Ship stats

[AdmV0rl0n]

Dear everyone,

I know you all love the current stats, but I don't ;P

Enhancements please:
More ships.
Each class should have hulls / designs that cater for more than one target class. Thus you might have one race that has FI ships that depending what you choose to build, can hit different targets.

Viper FI FI CO/FR/CR/DE/BS Norm 5 5 10 4 1200 1200 1200 TERRAN Terran Fighter
Typhoon FI BS DE/CR/FR Norm 6 10 12 6 2000 2200 1400 TERRAN Terran Torpedo Bomber
NightHawk FI CO FI/FR/DE Norm 6 12 11 3 1800 2300 1800 TERRAN Multi Turret fighter - built to take on CO

(I'm not sure the above will look right after I post, forgive me if its screwy)

In addition, in the tech tree, each race should be able to research PART of their enemies technology. Thus the Terrans might get a ship that can EMP, but its init might be a little higher, it might cost more (the admins might deem it worth placing a penalty price against such development), and it might not be quite as good, but they should gain access to something. Does'nt have to be the whole range of enemy ships, maybe just one.

I'd like to see a return of a resource stealing ship, even if its take was limited to small amounts/ratio against planet size. If some sort of scout ship was available to all in the Covert Ops option - and was built in mind of letting small players steal from larger ones. The amounts might be token to larger planets but useful to smaller ones.

Lastly, currently, battles are staid, with Ziks hogging their CO and the CAT hard landing on people(and the rest). We need something thrown in the mix which mean that not all battles just end up in some forlorn battle calc number crunching game.

Part of fleets getting lost in witch space, spacial anomolies causing early or late arrival, something akin to a dice that gets thrown, causing an amount of uncertainty in battles. This percentage could be reasonably low so as not to throw the game totally for six, but enough that a level of uncertainty crops up from time to time.

Large fleets should have some form of large running cost or maintenance or fueling - causing some headaches and occasional uncertainty. If you are above a certain size, how about a small percentage of ships being lost/left for salvage (lets say 1% or something) above the norm.

Also make the Terrans more Lightweight, but give them cheap Suicide ships next time round as their speciality.

Also, how about Ambushes on inbound or outbound fleets? Perhaps each race could have an expensive ambush vessel that strikes vessels in transit causing damage, roid losses (small ones), accidents, confusion, late arrivals, or a small reduction in Init, Armour, or firepower on arrival.

Something is required so that planets in the top100 don't become unreachable. How about the Gravity Well affect(TM) where the top ten planets (by a criteria in line with how its assessed) suffer from vast gravity wells, due to the numbers of vessels and roids in their orbit. This gravity well causes all incoming fleets to arrive -1ETA compared to the rest of the Galaxy.

Finally, I found this round dissapointing in terms of how far the GAL and Clusters have fallen compared to the alliances. I do appreciate the alliances taking their fair place, but should this be at the expense of the destruction of Gal and Cluster ? So.. I'm going to be bold. How about adding the facility to Clusters so that Clusters have similar capability as Alliances - funds, messages, and similar?

The issues surrounding 'Farming' and 'XP' are a pain. There needs to be an in game set of possible ways to simply trade. How about trading vessels that could carry res or roids or maybe ships between planets. I think the game allows trading at GAL level, and Alliance level, there should be something at the Player Level. Perhaps trade ships would be limited to players smaller than a certain size, in the same way galactic funds and alliance funds are limited.
And off course... trade ships should suffer from the odd ambush...

AdmV

[AdmV0rl0n]

some crazy ship stats..

Ship name Class Kill CL Cul Special Init Armour KC Dam. Cul Dam E C M ARM/CST DAM/CST RACE Extra Note
Viper FI FI CO/FR/CR/DE/BS Norm 5 5 10 4 1200 1200 1200 TERRAN Terran Fighter
Typhoon FI BS DE/CR/FR Norm 6 10 12 6 2000 2200 1400 TERRAN Terran Torpedo Bomber
NightHawk FI CO FI/FR/DE Norm 6 12 11 3 1800 2300 1800 TERRAN Multi Turret fighter - built to take on CO
Reaper FI STRUCT Roids Norm 55 18 3 8 2900 1900 3800 TERRAN Attack Bomber
Striker CO FI CO/FR Norm 8 20 8 4 1500 1000 1600 TERRAN Multi gun corvette
Adder CO CR BS Norm 10 20 10 4 1600 1200 1400 TERRAN mining dropship.
Viking CO FR DE/CR/BS Norm 10 22 8 6 1700 2400 1200 TERRAN Heavy Ion Turrets
Zerozen CO BS DE/CR/FR Suicide 40 25 10 6 3000 4000 2800 TERRAN Suicide bomber
Warspite FR FI CO/FR Norm 10 25 14 5 4500 3000 2800 TERRAN FR with high speed turrets
MTB FR DE CR/BS Norm 16 34 12 8 5600 4500 3400 TERRAN Torpedo FR
Spitfire FR CO FI Norm 9 25 9 7 4300 3800 4000 TERRAN Radar guided close quarter guns
Venom DE DE CR/BS Norm 12 45 20 14 7300 6400 5000 TERRAN Medium Turrets
Zeke DE BS CR Suicide 65 90 90 110 9000 10000 4000 TERRAN Ramming Attack DE
Buffalo DE FI CO Norm 10 45 24 12 6000 4200 3800 TERRAN Escort DE
Tomahawk DE Roids STRUC Norm 60 25 10 8 5000 4000 7000 TERRAN Hi Speed Raider
Tiger CR BS CR/DE Norm 20 100 50 45 10000 9000 12000 TERRAN Heavy CR
Custer CR FI CO Norm 6 40 40 35 11000 6000 6000 TERRAN Escort CR
TigerShark CR FR DE/CR Norm 20 50 40 30 12000 10000 11000 TERRAN Medium CR
Invader CR ROIDS BS Suicide 60 60 20 10 8000 13000 6500 TERRAN Assault Vessel, single use.
Gigamog BS BS CR/DE Norm 12 200 180 150 28000 32000 48000 TERRAN BS
Mogodon BS CR DE/FR Norm 22 350 240 190 34000 37000 49000 TERRAN Mdium weapons
Gargant BS BS DE/CR/FR Norm 30 750 490 370 79000 89000 110000 TERRAN Heavy BS
Porcupine BS FI CO Norm 35 900 350 250 80000 90000 39000 TERRAN Escort BS multigun

Tech Tree enhancements
Stealth Viper FI FI CO Stealth 4 2 5 5 2000 2100 6000 TERRAN Stealth Fighter - Stolen from Zan
Vulcan FR CO FR EMP 3 30 20 16 6000 8000 120000 TERRAN EMP equppied FR - stolen from Cat
Spearfish CR CR DE/BS Steal 70 100 95 75 14000 6000 16000 TERRAN Close Comabt Assault Cruiser

