I love the original posters idea, and completely agree with most of what is being said in this thread. In every game that I have built PJI (almost every one) they have proved relatively useless. Even if my fleet is in the same system as an enemy fleet (a system that has my PJI) the enemy can manage to get away without an real casualties. Lets not even talk about when my fleet is a starsystem away

Even better, the I idea im suggesting would deepen the aspect of PJI with 2 stages, adding another strategic depth/fun factor into the game without comming up with an oversimplyfied solution (which the current OP idea is) nor making to much effort ^^ .

It would be making SOASE more SOASE.

Dear LutjeKabal, I have read your idea and I think it is cool. What I like about this thread is at least all of us are actively contributing ideas in a healthy manner. From the post it seems that there is a consensus that the current PJIs are not really up to scratch (mostly say it is underpowered).

Some people want to keep it as simple as possible. Some want level 2 and 3 upgrades. etc.etc.. I hope a Developer can comment on how easy (or not) it is to implement some of our ideas here, is the engine setup to make these changes quickly or will it require some work.

Keep the ideas rolling guys! In another similar thread someone mention interdictor ships like in Star Wars extended universe - maybe this can be a mod!

Regards

Ok, thanks for your reply.
But what is and interdictor ship? Sounds sinister

In the Star Wars extended universe an interdictor ship creates an artificial gravity well that prevents ships escaping to hyperspace and can also pull them out of hyperspace. They were shaped like Star Destroyers (ie wedged shaped) but were smaller and had domes on the the surface as the source of the gravity well. They are sinister as you could move these ships around to any system of your choosing.

I'd like interdictor ships, too. They're mobile PJI.

As for the stationary types, if the devs made the time of phase lane interdiction easily moddable (don't know if this is the case already), maybe all could be made happy. Those that want only 30 secs, choose that, those like me that want basically permanent phase lane interdiction can type in sth like 3000 secs. The only real important thing here would be to differentiate between phase lanes to friendly systems with an own PJI and all other systems, to which interdiction should work only very shortly (to avoid death traps). And of course, make the AI understand that.

The thing is what i think i'm seeing here, is a view point solely in regards to AI.
Making PJI's more buffed so AI can't retreat as easily rather than preventing them from pushing further into your system.

As to locking phase lanes, in any which way, even if you have 1 on either friendly planet and what not, i say: NEVER!!

Try seeing this from your own point of view. You're going to attack an enemy, you don't want to spend a lot of time on a choke point, but want to push in further, or make a sneak attack. But hey, the AI has buffed up PJI's too. And phase lanes locked.
So here your uber fleet get's minced, and there goes your investment.
Sure, it's tactics, and you are now supposed to push in gradually, but that's not very strategic at all. Now flanking is ruled out completely, you can only charge head on.

To make a long story short, try seeing all suggestions as to how it would affect you too, and think twice if you would want to be caught in that situation yourself!!!

As to buffing up, i'm all for it.
- 1 upgrade --> 250% to 400% seems nice.
- Bigger radius, so you only need 1 at your favorite choke point.
- maybe some lower antimatter cost/recharge time

If you still couldn't catch the fleet by then, you were simply to far away.

GreetZ.

okay heres the post.



I actually like the idea of research to make them more effective, so maybe combining that idea with this in some way, like:

25 seconds delay (base) -> 32 seconds (research level 1) -> 39 seconds (r l 2) for enemies jumping to a system not owned by you/your allie.
45 seconds delay (base) -> 65 seconds (research level 1) -> 85 seconds (r l 2) for enemies jumping deeper into your territory.

numbers can be adjusted.

Increasing the standard jump delay time for the PJI would be more straightforward and simple.

Variations:

1) The PJI is upgraded for additional time delay.

2) The delay time is increased automatically in outlying planets and to standard in inner planets (where all phase lanes are connected to owned planets - no micromanagement).

3) The delay time is increased automatically the further you are closer to the capital planet (working more or less like culture) - no micromanagement.

4) There could be a limited number of ESP (Empire Strategic Points, see below), where a player could select important PJI's and increase their time delay substantially.

