Ship Building HOI style

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

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Zpock
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#136 Post by Zpock »

I guess you have a point here. Options to take pieces of the game out/in can be pretty good in certain cases. Like tactical combat in multiplayer. Variations on chess isn't common. I never heard of anything else then the playing with rules yourself wich usually ends up in broken game balance and a feeling of being pointless. Playing with/without time limit maybe, but that's not really a game rule IMO, it doesn't have anything to do with the game itself just how fast you play it. The other games you mentioned, I have played them I think but don't have any clear memories of them. I didn't mean to say one way was the only way, just that I prefer one of them.

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utilae
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#137 Post by utilae »

Geoff the Medio wrote: What's so great about being able to shoot from far away, or being able to shoot in a circle rather than a line, or having little drones attach to other people's ships? Those options are not, in of themselves strategically different.
Are you kidding? Don't you think a weapon that can hit a group of ships at once is strategically different to a laser weapon that can only target one ship at a time.

What if you had twleve ships and some drones attached to 2 of them. These drones then started shooting lasers at your other ships. How would you stop them. Do you risk damaging your own ships to get rid of them. Or is the a device that shuts down all AI operated devices that you could use.
Geoff the Medio wrote: There's no reason to pick one over the other, as things will need to be balanced so that the net benefit of any option is proportional to its cost, so they will all have X combat effectiveness for Y cost (unless there's some other differences you're not mentioning).
Once again you don't know what you are talking about. A drone (as an example) is very different from a standard laser. The way you use each of them is completely different. There is no better choice, since they are all so different, you can pick based on what strategy you want to use. Each weapon being so different is effectively usable throughout the game (just as Zerglings are still usable in the late game of StarCraft).
Geoff the Medio wrote: If things aren't so balanced, then everyone would always pick the best option. Whether it's an arbitrary choice with no consequences, or an obvious choice with no real alternatives, there's no "strategy" involved.
If the way the weapon works is very different, ie laser vs wave then that goes along way to balancing and avoiding the problem of having a weapon that is clearly better than another (happens in Moo2, 3 sigh).
Geoff the Medio wrote: By restricting the complexity to workable levels, and designing understandable patterns or rules into the system. Possible ways include using concepts like "damage type" (kinetic, energy, chemical, explosive...), that determines how much and what kind of damage will be done if a weapon hits, "delivery mechanism" (fighter, beam, missile, spray...) would determine range and how likely things are to hit, or "defence type" (armour X, armour Y, shielding Q, really fast ships that outrun anything).
Sure, this all logical and I see no reason why there shouldn't be counters, though they should not be rediculasley complex. Maybe the differences in weapons themselves are like counters, ie they are counters vs ships, each has there way of killing ships, each do it in a different way. I think it would be cool to have armor types and shield types. Though I think if your research armor upgrade/shield upgrade, then it should upgrade all types of armor/shield systems. The type of shield/armor is simply for counter purposes.

Hey, I can think of a good example of a countering system that is not very complex, even though there are like 16+ types: Pokemon.

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Geoff the Medio
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#138 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:Are you kidding? Don't you think a weapon that can hit a group of ships at once is strategically different to a laser weapon that can only target one ship at a time.
If a ship has more than one weapon and can shoot at more than one other ship at the same time anyway, then not at all. And even if it's only one target at at time for lasers, if the combat effectiveness is balanced, then no. Why would you pick one option or the other? That you can shoot at 12 at once instead of 1 at a time in of itself is not strategically different in of itself, if both options have the same result, which they would if things are balanced (which they should be) and there are no counters.
What if you had twleve ships and some drones attached to 2 of them. These drones then started shooting lasers at your other ships. How would you stop them. Do you risk damaging your own ships to get rid of them.
I can't say whether I'd shoot them or not, as I don't know the costs and benefits of doing so are when compared to ignoring them and shooting at the actual enemy ships instead. But whether you do or not doesn't really have any bearing on why this particular weapon should be chosen over another weapon. If things are balanced, the real combat effectiveness will be the same for drones or waves or lasers, so the weapons are effectively the same.
A drone (as an example) is very different from a standard laser. The way you use each of them is completely different. There is no better choice, since they are all so different, you can pick based on what strategy you want to use.
"The way you use them" is exactly the same: you shoot/launch/fire at something until you win or loose. The decision whether to shoot at your own ships to get rid of the drones is insignificant and purely tactical (assuming no countering), because the drones would have to be balanced so that all other weapons would have even chances against them. For each given other weapon that would either mean either shooting the drones or not, and would be well-known beforehard, meaning there isn't actually any real choice for the player here anyway; for each case, there is an obvious best choice (be it to shoot the drones or not).
Each weapon being so different is effectively usable throughout the game (just as Zerglings are still usable in the late game of StarCraft).
Zerglings are different and usable at the end because of the countering system of Stracraft, in which they fill a specific niche. For your system, you have just asserted that everything will be usable at the end, which cannot be proven or disproven by your belief that the weapons are different, though it would be supported by my belief that they are all the same...

