Yes i also think like mazda here.
1 click per turn cannot make it unfair toward CA. CA would still get the free investments ... just not instantly unless it builds sufficent amount of OA-s (that is easy anyway).

Initially the main power of CA is to instaform its breeders. 40% planet goes to 75%+ planet instantly! Free 1.5K resources instant investments when your whole economy is below 1.5K. When it is done then the main power of CA is the ability to instaform his numerous yellows and small greens. About 1.5K instant investment at place with 55 resources. Late game the terraforming power of CA is to be quite close to 3-immune. Up to 90 clicks terra ... so up to 6K invested freely and instantly anywhere.

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mazda wrote on Wed, 06 June 2007 11:24

The CA would still get these terraformed for free, just not instantaneously, which is the whole point. Plus they would still have the OA's and could buy regular terra if they wanted it. I did say that basing it on actual resources would perhaps be fairer, but harder to keep track of. How do you keep track of part terra done ? Where you place it in order of events is slightly more critical. Not to mention far more scope for MM. But one click per turn is definitely not too watered down. You'll probably make me do some maths on it now, for which I thank you.

What about just making regular Terra very cheap for CA? Say, 10-20 res per click, 7-14 with TT.

That would neatly link it to actual resources, keep it fast yet not instant, and allow the CA to optimize/MM it for every planet to their exact liking.

A QS or HG CA would be different to play than an HP CA. Even better, it should be quite simple to code, it being just regular Terra with a different cost.

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jabbawocky wrote on Thu, 07 June 2007 14:55

In regards to the racial archetype and the borg//assimilation discussion that was occuring earlier, could it not be possible to have a 'virus' race archetype?

OK, you got few freighters of zombies and infected some neighbours population. Total infection is impossible, no virus can infect everyone ... but OK.

First problem is that ... stars is made so that at one place there can only exist species of one type. How they mix with not infected species, your initial zombies or infected species of other aliens?

Even if the game engine is changed in a way that you can have multiple sorts of species at one place ... then how to determine the mathemathics like habitability, population efficency and growth rate of infected organisms in any realistic manner?

Then that "taking over by destroying" thing... but how is it logical? Quite hard to imagine Armagedon missile that hit some scout and TOOK over.

Finally ... the race has no power of its own got only to suck blood of others so ... diplomatic disaster i propose?

So ... i think your idea is too raw. You got to ponder about it a bit more.

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Kotk wrote on Thu, 07 June 2007 17:25

jabbawocky wrote on Thu, 07 June 2007 14:55 In regards to the racial archetype and the borg//assimilation discussion that was occuring earlier, could it not be possible to have a 'virus' race archetype? OK, you got few freighters of zombies and infected some neighbours population. Total infection is impossible, no virus can infect everyone ... but OK. First problem is that ... stars is made so that at one place there can only exist species of one type. How they mix with not infected species, your initial zombies or infected species of other aliens? Even if the game engine is changed in a way that you can have multiple sorts of species at one place ... then how to determine the mathemathics like habitability, population efficency and growth rate of infected organisms in any realistic manner?

It could be tackled as an "all or nothing" chance for planets to be converted, Borg-style, if they're under attack by the "Beast". You could even kill a significant percent of the resulting pop thanks to "environmental incompatibilities" or "unsuccessful resistance to the virus"

What the "Beast" would need to actually attack a planet would be another matter: bombers? freighters? missile boats? all three at once?

And Defenses would need to modify the chances of takeover. Even zero Defs should not allow a 100% chance of conquest, tho, since the races are dissimilar. Also, if habs (and other race settings) were near enough, the chance could be higher...

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Then that "taking over by destroying" thing... but how is it logical? Quite hard to imagine Armagedon missile that hit some scout and TOOK over. Finally ... the race has no power of its own got only to suck blood of others so ... diplomatic disaster i propose?

Nanotech magiks conquers all. You should see the "Beast" at work in the "Homeworld: Cataclysm" game. Bloodcurling!

Actually the idea is not that new. Stargate and Star Trek and even Lost in Space (the movie) display similar nightmares.

To summarize:

the Beast/Borg/Spiders need to attack and presumably damage/invade ships before taking them over
population can be assimilated too, under certain circumstances
the change of allegiance is not immediate or unavoidable.
un-assimilation is generally harder, but not impossible
the "parasites" get their tech from their takeovers

Balance would be tricky, but there should be a way to work this kind of "Beast" into the Stars framework.

[Updated on: Thu, 07 June 2007 13:04]

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Kelzar wrote on Thu, 07 June 2007 18:17

I'm thinking a an all virus game or a virus vs: virus duel would be very very boring for oh the first 80 turns?

Likely.

The Beast in the original "HW: Cataclysm" game can do its own research and build its own units, and not particularly slower than other races. Its main handicap is a certain fragility of its designs, IIRC.

So I guess balance of the whole thing will be even more complicated.

