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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
4/27/2017
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Hutton wrote:
Since we have pivoted to the subject of attacking ground structures, perhaps there should be a mechanic that shuts down production and the ability to que new upgrades and construction when attacking forces occupy the same square. Otherwise the defender, who already has the advantage of of defensive structures, just needs to hold on while they build new units.
Shutting down production would also give you a reason to think about your force distribution. The most effective strategy right now, I think, would be to clump all of your forces together and attack your enemy's strongholds one at a time, taking them down like dominos. And his best strategy would be to do the same thing, trying to cripple you before you cripple him rather than engage you in a protracted defensive battle that slowly decimates the population of your home city.
But, if an occupying force can shut down production, if becomes a valid strategy to divide your force to shut down your oponent's economy; and then divide it further to protect your own structures from being shut down by unopposed level 1 Infantry units.
edited by Hutton on 4/27/2017
Saying "You're under attack so you can't produce" doesn't sound bad, its a popular board game mechanic too when you're talking about big hexes of game board and a handful of actual units. But in this game. sending your one scout to attack, and shut down, an undefended level 10 structure, or sending something like a frigate to occupy the force from the air for several rounds at a time, kind of breaks that mechanic.
Similar to repair, you can't repair while in combat But you can't exactly throw away small units against a large force to keep it from repairing. Also, the check for "no combat", I think, includes a check to see if there are any attacking forces or that you inflicted at least 1% damage(?) to prevent that tactic.
You would have to do something like repair where if you want to shut down a structure it needs to have taken X percentage of damage, OR BETTER EVEN, the amount of slowdown scales with the amount of damage you did, say 10 to 1. So if you inflict 10% damage its 100% shut down that turn, 2% = 20% shutdown. That still seems awkward, you wouldn't be able to do much "shutdown" before the structures are destroyed anyway,. You would be better off either capturing it and halting it or destroy the thing. Maybe attack his supply lines.
I think production slows down with damage already by the way, like attack effectiveness with military units do.
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/27/2017
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Okay, that makes sense for ships. But if you don't have any ground forces defending, it shouldn't take that many troops to go in and shut down your factory without even attacking it. "Everybody go home! Te plant is closed today."
Actually, that same affect could be applied with your earlier suggestion of adding a capture bar to industrial structures. You can cripple an opponents economy by capturing his factories. You might want to institute the same rules then about slowing down the process of scraping orbitals to structures then. I might want to quick scrap a captured factory just because it's giving me a logistics penalty, but the original owner should have some time to capture it back.
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/27/2017
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But I still think occupation should block queing up construction of new units. You can't hire new soldiers while your surrounded.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
4/27/2017
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Hutton wrote:
But I still think occupation should block queing up construction of new units. You can't hire new soldiers while your surrounded.
It depends on how we end up doing captures. If we simply change ownership its one thing, but if we make captures kind of a "You can use its not really yours" then it might be different. Perhaps you capture industry and you can use it but you cant upgrade, salvage, or even change production. you can capture a Military base, queue your own units but the base is not yours, you cant sell it or any thing. I still lean towards the capture it you own it, but its not easy to capture it and you could of destroyed it just as easily. The only mechanic I worry about is capture to sell, for the money. Maybe the money is a good enough reward to spend the extra effort and combat to capture it.
Maybe it takes half the cost of the structure to actually convert it to your corp? That would make the capture to savage payout be net zero. But you can take a structure already built for half the cost of building it and no construction time. We could make the Capture Hit points cost as much to "repair" as the regular Hit Points. So you would have to pay for half the structure just to get it back to full Capture Health so someone else couldn't walk in and take it right back. that's where the No salvage money would come from. Salvaging a structure at no health or capture health isn't worth anything or worth less?
Some interesting ideas. At first. "Capture" probably won't be a thing. but perhaps eventually
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/27/2017
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If you capture but don't own, who's logistics does it count against? Is the real owner stuck with a logistics cost that they can't dump while someone else occupies the structure?
If no one is responsible it becomes exploitable. I yield a factory for you and you build one for me and then we capture them and the don't count against our logistics cap.
For that reason I suggest that if someone captures it they own it. But maybe you want to do away with scrapping and just allow downgrades with a cool down.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
4/27/2017
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Hutton wrote:
If you capture but don't own, who's logistics does it count against? Is the real owner stuck with a logistics cost that they can't dump while someone else occupies the structure?
If no one is responsible it becomes exploitable. I yield a factory for you and you build one for me and then we capture them and the don't count against our logistics cap.
For that reason I suggest that if someone captures it they own it. But maybe you want to do away with scrapping and just allow downgrades with a cool down.
Mmmm Sounds complicated =) The idea tharts going on the board, written in erasable marker, is that a capture makes it yours. If you want to salvage it for the payout you can, HOWEVER...
