Orion 2 clone game

[User137]

I want game to has possible micromanagements, but it will be possible to select many ships like in starcraft, using shift+click to add or remove from selection. Then set behaviour of many ships at the same time.

This will be very much faster combat system than moo2 even in network play, when both players can plan their attack same time. Autoplay can be partial, so that player can modify some critical ships behaviour only if they choose to.

[Brutalisk]

Looks like Ray reached the same conclusion. I think with some standard selection methods (eg hold ctrl key down while selecting multiple ships or as you said shift click or just dragging the mouse with a maximum selection of 10,20? ships at a time) will do away with the time involved, but, there won't be any of the intricacies of moo2 battles.

Ray: maybe this belongs in the other forum, but isn't just 6 type ships somewhat limited? Can they be refitted atleast?

[User137]

Well.. wasn't it 5 ship designs in moo2? It is just to keep things simple. Yes, ships can be refitted.

I could make it take shift or control, whichever player likes more for selecting. When either is pressed, there comes selection rectangle and previously added ships remain in selection, which can consist of all ships in the fleet.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Brutalisk
Ray: maybe this belongs in the other forum, but isn't just 6 type ships somewhat limited? Can they be refitted atleast?

I dunno. I have found in MOO1 that 6 designs is plenty. Unless you have so many techs that your designs are constantly out of date, then there's really no need for refitting.

Besides, one could argue that refitting has been abstracted by the 1/2 ship BC you get back when you scrap ships.

[Shadowlord]

I liked (part of) how Alpha Centauri handled designing units. Well, not necessarily how you could have a hundred or so designs at once. That got unwieldy, and I only used 10 or 15 at a time at most anyways (usually closer to six, not counting the various kinds of worker units (terraforming, colonies, probe teams, supply thingies, etc)). What I liked, though, was that when you marked a design obsolete, you kept your obsolete units instead of immediately having them all scrapped.

So here's a suggestion for RFR: When a design is marked obsolete, the player has the choice of scrapping the ships or keeping them. So long as ships exist for an obsolete design, the game would remember the design. However, obsolete designs wouldn't be shown on the ship-design screen - in fact that would stay the same as it is now. The only real visual change would be that the fleet view would show a 7th column for obsolete ships in addition to the six columns for existing ships.

[Shadowlord]

Oops. Double post due to hitting quote instead of edit. And I can't delete it. Bah.

[User137]

As far as i have planned and coded structures, i have made each ship unique. It bacomes unique when it is fully built, so if you change design during its progress, game will warn before constructions are scrapped. But there's no link between ready ships and design sets.
It can be compared to mobile phones There is always few new models and old remain functional.

[Ray K]

[SIZE=1]So here's a suggestion for RFR: When a design is marked obsolete, the player has the choice of scrapping the ships or keeping them. So long as ships exist for an obsolete design, the game would remember the design. However, obsolete designs wouldn't be shown on the ship-design screen - in fact that would stay the same as it is now. The only real visual change would be that the fleet view would show a 7th column for obsolete ships in addition to the six columns for existing ships.

Actually, the problem with not scrapping obsolete ships is that it opens the game up for an exploit. For example, you could create 6 designs, build a ton of ships, scrap the designs and start 6 new designs. Rinse and repeat.

Then you can enter combat with 12, 18 or however many stacks of ships you want and break the balance in combat.

[Shadowlord]

Hmm. Good point. Didn't think of that! Gotta start thinking outside the box more. :P

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Shadowlord
Hmm. Good point. Didn't think of that! Gotta start thinking outside the box more. :P

I didn't think of it either. I think it was brought to my attention when I was thinking about allowing just what you suggested.

[Brutalisk]

That's essentially the problem I am talking about. User, in moo2, yes you have fewer designs but each ship is not attached to its design. In short, it doesn't get scrapped if you delete that design.

One of my biggest problems with Moo1 was the fact that all the ships you had built get scrapped. There should be a way to upgrade them.

Ray: While also having the scrap option, you could also introduce an option of upgrading a design .

Let's say I have 50 "design a" ships and I have just discovered gatling lasers and shield II and want to upgrade them instead of scrapping. 50 x the cost of refitting to allow me to refit the fleet (="design a").

Thus, you still have only 6 types in combat but atleast you don't lose the ships. (btw, are you going to introduce "experience" in similar style to moo2? ie older crews become better)

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Brutalisk
That's essentially the problem I am talking about. User, in moo2, yes you have fewer designs but each ship is not attached to its design. In short, it doesn't get scrapped if you delete that design.

One of my biggest problems with Moo1 was the fact that all the ships you had built get scrapped. There should be a way to upgrade them.

Ray: While also having the scrap option, you could also introduce an option of upgrading a design .

