A few things I thought of; just gonna list 'em here for perusal at one's leisure. :)
- A Jump Cooldown w/ Shock Mechanic Tweak: Have Jump Shock be tied to max Jump Tonnage as a function of Increments per 5HS, with 5 seconds minimum. Then multiply it by the number of ships jumped; 1.25x per ship for Squadron, 1.5x for Standard with the rates doubled for Commercial Drives. When under the effects of Jump Shock, ships cannot perform another jump, but a ship not suffering from jump shock CAN jump ships that are. Jump Shock would NOT be cumulative when this happens, simply being reset to either the new value or the old value, whichever is longer.
- Transit Drive: A type of Jump Drive that runs on fuel, allows instant transit between points within a system. I had the idea that it would use special fuel, and have it's own special fuel tanks to hold them with the base capacity being 1 Unit of Jump Fuel per HS. Each jump would require one unit of this "Jump Fuel" and larger Fuel Tanks would give more Jump Fuel per HS, but at the trade-off of being more expensive. Each Transit Drive could have at least one unit of Jump Fuel capacity built in, although larger drives might have more and REALLY small (like, Fighter-scale) would have none. These drives could also transit Jump Points, both stabilized and non-stabilized, but would only transit the ship mounting them in addition to giving higher amounts of Jump Shock than if an actual Jump Drive was used. If implemented with the above changes to Jump Drives, it would give double the amount if Military, but Triple if the Transit Drive was Commercial. Like regular Jump Drives, these would be tied to engine type.Off-Topic: show
- "Pulse" Sensor: A variant of the Active Sensor that is smaller and more powerful than a regular version. Has a cooldown between uses and is significantly more visible than a regular Active Sensor of equal strength. Fluff wise the unit uses capacitors to "charge up" power and then releases it all at once to detect targets. Some ideas for implementation include:Off-Topic: show
- Commercial Engine Change: Currently, to qualify as Commercial an engine must take up at least 1,250 Tons(25HS) and possess a Power Modifier of 50% or less. Under this suggestion the minimum size of engine would be tied to the power modifier. For every 10% less than 50, the HS requirement for an engine to be considered Commercial would be 5HS less. So, under this proposal we would have:Off-Topic: show
- A Jump Cooldown w/ Shock Mechanic Tweak: Have Jump Shock be tied to max Jump Tonnage as a function of Increments per 5HS, with 5 seconds minimum. Then multiply it by the number of ships jumped; 1.25x per ship for Squadron, 1.5x for Standard with the rates doubled for Commercial Drives. When under the effects of Jump Shock, ships cannot perform another jump, but a ship not suffering from jump shock CAN jump ships that are. Jump Shock would NOT be cumulative when this happens, simply being reset to either the new value or the old value, whichever is longer.
- Transit Drive:
- "Pulse" Sensor:
- Commercial Engine Change: Currently, to qualify as Commercial an engine must take up at least 1,250 Tons(25HS) and possess a Power Modifier of 50% or less. Under this suggestion the minimum size of engine would be tied to the power modifier. For every 10% less than 50, the HS requirement for an engine to be considered Commercial would be 5HS less. So, under this proposal we would have:Off-Topic: show
Quote- Transit Drive:
I'm strongly opposed to adding a technology which lets a ship or fleet completely avoid an engagement by pressing a button. A fleet with a transit drive effectively cannot be intercepted, even with the jump shock effect it is trivial to "jump" outside of the enemy's pursuit range leaving them out of position, which can really only be countered by having an equally-capable defense fleet at each strategic position in a system. Requiring the defender to have a numerical advantage to win a battle is terrible game design, and forcing a defender to otherwise play a static defense strategy instead of mobile warfare is frankly boring.
Quote- Transit Drive:
I'm strongly opposed to adding a technology which lets a ship or fleet completely avoid an engagement by pressing a button. A fleet with a transit drive effectively cannot be intercepted, even with the jump shock effect it is trivial to "jump" outside of the enemy's pursuit range leaving them out of position, which can really only be countered by having an equally-capable defense fleet at each strategic position in a system. Requiring the defender to have a numerical advantage to win a battle is terrible game design, and forcing a defender to otherwise play a static defense strategy instead of mobile warfare is frankly boring.
Yeah, this is the problem. It's not even a military vs. commercial thing as I could accept something like this on a survey/sensor ship. The problem is when it can be fitted to a ship that also has weapons on it. I think it could be made expensive enough that you would never build more than a handful. Even just fitting them to all your standard survey ships should be well and truly prohibitive. I do still think that it is an idea worth exploring though. There are definitely use cases that would add to the game without taking away anything meaningful.
--- It seems I've very poorly explained the Jump Shock Mechanics that I proposed. I sincerely apologize. :-[ This is how it SHOULD read:
"Jump Shock is calculated first by taking the ship's Hull Size and dividing it by 5. Remainders are discarded. This is the basic Jump Shock for moving one ship of that size. If the ship in question is the only ship jumping, then no further calculations are needed. If the ship is jumping MORE ships than itself, then an additional 25% is added per ship. So a 25HS ship by itself will have 25 seconds, or 5 increments, of jump shock. Meanwhile a squadron of four 25HS ships would incur a 50 second, or 10 increment, jump shock. For a standard transit, this would jump to 100 seconds, or 20 increments. If those four 25HS were Commercial, it would go all the way up to 200 seconds, or 40 increments."
--- It's still very harsh, but the least I could do was explain properly. That much I failed to do, and I again apologize... I have NO idea how I got the original from the above, but madness is as madness does I suppose.
--- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.
--- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.
