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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: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses  (Read 60753 times)

Cyan Leader

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #30 on: August 17, 2018, 03:53:02 AM »

To be honest, while I'm excited to try this out, I agree with Botaragno's general argument. I think the game needs more ways to make the different mechanics and events that happen through text more active and real; as in, through gameplay.
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AspirantEmperor

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #31 on: August 17, 2018, 04:47:55 AM »

...

I can own Syndria.

...

...

I can own Syndria, and then de-civilize all other fuel-producing planets in the sector.

...

I'm going to be so gods-damned rich.

Actually, I have a few questions on that front. I'm surprised you can raid-away a nanoforge. I presume you can't raid and steal a fuel refinery? And if a planet becomes civilized, do fuel refineries and nanoforges remain on the planet for you to use if you recolonize it? And what happens to any AI cores that were in use on the now-decivilized planet?

Also, how long does the defender's readiness bonus last? Is it about as long as the industry remains damaged, or can you come back and raid again before it's back online? If you do, can you target the already-damaged industry to keep it damaged for longer? In particular, I'm wondering if we took out ship production facilities whether we'd effectively cripple a planet's future space-based defenses against our future raids.

And finally, does a faction officially end if all of their worlds become decivilized? (except for pirates and independent, of course)
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #32 on: August 17, 2018, 05:00:40 AM »

It occurred to me that with fuel required to literally fuel raids, tankers will be even more required to function.  Currently, we need tankers to explore.  Later, we need them to raid too?  Seems like we might need to decided several fleet slots to tankers alone, maybe two or four Prometheus for endgame fleet to function (not unlike one or two is needed today), not unlike lots of freighters were needed to loot fights in earlier versions.  This would be bad, because civilians would eat a big chunk of fleet slots and drag burn speed down to the worst.  Might make Navigation 2 must-have just to provide fuel relief.

It would be nice if tankers were nice, not required like freighters are now.
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errorgance

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #33 on: August 17, 2018, 05:13:55 AM »

Alex, have you thought about minimum fleet requirements, espically ship types and hull mods to boost bombardment and raid chances, similar to salvage and planetary survey mechanics?

Seriously Doing bombardments and raids in a similar manner to salvage and surveying would be really good for gameplay continuity.


Second, have you thought of doing just a normal space battle, but swap the regular space background with the planets surface and use immobile ships/stations for buildings/districts/cityblocks. you could literally target installations yourself and watch the collateral damage live as your shots miss and hit the housing area behind it!  :o

Again, this method would be good for gameplay continuity.
 
Also, Your fuel idea could simply be fuel the fuel requirements necessary to keep your massive ships stationary within the planets gravity field.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2018, 05:16:44 AM by errorgance »
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Histidine

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #34 on: August 17, 2018, 06:36:50 AM »

Yay, new feature!

Random thoughts:
  • How does this stuff interact with station-only markets (e.g. Kanta's Den)?
  • Should the UI present the player with an estimate of how many marines they'll lose before actually committing to the attack? I think the player would appreciate that information before making a decision.
    (unless they're expected to learn to make their own estimate from the strength figures already presented)
  • Hmm, the screenshot with the raid loot still has the text "Salvage operation" and an image of space debris in the top-left, and I am inordinately annoyed because I asked for a way to change it a long time ago (exactly a year ago to the day, it turns out) and it is still there :-X
  • Idea: If faction A is hostile (or maybe it needs to be vengeful) to faction B, perhaps it should look the other way if you do a saturation bombardment on a planet owned by B?
    (specific use case I'm thinking of: depopulating Al Gebbar in reprisal for Mairaath)

Very interesting. Well-thought out, as always.

Does fleet composition affect bombardment/raid effectiveness? Ground defenses determining the cost is fine but does that mean my starting fleet of a Wolf and Kite (A), if it could acquire a few Phaetons full of fuel, could bombard a planet with the same effectiveness of my end-game fleet with multiple capitals, ground defense rating being equal? I'm not a big fan of the "realism" argument but shouldn't a Paragon bombard a planet better than a Dram? However, since bombardment effectiveness is a function of fuel capacity, any small frigate fleet with a Prometheus in tow is a WMD! Perhaps the word "bombard" insinuates big guns firing on a planet to me so naturally, more guns=better bombardment.

