An addition to ship building - power plants

I like the power plant ideas in the ship, but the fuel idea would make the game realy logisticaly complex, limiting the number of ships you can build and maintain. It brings up some problems (Interesting how they would effect game play!.)If say your main fuel planet gets vaped by the enemy for whatever reason would the ships supported by it be able to continue or would they just become dead in space?

Like i said the whole fuel idea, while good, IMO would make the game require too much micromanagment, making sure you could fuel the ships you build and forcing you to chose between ships.


Thats my two cents,

Fate,

Thanks for your comments. I hadn't really thought it through that far but I suppose the best thing would be to leave your ships dead in space until you secure fuel by fair means or foul.

As for micromanagement when you do lose resources I guess it could be the ships furthest away from the captured planet that end up without fuel.

if you can warp into hyperdrive, you have found an fuel sources that you don't need to worry about fueling, just recharging, more economical!

I like the idea of powerplants in ships, I like the idea of only being able to put big guns on big ships.

This already is sort of implemented in the free space number of each ship size. Smaller ships can support only so many power-hungry weapons compared to larger ones.

I think this mechanic is already supposed to exist in the form of the maintenance cost, which is great because it shares the resource used for economic and research development (money), which means you have to find a balance between all three. The problem is that the maintenance cost is negligible compared to a strong economy, so you get 7-doom-ray ships. I don’t remember off-hand, is the maintenance cost of components included in gc2types, or is it internal?

Note: I just thought, to increase the maintenance cost you also have to increase the building cost of the ship, or else find a way to scale maintenance cost based on the size of your economy.

Great ideas.

Powerplants on ships would be a wonderful addition. I would think that you could even add two branches of techs to the tree, one that increases the power output, and one that decreased the size of the plant.

On the fueling idea what if instead of ships being reduced to no movement they be allowed only 1 movement point so that they can limp back into friendly space, however no new ships could be launched until you had increased your fuel logistics. Really this is not unlike most RTS games that require you to build certain structures in order to raise your population limit.

A possible alternative or addition would be requiring the civs to mine a resource that is depleted every time you build a ship. Basically over time you stockpile "power crystals" from you mines and in order to build a fighter you need a "power crystal" if you dont have any then your ship cannot be completed until you do. Bigger ships would require more crystals to build.

So Lord Mekos your talking of having a sort of 'recourse' that gives you power that you mine, sey out of astroid belts? Hey brainwave! We get astroid belts in DA so that could work, but it would make it abit like a normal RTS were you have to get resorces to build stuff, instead of just money. I'm still in favor of just having power plant's as otherwise were twisting the gameplay to much and still adding yet more micromanagment to the game.

(Citizen)Tototot October 12, 2006 07:55:06 Reply #3 if you can warp into hyperdrive, you have found an fuel sources that you don't need to worry about fueling, just recharging, more economical!

Can you clarify that up abit Tototot, I dont get it... Thats probably just me tho.


Fate,

Powerplants on ships would be a wonderful addition. I would think that you could even add two branches of techs to the tree, one that increases the power output, and one that decreased the size of the plant.

the way the techs are set up now is that you get to a particular research point, and it increases the power of that branch (ex. Impulse Drive), then each subsequent tech reduces the size (Impulse Drive II, III, etc) until you reach the next milestone... this convention should probably be continued

A possible alternative or addition would be requiring the civs to mine a resource that is depleted every time you build a ship. Basically over time you stockpile "power crystals" from you mines and in order to build a fighter you need a "power crystal" if you dont have any then your ship cannot be completed until you do. Bigger ships would require more crystals to build.

you could then trade these resources to other factions, like money or influence points

This would be a great way to add balance; i.e., mass drivers don't require significant energy, etc.

Er, don't railguns require a significant amount of energy to fire?

Er, don't railguns require a significant amount of energy to fire?

Except for the loading and triggering mechanisms, the cartridge usually provides for the energy to fire the round. In a rifle, it is the primer and gunpowder.

Except for the loading and triggering mechanisms, the cartridge usually provides for the energy to fire the round. In a rifle, it is the primer and gunpowder.

Railguns use electromagnets to fire cartridgeless slugs.

one thing to remember all starships would use some form of nuke power instead of chemical so the fuel wouldn't by that important

for instance the voyagers use nuke plants and although they have been in space for 30 years give or take

voyager 1 is dead

and

voyager 2 is still working

but i think it would be a good idea

there was a feed a while ago about civilian ships

i still think that is a good idea to have civilian ships running around to

Railguns use electromagnets to fire cartridgeless slugs.

Ah, the miracles of technology.

As railguns are usually described, they use a magnetic field to accelerate something that posesses weight. You need energy for that. Lots of it.

(BTW: Since this is a game, you can escape the Newtonian principles.)

I do not like the idea of power plants on ships.
1. It already is a hassle to fix the stuff on the ship you want it to have. It bores me to have to attach that number of engines and this and that every time over and over.
2. GalCiv2 has a certain level of abstraction, among which is also the abstraction that the space and money a weapon system requires also includes the power source for it.

A 7-doom-ray ship(154atk) would be an 8-blackhole-eruptor(200atk) ship if your willing to put in the(ton of) extra research that missiles take. Anyway, back on topic...

"2. GalCiv2 has a certain level of abstraction, among which is also the abstraction that the space and money a weapon system requires also includes the power source for it."

Yes. The technology description for HyperWarp 2 says that it takes considerably less energy to make ships move as fast as the original HyperWarp could achieve - and in the ShipYard, this translates into the HyperWarp 2 engine being 'smaller' than the original HyperWarp engine even though it's visibly larger if you look at plain physical size.

Similarly, the Nano Ripper is 'larger' and costlier than Singularity Driver 4 - yet they use the same tech. But Nano Ripper simply uses a lot more power - expressed in it's size and cost - to deliver 2.5x the smash of the frugal Singularity Driver, Mk.4.



Yes, I think so too. Maybe tiny cruise ships that randomly travel from planets to influencer starbases and foreign planets(representing tourism), and tiny cargo ships doing the same in case of economy and mining starbases(but not affecting their bonuses).

Maybe we could also have planetary improvements affect a planet's orbit. Like a Zero-G Sports Arena on a planet would result in tiny, brightly colored racers zipping around planet orbits, but in very wide orbits to avoid orbiting warships and moons. And building the Orbital Terraformer should actually result in a terraforming ship appearing in the orbits of planets. And Military Starbases could actually have tiny Fighter Drones buzzing in and out of their big hangar-pyramid central structures.

All these ships wouldn't be attackable, except in the case of Pirates - the Pirate attacks on civilian ships wouldn't be physically visible or have any effects on production, but would result in some small morale drop that gets worse and worse until those Pirates leave the sector or get destroyed.