Colony or Outpost?

[Supamand]

It's impossible to distinguish colony from an outpost right now unless there is an orbital. If you are hostile with the player and can't send a probe, you could be sending your fleet to a death sentence!

I'd suggest to add some type of distinctive graphics. Maybe add like a colored symbol below a colony, something similar to what I would have below my colonies.

[Royce]

Another problem that could be solved of there was a log of probe observations, which I think, along with probe waypoints, would make probes awesome.
Example:
Probe arrived at location XYZ
Encountered planet with details ABC
Was destroyed

[JetJaguar2000]

That's another good point. The way the game is designed now, if you show up in orbit of an enemy colony with anything less than 20 dreadnoughts, you lose your entire fleet and inflict no lasting damage.

I'm trying to understand how this system seems fun or sensical.

[Supamand]

That's another good point. The way the game is designed now, if you show up in orbit of an enemy colony with anything less than 20 dreadnoughts, you lose your entire fleet and inflict no lasting damage.

I'm trying to understand how this system seems fun or sensical.

Well think about it. If the planets were weaker, than a noob would be able to kill your home world and take all your outpost wile you are sleeping!
And it could of been done on like a
Second day after a server launch.
I think the system is pretty well balanced, we just need to understand it better ;)

But Jet, if you are looking to destroy planets, you should consider Bering a warlord. They get really strong ships. You'd probably only need 2 or 3 to wipe out a colony in 1 shot.
Not to mansion the planet killer ship that can kill a planet in 1 shot from across the sector!!!

[JetJaguar2000]

Sure, I get that, but there is a big difference between not being able to gank planets on day 2, and needing 20 dreadnoughts to take an undefended one.

A better system in my mind is one where planets have depletable defenses, rather than the "all or nothing" system in place now. Planets could start with some decent defenses to prevent early game rushes, but if someone chooses to suicide a ton of smaller ships against my planet over the course of a couple of days and whittle down its defenses, they deserve to have it. Of course, I could opt to use resources to improve my defenses.

We'll have to wait and see if the stuff I experienced today is a bug or not, but the fact that destroyers and cruisers seem utterly worthless feels problematic to me. At best a bunch of them could take an undefended outpost, but no chance whatsoever against a colony. The fact that it takes new colonies all of 4 hours to become effectively invincible is lame.

Also, for what it's worth, I don't want to attack planets just for fun. What I want to see is more player interaction -- more battling over resources, etc. The way it stands now it's almost the opposite of the scenario you describe: you can secure your planets to the point of never needing to worry about losing them in a matter of hours. On the time scale of a 2 month game, this seems like a shame.

[Supamand]

I think you are over thinking it. Let's take a look at this from a different direction.
To train technology to building Dreadnoughts it takes 3.5 days (2.625 if u r scientist). Let's say you also squish in a day for training other techs like harvesters and RO buffs. So that brings us to 4.5 days of training time.

In 4.5 starting days, you should be Abe to accumulate enough of CO/RO to build at least 1 or 2 Dread's... I think as you keep going and actively invest into ore research, you should be able to have 20 dred's within 10 days of server launch. Now if that's not good enough, I really don't think you are playing a right game... This is not an FPS dude

[catswift]

You've just made his point for him. If someone can rush dreads in just 4.5 days (with a substantial fleet in less than 10), then building anything less than dreads is worthless. Building anything else is incredibly detrimental as well since the "object cost" of building a sufficient force of smaller ships is exponentially out of whack (one destroyer == one dread, so you then have to waste serious research and/or production in building colonies to get sufficient ship yards).

I for one would definitely like to see the smaller ships play a larger role in the game.

The only exception I see to this is building cruisers; sadly not for their intended purpose of offense, but because they can be converted into orbitals for defense

[Mugen]

I think you all are missing the real point to the idea of the population defense idea. They have essentially created a method of preventing dedicated and skilled players from abusing players who essentially have no chance of defending against them. Basically Gateing the higher rankin players off from lower ranking players. Trust me taking out a colony with 20 dreds will be the least of your worries when you will have other players fleets to worry about.

No offense Supamad, but your play style is the particular reason why this design was implemented. They do not want people jumping home worlds and colonies early into their progression. They want these smaller ships ie. cruisers and destroyers to be fodder and used for general conflict and defense. There will be endless blood shed over strategic control of systems and whole galaxies at that matter. Worry more about that defense you so easily regard as a "game breaker". And maybe think about how much your going to need it in the coming months.

[Supamand]

All is true, but isn't the game objective is to win by any means necessary?

[JetJaguar2000]

Obviously a lot remains to be seen as far as how the game develops, but as of right now things seem off to me. Mugen, I think you are overstating things, though. My entire point is that I don't have to worry about other players fleets at all, since even my undefended planets can hold off up to 20 dreads at a time. I would be really surprised if anyone can field 20 dreads any time soon.

The idea of using smaller ships for "general conflict and defense" doesn't add up. What kind of conflict can you even hope to get involved in with these smaller ships? You're obviously not going to be attacking planets with them, since they have absolutely no chance to defeat one, and they contribute nothing to the defense of a planet that can hold off 20 dreadnoughts on its own. So again, what is their role? From what I can tell, you have a tiny window of opportunity to use them if you catch someone in the act of deploying an outpost or colony ship, but once that colony is established, forget about it.

That said, I'm not sure "dread rushing" is actually possible either. This brings up something that has been bothering me too: on the server I have been micromanaging the most, between my 4 colonies and 10 outposts I have maybe 500 RO. This is not enough to build anything big, even if I did research up to capital ships. I am stuck building lesser ships that are useless.

