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Post by wazzledazzle on May 25, 2017 21:01:18 GMT
Oh OK. Well using mass to calculate fuel points is really weird...for me at least. If we could imply 2.5 km/s DV =1 fuel point, much more stock ship can perform interplanetary travel. And yes battles over Jupiter and asteroids are TRULY BLOODY~ The idea behind ship mass for fuel calculation is that ships aren't launched with their internal delta-V reserve - that's their combat fuel. For travel, they are strapped to external tanks/engines. So a larger ship has a larger surface for mounting extra stages, giving it more range than a smaller ship. The map scale can't really be changed, though, since it mostly represents real-world delta-V cost (with a few compromises). Two more suggestions: Diplomacy and coordinates for nodes Players can PM the game host to inform other players to ask for military access (right to pass by sectors or celestial bodies controlled by other players), use of fuel deposit controlled by other players, ceasefire and request for corporation (or making allies in another word), and even sharing of intelligences~ Also, I suggest to give each node a coordinate, so we can have a more clear idea of location of ship during transfer between celestial bodies~ Diplomacy - I was definitely counting on players communicating ! No need to go through the GM, though, players could PM each other directly for whatever alliance plans they have. But for balance reasons, I think that we should force any starting alliances to be declared at the start of the game (to avoid everyone ganging up on a single player). Node coordinates - I'm not sure why those would be needed, since the nodes are just used for calculating fuel use and travel time. The only thing you need to know is when the ship is going to arrive, and when it is going to pass by a planet (since it could be intercepted). But I don't see why you need its specific location on a node since it can't be attacked there anyways.
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Post by wazzledazzle on May 22, 2017 11:43:50 GMT
I believe my idea of a point for every 2kt over 4kt was accepted (nobody said no) with a minimum of two I like that idea, since it makes more sense and also encourages building larger ships that have longer range, while smaller ships will have to use slingshots or stay in a defensive role. Are fights supposed to end when all of a factions's ships are disabled/destroyed? What if both parties end up out of delta-v for exemple? Also, did you consider the possibility to capture "disrupted" ships? Since turns are three months long, fights should stop at that time limit. And since we track every individual ship, partial destruction of a fleet isn't a problem either. Running out of fuel should set the fleet into Defensive status for its next fights (since, if I remember correctly, the AI never moves when set to Defensive). Once again, being able to manually set fuel / ammo levels would help a lot (pleading look at @qswitched ) Hadn't considered capturing ships, but since it's done in the campaign we definitely should consider it. Not sure how it would work, though - maybe just give players the option to scrap or capture the ship ? Obviously they would still need to repair it, which is quite an investment, but scrapping it would only give 1/4 of its value, so the choice is interesting. Which makes me think, if we go with Enderminion 's idea for fuel, that does make running completely out of fuel a possibility. How about allowing using the civilian tankers for that ? They could give a certain amount of fuel depending on the weight of the ship being refueled. PM'd !
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Post by wazzledazzle on May 20, 2017 19:52:37 GMT
So our attempt to implement multiplayer is to essentially turn it into a DnD style game using CDE as the way to settle fights? Awesome. Also wazzledazzle you don't have comments enabled on the docs. Hah, that's basically it. Also yep, my bad on the docs. Should be enabled now. If I understand correctly - ships would have a maximum amount of fuel, based on their mass ? That is certainly interesting, but shouldn't lighter ships cost less to strap to extra stages ? Yes but smaller ships have less free hull to mount thingsYep, I might have adjusted money without looking at game prices too much, that definitely needs to be fixed. Considering you proposed income, if you had jupider and its moons you could get a smaller ship every two turns or two ships every build phase while accumulating money, the gunship however is the most expensive stock ship and is an outlier, most ships cost >300Mc (the fleet carrier is a little more) but the difference between larger ships and smaller ships is extreme. also "civvie" ships like tankers should cost less, maybe cargo ships can repair damage too? just throwing that out thereI assume game start would have players each owning a sector, or part of a sector (had a list of every faction in the game and what they owned, need to find that I don't think there is any such list). They would have a certain amount of starting budget, which they could freely spend on ships. thats good enough althoug I would suggest a Gc for larger (>150Mc) ships and 200Mc for smaller (<150Mc) ships, if you wanna start with the same amount of kit for each playerAlso, there's no rules for game end yet. Again, nothing is definitive so far, but one thing that could work is if a player controls X sectors for Y turns, the game ends. We could also tally the fleets/money of each player once the game has ended. CDE has total war, I think the game should end when all but one player has surrendered or been fully defeated
Ships : Ah, that makes sense. Income : Yeah, there's some tuning to be done here. About civilian ships, there could be a slight discount for civilian ships, but I'm not sure about repairing outside of a yard - you don't just patch a Whipple shield and internal armour, you swap the whole thing out. Start/End conditions : The game mentions which factions control which bodies in their descriptions, and I had done a list with that, but I can't find it anymore. Oh well. Splitting the starting budget between large and small ships is a great idea, should make the starting fleets a little more even (instead of Gunship/Carrier spam). Fight until surrender/defeat could also work, I'm assuming people will play fair and admit defeat at some point.
