Spoiler
I've read your thoughts thoroughly and I understand the massive undertaking it'd take and the potential underwhelming results implementing a combat scenario for this purpose could yield. I do, however, want to expand where I'm coming from.
One of the reasons why station battles feel very exciting is because you are putting the ships/skills you acquired in a different scenario. It's like a new toy to play with, a new problem to tackle. Currently on the game we have station battles, regular combat and retreats (both sides). Those are basically all the types of battles we can engage though with obviously with a lot of variation, I don't want to downplay that. When originally thinking about station assaults I (and others I'd wager) imagined fighting massive structures with reinforcements coming in or even having hangers spawning destroyers or such. A battle that would play out a different way and would push our skills/fleet to the limits. Implementing that is another story, but what I want to highlight is that such a scenario would be a real game changer to battles, which in turn makes it memorable and exciting. Now don't get me wrong, I'm pleased with the current station fights (and I imagine .9's are going to be great too), but it makes me wonder if more different/unique ideas/scenarios couldn't be implemented in the engine. For example, consider some different situations like:
-> Raiding transporters/cargo ships while the rest of the fleet defends it
-> Protecting mining operations from attackers
-> Escorting scenarios
-> Boss fights (unique ship encounters)
These would all have unique variation and their own quirks to consider, which I believe to be a very positive thing. So when reading about raiding I can't help but imagine what could have been done with the combat engine, since that is the crowning jewel of the game. Now, from your post I can see that implementing a lot of these isn't feasible nor desirable, but I do think some different types of battles for future updates of could add a lot to the game. If it is possible and you think it could create interesting gameplay, please consider it.
Thank you for taking another look and elaborating! I think we're more or less on the same page here. Some of these ideas for combat scenarios, while they sound cool, the trouble is getting them to actually play out well. For example, the "escape" scenario is one case where it ... could probably work better, but for various reasons, it's difficult to fine-tune. It's mostly there because something *has* to be; that is, it fills a necessary role.
On the other hand, with the new release, we'll have:
Battles where you're attacking stations - which, alright, REDACTED does this already, but I think the new stations are considerably different, both in terms of power, and by being designed so that each station type creates a different feeling battle.
Battles where you're defending on the same side as a station.
And a early-midgame-to-midgame "boss" fight that you might encounter.
(As far as the station battles, 0.9a doesn't quite make *full* use of them - that is, there's a lot of room for having both more reasons to fight those types of battles, and more kinds of opponents - but it's a start in that direction, anyway.)
I assume a Synchotron Core is Domain-era technology? If it is, all the more reason to bust open the door and take it right from under their noses. Though that also makes me wonder if factions can be extra-aggressive for getting back such rare and precious technology, as well as search for the missing equipment after the fact. It sure would be suspicious if your Synchrotron Core was stolen only for another one to conveniently be acquired by an economical opponent. The Sindrian Diktat might think that some ham-fisted raiding of their own might be in order to reclaim such material, no?
On another note, and sorry if this was answered and I missed it;
If say there is only one of these Synchrotron Cores in Sindria and I was to successfully swipe it in a raid, does that mean that I now have the only synchrotron core in the game now and forever? Or do factions have mean to eventually restore their collection of relics or are they just permanently hamstrung?
It is, but you can find more on the fringes. At the moment, taking one from Sindria would be a permanent blow. (I do want to look at how the player selling an item like that to a colony might factor in, though.) And, yeah, there's room for these kinds of responses, or simply negative reactions to successful competition. I've actually got a TODO item to look at that, but I don't think it'll make it into 0.9.
For me at least, it's that we don't learn about connections to other mechanics until later, when the last blog post about all the mechanics in the update are done. Of course, I don't know how much else you have planned out that you don't talk about (because you have a habit of talking only about things you're confident in releasing, give or take), so there's always that.
Ah, thank you for clarifying!
On the renaming of Small Arms to Heavy Armaments, yeah it's rather difficult to sum up that into 1 or 2 short words since it encompasses so many things. If it was just 'Mechs, Hovercraft & tanks you could sum that all up into Armour or AFVs, but including squad-support weaponry torpedos that idea.
Maybe "Weapon Systems"? But then it's a bit vague as that could also describe ship-based weapons.
Then "Planetary Weapon Systems" would be more precise and leave less room for doubt, but then that's a rather wordy title for one commodity, I would guess the longest in-game.
Maybe "Defense Products"? It's vague enough and with appropriate artwork one can represent that the products are any manner of vehicles and heavy infantry weapons, and their variants. I dunno, it's hard to pin down.
Heavy Armaments could be called Military Hardware instead; squad-level weapons, vehicles, and such fall under that latter name pretty well.
(... and others...)
Thank you for the suggestions! I'm not unhappy with Heavy Armaments, so I think I'll stick with it, as nothing else jumps out as being /amazing/.