CATHAAR
Spider FI DE CR EMP 2 7 11 9 750 850 1000 CATHAAR EMP FI
Arachnid FI FI CO EMP 3 15 6 5 1100 650 800 CATHAAR EMP FI - radar tracking EMP
White Tail FI FI CO/FR/DE Norm 12 12 5 4 1200 950 1000 CATHAAR Escort FI
Beetle CO CO FR EMP 5 20 17 13 1400 1000 850 CATHAAR EMP CO
House CO FR DE/CR EMP 4 20 19 12 1600 1200 1200 CATHAAR EMP CO
Camelspider CO CR BS EMP 6 100 40 38 5000 6000 9000 CATHAAR EMP CO
Wolf CO DE BS/CR Norm 18 110 28 22 8000 4000 3000 CATHAAR CO - heavy Ion turrets
OrbWeaver FR FI CO/FR EMP 4 120 29 37 7500 6000 9000 CATHAAR FR - Guided emitters
CrabSpider FR FR CR/DE EMP 4 140 45 55 9000 10000 12000 CATHAAR FR - medium FR
Pholcidae FR CR BS EMP 6 160 80 100 12000 13000 12000 CATHAAR FR - Heavy FR
Trapdoor FR BS CR/DE Norm 14 160 75 60 13000 16000 14000 CATHAAR FR - STRIKER
Redback DE CO FI Norm 16 120 80 65 16000 18000 17000 CATHAAR DE - Escort DE
Huntsman DE FR CO EMP 4 110 95 65 15000 12000 11000 CATHAAR DE - Escort EMP
MouseSpider DE CR DE/FR EMP 4 150 110 90 18000 13000 20000 CATHAAR DE - Heavy
Black Widow CR DE BS EMP 4 180 90 100 21000 20000 18000 CATHAAR CR
FunnelWeb CR FI CO/FR EMP 4 100 110 120 29000 31000 30000 CATHAAR Escort Cruiser
Brown CR Roids Structures Norm 4 50 20 5 4000 5000 4000 CATHAAR Lightweight attack cruiser
Scorpion BS BS FR/DE/CR EMP 3 340 290 250 38000 47000 62000 CATHAAR Bulk Jammer
Tarantula BS FI CO EMP 3 220 180 200 39000 56000 47000 CATHAAR Radar guided jammers
Gargoyle BS Roids FI Normal 20 400 34 80 12000 28000 12000 CATHAAR Roider with anti FI gunnary

Tech Tree enhanced
Hobo DE BS CR Steal 22 180 80 75 20000 27000 21000 CATHAAR Stolen Zik Tech
Wishbone FI Roids FI Stealth 3 4 3 3 1200 850 1350 CATHAAR Stolen Zan Tech
MaleWidow CO CR BS Suicide 69 75 30 40 4000 7500 6400 CATHAAR Stolen terran, torpedo then suicide.

Xan
Phantom FI FI CO Stealth 3 2 2 1 240 120 360 Xan Lightweight FI
Shadow FI FI CO Normal 6 8 4 3 850 1400 900 Xan Medium FI
Mirage FI FR DE/CR Stealth 3 6 5 4 1200 1400 1000 Xan Heavy FI
Narzgul FI CO Roids Stealth 3 12 6 3 1500 1200 1400 Xan Tweaked Shadow
Gripper CO Roids Structure Stealth 4 20 4 2 1250 950 1800 Xan Assault Corvette
Thunderbird CO CO FR Stealth 5 16 12 10 1800 1900 1400 Xan Midrange CO
Wraith CO CR DE Stealth 6 32 14 12 2200 2600 2800 Xan Heavy CO
Heavy Wraith CO BS CR Normal 12 29 32 30 4500 6000 6300 Xan Extra Heavy Wraith
Comet FR DE CR/BS Normal 12 75 40 30 6500 9000 10000 Xan Heavy FR
ShootingStar FR Roids FI/CO Stealth 7 35 9 7 5500 3400 7400 Xan Assault FR
DarkNova FR FR CO Normal 15 65 40 30 4500 7500 4500 Xan MultiGun FR
SuperNova DE FI CO/FR Normal 14 100 55 64 7500 9000 12000 Xan Enhanced Muli turret Escort
Grand Nova DE DE CR/BS Stealth 7 80 70 80 12000 13000 16000 Xan Heavy Turrets
Spectre CR BS CR Stealth 8 120 85 75 14000 18000 13000 Xan Heavy CR
Goblin CR FR FI/CO Normal 8 190 100 75 16000 11000 16000 Xan MultiGun CR
HobGoblin CR FI CO Stealth 6 120 80 40 19000 14000 8000 Xan Guided Gun platforms
Bloodsucker BS BS CR Stealth 10 180 120 140 28000 38000 41000 Xan Guided Missile BS
Dracula BS Roids Resources Normal 25 490 30 100 36000 45000 52000 Xan Strike Battle Ship

Tech Tree enhanced
Ghoul CR FI CO Steal 80 300 39 32 20000 14000 14000 Xan Stolen Zik Technology.
Spirit BS FR CR/DE EMP 4 320 42 29 29000 21000 28000 Xan Stolen Cathaar Technology
Vampire CO DE BS Suicide 45 25 67 55 4000 8000 7500 Xan Suicide Bomber - Stolen from TER


Zik
Corsair FI CO FR Steal 69 10 9 6 1000 1200 1600 Zik Lightweight stealer
Thief CO FI CO Steal 69 14 12 8 1400 1800 1900 Zik CO
Raider CO FI CO Normal 10 16 9 8 2000 1600 2100 Zik CO
Catburgler FR CR DE Steal 69 24 22 20 4000 6000 7000 Zik FR
Magnet FR FR CR/DE Normal 12 85 45 43 6500 8000 8500 Zik Heavy FR
Superconductor FR BS CR Normal 12 90 65 55 9000 10000 14000 Zik Torpedo FR
HedgeHog DE FI CO/FR Normal 14 120 110 100 12000 16000 20000 Zik Escort DE
Galleon DE FR CR/DE Steal 69 240 80 70 14000 18000 24000 Zik Ramming DE assault special
SuperGalleon DE Roids Structures Normal 12 80 10 6 3000 1200 1600 Zik Assault DE
Privateer CR Roids FI Normal 12 40 8 24 4000 3000 4000 Zik Assault CR
Ironclad CR DE BS Steal 69 250 120 100 12000 16000 26000 Zik Assault CR
SuperIronClad CR BS CR Steal 50 800 65 50 24000 30000 38000 Zik Heavy Armoured ironclad
Rogue BS BS CR/DE Normal 12 350 120 150 30000 40000 45000 Zik Battleship
Rascal BS FI CO/FR Normal 14 300 200 120 40000 50000 65000 Zik Escort Battleship

Tech Tree Enhanced
Pirate FI FI CO Stealth 4 25 12 10 4000 2000 4500 Zik Combat Fighter
Nightcrawler FI FR DE/CR/BS Suicide 69 20 14 13 5500 4000 8500 Zik Suicide FighterBomber
Spiderbite FI BS CR EMP 2 25 9 12 4500 5500 4000 ZIK Tech stolen from Cath
Venom CO Roids Resources Normal 14 20 5 4 3000 3500 4000 Zik Roider

[AdmV0rl0n]

Sorry about the formatting above. These are off the wall stats, they'd need more thought than I have given just yet.

[Illmaticks]

Looks like you've put a lot of work into those stats.

However, to me it looks like you're overcomplicating things a bit?

I like the idea of re-introducing multitargetting, though.

I've a question though, why does each race have so many ships to choose from?

[Heartless]

I think a revamping of the combat engine, which was often referred to as "fisher price combat engine", is pretty much overdue. I think the simplification of it went a bit too far.

