what if the Vasari siege beams aren't actually targetting buildings or anything like that. what if they're drilling gigantic holes in the crust of the planet which would result in rampant Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tidal waves. how's that for matching a Nuke in destructive power?
Dostillevi1, if thats what you meant then a system similar to that is already in place. ice worlds in particular are likely to come up with Massive Pure Glaciers, Me
i think your ideas would apply nicely to a slightly different sort of game. the empire management in Sins is a bit more simplified than what you seem to be describing. if there were actual unique trade goods being carted around on those ships it would make alot of sense to track exactly where those goods are going to and use that data to generate an income rate. as is though there's no real distinction between the trade goods of one planet or another, thus the simplified "longest trail" trade
good job Gas Powered Games and Stardock. its a really good game and i highly recommend it for anyone who enjoyed Defense of the Ancients (Warcraft 3 custom map/mod). its fun, fast paced, and competitive. easy to learn but hard to master. the multiplayer netcode is slightly awkward at the moment but presumably that will be patched up relatively shortly.
for that to work you'd have to a specific point of origin. Trade Port Zero, so to speak. there's no real way to do this with existing game mechanics. you could borrow the Planet Alliegance mechanic (which is based on number of phase jumps away from the Home World) if you had a way of creating a Trade Port Zero, but other than that its a no go. also, i kinda like the fact that the current system requires a slightly deeper level of understanding to optimize. its mor
i believe you that eventually the AI will fleet up if left on its own. however, i often check the line graphs at the end of a map i've won and i've noticed that it is uncanny how the AI ups its fleet exactly the same time that i do in almost every instance. i'm pretty sure there's a rubber banding mechanic going on there to keep things on the level.
sounds like made up numbers to me. regardless, you never need 80 Cielos. 3 or 4 Cielos is about as many as a fleet ever needs. the main thing they do is Designate Target, which is an awesomely powerful ability that gives your whole fleet an effective 40% damage increase. it doesnt stack though so there's really no point to having more than on target designated at a time.
actually im fairly certain that the AI fleet level is nearly hard coded to exactly match your own. the bigger problem is that the AI doesn't do what human players do, which is ramp up their economy before each fleet upgrade so they can continue production at an adequate level. the AI will end up with an economy that is 2 or 3 tiers behind the human players but still have the same fleet cap. if you let them alone for too long they'll fill up that fleet cap and become dangerous. if you kee
diplomat isn't an AI settting. the 4th one is Researcher. aggressors aren't actually that challenging. they tend to build siege frigates very early and try to bomb undefended colonies. its easily countered with some hangar defenses. i find researchers to be the hardest. they'll run up the tech tree very quickly and start building heavy cruisers extremely early. economist is the easiest one in my opinion. th
if its an asteroid it just gets 3 turrets and a repair bay. if its in a really important position i'll build a starbase and 2 repair bays (and 1 turret to fill the last slot i guess). hardly ever waste money upgrading tac slots at a roid. if its a planet that i expect to see some combat at my first round of defenses is a frigate factory and 2 repair bays. i'll build defenders there to hold off enemies if it gets attacked. then, once funds become available, i upgra
its a late game situation against an AI. the answer to this kind of thing is almost always Kostura Cannons.
you can use hybrid strategies if you want but its more or less just an exchange of potency for versatility. the pure Carrier/LRF build probably packs the greatest amount of offensive punch of any frigate fleet in the game (at least until late game when you can use Heavy Cruisers). diluting that mix with Flaks in order to add more bombers in to your squadron mix probably won't do much for you in the end. what will happen is that you're losing both the offensive sup
the only issue with building bombers early is keeping them alive since they're extremely vulnerable to fighters. even a small amount of enemy fighter squadrons will make your bombers almost worthless unless you can dispose of them. this basically means you don't get to use your own bombers until you've got enough Fighter squadrons or Flak frigates to cover them. thats the real obstacle for early game bombers. the real reason we go fighters early game isn't just th
pretty sure the Skiranta has 3 launch bays, 1 underneath and 1 on either side. the ones on the side are where the siege beams come out of. the little round openings on the flanks of the Skiranta are definitely the Wave Cannons not fighter launch bays. its way easier to see the wave bolts come out if you have Bailknights mod installed, otherwise you might have to zoom in and squint since the Skiranta shoots small reddish wave bolts instead of big green ones. i agre
out of that list of LRF, carrier, Volatile Nanites, CB, Malice, Returning Armada, and Missile Barrage.... every item except for one has been adjusted in some fashion to better balance it.
spreadsheet that crap. do it. post it. seriously though, the upgrades are fine. maybe a little boring, but they work fine. one of the things that happens as fleet sizes scale up to a large size is that focus fire chains become more and more devastating. this is the reason why weapon damage does not need to upgrade on a 1:1 scale relative to defensive upgrades. its already an uphill battle for survivability just because of the natural e
see that other thread wasn't necro. this one on the other hand is most definitely necro. the first post from april 10th 2009 has NOTHING IN IT.
each of the three factions is guilty of some very unpleasant deeds and have some very unpleasant characteristics about their society. the Vasari subjugate and enslave what they consider "lesser races". they also ruthlessly strip down planets of natural resources, knowing that they're temporary and expendable since the Vasari exile fleet is just going to move on in a century or so. the Advent are religious fanatics who react viole
...and this is what happens when people reply only to the original post and don't read all 11 pages. which is a good signal that this discussion is basically over.
meh, it wasn't exactly a thread necro. he asked his own question and the question happened to have the same general topic of an existing post. thats an appropriate use of the forum in my opinion. it would only be necro if he was writing a response to someone elses question that was like 6 months old. this is not the case in this instance.
thats a neat idea How? maybe some alternative implementations of it would fit better with the diplomatic theme of the expansion. for example, some sort of "intelligence agent" feature of the black market or diplomacy screen that would affect the ability to get accurate readings of enemy fleets. instead of an exact number of ships it would only show you a range that would be +-50% of the real number (so 10 ships would show as 5-15).
you honestly think there's no difference between destroy 60 ships and destroy 24 ships? seems to me like the difference is 36 ships. quite tangible. look, i know that wasn't your point. i dont wanna make a game out of just attacking your semantics. what you're saying is that you dislike the very model of the Missile Barrage style ability. thats fine. there have been some good suggestions about how to make the ability a bit like a big Radiati
lemme just get on board the "i love Impulse" train here. its a great program. makes buying and managing my Stardock software a breeze and I like it alot. its fast, and smooth, and keeps me connected to a company that produces great software.
the three races are VERY balanced. there are alot of similar units and the primary differences are in their technology trees and their capital ships. they do differ heavily in emphasis. TEC get trade ports very early, Advent get culture buildings very early, Vasari get some important military upgrades very early. in the end though each of the factions has access to the same fundamentals, the biggest changes are how those things are slightly different and when you get them and how much they co
and then there was the time they hijacked borg technology and used it to defeat extra-dimensional fluid space aliens. mysteriously, the borg themselves (who were the originators of the technology) couldn't figure out how to do this and were dependent on the humans giving it to them second hand. ya, that went over real well.
