Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip

[Seawolf]

dup

[This message has been edited by Seawolf (edited 13 March 2001).]

[Drake]

Why would it be self repairing? If you did that, it wouldn't be any different than adding more engines or a solar sail. You wouldn't have any drawbacks to using it.

Repairing is too easy as things stand, I don't think we need to exacerbate the problem. I'd rather it work so that you could only use one of a certain type of component per turn, and repairs either cost resources, or took longer (or both).

Just my 2 cents.

[ColdSteel]

Crap, I've been using this little trick since it came to me almost immediately when playing my first game. I put at least one emergency propulsion component in every ship I can and then build at least one repair ship doubling as a troop carrier to travel along with the fleet (also with emergency propulsion). You get to use the extra propulsion every turn since the repair ships will repair the whole fleet's components each turn. Try combining colony ships with this idea and you can really spread out fast. I also use this concept for boarding ships. With repair you can board a new ship each turn without having to return to a spaceyard to repair the boarding party components. With a emergency propulsion or two thrown in, no ship or planet is safe. You can zoom in from a full system or two away and take any planet or ship (I love troops and capturing worlds intact) I do like having these self sufficent fleets.

Now, did you have to go and speak up and share this neat tactic with everyone? They'll take away our shiny new toy.

Seriously though, humans will always be able to come up with slime tactics like this. Finding them is a lot of the fun in playing the game. I remember playing Conquered Kingdoms by QQP (great game) and discovering the "Double Wizard Fireball" tactic. Poor AI didn't know what hit it. I could mention the sneaky stuff you can do with combo tractor and repulsor beams but I'm sure most have figured that out already.

Maybe this stuff does unbalance the game but it sure is fun and the AI can't seem to put up a decent struggle straight up anyway so what's the difference?

[Suicide Junkie]

More important to fix should be the "baseship with two engines" thing.

Make movement based on engines divided by mass.

Ie. engines provide 150 movement, and escorts require 150 engines per move, destroyers 300 engines per move.

Note that there is a limit of 255 on these values, so you have to divide by 10. But it still works.

[Kimball]

quote:

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Originally posted by Drake:
[b]Repairing is too easy as things stand, I don't think we need to exacerbate the problem. B]

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I ALWAYS crank my repair aptitude down to 50% at game start up anyway...those points are really nice. Baseships are really the only ship where you can load up on EP and still have a decent attack/defense ship. If you want to limit the number of EP per ship, I would recommend just limiting the number on baseships only. Even then, I don't think there should be a limit.

A fully loaded baseship takes a fair amount of time to build. I would rather crank out three or four dreadnaughts or battleships in the time it takes to build one baseship. So what if someone can move through several systems, I will have plenty of fire power there to make him wish he had just stayed home. I would rather have a fleet of battle ships or dreadnaughts than a single baseship, especially in tactical combat.

[rdouglass]

quote:

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Originally posted by ColdSteel:
Crap, I've been using this little trick since it came to me almost immediately when playing my first game. I put at least one emergency propulsion component in every ship I can and then build at least one repair ship....

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Yup, I've done this also. The point I'm surprised at is the fact about being able to activate 1 or 2 Emerg Mov modules at a time - I thought you used 'em all or none. I also thought that if your ship had a normal (with bonus) 9 move points, you would move your 9 spaces, activate EM pods to get up to 9 more points, then move 9 more, then end turn. It seems (according to this thread) you now could put, let's say 10 EM pods. Same ship moves 9 spaces, activate 2 EM pods, move 9 more spaces, activate 2 more EM pods, etc. That to me is an exploitation and not part of the game's "spirit". IIRC, SEIII was an "all or nothing" when it came to emergency pods (supply and movement).

I personally would prefer to see it in the "all or nothing" mode....

[AJC]

Self repairng was just a thought - if the limit is 1 EP component per ship it would make sense.

If there is not a limt on the number of EP allowed on a ship - then I would tend to agree - it should not be self repairing.

Actually I would like to see a component that is called damage control - that only repairs a few components at a time.

[Lucanos]

I call them "Federal Ships", those millitary vehicles that can be transported to any place in my empire within ONE turn.

They are essential so I don't need lots of fleets in every system.

One thing though:
To bad I can use the Component when the ship is assigned to a fleet.
So I must first disband the fleet, Use the emergency propulsion, and then assign them to the fleet again.

Another thing. If you have enough pop transports you could (theoretically) move an entire planets population to the other side of the quadrant in ONE TURN just by transferring the cargo from transport to transport.

Is this a bug? Mabbe not if you have access to temporal knowledge? Perhaps there should be some kind of turnlimit for transfering population?

Which brings me to a final ...thought,
What's with Cargo Containers vs Population?
How come an entire planets population can be stored on a light cruiser?

I mean... isn't that wierd?

[Tomgs]

The colonists are dehydrated and frozen then stored on racks thereby using up much less room . Just defrost and add water.

[Drake]

quote:

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Originally posted by AJC:
Self repairing was just a thought - if the limit is 1 EP component per ship it would make sense.

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Argh, don't say that! My point was that it never makes sense to make it self repairing. Even if the limit was 1, if you had it self repair, what would be the point of calling it an emergency propulsion component in the first place? It would serve the same function as the solar sail, by allowing more movement each turn. The only difference would be that it wouldn't carry over into combat, and you'd have to go through the annoying process of manually activating it each turn.

(mini-rant on) Manual activation under your suggestion would reward people who put them on every ship, and took the time for each ship to use the component, which would be restored for the next turn. Basically you're encouraging micromanagement, which I consider to be A Bad Thing. I seriously think a good strategy game should reduce pointless micromanagement as much as possible. Otherwise instead of a strategy game, you have a micromanagement game. Much as I liked Stars!, that's the kind of game it turned out to be for me after a while. I found myself able to compete well on a strategic level, but had to resort to brutal MM to optimize things, or risk losing to ppl who were willing to put more time in. SEIV is a little better in that regard, but not by that much. The TG contest drove home that point to me when the ministers proved woefully inefficient for what I needed to do to optimize my score. I eventually caved in at one point and settled for a less efficient execution of my plan in order to save what was left of my sanity.
(mini-rant off)

Anyway, I think it would make more sense to have the component completely destroyed and made unrepairable without retrofitting at a SY, IMO. Then maybe people would only use it in an emergency.

Since I would be surprised if the change could be made without other potential problems being introduced, either a component limit should be introduced, use of the components causes damage to the ship because of the stress on the hull, or it should be an all-or-none thing. I'd prefer one of the first two, as the all-or-none solution gives the possibility of wasted components. If someone won't ever get the benefit from 4 (actual number may vary) EPs because they have to use all 4 at once and there is a max movement for the ship, don't let them put 4 on the design in the first place. Limit it to 1/2 the number of engines or to 1 or something.