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Post by wazzledazzle on May 20, 2017 19:23:37 GMT
continuing from the google docs, the game does mention invasion stageing, so how about a point of propellant bunkerage for every 2000t with a minimum of two (not bonus), also the cost of some ships should be reduced for the game or income increased since if you controled jupider and its moons it would take ~10 turns to get the money for a gunship. also their are no rules for game start and starting units If I understand correctly - ships would have a maximum amount of fuel, based on their mass ? That is certainly interesting, but shouldn't lighter ships cost less to strap to extra stages ? Yep, I might have adjusted money without looking at game prices too much, that definitely needs to be fixed. I assume game start would have players each owning a sector, or part of a sector (had a list of every faction in the game and what they owned, need to find that). They would have a certain amount of starting budget, which they could freely spend on ships. Also, there's no rules for game end yet. Again, nothing is definitive so far, but one thing that could work is if a player controls X sectors for Y turns, the game ends. We could also tally the fleets/money of each player once the game has ended.
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Post by wazzledazzle on May 20, 2017 18:53:35 GMT
why no ceres? it could be in another belt sector with a few (1-3) smaller astroids, and if you add stuff further out then you should be able to use gravity assists and risk combat or spend more propellant and avoid combat. Am I correct in assuming its stock only for now? If a celestial body is missing, it's either that I couldn't find enough data on it, that the transfer times/delta-vee costs were too high or didn't fit with the rest of the map, or that I goofed somewhere . Again, everything is temporary and we want to get as many moons and asteroids on here (planets beyond Jupiter are out of scope because of their long travel times/rare launch windows). Yes, stock only for now. Sharing files between many users wouldn't be practical for a first test run.
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Post by wazzledazzle on May 20, 2017 18:29:41 GMT
Hello, and welcome to the Inner System ! This project, started by apophys , kaiserwilhelm , jasonvance and I, aims to expand Children of a Dead Earth's rich tactical gameplay, by including its battles into a forum-based game of interplanetary strategy. Sending their orders over the forum, players would fight for control of planets, moons and asteroids, managing movement, attacks and ship-building around the Inner Solar System. Battles would be resolved with AI-against-AI fights in Children of a Dead Earth. We already have a map (see the banner, or the link below) and a set of rules governing the campaign. But we are missing a critical element in this project... You!We are preparing for a test run, to tweak and improve the rules, and we are missing AT LEAST one or two players. In addition, as we wish to involve the entire CoaDE community, we would love to hear from all of you : Suggestions, ideas, feedback, anything that you might want to share about this. If you are interested, please answer the poll above, send us a PM, or post in this thread ! If you have any questions regarding the rules or the project in general, feel free to ask here. Links (everything here is subject to change) : The current map : HereThe current rules (commenting is enabled, so fire away) : HereCheers ! May you find a willing foe, and delta-vee.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Mar 14, 2017 10:30:51 GMT
Not sure what "real war" you are referring to. In the book it fares, without spoilers, well enough for its design. Great ability to constrain maneuver thanks to the guns shells, but limited by short range lasers. Oh yes, delta-v is not a primary concern in this setting... Where can I find this book? Yep, the ships reach hundreds of km/s of delta-v at 10mg thrust on cruise mode. Here's the author's website, but you can find the books on Amazon. www.thehumanreach.net/books.shtm
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Post by wazzledazzle on Mar 14, 2017 10:19:53 GMT
Paltus-class spacecraft... Wonder how would they even fare in the real war. Not sure what "real war" you are referring to. In the book it fares, without spoilers, well enough for its design. Great ability to constrain maneuver thanks to the guns shells, but limited by short range lasers.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Mar 14, 2017 7:47:06 GMT
With the advent of extruded turrets, is it a waste to out guns right at the front of a ship now? I continued testing of my super light manned patrol ship and found the frontal guns get stripped off too damn fast. And the sloped armor that was otherwise extremely good was penetrated through the hole in the front and fail. Nose gun on capital ship just sucks now. Don't have any designs with those right now, but they're still the best way to get multiple guns on target whithout showing your broadside. With multiple extruded turrets around the hull, the body of the ship tends to block the line of fire of most of them. There's also the case of spinal, unturreted guns. Rare on warships but still viable on drones But yeah, nose guns aren't very useful anymore. What we would need is lateral nose guns- here's an example from The Human Reach (great hard-fi book series) As you can see one of the green lasers is dead center on the nose, but the other laser and the coilgun are offset to the side. You could have a sloped nose AND front-facing guns. (Also yes, that coilgun is huge)
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Post by wazzledazzle on Mar 4, 2017 8:06:10 GMT
The AI currently has an advantage in laser combat as the new priority rules means it will always target currently active emitters. Luckily you can have a large number of small emitters for relatively low cost, so use those to destroy optics while keeping your main laser disabled.
