m.a@stars wrote on Thu, 31 August 2006 19:47

Then you select a planet and Queue it (ala Genesis Device) or tick a checkbox in the Research Pane (ala Generalized Research) and "point" it to your pet WH.

The idea was for a ship mounted item, the suggestion was to put it in a mining robot slot. Ships can be shot down, and mining ships have poor defenses.

One setup for it I would find fun is this:

WH Stabilizer fixes that WH endpoint as long as it is there with "mining" orders. The other endpoint is unaffected (to keep both endpoints in place would require a ship with a WH Stabilizer at both ends).

When a WH Stabilizer stops stabilizing a WH endpoint, then the WH destabilizes two stages PLUS whatever natural destabilization would have occurred during the time the WH was stabilized, and if the new stage is one where an endpoint jump is possible, then an endpoint jump is certain. This means that it can also be used to destabilize a WH endpoint, the user just has to "stabilize" the endpoint one year, then leave the WH Stabilizer off the next. IIRC about WH stages, that means that to remove a "Rock solid" WH would require four years.

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I've got an idea. Reduce capital missiles to range 5 maximum and let torpedoes go to range 6. That way there's a more interesting interaction between them - torpedoes having weak firepower but both longer range and lower weight...

Another thing I would like to try is re-introducing area effect torpedo type weapons as in early Stars! versions. Or, as per my idea in my still uncontsructed mod, a range 4 beam-like weapon class called Electromagnetic Gun (var. Railgun, Gauss Cannon, Wave-Motion Gun, etc...) that's heavier and more expensive than a typical beam weapon but can interact interestingly with cap missiles and conventional beams. With the power of having a brand new ruleset, though, you could give them fun effects, such as bypassing shields completely and dealing damage directly to armor (take that, RS!)... Effect: Equipped armor would have more effect than simply slowing your ships down. RS would be a riskier move. Might make Crobies overly strong.

One more thing that'd be cool - I think this idea originally came up in discussions of Supernova - is to make point-defense beams, a la gatlings, that have a chance of destroying torpedoes that enter their weapon range (not necessarily having to be targeted at the equipped ship). This would allow the use of a "destroyer screen" to protect your capital ships.

Oh, and before I forget, make Depleted Neutronium stong enough that a full slot can cloak a SS BB to 98%

[Updated on: Wed, 13 September 2006 19:21]

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Coyote wrote on Thu, 14 September 2006 01:16

make point-defense beams, a la gatlings, that have a chance of destroying torpedoes that enter their weapon range (not necessarily having to be targeted at the equipped ship). This would allow the use of a "destroyer screen" to protect your capital ships.

Could be nice. I'd even go as far as require those for any ship that wants to shoot down scouts/frigates.

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Coyote wrote on Thu, 14 September 2006 02:16

I've got an idea. Reduce capital missiles to range 5 maximum and let torpedoes go to range 6. That way there's a more interesting interaction between them - torpedoes having weak firepower but both longer range and lower weight...

...and bigger accuracy. Such modding can be done without coding, item range and what not can be modded.

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Another thing I would like to try is re-introducing area effect torpedo type weapons as in early Stars! versions. Or, as per my idea in my still uncontsructed mod, a range 4 beam-like weapon class called Electromagnetic Gun (var. Railgun, Gauss Cannon, Wave-Motion Gun, etc...) that's heavier and more expensive than a typical beam weapon but can interact interestingly with cap missiles and conventional beams.

Area effect missile takes some additional coding. Probably not so simple to make it to look convincing at VCR. Beams range can be altered without coding but there are 3 types of beams, ordinary, gatling or sapper.

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With the power of having a brand new ruleset, though, you could give them fun effects, such as bypassing shields completely and dealing damage directly to armor (take that, RS!)... Effect: Equipped armor would have more effect than simply slowing your ships down. RS would be a riskier move. Might make Crobies overly strong.

And sappers overly pointless. Such weapon type takes also coding.

Quote:

One more thing that'd be cool - I think this idea originally came up in discussions of Supernova - is to make point-defense beams, a la gatlings, that have a chance of destroying torpedoes that enter their weapon range (not necessarily having to be targeted at the equipped ship). This would allow the use of a "destroyer screen" to protect your capital ships.

It is possible to add base jamming to some hulls and jammer component to beams is possible (or even bomb component like to multi contained munition). However to let a token to jam for other tokens takes whole new feature of item (or hull) or new weapon type and effect takes coding.

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Oh, and before I forget, make Depleted Neutronium stong enough that a full slot can cloak a SS BB to 98%

Thats also possible without coding.

Heh... what we got to do is to code already existing properties and effects (no fancy new ones) so we can advance it from pre-alfa stage. What i am already worried about is that xml-based battle report will probably take quite lot of room.

[Updated on: Thu, 14 September 2006 12:17]

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Kotk wrote on Thu, 14 September 2006 08:36

Area effect missile takes some additional coding. Probably not so simple to make it to look convincing at VCR.

