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Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » make PP what they are suppose to be
Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 09 August 2005 11:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mazda is currently offline mazda

 
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dethdukk wrote on Tue, 09 August 2005 15:59


the point is that we dont want a MD ship and one overcloakership flying in, packeting a planet from point blank range, and then flying back out unseen. In my opinion, that would be worse than the SS robber baron. Also, the closest Stars! comes to a doomsday weapon is a Warp 13 driver. We dont want to have 3 MD13 ships with overcloakerships taking out our entire frontier.

Yes, but one MD ship won't be able to be cloaked to 98% by one overcloaker. Not if it has any minerals on board. So you'll be able to see it.
(Have you ever tried cloaking any number of loaded freighters ?)
And even if you don't see it, one 2000kT Warp 10 packet from point blank range would not destroy any planet with decent defences. (unless you are talking about PP having this at the start of the game when people don't have defences up - and if it is early in the game the PP will still have weak drivers, won't have cloaking, won't have many spare minerals, so it's still not a problem)

You seem to be overstating the effectiveness of packets by using phrases like "doomsday weapon" and "point blank range".

Packets are not all that scary as weapons, even at close range.

Believe me, allowing a PP to creep up (even reasonably cloaked)and packet a few planets is not going to break the game in the slightest. You might even thank him for the free minerals.

They are more likely to be useful against new colonies at a battle front than anything else.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 09 August 2005 11:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
dethdukk is currently offline dethdukk

 
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I admit that I may be wrong. still, it would be pretty cool to run one to your colonies(dont even have to build a starbase) and use it in about 5 different roles at once.


If you cannot love, you will always hate, and in hate there is only death.
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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 09 August 2005 13:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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Quote:

Also, the closest Stars! comes to a doomsday weapon is a Warp 13 driver. We dont want to have 3 MD13 ships with overcloakerships taking out our entire frontier.


This is why my suggestion is that there only be a couple of hull based mass drivers - I would like to see warp 5, 6 and 7 hull based drivers. The most advantage to these drivers is the ability to fling back minerals from the closer remote mining worlds. Any of these drivers would have weapons potential but, it would be limited. Once warp 10 drivers are available to all races, even the warp 7 mass driver ship will be useless as a weapon.

There is then no real need to deal with special hull types for a mass driver ship - any ship with cargo space and a general slot should be able to have one.

Ptolemy




Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 09 August 2005 18:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mazda is currently offline mazda

 
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dethdukk wrote on Tue, 09 August 2005 16:26

still, it would be pretty cool to run one to your colonies(dont even have to build a starbase) and use it in about 5 different roles at once.

Yeah, I think ship based drivers would be a cool feature as well.
I just don't think you need to be overly concerned with preventing them from becoming cloaked.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 09 August 2005 20:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
multilis is currently offline multilis

 
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Quote:

Once warp 10 drivers are available to all races, even the warp 7 mass driver ship will be useless as a weapon

Some things take time, such as setting up driver. Suppose you have just bombed and then taken my colony. Next turn you find you all you pop is dead before it even got a chance to do production... I had a cloaked driver 49 ly away that flung a packet at warp 10. Good day to be an SS, with robber barons and lots of guys to steal from.


[Updated on: Tue, 09 August 2005 20:31]

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Wed, 10 August 2005 05:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gible

 
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Rther than limiting the types of drivers that can be mounted on ships, why not just make it so that whenever rocks are thrown above the ship's normal speed and/or above the unladen weight of the ship then the ship(fleet) is thrown backwards at a rate dependant on the unladen mass, thrown mass &/or excess mass(thrown mass-unladel mass) and excess speed(packet speed-normal ship speed)

I'd also suggest it have NO cargo space. Make it a dedicated Mass driver ship. Perhaps a second higher level design with a few shield or mech slots... like bombers.

Regarding the ship's weight I suggest 200kT and 500kT for the higher level ship. 1000kT absolute MAX

The point here is that ship mounted drivers should never be as powerful as base mounted ones, and the "natural" way to limit them is in how much they throw/the speed they throw at.

As for the recoil formula, I'm not sure... I think there should be the potential to be thrown back more than 100ly and that there should also be a chance of the ship "breaking up under the strain"...and if the ship does recoil maybe it should leave its attendant frieghters/OCs behind Shocked Very Happy

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Wed, 10 August 2005 23:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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Hmmm... Recoil - now there's an idea. I like it. However, I don't think there should be a possibility of a ship breaking up under strain unless the packet has been launched at a higher speed than the MD rating. Think of it as the ship mounted mass driver equivalent of over-gating.

The only potential difficulty I see is when the MD ship is in a fleet. Ideally, only the MD ship should suffer from recoil and, recoil will need to be less than the first year travel of the packet. I do think though that mass driver ships should be required to have cargo space and only be able to launch packets as large as their holds are.

Ptolemy


[Updated on: Wed, 10 August 2005 23:36]





Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Wed, 10 August 2005 23:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gible

 
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I was thinking more of them breaking up under great strain...up to 2x ship mass should be very safe whereas 4x would be almost certainly fatal. like overgating...

