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[Debido]

Woah! Where do all these blog posts come from!?
Im not complaining though, You guys are doing great and this will certainly spice up the traveling in the campaign.
Keep up the good work!

I know? Right? It feels like things are hurtling along, and I feel Alex will be finished before the year is out.

[Alex]

It might be useful to be able to "ping" like patrols do. Just so you can ask nearby non-hostile fleets for a meeting instead of having to chase them down.

Hmm. That might be more useful if there's actually a reason to meet them, which currently there really isn't.

Seems like some of these things require the sensor system... that I read was still quite a ways off. Huh.

Sensors are mostly done, except for a few loose ends.

So capital ships will have a base burn speed of 7?  Sounds like in addition to the emergency burn, burn speed has been increased across the board.  That will certainly increase the pacing of the campaign screen.  I like that these latest changes seem geared toward giving the game a challenge aside from picking a fight you can't win; previously it was pretty trivial to avoid any fleet bigger than yours.

I think you misread that a bit, at navigation level 10 then capitals will have 7 speed, and so on and so on, Emergency burn would put them at 12 though. Which lines up with what he said as well, so if the math checks out i think that those speeds are based on navigation skill not just a base increase.

Capitals have a base burn of 7, and get +5 from Navigation 10. The latter part is what feels excessive, might tone it down, or increase emergency burn. Either way, Nav shouldn't overshadow EB.

I'm going to have to agree with what the other person said before.  Making campaign play difficult by having harder/bigger fleets be able to catch you will be great!  Also 1st post had to join the forums, I check them at least weekly for what seems like 2 years now?  Loving your game I tell everyone about it, I've been following it since it had another name that I can't remember at the moment.  I love your game, and eagerly await every update like Christmas morning.

Hi, and welcome to the forum! Thank you for spreading the word

I'd love to see a "deploy decoy" ability, much like the Cry Baby in Serenity. It could act as a distraction, when trying to sneak by enemy fleets. Or perhaps it can also be used to attract potential targets, when lying in ambush near it. Perhaps it emits an emergency signal, which could attract potential targets. Or it could emit the profile of a much bigger ship, to scare off pursuers? Perhaps different types of decoys can be purchased to work in combination with the ability? Now I'm just brainstorming with myself. 

Keeping a list of "neat potential abilities", added that to it.

Woah! Where do all these blog posts come from!?

I don't know!

I know? Right? It feels like things are hurtling along, and I feel Alex will be finished before the year is out.

It definitely feels like "hurtling", with the associated buildup of debt in balancing, playtesting, and optimizing. Going to have to slow down and work that off at some point

[Cycerin]

I want an ability called Broadcast Multiband Profanity which can be used as a system-wide taunt, or perhaps for after you lose your new frigate to a Buffalo II

[Alex]

... sounds perfect for modding in.

[orost]

Something for the list: "heightened readiness": gives a large CR boost that can go over your normal maximum, but costs some "real" CR to activate and then drains it over time (at an accelerating rate?)

If you activate it and then manage to force a battle shortly after, that's great: you get an advantage for a small supplies cost. If you activate it but your target manages to dodge you or otherwise delay the battle, you are in a tough position: keep it on and risk significant recovery costs, turn it off and risk a battle at CR even lower than your normal maximum, or even be forced to retreat and recover after overextending yourself.

I like it because it's a tool that can be used to boost your chances, but that the opponent can react to and turn into an advantage for themselves, which I think is what exactly those campaign abilities should be.

[DeltaV_11.2]

Right now, it's inverted - +5 to cap, +4 to cruisers, +3 to destroyers, and +2 to frigates at level 10. This evens all the classes out at burn 12 (with civilians still lagging 1 burn behind).

Still feels like it might be a bit strong, though. Reducing it to 4/3/2/1 might feel better.

Navigation has been one of the strongest skills for some time now. Cutting it down a bit is probably fine, I doubt that more speed will ever stop being highly desireable.

I can totally see the Active sensor burst used in an "Angler fish" tactic. Go in a pirate system and let everyone know you're here, feast on the overly curious pirate fleets and collect the juicy bounties.

By the way, what is the ship represented on the Emergency burn ability? It looks a bit like a Wolf but i'm not sure.

The forward section being split suggests a Conquest-class battlecruiser to me.

