FreeOrion

Nonetheless, the specific options to which you are referring are fundamentally different depending on whether the very next weapon in the tech tree is just a more powerful version of the previous weapon. For example, if you just researched the ultimate SR weapon and the next weapon available for research is the Nova Bomb, that's a fundamentally different decision to make than if you just researched the penultimate SR weapon and the next weapon available for research is the ultimate SR weapon. Regardless, this is probably just an issue of semantics, since we appear to be thinking along approximately the same lines...

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Well I think the key Idea is the declining/limited Returns

Laser I < Fusion I <LaserII-III <Fusion II-III< Laser IV+ < Fusion IV+<'Blaster'

so that the Laser Refinements are cheap, but if you researched+refined Fusion weapons instead you would be farther ahead in the long run.... because eventually those Laser Refinements will NOT be cost effective. Refinements extend a tech's useful life, not indefinitely so eventually the Refinements were a waste... a Short term investment with not much long term value.

I think that if it just comes down to that, researching the next weapon outright would generally be more useful. Refinements would only really be used in the endgame. But if the decision is between refining one type of weapon and getting a totally different type of new weapon, then players probably will choose to refine old weapons a bit before they get to the one that's just a more powerful version of the same weapon. The key isn't diminishing returns, but just plain different returns.

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Also -- this could be somewhat mitigated by limiting the overall number of "types" of weapons (with later classes of weapons that occupy the same "type" perhaps gaining a 50% bonus of refinement to the previous model) -- and then giving the different "types" a unique modifier that cannot otherwise be gathered?

Something like Lasers doing direct damage, w/ Fusion Cannons being somewhat weaker at base than Lasers but doing 50% of their base damage *again* in the following turn; whereas Ion Cannons are as strong as Fusion Cannons normally but do 50% more damage to shields... etc.

You could then include a later generation of the weapons which has higher ranges and obsoletes the older "types" -- So you'd have perhaps Neutron Laser being the 2nd generation of Laser, and getting 50% of the refinement bonus from the old Lasers.

Might I also point out to everybody that this would have the potential effect of limiting the number of parts introduced into the game, which seems to me to encourage at least a little bit the KISS principle for ship design if not research?

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Definitely sounds good
(ie Mass Driver/Gauss Cannon)

So you would have a certain number of Types, probably 3-5, of
SR weapons (ie Laser/Fusion/Ion/Mass Driver)
PD weapons (maybe the same as SR Weapons)
and
LR weapons (ie Fighters, Bombers, Missiles, Torpedoes)

I could see one type that does equal damage across the board; one that does more to shields than armor; one that does more to armor than shields; one that does enduring damage... that's 5 types right there. I think that anything more than this might actually be **too** complex tactically speaking.

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I imagine at higher levels of the tech tree, certain types would be combined to create a superior weapon, i.e. a weapon that is both persistent and shield piercing. Also, bear in mind that "weapons" include LR SR and PD, which have fundamentally different roles in combat, so there would be several fundamentally different types of weapons within these categories.

Overall, I'm against having specific weapon types beyond the basic LR/SR/PD. It's somewhat limiting to us as designers and it makes the player have to keep track of just another classification that isn't very helpful except in describing the features of the weapons, which we can do far more logically and fluidly by, well, simply describing the features of the weapons.

Secondly, I believe that automatically giving a refinement to a previous weapon of the same type after researching a new weapon is somewhat self-defeating, as one or the other will be definitively better.

As for the various types of weaponry, try not to just think about what it will do damage to, expand outwards to things like increased range, damaging all ships in an area, immobilizing ships, destroying planets, etc. The things that do that will all be weapons too, and most of them will come from the weapons tree, and therefore can be used to "stagger" the different types of weapons available.

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No the idea was that each weapon type would have a "flavor" that would stay with it... Super Duper Lasers would have the same basic characteristics as Lasers... they would just be a lot more powerful (and probably more expensive, etc.)



This was primarily proposed for the purpose of technological continuity making refinements more useful



That is the opposite of what is being proposed, we are NOT saying
You researched Super Lasers, now your Normal Lasers get +1 Level of Refinement

We ARE saying (afaik)
You researched Super Lasers... and since your regular Lasers were already refined +4 levels, your Super Lasers are refined +2 levels as soon as you research them [since you can't build normal +4 Lasers any more, because your +2 Super Lasers render them obsolete]



Increasing/Decreasing range I can see (although you don't want to make SR weapons LR ones.. just have ones that are near the limit, and ones that are even short for SR)

But I don't think we want all of those others. For Example, planet destroyers...why should those be usable against ships, it just makes planet destroying a boring option at the end [see Nova Bomb for a good Alternative]?

