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Darius Sanguna

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Posts posted by Darius Sanguna

  1. The main question is, when can you call something that you have created a new species? After the change of 1% of its genom, 5%, 10% or even 50%?

    1% maybe even 5% would be pretty easy, the only thing you have to do is cleaning the genom of broken genes and the kind that would be likely to be mutating, and fill the created gaps with more stable and desirable genes. Is this already a new species or is it human because it is still made up of human genes?

    Or a other question would a human with cosmetic changes on genetic level like a fox tail and ears (without the better hearing) still be a human or would he belong to a new species? This is probably a more philosophical approach but still valid i think.

  2. I also don't think that there will be different human species to choose from, at least not at game start, but genetical engineering could be a thing so that we could adapt to different kinds of environment and after a long time (don't know how long but i guess several years) we could end up with many differnet human species, i think Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda could be a good example.

  3. We are proud to announce that the Vulture Corporation is now working with the Terran Union together.

     

    We have also to announce that the Terran Union now is using Razer Comms for the internal communication.

    If you are a Citizen of the Union and want to join our Razer Comms community, please send a PM to me, i will give you the password.

     

     

    Changelog Version 2.2.3

    Added “Communication” under “The Union”

    Changed something in Economy/Companies/Be a Company in the Union

    Added “Vulture Corporation” under Economy/Companies/Companies that are currently working with the Union

    Added links to the description

  4. But this fundamentally about balance. I believe this idea as you have explained it and I have read it would have serious balance issues.

     

    We will have to wait and see what specific ideas NQ have and when that happens we can all express our opinions on them constructively.

    Yes but no unsolvable issues.

     

    Yes i agree lets wait with what NQ comes up.

  5. As Leader of the Terran Union i'm proud to announce, that the negotiations with the Cindfall Syndicate has come to an end.

    From now on we are a part of the Cinderfall Syndicate, what will guarantee our sovereignity and freedom.

     

    With this i also release the version 2.2.2 of our description.

     

    I wish all of our citizens a nice day! :)

     

    Changelog Version 2.2.2

    Added “Member of the Cinderfall Syndicate” under “The Union”

    Added Category Government/Cinderfall Syndicate

    Added Category Economy/Companies

    Added Category Economy/National Bank

    Added Category Economy/National Bank/Rentable Safes

    Added Category Economy/National Bank/Loans

    Moved Category Society/Markets to Economy/Markets

  6. Here is where I see the crux of our disagreement. What you see as evening things up a bit I see as bypassing an important and fundamental disadvantage.

    And why exactly is bypassing a disadvantage bad? Since our (mankinds) very beginnig the goal of evolution and technology is to bypass and overcome the disadvantages and obstacles.

    And don't throw the "balanced" argument at me, yes i agree that the game need some sort of balance, but you can also over balance one aspect of the game, which would lead to an imbalance of one or mutiple other aspects, the goal is to find a overall balance and this is certainly nothing that can you achieve via simply banning possible features that seems to OP for you. And don't begin with "fair" at the beginning the game will be fair in terms of start conditions, but after that, the game will be so fair as real life is fair.

     

    What if there's no gate in the system? Ask again how I think this mechanic makes big ships super fast. You have to compare like for like, you can't just throw in a star gate when it suits you.

    In my eye's the jumpengine tech, is a tech that will first appear after the point where almost all developted systems will have a jumpgate and when at this point your system still has no jumpgate, then it will make no difference if the invasion fleet will need 2 hours or 2 weeks, because you aren't able to prepare a defense that could withstand it, at least not in a time period that would a fleet not allow to get to you, even if they would use first generation FTL-drives. I hope the formulation makes sense.

  7. I'll just respond to this. What I want to see is for all sizes of organisation to remain relevant and to be able to hold their own. I want smaller, but smarter organisations to be able to hurt or even defeat larger ones. I want it to be difficult to hold huge swaths of territory for extended periods of time. I want the geopolitical map to be dynamic and ever changing. I want trade offs between advantages and disadvantages of different playing styles, different designs, different strategies, and I want them to scale. I want ground based or single planet organisations to be relevant - and just as powerful as multi planet organisations of similar resources. Super weapons and super fast travel are contrary these ideals.

    You are going here for a very very complex topic and many, if not even almost all, of the things you have mentioned here will depend on player strategies. For example let us go with the dificulty of holding large territories, here would have an organization with many smaller ships an advantage over an organization with a few larger ships. For this example let assume that both organizations have an equal amount of resources. So what would be the point of having a few larger ships? Every reasonably intelligent human would go for the many smaller ships. So what could we do to make a few larger ships more attractive? hmm... maybe adding a jumpengine to one of the larger ships.

