Report message to a moderator

Sandman wrote on Wed, 05 May 2004 19:55

We don't replace missiles or torpedoes after each battle do we? I also think fighter bays could be put on bases for defensive purposes.

Good points! We do not replace "used up" components in the current game of Stars!. No reason to start with Freestars.

And if we can have carriers we most assuredly should be able to base them on bases. The equivalent of "land-based" fighters here on Earth. There is no reason to differentiate them in the game, however.

I can see Ultras and Death Stars becoming a bit more able to protect themselves, although it would still be fairly easy to overwhelm base defenses by simply bringing enough carriers along.

Also, how about another LRT to tie into this idea? No SuperCarriers would give points back to the player, but would not allow carrier hulls to be built, restricting fighter bays to being placed on Nubians, Galleons, Rogues, etc. Alternatively, you have one called Allow SuperCarriers which takes points away from the player (although I personally like the first option better).

As for all the references to MOO and Space Empires and so forth. Don't have 'em. I have downloaded demos and simply am unable to get interested enough to actually try playing them. I think I tried SEIV one day for a couple of hours and never got the first turn done.

I think I'm getting old and resistant to change.

The Crusader

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Thu, 06 May 2004 18:05]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Fri, 07 May 2004 03:08]

Report message to a moderator

Remember that we can change anything to make them balance or plausable in the game. So With the carrirs and Spacedock thingy, we can make it fit into the stars! universe.

Some sugestion;
- You need pop on the carriers to make them be able to produce anything. Maybe build a carrier with the option of building faktories on them just like a world. Remember though that that should just be like 100,000 or 250,000 pop max with the races faktory settings. Also make them heavy, slow, few engines, expensive.

Lets say for example you take a normal HP 2000/15/8/20 with 100,000 pop on one of these mobile docks you can have 20*10 = 200 faktorys = 300 resourse + 100,000/2,000 = 350 resources per dock.

With 250,000 it'll be 20*25 = 500 factorys = 750 + 250,000/2000 = 875

That would mean you can only produce small amounts of ships. This would seem to make them useless but this means that those ships could be built right on the enemy's doorstep with salvage from a battle!

It'll take some playtesting to bance these numbers but at least we have Iztoks tech lv that we could also use for space docks or mabey make a small one for lower techs or for AR (Why not

I for one would be first in line for playtesting with carriers and mobile space docks.

ForceUser

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Fri, 30 July 2004 02:57]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Tue, 03 August 2004 16:29]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Fri, 06 August 2004 03:30]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Downsider wrote on Mon, 09 August 2004 13:09

IMO the battle engine for freestars should be completely redesigned; if not to the newtonian model of SSG then to a model that doesn't rely on stacks (so much).

Why to *completely redesign* something that works? You say theres no Rock/Paper/Skissors in Stars... maybe try bit more? IMO its opposite. Stars battles are exactly what they must be. Just to name few:

1) Significally stronger fleet usually wins with almost no losses. If you have some strategy sense then you see that this rule HELPS weaker but more mobile guys to beat up bigger guy.

2) When fleets have more or less equal strenght then more carefully designed and ordered fleet wins almost without losses. So people do not just research "ultimate tanks" and build them like in so lot of boring "strategy" games.

3) It is possible to damage opponents plans by significally smaller forces (like sniping out bombers, orbitals or freighters). Again, such tactic may turn really overhelming attack useless for a few years. Years mean tech, tech means obsoleteness for that "overhelming" fleet.

4) You open battle and it is over in a few seconds. Thats how some like me can play it years, see thousands of battles and no boredom and nothing better sold in the stores.

AND SO ON. AND ON.

If you can propose battle engine with that and more then go on.

Problems I see is that current tactical control is a bit buggy ... but easy to fix i think.
1) Mixed sappers and range 2 beams do not work as expected.
2) Minimum damage to self does not work versus orbitals.

That is it. just IMO.

Report message to a moderator

Quote:

You say theres no Rock/Paper/Skissors in Stars...

Negative. I did not say that. Stars has a Rock / paper / scissors (RPS) system in the form of beamers, missile ships and chaff. I said that freestars should implement a RPS system that included fighters instead of chaff, the difference being that fighters can actually kill stuff.

Quote:

Stars battles are exactly what they must be. Just to name few....

In answer to your points:

1) Should not a smaller force have the chance of beating a superior one based on the conditions of battle (tactics, terrain, positioning, etc.)? I beleive it should.

2) I'm not sure what your point is here. When fleets are of roughly equal strength the "more carefully designed and ordered fleet" will take losses no matter what. And in any case, all designs should have counter designs to keep the "ultimate tank" scenario from ever occuring (this is the essence of RPS). IMO, fighters would help solve this.

3) I have not proposed anything that would stop a player from targeting support ships in battle. You would still be able to do this with the battle model I imagine.

4) Stars battles ARE boring. I would much prefer a more fluent and random battle model where you couldn't predict fully what was going to happen. There is no reason why such a battle viewer can't skip the parts where little action is happening or simply provide a textual or visual summary of the battle.

another

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[quote title=Downsider wrote on Tue, 07 September 2004 02:47]

Quote:

2) I'm not sure what your point is here. When fleets are of roughly equal strength the "more carefully designed and ordered fleet" will take losses no matter what. And in any case, all designs should have counter designs to keep the "ultimate tank" scenario from ever occuring (this is the essence of RPS). IMO, fighters would help solve this. another

Even with little experience with nubs, just a few testbeds showed me that for any Nub design there is a counter design, that will win with equal number of resources and mins. With BBs there is far less possibilities for counter designing, but even there i think some counter desing is possible.