And I'm not sure we want too much variety in our types of weapon (why I was suggesting no more than 3-5 for each SR/PD/LR) I mean MOO2's weapon variety was fun... but, if you did put them in groups

Mass Driver-Gauss Cannon-Disrupter
Fusion Beam-Plasma Cannon-(Mauler Device)
Plasma Web
Lasers-(Phasers)-[Particle Beam]
Ion Cannon
Neutron Beam-[Death Ray]
Graviton Beam/Gyro Destabilizer
Tractor Beam-[Black Hole Generator]
Stellar Converter

That's at least 9 types, 7 if you are a bit more conservative.... and it is probably good if you want to have the complexity of MOO2 for combat. But I think that if we are going to KISS, that 3-5 groupings should be enough

In any case the types I could see for SR/PD

Standard
Shorter Range, Increased Damage
Longer Range, Decreased ROF
Uses Ammo? (more powerful)
Special Damage... "Crippling" damage

Sorry, I misread that particular quote.

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Happens to the best of us. Don't know how the rest of you manage!

Now, one way to limit things somewhat would be to mitigate the nature of our breadth of weapon types by not simply repeating each Type through the range categories.

For example; keep the persistent (multiple turns) & radiative (doing perhaps 10%-25% of its damage rating to ships within a certain distance of the ship struck... that could be really ugly for massed fleets) weapons SR only. This also makes something else useful; Lasers (the initial/starting weapon) would be able to be used at both SR and LR. (Damage could be reduced by like 25% or some fixed number once you're outside of the SR reach.)

So... over-all I'm seeing the following as a range of categories:

Mass-Driver "type" weapons: SR, +50% to armor
Plasma Cannon "type" weapons: SR, .5x following turn
Laser "type" weapons: SR/LR
Ion Cannon "type" weapons: +SR, +50% to shields
Gravity "type" weapons: LR, .25x damage to all ships within blah radius of target
Fighters: LR, 10% effective versions of SR weapons (picked at creation of bay. Fixed unless ship is refitted)
Missiles: LR, carries selected bomb type.
Bombs: Planet only.

That makes... 8 "types" that would have to be fitted in slots. (I'm imagining that Fighters, Missiles, and Bombs would all be given a 'drop down' when you pop them into the slot to assign which type of them you choose. This simplifies the ship creation screen by reducing the total # of icons.)

Possible names for weapons:
Mass Driver, Gauss Cannon, Matter Cannon, Micro-Singularity Projector

Fusion Beam, Plasma Cannon, Antimatter Converter, Hellbore

Laser, Neutron Laser, Particle Beam, Disruption Lense

Electrolaser, Ion Cannon, Positron Beam, Entropic Cascade Focus

EM Wave Focus, Graviton Beam, Inertial Disruption Wave, Transdimensional Disruption Engine

Fighters:
Scouts, Interceptors, Bombers. Refinements could include additional speed (max # of refinements equal to your drive 'generation') and armor (max # of refinements equal to your armor 'generation'). Scouts are equipped with your current-gen sensors (though they would obviously be less effective; purpose of scouts is, well... obvious; you can see further into the field, and maybe spot stuff earlier. For a stealthy/LR fleet this would be a decided advantage.) Interceptors get whichever SR weapon type you assign, and are floating PD. Bombers get your current-gen bomb type, and are the LR. If Bombers are sent, Interceptors will attempt a 1:1 ratio w/ Bombers. I am envisioning that Interceptor fighters could even attempt to 'fire' at beam-type PD weapons.

Missiles:
Could have mods as refinements (stealthiness and armor). Each generation of missile would be a separate field of research from developing a new drive type, rather than being a refinement as with Fighters. Each generation obsoletes the generation previous, but has no effect on ships already built. (Which may still pull from the "missile" pool as normal, however.)


Reason why I'm assigning the armor, speed, and stealth as refinements rather than just auto-upgrades is because that way fighters and missiles don't seem like after-thoughts or overwhelm the other weapons too immediately. This violates the KISS rule somewhat, but hopefully it's not too much so. As always, all refinements obsolete previous versions for new construction but require ship refit to be applied. Refinement refits could be applied from the galaxy screen; select the fleet and press the button for "update fleet" which appears only if a refinement could be applied. This would simply cost resources from the galaxy screen. (It could also be done from the planet screen and cost local production. Player options are good!)

This plus shield technologies, sensors, armor, ship speeds and hull sizes ought to make for satisfactorily in-depth stuff.

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Anyway, I think that any special features of weaponry should obviously be based on what we want the player to be able to do in combat. Refinements should probably affect all aspects of a weapon, including size, max damage, range, and speed/firing rate, where applicable. Since I'm in the mood, I'll just throw together a basic skeleton of what I think weapons should look like. Granted, looking at the tech tree first might be an idea, but I'm not in the mood.

Take LR as an example. The most basic type wile probably be a basic type of missile. The next more advanced type of missile will be significantly further up the weapons tree. The next step up from that would be basic fighters. Beyond that would be some kind of assault shuttles that could be used to drop troops on a planet during combat or board enemy ships during combat, depending on which of these will actually be allowed. Perhaps such a shuttle could also transport large numbers of secret agents, massively boosting your espionage meter on that planet, or allowing certain spy missions that would otherwise be impossible. That makes three distinct type of LR weapons.

The next LR weapon to be researched would be an advanced missile that does more damage, is more difficult to destroy and has a longer range than even the best refinement of the older missile. Next, something similar would occur with fighters, also with an increased firing rate, and then again with assault shuttles, with an increased troop/agent capacity.

