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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/13/2017
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You can't raid items. I almost allowed it but it seems unfair and devastating to take someones pricey item or artifact because there is no raid defense and there isn't even a good way to get it back from the unit that took it. So I would like to discuss some ideas on how to make raiding artifacts or items workable if at all.
One idea was for raid defense where you have to have more Military Power then your target to raid anything. and you need 2x tier power to raid whatever you can carry, scaling in between.
We can also allow you to select an item you want to raid just like we do with products, but if we do that then we need an easy way to get it back, such as making ships that are destroyed drop off what they were carrying.
We can also make whatever they were carrying automatically switch to the attackers corp when they are destroyed, so anytime you destroy the entire opposition, all the items and product at location switch your side, no raid necessary.
This would make "raiding" (the option on the attack order) something you do for specific things and use small forces to steal small amounts but if you can get everything to switch to your corp entirely if you destroy the entire corp at location, then that makes attacking for profit a viable thing. If someone is sitting on a stack of 1mil product, you can attack him until hes destroyed and it automatically switches to you, then salvage if you want. You could attack a research site that has several artifacts built up and then load them all and run.
We can even make transfers not work while in combat, so the defenders can't transfer out and run, but i don't like that idea.
Those are some ideas that might work. I think the switch everything to the attacking corps on annihilation is relatively easy to implement. The raid scaling to military power and attacking items is a lot trickier
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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The biggest impetus I see to implement a function for raiding items is to effectively counter the weaponized artifacts. Right now, even if you successfully manage to intercept a ship carrying a Supervirus you have to babysit that supervirus forever to prevent them from just picking it up and moving the ball forward.
I would propose a mechanic that protects artifacts stored at your HQ from raiding and that removes and re spawns them with your HQ if it gets destroyed.
I would suggest that you not make cargo automatically change hands when military forces are destroyed, but make the effectiveness of product raids dramatically scale up as the attackers to defender's power ration scales up. And artifacts should only be raidable when the defender has no military power at the location. If a pirate ship blows up a transport fleet, all the cargo floating in space shouldn't automatically become property of the pirate. The pirate only gets what he can fit in his hold. The transporting player should be able to send transports to recover any cargo that is left floating in space without needing to raid it back.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/14/2017
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Hutton wrote:
The biggest impetus I see to implement a function for raiding items is to effectively counter the weaponized artifacts. Right now, even if you successfully manage to intercept a ship carrying a Supervirus you have to babysit that supervirus forever to prevent them from just picking it up and moving the ball forward.
I would propose a mechanic that protects artifacts stored at your HQ from raiding and that removes and re spawns them with your HQ if it gets destroyed.
I would suggest that you not make cargo automatically change hands when military forces are destroyed, but make the effectiveness of product raids dramatically scale up as the attackers to defender's power ration scales up. And artifacts should only be raidable when the defender has no military power at the location. If a pirate ship blows up a transport fleet, all the cargo floating in space shouldn't automatically become property of the pirate. The pirate only gets what he can fit in his hold. The transporting player should be able to send transports to recover any cargo that is left floating in space without needing to raid it back.
How do you want to handle the item/artifact situation with quantity? Do you want ALL your items or artifacts change hands if your military is wiped out but only a portion of the Product? We can scale how much changes hands based on military power, but, you can just attack the empty spot again if I wpe you at. Thats why we might as well change ownership on everything there. If you leave most of it there... the owner can just attack it and take it back
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+1
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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I was interpreting the mechanism you described as requiring a unit to blow up to trigger the switch. Yes, you could just dial up the effectiveness of the raid so it only takes a couple of turns to pick up a lot of product. Those couple of turns won't make and difference in deep space but might give reinforcements time to arrive if the raid is on a planet that the raided party has a strong presence on. If it is up to me I would say artifacts still must be raided but the raid will only pick up one artifact at a time ad only while the coordinate is uncontested. After all, the raiders are presumably searching through the wreckage for the tiny artifacts. That should take some time.
