Wish list for patch/SEV

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by orev_saara:
And I'm still thinking that atmospheric resistance should be a factor, but then there's no way to set it to be there for most planets, but not those without atmosphere. And on gas giants, how deep are the weapon platforms really? To say nothing of the grossly inadequate size of gas giants in the first place... Never mind.

There is nothing that says that a colony on a gas giant is on whatever surface it has. THey could just as easily be floating platforms like Cloud city.

[Suicide Junkie]

Many of the things later on in your list can be easily modded.

Try the leaky armor system.
Try requiring armor mounts which base protection per kt on the total hull size.
Fiddle the mounts and racial costs as you suggested.

If this is not already true, and I think that it is not, I would like to see damage randomization weighted by the larger of structure space and the damage size of a component. The chances of hitting a Large Weapon should be greater than the chances of hitting a 10 KT component.

A 50-hitpoint component is at least Five times more likely to be hit than a 10-hitpoint component.
I believe it is slightly more than that, but there is room for doubt.

Armor works the opposite way, with weaker components being destroyed first.

Just mod it!
Then start a PBW game and see how many people agree with your changes

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LGM:
All the weapons with high supply factors, lose that trade off factor (NSP and WMG) with QRs in the game.

The tradeoff to using WMGs is that their damage/kt/turn ratio is lousy, and their damage/kt alpha strike isn't much better. Increase the damage to around 180-200 and you'd have a weapon that would be more worthwhile using for the massive research cost.

If this is not already true, and I think that it is not, I would like to see damage randomization weighted by the larger of structure space and the damage size of a component. The chances of hitting a Large Weapon should be greater than the chances of hitting a 10 KT component.

The probability that an item will be hit is equal to its structure tonnage divided by the total structure tonnage of the ship, and thus, large components are already more likely to be hit.

Make the Relious trait more costly in points: 2000 or 2500. Make the Talisman cost something like 3000 or 6000 organics to make them have some special cost factor.

For 2500 points I can raise maintenance reduction to 120%, or aggressiveness and defensiveness to 125%/120%. The talisman would hardly be worth it with that kind of cost.

Their damage rating should be 5 KT. They may be 40 KT of space, but one hit should desecrate their holiness.

Giving them a smaller damage resistance would make them less likely to be destroyed until the entire ship was gone.

All hits should have a 5% chance of skipping armor. Each armor component taken out, should increase the chance of bypassing armor. Chance to bypass armor should be 5% + (95% * KT Armor Destroyed) / # KT Armor on ship design). This would make larger hulls increasingly vulnerable as their armor is damaged. The KTs above, are space KTs, not damage KTs.

It would be far better to use mods with leaky armour instead of hard-coding behaviour like this.

Armour and shield facings are a bad idea for a game that easily involves battles between hundreds of ships in the stock game, and thousands in some mods.

Do computer controled tactical in strategic mode combat games in simultaneous and incrementally and allow ships to fire at any point in the increments. This will allow range advantage to actually be exercised.

What do you mean by this Last statement? Strategic combat is already identical to tactical, except that the computer controls both sides. Ships can already fire at any point in their movement.

[Phoenix-D]

"The tradeoff to using WMGs is that their damage/kt/turn ratio is lousy, and their damage/kt alpha strike isn't much better. Increase the damage to around 180-200 and you'd have a weapon that would be more worthwhile using for the massive research cost."

On the other hand, they -do- get a +30% to-hit bonus. Nothing to sneeze at. If they cost the same to research as APBs and were a little smaller, I'd say they were pretty well balanced..but they don't and aren't.

Phoenix-D

[Instar]

re: #2 Orbiting planets
Orbiting planets was discussed to a great degree (I think it was on those old defunct forums at what's that site that no longer exists). The decision came down to that orbiting planets would only confuse players more than necessary. (You could also argue that the camera over the system in the bird's eye view rotated along with the planets... but that assumes that all the planets rotate at the same relative rate...)

[orev_saara]

Wow, I thought this thread was defunct! Regarding the Quantum Reactor issue that was mentioned earlier, I was just thinking of that myself, and I have an idea. Make 'em bigger! If a quantum reactor was, say, 500kT, people wouldn't be able to put them in every ship, just one fleet tender. This way, you'd still get resupplied at the end of every round, but you couldn't just fire those big guns til kingdom come. Another option would be to make the cost staggering, or whatever, so long as it wasn't effective to put the in every ship. I'm currently working on increasing supply usage in general, as I think resupply is a somewhat neglected aspect of the game.

Oh, yeah, on the WP thingy. The WP advocates make the excellent case that if I don't like them I can take them out. Which I have pretty much done. I do think that Geo made a very lucid point about planetary assaults though. It goes to the heart of the issue. I don't want to sit here for five minutes while my armada pounds away at the defenses of a single planet. So I have some ideas, but I need to know a few things. Can troops be landed through planetary shields? If so, this presents a solution within the current game parameters. Kind of Star Wars, actually, planetary assaults would pretty much go like Hoth. I like this, I'll have to try it out. As far as future development goes, I'd like to see some sort of ground defense object that can A: withstand damage from orbit, B: not fire into orbit, except perhaps for point defense, and C: not be dropped from orbit. Some sort of bunkers? I think that would open things up nicely.

PS: I tried putting point defense cannons on troops, but they don't work.

EDIT: Yes! You CAN drop troops onto a planet through shields!!!

[ February 18, 2003, 18:42: Message edited by: orev_saara ]

[Phoenix-D]

"I'd like to see some sort of ground defense object that can A: withstand damage from orbit, B: not fire into orbit, except perhaps for point defense, and C: not be dropped from orbit. Some sort of bunkers? I think that would open things up nicely."

This can also be modded in. Simply remove everything except shields, ECM (?) and armor from weapons platforms.

Phoenix-D