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RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Deantwo - 01-23-2022
(01-23-2022, 02:36 AM)Greydog Wrote: A Declaration of War is still the best reason to institute a waiting period before an attack. The defender could accept the declaration at any time during a set period (say 24 hrs) beginning the war immediately. If the was no reply before the time period ends then the attacker can begin. Any colonies or structures are not covered by a jurisdiction are unprotected and may be attacked without a declaration. The time period would work across an entire empire and not just a single system. Once it's up, any of the defenders systems could be attacked.
The idea of this was discussed in the past, and not only did people seemingly hate the idea, it also has a lot of issues.
See: (Idea thread) Formal War Declaration
We didn't discuss this in the thread, but a lot of exploitable holes come up when you think about the idea further.
Examples:
- Attacker declare war on your empire. You surrender all your cities to a neutral third-party empire.
- Attacker declare war on your empire and all third-party neutral empires. You create a new empire and surrender your cities to it.
- Attacker creates a new empire and transfer all their warships to it. You want to fight back, but the waring empire has no cities for you to attack.
- You declare war on attacker's main empire. You are now considered the aggressor in that war and the attacker surrenders their cities to an ally.
So in the end that idea was abandoned and I had this fantastic idea about declaring war on a location instead of a non-physical entity such as an empire. I made an idea thread about this idea and it has gotten popular, I suggest you read it.
Here: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems
(01-23-2022, 02:36 AM)Greydog Wrote: Planetary shields could be a thing but not as something that just appears when the planet is threatened. It should be a couple of huge ground emitters on either side of the planet that are tied to a series of orbital emitters. It should use massive power, Need massive resources, and take forever to build. City shields should still be there as a (more powerful) second layer that needs to be cracked.
There is no universal rule saying that a planetary shield generator has to be huge, consist of multiple parts or even be a physical structure. I know you might have an opinion about planetary shield generators being huge and impressive, but that doesn't matter at all when we are discussing gameplay mechanics.
As I already mentioned a few posts above, the ancient ringworld builders could easily have created super-duper advanced planetary shield generators that automatic protect every single world in the entire universe. (#27)
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Greydog - 01-23-2022
(01-23-2022, 02:21 PM)Deantwo Wrote:(01-23-2022, 02:36 AM)Greydog Wrote: A Declaration of War is still the best reason to institute a waiting period before an attack. The defender could accept the declaration at any time during a set period (say 24 hrs) beginning the war immediately. If the was no reply before the time period ends then the attacker can begin. Any colonies or structures are not covered by a jurisdiction are unprotected and may be attacked without a declaration. The time period would work across an entire empire and not just a single system. Once it's up, any of the defenders systems could be attacked.
The idea of this was discussed in the past, and not only did people seemingly hate the idea, it also has a lot of issues.
See: (Idea thread) Formal War Declaration
We didn't discuss this in the thread, but a lot of exploitable holes come up when you think about the idea further.
Examples:
- Attacker declare war on your empire. You surrender all your cities to a neutral third-party empire.
- Attacker declare war on your empire and all third-party neutral empires. You create a new empire and surrender your cities to it.
- Attacker creates a new empire and transfer all their warships to it. You want to fight back, but the waring empire has no cities for you to attack.
- You declare war on attacker's main empire. You are now considered the aggressor in that war and the attacker surrenders their cities to an ally.
So in the end that idea was abandoned and I had this fantastic idea about declaring war on a location instead of a non-physical entity such as an empire. I made an idea thread about this idea and it has gotten popular, I suggest you read it.
Here: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems
(01-23-2022, 02:36 AM)Greydog Wrote: Planetary shields could be a thing but not as something that just appears when the planet is threatened. It should be a couple of huge ground emitters on either side of the planet that are tied to a series of orbital emitters. It should use massive power, Need massive resources, and take forever to build. City shields should still be there as a (more powerful) second layer that needs to be cracked.
