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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production  (Read 61339 times)

Nanao-kun

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #75 on: February 13, 2018, 08:08:06 PM »

Oh man, this future update looks amazing.
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Drokkath

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #76 on: February 13, 2018, 09:14:24 PM »

*thumbs up* I'm personally partial to the idea of having my own hideout somewhere, and being able to crank out some equipment there really makes it feel more useful, doesn't it?

Indeed, come to think of it; It reminds me quite a bit from X-Com games and I still play that old X-Com with OpenXcom program along with mods sometimes as it is a type of strategy and tactics game I can manage and deal with due to slower paced gameplay that let's me process info in my head.

I've noticed that in SS with Nexerlin (along with Console Commands for convenience and for fun ship testing), in some way I can keep a small but high quality fleet going and fortify invaded places just enough to make them stand on their own for a while and it made me realize that this game doesn't feel like just being some ruler of a space-faring government of sorts but rather being more of as someone who makes a giant ripple in time to turn the tides of life in the sector for the better or for the worst, depending of how one plays the game.

It's what I love about this game as there's no world-ending stuff to deal with like in almost any other game. Just different factions of humans trying to re-discover what has been lost while the player is an anonymous entity intially who can carve his/her/its own path and story in the sector with whatever faction if ever and/or whenever. All proverbial roads are open and paths lead to different outcomes even if they are just minor outcomes.


Thanks by the way; For developing this game, seeing its development through still to whatever is the "end" point of the "final" fruits of labor of this project/program/game (I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO). Thanks to all the good folk here who brainstorm with ideas to this game and to its mods and those who test the game to find bugs and issues to fix and thanks to all of them who have done/doing amazing mods for this game.

I have a lot of respect for Alex and for the modders because I myself, I can't code a script but I can mod the game due to easy to access game files that make sense enough to freely fiddle around to make something new to use in the game after some couple of hours working on that thing and finally seeing it actually flying or shooting or doing something one intended to make it a working thing.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2018, 10:39:17 PM by Drokkath »
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Sendrien

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #77 on: February 13, 2018, 11:19:44 PM »

Hmm, I see what you mean. But if one faction was the only one that (say) had access to the Apogee - it wouldn't even be guaranteed to show up in every fleet, right? The Onslaught/Paragon stand out because they're the pinnacle of power and so they matter because they *will* show up in the most powerful fleets and will matter there. Smaller ships seem unlikely to have the same impact unless they're prevalent. Still, it won't hurt, and it's more or less how I'm going about things in revamping what blueprints are available to what factions. If the Apogee was the main Persean League cruiser, that might be enough to help them stand out a bit more.

I'm also hopeful that the doctrine settings will help differentiate the factions more. For example, if the Hegemony and the Luddic Church have access to mostly the same kinds of ships, but the Church favors larger numbers of smaller and lower-quality ships, with a higher proportion of carriers, that should be very distinct despite them potentially sharing most of the hulls.

Also: this is a small thing, but I think "low-quality ships" will feel a lot more distinct in the next release, because the orangy-red bars that show the number of d-mods are now shown in more places. In particular in the fleet tooltip, the interaction dialog, and in the combat map, so it'll be extremely visually apparent.

I agree that doctrines can help differentiate in terms of fleet composition and fighting style. In fact, carrier fleets and phase fleets should definitely stand out. But I disagree that the Battleship class vessels are the only ones that can give a faction an iconic ship. For instance, if one faction had exclusive access to the Hyperion, that would instantly make their fleets recognizable.

Ship systems/weapons that have a very unique gameplay mechanic are what truly differentiate ships, big or small. The reason why Hyperion and Scarab stand out just as much as Paragon and Onslaught clearly has little to do with their size or power. Teleportation, Time Dilation, the Fortress Shield mechanic and the Thermal Pulse Cannon all add so much identity to their respective ships.