Was also thinking of linking the chance of breaking up to the recoil distance...with the unsafe speeds (W9/10+) being the danger zone.

Istill think the engine capacity should affect it somehow tho.

hmm perhaps a single Ship MD part that can safely throw up to the engines speed?

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 00:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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Quote:

hmm perhaps a single Ship MD part that can safely throw up to the engines speed?


Now, there's an idea, and it makes sense. Additionally, since the MD requires all of the engine output, the ship can't move if it's firing a packet. Using this option, Mass Driver potential will be limited to warp 10 by the engines - and, allowing for 'over-driven' packets then provides the basis for both recoil and the potential of breaking up under strain. We can use a simple formula for calculating the possibiltiy of break-up that uses ship mass (with cargo), number of warps over safe speed and recoil distance (a random value 20% +- the distance of the first year of packet travel). The cargo used to create the packet is not included in the ship mass (since it's in the packet).

For MD ships in orbit, the recoil location will be a random location outside the orbit of the planet (orbital calculation require firing at an orbital breakaway angle which means the ship could be anywhere in the orbit and the reverse direction would not necessarily be the reverse of the packet direction). Alternately, ships in orbit simply can not over-fling packets.

For ships in space, recoil will be in the opposite direction of packet travel.

Ships that have travelled by re-coil don't hit mines during the recoil - recoil creates a temporary wormhole so the ship just ends up somewhere else.

Ptolemy




Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 01:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
gible wrote on Thu, 11 August 2005 05:56

Was also thinking of linking the chance of breaking up to the recoil distance...with the unsafe speeds (W9/10+) being the danger zone.

Ptolemy wrote on Thu, 11 August 2005 05:56

I would like to see warp 5, 6 and 7 hull based drivers

I don't see any smart reason to use ship-based MDs if they'd be able to fling packets with max warp 10 (and 50% decay) only. For moving minerals around with speeds 25, 36 and 49 LY per turn (and recoiling back every turn they'd fling them, so basically two ships'd be needed ) I'd rather use freighters, as they're MUCH faster.
My my 2 cents.
BR, Iztok

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 02:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
crr65536 is currently offline crr65536

 
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Maybe engine speed + 2 could work? I had been thinking the same thing along most of this discussion - that with how much these are being crippled they would be useless weapons and at best slightly more efficient than freighters for mineral transport. The only remaining thing I can think of would be for shooting terraforming packets from closer up, but I don't see so much utility in that, especially if you'd have to delay your fleet getting to a planet to shoot packets at it.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 04:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
Kotk wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 10:48

Yep... it is VERY easy to test that PP can make planet fully terraformed + few clicks of permanent terraform with just sole very large packet (say 10 000 kt).

Unfortunatelly the problem remains ... this feature is still too expensive to use it as a part of any strategy. Nod

IMO here's the point. What PPs needs to be more playable is more minerals, as those are used for almost everything they can do with packets: terraforming, attacking and scanning.

I'm still for the idea mass drivers collect space dust and transform it into minerals. But PPs MDs should do that with better efficiency. Like:
- every MD creates minerals from space dust.
- efficiency for normal MDs is twice the speed of the driver. So MD-7 would generate 2*7=14 of each mineral each turn, and MD-10 20.
- efficiency for PPs drivers is 5 times the speed of the driver. So SD-6 would generate 5*6=30 of each mineral, SD-9 45 and UD-13 65.

When I started thinking about those numbers, I designed formula based on squared speed of the driver. But in that case PP would get less minerals earlier (SD-6 only 18, MD-7 10), when they are most needed for terra, and more in late game, when those additional minerals could make a game spoiler (UD-13 generating 85, MD-10 generating 20, and for comparison a planet with 2000 mines operating at MC 10 200). Since a max tech AMP Nub costs about 160 of each mineral that would make more than a half of a nub each turn. This way it makes only 40%, and for other races 12%.
But in first 40 turns PPs would get from about 10 planets with drivers (and tech-13 for SD-9 reached at about turn 30) about 7-10MT of additional minerals, resulting in another 35-50 "clicks" in terraforming. Not a game-breaker, esp. because only one third of those minerals would remain available for building. And that's also the amount other races would get from their drivers if they'd chose to build them.

In late game PPs would still have more minerals as they have now, so the "running out of minerals faster than running out of enemies" wouldn't happen soo soon, and would make PPs more playable also in that time frame of the game.
BR, Iztok

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 06:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mazda is currently offline mazda

 
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Why not simply give them +2 on their mining efficiency ?

Having MDs collect space dust alters the game for everyone.
And it obviously gives an advantage to empires with more planets.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 08:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
PricklyPea is currently offline PricklyPea

 
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Are PP really that bad?

If you were to tweak, I would consider -1 mine cost and maybe +1/2 mineral efficiency.

I may look into how easy it would be to do the mine cost as a MOD.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 08:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
mazda wrote on Thu, 11 August 2005 12:14

Why not simply give them +2 on their mining efficiency ?