There is no universal rule saying that a planetary shield generator has to be huge, consist of multiple parts or even be a physical structure. I know you might have an opinion about planetary shield generators being huge and impressive, but that doesn't matter at all when we are discussing gameplay mechanics.
As I already mentioned a few posts above, the ancient ringworld builders could easily have created super-duper advanced planetary shield generators that automatic protect every single world in the entire universe. (#27)
Well, in the first part you could simply make the declaration of war take precedence over other further diplomatic actions until after the declaration has been resolved. If an Emperor quits their empire, a new empire cannot take over without first responding to the declaration. The time period would not be reset and if a response is not given the attacker may proceed as they wish. Or (even harsher) the empire is considered "ungoverned" with an instant loss of morale across each of it's cities. at that point they could all be claimed individually by planting a flag. This would most likely set off a land rush with each side trying to grab what they can. I can't help but think that are no participation trophies in war and gameplay should reflect that.
While "realistic" is not what we're looking for "plausibly realistic" could be, which is how I look at it when thinking of these suggestions. With that, I tend to think that a real enemy bent on conquest would simply scoff at the notion that changing the name or leadership of a civilization would keep them from their goal. Instead it would possibly spur them into harsher action. But because this is a game we need a "plausible" reason to mitigate that mechanic. My suggestions are meant to slow the advance enough to allow players time to respond one way or another.
My shield ideas simply reflect a need to make the mechanic more substantial and less "magic". I have no issue with the ancient tech shields that you suggest, so long as it needs to be discovered via exploration like a ringworld is. After discovery it could be researched and updated like any other tech.
An empire bent on war is going to wage war, we shouldn't want to stop that, just deter it. As you say, how a mechanic works is more important than how it is delivered. At the same time the mechanics themselves should be almost invisible. It's the wrapper we place them in that creates the lore and ambiance of a game. It just so happens that we, the players, get a large input into what that wrapper consists of, so just because something has been discussed before, doesn't mean the discussion is over.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - QuakeIV - 01-23-2022
(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote:(01-22-2022, 09:04 PM)QuakeIV Wrote: I'm not in any case sure why you are suggesting that solar systems would necessarily fall as one. I tend to build colonies so that they are at the very least independent in terms of air and food power and so forth, mainly to avoid huge failure cascades due to supply chain issues. You say few people do it, but I am fairly sure its nearly standard practice. It seems like at best the system-wide siege idea would make it easier to conquer large swathes of space in a reasonable time frame, but it seems like thats an annoyance you have never personally been subjected to so its weird to me that you are so determined to make the case for that.
I don't really understand the point you are trying to make here. Are you saying you would rather have to spend multiple days sieging each and every world of a solar system one at a time? And only large empires that can field more ships should there for be able to siege solar systems with many worlds? Assuming you need one ship per world siege.
It does diminish the point of talking to you somewhat when you seemingly forget things I said two posts ago. If a conversation cant have more history than one post then it turns into a loop of re-iterating points.
(01-21-2022, 06:48 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: ...
Most planets, and even resource zones, have no value. There is no reason to attack targets that already mean nothing to the enemy.
There are two types of planets that matter to war fighting capacity, resource harvesting worlds, and shipyard industry systems.
...
If you need further clarity, what I meant by this when I said 'resource harvesting worlds' is that most worlds do not have circa q248-255 resources on them. If your enemy is fighting with ships noticeably below this range then they will be at a firm disadvantage. There is rarely more than one resource zone like this in a system, let alone a sector in most cases.
(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote: And all the newbies that don't know they should make every single colony self-sufficient are just at a disadvantage because the attacker can avoid wasting time and warships on little mining colonies that will decay on their own?
People who don't know what they are doing will always be at a disadvantage, allowing them to at least build a shield that gives them days or longer to react to the attacker would significantly lessen that issue because its such a basic precaution that they could relatively easily take.
