Why go full mobile?

from Sins Forums

This is something Ive been thinking about for a while now. There is really no incentive to completely strip all your planets and go fully mobile. Besides bodging novalith rounds and being able to avoid combat most of the time i cant really think of a good reason. In fact there are many reasons to keep several of your planets.

1. Kostura cannon. If you abandon all your planets you lose access to the most powerful super weapon in the game. Even more so when combined with the VL titans ability to summon phase stabilizers and summon several ships. You could assault an enemy planet deep in there territory and instantly reinforce your self while at the same time launching an assault from outside their territory forcing them to fight a war on two fronts.

2. 2 capitals are better then one. Especially on the capital victory setting but even without its still useful to keep the increased tax and resource rate provided by having your cap.

3. Steady income. While STTC provides a large amount of income its not steady there fore if you get caught in situatuon where you cant rapidly advance you completely lose your source of income.

4. choosing the ships you want. The summon dark fleet ability's of the phase stabilizer don't let you choose the ship you want. therefore if the enemy is spamming one particular type of ship you can spam the counter or you lost alot of one particular ship in one battle you can simply build the ships you want.

5. Culture. Culture isnt that important to the Vasari in general. but the damage boosts it provides can make the difference between victory and defeat in a close battle.

Solutions

1. Make the tech mobile ruler ship give a boost to all your ships or your titan if you own no planets. Such as increased movement speed through real and phase space or a boost to the titans shields and hull.

2. Make the tech that gives the tax income from their caps give them double or triple income if they have no planets.

3. Make shipbord labs give them a reduced amount of labs for every planet they own. something like the min amount of labs being .25-.5 with the max being the 2 it is now.

4. Let us choose what comes out of the Phase stabilizer. In effect it would be like a frigate and capital factory combined into one. but the ships would be built instantly and more expensive.

20,107 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Hahahahaha - good one!

Solutions:

L2P vs. something other than the AI.

On the off chance that this isn't a troll post:

Vasari Loyalists with Stripped to the Core in effect can eat their own starting planets and get such a blitzkrieg economic boost going that they can quickly steamroll any non VL players by having a much larger fleet sooner. Yes, if you doddle and lollygag and generally  lose your window of opportunity and let the other players' (or AI's) conventional economy slowly catch up, then you have lost your chance but that is not how to play VL full mobile.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ekko_Tek, reply 1
Hahahahaha - good one!

Solutions:

L2P vs. something other than the AI.

On the off chance that this isn't a troll post:

Vasari Loyalists with Stripped to the Core in effect can eat their own starting planets and get such a blitzkrieg economic boost going that they can quickly steamroll any non VL players by having a much larger fleet sooner. Yes, if you doddle and lollygag and generally  lose your window of opportunity and let the other players' (or AI's) conventional economy slowly catch up, then you have lost your chance but that is not how to play VL full mobile.
End of Ekko_Tek's quote

That advantage only exists now. Once they balance STTC in the next patch i doubt it will be anywhere near as effective.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ekko_Tek, reply 1
Vasari Loyalists with Stripped to the Core in effect can eat their own starting planets and get such a blitzkrieg economic boost going that they can quickly steamroll any non VL players by having a much larger fleet sooner. Yes, if you doddle and lollygag and generally lose your window of opportunity and let the other players' (or AI's) conventional economy slowly catch up, then you have lost your chance but that is not how to play VL full mobile.
End of Ekko_Tek's quote

You're missing the point of his post. Who actually strips their homeworld when you can send evacutators to the middle of the map or your neighbors sphere of influence and strip worlds you couldn't even hold in the first place? He's not saying STTC is under powered, but that there is no reason to strip every planet you own, since it allows you to stay in the game if your titan gets destroyed and produce the capitalships and frigates you choose, as well as replace your titan actually.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

All of his proposed "solutions" though are buffs to the current state of VL stripped to the core techs. It's ridiculous to propose buffs to the current most overpowered faction. We have no idea how they will be next patch so this is pointless until then. All of the "problems" he mentions (no Kostura cannon, no culture spread, no steady planet income) are not actually problems because they are never needed or missed in the optimal usage of VL going fully mobile. I don't think you guys understand the reason VL are considered OP right now - it isn't from keeping your own planets and going after neutrals or enemy planets - its the incredible jump start you get from eating your own early game sphere of planets - it allows a ramping up of military strength so much faster than any other faction can possibly keep pace with.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ekko_Tek, reply 5
All of his proposed "solutions" though are buffs to the current state of VL stripped to the core techs. It's ridiculous to propose buffs to the current most overpowered faction. We have no idea how they will be next patch so this is pointless until then. All of the "problems" he mentions (no Kostura cannon, no culture spread, no steady planet income) are not actually problems because they are never needed or missed in the optimal usage of VL going fully mobile. I don't think you guys understand the reason VL are considered OP right now - it isn't from keeping your own planets and going after neutrals or enemy planets - its the incredible jump start you get from eating your own early game sphere of planets - it allows a ramping up of military strength so much faster than any other faction can possibly keep pace with.
End of Ekko_Tek's quote

I understand that, but he does bring up a good point. Just replace his solutions with civilian evacuations and shipboard labs only working if you own no planets. Now that would lead to some interesting games and make VL actually risky to play.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top


This is something Ive been thinking about for a while now. There is really no incentive to completely strip all your planets and go fully mobile. Besides bodging novalith rounds and being able to avoid combat most of the time i cant really think of a good reason. In fact there are many reasons to keep several of your planets.

