Hypothetical Suggestuions Thread

[Shrugging Khan]

First off; don't get me wrong: This isn't supposed to be actual suggestions à la "Please mr. Dev, include this in the game!", but, instead, a thread for discussing purely hypothetical ideas about new or altered game mechanics, ship types, and whatever you can came up with. Things that might work, are not too outlandish, but still nothing you'd need to post on Mantis. especially not now that the big man is focussed on AVWW.

So post your wet dreams, discuss their feasibility, destroy other people's dreams, let the mind wander. With no productive pressure whatsoever.

I'll start off with some ship ideas. The numbers aren't important here, the ideas are.


Intragalactic Warp Chamber
Cap: two.
Price: Something around 5 million each
Energy need: Several Hundred Thousands Can be put into low-energy mode.
Immobile, low HP, requires supply. Transports up to approx. 1000 units.

The idea is to have a building similar to the Neinzul Regeneration Chamber, but built to warp ships from one planet to another. It ought to take at least 5 minutes to charge it before warps, it ought to warp the contained ships only to its sister Chamber (Remember: cap 2), and using it or putting it into LE-mode ought to reset the charge timer. The high resource cost and energy use mean that this is not something you build and re-build as to suit your tactical manoeuvres, but a solution to very-long distance logistics problems, when transports are not feasible.


Modular Melee Starship
Fusion Cutter OR Blade damage, in between 20k and 100k every 1s. Medium armour piercing?
Speed around 60 to 100


There is a sad absence of modular non-spire ships, with the Riot Control SS being the only one I can think of. There are also no melee starships. This is intended as a solution to both, with a basic but strong melee attack, and a few (about three?) modules similar to those of the hybrids (as opposed to the engine-damaging ones of the Riots). No particular tactical niche, but something that's fun, and making use of some neglected methods.


Half-Golem
Low Health and armour compared to any other golem, but considerably faster (speed 150 to 200?). Attack power around 50k x 5 every 2s, low or no armour piercing, 5-second-paralysis on hit.
Vampirism or Cloaking to give it some flavour?

Supposed to be a black sheep among golems, being cheaper and less powerful, and filling more of an tactical role than the strategical impact of its bigger brothers. A unit with the particular purpose of interception enemy ships that pose a high threat to other allied items; for example to quickly neutralise a raid starship before it comes close to a damaged CC, or to finish off a weakened target when no other unit is left nearby.



And one tiny mechanics idea: Bring back the save-and-paste-buildings menu from before the port. I really miss that one.




Ah well, criticise these, and then post your own, gentlemen 

[Sunshine!]

If the AI includes warheads in waves at higher AIP.  The use of a warhead in a wave will end up decreasing AIP by the amount a player would normally have to spend on the warhead, and it'll be primarily lightning and armored warheads, no EMP warheads (let's just say the AI has difficulty constructing EMP type things due to its nature as a machine).  Maybe throw in a nuke verrrrrry rarely if the AIP gets up over 1000.  With the lightning and armored, if you can catch and destroy the warhead early enough you can take out a sizable portion of the wave - if not... hahahahahaha.

I too would like a melee starship, but I'd like one that repurposes enemy ships as resources.  Basically a giant mobile recycling bin, fusion cutter attack, generates resources equal to 1/10th damage done or some such.

I would like a warp-jammer-esque support structure that works as follows: you build it on an AI planet, and that planet cannot receive reinforcements, which also means the planetary warp gate and AI eye will not function (planet can't send waves either).  While it is being built, it functions as a "sabotage" unit (it ceases to function as one after it's done because the planet can't receive reinforcements).  It takes a decent chunk of resources, and a decent bit of time so it needs to be defended pretty well, and it will put all neighboring AI planets on alert.  Limit to 6 or so, to let you put them between planets you own to create a safe highway that you don't need to constantly clean of enemies.

I would like to see other electronic warfare type things as well, to give the players more avenues for sabotage instead of a direct military assault.  A command station or structure that gives a much higher chance (though not complete chance - probably 50%/70%/90% for mk1-mk3) that any given AI wave will be launched against a planet that has one of these warp redirectors, rather than any other.