Meanwhile, in my other game, I have barely done anything beyond setting up one colony and a couple of outposts, and I have something like 7k RO. Granted, I am a Trader in this game, and I have a jovian planet next to my home sector, but is that really enough of a difference to justify over an order of magnitude difference in RO production? I feel like the first game is already lost for me, since I don't have the RO production to sustain the higher end techs (despite colonizing every RO generating world I've found, only to have them generate +1 or +2 with the colony inplace, WTF?). As a result I've hitched my wagon to the non-RO ships, which I now realize are worthless.

[Supamand]

The smaller ships can be and are used at early game to take over outposts. The reason I'm not doing it right now, is because of a redundant bug that screws with the combat. As soon as they fix it, I will go after outposts Muahahahahehe :D

[ChickenHawk07]

Jet, you just stated your problem in one game was lack of RO, a d you're not a Trader. So in order to get my RO, you have to basically max out your Advanced Materials Tech or Trade with a Trader. That's the whole point of this game. As a Warlord you shouldn't be able to sustain an enormous fleet without the help of other people. It's the whole, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Offer your protection to a nearby trader and start running trading routes with them. I'm not sure if they can transfer RO over to you, but if they can, you set up a payment plan with them. Then, you build your fleet and eventually destroy everyone, even the few you were protecting.

[JetJaguar2000]

The thing is, even if you max out Advanced Materials Collection, that gives you +20% to RO collection. Planets that I colonize with a stated RO generation rate of +40u actually generate +1u once I put a colony there (I'd be curious what the logic is behind this as well). Unless I'm misunderstanding how those techs work, 20% of +1u brings me to a whopping +1.2u! That hardly seems like a worthwhile investment of days of research time.

I really hope I'm misunderstanding how these techs work, because obviously that is ridiculous.

[ChickenHawk07]

My understanding is that the +40u the planet shows is its Max potential, but without the Advanced Materials Collection, you can't even collect it. What'd I'd venture to guess (and I could very well be wrong) is that percentage you get from every step up in the tech tree is a percentage of the Max Potential, not what you're getting right now. If I did my math right, 3% of 40 is 1.2, so they probably just round to the nearest whole number. As a trader you can get 90% of its max potential, I believe if you max the AMC. That makes more sense to me, and I hope that's how it works. So if you can get a max bonus of 20% than you are looking at a max of 8u RO per hour on the planet you referenced. Still not great, but definitely better than 1.2. In the end, you'll still have to rely on Traders to stockpile enough RO for a sizable fleet of Super Capitals. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Otherwise the Warlord would be extremely Over Powered.

[Tsagoth]

I think CH7's explanation is right. WL is constrained by poor RO production. Lee would know best, he designed the scheme.

[ChickenHawk07]

I'd definitely like Lee's input here.

[VanderLegion]

The idea of using smaller ships for "general conflict and defense" doesn't add up. What kind of conflict can you even hope to get involved in with these smaller ships? You're obviously not going to be attacking planets with them, since they have absolutely no chance to defeat one, and they contribute nothing to the defense of a planet that can hold off 20 dreadnoughts on its own. So again, what is their role? From what I can tell, you have a tiny window of opportunity to use them if you catch someone in the act of deploying an outpost or colony ship, but once that colony is established, forget about it.
Sure, smaller ships may not be useful for attacking colonies, but you have more than a "tiny window of opportunity" when it comes to outposts. Outposts don't generate population, so their defense doesn't change over time. The only time it changes is if you set up orbital defenses (minefields etc). Otherwise, outposts are easily captured with a small fleet of small ships. If someone has 5 colonies and 20 outposts, and you go capture their 20 outposts with small ships, they're not gonna be getting much income to do a lot about it while you work on building your bigger ships to kill their colonies.


That said, I'm not sure "dread rushing" is actually possible either. This brings up something that has been bothering me too: on the server I have been micromanaging the most, between my 4 colonies and 10 outposts I have maybe 500 RO. This is not enough to build anything big, even if I did research up to capital ships. I am stuck building lesser ships that are useless.

Meanwhile, in my other game, I have barely done anything beyond setting up one colony and a couple of outposts, and I have something like 7k RO. Granted, I am a Trader in this game, and I have a jovian planet next to my home sector, but is that really enough of a difference to justify over an order of magnitude difference in RO production? I feel like the first game is already lost for me, since I don't have the RO production to sustain the higher end techs (despite colonizing every RO generating world I've found, only to have them generate +1 or +2 with the colony inplace, WTF?). As a result I've hitched my wagon to the non-RO ships, which I now realize are worthless.
Being a trader makes a HUGE difference in RO production. My trader game I've made a lot of 500 RO cargo ships, while my non-trader game is probably around the same place as yours for RO.

[catswift]

Sure, smaller ships may not be useful for attacking colonies, but you have more than a "tiny window of opportunity" when it comes to outposts. Outposts don't generate population, so their defense doesn't change over time. The only time it changes is if you set up orbital defenses (minefields etc). Otherwise, outposts are easily captured with a small fleet of small ships. If someone has 5 colonies and 20 outposts, and you go capture their 20 outposts with small ships, they're not gonna be getting much income to do a lot about it while you work on building your bigger ships to kill their colonies.

I would agree with this if cruisers could not be auto-converted to beam defenses. Since no one really knew about this hidden feature, there was a fairly large window in which a lot of back and forth with little ships happened.

Now I know I can rush cruisers, capture a bunch of outposts and insta-protect them all in less than two days. Mammetum is going to be a whole different ball game.

[Tsagoth]

Now I know I can rush cruisers, capture a bunch of outposts and insta-protect them all in less than two days. Mammetum is going to be a whole different ball game.

One of the bigger problems identified during beta was that mining outposts were easily captured, since they could not build ships/orbitals locally with no population. The cruiser/battleship conversion was put in specifically to address this situation.