Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » New Tech
 New Tech |
Mon, 03 May 2004 15:37  |
|
| Sandman |
 | Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 20
Registered: April 2004 | |
|
I understand the need to try and make Freestars 1.0 as close to the current Stars as possible. I also wanted to start a thread that deals with (for good or ill) the possibilities of new tech by version 4.0 or something. Since I started the thread, I'll throw my hat in first.
I think everyone can see the similarity between Stars ships design and Earth wet navy design. Why not add the next logical element: Carrier-based spacecraft? I see it working something like this;
The Hangar Deck would be a new component that you could put on ships in a Mech slot (or possibly General). each Hangar Deck would support one fighter craft. The fighter would leave the mother ship after all movement is finished on the first turn. Fighters would attack targets based on their home fleet's orders and would be able to fire every turn. They could be shot down by beam weapons or torps and would be replenished between battles. Better tech would result in better fighters (bombers?) and eventually dedicated Carrier hulls.
What does everyone think?
"Fascinating Captain."Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Mon, 03 May 2004 16:05  |
|
 EDog |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 417
Registered: November 2002
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA | |
|
| Sandman wrote on Mon, 03 May 2004 13:37 |
The Hangar Deck would be a new component that you could put on ships in a Mech slot (or possibly General). each Hangar Deck would support one fighter craft. The fighter would leave the mother ship after all movement is finished on the first turn. Fighters would attack targets based on their home fleet's orders and would be able to fire every turn. They could be shot down by beam weapons or torps and would be replenished between battles. Better tech would result in better fighters (bombers?) and eventually dedicated Carrier hulls.
What does everyone think?
|
Why use a slot for an extra ship when you can put an x-ray laser on a scout hull and have the same effect in a battle? I've thought about this myself, and in the Stars engine, a fighter would be about the same use (and have the same effect) as chaff, so why waste a ship slot on it? Now, if there was an Orbital device (maybe not available to IT or PP, and cheaper for AR) called the Hangar Deck, which carries a set number of two-slot vessels (one engine, one weapon, but a battle move 2.5 (or higher!) and a high initiative), it could make attacking starbases a more...interesting proposition.
I've always thought a neat item would be something like a Marine Contingent. It would be a Range 0 weapon (or mechanical) that would allow you to capture intact an enemy ship. This could be a neat way to obtain vessels you cannot normally possess or vessels of a higher tech than you have.
And as long as we're dreaming, how about the infamous tractor beam as an AR specialty - it could capture one enemy vessel per combat round. Captured vessels may be scrapped or "refitted" and used the following year. It could also make taking down a starbase an interesting task, since it would have targeting algorithms to go after the largest displacement vessels first (or something) - exactly the opposite of chaff.
Imaginating EDog
================
All your base are belong to us!!
http://ianthealy.com
Born, grew up, became an adventurer
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | | | | | |
| Re: New Tech |
Mon, 03 May 2004 17:36 |
|
| ForceUser |
| |
Messages: 383
Registered: January 2004
Location: South Africa | |
|
A few more ideas, How about a few Fighter specific guns?? Same damage as normal weapon of same lv but lighter and cheaper and mabey shorter range. Same with armour and shields. Maybe make a whieght limit and design limit on type of fighters.
Also give the carrier orders what type of fighters/Heavys to manufacture in he next battle, % of each type.
Or a new radical idea : Make them mobile Manufactioring ships. On a small carrier give space for a few miners and on bigger carriers more miners so that it can colect minerals on unihabited planets, Store it in the cargo hold and manufactior fighters from that minerals in the battle??
Maybr make the biggest carrier exclusive to AR or A carrier with more guns for a WM, One to lay mines for a SD, One with limited gating capabilitys (Lighter ships) for IT, Stealthy one for SS, Small cheap ones for HE, Nubian type carrier for Joat, One that can fling limited packets (Lowish warp) for PP, No Idea for IS or CA.
Or a LRT of Advanced Carriers (AC) not CA 
Carriers can also count more points than cap ships.
