Friday September 28th. Will upload it 45 min before leaving for the weekend! They do it that way just so they can hear us scream, they like to hear us scream, it makes them stronger.. "Your anguish sustains me" - Stewie Griffin, game dev. <img src="http:/
Couple of items, not sure if I overlooked them in all the other threads: 1) "Last Flagship Standing" modes = auto-fail, as no player has a flagship to begin... instant game over! 2) Captain Hazelwood is back behind the ship's wheel, and he has brought the rest of the bar with him; dang ships keep running into asteroids and other obvious obstacles, hopefully they can lay off the sauce soon, and turn on the radar to help them pathfind to avoid collisions.
I'm thinking that it isn't so much an artificial buff, more as a recognition of what C&C provides for a fleet... I had the David Weber/Honor Harrington space fleet engagements in mind, where each ship had various point defenses that could effectively ward a ship from limited numbers of attacking missiles. Smaller ships had fewer defensive options, larger ships had more. The formation of a fleet with linked C&C puts smaller frigates into slots which relieve from straining smaller local
I hope that when they do implement formations, they also add modifiers to damage and defense benefits of ships in formation. This would reflect the increased effectiveness of point-defense abilities and coordinated firing control that fleets enjoy, thereby allowing a significant advantage over uncoordinated spam fleets.
At end game, we still have slight issues of irrelevant research techs and resource surfeits... perhaps higher empire research could allow for improvements to the capital planet, perhaps be allowed to keep researching higher limits for pop/logistic/defence/fleet? This could serve to sink more cash out of game and further harden the empire -helpful for when game generator decides to give no logistics sources nearby. I like the thought of the planets being able to help defend themselves,
The pirates took a little bit to counter, but my AI opponents are too rigid to do the same and end up dying from insurgencies and marauders. On a "hard AI" custom game, I've been building a "pocket" empire by turtling off a section, and then "hardening" all points within by maxing out the defence tech and building clusters of GG's and hangers to the limits... when insurgents come to raid, they get wasted without me even having to be worried about diverting patrols. AI's won't b
Most researched items are the common improvements on both Combat and Empire, and the research emphasis will change due to game options and playstyle... but from a "Last Flagship Standing" perspective, here are some thoughts: Least researched on Combat side are: -repair structure, resources too scarce to utilize many of these structures -cruisers, too vulnerable at the moment... but I am still trying them out -missile range enhancements, 12% does little good when closing the
I've been having a lot of fun so far working on custom setups of 51-69 planets/high resources/hard AI to start, but tonight I'll play in the higher ranges... only crashed a couple of times now, but overall it sure does have a nice feel to it. I love whats happening with the pirates! Logistics are hard to balance at beginning when you want to activate all the bells and whistles... the capital planet could be allowed to have a little extra, but I am not sure how that would work with the
I agree, the Beta 1 AI is as smart as a spider monkey smoking peyote -up against an experienced player or an upgraded AI, these tired old turtling strategies will leave you defeated and wondering why the devs cheated and listened to our complaints about poor AI strategizing... I'm all for dynamic mechanisms and scaling up to prolong game longevity and prevent staleness & stalemates, rather than restricting gameplay... real empires will dedicate resources for a conquest, not be held back
I suppose it would depend on which use would make most sense, and not be too unbalanced... if a player owns the entire star system, then either option would provide another interesting reason to have their forces drawn out into the star grav wells which could force open fleet engagements as opposed to seige warefare type grinding that chokepoints allow. There have been a lot of great ideas bounced around in this thread, and it would be nice to find a combination of military and empire r
Another thought could be to build some sort of a warp-assist structure in the star gravity well to permit flight (or meaningfully facilitate it) between stars... this could be another possible reason for drawing strategic interest into having game play move into star gravity wells outside of tiny chokepoints in planetary traps.