[AdmV0rl0n]

The reason for so many vessels is pretty simple. Right now, the PA universe comes down to pick your race, then go and pick the only ship type that actually works.

So, for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well forget everything, and go build a CO fleet.

Thats it. No real choices, just the same strategy that all the others use, unless you foolishly deviate and experiment.

So something like the ship matrix below adds complexity, and I am sure it needs a rather sharp rework from some who are in the know and could spot banana skins better than I could.

Why should not every race actually be able to build a fleet that fits a capability, hopefully somewhere in that matrix below, you could built fleets in any race that are fundamentally different, and would mean that much more goes on in the PA universe.

You could still add in (I've tried to in a rough sense, but I may have strayed a little away from the core idea) ideas like Terran vessels cost more and are weighted heavier. Xan are still numerous in general. Zik still steal. Cathaar still freeze.

Incidently, I did not really explain the comments at the top. So I will now.

Ship name
This is Obvious enough..

Class
Class of vessel.

Kill CL
This is the primary kill class that the vessel is designed for.

Cul
Culmative damage against the secondary viable targets. Usally I have tried to show a vessel as having small/medium or large gunnary. Therefore - in most cases, the vessels that are good against FI won't work at all against BS (example)

Special
This is the special capability, EMP, Steal, Stealth, and the new Terran Suicide.

Init
Same old init. My suggestions may need a tweak.

Armour
The amount of armour a vessel has

KC Dam.
The KILL class damage. There are some oddballs in here, where the primary targets are lower than secondary (Culmative damage), and this is for example the fact that the primary target may be FI and they are harder to hit than the slower CO, but in most cases the primary is higher than secondary.

Cul Dam
The secondary target damage as inflicted. People may want to amend these.

E C M
The cost in Eonium, Metal, and Chrystal

ARM/CST DAM/CST
This is the arm/cost and damage cost taken from the current stats, frankly I'm not sure how they conclude these so I have left these blank.

RACE Extra Note
Just notes.

The tech tree upgrades are ships that are sort of bonus ships. I do not know exactly how you could bring them into the game, but I think it would add a little spice to be able to gather some enemy tech off the battlefield, and shoehorn it into one of your hulls. Perhaps you could gain them for acts of daring do, bravado, or perhaps the parts could be traded in some way.

Much of what I have tried to suggest is to bring the game into a more 'combat'-alike idea, where you could understand your battleship that is designed for big ship battles, could indeed fight a DE or Cruiser engagement, although perhaps it has the edge taken off its raw power in such contests.

You'll also find each race has vessels like escort vessels that can perhaps chew on FI and CO, but you'd not want them left out there against other classes. The fleets would still continue to have inate strengthes and weakness, but each player could choose, and I mean really choose, what direction he wanted to go in with fleets.

Also, perhaps the way ships are built rather than race should define the costs. Large ships perhaps should hit you hard on metal, maybe technical special ships that have capability cost more Chrystal. Maybe the more classes they can fight the greater the hit on Eonium.

Anyway, I'd kind of hope every player could build a fleet out of whatever ships he wants, instead of just being forced to build whatever his race has to build'.

I'd also point out that, there is more structural damage in these fleets. And even some resource stealers.

Lastly, I'll apologise to the admins, I know that these requests mean a lot of changes, and on limited resources, its almost a none starter. But you asked for suggestions, so I figured I would put one up.

AdmV

[tombcfc]

i agree i think the whole system needs a new look, its just a case of calc it up and send , theres no real stategy anymore, i could quote everything and outline every point but i could be all night and all day :P

i like the idea of resource stealing ships, some plannets are so resource fat it becomes almost impossible to attack them, i like the option of which class to target you would choose it would make the game alot harder and alot more fun.

and mutilands should be brought back in it would be easier to land because of the soak up on defence,

Maybe bring back primary and secondary targets as well the attacks need a lil spice added

maybe if PAN ever does happen we can see a new way of attacking in the universe

[XelNaga]

I stopped reading after

So, for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well forget everything, and go build a CO fleet.

[Clogg]

I think you should go back to the OTHER game if you like multiple targeting.

I'm also very much against researching parts of other races abilities. I for one would like to see and added unigueness to the races rather then some more interweaving.

I do think the races should have an added ship to their main pod fleets, to make attacking even more succesfull, but this will probably unbalanance the game to an even more offensive one and will most likely result in a rerun of round 16, which is the worst ever imho.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Dear Xelnega and Clogg:

You may not have liked that I said as for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well go build a CO fleet - SORRY, but its true. And you can apply a ship type and pretty much single strategy to any of the races for the most part.

Clogg, to take you up on your point, I added Suicide to the Terrans, but feels free to add more variety to the races, I was in a round about way suggesting it, but to clarify, the reason mainly behind my postings was to add a little logic to the game. In battles, your race would pick up technology from the enemy, especially perhaps in battles you win, or some other plausable modifiers just as you pick up intelligence, information and resources from your enemies now.

In terms of multiple targets, the issues or problems people percieve can be ironed out. You could water down the secondary usefulness if you wish, but I am not alone in the idea of more ships or variety. The current ship system is simplistic, and kills variety totally in the game.

AdmV

[XelNaga]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

Dear Xelnega and Clogg:

You may not have liked that I said as for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well go build a CO fleet - SORRY, but its true. And you can apply a ship type and pretty much single strategy to any of the races for the most part.

Go get a clue and then come back.

[Thefoundation]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

Go get a clue and then come back.

Are you having your period?

Honestly get a clue yourself, this game can and is played by people with 1 sort of fleet. (just got a inc from a top 10 ally who is ter and has shit loads of Bs and some De to fake with) It just depends if your a "nice" guy if you make def ships.

I like the idea of multi targetting, with efficientcy ratings. 70% of the dmg goes to ship type X, 10% to Y 10% to Z and 10% to W unless its race '?" cause they are to quick, or have to much armor.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

Dear Xelnega and Clogg:

You may not have liked that I said as for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well go build a CO fleet - SORRY, but its true. And you can apply a ship type and pretty much single strategy to any of the races for the most part.

The biggest zik planet seems to be quite happy with 3 times the investment in CR than CO.

I hate to blow my own trumpet (by hate, I mean love), but the on thing I'm quite happy about is that I feel I've made a set of stats where there isn't a single fleet that is absolutely terrible, and people could get by with any particular attack fleet; even with other issues and imbalances :/

[XelNaga]

Seriously, you're just some random noob trying to tell us how the game is played, because, quite obviously, you don't have a clue at all.

Most Xan have one FR fleet, mainly on Ter/Zik, and one FI fleet, faking mainly on Zik, or simply attacking Cat. Some even add Revenants to their FR fleet and try to take Xan out. Cat have FR and CR, and I've seen lots of fakes here, too. Zik have ALL kinds, depending on what they stole, and on what they focus on, and as usual, good Zik rather focus on steal fakes than on actual roiding fleets. Terran use a lot of DE and recently, BS is appearing quite frequently, too. They mostly try to take out the fat Cat.

And there is a higher and higher amount of defense ships around, too, because without defense ships, you can't defend . Even if you stockpile resources to avoid building unnecessary defense ships, you will end up getting enough incoming to make you spend, and then you still have them. This round, keeping roids is crucial, and it gets more and more hard to land.

