Stellar Manipulation Suggestion for 1.42

BeeDee10 · #1 October 1st, 2001, 04:54 AM

Hooray! Finally, a defence is possible!

I suppose this does mean that it's possible for a player to seal himself off from the rest of the quadrant impregnably, by closing all warp points out of his grav-shielded systems and abandoning any colonies outside of that group to remove the possibility of intel. But since grav shield facilities cost a fortune and take forever to build, it's likely that this will only account for a small number of systems. If he ever decides to reopen the gates to the outside world again, he's likely to find that he's been left behind by the massive non-isolationist empires out there.

geoschmo · #2 October 1st, 2001, 05:11 AM

Yep. I have to play around with it some. If the ability is usable by non-facilities, it offers some intriguing mod possibilities too.

Geoschmo

BeeDee10 · #3 October 1st, 2001, 06:30 AM

The possibility that leapt immediately to mind was giving a planet the system-grav-shield function, sealing the system until whoever's trapped inside develops tectonic disruption weapons powerful enough to destroy it. A pity the AI isn't very clever, one could set up a cute "ancient evil sealed away by ancient foes" scenario with the ancient evil breaking out of their ancient prison to menace the younger races. A human could play that role in PBW, though.

I suppose you could give it to a sun as well in that case, so that anyone trapped inside has to commit suicide in order to free themselves. But that's kind of pointlessly mean.

Oh, on the other hand, one could use the map editor to make one-way warp points leading into such a "sealed" system. Kind of an interesting situation for the crews; they'd better hope there's a colonizable planet in there.

Magus38 · #4 October 1st, 2001, 06:11 PM

This is fantastic news. I have to admit that I had been giving the game a rest for awhile; until the patch came out (I got back into Age of Wonders - another fabulous turn-based strat game - 'plug'). With the news of this fix, alongside Intel being fixed, I cannot wait to play again.

Baron Munchausen · #5 October 1st, 2001, 09:33 PM

Now if only there could be 'levels' of effectiveness for stellar manipulation and the defenses against it so the game wasn't so simple.

As it is now, you build a defense and that's it, you're safe. Hardly realistic.

raynor · #6 October 2nd, 2001, 05:33 AM

At one point, someone had suggested making the Warp Point creation ships one-shot ships like the SM ships that destroy stars. Granted, you pay a huge maintenance cost for SM ships already. What effect do you think it would have on the game if the SM components were non-repairable?

I have forgotten now. Did they require that SM components have to be repaired at a space station?

MegaTrain · #7 October 2nd, 2001, 07:51 PM

quote:
Originally posted by raynor:
At one point, someone had suggested making the Warp Point creation ships one-shot ships like the SM ships that destroy stars. Granted, you pay a huge maintenance cost for SM ships already. What effect do you think it would have on the game if the SM components were non-repairable?

I have forgotten now. Did they require that SM components have to be repaired at a space station?

What? So "this component is destroyed after use" actually means "this component is DAMAGED after use but can be repaired" ?!

Is this damage repaired in a single turn like other damaged components?

This makes a HUGE difference in my current game (my first long-term PBW game). I've just now researched Warp-point manipulation, but was putting it off as the ships were going to take about 2.4 years to build. But if I can just repair the component, then WHO CARES how expensive they are to build, they can be reused indefinitely.

Granted I'm coming at this from the other angle, but in my opinion reducing them to true single-shot ships would make a HUGE difference.

------------------
-MegaTrain-
Athlon 1.3 GHz running at 1.6 GHz on an iWill KK266