One involves taking a page from Nexerelin's book: Reserve Fleets. In Nexerelin, reserve fleets are stationed at planets or stations, hidden until the player or an AI invasion/raid fleet arrives at the planet and begins their invasion, in which case a large reserve fleet scrambles to interrupt the invaders and must be defeated to finish the invasion process.
...
I think stations more or less fill that role, and they already prevent bombardments but not raids, so it's basically exactly that.
Spoiler
Say, civilian vessels like the Starliner, Atlas and Prometheus are worth 0 on the Suppression Scale
Military vessels like Hammerheads, Eagles & Onslaughts are worth their value in recovery cost (8, 22 & 40 IIRC) before adjustment.
Optionally:Vessels get an additional modifier based on their size class. Say, arbitarily, FFs are worth 0x(handwaved as too small & flimsy to reliably stand up to counter-battery fire), DDs are worth .5x, CLs and CAs are worth 1x, and BCs & BBs are worth 1.5x(Making the Onslaught just as terrifying to see in orbit as it is from the bridge.). So the Hammerhead, Eagle & Onslaught of the previous example are worth 4, 22 & 60 suppression points if I recalled my recovery costs correctly originally.
Optionally:Vessels can get additional bonuses/maluses based on hullmods. May be a modular hullmod, or could probably be added to the Valkyrie in addition to its other upcoming bonus.
Finally, the Fleet's suppression values are compared to the planet's Defense value. Let's say the defense value is an arbitary 50 on Kanta's Den.
If the Fleet's net suppression is equal to or exceeds the defense value, little or no CR/Hull damage is taken. So, say, a handful of Eagles would allow you to bombard the den safely.
Otherwise, the fleet takes some CR/hull damage which will require time and supplies to repair. So, say, a few Hammerheads would not be enough to bombard the den safely.
The end result is basically a soft cap needing overcome with combat craft and a reason why barrages aren't more common: Even if one could sneak into the port past all the patrols in nothing but a Prometheus and two Valkyries with a battalion of marines, you still can't safely dump your fuel onto defenses even if you theoretically have enough to knock them all out without the dedicated combat craft doing suppressive work. Safely suppressing the defenses would need a big fleet of big combat ships. Big fleets are expensive, big ships are expensive. Thus, a properly outfitted bombardment fleet, with all the ammunition and marines and battleships for suppressive fire, would be expensive to procure and maintain, and thus rare.
On a final note, how about Aerospace Fighters? Could we see a fighter design that can operate both in an atmosphere and in space? Mechanically there wouldn't be much of a difference in the Fleet battle part, maybe the Aerospace design is slightly weaker in space combat but grants a bonus to raid strength when raiding planets (able to provide Close Air Support to the Marines on the ground) I don't think any current fighter is fluffed as an atmospheric-capable fighter though, so it'd require either adding that to an existing fighter or creating an entirely new one. Maybe something armed with something that's not too useful in space but presumably more useful against soft targets, like the Thumper?
My feeling here is that it's smoother to just abstract all this away instead of adding another number. That is, we've already got raid strength and ground defense strength, so we already *did* add one more number to build up and manage and so on. Why add more when this is a fairly passive interaction? I mean, there could be reasons! But to me this feels like making it more detailed just for the sake of doing that, if that makes sense.
Alex, have you added tooltips for unexplained mechanics in 0.8.1 such as Armor? I'm very sure there's no (combination of) tooltips which explain how Armor works in the game; I have had to rely on external sources for reminders.
Nope! Might make sense to, say, add some tooltips to the refit screen, but I haven't been in the neighborhood, so to speak.
The easiest way I see is to make the reward so small that its not worth it past the early game, outside of missions. If in a self-planned heist you get like, ten luxury goods or illegal drugs, that's nice for a frigate captain, but not worth the bother for an admiral. The bother being mainly the necessity to sneak past patrols and inducing a high market suspicion (so patrols will still come to scan you later on).
Once the mechanic exists, it could be used for heist missions, were you e.g. get inside info on the time and place of an AI core transfer taking place, and thus much better rewards.
Ahh, gotcha - yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think implementation-wise it'd be easier to handle it as a bar-mission rather than a generic mechanic, though, both because it's set up to easily handle that and because I don't think that something with such a relatively narrow window of usefulness really needs top-level UI feature billing.
The Synchrotron Core sounded like something out of Artistic License to me until I looked such a thing up. It's a nice surprise to discover something real.
Oh ***, it is, and it's also the thing (particle accelerator) that is used to create antimatter on Earth, right now. I'm so used to inaccuracies in games that I can't see nuggets of truth.
The time I spend on wikipedia...
I actually like the bombardment limitation and costs. even the fuel, it can be made make sense, you are going to be firing weapons in "orbital bombardment mode" say an overpowered mode for energy weapons and sligs or using specialist weapons that might be energy hogs, while performing movements either to avoid ground guns/disrupt them or to move in and go "point blank" in low orbit or even skimming the upper atmo (or both)
In-fiction, the way I see it is pretty much jury-rigged fuel cells being dropped from orbit, whether for a high-orbit dispersal or for a concentrated high-damage strike.