So I got quite far into writing a post full of (hopefully) constructive criticism but I am suddenly unsure if I correctly understood the premise of the transit drive. I just noticed something quite significant that requires clarification. Like completely changes the nature of what it is that we are talking about.
In your OP you said that the Transit Drive "allows instant transit between points within a system". Were you referring to jump points specifically? As in, this drive would allow a ship to use an existing jump point but instead of emerging in a different system, it emerges from a different jump point in the same system? You didn't specify jump points so I, and possibly others, interpreted it to mean arbitrary points. As in, this drive lets you move instantly, from anywhere, to anywhere else, in the same system.
Intent unclear. Foot nearly put in own mouth. Please advise.
I appreciate the clearer explanation. However, it doesn't really change any of the issues I have with it:The overall point is, a game mechanic which consists solely of punishing the player for the sake of verisimilitude is a bad game mechanic. That isn't saying that punishing the player is bad - mineral crunches or being outmatched in a battle are punishing, but also logical consequences of other game mechanics and player actions. Making large ships suffer more jump shock just because it seems more realistic doesn't fit this bill - it might make sense if it was needed for game balance, but at least as things stand right now that is not the case.
- Scaling jump shock with ship size is a very harsh nerf to larger ships, which is very much not needed in the current state of the game as larger ships already have significant strategic drawbacks (shipyards, maintenance, research, etc.) even if they are a bit more efficient tactically.
- Jump shock is already supposed to affect all ships in a squadron or fleet, so it already scales with squadron/fleet size at exactly 1:1 net effect (if it doesn't that is a bug and needs to be reported and patched). There isn't any need to add an extra multiplier - especially because this modifier basically punishes people for using higher techs in the Jump Squadron Size tech line (which by the way already has a drawback because jump drives with a larger squadron size are larger and more expensive). Why should players be punished for using higher techs? They should not, as long as they are able to pay the costs of using that tech in the first place - i.e., researching the jump drives and building ships that can carry them.
- There's no real counterplay to these mechanics. The only way to
avoidmitigate the 1.25x modifier, for example, is to use smaller jump squadrons, and since the jump shock effect is principally a tactical drawback to make jump point assaults an actual challenge, and using fewer non-jump ships per squadron is also a tactical drawback, the result is not an interesting gameplay decision. In the end one way will be strictly superior either due to pure numbers gaming or due to strategic costs. Most of the good gameplay decisions in Aurora come from balancing tactical and strategic factors, not from making the player pick their poison.
--- I honestly agree with all of that... in hindsight it would be a terrible change. :( That said I STILL maintain that I'd really, really like to see Jump Shock prevent a ship from Jumping while under the effects of it.
--- I honestly agree with all of that... in hindsight it would be a terrible change. :( That said I STILL maintain that I'd really, really like to see Jump Shock prevent a ship from Jumping while under the effects of it.
This is supposed to be implemented...I see this effect on my survey ships all the time as they jump into a new system and must wait some time before being able to jump out. I've never tried to see what happens with a squadron jump (usually when I do these I have other things on my mind...) but if it does not also prevent immediate re-jumping it should be submitted as a bug.
However the NPRs are allowed to jump with no cooldown as a compensation for their poor AI, so we do need to separate out player race (if you can jump immediately after jumping, it is a bug and should be reported) and NPR (not a bug, only an unfortunate compromise) behaviors.
The huge problem with jump shock right now is that based on player reports it seems that ships with 100% trained crews can more or less ignore its effects entirely, which rather defeats the point of the whole mechanic and makes fleet training excessively powerful - and unlike some exploits this one cannot really be avoided as ships gain training% over time even if not under a TRN admin command.
--- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.
On Commercial Engines:
I'm in favor of changes that allow for smaller commercial engines. I don't dislike xeno's suggestion, but I don't know if it's the best way to facilitate that goal. Likewise with serger's suggestions. I see the appeal of a ramscoop (or whatever other explanation is used for fuelless commercial engines) to reduce player/AI special rule cases. The caveats there is that it reduces design choices (but I really don't know how large a % of the players enjoy balancing speed/fuel usage on their freighters) and there would need to be a check to prevent commercial engines on military craft (as I don't see it as desirable to allow fuelless engines on warships, no matter how slow they are; at that point you might as well get rid of fuel altogether). Granted, that second point is mitigated in that with seperate tech lines, an engine wouldn't be designated as commercial just because it's big and slow, and the game can already check for similar ship design rules. I also don't know if an additional tech line(s) are desirable for the overall goal (smaller commercial). Looking at how jump engines are handled, similar things can be done that way: toggle the design project to commercial, and it would alter other features (power per HS, max boost, etc).
--- Well, since y'all jacked my thread I guess I'll weigh in on this myself. ;D I see the crew requirements as the need not only for manpower, but also the various food stuffs, etc. The "Life Support" as it were. Also, I feel as though the comparisons to wet water ships are relatively poor. In space, it is far and above more difficult to maintain things. Whether Real Space or the Aether, starships of any stripe are very likely to be significantly more difficult to maintain and need significantly more supplies to keep those crew members alive.
One bad gasket can be the difference between life and a slow, quite possibly painful, death.
I see the crew requirements as the need not only for manpower, but also the various food stuffs, etc. The "Life Support" as it were.
Also, I feel as though the comparisons to wet water ships are relatively poor. In space, it is far and above more difficult to maintain things. Whether Real Space or the Aether, starships of any stripe are very likely to be significantly more difficult to maintain and need significantly more supplies to keep those crew members alive.
One bad gasket can be the difference between life and a slow, quite possibly painful, death.