Only played a little bit so far but really enjoying it. Seems like you guys borrowed a good bit from MOO and MOO2 (not that that's a bad thing) but no much that it feels ripped off...seems like you really did your own thing with it. Anyway....
One thing I'm curious about, are there any plans to introduce a research requirement for the "Large" and "Huge" (or maybe just the "Huge") hull sizes? It seems a bit strange that I can built the largest ship sizes right from the start in the game. Another thing I'm curious about is the relative differences between the ship sizes. Right now the difference between a "Large" and "Huge", while pronounced, doesn't seem as large as it should be. I'm wondering if adding research requirements for the two largest ship sizes while increasing the size of each hull would help with this.
Again, this is just an opinion based on only a few hours of gameplay.
Ships Sizes and research
Re: Ships Sizes and research
I agree with that thought - it would be neat for large/huge ships to be in the tech tree. Also, I'm thinking the tech tree needs more action items in general - where is the fun in the entire construction tree and weapons tree if I can never actually build or do anything with them?
Re: Ships Sizes and research
I was able to get the stargate technology as well as the beam defence tech.
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Madbiologist
- Contributor
- Posts: 98
Re: Ships Sizes and research
If they do this, I would limit it to Huge only. Large ship sizes are paramount to any real war you may want to wage, even in the early game (I don't mean early early game, but during the phase where you still exploring and expanding). If a race unlocks Large and you don't, and you get into a war... you are in trouble. Also, vice versa, if you have it while the AI doesn't.... I think the idea behind the tech in the game is avoid "you need X or you are boned" or to have people B-line to certain techs (considering you discovery techs randomly, diplomatically, or by archeology... you can't even b-line if you want to).
Better tech is always desired, but you are not crippled to the point you better off just quitting if you lack something. Too many 4X games become tech races, where having a certain tech just means you won, no need to play anymore. Here in the game, better tech is better, but doesn't automatically give you the rest of the game on a silver platter. All too often I hear games devolve their tech to 'spec trees' akin to classes in MMOs, being only a few build orders in the early game that work. I am rather happy Horizon found a way to do away with that. Introducing hull size tech requirement, may re-introduce this and within a system where you have a more hands off approach to tech (what if you can't get it... but you need it). Now, you have it... no matter how badly you luck out.
Placing ship hulls as technological unlocks would make those become 'b-line' techs (in a system that doesn't let you no less), in a game that seems to want to avoid that, which I agree with this design philosophy. As I said, maybe the largest hull type needing something 'extra' but that is it. Even there, not necessarily a tech requirement.
That said I don't think having Huge available at the start is that bad either. You need a strong economy (large cash reserves) or a huge industry. Even then money doesn't hurt. Maybe making Huge Hulls require a certain level of industrial infrastructure. So you can built them only once you have a developed production world (otherwise you are limited to large only). Honestly I like the fact that even in the early game, if you manage to save up the money or have a built up home world you can churn out a Mothership. It might be impractical, but you want to show off, or maybe as a last ditch effort against a war you are loosing.
From a sci-fi perspective, the primitive star faring race places all its effort into a final last ditch project, to create a leviathan to save their race. Armed to the teach to hold off the invaders. Holding waves of cruisers hoping it can end the war before they die. That is the tales stories are written form, and make for epic games when it happens. That is how I want to loose a game, not get steamrolled by cruisers while I just sit there and do nothing because I did not 'follow' a tech order.
Sorry if I seem to argue the point, but I am rather happy there is a game that has tech being something that supports you and you need to improve, but doesn't completely screws with you if you haven't researched X and Y by turn 100. It saddens me when 4X players swap tech builds like WoW tanks do with their tanking specs. It just seems... wrong. Lasers at level 10 are still good (though it is better if you have other weapons you can use to compliment your designs with).
Also, I don't think the size between cruisers and Motherships is too small. My Cruisers seem under armed all the time and I need to work hard to get what I want in. My Motherships, I can't seem to know what else to put in them (so more guns, and they become armed to the teeth). Did you factor in adding supply or support modules, usually a cruiser looses a lot of its hull if you do, while motherships can handle them easily and still have room for a tonne of weapons. Actually I think the Large to Huge jump in space is just as dramatic as the Medium to Large one.
Now all this said and done, I do agree, more option opening techs would be nice, at least on the planetary level. At the moment you get most of your options for ship design, and imperial improvements are limited to bonuses. You do have the 4th tier of buildings for colonies, and beam defense and star gate, but you only seem to get those from archeological digs and maybe randomly (I haven't gotten one from random discoveries); and can't seem to demand or offer them diplomatically. More options from unlocking techs for colonies would be good.
