Changes to Game

Player discussions

Moderator: Tregonsee

Knights of Rancor Comment

Postby R. Ritnour » Wed Sep 02, 2015 7:12 pm

Comment from Knights of Rancor:I have reviewed the new changes and here is what I think without testing them out yet.

I like the first 3 and always thought the # of actions, # of fleets and # of ships limits were too small.
BUT!
I have a problem with the last one limiting the # of ships in a fleet will all but trash my (cyber) strategy of over whelming and over powering my targets ex.

Some of my fleets now have over 200 ships per fleet. An invasion Fleet of 20 ships means only 18 HTRN, 1 CSS and 1 SUP that means only 1800 CMUs to invade with witch means I have to Use MORE unprotected fleets to invade with (some of my fleets hold around 10,000 MUs per fleet.) An invasion Fleet of 20 ships to have enough MUs to invade with would have NO FTR cover (my invasion Fleet now holds about 3,000 FTR on CAP plus attack FTRs) and NO heavily armed escort war ships. This may be all very well and good for a Miner or Ag Corp who do no depend on their military for income. As I see it, it takes away the fear factor of running into a Cyber Fleet because all fleets will basically be the same size with maybe a slight variation in TEC and even that will disappear. and this does not address my 2 war fleets or my 2 merchant fleets witch all have over 20 ships per fleet as far as that goes I have Scout fleets with more than 20 ships per fleet. as it is right now I have almost 1000 ships (closer to 900)

Small fleets get chopped up by planets one at a time as they enter orbit.

A side thought maybe FTRs (on CAP) should be able to attack ships and not just FTRs before a hostile Fleet is in strike range as they go into battle planets too.

SO NOT too thrilled with the new # of ship per fleet limit, so far, your going to have to convince me otherwise.

my 2 cents (early)
WmP of the KoR
R. Ritnour
 
Posts: 512
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:51 pm

Comments of Larry L.

Postby R. Ritnour » Wed Sep 02, 2015 7:14 pm

I too feel the # of ships in a fleet should be lqrger, but for different reasons and a potential change.

Lots of ships fit my style better in most ways. Not sure this can be implemented in current version, but looking at the future, limiting the # of ships based on Research Level (command and control) would work better.

In the initial replys defense, I do not feel you can build a decent fleet for an assault, inasion, and even difficulty with System Defense.

I would like to recommend a 2nd look be taken in the view of "lets create some fleets and see". Use a TL 30 setup and expierement with various Fleet Constructs for various purposes and see what can/cannot be achieved.

Example:
CV Fleets
Merchant
Mining
War Fleets
Invasion
Assault
System Defense
Trade Center (I use 30+ currently)

Take 2 BS, 5 DD, 2 CVs, 2 Scouts, 5 Transports. Not much of an
attack force and already 17 of the 20 gone. What a force could
do like that against a standard HW/TW would be practically use-
less.

Have to go, so leaving this as a thought and will try some combos
myself against some NPCs and get back after this turn.

Larry
R. Ritnour
 
Posts: 512
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:51 pm

Comments of Ralleb the Pirate

Postby R. Ritnour » Wed Sep 02, 2015 7:17 pm

I agree with Items 2 and 3.

I would like to see somewhere around 150 fleets. At this point in the game, where one is exploring along all three planes, also as one begins to own worlds on opposite ends of the galaxies, I see the need for more fleets to keep the continued rate of expansion. If you want to go to 200 fine. But, I believe the larger the number the better chance for the waste of resources. I would like to expand the number of fleets, but at the same time keep it tight enough so one needs to keep resources in check. I do not want the only determining factor to be RUs. I don't enjoy games where the richest person wins. That is what the card game Magic is for.

You can raise the number of ships, but 10,000 is over the top. Why not lower the number and see where everyone maxes out, and how that affects game play. After playing a pirate for 70 turns, I have 700 ships. The max of 1000, is in the back of my mind, but not really a factor yet. Your low number was 4,000. start there.

Number one:

Do we need 100 actions? The original game had a universe with unlimited actions. (I thought I remembered that. I did not play in that galaxy, just was an option) I guess there was a reason I did not play in that galaxy. If the only thing limiting actions is RUs, then the richest player wins. The game becomes less of a game and more of a contest for RUs. I believe under the current list of actions 50 is fine. If you add a bunch of actions where we are more micromanaging the game, I could see increasing the number of actions slightly. I hope the game does not become more cumbersome by adding more steps to do stuff we could do in one. Also, The increased number of actions could increase the number of ineffective actions. Like scanning three suns in a stellar cloud with one scout, where the first sun was a black hole and the following two were wasted. Also, one mistake could cause more of a cascading effect if there were more actions. This is always a risk, but with the limit of 50 actions, how many actions is anyone willing to devote to one task during one turn?

