Dave's Galaxy

[fodder]

heh.. think i lost like 3 or 4 planets so far and took 1.

[Vellos]

I think a better solution would be to make PD planets just not produce much in the way of resources(steel etc.). Maintaining the system can't be cheap and it would mean you have to actually place them strategically or you wouldn't be able to produce much fleets to actually attack someone or even colonize new planets.

So you'd end up with players having to decide between being able to project force and being defensive. Have a PD on every single planet? Well, you won't be producing those superbattleships fleets in any meaningful time frame and your new colonies will be in trouble. So players would need to come up with a balance and maybe we wouldn't end up with players building them on ever planet.

Reducing the area of effect will just make it worse I think. I know I'd have to build more of them.

Just don't let PD overlap have an effect.

Would it be hard to code something saying that "a fleet can only be shot by 1 PD per turn"?

So the incentive would be, rather than to make overlapping PD, make tangential PD.

[Dav3xor]

heh.. think i lost like 3 or 4 planets so far and took 1.

Haha, I was thinking that you were winning (I swear I see more weight to your fleets than mine...)

[Dav3xor]

Just don't let PD overlap have an effect.

Would it be hard to code something saying that "a fleet can only be shot by 1 PD per turn"?

So the incentive would be, rather than to make overlapping PD, make tangential PD.

Hmmm...  PD is pretty expensive already, and it's not very effective at the limits of it's range - I like things that make tradeoffs you have to think about.  How close do you weave your fleets through a maze of stuff to attack your neighbor, etc.  Maybe I could make it so that overlapping PD's cancel each other out...  that'd be a lot of computational geometry to do, especially in Heirulf-Space...

[LilWolf]

Hmmm...  PD is pretty expensive already

Only in quantaloos. Make it cut into steel production in a significant manner and it'll be a strategic decision instead of a build it everywhere and forget it sort of thing. No need for complex code to decide which PD hits a fleet and which ignores a fleet.

[Dav3xor]

Only in quantaloos. Make it cut into steel production in a significant manner and it'll be a strategic decision instead of a build it everywhere and forget it sort of thing. No need for complex code to decide which PD hits a fleet and which ignores a fleet.

So I'll set it to 5000 steel a turn, and watch the screaming start....

[LilWolf]

So I'll set it to 5000 steel a turn, and watch the screaming start....

The anguished screams of nerds is my preferred way to wake up in the morning 

[Tom]

Just don't let PD overlap have an effect.

Excuse me?

Not only does that make no sense at all, it also makes defense against huge fleets entirely impossible. My PDs eat tons of resources every turn, and I haven't used them once. They better give it all when an enemy comes into range.


Plus, it kind of defeats my entire strategy. :-)

[Tom]

Only in quantaloos. Make it cut into steel production in a significant manner and it'll be a strategic decision instead of a build it everywhere and forget it sort of thing. No need for complex code to decide which PD hits a fleet and which ignores a fleet.

But the "build it everywhere and forget it" part is exactly what makes PD interesting to players like me, who don't run 500 scripts and 20 excel sheets over our empires.

[LilWolf]

But the "build it everywhere and forget it" part is exactly what makes PD interesting to players like me, who don't run 500 scripts and 20 excel sheets over our empires.

True, but do you really need 5 of them overlapping? I mean, if someone attacks you I'd assume you'd care enough to build a fleet for some additional defense instead of just relying on the PD's to take care of everything

In some cases players have like 10 PDs covering a single planet. Add in the fleets they can produce from those planets and you're looking at impossible odds to overcome. Hecks, my planet with a single PD held out against 50SBS with very little problems. A single PD beat the crap out of some 1000 cruiser and a few hundred battleships I sent against it. I can't even begin to try any sort of assault on something that has more than a single PD covering it and I'm a player with some 900 planets.

[Vellos]

I've actually wondered if breaking overlapping PD is really even possible.

With, say, 7 or 8 PD overlapping on planets that are quite productive and that are close together (a star cluster), and with those planets able to produce 15,000 Steel a day each...

Yeah.... I feel like that'd be pretty tough to break. How many thousands of ships would you need?

Or you could just say that PD only has a limited amount of "shots" per turn. Overlapping would still be valuable, but less so.

I personally don't like high resource costs, as it doesn't really fix the problem. Stack up steel to your maximum thresholds, then build PD. Add most existing PD great-walls-of-china have been sitting around for a while, and so probably have big piles of resources already accumulated. IMHO, the most effective means of balancing PD is not to raise the cost of PD, but to diminish its power.

[LilWolf]

I personally don't like high resource costs, as it doesn't really fix the problem. Stack up steel to your maximum thresholds, then build PD. Add most existing PD great-walls-of-china have been sitting around for a while, and so probably have big piles of resources already accumulated. IMHO, the most effective means of balancing PD is not to raise the cost of PD, but to diminish its power.

And once that resource pileup is used to build a fleet and they see they're only making 2000 steel per turn instead of 12 000, they'll seriously consider whether they need all those planetary defenses. They'll certainly be worse off than someone who has a balanced setup since a single non-pd planet equals six that have one

[fodder]

Haha, I was thinking that you were winning (I swear I see more weight to your fleets than mine...)

i probably do have more weight due to lots of "full" planets... (and now getting shot up by your pd) not touching planets that don't have your fleet near them (so merc can eventually grab them and the resources XD)

not even sure how you got the planets as most of your fleets are like 3 destroyers or some such, even though you had a bundle of them. as opposed to me with 1k this 300 that, etc.. oh well... they should be fairly empty anyway...

as for pd.. you want overlap anyway right at the borders, because a damaged pd might not shoot?

[Tom]

True, but do you really need 5 of them overlapping?

No, I need 10 of them overlapping. 5 is when you're trying to attack one of my outer planets. If you try to hit my home world, you need to fly through at least 20 PDs before you even get in range of its own PD.

And that's exactly how I want it. Because I spent months building up that defense, it should be equally hard to get past it.

[De-Legro]

I've actually wondered if breaking overlapping PD is really even possible.

With, say, 7 or 8 PD overlapping on planets that are quite productive and that are close together (a star cluster), and with those planets able to produce 15,000 Steel a day each...

Yeah.... I feel like that'd be pretty tough to break. How many thousands of ships would you need?

Or you could just say that PD only has a limited amount of "shots" per turn. Overlapping would still be valuable, but less so.

I personally don't like high resource costs, as it doesn't really fix the problem. Stack up steel to your maximum thresholds, then build PD. Add most existing PD great-walls-of-china have been sitting around for a while, and so probably have big piles of resources already accumulated. IMHO, the most effective means of balancing PD is not to raise the cost of PD, but to diminish its power.

Its possible. I just took a planet protected by nine PD's. 4 of these were at maximum range though so their effectiveness wasn't great. In the end I sent 15k of battleships, I think I've got 2k left and I will probably lose those too. Need to reinforce the area quickly. There are tricks to taking heavy PD defenses, but they rely on the other player making some mistakes.