Better tech is always desired, but you are not crippled to the point you better off just quitting if you lack something. Too many 4X games become tech races, where having a certain tech just means you won, no need to play anymore. Here in the game, better tech is better, but doesn't automatically give you the rest of the game on a silver platter. All too often I hear games devolve their tech to 'spec trees' akin to classes in MMOs, being only a few build orders in the early game that work. I am rather happy Horizon found a way to do away with that. Introducing hull size tech requirement, may re-introduce this and within a system where you have a more hands off approach to tech (what if you can't get it... but you need it). Now, you have it... no matter how badly you luck out.
Placing ship hulls as technological unlocks would make those become 'b-line' techs (in a system that doesn't let you no less), in a game that seems to want to avoid that, which I agree with this design philosophy. As I said, maybe the largest hull type needing something 'extra' but that is it. Even there, not necessarily a tech requirement.
That said I don't think having Huge available at the start is that bad either. You need a strong economy (large cash reserves) or a huge industry. Even then money doesn't hurt. Maybe making Huge Hulls require a certain level of industrial infrastructure. So you can built them only once you have a developed production world (otherwise you are limited to large only). Honestly I like the fact that even in the early game, if you manage to save up the money or have a built up home world you can churn out a Mothership. It might be impractical, but you want to show off, or maybe as a last ditch effort against a war you are loosing.
From a sci-fi perspective, the primitive star faring race places all its effort into a final last ditch project, to create a leviathan to save their race. Armed to the teach to hold off the invaders. Holding waves of cruisers hoping it can end the war before they die. That is the tales stories are written form, and make for epic games when it happens. That is how I want to loose a game, not get steamrolled by cruisers while I just sit there and do nothing because I did not 'follow' a tech order.
Sorry if I seem to argue the point, but I am rather happy there is a game that has tech being something that supports you and you need to improve, but doesn't completely screws with you if you haven't researched X and Y by turn 100. It saddens me when 4X players swap tech builds like WoW tanks do with their tanking specs. It just seems... wrong. Lasers at level 10 are still good (though it is better if you have other weapons you can use to compliment your designs with).
Also, I don't think the size between cruisers and Motherships is too small. My Cruisers seem under armed all the time and I need to work hard to get what I want in. My Motherships, I can't seem to know what else to put in them (so more guns, and they become armed to the teeth). Did you factor in adding supply or support modules, usually a cruiser looses a lot of its hull if you do, while motherships can handle them easily and still have room for a tonne of weapons. Actually I think the Large to Huge jump in space is just as dramatic as the Medium to Large one.
Now all this said and done, I do agree, more option opening techs would be nice, at least on the planetary level. At the moment you get most of your options for ship design, and imperial improvements are limited to bonuses. You do have the 4th tier of buildings for colonies, and beam defense and star gate, but you only seem to get those from archeological digs and maybe randomly (I haven't gotten one from random discoveries); and can't seem to demand or offer them diplomatically. More options from unlocking techs for colonies would be good.
Re: Ships Sizes and research
I wouldn't mind this for the Huge (Mothership) class of ships, but having it for cruisers would be a headache I do not want! This was done in SotS, and as mentioned by other people below.Delta_V wrote:
One thing I'm curious about, are there any plans to introduce a research requirement for the "Large" and "Huge" (or maybe just the "Huge") hull sizes? It seems a bit strange that I can built the largest ship sizes right from the start in the game. Another thing I'm curious about is the relative differences between the ship sizes. Right now the difference between a "Large" and "Huge", while pronounced, doesn't seem as large as it should be. I'm wondering if adding research requirements for the two largest ship sizes while increasing the size of each hull would help with this.
Again, this is just an opinion based on only a few hours of gameplay.
What MB says right here is exactly right in Sword of the Stars, and annoying as hell. You get epic cruisers with shields rank four, railguns, whatever, and the AI walks up with dreadnoughts and chomps them to pieces. Your choices then become...Madbiologist wrote:
If they do this, I would limit it to Huge only. Large ship sizes are paramount to any real war you may want to wage, even in the early game (I don't mean early early game, but during the phase where you still exploring and expanding). If a race unlocks Large and you don't, and you get into a war... you are in trouble. Also, vice versa, if you have it while the AI doesn't.... I think the idea behind the tech in the game is avoid "you need X or you are boned" or to have people B-line to certain techs (considering you discovery techs randomly, diplomatically, or by archeology... you can't even b-line if you want to).
A) Research the bigger ships above all else (which caused other hassles in SotS, and might in this too).
B) Hope that you can print out overwhelming numbers of high end badass cruiser class ships to compensate.
Either way sucks.