Perhaps when you do your next revision of ships, you could revisit some ship systems with unique mechanics and look for opportunities to add a few more built-in weapons similar to the TPC on the Onslaught? (scaled for power, naturally). TT is a very unique faction because each of their ships is so special. I think the other factions deserve the same degree of love as TT.
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Draba

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #78 on: February 14, 2018, 01:06:59 AM »

(I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO)

The art style also helps a lot, it's not something that'll look bad in 10 years.
My guess is once everything is done SS will be right up there with Transport Tycoon Deluxe in replayability.
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Gothars

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #79 on: February 14, 2018, 03:27:00 AM »

Very nice, I like the breakdown with the ship packages and the doctrine settings.

Right, as I mentioned a few posts above, doctrine settings are almost entirely combat-layer-focused. I could see adding a setting or two for something campaign related, when/if it becomes clear what that something might be, but that's something to be careful with, so that some settings don't become clearly-best.

I'm not quite clear on this: Are equivalent-tier fleets from all the factions supposed to be of equivalent strength? So e.g. a heavy TT patrol has a 50% chance to win against a heavy pirate patrol? That would feel odd, I think. If true, then how are varying  faction/colony strengths represented by their fleets? Do stronger factions just produce more/higher-tier fleets? Or is it about nanoforges?

I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.

Another thing: Maybe as a player wins more of a faction's favor, he get's a say in their fleet composition? When they like you, you get to look at their Doctrine & Blueprints tab, which would be interesting. And once they really trust you, you could re-assign one or two of their points. Makes you feel more involved, especially if you don't plan to establish your own faction.
Combining that with the idea above, maybe even upgrade the number of points they have. If you become a pirate king, you could have the influence to improve their organization and strengthen their overall fleet power from six to seven points.



*(Btw, shouldn't start "blueprints" with a capital B after the ampersand?)
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Megas

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #80 on: February 14, 2018, 05:48:32 AM »

The first standard faction I tend to eliminate in Nexerelin are Luddic Path because their ships are weak (plus with them mostly SO, I can win by waiting out their death clocks), probably weaker than Pirates.  One-on-one, Colossus 2 is weaker than Hammerhead!  If Luddic Path equivalent of other factions' cruisers are weaker than Hammerhead, they should be easy pickings.
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Defertos

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #81 on: February 14, 2018, 08:13:59 AM »

Well that's another high quality blog post, great job as always.

Other than pure praise I though I'd drop a small suggestion on the "Fleet Doctrineâ„¢"

Have you thought about having a small rock-paper-scissors type relations between different fleet doctrines and ship types?

For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, the system would tune the results to favor the relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

This would add extra immersion & strategy to the campaign layer since players would be able have somewhat solid idea on power relations between factions and also allow them to make educated guesses on outcomes of 2 fleets auto-resolving.
In addition this would give players other options to think about before actively going to a war with a faction, like changing doctrine to favor carriers if enemy likes to field lots of warships. (Or going to war with a faction when it is already fighting against a faction it is in disadvantage with)
Also the whole thing could easily be explained in tool tips when hovering over different doctrine options: "Warships generally have the armaments to easily defend against sneaky Phase ships, but struggle when targeted by enemy carriers", "Higher quality ships easily outmatch several lower grade ships, but they can not outperform skilled Officers".

For last having an ability to give "quirks" to certain factions that modify the doctrine benefits and penalties like Luddic Path having "Daredevils" that increases power against civilian ships, or Persean League having an "ion focus" making them more effective against low tech but less effective against high tech.
Above could also generate a more diverse modscape when it comes to campaign interactions between factions.
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TaLaR

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #82 on: February 14, 2018, 08:22:26 AM »

For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, it would tune the results to favor that relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

I'd rather have them auto-resolved as closely as possible to what actually fighting it out would produce. Last thing we need is auto-resolve that is wrong-by-design.
Disconnect between auto and happens when you join a fight would be totally immersion breaking. Like potential situation where your patrol is wiped by auto, but can easily win same fight if you just join and sit in the corner.

