Disrupter
[ Posts : 458 ]
 | [Post Date: 21-Jul-2008 15:40]
Unless there will be some kind of feature wheres drone ships scan the galaxy automatically, i think that there should be an easier way then manually scanning 1000+ stars to find your opponents.
I meant TG is small compared to Trio, the Eye, or Pleiades, empires could go the entire galaxy without ever fighting or even being found this way.
Its great for secrecy, if you want to hide, you can, but its bad for war.
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
 | [Post Date: 22-Jul-2008 10:55]
Yeah, exploring is really slow also. I think once the game is up and running, some more changes will be needed to make it faster to use. Right now everything takes ages and it gets annoying quite soon. With 100 planets it is basicaly impossible to place all your orders in one time, I have to do some, check back later and do few more and so on, else its just too much and becomes more like work than a game 
Exploring is the same, I have like 20 drones, but dont bother moving them, because its so slow and annoying. And finaly is the science list. I know queues will be added for membership, but I think that this will be a huge advantage over other players, as I could easily have completed the research tree if I had the queue, because I have been making 1000+ points for ages now, and if they were not wasted for most of the time I would have everything.
Right now I still have quite a way to go, and am researching slowly, about 4 or 5 a day or something...but thats much slower than my empire could be producing...
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Maverick
[ Posts : 1331 ]
 | [Post Date: 22-Jul-2008 11:50]
We need more people to test it all around.
Exploring: As I said it before we would try some new ways of exploring, but don't forget that alliances will explore much faster then a solo player and it is ok imho. Now lets make some calculations. We have about 1000 systems. If we have 100 players we have about 10 systems per player. Now lets have 10 alliances with 10 players in each. Each member should explore 100 systems and that is 10% of the galaxy that is not so much and acceptable. To help it we will add an automatic system scan, but will make it very slow.
On a side note, lets think that humanity learned inter stellar travel. How long it will take us to explore our Milky Way galaxy?
Ordering buildings and ships: If we take same calculations as above you'll have about 10 planets and this is not too much When in war I expect that you'll conquer just most advanced enemy planet and bombard others. Of course we'll add in time new interface features that will help you managing planets (next colony button on colony screen to name one).
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 22-Jul-2008 20:38]
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We need more people to test it all around.
Exploring: As I said it before we would try some new ways of exploring, but don't forget that alliances will explore much faster then a solo player and it is ok imho. Now lets make some calculations. We have about 1000 systems. If we have 100 players we have about 10 systems per player. Now lets have 10 alliances with 10 players in each. Each member should explore 100 systems and that is 10% of the galaxy that is not so much and acceptable. To help it we will add an automatic system scan, but will make it very slow.
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In theory, but things never work the way they are planned . Firstly few alliances will have 10 members, and many people want to play solo. This is expecialy true of new players, who are forming their first impression of the game...and if they find this slow and boring, they may not bother continueing. Its really annoying to me also, I dont want to have to move ships to explore at all, any automatic option, even if slow will be fine, but not so slow that it takes more than maybe 1000 turns to explore the galaxy. Afterall, its a war game, and if you cant find your enemys, war can't happen...
Also, the big galaxys are much more than 1000 stars, trio is over 2000 so that would make the absolute minumum 200 stars each, and it would be nice if all players did their fair share of the exploring...but life doesnt work that way...also most likely several players will start near each other (thats why they join up) and then they all explore the area near them, and it still takes for ever to explore the further reaches. Also, how do you coordinate the exploring? So players will all move ships out and cross each others paths and areas will be left...
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On a side note, lets think that humanity learned inter stellar travel. How long it will take us to explore our Milky Way galaxy?
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A long time, but like I said before, games can avoid the problems of real life, and thats what make them fun...in real life you wouldnt need to explore everywhere, and you would try to avoid war...in games, you want war...
This message was edited by Emperor L
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Maverick
[ Posts : 1331 ]
| [Post Date: 23-Jul-2008 13:22]
What if you could set your drones/fleet a path? Would it easier exploration? Then observatories could be just a backup. In my opinion observatories should be less effective.
This message was edited by Maverick
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 23-Jul-2008 13:31]
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What if you could order your drones/fleet a path? Would it easier exploration? Then observatories could be just a backup. In my opinion observatories should be less effective.
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I have an idea. Firstly all stars are invisible to players, this means that except their own star, the map is empty and has no stars shown. Maybe also show anything within 10 quadrants of a player owned star.
The observatory allows you to see where stars are, and makes them visible. This will be a bit like satalites in DQ:E, where you set how much resources and it will display that many stars (starting with nearest). To actualy explore the star you need to send ships to them.
You could have some sort of auto explore option on the ships, meaning they move automaticaly to the nearest unexplored visible star, then to the next and so on. Meaning the more you have, the quicker you explore, but only within your visible area.