(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote: I have yet to see any of the shield generator ideas mention the invulnerable surface-to-space weapon systems and how the attacker is supposed to withstand that firepower for days of a siege. Or is the attacker supposed to just be bombing the other side of the planet? Until the defender quickly build new invulnerable surface-to-space weapon systems under it?
I would rather have a single week long siege against the whole solar system at once. The attacker having to be in orbit of the sun or at the rim of the system so they aren't disadvantaged by invulnerable surface defenses. The defender having to actually take the fight to the sieging ship, or just evacuate around it.
Do not allow surface to orbit weaponry to fire through a shield that has been pushed into siege mode. This would also be consistent with the earlier notion that no resources or people come in or out of the city while it is besieged. So in other words if you want surface to orbit firepower, you will need to build it outside of the shield bubble. (in fairness these things can be really dangerous in their own right)
(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote:(01-22-2022, 09:04 PM)QuakeIV Wrote: In my opinion by far the biggest obstacle to changing cities into something that take a while to build up is the fact that they are so easy to quickly destroy. A way to defend them has to come first, as a pre-requisite to them being harder to build up.
Yeah that has been an issue since before destroy-able cities. There is no difference in the value of a city that have existed a year, verse a city that was built a week ago. But this seemed like a while separate issue and I didn't want to get into it here.
If you wanna make a thread for the topic, I would love to read your thoughts on the matter.
I probably wont bother any time in the immediate future, I think we both agree that it would be preferable for cities to gain value over much longer periods of time however. Cities potentially reaching their full potential within hours or days is a bit silly and right now it kindof has to stay that way until cities become less vulnerable.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Deantwo - 01-24-2022
(01-23-2022, 09:17 PM)QuakeIV Wrote:(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote:(01-22-2022, 09:04 PM)QuakeIV Wrote: I'm not in any case sure why you are suggesting that solar systems would necessarily fall as one. I tend to build colonies so that they are at the very least independent in terms of air and food power and so forth, mainly to avoid huge failure cascades due to supply chain issues. You say few people do it, but I am fairly sure its nearly standard practice. It seems like at best the system-wide siege idea would make it easier to conquer large swathes of space in a reasonable time frame, but it seems like thats an annoyance you have never personally been subjected to so its weird to me that you are so determined to make the case for that.
I don't really understand the point you are trying to make here. Are you saying you would rather have to spend multiple days sieging each and every world of a solar system one at a time? And only large empires that can field more ships should there for be able to siege solar systems with many worlds? Assuming you need one ship per world siege.
And all the newbies that don't know they should make every single colony self-sufficient are just at a disadvantage because the attacker can avoid wasting time and warships on little mining colonies that will decay on their own?
People who don't know what they are doing will always be at a disadvantage, allowing them to at least build a shield that gives them days or longer to react to the attacker would significantly lessen that issue because its such a basic precaution that they could relatively easily take.
(01-23-2022, 01:16 PM)Deantwo Wrote: I have yet to see any of the shield generator ideas mention the invulnerable surface-to-space weapon systems and how the attacker is supposed to withstand that firepower for days of a siege. Or is the attacker supposed to just be bombing the other side of the planet? Until the defender quickly build new invulnerable surface-to-space weapon systems under it?
I would rather have a single week long siege against the whole solar system at once. The attacker having to be in orbit of the sun or at the rim of the system so they aren't disadvantaged by invulnerable surface defenses. The defender having to actually take the fight to the sieging ship, or just evacuate around it.
Do not allow surface to orbit weaponry to fire through a shield that has been pushed into siege mode. This would also be consistent with the earlier notion that no resources or people come in or out of the city while it is besieged. So in other words if you want surface to orbit firepower, you will need to build it outside of the shield bubble. (in fairness these things can be really dangerous in their own right)
But you didn't answer the question. What I gathered is that you would prefer that people build a super-shield-thingy-building on each and every world they care about, and then the attacker need to attack each and every one of those little worlds one at a time or as many as the attacker has warships for. You also want complicated protection mechanics that are only enabled while the the world is under siege. Any world that doesn't have the super-shield-thingy-building is just free pickings because who cares about those. And the way you say "days" suggest you aren't all that interested in a week long siege. The actual super-shield-thingy-building's design or function outside which world has one and which doesn't seem to be moot.