[DeathRay]

I actually like the Idea, to have an ability like "It's a trapp!" which makes your fleet look smaller.
But it should have some downsites:

Effect: The ability could shrink your "visual" appearence by a fix percentage, for example 25%.
Downside: It would decrease your maximal CR rating for the duration, maybe -15%. (Your ships need to look like they are unused or not fully operational)

Addition: It might be possible to somehow exclude specific ships, but I think this could lead to UI cluttering. Maybe a skill, that reduces the cr penelty on piloted ships, either by the player or your Admirals, might work.

[Gothars]

What does the "lock" check box do?

A few more ideas for fancy abilities   :

- Infernium screen. The fleet spreads a cloud of fuel behind it, reducing sensor range and increasing sensor profile of any fleet passing through (because they ignite the fuel with their engines). Costs a lot of fuel, obviously.

- Lay minefield. The fleet stops to plaster a region of space with (costly) guided mines, causing hull damage and loss of CR to any enemy ship passing through. Minefields have a (small) sensor signature, so to be effective they have to be used near choke points (like wormholes) or within a low visibility area, like a nebula. Illegal in civilized systems. (I'd love the ability to lure superior fleets into traps.)

- Deploy sensor beacon. Provides sensor data of the surrounding space for some time. Useful to cover your back in potentially hostile environments.

-  Hyperspace Coast. Deactivate hyperspace engines and let your fleet drift to the nearest gravity well, as if out of fuel. Can save fuel in dire situations (maybe the last drops needed to choose the right re-entry gate). Could actually be a side effect of going dark in hyperspace.

- Take cover. Orders the ships of your fleet to approach/dock with/enter any nearby natural cover, e.g. asteroids, wreckage or a star's corona. Effects depend on type of cover, but essentially are a much stronger version of "going dark" with added environmental hazard.


And I think the "heightened readiness" and "crybaby/transponder" are great ideas.

[Chaos Farseer]

Man, the pace of development here is kind of unbelievable. Kudos, Alex.

A random thought for future development: Perhaps different portions of the environment would affect sensor range, by creating interference or something like that. Perhaps since the jump points are thin enough to pop into hyperspace, there's some cosmic radiation which reduces sensor ranges. Actually, that might help with players trying to sneak through a jump point.
Anyway, thought for the future. Might help with creating 'terrain' on the fleet level.

[Clockwork Owl]

Great to see all those times you invested on basic infrastructures of the game starting to pay off 
Now the next update must be an interesting one...

Do you plan on revising trade system at some time later?

[Alex]

(Appreciate all the enthusiasm for "it's a trap", but I wasn't actually planning to add it to the game. Ahem.)

Something for the list: "heightened readiness": gives a large CR boost that can go over your normal maximum, but costs some "real" CR to activate and then drains it over time (at an accelerating rate?)

If you activate it and then manage to force a battle shortly after, that's great: you get an advantage for a small supplies cost. If you activate it but your target manages to dodge you or otherwise delay the battle, you are in a tough position: keep it on and risk significant recovery costs, turn it off and risk a battle at CR even lower than your normal maximum, or even be forced to retreat and recover after overextending yourself.

I like it because it's a tool that can be used to boost your chances, but that the opponent can react to and turn into an advantage for themselves, which I think is what exactly those campaign abilities should be.

Yep, been actually thinking about something similar. (Tentative thinking-about name: "Red Alert". Because, really, putting your fleet on red alert is cool.)

The issue is, how do you prevent it from being activated when the encounter is inevitable, thus removing the the risk of a "misfire"? There's pretty much always a half a second or so when you know it's going to happen.

I think something like this might work better if it was either designed around being succesfully used, or did something simpler, such as improving CR recovery at the cost of extra supplies

What does the "lock" check box do?

Makes it so that you can't change the skills. Basically, so that an accidental left (or right) click on the bar doesn't bring up a skill selection dropdown. Well, drop *up*, but, you know.


Noted some of the ideas down, cool.

- Lay minefield. The fleet stops to plaster a region of space with (costly) guided mines, causing hull damage and loss of CR to any enemy ship passing through. Minefields have a (small) sensor signature, so to be effective they have to be used near choke points (like wormholes) or within a low visibility area, like a nebula. Illegal in civilized systems. (I'd love the ability to lure superior fleets into traps.)

My concern with something like that would be, how do you prevent it from being "defeat any fleet without fighting if you have the money"? Hmm. Limiting where they're useful might help, as might a lengthy cooldown...

A random thought for future development: Perhaps different portions of the environment would affect sensor range, by creating interference or something like that. Perhaps since the jump points are thin enough to pop into hyperspace, there's some cosmic radiation which reduces sensor ranges. Actually, that might help with players trying to sneak through a jump point.
Anyway, thought for the future. Might help with creating 'terrain' on the fleet level.

