Design Discussion: Transport Revamp Ideas

[keith.lamothe]

The slow unload / inability to be scrapped on AI planets sounds like a decent trade off. It shouldn't affect the way I personally use Transports too much

(though it may mean higher casualty rates for CS raids when I want to funnel AI ships into a wormhole trap).

Both the lack of impact on "peaceful" usage and the significant impact on "ramming speed!" usage are what we're going for  It'll still be possible to command-station rush with these, but there will be more incentive to at least partially beach-head.

[carlosjuero]

Normally I do form a beach head, unless I am outnumbered on the next planet in line (or it is a MK III or higher) - then I need to weed them out or my beach head won't survive long enough to do any good. Warheads only work so well against higher MK planets, and the AIP cost isn't always welcome (for me at least .

I can still use them for my beach head support ships I bring in after mopping up the wormhole & nearby posts at least, the slow unload won't really matter with them.

The slow unload / inability to be scrapped on AI planets sounds like a decent trade off. It shouldn't affect the way I personally use Transports too much

(though it may mean higher casualty rates for CS raids when I want to funnel AI ships into a wormhole trap).

Both the lack of impact on "peaceful" usage and the significant impact on "ramming speed!" usage are what we're going for   It'll still be possible to command-station rush with these, but there will be more incentive to at least partially beach-head.

[x4000]

I think this is a great set of changes.

[Rustayne]

Ok, in for 3.184:

* Transports are now always subject to the gradual-unload rule when on a hostile planet (they can still bulk-unload on a friendly planet or a neutral planet that is in-supply).
* Transports can no longer be scrapped on a hostile planet (they can still be scrapped on a friendly or neutral planet).
* MkII Transports gradual unload rate increased from 10/second to 20/second (mkI is still 10/second).

Sounds like the best solution to the problem. It was kind of cheesy to be able to scrap them.   I assume that if transports get destroyed, they still do their bulk unload?

[Vinraith]

I don't have a useful suggestion at present, but I'm thrilled to see that you guys are thinking about this. Transports, as it stands, are sufficiently powerful that conducting any offensive strike without them is completely silly. Load up the transport, roll in, pop guard posts or command post, roll out. This makes for a lack of diversity in offensive action, undermines the effects of the varied new guard posts, and just feels kind of cheap since the AI doesn't even have transports. I think if you could achieve all six of your goals that "cheap" sense would go away, and that'd be great. Smiley

I'm not sure the 3.184 changes at present will get us all the way there, I'll have to test it but my guess is I'll still always be shipping offensive units in a transport every time I attack a planet, I'll just have to offload them a bit further away from the target command posts and guard posts.

(edit by Keith: sorry, for some reason I hit modify instead of reply, restored the original text now)

[keith.lamothe]

I assume that if transports get destroyed, they still do their bulk unload?

Correct, and they also skip the gradual-unload rule if in friendly territory.

[keith.lamothe]

Transports, as it stands, are sufficiently powerful that conducting any offensive strike without them is completely silly.

I'm not sure the 3.184 changes at present will get us all the way there, I'll have to test it but my guess is I'll still always be shipping offensive units in a transport every time I attack a planet, I'll just have to offload them a bit further away from the target command posts and guard posts.

Right, they'll still be useful in a large number of offensive cases, this is a large part of the reason they no longer cost knowledge.  But they will no longer be quite so much of an "I Win" button   Also, particularly early on in the game, their resource and energy cost is non-trivial, and an offensive that can manage without them can have more ships or launch earlier.  Should they still prove to be too effective at bumrushing, their unload rate can be decreased to 5/10 or whatever.

[Arcain_One]

A. Warping Transports That Die On Delivery

This would meet the goal #5 very well, and it could be made to work for ?#3 and #4 pretty easily, but it would violate goals #1 and #2 unless a time lag was put on the transports' warp.  And that could be done.  But in the meantime you'd have all these ships out there in limbo, which would be a real pain.

Unless, potentially, the transport just sat on the planet that it was warping from, with a "warp timer" counting down, after which it moved instantly.  Then you could cancel the warp and get your guys out if you had to, while still having the time penalty.  That actually would work really well.

But then there is a secondary problem of where the ships would actually appear when reaching the destination planet, which is not easy to solve.  They could appear somewhere at random if no friendly ships are there, or they could appear next to a random friendly ship if friendly ships are there (so a scout could be seeded in enemy territory, for instance), or next to the command station if it's a friendly planet.

Of course, the scout thing could lead to abuse with the mark IV scouts, so maybe it would have to be limited to the lower-level scouts, which would get revealed by the tachyons of all the various guard posts and command stations.  And I guess the guard posts and command stations would then ALL need to have tachyons, too.