We really need an easy to understand solution, that covers everyone equally regardless of player experience or empire size. I just don't see how a manually built shield generator and overly complicated siege rules would benefit everyone. Not to mention the confusion about suddenly having two types of shield generator buildings.
Maybe I am stuck thinking that my idea is the best in the world. But I have yet to hear a more elegant and basic solution that covers all the issues. And I have yet to hear any issues with my original idea that would make it not work. Maybe I am bad at explaining it, or maybe my idea just sounds more like boring mechanically designed space politics rather than fancy shields that need bombing for days.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - QuakeIV - 01-24-2022
I answered your question, you asked if I want to besiege every little world in a system, then claimed that only larger empires will be able to do this, I pointed out this will almost never happen. If someone actually puts a bubble on every random airless moon, not that anyone will ever do that as that is totally pointless, you ignore them and only attack the planets that matter, which are very rare things.
It is also not particularly over complicated, what it essentially amounts to is turning off all buildings under the shield while the city is under fire. You would probably also need to prevent spacecraft from firing while under the bubble, as was done to fix the giant jenga motherships.
Since you asked for problems with the system wide siege notion, I would point out your idea likely requires far more complicated rules to make work than a city shield. For instance, to address some specific points:
- Since destroying all military buildings is needed to initiate the siege, is the siege broken if someone manages to build a guard tower?
- Do military buildings hidden on the bottom of an insidious gas giants count against preventing a siege?
- What about hiding military buildings between the invulnerable civilian buildings, thereby making them almost or entirely impossible to destroy? (I seem to remember this happening before)
- Is it really particularly amusing for your notification that you are under attack to be that all of your military buildings and spacecraft are gone and there is constant hail spam every 30 seconds?
- Even if you did away with the originally proposed hail spam, how would people know they are still under attack? The enemy ships will be parked far away doing nothing.
In the city shield case, you know you are under attack because the shield is continually being bombed, which is both loud and also an obvious light show. If I remember correctly, any buildings under a shield bubble are protected by the shield even if someone weasels under it and starts C4ing them. Shields also already block transporters and prevent enemies from walking through them. If you place buildings that poke through the shield to absorb hits, the damage also appears to apply to the shield.
Currently you can still run around inside a shield killing people, (by blasting the shield until it flicks out temporarily and then deploying an orbital Zensras to cleanse all life), however this would not be a problem if the shield was invulnerable for days. Its very clean and hard to exploit from a mechanics perspective. City shields are already very close to doing what I am suggesting.
This also gives the player a lot more they can do to influence the outcome of the siege. You would want to design your city to fit under the shield as much as possible, might park spacecraft under the shield to protect them from being destroyed overnight, and the size and strength of the shield bubble is already something you can change in the designer. With the system wide siege there isn't much player choice involved, its the exact same outcome (all of your ships and military buildings gone overnight) more or less no matter how you design your cities.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Deantwo - 01-24-2022
(01-24-2022, 03:35 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: Since you asked for problems with the system wide siege notion, I would point out your idea likely requires far more complicated rules to make work than a city shield. For instance, to address some specific points:
- Since destroying all military buildings is needed to initiate the siege, is the siege broken if someone manages to build a guard tower?
- Do military buildings hidden on the bottom of an insidious gas giants count against preventing a siege?
- What about hiding military buildings between the invulnerable civilian buildings, thereby making them almost or entirely impossible to destroy? (I seem to remember this happening before)
- Is it really particularly amusing for your notification that you are under attack to be that all of your military buildings and spacecraft are gone and there is constant hail spam every 30 seconds?