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+1
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/14/2017
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+1. Though artifacts are, of course, 100 ton spheres of alien metal, and are likely not that hard to find 
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/14/2017
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I'm still leaning towards wiping out the target moves all product and items, and you can always attack the empty spot and take it back.
Since we're talking cRaZy what about taking over structures too if you get them below say 25% and no military is present. They all switch, I mean the guy was going to destroy them, now at least they are still in place. You didn't get your salvage though. You could of salvaged it while ts being attacked however, unless we prevent that from happening (don't like that idea). Or we can go with the idea of if you salvage or it is destroyed WHILE IN combat then the salvage is split between owner and attackers. Orbitals can be worth BILLIONS
edited by DrDread on 8/14/2017
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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Seperate but real related point: raids should not damage civilian structures if there is no military left. If I'm a pirate, I don't want to destroy industry. I want industry to produce more product to raid. Yes, there will be collateral damage in the fighting, but if there are no guards I should be able to roll in and take what I want without firing a shot.
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+1
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/15/2017
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Hutton wrote:
Seperate but real related point: raids should not damage civilian structures if there is no military left. If I'm a pirate, I don't want to destroy industry. I want industry to produce more product to raid. Yes, there will be collateral damage in the fighting, but if there are no guards I should be able to roll in and take what I want without firing a shot.
So if you're set to raid, it won't hit the structure at all? but will take all the product once the military is gone? I could attack normally until the last round, or military is gone then raid it to take the products. That doesn't work well, I guess its if you attack normally and there are no MILITARY units remaining at the location, you take whatever items/products are there automatically. That seems to work well as you can stop your attack after the military is gone and youtook the product without destroying the structures. It can almost be another option.
If you are set to raid it can ignore the structure(?) that seems clunky also. I know that you are usually not interested in the structure and just want the military but the structure is a defensive position with 8k hit points that the defender wants to draw fire with. The attackers can't dictate which units are not going to be on the defense.
Converting all the product if no military defense is there makes raiding a lot easier, you can literary hit someones CorpHQ industrial center and take every thing piled up in one turn if his army is away and no defenses but leaving all his buildings intact.
I suppose we can make it happen if you are set to raid after all. I mean if you're raiding you'll be moving stuff into cargo while attacking and if the military defense clears then the raid gives you "max cargo" transfer on that turn (because theres no military) and then converts the rest on the ground to your coprs. So next round the attack order will see that there is nothing to "raid" anymore and move the order to the next one. Actually if the enemyis producing there will be more product every round, BUT one of the triggers to stop a raid attack is that your cargo is full, and it will be, or at least at the point wher you can take anymore cargo it triggers as raid is over.
... typing out loud here. This all might work =)
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/15/2017
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I think you are on the right track. The civilian structures SHOULD take damage while there is defensive military present because you expect the defenders to use those civilian structures for cover and to set up ambushes in. But once they retreat or get wiped out the the civilian structures should stop taking collateral damage because there are no primary target for the raiders to keep shooting at. If the attackers goal is to destroy the civilian structures they should just mount a regular assault instead of a raid.
The idea of taking over structures makes sense from the immersion perspective. Game balance-wise though that seems like a real pandora's box. If this were still pre-launch I would say go for it, that sounds like a better game mechanic than not having it. Now I'm hesitant to encourage you to do something that might incentivize a lot of chaos that could disrupt the experience of a bunch of players that are only a month in and are just now getting comfortable managing their little empire.
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Rekkles Posts: 36
8/17/2017
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I suppose we can make it happen if you are set to raid after all. I mean if you're raiding you'll be moving stuff into cargo while attacking and if the military defense clears then the raid gives you "max cargo" transfer on that turn (because theres no military) and then converts the rest on the ground to your coprs. So next round the attack order will see that there is nothing to "raid" anymore and move the order to the next one. Actually if the enemyis producing there will be more product every round, BUT one of the triggers to stop a raid attack is that your cargo is full, and it will be, or at least at the point wher you can take anymore cargo it triggers as raid is over.
This.
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