Space Opera 2016-10-05

[Nwoll]

After playing several games, here's some thoughts:

I agree with leaven about the guard units, but almost all civ scenarios/mods and even the vanilla version reward the aggressor. The best offensive unit will almost always beat the best defensive unit.

The lack of entertainers (specialists) is a serious problem. You have to raze all captured cities because until you destroy a whole civ there is no way to make a captured size 4 or more city happy. (or whatever difficulty level you play at) Also, the city governor becomes useless at keeping cities from civil disorder. The AI has no concept of purposefully starving cities until habitats, temples and stim centers can be built. This leads to heavy micromanaging, which can normally be avoided with the city governor turned on.

The stealth ships are great - very fun to surround an enemy (or not) planet and then fortify and watch them attack with frigates.

The wonders are really good too and i like the army graphic - very cool.

Again, great scenario!

 

[NavyDawg]

Leaven, thanks a lot for the comments. Ideas like yours will help me balance the gameplay in future versions.

First, the Defender/Guard units seem almost worthless. Every time I have built them and actually had them attacked by Smugglers or Marines, the guards loose almost every time. I no longer build them because they have only a slightly better defense than other infantry (Like the Grunt) and they cost more too. I think if you are going to have specialized defenders, they should either cost less or else be better at their jobs (maybe decrease their offense values and put those points into defense).

I think that 18 for a defense is actually pretty good against the best offensive unit's 24 (same as the epic game IIRC). I gave the guard an extra 2 points right before I released this version, it was 16. I think they are quite invaluable in defending systems from amphibious attacks, considering that the next best defender has a 14 value. Would you suggest a defense value of 20? I think that might be too high.

Second, the Starfighters and Starbombers also cost a lot for what you get. A Destroyer costs 160 shields for a whole ship, while a fighter is 120 and a bomber 180! Additionally, since most ships have decent air defense values, the aircraft get shot down more often than not, and you need a lot of attempts to actually bring one down.

Good points here. I might make fighters and bombers a little cheaper. I have found them to come in handy when bombarding troops in the open after I have taken the first system in a bad guy's solar system. I might lower the AD value for some of the spaceships as well.

On the topic of ground units, I like that there are only infantry. However I do think that maybe later units could wear some kind of armor or powersuit (along the lines of the Powerloader worker unit) to augment their abilities.

Agreed, I have some infantry planned for the next release that will be outfitted in some pretty heavy power-armor type suits.

 

[NavyDawg]

Nwoll, Thank you also for the comments. I really appreciate the feedback.

I agree with leaven about the guard units, but almost all civ scenarios/mods and even the vanilla version reward the aggressor. The best offensive unit will almost always beat the best defensive unit.

See my comments above. I agree that offensive units tend to win their fair share and more. However, guards stand the best chance against a marine space assault, and therefore, I always keep a few in each of my cities.

The lack of entertainers (specialists) is a serious problem. You have to raze all captured cities because until you destroy a whole civ there is no way to make a captured size 4 or more city happy. (or whatever difficulty level you play at) Also, the city governor becomes useless at keeping cities from civil disorder. The AI has no concept of purposefully starving cities until habitats, temples and stim centers can be built. This leads to heavy micromanaging, which can normally be avoided with the city governor turned on.

There is an entertainer specialist available after you research gambling. Let me know if it's not working for you.

The stealth ships are great - very fun to surround an enemy (or not) planet and then fortify and watch them attack with frigates.

Yes, I've been able to use the stealth ships to great effect as well. I've also lost several to destroyers and battle cruisers, so I don't think they're unbalanced.

The wonders are really good too and i like the army graphic - very cool.

Thanks, I have a few more wonders planned for the next release.

 

[Leaven]

I looked into the guards a little more and I think I understand why I've had so many problems with them. The epic game does give 18 defense for the Mech. Infantry, and 24 attack for the Modern Armor, however this difference takes into account the multiple defensive bonuses in the game (city size, terrain, across a river, etc.). In this scenario the terrain bonuses are lowered, the highest is 10, and some are even negative. Also, since the size of colonies (Towns) has been increased, I have been taking my time in building the Agro. Board (Aqueduct), so many of my planets give no defensive bonuses, resulting in weaker defenders.

I don't think this is really a big problem (since it allows me to mop up the AI all over the place), just wanted to point it out as something I noticed.

 

[Bluemofia]

In this scenario the terrain bonuses are lowered, the highest is 10, and some are even negative.

Really? I've read a book and it's actually considered the possibility of interstellar war without FTL travel. The defenders will always win if the technology is about on par, due to the reason that it is very very easy to hide defenses around the system. (throw a mine here, an orbital cannon there, some hidden turrets on a moon, some proximity mines on an asteroid turning it into a huge frag grenade, etc.)

 

[Miles Teg]

Ah but the enemy is not limited to that plain of attack. Even inter-planetary space is big. You'd need to have a complete spherical defensive system on any planet you want to defend. In which case you still loose the planets you can't afford to defend properly, which may be half of you empire.

 

[Leaven]

Ah but the enemy is not limited to that plain of attack. Even inter-planetary space is big. You'd need to have a complete spherical defensive system on any planet you want to defend. In which case you still loose the planets you can't afford to defend properly, which may be half of you empire.