This is... not super important, right, but the important point is that it completelty decouples it from military ships. Otherwise, it's tempting to start, say, calculating bombardment strengths of various ships and so on, and it just ends up being a lot of stats and number crunching without a particular benefit.
Mayhaps the saturation bombardment cost should be lower (fuel wise) but much, much higher in reputation (I mean, it is a crime against humanity and outside a very, very narrow set of circumstances, should make you an instant pariah).
It's already got higher reputation penalties, yeah. I'm not sure there's really any reason for lowering the fuel cost.
Alex, thanks for the detailed “no” it’s nice to know “why” and I appreciate it, talk about more complex than assumed!
Thank you for not taking it adversely
One more thing, could a raid also apply to persons? Say kidnap pirate Commander Bob, for interrogation, ransom, or for the bounty? Doing a bounty raid on a civilized world would I think be a good early game option, local forces would be much more welcoming (lower consequences) to someone picking up a dangerous outlaw rather than someone stealing a nano forge. Also raiding a hostile pirate base for a bounty would be a good step up in risk before you start raiding other factions.
Hmm - I think that sort of thing might be better handled as specific missions. That is, I don't think a general-purpose "kidnap a person" mechanic really belongs in a game about fleets and colonies and so on.
And another thing, what’s the point of individual relations with commanders?
Couldn’t they be helpful in a situation like this? A Station/planetary commander could delay the authorities response times, foul up investigations into who raided them, or even turn a blind eye entirely, perhaps even lend a hand if high enough. heck could a good reputation with a commander allow you to smuggle more without suspicion?
There really isn't one they're starting to feel like a solution in search of a problem. Definitely a case of me adding something because it seemed potentially useful/cool (and not too difficult) at the time, and then just everything not going in a direction to take advantage of it. So for example this sort of thing, right, it would make sense if it was a core mechanic that we were tying more things into. But right now it's kind of an island - your relationship with a station commander etc doesn't matter 99% of the time - so tying one individual thing to it I don't think would be a good idea.
Spoiler
i know a lot has already been said on using fuel for bombardment. (to be honest i did not read all of them. due to time constraints.) but i feel like fuel is already SUCH an important commodity that this may be over stretching its importance a bit. it makes me feel like some of the other commodities could use some love in the usefulness department instead.
right now it feels like in terms of usefulness and importance. the only commodities that really mater currently are supplies and fuel anyway. if one were to have a sort of bar graph of importance these 2 commodities would be i feel about 95% of the entire graph. sure there are a couple edge cases for one or 2 of the other commodities. but they really dont have a use (as of yet) that is important in a meaningful way.
I can certainly get behind not making another type of commodity for just the sake of bombardment as well though. instead I in my honest opinion. (there is that word shudder) would like to possibly see a different resource or even a combination of lesser resources be required for bombardments. if a combination were used i could certainly then see fuel being in the mix as a minor resource for that. as you said volatiles are I believe a good primary required resource. maybe a little bit of fuel and maybe a high end metal of some sort. where the metal and volatiles are the primary requirement.
after all if your going to war anyway via bombardment wouldn't a smart commander (i imagine) plan for that. instead of in a sense going well. i have all this extra fuel on board i was going to use to get back home... buuuut. whats the worst that could happen. drop it all in low planetary orbit and let it rain fuel.. they will thank me later when fuel prices drop.
then end up in a huge war with no way to run away. or a very possible desperate state. because someone could not either figure out just how much fuel they needed for the return journey and they guessed wrong. (whoops) or it never crossed their mind before they dropped the bombs and are now lambs to the slaughter with no way to escape. (do you smell bacon.... i smell bacon)
i dont know i just get this impending feeling that this is something that sounds decent to do at limited times. but possibly all the ramifications of said action, due to the use of fuel, maybe something a bit to daunting for a lot of people to consider, especially the un-initiated new players. in just how important not running out of fuel is.
Hmm - in part, it being a daunting prospect is kind of the point. I do see what you're saying, though. I'll just say that I'd like to see how it works out in practice before making it more complicated. I also like the idea of it not being something you have to stock up on specifically for bombardments, which would be the case for most other resources.
(Side note, we've got uses for Heavy Machinery, a fringe use for Volatiles, and with 0.9a, a use for marines, more uses for Heavy Machinery and Metals (constructing objectives). So I think it's moving in the right direction! Some resources will be leaned on more heavily than others, and they also have more direct UI support - i.e. the fuel bar, the supplies indicator, and so on. The goal isn't to make it all evenly important, since then you'd probably have to stockpile and track too many things. But just enough so that a bunch of things are at least situationally useful.)