To the point: Capitals (and to a lesser extent, Cruisers) should work as a multiplier of the attacker's ability to bombard, reducing fuel cost, if such a thing isn't in already.

Hmm, I think it is indeed a matter of perception. Bombardments are a largely industrial activity, in terms of the materiel and personnel involved. Combat ships do not contribute to them, aside from making them possible in the first place by destroying orbital defenses.
FWIW I think it does look weird that 1 Vigilance + bunch of tankers is almost as good at bombardment as three Paragons + the same bunch of tankers.

Idea: Perhaps a certain minimum of combat ships (perhaps measured by fleet point count) is needed to perform a bombardment, based on the strength of the ground defenses? Like how you can't survey a planet or recover a ship without enough Heavy Machinery. It seems correct that a stronger planet requires a larger fleet to bombard effectively.
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Gothars

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #35 on: August 17, 2018, 09:54:02 AM »

Idea: Perhaps a certain minimum of combat ships (perhaps measured by fleet point count) is needed to perform a bombardment, based on the strength of the ground defenses? Like how you can't survey a planet or recover a ship without enough Heavy Machinery. It seems correct that a stronger planet requires a larger fleet to bombard effectively.

I think that's not really necessary, since there are (up to) two layers of defense before you can bombard anything, patrol fleets and orbital stations. For those the strengt of your combat fleet matters very much. That it stops mattering once you've overcome these defenses seems alright with me.



A specialized bombardment ship with an respective efficiency-boost hullmod and big fuel tanks would be interesting. Or a hullmod to specialize your tankers for that role.

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Thaago

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #36 on: August 17, 2018, 09:57:45 AM »

I think its good that a single frigate + tankers could wipe a planet: planets need active defenses, active defenses make space battles, space battles are core gameplay. Any planet with an orbital station requires the fleet to be big enough to kill the station anyways, so really a colony that can't fight off a frigate is just asking to be conquered by Megas on the first day of gamplay. From a "feel" argument, ground bombardment through fuel dispersal does not rely on guns but on fuel, so why should we need cruisers or capitals? Going all WWII in space, fighting ships are the fighters/interceptors and fuel ships are the bombers.

I do think that Tartiflette's idea of having there be a specific, highly illegal (in some polities) good be used for bombardment has some merit. What if tactical bombardment used fuel, but saturation bombardment becomes "biological bombardment" and requires some good, lets say "Death Spores", to reduce population? This raises the risk of genocide as an option and increases the difference between the two options; perhaps death spores are 'super' illegal and being caught with them at all instantly tanks your rep to hostile.

[Edit] A hullmod for better fuel dispersal sounds like a great thing to be built in on some faction ships, to drive home how sinister they are.
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #37 on: August 17, 2018, 10:29:51 AM »

I do think that Tartiflette's idea of having there be a specific, highly illegal (in some polities) good be used for bombardment has some merit. What if tactical bombardment used fuel, but saturation bombardment becomes "biological bombardment" and requires some good, lets say "Death Spores", to reduce population? This raises the risk of genocide as an option and increases the difference between the two options; perhaps death spores are 'super' illegal and being caught with them at all instantly tanks your rep to hostile.
When the goal is to kill all factions, this is not a penalty.  If player does not want to wipe out planets, he will not go near it.  If he is interested, and it is the best WMD, he will stockpile and use it the moment he is ready to kill everyone.

Re: Tanker hull mods
Another one is making the tanker itself a gigantic bomb.  Apply hullmod, sacrifice your tanker at the appropriate screen, and there goes half the planet.  Maybe if destroyed in-combat, explosion range and damage could be big enough to wipe out whatever is within 1000 or so units.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2018, 10:33:06 AM by Megas »
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Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #38 on: August 17, 2018, 12:40:50 PM »

And oh, the Prometheus suddenly appears in a completely new light ;D

:D

Are there plans to integrate this into missions? Seems like an obvious thing that faction would pay third parties to raid their rivals. Maybe there could even be special "extraction" raids where you safe an exposed operative or something.

I've been thinking about that a bit, but since this is the newest feature, there hasn't been much chance to take advantage of it in content-land.

... hmm - let me add some listeners/callback type things, while I'm thinking about it. I'm sure I'll need them anyway, and might as well make sure mods can easily detect when the player raids/bombards something.

