DESIGN: Buildings / Build Queues / Infrastructure

[noelte]

I like to mention one thing we didn't touch yet. When talking about defences, what about ground troops. I would like to see them in game and if we have them, do we need Marine-slots? I still think all the defence stuff shouldn't touch the planet slots.

[Satyagraha]

i could do without ground combat. the time might be better invested in improving space combat.

[noelte]

I think ground combat is the logic next step to conquer a planet. If you don't glace a planet, you should be forced to control the population as long as the need to accept the new ruler. I'm not talking about tactical combat control. Btw this would also add one more area for race specific picks.

But this might not be the right place talking about ground combat.

[Daveybaby]

I was thinking more along the lines of planetary defenses. It seems to me you could always go around planetary defenses, even with starlanes. Unless the tactical combat 'playing field' is so small that planetary missile base would cover it, you could just cruise around the periphery on to the next system or undefended planet. If not then you eliminate the ability to blockade a planet or system, unless it is completely undefended. I don't think we want to do that do we?

Agreed.

I was more trying to point out that by using a starlane system, there are far fewer systems which need to be defended in order to secure your borders - thus you can use your fleets to defend these chokepoints far more effectively than you could in a game like Moo1 or Moo2. Thus with starlanes you dont have as much use for system/planetary defences. In Moo1/2 there is no way you can assign adequate defensive fleets to all systems which can be attacked by the enemy - so you need system defences to give those systems at least some protection.

Moo3 illustrated this well - the only reason to bother to build system defences is to reduce unrest due to piracy.

[Ragnar]

I'm with you, Daveybaby.

I think if we do the tactical combat right we could see viable system defenses at the point of penetration (starlane entires). This would take some of the emphasis off fleets, but fleets would still be the primary defense. This relegates planetary defenses to the tertiary means of defense and ground troops to the fourth line of defense.

From the latest posts, it seems there is at least a majority that don't want defense to be in with the planetary focus. As for slots, maybe we could have one defense building that would be upgradeable. In fact, why not have upgradeability as a function for all buildings, if applicable. Shipyards would have some progressive levels giving you more capacity and/or build speed. Defense Center goes up from batteries to batteries w/ shields, etc. Automatic upgrades on weapons as you research them. Then we leave it at 3 slots max.

Another idea is to have the 'Defense Center' act like a ship, with spaces you can fill with whatever weapons, shield, and specials you want. Also taking up one planetary slot. You then have to upgrade it when you want to redesign (as long as there is a macro tool that rebuilds all your 'Defense Centers' at once).

[drek]

As for slots, maybe we could have one defense building that would be upgradeable. In fact, why not have upgradeability as a function for all buildings, if applicable. Shipyards would have some progressive levels giving you more capacity and/or build speed. Defense Center goes up from batteries to batteries w/ shields, etc. Automatic upgrades on weapons as you research them. Then we leave it at 3 slots max.

Sounds good to me.

[guiguibaah]

Playing around in MS paint and I drew up this monstrosity.



I think it's supposed to represent a small planet. Maybe a big planet gets 6 blue building slots and a medium 5? I didn't show what's on the moon, perhaps I'll do that later.

Anyway, the first row of white icons are the main buildings and stuff.. I'm not creative, so I thought up of "Automated factory", "Farm (that's supposed to be a tractor)" and "Research lab". I guess you could scroll down more to access things like "Shipyard" and maybe "Hydroponic Farm" or something like it.

The second row of icons are the Defence ones. I imagine they pop up as you research their ability. I thought up of Missile, Battery, Fighter and Shield. They would fit in the purple, and if all the purple are filled, maybe the blues as well (although this would restrict the planets potential).

Oh, and I put numbers to show what's in empire "storage"

- - -

Here's another thing in regards to planetary defence.

- On this planet there are 4 military slots. If I wanted to, I could fill them up with:
1 missile, 1 battery, 1 fighter and 1 shield...
Or, I could fill them up with:
4 battery. Or
3 missile and 1 fighter.