Let's say I have 50 "design a" ships and I have just discovered gatling lasers and shield II and want to upgrade them instead of scrapping. 50 x the cost of refitting to allow me to refit the fleet (="design a").

I don't really see the point. There is a cost associated with upgrading a ship. After all, you can't pay 20BC to go from a 30BC design to a 50BC design.

By the same token, there is also a cost associated with scrapping a ship (you lose half of its value). It's really just a different about of BC going into a different 'bucket'.'

Here's an example:
Let's say that you have 10 "Design A" ships orbiting your planet, worth 20BC each. That's 200BC worth of ship, and you want to replace them with 10 "Design B" ships worth 30BC each.

Let's also say that your planet is spending 15BC per turn to build ships.

To upgrade, you would have to pay for the 100BC increase plus whatever the arbitrary upgrade pct is. Let's say it's 50%, so you have to pay 150BC, so it will take you 10 turns to upgrade your ships.

If you scrap, the scrapped ships immediately put 100BC in your reserve, which you can use to temporarily double your planet's production. Of course, now you need to spend 300BC to build the 10 new ships. With the reserve from the scrapped ships your planet can produce 30BC per turn until that 100BC reserve runs out:
Turns 1-6: 30BC (180BC)
Turn 7: 25BC
Turns 8-13: 90BC

In 13 turns, that's 295BC, which means that the 10th ship will be done on Turn 14. With upgrading, you get it on Turn 10. However, this difference in turns is almost completely dependent on the % upgrade cost vs. the % scrap recovered. If the scrap recovery % was raised to 75%, both would have required exactly 10 turns.

So, to me, the difference between scrapping and upgrading is not a functional difference, but just a player preference. Programmatically, however, scrapping designs is much cleaner and more difficult to exploit.

[Brutalisk]

My prob is the following:

I have a sizable fleet and I am at war. Some key new techs arrive at the scene and I want to incorporate them onto my ships.

In Moo2 you could do that by gradually upgrading the ships without jeopardising your empire. In Moo1, the ships are gone and leaves a GAP in the size of my fleet. That is the problem (and the difference) between the two. I wouldn't even mind doing it at a greater cost (overall) than scrapping and building from scratch. (ie the problem is not the BCs)

I don't have a problem with being limited to 6 designs, but I don't like having to scrap my ships in order to add a new laser on them...

I can understand it's tricky to program.. a suggestion I guess would be for the BC cost of the upgrade to be an OPTION only IF there is enough in the empire RESERVE (and thus the BCs are then deducted from the empire coffers) and you get instantaneous upgrades on that design.

For example, I have 100 "design A" ships. The upgrade cost comes up as 50$ BC per ship plus 50% upgradecost (as a counter measure for the fact that you won't need to put any production in it; heck we can even make that +100%). You can only upgrade that design once you have (50x100)+50% = 7500$ BCs in your reserve. Clicking on the upgrade button instantaneously deducts that amount of cash from your resevre (pending a confirmation "Are you sure?" from the player) and the ships are instaneously upgraded (just like they would have been instantaneously scrapped instead).

The option for scrapping will ofcourse always be there.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Brutalisk
My prob is the following:

I have a sizable fleet and I am at war. Some key new techs arrive at the scene and I want to incorporate them onto my ships.

In Moo2 you could do that by gradually upgrading the ships without jeopardising your empire. In Moo1, the ships are gone and leaves a GAP in the size of my fleet. That is the problem (and the difference) between the two.

But don't you see that it's the scrap option that forces you to make a tactical decision? Simply selecting 'upgrade' whenever you want to stick another laser on a ship removes key elements of the ship design process...

1. Can I upgrade my fighter?
2. Is the improvement large enough to warrant a new design?
3. If I am at max # of designs, which design should I scrap?

All 3 questions applied to MOO1, whereas only the first applied to MOO2. In MOO2, you could redesign you entire fighter fleet whenever you wanted without consideration of anything else.

In MOO1, you might not want to upgrade your fighter JUST YET because maybe you are about to learn a new engine tech and want to ensure that are included in your new design.

And with good planning, question #3 was a non-issue because you always had an old design ready to scrap. I don't think any experienced MOO1 player scrapped a valuable part of his fleet to make a new design.

[Brutalisk]

Nah, in Moo2 you did have the logistics of arranging an appropriate upgrade cycle (plus production costs). Your ships are afterall needed elsewhere. "2" applies to moo2 as well. Upgrading is not exactly "free" and moving ships towards planets that DO have a starbase and a large enough production to upgrade in a reasonable amount of time takes time, money and the risk of having fewer ships where your fleet is needed. Granted the dynamics of the fleets/ships and the way they work is somewhat different. The 3rd one is the one that doesn't apply to moo2.


Anyway, I can see that you don't like that idea, not much point dragging this on. I do like the 3 way battle though. (what's the maximum "x-way" battle you can have?)