Question, Armor and mines

[Askan Nightbringer]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Once the player gets to the point where they can build and support enough sweepers mines become irrelevant to the attacking fleet. It's all or nothing. Your fleet will roll through field after field with no pause or concern from the mines. I want you to have to take your time. Not to stop you completely, but to make you take your time when going from planet to planet. I want to make wars in the late game be campaigns instead of just an inexorable drive from planet to planet towards the heart of the enemy empire.
Geoschmo

Mines aren't the only way to acheive this. Repairing is critical for the roll to victory. Without repairing then every combat has a chance of slowing or halting the advance.
If you could only repair components at bases and planets then the end game would be a campaign, with the invading player's fleet whittling away or him spending time colonising, building bases or waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
This gives the defender more time to build ships and planetry defences might be useful.

Askan

[Q]

Originally posted by Askan Nightbringer:

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Once the player gets to the point where they can build and support enough sweepers mines become irrelevant to the attacking fleet. It's all or nothing. Your fleet will roll through field after field with no pause or concern from the mines. I want you to have to take your time. Not to stop you completely, but to make you take your time when going from planet to planet. I want to make wars in the late game be campaigns instead of just an inexorable drive from planet to planet towards the heart of the enemy empire.
Geoschmo

Mines aren't the only way to acheive this. Repairing is critical for the roll to victory. Without repairing then every combat has a chance of slowing or halting the advance.
If you could only repair components at bases and planets then the end game would be a campaign, with the invading player's fleet whittling away or him spending time colonising, building bases or waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
This gives the defender more time to build ships and planetry defences might be useful.

Askan

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You are absolutely right about the enormous importance of repair. But your idea to restrict repair to bases and planets is extremely easy to implement: change the allowed vehicle types for repair components and space yards from bases/ships to bases only.
There are however major problems with this modification: 1.) You could never build bases outside the orbit of planets and therefore remote mining and ring-/sphereworlds would be impossible.
2.) You could not repair ships that have lost their engines. Human players would have to send killer ships to destroy these wrecks but the AI would be lost with this problem.

[ August 18, 2002, 06:42: Message edited by: Q ]

[Fyron]

Remove the repair ability from Space Yard components.

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Remove the repair ability from Space Yard components.

Oooo, this has potential. SY components have no repair ability, and Repair bays are only mountable on bases. So you have to build repair bases during campaigns into enemy territory; repair bases that would have to be defended or scrapped (and then built all over again). The only other option would be to build colonies in enemy territory, (which has it's own inherent risks involved, ie. population captured by the enemy. Reduce the build rate of the SY components so that such bases take, say, 5 or 10 turns to build....

[Q]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Remove the repair ability from Space Yard components.

That would indeed solve problem number 1. But the second problem would still remain.

[Fyron]

No it doesn't. Build a repair base there to repair the engine-less ship. Same problem as #1. Well... not for the AI, but AIs don't repair their ships very well as it is. And this type of game would seem to be needing Human players anyways.

Askan, another tid-bit: you can mod repair bays to fit on satellites, and they will work perfectly fine (when the satellites are launched into space). May not be a good thing for your idea per se. But, if this is the only way to repair, it at least takes an extra turn to get the repairs started. And, you can't repair while moving.

[ August 18, 2002, 07:20: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by Q:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Remove the repair ability from Space Yard components.

That would indeed solve problem number 1. But the second problem would still remain.

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Well, since we're modding, we could also mod in a smaller base hull, just big enough to hold command structures and a small repair bay that only repairs 1 component per turn. The smaller repair base should be buildable quickly, but as long as the bigger base with full sized repair bays is significantly more effecient at repairs/turn, the desired effects should hold...

EDIT=typos

[ August 18, 2002, 07:25: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[Q]

My point is just that the restriction of repair would create more problems than its benefit is worth. That is of course just my humble opinion. If we want to prevent a fleet from going indefinitely from one combat to the other why not play without quantum reactor and solar panels? No matter how much supply ships you have in your fleet sooner or later you will run out of supplies and you need either to return or conquer an intact colony and build a resupply depot.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Q:
My point is just that the restriction of repair would create more problems than its benefit is worth. That is of course just my humble opinion. If we want to prevent a fleet from going indefinitely from one combat to the other why not play without quantum reactor and solar panels? No matter how much supply ships you have in your fleet sooner or later you will run out of supplies and you need either to return or conquer an intact colony and build a resupply depot.

Why not do both of those things? Limit repairs to bases/planets and remove the quantum reactor (and maybe the solar panel - or maybe just make it generate supplies more slowly). It's certainly an interesting thought.

Of course, if MM would implement tugs, the whole idea would work even better - then you could tow derelict ships (either out-of-supply or all engines damaged) back to a repair base. (I know, in the current Version, to move an out-of-supply ship all you need to do is fleet it with another ship that still has supplies; but a tug could be used to grab the ship WITHOUT fleeting, and therefore without having to share supplies and only spend supplies on the tug's engines, not both ships' engines).

[Zanthis]

Large mine fields could have their omnipotence reduced if the maximum number of mines attacking a given fleet was controlled by the number of ships in the fleet.

Example, suppose a fleet was attacked by 10 mines per ship. Now 2000 mines only mean multiple fleets will have to deal with the mines, but a single fleet doesn't have an impossible mass to deal with.

Then add components that fit into mines that improve their seeking (would have to be a new ability), increasing the number of mines that attack each ship. So maybe with advanced seeking heads, 15 mines per ship might attack.

Further, add another component (with yet another new ability) that makes the mines more difficult to destroy. Say add a "-1 mine destroyed per minesweeper" ability. Then, higher tech levels would balance out by keeping minesweeping components in check.

Optionally, make minesweepers have a chance to hit, and use Combat To Hit components to make mines harder to sweep.

Actually, giving to hit chance would be nice. Then allow/require mine sweeping components to double up shots on missed mines at 1/2 chance of hitting.

For example, say 200 mines are attacking and you can sweep 200 mines. Further, lets say you have a 90% to hit (just out of a hat). You kill the first 9 mines, but the 10th slips by. You take a second shot at 45% chance to hit, but miss that too. That mines damages your fleet (should automatically, or nearly always, hit a minesweeper, probably, allowing you to lose minesweeping components before you get a chance to use them). So, you've killed 9 mines and 1 blew up and hurt a ship. You've also used 11 of your 200 shots. Repeat for the remaining 190 mines waiting to attack you, the Last of which (since you only have 189 sweeps left) will get through safely.

Adding chances for mines to hit would be nice. Proximity warhead with bonus to hit but doing less damage could be cool. Proximity heads could also be harder to sweep (penalty to be hit) since they must be destroyed earlier [extra special would be reducing the chance to be hit for only double up shots, but that's a brand new ability, and probably not worth it].