Seriously, I have no problem with new ideas, and I appreciate the "effort" you made putting those stats together, but using plain wrong facts as reasons for change is just lame. And if you seriously believe what you're saying, please, learn how to play the game before suggesting ideas because you simply don't master it. Or just go back to that other game.

P.S.: Of course this game can be played with just 1 class of ships. You can play it without attacking, too. Or with a fleet of only harpies. What was your rank again?

[Thefoundation]

Xelnaga:
Whatever you just said doesnt matter cause you used this sentence: "hat was your rank again?" You think your a big boi now?
Elitist pfff i play this game for 3 rounds and im still high ranked.

On the stats:
Have ever heard of the game Homeworld 2? Thats how this should work.
Effiecientcy vs other classes, and targetting parts of bigger ships. (Propulsion, weapons, etc.)
Stop with the simplification of the stats, multiple ships per class with different targetting and different ability's. Make advanced research to unlock extra ships from each class.
Dont make this a game for stat-reading masters, make it one for all.
Where hard work and dedication pays of.

[Heartless]

I think my main motivation to switch back to multiple targetting, weaponspeed and agility (at the cost of the initiative though, as that'd solve itself out with wpsp and agi) is just so that like xelnaga and clogg get their tactical incompetence shoved up their arse.

That guy made one mistake, but wrote a very interesting thread and what happens? You nail the new forum poster because of one mistake, instead of bringing any reasoning. This ain't Alliance Discussions ladies, flame festivals are not supposed to happen in here.

[Thefoundation]

This appens alot
(And i may hope Xelnaga and clogg are crying in some weeks how the numbers of the community is in decline)

[XelNaga]

Originally Posted by Heartless

I think my main motivation to switch back to multiple targetting, weaponspeed and agility (at the cost of the initiative though, as that'd solve itself out with wpsp and agi) is just so that like xelnaga and clogg get their tactical incompetence shoved up their arse.

That guy made one mistake, but wrote a very interesting thread and what happens? You nail the new forum poster because of one mistake, instead of bringing any reasoning. This ain't Alliance Discussions ladies, flame festivals are not supposed to happen in here.

Excuse me sir, but I merely pointed out his mistake, which was plainly and simply a wrong claim in his reasoning. I then proceeded to outlining why, so he could see why I thought he was wrong. I, at no point, claimed anything about the rest of his post. Quoting myself, from my previous post, so you don't miss it again:

Seriously, I have no problem with new ideas, and I appreciate the "effort" you made putting those stats together...

The quotes being there because he said himself he didn't work out the numbers, but was rather giving it as example.

He then proceeds to just taking my last sentance, and ignoring my whole reasoning. I'm pretty sure any experienced player will agree for most parts with my view on the usual fleet compositions we see this round, and, thus, with the fact that he made a wrong claim in his own reasoning.

That's all I've been saying, and that was my whole point. And you clearly missed it. Now, I can live with it, because I don't need to discuss this any further unless you, or rather him, can show me where my reasoning went wrong, but even then, I cba anymore after this.

Now given that won't happen, all I wish for is for him to accept that his view on the current ship stats might need some adjusting. Now, after having this out of the way, I simply didn't comment on the rest, because I, for myself, am happy with the current stats. Which doesn't mean that no stats would be better, and that another system wouldn't be more fun. I left that to be discussed by the other people.

On a side note: I played all pre-pax rounds except the first, and lots of other games, I'm pretty self-confident about being able to hand you your ass back with any given set of stats. Not that your personal attack would be of any relevance to the subject.

Now a few last words to Thefoundation, since this will be my last post on this thread:

If you can't provide coherrent reasoning behind your posting, that's your problem. If you fail to accept or admit a mistake you wrote, after it has been pointed out to you, that's your problem. If you feel personally attacked by me, because I pointed it out, that's your problem, too. Frankly, if you can't be bothered to revise your view on the stats after some people in one way or another tried to let you know you might have a wrong point, I can't be bothered to contribute here anymore.

Bye.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Erm,

"I stopped reading after
Quote:
So, for example, if you are a Zik, you may as well forget everything, and go build a CO fleet."

This was your kind of contribution. And you are asking that I accept your logic? Look, I think I've been quite clear, the stats posted by me are nowhere near what one might suggest as complete, they are just a kind of outline so people can shoot the shit about stuff. And there are probably lots of things in there people can pick up on and suggest changes.

I stand by my ideas on how weapons would work in line with a bit of logic and the rest. Feel free to come back and suggest changes

AdmV

[Cannon_Fodder]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

Go get a clue and then come back.

You may be right about the CO fleet thing, as Gate demonstated. But this language wasn't called for, especially considering it wasn't long ago that you made poor threads.

[The Real Arfy]

I read this thread around two days ago but I didn't reply. I've quickly skim read it again but I'm not entirely clear what the main arguments are etc.

BUT! I recall somebody saying that the fleet compositions are too generic with this engine. While I agree, I think thats because everybody takes the "obvious" option, for example last round so many people were thinking in terms of "only send one ship class on an attack". Many overlooked the possibilities of a Spider+Recluse combo, Xan FI+CO and so on.

The problem I find with multi targetting is that quite often, it requires alot more of your ships to go and kill your target. Otherwise the roids are just too costly, which either causes bashing or stagnation, usually both. There is always going to be one ship better than another, which everybody will build en-masse.

Finally I also enjoy the constant changing of stats between rounds. Otherwise it just gets boring. Statistics are hard enough to balance with this engine, think how hard/impossible it would be to get right in one round with multiple targetting.

AdmV0rl0n: It was a nice first post I must say and I like your ideas and the thought you put in. Keep it up mate.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Generally speaking.. the stats are mainly, with a few exceptions, akin to ships that fight small, or small to medium, or medium to large. You could tweak things so that the secondary fire really only caused collatoral damage, but even so it would bring in some element of surprise in battles. Or you could go the other way and make the Kill class very efficient. I still see that people would have inate weaknesses in their fleet composition, and that alliances could still form up and hit targets that have clear achillies heels.

Even were you to say, no, we want to keep the fleet mechanics simple, so be it, but I think you need some form of modifyer or 'chance' thrown into battles.
Right now... its calc n shoot.

And I still maintain people look at stats and mainly follow a basic logic like I'm a Zik and I have to build a huge bunch of CO as its one of the only ways to actually even exist. I'd like all races to have fleets that mean the variety makes the game much more of a risky, variable affair.

As it stands, you could probably eliminate half the current ships as when applied to their race they *are* pointless. I doubt my stats would give people the one ship is better than another, as it would require weeks of play to work it out. Unlike now where some people have twigged the answer on day 1...

[AdmV0rl0n]

also...
what about a race called the Xeno?
They could mimic other races ships at build time, albeit at a cost, or maybe performance penalty..or similar

[Ultimate Newbie]

Gee - away for three days or so and come back to find a flamewar in strategy!!

Whilst i dont have enough time to reply right away, AdmVorlon, i will seriously have a look at your proposal. Perhaps on the weekend there will be time...

[AdmV0rl0n]

Dear Ultimate Newbie, and everyone,

Please bear in mind the nature of the rough outline and there may well be things in there that need changing. I'm not suggesting any of this is 'finished'.

