[Talenn]

Hey all,

Just a few thoughts from the Peanut Gallery:

Regarding Cruisers and other hull types:

One easy fix to do is to make the 'Hulls' cost significantly more as you go up in size and then climb steeper towards the top...ie, a 'surcharge' if you will on Capital Ships (above Cruiser size). This will encourage folks to make the bulk of their fleet the small fry and Cruisers, but have some Capital Ships available (maybe in mothball) for the inevitable wars.

Also, the artificially inflated costs make the build time longer which I also found to be far more realistic. Of course, for any of this to work, you have to make the Capital ships really worth it. To do that you have to break the basic mold of going up approx 100kt per size. The Capital Ships should have significant size difference to make up for the cost.

There are some other items that can be used to differentiate the big boys too. For example, an Armor component that takes up ~100kt but has a VERY nice ratio can go a long way to making Capitial ships nearly immune to small ships and will guarantee that only they can carry them. Some Weapons can be made to do the same thing...Massive damage and range, a nasty to-hit penalty and a huge size (although maybe a modest cost). Weapons like this would be required to penetrate the 'main armor' on other Capital ships, but would be nearly useless vs smaller, faster opponents.

In other words, the ship would have to have secondary batteries to deal with small fries or else be escorted. If you want some of the small guys to be able to affect Capital ships, weapons like a Torpedo that does good damage but fires once or twice a battle are a good option. Capital Ships wont want em because they can get the same performance from a Main Battery, but people can then design some small craft with lethal firepower at the cost of RoF and having vulnerability to other small craft.

Armor vs Shields can be a trade off between cost and space. Shields can be effective but have a MUCH higher cost (and thus add to the build time and maintenance). Armor is far cheaper, but more mass intensive. Weapons that defeat one or the other can round out the interaction as desired.

The possibilities here are endless if you dont have to worry about an AI.

A few other ideas to throw out:

In my original mod, I made the neglected resources much more necessary. This had a good effect on the game IMO as it required some actual resource management, but wreaked havoc with AIs. One way I encouraged the other two was to make Facilities on planets cost HIGH amounts of Organics and Radioactives...if you want to be colonizing a lot, you will need those two in much larger quantities. If you are simply going to war, you can dispense with some of them. This allows people to go on a 'war footing' by converting planets over and requires a retooling of the econ to go colony-happy...it made for a fairly good 'Guns or Better' decision-making process.

Population can be made to be far more important by adding a lot more early pop-breaks and giving the lower pops a huge resource and building penalty. That, coupled with higher cost facilities slows colonization down to a more 'realistic' level, but without the extreme slowdown of the 'Proportions' Mod.

I also agree with slowing down research a bit on Weapons. IMO, have the breaks come less often, but be more pronounced. I never really saw the point of having 10 levels of a weapon that you could get through all of the early levels in a few turns each. It just made for a micromanagement hassle of having to redesign the ships every few turns anyway.

The Missile/Anti-Missile Defense of the Devnullmod are quite good and IMO, should be a firm base for an AI-less mod. I havent explored all of the ins and outs in detail, but Missiles seem viable early on without being overwhelming and can continue to be viable even into the later game.

If using a Ship Size system as I had above, there is a lot of scope for Missile techs. Smaller Missiles are perfect for scrubbing the 'swarmers' and 'Ship Killers' can be made that are tough to knockdown, fast, and have huge warheads and space requirements. Give them a once or twice a battle RoF and they are good to go. Again, unlimited variety if the AI is not a factor.

Well, anyways, those are just some thoughts. If I had the time and the player-base locally for an AI-less mod to be successful, I'd love to take those ideas and pair them with some of the other great thoughts I've seen here and make a mod. Maybe these ideas will inspire y'all in ways I haven't even seen as well.

Thanx,
Talenn