Difference between revisions of "User talk:Geoff the Medio/Ships"

Latest revision as of 19:21, 17 June 2005

About Strategic map balancing (mvor)

What do you think about introducing the concept of fleet operation? Fleet operations, as its name implies, would be missions assigned to groups of ships (from a single ship to a fleet) like:

* System blockade - Prevent shipping from crossing starlanes out of (or into) a star system
* Planetary Raiding - Bombardment of enemy colonies
* Planetary Invasion - Siege, bombardment and deployment of ground troops to capture enemy colonies
* System garrison - Interdict enemy missions in a given star system
* Disrupt merchant shipping
* ???

These operations could cost a number of RPs proportional to the number and sizes of ships assigned to the mission. Operations could have a base cost and a continuing, upkeep cost to keep operations going. These costs could be affected by special buildings (like a 'naval depot'), leaders with exception organizational abilities, technologies involving logistics, etc.

Giving orders to fleets isn't really a "new" concept; we already have fleet move orders, merge and transfer orders and it's obvious to extend this where appropriate, such as Orbital Bombardment, Dropping Ground Troops, Blockading Neutral / Multiowner Systems. Garrisoning doesn't really need an order... it's sort of the default state of ships in a friendly system. Disrupting enemy shipping anywhere, or non-allied shipping through systems you own would also happen automatically, but an order to block non-allied shipping in neutral systems makes sense. Really, I just haven't gotten around to writing this stuff yet. I don't see a need to make bombardment or blockades cost anything per turn, other than the standard maintenance and supply costs for the ships involved... Doing this stuff is why you build ships, so the cost of the ships themselves the only necessary cost. Geoff the Medio 14:21, 16 Jun 2005 (EDT)

My comment was not intended to be a criticism. Maybe I was not able to express myself well. I wanted to offer an idea about how to make a bit more difficult for people to keep and use enormous armadas. Your latests additions to User:Geoff the Medio/Ships propose a much simpler balance solution that having orders that cost something to execute. (mvor, 00:23, 17 Jun 2005)

I don't really know what you're talking about regarding my "latest additions". Nothing I've written so far has the purpose of limiting total fleet size, and everything that could be possibly confused for something intended to limit fleet size was written before your original comments were added to this page... In any case, just having ships cost something to maintain at all times is simpler and more effective than having costs to do specific things, IMO. If it just costs to do things, then the player could have a huge fleet sitting around idle, as it doesn't cost anything unless they use them. Geoff the Medio 18:51, 16 Jun 2005 (EDT)

My fault then for not reading carefully your document. However, sitting idle could mean that ships are docked somewhere, and easily destroyed/captured, not in active duty - as ships with a garrison mission would. Since missions would have an upkeep cost, I think the same effect as item-based upkeep costs would be achieved. It would also allow people to use strategies like building a strategic reserve force, to be put on-line during wartime, rewarding forward planning. However, I admit that order-based costs are more complex that item-based ones, as it would imply to convert fleet orders into first-class game universe objects, very much like planets, ships or build projects. And having to choose between maintaining a powerful standing fleet and developing the empire would add to the fun factor. (mvor)

Dealing with active garrisons vs. vulnerable reserves seems like a lot of micromanagement... and I don't really see an advantage to having the option of making a reserve but inactive force; you'd have to plan ahead to build ships in either case. Also, if costs *can't* be deferred after building ships, planning carefully would be even more important, wouldn't it? I believe a player's orders are already treated as a C++ object in memory, but not are not a UniverseObject, which is a base class from which things like ships and planets are derived... Though regardless, I don't think the programming details are really an issue we need to be concerned with for deciding whether there should be costs for fleets or ships to do certain missions. Geoff the Medio 15:21, 17 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Abstracting ferrying (mvor)

I think it would be a good thing for gameplay that ferrying tasks (like moving population, goodies, etc.) was abstracted in manner similar to that of MOO2.

Resources are already shared empire-wide without need for transports. I discuss migration here with consequences of the one race per planet rule, which eliminates much of the need for colony ships to ferry population (ie. except when starting new colonies in systems you haven't yet colonized). The suggestion that transports could be used was only in very limited special cases for story-relevant / unique items and artifacts... like alien artifacts from SMAC, but rarer and more interesting. This wouldn't necessary need to be specialized transport ships; any ship could carry these things, I'd expect... or perhaps any ship of a certain size or larger. Geoff the Medio 14:19, 16 Jun 2005 (EDT)