Perhaps, I need to extend the logical thinking to the ship build. For example, perhaps the vessels that are escort vesels - designed to tackle FI and CO, would have very low armour scores. The fact somewhere in there should be all races are at war, and resources are at a premium. Therefore, the ship designes would be highly focused on their strengths. Perhaps the Xan could continue to be numerous, but pay a price in the ship designs for going down that strategy? (Low armour? Light weapons?)

I've said I would like to see something in the game that meant being large caused a headache. If I remember in older rounds, ships required Eonium for travel, and perhaps this could be considered, rathar than implementing anything more convoluted.

In battle, as well as having a plausable net cost, in fuel, ammo, food, resources of all kinds, you'd also technially find ammo dumps, supply depos, or similar. I'd like to see perhaps a salvage theory considered for battles, where the DEF side still get the bulk salvage, but where perhaps the attackers, by luck, chance, or otherwise also sometimes pick up some res, loot, booty. Maybe even sometimes a lot of it.

What if each planet had a new resource called, 'treasure'. Each tick, a world, people, or whatever, gains some treasure. Maybe treasure could actually be something totally tradeable between all worlds, even non allied worlds. You could trade treasure for one of the other three resources, but you can't trade the three back to treasure. Now, I'm just early in the thinking stuff up stage here, but bear with me. If you got say 0.5% output of your mining resulted in the treasure, larger planest would get more treasure.
And initially, this would seem to give them a lot of resource.
*BUT*, what if treasure was the wildcard in battles? Something where if you attacked a planet, you might, and this would be a variable, find, steal, loot, raid, treasure? And this variable could be from 5% to 75% of the planets treasure? (thats obviously a wild guess, and is clearly open to changes if you have ideas).
And what if the treasure was still plausable even if you lost an attack fleet? It might encourage rainding on the larger planets in the universe, something that is deeply missing from the game as it stands. Could treasure, or something like treasure be a motivating factor in bringing down the big boys, and the bigger they get the more worthwhile it is to hit them?
Taking this one step further, what if chips and classes and the technology behind them were part of a global market, where trading in such 'goods' could only be done via treasure+research+construction, and maybe, in such a way that even the largest planet could not complete every level? This might mean people had to pick directions for their empire that affect them through the game? Perhaps some races would not have access to areas unless they traded with someone for it, and perhaps this would *have* to be done outside of GAL/Cluster/Alliance and RACE, thus adding a new onus on making deals and co-operating and communication in the game for success. In essense you'd maybe have an interesting arms race going on between races, players, alliances, clusters and galaxies.

Someone said they felt that having multiple targets for ships would equate to a less attacking game. I feel that to some degree they have a point. But I also feel that you could look at the ships I have built, adjust them and still have achillies heels therein to the point where they are fairly single minded, yet slightly more adaptable than the current ship designs. Looking roghly at my stats, I'd say you might build a fleet that can handle FI and CO , or perhaps FR/DE/CR, OR DE/CR/BS, but you'd still be hard pressed to cover every angle.

So, looking at this a little more, if the problem is that we're having ships that are TOO versatile, I'll offer a fix. You won't like it though ;P as my fix is like this:-

Currently the game has these classes:
FI
CO
FR
DE
CR
BS
Pod

And the ship stats I gave you meant that ships might cope with three of these, thus you can in theory cover too many bases and this leads to a static game. Right? OK, so you extnd the classes, and tweak the ship stats.

LIghtFIghter
FI
FIghterBOmber
MIningCOrvette
LIghtCOrvette
MEdiumCOrvette
HEavyCOrvette

(The reason for the targetting on such vessels being finite - would be that a Light Fighter, or a Heavy corvette for example would simply travel differently, and have wholly differing levels of agility, thus meaning you'd need differing targetting or weapons systems to cope.)

LIghtFRigate
MEdiumFRigate
HEavyFRigate

You could apply the same to DE, CR, BS, and extend to have Battle Cruisers, Scouts, Patrol Vessels, Assault Landing ships, or Landing Ship Logistics (perhaps to go after structures)
and FIghter CArriers, MIneSWeepers could all be new classes.

I've also realised now, that most fleets from a logical fleet need auxillury supply vessels. I suppose the bigger a fleet you tried to launch, the larger the number of auxillury vessels might be needed to supply it, so therefore, perhaps an auxillury set of vessels / merchants for treasure might be plausable, thus providing that extra factor when people grow large.

So, now we have widened what ships might be able to kill, we have also widened the number of classes, which should open up the possible theory that even if you are a large planet with lots of resources, you might get attacked by small focused strikes from determined players. Would this change make people feel like the game would have enough open-ness to encourage an attacking game? especially if there was some juicy treasure + roids on hand?

I personally would hope that something like the above would take us away from, "I'm a zik so I merely build X class and just go round raping Terrans" (yawn).

By the way.. I held the special Eonium roid for quite some time in this round. I think those roids are an interesting idea, but it seems they are not very interesting in their current guise - do they need to be a bit more worthwhile?
how about more of them? why do we only have one of each? could'nt a new one be found by players every50 or 100 ticks (or similar?)

AdmV

[stubbsy]

Originally Posted by tombcfc

i agree i think the whole system needs a new look, its just a case of calc it up and send , theres no real stategy anymore,

well, no, it's not really is it?
there's still opportunity for fakes, and the stratergy is in creating a calc that give you most roid count with minimul losses (max steal)
to suggest that there's no stratergy is silly, it's just a little simple

AdmV0rl0n i hate the idea of random things affecting ships. if you want random, stop thinking so much about PA and go outside, a bird may or may not shit on you, perhaps that will excite you.

I like the idea of ships multitargeting, but it seems (or at least this is how i've read it) that the player will have some choice over which class his ships target. This is pointless, you're going to need some sort of fixed system, otherwise it'll just be a case of the biggest zik landing on everyone seeing as no one would know what ships their targets could kill... [but as i said, i might have misinterpreted that]

edit
more golden roids ftw!

anyway

[AdmV0rl0n]

Hi Stubbsy:

Random or good/bad luck can happen, thats life. Chaos theory and what can go wrong might.

About the ships, look, you could have more ships but with laid out details, or you could have a tech tree that gives you a new vessel, but the vessel is not dynamic, it would come out with a PRI and SEC target, or you could combine it in some interesting way. I don't mind so long as we get more ships/variety.

Some people have said this would be hard for the beginner. But if limited ships are available in the start of their game, why is this hard ? That kinda logic is loopy, as you'd never dare have a construction or tech tree in case it confuzzled people. Besides, tech trees, constructions add an item of interest inside the game, same as extra ships would.

I'd actually advocate having a tree /construct/ ship system that was actually in-completeable. Thus by the end of round, no one could have completed the full tree available to them. Thus again players would all have variety, but would go down different routes, and it would mean each player had a variable and differing game from one another...

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

Each class should have hulls / designs that cater for more than one target class. Thus you might have one race that has FI ships that depending what you choose to build, can hit different targets.

Ok, a moment of clarification here. Do you mean that your race (eg, Xan) has Two Fighters. You are then able to choose two of the possible four (for example) pre-set Fighters? Or, you have Two Xan fighters without any choice in them at all (as per the current setup), or you have Two Xan fighters which you are then able to customise (via choosing your own targeting, which is then made permanent, ie T1=CO, T2=FR) ?

