Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » make PP what they are suppose to be
| make PP what they are suppose to be |
Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47  |
|
 dreadlordnaf |
 | Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 27
Registered: April 2005
Location: Bulgaria | |
|
Ive always viewed the PP as sort of the merchant PRT of stars. The idea meaning they have the capacity to quickly and cheaply shuttle minerals around their empire to maintain that much needed balance of keeping mineral poor worlds stocked so that every planet can produce ships.
Only problem is right now they dont do this much better than anyone else. For one whats the point of being able to send warp 13 packets when you can just be IT and use a freighter to gate them there instantly on top of having all the other bonuses IT gets. Even a non-IT/PP race can keep their mineral spread balanced just by using warp 10 freighters and planning ahead a little bit each turn.
In addition the other ability of PP, packeting planets isnt too effective late game. Planetary defenses seem to stop quite a large chunk of the minerals and the packets seem to get intercepted by enemy frieghters very easily. In the end it seems you have to use so many minerals to kill one planet that it would almost be cheaper to just build a fleet with that same amount and take over the place. Which means again, what is the point of PP?
I think to improve PP you just need to make it so that its hands down the best PRT in the game at what its suppose to be good at: shuttling around minerals cheaply and quickly. This could be done several ways. First off perhaps limit or restrict IT's ability to gate huge freighters around. Unless this is changed PP will always be kind of useless because IT can do everything they can but better. Here are some other ideas:
-Perhaps do things like add a new starbase hull just for PP. A really cheap one that has just 1 slot and lets you build a mass driver on a new world for dirt cheap. This change would also let you use the terraforming aspect of PP much better on new worlds.
-Do something to increase the terraforming aspects of packets. The 50% chance is not good. It means on average 2 years of flinging packets (plus flight time) to terraform 1 point. This means 10 points would take about 20 years. Lame. Right now its quicker to just spend the resources on the target world instead.
-Increase the speed of all mass drivers. Unless PP can shuttle minerals around cheaper and faster than a freighter can thier PRT becomes useless. Right now only the warp 12 and 13 mass drivers can really move stuff around fast enough to see a noticable difference over freighters with warp 10 engines. There's no reason PP shouldnt start out with warp 7 Mass drivers and have the capacity to get it up to warp 16 or 17 or something. This increased speed would also make it more efficient to bomb planets with packets.
-Make all mass drivers much cheaper to build accross the board for PP. Again this is mainly to help out new worlds that want to get a mass driver up to use the terraforming.
-Or instead of increasing packet speed make it so that there is a high level mass driver which does the equivlant of gating minerals isntantly.
-Make it so that PP can also fling people. I dont see any reason why they cant package up a bunch of colonists in hibernation and fling them to be safely caught by another world with a mass driver. This would also help them in the development of new worlds. Make this a PP only ability.
-Being able to fling lots of minerals isnt too useful if you dont have any. Maybe give PP some sort of bonus to mining or other interesting things like mineral alchemy. Or make it so that their mass drivers somehow help out the mines on thier planet and give a bonus to mining as long as there is one in orbit.
-Make a ship that can hold a mass driver. This would allow the remote flinging of packets from minerals that are being remote mined.
-Make it possible to flight multiple packets at multiple planets from one world. This would also help the terraforming aspect.
Anyway these just some suggestions. I just think any changes or alterations to PP should not be too radical and shouldnt just be an increase in racial points. PP are suppose to be the best in the galaxy at moving around minerals, (without the use of freighters) lets make them that way.
[Updated on: Tue, 02 August 2005 04:59] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Tue, 02 August 2005 06:54  |
|
|
|
| Micha wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 22:14 |
A few threads down EDog mentioned that PP maybe should be able to use their mass drivers to grab space dust and "mine" minerals like engines scoop fuel ...
Going a bit further (a link to a post of mine in that thread, it would be neat to suck minerals from all (enemy) planets (with a mass driver in orbit) in range of your own mass drivers. 
|
Not so sure about using them to steal minerals...but having a PP only mech part to mount on remote miners and fling minerals home would be cool.