No, if you're going to limit things, just limit the Mothership class...annnnnd...
...the best way to do that may be to REQUIRE the player to build a shipyard before they can build one.
As far as I know, shipyards don't seem to do much anyway?
Emperor PayPatine out!
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Madbiologist
- Contributor
- Posts: 98
Re: Ships Sizes and research
They improve the speed of construction considerably, and have a minor improvements on buyout costs.Zalthun wrote:As far as I know, shipyards don't seem to do much anyway?
But I do like the suggestion, that motherships can only be built at shipyards. At worst, requiring a shipyard and maybe Factories as an industrial building (or Grand-scale Factories at worst worst).
Re: Ships Sizes and research
Madbiologist wrote:
But I do like the suggestion, that motherships can only be built at shipyards. At worst, requiring a shipyard and maybe Factories as an industrial building (or Grand-scale Factories at worst worst).
That makes sense. They need the size of the shipyard in orbit to put the thing together, and the grand scale factories on the ground to make the parts.
Emperor PayPatine out!
Re: Ships Sizes and research
Yea, after playing for a bit I'd say limit the research requirement to the largest ship size only or only letting them be built at shipyards. On a related note, note, does it seem to anyone else right now that once you establish a few colonies and get a decent economy going that ships are way to easy to come by?
After I had colonized an additional 4 to 5 colonies in my first game I found myself with huge amounts of cash. I could build large fleets of Huge ships as fast as I could buy them. I'm sure this will come up more in testing but it seems to me that either ships (even huge ships) are too cheap or their needs to be some balance done to the economy or some mechanism to prevent the abuse 1-turn buyouts for large amounts of ships.
After I had colonized an additional 4 to 5 colonies in my first game I found myself with huge amounts of cash. I could build large fleets of Huge ships as fast as I could buy them. I'm sure this will come up more in testing but it seems to me that either ships (even huge ships) are too cheap or their needs to be some balance done to the economy or some mechanism to prevent the abuse 1-turn buyouts for large amounts of ships.
Re: Ships Sizes and research
Yes, once you get some good money rolling in, you can buy ships fast. I just go for mega-economy, in most cases, and then print out ships 1-per-turn.Delta_V wrote:Yea, after playing for a bit I'd say limit the research requirement to the largest ship size only or only letting them be built at shipyards. On a related note, note, does it seem to anyone else right now that once you establish a few colonies and get a decent economy going that ships are way to easy to come by?
After I had colonized an additional 4 to 5 colonies in my first game I found myself with huge amounts of cash. I could build large fleets of Huge ships as fast as I could buy them. I'm sure this will come up more in testing but it seems to me that either ships (even huge ships) are too cheap or their needs to be some balance done to the economy or some mechanism to prevent the abuse 1-turn buyouts for large amounts of ships.
Emperor PayPatine out!
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jorgen_cab
- Citizen
- Posts: 36
- Location: Sweden
Re: Ships Sizes and research
That will also make shipyards kind of redundant to build. Last game I never built any shipyards and only one starbase at Earth.
Re: Ships Sizes and research
It does, but it wouldn't if they were required to make Motherships.jorgen_cab wrote:That will also make shipyards kind of redundant to build. Last game I never built any shipyards and only one starbase at Earth.
Emperor PayPatine out!
Re: Ships Sizes and research
I believe the matter of quantity of ship sizes and requirements for them is only a balancing issue.
Player or AI could take an afford and get the biggest available ship earlier than all other races, but It shouldn't mean that such race will get absolutely advantage. At least such race have to have some weak point - either less advanced technologies for weapons, defenses and core structures or industry capability. So, other races could oppose to such race bigger amount of smaller and more advanced ships. It would be cool if some races couldn't research some biggest sizes at all, but would have some bonuses for smaller sizes instead.
Also, don't forget that in Horizon mechanic you can fire with heavy and normal weapons only in forward direction from the ship. So, if dreadnought will not be able to fully turn on 180 degrees during its phase of combat then it'll be easily destroyed by little and more agile ships from the back.
Player or AI could take an afford and get the biggest available ship earlier than all other races, but It shouldn't mean that such race will get absolutely advantage. At least such race have to have some weak point - either less advanced technologies for weapons, defenses and core structures or industry capability. So, other races could oppose to such race bigger amount of smaller and more advanced ships. It would be cool if some races couldn't research some biggest sizes at all, but would have some bonuses for smaller sizes instead.
Also, don't forget that in Horizon mechanic you can fire with heavy and normal weapons only in forward direction from the ship. So, if dreadnought will not be able to fully turn on 180 degrees during its phase of combat then it'll be easily destroyed by little and more agile ships from the back.