In addition, in the tech tree, each race should be able to research PART of their enemies technology ... Does'nt have to be the whole range of enemy ships, maybe just one.

This was tried in the past - iirc R15? - whereby each race had a Stealer ship (and afaik an EMP ship too?). It was a good concept, but the particular stats failed due to certain abuses (namely, Caths stealing more Sentinels than Xans owned, preventing Xans from touching Caths all round). Just because each race is strongly specialised (ie, all cloaked, EMP, steal, armour) doesnt make them boring, it means that you pick a strength that suits your playing style, and stick with it. Personally, i am more in favour of race specific researches (discussed elsewhere on this forum), however i wont dismiss this system out of hand.

I'd like to see a return of a resource stealing ship, even if its take was limited to small amounts/ratio against planet size. If some sort of scout ship was available to all in the Covert Ops option - and was built in mind of letting small players steal from larger ones. The amounts might be token to larger planets but useful to smaller ones.

Stealing resources (ie, Cargoships) is fun, and i'd like to see them come back. There are already threads on this (most recently, Furball's iirc). As for the Covert Op - that function already exists in the forum of Resource Hacking iirc.

Lastly, currently, battles are staid, with Ziks hogging their CO and the CAT hard landing on people(and the rest). We need something thrown in the mix which mean that not all battles just end up in some forlorn battle calc number crunching game.

Races will always play to their strengths. Whilst i would imagine that Ziks are using far more CR than CO (at least, i am ), that is beside the point. Regardless of what setup of stats, whether they be targeting/init/armour/firepower/class/etc , battle calculators will be able to emulate their stats. Indeed, in R10 when both the combat engine and the ship stats were kept hidden, in fairly short order a working set of stats were reverse engineered which was typcially very accurate.

Quite frankly, being able to calculate a battle accurately is not a bad thing - people are going to do it anyway, and besides having imperfect information in the form of inaccurate scans is prolly a much better way to go about this.

Part of fleets getting lost in witch space, spacial anomolies causing early or late arrival, something akin to a dice that gets thrown, causing an amount of uncertainty in battles. This percentage could be reasonably low so as not to throw the game totally for six, but enough that a level of uncertainty crops up from time to time.

There has been much discussion on 'random events' in PA. There is a particular thread that escapes me atm, however there were a number of themes; Random events that were Quest-like, where players had a number of choices to respond to the situation with 'success' resulting in a small resource(et al) reward; Random Events that just occur and displayed in your news which you have no control over at all, such as finding a free floating init roid, or one blowing up in an accident with the overall impact throughout the round being no overall effect; and a few others. Have a read of that thread and/or post your suggestions for new random events in a seperate thread so it can be discussed more easily please.

Large fleets should have some form of large running cost or maintenance or fueling - causing some headaches and occasional uncertainty. If you are above a certain size, how about a small percentage of ships being lost/left for salvage (lets say 1% or something) above the norm.

Maintenence and Fuel have been common threads of discussion, again start a new thread regarding the natural limiting of large players. Presently, the XP system is designed to help small players catch up rather than large planets slow down, which is perhaps a more "positive" solution to the same issue - disparity between the top and bottom planets.

Also make the Terrans more Lightweight, but give them cheap Suicide ships next time round as their speciality.

Why? What is wrong with them now? What would this suggestion give to the game? what would it achieve? Also, search for Noah02's (i think) thread on suicide ships - i think its still around.

Also, how about Ambushes on inbound or outbound fleets? Perhaps each race could have an expensive ambush vessel that strikes vessels in transit causing damage, roid losses (small ones), accidents, confusion, late arrivals, or a small reduction in Init, Armour, or firepower on arrival.

Roids are never inbound to a planet - they are either at your planet or at your enemy's planet, never in transit - thus they cant be 'ambushed'. Additionally, battle has traditionally taken place at people's planets, because its not considered how a fleet actually moves between planets - ie, does a fleet from 1:1:1 moving to 2:2:2 fly past 2:2:1 before reaching there? or what? How would you intercept a fleet?

Having said all that, i do like the idea of moving battle away from above planet only. I made a suggestion along the lines of Interception somewhere, but i cant remember where (or when :\).

Additionally, DO NOT EVER STUFF WITH THE INITIATIVE (or armour, firepower, resource cost or any other combat attribute of ships) - because it stuff up with the concept of balance in the ship stats. Good ship stats can be made or broken by a change of even 1 initiative level of 1 type of ship. Believe me when i say this, as its happened before.

Something is required so that planets in the top100 don't become unreachable.

Unreachable by whom? those not in the top 100? or by anyone at all? Usually, top 100 planets are hard to attack not because of their personal planet, but more because of the inherrent support of others in the form of alliances - well connected players will successfully attack more (thus more roids, XP), be sucessfully defended more (thus less losses of ships, roids, value), and have greater access to scanning technology/amps etc. Otherwise, they wouldnt be in the top 100. Thus, i am not so sure that there is anything wrong with being in the top 100, rather trying to get there should be encouraged, rather than trying to pull the top 100 down (see; XP).

So.. I'm going to be bold. How about adding the facility to Clusters so that Clusters have similar capability as Alliances - funds, messages, and similar?

This is another contentious issue - i think Kal has just started up another discussion regarding the role of Clusters somewhere, but additionally there is discussion regarding the addition of a fourth "in-galaxy only" fleetslot, in order to promote in-galaxy harmony. this concept i support, but players who plan ahead know the importance of galaxies. Sometimes, the largest benefit can be made by galaxymates by nothing except reporting incoming to a player's allaince when they are offline - you just cant do that at the cluster level, as there are too many players there.

The issues surrounding 'Farming' and 'XP' are a pain.

How so? Just make sure that you dont have the support or go-ahead of your target when you attack/defend etc them, and you are almost certainly to be ok. Collusion is bad .

There needs to be an in game set of possible ways to simply trade. How about trading vessels that could carry res or roids or maybe ships between planets.

I thought you just said that farming was a pain? Did you just mean the rules regarding farming, or the concept of farming (unfair gain) itself? Imagine the situation where players could trade resources between eachother in the universe - alliances would donate large sums of cash to certain players in order to get them to win the round or whatever. This has happened in the past, namely R3 and R4 iirc. It hasnt been seen since because it is generally accepted as a bad thing. Trading ships is generally discouraged too, because otherwise players could attain the "ideal fleet" which defeats the purpose of choosing a race entirely.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Hi, You wrote in ****

**Ultimate Newbie - Ok, a moment of clarification here. Do you mean that your race (eg, Xan) has Two Fighters. You are then able to choose two of the possible four (for example) pre-set Fighters? Or, you have Two Xan fighters without any choice in them at all (as per the current setup), or you have Two Xan fighters which you are then able to customise (via choosing your own targeting, which is then made permanent, ie T1=CO, T2=FR) ?**

I think either of the above could work. You could also perhaps have it based on a number of hulls available. So for example, if you chose three FI types, you lose a DE/CR/BS/CO/CR hull I think that somewhere in the above could be a system that at least could be tried out, and if its horrible could be tossed away

**This was tried in the past - iirc R15? - whereby each race had a Stealer ship (and afaik an EMP ship too?). It was a good concept, but the particular stats failed due to certain abuses (namely, Caths stealing more Sentinels than Xans owned, preventing Xans from touching Caths all round). Just because each race is strongly specialised (ie, all cloaked, EMP, steal, armour) doesnt make them boring, it means that you pick a strength that suits your playing style, and stick with it. Personally, i am more in favour of race specific researches (discussed elsewhere on this forum), however i wont dismiss this system out of hand.**

The way I look at it, the stolen ship tech is with a backdrop of a lot of choice shipwise, so - one would hope you'd not actually end up with the senario you've described above. I feel that senario came from the limitation in options in the first place. To do that job, why were only sentinels the only possible route

**Stealing resources (ie, Cargoships) is fun, and i'd like to see them come back. There are already threads on this (most recently, Furball's iirc). As for the Covert Op - that function already exists in the forum of Resource Hacking iirc.**

maybe the cargo ships idera could be embellished somehow. And don't forget treasure !