- Each planetary defence has it's Strenghts and Weaknesses. You may put all 4 missile defence, which would wreck havoc on a fleet of purely large long-range beamships. But if you want to take it over, attack with a smaller fleet of ECM point-defence ships.

- For sure, if you wanted to, you could fit an outpost with 4 missile defence and add 3 batteries in the blue slots... But then that could take a long long time to build anything on that planet.

- Here's what a full planet could look like....

[utilae]

Yeah, we definately need defense in their somewhere.

[skdiw]

we are fairly certain we aren't going to be managing each planet individually. The few things that we do build will be rare, and only a few planets will have them.

Things like wonders, shipyards, and perhaps defense. I want the planet to autobuild based on its focus. Buildings will exist but the player will not need to build them.

This will reduce management of a planet and leave the player to focus on more important things, like research, fleet building, diplo, etc.

Totally. Too bad my posts got deleted .

I like to keep things as simple as possible. For defense, I think we should have a button that doubles the amount of defense that the planet have. It should start off with some natural defense. With each click of button, your defense structures will double once completed. A defense structure will include your best missile, beam...whatever all in one convienient building so no fiddling around with batterings, silos...too complicated. I think doubling is good because the curve grows fast so you shouldn't have to go to every planet and click too many times to get the defense that you want.

[drek]

I think doubling is good because the curve grows fast so you shouldn't have to go to every planet and click too many times to get the defense that you want.

Again, I think the most intuitive method of dividing resources spent on defense is via the fleet interface. If you want to defend a system, move some ships in. If you want to double the defense of that system, move twice as many ships in.

If there is a defensive structure, I'd want it to be something like Smac's/Civ's citywalls. If you need more defense on a planet, perhaps because it's a fortress world meant to defend a chokepoint or the location of an important shipyard, then the player would use another build slot to construct a second defensive structure of the same type.

Rather than upgrading the structure itself, you'd research defensive technologies to improve these "citywalls."

Instead of directly attacking enemy ships, these defensive structures would increase conquest time, cut down on piracy and other bad random events, and mostly importantly aid friendly ships in the system, giving them a bonus in combat. Because the structure would be essentially useless without friendly ships, it enforces the notion that starships are the one true gauge of military might.

Maybe it's not terribly realistic, but I think it would make for cleaner gameplay.

Misc. structures that help with defense without directly effecting combat, such sensors that spy into neighboring systems or gravity wells that mess with the starlanes, seem far more interesting to me than messing around with kill-o-zap buildings--especially since we've already got ships to do the kill-o-zapping.

A few rare defensive Wonders might be cool too, but they should have an area of effect. (like the Great Wall of China project in Civ)

[Rapunzel]

Buildings like "Planetary shield" are huge projects that ought to be a spcial building since these things tend to use up a huge amount of recources. But I like the idea of defending a System using objects in space not by planets.

1. Planet can build planet defense, but they aught to be expensive in building and maintainance, but should give a great amount of offense/defense. (maby a Builng borrowed from starwars could be possible "Doomstarshielding" gives ever ship +100 shild or whatever)

2. Defense of a system should be made by Spaceships/Spacestations/Mines/Satelites

If we have a ship that transforms into the spacestation, we originally designed, once it is in position, spacestations can even be placed at places were there is no shipyard or just a smal planet or even no planet at all. But if this is a cokepoint we want to be ready there

[Satyagraha]

Instead of directly attacking enemy ships, these defensive structures would increase conquest time, cut down on piracy and other bad random events, and mostly importantly aid friendly ships in the system, giving them a bonus in combat. Because the structure would be essentially useless without friendly ships, it enforces the notion that starships are the one true gauge of military might.

