[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

Seriously, get a clue.

This is a joke right?

OK, you keep on throwing this at me. Do you run, maintain and look after the combat engine for PAteam? If the answer is yes, ok, I'll stop posting and we can forget the idea. If the answer is no, go away, and stop quoting 'current combat engine' at me. Changes to the combat engine big or small with an idea like this are a given. OK. Understand?

I've promised to help Game's work on the ship statistics for next round. I hope that's a sufficient answer. For what it makes, I'm feeling more and more reclutant to touch it with a stick every day.

I'd still have people come in thread and say:-
Superships by design are bad (even tough the game is riddled with superships)
The current combat engine can't do this - go away.

It has been argued why the current combat engine isn't very well equipped for such ideas, and the argument has received a level of support amongs some experienced players.

Marine carriers would be wasted unless you need them. However, if you want to add a third new class feel free.

Personally, I'm not about to add any classes.

Well, you've attacked me for suggesting the ships, wether we use conventional method (ie ship stats), or a new method. If the conventional class fought with marine class, and you twisted this like every other class in the game is twisted, at least you'd be consistent. Maybe herein, you actually have added something for the first time. An observation that its actually 3 classes, new ones, that *maybe* don't mess with the rest of the combat engine, flagships, marine carriers, and heavy destroyers (example, blurb would be, guns upgraded to deal with marine carrier armour, or whatever). In both cases, both have a limited use.

Why I've critisized the idea of adding classes? You said it yourself. If the conventional classes fight with the marine class, you need to be extra careful so you don't end up with things like marines sniping out pods from fleets with an amount of podfleets having no chance to do about it (essentially creating more or less sniping shipclasses). If it works as an external to the current combat mechanic, then it's a whole different story.

There has to be a counter to flagships. If not marine carriers, then could it be something else.

You still haven't answered a few questions regarding the idea. In fact, you're concentrated on defending your idea outside the actual idea (focused on the debate instead of the content of the debate). Let me ask them again, and elaborate.

The original premise was basic. New ships.

Brainstorm that. That's a little vague at best. Obviously, it would be reasonable to actually also include a plan on how these ships interact with the existing game.

Flagships when raiding give you 5% extra roid cap, 5% more kills (or simple stuff put up for simple discussion)

Marine carriers would be wasted unless you need them. However, if you want to add a third new class feel free.

This, yet, leaves very little ideas on how to integrate the new ship classes and their effects into the current game system. Do they float on a combat of their own, marine carriers chasing after flagships, or do they combat regular ships as any ship? The relation between the idea and the current game mechanic needs to be resolved inevitably. You can keep saying that "stop attacking the idea", but instead you could offer possible solutions to this problem, because that's the essential ("fundamental") problem in implementing ships that have differing effects to the combat system where the current ships work at.

I can only visualize a few alternatives.

First, without marine carriers. That's when you have to place the flagships a little like structure killers are placed at the moment - off pod classes, for mentioned reasons. While this might bring in new content, the next question is whether the content is worth the tradeoff which is more hassle, and more work on the balance. Some people have, following the changes in population and such, argued that the game doesn't really need to become more complex, but it needs some sort of a finishing touch with more attention to things working better than bringing in new things. This is a matter of flavour.

Second, with marine carriers. This way you can completely exclude the flagships from traditional combat, which avoids them being impenetrably protected by a wall of other ships (through EMP resistance variance or armor variance). This leaves you with only marine carriers being able to target them, and again places you in a question of how to place the marine carriers in the ship classes. If a race has say frigate marine carriers, this means that races that shoot hard at frigate can trounce through rather easily, while if you don't shoot at frigates on your podfleets, you can't hit it with flagships. Given the ETA of the flagship (what would it be?), it would again favour a race over other, which probably isn't the intention is it?

The third is a variability from the second. It would involve placing both marine carriers and flagships outside the conventional fleet setup. At this point, you could either make one ship for each race with no job whatsoever but to bash marine carriers (like an astropod picks roids), or just to leave marine carriers untouchable and just simply require an amount of them (accompanied by a fleet slot) to stop given flagships. The latter would essentially work as a "second" combat engine that works out the same fleet slots and may affect the outcome of the primary engine, but also may not.

They all come with certain problems (which some people call fundamental) involved. Which one were you planning on, or did you have another idea?