"Why does a constructor have to be used up when building a starbase or adding a module to it?"

They dismantle the ship for the parts.

I agree with Robbie.Price that the fleet combat system leaves something to be desired. I enjoy watching the fleet battles and when I heard that there were "fleet formations" back for DL I was excited. Was hoping I could start organizing my fleets into formations of the sort you read in sci-fi these days.
So working with some of Robbie's idea as a base would it be possible to make a combat system that let the player have more control.

Before combat begins you go to a pre-screen that would let you have choice over categories (eg. fleet formation, targeting preference, retreat ability). Complexity could be from a simple set of cards that highlight to show the strategy to a more advanced control that involves a dropdown menu with choices of what types of units to put where in different formations.

Formations could be things like, 'Flank' 'Charge' 'Pincer' 'Ranged' or 'Light Screen' 'Heavy Screen' and have various bonuses to the fleet which is using it (maybe affecting the accuracy of the shots/damage done/fleet confidence/accuracy modifier to enemy)

The targeting would affect how the damage was distributed. So like Robbie was suggesting you could have a target of highest priority and if it wasn't available it would default to the nearest thing it could hit. Choices could be things like sizes(fire on large ships, mediums, etc.)/loadouts (weapons based)/range.

Other things on the page might include a radio dial that allows/disallows fleet retreating.

The page could already have a specific set of defaults which are used generically and the ability to set a players new "default" that will be used in every battle. This way players who enjoy simplicity can set their preferences and then only have 1 click more than normal to finish combat.

As for fleet confidence the idea (or what seemed to be this idea to me) seemed to come from wyndstar and zonk84. They were talking about the idea of mutual survival. This could be accomplished with a morale system.
Set a morale value at the beginning of combat. Give each ship-size a morale sort of value and then add these up in the beginning of combat (a tiny ship would be a 5 and a huge would be a 25 or something). (also might have a simple health modifier)
Say you are have 3 tiny ships facing 1 huge and 1 tiny (all combatants are at full health). Your base morale value would be something like 100 (the range could be limited 0-200) so since you have 3 tiny craft your value goes to 115 but then you subtract the 30 that the enemy has so you have 85 as your morale value. This could affect accuracy and with each ship destroyed your fleet confidence would change.

At the breaking point of the battle the game would look at your choice from the pre-combat screen and based on your choice would either retreat or fight to the death. The breaking point for your fleet could be determined by the game difficulty level, the soldiering level of your troops, health,(and a species aggressiveness constant or something). The AI's breaking point could be determined in a similar way.

I think these updates would be useful because they could allow for fleets to gain some advantage over individual ships and also increase the amount of wounded ships that are floating around the universe.

I know I was annoyingly detailed and probably unrealistic but thought I would give a good description of the system idea.
I think it would be a nice addition to what is already a great game.

A mining ships doesn't dismantle themselves to build a mining station, so why should constructors have to?

A simpler way of adding a lot more complexity to fleet combat (and not making the interface any more complex to boot) would be to simply have battles terminate after a set number of rounds.

Mining ships have asteroids from which to make the bases. Constructors don't have anything to use apart from their own hulls.

Well, this is interpretation. Constructors could easily bring materials to the starbases. To construct a starbase, yes a constructor could be dismantled, but to add guns, shields? Pretty sure they don't fabricate brand new laser guns from their hull, kitchen, crew quarters...

For the initial starbase, we could easily say that the constructors are made in a way that they can be "transformed" into a starbase, which would be logic.But for the rest...

Anyway, I'm with Steven Warren on this topic and those are my two cents.

So if you want to be able to build one constructor that will do the work of 5, it should take 5 times as liong to build and cost 5 times the money. So you're losing out on the effects of the starbase while you wait. Instead of having, say 14%production from an economy starbase you're gomnna have none while you wait long enough to get the full 34% (assuming you have the techs). it wouldnt make sence.

What IS the adavantage to having constructors able to add multiple modules? As it stands you can do it FASTER since ytou can have multiple planets supplying constructiors.

And an asteroid mine is quite smaller than a starbase. required a lot less constructuion materials. the question sjhould be, why doesnt my starbase llok like my constructor?

@CaptainYar
Yeah you have some points. Anyway, my point is that I would suggest that Starbases should be more powerfull (and less in number). Something like more expensive (the military modules anyway), more rare, but damn harder to beat.

I have no idea about what to do and what to implement for this. It is just a though.

You can move a rally point already, all you have to do is click on it, click on move , and click where you want it. Or were you just wanting the move to be a click and drag ? I think the current move works pretty simply.

The great new Civ expansion has a setting called no technology brokering,"Players cannot trade technology they have not researched themselves".I would love to this included in the update.

I like this idea, as it would limit the incestuous tech trading that goes along, without cutting it out entirely with the No Tech Trading option.

@Robbie

Liked the battle ideas.