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#139 Post by LithiumMongoose »

Ugh... my head hurts from following this thread... Anyrate, I don't know for sure what the best answer is. I *am* however strongly inclined to think *some* sort of countering system is in our best interests. Ideally I'd like to see most potential matchups of weapon types, armor types, shield types, and ship/engine types either be neutral, or favor one or the other with at most 40-50% biasing. There can/should be exceptions, obviously longer weapon range + faster ships = enemy screwed. But if you don't go overboard with the potency of the counters, then sticking with what you've got and what you already invested most of your research in (if you chose to specialize) is still a viable option. Besides, you're not always fighting just one enemy at a time. Something that doesn't work *as* well against one may work better against another. (And that includes space monsters I might add. :)

I'm basically with utilae on this, I think: different weapon types feels very intuitively to me like it will be a big contributor to a robust counter system. Beams that only shoot one thing at a time, for example, given that they have a non-negligible recharge time are not going to be as effective against larger numbers of smaller, weaker ships that collectively pack a lot of offense. Missiles pack more numerical damage per space used to equip them but can be neutralized in more ways so it's a gamble (I know I talked about this before somewhere). "Nova" type weapons should probably be the most deadly of all, like PBAE in DAoC, due to the difficulty in using them offensively (need to be able to get right on top of the enemy ships). They *can* help against missiles and fighters but presumably would have a long recharge time so aren't a perfect solution by themselves. Longer-range, heavier, bigger guns hit harder per shot but have a lower DPS than standard versions. Everything should also at least have different dmg numbers for vs armor and vs shields, and going "heavy armor, light if any shields" and "heavy shields, light if any armor" should be viable strategies in the tech tree as well as on the ships themselves. Obviously armor will need an advantage to balance out the regenerative properties of shields, and I would say more total HP or more total "absorption/deflection/negation" ability would be the way to do it. While I'm on the subject, make it so ships have inherently higher numerical negation ability than missiles and fighters, so point-defense remains one of the best counters to those weapons but is ineffective at leveraging its high DPS for close-quarters bombardment (enter the nova-type weapons for that purpose instead). Don't forget we also have the different hull types issue (metal, organic, crystalline get my vote :) potentially coming into play here. And so on. There's lots of potential here guys. No need to be so harsh with each other.

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Geoff the Medio
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#140 Post by Geoff the Medio »

LithiumMongoose wrote:I'm basically with utilae on this, I think: different weapon types feels very intuitively to me like it will be a big contributor to a robust counter system.
And I agree. I was objecting to the claim that the shape of the weapon blasts would make a difference in the context of a system without any counters. Weapon shapes being more or less effective against certain ship sizes or other weapon shapes is a countering system, so my comment don't apply to that scenario.
Everything should also at least have different dmg numbers for vs armor and vs shields...
IMO there should be a few types of armour and a few types of shielding, with different effectivnesses against different types of weapons, eg. ablative armour is good against lasers, and plated armour is good against explosives, and rocky armour (eg. asteroid ships...) is good against mass drivers.
Obviously armor will need an advantage to balance out the regenerative properties of shields
This could be a low tech / high tech or cost or strategic resources required type limitation as well. Also, shields could let certain kinds of weapons out (lasers) but not mass drivers / plasma etc, as (fluff) you have to turn them off when something you're firing out passes through. Thus shields would be good on ships with pulsed energy weapons, but bad for continuous fire gatling-type guns or ships with lots of non-laser PD.

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#141 Post by Ranos »

@Geoff the Medio

You talk about weapons firing differently not being strategic and that there is no reason to pick one over another. Its all about preference. If you go with an intricate countering system where there are a hundred different items that counter eachother, then how is that any different? I put weapon A on my ship, but shield B counters it and weapon C is countered by armor D and by the time you get through with it, it isn't going to matter what you put on your ships because there will always be a counter. So according to you, this means that there is no strategy involved in it.