Yeah, nebulas and such seem a good fit for that sort of thing.

Do you plan on revising trade system at some time later?

In what way?

I think the base - the economic simulation, that is - is sound, but some of the stuff around that, in particular the details of how events interact with it, could use a bit of work. I don't think enough is in place to really judge it one way or another, though. Things should become more clear there once outposts are in place, which should also involve some adjusting.

[Megas]

I think something like this might work better if it was either designed around being succesfully used, or did something simpler, such as improving CR recovery at the cost of extra supplies

Faster CR recovery is nice, if I am far from base.  CR is my primary health bar, not hull or armor (especially if I have hull regeneration perk).

P.S. Faster CR recovery is another (secondary) reason why I use frigate swarms.

[orost]

The issue is, how do you prevent it from being activated when the encounter is inevitable, thus removing the the risk of a "misfire"? There's pretty much always a half a second or so when you know it's going to happen.

Make it take a couple seconds to ramp up to full bonus, so that you have to activate it far enough in advance that you can't have 100% certainity.

[Wyvern]

On the minefield idea: I'd say a minefield just slows a fleet down - if you're not in combat conditions, you can take your time and go around / destroy mines safely.  No damage, no CR cost.

...However, if you're in an enemy minefield, and you get attacked by the enemy that placed that minefield?  Then you get a combat map with mines on it; I'd probably treat these as small, immobile ships, each armed with a single-shot missile launcher; usually a harpoon, but (depending on the skill level or perhaps resources spent by the mine layer) maybe a torpedo.

[SafariJohn]

On the minefield idea: I'd say a minefield just slows a fleet down - if you're not in combat conditions, you can take your time and go around / destroy mines safely.  No damage, no CR cost.

That sounds good, but there's a question of how the mines could even be effective in the first place. Hmm, maybe they have a simple phase cloak that they use whenever something shoots at them. That ties in nicely to how phase cloaks currently work.
The mines are scary because you know they are there, but it's hard to get rid of them. You have to blast them before they can phase (which should be hard to do) or keep them phased until they overload and then blast them. Out of combat that's not too dangerous, just time consuming.

...However, if you're in an enemy minefield, and you get attacked by the enemy that placed that minefield?  Then you get a combat map with mines on it; I'd probably treat these as small, immobile ships, each armed with a single-shot missile launcher; usually a harpoon, but (depending on the skill level or perhaps resources spent by the mine layer) maybe a torpedo.

Thinking about missile launching mines, I don't think they would fit in at the logistics level. Where would you get all the missile launchers? [See edit-note]

Spoiler

Instead, why not make mines like a ship of sorts: long phase cloak + slow engine + powerful self destruct ability. There, a simple mine that's hard to take out and is threatening. No missile nonsense, they just cost supplies and time. I even think the combat AI could kinda handle it as is.

Also, mines with engines gives a reasonable excuse why there'd be more than just one or two mines in the battle. Could say that jamming attracts the mines to the area. (Are we still using the explanation of jamming for the short detection ranges in battles?)

[close]

Spoiler

The simplest way to treat mines is to make them hostile to all, but these are Advanced Future Space Mines^TM, not the dumb mines of land warfare. It's easy to link mine targeting to transponders, so as long as you have the right transponder on they won't attack you. But that brings up a question: do ships use transponders during battle? If not, then there's no such thing as a friendly mine once battle is joined.

I imagine, to keep the mines from blowing each other up too, each mine would have to have a transponder. This wouldn't make them as detectable at the campaign level as you'd think, since transponders only double the range at which something can be detected, and mines would have a short detection range to begin with. But it would make official faction minefields more official and, on the lore side, easier to maintain, since it would be easy to keep tabs on the mines and get in to replace them.

Maybe if mines were deployed without a transponder they might attack each other in combat. The minefield would also probably degrade much faster at the campaign level than a minefield that has transponders. That might be desirable in some cases, though.

[close]

This discussion gave me the cool mental picture of an Atlas laying a minefield:

The titanic Atlas was clearly visible against the background of stars. Where it would normally carry hundreds of cargo containers instead bristled racks and racks of mines. Dozens of tiny mining pods scurried about it, scattering the thousands of bombs into the empty depths.


Edit-Note: It occurred to me that if mine production was limited by blueprints like many other things are in-lore, then any missile launchers needed would probably be part of the blueprint. The blueprint explanation also allows a potentially wide variety of mines to be available.

Also makes me think mines could be carried as cargo rather than produced as needed, which would limit any mine-laying ability by available cargo space.