    So you see it has all its pros and cons and theoratically we could continue with examples for every single possibility, so that it is all balanced, but this would us probably cost more than a lifetime. So we have to chose if we take a risk and take a chance or if we go the safe way. I personally prefer the risk, simply because every other game is going the safe way.

  8. Yes, star gates have been described by NQ as massive structures that will require a large amount of time, resources and cooperation to build.  Note however, that these structures are entirely dedicated to a single task, and cannot travel fast themselves.  It is not a given that the same technology can be used to send itself across space.  Much like a catapult can propel a rock at high speed, but not itself.

    Ah finally the science-finction argument is on my side :D as far as i know has NQ never stated that star gates needs to be stationary, so the question would be, if star gates must be stationary to function or they can't move due to the lack of propulsion, if the second is true it wouldn't be much of a challenge to make a ship out of it. And in the B5 method that is here suggested, a jump gate would open and maintain a seperated phenomenon, that leads into hyperspace, let us call it a "hole" and would the jump gate stop to maintain the "hole" it wouldn't be instantly closed, so you could theoratically have enough time to push the jump gate through the "hole". Much like a self-closing door that you hold open for other people and after these are through, you go yourself.

     

    Allowing 67% payload and structures on a ship that can travel so incredibly fast is amazingly efficient.  So you are proposing a stargate that can not only transport itself, but transport up to twice its own weight in additional payload and structures!

    I propose a ship that can carry a stargate as a sub-system and this sub-system would be take away 33% - 50% of the ships volume and this is only a theoratically functional stargate. Nothing else is in this ship, no power generation, no basic propusion (without these two the ship can't even travel, no matter what speed), no life support, no armor, no shielding, no weapons, simply nothing and without all this the stargate can't function, because it has no power and resources. So let us build an example ship: 33% stargate, 20% basic propusion, 10% power generation, 10% resource storage (fuel, food and so on, no operable weaponry or such things), 5% weapons, 5% armor, 5% shielding, 5% life support and the rest is crew quarters, hangars and such things. Yes this is just conjecture, but so could a ship look like.

     

    I'm sorry but this system does remove a strategic layer from warfare.  And it is a complex layer that has more implications than you or I can reason about.

    I don't see it, please specify.

     

    My point is still valid.  Solar systems are not all the same size and are not all the same distance apart.  Imagine a solar system that is five times larger than the one in your example.  Besides the fact that 10 minutes to cross a solar system sounds too fast to me.

    Its all just conjecture, in the end it is a matter of balancing.

     

    You are drastically reducing the importance of fast travel within a solar system by bypassing the stargates and allowing powerful ships to land anywhere in a system that they like.  In your vision these ships have so much spare capacity that they can then deploy an entire fleet of ships that move fast within a solar system.

    No i add importance to fast travel within solar systems, because the defending fleet must be fast enough to encounter the enemy and it adds strategic depths in terms of fleet composition, if you want i can get more into it.

     

    Requiring resources does not fix the problem.  Cars need petrol every couple of hundred miles but they can still go a lot faster than bicycles.  It doesn't matter how much petrol you put in the bicycle, it still can't catch up to the car.  Requiring additional resources only exacerbates the problem by providing exclusive advantages to those that already have a large pool of resources.

    It adds the point of "is it worth it" into the strategy and why is it bad that the guy with more resources have more advantages? I mean yeah the game should be fair in terms of everyone has the same start conditions, but as the game is progressing there will be some with more resources and with this they have more advantages, thats only natural. And after stargates must be something else to keep the motivation, it is a evolution and is this suddenly stoped or cut down, the motivation to gofurther will drop.

     

    So it is late for me it i should go to bed, i will the rest adress tomorrow, good night :)

  9. If there's some sort of partial damage, where you could, let's say, aim for the cockpit or the "energy room", there will never be any kind of "public competitive ships". If your enemies knows your ships weak points, you can't be competitive. If this is the case, any corporation will have their own team of builders, and their projects will be private. Any other ship that doesn't revolve around fighting should instead be fine, and people will buy/sell those. 

    I belief he meant competitive in sense of "competitive on the market"

  10. I don't think that is logical at all. We are in the realms of science fiction here, so you can make up any lore you like, and more advanced technology is most certainly not necessarily bigger or heavier. However, with real propulsion bigger only means faster if you don't increase the payload. Put massive engines on a tiny structure and it may go very fast but it can't carry anything.