This design might actually work, come to think of it, with the warp timer on local planet thing.  That just occurred to me.  Of course, it's a pretty big departure and would make the regenerating transports useless, but those could be turned into something else.

This sounds less like a transport and more like the Warp Drive or Jump Drive idea that has been requested but instead of using scouts it could use its own personal warp assist drone

B. Lower-Heath Transports With No Self-Attrition But With Move Restrictions

Basically, transports simply would not be able to get further away than 5 hops, period.  That would meet #4, mostly.  With the lower health, it might be really hard to get them out to 5 hops, though, or even 3 sometimes.  One of the benefits of the high health on the transports right now is that they are pretty reliable at going certain distances, which is important.  With more fragile transports, they would be pretty bad at #3.  And if the health wasn't low enough, then it wouldn't meet #5.  And I'm not sure this would meet #5, anyway.

All in all, this one seems un-salvageable.

The health seems to need to be lowered anyways, even just 10%. The limiting the distance would give a difficult explanation (a second kind of supply?)

C. Anti-Transport Guns on AI Guard Posts And Command Stations

Basically, the current model of transports is great, except that they provide that bonus when parking right up next to the big AI structures.  Well -- the AI structures of note are always next to a guard post or command station.  So if those had a big gun, that killed transports that got too near, that would be helpful.

Except not, because that would just eject all the ships inside the transport, unless that was changed.  But then THAT would make transport use really risky because they tend to die on 3-4 hops, and then you have the whole micromanagement issue that invalidates #6.

Not to mention that the transports have a legitimate reason to pass by command stations and guard posts while en route to a different planet, and they'd get shot to pieces in those circumstances, which would randomly violate both #3 and #4.  Unless there was some sort of "transports are immune while going cross-planet" logic, but then players could give extra-far move orders to go cross planet, and then could simply cancel those when the transport was in range of the target structure, so long as the target structure was within a line between the destination and the starting point.  So that would violate #5 and #6.

This one seems even more un-salvageable than B, above.

Just picking ideas out of the air, what about, to stop the charge a CP and delete tactic, some kind of high range field that CPs could project that only affects transports (like a very specific grav turret).

It could do one of the following:
-immobilize any transport in it's field, or just prevent entry to the area.
-massively slow down the transports in the area.
- and possibly my favourite: Jam up the unloading mechanisms of the transport to prevent unloading within the protected area. Of course, there could be a problem with the delete unload. To combat this you could make it so if the transport dies (or is deleted) in this area, the ships are lost (or a proportion of them are, or they come out at half health, and stunned for a few seconds). The transport ship could flash red when in one of these fields, with a message in it's tool tip that warns about the transport disruption field.

Why not have the A.I. use gravity turrets?(or at least when it sees the player using transports) I doubt this would increase the difficulty nor annoyance much, if any thing it gives us a bit more variety.

un-salvageable

To an engineer no idea is un-salvageable, we just can't make it work right now


Admittedly, I have not used the transports yet but I still like to lend my opinion if it helps

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums

I think the changes we wound up making for this iteration will do pretty well, but we'll keep those other ideas in mind in case this doesn't do it.

[Vinraith]

The "AI using gravity turrets" idea is a sound one even outside the transports discussion, that would put an interesting dent in a lot of raiding strategies. It obviously shouldn't be very common, but from an "occasional change in the strategic landscape" standpoint it has potential.

[x4000]

The "AI using gravity turrets" idea is a sound one even outside the transports discussion, that would put an interesting dent in a lot of raiding strategies. It obviously shouldn't be very common, but from an "occasional change in the strategic landscape" standpoint it has potential.

Indeed!

[RCIX]

Another thing that's sort of related is if AI planets put turrets all over the place then there's no real safe spot to park and unload; your fleet or transports are facing constant attrition.

[Kjara]

Any chance of going one step further and putting them on a timer like electric shuttles, so that only one(or some small number) can unload every second?  That way you can't get around this by using 20 transports with 50 units each in them (though of course this would be pretty energy intensive, but very manageable if you capture a zenith power plant or two) to get an unload rate of 200 per second for 5 seconds.  Other than that, I think this is a step in the right direction.

[keith.lamothe]

Actually, if someone builds 20 transports with and loads 50 ships each, I think it's entirely reasonable that they be able to unload in 5 seconds.  They paid for the privilege   That's 200,000 energy they don't have for ships.

That said, if we find that this is a problem, we could look at a per-planet-per-player throttle like with electric shuttles and lightning turrets.  More likely to just reduce the unload rate first, though.

[Kjara]

Pfft, its only one zenith power plant, and it makes it easier to get your ships to the target since the transport fleet has more hps too.  Its just alot of micro to get the darned ships split evenly like that .