Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh definetly. But it was very easy for me to suggest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geo

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

Well, I agree that the planetary combat need some modification...
As of now, we can already do some things :
* Drop Wp altogether, I don't like them, that's not SciFi as I want it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
* Make population much more resistant to damage : it just hurts me to see a lone "Escort" killing 100M people with its DUC1...
even if it supposed to weigh 150KT that don't help, what I see is a small 100 m long craft...
* HEAVILY Shield planets/facilities !! That's what B5 mod did, along with shield skipping bombs ! That's very neat, to kill planetary stuff you have to use bombs instead of rays

With this planetary attacks should look better IMHO. If I ever do a mod I will begin with this ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't understand. What do you have against Weapon platforms?

Geoschmo

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My italics. That's the issue. A ship, a WP, even a troop, is a single 'hard' target. You have to hit it directly with a concentrated attack. Facilities are less 'hard' but at least fairly localized. You can see/scan the location of a mine, factory, research lab and bLast it.

Population is a whole other thing. People are not likely to be in one convenient location unless, as Geo points out, the colony is a hostile atmosphere type and everyone has to live in domes. So it's just not realistic to be able to wipe the slate clean on a populated planet with DUCs or even APBs or any other beam weapons.

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

As with other discussed weapons/damage/etc, it must be remembered that balance is the key. If one goes overboard and makes a planet to hard or nearly impossible to glaze then balance is gone.

IMHO, Probably the easiest way to help in this area is to increase the use and strength of Planetary Shields. In addition as a side note, the possiblity of stronger wp shields/armor could also be looked into. These would be stronger then ship shields/armor, due to the larger area for infrastructure then you have on a ship. Increasing the range of wp's is also an option, as well as limiting the types of weapons that can glaze or damage a planet. Glazing planets whether pop/resources/infrastructure is needed however, it should not be as easy as it is currently in regards to planets that have progressed past initial colony stage. This is where planetary shields come into play. You could have different levels with higher levels of damage resistance as you go up the ladder. Also you could also have say level one shields stop x type of damage/weapons, level y stops up to ... dypes of damage/weapons, etc. or something along this line. We must remember not to make it to strong or play balance is gone..

This is only my opinon and 2 cents worth.

just some ideas mac

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

I don't think there is any balance issue to making it nearly impossible to glass a non-domed colony. If you can wipe out the facilities, and reduce the conditions you remove almost any benefit to the owner. It's not a big deal and quite reasonable I think to require some sort of land action to completely finish it off. Actually if population could be used as low tech troops, then you could simply bomb the planet down to 1 Mil and then plant your own colony on top of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Before that though I think as someone else suggested earlier there should be a chance per turn of blockaded and rioting planets going over to the other side. Even if you didn't implement the other stuff about lack of resources causing starvation and what not.

Geoschmo

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">At the very least, you should be leaving them in as armor for the population. IE: Bomb Shelters & Bunkers.
Surface - to - Space Missiles are also quite reasonable, and certain types of direct-fire weapons too (torpedoes, lightning gun).

Antiproton beams should certainly never be used in any sort of atmosphere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

The ability to target facilities, cargo, or population would be nice. There have been times that I wanted to destroy a shipyard in my initial attack, but my bombardment winds up killing one WP, a couple of million pop, and a research lab. If you added an inherent defense for these facilities, it would require a player to use a bit more strategy when attacking a planet.
Also, how about not only planetary shields, but also facilities that would protect your population, facilities, or weapons platforms?
1. Bunkers (or shelters)- would add a defense value to your population. Effect would be cumlative.
2. Hardened defense bases-would increase defense value of weapons platforms
3. Hardened Facilities-possibly an upgrade? Would increase the cost of a facility but add a defense factor for the facilities.

I don't think any of these would unbalance the game. It would require the planet owning player to sacrifice space/resources to create a defensive planet. Also, it would take a lot longer for a fleet to destroy a world.

If you added some other things like beam weapons damage being decreased by atmosphere (thanks MOO!) or increase planetary weapons range, maybe it would make planetary attacks more interesting.

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

Also, the original point was to force more frequent use of troops. All we need to do is make more reasons for the use of troops, not make planets so tough to defeat that the game stalemates.

I think the current damage ratio works well enough to compensate for atmosphere. It's just not enough to compensate for the difference beteen the wide-open spaces of a planet and the hard-point target of a ship, troop, WP, etc.

[ June 27, 2002, 16:04: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't understand. What do you have against Weapon platforms?

Geoschmo</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, it was a shortcut http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif : I mean they can't work "properly" in SE4 - they can't be specifically targeted ...