- Even if you did away with the originally proposed hail spam, how would people know they are still under attack? The enemy ships will be parked far away doing nothing.
Yeah, I guess I didn't edit that about destroying military buildings out of the opening post. After discussing the safe harbor idea with Haxus and hearing his idea for noncombatant protection, I sort of liked the idea of the worlds and everything in their orbits being protected by default. As for the whole "destroy military buildings before civilian buildings" logic that is still in the game, I assume if that logic would stay it would be an issue for any idea, since even the super-shield-thingy-building could be hidden between two civilian buildings.
As for the hail spam, I assume you know 30 seconds interval would be insane? I was suggested that cities actually play a siren alarm sound when enemies on are the world, something like that would help a lot to make cities not feel so tone dead to their surroundings and could be used to indicate an active siege on the system too. I confess there are many people that don't read their Dossier messages either or even know why the button is "flashy", and they wouldn't know that anything is being sieged in another solar system at all, but I guess that is an issue with the Dossier's design.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Deantwo - 01-24-2022
(01-24-2022, 03:35 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: I answered your question, you asked if I want to besiege every little world in a system, then claimed that only larger empires will be able to do this, I pointed out this will almost never happen. If someone actually puts a bubble on every random airless moon, not that anyone will ever do that as that is totally pointless, you ignore them and only attack the planets that matter, which are very rare things.
You can't design a system with the mindset of "it is pointless, no one will ever do this." Haxus added the new world volume and population limits to prevent cities from becoming a strain on the servers, yet a bunch of players are trying their best to reach those limits. Even with the old-style cities there were a few players that fully colonized their whole solar system and reached the population limit on all their worlds.
I don't see any reason not to build a super-shield-thingy-building on every freaking world I have even a basic mining colony on. Resources are infinite and I love making my attacker have to work for whatever pleasure they get out of attacking me. Sure they can ignore the little moon colonies, but that depends on their reason for attacking in the first place. If the attacker is attacking to remove a tiny empire from their territory, then leaving tiny self-sufficient moon bases is a security risk as they provide starmap information. So again you can't generalize the attacker's mindset to "will only attack important targets" either, and you yourself said that players make all their worlds self-sufficient.
(01-24-2022, 03:35 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: In the city shield case, you know you are under attack because the shield is continually being bombed, which is both loud and also an obvious light show.
What if the attacker is bombing the far side of the planet? Will it then just be a flashing shield in the sky? What if the attacker is bombing a world on the the other side of the solar system? I don't see much advantage from the whole "bombing light show" thing if you have to be on the world and directly under it. But I guess cities on the world could just spam the Empire channel every 30 seconds?
(01-24-2022, 03:35 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: Shields also already block transporters and prevent enemies from walking through them.
Currently you can still run around inside a shield killing people, (by blasting the shield until it flicks out temporarily and then deploying an orbital Zensras to cleanse all life), however this would not be a problem if the shield was invulnerable for days. Its very clean and hard to exploit from a mechanics perspective. City shields are already very close to doing what I am suggesting.
By the way, you know anything that isn't moving too fast can pass through the current shields, right? Just wanted to ask.
(01-24-2022, 03:35 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: This also gives the player a lot more they can do to influence the outcome of the siege. You would want to design your city to fit under the shield as much as possible, might park spacecraft under the shield to protect them from being destroyed overnight, and the size and strength of the shield bubble is already something you can change in the designer. With the system wide siege there isn't much player choice involved, its the exact same outcome (all of your ships and military buildings gone overnight) more or less no matter how you design your cities.
"How long do you want to be protected for, 3 or 7 days?" isn't really an interesting or useful choice. Someone will design a nice looking blueprint optimized to have the maximum possible shield stats and everyone will use it, unless it takes multiple days to construct no one will care.
