Cari, yes it’s a bit of an older thread, but wanted to put my 2bc in, hopefully you are still looking at it and if folks like it, perhaps pass it on.
Firstly, the AI does a good job of making sure that “border” planets are guarded with ships in orbit, however, since they defend one at a time unless the AI still has room for the fleet manager, which more often then not it doesn’t build, it becomes a somewhat trivial matter of picking them off.
I suggest that all planets should start with F_logistics 1.0, and with improvements, move up from there.
ROP quick adjustment could just set fleets to ½ their base move instead of 1 per turn.. however I would prefer to see a larger over-all change to the mechanics of warpdrive.
Warp drive mechanics could be separated into two seamless subsets which are sci-fi standards, impulse drive and warpdrive. This division basically assumes that going into and out of Warp drive takes time.
Implementation of this concept offers a plethora of options, a few of which iv’e been mulling over for a while.
a) Any move that requires greater than ½ a ship/fleet’s total move (if used, could create an interesting tech tree subset related to sensors) precludes an attack for that turn.- i.e., if you attack, then move, you only move ½ total available points, or move then attack, it can only be within that Half range – basically anything greater then ½ your move requires the use of your actual “warp” engines, and it takes time to go in and out of warp. However, if there is multiple targets that are within “ Impulse Range ” – you can continue to attack until out of movement points.
Or, each and every attack cuts available move points by ½
c) Or, as a above with regards to impulse range, but any move over your sensor range points completely negates the ability to attack for that turn. (drop out of warp, use sensors to make sure you are not in the middle of a star, come back into the “real” universe etc.)
Gravity Wells
Planets, and Stars especially create gravity wells around them, quite literally bending space. To reflect this, and to add another level of complexity/strategy, allow the star an “influence” range aka what a starbase does now. The primary effect is once a ship reaches the border of an enemies solar system, it stops for the remainder of that turn to “drop out” of warp, and proceeds the next turn “on impulse”. This option also could allow for planetary improvements that augment the whole system! Consider an improvement to the current Fleet manager that once an enemy attacks a planet, all of your defending ships (to the planetary-holding max) in that system are transferred over “instantly” to defend.
Sensors, Scanners, light up your life.
The above posted ideas about limiting knowledge of enemy ship load-outs is a good one, however id like to take that further by offering the idea that currently, scanners/sensors/survey modules or whatever you want to call them are being under utilized. I’m sure all of us can name various sci-fi show’s that when encountering a planet or a ship, the captain asks …” what does the sensors/scanners say?”
Again, a division is needed, Long Range, and Short Range scanners. Long range scanners should be just that, long range. The current scanner cap for a gigantic galaxy is 15- this should be raised at least to 25.. with the corresponding caveat.
“Captain, our long range scanners are picking up a fleet of Plingon ships, make up unknown”
Yep, anything over ½ sensor range precludes intimate information of an enemy ships load-out. – spies can tell us what has been researched, what a planet looks like, but a spy on each individual ship of the enemy’s navy is a bit much. – granted the idea is that the spy actually has just penetrated the security data base, but still, you get the idea.
In conjunction with this, sensors, or presumably just survey modules, should allow for viewing a planet’s surface regardless of espionage level or current habitation. (“captain, our scanners are showing a high concentration of byrlecream under that volcano, just what our barbers need to keep the ship running’) – again, only at ½ range.
Starbases could have their own versions of these scanners – perhaps with a built in bonus to range/knowledge to reflect the size differentials.
Finally, as to the suicide too easy stuff that made its way to the thread, I think just a tweak in the attack ship to transport ship ratios of the AI might very well make a huge difference, I agree that at just about every AI level ive tried or even cheesed through, the AI’s lack of effective transport usage is its downfall.
anyhow, thanks for the time in reading this, have a few more idea’s but as per usual I seem to have written a durn book.
PS - if you are able to have a ship "warp" instantly anywhere, is there any chance of gifted/surrendered ships being moved to the new owners space? - more often then not, it seems the best use of these ships is to simply detsroy for the cash, if they were moved into your own system, it would prove much more useful.