If there is some limited counter that is easy to understand, then I'm all for it, but when you talk about a hundred different things countering eachother, that is just far too complex.
Geoff the Medio" wrote:You miss the point. The diagram was to illustrate the shape of 5-way rock paper scissors, and how it's not necessary to have some of every kind of equipment to cover all your weaknesses / have a winning / optimal fleet / task force. The specific words that were put into the nodes of the diagram are irrelivant.
How are you going to put a hundred different items into this?
Geoff the Medio wrote:I guess nobody would ever play chess or WarcraftIII, since there are just so many different counters for every move/unit that it's impossible to keep track of then...?

The whole point is to make it complex enough to be interesting to the player... without always having obviously right, wrong or best choices. The player will need to plan and weigh the options.
This is just a silly and stupid arguement. Chess has no countering other than moving to block. That is what would happen in combat. Attack here, retreat there, stand your ground. Comparing a board game to a space strategy game is ridiculous. s for Warcraft III, I've never played it. I played one and two so I imagine that it is the same. Cheap units do small ammounts of damage, stronger units cost more, etc. How does this fit countering? It is balancing. You build the stronger units to do more damage even though they cost more and you build the small stuff because its cheaper and fast so you can have more. This would be a comparison to hull sizes, not counters.

The Key to the second part of that quote is "complex enough." If you make it too complex, the player won't be interested either. How can there be obviously right or wrong choices when choosing between a dozen different types of weapons each of which do damage in different ways and each of which have individual characteristics. Maybe you didn't read the thread before posting. Beams would fire at longer ranges than Bolts, but Bolts would do more damage. Projectile would have a long range and do more damage, but they are limited by ammo. Missiles do a tremendous ammount of damage but can be destroyed by PD. The Wave Emitters would effect more ships but have a range shorter than that of Bolts. Is all this counters, in a way yes. I never said I didn't want a countering system, I just don't want a complex one where every weapon is countered by a shield or armor everyone of which is countered by a weapon. Throw in hull sizes, sensors, and anything else and it is even more complex.
Geoff the Medio wrote:A diagram showing graphically what's strong and weak against what would be easily understood.
Not if there was a hundred different items on it. First you have to find the item you want to use, then you have to follow the lines to find what it's strong and weak against. Then you have to see if there's anything that would work better, etc., etc. A complex system like this also requires a lot of devotion and complexity with spying. Spying is fun to destroy buildings or ships or maybe assasinate a leader or steal technology, but if you have to get down to paying attention and constantly spying just so you know what your opponents are up to, it would put too much focus on spying.
Geoff the Medio wrote:By restricting the complexity to workable levels, and designing understandable patterns or rules into the system. Possible ways include using concepts like "damage type" (kinetic, energy, chemical, explosive...), that determines how much and what kind of damage will be done if a weapon hits, "delivery mechanism" (fighter, beam, missile, spray...) would determine range and how likely things are to hit, or "defence type" (armour X, armour Y, shielding Q, really fast ships that outrun anything). Alternatively, we can just keep the number of distinct weapons, defences and other ship properties to manageable levels, so a web showing all the strengths and weaknesses the individual options is readable. This needn't be much more complicated than unit-countering in an RTS, and people seem to be able to understand that well enough.
If you can draw out a diagram showing how this would work and make it understandable, I would back countering. If I feel it is too complex, I'll point out where it is too complex. I just don't want to have a headache after trying to design one ship.
Zpock wrote:In short, dumbed down average joe just play the game type of game vs abyss deep you-will-never-master-it gameplay that forces you to THINK THINK THINK more and better then your opponent.
I find this mildly offensive. If the word dumb wasn't in there, I would have no problem. I am not lookig for a game that "dumb" peopl can play. I am looking for a game that anyone can play.
tzlaine wrote:This is about as wrong-headed as it gets. We are not trying to appeal to an audience of potential customers. We are not making this game for anyone but *us*. We are smart people who can handle a little complexity, or we wouldn't play TBS games.
Define "us." Is us the people actually doing programming, graphics, audio, etc? Is us the people contributing to these forums? Is us the people who were disappointed in MOO3? How many people does us encompass? If us is just the programmers, then why spend money on a forum to get other peoples ideas? If us is anything else, then Zpock is right. Granted, you aren't selling it but you do want people to see the game and like the game and maybe for the big companies who sell to consumers to like it and possibly adopt some of the concepts into there games. If this is the case, which I think it is, then you need to make the game easy to understand.
Zpock wrote:Yeah about the ratio that was what I was trying to say about complex game - complex strategy. I think moo3 is a good example on a really bad ratio, game complexity was "washed out", too much little details that didn't make any real difference.
Yes, MOO3 is a good example. It was far too complex for the rewards that we were able to get from it. That turned a lot of people off from the game. Too complex = uninteresting.