Yes, my idea doesn't have much choice, because giving people the option to shoot themselves in the foot usually goes poorly for them. And that includes giving them a choice in what to protect, since I really don't see a point in letting a newbie or veteran player forget to build the super-shield-thingy-building in their new awesome city.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - QuakeIV - 01-25-2022
(01-24-2022, 08:36 AM)Deantwo Wrote: You can't design a system with the mindset of "it is pointless, no one will ever do this." Haxus added the new world volume and population limits to prevent cities from becoming a strain on the servers, yet a bunch of players are trying their best to reach those limits. ... I don't see any reason not to build a super-shield-thingy-building on every freaking world I have even a basic mining colony on. ...
Allow me to provide a considered response to this point:
(01-21-2022, 06:48 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: Most planets, and even resource zones, have no value. There is no reason to attack targets that already mean nothing to the enemy.I will elaborate further. The only cities worth sieging are shipyards, and resource harvesting worlds in the QL248-255 range, which are so rare that there is typically not more than one per sector. If they bubble other targets, ignore them and go around them. I personally think that makes siege targets acceptably rare enough.
(01-24-2022, 08:36 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ... What if the attacker is bombing the far side of the planet? ... What if the attacker is bombing a world on the the other side of the solar system? ...
Empirically speaking, the answer is that nothing happens because the shots hit the planet. I also have built ships with the longest range possible weapon and they arent even close to shooting across the solar system. Its not clear why you thought this was something worth bringing up.
(01-24-2022, 08:36 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ... By the way, you know anything that isn't moving too fast can pass through the current shields, right? Just wanted to ask. ...
This is a fair point and I didn't know that. As mentioned the attacker still cant damage the buildings, but they will be able to shoot people in the city. This would obviously be an issue worth fixing but I in all good faith believe its minor enough that its not catastrophic, the city itself would survive this, as could parked spacecraft (if for instance you hangared them or didnt have any external entrances).
(01-24-2022, 08:36 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ... "How long do you want to be protected for, 3 or 7 days?" isn't really an interesting or useful choice. ... Yes, my idea doesn't have much choice, because giving people the option to shoot themselves in the foot usually goes poorly for them. ...
At this point the only real consideration would be build time (days at least), and resource usage (days or longer of production). Actual mass production of shield modules takes a huge amount of effort to set up, and it can easily take weeks if you need millions of them.
Regarding making sure players can never shoot themselves in the foot as a gameplay objective, I think pursuing this removes all relevant and interesting choices from the game, and also support the return of the peace dimension for those who want a game that is impossible to make wrong choices in.
By the way I don't know if this thought had entered your mind yet, but if the defender bubbles every planet in a system, you can generally speaking ignore all but one of them and just go around them because they don't matter.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - Deantwo - 01-25-2022
(01-25-2022, 03:57 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: Allow me to provide a considered response to this point:
(01-21-2022, 06:48 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: Most planets, and even resource zones, have no value. There is no reason to attack targets that already mean nothing to the enemy.I will elaborate further. The only cities worth sieging are shipyards, and resource harvesting worlds in the QL248-255 range, which are so rare that there is typically not more than one per sector. If they bubble other targets, ignore them and go around them. I personally think that makes siege targets acceptably rare enough.
By the way I don't know if this thought had entered your mind yet, but if the defender bubbles every planet in a system, you can generally speaking ignore all but one of them and just go around them because they don't matter.
Allow me to question. What is the point of this feature you are proposing if it is going yo be rare? What determines that it is going to be rare? What stops a player from making super-shield-thingy-buildings on every world in their massive empire and why wouldn't they want to do that? You seem to just be generally guessing how people would use the feature, and then again guessing how people would fight against it. You seem to just have skimmed what I said and continued repeating the same "people wouldn't do that", when I just told you that I totally would.
I will say again. You can't just assume that an attacker want not wipe out every single little moon colony. That proves you have no concept or consideration for smaller more local wars. Yeah in a war between two massive empires that are each located on opposite sides of the galaxy, maybe they don't care about the tiny moon colonies, but that is only one type of war and you can't assume that is the only type of war or PvP that exists in the game.
