PBW PvK Proportions Game #2

AMF · #1 August 24th, 2004, 10:29 AM

Will we need to redo our empires for the new proportions games with this release or (as you indicated earlier) are they good as is (if made with the beta of this Version)?

Thanks,

Alarik

Quote:

PvK said:
Heh, ok.
I'm going to be on trip till Friday.
See 3.0 thread in this forum - new Version available.
I will do a 3.1 shortly thereafter which we can upgrade to.

Game#3 will have six players exactly, because I made a map for exactly 6, somewhat balanced.

PvK

PvK · #2 August 27th, 2004, 04:16 PM

They're good for 3.0.

Shoe however pointed out a bug I'll need to fix somehow... but I think/hope I can figure out a way that this will actually work without having to re-do any EMP files.

PvK

PvK · #3 August 28th, 2004, 08:13 PM

I got the bug fixed and the 3.0.1 patch released to the Proportions web page.

Only players who have chosen the same shipset as someone else will need to change their EMP files.

PvK

PvK · #4 August 28th, 2004, 09:05 PM

Both games are pretty much ready to start. I'm just waiting on PBW to make 3.0.1 available as a game Version.

PvK

Ed Kolis · #5 August 28th, 2004, 09:41 PM

It is possible to run the turns offline until PBW has the mod set up, you know... not like I'd force you to do that or anything, I just thought maybe you forgot

Hippocrates · #6 August 28th, 2004, 10:00 PM

Hey PvK,

I still think you should join in on at least one of the games (if you want to, that is). What better way for you to see how 3.0 does, and know what needs fixing / works just right? On a map as mall as has been discussed, I don't think you'd have a big advantage, and hosting games you don't play in could be a drag, no?

-Hippo

csebal · #7 August 29th, 2004, 06:36 AM

A possible change.. i was thinking about it for quite some time, and i think it could fit in:

the starliner ships have no maintenance reduction. This leads to the somewhat odd situation, where using medium transports as starliners is more viable economically.

i think starliners could use at least the same ammount of maint. reduction as transport ships get, or even a bit more. After all, their 'only' advantage over transports is that they are there right from the start (the small starliner i mean). Other than that, they are smaller and slower than medium transports.

What do you think?

PvK · #8 August 29th, 2004, 02:20 PM

Yes, improving the starliners is actually on my "to do" list. The reason they are the way they are is that the first starliners are the low-tech solution to moving population before Medium Transports are available. Similarly, Large Starliner is designed as an early but not cheap solution to moving more than 1M at a time. I agree it would good to have some better starliners. I have been meaning to keep the existing ones while adding some higher-tech ones which provide lower maintenance and/or higher speed, so there will be good reasons to use them for population transport instead of ordinary transports.

PvK

TheDeadlyShoe · #9 August 30th, 2004, 08:39 AM

I think higher speed would work fine. Would differentiate the two hulls, and it would make sense for a population transport to be faster.

csebal · #10 September 1st, 2004, 05:12 AM

That brings up another point.

The smaller starliner modules, along with the larger transport ships are simply not worth it.

Why?

Because you need larger ships to fit multiple modules, which means:

more engines, more support modules -> more upkeep

More importantly, you may also need some improved starliner modules, which are quite expensive (well, at least they were in 2.5.x) compared to the first (clumsiest) Version.

So if you compare a large transport, that can carry multiple units of pop to a medium transport, that only carries one unit, you'll realize, that two medium pop. transport ships are cheaper to maintain than one 'technologycally advanced' large ship.

-- About the small starliner:
IT really should be worse than the medium transport, after all it is easily available from the start. Then again, i never build it, as by the time i get to build pop transport ships, i always have the medium transport ship class, so all in one, the starliners definitely need some fixing.

The goal is to make them viable, but underpowered compared to the medium transports.
Here is a suggestion:
- give those ships a rather high base price, so it'll take many turns to build even a single one. Say: about 5-10 turns on a homeworld.
- give them a damn high maint. reduction, say 90%, to offset their rather high price, and make them economically viable to use on the long run, compared to regular transport ships.
- Limit their speed (this is already done) compared to the regular transport ships.
- Give them some -999% defense and attack bonuses.

With this, you'll get a slow to build, extremely cheap to maintain transport ship, that is a lot slower than the regular tranports, but costs less to maintain on the long run.