weapons of mass destruction

from Stardock Forums

I'd say in the game you tend to have relatively few fleets and those are pretty big. maybe an occasional smaller fleetlet to protect a cluster of planets, some few times for pronged attacks, but more often than not you're better off keeping your ships together. but that forces all players to equally have main fleet, which I think just does not fit too much to a 4x game (ok, RT4X). so I though of a few sort of soft ways to put a price tag to a big fleet (other than it not being at multiple places at the same time, which is a moot point if all players deal with big fleets as you will hardly kill a fleet 3 times your size without massive defense, brilliant tactics and slip ups from the opposition):

one could be an explosives-laden capital ship that explodes with vast force in the enemy ranks. think of freespace 2, meson bomb carrying orions. in short, you pay as you would for a normal capship, also the slot, and get a tough ship though with no weapons or abilities. except for a weaker version of argonevs big red button. maybe something in the range of 1000 dmg in a big enough radius to encompass completely a large fleet.

a second could be something like a black hole generator that damages ships in the area. has to be channeled (and can thus be interrupted), takes, say 1% health or shield per second or if that is not possible something between 5 and 10 of either. could be an expensive cruiser class ship. important: effects do not stack. you could use multiple of those things to cover the entire enemy fleet, but any ship can only be damaged by one black hole at a time.

the problem I'd see with both ideas is that it makes them prime target and the very large fleets they are designed to counter would take them down pretty fast. though on the other hand, if you made the range large enough, such a fleet would be highly cautious to engage it and try to take these fleet killers down remotely, by fighers for example.

on the whole I think these are sound suggestions as they are potentially very powerful weapons, but have weaknesses and can be countered. the missile would to get close enough to detonate which would be tricky if the enemy directs fire to it. the cruisers attack can be interrupted and does not stack. both abilities should really affect you and allies as much as the enemy as we are talking about wmds. so, yeah, some sort of incorporation of concepts of collateral dmg found in other 4X games, which would benefit the game imo.

28,569 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

if there were weapons like that, they would have to be extremely high tech, up there with the superweapons, possibly add another tech level above them, because fleets are meant to be the main deciding force in sins, if they could be destroyed so easily, it would change the entire game. The idea has merit imo, just tone it down a bit, maybe make a ship that is uber good against shields, and another that's good against hull (possibly convert the building destroyers...), similar to the human/covenant system in halo. If it was made so each race could only tech one or the other, than you wouldn't have fleets of both (except in team games) wiping out your fleets, and they could be easily countered (by themselves) because they could only effectively attack one of your ships defenses. In team games it would be balanced, because they would be extraordinarily high tech levels, and also it would take a lot of coordination to use them effectively together.

lemme explain that, if these ships had a limited amount of weapons, then they would both have to be micro'd for enemies to be destroyed quick enough to win the battle. If they weren't micro'd and coordinated properly, the other team would win.

they would have to be high tech though, otherwise there would be mobs of these ships with lrf blobs killing everything, possibly the same tech as heavy cruisers?...

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

mmm, I like the idea of WMDs in Sins. Sounds very interesting.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I was actually thinking of a suicide ship along the lines of the ones the OP mentioned, except that it would be a frigate with a small damage radius.

With some balancing, these ideas could add a lot to the game, but repulse would completely negate the suicide ship idea...

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting CaptainAanderson, reply 3
I was actually thinking of a suicide ship along the lines of the ones the OP mentioned, except that it would be a frigate with a small damage radius.

With some balancing, these ideas could add a lot to the game, but repulse would completely negate the suicide ship idea...
End of CaptainAanderson's quote

well quite obviously repulse would not affect a ship like this, I left it out in the op, so as not to stuff it even further. tbh I wonder if it were better to not apply to capships altogether (though a just capships against the ball will likely not be very much good anyway), but that's beside the point.

I chose a capship btw for the extra investment of the slot and the fact that only such a big thing could carry a big enough payload. many, little ones would also be interesting, but harder to administer.

also, I hope this came across correctly that every race gets only one such measure. I considered the wormhole thing for vasari and maybe the suicide capship for tec (similar to argonev. the are desparate and ready to do anything to stop the enemy advance).

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

for the TEC, it could be a bunch of Arcova or Cobalt frigates, loaded with explosive weapons (probably nukes, that's desperation for ya), and piloted by robots created by Hoshiko crews.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

We already have weapons of mass destruction.

TEC has MB
Advent have Malice and CB to trigger it effectively.
Vasari supposedly have VN.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting N3rull, reply 6
We already have weapons of mass destruction.

TEC has MB
Advent have Malice and CB to trigger it effectively.
Vasari supposedly have VN.
End of N3rull's quote

of course. but these are all capital ship based and thus not that easy to get, especially once the enemy took it out. ie they are pretty hard to replace once gone. something else that does the job efficienty would be nice (ok, MB is efficient, but c'mon, every serious player will try not to get you there and that's not so damn hard).

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I don't mind any of your ideas.

But mark my words - Sins will sooner see chuck norris roundhouse kicking fleets as a superweapon than any of the cool ideas that pop up around the forums - Starships, your weapons of mass destro, etc.

Devs have to fix their game first, then do what they planned on.

I seriously doubt there is any positive chance of these ideas making it into the game. Sorry ;s

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting N3rull, reply 8

I seriously doubt there is any positive chance of these ideas making it into the game. Sorry ;s
End of N3rull's quote

Agreed, just like starships it's not going to happen from the devs. Thats why we have modders.... hahaha

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting N3rull, reply 8
I don't mind any of your ideas.

But mark my words - Sins will sooner see chuck norris roundhouse kicking fleets as a superweapon than any of the cool ideas that pop up around the forums - Starships, your weapons of mass destro, etc.

Devs have to fix their game first, then do what they planned on.

I seriously doubt there is any positive chance of these ideas making it into the game. Sorry ;s
End of N3rull's quote

i agree... IC definitly has a very strong position on makin the game THEY want, not what the community wants...

which is totally fine... unfortunate, but fine.

i have to say though... semi-spammable superweapon ships... not a great idea... the cap ships will go down to focus fire.

lets look at it:

1) you make it part of a fleet. you use the cover of the rest of your fleet to increase the WMDs survivability. The thing about the argonev Big Red Button is that it damages friendly ships as well as enemy ships. so, if it has the power and range to affect the enemy on a fleet level, it should, in all fairness, damage your ships as well. so you wouldnt use them as part of a fleet. there is just no explaining it in lore, fairness or otherwise.

2) you use it like a suicide bomber... and with enough health it survives the focus fire and gets throguh to decimate the enemy fleet (which so many people would hate) or else it doesnt have enough health and goes down to Focus Fire before getting in range...

so its either useful and uncounterable unless you have a shitload of bombers and LRFs. or it goes down to any decent amount of FF before being of any real use...

 

so, in my (humble) opinion, its an unnecessary and unbalanced concept, no offence. i just dont think it is needed at all, and i think it will be a bitch to balance, either its too effective, or not effective enough to the point of being worthless.

interesting ideas though, i think superweapons could be used somehow, but not like this

as for the black hole generator cruisers... focus fire as well... but all they would do is make battles end quicker... which IMO is useless... combat is a major part of Sins, and making them quicker just seems pointless to me...

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

what about ships with anti-ship abilities that are INTERPLANETARY? That would have a whole new dimension of combat.

The thing is though, you would need up-to-date intel on enemy fleet movements, a good amount of fleet supply/resources to spend on the inter-planetary bombardment ships, and also an empire that is set up good enough to fend for itself for a few (maybe 15 at most) minutes.