Sun Defense?
And a little refinery/trade post idea
from 
Sins Forums
Sins Forums
Hi,
I am not sure if this has been discussed before, and if it has, I apologize for not finding the earlier thread(s).
I find on maps that have numerous solar systems but few planets each are difficult to lock down. For example, you might conquer a whole system, but if there are 6 more on the map, you've definitely got your work cut out for you.
I think it would be very cool if, under a certain set of conditions, an empire could build tactical structures in the gravity well of a star. This would greatly improve the defensibility of these systems, and allow you to devote your entire fleet limit to ships in another galaxy.
I've been thinking about /what/ conditions might be appropriate, and thought it'd be cool if this ability were possible whenever an empire controls a majority of the worlds that phase-line to the sun. A "majority" is just > 50% (strictly greater, to prevent ties). So if there were 9 (planets + asteroids) linked to a star, whoever owned at least 5 would be able to build at the star's gravity well. Once you have this situation, you'd be able to click on the star itself and have the tactical build button. LEVs could simply "appear" in the gravity well, or you could do it more realistically by sending them in phase from a randomly-selected phase-linked planet or asteroid.
Since stars have no infrastructure and can't be "captured" per se, invaders would have to defeat the defenses and embargo incoming LEVs - which makes the case of phase-linking them from surrounding worlds interesting. Once the invaders totally eliminated the defenses, they could just leave something weak like a Cobalt behind in the system to kill more LEVs, and then start attacking worlds.
Another possible element to add a dynamic aspect would be to base the tactical points available in the star's gravity well on the tactical points available on the surrounding worlds.
Clearly, if it were just a sum, it'd be way too much: if you had three Volcanic planets linking to it, good grief, I don't see how anyone would break through about 50 Gauss cannons, or just as many bomber squads.
So there would be some balancing algorithm (divide by two? three? average? root-mean-square?) that would calculate the star's tactical points, depending on the tactical strength of worlds phase-linking to the sun. Not only would this add tremendous value to Dead Asteroids linking to the sun, it would also make "weak majority" solar occupants have a barely-useful position there. In the case of 5 of 9 worlds as mentioned above, you would not have enough tactical points at the star to mount very much of a defense. But you still might be able to set up some hangar defense to take out enemy refinery ships that are pathing through the star (as an example).
And that's basically my idea. A totally unrelated idea that I just thought of from above: refineries and trade posts should be bindable to a set path. The AI may be smart enough to automatically take a safe path, and that's fine; but sometimes you have strategic reasons for avoiding a sector (e.g. the enemy is currently invading it and winning) and would like to path your valuable refinery ships around the problem. Rather than controlling individual refinery ships, the algorithm would just send refinery ships "owned" by each respective refinery/trade post down a path determined by the player.... unless the player hasn't set one, then the AI kicks in.
Comments welcome!
-allquixotic
I am not sure if this has been discussed before, and if it has, I apologize for not finding the earlier thread(s).
I find on maps that have numerous solar systems but few planets each are difficult to lock down. For example, you might conquer a whole system, but if there are 6 more on the map, you've definitely got your work cut out for you.
I think it would be very cool if, under a certain set of conditions, an empire could build tactical structures in the gravity well of a star. This would greatly improve the defensibility of these systems, and allow you to devote your entire fleet limit to ships in another galaxy.
I've been thinking about /what/ conditions might be appropriate, and thought it'd be cool if this ability were possible whenever an empire controls a majority of the worlds that phase-line to the sun. A "majority" is just > 50% (strictly greater, to prevent ties). So if there were 9 (planets + asteroids) linked to a star, whoever owned at least 5 would be able to build at the star's gravity well. Once you have this situation, you'd be able to click on the star itself and have the tactical build button. LEVs could simply "appear" in the gravity well, or you could do it more realistically by sending them in phase from a randomly-selected phase-linked planet or asteroid.
Since stars have no infrastructure and can't be "captured" per se, invaders would have to defeat the defenses and embargo incoming LEVs - which makes the case of phase-linking them from surrounding worlds interesting. Once the invaders totally eliminated the defenses, they could just leave something weak like a Cobalt behind in the system to kill more LEVs, and then start attacking worlds.
Another possible element to add a dynamic aspect would be to base the tactical points available in the star's gravity well on the tactical points available on the surrounding worlds.
Clearly, if it were just a sum, it'd be way too much: if you had three Volcanic planets linking to it, good grief, I don't see how anyone would break through about 50 Gauss cannons, or just as many bomber squads.
So there would be some balancing algorithm (divide by two? three? average? root-mean-square?) that would calculate the star's tactical points, depending on the tactical strength of worlds phase-linking to the sun. Not only would this add tremendous value to Dead Asteroids linking to the sun, it would also make "weak majority" solar occupants have a barely-useful position there. In the case of 5 of 9 worlds as mentioned above, you would not have enough tactical points at the star to mount very much of a defense. But you still might be able to set up some hangar defense to take out enemy refinery ships that are pathing through the star (as an example).
And that's basically my idea. A totally unrelated idea that I just thought of from above: refineries and trade posts should be bindable to a set path. The AI may be smart enough to automatically take a safe path, and that's fine; but sometimes you have strategic reasons for avoiding a sector (e.g. the enemy is currently invading it and winning) and would like to path your valuable refinery ships around the problem. Rather than controlling individual refinery ships, the algorithm would just send refinery ships "owned" by each respective refinery/trade post down a path determined by the player.... unless the player hasn't set one, then the AI kicks in.
Comments welcome!
-allquixotic