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Quote:

First problem is that ... stars is made so that at one place there can only exist species of one type. How they mix with not infected species, your initial zombies or infected species of other aliens? Even if the game engine is changed in a way that you can have multiple sorts of species at one place ... then how to determine the mathemathics like habitability, population efficency and growth rate of infected organisms in any realistic manner?

Well maybe the infected cease to BE the original organism- the virus could cause massive physiological changes to the host, or something :S. The virus race would still need gravity//temperature//radiation levels included to represent the potentially dangerous levels of aforementioned environmental effects on the virus organism itself//infection process. Also, maybe the colonist growth rate could represent, in the virus races case, the maximum % of the population it can infect. So, at most 20% of the population while the rest dies off//gets evacuated//etc (depending on the circumstances). Furthermore the % infected is further modified due to defences, etc.

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Then that "taking over by destroying" thing... but how is it logical? Quite hard to imagine Armagedon missile that hit some scout and TOOK over.

Yeah, well I admit logically it sounds rather stupid. The idea is that after a ship has suffered a certain amount of critical damage to itself, and numerous decks are 'open' to space, a small amount of the virus could infect the few crew left alive. The virus gets on the ship by being on the solid shells, ionised gas (well, ok not that one- even cold plasma sterilizes
stuff and hot plasma... well not much could survive that ), etc.

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Finally ... the race has no power of its own got only to suck blood of others so ... diplomatic disaster i propose?

Yes. Total diplomatic disaster, admittedly. Maybe the virus race makes a deal with one of the 'prey races' so that the prey race uses it as a bio-weapon and in return the virus race doesn't eat it? Yeah... pushing it I know...

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I'm thinking a an all virus game or a virus vs: virus duel would be very very boring for oh the first 80 turns?

Yep. Virus vs. Virus games would be hard to play out, and probably quite boring .

Maybe an additional lesser trait could be created? Named something like 'Old Empire'- basically the race you are playing USED to rule the galaxy or something but due to war//infighting//etc the empire collapsed. So you get a few extra planets, higher population on said planets but fewer minerals on the planets (due to previous use). Eh.. just a random idea. Actually doesn't really help with the virus vs virus problem does it?

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So ... i think your idea is too raw. You got to ponder about it a bit more.

Idea is rather raw I admit, hence why I brought it up. So many intelligent minds HAVE to come up with a cunning plan on how to get something like the virus race to work . In fact, from what I've already seen, it has already started to happen. I know, I know, I'm such a suck up...

[Updated on: Fri, 08 June 2007 04:26]

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Ahhh, you're making me want to try Master Of Orion 3 again... They had a race like that... They were parasites. Very slow growth if left alone, but if you were sharing a world where another race was present you'd gradually take over their population.

Can't remember the name of the race offhand, but they just kinda jumped on the backs of aliens and took over their nervous systems.

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Ithkul, aka Harvesters. I loves them to bits. in Moo3 they are a race almost like all the others. lowish pop growth but good spies and mediocre research, mining and factories and ofcourse killer ground troops. They're viable without using thier "virus" abilities only problem is that every other race WILL be at war with you. so you can drop the diplomatic race pics and concentrate on making them an uber race

Perhaps have the same idea here? be able to make them an uber race, but just like the current CA monster, not many people will be willing to ally with them or even allow them into a game...

Another thought would be to have the "virus" ability be a LRT just like you're proposing the AR ability be. Make it so that a certain % (based on bio level) of pop and/or ships are "taken over" AFTER a battle or ground invation (that you win of course since it only take one zombie slayer to kill all them freshly rez'd zombies ) This would fit more with a zombie virus than a parasite organism though since all stereotype zombie virus' ressurects thier hosts.

This would mean that they would need to fight to survive, more so than a WM or other races. maybe have a research penalty added to the virus LRT.

If we think of the virus race more like an LRT than a PRT, it could be balanced much easier and meshed better with the current races/PRTs/LRTs

ForceUser

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[Updated on: Wed, 18 July 2007 22:56]

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A lot of these are different words for what's in the first page.

The "trickster" thing could get.... shall we say, messy. It might be a little too unbalancing.


Miniaturization reducing mass sounds interesting, but hard to balance and probably ahrd to code too - the added fuel and cargo seem a bit trivial as well. Maybe some special combat hulls like Light Cruisers and Pocket Battleships would be more in order - hey, combine that with the Guerilla Warfare trait, which in addition to the other effects lets you build these hulls but prevents you from building the normal cruiser and battleship.


Another thought is maybe either traits or a scale that adjust how difficult your planetary defenses aare to destroy - more fragile ones would be cheaper to build, so it's a tradeoff.

[Updated on: Thu, 13 September 2007 19:51]

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BunBun vonWhiskers wrote on Thu, 13 September 2007 18:25

Trickster- You will have access to deceptive cloaking devices that will enable your ships to appear to be from a different empire. Members of the race you are imitating will see right through it however, as will anyone they are currently sharing information with. (This can be done with a mechanism similar to cloaking devices. A ship with a 50% trickster cloak will appear as belonging to a different empire if it is within 50-100% of an opponents scanning range. Any closer however, and it will show up as it really is.)