I would like to see a method for temporarily disrupting specific wormholes (a warhead maybe), so players can "force" avenues of attack for short periods of time.  Say an Exogalactic strike force is incoming, headed towards a rather beat-up planet.  You launch a warhead into your beat-up planet's wormhole to close it for a little while, forcing the exogalactic strike force to divert into one of your other nearby planets which happens to be relatively untouched with active defenses.

A virus warhead that turns all AI ships of its mark or below on-planet into zombies temporarily (and releases them to active threat afterward) would make for an interesting (and dangerous) alternative to EMPing a 1500 ship mk3 planet (no mk4 warheads, so won't work on a mk4 planet).  Would probably have 5/15/25 AIP cost (5 for mk1 because it'll only be useful against waves as soon as you step out past the very earliest part of the game).

Edit: I'd forgotten one that's been kicking around for a while.
So we have Golems, these giant ancient rusty buckets of bolts that dish out an absurd amount of damage.  We don't have the technology to make them not kill themselves over time.  Kind of.  There should be an option to retrofit golems with Spirecraft materials to negate the Self-Attrition for a pretty high cost.  They'd be Spirecraft Golems after that.  How it would work is as follows: a build tab would be added to each golem, allowing the golem to be turned into a mining enclosure (with super high health, but weapons disabled) on a specific type of asteroid.  There would be multiple stages of this, with the number of stages varying by golem, and each additional stage requiring higher level asteroids.  Artillery Golems or Black Widow Golems (because they are generally less powerful overall), for example, would only need to go through the first stage or two on Reptite and Pysite.  Botnet and Hive (powerful, but situational) would need to go through 3 or 4 stages on Reptite through Xampite/Ebonite.  Armored and Cursed would need to go through probably 5 stages for Armored, 6 for Cursed, up to titanite/adamantite, because they're super powerful and not situational at all.

Alternatively, to make the bonuses more enticing for players given the expenses, Black Widow and Artillery would go to Tier 3 or 4, but would gain a small self-healing (complete self heal in 3 hours or so) upon completion of the last stage.  Botnet/Hive would go to Tier 4 or 5 and would gain self heal upon completion of final stage.  Armored and Cursed would go to Tier 6 and would gain self heal upon completion of final stage.  Resource intensive, but it's basically front loading all those resources you would've had to pay for repairs into the golem so you don't have to pay them later, and it sucks up a pile of asteroids to make players really consider what they're doing.

I've also had the thought of a smaller, non-attritioning "half-golem" kicking around for a little while, but that's pretty much what the varying marks of Spirecraft Siege Towers are so I don't think it would fit in the game at this point.

[Orelius]

I've had an interesting idea that would probably be impractical and stupid.

AI Super Artillery Cannon
An AI structure that is located deep in AI space, that is able to shoot things on worlds within a 3-jump radius.   This structure is only able to shoot once every five minutes, but when it does, the results are devastating.  Generally, what happens is an explosion with the range and power of a mark I lightning warhead occurs and hits the largest concentration of ships and/or structures.  Generally, there will only be one, and at most, two of these per map.  When the cannon is getting close to being able to fire, you get an alert that says something along the lines of: " Your Ships at <Planet Name> are in danger of being hit by the AI Super Artillery Cannon".  The player doesn't get a warning as to when the cannon fires exactly, and the cannon will only fire at large ship concentrations of perhaps 100-200 ships or more, so you can't just lure the shot away with a small group of ships or scouts.  It would also destroy all transport in its firing range a second or two before the attack, so it's not possible to hide your ships within transports to protect them.  In addition, larger ships, like starships, spirecraft, and golems are unaffected by the attack.