ForceUser
"There are two types of people in the world. AR players and non-AR players" Nick Fraser
Working on some new stuff: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/stars-nova/index.php?t itle=Graphics
And the Mentor Database www.groep7.co.za/Mentor/ ZOMGWTFBBQ!! it still works lol!
Check out my old site with old pics at www.groep7.co.za/Stars/
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| |
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 00:58 |
|
| Ozone |
 | Warrant Officer |
Messages: 115
Registered: April 2003
Location: Twilight Zone | |
|
Very interesting discussion. I like a lot of the ideas discussed here.
I like the general idea of finding a way to make smaller ships combat effective (other than chaff): It would be great if some balance features like what have been discussed were available to make smaller ships viable at higher tech levels. Also - It would be nice to have some higher tech smaller hulls available as well.
I think the concept of a ships that lack warp engines is a logical design option that could add depth to the game: The general idea is that a ship without heavy warp engines, large fuel tanks and what ever else is inside the hull to support the crew for long periods of time in space would be a much more effective fighting ship. BTW - There is really no reason that this concept has to be limited to only very small ships (fighter size ships). You should be able to build any ship without warp engines to remain in orbit of a star. Or require some sort of super carrier to move them or perhaps you just can't move them at all. To balance the whole thing you would have to add a battle order of target carrier. I would think that a ship that lost its carrier would die after the battle or have to be abandoned.
A new concept I would like to introduce is that of fleet support costs. My idea for this would be a tax imposed across the board on all of your planets based on the size of the fleet that you have to support or maybe the tax would apply to only planets with starbases. Either way the total cost could be based on ship mass/age/tech level or slots or fuel capacity or some combination of these. The same idea could apply to operating a starbase. In real life the actual cost of developing/producing a weapon system is only 30% of the total life cycle costs. 70% of the life cycle cost is in support and maintenance over its life.
[Updated on: Tue, 04 May 2004 00:59] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | | | |
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 12:58 |
|
| Crusader |
 | Officer Cadet 2nd Year |
Messages: 233
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dixie Land | |
|
OK, I give up. I'll put in my 2 cents worth here also. 
If you are going to go the fighter/carrier route, you really need to put these items in the tech tree, and quite a ways up there in my opinion (for whatever that's worth). Trying to stay in the scale of the game would be the main consideration here, I think, which means that fighters are built/represented as squadrons or wings with the carrier being another hull, possibly multiple to represent different classes of carriers with increasing capabilities of carrying more squadrons. Slots on the carrier hull are for carrying fighters, and all the other stuff as well, but mainly fighters. Fighters are a component that have intrinsic values like beam weapons or missiles/torpedos. Range would be the entire battle board.   Difference is, fighter components are used up. You have to replace them due to losses, both combat and maintenance. Either that, or you just assume that supply always makes up your losses and so you have an unrealistic representation of the fighter as a component that never dies. 
And if space fighters are as big a impact on space battle as they have been in terrestial battles here on Earth, you will see Battleships quickly become obsolete as a main ship-of-the-line due to their cost vs. their vulnerability to fighter hits, so carriers are more along the cost of a cruiser hull (in minerals) rather than the BB, due to the lower armor, etc., although resource costs would be higher than the BB. Carrier hull would probably require construction and electronics tech both to build also.
Individual fighters might be cheap, but you don't fight with fighters as individual ships. You throw them at your targets as squadrons or wings, swarming them en masse. A squadron might be the equivalent of a destroyer or some such. Higher tech levels could possibly give upgrades to fighters, if you want to get that complicated about it.
Assuming that you are going to allow fighters to have the same impact in battle that they do here on Earth, you are going to have a squadron of fighters with the ability to take out a fully decked out BB, which makes the BB a less attractive ship. Another down side is that you can't even use your old, obsolete BBs for ground bombardment like you can in real life, unless FreeStars is going to give BB hulls some intrinsic bombardment value, or bomb slots.
Again, assuming that your FreeStars is attempting to stay true to Stars! while incorporating this new feature modeled after terrestial experiences. Ain't no law that says you got to.