Programming different layers would take a lot of extra time, something that I don't think most of us want to wait for. There should be one way the game is done, with difficulty changing how the AI plays.

I agree with everything utilae said in his post. I don't need to elaborate more on that.
Geoff the Medio wrote:If a ship has more than one weapon and can shoot at more than one other ship at the same time anyway, then not at all. And even if it's only one target at at time for lasers, if the combat effectiveness is balanced, then no. Why would you pick one option or the other? That you can shoot at 12 at once instead of 1 at a time in of itself is not strategically different in of itself, if both options have the same result, which they would if things are balanced (which they should be) and there are no counters.
Even if lasers can fire at multiple targets, the wave would be stronger. The balance comes in a few ways, price of the weapon, size of the weapon, range of the weapon, recharge rate of the weapon and damage of the weapon. If everything is balanced by making the damage about equal, then I go back to my "What's the point of having different weapons" commnet. For example, Phasor Beam would cost 10, have a size of 5, do 10 damage, have a range of 10 and a recharge rate of 2. Pulsar Wave Emitter(PWE) would cost 50, have a size of 10, do 600 damage, have a range of 3 and a recharge rate of 10. In this way, they would be balanced. While the PWE would do massive ammounts of damage, you would have to get in close to the ships to make it effective, where with the Phasor, you could stand off and fire at the enemy.
Geoff the Medio wrote:"The way you use them" is exactly the same: you shoot/launch/fire at something until you win or loose. The decision whether to shoot at your own ships to get rid of the drones is insignificant and purely tactical (assuming no countering), because the drones would have to be balanced so that all other weapons would have even chances against them. For each given other weapon that would either mean either shooting the drones or not, and would be well-known beforehard, meaning there isn't actually any real choice for the player here anyway; for each case, there is an obvious best choice (be it to shoot the drones or not).
How would a countering system effect this differently at all? You will still "shoot/launch/fire at something until you won or lost." You would still have to deside between doing X, Y or Z. Your choices will always be the same. The only difference wouldbe that you would do more or less damage depending on how well each side had done at countering. The other difference would of course be that you spent an hour designing one ship instead of 5 minutes.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Zerglings are different and usable at the end because of the countering system of Stracraft, in which they fill a specific niche.
Since I have also never played Starcraft, I don't know how this works for sure, but I would also imagine that it is based on speed, damage vs. cost, etc. Again, this is balance, not countering.

I like what LithiumMongoose said. It made sense and sounds reasonable and workable. I disagree that Nova (aka Wave Emitters, I just like the name better) weapons would be the most powerful. A new type that I thought of: Kamikazies. They are packed with heavy explosives and when they are near enough to enemy ships, the explode massively destroying everything nearby. They would be balanced by making them very expensive to build and unless you had the right type of government, unrest would be caused due to you sacrificing lives in that matter.
Geoff the Medio wrote:I was objecting to the claim that the shape of the weapon blasts would make a difference in the context of a system without any counters.
You seem to be focusing only on what the weapons would look like in combat, not how they would actually work.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Also, shields could let certain kinds of weapons out (lasers) but not mass drivers / plasma etc, as (fluff) you have to turn them off when something you're firing out passes through. Thus shields would be good on ships with pulsed energy weapons, but bad for continuous fire gatling-type guns or ships with lots of non-laser PD.
I strongly disagree with using this as a counter for shields. It would be far to huge. You would only be able to use the shield half of the time because of having to lower it constantly. All the enemy has to do is to time their recharges for when the shield is down for you to fire. Then the shield is useless. Lets stick with certain things be stronger against others.
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utilae
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#142 Post by utilae »

