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Author Topic: Limit High Commands to one and use it to denote a capital world, rename others  (Read 1269 times)

JJ842

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Title. The description of the High Command industry seems to indicate (at least to me) that it's THE command hub for the player faction's military so it appears silly that you can have multiple ones. Maybe the first one that's built could also be used to set the world in question as the player capital with a small corresponding bonus? Any further bases could be upgraded as before, becoming statwise identical to the old High Command industry. Call them Hardened Military Bases or Stellar Arsenals (heh) or something.
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Wyvern

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It's not entirely clear to me what the High Command even does that the military base doesn't.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Grievous69

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It's not entirely clear to me what the High Command even does that the military base doesn't.
If I'm not mistaken, the things it will do have yet to be implemented.
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Please don't take me too seriously.

SCC

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Currently, high command creates more and better patrols, than military base.

Megas

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Currently, high command creates more and better patrols, than military base.
Which is handy for colony defense and maybe lets player ignore expeditions instead of stopping in his tracks (from saving core worlds from whack-a-mole pirates) to deal with expeditions personally.
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Schwartz

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I don't mind the name. It does carry the connotation of being a faction-wide command hub, so if it were to be changed I'd prefer that all High Commands be changed. Since there is no "homeworld" for the player.

Having a player homeworld is still an interesting idea, but I wouldn't want to see it determined by a High Command but maybe another structure. Like an upgrade to the "Population & Infrastructure" item that gives the impression of government. Or a separate building, either industry or non.

On the other hand.. NPC factions don't have these currently either. Do they have 1 High Command per faction or are there more?
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Morrokain

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Well, Sindria has a High Command and before the colony update also had the now unused Regional Capital condition. That kind of implies that High Commands were originally designed to be located on capital worlds. It doesn't necessarily mean that factions couldn't have more than one capital world, however, since the Sindrian Diktat is a relatively small faction. "Regional" kind of implies more than one for larger factions.

My opinion, though, would be that the player should be limited to one High Command and the rest of the colonies get Military Bases or Patrol HQs if they are short on industry slots. I think this could be possible without additional babysitting since the fleet sizes are being scaled down a bit.

Besides the connotation thing, I think a single High Command limit could be interesting from a gameplay perspective because it could then be used to cause additional problems for the player to solve that are not also tied to Military Bases or market share, etc. Invasions against the player only being a thing if the player has one is the obvious choice here - but there are lots of things that could happen to warrant needing or, conversely, holding off on building a High Command.

In other words, it is a late game structure for late game considerations in my mind. Military Base would be the "standard" colony defense industry alongside stations until then.
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Megas

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My opinion, though, would be that the player should be limited to one High Command and the rest of the colonies get Military Bases or Patrol HQs if they are short on industry slots. I think this could be possible without additional babysitting since the fleet sizes are being scaled down a bit.
Player will be limited to size 6 for his colonies.  Currently, my endgame colonies are size 7 or 8.  Also, since player will not freely select skills, he may not have whatever passes for Fleet Logistics for his colonies.

In other words, player might get his fleets scaled back more than the NPCs.
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Morrokain

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Player will be limited to size 6 for his colonies.  Currently, my endgame colonies are size 7 or 8.  Also, since player will not freely select skills, he may not have whatever passes for Fleet Logistics for his colonies.

In other words, player might get his fleets scaled back more than the NPCs.

If so, then the caveat of limiting High Command to one would be that FP values for patrols would have to be adjusted so that standard issues a player deals with pre-High Command can be mitigated by the combination of a Military Base and a station. Ideally, High Command should only be required for "High Command problems" and those problems should probably only target the High Command market the majority of the time.

Then again, I'm not completely against events forcing a player's action either, I just think they need to be rare enough to not feel like constant babysitting is necessary to start a colony. Judging from all the gamers I knew growing up, even that feeling is widely subjective though so it can be tough to find a sweet spot.

One thing that I've found that always seems to help is avoiding repetition as much as possible. The more diverse and unique the related events are, the less they feel like a chore and the more emergent they become as the centerpiece to colony mechanics. Then it is just a matter of making sure the player knows what they are getting into before taking that step - similar to Commission mechanics, etc.
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Schwartz

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I'm against any measure that reduces player faction fleet generation unless the inbound NPC fleets are also going to be reduced. Now there is something in the pipeline for next version as far as fleet compositions go, but I'm not seeing explicitly stated that this will reduce NPC aggression vs. colonies.

Didn't like the size limit for player colonies - but I understand it at least. Don't like having an option of several High Commands and now having it taken away, either. If so, the meta needs to change accordingly.
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