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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
For slowing ships down- perhaps the "random movement" ability?
I'm not sure how that one works. Would it affect bases and satellites? If so, that would make for a rather interesting system but I don't think it fits the Zones very well
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perhaps the maintance decrease ability? Can you apply that to a system? So as you get deeper, that ability starts to get weaker, making your ships more expensive.
I believe it would work as a system ability, since the Crystalline Restructuring Facility reduces maintenance system-wide already. But I think that would give an unfair advantage to races originating in the Beyond (that's the name for the high-tech area, for those that aren't familiar with AFUtD) because they could build up a larger fleet to send into the Slow Zone (that's the low-tech area) than the Slow Zone people could build to send into the Beyond.
I guess I could remove the unfairness by having all races start in the Slow Zone. Then I could use every trick in the book to make the Slow Zone into the armpit of the quadrant, with combat penalties and resource penalties and research penalties. Everyone will race to colonize the Beyond and all the big wars will be fought up there, just like in the book.
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Using combat sensor abilities would probably be a bad idea. It would affect all ships evenly, so the low tech ships would be at a disdvantage no matter where they were.
No, a low-tech ship that left the Slow Zone would regain normal combat sensor abilities as it entered the Beyond systems that didn't have the combat sensor penalty. By giving all ships in the slow zone a to-hit penalty, people in the Slow Zone would favour using missiles, fighters, larger ship hulls, shorter-range direct fire weapons (to reduce range accuracy penalties), and maybe torpedoes. The Beyonders who come charging in with their high-tech shielded WMG cruisers would be at a disadvantage against native Slow-Zone ships loaded with missiles and piles of armor.
Or so I would imagine, anyway. I need to test this out some.
My main goal is to make certain types of ships and technology preferable in one half of the quadrant while a different type of technology is preferable in the other half. I don't want to just use shield dampening for this, either, since then organic races would kick Slow-Zoner butt.
Has anyone ever tried giving a system level five sensor ability to eliminate cloaking devices?