So, go back to individual fighters (yuck). How many fighters can you load on a carrier (or hanger slot)? How many fighters does it reasonably take to kill a BB? One lucky shot could do it in WWII. Probably couldn't be done in WWI. One fighter can quite possibly take out a fleet today.
Then, someone will want to be able to do kamikaze attacks, so better change the battle orders too. How come your battle orders don't apply to fighters anyway? How do you represent fighters without taking up a ship slot, but still get them transported into battle, much less build them.
I'm just saying... 
I know. I'm being the spoilsport here, and I'm not even a part of the coding team. I do understand the challenges here, however, or at least my ego tells me I do.  The game of Stars!, as it currently is, represents a grand strategic scale that is too large to easily represent fighters. This is only true in the reality where I live. Your reality my differ signicantly. To my mind, a scout hull represents a ship consisting of a working crew of between 10 to 50 "beings". This is why I believe a squadron of fighters would be represented as a token, rather than have individual fighters zipping around the battle board. You couldn't even design fighters like you would ships. You could probably fly three or more fighters into the Fuel Mizer engine with room to spare. The short-range, super-fast (on the battle board at least) engines on the fighters are teeny-tiny and not in the tech tree at all.
Well, I'm starting to ramble. But I just really think that the difficulties in trying to represent fighters in the current Stars! game would actually detract from the game, either in making it an unrealistic representation of battle (again, in MY opinion) or complicating the game to the point of frustration. (same disclaimer)
But if you guys can work it out so that fighters can be represented without overcomplicating the game, knock yourselves out!  I'll be the first to congratulate you if you can get it to work.
The Crusader 
Nothing for now.Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| |
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 14:08 |
|
| EDog |
| Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 417
Registered: November 2002
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA | |
|
I'd like to touch more on an idea someone else put out in passing - that of the Carrier as a mobile space dock. This sounds much more useful to me than the idea of fighters. A Carrier in this case would be able to build small ships so long as they have minerals available. Perhaps a Carrier acts as a 100kT dock (for example). It would have cargo capacity equivalent to a Large Freighter or Galleon (which could also be a clue as to where it would go in the research tree). A Carrier could upload minerals from a remotely mined planet (for example) and build ships with the minerals. This would allow ships to be built by worlds not held by colonists, so long as surface minerals are available. Allies of an AR could build ships in orbit around the AR's world, so long as minerals are available. A Carrier would make salvage in space much more useful - Carriers instead of Freighters would go after salvage and could turn around and make more ships. A Carrier would be treated as, and targeted as, a Freighter. When a Carrier's cargo hold is empty, it can no longer build ships.
Some races would find additional benefits to the Carrier hull - SS would become truly fearsome by stealing minerals and immediately converting them to ships - suddenly a fleet of bombers appears over your world! Races using ARM would find their ship production enhanced. Anyone with a fledgling colony could protect it quickly so long as a Carrier was in orbit with a hold full of minerals.
As a later hull, there might be a Heavy Carrier, which could build ships up to (for example) 250 kT.
The usefulness of the Carrier is mitigated by the need for it to have minerals (which could not be used for terrestrial production), so it's not like getting something for nothing.
Whaddya think?
EDog
http://ianthealy.com
Born, grew up, became an adventurer
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 14:29 |
|
| EDog |
| Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 417
Registered: November 2002
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA | |
|
| The Taubat wrote on Mon, 03 May 2004 21:13 |
Fighters are not the best tech for space battles.
|
To quote a line from a famous space battle movie, "What good are snub-fighters going to be against that?"
Fighters by their nature are fast and hard to hit. Individually they don't do much damage (unless they happen to hit an unshielded thermal reactor port), but en masse they become a force to be reckoned with. The Empire lost two (count 'em, two) Death Stars to fighters. Their speed, maneuverability, and small size make them difficult targets for capital ship weaponry. This is true even today. If fighters were not useful, why does every Air Force and Navy use them today?