    I think we talk here past each other. Yes in science-fiction you can make everything as small or big as you want, but if the lore already says "there will be big ass stargates and the technology needs massive amounts of resources and space" It would be logically to me that really big ships could also have the abilities of stargates, but which would be the logical way to explain that tiny ships have also a way to do the same thing as stargates? Yes maybe there will be a tech to make that work, but probably decades, if not even centuries, later.

    I doesn't talked about technologies in general, i talked about technologies that will probably be bigger and more resource hungry, such as superweapons and jumpengines. I may have formulated it wrong.

    My whole point the entire time was, that jumpengine are only a way to get in and out of hyperspace and in hyperspace it would be necessary to use your normal engines.

     

    And regarding the point of a ship with a massive engine that can't carry anything, yes i agree and to get you a picture of what a type of ship i imagine here a little description, basically i imagine a massive military ship, where the jumpengine and the necessary sub-systems to operate the engine, take around one third to the half of the ships volume. This ship should only operate in fleets and its main role should be to act as mobile jumpgate and maybe as CIC for the entire fleet.

     

    You can't be serious about not being able to think why anyone would want to build a giant ship... How about consolidating a massive amount of firepower and personnel behind extremely strong defences? Transporting massive amounts of goods? An achievement to rally people behind? Your argument of effectiveness against smaller ships is invalid because ships are entirely player designed. You could design a ship to have hundreds of small weapon batteries if you like. I would argue that the only negative of having a large ship is that it's very slow, but you're campaigning to remove this lone disadvantage.

    Yes i know there is more behind it, but i did not want to go into so much detail. That are all good points and they have all their pros and cons in certain situations.

    But regarding the weapons in my previous post, i meant "more and/or larger weapons", but i have forgot the "or", sorry for that, i have edited it.

    Now to the many small weapons on a huge ship, the only effective advantage for this would be a massive spreadfire to cover a large area, but this would burn trough your ammo and energy storage pretty quick. And everything else would be pretty pointless against much smaller ships, because every reasonably capable pilot could outmaneuver you and stay out of the effective range range of your weapons, but in the same time his effective range against you is much larger, because it is pretty difficult to miss a target that is several cubic kilometers in size. And i mean at a distance just a bit outside of the effective range of the bigger ship.

     

    In war, mobilisation of force is key. Generally mobilising a small amount of force is easy, a large amount difficult. Take that away and not only is the balance broken, but a massive layer of strategy is removed.

    Yes i agree, but i don't want to take away this layer, it would be just a little shifted, because you would still need to gather your fleet at one point.

     

    You absolutely must remove jump gates from the equation when comparing the speed of two ships. I don't care how fast the jump gate "engine" goes, I care how fast the ship's engines go. Not least because it makes your example contrived. What if I want to go to point D in solar system B? Point D is 5 times further from the gate than point C. So the small ship now takes 55 minutes and the large takes 45.01 minutes.

    Let me clearify: Point C and the jumpgate in B were meant to be on the opposite edges of System B, so the travel i was mentioned, was across the entire solar system. So your Point D is outside of the system in empty space. My intention is that smaller ships are still faster, if they want to travel inside a system or travel from a system to any point in another system and yes the larger ships could use their jumpengines, but it costs a lot of resources, so much that even a ship with large amounts of resources available, would be forced to refill all 3 to 4 jumps.

     

    Your resources argument is also bad for gameplay. It is yet another point in making bigger and richer exponentially superior to smaller and poorer. Bigger and richer are intrinsically advantaged. There is no need to give them additional advantages.

    No it is not, what you are thinking is necessary to maintain and man such a massive ship to keep it functional? Such a ship is nothing that you could build for yourself, it would require a whole team of builders, engineers and designers and amounts of resources that are beyond everything that a player or even a small group could gather in their entire lifetime.

    And no bigger means not automatically better, in every case it is depending on the situation.

  11. except the whole thing builds on that theres independent hyperspace movement where you dont necessarily need something at the exit point to jump there... where would that need another FTL drive form?

    why would the game need another drive that does the same thing?

    The points of the different propulsion systems are, speed, where you can go, availablity and price.

     

    sub-light: the slowest, useful for near planet and POI navigation, will be available for all, will be an early tech and probably pretty cheap.

     

    FTL/Warp-Drive (has still no offical name): average speed, useful for in-system-travel and exploration, will be avaiable for, will be a later tech and probably more expensive, something for "older" players not for newbies in terms of resources. With this first two you have no limits in where you can go.