Perhaps being able to deflect and capture passing enemy packets. hmm a mech or elec deflector component that can deflect packets within (energy tech-packet speed)^2 range at up to 5(10?) degrees per level of energy tech?
En26 deflecting W10 packets at 256ly by up to 260 degrees?
Maybe also increase or reduce existing packet speeds?
Probably need to make base-speed packets lossless for all but IT for these to be viable tho.
[Updated on: Tue, 02 August 2005 06:55] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Tue, 02 August 2005 11:24 |
|
| Orca |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
|
Right now, nobody except an IS can keep a world inhabited against a lategame PP within 85 lightyears. And keeping them inhabited at 254 is dicey too, unless you can get freighters at all the points where the packets will end up after at year 1. And then keep them there against a PP that wants to destroy the freighters which now can't move. PP's flingers are plenty powerful - the packets act as scanners, and they can terraform (based on the amount of minerals striking the planet). Chance of perm terra is lower, but still rather nasty. Where they fall down is in terms of econ. Like SS, they're rather expensive, and like SS, they can't mine NAS for many points (in the PP's case, it quickly can *cost* them points to take NAS).
Any "official" freestars changes to accomodate strengthening PP are going to be slow and methodical to prevent breaking the pretty good balance Stars! has now. If you wanted to change the mod file, you'd be able to do that (some of your suggestions would be easy enough. Others, like collecting minerals/stealing minerals would require code changes).
Jesus saves.
Allah forgives.
Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich.Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Tue, 02 August 2005 12:15 |
|
| dreadlordnaf |
| Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 27
Registered: April 2005
Location: Bulgaria | |
|
| Orca wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 11:24 |
Right now, nobody except an IS can keep a world inhabited against a lategame PP within 85 lightyears. And keeping them inhabited at 254 is dicey too, unless you can get freighters at all the points where the packets will end up after at year 1. And then keep them there against a PP that wants to destroy the freighters which now can't move. PP's flingers are plenty powerful - the packets act as scanners, and they can terraform (based on the amount of minerals striking the planet). Chance of perm terra is lower, but still rather nasty. Where they fall down is in terms of econ. Like SS, they're rather expensive, and like SS, they can't mine NAS for many points (in the PP's case, it quickly can *cost* them points to take NAS).
Any "official" freestars changes to accomodate strengthening PP are going to be slow and methodical to prevent breaking the pretty good balance Stars! has now. If you wanted to change the mod file, you'd be able to do that (some of your suggestions would be easy enough. Others, like collecting minerals/stealing minerals would require code changes).
|
Hmm i did the calculations with stars calc. Assuming late game, max defense coverage and a warp 10 driver on the target planet, it will take a PP race flinging a packet warp 16 to use 23,000 kt of minerals to kill the planet if its 80ly away. Assuming they want to take out more than just 1 planet, thats not exactly what i would consider a very effective kt-to-kill ratio. How many combat nubains could you make with those minerals instead?
Also terraform ability is based on packets caught regardless of size. Sending more to a world with a mass driver wont terraform it any faster than what i stated in my original post unless you have multiple worlds flinging them to one planet. Also perma-terraforming is a joke. Every 100kt u send has a 0.1% chance to permanently affect it. That means you need to send 10,000kt to have a 10% chance to get a permanent move in the variable by 1 point! You can only do this on minerals not caught either, which means usually on uninhabited worlds so you will lose a lot of the minerals. This ability drastically needs alteration.
[Updated on: Tue, 02 August 2005 12:24] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Tue, 02 August 2005 19:10 |
|
|
|
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 02:17 |
I just think its wasted potential when a game has races that no one uses because they are inherently flawed. Why even put PP in then if IT can do pretty much everything they can do but better? It seems like AR is getting enough publicity for changes already. Figured id spur some for PP.
|
Who says no one uses PP? Or AR? They aren't popular, but they certainly show up. There's a PP in a game I'm in right now, doing pretty good too. He's certainly got the most kills, and fairly cheaply too.