You're OFC right, but jeffs as sworn enemies of everything simple would probably disagree with that solution. Wink
Giving PPs better (+10%) mines was in one of my proposal of how to balanace PRTs with mandatory unspent RW points.
BR, Iztok

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 08:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
PricklyPea wrote on Thu, 11 August 2005 14:13

Are PP really that bad?

For everythig they can do as PPs they need minerals, and in the end they have less of them for ships than other races.
BR, Iztok

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 13:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Kotk

 
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Messages: 1227
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mazda wrote on Thu, 11 August 2005 13:14

Why not simply give them +2 on their mining efficiency ?

Thats exactly same effect as to give them just 110 more rw points. Most PP players take mine efficency 8 if theres +2 efficency. Wink

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Thu, 11 August 2005 18:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mazda is currently offline mazda

 
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But going from 10 to 8 only gives you 66 points, not the 112 you get from 12 to 10.
Not sure if that is such a bargain.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Fri, 12 August 2005 07:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Kotk

 
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Messages: 1227
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Okay. Then your solution is bit more fitting than just giving them 110 points more. Very Happy
I still like the idea to let PPs to collect debris with their MD bit better. Amount needs to be tested of course but constant 5-10 kT per safe warp of base seem not too unbalancing. It gives similar effect over time and makes good reason for PP to quickly build his MD everywhere he can. Nod

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Fri, 12 August 2005 10:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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Yes, the issue of mineral availability is the other item that realy does need to be addressed. Since packets and salvage 'decay' in space, all that mineral loss really should be collectable somehow and it is the PP that should be able to collect it.

The easiest way to deal with the issue is to handle it the same way as the SS spy bonus for planets with mass drivers.

Ptolemy


[Updated on: Fri, 12 August 2005 10:27]





Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Mon, 06 February 2006 11:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
rowenstin is currently offline rowenstin

 
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Ok, just another crazy idea. What if PP races could “fling” ships, giving them a 1st year speed boost? It could work this way: A fleet that leaves that year a planet with a mass driver has an Effective Warp Speed (EWS) of ((Fleet “nominal” speed)*(mass driver speed))/(Fleet speed+driver speed), rounding down.

So, in the first years of playing, a fleet traveling at warp 9 (using FM) would travel a single year at warp 9 + (9*5)/14, that is, 12. It would travel 144 light years the first year, and 81 the next ones. Even having only a warp 5 engine, he could have a boost +2 warp speed, going 49 LY the first year instead of just 25. This ability would help starting empires, allowing them to expand faster.
Later in the game, with warp 10 engines and warp 13 mass drivers a fleet could travel a mind numbing total of 225 Ly in a single year; really good to defend your empire when you are not a IT or launch surprise attacks, so PP races would be military stronger.

If the bonus is too big, maybe it could be toned down to ((fleet speed)*(driver speed)/(fleet speed+driver speed)) – 1. That´s a bonus between +1 and +5, depending on the drivers and speeds.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Mon, 06 February 2006 22:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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Nope - not logical. Mass drivers fling packets and a departing packet only travels half it's speed distance in the first year. Figure it as 'building' up to top speed. I don't think there is any real value in flinging ships.

Ptolemy




Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Mon, 06 February 2006 22:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Madman is currently offline Madman

 
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Well, I kind of like the idea - It's not 'logical', but does add a bit of a different flavour to PP from the gameplay perspective. Some other abilities with minerals would be more in keeping with the PP 'theme' though.

Of course, any changes to PP need to be _after_ FreeStars 1.0 is released in the first place.

I think one of the ideas of FreeStars is that we could eventually do something like what FreeCiv Does ... here's lots of optional rules, some incompatible with each other, choose which ones you want (so there could be more than one option available for improving PP or slowing CA) - it might make the game adverts a little longer though.

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Mon, 06 February 2006 23:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
icebird is currently offline icebird

 
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That's what's so cool about FreeStars; that idea is integral to the whole project. All the rules are stored in text files, so they can be changed like that very easily.

The idea of flinging ships is cool. I think it might be a bit too big a bonus, but heh... No point worrying about that yet, is there? Very Happy



-Peter, Lord of the Big Furry Things

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Re: make PP what they are suppose to be Tue, 07 February 2006 05:25 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Madman is currently offline Madman

 
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icebird wrote on Tue, 07 February 2006 17:59

That's what's so cool about FreeStars; that idea is integral to the whole project. All the rules are stored in text files, so they can be changed like that very easily.

Well, a lot of the rules are stored a XML file, but some of the proposed rule changes (such as flinging ships) would require code changes, with maybe something in the rules file to turn that option on or off.

For instance, I've got a new idea for a PRT that I'm really keen on trying out, but no point thinking much about it till there is a game to try it on.

Quote:

The idea of flinging ships is cool. I think it might be a bit too big a bonus, but heh... No point worrying about that yet, is there? Very Happy

One of the things that make Stars! special is that most of the PRTs have must-have bonuses or toys that you really don't want to be without, and you just get one choice. Looked at it that way, flinging ships probably isn't all that powerful, given that just flinging minerals makes PP a weak PRT.

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