Travel and Solarsystems revamp anything?

Just curious... How do you know the average planet number?

But I agree. I'd like more stars with less planets.

I totally agree with this proposal, since I as i earlier said isn't too fond of how it work as of now.

We won't be removing the use of Phase Lanes from within the solar system and since this is a game, it doesn't have to follow real-life 100%.   We will consider tweaking things based on feedback, however.

yup yup yup Love it. Hopefully open solar systems would help stave off the boredom im allready feeling at invading a planet, every time its exactly the same!!!

EDIT: sorry Yarlen i didnt see your reply, as far as im concerned this isn't a realism issue its a really big gameplay concern as I said in Rhaws thread about this at the moment invading planets feels just like island hopping and gets very very samey.

Theres no real excitement when i invade a planet, even if i havnt scouted it, I know there are going to be gaus guns, maybe fighters and if im LUCKY, theyll be some ships to steamroller. I know its early and the ais fleet building will improve but still what the game at the moment comes down to is a series of identical mini games where i move a fleet (usually an identi-kit size and composition fleet because theres no need for anything more special) round a planet blowing things up. That might seem a bit dramatic but I'm rapidly getting concerned about the longevity especially when a lot of the fleet combat is automated anyway ::

Making open starsystems would allow a lot more in the way of strategy and tactics imo

We really wish you'd consider removing Phase lanes, or at least pretend that you do.

Or list out the problems with it. (that'd be more helpful) We could always come up with ideas to help with that.

We have considered removing them and we have played without them (remember phase lanes were introduced AFTER we tried it the other way). As Yarlen said, it is a game and both Stardock and Ironclad feel the current system is superior in gameplay to the old way (we were playing it almost a year ago). I made a large post on this issue in the original phase lane thread if you want more details. I don't want this to repeat everything that is already there as we've already taken pages of notes on those comments. However, if someone does proprose a superior system (that is not already in the original Phase Lane thread) we will give it serious consideration - we are always open to ideas. 

As of right now you can easily mod the game for more stars and less planets by tweaking a very simple text file and it's a bit more complicated to tweak the phase lanes but it is possible and will be easier in the future when we focus a bit more on mod support.

I dont want to sound like im second guessing you Blair i appreciate all the work youve
done, but theres one thing i want to ask, did you specifically play with a starsystem
with a gravity well say half the size of the SOLARsystem theres now on?

What i mean is, the phaselanes are good idea but on a interstellar not interplanetary
manner, the reason for suggesting this is not about reality even if it sounded like that.
The big point is that at present its boring lanehoppin (jump, bomb, jump) infinately.

Theres practically nothing to allow for strategies on defence at this point, what matters
at this point is how much metal you have ready to intercept right after they
translate insystem, if you dont stop them the sec they arrive your planets a goner.

Otherwise the gamemechanics work 20000% better than i'd have ever believed possible for
a beta phase game.


My only problems is the lack of tactics and strategy, strategy as in all you do is get
capships and tradeports for money and you can literally rush through 60planets on 4stars
in matter of hour or two if youre not paying much attention, tested this and its the
same with max hard computers and with seriously tweaked pirates.

Please i implore you try my suggestion to some point or tell me how i'll do it, heck
ill do the whole thing again and free if you wish just to give you a testversion of
what i mean.

(Starsystem with gravwells about half the size of the actual solarsystem presently,
then phaselanes that connect stars to eachother[not necessarily all to all] the speed
taken to travel from other end to other in solarsystem could be about the same as
phasing say on 3-6minute timer[this should be determined by testing logically])

The reason for my half-forum long rant is that for first time in my gaming years ive
actually found a studio that listens to us and is making a game with real potential
for the first time half a decade. I mean it, theres NEVER been a game like this one if
it succeeds 2/3rds of its goals.

PS. ive played since i was 6years old and you can start picking guesses on my age between
20-30

I would very much enjoy open solar systems if there's more of them but less planets in them.

Still the game needs choke points, more interesting.

The chokepoints would be the phaselane entries to each solarsystem, say you got 3xentries
to your star, planets arent right on the edge of the system so you could build defences
to each entrypoint just like youre doing now within planetary gravwell, it would prevent
rush orgies since you couldnt just pop over enemys colony in less than 1min like its now

Instead you'd have to clear your way through the defending fleet/defences unless you wish
to take enormours losses when trying to run through the enemy.

Please Ironclad explain the exact type you used to test the open solarsystems,
Im serious about making this thing as free example for you if you give me some pointers
on how to implement it into the beta, as i understand the starsystems were open before,
so it shouldnt be "that" enormous test for someone else to try, wouldnt be much off
your time.

Im dead serious about this, ironclad rep may contact me via mail should they wish so.

Hey
Well its been discussed for a long time. You can read the "Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept!" thread.
They said, they will not change it, but are open for ideas, in the corrent system.

After eyeballing the thread through i got a bit disappointed that were going to stick to
current system, well i hope the leave the basemechanics in so one could mod it after.