(01-25-2022, 03:57 AM)QuakeIV Wrote:(01-24-2022, 08:36 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ... What if the attacker is bombing the far side of the planet? ... What if the attacker is bombing a world on the the other side of the solar system? ...
Empirically speaking, the answer is that nothing happens because the shots hit the planet. I also have built ships with the longest range possible weapon and they arent even close to shooting across the solar system. Its not clear why you thought this was something worth bringing up.
Go read that part of my post again. You seem to have completely misunderstood what I said, and I don't understand how you thought I meant any of that. But basically I meant that your idea of "you know you are under attack because bombing" only mattered if you were actually on the world and in the specific city being bombed.
But as you point out below, this will never matter, since no newbie will ever construct a super-shield-thingy-building.
(01-25-2022, 03:57 AM)QuakeIV Wrote: At this point the only real consideration would be build time (days at least), and resource usage (days or longer of production). Actual mass production of shield modules takes a huge amount of effort to set up, and it can easily take weeks if you need millions of them.
And finally the next subject I was curious about, the cost. Of course a super-shield-thingy-building should need Cryozine, which then finally shoves this out of a bunch of newbie hands. A newbie that have only just started colonizing their solar system cannot be protected unless they are really lucky to get a nice source of Cryozine and actually know about this feature.
The construction time being able to be a few days doesn't actually matter much, but I definitely wish that the construction window supported better information about this.
RE: Conquest of Solar Systems - QuakeIV - 01-26-2022
Well, to start with you seem to have just kindof repeated the point of 'what is stopping the defender from bubbling every moon' like you didn't understand what I said, the answer to that is still that the vast majority of those colonies dont matter and can be ignored, but then you made this point:
(01-25-2022, 07:51 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ...You can't just assume that an attacker want not wipe out every single little moon colony. That proves you have no concept or consideration for smaller more local wars. ...My take on this is that if you want to wipe out every world the enemy has just because it exists, and aren't willing to put in the time of day to do it, then maybe its fine if the game doesn't support that play style. I don't really see that wars of extermination down to the last pointless low QL moon colony are something of value that we should fight to keep.
(01-25-2022, 07:51 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ...basically I meant that your idea of "you know you are under attack because bombing" only mattered if you were actually on the world and in the specific city being bombed. ...This is a fair point, I would personally suggest that if you are a large enough empire that you will never visit a planet (particularly your homeworld) for the entire time it takes for it to be conquered, then its okay to be expected to listen to the fleet channel (which if I recall is where city notifications that they are under attack come over) and to check the mail. My memory is that cities start complaining as soon as you start shooting the shield (which rarely was built, but some cities did in fact do this).
With regards to 'knowing you are under attack' I was thinking of newbies happily frolicking about on their home world and then suddenly losing it without ever having even seen any signs of the enemy.
(01-25-2022, 07:51 AM)Deantwo Wrote: ... Of course a super-shield-thingy-building should need Cryozine, which then finally shoves this out of a bunch of newbie hands. ...Honestly that is a fair point, the super new person frolicking on their home world oftentimes wont even know shields exist, which does make some of my concerns there poinrtless in the first place. However, this would still be a technology in reach of very small empires, one of the earliest hurdles you cross is gaining access to shields.
It might be reasonable to say that the main design consideration for city shields would be: how many shield modules are you interested in producing to get it built, what radius do you want it to have, and how much damage would you like it to be able to take before it fails and goes into siege mode. Aside from that they could all be identical in how they behave (IE how long siege mode protects you). That would also simplify that mechanic into just being a flat three day timer or however many days.
You also remarked that they are 'lucky to know about this feature', I still think that you shouldn't be protected by game mechanics from the consequences of not knowing how to play the game. Ideally provide a tutorial (which exists) and clear documentation of how to defend yourself, and if you want no chance of dying, then live in the peace dimension which I still think aught to be brought back.