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | | | |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Wed, 03 August 2005 12:16 |
|
| velvetthroat57 |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 111
Registered: June 2005 | |
|
| mazda wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 05:17 |
Could tweak it by removing the 50% chance part.
e.g. taking the above suggestion into account, early game 7 points of terra for 700kT mins seems very reasonable, would have a measurable effect on speed of colonisation.
|
I wouldn't mind this but if 700kt is reasonable, then is 1400kt really too much? If you are going to play PP, you need to have some healthy mineral settings anyway, so dropping from 1400 to 700 isn't that big to me. In the early game I don't have a spare 700kt anyway.
How does permaforming work? If it is 50% for 1000kt, is it 5% for 100kt? If not, then that is a change I would like. I have never noticed any permaforming on my worlds but I rarely play PP and don't send big packets except at enemy worlds.
The problem to me with PP is:
(a) expensive PRT
(b) NAS costs points
(c) extra minerals needed - ARM or good mines - costs points
(d) econ boost from packeting is small.
Since a,b,c all make the race economically fragile in the RW and the last one doesn't make up for it in play, and since Stars! is fundamentally a resource driven game, the result is ugly.
Take a typical PP race, convert it to JoAT. Take NAS and put the points into better habs. The wider habs are better than the packeting can do for you early and you get all the JoAT advantages as well. One of the reasons you see way more JoATs than PPs I think.
To fix it, I would say fix (a) and (b). Make it cheaper as a PRT and let them get points for NAS.
CAL
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | | | | | |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Wed, 03 August 2005 23:54 |
|
|
|
After countless numbers of games and years of playing stars!, I finally fielded a PP in my last larger game (Epoch of darkness VI).
The design actually worked surprisingly well, especially considering the universe turned out to be extraordinairly disadvantageous to the race (too many other -Fs and starting against a wall w/out enough potential enemies early on).
PP is pretty useful as a -F. My particular variant was intended to use factories, however.
Race: Aprahanti/Butterflies
IFE, NRSE, OBRM, ISB, RS
G-Immune
T- -192 -- -8
R- 1 -- 37
19%/1 in 6
1/1000
7.25.14
10.3.11
W,N,C-Cheap
L-Normal
P,B-Exp
The point of having a few factories w/ modest efficiency was that I would land on them, take them, and use them w/out paying. in practice this whole idealistic plan failed rather dramatically when the first enemy I ran into and began seriously fighting was a duo of -F ITs.
The packet forming and permaforming was surprisingly useful actually. It was too expensive to ever consider practically outside a No-CA game. However, those few really useful (high mineral value) planets just outside your range can be permaformed to habitability w/ your packets. The value of this is not to be underestimated when you need planets.
Also, the early mineral cost isn't so bad, especially when you're making sure that the planet your colonists will soon be arriving on will have minerals to immediately build a dock to send the next wave outward.
The bigger problem is how slow drivers are early on. Need the N-cheap early. You never want to overdrive a terraforming packet since you're going to rapidly lose efficiency. YOu need to be very patient and take a distressingly 'long-view' for a -F. It's a strange beast.
In future designs, I'd probably nix one of my cheap techs and boost hab/PGR. The race intersettles easily.
I might even consider W-normal on this race. Reason: your average resource monster QS or HG type race is always going to get weapons faster than a -F. Your best bet is to trade away non-weapons technologies for cutting edge weapons. In many games trading advanced scanners will get you far... Oh, and once you do make friends, hope they have factories and settle nice and close....and wait and fight mutual enemies for a long time...hopefully w/ factories...
[Updated on: Thu, 04 August 2005 00:05]
g.e.
====
"When the newspapers have been read, the TV sets shut off, the cars parked
in their various garages. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star.
(I clocked it once, and the reception is best between 3:00 A.M. and 4:45
A.M.). Of course, I don't usually tell people this when they ask, "Say,
where do you get your ideas?" I just say I don't know. It's safer."