It worked fine when it was implemented in the older versions of Stars! - but instead of balancing these weapons they were removed outright. Sad. More options generally make for more fun.

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Beams range can be altered without coding but there are 3 types of beams, ordinary, gatling or sapper. Quote: With the power of having a brand new ruleset, though, you could give them fun effects, such as bypassing shields completely and dealing damage directly to armor (take that, RS!)... Effect: Equipped armor would have more effect than simply slowing your ships down. RS would be a riskier move. Might make Crobies overly strong. And sappers overly pointless. Such weapon type takes also coding.

Sapper + capital missile combo is powerful. As long as capital missiles are around, sappers will be too. Against the capital missile/sapper combo, simplistically speaking each point of shield DP is worth 4 points of armor DP. When your shields give out, you die, and throwing on additional armor is a waste of iron and resources and slows your ships down besides. Armor is of marginal worth at best even against a pure beam fleet because it slows your ships down and leaves them vulnerable to range advantages.


I would like to see armor become something that can actually confer an advantage in proportion to its cost and mobility drawbacks. The EM gun dealing damage directly to armor and bypassing shields would add one more fulcrum to the tactical balance. The other option is to improve armor.


Even disregarding all that, I still would like to see an intermediate-range weapon class.

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It is possible to add base jamming to some hulls and jammer component to beams is possible (or even bomb component like to multi contained munition). However to let a token to jam for other tokens takes whole new feature of item (or hull) or new weapon type and effect takes coding.

Yes, but it would add fun behavior. And it should not function just like jamming - there should be an upper limit to how many torpedoes can be intercepted, say, each round the stack can only intercept as many torpedoes as there are PDW's in the stack. The PDW's would intercept an absolute percentage of incoming missiles before jamming is calculated, improved by any battle computers on the hull. The effect could have a range of either 0 or 1 square. Now if these are on lighter hulls than the capital ships, they can follow the capital ships around and give them a PDW screen - but this may require a new battle order behavior (Provide Cover?) Also, if your enemy is gonna attack your starbase (with Attack Starbase orders) you can gate in some PDW destroyers that'll sit there and intercept incoming missiles while your starbase fires back.
This would make chaff obsolete.

Speaking of battle behavior - we should be able to set different battle orders for each ship class in a fleet. Also, "target capital ships" and "target escort ships" options... Targeting capital ships is obviously useful, but targeting esort ships would have you destroy the PDW screen before attacking the capital ships. (I'm assuming it would be rather difficult to achieve a capital ship rating with PDWs.)

[Updated on: Sat, 30 September 2006 19:08]

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Coyote wrote on Sun, 01 October 2006 02:02

It worked fine when it was implemented in the older versions of Stars! - but instead of balancing these weapons they were removed outright. Sad. More options generally make for more fun.

Generally you are right ... different abilities are fun. OTOH disabling buggy/weak features is better than leaving them in. As for VCR ... VCR has always looked quite pathetic for interstellar battle and area effect was strange and most odd cheat was that self detonate battle plan.

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Armor is of marginal worth at best even against a pure beam fleet because it slows your ships down and leaves them vulnerable to range advantages.

Correct. Hull armor (beside that on orbitals) is good and cheap and sufficent ... so armor components are pointless elsewhere but on orbitals.
Lets take construction 3:
crobmium = 75dp in 56kT for 6/0/0/13
destroyer = 200dp in 30kT for 15/3/5/35 (8 slots, 280 fuel)
So 3 slabs of crobmium only double DD hulls armor but also double ships cost and raise its weight 7 times. I actually dont see how proposed EM gun improves that disbalance (between inbuilt armor and armor components) and makes me put crobmium onto DD? I anyway better build 2 armorless DDs.

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This would make chaff obsolete.

Yes, yes. However the whole set: PDW components, PDW tokens + new battle plans & orders + battle plan per each token in fleet ... it all seems lot more work first to implement and later to use compared to chaff. Chaff has been so easy to implement that it is considered allowed cheat and not a feature. Sure all can be added one day.

[Updated on: Sun, 01 October 2006 12:20]

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[Updated on: Sun, 01 October 2006 15:13]

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Kotk wrote on Sun, 01 October 2006 08:59

Yes, yes. However the whole set: PDW components, PDW tokens + new battle plans & orders + battle plan per each token in fleet ... it all seems lot more work first to implement and later to use compared to chaff. Chaff has been so easy to implement that it is considered allowed cheat and not a feature. Sure all can be added one day.

Yes - but my plan would put AR on an equal footing with everyone else. Chaff doesn't.

Isn't "fixing AR" one of the top priorities of game balance discussions? A seemingly unrelated tactic solves the AR weakness problem. And AR PRT itself doesn't have to be bothered with at all. It's a solution that affects everyone in the same way yet plugs a sizeable hole.

[Updated on: Sun, 01 October 2006 15:26]

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Coyote wrote on Sun, 01 October 2006 22:05

Yeah. Armor needs to drop in cost/DP quite a bit.

