🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic Brad Wardell <bwar...@stardock.com> wrote:
> "mcv" <mcv...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message 
> news:43d66ff8$0$11067$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>
>> Ofcourse if players tend to specialise extremely in different weapon
>> technologies, this may not be much of a problem, but with more than
>> two players, I may be able to trade my advanced mass drivers against
>> an ally's advanced beams, and surprise my enemy who has just put a
>> lot of effort into a mass driver resistent fleet.
> 
> It'll be very tough for players to be jack of all trades and win.  One 
> change we did to the game is that techs get more expensive based on the # y 
> ou've researched.  So going up through the railguns and such to get good 
> mass driver based weapons is good but it'll be tougher to go back and start 
> with missiles or phasers or whatever.  So you end up commiting, to a certian 
> extent.  You can switch, and players will need to in many cases, but it's 
> not trivial to just crank out a fleet of dreadnoughts using the state of the 
> art beam weapons and then turn around with another group of dreadnoughts 
> with the best missiles.

But consider the following scenario: I'm specialising in mass drivers,
while my buddies the Altarians are specialising in beam weapons. I
get into a war with the Drengin, and because of my mass drivers, he
specialises in armour. We go on for a while, and I end up with Mass
Drivers XXI while he has Armour XXIII. So I talk to the Altarians,
whom I happen to be on pretty good terms with (although he hasn't
joined the war yet), and trade my Mass Drivers I-XXI for his
Beam weapons XVII, and start shooting the crap out of my shieldless
adversary. And I only have 1 more tech than I had before, so it's
not even slowing down my research much (although the Altarians may
suffer). The only way to prevent this is to prevent tech trade
altogether.

But even if you don't allow tech trade, the Altarians can still join
the war, and start shooting the crap out of those poor, shieldless
Drengin.

Although I like the idea, I'm afraid that forced specialisation in
technology may give close allies and/or tech traders a big advantage
over players in a more isolated position. (This may actually be
realistic, but it's also a bit unbalancing.) Instead, I think
encouraging specialisation in ships while allowing diversification
in research would be better.

A way to encourage specialisation in ship designs is to have for each
weapon type also a component that increases that weapon's effectiveness
(either power or accuracy). Let's say that we have Missile Guidance
Systems that increase the power of your missiles by 10%, and Targeting
Systems that increase the power of your beam weapons by 10%. On a ship
with 10 missiles, each MGS would effectively add another missile, but
on a ship with 5 missiles and 5 beams, each MGS or TS would add only
half a missile or half a beam weapon.

Ofcourse someone with Mass Drivers VII but Beam Weapons III is still
more likely to use mass drivers for his battleships, but if he really
needs to, he can still switch. And more importantly, so can his enemy.

>> By the way, I love the unique Drengin ship names, and especially the
>> fact that their naming scheme changes when their alignment changes.
>> Probably not very hard to program, but still a very cute detail.
> 
> Actually I did that as part of my game.  The game was pulling the stuff from 
> a text file that has a whole series of names based on alignment but then we 
> got negative feedback that as cool as it was, it made it take longer to tell 
> what type of ship.  So we're back to "battleship".

But with ship design, they can make several different kinds of battleship,
so you still need a way to distinguish between those different designs.
So how about using "Battleship" or "BB" followed by the "cool" name?

> In 1.x I hope to make it
> an option because well 1) I think it's cool and 2) We already put in the
> work. ;)

I hope you manage to get it back in. It's useful to be able to tell in
an instant that you're looking at a battleship-sized ship, but coolness
is important too.

>> Great read. Looks like a really exciting game. Any chance you're
>> looking for beta testers?
> 
> Heh.  Well we're pretty much set now.  Goes gold next week. ;)

Ooh! Can't wait. My birthday is conveniently coming up in a month, so
it's excellent timing.

> BTW, in the campaign I named some of the ships after regulars from this 
> group.  There's a ship called the MCV (and Ceowulf and Lucian and so forth). 

This is so cool. And an honour too. I've never been mentioned in a game
before. Although I'm afraid Ceowulf and Lucian make better shipnames
than my initials.


mcv.
-- 
"Serenity is a very personal work with political resonance and a
heartfelt message about the human condition and stuff blowing up.
'Cause let's face it, nobody cares about that 'human condition'
stuff... in fact if you notice it, try to keep it to yourself."
                                        -- Joss Whedon on his new film