I think this has good potential but needs to be given better limits / scope.

Let's say a "deception" cloak works just like a normal cloak but gives the ship(s) a fair chance of being detected as belonging to the race & class they pretend to be, even for the scanners belonging to the real race.

Said chance should decrease with nearness to a scanner, as well as "deplete" with time, or at the very least use a lot of fuel. Ships traveling faster get reduced chances. Ships engaging in battle, bombing, cargo thieving and/or pursuit of other ships should get a drastically reduced chance of actually deceiving others.

So, 12 "5% deception cloaks" on a ship should give a fair chance of passing off undetected for about 3 turns if it didn't travel faster than warp8, didn't stray nearer than 50% of a scanner's range, and the real owner of the spoofed race didn't bother to check them (by giving orders, or sending escorts), and it didn't engage in battle.

And the best part of it, the "tricksters" would never know if they had actually succeeded in their ruse until the torpedos hit.

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[Updated on: Fri, 14 September 2007 20:06]

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[Updated on: Mon, 24 September 2007 21:29]

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yartrebo wrote on Tue, 25 September 2007 00:01

I like the idea of having things bundled into PRTs because it helps make the game easier to balance. If one trait (cheap colonizers) gives a benefit in a large universe, another trait (no stargates) can balance it back out. If the PRT traits are unbundled and can be mixed and matched, what will stop a person from taking cheap colonizers and great stargates. The game will be unbalanced and it will be pretty boring as everyone will go for those traits.

It will be a matter of cost. The main thing about "unbundling" race traits is that each of them needs to have an adequate cost, so some testing will be needed to ensure good game balance.

Thus, anyone trying to buy Gates for their HE would probably have to sacrifice something else, like double growth or immunities.

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Here's an incomplete list of the changes I would make: - Weaken the nubian by increasing the cost of the hull (perhaps 2x) and reduce base armor strength to 2,000. It should still outperform a BB in general.

Yup, the Nub's too strong for its cost. I'd start testing with about 3000 for base armor strength.

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- Add more armor slots on warships to make heavily armored ships more appealing (if it will be slow and ungateable, at least it will be tough).

I predict Ironium prices will soar, both for Armor and Missiles.

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- Push BC, BB, and DN back 1 or 2 tech levels.

You mean, make their tech reqs a bit higher?

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- Allow research past level 26, but don't put any techs past level 26. This way the BET penalty can be neutralized for level 26 stuff by reaching level 27. That the cost of research increases exponentially ensures that it will only be worthwhile to exceed level 26 if you have BET or have nothing else to do with the resources. Even then, mineral alchemy might be a better use of resources.

Could make BET too attractive w/out its main drawback.

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- Make tech 0 stuff miniaturize according to your highest tech, not your lowest. This will stop oddities such as blue lasers being more expensive then red lasers or scouts being pricier then frigates.

Yup. Those oddities are... odd.

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- Make the OBRM trait cost RW points instead of giving points (maybe -50).

Perhaps tie it to hab points, as TT is?

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- Make NAS have no effect on scanning range, but have it give back more points (maybe 175). All scanners are available, but pen scanners will have the penetrating feature disabled.

Doubled range is useful for spotting cloakies. I believe that's the reason many ppl take NAS.

Disabling *all* penscanners sounds neat, tho. Perhaps make the two as separate LRTs? "No-penscanners" gives points, while "doubled range" costs points.

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- Make RS take a few points instead of giving a few (maybe -10).

RS would greatly affect your "armor-heavy" hulls, so it would look like a significant disadvantage.

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- Make mineral alchemy cheaper. Perhaps 15 or 20 resources/1kT minerals instead of 25.

Interesting, that one.

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Coyote wrote on Sat, 15 September 2007 02:03

Well, I've suggested a long time before that if you don't win a battle with a cloaked fleet you don't get to know who it belongs to or see the ship designs. If you don't have a scanner present and are defeated by a cloaked enemy you don't get any battle information at all, other than it appears to have been destroyed by forces unknown. This probably should be a random chance depending on cloaking percentage.

Also, if you destroyed a cloakie, you'd get to know the owner and the design, I guess.

What you wouldn't know is the exact *number* of ships in the fleet, perhaps.

It would certainly look odd in the battleboard, tho.

At any rate, if "something" fired at you, you'd know their weaponry, their init, computing, and the number of armed ships that fired.

If your ships fired back at "something" you'd know their shielding, jamming, a good guess at their armor and mass, and perhaps even their engines.

Also, I think the "no battle info at all" would make more sense if all your ships were destroyed at 1st shot or were all civilians.

The military should still be able to extract significant info on their cloaked enemies thanks to the "penetration-testing" capabilities of their ordnance. But a single kamikaze chaff "pinging" a big fleet would be reduced to learn some details about what fired on it.

Things whould be somewhat more feasible if one race were allowed to know "partial" enemy designs (where even guesswork could be included), instead of all-or-nothing.

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[Updated on: Tue, 25 September 2007 21:08]

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