Would also lead to outfitting fleets in all kinds of weird ways (as long as I max out abstract bars that win over competition it does not matter that resulting fleet can't do anything in a real fight). So it becomes a question of how to get bars into position at minimum cost (if costs are involved at all).
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 08:28:07 AM by TaLaR »
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Techhead

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #83 on: February 14, 2018, 09:52:33 AM »

I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.
That probably works for officer quality/ship quality/number, since the values are independent scales, but probably not warships/carriers/phase ships since that scale is about proportions of different ship types in a fleet. You can't make a combat fleet 60% warship 45% carrier 10% phase ship.
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Blothorn

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #84 on: February 14, 2018, 10:23:59 AM »

For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, it would tune the results to favor that relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

I'd rather have them auto-resolved as closely as possible to what actually fighting it out would produce. Last thing we need is auto-resolve that is wrong-by-design.
Disconnect between auto and happens when you join a fight would be totally immersion breaking. Like potential situation where your patrol is wiped by auto, but can easily win same fight if you just join and sit in the corner.

Would also lead to outfitting fleets in all kinds of weird ways (as long as I max out abstract bars that win over competition it does not matter that resulting fleet can't do anything in a real fight). So it becomes a question of how to get bars into position at minimum cost (if costs are involved at all).

Aye. Not to mention that RPS tends to be a terrible mechanic unless both sides have access to most or all of the options and some power to influence which matchups actually fight. For fleet composition, where all a side's fleets share strengths and weaknesses, I see this as either a slightly tedious "I win" mechanic for the player (if the AI never adjusts fleet composition, so the player just needs to adjust to whomever he is fighting at the time) or a source of endless frustration (if the AI does adjust to counter, requiring a constant cycle of updates).
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Alex

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #85 on: February 14, 2018, 10:45:46 AM »

Thanks by the way; For developing this game, seeing its development through still to whatever is the "end" point of the "final" fruits of labor of this project/program/game (I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO). Thanks to all the good folk here who brainstorm with ideas to this game and to its mods and those who test the game to find bugs and issues to fix and thanks to all of them who have done/doing amazing mods for this game.

I have a lot of respect for Alex and for the modders because I myself, I can't code a script but I can mod the game due to easy to access game files that make sense enough to freely fiddle around to make something new to use in the game after some couple of hours working on that thing and finally seeing it actually flying or shooting or doing something one intended to make it a working thing.

Thank you! I'm glad you're having fun doing some modding; I remember enjoying that a lot myself for other games.

(And, indeed, I'm also very grateful to everyone that chimes in with feedback or suggestions!)

For instance, if one faction had exclusive access to the Hyperion, that would instantly make their fleets recognizable.

Ship systems/weapons that have a very unique gameplay mechanic are what truly differentiate ships, big or small. The reason why Hyperion and Scarab stand out just as much as Paragon and Onslaught clearly has little to do with their size or power. Teleportation, Time Dilation, the Fortress Shield mechanic and the Thermal Pulse Cannon all add so much identity to their respective ships.

Yep, I hear what you're saying. It's not that something like the Hyperion isn't unique, it's that it's not widespread in a faction's fleets, right. So if a fleet doesn't have one, then the Hyperion technically being avaialble doesn't do much. The battleships/capitals kind of get around that because they're almost always present in the larger fleets, the ones you're most likely to remember encountering. There's just more hull variety the lower the hull size is - a faction might have access to a couple of capital ships, but like 10 frigates. Since there also tend to be a lot of frigates in a given fleet, specific ones can get lost in the shuffle a bit, too.


I'm not quite clear on this: Are equivalent-tier fleets from all the factions supposed to be of equivalent strength? So e.g. a heavy TT patrol has a 50% chance to win against a heavy pirate patrol? That would feel odd, I think. If true, then how are varying  faction/colony strengths represented by their fleets? Do stronger factions just produce more/higher-tier fleets? Or is it about nanoforges?

Right, yes - differentianting campaign power is the job of larger colonies, stability (which affects production quality), nanoforges, having the demand for ships & weapons be met, and so on.

