Changes to traveltime
 

two suggestions, the first is simple and basic: reinstate cluster and parallel eta advantage on attack and defence, think this would give the game some new momentum. Galaxy to Galaxy based politics might come more in to play or be reinvented.

the other suggestion is, changing the base eta system on each class, and the entire travel system.
Example:
Fi base eta: 5
Co base eta: 6
Fr base eta: 7
De base eta: 8
Cr base eta: 9
Bs base eta: 10

the travel tech still in place lowering each class base eta by 1 for each level of tech you finish. The travel system would add 1 tick for the distance you want to go. Lets say you are 5:4:2 and your alliance has 8:3 and 1:7 up as galaxies, you should pick targets that would give you as good as possible potensial cap and as low as possible travel time.
In this case 8:3 would be closer than 1:7. If you map the coordinates in a 3d grid system. probably way too "complex" if i am supposed to believe the newbie thread, but anyways flame away :-p

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

using this rounds stats as an example...the Harpy has 4 ticks to send def vs De incs.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

To be fair, I'd rather see the travel times levelled for the purpose of easier to make stats (more options when fi and bs shoot at each other)

But thats just me ;P

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

The introduction of geography is something I've been interested in seeing for a few years now, but the design and implementation effort required is probably beyond what the volunteers of PA Team can invest. I am also a little concerned that the universe may have shrunk to the point of making it non-viable.

The large differences in ETAs between the classes that OP proposes seems like a bad idea to me.


One overhaul that I would like to see is a simple inversion:

Cr/Bs base ETA: 8
Fr/De base ETA: 9
Fi/Co base ETA: 10

That way, the fleet that you get with minimal research is the slowest, and the one that takes the longest to research is the fastest. It would have little to no impact beyond that.


I also rather like Machado's idea of leveling the travel times. To make that work with the inversion I suggested above, you could increase the base ETA of all fleets by 1, make Hypergate only work for Fi/Co/Fr/De, and add a new travel time research that only works for Fi/Co (call it "Reactor Miniaturization", I'm making this shit up as I go along):

Stargate:
Cr/Bs ETA: 8
Fr/De ETA: 9
Fi/Co ETA: 10

Hypergate:
Cr/Bs ETA: 8
Fr/De ETA: 8
Fi/Co ETA: 9

"Reactor Miniaturization":
Cr/Bs ETA: 8
Fr/De ETA: 8
Fi/Co ETA: 8

That would be a little more work to implement, and some tinkering with the RP cost of travel time research to help Xan, but nothing major.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

I suppose that depends on your definition on 'little'..
It would completely alter what ships an alliance can use to defend against incomings..
Right now FR/DE can not defended by CR/BS fleets from alliance.. (unless PL def but that's more of an exception)

If you alter the TT research as you suggested then it would make it even more difficult to know/guess what an attacking fleet consists of..
With all researched finished an eta 8 inc can then be FI/CO/FR/DE/CR/BS..

In my opinion it would completely change attack and defence..
I'm not saying that's a bad thing but I would not qualify it as 'little to no impact'..

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

I really like the sound of this.

1. It's fairly logical - bigger ships have bigger engines after all, can hold more shit.
2. It allows stat makers to have FI and BS shoot at each other, meaning that the usual unnatural feeling strain that is put on the FRDE class is removed and stats can be a lot more logically balanced.
3. FI/CO have all the advantages now. They have quickest ETA, need the least research, are often (always?) xan/cat (cloak/emp), can attack the earliest, and I'm sure there's a few more.

I should probably explain #2 briefly.

For stats, FRDE is often a bit of a mess. This is because of FI targeting being limited to CO, FR, DE (because FI targeting FI can be ugly). CO, CR and BS have the same problem. FR and DE then have the problem that between them they ALWAYS need to target FI, CO, CR, BS - and can hardly ever target each other.

This is an odd factor in statmaking, because FI and CO often target each other, and so do CR and BS. Making FRDE the odd man out. In my humble opinion, this is very limiting and often causes balancing problems when making stats. Example: suppose FR targets FI CR, and DE targets CO BS, then BS NORMALLY only has DE and CR left as possible targets (I'm exploring a "support class" set, but it's proving very difficult to balance).

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

Yeah. When you send Fi/Co now, you'd send Cr/Bs in the system I propose, and vice versa. That's barely a change. Adding in Machado's suggestion makes for a bigger change, of course, but that was not what my 'little impact' comment was about.

Agreed, and solid explanation.

What is this, people agreeing with each other on PAF!?

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

The change is that crbs is usually alot more expensive than fico so you cant really send full fico fleets with crbs (unless its cloaked) if you flip it around this restriction will no longer exist unless you change the price structure of the ships aswell.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

I continue to fail to see the Big Change.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

It gets dramatically easier to fake (thus harder to defend) and more traps for statmakers

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

If you completely level them, then it becomes easier to fake.

If you reverse the etas, it becomes much harder to fake, except for perhaps Xan.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

Geographical ETA differences have already been done, and were quickly put away after a round of total failure. And THAT was with way more players

About the other stuff (OP with ETA per class) I think it would change a lot, maybe too much. Par and Cluster ETA reduction is possible, but again, the universe is quite small now. Not sure it would be viable.

Re: Changes to traveltime
 

Parallel and Cluster ETAs were around for a while and weren't regarded as a failure as far as I know? :)

Defence ETA changes, maybe, but I'm not sure about attack ETA changes.

Also it means more people trying to all exile into the same cluster/parallel