skdiw wrote:
I think you forgot the macro-game: military suppose to beat up growth players so enemies should be able to blockade an econ player and beat him.
Blockade should be simple like if significant enemy ships are in the system, there will be no trade in or out of the system. Incrementalling decrease the amount of trade each turn is fine, but I wouldn't get too fancy any further like with techs. Anybody can make the counterarguement just as easy. I could say I have advanced cloak detector so I can see your cloak trade ships. Or, I can say, I can make my blockade deadly by transporting nukes to your trade ships.
I think you guys are making the issue way too difficult and spend way too much energy on insignificant minor details. Remember this is a 4X game, not simPirates.
I didn't forget the macro-game.
In what way does having a good blockade model impinge on the macro-game?
In what way does having to have a significant fleet (rather than one frigate with no shields and a laser cannon) to blockade a major Core World make the macro-game worse?
In what way does having superior technology improve the effectiveness of your economic and military tactics make the macro-game worse? If you have cloaking technology, pinnacle engine tech, etc, why would having Fred Flintstone's Fleet in your system affect you in any way? Technology should improve *all* use of the military, not just combat.
These are all *good* things.
As for tech affecting blockades, I mainly see the tech side of the blockading as being something that you get
alongside other benefits. Got stealth tech? Then you can run blockades better, as well as building cloaked cruisers. Got good scanners and engines? Then you're better at levelling a blockade, as well as knowing where the enemy fleet is and your ships are more maneuvrable. (I assume that transporting to shielded ships will be banned for balance reasons, just like in Star Trek). I suppose if we're running short on applications we could make the blockade modifiers into applications in their own right, but at the moment I wouldn't recommend it; it's a bit over-specialised, and breaks the "internal trade is automatic" model.
Seriously, as long as everything is intuitive to the player and doesn't require additional UI to manage the system, it's all good. I think it's fine to have complex mechanics behind the scene to make tactics that *should* work into tactics that *do* work. We're designing a computer game, not a board game, so we can have systems that involve formulae and record keeping without reducing the quality of game play at all.
There's more to winning a war than fleet numbers and quality. Too many 4X games neglect this.