I think slightly reducing armor components cost, slightly improving their dp and slightly reducing hulls dp and slightly increasing their cost (with slightly i mean 5%-15%) would actually sum up as Lot More Attractive Armor Components. Weight of armor is ridiculous so it needs to be reduced very dramatically ... say 75%. Can make all hulls 30% heavier and armor components "only" 70% lighter ... but that improves IT-s somewhat.

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Hull Notes (from things I've tried in Star Ed)

Yes... all it is just configuring, not coding ... that all brings into mind ... who will write FreeStars ED?

Coyote wrote on Sun, 01 October 2006 22:20

Yes - but my plan would put AR on an equal footing with everyone else. Chaff doesn't.

Your plan involves so lot of new stuff that new balance (between different weapons/strategies and tactics) is hard to imagine behind it all. I am unsure if it fixes any AR troubles. Probably makes it harder to pluck that IT-s gate out.

AR fights quite OK like it is. While Deathstar is "easy" to take out it is also easy to build back as AR ... so there is balance. As contrast LBU-ed planet of some factory race is out of business for him for decade or two. Noone will throw away a fleet that takes out deathstar with one shot to see the deathstar built back in 3-4 years from salvo of that fleet.

AR real weaknesses are that it cant pop drop nor can build much fleet up to 2460 meanwhile it feels -F so wants lot of planets.

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Maybe it's an idea better suited for a different game. I don't know. It could be fun to experiment with sometime.




One thing that could be nice is to make the battleboard significantly bigger - say, 24x24? With a larger battleboard, the time needed to escape should increase as well.


Another thing is to make the maximum number of designs for each player adjustable as a game option. Let's say, you can pick between 10, 16, 24, or 32 designs allowed. Either that or have it tied to universe size.
Or, have it a variable in race design! If you can live with 10 designs, you get points - if you want a full 32, be prepared to pay.

[Updated on: Sun, 01 October 2006 21:16]

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Kotk wrote on Sun, 01 October 2006 18:03

AR real weaknesses are that it cant pop drop nor can build much fleet up to 2460 meanwhile it feels -F so wants lot of planets.

They should start with more midget miners, say, 12. That would help their speed.

[Updated on: Sun, 01 October 2006 21:17]

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multilis wrote on Mon, 02 October 2006 18:11

imo AR needs a weakness. Mineral fountain is very powerful late game. AR is stronger in non Acc-BBS games

And HE needs its weakness.
HE is stronger in smaller games.

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Kotk wrote on Mon, 02 October 2006 12:53

multilis wrote on Mon, 02 October 2006 18:11 imo AR needs a weakness. Mineral fountain is very powerful late game. AR is stronger in non Acc-BBS games And HE needs its weakness. HE is stronger in smaller games.

Mineral fountain could be nerfed by using a diminishing returns formula for remote mining - say, a logarithmic progression instead of linear, so each additional mining bot per planet is slightly less useful.

On a side note, perhaps ARM should slow down mineral depletion from remote mining. That would be nice.

HE's weaknesses are more than just lack of stargates - combine that with slow shipbuilding per planet and it takes them a long time to get fleets to the front. Also, their planets are really vulnerable to popdrop before the defenses are up. I've noticed that it's difficult to make a HE with a high growth rate that can manage to export colonists by 30% capacity. Higher growth rates end up being a waste of points and in contradiction to the name they simply can't expand very quickly, compared to, say, IS.

[Updated on: Tue, 03 October 2006 12:41]

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something I just wanted... a list of what each planet is contributing to research

...an excess resources column in the planet listy thing would do it nicely

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TRSMMaiden wrote on Sun, 21 August 2011 23:50

I like the idea of being able to take over an enemy ship instead of destroy it.

Me too!

But it is generally assumed that ships built by another race are too hard to operate/maintain/govern, plus most races build them with automatic self-destructs, which is why everything not fleeing the battleboard ends up as smoky debris...

It would be cool if some (new) PRT or LRT came with a kind of "dissonance dampener" that enabled the capture of damaged ships that became surrounded and unable to escape the battleboard.

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BlueTurbit wrote on Mon, 22 August 2011 15:04

How about another MT type. Instead of special MT toys, it gives race-specific items, like maybe Robber Baron, or Orbital Adjuster tech, or Any gate type, or many of the other techs only available to certain races.

Me likes!

Balance could become a problem, tho, if some race/item combinations became too powerful.

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Coyote wrote on Tue, 23 August 2011 23:11

An expansion of the MT toy list in itself could be fun - with some items more useful than others, and some items at lower/higher tech levels than others, and some items with truly odd properties that you may or may not find an interesting use for depending on how you use them.

And of course the same would apply to a revised/improved/expanded techtree.

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What about procedurally generated MT items that will be different in every game

Such as...?

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goober wrote on Wed, 24 August 2011 02:44

make it possible to acquire such a technology through battle/pop drops.

Wouldn't that blur the differences between races a bit too much?

In other words, only IT races have spent enough gazillion years gating around to have evolved the very particular abilities needed to gate thru infinity and not implode in the process...

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