1. Kostura cannon. If you abandon all your planets you lose access to the most powerful super weapon in the game. Even more so when combined with the VL titans ability to summon phase stabilizers and summon several ships. You could assault an enemy planet deep in there territory and instantly reinforce your self while at the same time launching an assault from outside their territory forcing them to fight a war on two fronts.

2. 2 capitals are better then one. Especially on the capital victory setting but even without its still useful to keep the increased tax and resource rate provided by having your cap.

3. Steady income. While STTC provides a large amount of income its not steady there fore if you get caught in situatuon where you cant rapidly advance you completely lose your source of income.

4. choosing the ships you want. The summon dark fleet ability's of the phase stabilizer don't let you choose the ship you want. therefore if the enemy is spamming one particular type of ship you can spam the counter or you lost alot of one particular ship in one battle you can simply build the ships you want.

5. Culture. Culture isnt that important to the Vasari in general. but the damage boosts it provides can make the difference between victory and defeat in a close battle.

Solutions

1. Make the tech mobile ruler ship give a boost to all your ships or your titan if you own no planets. Such as increased movement speed through real and phase space or a boost to the titans shields and hull.

2. Make the tech that gives the tax income from their caps give them double or triple income if they have no planets.

3. Make shipbord labs give them a reduced amount of labs for every planet they own. something like the min amount of labs being .25-.5 with the max being the 2 it is now.

4. Let us choose what comes out of the Phase stabilizer. In effect it would be like a frigate and capital factory combined into one. but the ships would be built instantly and more expensive.

End of quote

Is this serious?  espescially your 4th solution, you want to fix an overpowered Dark Armada by buffing it? Are you bat shit crazy?  That ability is so terribly broken right now.

Also if you strip only 2-3 planets to the core you can have a huge head start on making a "steady" income that you are talking about.  You seem to really misunderstand the ability and its benefits.  You don't strip everything to the core, you only strip juicy terrans, possibly a volcano or ice, and leave deserts and asteroids for logistical spot hubs.  If it destroys your trade line you can easily put down a starbase with trade with the money received.

Your solutions also entail that nothing is wrong with Strip to the Core and should be left as is.  Thus, you should play a game or two on ICO and see why people rage about it, because clearly you spend too much time against the easy AI. 

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Nightraid3r, reply 7


Is this serious?  espescially your 4th solution, you want to fix an overpowered Dark Armada by buffing it? Are you bat shit crazy?  That ability is so terribly broken right now.

Also if you strip only 2-3 planets to the core you can have a huge head start on making a "steady" income that you are talking about.  You seem to really misunderstand the ability and its benefits.  You don't strip everything to the core, you only strip juicy terrans, possibly a volcano or ice, and leave deserts and asteroids for logistical spot hubs.  If it destroys your trade line you can easily put down a starbase with trade with the money received.

Your solutions also entail that nothing is wrong with Strip to the Core and should be left as is.  Thus, you should play a game or two on ICO and see why people rage about it, because clearly you spend too much time against the easy AI. 
End of Nightraid3r's quote

You are also missing the point. I understand that STTC is very OP as it is now. What im trying to do is give people a reason to completely strip all their planets by making the techs weaker if they don't. This way if they want the full benefit of the VL techs they have to accept all the risks that come with having only your titan to keep you in the game. And my num 4 suggestion is much more of a nerf to the ability then a buff. As it is now you get more ships then the amount of resources you put in. With my suggestion you are now paying 2-3 times as much for the same units so its no longer cost effective. And also if you read the 3rd suggestion you would realize that it would make strip rushing impossible. If you have enough labs to research ship board labs you would probably only get .5-1 lab for the caps that you own. and if you destroy all of your planets to get the full benefit you would lose the labs on those planets meaning you still don't have enough to research STTC you would also need your titan to destroy all your planets without losing. This combined with pushing STTC to tier 7/8 would mean the only way to get STTC is A. build labs the normal way and wait until later in the game to get it. or B. destroy all of your worlds and build a titan which is incredibly expensive and time consuming and if you lose the titan you now lose the game.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Technically, i would say, even if you keep your capital planet, just to be safe, in case your Titan gets destroyed somehow, it could still be considered as "almost" fully mobile. The point is, your goal is not to build empire spawning across several planets, like all the other races, so whether you actually keep this one planet or not, does not make that much difference, imho.

Regarding STTC, as i see it, you either get rid of the planets you colonised - and gain the money this way - or keep them and use the free slots (instead of labs) for more tradeports. So the whole mobility thing is i suppose meant to be thing of choice.

The idea to make those mobility related tech tied to no planets at all is indeed interesting and makes kinda sense, but i dont think it would be that easy to implement.  

