remove regen from antimatter

from Sins Forums
A bold statement I know and probably haven't spent enough time thinking it through but hey here it is anyway. Just thought it might add an extra layer of tactical options/restrictions

Thought it might be nice if antimatter was a depleteable ship consumable no regen.

How would this work ? Planets would manufacture antimatter through an orbital structure. Antimatter tanks would be needed to hold (fleet sized) quantities. extra production facilities increase production rate. extra store tank increase max supply held at planet. Ships would then need to get within its supply sphere range to be re-fueled (similar to a repair station transfer).

Effects on fleets
Hard version
Every ship has antimatter fuel tanks (which can be made bigger through research) antimatter cost for abilities/travel is reduced from current. Ships can become stranded if they don't leave enough fuel for the trip home (have an optional Bingo Fuel, safeguard which can be turned on or off)
Introduce 3 Tanker ships one from each class. They would carry large antimatter tanks and be able to ranged transfer refuel a fleet and thus extend its jump range and or combat power longevity.
Passive ability tankers which are destroyed with more than 50% full tank have a large area effect explosion from the matter/antimatter reaction when containment is lost upon destruction viable suicide tactic and also a good way to cripple your own fleet if you keep your tanker to close to other ships.

Would create the need for tanker supply lines for deep large fleet assaults, although extended range small fleet hit and run would just require a tanker to come along. Capital tankers could possibly use trade ships to re-supply them as a secondary source of fuel.

Advantage to defenders as the will have greater and longer use of powers.

Crippling tactic, destroy a planets antimatter storage tanks and set you enemy back several minutes/hours of production making it harder to launch attacks on you, hit and run tactic more viable as a defensive measure.


Soft Version
Ship Jumps normally use antimatter but can also use a "general emergency jump capacitor" which uses no antimatter and will allow the ship 1 jump or all the way back to the nearest antimatter facility.
7,718 views 26 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
This has been sugsted before, I think even pre-beta.

It was also shut down
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
it sounds like a great idea at first, but when you begin to really consider it: it completely shuts down any attacker, and it seals the coffin on raiding.

no, dont like the idea in the least.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
It sounds more like an added layer of annoyance Fuel and such works fine in 4x games, but there's enough to worry about in Sins that adding a fuel system would just make it frustrating.

And as Schod pointed out, it gives the defender an even bigger advantage than they have now. Consider that it is entirely possible for an attacking player to attack a planet with the enemy's entire fleet plus maxed out static defenses. That's already extra fighters, bombers, repair stations, and gauss/missile launchers to deal with. Now, if you force attacking players to waste fleet points on fuel ships (that do big AoE explosions when they blow) you pretty much create a situation where the attacker effectively bashes his head against a brick wall.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
All you'd need to mod this in is an ability that gives another ship antimatter.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Well if such a system was implement then static defense would need to be tone'd waaay down to compensate just to begin with it really would require a complete re-balance

A soft half way of doing it would be to have 3 types of ships
Heavy Assult/Defense , ships are the most powerful in each of thier classes but lack antimatter regen ability

Hybrids, Have mdoerate assults/defense and also have antimatter regen fundamentally what ships currently are

Tankers, are basically antimatter reactors with engines required to fuel the heavy assault varieties
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
while schod and annatar have very valid points, I still kind of like the idea. you could fotr example make all this a very powerful offensive strategy too if you play around a bit with intra-empire supply lines. for example, in order for the supply ships and front line stations to work, you need a supply line ( no, you don't need a ship in every gravwell from your planets to your target). that way a counterstrike destroying the enemy supply line would cripply their ability to regenerate am.

next: I wouldn't set reg. rate to zero, but very low. to accomate a bit, reg. rate for those tank ships should be very high, max. amount should be higher and jumps should take less am.

also: if you argue these ships take away fp, yes its true, but for the defender it takes up either fp for ships or tac points for struktures. so either way, if he wants the same advantage he will also have to sacrifice some firepower. granted, a structure would probably be more efficient, but still.

alternatively, what you can do, is make the ships optional, not mandatory. sort of like a trade off between more attack ships and exploiting existing abilities more. but that would surely put all the supply line stuff ad absurdum.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
It sounds more like an added layer of annoyance Fuel and such works fine in 4x games, but there's enough to worry about in Sins that adding a fuel system would just make it frustrating.
End of quote


Sadly most strategic elements proposed were labeled as annoyance.