In Stars, Fighters should have battle speeds above 2.5, a high initiative, and a high defensive rating (not necessarily shielding, but hard to hit). Gatling weapons would decimate fighter wings, of course, and they would remain useful even at higher tech levels. Fighters should be immune to missiles and torpedoes. If we assume that one wing of fighters has 10 ships (purely theoretical here - I know actual wings are different), one beam weapon would destroy 10% of a fighter wing per battle round.
Fighters should come in three types: best beam, best torpedo, or best sapper. I don't believe fighters should carry capital ship missiles. Fighters would be best combated by other Fighters. In an even combat, two fighter wings would more or less destroy each other, leaving the capital ships free to trade volleys as needed. Otherwise, higher tech fighters would usually defeat lower tech with fewer (or no) losses.
A Fighter should not be a separate hull. Like the original post, a Fighter should be a component directly tied to the Hangar Bay. One Hangar Bay could contain one wing of Fighters. Thus, eventually you could have a "Carrier" using a Galleon or Nubian with several Hangar Bays. Fighters would essentially be considered mobile weapons (best beam, best torp, best sapper). Having Gatling weapons would be essential fighter defenses. There could even be an Orbital-only Hangar Bay that could be (for example) the equivalent of 10 ship-based Hangar Bays. Again, this makes taking Starbases harder because of their mobile defenses. Fighters would add a new depth to Stars but I believe they could be made to fit within the overall plan and the battle engine.
Might as well continue along this route - it's not like we're going to be playing Supernova...ever.
EDog
http://ianthealy.com
Born, grew up, became an adventurer
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 14:37 |
|
| Sotek |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
|
Okay. I see basically two potentially-useable ideas here.
1) Fighters (and possibly larger) as non-warp ships that require carriers.
This is actually, conceptually, not that difficult to do. Might even have a new 'type' for non-warp ships, that you could put miners in and so on, and have a carrier.
If you do that and want to not completely mangle the game, I'd suggest making it so that 'bays' are a mech part that work like cargo pods.
And you can have low-tech hulls that *can't* fight.
It'd be an interesting way to do miners and minelayers; have to be carried (Possibly you could gate without a carrier, too.), but are now individually cheaper, and use a different slotset than your normal ships.
However, I would strongly advise not allowing fighters until TL 20+ in const.
20 would be nice to make const a bit less silly in the giant gap department.
Not sure about fighter weapons; I see two possibilities here.
1) Use regular ship weapons.
2) Use special 'fighter' weapons, which probably unlock along the weaps research tree, maybe with a preq of high const, maybe not.
Engines pretty much have to be special.
I'd have the non-warp engines be along the prop tree and act basically like cheap versions of the normal ones at similar levels, since if you go my way here, you'll be using them for other things.
One note: This will change balances some, but I suspect it shouldn't be too significant a change until fighters show up, and a drastic breakpoint change at high level isn't too bad, IMO, especially if it leaves early-game relatively unchanged.
The other neat idea, that of the mobile space dock, is an interesting one that I really really like.
However, you'd need some way to balance it, otherwise people will produce as many carriers as they can with their worlds, and just use carriers to make ships, and it'd seriously unbalance AR.
If you come up with a sane way to do something that accounts for resource cost, that'd be good.
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 15:14 |
|
| Orca |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
|
| EDog wrote on Tue, 04 May 2004 14:29 |
| The Taubat wrote on Mon, 03 May 2004 21:13 |
Fighters are not the best tech for space battles.
|
To quote a line from a famous space battle movie, "What good are snub-fighters going to be against that?"
Fighters by their nature are fast and hard to hit. Individually they don't do much damage (unless they happen to hit an unshielded thermal reactor port), but en masse they become a force to be reckoned with. The Empire lost two (count 'em, two) Death Stars to fighters. Their speed, maneuverability, and small size make them difficult targets for capital ship weaponry. This is true even today. If fighters were not useful, why does every Air Force and Navy use them today?
|
You know, I think we're going the wrong route here. What we don't need is fighters - what we need is Gundams! Gundams are more flexible than non-humanoid fighters - and the larger they are, the more manueverable they get! Plus, look at all the damage they can absorb and dish out. A Gundam the size of a Battleship should have a move of, oh, I'd say about 5, and a base armor of at least 100,000. Yeah.
