Long Range Wepons

Undertakr · #1 September 9th, 2002, 08:52 AM

I think intelligence (and it may work this way, I don't know) should allow for a percentage chance to capture any ship within the sector you can't see in when you choose to take any ship. This gives you a chance to get inside the system. I don't think there should be a way to directly go into a turtled sector. I think closing off warps is a fair strategy right now because once they make it so you can't get in, they can't get out. That's severly limiting, especially since they can't get out to defend their unprotected sectors and you start them all rioting. They will eventually have to come out of their shell.

- takr

Suicide Junkie · #2 September 9th, 2002, 04:22 PM

Quote:

I think closing off warps is a fair strategy right now because once they make it so you can't get in, they can't get out. That's severly limiting, especially since they can't get out to defend their unprotected sectors and you start them all rioting. They will eventually have to come out of their shell.

If they lock themselves into a small number of systems, they can stay there indefinitely.

The only thing that could possibly break the turtling is random events.
Even supernovae can be prevented by a Ring or Sphereworld, and if there are grav shield facilities on multiple planets in each system, earthquakes and planet core instabilities won't crack the shell either.
After thousands of turns, you might find that the turtled player's planets are all randomly destroyed (he can't rebuild since the ringworld uses up the star). I don't think ringworlds can be broken up by random events, though, so he could still sit there with ten grav shields and say he hasn't lost yet.

dogscoff · #3 September 9th, 2002, 04:46 PM

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Yes I relize that they would have to be hard coded in but I just wanted to open up a dialog on the subject to see if anyone liked it.

If enough people like then maybe in to be put in to SEV

What I'd really really like to see for SEV would be the possibility for normal space FTL travel from system to system as well as warp-point travel. This would open up whole new tech trees and strategies. For example, travelling directly from system to system without warp points would have the advantage of being able to approach from any direction but the obvious disadvantage that it would take a lot longer to get from A to B. Cost and supplies might also be issues.

Maybe also make it so that once a fleet has been despatched via FTL into the inter-stellar void, it can't change course. Chuck in some sensors so that the defender could see a few dozen light years beyond the system's boundaries (and all the cloaking devices & stuff that come with sensors) and it could be a well- balanced feature for the sequel.

LGM · #4 September 9th, 2002, 07:14 PM

Interstellar travel without warp-points would allow entry into segment of the solar system that are not connected by warp-points. This would effectively counter System Shields denying access to a system after the warp-points have beenr emoved.

Puke · #5 September 9th, 2002, 10:47 PM

if out-of-contact empires counted towards a 'peace' victory condition, you could set it to peace after 10 years. anyone who turtles for 100 turns with the rest of the galaxy at peace, would cause the game to end. and would probably be deemed the loser, if he had a lower score.

on the other hand, if someone with a hunge empire blocades all the others out and has a higer score, he could win by the same logic. not a bad thing necessarily.

Arkcon · #6 September 9th, 2002, 11:19 PM

How about a component that induces the random event that causes a ship to travel to a random part of the galaxy. If it were expensive enough, you wouldn't want to use it on every ship. But it would provide a way into any far flung system.

Undertakr · #7 September 10th, 2002, 02:04 AM

Well, since we're experiencing this and just defeated it, here is what we did.

It's 2 vs 1, the 1 is turtled in a sector with a system shield and has 100 planets outside his shield.

We attacked 2 or 3 planets per system to start riots. The riots caused his intel centers to stop producing. Even though he has about 4 gazillion intel points saved up, his production is currently 0 so he can't use any of his stored points to stop us.

We then began using intel to steal a random ship. We can steal 3 ships each turn. After about 10 turns we happened to steal a construction ship in his turtled sector. (And we see he's not quite done with the sphere world, but that's neither here nor there.) Immediately built fighters with the builder ship to defend it and set all of our intel to attack specific ships in the turtled sector now that we can see inside.

Obviously, this can't work in all instances, but it's how we won in this instance.

- takr