Shipyards / Starbases

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Shipyards / Starbases

#1 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I'm not sure if this is something that will be decided on officially soon, but since we're talking about designing ships, perhaps it's a good time to discuss building ships.

It's been decided to use empire-pooled production, and (I gather) to generally have a small number of shipyards, rather than lots of them all over an empire. Also perhaps relevant is that there will be limited buildings slots.

That in mind, how should shipyards work?

1) Production - Limits on Spending or not? How much can a particular shipyard produce in a given turn? Relevant sub issues:

1a) Existance / Form of Limit
A) unlimited
B) limited by number of ships worked on simultaneously
C) limited by PP that can be spent from the empire pool per turn

1c) Uniqueness of Limit
D) the same for all shipyards owned by an empire
E) determined for each shipyard indivually

1d) Source / Scope of limit
F) based on (local only) planet(s) in system, by population, buildings, resource access etc.
G) based only on researching technology immediate benefits to shipyards (all, or just those meeting certain requirements)
H) based on what addons or modules have been built for a particular shipyard, which increase capacity and/or allow new types of components
I) based on type of shipyard, (as opposed to components added to a shipyard). A type of shipyard could specialize in a particular class of ship hull, for instance.
J) combinations of F - I


2) Specialized or General? Can any shipyard build any type of ship that an empire knows how to build, or are shipyards specialized in some way, only building specific types of componenets / ships? This could be dependent on "modules", or available resources or, or building separate shipyards for different classes of ship hull, or other factors.

Having specialized shipyards might be redundant if players typically only research a few types of ship components, rather than having a wide variety available. If shipyards are specialized, it would imply that the number of componenets buildable at a particular shipyard is limited, rather than it being possible to build any and every component at a single shipyard.


3) Are shipyards a type of starbase, or something different? (Assuming there even are starbases...) A shipyard could be an addon to a standard "starter" starbase, as would weaponry and trading posts and scanning arrays and such. It could also be it's own separate object that's built on its own with or without a starbase in the system.


4) Can shipyards be captured and used by another empire than the one that built them?


Other issues? I didn't feel like scanning through rather lengthy threads to compile an exhaustive list... a starting point for more / to review might be this thread: viewtopic.php?t=774

noelte
Juggernaut
Posts: 872
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:42 pm
Location: Germany, Berlin

#2 Post by noelte »

1 - ship build should be limited at least by an overall hull size limit (which might be expandable by additions shipyard parts) and the PP which are available.
2 - can't see cases in which i would prefere Specialized shipyards
3 - a shipyard isn't a starbase
4 - NO
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

drek
Designer Emeritus
Posts: 935
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:07 am

#3 Post by drek »

1: Recall of the building public review the idea that each shipyard drains a certain amount of PP from it's host planet. This is limit one.

Only a certain # of projects that can be assigned to a world at a time. Perhaps 3xthe number of shipyards present.

2: Each shipyard unlocks building the basic ships, adds to capacity, drains PP, and unlocks building certain specialized ship parts.

3: erhm?

4: Yes. One of the dangers of building a shipyard close to another empire's borders should be the possiblity of having it turned against you. But, like all buildings, it should suffer a chance of being destroyed during the combat to take the planet.

Odi
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 1:52 am
Location: Germany

#4 Post by Odi »

1: well, I would like to see that every shipyard has a fixed ammount to spend dependent on size and tech... PP are spent equally on all projects within the shipyard, empire-PP distribution like food-distribution? (with the option to spend only a percentage of empire-PP for shipbuilding) ... just a few ideas :-)

2: I like the idea of specialized shipyards, that limits the capacity of how many capital ships can be build simultaneous... the need of building new/bigger shipyards as soon as you researched bigger hull-classes (like small [1 slot - can build 1x "small"-classed ship simultanoues] / medium [2 slots - 1x medium or 2x small] / big [3 slots 1x big || 2x medium || 4xsmall] / giant [4 slots ...]) is comdined with 4) a key for success...

3: same like drek :roll:

4: YES - opens up many strategies for a tactical invasion of a foreign empire....
zaba zaba zud zud

User avatar
Prokonsul Piotrus
Space Kraken
Posts: 154
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2004 9:20 pm
Location: Poland, Europe, Earth, Sol

#5 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

1 J - the more limits the better. The empire/planet PP of course, then the spaceyard capabilties determined by techs and amount of PP put into it - like how big ship hulls it can contructs and how many docks it has (on how many ships it can work at the same time).

2 No specialization in that sence. Simply limtits from 1 - the bigger spaceyard the bigger stuff it can build. If you want specialization then module idea - like adding a fighter or mine production line - is the best, I think.

3. The best solution I think is SE3/4 - space yards are (biiig) equipment parts (as are their modules). So you can put them on ships and bases, if they are big enough. Anyway, for me a space yard is like a big spacebase with various add ons orbiting nearby.

4. Sure, why not? Of course there is the problem of learning to use given tech. Imagine humans capturing a shipyard of energy race - they would have to recognize it for what it is, and learn to use it. It would take LOTS of time, but should be possible in theory. I think the main factor here should be based on race desing - hopefully we will be able to determine how big is the diffrence between various races, and that would influence stuff like diplomacy and penalties to use of captuered equipment.
Image

Ellestar
Space Squid
Posts: 72
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 7:39 am
Location: Russian Federation, Moscow

Re: Shipyards / Starbases

#6 Post by Ellestar »

[quote="Geoff the Medio"]I'm not sure if this is something that will be decided on officially soon, but since we're talking about designing ships, perhaps it's a good time to discuss building ships.