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Perhaps such buffs would be needed if amunt of resources STTC gives gets significantly nerfed.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ShotmanMaslo, reply 10
Perhaps such buffs would be needed if amunt of resources STTC gives gets significantly nerfed.
End of ShotmanMaslo's quote

Then how bout this. for each planet you own strip to the core will give you diminishing returns something like the amount of resources you get divided by the planets you own. This way unless they get rid of everything of almost everything they wont be getting enough resources for it to be worth it.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

This would actually be counter-productive. If you get more income from it when you use while having fewer planets you are encouraged to strip any of your planets and every new one you acquire, lest you lose out on potential income from SttC. It would make the locust mentality even more attractive.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Well the idea is to punish them for having planets and reward them for taking the risk of having none this way the VL can becoming viably become fully mobile like the devs intended.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Personally I don't like the design idea of forcing a player to go fully mobile with penalities if he doesn't. I'd prefer to see a way to have pros and cons to playing fully mobile or to keep your planets and benefit from the extra logistics slots.

Also, apologies to excartus for being so harsh initially, I can see now you aren't trolling and are actually trying to think about this.

Shipboard labs current state is what allows STTC to come so quick. I like the idea of simply making the Titan a pre-req in the gravity well of any planet being stripped as a solution to try first. The additional costs and time to do that might be enough to balance it. STTC could be researched in advance but won't bring resources from stripping planets until the Titan is present.

Why two threads though? - this is already all covered in this one: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/427264

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Our threads have different goals. The other thread is about balancing STTC which right now needs a pretty big nerf. This thread is about making striping all your planets and only having your titan to keep you in the game a viable strategy. As it is now people only strip neutral and enemy worlds while keeping there worlds in tact for trade, ship production, culture and the kostura cannon. In effect there getting all the benefits with non of the risk. so i want to make it so that there is a reason for people to give up all their planets either by giving them penalties for the STTC technology line if they have planets or maybe making it so they gain something that's worth giving up all the advantages you get from having planets.

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

Hmm - that's still where you have it wrong though. It is already viable. By the time you actually have stripped all your planets you have steamrolled the galaxy if you are doing it right so you don't need to worry that you only have your Titan. You have it wrong when you think people only strip neutral and enemy worlds. That isn't what they do. You are right in that right now people can get the stripping benefits and keep some planets as well without any downside. With your suggestions, what people would do though is still strip their own planets, but 100% of them this time, get all the bonuses you are suggesting (40% increased tax income for example), then steamroll as usual, and then if they are concerned at all about their Titan being vulnerable, just take over a few planets with the massive force they already have - who cares at that point if they incur some shipboard lab penalties?

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

1. Strip all your planets

2. Find some random astroid in the middle of the map

3. Build a 2000 supply fleet in about 30 minutes

4. Steamroll your emenies and win the game.

I don't see the disadvantage of stripping all your planets.

If you really wanted a korstra cannon than find some random astroids or moons to place them on.

Culture is irrelevant when you eat every planet in your path.

Steady income is irrelevant. You'll have more worries of the emeny not having this since they don't have planets to build an economy on.

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Rovert10, reply 17
1. Strip all your planets

2. Find some random astroid in the middle of the map

3. Build a 2000 supply fleet in about 30 minutes

4. Steamroll your emenies and win the game.

I don't see the disadvantage of stripping all your planets.

If you really wanted a korstra cannon than find some random astroids or moons to place them on.

Culture is irrelevant when you eat every planet in your path.

Steady income is irrelevant. You'll have more worries of the emeny not having this since they don't have planets to build an economy on.
End of Rovert10's quote

Once again this only works now. Once they nerf STTC i doubt you will be able to do this without repercussions. You are also missing the point right now people can have the best of both worlds. The massive income of STTC and free logistics slots of ship board labs while still holding on to planets so you wont lose the game if your titan dies and retaining access to factories and the kostura cannon. Im trying to force them to choose one or the other.

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting excartus, reply 18

Quoting Rovert10, reply 171. Strip all your planets

2. Find some random astroid in the middle of the map

3. Build a 2000 supply fleet in about 30 minutes

4. Steamroll your emenies and win the game.

I don't see the disadvantage of stripping all your planets.

If you really wanted a korstra cannon than find some random astroids or moons to place them on.

Culture is irrelevant when you eat every planet in your path.

Steady income is irrelevant. You'll have more worries of the emeny not having this since they don't have planets to build an economy on.

Once again this only works now. Once they nerf STTC i doubt you will be able to do this without repercussions. You are also missing the point right now people can have the best of both worlds. The massive income of STTC and free logistics slots of ship board labs while still holding on to planets so you wont lose the game if your titan dies and retaining access to factories and the kostura cannon. Im trying to force them to choose one or the other.
End of excartus's quote

I just played a capital victory, and how i used STTC was easy, get to a planet, colonize it, strip it, colonize it again, strip it once more(no gains from this tho) planet becomes an asteroid belt and deny your enemy chances to start a blockade there :) I played against AI's and first time using the vasari in rebellion, as well as using STTC for the first time, but was fun deminishing half the map to mere asteroid belts while still having a good 6 planets for a steady income from there...And I didn't know if I would lose if I'd strip my home planet...Even tho I fully researched all the techs.