I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.

Hah! Already planning to do something similar (great minds, etc?); I suspect pirates will probably get something like 1 in officer/ship quality, and maybe 2 in quantity. Doesn't make sense to do that with warships/carriers/phase ships, though, since that's just relative proportions, not absolute quantity.

As far as industrial strength progressing, the way it's set up now means that if you stack on ship quality in every way possible, you end up with some diminishing returns and an "extra" point or two to play with, since you'd only need 4 or 3 in ship quality to mostly get pristine hulls.

Another thing: Maybe as a player wins more of a faction's favor, he get's a say in their fleet composition? When they like you, you get to look at their Doctrine & Blueprints tab, which would be interesting. And once they really trust you, you could re-assign one or two of their points. Makes you feel more involved, especially if you don't plan to establish your own faction.
Combining that with the idea above, maybe even upgrade the number of points they have. If you become a pirate king, you could have the influence to improve their organization and strengthen their overall fleet power from six to seven points.

Hmm. So yeah, that's interesting. I'm not sure how "join a faction" mechanics would play out; this sort of thing may be worthwhile but it also seems like a bit of a pain to implement (the idea of how far you can stray from the base doctrine, UI support for that, letting the player know that it's even something they can do, and so on).

*(Btw, shouldn't start "blueprints" with a capital B after the ampersand?)

I've been leaning towards only capitalizing the first word in a button title in these kinds of tab buttons. It's a bit weird - in some places, that feels good, and in some cases (such as in the main menu, i.e. "New Game") having only the first be capitalized would be weird. I'm not sure whether that's just a "me" thing or if there's some larger principle here that I'm unaware of, but it certainly feels like consistency in this doesn't produce good results across the board. Although, if I had to pick one, then "capitalize everything" would be the better option.


Well that's another high quality blog post, great job as always.

Thank you!

Have you thought about having a small rock-paper-scissors type relations between different fleet doctrines and ship types?
...

I'm sure there'll be some of that naturally as far as the battles the player actually participates in alongside their fleets, but for autoresolve, I think it wouldn't be great. As others have mentioned, RPS works when it's a dynamic situation; if factions have fixed doctrines (which they need to, since that's their personality), then there would always be the same right answer for facing a particular faction, and that's not very interesting.
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SCC

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #86 on: February 14, 2018, 01:20:14 PM »

Here comes the meat of the 0.9 update... Starsector DIY is so much simpler than the real one!
I've seen somewhere here that there are blueprints of more than just ships and weapons, neat! Do the packages come always in ship only or weapon only varieties?
In the Doctrine screen you have categories sorted alphabetically - wouldn't it be better if top row was occupied entirely by all, low, medium and high tech options? Wouldn't lose them in a bunch of modded factions then.
Custom production is where you miss the appeal of manually ordering machines of war - it's not that it's cheap (not when it comes to the multimillionaire player, at least), nor that it's yours or fast... It's that you buy exactly what you want and it's delivered to a specific place - do I have to go on a shopping spree to find that rare weapon or ship? Nope, it's here, or will be here in a month, 100% guarantee! No worry! Thus, I advise you to have prices for custom production be equal or even more expensive than normal buying, because player shouldn't be incentivised to always/often do custom production, because sometimes going out of your way to buy yours can make it actually more expensive, if you factor supplies and fuel.

Perhaps anything that is a small enough fraction of monthly production (say total purchases no greater than than 5%) are always available instantly, either as a case of being trivial to manufacture (HMG's, low complexity fighter LPC's) or ubiquitous to the point of spares always being on hand for requisition (Hounds and Buffalos).
Make an "apocalypse-proof storage" building to increase this bonus! Think US and no M1 Abrams made since the cold war, just retrofitted.
Now the bad news...
Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)
I feel like being able to join the battle alongside your allies is about as far as this should go. Being able to remotely watch battles your faction fleets are involved in raises the question of why you couldn't participate in it; I'd like to keep the feeling of the player being in a specific place, rather than entirely omniscient. In addition, ship AI is designed with one ship being piloted by the player in mind, so "you can watch AI vs AI battles" is not a feature I want to explicitly push. That's not an experience the game is made for.

