What to do with the lighthouse

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Ophiuchus
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What to do with the lighthouse

#1 Post by Ophiuchus »

So in the multiplayer game I found the biggest problem for peaceful expansionist the lighthouse. It breaks the ability to travel and more important it makes it mostly impossible to establish hidden colonies.

Currently the only realistic counter to loose stealth of your hidden colonies is to put hidden colonies on all planets of a system.

There are multiple things wrong with it I think:
  • it is a build-everywhere building
  • it is very powerful for its price (both in RP (150) as in PP), negating one-and-a-half levels of stealth. Plus you get speedup.
  • it is too accessible (150RP on top of active radar), by that time the opponent could only have research one level of planetary stealth. And the prerequisite (active radar) also negates one level of stealth. Even great stealth species have trouble with that.
What I would suggest:

For pacing: make it later accessible, up the research cost a bit

For restricting build-everywhere: make it cost influence upkeep to keep the numbers low. Up the PP cost so that moving the building hurts; or building one lighthouse also costs some influence; or lower influence upkeep the longer the building exists.

And also add a counter: e.g. a targeting computer which makes the ship weapons shoot at marked planets and no other targets. A target is marked if the enemy has lighthouse on it OR if you mark it by building an influence project to expose the defense structure.
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Oberlus
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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Change prerequisite for Lighthouse to Detection 3 (up from Detection 2) and nerf the stealth malus to -20 (from -30).


An absolutely pacific expansion strategy should not be easy.
Consider adding some stealth ships to harass enemy outposts/colony ships.

It's true that playing pacific Sly against AI is way easier than against humans.

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#3 Post by LienRag »

The Speed bonus is both important to get not so late (where transportation through Stargates will make it obsolete) and makes a large number of lighthouses necessary.

What would the proposed change of Stealth mechanism entail here ? Maybe the solution is right there ? Making the Lighthouse able to detect enemy actions but not enabling attacks against stealth colonies ?

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#4 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 4:09 pm Change prerequisite for Lighthouse to Detection 3 (up from Detection 2) and nerf the stealth malus to -20 (from -30).
I thought this should go into 0.4.10 as a short term solution. But then I realized that one is forced to research detection 3 (another anti-stealth) in order to get the speed boost. So I rather suggest make the requisite electromagnetic dampening (SPY_STEALTH_PART_1, 100RP), up the cost to 200RP (from 150RP) and nerf the stealth malus to -20 (from -30). Looks better in the research tree, still has fluff connection, the stealth part is not anti-stealth and going for detection stays a choice. Does not address the spamming though, so should be revisited in 0.5
LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:34 am The Speed bonus is both important to get not so late (where transportation through Stargates will make it obsolete) and makes a large number of lighthouses necessary.
We should find another way to give a speed boost then.
LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:34 am What would the proposed change of Stealth mechanism entail here ? Maybe the solution is right there ? Making the Lighthouse able to detect enemy actions but not enabling attacks against stealth colonies ?
This is not completely possible yet I think. But with the building only helping in granting basic visibility (so not able to blockade stealthed ships or invade stealthed planets) seems a good idea.
Last edited by Ophiuchus on Fri May 15, 2020 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#5 Post by LienRag »

Maybe doing Speed boosts differently is indeed the way to go...
The Interstellar Lighthouse is both interesting and flawed for that, the way it works now.
The idea of having sort of "railroads" inside one's Empires is interesting gameplay-wise¹ and gives a sort of emotional reward when they are unlocked, but being spamalot they're actually just a sort of second Interstellar Logistics once one has built them everywhere.

¹ Though it is alas nullified by the Stargate unlocking later

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:37 pm Maybe doing Speed boosts differently is indeed the way to go...
The Interstellar Lighthouse is both interesting and flawed for that, the way it works now.
One thing about the lighthouse which in principle could be interesting is that it also works against your own stealth, so there is a speed-vs-stealth tradeoff. But that fails on two accounts: first, it is very easy to remove the lighthouse if an enemy approaches. second, it is only a tradeoff for stealth if you are invested into stealth. If stealth was very powerful that might make sense and you would place lighthouses only on certain planets. At the moment stealth is UP in multiplayer.
Last edited by Ophiuchus on Fri May 15, 2020 1:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#7 Post by LienRag »

Indeed...