So why do you think there is something to be "solved"?

Carn

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Hi!

Downsider wrote on Tue, 07 September 2004 02:47

1) Should not a smaller force have the chance of beating a superior one based on the conditions of battle (tactics, terrain, positioning, etc.)? I beleive it should.

Why do you think that is not implemented in current Stars!? I've won a small sparse slow-tech game against an opponent, whose ships had almost tree times the firepower mine had (he was using Dooms and Disruptor BBs, me MarkIV blaster dreadnoughts and lots of chaff), 30% more capital ships then I had, but not enough time to play properly.

Everything you mentioned was involved:
- intelligence (I knew all his designs for more then 20 turns, and what he'll have in battle),
- tactics and positionning (I testbeded that decissive battle several times, and made proper token sizes and orders),
- terrain (we fought on my planet, to save all salvage. But that has not been my merit - I've been on defensive for 10-15 turns and already lost 1/4 of planets).
The end result was I lost 1400 chaff, he 70% his capital ships (complete attack fleet but some SFX), and soon after this his core planets.

All that couldn't happen if Stars! would strictly favour bigger/stronger fleets. To be completelly honest, that also wouldn't happen if my race wouldn't be a WM, as I could not be able to make a BB that would have first shot, move 2.25, be less attractive to missiles then chaff even without shields, and go 1_on_1 against ship with three times its FP and win (90% damaged).
My .
BR, Iztok

Report message to a moderator

Quote:

You would still be able to do this with the battle model I imagine.

Good then. All we have heard about your mysterious battle engine. There is quick board movement chaff without fuel. It takes out missile boats before these can do any major damage but does not prevent from sniping out the support vessels.

Maybe SSG had better battle engine, i did not see it. Game was beta tested but never released so probably there were too serious balance issues and bugs to be playable at level of current stars.

Why do not you just design that "better" battle engine that you imagine and then show it to us? No need 3d graphics or something, triangles and circlers are ok for starters. How do 2 fleets (of 1000 warships at each side) fight? In the way that its interesting, fun and does not suck? Arguing that current
engine sucks and is boring does probably raise nothing.

For some thinking: There were some sort of jump start and self detonate battle orders in stars v 1.0. These were further taken out as unbalancing. Current chaff has too few fuel to get anywhere far on its own. It has barely enough to chaff-sweep or to check designs. WM has trouble because its chaff has too quick board movement.

[Updated on: Tue, 07 September 2004 20:42]

Report message to a moderator

[quote title=iztok wrote on Thu, 06 May 2004 15:03]Hi!

Sotek wrote on Thu, 06 May 2004 21:19

We don't I IMO fighters should be "one shot" weapon. Once launched they remain on battle board until destroyed or battle ends. After the battle they are automatically "rebuilt" in hangars to be used next turn. I'd propose the following fighter "technical" properties: - 3 levels of fighter bays, launching 1, 2 or 3 fighters (tokens); - tech requirements for bays: level 1: en-6/weap-8/con-5/prop-7 level 2: en-12/weap-14/con-11/prop-11 level 3: en-18/weap-20/con-18/prop-16 - speeds 2, 2.5, 3; - armor 10, 30, 70; shields 20, 50, 100; - R1 weapon 26, 66, 169 damage, at R0 ignoring target's shields - immune to missiles/torpedoes, R3 weapons 5% chance to hit, R2 10%, R1 20%, R0 60%, gattlings 25%. Comments? BR, Iztok

While we're playing around w/ pipe dreams, I might as well spew some nonsense since I have nothign better to do right now.

In theory, I like this idea. However, I would suggest a couple changes. Gats act more like beams, only they are better at point defense. Gats should get just under 100% near range 0, IMO.

Since you are creating ships, have a mineral cost for fighters produced. Say 1I,1B,1G, per ship. Fleet must be carrying minerals to produce fighters. And since this is a wish list, fighters should have a secondary battle order selection screen.

However, Orca's right on in that this is adding a monumental level of complexity when it comes to coding and balance. This has all been rehashed thousands of times on rgcs, years ago. Most people stopped discussing it long before Stars! 3.0 ceased to materialize in 1997,98....SNG failed to cohere out of vapor in 99, 00, 01, etc.

Now that we're intent on reinventing the wheel so that we can go about actually tryng to go forward w/ designing a car instead of this damned 10 year old rusty, 3 wheeled wagon, we should probably focus on the basics.

On a more realistic note, I do have a suggestion.

See that big, bad-assed missile boat? Well that is your your "carrier." See those gi-normous armageddon missiles that devoured your planets' iron. Well, basically, it's an anti-capital ship fighter...that your ship builds and fires out every single turn in battle. See that chaff? That's your interceptor-fighters. Deal.

IMO, no less logical than all the aforementioned systems mentioned in this thread.

my .02 USD

g.e.

Report message to a moderator

Hi!

SinicalIdealist wrote on Sun, 10 October 2004 21:26 (fighters)

In theory, I like this idea. However, I would suggest a couple changes. Gats act more like beams, only they are better at point defense. Gats should get just under 100% near range 0, IMO.

Since gattlings are quite common I wanted to make them a bit less usefull. Regarding the proposed fighters' firepower and defenses it looks like the beam accuracy should be significantly increased (by about factor 2), and maybe add 5% accuracy to torpedos. IMO computers should help with accuracy too.

Quote:

Since you are creating ships, have a mineral cost for fighters produced. Say 1I,1B,1G, per ship. Fleet must be carrying minerals to produce fighters. And since this is a wish list, fighters should have a secondary battle order selection screen.

Here I agree. But then the missiles/torps should have some cost too.
BR, Iztok

Report message to a moderator