Actually you got it completely correct; fuel and such work for 4X games - and Sins was supposed to become one. RT4X, remember? Also I guess with all the capship babysitting going on there is not enough time for any real strategy. Manually setting up all the building queues is ok, as long as the money wasn't deducted instantly so the queues are VERY short to non-existing. Making planetary etc. micromanagement a constant.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Conquest Frontier Wars

had the same supply system more or less, as well as multiple planets and gravity wells.

The system works fine, its not 'annoyance' at all.

That being said one can argue that there is 'enough' in sins that this simply would overcomplicate the user. I think I'd be fine, but we've been told allot of features are waiting for release, assuming they are at all useful, cool, and complicated there is a valid point in thinking that this feature would just take too much time.

That being said, I really hope the extra features are good enough for me to think that, as supply in Conquest Frontier Wars was easily one fo the best parts.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Hmmm, I think the idea has some merit.

Still, here is another similar idea. How about reducing ship antimatter regen to nothing. Also get rid of the 100 antimatter cost for phase jumping (which makes no sense anyway). Last, keep the present regen rate for around stars.

Now, players will actually want connections to stars to fuel up their ships. Star connections will be sought after real estate, instead of simply being pirate infestation zones.

The good news is that this can be EASILY modded.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Conquest Frontier Wars,

Wow i actually forgot about that game. Bloody loved it and yes supply system was done perfectly in that game. Although I think the Tiamat Battleships were a bit overpowering with their ability to just lauch deadly fighters while hiding in a corner in the system.

Anyway, supply and demand will mean a restructuring and rebalacing of the entire game and it's units as simple as that. Alot of thought needs to be put behind how supply is handled vs combat effectiveness when you are 3 or 4 systems away from the nearest resupply station. And I actually dont see a problem with the need for no supplies since I would assume that an advanced race would atleast have the ability to be able to build reactors that has the ability for self sustained fission or whatever. BAH im tired now... and rambling... im going to take a nap.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, there certainly is nowhere near the time to employ the idea sadly. Thus why I originally suggested it back in Beta 2, and that might have been too late too lol

That being said it'd be cool for certain mods.

Oh and the Tiamat wasn't exactly unbalanced when you consider that the Mantids were so soft and squishy overall.

That would actual be a great mod as I doubt we will ever see CFW2 which is supposedly in production.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
You know... Your right that would make a brilliant mod since alot of the game concepts are the same so it would basicly be just the modeling and ship design.

I am still trying to decide where to devote my efforts in game design since I used to do things for Unreal, unreal tournament and Neverwinter Night. As well as Darkreigh a long time ago.

Right now I cannot decide between Neverwinter Nights 2, Unreal Tournament 3 or Sins... sigh
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Neverwinter Nights 2
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I still have not heard of any decent PW for NWN2, and only horror stories about how complex the modding suite is. You'd probably have better results (and support) for doing a Sins mod
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Thats because of the way NWN2 makes you download all character meshes when connecting to a server. Kinda stupid but thats their choice, I dont care much for PW's. I played mostly on Legit PVP servers 12ac. hmmm pretty sad actually I had almost 6000 kills to my name.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah go with Sins, itll just be easier to mod, I'd wager.

Plus think of the possibilites... B5, Star Wars, obviously but there are allot of possible and great mods.