It is my opinion that the ability to scrap buildings at will with little to no cost is a problem as it limits the consequences of choices made earlier and as such makes many things a no-brainer that wouldn't be otherwise.

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#8 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:55 pm Indeed...

It is my opinion that the ability to scrap buildings at will with little to no cost is a problem as it limits the consequences of choices made earlier and as such makes many things a no-brainer that wouldn't be otherwise.
Burned earth is much too easy currently. It is almost impossible to keep your spoils (surprise attack mostly). I would not mind if the "scrap the building" functionality was removed. The infrastructure concept is not interesting anyway.

One way to redo the lighthouse could be a speed-vs-damage tradeoff (although hard to write fluff for that). One could also make the lighthouse add an "enlightened" special to the system, so one cant remove it at will (fluff: you do something to the frequencies sent out from your sun).

Against spam-a-lot also making this centralized would work: add the speed effect IFF supply-connected to an allied Interstellar Lighthouse (fluff: it does something to the starlanes). Make the lighthouse much more expensive for that - at least ten times as it is now. Cutting the connection would slow down your fleet.
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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#9 Post by Oberlus »

Scrap buildings as a project that takes say three turns and costs some PP.

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#10 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:59 pm
LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:55 pm It is my opinion that the ability to scrap buildings at will with little to no cost is a problem as it limits the consequences of choices made earlier and as such makes many things a no-brainer that wouldn't be otherwise.
Burned earth is much too easy currently. It is almost impossible to keep your spoils (surprise attack mostly). I would not mind if the "scrap the building" functionality was removed. The infrastructure concept is not interesting anyway.
In this discussion I alluded to an Influence Upkeep mechanism that would tacke spamalot problems, and partially scrap-and-rebuild being too easy. Combined with scraping taking a few turns (and having a cost) it could help alleviate the "scorched-earth tactics being a no-brainer" problem that we have now.

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:59 pm
One way to redo the lighthouse could be a speed-vs-damage tradeoff (although hard to write fluff for that). One could also make the lighthouse add an "enlightened" special to the system, so one cant remove it at will (fluff: you do something to the frequencies sent out from your sun).
I'm not sure that I fully understand nor agree with the first proposition, but the "enlightened" special could be a way of making it work, indeed.

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:59 pm Against spam-a-lot also making this centralized would work: add the speed effect IFF supply-connected to an allied Interstellar Lighthouse (fluff: it does something to the starlanes). Make the lighthouse much more expensive for that - at least ten times as it is now. Cutting the connection would slow down your fleet.
I really like the strategic implications of slowing down enemy fleet by cutting their supply lines...

It is my current opinion that there are too many centralized mechanisms in FreeOrion, though. I understand how it was necessary to avoid spamalot (and avoiding spamalot is a sound design choice) but my proposed Infrastructure Upkeep mechanism gets rid of spamalot if it is adopted, leaving way for more diverse kinds of geographical effects from buildings, beyond the supply-wide one that is now hegemonic.

Maybe I'm wrong since anyway Stargates will remove their usefulness, but I'd like to have a "railroad-like" mechanism if we get rid of the way the Lighthouse works right now : maybe have "Space Corbetite Terminals" that have a bigger effect (mostly range-wise) but that due to their Infrastructure requirements cannot be build everywhere.
I'm thinking of something like +60 to speed in the system itself, +40 one hop away, +20 two hops away, +10 three hops away. All these boni only for allied ships.
This would make for one or two "speed lanes" in the Empire that one would need to carefully plan, making for fast military movements along these lanes, with all the strategic effects and polarization of space that it entails.

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Re: What to do with the lighthouse

#11 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 3:22 pm Scrap buildings as a project that takes say three turns and costs some PP.
Yes, exactly that (you posted while I was writing my own post so I didn't see yours).

Maybe more than three turns? It's usually easy to see enemy coming from more than three turns before they conquer a planet, so forcing hard strategic choices rather than just reacting to obvious events would require scraping to take more around 6 to 10 turns, don't you agree ?

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