     

    Stargates/Jumpgates: near instantaneous travel compared with the other methods, useful for interstellar travel, but you can only travel on fixed routes or in the range of the gates, an even later tech and will theoratically be available to all, but the resource requirements will be so high that only larger oganizations can afford it.

     

    The devs gave us a hint how long it could take to get to the stargate tech, somewhere have i read that they are thinking it will us take approximatly one year to get in to space, i assume that they have meant sub-light space travel.

     

    you also dont have to talk down to me, politeness is nothing confined to real life :P

    Sorry for that, apparently came out a little different than I thought, was not meant to be rude.

     

    i totally dont get what you people have with this stupid "it may takes months for the probe to arrive" thing.

     

    why should the game consist out of waiting, literally?

     

    why not make aquiring and preparing the equipment take months instead of building a small probe and then wait for ages...

    why that literal time sink which gives nothing interesting for that time.

    getting the equipment, preparing the expedition, building the stargate should take ages to do. y'know, the things that provide actual gameplay.

    Because space, duh. ;)

    See the probe as the first step in a chain of events that are needed to explore a new solar system. How the chain would look exactly, would probably depend on the executing player. But what i want also to say is that there is no need for taking care of the probe if its on its way, so you can make something else and if the probe passes something intresting you get a notification.

     

     

    on the whole "get people together" topic.

    its the reason why i'd prefer the gates to be the focus point of (at least the initial) exploration.

     

    with a gate opening up nearby systems to all players at once, who can build the whole thing as a communal effort and then use it all together would be much more interesting than a group building a ship which can only hold a few people who have the privilegue of seeing the new systems until both sides of the gate are built.

     

    even with people spreading over a few systems in the initial boom, they'd have to form new communities there to survive, reconnect home and expand further.

    with the "new colonies" diverging technologically a bit before they can reconnect to the main land.

    providing variation and competition.

    I don't get your point, how the system will work in the end, will lay in the hands of the players, the only thing that are given by the devs is the basic game mechanic.

  12. As far as I know they intend to create a safezone for people that want to build safely without getting involved in PVP, it's not a suggestion of mine. Still i think that a complete anarchy would be bad, and I agree with this solution. A safezone should be intended as a social HUB(that you wouldn't have with anarchy), and everything else (building, farming, storing,...) should be limited. 

    Yes complete anarchy would be bad, but player organization forming already, to prevent this, for example the Cinderfall Syndicate and the Terran Union.

  13.  If you remove the jumpgates from the equation the small ship is virtually immobile compared to the mothership.

    This is the point, it is only logically that a mothership has the size and the resources for a larger and possibly more powerful tech, such as a jumpengine.

    If you remove the jumpengine what would be the point of having such a humongous ship in the game, besides that you want to build it and its possible use as carrier. The only advantage of such a ship that i can see are more and/or larger weapons, but the effectivness of these weapons against smaller ships shrinks with the growing size. And you are unable to destroy planets in the game, at least as far as i know, so there would be no super weapons, that would require such a ship.

    So see the jumpengines more as additional motivation for building such ships.

    Why such ships still need jumpgates, can you read in Fitorions posts. I have also mentioned possible single-use jumpengines for small ships.

    And jumpgates shouldn't be removed from the equation, because they should be much cheaper as motherships.

     

    The mothership would be vulnerable to interception if it also had to use the jumpgate and then slowly travel across the system to point C.  And this would make for more interesting warfare dynamics than appearing at a point and then having to wait a while to become fully functional.

    If a mothership not in a rush, it would normally use jumpgates, because of the resources that are needed to jump. So in this case it would also be vulnerabel to attacks.

    In case of a rush, an enemy could use advanced sensor and hyperspace sensor probes to detect the ship in hyperspace, calculate the possible exitpoint and intercept, in this case the ship would be even more vulnerable.

     

    As for resources, I would expect that jumpgates would need to be larger and spend more resources to send larger ships through them in any case.

    Jumpgates could be able to vary their physical size, but yes in some cases they would need additional energy. In Babylon 5 the jumpgates consists of 2 independent main bodies and several moveable parts on the main bodies, if i remember correctly.

  14. I can agree with the first 2 points i

     

    Safezones

    - Safezones should exist, because you can't protect your assets 24/24 since it's a game, not RL. 

    - Safezones should be rare, or the PVP will die. And if the PVP dies, economy, building, and the social aspect will follow.

    I totally agree with this points.

     

    - Safezones should be public. If there's a way to obtain a safezone by playing the game, this would be a feature that only huge and rich corporations would benefit.

    I agree kind of, in terms of the game mechanic they should be public, but the ruling organization should be able to prevent you from entering and should be able to kill you if you have entered unauthorized.