Range:

PJI's should be based not by a radius but by the ability to interdict the entirety of a jump lane area. Why all the fuss on having to waste time and think about the proper place to have them? There's a lane I want to interdict and that's it.

In that order, placing a PJI could be done only in open slots aligned with the lanes a planet has. If that's not possible, then increase the coverage.



Instead of nerfing superweapons or get rid of them altogether, why not have counter-measures?

SDS - Superweapon Defense Structure

The SDS would be fallible: 50% chance to intercept an incoming attack altogether, 70% chance to minimize damage.

Coverage of the SDS could be contiguous; not only the planet where it's built is protected but also the immediate neighbouring (owned) planets connected to it.

That way an SDG (Superweapon Defense Grid) could be established throughout a player's Empire. But fallible, thus creating a better balance between offense/defense related to superweapons.

Variation:

The SDS would be dependent on Empire Strategic Points and not on Tactical or Logistic slots available on the planet. Since this would benefit the Empire as a whole, not just a single planet (thus freeing up planetary slots for needed local stuff).

Empire Strategic Points

For placement or improvement of structures that benefit the Empire, not just a local planet. No planetary logistic or tactical slots would be used.

Could be included and developed in the Civilian (Policy) tech tree.

My 2 cents...

It is clear that the Beta showed several important drawbacks of making phase inhibitors too power. I would like to summarize:

1. Current phase inhibitors are not working because they do not sufficiently stop enemy fleets from simply going elsewhere. This eliminates one of the supposed main strategic points of this game.

2. The phase inhibitor that completely stopped phasing out was too powerful because it allowed death traps that made the game unfun.

3. Phase inhibitors that would only allow retreats pose the same problems as the case where they stopped all phasing outs. This allowed super turtling strategies until the super weapon.

Therefore to solve these problems, I propose the following alternatives:

1. Make phase inhibitors take up all tactical slots in the system where it's built AND

2. Limit the number of phase inhibitors that can be built based on map size AND

3. Inhibitors should allow retreat.

4. Possibly eliminate the superweapon as it currently adds little value to the game

This way, it will no longer be able to create death traps experienced in the beta.

You now have the ability to create a true strategic choke point but you have to defend it fairly with a fleet. Therefore, the enemy has a fair chance against you to push through. You will have a fair fight, fleet to fleet.

Most of my thoughts have already been covered (glad someone brought up the superweapon countermeasure idea) so I'll just echo one key sentiment here. If heavily defended superweapons are the biggest issue with making phase-lanes more defensible, then I'd agree with what was said above: take a good hard look at the superweapons instead of leaving the inhibitors as useless as they are. And end-game joytoy should not be responsible for hindering play in every other part of the game.

Now I'm all for well-placed surgical strikes with, perhaps, some kind of ship that can beat the lockdown but as a matter of preference, I would find the game much more entertaining if there were some way to prevent or hinder a full battlefleet from simply trapsing through my most heavily defended sectors uncontested (or just zipping back and forth without penalty until I get bored with following them around). This would add a 'lot' more to the game than the balance and viability of and end-game planetbuster.

A question to all these people who want a weak PJI: WHY HAVE PHASE LANES BETWEEN PLANETS AT ALL? I thought they were there for a reason, which was to create a strategic geographical dynamic to the game. The developers must have originally thought this as well, because they developed the PJI which apparently functioned fine (imho) in beta. Furthermore, why have the concept of a gravity well?

Look, if a stronger PJI makes no sense, then neither do phase lanes between planets, and neither do gravity wells, so take them out. I'm not being funny or sarcastic, I'm being dead serious - it would actually solve a lot of issues. Keep phase lanes between stars - those are needed because distances between stars are huge, but remove phase lanes between planets, and remove gravity wells because they aren't needed (they create a false impression of some sort of strategic, defendable area).

I think there are two different camps of people, the people who prefer some kind of "open" game play dynamic where they can strike deep into enemy territory at will, do harassment attacks, flank attacks, surprise attacks, and people who don't want that kind of dynamic. Basically it's people who want a wide open "anything goes" "free" sort of game play dynamic, and people who want a more "closed" dynamic. I'm guessing that people who prefer the first dynamic also prefer fast, tactical types of games, they probably tend to be players who rush, and they probably don't have much use for defense, as they believe that a good defense is a good offense. They probably believe that in most cases it is better to counterattack than to defend (i.e. defend by attacking).

