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Planetary Defense Rethink

Aecian

Join Date 03/2005

Planetary Defense Rethink

I believe that the planetary defenses need to be rethought. I like the idea of the hangers with the mobile squadrons that can cover the entire gravity well, but the turrets are way too underpowered for what they do. Their range is severely limited, which means that a group of seige ships can fly into an area, dodge the turrets, use a couple of fighter squadrons to take out the bombers headed towards them, and then assault the planet with absolutely no trouble.

To this point, I suggest two things. Either, possibly, make the turrets missile based and change the damage output based on the range between the turret and the target... or take the turrets, shields, hangers, phase jump limiters and pretty much all the other defenses and place them on-planet.

Imagine. If something is attacking the planet and the turrets can't hit them because they're out of range, do you think that the people on the planet are just going to look up and watch themselves getting bombarded? We'd shoot every missile we had on the planet up at them in order to defend ourselves. Instead of placing defenses out in space, lower the damage output a bit and then place them on the planet itself and give them the ability to fire outwards from the planet to the yellow line dictating where the orbits stop. Ships would still be able to 'dodge' the defenses by flying on the outside of the well, but once inside of their range, they'd start to get bombarded. This would make the user decide on whether they wanted a soft target [read: Capital Ship Factory, Refinery, etc.] or whether they wanted to try to survive the attacks from the homeworld and try to take out the planet itself.

Right now, dodging defenses with the cunning use of a shift key is too simple. The only thing you ever have to worry about it is the computer's other fleets. If the planet were able to protect itself no matter what direction I attacked from, it would bring a bit more interest to combat and leave the computer with a little bit of protection in case their fleets are half way across the galaxy.

This would also help clear up issues with clutter in the gravity wells that prevent ships from flying properly from point to point.

Just my two cents!

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lol... you dont know if a unit whose only function is to attack air is good against massed air units?

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Well, hippos and gargs are also very focussed anti-air units.

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nah, you can always toss a archer onto a hippo...
as for gargs, just send em in to their base or if theyre noob, stone form and laugh as they waste their time

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I like the defense cannons in all respects. At first I wished they had more range so I could be lazy elsewhere but it is a case in point to haveing fighters and possibly some larger mobiles.

I can already see the point in leaving the small gaps that ships can pass through so that a player must attend to a system manualy in order to prevent enemy advancement, and that, the guns, if placed properly coupled with a jump inhibitor and repair docks, can easily turn the tide of any assault if the defending player has the experince, and tactical pinoche to defend himself.

No offence to the players that think there should be uber guns so they can kickback afk and eat a sandwich knowing that their triple crystal mine 16 logistic slot planet is safe as a bade in arms, but it does not make good gameplay sense to me, aspcialy with multiplayer in mind.

In my opinion, the gap is a nice bit of strategy that can be used by a player that knows how to work his resources to his advantage.

Could stand to have a flack turret though, that sucks down 1 logistic like guns, but should only be useful as atni-strike craft defense with the proper research ofcourse.

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I would like to see the defense get more dense/effective the closer you get to the planet. (The planet is the main focus of defense) . Attacking ships MAY be able to sit on the edges of the system and use stand off weapons to pick away at outer defenses or possibly fire stand off siege weapons (minor damage to planet and attacking fleet) as fleet moves in both possible planet damage and Fleet damage increases. This allows a real siege that could isolate a planet (in well) and annoy it . . if and only if a fleet is large enough can it get in close and be a real threat to the planet. (Game wise this could be done in various ways, planetary weapons, rings of platforms, inner defense station etc . But most importantly, long range weapon fire = minimum damage, close in = maximum damage. ) . Another tactical boon here is that the planet can be raided, resource ships destroyed, but the planet may not be in “real” danger (only a economic attack) and you might need your own fleet to break the siege.
(FINALLY a good role for the pirates! They do not take over systems but make economic blocks what you need ships to dislodge)

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They can, but bat riders explode, so they're not really taking damage, and siege tanks just don't die no matter what you do. Also, gargs are the best AA damage in game, except that they have melee, but so do hippos.

I believe this thread is completely hijacked, and it's all my fault.

GET BACK ON TOPIC!!! lol

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How about a new type of cannon that can hit anything in the gravity well, but in order to target you need to have a special squadron built that has laser targeting. Those type of fighters will fly up to the target and target them with a homing laser, then the cannon fires!

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Nice,

A alternate variation on that good idea.
A massive laser orbiting the planet . . and it can hit anything in the system . . Tech advances may increase damage and possibly refire speed. (also a good way to balance it)
as a rule the closer you get the more damage it does . .
But a some level of tech . . later in the tree when real siegeing is happening a new tech advance (possibly linked with another tech) that allows a frigate, or special fighter squadron to generate a gravitational lenses to refocus the laser at extreme distances. This would allow “Close up” massive damage anywhere the lens ships are . . loose the ships loose that capability . .
(possably better for one of the other races though .. )

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Hippos = Crazy Amazing Piercing attack, which is essentially anti-air embodied.
Gargs= Probably the same reason, I wouldn't know, I never played undead, I'm more of a NE guy.

