research and development

[BlueO]

Hi,

Just bought Bridge commander, and I have to say wow! awesome game. Anyways, I was reading through its manual about soverign class ships, and how the first prototype has serious flaws that kept it from being put into service. They had to redesign the ship. Will Moo3 incorporate something similar?

Like, in the usual space strat games, as soon as I discover a new tech, I'll put the new system into ship design and start mass producing the new ship. What if, there's something called a 'critical flaw table', and anytime I put a brand new tech into a ship, the game allocate some random critical flaws to the new system. (some serious, other harmless) So as a player, I have to build a prototype ship first. Put the new ship in 'field test' missions. If there are flaws in the new system, each turn of field test has a chance of revealing it. So the longer I put a ship on field test, the higher the chance of revealing any flaws. When a flaw is revealed, I can then, redesign another ship with the new system. But this time around, any critical flaws that has been revealed, will be fixed.

I would think that be pretty neat, be the first to research that spanky tech, build a whole new fleet of hi-tech ships. Then have the entire fleet be disaterously annilated due to critical flaws in the new systems. Hehe. It would also add variety to different races too, since theorically, even if all the races are at the same tech level, each ship they have, will be different from one another, due to the different type of flaws in their ship design. Not only that, some races can be better at 'development' and have less harmful flaws than the stupid races who tend to build hi-tech ships with serious flaws.

This is a good idea, really!

[BlueO]

Here's a couple examples of flaws.

1) 50% chance of overload and doing self-damage.

2) reduced effect. So a weapon advertised as 40-60 damage weapon, will actually only do something like 20-30.

3) increased cost. So a system that normally cost 100 cp and 100 space, will atcually cost 150cp and 120 space.

4) and many many many possible effects...

[SeanV]

Incompatible Tech

Another thing that would make the game really neat would be if you had incopatible tech in the game. Sometimes you would know the two (or three or four) techs are incompatible
(Obviously we can't put the E.E.F.'s {Engine Emmission Sensors} on the rear of the ship Ivan, it wouldn't be able to sense anything.)
What would make it really interesting would be that you wouldn't always know that two tech are incompatible.
(What do you mean the klasher destructo ray won't work? The only other system in this bloody ship that is on is the life...support... oh darn.........) You would find out the longer you field tested things though.

So what do you think?

[loinburger]

BlueO: Stormhound said awhile back that critical failures resulting from new technology would not be in the tech system.

[BlueO]

Oh well...

[vishniac]

Next time maybe? (MoO4)

[Stormhound]

Probably not in MOO4 either. You see, we went about it a different way...the research project where you "discover" the new tech can itself run into problems which up the total cost. Thus, you pay the extra money up front, and once you get the item it's bug-free.

[Ozymandous]

Hrm, so essentially the "extra cost" is building a working proto-type and working out the flaws in the design and testing phase. All abstracted of course.

Good idea.

[BlueO]

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'm glad there's some sort of prototype cost. I guess my ideas are too harsh, I can imagine now if my ideas were used in a game, developers getting a bunch of hate mails because their whole fleet with new death ray weapon self destructed.

Still, I really like my idea though.

[Lorizael]

While an abstracted version is good, it can take some of the fun away. It means you can't have the space equivalent of the *enter name of first submarine here, you know the one used in the Civil War by the South, I think it started with an H* . What I would hope for is that first you have a lower than average battleship, then as your tech advances an average one, and then later on a superior one. However if you spent more money in the R&D phase, you wouldn't have that lower than average battleship, just the average (or with enough money superior) battleship. But, for the added benefit, this is probably not worth the added effort.