The Pirate Colossus Mk.II/III comes to mind. It could use some help anyways.

I think it already got a bit of a buff with a second fighter bay. I do like the idea, but it's also the least-atmosphere-capable-looking ship out there. On the other hand, ground support doesn't *have* to be close-in. Yeah, let's do that :)

It would be appropriate to add a line about how it can also be used for orbital bombardment, wouldn't it? Seems a good fit after "Fairly safe." ;)

Hmm, maybe? I'm also partial to just leaving the implication there without over-explaining, and then letting the player discover what "fairly" means for themselves.


That was awesome to read, and see all your reasoning behind it. I wanted to ask, If for the most part pirates likely wouldn't bombard your military facilities as the cost is too great, would they ever do it out of spite, say if they were vengeful towards you?

Just in terms of what can currently happen in the game, no. In theory, I could see it happen, but I'd also imagine that even spite would be unlikely to motivate *that* high a resource expenditure. I'd guess that most people with that degree of self-damaging spite wouldn't make it up far enough on the pirate ladder to be in position to be making those sorts of decisions. But, of course, it wouldn't be impossible.



1. A max invasion cap that can be modified by ship types (troop transports/siege?), modules, skills.

Troop transports are in already - well, the Valkyrie is, anyway. So you're able to specialize your fleet for raiding to some degree.

As far as the other stuff, my feeling is it sounds on the "too complicated" side, and I'm not quite sure what it really adds. For example, if "slower safer but worse" and "faster and more dangerous but better" are options the player can pick from, then one of those is probably just better in a given situation.

Maybe sometimes this isn't the case, but it feels like making the choices too fine-grained. I think "I want to raid for valuables" is about the right level of detail for that decision; having to decide which way of raiding for valuables is more efficient in a specific situation seems... mostly like asking the player to do a math problem to come up with the right answer. And even if it's not, it's not a super interesting choice, because the outcome of making a good choice is still "got more stuff", not something very different.

Goes back to what I'm talking about in the blog post as far as the reasons for not wanting to have tactical decisions here.


I'm kinda miffed that this system is still mostly passive.

...

I feel like tying fuel to this for handwave woo doesn't really provide an engaging gameplay element to the whole thing

To be honest, while I'm excited to try this out, I agree with Botaragno's general argument. I think the game needs more ways to make the different mechanics and events that happen through text more active and real; as in, through gameplay.

Hmm, I think you guys might be looking at it in a somewhat narrow way. Raids taken in isolation are not engaging and aren't supposed to be. But they give you reasons to do engaging things in the active parts of the game, whether it's fighting or sneaking around and so on. They're only passive when taken in isolation; looked at in the context of the larger game, they're part of the active gameplay.

I think trying to make the various text interactions more "active" would be a mistake. The idea is to use them to add more depth to the active parts. If instead you make those parts active as well, you're adding a lot of breadth, but it would ultimately be more shallow. It's also entirely impractical, so this is a bit of a theoretical discussion anyway.


I also look forward to perhaps the Colossus Mk.III getting that Ground Support Package hullmod - whatever's left of that once-roomy cargo, extra weapons bolted to to hull, and the ability to manufacture and launch it's own fighters.  Sounds like something out of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.  Even if it can't hold as many Marines as one might like, it really fits the role of ground support well.  In comparison to the naval invasions, think of them as the destroyers off-shore bombarding positions rather than the landing craft bringing the troops in.

I figure for the Colossus Mk.III, it's strapping on a bunch of things to drop near the raiding forces to discourage resistance, but hopefully (mostly) not quite *on* them :)


Interesting stuff, very much looking forward to the next release (at long last, it appears on the horizon...or so I believe).  Though, if I may be honest, I think you put a bit too much time into considering if a single, certain mechanic is "good enough" or not, and you only do it one at a time rather than seeing how a bunch of future, planned mechanics would fit together - or at least that's the vibes I get from the past blog posts.

Hmm, I'm curious as to what gives you that impression. I feel like e.g. the raiding mechanics are all abouth how it fits in with everything else. Like, it's totally not a mechanic that works at all in isolation. If I was looking at it like that, I probably wouldn't be happy with what it looks like!