For SR weapons, it's natural that we start with the basic laser, that functions the way it's expected to.
From there, we have a weapon that partially ignores shields, perhaps only a small fraction of what should have been absorbed by shields will be. Good against ships with heavy shielding, but worse than the laser if the ship has no shields due to decreased range/damage. The third type might deal persistent damage to a ship and all the ships in it's vicinity by causing it to act like some sort of spatial compressor, but this weapon would have a very low firing rate. Good against large fleets of very small ships, where the power of the laser would be wasted by shooting down ships one at a time.

Then, obviously, we have the advanced laser. The phasor perhaps, which would be better than the most highly refined laser with regards to power, firing rate, and range. After that, a weapon that ignores shields completely, but is still weaker than the phasor when used against ships with mid-low level shielding. Lastly, beyond that, we have a super duper spatial compressor initiator, which can be given a cooler/more concise name later, or removed/replaced if that whole idea wouldn't work very well.

Last but not least, we have PD weapons. I guess we would have really small, rapid fire, super-accurate weapons for the first stage, followed up by some sort of spatial compressor. I can't really think of a good third one for PD weapons. Those two would probably do, and could have their next levels as well, i.e. lightning field to spatial compressor, or mini-laser things to super-duper mini-laser things...

Any way, amidst these would be spread things like biological weaponry if you want to destroy a colony, but leave the infrastructure intact so you can colonize it, perhaps special weapons like stasis fields, an last but not least, the mighty Nova Bomb.

That's just my first idea for a weapons tree. Now I'll go look at the real one and see how/if they compare...

Looks like IConrad posted something while I was writing this... using fighters for recon is a good idea...

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Bigjoe -- the one issue I have with the approach you described is that there would be only one truly viable strategy at any given time for the weapons you possess.

I don't like the idea of a strictly linear progression for weapon-arrangement strategies with the only choices being between SR & LR approaches.

I feel that fighters, missiles, and beam-weapons should all be arranged for equivalency in choices. Not necessarily merely because it would increase "realism" but rather because it would allow players to pick and choose their strategies and tactics in combat on something based more strongly than merely how high their overall technology rating is.

That is to say; rather than have a truly linear technology tree a la MoO II -- I feel it would be a more interesting approach to find something more akin to the Rock/Paper/Scissors approach.

So each "generation" of weapons is effectively equivalent in overall power; which you start with is perhaps random or perhaps determined by your species -- it wouldn't necessarily be lasers; rather, it could be electrolasers.

For point defense weapons, I was envisioning something akin to permitting just a much-reduced-potency version of the SR or LR weapons.

I.e.; you could use Interceptors as your Point Defense by not using Bombers. You could also assign Point Defense status to missiles which would get you a whole lot more of them but they'd do less damage/range. (I.e.; anti-LR rockets) Then you could have Ship Defense beams... and at the latest range you could have the "gravity" type weapons become selective which would make them "killer" against LR weapons -- but not necessarily 100% effective, of course: a well-armored LR weapon could penetrate this anyhow.

I'm also thinking, by the way, that even the LR beam weapons could be intercepted by PD stuff. This would be something equivalent to throwing up Chaff; if you shoot a rocket at the path of a Laser, when the laser hits the rocket it is effectively harmlessly disbursed. If you throw up a beam PD weapon against a Gravity beam, it simply lacks the mass / decoheres the beam such that it no longer has its nifty gravitational-like effects. Etc. (This preserves the LR / PD 'arms-race' value whilst allowing beam-based LR weaponry.)

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? I don't think that's true at all. The idea of the newer weapons is that each is useful in a different situation/as a counter to a different enemy tactic. For example, if your opponent is using heavily shielded ships, the disruptor will be a better option for your short range ships that the phasor. Similarly, If you're opponent is using large fleets of small ships, fighters or what you called "Gravity type" weapons are better than just using lasers/missiles, or even better than phasors/advanced missiles. Whether to use more LR or SR for this purpose would depend on the proportion of the enemies ships. More PD ships means you should use more SR, whereas more SR means you should use more LR.

That's essentially the whole point of what we've been discussing. We want players to use more than just the most recent type of weapon.

Obviously certain weapons such as fighters will come in two flavours: bomber and interceptor, and I was assuming there would be some type of "Gravity" weapon for use as a PD weapon. If we fail to specialize at least some weapons for LR PD or SR, then the tech tree will become shorter and lack the depth that it might otherwise have.

I assume you mean SR in this quote? Anyway, if that were implemented, the RPS quality of LR/SR/PD would be lost, IMO.

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I think Big Joe's idea is basically good (And similar to IConrads)

Theory Level 1: allows Lasers, Laser II (refinement)
Theory Level 2: allows Fusion Beams, Fusion Beam II and Laser III+IV (refinement). Laser II<Fusion Beams=Laser III < Laser IV
.....
Theory Level 6: allows Phasers that Replace Lasers


so the Refinements would allow any weapon 'type' to remain current until it got to the next Generation

No, I did in fact mean LR beam, not SR beam.

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