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When it comes to planets, I expect to be able to do anything from make it a huge resource collection/and food growing planet, to a mega economic center, to an enormous trade market for dozend of other planets resources to move through, to making the planet one giant shipyard, or make some desolate and inhospitable planet a storage area for my resources that are not in use, to making the planet a giant fortress with enough defences to wipe out even a major attack fleet. Depanding on what the planet is like (inhospitable, tons of minable resources, few resources and poor soil, very fertils soiled planet, exc.) I will make a plan as to what the planet will become. I expect planets to be diverse, star systems to be diverse, space to be diverse, and what I can do with a planet to be diverse.

I hope that in Sins, space is not empty. There are more than just earth-like planets. Planets range from hot barren wastelands, to super sized gas planets (with and without rings!!! I havent seen a single gas planet or planet with rings, or moons in game at all), to desolate frozen bodies, all with the potential of moons (ehem).Then theres comets, asteroids, space dusts, ice clouds, supernovas, black holes, nebulae, binary (or more) star systems, and space wreckage. Keep in mind that just because you blow up a ship, doesn't mean that its gone, and has the potential to become hazards. Space wreckage still has gravity, as does any nearby planets. When a large battle has taken place near a planet, the wreckage will do one of three things. It will orbit the planet, it will drift from the planet, or it will bombard the planet. If it drifts, it will eventually become part of asteroids. If it orbits, it will form a ring around the planet, and possibly over time, a new moon for the planet. If it falls to the planet, it will damage and destroy structures (and make a really neat light show). Of course you could gather and re-use the wreckage, for planets are not the only possible place for exploiting. Almost everything I mentioned above could be mined in some way. Wow I just said alot. At 3:21 AM.

Ah! But my ideas are too ambitious. Not everything I hope for will be in the game

(if any, although I do hope some of the above is put in)

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prolly been said but Im not reading all that. I want a "defensive"*ahem* deathstar.

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

Planets range from hot barren wastelands, to super sized gas planets (with and without rings!!! I havent seen a single gas planet or planet with rings, or moons in game at all), to desolate frozen bodies, all with the potential of moons (ehem).Then theres comets, asteroids, space dusts, ice clouds, supernovas, black holes, nebulae, binary (or more) star systems, and space wreckage.

Terran planets, desert planets, gas giants are "in" according to devs, I've heard chatter about moons but don't remember the details, desolate frozen bodies = ice planets, asteroids are in-game, space wreckage is in, and I believe binary/trinary star systems are something they want in, but aren't sure about the details yet. Just remember, they have another patch to go on beta 2, and then two more betas past that!

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Well, at least most of the whole "space is not empty" stuff is covered. So theres a total of 4 Beta's? Interesting. I do think that moons really should be in, but they might interfere with "orbiting" facilities (from what I can tell, they are stationary). Moons may also add more interesting combat (uh, oh, the moon is coming really close the the battle, probably need to bug out). And of course, theres the wonderful programming involved for moons (especially if theres more than one).

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They need a Magretha (from Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy) type of planet where you can construct your own planets for like 1,000,000,000 credits or something.

Imagine, 3 suns and a single planet! It'd be cool.

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one thing that i like is range, i have had ships siting on top of the Gauss Cannons and they still get hit with the same damage. i think that that needs to be changed

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one thing that i like is range, i have had ships siting on top of the Gauss Cannons and they still get hit with the same damage. i think that that needs to be changed

so you are saying you want the guns to do more damage the closer a ship is to them?

interesting...

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

For some weapons (lasers) that makes sense (dispersion if the weapon isn't focused very tightly)... but the distance its traveled isn't going to change a projectile's speed (unless its headed out of a gravity well).

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ok just take a look at this

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your telling me that when you have a ships like this it shouldn't cause a little more damage?

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what?

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

your telling me that when you have a ships like this it shouldn't cause a little more damage?

Kinda hard to see anything, but yes.

Distance doesn't automatically weaken a weapon. If a laser / energy beam isn't *perfectly* focused, then yes it'll suffer some degradation from dispersing as it travels (but unless it spreads out wide enough for parts of it to "miss" the enemy vessel, all the energy will still arrive there, just as potent). But if a projectile weapon isn't fired out of a grav well, then its velocity isn't going to change in space. In fact, if your ship is closer to the planet than the cannon, the farther away the cannon is the more damage the shot should do.

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chances are they would add autocorrecting thrusters onto the sides of the projectile, allowing it to speed up during travel, so in theory the object would do more damage the farther away. besides, as ron said, the slowing of an object in a near perfect vacuum is negligible, and at the speeds the devs say these things are moving, gravity would make little to no difference at all.

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If a ship is on the barrel of a gauss cannon then, because the energy is dispersed onto a smaller area, the effect is greater. The more concetrated the energy is onto a smaller part the more likely its chances should be for punching through the shields or putting a hole in the hull.

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the difference really would be negligible because they arent using gunpowder, which accelerates through compression... i think they are using magnets... ive posted too much... i should sleep...

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lol maybe you should.

but its not a force comperison, its an energy comperison, a laser travels at a speed, so if it hits a spot . compered to a spot OOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOO

then the energy transfer for . would be more

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either im really tired or you need to make that make a whole bunch more sense...

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