**Races will always play to their strengths. Whilst i would imagine that Ziks are using far more CR than CO (at least, i am ), that is beside the point. Regardless of what setup of stats, whether they be targeting/init/armour/firepower/class/etc , battle calculators will be able to emulate their stats. Indeed, in R10 when both the combat engine and the ship stats were kept hidden, in fairly short order a working set of stats were reverse engineered which was typcially very accurate.**

What I advocate is not so much equalising each race. Its just to broadedn the strategies and game. I'm not against battle calcs, I just think some luck, and wider apability with fleets would make the game fun.

**Quite frankly, being able to calculate a battle accurately is not a bad thing - people are going to do it anyway, and besides having imperfect information in the form of inaccurate scans is prolly a much better way to go about this.**

I think having such wide capability would make the game more open and attacking, but maybe I am wrong.

**There has been much discussion on 'random events' in PA. There is a particular thread that escapes me atm, however there were a number of themes; Random events that were Quest-like, where players had a number of choices to respond to the situation with 'success' resulting in a small resource(et al) reward; Random Events that just occur and displayed in your news which you have no control over at all, such as finding a free floating init roid, or one blowing up in an accident with the overall impact throughout the round being no overall effect; and a few others. Have a read of that thread and/or post your suggestions for new random events in a seperate thread so it can be discussed more easily please.**

Sounds good.

*Maintenence and Fuel have been common threads of discussion, again start a new thread regarding the natural limiting of large players. Presently, the XP system is designed to help small players catch up rather than large planets slow down, which is perhaps a more "positive" solution to the same issue - disparity between the top and bottom planets.*

Fair nuff.

**Why? What is wrong with them now (Terrans)? What would this suggestion give to the game? what would it achieve? Also, search for Noah02's (i think) thread on suicide ships - i think its still around.**

Nothing is wrong with them, per se, in fact its not so much that anything is actually wrong. I guess I'm just trying to add ideas to what some people would see as ok already. Other races have a special capability, I don't see why terrans should'nt join in the fun

**Roids are never inbound to a planet - they are either at your planet or at your enemy's planet, never in transit - thus they cant be 'ambushed'. Additionally, battle has traditionally taken place at people's planets, because its not considered how a fleet actually moves between planets - ie, does a fleet from 1:1:1 moving to 2:2:2 fly past 2:2:1 before reaching there? or what? How would you intercept a fleet?**

Although the ships don't pass planets, I guess the transit system is done via ETA. Therefore, I guess the ambush idea would have to go that route, although I do confess to not quite knowing how that might work. How about a wave that could be aimed at an inbound or outbound fleet enemy or even friendly fleet that would screw up their navigation and cost them an ETA or reduce their fleets by a *lucky* or unlucky variable? That would enable crazy stuff like fleet catching, counter raids, or distruption of attacks, or even perhaps save you from a calamity (I know, this is very lose and rough, and probably has bad ideas...)

**Having said all that, i do like the idea of moving battle away from above planet only. I made a suggestion along the lines of Interception somewhere, but i cant remember where (or when :\).**

Fair nuff

**Additionally, DO NOT EVER STUFF WITH THE INITIATIVE (or armour, firepower, resource cost or any other combat attribute of ships) - because it stuff up with the concept of balance in the ship stats. Good ship stats can be made or broken by a change of even 1 initiative level of 1 type of ship. Believe me when i say this, as its happened before.*

My ship stats are suggestive only, and certainly not finalised. I think you'd have to run battles through some simulationm/beta given the size of suggested changes .. At least we'd all be in the unknown. Besides, maybe variable inits could be a nasty surprise sometimes :P

**Unreachable by whom? those not in the top 100? or by anyone at all? Usually, top 100 planets are hard to attack not because of their personal planet, but more because of the inherrent support of others in the form of alliances - well connected players will successfully attack more (thus more roids, XP), be sucessfully defended more (thus less losses of ships, roids, value), and have greater access to scanning technology/amps etc. Otherwise, they wouldnt be in the top 100. Thus, i am not so sure that there is anything wrong with being in the top 100, rather trying to get there should be encouraged, rather than trying to pull the top 100 down (see; XP).**

Lemme put this another way. No matter your ties, alliances and friends, the weight of the whole game should be to make it very very tough to be No1, and stay No1. Go look at the No1 planet right now. If that means that the game becomes more cut throat and desperate at alliance levels, cluster, and gal level - GOOD. No one said this was easy? Right?

**This is another contentious issue - i think Kal has just started up another discussion regarding the role of Clusters somewhere, but additionally there is discussion regarding the addition of a fourth "in-galaxy only" fleetslot, in order to promote in-galaxy harmony. this concept i support, but players who plan ahead know the importance of galaxies. Sometimes, the largest benefit can be made by galaxymates by nothing except reporting incoming to a player's allaince when they are offline - you just cant do that at the cluster level, as there are too many players there.**

Much of the above sounds like good stuff. I found in this round that people tended to go Alliance first, then Gal... often a distant second. That has changed as the ETAs have come down, simply because frankly, quite often at that situation only GAL mates can help. Clusters seem to have died altogether. I have met people who claim thats not the case. Would be interesting to see wether people have a view on that more globally.

**How so? Just make sure that you dont have the support or go-ahead of your target when you attack/defend etc them, and you are almost certainly to be ok. Collusion is bad .**

Occasionally I get puzzled by this. Collusion seems to only be bad when someone finds a new way to collude. Yet, collusion is allowed and goes on all over the game, in gal, in alliances. I've seen gals be taken for a ride by alliances who gain the GC / officer roles, Gal money pumped into Alliances.
I think there should be a way of trading - with some limits, between planet to planet. Planet to gal. Gal to planet. Player to alliance. Alliance to player. Scanners are another form of collusion if you like, so, well, I'm not sure I can agree on your collusion is bad stance. I would even go so far as to say that farming should be allowed, BUT, that the current methods of picking out cheats could be amended.. so that for example, all alliances get notified when a planet is found to be committing farming, or some form of intelligence becomes globally known. You can then all the game to decide if they will allow that or wether a competing alliance might go raiding on such targets. Thats probably a little too loose an idea and needs more thought. 'Farming' is the thing I know people get steamed up about, so I'll add that I agree, there would have to be some limitation to cover gaining massive advantage from it.
if it was a level playing field, then its more difficult for anyone to claim that they are at undue disadvantage..