As for improvemnt to present system i'd say increasing the gravwells a great deal,
decreasing the amount of planets per starsystem and adding some ability to defend stars
i could become satisfied.

I just really hate rushing kind of playing, rushing siege ships through any amount of
defence in under a minute and blasting away your planet in matter of seconds is something
im definately fond of.. sucks on my opinion, i'd rather concentrate more on interstellar
warfare than interplanetary zigzagging and raiding, could some ironclad rep tell me in
which file is the gravwell size determined i'd like to test it bigger.

such choke points would be so heavily defended , they would be impossible to penetrate....

so you prefer attacking on enemy that has 40ships and atleast 10planets in a cluttered
solarsystem, no way of predicting where you will hit and when, meaning any planet without
a big fleet is deadmeat for sure the sec you commit even a medium sized fleet on it?

Which file contains the data on gravity wells please, id like to mess around with it a bit

As I've said before we aren't support modding right now because we have too much higher priority development to do and much of the modding stuff may be obsolete in short order because we are constantly changing things.

However, if you want to play with more stars/less planets you want to mess with values in galaxysetup.setup. If you want to play with phase lanes, you need to modify the connections in a save game. If you want to play with gravity you need to play with gameplayconstants.constants (though I don't think the variables to allow multiple planets per well is accessible, but at least you can try playing in a large gravity well). Closer to release we will make it easier to make these changes and we'll provide some online help.

Thanks blair, ive already been messing with the galaxysetup.galaxysetup quite a bit,
the only problem beieng that almost always the computers start at the same star as i do.

I know i cant change multiple planets in same gravwell, didnt take long to realize that,
what im looking for is the line that specifies the size of the gravwell of an object,
i do realize that any changes i make are obsolete in no time but i really want to get a
hang on it now since when we do get to mod well most of my time will propably be spent on
AI tweaking to make it understand and use the changes ive made.

And thanks Blair for your time, i suppose you have a life too and still have time to
answer all our silly and pesky requests and demands hehe

I would love to give everyone 1 on 1 tutorials on modding but I just don't have the time at the moment with all the things we are including in Sins However, the AI per star distribution bug is fixed in the upcoming patch which is almost done  I also dug up the gravity size value for you: its called FarOrbitOffsetRadius and its in the entity files of each star/planet type.

Thank you blair from the bottom of my heart, thats awesome i found out most of the things
on my own, my game looks about 3000% different than the beta should be now hehe.

The exact reason i foresee a great future for this game is that all data is in readable
form and not some cryptic mumbojumbo less educated companies use.

Now ill try leave you alone for a while and try not to take too much of your time.

This issue is almost like beating a dead horse, but i have faith in IC. Plus it was said that the lanes will be modable in the final game. So i can live with that.

I'm still not %100 sure that Umbra Evitos, Rhaws and my point has really got across (if it has just slap me silly). What were (or at least me ) asking for isnt soo much to do with phaselanes as it is to do with the things the phaselanes connect.

Idea being that you take whats currently in game, so one planet surrounded by a gravity well, make that gravity well quite a bit bigger, and put a few more planets, moons, asteroids in it. So just checking, is that what you've allready tried out in an earlier phase and found the current system better? Or did you just try allowing ships to jump from one planet to any other planet? because that is NOT what i mean when i say an open solar system...

i played a game a long time ago that (very old game, can't remember the name... on Atari computer... there was such a thing) had harmonised the 2 concept of phase and non phased lane in a very basic game.

The game started with only phase lane (jump gate really) between star system and free travel within star system (but slow. You where playing with Icons basically). As the game progressed, you could uncover technology to make the lane basically portable (equip jump gate on your ships) and there was restriction on which ship and range to ensure that there was no way you could actually just jump anywere at anytime. It worked quite well.

In addition as a bonus, if you add to this your "intelligence" network like in Moo2 where you can have a idea of the level of technology of the other players, you could potentially guess which stars / planets are at risk.

another way to mitigate inter-planetary "jump" without lane would symply be to have 2 travel engine. A inside the system engine (sub light) and a system to system jump engine. You could require to have a entry point at the edge of the solar system (call it safety due to gravity) and make it far enough that the incoming fleet must switch to sub-light speed to let the owner(s) of the system react without to have to build massive forces all around the system which would be near impossible.

Combine this with limited range of inter-system travel and you can develop some pretty interesting choke point without having to resort to jump lane which i must admit are quite frustrating. basically find a system with 1 incoming lane, build it up with gauss and hanger and park a defense fleet and no one pass no matter what. Build another rampage fleet and a few hrs later, the game is over.

with this said, i am amazed at the effort and quality of this game so far. It will surely win award.
Add 3 d movement "a la homeworld", fleet management "a la SE4/5" and this would be unbeatable. Makes me think of a the old "Ascendancy" game in RTS format (with way better graphic obviously). Continue the amazing work IC.

That's been in the game since beta 1--just press the ~ key while setting a move order, same as Shift-moving in homeworld.

Why... I'm I only finding out about this now?! Are you utterly sure that actually works?

I'll try that. Thx

it works for everyone but you...

@lordkosc
that made me laugh