New Idea, I can always make it so that if you destroy a structure or enemy units you get some of the salvage money? Can't force salvage while in combat to deny them either. Be like 25% 25% split? Might make destruction for cash payouts worth it. But is that something we really want to encourage?
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
4/27/2017
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Hutton wrote:
Question. Right now, if I have a level 10 unit that takes 90% damage and I voluntarily downgrade it, does is become a level 9 with full hitpoints?
Good question, Yes you get the full amount. I have to let you salvage it because thats the only way to NOT pay the repairs. But I probably should cut the salvage on a sliding scale up to 50% if your structure is at 1% remaining hit points
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Guest
4/27/2017
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Or, downgraded units start with the same hitpoints as the unit they were downgraded from. That would work with auto downgrading from damage too. If you have a level 10 (X100) unit that takes at least 25% damage it would downgrade to level 9 with the same number of current hitpoints it had before downgrading (X75); but if it took a whopping 50% or in one turn it would drop all the way to level 8 (X50), again with no more current hitpoints than it had after taking damage as a level 10 unit.
I think that is a very simple and elegant mechanic that achieves everything you are going for.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
4/28/2017
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Ok about this whole downgrading of units...
I am starting to get worried about it. Some units take thousands and thousands of turns to upgrade. Then you use them in combat and bang... time to spend again thousands of turns to upgrade them. This is not trivial because while they are being upgraded, such units are planet bound (they cannot be transported as you cannot load a unit which is being upgraded into a hangar). If we basically want to have low level units fighting each other now and then ok but ... if you really want to go with the combat results in downgrade mechanic you should reconsider the upgrade times for units.
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/28/2017
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That's a valid point. On the one hand, I think you should have a have a long recovery time after a protracted war; but it does create this counterintuitive situation where it's faster to build a new level 10 unit (assuming you have a level 10 Base) than reinforce your battle weary legion back up to full strength.
Is it feasible in the game engine, and would it be an acceptable middle ground to make it fast to upgrade up to the level of a Military Base in the same square? Then you would still have to retreat to your home turf to refit, but it wouldn't take you just as long to do so as a corp with only a level 1 base?
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/28/2017
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The game seems to have a certain consistancy in the math between levels in most aspects. I think the only practical difference between a level 10 unit and 100 level 1 units is the Logistics cost. And the same goes for a level 10 (X100) vs a level 9 (X75) plus a level 7 (X25). So the time to upgrade a level 9 to level shouldn't be more than it takes to build a level 7 at your level 10 military base, if you have one.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
4/28/2017
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Vulpex wrote:
Ok about this whole downgrading of units...
I am starting to get worried about it. Some units take thousands and thousands of turns to upgrade. Then you use them in combat and bang... time to spend again thousands of turns to upgrade them. This is not trivial because while they are being upgraded, such units are planet bound (they cannot be transported as you cannot load a unit which is being upgraded into a hangar). If we basically want to have low level units fighting each other now and then ok but ... if you really want to go with the combat results in downgrade mechanic you should reconsider the upgrade times for units.
Downgrading levels is something that would only happen if you're taking huge hits against it. A level 10 Structure has a lot of hit points and if its taking 20% of it on one turn then yeah it might be downgraded. Whoever is hitting you can destroy it outright in a few turns apparently .
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/28/2017
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I might be wrong, but I thing he was more concerned about mobile ground units. That's a situation where you might win, but still take a beating first. And I usually give my ground units an order que to cease Attacking/Guarding at a certain damage threshold followed by an order to retreat to a base. I haven't been in enough fights to know for sure that's an effective tactic, but I assume that's what everyone else does. Under those circumstances you would expect to have lots of units getting downgraded but not destroyed.
Actually, that brings up another kink. If you have units getting downgraded it will screw up the modifier to stop Attacking or guarding at a certain threshold. If I tell a unit to retreat at 20%, it will never retreat until level 1 because it is always going to downgrade before it drops anywhere near that.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
4/28/2017
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Doctor Dread wrote:
Downgrading levels is something that would only happen if you're taking huge hits against it. A level 10 Structure has a lot of hit points and if its taking 20% of it on one turn then yeah it might be downgraded. Whoever is hitting you can destroy it outright in a few turns apparently .
Not necessarily - if you are unlucky with criticals and your enemy has a +100% to damage and your unit runs right into the fire and takes another +100% to damage you can still suffer a lot of damage from a unit which in fact you can destroy.
I am more concerned with ground units than most anything else (ships - even the monolith, upgrades fast, 100 turns per upgrade. Getting my varitek from lvl 7 to lvl 8 is 2400 turns....)
Some industries also take a very huge amount of time to recover too (I'm thinking about the research stations).
Probably the worst situation overall is if you take a lvl loss in a military base or shipyard - I don't even want to think how long it takes to upgrade one of those to lvl 10 - and they are both VERY useful at lvl 10.
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