play some multiplayer?

hm...

*shouts*
ECHO!!!
echo...
echo...
...

Anyone else feel like the Devs made this little thread to distract us?

We ARE sheep... baa baa baa...

ATM, yeah, purty much.

wow, I almost forgot the idea I am going to post, I got it when chatting in preparation for the big game.

just before that I would like to stress again that I want to see in the ability descriptions exact measures on the effects. like how much damage the gauss canon does at every lvl, how much income is sources by embargo, how strong sova missile batteries are, how long the akkan ion bolt kills electric systems. I'm pretty sure, its not in there in the level of detail I would like to have. maybe you devs are aware and its just not a high priority, but I wanted to bring it to your attention in any case.

now for the idea: I think most will agree that capships at higher levels are pretty damn powerful. now, I thought of an elegant way to balance this a bit with normal ships and the game flow. just exclude capships from research upgrades. capships get more hp, firepower, abilities and so on as they level up anyways, so why make them even stronger with research? you can compensate it a bit with either making resarch slightly cheaper or if you find this nerving too much, making level increases a bit more pronouced (even though I think they already are too much). in any case, it would make normal ships be a bit better against them in later stages of the game, while barely limiting the role in the early to mid game and since you can train them to a certain degree anyways, you can still get a strong ship in late game.

How does it need "balancing"?

would someone plz answer my question in my post: "quick question (universe size)"

Learn patience. Especially since your questions ARE answered.

Just a hint, but forums (unlike chatrooms) are not based around instant gratification. In fact, their based off of patience. You post something, you wait for a reply. Going around, spamming threads with "please answer my question!" doesn't work very nicely. In some placed, mods will ban you for it. In others, they'll only give you a warning. In still others, you'll get laughed off the forums as the forum "trolls" come and through poo at you. Luckily for you, this is a fairly tolerant forum. But please, do learn the rules of netiquette.

I would love to see players in multiplayer games have the ability to donate/trade planets (or even tech) with other players. This really is something that should be there.

Diplomacy is already on the list for an "overhaul"... what the includes, they really don't want to say for some reason

I think high lvl capships (which at that point mostly also have upgrades) tear frigates apar too well for my view. only thing to stop it is another capship or an very large amount of smaller ships.

I kinda liked the idea that tech upgrades don't apply to cap ships. This makes sense as they rely on leveling for their upgrades.

In another note, yesterday's 'big game' had two AIs attacking our side through several phase points (there were a lot of phase links to the AI planets). They were of course far more capable than humans at launching/managing multiple attacks simultaneously. The same AI players were also extremely skilled at recolonizing planets we destroyed before our own colony ships could arrive (their attacks in our backlines would often kill off our own colony ships before we could save them).

I suspect that this was a very light example of 'whach-a-mole'. It REALLY was more frustrating than fun. It also seems that the more phase lane connections, the more capable the AI is at fighting humans.

exactly my point.



hm, interesting, I was wondering why you had so much trouble over there with ai's. ok, before there was ai + annatar vs dutch more or less. didn't watch those battles that closely though I have to admit. too far away.

Except... new ships don't get levels automaticly. Thus degrading capship's power relative to frigates, as well as making research less useful. Personally, I like the current system.

Edit:

Just to point out, but this makes weapons upgrades much less useful. Sure, you could make them easier to get, but they'd still be a lot less useful early unless you overpowered them for later on.

they don't, but in the mid game where this is an issue they will level fairly fast du to the large battles taking place, if you manage to keep them alive. and yes, making them a bit less powerful towards the was the intention.

weapons: you mean because armor affects everything and weapons just a few kinds of ships? agreed, upgrading lasers almost exclusively for cobalts is tough. maybe there is a way to compensate for this, I wouldnt mind if it leads to a more specialised research approach, say individual upgrades are more expensive but also more noticeable.

Towards the end you mean?

Problem is I like how powerful they are at the end.



No, I mean because early game weapons upgrades have the biggest effects from capitol ships, not their support craft. You're effectively removing upgrades as an early game approach with this idea -- though you also have a good point, that most weapon upgrades would abruptly become far too limited if you remove capships from the list of effected units.

At the start, Dutch took a beating from Annatar and the AI, while Jam3 and I were helping Shadow take out Multi's homeworld.

When Annatar was dropped from the game, we simply assumed that Dutch would clean house on his own. We didn't take into account that Dutch was already badly damaged and both AIs never let him recover.

Once I started to help Dutch out, we were beating both AIs. It was just irritating because they would constantly attack all our phase connections simultaneously. My long train of reinforcements (siege frigs, carriers and colony ships) had a bad habit of trying to cross gravity wells that were suddenly packed with AI ships. By the time I would notice, my ships would already be toast.

It was like whack a mole...but worse. Each time we smacked one enemy fleet down, another 2 would attack elsewhere. Of course we would have won, but the time it would have taken would have seen Shadow defeated and Multi/Gauntlet attacking us elsewhere.

yes, towards the end.

well, thats a different opinion, no more no less I guess about how strong they should be. I think the way they are at lvl 5 or so is ok, later its really brutal. its of cours a task never to let your enemy have one if you dont but ... well, things dont always go as planned.

the effect is so different? I need to pay more attention next time. my suggestion would in any case entrail some rebalancing and revamping of research that much is for sure.

something entirely different:

I read multis post and the thread about the 100 planet game and so on. now, apart from all other things that need to be done like increased automation, you could include two things, if they aren't in already:

1. the shift option for ship building so you can construct larger fleets more quickly. i.e. shift click builds you 5 or ten of that kind.

2. star based production instead of planet based production: basically, I'd say that often you have star sytem that is not under attack and totally colonised by either you alone or with your allies. if you want to produce stuff there, why bother going into planetary menus? just click on the star and have those options light up as if you selected the planet and the orders will be spread out among all the factories you have in that system.

sorry if its already in, I'm too lazy to check right now.

MMMM and star based rally point. Excellent suggestion... have to check tonight if thats in there

the thing with capital ships is that late game they can VERY easily be spiked, thats why they are so rediculously overpowered later on.

currently they are as balanced as possible, and no in late game they do not level up excessively, rather they level quite slowly.

I do hope they allow multiplayer 'observers' to message each other.

If they allow people to just join as observers Otherwise, most people probably wouldn't stick around much after being wiped out to wait for the next guy before being able to talk.

But I seem to remember reading that they weren't going to allow 'join as observer' stuff, though I could well be wrong

Earlier today, we tried to organize a big game and found we had too many players wanting to join. We had 13 or 14 at one point. We ended up having to divide ourselves into 2 separate games.

So this is a shout out to Ironclad that we need the game to be able to support more players than just 10.

Sorry, this won't happen. It's not so much that the engine can't handle it but it would require a massive redesign of the GUI for something that would be used rarely.