This makes it more like exploring, because you dont know what is comming up, anything could be out their, including black holes and worm holes.
You could also have paths, and just normal movement for exploring, so the player can choose how to explore.
The observatories could use science points BUT, they use spare science points, so if you are not researching anything, they will use up the points that would normaly be wasted for locating stars. They should maybe 10 points to locate a star, and also have a more expencive option to explore them, like maybe 50 points for this 
Any science points wasted build up and are used for this, but only points from the planet where the observatory is built should be used.
This means on planet A I could use points for locating stars, and on planet B for exploring stars. The speed will depend directly on how many points my planets make, and not on any pre set speed in the game, so players can explore as fast or slow as they want, but it depends how much population they put into this
This message was edited by Emperor L
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Maverick
[ Posts : 1331 ]
| [Post Date: 23-Jul-2008 13:34]
Good idea and I saw it in other games already, but unfortunately It requires way too much changes to the entire system. 
Lets implement paths and observatories and see how it works then we'll decide.
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 23-Jul-2008 13:37]
Ok, you replyed as I edited.
See the last bit about using spare science to explore.
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Disrupter
[ Posts : 458 ]
| [Post Date: 01-Aug-2008 18:36]
Would it be possible to make Fleet Groups?
I think it could add more to strategy if you can have several fleets link up the way several ships can.
Each fleet can maintain its own formation and range but the Fleet Group would share the same disposition (guard, aggressive, defensive)
Its not entirely necessary, but would help for coordination, traveling one Fleet Group to a location instead of several fleets is much better then trying to have all arrive at once.
Strategy would be more involved here, you could have weaker ships in Close fleets attacking with Close weapons and stronger ships attacking from afar with Long weapons. The possibilities would be numerous and it would be up to the player to use whichever combinations of Ranges and Formations they want.
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 01-Aug-2008 18:55]
The only problem I see is that players would build ships of all 1 range. I could build a short range ship, a mid range ship and a far range ship, and it makes it unnessasary to build a balanced ship.
I mean, with a single fleet, you have to choose weapons that fit every situation, and if you dont could be beaten badly. Where if you just have single range ships all fighting their own range, then you wouldnt need to bother.
I know you can just make separate fleets to do it anyway, but not sure...
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Disrupter
[ Posts : 458 ]
| [Post Date: 04-Aug-2008 16:12]
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The only problem I see is that players would build ships of all 1 range. I could build a short range ship, a mid range ship and a far range ship, and it makes it unnessasary to build a balanced ship.
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Well if you build a "balanced" ship, no matter what you will be wasting your firepower. If you have 3 long, med, and short range weapons, no matter what 6 of those 9 will always not live up to their potential. It would be up to the players to determine whether they want balanced or unbalanced ships. Most of my ships now are more or less balanced, but i know id build a few special ranged ships just to shore up my main forces.
If anything, i think having a "balanced" ships is almost worse then having a special ship because if you have a balanced fleet or fleet group, then all your ships live up to their potentials. Even if the range is off, its not like the special ships would be stuck. Since fleets are so important, they should be balanced between ships, not each ship balanced in itself.
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 04-Aug-2008 21:09]
Maverick just changed the penalty for using the wrong range, its now -30% for 1 range out, and -60% for 2 ranges out.
If you build a fleet of short range ships/weapons only, for example, and your enemy has a mid range fleet, with balanced weapons, you would loose 30% of fire power on 100% of your weapons...
They would loose 30% of fire power on 66% of their weapons...
Now, I dont know exactly what this would do in battle. We should test it
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Disrupter
[ Posts : 458 ]
| [Post Date: 04-Aug-2008 21:28]
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Maverick just changed the penalty for using the wrong range, its now -30% for 1 range out, and -60% for 2 ranges out.
If you build a fleet of short range ships/weapons only, for example, and your enemy has a mid range fleet, with balanced weapons, you would loose 30% of fire power on 100% of your weapons...
They would loose 30% of fire power on 66% of their weapons...
Now, I dont know exactly what this would do in battle. We should test it
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Hmmm. Ok. For all intents and purposes, lets build some Long and Short only range fleets and some Long short together fleets.
I think they should all be of the same class though, say cruisers?
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 04-Aug-2008 21:36]
Yeah, cruisers will be ok. Say 10 each.
You can build any single range ships you like, or combination of single range ships. I will balance my ships with any weapons I think work best. Will try and make it even as much as possible.
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Disrupter
[ Posts : 458 ]
| [Post Date: 04-Aug-2008 22:09]
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Yeah, cruisers will be ok. Say 10 each.
You can build any single range ships you like, or combination of single range ships. I will balance my ships with any weapons I think work best. Will try and make it even as much as possible.
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So are your ships going to be balanced then? If so ill make ships of 1 range type per ship and several different ships.
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