-P. K. DickReport message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | |
| Re: make PP what they are suppose to be |
Sat, 06 August 2005 23:04 |
|
| LEit |
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
|
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
First off perhaps limit or restrict IT's ability to gate huge freighters around.
|
It will be possible to turn off cargo gating for ITs with Freestars. This would really change ITs, so it's probably not a good idea.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Perhaps do things like add a new starbase hull just for PP. A really cheap one that has just 1 slot and lets you build a mass driver on a new world for dirt cheap. This change would also let you use the terraforming aspect of PP much better on new worlds.
|
Easily possible in Freestars, but there isn't really much point, the orbital fort already does this.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Do something to increase the terraforming aspects of packets. The 50% chance is not good.
|
Currently it's just a true/false on the race. But, as you note, it should be a bit more definable, I'll add that soon. Perhaps # of minerals for a chance, and odds of it happening.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Increase the speed of all mass drivers. There's no reason PP shouldnt start out with warp 7 Mass drivers and have the capacity to get it up to warp 16 or 17 or something. This increased speed would also make it more efficient to bomb planets with packets.
|
Easy to do in Freestars.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Make all mass drivers much cheaper to build accross the board for PP. Again this is mainly to help out new worlds that want to get a mass driver up to use the terraforming.
|
It's possible to specify a cost reduction on certain types of parts, it should work on drivers, but I havn't looked into that yet. The same thing has to work for IT drivers, so it will be possible to give PPs a cost reduction to all drivers.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Or instead of increasing packet speed make it so that there is a high level mass driver which does the equivlant of gating minerals isntantly.
|
Not possible without upping the speed to warp 20 or so, which has another effect of making packets world killing machines, which might be what you want...
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Make it so that PP can also fling people.
|
Currently there is no plan for this. If it does get added, they will all die if they are overflung, if the catching driver is under rated, if they hit a different players worlds, or if any other players ships meet the packet in space. So you can't use people as ammo.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Being able to fling lots of minerals isnt too useful if you dont have any. Maybe give PP some sort of bonus to mining or other interesting things like mineral alchemy. Or make it so that their mass drivers somehow help out the mines on thier planet and give a bonus to mining as long as there is one in orbit.
|
No plans for either of these, however you will be able to adjust the cost of the PRT, so that you can use those points to buy more or better mines.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 04:47 |
-Make a ship that can hold a mass driver. This would allow the remote flinging of packets from minerals that are being remote mined.
|
No plans for this. Since packets cost resources as well as minerals, and ships don't have resources, this would take a major change.
| Micha wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 06:14 |
A few threads down EDog mentioned that PP maybe should be able to use their mass drivers to grab space dust and "mine" minerals like engines scoop fuel ...
Going a bit further (a link to a post of mine in that thread, it would be neat to suck minerals from all (enemy) planets (with a mass driver in orbit) in range of your own mass drivers.
|
No plans for any of this either. Sucking minerals from planets is probably a bad idea, but perhaps from other packets would be interesting.
| dreadlordnaf wrote on Tue, 02 August 2005 07:31 |
Im sure they could scale this somehow to make packet dmg more exponential yet with a lower base. So that slower packets going warp 10 and below dont do as much damage as they do now, but higher level ones do much more.
|
This would be a code change, so no plans currently. If done there would be a rules file setting to adjust this.
| Kotk wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 08:09 |
Yep ... CA is broken with its 0 cost terra.
|
This too is adjustable in Freestars.
| velvetthroat57 wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 12:16 |
The problem to me with PP is:
(a) expensive PRT
(b) NAS costs points
(c) extra minerals needed - ARM or good mines - costs points
(d) econ boost from packeting is small.
|
a and b will be easy to change in Freestars, both allow more points for better and/or more mines. As mentioned above, I'll be changing packet terraforming to be adjustable too.
Most 'magic numbers' in Stars! will be definable in the rules file for Freestars, if you want to see the current rules file, it's on Sourceforge at: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/freestars/freestars/ru les/MyModRules.xml?view=markup
[Updated on: Sat, 06 August 2005 23:06]
- LEitReport message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
Current Time: Fri Apr 19 21:21:37 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
)
.
