Ideas for the next expansion?

[keith.lamothe]

A Katamari ship would be pretty funny to see show up.

One morning, the Dyson Sphere just felt this need... the need... to roll.

(fade in "Naaaa nanana na na na..." music, followed shortly by a growing chorus of screaming, which evidently can be heard in space)

[Draco18s]

(fade in "Naaaa nanana na na na..." music, followed shortly by a growing chorus of screaming, which evidently can be heard in space)

Wide-band transmission.

[Aklyon]

A Katamari ship would be pretty funny to see show up.

One morning, the Dyson Sphere just felt this need... the need... to roll.

(fade in "Naaaa nanana na na na..." music, followed shortly by a growing chorus of screaming, which evidently can be heard in space)

Well, all you need is a big enough katamari, and suddenly this is in space, picking up your spacecraftdoods.

[brianc]

A revamped scoring system, possibly a mode with a multiplier effect for kills with different values for different ships and a timer creating a whole new way of playing. A mode that compresses every function of the game letting a campaign be completed in maybe an hour or two at a respectable difficulty.  The game's got a ton of content, I think the focus should be on selecting different rule sets and modes.

[Aklyon]

Revamping the score system assumes it actually makes sense in the first place. I have no idea how it works, but frumple describes it better.

What I've learned from this session is AI War scoring is an eldritch abomination of incomprehensibility. Part of me wonders if it doesn't just go up randomly in order to give people pretty numbers to look at.

This is from a time when everyone's score (except mine, it was 12) was exactly 6, regardless of raw score.

[keith.lamothe]

What I've learned from this session is AI War scoring is an eldritch abomination of incomprehensibility.

100% correct.

[Bognor]

Despite allegedly being a Sr. Member Mark III, I know precisely zero about how scoring works.  I remember searching the wiki and forums about it ages ago but found nothing.

A mode that compresses every function of the game letting a campaign be completed in maybe an hour or two at a respectable difficulty.

I'd certainly use this.  I do love the idea of epic 30-hour campaigns, but real life means by the time I ever get half-way through one I want to restart to try all the new features that have come out since I started.

[Draco18s]

A mode that compresses every function of the game letting a campaign be completed in maybe an hour or two at a respectable difficulty.

I'd certainly use this.  I do love the idea of epic 30-hour campaigns, but real life means by the time I ever get half-way through one I want to restart to try all the new features that have come out since I started.

Yeah.  I was thinking about how I could do that in the last week or so.

[brianc]

A mode that compresses every function of the game letting a campaign be completed in maybe an hour or two at a respectable difficulty.

I'd certainly use this.  I do love the idea of epic 30-hour campaigns, but real life means by the time I ever get half-way through one I want to restart to try all the new features that have come out since I started.

Yeah.  I was thinking about how I could do that in the last week or so.

I'd imagine everything could be compressed in a similar way to how the ship count options are handled.  Everything has greater value but there are less planets and the difficulty ramps up quicker. 

[Aklyon]

You can already choose less planets, though.

[Draco18s]

No.  That's not what I'm looking for.  I want to be able to conquer more planets in less time.

The only thing I can think of that make it work is....

• Cut build times down to 25% of whatever they are currently.
• Double (base) player unit speeds. (Basically: spend less time waiting for my units to get somewhere, but not reduce the reaction time of the AI doing something because the AI's units are also moving faster; i.e. not the same as Time +2)
• Increase time between waves (of all kinds) by 200%

Would it make the game easier?  Probably.  But I want things to be moving fast enough that I can win a game in 1.5-4 hours.  The big things that slow the game down have to do with build speeds (even with a rocking economy it's not the cost of units but their build time), how often I'm reacting to the AI (defending against waves), and travel times.

[Shoat]

No.  That's not what I'm looking for.  I want to be able to conquer more planets in less time.

The only thing I can think of that make it work is....

• Cut build times down to 25% of whatever they are currently.
• Double (base) player unit speeds. (Basically: spend less time waiting for my units to get somewhere, but not reduce the reaction time of the AI doing something because the AI's units are also moving faster; i.e. not the same as Time +2)
• Increase time between waves (of all kinds) by 200%

Would it make the game easier?  Probably.  But I want things to be moving fast enough that I can win a game in 1.5-4 hours.  The big things that slow the game down have to do with build speeds (even with a rocking economy it's not the cost of units but their build time), how often I'm reacting to the AI (defending against waves), and travel times.

The first and third options are already available:
- You can increase your handicap to get a huge boost to resources and just boost out EVERYTHING with engineers. If you have the resources for it, anything can be built within SECONDS if you put enough engineers onto it.
- There's an option in the lobby that halves the frequency between waves (but keeps their power the same, effectively making waves half as dangerous).


Not that I'm against your idea of a new gamemode, but there are so many lobby-options (and in-game cheats) available that you could use to customize your experience and get pretty close to your idea of a new faster gamemode.

[lemon10]

The first option is not available. Even with maxed out MK 1-3 engis, with a very large endgame fleet cap it can take well over 10 minutes to build up your fleet from completely dead. And that assumes that you have infinite resources and don't have a huge spirecraft fleet to build as well at the same time.

[Aklyon]

Rebuild endgame from completely dead is one of those cases where it wil take quite some time regardless of how much resources you have, you want to avoid it if at all possible; every ship you can hold onto if you've got to pull back is that much time saved building. There is simply too much quantity, if you bring every spacedock and starcon online and build from all of them at once you can't focus the engies, if you use only one you are gonig to be bottlenecked no matter that pile of engineers involved.