Spacecraft Propulsion

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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noelte
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#46 Post by noelte »

utilae wrote:Basically you would go to the refit screen. You would have the option of a detailed custom refit or auto refit. If you choose auto refit, you set the slider to low, so 1 turn refit, low cost. The AI then determines the best way to refit your ship in 1 turn and at low cost.
Ah, nice idea. I would have a blueprint of a new design and can define how a ship i choose is updated (quick and expensive or slow and cheap). But there's a option missing: how long will a refit last (if it can't be done within one turn). Will it go on until i reach the blueprint, until i move the ship, just one turn?
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yaromir
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#47 Post by yaromir »

You might want to not spend money upgrading and save that money for something else.
Well you'd still have to allocate resources at the "construction" screne. That's the way HOI2 handles it.

It's not like you'd flag a ship for upgrade and then it comes into port and starts sucking up hammers/minerals like a hoover.

So you would do both: Mark a ship as "available for upgrade"
If there is resources allocated to upgrading, it will be upgraded when it stops at a dock.

You you really want to go crazy, I don't, but...

You could have several upgrade flags on each ship:
Upgrade Weapons
Upgrade Engines
Upgrade Shields
...
...
etc
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Impaler
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#48 Post by Impaler »

Rather the tags which will cause the game AI to perform upgrades perhaps a simpler passive tag that the player puts on their fleets/taskforces/ships and is simply their to remind the player, kind of a quick mental note kind of thing "That ship needs an upgrade". Lots of times I know I need to do something but I cant do it right away and I dont want to forget about it as I do other tasks. Once I do send the ship to a get its upgrade the tag could be automaticaly removed. Tags could be added to whole groups of ships, say for example taging all the older model "Mk1 Scorpion Missle Frigates" for upgrading from a central galactic fleet manager screen. When I am on the galaxy map I can have the User interface highlight all tags of a particular type when I want. Other tags might include...

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utilae
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#49 Post by utilae »

I don't think tags would be necesary. I usually want to refit the ship 'now', not put a tag 'now' to refit later.
noelte wrote: Ah, nice idea. I would have a blueprint of a new design and can define how a ship i choose is updated (quick and expensive or slow and cheap). But there's a option missing: how long will a refit last (if it can't be done within one turn). Will it go on until i reach the blueprint, until i move the ship, just one turn?
Note that my idea of auto refit (eg choose to refit in 1 turn) would not involve any new design or blueprint for the ship to be refitted to. A custom refit would refit to the new design or blueprint. My auto refit idea would refit the ship according to it's current design. If you say you want to refit this ship in 1 turn (this does not mean I am rushing production, I am just allowing limited work, therefore it is cheaper then 2 turns of refit) then the AI will try to improve the ship as much as possible according to the time frame of 1 turn. The AI will not change the design. If you have 5Xlaser cannon, the AI will make it 6Xlaser cannon or 3Xlaser cannon2. The AI will not swap 5xlaser cannon for 2Xbombs, since that is changing the design. So, yeah, this auto refit idea does not involve having a new ship design. It's a tool to improve existing designs. A custom refit would be used for much more dramatic changes.

Kharagh
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#50 Post by Kharagh »

That's an auto refit I could live with very well. If it doesn't change the main design of the ship it will be a valuable option later in the game, when the number of ships gets too high

Carbon Copy Man
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#51 Post by Carbon Copy Man »

Yeah... but what about the engines? You'd have the almost-compulsory task of going through your entire fleet (your mobile fleet) and upgrading every single ship one-by-one. It just seems like it would be a really laborious chore just so you can see any benefit from your new engine technology.

Magus
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#52 Post by Magus »

I think you overstate the importance of upgrading engines.

