Shipyards

I think each planet can connect to only one shipyard. The rest is still being worked on. I think.

DARCA.

I suspect Shipyards will be very similar to Starbase as in you can build upgrade modules to them, Including defense modules.

I also suspect that they will be linked to planets in the same way that Asteroid mines are linked to planets in GalCiv2. I.E: you would see a thin moving line between the planet and shipyard representing the moving of resources .

A major concern here is the fact that since Shipyards are now attackable one can simply gain slight military superiority and "camp" the enemy and destroy each and every new shipyard they attempt to build so they can never build any new forces and never recover.  Previously each planet was an indestructible shipyard unless you defeat it in an invasion which prevented someone from being camped and make it possible to make a comeback.  But with the new shipyard system I suspect this strategy would be very exploitable.

They can come up with restrictions such as making it a requirement that the shipyard must be within your own territory before you can attack it.  (ie you need to take the nearby planents to extend your territory or have higher culture) but that wouldn't make much sense.

Either way I don't see this new system working out very well.  It seems interesting on paper but in practice it's very exploitable.

I've camped plenty of AI opponents exactly like that in GC2. One fleet per area, with enough speed and firepower to hit most/all the planets in the area in the same turn.

The difference here is that someone could make a fast constructor, sprint for the edge of the known universe, make a shipyard and start spamming rush-buy ships for as long as they have the cash. It's more camp-able in terms of killing off *good* production, but less camp-able in absolute terms.

I like to call this the "CheckMate" effect.  I think this would mostly be effective in early game rush. My initial suggestion to counter this was that planets could still build small and cargo hull ships.

Once in late game and empires have a big inertia, several shipyards and tons of ships in play. It would be hard to subjugate an enemy in such a way. Not saying it cant be done but at least this would not feel like cheese.

I guess you guys missed this post then?

https://forums.galciv3.com/453140/page/1/#3455471

Perhaps.

I think that if range is done properly it isn't that big of an issue.  In GC2, I have done exactly this strategy but with planets.  In fact I do it just like WIllythemailboy says he does in his post above.

In GC2 you start with a base range before upgrades of about 20% of the map.  I normally have no trouble getting to the far side of any ones empire in that game.  But if the range system isn't so generous, then you just have more strategy here.  He can build his shipyards on the far side of his empire, farther away then from his farthest world if he needs to.  You can't touch them even if you can camp his worlds.

Also if your ally is getting hammered and he has lost all of his shipyards, you can give him one of yours from a safe distance without giving up a world.

This mechanic adds a whole bunch of good and bad and new thought.  Also it doesn't preclude your planets being able to build ships as well.  So you could have a single queue on planets like we do now and still have shipyards.  It would be worth building them just for the extra queue.  Or perhaps planet based shipyards can also be caped for max hull sizes.

Lots of possibilities.

I am eager to try it out, and if it doesn't work we can still doe something about it. 

This is all speculation depending on how the AI plays. We don't know what exploits will be possible and which sound good on paper. I suggest that once you defeat their space fleet (shipyards), doesn't that mean they are finished anyway. This doesn't mean that one cannot protect and guard these structures, nor are these structures completely defenseless. I wouldn't expect a ship to be able to move onto a shipyard and walk away unscathed. I would imagine that the construction of the shipyard would produce enough defenses to require a fleet to destroy the shipyard.

Moving the shipyard to the end of the galaxy, wouldn't this make protecting your planets difficult as you need to move that fleet to your planets each time? The further you build that shipyard the longer it would take that fleet from reaching that planet as well. Who knows, we may be able to create constructors with weapons on them to help defend against the attacking defenseless constructors. 

I'm looking forward to see this shipyard in action, and I'm looking forward in seeing the AI make effective use of it. Or even playing against human players to see which tactics actually work.