LithiumMongoose wrote: I'm basically with utilae on this, I think: different weapon types feels very intuitively to me like it will be a big contributor to a robust counter system. Beams that only shoot one thing at a time, for example, given that they have a non-negligible recharge time are not going to be as effective against larger numbers of smaller, weaker ships that collectively pack a lot of offense. Missiles pack more numerical damage per space used to equip them but can be neutralized in more ways so it's a gamble (I know I talked about this before somewhere). "Nova" type weapons should probably be the most deadly of all, like PBAE in DAoC, due to the difficulty in using them offensively (need to be able to get right on top of the enemy ships). They *can* help against missiles and fighters but presumably would have a long recharge time so aren't a perfect solution by themselves. Longer-range, heavier, bigger guns hit harder per shot but have a lower DPS than standard versions. Everything should also at least have different dmg numbers for vs armor and vs shields, and going "heavy armor, light if any shields" and "heavy shields, light if any armor" should be viable strategies in the tech tree as well as on the ships themselves. Obviously armor will need an advantage to balance out the regenerative properties of shields, and I would say more total HP or more total "absorption/deflection/negation" ability would be the way to do it. While I'm on the subject, make it so ships have inherently higher numerical negation ability than missiles and fighters, so point-defense remains one of the best counters to those weapons but is ineffective at leveraging its high DPS for close-quarters bombardment (enter the nova-type weapons for that purpose instead). Don't forget we also have the different hull types issue (metal, organic, crystalline get my vote :) potentially coming into play here. And so on. There's lots of potential here guys. No need to be so harsh with each other.
Everything you say here is awesome. Exactly how I would like counters to work as well as the effectiveness and balance of weapons.
Ranos wrote: I like what LithiumMongoose said. It made sense and sounds reasonable and workable. I disagree that Nova (aka Wave Emitters, I just like the name better) weapons would be the most powerful. A new type that I thought of: Kamikazies. They are packed with heavy explosives and when they are near enough to enemy ships, the explode massively destroying everything nearby. They would be balanced by making them very expensive to build and unless you had the right type of government, unrest would be caused due to you sacrificing lives in that matter.
The Kamikazies you mention here sound very much like missiles. I think it would be more interesting if the ship itself was the Kamikazie weapon
eg maybe you activate the Kamikazie device and it overloads the ships propulsion to an extreme state, which allows the ship to travel at great speed (torwards a target) and explode upon impact (nice explosion because of the state of the engines, which are overloaded with power).

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#143 Post by Ranos »

utilae wrote:I think it would be more interesting if the ship itself was the Kamikazie weapon
Thats what I meant, I just didn't say it very well. Thats why they would be expensive an cause unrest, huge ammounts of explosives on the ship and the loss of life in a suicide attack, something most people would look down upon.
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Geoff the Medio
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#144 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ranos wrote:If you go with an intricate countering system where there are a hundred different items that counter eachother, then how is that any different? I put weapon A on my ship, but shield B counters it and weapon C is countered by armor D and by the time you get through with it, it isn't going to matter what you put on your ships because there will always be a counter. So according to you, this means that there is no strategy involved in it.
If you play without thinking, then there would be no strategy. However, if you thought about what weapons to put on your ships by considering what your enemies have, or will have, then it becomes strategic. The point is to give the player important meaningful choices. The weapons you pick determine whether you are at an advantage or a disadvantage in battle.
If there is some limited counter that is easy to understand, then I'm all for it, but when you talk about a hundred different things countering eachother, that is just far too complex.
You're the only one talking about hundreds of things. For this and other comments regarding hundreds of things being uncomprehensible, see my previous comment about systematic order and rules to make it understandable. Also see the below linked Starcraft and Warcraft stuff, which is very systematic and understandable.
This is just a silly and stupid arguement. Chess has no countering other than moving to block. That is what would happen in combat. Attack here, retreat there, stand your ground. Comparing a board game to a space strategy game is ridiculous.
The comparison is to picking what to put on your ships, not the real-time battle simulation, which is pure tactics. The analogy of moving to block makes some sense in this context.
s for Warcraft III, I've never played it.
Warcraft has damage and armour
types. http://www.battle.net/war3/basics/armor ... ypes.shtml
How can there be obviously right or wrong choices when choosing between a dozen different types of weapons each of which do damage in different ways and each of which have individual characteristics.
Obviously right or wrong choices is what I want to avoid.
While the PWE would do massive ammounts of damage, you would have to get in close to the ships to make it effective, where with the Phasor, you could stand off and fire at the enemy.
This is fine... though in of itself it is not enough to make the choice of weapon really meaningful (nor is a few numbers for cost and daamge). The important issue for balance is whether spending roughly the same amount on a whole fleet of ships with weapon type 1 (and the research and infrastructure to build them, if you want to get really big-picture) results in you winning against something that cost another empire about the same amount. This is not just a matter of one ship being able to shoot from afar or only up close, or whether the single shot does a lot of damage to one ship rather than a little damage (or a lot) to a bunch of ships. The issue is the overall battle performance, after tactical issues are averaged out.
Geoff the Medio wrote:"The way you use them" is exactly the same: you shoot/launch/fire at something until you win or loose.
How would a countering system effect this differently at all? You will still "shoot/launch/fire at something until you won or lost." You would still have to deside between doing X, Y or Z. Your choices will always be the same. The only difference wouldbe that you would do more or less damage depending on how well each side had done at countering. The other difference would of course be that you spent an hour designing one ship instead of 5 minutes.
In battle, there is little or no difference to what you can do with or without counters. That's not the point; at that time, your ship parts choices are pretty much fixed for the battle. With countering, however, outside of battle there are meaningful choices to be made. Pointing out the lack of meaningful choice was in response to claims that having drones would give rise to the shoot them / don't shoot them (non-)choice in battle. It was not in support of countering, so much as refuting the claims of merit of a non-counters system.
Since I have also never played Starcraft, I don't know how this works for sure, but I would also imagine that it is based on speed, damage vs. cost, etc. Again, this is balance, not countering.
Starcraft has damage types and unit size (not cost). http://www.battle.net/scc/GS/damage.shtml