     

    And regarding the remainig points, no it would act against the targeted player-driven gameplay.

    Simply if you want a bank, build it, if you can't defend it, you're screwed, end of the story.

    The whole point of DU is "Here you have the tools, now go and do whatever you want" and would you add such things like renting territory tiles in a safezone with building limits from a NPC, it would destroy the game. At least in my opinion.

  15. I really dislike this idea of making large ships incredibly fast. It is the antithesis of balanced gameplay.

    Hyperspace is an extra dimension where the distances are shorter, but the engine capabilities of your ship will still dictate your maximum acceleration, even in hyperspace.

    The only advantage that the large ships will have is that they are also jumpgates.

    An example:

    You want from System-A to Point-C in System-B, but Point-C is on the opposite site of the system, seen from the jumpgate in System-B.

    So first you take your small exploration ship and you are using the jumpgate in A, the travel from A to B in hyperspace takes 5 minutes and then you use the jumpgate to get out of the HS, from now one you are using your FTL-Drive and it takes 10 minutes for you from the jumpgate to C, so your travel time is 15 minutes.

    Now your are taking your big jump-capable mothership and you are using again the jumpgate in A to save resources, but instead of going to the jumpgate in B you are taking the direct route to C in hyperspace and it takes you 45 minutes, as you arrive at C you are jumping out of hyperspace, but it costs resources, your weapons are offline and your defenses are at minimum, because off the amount of energy it takes to jump.

    So all in all with the small ship you have traveled 15 minutes, including a detour.

    With mothership it has taken 45 minutes, even with the direct route and after the jump your ship is also for at least 10 minutes vulnerable to attacks.

  16. which is not true in the system Fitorion is suggesting and he and i are discussing

    No that is only what you are assuming, at the begin of this topic it was clear that the devs will implement 3 main propulsion types, sub-light , FTL and Stargates and this topic is for the discussion regarding stargate functionality and i think Fitorion knows that and because of that he assumed probably that you also know it. So why should he point something out, if he is thinking that it is clear to all?

     

    i've also never talked to a gamer who enjoys exploring who doesnt dislike having to deal with players for his primary occupation, exploring.

    thats why i was suggesting that gates are essentially FTL ship cannons that can get you there but not back.

    so every gate construction would cause a new boom of very small scale exploration to occur in its range.

    people would have to organise to get back to civilisation, but they can follow their favourite pastime without having to deal with flying with other people.

     

    Yes i get that you are going for a catapult-system, but we could modify the B5 system to allow single-use jumpengines for smaller ships, and with such an expansion you would have your one-way-system. So you could theoratically send a probe with hyperspace beacon trough normal space to your desired destination, this probe would probably travel for several months till it has reached its target. After the arrival of your probe at its destination, you could use a jumpgate to get into hyperspace, travel for 5 minutes or so, till you have reached your the signal of your probe and use your single-use jumpengine to get out of hyperspace.

     

    and why should i use the jump engines of my combat craft to get in/out of HS?

    take a mothership along that acts as a mobile gate and jump the actual combat ships through with help of the mothership.

    you know, like they did with the fighters in B5.

    and with all kinds of ships being buildable, i doubt that that tactic wont be used.

    with all that it takes is coordination.

     Your combat craft will not have jumpengines only the biggest ships (crews with hundreds or even thousands of people) in a fleet will have jumpengines, that what you have descriped is the whole point of fleet operations with jumpengines. If you want to use the jumpengine of your mothership in a combat situation, you will need a escort fleet or you are space dust.

     

    and i didnt assume that important locations would be completely undefended, but the attacker has a huuuuuge advantage because he can pop out anywhere without the defender being able to notice him beforehand and attack with concentrated forces.

    whereas the defender has to spread himself over all his assets.

    the attacker will always have a concentrated force with jump-out-anywhere drives.

    no choke points there.

    You don't need choke points, you need counter measures for such a scenario, for example sensor probes in HS. But you will probably get choke points, because even the biggest factions could probably only maintain 2 or 3 motherships with jumpengines.

  17. @Cornflakes you have forgotten that there will be at least one more FTL-drive besides of the jumpgates/stargates that could be used for exploration, this would be much slower than jumpgates, but achievable by all players.

    The whole point of DU is that you're getting capabilities equal to your resources, so if you want to travel fast you must join a organization or there must be a organization that allows singleplayers to use their infrastructure, just like in real life or are you building highways for yourself?

    And in case that there is no infrastructure, even large organizations must go with the slower FTL-drive.

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