Useful Starbases! ? Modders, please respond.

Puke · #1 January 9th, 2001, 02:02 AM

i think fighters do get strategic movement. i have not tried it, but i hear people talking about moving them with fleets, or launching and moving them independantly. also, i remember from way back someone mentioned deploying them at a warp point and moing them back to a planet to resupply. I believe their limitation is that they cant warp.

so you would have little spacestations flitting about your system. what do you think this is, deep space 9?

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 09 January 2001).]

Daynarr · #2 January 9th, 2001, 08:18 AM

Well, I know that in MOO2 tactical combat you would have a base right between the planet and enemy. Why, for crying out loud, can't this be done here? If somebody wants to get to the planet he would need to get through that base or go all the way around to get to the far side. If he does go around he would lose lots of turns, so he just won't be able to do much damage to planet.

As for that tactic that is used on bases it can be countered by making larger size mounts for point-defense cannons that will have longer ranges (that will make them fire more then once on the incoming seekers) for both bases, weapon-platforms and satellites. It is a solution that AI will be able to use. Also you can add a +1 range per mount size to all weapon-platforms. It will make them much more useful (I already did that in my games).

The satellites are even more useless as they are now. I think that the player or AI should be able position them before the tactical combat starts, and to be able to divide them in Groups (AI would use 5 unit Groups like fighters, and would position them all around the planet).

I really think that these changes would fix the problem and that it wouldn't take too long for MM to make it work.

Mephisto · #3 January 9th, 2001, 01:07 PM

You are right, Daynarr. These changes would help a lot.

dmm · #4 January 9th, 2001, 05:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Trying to break the design classes like this seems awfully desperate to me.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Load your starbase with MISSILES. They have enough range to cover any planet. You could make a missile mount for bases that extends the range a bit more, even.

You'd have to REALLY extend the range, if the enemy fleet is on the other side of your huge planet. And what if the enemy fleet has very good PDCs?

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Or load it with fighter bays...

That's not an option early in the game. And again, it's a strategy that is defeatable by PDCs. Also, fighters are susceptible to wars of attrition, because ships often escape from a battle badly damaged but fixable, whereas fighters have to be rebuilt. The attacker can bring a lot of repair ships and fix everything in one turn, but fighters can only be built so fast. (Because of the one shipyard/planet limitation. Yet another reason to get rid of it, or better yet, overhaul the construction system entirely.)

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
You could also make weapon mounts for WPs more powerful...

Yes, but WPs are limited to combat-type stuff, they're not as big as bases, and they take up storage space so they're not as good for defending tiny planets.

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
If you had to close in and use special weapons to kill off a planet's population it would be easier to protect.

Yes, that would help, but attackers could still go to the far side of the planet and remain mostly untouchable by a base.

dmm · #5 January 9th, 2001, 05:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Puke:
i think fighters do get strategic movement.

I believe you. But I know for a fact that fighters did NOT get strategic movement in early demos. So my point is that it would be easy to put code in to allow bases to have tactical (i.e., combat) movement but not strategic movement. Or maybe the code is already there, and some flag in a data file controls it.

Of course, you'd also have to limit the number of engines to one. Maybe even limit the movement to one, or make base engines not usable every turn, or make them expendable, or make them unreliable, etc. Bases should move ponderously; they should not flit under any circumstances. But they shouldn't be rendered useless just by being on the wrong side of a planet.

Warning: Repetitious rant coming.
If MM is intent on not allowing bases to move and modders can't find a way around it, then at a BARE minimum (and this has been pointed out often):
a) bases should be positioned between planet and enemy, and/or
b) multiple bases should be distributed symmetrically.

Baron Munchausen · #6 January 9th, 2001, 05:33 PM

You know, it's just possible that starbases, or any bases, are not the best option for defending a planet! The thing that was UNrealistic was the old SE II/MOO system of forcing you to go through the bases to reach the planet. It's quite realistic to be able to go around them as you can now.

Try satellites. Launch them in Groups of no more than 20 (I recommend 10, actually) so the Groups will be spread around and give better coverage. Increase the cargo space of all planets in the planetsize.txt file so there's more room for WPs. We have discussed this issue in the beta forums. There's no realistic limit for planet capacity. It's just a convention required by the game to have a finite setting. Ten times more cargo capacity for planets would not be unrealistic, though maybe the game couldn't handle it.

Maybe you could even increase the size of WPs then. If they were 400/600/800kt instead of 200/400/600kt you could have more efficiency. You might add a "Mega WP" of 2000kt for that matter and build your "ground starbase".

WhiteHojo · #7 January 9th, 2001, 06:11 PM

This "Ground Starbase" idea is interesting. If you did make some super WP is there anyway to flag it so that it would be the recipeant of all fire untill it is destroyed?

Not very realistic but dangit, it's what I want...

Also, I believe there is some way to adjust the amount of damage a specific weapon type does against a planet in one of the data files, but my question is how many of the files have to be modded? Is it just one main file or does each race have its own file that would have to be modded?

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