Will we be getting any ships that can passively help with bombardment in future releases? Some sort of useless for normal work ship that is a pain to lug around. It would make it interesting if you see a fleet approaching your system with a few of these in tow you will know they mean business. Well it's an idea at least.

I don't think so - in general, it seems like being able to mitigate this fuel cost could lead to a situation where bombardments are an always-best-choice non-choice, so it'd have to be handled very carefully. And just in general, it's not a direction I'd like to go in. I rather like an equilibrium where bombardments are rarely useful. Especially since it helps explain why *the player's* colonies don't get bombarded into oblivion with more frequency.


I presume you can't raid and steal a fuel refinery?

A "Fuel Production" industry requires a "Synchrotron Core" to boost fuel output beyond a fairly low level. This is a rare item that Sindria has, and it can be stolen.

And if a planet becomes civilized, do fuel refineries and nanoforges remain on the planet for you to use if you recolonize it? And what happens to any AI cores that were in use on the now-decivilized planet?

(Assuming you mean "decivilized".)

That stuff is just gone. You could, however, set up a tech-mining operation in the ruins, which could theoretically yield these kinds of items.

Also, how long does the defender's readiness bonus last? Is it about as long as the industry remains damaged, or can you come back and raid again before it's back online? If you do, can you target the already-damaged industry to keep it damaged for longer? In particular, I'm wondering if we took out ship production facilities whether we'd effectively cripple a planet's future space-based defenses against our future raids.

Currently, it's set to last for a month. If you re-raid an already-raided industry, it'll set its disruption to the higher value, so basically it'll refresh the timer.

If you take out ship production on one planet, the planet will instead import the ships from somewhere else. So if you take out the best ship production center within a faction, that would indeed have major consequences for their fleet strength.


And finally, does a faction officially end if all of their worlds become decivilized? (except for pirates and independent, of course)

Currently, no; that's not even a concept. But (if stuff is coded correctly) things like person bounties and other missions from that faction should cease. So I guess yes, in a way?


It occurred to me that with fuel required to literally fuel raids, tankers will be even more required to function.  Currently, we need tankers to explore.  Later, we need them to raid too?  Seems like we might need to decided several fleet slots to tankers alone, maybe two or four Prometheus for endgame fleet to function (not unlike one or two is needed today), not unlike lots of freighters were needed to loot fights in earlier versions.  This would be bad, because civilians would eat a big chunk of fleet slots and drag burn speed down to the worst.  Might make Navigation 2 must-have just to provide fuel relief.

It would be nice if tankers were nice, not required like freighters are now.

I wouldn't expect bombardment to be required for optimal raiding. Long-term, you'd be better off investing in more marines and troop transports.


Not just that but situations where you need to weather down the defenses just a notch to get a proper raid result. By using fuel and lacking granularity, there will be a common situation where it will more advantageous to just make a trip to another market to get those extra 50 marines rather than carpet bombing the resistance. Or where you have to farm the small patrols spawning from the market to get some extra leeway...

Ah, I see! This would only factor in for "disruption" raids, since there'a minimum required there. But if you wanted to get a long-lasting disruption raid done, you'd really want more than the minimum anyway, so it doesn't *seem* like it'd be a major concern. For non-disruption raids, a couple percent more or less effectiveness will only make a couple percent difference in the outcome.


Here I was more thinking about renaming the small arms ressource to something else, and make it highly illegal in high security space while you are not in very good terms. After all, they can only be used for a single purpose! Then you get all kind of interesting implications like troubles to aquire such ressource (except from cooperative factions), avoiding patrols near the system you want to raid because if they scan these, the defenses will get prepared in advance, opportunities for missions to procure that ressource to a faction lacking the proper relations (then they might launch their own raid, so you might want that to happen if you have comon enemies), or even better, it could be uses as a shortcut to bribe and join the pirates...

My issue with fuel is that it is indeed universally usefull, and having more will never be a wasted investment. So having it used for bombardment will just mean having an extra tanker with you and that's it, no gameplay change from the curent loop (especially compared to games with Nexerelin which requires marines to invade markets). Whereas having a dedicated valuable and sensitive ressource plus adding some granularity to the result means making a calculated investment both in how much you buy, and how much you use once there compared to your projected marines losses.

Counter-point: having a dedicated resource for bombardments, combined with bombardments not being universally useful, might mean that you don't generally bother acquiring it in the first place, and would end up making them a non-option entirely, except for a few cases where you know ahead of time you want to do it. It also makes bombardment itself a less interesting choice because the only tradeoff is cost, not "do I have enough fuel to do the other things I need to do".

The potential benefits from a dedicated resource - illegal, difficult to obtain, trouble if you're caught, and so on - are also all... how to put it - aspirational, maybe, is the word? That is, they're not things that would automatically happen. It would be, I think, quite difficult to make them happen with enough reliability to make it an actual - rather than theoretical - change in gameplay, as opposed to, say, "player just bought some on the black market somewhere and never got scanned because let's face it they don't get scanned that often in the first place".

So it really seems to be a case of adding a new resource and then adding a bunch of things specifically to give it meaning, vs utilizing an existing resource that already has some meaning.

All that said, I think a dedicated resource could work! I just strongly prefer using an existing one; I think it'll ultimately add more depth, and I'm not keen on adding more and more new resources to the game - if anything, the average usefulness of various resources should probably be increased, rather than diluted.


(Oddly enough, I did already change "Hand Weapons" to something else! They're now "Heavy Armaments", covering stuff from heavy squad-level weapons to hovercraft, tanks, mechs, and so on. Currently only used to boost the effectiveness of ground defenses - that is, ground defenses have demand for those, and suffer if it's not met.)


Alex, have you thought about minimum fleet requirements, espically ship types and hull mods to boost bombardment and raid chances, similar to salvage and planetary survey mechanics?

Seriously Doing bombardments and raids in a similar manner to salvage and surveying would be really good for gameplay continuity.

You mean having easier targets to start with, and building up to more difficult ones for higher rewards?

If so, yeah, that's how it already works. Different colonies have different levels of defenses; iirc the ground defense strength of colonies in vanilla ranges from something like 50 to over 4000.


Second, have you thought of doing just a normal space battle, but swap the regular space background with the planets surface and use immobile ships/stations for buildings/districts/cityblocks. you could literally target installations yourself and watch the collateral damage live as your shots miss and hit the housing area behind it!  :o

Again, this method would be good for gameplay continuity.

<runs away screaming>

... alright, so! I can totally see how this might seem to be something that could reasonably work. However, all of my experience tells me that while yes, having the space combat engine would make it a bit easier to do, making it good would still amount to making an entirely new game, and that a "simple" (not really) reskin would, frankly, suck.

Without getting into too many details, let's just take a look at some basic stuff that would come up. A background, right? The space background is a fixed size because it doesn't move when your ship moves. This means that the background doesn't need to be the size of the playing field. For ground combat, it *does* need to be the size of the playing field. That likely means some sort of tiling system, since we can't have a single big-enough image for various reasons; that's already a big difference.

If we have that, then all of a sudden the visuals - designed to work on top of a dark background - would have to be adjusted to work with a brighter background. You know how if there's a bright planet in the combat background, it gets annoying because it's hard to see stuff that's over it? That, but for the whole battlefield. Would also need some sort of halfway-convincing system for shadows, since that's what tells us that something is actually *on* the ground.

The feel of combat heavily depends on intertia, which would not work the same way on the ground. Also ship speeds, shot speeds, and so on - change those things drastically, and things that currently work well don't work well anymore. "Ground" also implies "terrain", and that's huge too. If we don't have terran it'd feel cheap, if we do, oh boy, that's a huge undertaking, especially considering that the AI would become near-useless.

Then if we worked out the above - and a myriad other things like these, since that's just the first few issues that popped into my head - that'd be a lot of work just to have limited player input into it, right? Would have to do up ground vehicles, probably different types of ground forces, buildings, and so on. And audio and visual assets for everything.

It really is just another whole game. Either that, or it'd be very cheapo-feeling and just, well ... bad. I can't emphasize enough how untenable it is, and how little having the space-combat engine actually helps with the job.


  • How does this stuff interact with station-only markets (e.g. Kanta's Den)?

It mostly just works. The one difference is that this type of market decivilizing becomes an abandoned station and can't be recolonized. Everything else is the same. Defeating the station in combat, for example, just removes its combat capabilities until it's repaired.

  • Should the UI present the player with an estimate of how many marines they'll lose before actually committing to the attack? I think the player would appreciate that information before making a decision.
    (unless they're expected to learn to make their own estimate from the strength figures already presented)

I did consider it, but the logical endpoint of that is "projected marine losses: 3,000 credits" and, uh, I don't want to present things that way. The casualties are also fairly random (though the maximum is limited by raid effectiveness), so there'd be a lot of variance from any estimate.

The casualties are also closely linked to raid effectiveness, so I think it's fairly reasonable for the player to just get a feel for it.


  • Hmm, the screenshot with the raid loot still has the text "Salvage operation" and an image of space debris in the top-left, and I am inordinately annoyed because I asked for a way to change it a long time ago (exactly a year ago to the day, it turns out) and it is still there :-X

<shifty eyes> I'm sure "salvage operation" is exactly how it shows up in the fleet log.

(Let me make a note; this is more of a pain to pass through than it'd seem, and it's not entirely clear what the text should say anyway. If anything, but it feels weird without it.)


  • Idea: If faction A is hostile (or maybe it needs to be vengeful) to faction B, perhaps it should look the other way if you do a saturation bombardment on a planet owned by B?
    (specific use case I'm thinking of: depopulating Al Gebbar in reprisal for Mairaath)

Hmm, I don't know - if a faction is the sort to care about atrocities, I imagine they'd generally make the distinction between "innocent civilians" and "the people we actually hate".


Idea: Perhaps a certain minimum of combat ships (perhaps measured by fleet point count) is needed to perform a bombardment, based on the strength of the ground defenses? Like how you can't survey a planet or recover a ship without enough Heavy Machinery. It seems correct that a stronger planet requires a larger fleet to bombard effectively.

I think that's not really necessary, since there are (up to) two layers of defense before you can bombard anything, patrol fleets and orbital stations. For those the strengt of your combat fleet matters very much. That it stops mattering once you've overcome these defenses seems alright with me.

Yep, that's exactly how I feel about it, too.


A specialized bombardment ship with an respective efficiency-boost hullmod and big fuel tanks would be interesting. Or a hullmod to specialize your tankers for that role.

Mmmaybe - I think that can get a bit iffy since it might trivialize the costs in some cases, making bombardments too good a choice.


I do think that Tartiflette's idea of having there be a specific, highly illegal (in some polities) good be used for bombardment has some merit. What if tactical bombardment used fuel, but saturation bombardment becomes "biological bombardment" and requires some good, lets say "Death Spores", to reduce population? This raises the risk of genocide as an option and increases the difference between the two options; perhaps death spores are 'super' illegal and being caught with them at all instantly tanks your rep to hostile.

(I do believe there are already some backstory references to planetbusters...)

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Sarissofoi

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #39 on: August 17, 2018, 01:46:24 PM »

Nice.
Really nice.
Update soon!

SCC

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #40 on: August 17, 2018, 01:52:31 PM »

That stuff is just gone. You could, however, set up a tech-mining operation in the ruins, which could theoretically yield these kinds of items.
Minor: these ruins (as a planet modifier) don't actually care what tech was there before, do they? Are they even all the same (in terms of chances for tech) or are some weighted to yield more or better stuff?
(Oddly enough, I did already change "Hand Weapons" to something else! They're now "Heavy Armaments", covering stuff from heavy squad-level weapons to hovercraft, tanks, mechs, and so on. Currently only used to boost the effectiveness of ground defenses - that is, ground defenses have demand for those, and suffer if it's not met.)
The new name bothers me somewhat, I thought there's a better term for thing you're describing, but besides "materiel" I couldn't find anything fitting.
<runs away screaming>
I know it's not happening, for good reasons, but Starsector's mighty nice shoot em up, even when it isn't!
I did consider it, but the logical endpoint of that is "projected marine losses: 3,000 credits" and, uh, I don't want to present things that way.
That's how the things are, though. You just need enough marines for whom you just pay once and spend them where it's needed; they don't level up or affect anything else (I'm still sad by having crew veterancy gone, but I digress). They ARE numbers and the sector IS a place where people no longer care for others. You may not like it, but I really like that it sounds so casually.

Gothars

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #41 on: August 17, 2018, 02:06:08 PM »

A "heist" type of raid could be a lot of fun. Say, it's a transponder-off-raid for valuables that has an extreme bonus on raid strength but can at best acquire a small number of (highly valuable) items. Additionally, the market suspicion level drastically increases after a heist.