Finally, this is very much something that affects most players, not just a small subset that really want to optimize. How much it affects any given player is going to be variable, but the rules of a game naturally shape the way the game is played. Putting in rules that encourage one thing and then expecting the player to do something else that's actually fun is bad design, period; thinking that this only affects the hyper-optimizer style of player is imo a fallacy. It's a pretty well known fact that given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out. (I'm not saying that there's nothing like that already in the game or that its design is perfect, but those are things to fix, not add more of.)

So, for several reasons, I strongly feel this would be a bad idea. Apologies! :)
You were the chosen one! You were to make the perfect space RTS, not leave the genre in darkness!
Well, maybe kinda not really. I just hoped there'd be a way to actually experience uneven, close or panic-inducing battles. In campaign I just use whatever exploit I fancy to jumpstart my way out of early game and then I just... Pick my fights too well. I feel like RTS on SS-engine (with obvious option to autoresolve some battles, do manually the rest) would be VERY good, even if majority of mechanics bar battles were simplified. And the interface was a bit different than from normal mode. Oops, that's unpaid work.

Alex

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #87 on: February 14, 2018, 01:35:35 PM »

I've seen somewhere here that there are blueprints of more than just ships and weapons, neat! Do the packages come always in ship only or weapon only varieties?

They can have both - or, rather, all three - ships, weapons, and fighters. Several of the packages (i.e. low/midline/high) contain all three; there's also a separate "missile weapon package" for the more common missiles, since they're not as tech-level specific.

In the Doctrine screen you have categories sorted alphabetically - wouldn't it be better if top row was occupied entirely by all, low, medium and high tech options? Wouldn't lose them in a bunch of modded factions then.

I don't think it makes sense to emphasize these; as far as this screen is concerned, it's just a set of tags. They could be more or less important than other tags depending on various factors. I.E. if a mod adds a bunch of ships and you're interested in them, then that mod's tag is probably more important. I don't think these three are that special. Could make sense to sort based on the number of items under each tag, though, hmm - since that *is* indicative of importance. Let me make a note - I wonder how other similar tag-based UIs work. Alphabetical does have the advantage of the user having a better idea of where the tag is going to be, though.

Custom production is where you miss the appeal of manually ordering machines of war - it's not that it's cheap (not when it comes to the multimillionaire player, at least), nor that it's yours or fast... It's that you buy exactly what you want and it's delivered to a specific place - do I have to go on a shopping spree to find that rare weapon or ship? Nope, it's here, or will be here in a month, 100% guarantee! No worry! Thus, I advise you to have prices for custom production be equal or even more expensive than normal buying, because player shouldn't be incentivised to always/often do custom production, because sometimes going out of your way to buy yours can make it actually more expensive, if you factor supplies and fuel.

That's a great point, thank you for bringing this up. "It should be cheaper" was kind of an unquestioned assumption on my part; but in messing with it so far, it does feel like some of the ships and weapons are too inexpensive. Heck, even at 1x the base cost, it'd still be cheaper due to not having a tariff, and, as you mention, supplies and fuel being factored in. I'll keep an eye on this balance-wise, also depends on how much income the player ends up getting from colonies.

Well, maybe kinda not really. I just hoped there'd be a way to actually experience uneven, close or panic-inducing battles.

Hah, I don't know what that has to do with not being able to observe AI vs AI fights! I'd expect more desperate battles to come about due to needing to defend colonies - unlike your fleet, they can't run, so that's a qualitative difference as far as being able to pick your fights goes.
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SCC

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #88 on: February 14, 2018, 01:43:14 PM »

I thought of my dream RTS mode as, let's say, hand-picked series of mission battles.

PCCL

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Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« Reply #89 on: February 14, 2018, 03:17:08 PM »

How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?
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