Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: January 09, 2016, 04:32:15 PM »The tech tree itself does contain a few surprises anyway, it's not all just bigger numbers.
Well it sort of is, but you know what I mean.
Well it sort of is, but you know what I mean.
Sure, it's there if you go looking for it, but spoilering the text keeps it that way. I was surprised last night when the base tech completed and I saw all the tech lines had changed values. I didn't want to spoil the pleasant surprise for anyone else.
I like the changes, but I think they make it possible to bioengineer a human-derived race that can withstand temperatures into the negative Kelvin range.negative Kelvin range "The future of humanity: Deep frosted ...at the other side of the multiverse." Star Trek scripters would be proud.
Regarding the ablative vs deflective armor, I certainly do not suggest a completely deflective model. That would indeed be exploitable. But it is my opinion that the completely ablative model used now also has problems. Mainly, no matter how advanced the technologies become no weapon ever becomes completely obsolete.
Looking at the higher end armors, we have some pretty incredible and futuristic stuff there. I would expect that some armor named "Bonded superdense armor" would be capable of just shrugging off a tiny (damage 1) infrared laser, just to make an example. Or bouncing the smallest kind of railgun (damage 1 per shot also).
A possible proposal, considering we have 12 tiers of armor, could be: tier 1-4, 0 "deflection point". tier 4-8, 1 "deflection point". Tier 9-12, 2 "deflection points". This would be a small enough number not to create invincible ships, but would at least somewhat model the higher technology and encourage to build weapons a bit bigger.
...The original design was too imbalanced towards impregnable armor; the next iteration towards ablative armor. The "shock damage" change was Steve's effort to pull the balance back towards the center, and based on his post above he's happy with it, so it's unlikely to change
Steve, I've had a thought about the deep space station we talked about on this thread. Are shipyards also tied to colonies like populations are? If not is there any reason a shipyard can't orbit a deep space station?