@Captain Yar

Each Constructor is more than just the module, but also the engine, and other parts. So creating a ship with

- 1 engine,
- 1 life support, and
- 2 construction modules,

would cost less than 2 ships with

- 1 engine,
- 1 life support, and
- 1 construction module each.

Would it be possible to have a starbase manager and or screen for that ?

When I say manager I mean the computer controlling designated constructor type ships once they're built, sending them across your territory and fortifying your defenses.

I am trying to get even less micro or away from it as possible. I know the AI can handle this, it does it for itself. Though maybe add some player controlled directions, like the sliders for mil/econ/influence/mining resources and the computer assigns constructors to build and upgrade said bases. Basically, I can choose to designate worlds whose purpose is to build constructors and thats what they do. While other worlds would do research or crank out battlecruisers. I know I should spend more time with constructors/bases than I do but, I don't. Actually, I want to spend even less time thinking about it.

That's my 2 BC!

Also want to say GC2 & DA still ROCK and still play them.

You don't pay for the engines on the basic constructor and you can feel free to leave off any life support. Basically it would cost less because you have only one hull but it should be made to cost the same if that ever happened. I just think multiple modules will make for confusion. I mean planets will be building constructs with different numbers of modules. then after you get the right teschs you'll have to figure how many more you'll need, and then remeber where each different one is supposed to go. You may have the techs for an upgraded economy starbase but not for a minimg starbase. what happens if your constructor has too many for the star base you send it to? Will we have to go down a punch list of which upgrades we want?

Here's another idea. If a spacestations is with in say 5 to 8 parsecs of a shipyard you can select upgrade spacestation from the build list. Or if a spacestation has it's own shipyard it can upgrade it's self. This would get rid of the hassle of having to build and manage dozens of constructors to upgrade a spacestation.

how much longer do we have to wait for v1.7 to come out. By the way will it fix DA choppyness

Basic hyperdrive and life support systems are assumed to be included with the hull, as well as the basic costs of hauling newly constructed vehicles into space (or constructing them in orbit... regardless, building a large space faring vessel isn't a trivial operation)

I'd like a game start option that has only a colony ship. From there I can then pick the planet I want to colonize, and build up literally from square one.

It's the opposite on the play-style spectrum to the start option where you have all stuff researched and you're just there to fight the AI. That type of start option never appealed to me, as I prefer the world-builder aspects of the game more than just launching it and fighting.

I see there is mention of "The "All Labs/Factories" approach". I'm not sure what this means, or where it was mentioned in 1.7 changes, but I'd prefer to have Social and Military production on the individual planet level, and research on the civilization level. More detail is better, as you can scale back on micro-management concerns using governors. But removing levels of complexity entirely, removes it for players that enjoy such complexities.

Kryo, any word on when any of the 1.7 beta's will be done?

Thanks.

No ETAs yet, sorry.

That's it exactly. Think of it this way, divide the mining module into three pices-25%
miner/25% constructor/50% ore processor. That's why miners don't destroy themselves
when they build or upgrade a base on an asteroid, they use what they take from the asteroid. Constructors on the other hand don't have anything but themselves to use for building bases (ie. resource, econ, mil, culture). For resouce bases(econ,mil,cult, money,etc.) the constructor is building an enegry collector more or less. For the actual base (mil,econ,or cult) it is building a means to disperse the collected energy. Due to the way constructors work they don't have the space for extra parts. Now I know what you'er thinking " What about the miniaturizing techs?", right? Unless the great and mighty dev overlords,(all hail the dev overlods), deside to add a "parts/supply" module to go with the constructor, which I doubt, there is no room for "extra parts". So constuctor ships dismantle themselves for the parts to make the bases. If that's not a good enough explanation try this, it's how the devs want it to work.

Yes indeed - this is one of the best things to happen to tech trading IMO - it totally makes sense and gets rid of the cheese of AIs (and players too sometimes) essentially doing group research.

Another angle on the tech trading is what they did in Hearts of iron - tech trading is in fact blueprint trading. It halves the research time but you still need to conduct research to get the actual tech into use, none of this "being used from day 1"-nonsense..

Nice. Cant wait.

-Scot
Commishioner
Metaverse League


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Is this all that will be changed? What is meant by more? I am curious, will it be the ship/fleet combat system?

Yep i agree! Kinda gives you that "Google Earth" feeling (it's really similar) I love Supreme Commander just as much as i love GalCiv 2. I'd like to suggest one more thing for 1.7. How about having more tactical view ship icons? At least enough so I can tell which of my ships are which class from tactical view without having to zoom in. We could have one for the normal transport/constructor/scout/colony ship we start with at the start of the game, and more for modified ones. Like a transport that goes faster cuz it has more high tech engines should have a different icon, or a transport armed with weapons should have an icon which sort of looks like a hybrid between the transport icon and the defender icon. If possible, just include one huge library of these icons (20 or so would be great. I don't think it's that hard to make those small icons.) and let us choose what icon we want for each ship we design.