Or why don't we use the Honor Harrington model? "fighters" the size of a WW2 battleship? Or actually, the Mote in God's Eye model was kinda neat...
Basically, you can find a justification for any level of fighter involvement, depending on which universe you happen to like.
As for the more modern ascendence of fighters, it's because they're a major force multiplier. They don't cost as much as a warship to build, and a few of them can easily sink a warship if said ship doesn't have adequate air defense. At the same time though, modern fighters don't use bombs against naval targets, they're firing Harpoons and Exocets and similar missiles from 60 miles out. If they had to close to point blank to engage, you'd need a LOT of fighters to successfully attack a Burke or Ticonderoga class ship...
And in any case, real life is totally irrelevant to the game - we just care about a) balance b) how the mechanics will work given the ship design, battleboard and order limitations. IF fighters were added, they'd need to be balanced so that they neither dominate or are irrelevant. And then there's the entire logistical concern that that brings about - do we really want to deal with ship *as well as* empire-wide logistics?
I'm hesitant to mess with *any* aspect of Stars! balance without being very, very careful about it. Though imperfect, it's withstood years of people playing the game (last real balance change - exempting the PP/CA packet terraforming and full damage packets - was in 2.60d. Which is what, 8 or 9 years old? Maybe more?). If you want dominant fighters, that very much changes the game...
[Updated on: Tue, 04 May 2004 15:25]
Jesus saves.
Allah forgives.
Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich.Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| |
| Re: New Tech |
Tue, 04 May 2004 22:39 |
|
|
|
I see different approaches to fighters, carriers, etc surfacing here from the Moo2 and Space Empires III.
I suggest we finish Stars game first, then worry about additions but try to leave room in design to make additions easy.
To throw another suggestion if fighers are wanted is they are a special hull like mini-coloniser that allows use of a special non-warp engine and can be loaded into a freighter that has a special 'fighter bay' module, using space up based on their weight.
Figher hull would likely have one weapon, one shield and one engine slot. Fighter hull would also allow normal engines. Special engine would allow combat speed of 3 if ship was light (eg light weapon, no croby shield), but would drop to a crawl if design is heavy. Fighter based weapons, shields would cost half as much as regular but be half as effective.
Fighter ships would have intrinsic jamming as part of their hull against missiles (makes them less easily chaff but also more torp resistant).
When carried they would be protected from minefields... but if the ship carrying them is destroyed, they would be.
In combat it would take time to 'deploy' them (each fighter bay could only launch 1 per turn). If the carrying ship is destroyed in combat, all fighters still inside would be destroyed. Targetting may take into account the value of all ships still within a carrier.
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Wed, 05 May 2004 20:55 |
|
| Sandman |
| Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 20
Registered: April 2004 | |
|
I can see the logic of having fighters as ship/weapon components as opposed to actual ship hulls themselves. Having a seperate hull for every kind of fighter would make the game disasterously complicated. I can see them being balanced (after a lot of playtesting) so as to be effective without being overwhelming.
I don't see carriers as needing to build fighters with on-board minerals. This is (IMHO) completely outside the current scope of the game and would also complicate things immensely. As for the notion of fighters being replaced after combat, why worry? We don't replace missiles or torpedoes after each battle do we? Just assume that the fighter bays are repleanished after each battle.
I also think fighter bays could be put on bases for defensive purposes.
"Fascinating Captain."Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: New Tech |
Wed, 05 May 2004 20:59 |
|
| Sandman |
| Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 20
Registered: April 2004 | |
|
I also took a look at the Malfador website listed and downloaded the demo for Space Empires. The demo is pretty cool and I think the game has lots of merit...but not for that price. $50.00 is a bit steep as far as I'm concerned for the game. It's cute, and looks very playable with lots of tech and tactics and so forth...but it's not $50.00 cute!
"Fascinating Captain."Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
Current Time: Fri May 03 15:33:39 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
Re: New Tech
