ship balance : basic ships

[spacetrace]

the game balance of st is centered around the basic ships. This is cool and is a great thing.

so you can always use the basic ships and they go strong. but this makes the ship balance very fragile and for new ships - and so... many new ships , with cool effects cannot be added to st.

i think it would be cool, if you can add to any effect a marker (for example !)

an effect with an ! will not work on a basic ship or building (fighter, destroyer, cruiser, shipyard, research center)

with this we could add much more ships without sacrificing the game balance...

what do you think???

[vyor]

adding that would fk up the balance in itself. Poeple would only use those ships to avoid swanks and other things.

[Cloudgatherer]

I don't see it as such a bad idea. So long as you (administration) are very careful about using it. Overusing the ! syntax would pretty much defeat the purpose of having anything other than basic ships, which would suck and is not what you're intending, I'm sure.

Use it only in a case-by-case basis as one of the "drawbacks" you can add to certain inventions that would otherwise be too powerful or otherwise unbalanced. Ah, whatsmore, to add to the potential of this, you could further add upon that syntax by limiting the classes of basic ships. ! would mean ALL basic ships, !1 would mean c1 basic ships, !2 would mean c2 basic ships, etc.

This would be used as like a counterbalancer for those ships who just didnt have a "drawback" that fit before. If that is what you're intending (which it sort of seems like it is), then I am all for it.

New ships on the horizon?
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[admin]

for now, you can already invent your ships, so they don't affect basic fighters, destroyers, etc:

just use the right syntax, for example, if you destroy a fighter, recycle one after, or such

[spacetrace]

ehem... that is not very convinient...

ok... it's no fun to program it ... but i am willed to do it because i think it would open the door for a big bunch of new crazy ships... we could add 20 ships ( late in the tec tree) without hurting the game balance...

[vyor]

hmmmmm, anyone here remember my old skyhook?



http://www.spacetrace.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7045

[Senor]

i gave this a thought. here it is.
its a wall of text, i know. i'm not good with words, so i have to write everything through more than needed.

as much as i like the idea of adding new cool ships, i feel that this new syntax would be a step in the wrong direction.
all the syntaxes we now have are universal, meaning they work on every ship unless the target itself is immune to the effect (like blockade runners are to modifying effects).
this new syntax would work as an exception to this rule and would not be straightforwardly understandable.
i explain:

lets take blockade runner. it has it written in the syntax that it is immune to modifying effects. very easily understandable for anyone willing to read and understand the effect.

now lets take the fighter. all it does is it fights, very easy to understand. but now lets add some ships in the game that can't hurt the fighter. now when someone reads the fighter description, there is nowhere said that this or that ship can't hurt it.

what im getting at here is that this new syntax would be "inside info" for anyone playing the game who has not read through the manual about all ships in the game.
i think the angle of approach is wrong. instead of excluding ships from being affected by some effect, the ships themselves should be immune to them. so instead of having ships that can't influence the basic ships, maybe we should add an immunity effect to the basic ships.


i feel that adding new rules and exceptions can hurt the game by making it even harder to understand for new players. the point of the basic ships is that they are simple to understand. thats why they are the basic ships. if we have effects that don't work on them then these basic ships aren't so basic anymore.

[spacetrace]

i understand what you mean... this game is complex, keep it simple etc.

but this thing would not confuse any newbie or veteran, it just means that that high tec ships cannot kill the basic ships. the user of a fighter or destroyer dont need to consider anything more than now.

anyway i do not consider st as to compex ... it is somehow ahead of its time.

i rather would like to push the limits.

lets imagine the ship set we have as balanced somehow.

now we declare the very basic ships - let's called the basic class (fighter ,destroyer etc.)

then we declare the others of our set - let's call it the core class (the rest)

now we could imagine a unlimited number of somehow hirarchic ordered ship-sets that can /cannot affect some ship-sets

this way we could define a balancable tec-system with 1000 different ships

imagine tec-tree^3

and the basic ships will just work fine...

i guess this is what i am thinking of ... haha ... i like it

[ncaries]

expressing my thoughts on this topic would cost a lot of effort but fortunately senors post expresses them well.

don't underestimate the complexity of the game, esp. for new players. complexity isnt a problem if there are some consequent guideline that help you through, but this isnt helping.

in my opinion it isnt a goal to add more ships, i think it should be a challange to add value with a new ship, gives the basics we already have.
And: to many ships tend to make a battle a lottery

Thetrue challange of 'innovation' now lies in a stronger link between the strategical and tactical gameplay.
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[spacetrace]

[Cloudgatherer]

[admin]

i think it would be difficult to put it into a flavour text, to explain, why a spaceship should not affect especially fighters, destroyers, cruisers and motherships.
there is no sound physical explanation for it.

i think the better way is to create ships, that are not overpowered so the basic ships always give you the test, if your invention is sound

another option would be, to give the basic ships some triggers or shields, or such, that make them invulnerable against some sophisticated stuff

and anyway:

[vyor]

this game could be made a WHOLE lot more tactacle...it would ruin the game though......We could add rapid fire to balance them.....say a fighter does extra damage to a cruser a cruser does extra damage to a destroyer and a destroyer does extra damage to a fighter(or something)....