Once you find the artillery cannon you can attempt o capture it.  If you want to capture it, you'll have to fight through the planet's very heavy defenses.  Destroying the AI command station will knock the artillery cannon offline, forcing you to repair it like you would repair a golem.  The cannon would require massive amounts of energy to operate, and has a significant range decrease (down to one or maybe two planet ranges) and health decrease.  It would only be able to fire once every ten minutes or so, and its firing can not be manually targeted.  If the cannon is destroyed, it will trigger a large AI progress increase (50ish?), but the cannon can only be damaged if your command center is destroyed, as it has cloaking similar to that of the human rebel colonies.  The cannon would be able to shoot at worlds that you have scouts upon, or ships that provide scout intel.

Probably a bad idea, but, hey, worth a shot.

[Fleet]

I'm thinking that the removal of production buildings (space docks) with limited their oh-so-limited cues would be cool. The focus would shift on cue management, being composition and location. So, from a single screen, I manage multiple lines of production, and redirect them to different planets as I wish. This does not mean I can necessarily make changes instantaneously (there can be delay for starting up production facilities on a different planet, which is realistic enough), but rather it removes some micro-intensive tedious tasks of managing a large empire spread over several planets. I am also able to issue simple standing orders, such as garrison ship caps, and cue-specific rally/patrol routes, stance, etc.

I think this would fit in very well with the grand strategy aspect of AI War. There are certain parts that can be micro intensive, such as battle management. No way to avoid keeping an eye on things in this case. But I think that the area of macro/production has a huge potential to be abstracted, and the player can really feel like the commander of all of Earth's forces, instead of being captain of one planet at a time.

[Fleet]

Yup, I was thinking the same thing. Either completely integrated with the command station (units just build there), or as a natural extension/add-on. In this way, specific production facilities could be upgraded or expanded. This would give some different paths for the player to take, and would give meaning when the player says something like "main production facilities". They are probably talking about some some shipyards they heavily invested in deep within their territory, not just a planet where they plopped down 5 space docks in a matter of seconds at practically no cost, after which they can instantly build full-speed ahead.

[Sunshine!]

I routinely get up to 10 or more space docks and max starship constructors on my homeworld.  I also like how centralizing your production facilities is very easy - if I had my production facilities split up over every command station across every planet I would go insane with all the micromanagement.  I want all my production organized in one place in a specific way because it's easiest for me to monitor and control.  I think there are enough problems inherent in losing space docks, because any force strong enough to start taking out your space docks will probably be a problematic force in general.

That being said, I have no problems with the idea of upgrades for space docks or starship constructors.  There are two obvious ways to do this:
1.  low knowledge cost, high-ish cap, and increases production speed such that mk# ships will be produced at the same speed as mk1 ships from a mk1 space dock.
2.  high knowledge cost, low-ish cap, increases production speed and reduces production cost such that mk# ships will be produced at the same speed and cost as mk1 ships.  

I am far less likely to unlock the first, since I can just use engineers to speed up construction if necessary.  I am VERY likely to unlock the second as an alternative to econ command stations or harvesters.  There will be tradeoffs here for implementing the second idea; taking a fleet heavy approach will be more necessary by unlocking the space docks since you'll be saving resources, but you'll be more limited in your ability to implement large construction projects.  Similarly, unlocking the mk3 econ or harvesters will probably end up being less efficient for a fleet heavy approach, but will be far more efficient if a player likes large construction projects.

Let's take a look at the numbers game for option 2 really quickly here:  
At most, a ship will cost 120 metal and crystal per second.  Unlocking mk3 space dock and building 6 (to match the number of mk3 econ command stations one can have), a player will instead be spending only 40 metal/crystal per second (in reality it would still be 120 per second for 1/3rd the amount of time, but I didn't want to deal with adding in time as a question), so the space docks have essentially allowed the player to "make" 80 metal/crystal per second (usually less than this because I can't think of any ships that actually cost 120/120 per second).  Given 6 space docks, they're making 480 metal/crystal per second (best-case scenario).  

With 6 econ command stations, a player is making 160 metal/crystal per second guaranteed, for each command station, so 960 of each total.  A player will be making double the cash with the econ command stations unlocked instead of the mk3 space docks, so I in no way think this would be broken (especially since a player using mk2 space docks as well would end up being inefficient costwise, but maybe efficient timewise).