The new features do make manoeuvre ever so slightly more important- you can pivot to mask and unmask your mirrors to get a jump on the enemy's turrets, or have one ship weather the fire while another moves in to destroy optics. Don't know if it makes sense in text.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Feb 25, 2017 13:43:21 GMT
Just finished tweaking a few ships. SF-143 Safran (Laser Frigate) Want a stellar navy without a stellar budget? Those frigates are light and cheap, mounting a laser in the nose, as well as light coilguns and missiles for backup. Decent mobility, but the armour is lacking. They're best used as cheap support craft in larger fleets. OS-258 Overseer (Missile Cruiser) An affordable capital ship with a focus on survivability, the Overseer can point up to 22 point-defence guns on incoming missiles. Additional armour belts keep the crew and reactor safe, radiators are double-redundant. Missiles are the primary armament. LR-172 Lagrange (Laser Cruiser) This class is meant to operate alone, away from a fleet's tankers, giving it generous supplies of fuel. There are two main 27MW lasers, along with twelve counter-batteries. The armour is light, mainly anti-laser and anti-nuke, leaving it vulnerable to kinetics. AS-151 Asimov (Heavy Cruiser) The Asimov is meant as a true flagship for a fleet. Heavy and tough to take down, with spaced armour, a backup power plant and extra crew members. For offence it carries coilgun-launched missiles, as well as two lasers and six counter-batteries. The "counter-batteries" on the Lagrange are an idea I had when reading a book by J. Lumpkin - Basically, with large aperture lasers it can be expensive and heavy to armour the turret. But with a smaller turret, you can afford to have multiple arrays with much more armour on them. So you let the enemy come into range, burn through his laser with your smaller counter-batteries before using your main laser without fear of losing it. The number of counter-batteries you have and the thicker armour means you can afford to lose a couple. Don't know what it's worth in the current meta, but it's an interesting thought.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Feb 22, 2017 19:36:56 GMT
I suppose you could use software like roll20 and videocalls to make that work long distance, you would also have to make rules for all the things we build Doesn't really need to be done in real-time, though. It's more interesting to give it a slower pace and do it through the forums. Would give some time to make interesting reports of each turn and battle, etc.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Feb 22, 2017 19:20:27 GMT
Had thought about this a little while ago.
There's a grand strategy board game called "Battlefleet Mars" that could be pretty useful for this. The movement on the map actually takes in account varying orbital velocities around the Solar system, and the tech is reasonably close to what we have in the game. Could tweak a few things and resolve the battles in CoaDE.
If I bought a copy of the rules and there was some interest for it, I'd love to host something like that.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Feb 22, 2017 13:38:22 GMT
Well, I guess this counts then. Back when the game came out, there was a discussion on another board where someone joked that refregirators would be more effective than radiators. You can guess the rest.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Feb 17, 2017 11:30:26 GMT
In my mind, unless your weapon is of the low ammo variety, if it has more than a 30% chance to hit, your weapon should be firing. Imo, if a coil/rail weapon has at least a 1% chance to hit, it should be firing. It probably should be adjusted for rate of fire as well - At 1 round per second a 5% chance to hit isn't much, but for a sandblaster firing at 30 rounds per second a 5% chance per round guarantees multiple hits.
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