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Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:47 am
by Foocaux
The new transpatial drive core part has - so far - looked suspiciously similar to the totally unrelated singularity engine core part.

To remedy this state of affairs, here's my initial take on what it actually looks like, released under CC-by-SA 3.0 licence:

Edit: Oops, I did upload the wrong file, corrected that now!

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:55 am
by adrian_broher
Do you have a source asset for that?

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:50 am
by Foocaux
Well, I just played around with the existing engines icons (engine-2.png & engine-3.png inside the icons folder) plus a few layer effects in paint.net. Apart from those 2 pngs I used no other assets whatsoever.

I did lose a couple of intermediate steps/layers, by cleverly flattening the image, then saving, rather than saving then flattening, though.

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 12:00 pm
by Foocaux
Hmm, noticed a hard edge on the bottom left hand corner, and removed it.

Plus I've got a snapshot of what it looks like 'in the flesh':

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 1:47 am
by MatGB
This is rather nifty, I have no idea how to make a patch for new images let alone upload them, but it ought to be done ASAP. Thank you, I'd completely overlooked asking for someone to do this.

Now, this implies you've played games using the part. On a scale from A little bit to ridiculously, how overpowered do you think I made it? And what can be done to tone it down while still keeping it cool and usable?

Edit: here's a patch but the file appears to need uploading to SVN separately.

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:36 am
by Geoff the Medio

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 8:48 am
by Foocaux
MatGB wrote:Now, this implies you've played games using the part. On a scale from A little bit to ridiculously, how overpowered do you think I made it? And what can be done to tone it down while still keeping it cool and usable?
Well, in my game I did get to this technology as an afterthought (I was producing 1.1k RP per turn, before getting round to switching all the research planets to something else - now only 360-odd RP/turn, the rest in industry & pop bonuses)
I already had 2/3 of the galaxy, and I was churning out titans 4 at a time, in 3 interleaved-by-5-turns batches. I also had 5 working stargates, to deliver the freshly baked titans to the front lines. The most pressing concern I had at the time was to produce enough troops to conquer the 20 or so enemy planets I was blockading, without disrupting my Titan bakery too much! :D

To recap, things were already 'slightly' unbalanced to begin with, but it is really nice to be able to jump to a far away system in just one turn. The cloaking aspect of it didn't make much difference at that stage, the enemy had sufficiently high tech to see my ships at all times.

I suppose a way of nerfing this engine would be to increase the min required production time by a couple of turns, then the player has to balance longer production times with shorter travel time once produced.

Mat, look what you've done: you got me thinking about game balance... Drats, I like winning! :D
There's definitely a couple of issues I kind-of noticed but hadn't really given much thought about. I'll collect my thoughts, and I'll provide some semi-coherent feedback on that whole game at some point! :)

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:54 pm
by MatGB
Foocaux wrote: I already had 2/3 of the galaxy, and I was churning out titans 4 at a time, in 3 interleaved-by-5-turns batches. I also had 5 working stargates, to deliver the freshly baked titans to the front lines. The most pressing concern I had at the time was to produce enough troops to conquer the 20 or so enemy planets I was blockading, without disrupting my Titan bakery too much! :D
Heh, been there—you build full Stargates and not Transformers? I always preferred the latter but these days try to build the former at least somewhere because it's Just So Pretty.
To recap, things were already 'slightly' unbalanced to begin with, but it is really nice to be able to jump to a far away system in just one turn. The cloaking aspect of it didn't make much difference at that stage, the enemy had sufficiently high tech to see my ships at all times.
It's the massive speed boost for titans that bothers me most, making them potentially way faster than Fractals with all those slots. I haven't got to testing with a Solar yet but I suspect that'll be hideous. On the other hand, once you're churning out solar hulls, you're normally so far beyond being threatened it's silly.
I suppose a way of nerfing this engine would be to increase the min required production time by a couple of turns, then the player has to balance longer production times with shorter travel time once produced.
Tried that already, it's now IIRC 8 turns, I think it possibly needs to be 10.
Mat, look what you've done: you got me thinking about game balance... Drats, I like winning! :D
Everyone playtesting should be thinking about balance, at least a bit, but it's what I've always been best at in design, completely "new" ideas are very rare from me, but taking a good idea and makign it work within an existing environment. One of the problems we've got is we're not thinking about balance enough or reporting them, bugs get reported, missing art, etc but "If I build a fleet of these I win" not so much, and there's only so many things or variants of tech research I can do.

Course, what we really need is to work out a way to actually play each other, but that'd require logistics that'll be a challenge.
There's definitely a couple of issues I kind-of noticed but hadn't really given much thought about. I'll collect my thoughts, and I'll provide some semi-coherent feedback on that whole game at some point! :)
Good good. I plan to start a thread soon. Hmm...

Re: Proposed New Transpatial Drive Icon

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:51 pm
by Single Player
MatGB wrote:Tried that already, it's now IIRC 8 turns, I think it possibly needs to be 10.
Increasing drive production time to 10 does not really nerf much if you put it into a Scattered Asteroid hull (production time 15 turns) or a Solar hull (20 turns) where I think they're most useful.
Only a ship with a Self-Gravitating hull (2 turns) would take significantly longer to build, with a Titanic hull not so much. OK there is also the Trans-spatial hull - but I don't really see its use.

BTW the stealth effect of the Trans-spatial drive not only does not stack with other cloaking ship parts but makes them useless. Given the drive is a tech for later game phases its stealth is of no use against neutron scanners and sensors (except in a sentient hull). Don't know if that is intended -- if yes then most of the many internal slots of the bigger hulls have no purpose than to take more N-dimensional engine matrix-es. You said those massive speed boosts bothered you, didn't you?