colony ship and transoprt ship balance

from Stardock Forums
Is it just me or are these ships too unbalanced?

A colony ship is fairly cheap. Compare it to a scout. Costs 25% more and can hold billions of people???? This is just too silly. I would really like to see this changed, both to be a bit more realistic and also to extend the whole colonisation into mid game.

Perhaps leave the current colony ship, but make it an outpost ship. It can claim a planet but will never grow into a colony. An outpost can also be destroyed from space by a powerful ship (cruiser or above). Add a real colony ship, which can hold 10M people at the same cost of an Avatar (500). This is a HUGE ship. Just think of it. How much building would be required? This would also give much more realistic colonies. None of this instant 1 billion population systems which are immediately useful. It should take decades or even centuaries to make a new colony useful! Perhaps at a higher tech add a 100M colony ship.

Transports are even more annoying than colony ships. They cost 2.5 time a scout and can caryy 40M+ troops??? What is this about. I can build a transport, hope to an enemy planet. Drop 40 million troups. Purchase another transport. Load 35 millino troops. Move to another planet. Capture it and continue like this till the entire enemy is destroyed. Unfortunately to make this realistic the whole 'entire population = soldiers' idea needs to be changed.

I would suggest that only a fraction of a planet are soldiers. Let this fraction be set by the user (0.5-20%), but soldiers cannot add production and have an upkeep cost. Now make transports fixed size with realistic costs. 10M transport = 500 cost (be realistic, this thing would be a whole city in space complete with invasion craft. it should cost at least this much). 100M transport = 2500 cost. Now when you invade a planet you just have to defeat the troops, not the entire population.

To make the game more interesting battleships and greater should be able to bombard from space. This can reduce troop numbers (good player), reduce good numbers and destroy social improvements (neutral player), reduce troops numbers, buildings and population (evil player).

To capture a planet you would therefore defeat the enemy fleet, bombard until the trrop numbers are low enough, and then invade with your transports.

Paul.
192 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Paul,
I agree that what you describe could be next millennium reality but in a game you have to carefully balance reality mimic vs game mechanics (playability).
Let's simplify your toughts: colonies & transports must be more expansive (2x otherwise game slows down).
I don't agree on adding outposts (more things to manage).
I'd support limits on colonies & transports size.
Soldiers=population works on both sides (attach and defense) so let's keep it simple that way.

I support that would be nice to colonize even when the game is advanced but don't know how to make it.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Gherardo,
I agree that you want the game to be fun and that you don't want it too slow. At the moment though a mid to late game is a slow long boring play of continously pressing turn or slaughtering all opposition in one quick war. I want a more balanced game throughout with the start slightly slower on expansion only, keeping some of that expansion game till later. The way my suggestion ensures this is by using the outposts. This allows for expansion without actually colonising the planets. You therefore meet the other races and interact with them well before the galaxy is full. This allows for so much more diplomancy.

Making colony ships expensive and slowing colony expansion (smaller initial numbers) stops the current instant filling of the galaxy. Doubling the costs while it may help is not enough. Look how quickly everything is colonised, especially in smaller galaxies. Even twice as long will not help.

I like the idea of having wars and battles in a galaxy only half colonised.

My soldiers = population problem is really playability related. At the moment the system is simple and works. It is too easy to abuse though (moral control, planet hopping and instant useable planets). Because of this, once you get an upper hand in a war it's all over. Game won, no fun.

Perhaps finding another method of stopping this abuse would work?

Paul.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with Paul in much of this.
I like having to work hard to get an attack force in place, the satisfaction of victory needs to be greater and therefore more hard fought.
It may also stop the game peaking to early Paul is right - colonization is great fun and over to quickly in my view. If this were slowed down there would be more exciting 'frontier wars' as empires expanded slowly and more room for tactics - AND for the impacts of diplomacy to play out. At the moment I am afraid there is a mid game slog - I am in one now.

The combat numbers x million versus y million just blow my mind, ships carrying millions of troops - I cant get myself to accept it in the reality stakes and that impacts on my 'immersion' into the game. Gherardo makes a point that it is simply numbers v numbers (dicethrow) but smaller numbers win on the reality stakes. Planetary bombardments (and ship enhancements capable of doing it) sound great. Not sure that outposts achieve much and may complicate without adding a lot of fun. Now mining outposts would be interesting....
s
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
We all agree that at midgame it happens to be pressing buttons...(see my post on the subject...).
We all agree that having midgame colonization would be funny.

A solution could be made of:
- ranges (do you remember how difficoult was to expand?)
- higher price for colonies/transports (but not too high)
- minimum limit on millions of people to startup a new world (to be combined with higher colony price to avoid a "put my hat" tactics on all nice worlds)
- limits on colonies/transports freight capabilities
- limits on available soldiers for invasion/defense to XX% of population (being XX dependant from governament type, techs, ...)
- scouts/freighters are perfect for interacting with remote civilizations

Please comments :)
Gherardo
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Gherardo,
I would certainly agree with everything in your list. Another way of controlling the 'put my hat' tactic would be to allow orbital bombardment. This should be able to destroy small colonies. If a large enough fleet bombards a small colony it may even occur in 1 turn without the owner being sure of who did it (as he would have lost sensor views).

Paul.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
One of the things that keeps coming up is the concept of ship ranges as a way to keep the game moving. MOO2 implemented this concept in a good way in the guise of researching advanced power sources for ship propulsion.

If Galciv were to do something similar it would go a long way towards mitigating the following problems:
- every habitable planet in the galaxy is nailed down
early in the game.
- every race is able to explore the entire galaxy
fairly early in the game
- the mid-game becomes and endless series of hitting the
next turn button

I also think the concept of orbital bombardment has merit in terms of game play, both in terms of realism and in terms of playability.
Cheers
Magus
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Gherardo

I agree, you make a fair summary. Elsewhere I have commented in a thread about ensuring there is a 'realistic' way of limiting ranges rather than a gamey one - perhaps Magus has the answer? I think I talked about some sort of resource issue - or perhaps time - who wants to spend more than a couple of years on a starship (really?)

I support the view on planetary bombardment.

I think lengthening the early game stages of colonisation will create some advantages in the diplomacy and research modules which are coming along great but really don't have time to express themselves as the universe is colonised to quickly - we need swapping and changing frontiers with new ship classes breaking the balance and then it being recovered etc - that would be great.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd say that we expressed our opinions and we basically agree on the issue and possible solution.

GC team, it's time to know your opinion... :)
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree, I think colony ships and other huge ships should be extremely expansive.. In the next build we will start to play balance more.