In MoO 1, I would usually start fighting real wars around the time I got Sub-Light Drives (3 Parsecs/Turn). When I got Fusion (Warp 4) or Impulse (Warp 5) Drives, I would rarely design new ships to take advantage of the drives, unless I was using Huge ships, or I needed a new ship design for some other reason (bigger weapons to take down planetary shields, new battleships to keep up with the enemies new designs/production efforts, etc.) By the time my old Sub-Light battleships were too slow to be realistically useful, they weren't useful anyway due to outdated technology in other realms. But while they were still viable combatants, though overshadowed by newer, faster ships, they still had a purpose. They could be used in a coordinated launch from a nearer star system so that both the old and new arrived simultaneously. If I had old and new at a system, the fleet could be split to a near and further system. Would it have been better if they old ones were faster? Sure. But it also would have been better if they all had Omega-V Bombs and Fusion beams rather than Neutron Blasters and Nuclear Bombs.

To sum up, ships with old engines can stay with old engines, its not going to cripple them or your fleet any more than the simple fact that they are old and decreasingly meaningful in combat.

Dreamer
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#53 Post by Dreamer »

All the more reason to have a good upgrade method. So you also don't have to go around with nuclear bombs ;-). If you want to put death-spores instead of nuclear, fine they have a different purpose, design a new ship. Else, upgrade both the design and currently existing ships. We were talking about this matter in this topic viewtopic.php?t=1070

orionzzz
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#54 Post by orionzzz »

suggestion...
how about 2 types of drives... a convetional drive all you mentioned earlier e.g. ion, nuclear, solar sail, impulse...

as well as a interstar travelling engine for long distances
e.g. FTL drives, warp drives, wormhole openers, dimensional folding device??, other subspace travel devices??

marhawkman
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#55 Post by marhawkman »

orionzzz wrote:suggestion...
how about 2 types of drives... a convetional drive all you mentioned earlier e.g. ion, nuclear, solar sail, impulse...

as well as a interstar travelling engine for long distances
e.g. FTL drives, warp drives, wormhole openers, dimensional folding device??, other subspace travel devices??
Currently there is no FTL travel at all in this game. Thus all travel is done using non-FTL drives. The only actual reason for having multiple drive types would be if we have one for in-combat and another for out-of-combat. Which seems unneccesary to me.
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utilae
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#56 Post by utilae »

There have been no decisions made at all regarding FTL drives. So there will likely be FTL drives in the game.

The two main types are:
Impulse = slower than light
FTL = faster than light

Within those you have travel methods, eg Stargates, Tugs, Pushers, Engines, etc.

marhawkman
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#57 Post by marhawkman »

utilae wrote:There have been no decisions made at all regarding FTL drives. So there will likely be FTL drives in the game.

The two main types are:
Impulse = slower than light
FTL = faster than light

Within those you have travel methods, eg Stargates, Tugs, Pushers, Engines, etc.
So in the future "Off road" travel might get implemented?
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tzlaine
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#58 Post by tzlaine »

marhawkman wrote:
utilae wrote:There have been no decisions made at all regarding FTL drives. So there will likely be FTL drives in the game.

The two main types are:
Impulse = slower than light
FTL = faster than light

Within those you have travel methods, eg Stargates, Tugs, Pushers, Engines, etc.
So in the future "Off road" travel might get implemented?
In the code, offroad travel was implemented when starlane travel was implemented. However, the design team have decided that offroad travel is out. As such, you'll probably only see offroad travel in FO in a post-1.0 mod (if ever).

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utilae
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#59 Post by utilae »

I see no reason why those types of travel can't be used for both starlanes and offroad.

Just cause we have starlanes does no mean off road will not be viable either. Moo3 made off road a bad way to go, so we don't want to repeat that mistake.

Maybe there could be travel methods for off road and starlanes. So one player could put on some off road tyres and they get good at going on off road. Another player puts on some skates and goes down the prepared concrete path (starlanes) and specialises in that terrain type.

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Geoff the Medio
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#60 Post by Geoff the Medio »

tzlaine wrote:In the code, offroad travel was implemented when starlane travel was implemented.
To clarify, the "offroad travel" that was implemented is a rather limited form thereof, which still required ships to move only on paths directly between systems. I would call this "highways and dirt roads travel", in that the "starlanes" are the highways on which you move fast, and the dirt roads are the paths between systems that don't have a starlane, on which you move slow. You can't really figuratively go off the road and through the woods though, since you can't move freely anywhere in the galaxy, stop, turn sideways and move around in spiral-shapes or the like in what I consider to be true "offroad travel".

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