Change Log for 6.40 Discussion

[Marski]

Does infrastructure decrease the amount of EM and Thermal emissions of a population? Is it harder to be destroyed?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

 A couple thoughts:

A selectable random chance for a 'diplomatic incident' resulting in a war between two truce-NPRs or between a player and a truce-NPR might be interesting.  Players can RP this, of course, but not  knowing when they come can throw a curveball.  Though they're still going to bombard planets into extinction...

re: Underground Infrastructure.

I like this sort of thing, I usually house-rule out Terraforming so I do a lot of 'hostile colonization', even normally. ..

so now we have a sort of tiered colonization:

gas giants - OH
rocks - UI
hostile worlds - Infrastructure

Hmmm.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In regards to the intercept mechanics. Is there any chance that AMM missiles will get the same treatment so they take the shortest routes instead of chasing missiles the normal way. I suppose this would make it somewhat easier for AMM to intercept ASM when the ships is engaging missiles at an angle protecting other ships.

[Steve Walmsley]

In regards to the intercept mechanics. Is there any chance that AMM missiles will get the same treatment so they take the shortest routes instead of chasing missiles the normal way. I suppose this would make it somewhat easier for AMM to intercept ASM when the ships is engaging missiles at an angle protecting other ships.

Currently working on missiles vs. ships but will get to missiles vs. missiles at some point as well

Steve

[Bremen]

On NPRs and research costs, I'm pretty sure the AI of every strategy game cheats at least some. There's just no way to write one that can compete with a human at games much more complicated than Chess. So it doesn't bother me.

Though I think another reason NPRs fall behind on research is they don't use scientists for their specialties; it might be worth looking at updating their decision making there.

[Brian Neumann]

On NPRs and research costs, I'm pretty sure the AI of every strategy game cheats at least some. There's just no way to write one that can compete with a human at games much more complicated than Chess. So it doesn't bother me.

Though I think another reason NPRs fall behind on research is they don't use scientists for their specialties; it might be worth looking at updating their decision making there.

I second that.  Human's just multitask better than a home computer.

Brian

[MarcAFK]

I'm really looking forward to the new interception mechanics. I've always played slower conventional starts and at those kinds of speeds even catching up with earth can be a nightmare

[Panopticon]

Looking forward to better NPRs, the wealth change for them is a good idea I think.

[Prince of Space]

so now we have a sort of tiered colonization:

gas giants - OH
rocks - UI
hostile worlds - Infrastructure

Hmmm.

Did I miss something? I thought gas giants were uninhabitable, even with orbital habitats. I don't object to the idea, I just thought the game didn't allow it.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Uh, I never tried. Didn't think about it.  I guess the main point of OH now is planetary construction, and/or moveability...

[Prince of Space]

Unfortunately I don't have access to my game right now, but I construct my fuel harvesters as huge engineless rigs with a single OH so they can be built without a shipyard. I could have sworn that colonists never were delivered to populate the gas giant. If memory serves it was because I couldn't create an colony on a gas giant in the first place. Given that UI and OH overlap in the ways you suggested, maybe this is a niche that could be opened up? Of course then we have the weirdness that comes with dropping off installations or missiles or whatnot at a gas giant colony that does not yet have an OH.

[MarcAFK]

You can't create colonies on gas giants, if you're lucky there'll be some moons you can colonise in orbit of it.

[alex_brunius]

Energy Weapon Impacts

I've added a new type of contact for v6.40 called energy weapon impacts. These are very similar to explosion contacts except they occur when an energy weapon scores damage on something (ship, missile, shipyard, population or ground unit).

(mainly so I can see what is going on in my current game when NPRs are firing beam weapons at each other)

Would be nice if these contacts (and missile impacts) light up only if you have say thermal sensors. It makes sense that it's easy to detect nukes going off but not so much that you can always reliably detect laser/kinetic energy signatures from across the system.

[Narmio]

Would be nice if these contacts (and missile impacts) light up only if you have say thermal sensors. It makes sense that it's easy to detect nukes going off but not so much that you can always reliably detect laser/kinetic energy signatures from across the system.

I like that idea!  Energy weapon impacts are a very different beast, spectrographically, than a nuclear explosion. You could multiply damage by 10 or even 100 (lasers are hot!) to get the thermal contact strength.

[MarcAFK]

I like this, perhaps even missile and all other explosions should depend on the availability of powerful enough thermal sensors to detect them. But I think in general we would want most battles to be observable from a fair distance away by reasonably sized sensors. Perhaps a single scout ship might not be able to see employee detonations from a billion kilometers, but it should see a drive or magazine explosion from the other side of a system.