Or... maybe, you could choose to go 'Farming' instead of vacation. While in 'farm mode', you could be attacked, smashed, hammered, but your res is fed into the alliance fund, or something.

**I thought you just said that farming was a pain? Did you just mean the rules regarding farming, or the concept of farming (unfair gain) itself? Imagine the situation where players could trade resources between eachother in the universe - alliances would donate large sums of cash to certain players in order to get them to win the round or whatever. This has happened in the past, namely R3 and R4 iirc. It hasnt been seen since because it is generally accepted as a bad thing. Trading ships is generally discouraged too, because otherwise players could attain the "ideal fleet" which defeats the purpose of choosing a race entirely.[/quote]*

No, I'm not against additional trading in game, I actually think player to player trades, perhaps with some limitations would be a great addition to gal/alliance trading. You could add that such trades can only happen between non allied players, non gal members, so that its totally seperate from Gal/Alliance use.
I think the one thing that peeved me was the XP whoring thing. If people wanna burn their fleets and whore XP but to do that they have fleets out, and are burning ETA, so what, that to me is swings and roundabouts, and as you said, to bring in XP so people could try new ideas, and push for a higher score, then to hammer them for actually going all out to use the system seemed illogical. It would seem to me that that could have been handled by tweaking something. ie - if attack + def fleets = same source reduce XP by 2 or something. I think balance rather than cheating was the issue there.

[AdmV0rl0n]

As you can donate funds to a gal.. how about being able to init roids for a gal?

The roids could be stolent by raiders. Any successful raids on gal mean you lose some gal roids. If you def the gal - you keep more roids.

The roid initing process would be similar to the players, the more roids your gal has, the more costly it is to init new roids.

Perhaps this can be another reason for gals to work together and def each other.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

Perhaps, I need to extend the logical thinking to the ship build. For example, perhaps the vessels that are escort vesels - designed to tackle FI and CO, would have very low armour scores. The fact somewhere in there should be all races are at war, and resources are at a premium. Therefore, the ship designes would be highly focused on their strengths. Perhaps the Xan could continue to be numerous, but pay a price in the ship designs for going down that strategy? (Low armour? Light weapons?)

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. Xans are numerous only because they are cheap - they are effective on a resource to resource level, but totally useless on a 1ship:1ship ratio with any other race. If you made Xan ships cost the same as Terran ships, and increased their weapons/armour stats to match their current levels, then there would be virtually no difference between them. In this game, absolute cost has less importance than relative cost - ie, resource effectiveness in armour and damage.

Escort vessels need not be anti FI nor CO. If you are sending BA classed fleets, then no FI/CO ships actually target you - thus, you do not need ships to escort your battleships against those classes. If you are talking escort ships in general - ie, Types in the same Class as your Pods that fire on Defenders, then yes there is a need for them almost always.

I've said I would like to see something in the game that meant being large caused a headache. If I remember in older rounds, ships required Eonium for travel, and perhaps this could be considered, rathar than implementing anything more convoluted.

Why? i thought the point was to reach the top, and that competitors from all around you make it challenging.

It might encourage rainding on the larger planets in the universe, something that is deeply missing from the game as it stands.

Fleet is primary for virtually all planets. Fleet is more important than roids, more important than value or score. Killing your fleet in order to collect Treasure i wouldnt imagine would be a very practical course of action, i would imagine.

Additionally, since the advent of XP, there is now a much, much larger incentive for players to attack those who are at least equal in value as you are, and commonly more. If you want to promote attackinig of large planets, then i would imagine that the easiest way to do this would be to increase the XP gain from attacking players x% larger than you.

Taking this one step further, what if chips and classes and the technology behind them were part of a global market,

Whilst some people, like Appocomaster, like things similar to this suggestion, i cant say that i am a fan. Mainly because it will result in the "ideal fleet" as optimal ships are traded for less optimal ships (or rather, a less-than-useful ship for one race would be ideal for another, and vice versa. Trade in both of these ships would be very damaging to balance in the ships stats, and as such a very bad idea imo).

but you'd still be hard pressed to cover every angle.

Presently, attacking is made far more viable than normal as typcially races have vulnerability against one or two classes of enemy ships - thus they get raided by those ships repeatedly, as they exploit weakenesses in the targeting spectrum of the enemy. If more types of ship are firing on more classes, that single weakness could still receive fire from more directions, making it less efficient to attack - more losses increases the cost of attacking which makes attacking less viable which results in less battle which leads to more ships protecting fewer roids leading to stagnation, which is bad.

If you really want to go to 2 targets, you would prolly need ~10 classes of ship (you might get away with 8). For example, Drone, Fighter, Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battlecruiser, Battleship. Having 60 variations on the single class of Corvette would get confusing, i think...

(The reason for the targetting on such vessels being finite - would be that a Light Fighter, or a Heavy corvette for example would simply travel differently, and have wholly differing levels of agility, thus meaning you'd need differing targetting or weapons systems to cope.)

Weaponspeed and Agility were removed from the ship stats in order to make them more simple, easier to understand, **far** easier to make and balance, and so on. Additionally, it might just be easier to say that T2 is only firing at eg 75% power (all the time) rather than doing a complex WPSP/Agility calculation for every weapon fired on every type of ship at every initiative level in every battle.

I've also realised now, that most fleets from a logical fleet need auxillury supply vessels. I suppose the bigger a fleet you tried to launch, the larger the number of auxillury vessels might be needed to supply it, so therefore, perhaps an auxillury set of vessels / merchants for treasure might be plausable, thus providing that extra factor when people grow large.

Actually, i think you'll find that logistics is more the other way around - logistical units required to maintain a force increase at a decreasing rate, becoming proportionally smaller as the size of the force increases. In that regard, i'm not really sure if its a great idea.

So, now we have widened what ships might be able to kill, we have also widened the number of classes, which should open up the possible theory that even if you are a large planet with lots of resources, you might get attacked by small focused strikes from determined players. Would this change make people feel like the game would have enough open-ness to encourage an attacking game? especially if there was some juicy treasure + roids on hand?

So you've added a whole layer of complexity in order to get back to where we are now. I'm not sure that's a huge improvement, but having said that, i would like to see a 8-10 class/14-16 ships per race stats simply because it might permit players to have really viable high class and low class pod fleets that they could use interchangeably, unlike now where there is a strong bias towards one over the other which is perhaps due to targeting being too restricted.

By the way.. I held the special Eonium roid for quite some time in this round. I think those roids are an interesting idea, but it seems they are not very interesting in their current guise - do they need to be a bit more worthwhile?
how about more of them? why do we only have one of each? could'nt a new one be found by players every50 or 100 ticks (or similar?)

Any clever ideas regarding an expansion of Special Roids would, imo, be interesting to read - perhaps a new thread mate... .

[AdmV0rl0n]

I hate NEW threads :P

ROIDS ROIDS ROIDS.

OK - so, couple of ideas on roids.

You currently have normal roids in three classes.
E
M
C

You also have three special roids. Again, mirroring the classes.
E
M
C

How about special roids that give you XP, or score, or SHIPS !
Imagine a roid that gave you FI, or CO, or DE, or whatever per tick. That would be worth having... right ?
What about giant roids that allow you to break off new roids - Baby roids !

if these were to give you say... one E, one M, one C roid per tick, they would be prized assets.