"Unit construction only" Space Yards

[rdouglass]

As long as you don't get rid of the ability to put a base out in 'deep space', it sounds like a good feature - more detail and strategy is good IMO. But like I say, let's be able to build a base and ships anywhere. One of my favorite tactics is to build a base of operations deep in enemy territory hidden by a sensor-obscuring storm...

[Baron Munchausen]

I find it strange that a planet can build drones, which are physically larger than Escorts, but cannot build an Escort without a shipyard. How about a new setting for shipyards -- max vehicle size. Planetary abilities would be set by defaults in settings.txt of course, and then you could have 'small ship yards' that can build anything up to 50 tons for small units (troops and fighters), up to 150 or 200 tons for satellites and drones, and then actually have MORE levels of full-scale shipyards with increasing max tonnage ability for major ship construction.

A nice side effect of this would be that planets could build small ships, escorts and frigates, so you could do things like build scouts or errand-runner type ships (medical bay? ) without tying up your main shipyards. Actually, in my modded config the escort is 200 kt so you could have planets able to build only units by setting the default planet max build size to less than that. This could open the way to a new racial ability, too. Increased shipyard capacity that would let you build larger ships than the default for your shipyard type.

[ 05 February 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Baron,

I was trying to find a way to do it without a code change, but if we are looking for code changes, I like your idea a lot. You should put that on the list of suggestions for future patches.

Geoschmo

[dmm]

Baron, that's a great idea! Hope it will get implemented eventually. It would be cool to establish a base at the limits of your colonizer ships, then have that base build escorts for exploration. Also, it would help with defense in the early game -- you could make lots of escorts quickly. An enemy without long-range sensors wouldn't know if the fleet on your outpost was 4 escorts or 4 destroyers, so he'd have to weigh the risks. (This can happen now, of course, but it would become much more common with your suggestion.)

One problem might be people making tons of escorts to suddenly inflate their score.

[jimbob]

quote:

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One problem might be people making tons of escorts to suddenly inflate their score.

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Ah.. trickery!

This reminds me of the British and Germans during WWII building a whole lot of Anti-Aircraft guns on the coast... along with a bunch of plywood cut-outs of Anti-Aircraft guns! And I think the Russians painted top-down views of airplanes on their runways (complete with shadows) to give the American's false Satelite data.

Building a ton of escorts to send a false score is tricky all right. But if push does come to shove, the trickery won't save the player!

PS. So this thread about having space-based Unit Producing components right? So, where would units be stored? Are units automatically stored into empty storage components? Would the Unit Producing component have a certain amount of storage space?

[ 06 February 2002: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Phoenix-D]

" But if push does come to shove, the trickery won't save the player!"

It will. If the game is decided on score, for example. The AI also uses score for things like surrendering and MEE.

Phoenix-D

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by dmm:
Baron, that's a great idea! Hope it will get implemented eventually. It would be cool to establish a base at the limits of your colonizer ships, then have that base build escorts for exploration. Also, it would help with defense in the early game -- you could make lots of escorts quickly. An enemy without long-range sensors wouldn't know if the fleet on your outpost was 4 escorts or 4 destroyers, so he'd have to weigh the risks. (This can happen now, of course, but it would become much more common with your suggestion.)

One problem might be people making tons of escorts to suddenly inflate their score.

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Well, you could say the same of starbases with nothing but ship control components. This is a problem with players abusing the way score is calculated, not a problem with starbases. I personally would like to see some changes so that the AI would work with 'perceived' strength rather than getting a 'cheat' view of your actual strength. Non-sabotage Intelligence projects would actually be important to the AI then.

I'd also like to see any sort of colony be able to build a colony ship but that might require some tricky manipulation of the restrictions since they are so large.

[jimbob]

"It will. If the game is decided on score, for example. The AI also uses score for things like surrendering and MEE."

Oh
I've never played by "score wins" and only occassionally request a surrender. I guess I'm just a little too barbaric