Edit: I'm going to go stick this on the bugtracker, since I would totally unlock these for fleet ships and starships too probably.

Here's the bugtracker post: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3176

[nanohum]

The original space dock discussion led me to remember one of one of my favorite (ASCII!) games - Anacreon Reconstruction.  It can be considered to be a game of maximizing efficiency by managing supply chains.  The relevant portion is that the equivalent of space docks (planets) begin at low efficiency and gradually improve over time if they do not retool.  A planet in that game can be designated to produce a certain type of ship (star ships, jump ships, etc.), and they start off with miserable production rates, but after many turns thousands can be churned out per turn.  I really enjoyed that feeling of specialization, and it was a terrible tragedy to lose an optimized production facility.

How about this:  when first built a space dock produces each new ship with some penalty (say +100% cost and time), and each new ship *of that type* that it builds gets a discount on cost/time (maybe a percentage based on ship cap so as not to penalize low cap ships) to some optimal production rate (maybe 25% discount?).  This should encourage specialization and protection of production facilities.  In order to further encourage this, perhaps each dock should have a limited number of 'specialization' slots (which can be set/reset by the player).

To pick up on the original thought: higher mark production facilities could improve efficiency more rapidly, with perhaps a better optimal rate (and more specialization slots?)

To avoid a sluggish start the home world could be supplied with a partially trained dock for triangle ships.

[Sunshine!]

Nanohum, I like that idea a lot.  It would certainly make for a lot more necessity in guarding your experienced space docks so you don't end up having to start all over and retune all your factories.  The devs have frequently said they won't be adding in experience however, and this would probably fall under that category.

[Shrugging Khan]

How about adding higher-mark space docks?

[TechSY730]

How about adding higher-mark space docks?

How much would that help? Most fleet ships can be built very, very quickly with a decent number of engineers helping it. I'm not sure if I would pay knowledge to reduce the build time from a, say, .5 seconds to .25 seconds, as either way I'm going to hit ship cap quick enough for it to not matter much. This also extends to cost, most fleet ships are so cheap that you could easily rebuild after each attack with barely a dent in your economy, I'm not sure if I would pay knowledge to make that already small dent smaller.

So past the early game, I would rather spend my knowledge on the more general purpose engineers than more specific purpose space docks.

I will admit that both versions of this idea (one decreases cost with Mk, the other decreases base build time with Mk) would help out greatly for low ship cap ships (like Spire maws, Z elec bombers, etc.) and for starships, as those costs and especially build times are high enough for me to care about even in the late game.

[Shrugging Khan]

How about limiting higher-mark ships to higher-mark docks?

[TechSY730]

How about limiting higher-mark ships to higher-mark docks?

You mean make them like the enclaves, only able to build up to their Mk. level? I don't know. That would require a lot of tweaking around with the unlock costs for various marks and for these to keep balance. I guess it would save knowledge in the long run, as part of the unlock cost for all Mk. IIs and Mk. IIIs would be centralized into their respective space dock levels, but in the short term (like your first Mk. II or Mk. III unlock), it would be more expensive. IMO, keeping the space dock Mk. II knowledge  cost + one fleet ship type Mk. II knowledge cost = current one fleet ship type Mk. II knowledge cost would lead to Mk. IIs after your first becoming too cheap unless space dock Mk. II was a quite low cost compared to the base Mk. II unlock cost. Same argument with Mk. IIIs

[Sunshine!]

Khan, Tech: Higher mark space docks suggestion here http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3176

It's kind of hidden at the bottom of my wall of text, but it poses a solution for getting around the problem of mk2/mk3 space docks being redundant compared to a mk1 space dock with a pile of engineers.

[Shrugging Khan]

Just to clarify: My idea was to make the higher-mark docks capable of building specifically unlocked fleet ships, not higher-mark fleet ships in general (i.e.: without having to unlock them by paying knowledge). So yeah, pretty much exactly like the enclaves.