Those of us who like strategies, who think of the game in terms like chess, 50 actions is good, maybe 60 for good measure. But 100, I believe the game will lose its flavor and become less of a strategy and more of who does the most, not who does it well or the best.

My gut thoughts from reading your letter.

Love the game.

To make things better, things must change, but not all change makes things better.

David B

Ralleb the Pirate.
R. Ritnour
 
Posts: 512
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:51 pm

Comments of Hoouse Mako

Postby R. Ritnour » Wed Sep 02, 2015 7:18 pm

I like the first 3 but I'm not sure about fleet sizes, it seems a little low to me. I don't have any large fleets yet, but someday I hope too.
R. Ritnour
 
Posts: 512
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:51 pm

Re: Changes to Game

Postby Soelien-Twa » Thu Sep 03, 2015 12:31 pm

1. Maximum number of actions per turn raised from 50 to 100.
- I'm good with 50 but with the other items I can see the need to increase to do the same actions

2. Maximum number of fleets allowed raised from 100 to 200.
- I currently have 31 fleets. 100 was fine for me but the reduction in fleet sizes may mean an increase needed

3. Maximum number of ships allowed raised from 1,000 to between 4,000 and 10,000.
- I'm good with 1000. 10,000 would just be too many, especially if they are all in tiny fleets

4. Maximum number of ships allowed per fleet reduced to between 20 and 50.
- Without totally changing the combat I don't see how this works. A size 9 lvl 2 NPC world can have about 5000 MUs and 5000HMUs on it. Even if you missile strike all the HMUs and FTR strike the MUs multiple times (All with different fleets due to the limitation of the fleet size) you would be there forever. For example with a fleet size of 20.
To take out the 45 FORTs... say 5 fleets with load, move and missile strike actions. So 15 actions if only one jump away
Now a FTR strike to get rid of those pesky FTRs. Say two strikes to be sure you get them all. Different fleet for this so load FTRs, move, and FTR strike. Because of size limitations of the FTR strike fleet will have to be two different fleets for each FTR strike or the same fleet reloaded. We will say at least 6 actions. Oh wait. We can't load that many FTRs from one planet. Add another 10 actions for planet hopping or sending FTRs from other planets. Now the FTR strike is 16 actions
Your fleet to take out the HMUs could only take out about 200 per action with a fleet size of 20. So that is 25 fleets (or the same fleet 25 times) with load move and missile strike actions. Another 75 actions.
You could only carry 1900 MUs with HTRNs and a Support ship (and no escorts). Gather up your MUs from different worlds, move into orbit and invade. There is another 5 actions.

So we are looking at 15+16+75+5=111 actions and 33 fleets to find oops... we didn't take into account the Pop bonus on the planet and the entire invasion is a wipe against a tech 2 world.

Ideally what I would like to see are combined arms fleets. Have stealth ships have a bonus against capitol ships, capitol ships with a bonus against cruisers, cruisers against destroyers, destroyers against frigates, and frigates against stealth ships (or something similar). This is more realistic rather than 20 Dreadnoughts wandering around together as in reality they would fall foul to one stealth ship that they could not detect. If you are spending for example 5000 RUs on a Capitol ship only to lose it against a 500 RU stealth ship, are you going to have at least one frigate in your fleet to protect it? Of course with smaller fleets I don't see how you can have combined arms fleets (unless you set a max number per class in each fleet)
User avatar
Soelien-Twa
 
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:53 am
Location: Canada

Re: Changes to Game

Postby nazareth » Thu Sep 03, 2015 5:57 pm

Agree strongly with Ralleb the Pirate. I also agree with Soelien-Twa's combined arms and think they both compliment each other. Various ship types should specialize in certain mission types. DE and DD for example should always place themselves between a fighter assault and the heavier ships in the fleet, engaging those fighters before they can target more lucrative targets. Each ship type should have some priority function that is it's mission type when engaging in fleet combat. Otherwise, it is strictly a numbers game.
User avatar
nazareth
 
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 1:10 pm

Re: Changes to Game

Postby Knights Of Rancor » Thu Sep 03, 2015 6:25 pm

Thank you Randy for posting my comments when I couldn't get logged in.