This is all fine and dandy, however it seems these two camps of people are at odds. I'm wondering if any accomodation or compromise can be made at all? The suggestion I made above about having one branch of research close off the other branch, so you either go PJI or you go superweapon, is actually a compromise approach which would allow both gameplay dynamics in the same game. However, what I'm worried about is, a compromise approach would be unacceptable to the first camp - the camp which wants a wide open tactical sort of game, where there is nothing in anybody's system to "clutter" their ships from going wherever they want, whenever they want. In that case, I suppose it would make good business sense for the devs to figure out which group heavily outweighs the other group, and please that group. Either that, or make game setup options for dropping the (buffed) PJI and the superweapon.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

PJIs are very unlikely to go back to being able to block phase jumps entirely with no drawbacks(yes, even the 2 connected systems with PJI idea).

Let's start the analysis with some numbers:

Current default phase jump power-up time: 7 seconds
Current default phase jump delay from PJI: 18 seconds (250%)
Total jump time under PJI influence: 25 seconds

The general consensus is that 25 seconds is not long enough, so let's see what we can do:

Adding a research that increases jump delay by an additional 50% (so 300%, 350%, 400%) per rank would give us 28 seconds with rank 1, 32 seconds with rank 2, 35 seconds with rank 3 (assuming rounding up). Okay, so that's 10 extra seconds of delay with some research, not bad right? Still, 10 seconds isn't a whole lot of time, so let's see what else we can do.

Why not make PJIs affect phase space speed itself? Phase lanes can be quite long, and huffing and puffing along them can be a grand time killer without directly trapping the hostile fleet. Why not add on the ability to research incoming and outgoing phase space delay?

Here's how I picture it:

[Basic PJI module research] >(next lab)> [Additional 3 ranks of research for total 400% charge-up delay] >(3 additional labs)> [2 ranks to increase incoming and outgoing phase space speed by 200%]

Pros: PJI progressively gets better as you sink more money into research, instead of being a one shot wonder. It does what it's meant to do still, which is to delay the enemy, without creating a grav well death trap.

Cons: Research costs would add up. Some races would get access considerably earlier than others (Vasari), and on smaller maps not all races may be able to make full use of them.

The cons, for me, are actually pretty arguable. Vasari are meant to be the masters of phase tech, so I can live with them having access to the complete PJI path 2 labs ahead of the TEC. This also wouldn't stop people bypassing your choke points, but it would slow it down considerably (35 second charge up, incoming AND outgoing phase space speed reduced by 200%).

There's my idea

If there was a "catapult" ship that had a gravity-well-sized range of fire and worked very effectively against orbital structures, you could counter an opponent who tries to turtle up in a single planet by keeping your fleet on the edge of the gravity well and sieging his structures. Your opponent would be forced to either come out past his static defenses and fight you fair, or sit there and accept expensive losses until his defense is gone.

That's how most strategy games have solved this specific problem - by allowing a counter unit against hiding behind a lot of defense. SoaSE's current solution is just to let you run past the defenses and ignore them, rather than giving you a good way of cracking them directly. It's not a very good solution, for the reasons people have said.

I quote and bump myself in protest! Your solution's are too cheap & demand too little!

The whole premise being Sins is that it's not a rock/paper/scissors game. In fact, a "catapult" ship with the range of the entire grav well is perhaps the most horrible idea suggested thus far

Flak Frigates and LRMS already defeat turtling systems anyways.

Even if there is no change in PJIs, I think we all agree that the radius idiocy should just be removed. The entire system ought to be affected by wherever the PJI is, there should not be any need to 'place' them. As of now bad placement can simply result in nothing at all.

A solution i posted in another thread was having a % chance to disable a non allied ship that tries to jump out of a system with a PJI.

The problem with increasing the time they work for is that in some situation it will be just as good as a 100% block, and in other it wont matter at all.

I understand being able to totally turtle in and build a super weapon or something is undesirable, but empire boundaries should mean something.

