Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, with all of the scientists in your empire working on the problem, and a two or three month travel time, that is not entirely unreasonable.

Rushing down tech areas to get the final uberweapon of that Category is one of the things I don't like and is on my list of things to mod out.

Higher research costs is only part of the equation. Having much longer tech trees, with diminishing returns is another. Adding Grid techs instead of linear techs will also help.
(EG: Multi tech areas: DUC damage, DUC accuracy, DUC durability, DUC mass production)

Then it would be more like "during the month you were at sea travelling to the front lines, the guns got obsoleted: we came up with a more durable design for the turret gears. It'll reduce the maintenance costs by 2%".

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm - diminishing returns apply to research too you know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .. so putting all the scientists on it may not gain you much. But in 'game' terms I believe that even a six-month travel time should not result in you arriving on the battlefield with effectively useless weaponry.

I think that the ratios of technological advancement to ship construction times to 'time to battle' are very difficult ones to get right, and historical precedents are not usually directly translated into a good game balance. I have yet to see a (sci-fi at least) game that rewards 'dispersion' of fleets over a territory over making 'one big nasty stack'. Yet that would result in lots more 'cruiser actions' and a better game overall.

I am currently running my first game in a long time, and using High tech cost. So far it looks promising in holding back the arms race. My overall approach is that a ship design that I built a year ago might get beaten by half the number of my latest model - but should not be useless against it.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think High tech cost does the trick nicely on that one already. It costs MILLIONS to get to the end of Energy Stream for example. Same with Shields 10.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think I would go down to that level of granularity. What I would do is make the tech tree a directed graph instead of a tree; like the Civilisation series games for example. To give a couple of examples:
Cloaking might need Astrophysics 2 as well as Physics 3.
Troops above level 1 might need Psychology (or Computers, alternate tracks).
ECM level needs matching level of Physics, as well as the prerequisite Mil. Sci.

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh, certainly.

The problem is mainly that concentration of firepower is so important.
Perhaps if there were more specialty and "splash damage" weapons, that would be effective against large concentrations of ships, but next to useless against small/scattered forces...

Sort of like infantry and artillery.
or vehicles and tactical nukes.

Hard to pick off a single guy, but if there's a thousand coming at you, you're bound to hit something or two.

[ March 15, 2003, 00:18: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think you've interpreted my comment as talking about the tactical when I meant the strategic.. but what the heck, both are interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

At the tactical level, SE4 does indeed impose what is in effect a 'stacking limit' by having one ship per square. This does result in some nonsense with large fleets, but not a bad idea overall. I remember imposing such limits in old hex-based tabletop games before now, with positive results. And as you say, bringing in 'splash damage' can discourage stacking without an arbitrary rule. I seem to remember SFB ship explosions having that effect.

At the strategic level, what I meant was the dispersal of the fleet over the empire, and the opportunity for many small scale actions (as opposed to mega-stack, win-or-die, apocalyptic clashes). I think one major factor discouraging this is the warp point system, which channels all travel through classic 'choke points' and practically guarantees only major fleet actions.

In over 20 years of gaming I have yet to find a campaign system that generates interesting cruiser actions, in any game - so the lack of it in SE4 is not a major criticism. It remains one of the reasons that I prefer the early game though, and why I like High tech cost to prolong that...

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

I still like my percentage cloak ability idea that's buried somewheres deep in this thread.

I think it was this thread, anyway...

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

Heh. It was this thread.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To elaborate:
Cloaking becomes a new ability tag "% chance to remain undetected", one for each type of cloaking (i.e. Active, Passive, Psychic, etc). It is, of coarse, a value. Cloaking components/sectors/systems have a positive value, cloak defeating sensors have a negative value. These values should NOT be cumulative (or better yet, make that moddable in settings.txt with a simple true/false line).

The basic sensor ability (before any research) is just the cloaking tag attatched to the hull size. It should probably be about -50% (or 50% chance to detect normal ships). Colonies get an inate sensor rating of about -25%. That should be moddable in settings.txt as well. The values, of coarse, aren't set in stone....

edit: upon review, the below method seems much more logical than the above system.

If you wanted to get really elaborate, you could have seperate tags for "% chance to remain undetected" and "% chance to detect". Then you could make it so that (for example) the cloaking values don't stack, but the sensor values DO stack. (which IMO would be unbalancing, unless the sensors didn't have a high value...) I think it would also be kinda neat if there were two kinds of sensor tags, System wide, and sector wide. Then you could make all sorts of interesting cominations! (System wide sensors having a lower max ability than Sector specific sensors comes to mind...)

Now comes my favorite part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif A check is made each turn to see if your ship is detected using the following formula:

A - B = C
where:
A = Highest available cloaking %
B = Highest available sensor %
C = % chance of detection.

As an example, we'll use my numbers above. An uncloaked ship enters a system in which you have a single colony. 0%(cloak)-25%(colony sensor)=25% chance that you will detect the ship THIS TURN. The game does a quick random number generation, and determines whether or not the ship is detected. Next turn, assuming that the ship is still in system, the game goes thru the whole process again.

That way, just because you slipped past the sensors Last turn, they might detect you this turn. The opposite is true, as well; just because you detected that star destroyer as it entered your system this turn, that doesn't mean that you will be able to detect it next turn!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Even better would be to make the turns between sensor checks moddable, too. Yet another line added to settings.txt.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

You could also mod a high value sector only sensor tag onto Warppoints, if you wanted. That way, you see the cloaked ship enter the system (since it activated the WP, which would probably be noticed). But as soon as it moves away from the warppoint ... I hope you had sensors researched...

I provided a few examples of how versitile such a cloaking model would be. Hopefully, Aaron is convinced now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (yes, I know he probably will never see this thread...)</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Done this sort of thing before in modifications to games. I have found the critical thing is this - you must generate 'false contacts' somehow. Another factor to include is a range dependency, so you can 'close in and confirm' that hazy little blip on the screen.. 8-)

The effectiveness and/or cost of cloaking can be tied to ship size as well, so it's easy to sneak that escort past his fleet but those 30 baseships are a different matter. Similarly for fleets of ships, they should get progressively harder to hide.

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

"I think one major factor discouraging this is the warp point system, which channels all travel through classic 'choke points' and practically guarantees only major fleet actions."

The problem here is in a lot of military situations, splitting up your fleet just invites defeat in detail. Even if SE4 didn't have warp points this would be true.

Phoenix-D

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

Well I have a few suggestions (may work for SEIV too).

1) In tactical combat have the board "wrap around" so you don't get stuck at the corners. Have the E-W squares warp and the N-S squares map, so that if you are at the east edge of the map and you move east, you end up at the west edge of the map. Faster ships should be able to escape and not get caught in a corner of a map. Hopefully you can at least make it a configurable item at startup.

2) In tactical combat have a button to resolve the reset of the combat using strategic. Yes I know you can hit auto and end-turn over and over. Often I want to scan a planet first to see what it has.

3) In tactical combat, somehow make the fighters group. Right now, when they are launched they fly off to attack. I would prefer all fighters to launch and group up, then attack.

TheBlip

Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
 

2) There is a Resolve button in the Orders menu. It will automatically hit auto and end turn for you. It would be nice if there was a second option to exit tactical though.

3) Place them in a fleet. Select one fighter stack, hit alt + 0-9 (you can make up to 10 "fleets" in this way). That fighter is the leader of the fleet. Then, click on each other fighter stack you want and hit alt + 0-9 (the same number) to add them to the fleet.

[ March 16, 2003, 07:26: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]