I have other concerns about the smaller fleet sizes such as in the case of invasion fleets beings how that is where I started my comments,
not only do yo not get the invasion force you need to invade but you have to duplicate ships you would not other wise have built in the bigger fleet such as the CSS and the SUP also you now have to duplicate the actions needed to move that fleet and any other invasion fleet you have to use to get to the numbers you previously used to invade a planet with. So in my case I like to use 10000 MUs (CMUs) so to get that many to invade (for the sake of argument) with a 20 ship fleet I would need a minimum of 6 fleets.

That means I need an additional 5 fleets and 5 CSS & 5 SUP for those fleets and orders for 5 new fleet then moving each one into position so what it took to move the first fleet X 5 assuming they were all in the same place.

Now missile fleets are OK with the small numbers so they are expendable.

But as a Cyber if I run into ANYONE not an ally the fight is on. My strategy long before Ender's Game came out was to screen my main ships with masses of smaller ones those shields soak up a lot of damage. Now that will be gone with the new small fleet limits. I don't think Cybers will fare well at all with these new limits.

Like Solelien-Twa stated, we will NEED the higher action turns for all the extra actions we are going to need to do what we need to do and I don't think that will even be enough not to mention the nightmare of trying to keep track of all those small fleets I don't mind 20 ships or less for scout fleets I don't mind 5 ships or less for Missile fleets but Merchant ships NEED to carry more cargo if they are going to be limited on the number of ships in the fleet same with carriers and troop transports.

Buy the way you really don't want to see Cybers with Stealth ships (evil Cyber grin if Cybers could grin) :twisted:

WmP

The Knights Of Rancor have been reactivated and on the move and the constant broadcast on all known com channels fills the vast darkness of space of the Estra Galaxy once again ........

"Who cares if the Bios' hate they are all to be exterminated. The Galaxy must be cleansed!"

From the C.C.C. (Collective's Central Core) of the KNIGHTS OF RANCOR (KOR)
User avatar
Knights Of Rancor
 
Posts: 99
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 2:35 am

Re: Changes to Game

Postby CHARON EMPIRE » Thu Sep 03, 2015 11:07 pm

I have a plan, I can get by with 50 ships per fleet, as long as merchant ships can carry 100 cargo per ship. Will need a lot more fleets, but I'll make it work!

With 50 ships I can have 3000 marines per fleet, with escorts.
With 50 ships I can have 6000 fighters per fleet either on CAP or on the deck. Fleet will be safe in subsector space.
With 50 ships I can have 5 missile ships per fleet, launching 50 missiles from sub-sector space
With 50 ships I can have a lot of firepower from 50 Battle Stars, they might even hold there own against 5500 fighters.

One thing is sure, with all the multiple fleets that I'll have, It won't be a complete loss if a fleet is destroyed.

Just some random thoughts...
User avatar
CHARON EMPIRE
 
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:04 pm

Re: Changes to Game

Postby REPTIMALIEN » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:33 pm

I agree with nazareth, there should be a variety of squadron designations( i.e supply and support). These designators could carry the passive /defensive characteristics necessary for their function in the fleet. I think this also answers the questions regarding Trade fleets the fleet would consist of several squadrons(supply) of merchant ships and a squadron(defense) or two of escort carriers with fighters on fleet cap to protect the trade ships.

My concern is the enormous task at hand to convert over to this system. hopefully, we can convert between turns or spread this out over several turns.

How do we handle the separation of the various squadrons when giving the global commands?
REPTIMALIEN
 
Posts: 104
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:57 pm

Combined arms and specific ship roles.

Postby R. Ritnour » Fri Sep 04, 2015 9:59 pm

Great feedback guys!

We agree that ships should have specific functions roles to play, such as convoy escort, anti-stealth ship, minesweepers, fuel and cargo haulers, escort carriers and so on. That is the direction we are heading with the squadron scheme.

An additional benefit of squadrons is that you can have them stationed as pickets guarding various starsystems and reporting on any passerby. They don't all have to move. You can literally have them on permanent station and only call on them to move as needed. Their resupply etc would be automatically handled by your supply system.
R. Ritnour
 
Posts: 512
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:51 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Takamo Player Discussion Forums

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron