Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: gruberscomplete on March 14, 2015, 09:40:17 AM

Title: construction/industrial
Post by: gruberscomplete on March 14, 2015, 09:40:17 AM
Being that 0.65.2a came out and a new update is not (possibly one is though) being worked on right now, I'd like to propose a few ideas of where SS could develop.

In fact, after trying out all TC mods, I feel that certain changes should be done to the base game to make it less like your choices are unimportant. Let me explain. HAS anyone played star trek broken mirrors? That is like my favorite game ever. you can build space station, conquer planets and buy fleets(even tho the game is bugged) but that is what I feel SS should be more like, along with more "all-out-war" and other things...

Conquer planets...:
options>>
make it an industrial complex, a party planet, a ship yard, etc. You can choose what facilities to develop. Making a city will attract people to your planet, increasing revenue generated from your planet. Also increases population and workers amount>> can now have engineers and laborers to build heavy facilities. Boosts the amount of ships your planet produces (You can specify what ships to build...)

With all that, you can build a station, and then produce fleets (mining fleets, trade, defense, offensive) and tell them what to do. This is for the player's own faction, or they can choose what faction to build a station for. Mine asteroids, gas giants, tech mine planets, find wrecks floating around (battles create wrecks), over time, space junk accumulates in orbit around planets....

I'd like if fleets were smarter, if they could "see" farther and stop crashing into a much larger fleet repetitively as they try to return to their objective.
I am a big fan of blue prints
make one faction actually go to war with another, and conquer each other's planets, stations, affect the populations of planets and the infrastructure available there.

And of course, CRAFTING! mining fleets bring in metals, etc. which stations turn into "refined" metals and then based on instructions (possibly from player) focus on building certain products and not others... focus on building supplies and fuel, or weapons and ships, ...
the player can craft without owning a station

If you like my ideas please tell me what you think and if anything else should be added.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: Schwartz on March 14, 2015, 01:05:23 PM
Pretty good poll. For me, it's a toss-up between different options but I had to go with a more dynamic game, representative of 'more things to do', which may well include construction and other stuff.

I don't particularly like the idea of planets being conquerable or easily turned; too often that I've played sandbox games like Warband where the political landscape changes so much by the time I'm done beefing up my character, it doesn't look like itself anymore. I'd rather have some stability and restrict player actions to a maximum of constructing starbases.

I -love- the idea of battles creating areas with wrecks in them.

Combat AI is pretty damn good; combat overall has already been polished to a certain degree and will probably only see fine-tuning and small additions, which is fine. Fleet smarts on the strategic overview however needs work.

Now we have markets, which are fine, but I feel that without more things to impact markets and more things that the markets in turn influence, they're a bit lacking and disjointed. Which brings me to..

Diplomacy! Pirate sieges, pacts and wars could drastically alter the mercantile landscape and provide more fertile soil for these 'trade events' that the current system is based around. Goods starvation is too predictable and too easily created by the player right now to keep it interesting.

Likewise deepening the game with options to pledge yourself to a faction, to do certain missions for certain individuals, with a framework that will have fleets and characters not only floating about killing each other, but perform a whole range of tasks that weave into the strategic game. Such as guarding an installation, spying on somebody, scouting, luring, taking prisoners, guarding trade convoys, invading worlds, meeting diplomatically, mining and sciencing.

Another very hands-on thing that reeks a bit of RPGness would be to have fleets occasionally drop a certain weapon with altered stats on it; nothing massively overpowered, but a prototype that roughly fits the faction that dropped it. Hegemony may drop a Double Flak with concussive payloads that add X of EMP damage. Tri-Tach may drop a HIL that does some flux damage to phased ships. Pirates may drop a missile system with higher agility and unpredictable tracking. Prototype Ship Systems (those that are software-based or not overly bulky) could similarly become a trade good rather than just costing OP. This also ties in with the crafting idea.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: SafariJohn on March 14, 2015, 04:26:58 PM
I could see planets being conquerable, but I would prefer it scaled to be infeasible for a single fleet. I mean, even a small pirate base is probably going to have a few hundred marines guarding it (not to mention any pirates who happen to be there at the time and side with the gang controlling the place), so a major faction-controlled planet would have whole divisions of soldiers on it easily.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: Megas on March 14, 2015, 05:20:12 PM
That is what we have capitals, shuttles, and Valkyries (and the Special Ops perk) for.  Bring several hundred marines and overrun the base.

At some bases, I store more marines and crew than their population.  I would like to initiate hostile takeover and make their base mine!

I would not be surprised if there were ghost settlements or barely defended pirate bases that a relatively low-level character can conquer, given enough preparation; then gradually progress to bigger targets like major factions' homeworlds by endgame.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: nomadic_leader on March 15, 2015, 08:23:42 AM
i put more events, but what i really want is more content, quests, in-campaign tasks and missions, and good templates/frameworks for modders to develop even more of same.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: gruberscomplete on March 15, 2015, 03:50:01 PM
Well, for those of you who don't think it is possible to conquer a planet with a single fleet, think again. I mean, with a human attack fleet of 5 onslaughts, the Crystantite population was nearly destroyed. So with a much smaller fleet, you'd be able to conquer a small military out post, even if there were thousands of marines gaurding it. I mean, your not trying to conquer the whole population of a planet, but just a subset of a hundred thousand people.

Do you guys ever see or look at the population of a planet when in a trade screen? It goes, "only hundreds call ... (Umbra b) home". Not all of these are marines. And shouldn't a single ship be able to do a lot more damage than a marine?? So like one wolf should be able to be equivalent to 300 hundred regular crew (crew not in a ship) or maybe 50 marines? So a destroyer would be 500 marines? I'd say it wouldn't be impossible at all.

Plus, many planets don't have colonies at all, it should be EZ to start your own faction on some kind of rock in space. Asteroids?
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: Pushover on March 15, 2015, 04:19:37 PM
Well, for those of you who don't think it is possible to conquer a planet with a single fleet, think again. I mean, with a human attack fleet of 5 onslaughts, the Crystantite population was nearly destroyed. So with a much smaller fleet, you'd be able to conquer a small military out post, even if there were thousands of marines gaurding it. I mean, your not trying to conquer the whole population of a planet, but just a subset of a hundred thousand people.

Do you guys ever see or look at the population of a planet when in a trade screen? It goes, "only hundreds call ... (Umbra b) home". Not all of these are marines. And shouldn't a single ship be able to do a lot more damage than a marine?? So like one wolf should be able to be equivalent to 300 hundred regular crew (crew not in a ship) or maybe 50 marines? So a destroyer would be 500 marines? I'd say it wouldn't be impossible at all.

Plus, many planets don't have colonies at all, it should be EZ to start your own faction on some kind of rock in space. Asteroids?
Look at the time scale in this game. How would you build a new colony? Pick up a ton of people, ship them all to an airless rock, tell them they live here now? You would need a lot of machinery, metal, components, etc to build housing. I can't imagine building housing for people taking less than a year, which is quite a while in game. Then the colony needs to do more than just eat food consume goods. Mining would take more equipment, as well as building the mines in the first place. Setting up that infrastructure would take more time. It's gonna be a long and expensive proccess to build a colony. In the meantime, you would probably have to defend your new colony from just about everyone. Pirates would like some free profit by raiding your colony. The Hegemony is probably not too thrilled about you taking their citizens and building your own faction. So for a year or longer, you need to work on defending your colony, as well as set up a defensive fleet system.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: Megas on March 15, 2015, 06:06:47 PM
Not a problem, if player is in it for the long haul.  If player wants to grind to level 70+, it will take more than ten cycles to do.  That is enough time for political upheaval, power restructuring, and nation building.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: gruberscomplete on March 15, 2015, 08:10:09 PM
Well, for those of you who don't think it is possible to conquer a planet with a single fleet, think again. I mean, with a human attack fleet of 5 onslaughts, the Crystantite population was nearly destroyed. So with a much smaller fleet, you'd be able to conquer a small military out post, even if there were thousands of marines gaurding it. I mean, your not trying to conquer the whole population of a planet, but just a subset of a hundred thousand people.

Do you guys ever see or look at the population of a planet when in a trade screen? It goes, "only hundreds call ... (Umbra b) home". Not all of these are marines. And shouldn't a single ship be able to do a lot more damage than a marine?? So like one wolf should be able to be equivalent to 300 hundred regular crew (crew not in a ship) or maybe 50 marines? So a destroyer would be 500 marines? I'd say it wouldn't be impossible at all.

Plus, many planets don't have colonies at all, it should be EZ to start your own faction on some kind of rock in space. Asteroids?
Look at the time scale in this game. How would you build a new colony? Pick up a ton of people, ship them all to an airless rock, tell them they live here now? You would need a lot of machinery, metal, components, etc to build housing. I can't imagine building housing for people taking less than a year, which is quite a while in game. Then the colony needs to do more than just eat food consume goods. Mining would take more equipment, as well as building the mines in the first place. Setting up that infrastructure would take more time. It's gonna be a long and expensive proccess to build a colony. In the meantime, you would probably have to defend your new colony from just about everyone. Pirates would like some free profit by raiding your colony. The Hegemony is probably not too thrilled about you taking their citizens and building your own faction. So for a year or longer, you need to work on defending your colony, as well as set up a defensive fleet system.

Hey. Obviously you underestimate the power of the FUTURE. (technology). You can just drop a couple cargo containers and tell people to live in them. Those people are very poor and would gladly want to have a new start on a colony away from wherever. And yes, the player will have to defend their colony.
You want exact numbers?
OK.
Size of fleet: 1 cargo ship , 4 frigates, 1 shuttle. 1 crew ship.
Whats next?
Go to Hegemony home world. pick up willing people. They are likely all untrustworthy pirate types and miners.
And finally...
Buy 15 heavy machinery, 20 metal (or maybe mobile housing compartments), 50 food. 30 supplies.
Then:
go to planet. Place stuff on planet surface. Wait 1 day for everything to come together. (its magnetically attracted to the right position)
After:
guard your planet. build AA guns. build military base. mine. force population to abide by your rules. They produce raw ore. build factory. build small farm.
continue until successful.

Isn't this supposed to be a sandbox? There is nothing wrong with spending multiple cycles building your colony.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: SafariJohn on March 16, 2015, 09:03:09 AM
Please remember that the current population numbers are (I think) placeholders for economy system balancing; Alex or David said something to that effect somewhere, I'm pretty sure. It is not unreasonable to expect that the core worlds could have billions of population, which would allow the major factions to garrison their less populous planets with lots of soldiers. The pirate bases even might be a bit under-populated, given that pirates can be seen operating cruisers when even a Falcon requires 100 crew.

To use a real life example, the USA has a population of ~320 million. ~1.35 million of those people are active soldiers in the military. That's about 0.4% of the population, which is high compared to many other countries. If we say that the Hegemony has only 1 billion citizens and maintains 1% of its population in its active military (given the dangerousness of the Sector), then that's 10 million soldiers, or about 3 to 10 hundred divisions (10 million is enough to crew 20,000 Onslaughts, to put it in game terms). 50 Valkyries (100 Logistics points, not counting crew/marine costs) can only carry 14,500 marines (+500 crew).


In respect to the argument that ships are worth more than marines (I'm assuming specifically regarding attacking a station/planet), I say when given the shield systems ships are able to mount, presumably stations and planets with their huge power grids would be even harder to crack. It could be like castles or fortified town before cannons: the most reliable way to capture a fortified position is by besieging it until they surrender.

Although, when it comes to actually assaulting a station/planet, Alex and co. could take it a number of ways. Perhaps there's some kind of phase shuttle that can be used to bypass the massive shields of stations and planets. Perhaps shield domes over planetary bases can't block troops on the ground effectively (shields have problems with solid objects, like, say, the irregular and very solid surface of the planet). Perhaps, even, you actually have to blast through the shields before you can start landing troops to capture the infrastructure. I am sure there are many, many more ideas, ways, things, and so on that I haven't even considered.



with a human attack fleet of 5 onslaughts, the Crystantite population was nearly destroyed.

That is from either fanfiction or mod lore, but definitely not canon Starsector.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: celestis on March 17, 2015, 06:07:41 AM
I'm sure the dev team has plans for industry, because there is an empty "Industry" skill tree in character screen for a long time.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: gruberscomplete on March 17, 2015, 09:57:36 AM
so what do u think the next update will be? Will it be industry or will it focus on systems and ships? Or maybe just be one big update that does everything?
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: celestis on March 18, 2015, 07:19:31 AM
I think nothing about next update, I don't know more than anyone about the plans) I just remember the placeholder for this feature for a very long time, so I suppose it will eventually be implemented.
Title: Re: construction/industrial
Post by: joe130794 on March 18, 2015, 09:42:27 AM
Good idea with the stations. Maybe even have them in battles. Would be good for a new game mechanic where you could maneuver your capital ships in close to board them during the mission.