In effect, even a small fleet (or single ship) with a dozen marines can (from time to time) pull of a heist on a medium well defended world. That gives you another early game source of income and early use for marines. It's also nice for roleplaying. And yeah, this Idea is totally inspired by Firefly, especially the Ariel (hospital) and Train Job episodes^^


Hmm, maybe? I'm also partial to just leaving the implication there without over-explaining, and then letting the player discover what "fairly" means for themselves.

"Fairly safe (in a vacuum)" ;D
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The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #42 on: August 17, 2018, 02:29:33 PM »

Nice.
Really nice.
Update soon!

Thank you :)

Minor: these ruins (as a planet modifier) don't actually care what tech was there before, do they? Are they even all the same (in terms of chances for tech) or are some weighted to yield more or better stuff?

They don't care about prior tech, no, but the size of the ruins is based on the size of the market, and, same as for ruins found in the fringes, affects the amount of stuff that can be recovered.

The new name bothers me somewhat, I thought there's a better term for thing you're describing, but besides "materiel" I couldn't find anything fitting.

(Yeah, I think we (me & David) went through about the same process.)

I know it's not happening, for good reasons, but Starsector's mighty nice shoot em up, even when it isn't!

:D

That's how the things are, though. You just need enough marines for whom you just pay once and spend them where it's needed; they don't level up or affect anything else (I'm still sad by having crew veterancy gone, but I digress). They ARE numbers and the sector IS a place where people no longer care for others. You may not like it, but I really like that it sounds so casually.

Well, arguably, though I'd also argue that's not the case in the entirety of the Sector. But there's also a difference between "how things are" and that being embraced, either by the inhabitants of the Sector, by the game's UI, or by the player.


A "heist" type of raid could be a lot of fun. Say, it's a transponder-off-raid for valuables that has an extreme bonus on raid strength but can at best acquire a small number of (highly valuable) items. Additionally, the market suspicion level drastically increases after a heist.

In effect, even a small fleet (or single ship) with a dozen marines can (from time to time) pull of a heist on a medium well defended world. That gives you another early game source of income and early use for marines. It's also nice for roleplaying. And yeah, this Idea is totally inspired by Firefly, especially the Ariel (hospital) and Train Job episodes^^

Having thought about this some - and there are a few "raid for rare items" raid option leftovers - I do like the idea, but I'm not sure how it would work.

Let's say it's possible for a heist - with relatively minimal investment - to pay off big. Then either it's an explotable mechanism for getting way too much money too quickly, or it has to be rate-limited somehow. One way to do that is having a small chance of success, but that's not very fun. Another way would be through suspicion, somehow - maybe you can do it in one area, but have to wait for things to cool off - but that seems still vulnerable to being exploited. And there's always the potential for it to go from "unlimited exploit" to "something you ought to do whenever it comes up as being available", i.e. less a major exploit but just a chore disguised as an easy opportunity to get good stuff.

What I'm getting at is, as cool as the concept is, I'm not sure how this would work as a core mechanic without running into these problems. I think this sort of thing would work better as a one-off, or perhaps very rarely repeating, bar-mission type thing. (And, hey, that'd tie this into missions and raids, too.) Open to ideas, of course, as far as how it might work as a core mechanic - at the very least, that'd be interesting from a design analysis point of view.
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maximusprime1010

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #43 on: August 17, 2018, 05:36:23 PM »

one thought on a meaningful tactical decision that could be made. You could choose whether the raid is covert or overt. a covert raid reduces chances of success but adds a chance that it won't be realised that you conducted the raid (maybe has to pass additional skill check), an overt raid has a higher chance of success but you will always be known as the culprit. This should only be allowed for raids, it makes no sense for bombardments.
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Inventor Raccoon

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #44 on: August 17, 2018, 05:52:02 PM »

one thought on a meaningful tactical decision that could be made. You could choose whether the raid is covert or overt. a covert raid reduces chances of success but adds a chance that it won't be realised that you conducted the raid (maybe has to pass additional skill check), an overt raid has a higher chance of success but you will always be known as the culprit. This should only be allowed for raids, it makes no sense for bombardments.
That seems kind of similar to the existing distinction between transponder-on raids and transponder-off raids.
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