That's a great point, and one I hadn't considered. If this was the reason for low defense values then it makes a lot of sense. I think I have been picturing each planet with a single colony or outpost on it and the units fighting to control that, as opposed to the whole planet.

While I'm on the subject of colonies, I tried Civinator's idea of blank city graphics so each planet can be seen more easily, and I have to agree that I think it looks better in most cases. The only thing I was wondering is if it's somehow possible to have some colonies look like planets (like the larger ones on habitable worlds) and others look like space stations (these could be smaller colonies, or maybe the ones located on Gas Giants)?

 

[NavyDawg]

Interesting conversation guys. Just so you know, I made the offense/defense/terrain defense bonus stats for gameplay purposes. 99% of conquest in this scenario (whether it's the human or AI) will have to cross space (water) to capture a system. Because of this, I wanted to give an edge to the attacker, so there would be successes. That said, I think the guard, especially with a radar tower nearby, can do a fair job defending - much better than anyone else.

As for the academic debate, I think that the balance of favor would shift between attacking/defending systems as technology changed. For example, offensive maneuver was highly successful in the early 1800's as the average rifle had an effective range of about 100 yards, which Napoleon used to great effect. By the time of the American Civil War, advances in rifling increased this range to 400 yards, and the advantage went to defending units, seen in dramatic fashion during Picket's charge at Gettysburg. This advantage shifted as warfare became mechanized and offensive ground units got faster and had increased air coverage, e.g. the German Blitzkrieg.

I think you could make the argument that assymetric warfare tactics, especially by non-state actors, in urban environments are now shifting the balance back to a "defensive" force, or at least an insurgency not overly concerned about what happens to the infrastructure of the country they are fighting in - Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

 

[Bardak]

Nice Mod! I'll try it! It remind me Galactic Civ.

 

[Bluemofia]

Ah but the enemy is not limited to that plain of attack. Even inter-planetary space is big. You'd need to have a complete spherical defensive system on any planet you want to defend. In which case you still loose the planets you can't afford to defend properly, which may be half of you empire.

Without FTL, detecting spaceships is fairly easy. Look for the signature emissions of their exhaust. (must be high energy, otherwise fairly useless.) So after an armada is detected, it doesn't take very long for the defenders to concentrate a defense.

Assuming there is no early detection, by the time the attacker leaves their system at about equal tech as the defenders, and entered the defenders system, the defender has increased their tech capabilities. It's sort of like sending off an army to walk slowly from South Africa to attack Siberia (assuming they have the equipment), and then arrive there with 10 or 15 years out of date equipment compared to the defenders.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Love the cloakshape/H fighter you have in there.

Is that used for the worker graphic?

 

[jlvfr]

Just downloaded and played this pack. Excelent mod! Great work!


Is there a way to generated a random map (preferably big/huge) using your mod?

Cheers

 

[Tiberius1st]

I think the download link is broken

 

[Leaven]

Both the Biq download and the main file link to other pages, which are you having trouble with? NavyDawg posted some instructions on finding the main files in the first post.

 

[NavyDawg]

Assuming there is no early detection, by the time the attacker leaves their system at about equal tech as the defenders, and entered the defenders system, the defender has increased their tech capabilities. It's sort of like sending off an army to walk slowly from South Africa to attack Siberia (assuming they have the equipment), and then arrive there with 10 or 15 years out of date equipment compared to the defenders.

Good point, but why make war against a place that is so far away? I think the social and economic benefits of having a territory that is 10-15 years away would be non-existent. Now, trying to settle a distant world would be another matter, but I still don't think the homeworld would benefit much. Might make for a good way to get rid of undesirables, just like the English colonies for prisoners (debtors, mostly) - Georgia and Australia.


@ Moff Jerjerrod, no, there are three workers in the game and none resemble a ship.

@ jlvfr, thanks. Unfortunately, random maps will not work with this since it would generate way too many planets all right next to each other. I might make some more galactic maps, and I'm open to other folks making their own.

@ Tiberius1st, It's worked for others. Like Leaven said, please read the Opening Post.

 

[Tiberius1st]

Now it works. I think it was a temporary problem in conjunction with this Opera-incompatible File Hoster

 

[jlvfr]

@ jlvfr, thanks. Unfortunately, random maps will not work with this since it would generate way too many planets all right next to each other. I might make some more galactic maps, and I'm open to other folks making their own.

Ah... pity, I'm a big-map freak

 

[Bluemofia]

Good point, but why make war against a place that is so far away? I think the social and economic benefits of having a territory that is 10-15 years away would be non-existent. Now, trying to settle a distant world would be another matter, but I still don't think the homeworld would benefit much. Might make for a good way to get rid of undesirables, just like the English colonies for prisoners (debtors, mostly) - Georgia and Australia.

Well, this is assuming no FTL travel. So 10-15 years is an average distance actually. If they were running out of space, the benefits will outweigh the cost. (though it's pesky to deal with resisters)

 

[Leaven]

Ah... pity, I'm a big-map freak

Actually it's pretty easy to make a map using the space terrain. After playing the scenario a few times I wanted a change of scenary, so I sat down an popped out a map in just a hour or two. The main thing is that since each planet is a single tile, you only have to add a star, a few planets, and a few asteroids and you've got a new system!

 

[NavyDawg]

Yes, everyone is encouraged to make more maps (my map-making skills are limited). Leaven, feel free to share it.