Charva1 Charva1

Cap Ships as Milestones

▼

Cap Ships as Milestones

What if Caps were a reward for getting research to a certain level

from Sins Forums
I've been reading and thinking a lot about Capital Ships vs Cruisers vs Frigates.

It is clear that Capital ships are a special part of the game experience and that it seems disproportionately easy to get a capital ship vs getting a cruiser in term of the research involved in unlocking the ability to build cruisers. In real terms, Capital Ships would represent a significant amount of resources for a civilization to build. So I started thinking, what if Capital ships were more one of a kind. What if you only got one of each type in any given game depending of whether you had meet a certain set of criteria to get a capital ship of that type. This would add a bit of depth to the research tree, and would provide an incentive to research higher into any given tree.

An example of what I mean. Let's say that you start a game with no Flag Ship. You start the game building 15 Cobalts and research the entire first level of combat tech. As a reward for reaching this milestone, you gain the ability to build one Kol for free. You can not however build any more Kols. Therefore that flagship becomes extra important and special. When you have succeeded in gathering enough resources to research the third tier of Combat and the 1st Tier of Colony you unlock the next Capital ship. Maybe you could tie unlocking a type of capital ship to controlling a planet of each type, or controlling a certain number of the same planet type. The possibilities are endless.

Another way to handle this might be to make capital ships more like wonders of the world in Civilization. Every society can build one of each type, but it takes a protracted effort to build.

It also might make sense to attach each time of capital ship to the cruiser type that matches the flagship type. Researching the carrier Cruiser means you can build one Carrier Cap.

Of course you could add a technology high on the combat tree that allows you to build all the Capital ships unfettered.

Just an idea. What do people think?
10,200 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
but stardestroyers (and the supers) where catch all ships . . they all had the same strengths and weaknesses . . . rather boring.
This is a RTS / 4x game (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate ) there should be fleets not 20x of the best single ship you can produce. again booring and will make the longevity of this game very short.


Also what IS the time span (in game time span) we are talking about? Surely nothing like the turn based 4x there 100s / 1000s of years could go by (an entire age of a space going civilization) This game feels like one big war possibly years possibly 10s of years . . not 100s of years.
And if so, you just don’t come up with a war fleet over night . . you must have had the ability before hand. With the back story of this game like history each civilization making new war ships could build civilian ships of the same size before hand, the integration of weapons and armor was the big next step.

So you START with a battleship why do you need to research how to make one?? This is not a game starting at beginning of spaceflight but far into it . . Research should be kept for enhancements, weapons, utilities, etc to be added to known designs. War ships evolve over time refit after refit but the basic design changes very slowly.

So building capital ships or any of the other ships (in general) should not tied to the tech tree, but the enhancements and extras that make the powerful yes. (though I am fine with a few “extra” optional ships to be unlocked to add spice – but not the core ships) for example the robot ship would make a good optional, possibly one of the support capital ships . . but that’s all.

The limiting factor should be resources and support. You can’t make a fleet with out the initial resources, and you can’t make a fleet if you do not have the support points. . . this should force expansion for more support points and the accumulation of a large amount of resources for the initial build (the cap ship factory should be $$$ to make also, a big liability) . . also any loss cap ship is a equally big $$ loss . .since you put all of that in ONE ship, you really need to keep them alive. (the reason it is a “hero” ship)
The other ships (non “hero”) should be more efficient in both resources and support cost then a capital ship but lack the punch to crack a heavily defended system. This should make them useful and cheap to make a good number of them (and sill not compete too bad with support with the cap ships) while allowing you to expand for resources and support points to build the battle group to crack the other players planets.
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
But anyway, don't artificially FORCE players to limit the capitol ships. The devs have the right idea by making combined arms the way to go, rather than simply manipulating game mechanics to make players do it.

That's what my "FORCE" meant. I didn't say one shoulod be limited with numbered limits. Just to make it more clear - I wrote
but the game should FORCE you into this IMO. By price, upkeep and vunerability.
Force by price, upkeep and vunerability... I don't think this can be regarded as a "hardlimit" of any kind. It's a gameplay "limit". The "manipulating game mechanics" - as you put it - means exactly the same IMO.   

About huge fleets in SW etc. - when you have hundreds of worlds under your control one can expect such fleets. I'm all for hundreds of capitals as long as thousands of non-capitals acompany them. And SW doesn't really ask itself questions like "is anybody guarding my rear planets" and such so it can create "all my ships vs. all your ships" kind of battles. Great for movies, less so for defending an empire.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a couple of suggestions:

1) If you increase the overall speed/turning speed of the smallest ships (i.e., give fighters a big speed boost, frigates a slightly smaller speed boost, and cruisers and bombers smaller still, but leave cap ship speed alone) you can increase the tactical value of the less often used ships. The goal being that in a scenario of all cap ships, the frigates could run circles around them continually attacking from behind. The fighter speed increase would help mitigate the use of bombers since if two fleets started at any appreciable distance, the fighters could intercept the bombers before they could release their payloads. In non-combat situations, the increased speed is also quite useful for exploration and getting reinforcements to systems under siege. It also makes guerrilla warfare a possible tactical option as frigate fleets could do hit-and-runs.

2) IMO, there's no real reason why all ships shouldn't have experience. The smaller ships may not get level-up abilities, but they should benefit from the increases to damage, shield and hulls, which would keep them useful even in end-game scenarios.

3) Grant cap ships a small upkeep, anywhere from -.1 -> -.5 credits per second and possibly another -.1 metal and crystal per second. If you want to go all cap ships, then you'll have to have an economy of scale to support them. Right now, you can turtle with 5 systems build 8+ cap ships, and then destroy everything with little consequence.

I will also cross post to the gameplay feedback thread.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
Force by price, upkeep and vunerability... I don't think this can be regarded as a "hardlimit" of any kind. It's a gameplay "limit". The "manipulating game mechanics" - as you put it - means exactly the same IMO.


Sorry, I saw the word "force" and I guess I panicked Not really the way I'd usually use the word "forced"... after all, I can still go all-capship, its just that that approach sucks.
1) If you increase the overall speed/turning speed of the smallest ships (i.e., give fighters a big speed boost, frigates a slightly smaller speed boost, and cruisers and bombers smaller still, but leave cap ship speed alone) you can increase the tactical value of the less often used ships. The goal being that in a scenario of all cap ships, the frigates could run circles around them continually attacking from behind. The fighter speed increase would help mitigate the use of bombers since if two fleets started at any appreciable distance, the fighters could intercept the bombers before they could release their payloads. In non-combat situations, the increased speed is also quite useful for exploration and getting reinforcements to systems under siege. It also makes guerrilla warfare a possible tactical option as frigate fleets could do hit-and-runs.


I don't know about the rest of it, but giving smaller vessels a speed boost would also make them more useful for nodal defenses -- park them someplace, and have the fleet jump out to respond to attacks on neighboring systems. As things stand, there's no difference between using a capship or frigates for this, except that capships are a lot more powerful once they arrive.