There are also issues of ground and air units and whether they can attack ground or air that complicates things a bit more.

Starcraft is (now) also very well balanced, but this is done within the context of units having certain other units against which they are effective or not, forming a countering system.
You seem to be focusing only on what the weapons would look like in combat, not how they would actually work.
I do so because, in order to be balanced without a countering system, they would have to all work exactly the same (as described above), so the only difference would be how they look. If there is a countering system, be it simple with just weapons, or complicated with weapons and armours and whatnot, this does not apply.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Also, shields could let certain kinds of weapons out (lasers) but not mass drivers / plasma etc, as (fluff) you have to turn them off when something you're firing out passes through. Thus shields would be good on ships with pulsed energy weapons, but bad for continuous fire gatling-type guns or ships with lots of non-laser PD.
I strongly disagree with using this as a counter for shields. It would be far to huge. You would only be able to use the shield half of the time because of having to lower it constantly. All the enemy has to do is to time their recharges for when the shield is down for you to fire. Then the shield is useless. Lets stick with certain things be stronger against others.
This is not a "counter" for shields. This is an example, with fluff justification, for why certain weapons would be usable or not on ships that themselves have shields. Having to turn off the shield half the time is precisely why it would be inadvisable to use a shield with mass drivers or gatling guns ... or anything that shoots matter slowly or continuously. Instead, you'd have to use a fighter escort, PD or thick armour on ships using mass drivers or continuous fire matter weaponry. The strategic implications of such restrictions can make the designing of ships more interesting.

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#145 Post by Zpock »

I think some people are a little entrenched in their arguments here. Lithium mongoose did a good job at stating the obvious that it would be best combining the two methods of building a countering system. Weapons that work differently how they deliver dmg will be different. A weapon that can dmg multiple enemies in one shot will be a counter to many tightly packed enemies but countered by one strong enemy. This is as trivial as 3*2 > 5. There's many more examples, missiles can be shot down by PD so a PD heavy ship will be a counter to a missile ship. A long range weapon can be a counter to slow moving short range ships. Nothing of this needs any weapon K 50% more dmg versus armor type Q.

Some variation in how much damage is actually done when the weapon hits is a good idea and you will not need a 100s of things to keep track of here. That is just saying the system is bad becouse you can come up with a way of implementing the system that's really bad.

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#146 Post by Impaler »

I propose we create a new thread and start getting some real work done. Lests start off by listing and analyzing good countering examples in TBS and RTS games. We can come up with a few tables/plots and general weapon type lists that can be put on the Wiki and polished as we move toward Space Combat implementation.