It could be fairly easy to balance AM recharge for a mothership as others have indicated... it could have a big battery that recharges painfully slow if not close to a star. The AM would be required for defenses, and the Mothership becomes more vulnerable deeper into a system. Perhaps even a second AM gauge would be needed for production, hard to say if necessary as yet until a practice run is put in place to get metrics for balancing. Such a limit would make it most useful in a star
With defense in depth from walls of guass guns, add in hardened zergling hordes of kodiaks and scouts to focus fire on attackers... attacking any of the turtle choke points off the star is currently not a guaranteed victory for an attacker. Mind you, I'll grant that the AI is as yet simply predictable in B1, but I am suspecting that even in the next beta that turtling will still be a key strategy to winning. An aggressor without a mothership-type frigate factory for forward re-supply h
This is an idea that can also be tied into the Star dead space discussion... what if the motherships could only be recharged from antimatter collected from solar winds? Stars have a lot of energy, and motherships would need to use a lot. This scenario would have the motherships charging at home stars to begin with, and when attacking enemy stars, the mothership would want to stay close to that sun to top up the energy reserves. This would have major fleet interests in the Star gravity
That is a problem, the technology tree should reflect the point in time you are in the game. It feels like the beginning and end aren't that much different when technology comes into play. Also, more stuff that you can build needs to be researchable. I know the TEC is all about trade and make shift war cruisers, but it feels like there should be at least one or two cloakable ships. An aircraft carrier that's stealthy and fires torpedoes, l
Then again, the devs can ignore everything and let us continue to "turtle" with insane amounts of guns at the first set of chokepoints... thus leaving stars as dead space. What can we suggest at stars to provide an incentive to use them? They are wasted real estate, and defenders can easily go the static route on the only set pathways from the star... the advantages for the defender are always defences in depth, short supply lines, quick reinforcements, etc. Without encouragin
One advantage of slight changes to the z-axis placement for both constructed items and ships would be the reduction of collisions that are overpowered in their effect to slow down a fleet that is trying to fly past a "turtle" defense shell. Currently, a wall of guns can trap a fleet long enough to decimate them as the ships try to painfully pathfind around the guns and themselves... they die too easily in a three-Stooges barrel shoot as it is.
Another solution may be to have regular "solar storms", where extra solar winds will push objects away from the star until the winds subside... this way, constructed guns and other static placed defenses are shifted far away from their originally placed location, eventually forced ridiculously far out of range. Ships would be pretty much immune, as they have powerful engines that maintain their orbits... this will strongly encourage ship vs ship as opposed to easy static ambushes.
If stars have extra large gravity wells, and fleets are allowed to jump in formation... perhaps allowing a larger randomized exit point within the gravity well would negate the concerns about static defense chokepoints, and defeating in detail a staggered fleet arrival. Perhaps a new ship class can be researched to allow fleets to jump in formation? Perhaps also allow research for faster capital ship engines, to allow fleets to move past "turtle" defences slightly quicker -thus
Has it been mentioned already that the T3 Empire tech "Advanced Civic Design" doesn't raise the population cap anymore? After developing Terran-type planets to maximum (level 3) and researching T1 Empire tech "Improved Civic Design", the planets hit a cap... 345 for Capital planet, and I seem to recall that used to go to 380 when Advanced Civic was researched. Anyone confirm?
How about an option for a supernova weapon in a "Last Flagship Standing" mode? Can call it a "Last Star Remaining" game: Have your fleet defend some T6 military tech devices that need to stay in orbit around the enemy star for a certain amount of time... if successfully deployed into the star, it gives you a certain window of safety to jump to safety back into your own star system before annihilation. This would give another use and options for multi-star system games, more fl
Seems to me the current described problem is that the "military" is going where ever they want at the moment, which is into everything like a bunch of billiard balls. Those ship captains are just playing bumper cars for fun. If only there was a solution to the collision issue, because there are so many limitations to depth in a 3-d space...
How about assigning different default Z-axis layers/orbits for each ship class? This would take limited advantage of the 3-D nature of a system, but not so much as to create an issue. This plays into stacking/wall formations for mixed fleets as well. The concept is a little like a multi-lane road, where slower traffic keeps right, commercial stuff has bus lanes/HoV lanes, etc. During battles, it's a free for all on pathing, but after the plasma cools, all the ships return to thei
Checked out the website, has a couple of trailers worth watching... www.starcraft2.com Sins, AoC, SC2... it's a beautiful life, being a gamer!
I try my best to mess up me own posts Comedy gold is a treasure revealed when pirates occasionally listen to the parrots whispering in their ears... arrr!
