phase lane suggestion

I think i've gone half blind just by looking at that blob of white texte with black background.

Some paragraphs would do wonders for people actually reading that.

I read that it costs anti-matter to make phase lane jumps. Also reading what you just said is painful since you put everything in one paragraph. Perhaps try splitting it in to more then one next time?

sorry bout that, is there any way to edit posts? also the anti-matter thing only effects the ships tactical situation not the overall map, im looking at the bigger picture here.

lol, i just stared at it for a moment now im all dizzy:) but thats the plan blind the competition  

Traveling through phase lanes should cost something, cash defiantly and maybe crystals.

I see it working like this, jumps to and from your homeworld will be free. The farther from your homeworld you get the more expensive it is to travel(cost is based on ship type and ship weight)also your support capital ships should be able to negate the travel expense of a number of ships equivalent to a support ability.

It should cost double the travel expense to travel to enemy or unaligned factions planets. I envision there to be a diplomatic option to allow ships to travel in your space, for a percentage of the travel fee, or for free(no tax but at base cost indicated by the distance from your homeworld) if you are allies.

This is where it gets interesting, with all these travel expenses you should be able to focus on where you send your ships. To that end i suggest you implement "phaseways" similar to what the Zuul from Sword of Stars Born of Blood use to maintain nodelines. On the civvy tech tree there could be a phaseway tech that increases to the number of phaseways for your faction.

What do phaseways do? Well for one they connect any three astral bodies together to decrease (up to 75%) the cost of travel. As you research phase tech your ships travel faster and cheaper, with every other tech level adding a phaseway. These can be used to link your rim world to production centers or to make a defensive area where your ships can travel in and out quickly and cheaply. Im not sure yet but after you research it you can link your phaseways to enemy worlds.

Another aspect of phaseways is their ability to slowdown and increase the travel cost for unaligned and especially enemy ships. These penalties can be increased by research. I know these changes will not make it into the retail version but maybe in a patch/mod. The whole point is to limit expansion and early scouting, and forces you to choose where to focus the bulk of you resources.

It also seems more logical this way. as far as phaseway management goes you could put a small icon(maybe two tiny planets connected by a phase lane) with a number indicating your number of phaseways. as you scroll over the icon a tool tip drop down list will display the planets that each of your phaseways pass through. Clicking the button will make all phaseway connected planets and phase lanes glow a color(purple i think works well,like the jump cursor lines from homeworld).

You would start with one phaseway and to set it up you click the icon and select 1 from the tool tip menu and simply select a starting location which must be a planetoid, and then select two additional locals, which may be anything. to add variation amongst the factions you could have TEC travel cheaper through phaseways but Vasari travel faster. the cost and speed of travel will have to be very carefully balanced but i think that with the above mechanic the game will be a lot better and more manageable. I'm really looking forward to peoples thoughts and suggestions regarding my idea, thanks!

I read that it costs anti-matter to make phase lane jumps. Also reading what you just said is painful since you put everything in one paragraph. Perhaps try splitting it in to more then one next time?

I reformatted ttaargus Original post post to make it more eye friendly and corrected a few grammar and spelling mistake. ttaargus I hope you don't mind me reformatting it?

ttaargus, anti-matter is effectively a measure of time, which is one of the resources in any RTS.

Also, the last thing I'd want Ironclad to do is look to anything in Sword of the Stars for inspiration.

-Tom

thanks for the edit. but are you serious? this plays ALOT like sword of the stars, nodelines/phaselanes, the focus on logistics and strategy rather then micromanagement, hell even the ship icons look similar.

This would overcomplicate the game and stall early expansion.
The game is on the verge of being slow as is, we don't need extra costs.

Still its a very interesting idea

wow, the quote is MUCH easier to read. They should change the background accordingly.

it wouldn't slow it down it would actually speed it up in someways. it allows you to focus on your relevent fronts and allow you to slow down the enemy. i also outlined a simple ui mechanic that makes managing phaseways very easy. and i also said that balancing cost would be very important for this to work.

you guys should actualy play the game before making suggestions which dont fit to Sins at all.

yeah thanks again to kenquinn

Again, it is wrong, you need to jump farther from your homeworld if you ever want to have a chance at surviving. And usually you don't have spare cash to pay for some fee.

Many of the ideas you bring up seem to be implemented in some form, but not via cost-per-jump.

The Vasari can build structures which let them gate between any two nodes (skipping intermediary paths). I think they also have tech which increases their transit speed and a ship which slows incoming enemies in transit. TEC have a building which keeps enemy ships from jumping deeper into your territory and I think a tech which reduced the prejump wait time. And I am sure the Advent will have some similar bonuses/abilities.

So keep in mind that researching any of these will cost a player credits and/or resources, so there already are costs associated with buffing/debuffing movement capabilities (in addition to the tactical loss of antimatter during the jump). Only it isn't done in an unforgiving cost-per-jump manner.

Edit - Also, last I heard, you had to research the abilities to perform interstellar jumps or use wormholes, so there are a few more movement costs to add to the list.

You can only edit a post if no one has made a post after it.

A cost per jump system also favor the Turtling player FAR too much. It takes a good 50 ships to destroy a well defended planet in a timely manner, even without fleet backup. Now pay 100 credits per jump like you seem to suggest, thats 5k credits to assault a planet, plus the cost of replacing casualties.

Penalizing attacking players is a great way to slow down a game. This just doesn't really fit the game. The Anti-matter penalty for jumping already puts defense to a tactical advantage. Its good like it is.

firstly i never put a price on the jump cost, so you can throw that 5k number out. but you do raise a valid point about turtling. however the whole concept centered on the ability to focus on places you need to be.

also keep in mind that the dev team can adjust the resource acquisition rate to compensate for movement costs.

I'm getting Nostalgia anytime people mention SOTS on this forum. I think I'm gonna reinstall it.

comparing SotS to sins is a drastic misstep, the two are fundamentally different (primarily in that one is an RTS...)

well in any case, the idea would not work. even on relatively low costs per jump the system would become extremely prohibitive for larger maps. additionally it would drastically lengthen the time it takes to build up, favor the turtle, amongst a dozen other issues I see with the game

ttaargs if I'm not mistaken you're relatively new to the forums, and most likely the game. while the concept seems interesting enough to have as part of a design concept from the start, it is far too late (5 days until release? I mean really!) to suggest such a drastic reworking of the system.

Except for the first post of the thread, which you can edit forever.

To be fair though I don't want to exclude people from suggesting cool ideas (even if they are impossible to accomplish for release). Who knows what could come of them future versions of Sins.

Though ideally we hope that people can play the game and then decide.

I think making it cost money to travel woudl be incredibly un-fun. It would just introduce another thing to keep track of and slow things down. 

I think once you play the game you'll like how it works.

Thank you Frogman!!!! All these, "it should be like this, even though I haven't played the game!!", statements are seriously starting to grate on what little sanity I have left. Who wants to pay for units to travel? "Whoops, you can't send reinforcements to intercept that invading fleet cause you don't have enough resources!!" Am I running an empire, or the local starport?

""Whoops, you can't send reinforcements to intercept that invading fleet cause you don't have enough resources!!" Am I running an empire, or the local starport?"

Have you ever seen Blazing Saddles? Where the town keeps the bandits out by erecting a toll booth outside (and none of the baddies have change). It's funny in the movie, but doesn't sound like fun to play.

And hey, cut us people who haven't played but love to theorize some slack