All in favor say AYE!!
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Ranos
Dyson Forest
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#147 Post by Ranos »

@ Geoff the Medio

Utilae and I think that weapons having different delivery systems is strategic, you don't. Neither side is going to change the other sides mind. This is also an unimportant debate so lets call it quits on that part. Neither utilae nor I were arguing against a countering system based on the fact that we believe the delivery systems are strategic. As I said in my last post, if you could draw out a countering system using the different types of armor, weapons, shields, etc. and made it understandable, I would back it all the way.

I am also going to have to agree with Impaler. This thread was about research and somehow got onto this countering system. I also think the thread got mired down and people lost interest in reading it. This thread is pretty much dead unless we can get it back to talking about the original topic.
200 and still a Wyrm!?! I don't want to be a Wyrm anymore. I've been a Wyrm for 100 posts now.

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Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
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#148 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ranos wrote:Utilae and I think that weapons having different delivery systems is strategic, you don't.
...Try reading a little more closely.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Weapon shapes being more or less effective against certain ship sizes or other weapon shapes is a countering system, so my comment don't apply to that scenario.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
You seem to be focusing only on what the weapons would look like in combat, not how they would actually work.
I do so because, in order to be balanced without a countering system, they would have to all work exactly the same (as described above), so the only difference would be how they look. If there is a countering system, be it simple with just weapons, or complicated with weapons and armours and whatnot, this does not apply.
Whether or not there are armours and other non-weapon things included in the countering web doesn't change whether it's a countering system. If empire A having long range means that empire B with slow ships is at a disadvantage in battle, then we have a countering system, which is strategic. Delivery mechanism is just one possible way to give advantages to one empire or the other, though. Strengths and weakensses vs. shields or ship speed are others.
As I said in my last post, if you could draw out a countering system using the different types of armor, weapons, shields, etc. and made it understandable, I would back it all the way.
Look at the Starcraft and Warcraft sites, and draw one yourself. They're not that complicated. There are also some tables on the Warcraft page that have armours on one axis and damage types on the other. http://www.battle.net/war3/basics/armor ... ypes.shtml

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utilae
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#149 Post by utilae »

Ok, lets make a new thread.

Btw, to make a complex counter system less complex we could have some counters be harder, eg
Weapon Type vs ships are the most important counters
examples: missile vs pd ship, long range vs slow/short range

and some be softer eg
Weapon type vs armor/shield
examples: laser vs reflective armour=ineffective

Harder meaning that the counter effect is more potent, while softer meaning that the counter effect is less potent.

Kharagh
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#150 Post by Kharagh »

Hi all,

some time ago in this tread people were talking about the advantages and disadvantages of refinements vs improvements.

Some of you, like Ranos, were in favor of a system where refinement was only a means to reach the next level of advancement of a technology. Basically the weapon would be renamed every few levels. I don't like that idea much, because one of the things I liked most about moo2 was the great deversity of differrent weapons. I want a multitude of differrent (range, dissipation, enveloping, shield piercing,...) beam weapons and missles to choose from, not just one kind of beam weapon which changes colour and name every few levels of refinement.

Others, like Impaler wanted to be able to refine every weapon indefinately, which presents the difficulty that people might refine the most basic weapon until the end of the game.

Both positions have their pros and cons.
I would like to present kind of a compromise between the two extremes and hope it will revive this treat a little bit.

My suggestion consists of two major points:

1. You will only be able to refine a weapon up to one level prior to the level of the next weapon you haven't reseached of the same category.

for example: your laser is a level 1 tech, the fusion beam is level 5. So you will only be able to refine the laser up to level 4, until you reseach the fusion beam, which will allow you to refine it up to level 9. After that you will have to reseach the phosor to reach level 14, ... .

With this system, refining a weapon will be much more costly than simply advancing in weapon technology, as you will first have to reseach the new weapon, and then spend resesach ponts to refine it. Only people who REALLY like their Laser will refine it very much, but IT WILL BE POSSIBLE ! What I like most about games is the possiblilities you have. I want to be free to do almost anything I like. It may not be cost effective to refine my laser to level 15, but if I decide I like the color of the beam (or range penalties, area effects,....) of a weapon, then I want to have the option to refine it.

2. The costs for refinements (both reserach and production casts) will increase more and more after each refinement. At first the increase shoud be linear, but after a certain level of refinement the graph should gradually change into an exponential one.
Refinements get more and more expensive (which is logical, from the engeneer's point of view) until they are just no longer worth reseaching or building, but as stated above, it would be possible.

please tell me what you think about what I have witten above,

cya around,

Kharagh

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