My solution means that if you are going to jump deep inside an enemy empire you are going to lose some of your fleet along the way.

Give PJI a 10% chance to create a critical failure of a ships phase jump engine when it tries to leave. You can remove the current slow-down effect entirely. This can be something that will take a minute+ to recover.. Have it upgradeable to 15% and then finally 20%. This effects capital ships as well, but not scouts.

In this way if you absolutely need to kill something in the middle of an enemies empire you can throw ships at it and you should be able to get the job done. But it makes an attack on an enemy system something that needs considering, because you cant just 'jump out' if things start going bad. You CAN retreat if things look REALLY bad, but its going to cost you some of your fleet.

To summarize, this gives the capability to strike deep at the enemy, but with cost. It gives the choice to make a retreat, but with cost. It prevents people from just running around your empire with out difficulty, because they are losing ships the whole time, with out making it impossible to operate within an enemy empire.

It should require a dedicated effort with resolve to attack an enemy, so forcing people to at least PLAN on being able to win when they make that jump into enemy space should be REQUIRED. However sometimes things go wrong. Letting them get away totally free is too easy on them, but not allowing them to 'cut their losses and run' is also asking too much.

This effect of course goes away if the PJI is destroyed. So destroying the PJI before running is another option, and another thing the person controlling the fleet has to consider.

Also make a limit of 1 PJI per planet, to prevent people from making super-death traps.

There is so much good response in here I would love to see a developer response.

Could you elaborate on why you think this is a bad idea? There's already a strong counter-strategy to turtling in 1.02, it's just not one that makes for good gameplay. Running fleets or siege frigate wings past heavily defended systems is the "scissors" to static defenses' "paper." I'm suggesting another way players could cut that paper, without the undesirable side effects (useless PJIs) that we see in 1.02.

Catapult ships are just one possibility. Someone suggested an EMP bomb that would disable all static defenses for a few minutes, and that sounds like another good option.

Jump in a few of them along with a few flaks for protection from bombers, and all orbital structures are dead with only a few ships, if there's no mobile fleet present.



Rock/paper/scissors argument does not apply to tactics and strategies, only units.

Great - I think that would play well. It would take a while to whittle away the defenses if the attacker didn't send many catapult ships, and the defender would be given a fair chance to react and send some response forces.

The counter is more efficient than the original strategy, and the counter-counter is more efficient than the counter. All is well in the world.


Oh - call it whatever you want. If A>B, B>C, and C>A, I always thought of that as rock-paper-scissors.

I gotta break your balls there real quick. In the majority of RTS's there's three rock paper scissors strategies.

Rush
Expand
Turtle

Rush beats expand, Turtle beats rush, expand beats turtle, or something like that. Expand also means resource rush, where you attempt to get the most resources with minimal defenses and tech as quickly as possible.

Although I do think over all PJI could use some sort of bump, I don't think they need much unless they got a major overhaul on how they work. Perhaps another 25%-50% boost in delay time that what it does now. Or even some techs would have been nice to invest in to boost the capabilities of the PJIs later on in the tree.

On the other hand, it seems like a lot of people don't put defenses up around the inner planets of their empires. PJI are just one brick of the grand wall of defense you could say. Other than the resources it costs to build gun-turrets and hangars, each planet/'roid/gravity well has at least a dozen TAC slots. So fill 'em up! Don't rely on just your outer most planet as the first and last line of defense. If you have several PJI's over the course of several locations the overall time of a fleet potentially making a B-Line drive to your inner planets adds up. PJIs are not meant to completely stop fleets from moving through enemy territory.

This isn't how balance works Ships destroy all defenses, jump out before defending fleet gets there, how's the counter-counter more efficient?



Before you try that, you should understand what it is I was talking about in the first place. All strategies have counter strategies, but that doesn't mean that all *units* need to have direct counter units. Sins was designed in a way that greatly blurs the rock/paper/scissors idea among *units*. I originally brought up the R/P/S point in response to "catapult" ships being able to shoot anywhere in the grav well for the purposes of busting up defenses, which is a direct unit counter - exactly the kind the game was designed not to employ. Countering strategies were never part of it.