The problem i see here is that it would be hard to tell the true strengh of a fleet, if the strengh constantly changes depending on defenses of particular systems. it think it might make the planning of an attack more difficult. Let´s say Fleet A is currently in system A, but i want to know Fleet A´s strengh if they move to system B. click fleet A, remember strengh, click system B, look at defenses, add the bonuses of system B to fleet A, calculate overall strengh... looks like number crunching to me

It´s easier to predict the outcome of a battle if we simply have star bases that work like additional "stationary ships" because i can say "ok, my fleet will face an enemy fleet of 15 ships and additional 2 star bases in that system, or additional 3 star bases if they retreat to a nearby system".

[noelte]

The problem i see here is that it would be hard to tell the true strengh of a fleet, if the strengh constantly changes depending on defenses of particular systems. it think it might make the planning of an attack more difficult. It´s easier to predict the outcome of a battle if we have star bases that work like "stationary ships" because i can say "ok, my fleet will face an enemy fleet of 15 ships and additional 2 star bases in that system, or additional 3 star bases if they retreat to a narby system".

You can't tell fleet strength just by counting ships/star bases and so on. We had the same problem when talking about howto display fleet info on starmap. Using numbers wouldn't tell anything. Maybe we will later be able to >calculate< the attacker/defender strenght.

[Rapunzel]

It seems that we are all agreed to manage Planets by focus and that buildings the player actually creates are specail, very rare ore even unique within an empire.
System defence is something regular so we cannot defend the system with planetbuilding, at least it shuld not be normal to do so, there could be some special building's supporting enhancing or whatever engaging in comat, but they should be rearly special and too expansive to support on all planet's or even on all important chocepoints.
ergo system defence does infolve Planetary-Buildings.
So O think the thread about defense should be discusses in a seperate thread.

[utilae]

I think doubling is good because the curve grows fast so you shouldn't have to go to every planet and click too many times to get the defense that you want.

Again, I think the most intuitive method of dividing resources spent on defense is via the fleet interface. If you want to defend a system, move some ships in. If you want to double the defense of that system, move twice as many ships in.

I'd still like to see defensive structures of some kind. They would basically be ships that cannot move. If we only use ships for defense, that cuts down on the fun.

If there is a defensive structure, I'd want it to be something like Smac's/Civ's citywalls. If you need more defense on a planet, perhaps because it's a fortress world meant to defend a chokepoint or the location of an important shipyard, then the player would use another build slot to construct a second defensive structure of the same type.

Rather than upgrading the structure itself, you'd research defensive technologies to improve these "citywalls."

Wouldn't be less micro to not have to build the defense structure a second time. So if we upgraded the structure, at least then we could have it done automatically based on some kind of defense emphasis we set for the planet. Set it to high, it upgrades faster and builds more defense structures itself.

Instead of directly attacking enemy ships, these defensive structures would increase conquest time, cut down on piracy and other bad random events, and mostly importantly aid friendly ships in the system, giving them a bonus in combat. Because the structure would be essentially useless without friendly ships, it enforces the notion that starships are the one true gauge of military might.

Maybe it's not terribly realistic, but I think it would make for cleaner gameplay.

Yeah, but that sounbds a little boring to me. I mean I would like to see the possiblilty of going into a system with no defending ships and only the planets defense type buildings. If all a laser battery did was give my ships in the system a bonus to attack, well that is pretty lame. I would be much happier if it did what I expected and fired lasers of its own.

Misc. structures that help with defense without directly effecting combat, such sensors that spy into neighboring systems or gravity wells that mess with the starlanes, seem far more interesting to me than messing around with kill-o-zap buildings--especially since we've already got ships to do the kill-o-zapping.

A few rare defensive Wonders might be cool too, but they should have an area of effect. (like the Great Wall of China project in Civ)

You have to have a variety though. If we threw out the defense structures that 'just shot lasers' because they are too normal, then that is not good at all. I would expect the kill-o-zap buildings to be just as useful as ships. And I don't see a reason to phase them out because 'ships are better'.