Not to mention supply could work well with B5 too. Though I like the idea of adding the Mantis from CFW to straight up Sins, as they would be very pretty with that many fighters flying about!
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
yeah, thoughts of CFW came to my mind also, I think the game was brought up for its couple of good ideas a while back.

well, nothing wrong with keeping ideas coming, the way the game is shaping, I wouldnt be surprised to see further pursuit.

though the point still stands that a supply system diverts fleet points away from pure attack ships, giving the defender an advantage which would unnecessarily make raids harder to pull off.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

yeah, thoughts of CFW came to my mind also, I think the game was brought up for its couple of good ideas a while back.

well, nothing wrong with keeping ideas coming, the way the game is shaping, I wouldnt be surprised to see further pursuit.

though the point still stands that a supply system diverts fleet points away from pure attack ships, giving the defender an advantage which would unnecessarily make raids harder to pull off.
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With the proper modifications anything is possible
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
For example you could set supply ships to be 0 fleet supply. Thats entirely possible. Just make them expensive, or have a seperate limit of say 30 of them, just like how Capships have a seperate limit.

Plenty of ways around that issue.

Oh and the 'supply' ship could also grant a small bonus to fire rate for ships in its general area, meaning that if you risk the supply ships in the battle the offensive player gets a risky advantage over the Defender who has little reason to have supply ships on defense.

Also in CFW you had to build resupply depots to refuel, so the attacker can destroy this and both sides will be on even supply terms, except the attacker is probablly better prepared.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I guess the main problem with the idea that I see (setting aside the already admitted fact that it would require a lot of rebalancing, and would most likely need to be a mod-in at this point), is that antimatter would double as fuel and as a medium for special abilities. It's sort of like that right now, but having no antimatter doesn't prevent you from travel as it would if it actually became like fuel.

If the thought behind this idea is just that it'd be cool to have a fuel/supply system in place, then perhaps it'd be better (if possible) to separate fuel from antimatter. As it is proposed, destroying the supply ships would make a little too big a dent, I think. Considering that nowhere in the grav well is safe when we have access to fighters/bombers, the fuel ships would probably be the first targets for the defending player. Then, the attacker is either forced to retreat right away, or not use any abilities to save enough antimatter for fuel/travelling purposes if he has to retreat.

If the thought behind the idea is to curb the usage of special abilities somewhat, then perhaps you could just make it so that capitals double as supply ships for their escort, recharging their antimatter stores when they are in proximity. To go along with it, the capitals themselves could borrow from EVE and treat antimatter like a capacitor with variying recharge rates based on how full they are. Too low and it recharges slowly, too high and it recharges slowly. That way the player could empty it all on specials and then spend a long time waiting to recharge, or be more moderate and keep the antimatter stores in the optimal recharge rate area.

Because this thread didn't have enough thoughts already
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
yea but think of the fire works when blow up that fuel tank.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
good point Annatar, I don't know how to make it possible to have 'two' lines of antimatter if you will, one being supply, the other being for specials.

Then again our favorite choice example of CFW simply had specials use supply, which did prevent too much spamming, or at least required more supply ships.

The capacitor idea is neat, I think perhaps a single 'supply' capital ship would be good for this. Notably the supply ships in CFW eventually 'ran dry' too and had to return to a depot to refuel, so I could see diminishing the fire power of the Carriers a tad, and making them be great store of antimatter for the fleet.

We could also make special abilities just cheaper in AM costs to accomadate. Or perhaps give them longer cool-down times but have them cost No AM, or a little.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
You could always make them trade ships of a sort. Set up a depot somewhere that pops out supply ships and have it either auto-target fleets in enemy or neutral territory or waypoint to the fleet to supply it.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
Not sure how possible that is, since it has an AI component to it.. but quite an interesting idea if it is possible to mod.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Hmmmm, we could set trade ships to rendevous with cap ships (or a specific supply ship) instead of other trade centers AND we would give th trade ships a regen antimatter area effect ability.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

You could always make them trade ships of a sort. Set up a depot somewhere that pops out supply ships and have it either auto-target fleets in enemy or neutral territory or waypoint to the fleet to supply it.
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I had a vaguely similar idea on the proper supply thread a few weeks ago. but that was more of an empire internal supply line thing. basically my thought was to cut off planets resource generation and build rates but a) killing supply ships (progressive effect) or b) killing supply stations at planets (severy immediate effect). that would make for some nice raiding.