It's been decided to use empire-pooled production, and (I gather) to generally have a small number of shipyards, rather than lots of them all over an empire. Also perhaps relevant is that there will be limited buildings slots.

That in mind, how should shipyards work?

1) Production - Limits on Spending or not? How much can a particular shipyard produce in a given turn? Relevant sub issues:

1a) Existance / Form of Limit
C) limited by PP that can be spent from the empire pool per turn

1c) Uniqueness of Limit
E) determined for each shipyard indivually

1d) Source / Scope of limit
G) based only on researching technology immediate benefits to shipyards (all, or just those meeting certain requirements)
H) based on what addons or modules have been built for a particular shipyard, which increase capacity and/or allow new types of components



2) General shipyards.

3) Different from a starbase.

4) Can shipyards be captured and used by another empire than the one that built them?

Yes, it will be more interesting to play.

PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#7 Post by PowerCrazy »

(1)I envision shipyards to be limited by a PP/turn based on the tech level of the empire. Thus a "level one shipyard" can do 100pp/turn, while a "level 2 shipyard" can do 1000pp/turn.

(2)I don't want to bother with building modules to upgrade the shipyard, simply make it automatic with each tech advance, or have the shipyard "leech" PP from its host planet for X number of turns until the shipyard has upgraded.
Each shipyard is a "generic" shipyard and can build all ships that any other shipyard can build.


(3)A Shipyard is NOT a Starbase.

(4) A shipyard is a building, and like all buildings it can be captured and used by the enemy (after a suitable penalty has been applied).
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

emrys
Creative Contributor
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:44 pm

#8 Post by emrys »

My preferences:

1a) Limits - B (number of simulatenous ships ("# of slips") &C (PP/turn "Complex capacity") (& possibly limit on max tech components ("production methods") or hull size ("size of slips") buildable at that shipyard?)

1b) WHERE DID 1b GO????? It's a conspiracy I tell you.

1c) Uniqueness - E (factors tracked by shipyard - so I can push development at on rather than another = strategically planned investment decisions)

1d) Source/Scope - G) research tech with immediate benefits, and ?H? also based on a definite decision to upgrade a particular shipyard (either in capacity (PP/turn) or simultaneous construction limits or hull size or tech level. Not totally keen on modules/shipyard types for specific techs or hull classes (going a bit too far down the RTS path for my liking.)

2) Based on what I think you mean by this question, general. i.e. not "this is a plasma destroyer shipyard...", but not necessarily "every shipyard is identical and undifferentiated, I'd envisage having shipyards that aren't capable of building the larger hull sizes, but could be made to be by upgrading them, and shipyards that can only build one ship at a time, but can be upgraded to build more at once.

3) quoi? You'd need to define what you're meaning by "Starbase" precisely for that question to even make sense.

As a possibly related point I'm envisaging a system where shipyards take one/more building slots from a planet, but have a whole slew of fairly abstracted "orbital components" that would show up as pretty models in the combat map (more /bigger models for more developed shipyards), allowing hit and run raids to damage a shipyard complex's capabilities (or perhaps catch ships in the process of being built and destroy all that investment). It'd be good eye candy, and give fun objectives and tactics to combat bit of the game.

I'm not seeing "shipyards" as being a component of some orbital defense platform.

4) Definitely. (Subject to minor quibbles (i.e. optional gameplay featurettes) like being able to understand the tech (limiting your ability to use it) and some time to adapt another races systems to be workeable with your stuff and physiology (basically requiring a small fee/build project/time delay on capturing).)

But essentially - Shipyards require a PP/turn limit of some kind for the global build model to work nicely (explicitly accepted in the build queue review thread) - It seems natural to make them upgradeable in stages.

Also lots of people seem to want to force them to be at industrial planets, so there's the idea of draining a base quantity of PP from host planet. I think this ended up as being in the sense that a shipyard capable of drawing (100,1000,10K)PP/turn from the global queue sucks e.g. and additional (10,100,1000)PP from it's host planet irrespective of how much it's actually building this turn. (e.g. it's a standing cost not a fractional surcharge). This is a useful factor driving people towards smaller numbers of yards. (Requiring capacity upgrades to be built (i.e. investing time and PP, rather than always being free with techs) would further reinforce this.)

Most of the rest of the stuff is pretty optional/up for discussion at this point.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

emrys wrote:1b) WHERE DID 1b GO????? It's a conspiracy I tell you.
... look, a diversion! (hides)
3) quoi? You'd need to define what you're meaning by "Starbase" precisely for that question to even make sense.
That's half of what I was asking about, really...

Presumably a starbase is something that you build in space, either around a planet you own, elsewhere in systems you have planets in, or in systems you don't have any planets (via some sort of constructor ship, perhaps). What a starbase can and can't do, and what it is and isn't are a rather complicated set of issues we'll need to discuss at some later time...

However, one potentially relevant issue now would be if shipyards were a type of starbase / component / upgrade. It doesn't sound like this is particularily popular though, so whole concept of starbases can probly be dropped for the time being.

Post Reply