DrDread

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4/26/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: What if you make it upgrade like a mix of ground units and space units. Upgrading increases size and logistics like a ground unit, but you choose from a menu whether firepower, armor or hanger space gets bumped up with that level. I propose that both defenders and attackers can only put units that fit into the hanger space on the station at a given time. They are not sharing the space, they can both fill it. And if more than one corp is defending or attacking they can both use the hanger space separately. Incentive to operate a station with allies. Attackers could swap out a unit that is damaged but will be giving the defenders a turn to push the capture bar without opposition. Defenders could swap out, but will become the attackers next turn if they don't leave a unit behind to hold the fort. What about my question about Grav-sleds and Longdoors from the top of this page? And what about the suggestion that ground units, (not just star-bases), drop levels when their hitpoints drop below the max for a lower level? I intend to make ships as well as ground units loose levels as a type of critical hit. You would have to already be hurt and you will have to take a big hit. Or the chance of a downgrade scales up with the amount you took that turn and modified by how low you already are.. If you got hit for 2% even though you are already at half damage, you're probably not going to get a downgrade. If you get hit for 20% of your total in one turn, the chances are very high. When downgraded you won't lose any additional hit points just loose the level so your health bar will actually go back up close to full (in the case of ground units) but you are now a smaller unit. . On ships It will be a random level upgrade but it could take off your Hit Point upgrade. In that case we want to try to not make the ship effectively take more damage, instead the downgrade will lower you max hits but lower your damage by the same amount if we can pull that off. It should be noted that your units do less damage as they get hurt. goes to about half firepower at 1% remaining I'm not a fan of giving Artifacts effects additional special powers in niche situations like orbital installation attacks. I can almost pull off the teleport to the moon from the planet because I actually had to block the normal ground movement from allowing that. Fighters could barely make the 6 space leap across the gap onto the moon =) The gravity sled reflects the gravity near the ground to let you float or skim quickly, not sure how that affects A Starbase raid. And the Longdoor system makes a portal that the units can use to step through to a distant location. Hence it s "Long Door" but I don't envision it working INSIDE a Starbase, they aren't personal teleporters. Granted, thats all Flavor Text and we can really do whatever we want. It would be better to do something like Movement speed on units offers some kind of defense or bonus in combat so when your Infantry has a 26 movement with a Long Door system it has some high stat. For example the chance of a level downgrade can be modified downward by a units movement speed. Faster units can escape better and prevent a critical downgrade so a Movement 25 unit has almost no chance of being hit with the "Massacre! -1 Level" critical. Ships also. Scouts would have a less chance of being downgraded than capital ships. Not that it means as much =)
4/26/2017 Topic: Nice Colours!!! Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: Alright love the new colours on the viewscreen where concentrated military assets are shown as more and more dangerous (both the arrows for moving units and the squares for stationary units), pity I didn't realise the change - I wonder if the massed forces to take on the Kaiku monster would have been a deep deep red... Thanks! There are 6 levels of "Danger" from green to bigger glowing red. it goes by total Military Power at location but also broken up by stationary and the 8 directions. So if a dark red stationary spot suddenly flew in all directions, the arrows would probably all be orange and yellows. Green Level 1 > 0 Green-er Level 2 > 1,000 Yellow Level 3 > 10,000 Orange Level 4 > 50,000 Red Level 5 > 100,000 Big Red Level 6 > 500,000 Half million is a lot. I actually wanted to make Kaiju show up as a little monster face on the military screen, gotta work on that =)
4/26/2017 Topic: Nice Colours!!! Doctor Dread Administrator	Also, as another sneak feature upgrade, the Search box on the view screen has some tricks now. It already understand galactic coordinates if you entered them, "198746:238334" would take you there. Now it assumes that anything under 25, like "12:14" means you want to go to that grid on the current map you're looking at and zoom in, as if you clicked it. The delimiter can be a colon, space or a plus sign "12 13", "12+13" will work. its so you can do it from the keypad. Also to zoom out you can put a single space and hit enter, or a minus, or a zero. the search box should be taking full focus every time you hit it so you don't have to use the mouse at all if you want to 9-pad navigation like a pro. Its also a poor mans way of getting around mobile screens and trying to click on the map. Not a full fix but a doable work around in a clutch.
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	I wasn't even thinking about applying the damage downgrade mechanic to ships. Just ground troops and structures. But the critical hit mechanic you describe would be ideal for ships, structures and orbitals. I'm going to dissent and argue that ground troops should automatically get downgraded when their hitpoints drop below the max hitpoints of the previous level. A level 2 Infantry, for example, has twice as much size, attack power, hitpoints, time to build and cost as a level 1 Infantry. It seems like the difference between level 1 and level 2 is that level 2 has twice as much staff and equipment. I haven't taken note of whether or not attack power gets reduced with hitpoints or if the cost of repairing a level 2 at 50% hitpoints is the same as upgrading a level 1 to level 2. But I'm sure it doesn't reduce the size of the unit. A mechanic where a units size gets reduced could have a couple of stratigic implications. 1st, if you take a strike group including ships and ground units to a fight and and they all take damage, this could simplifying the mechanics of going home afterwards. If some of your carriers got blown up or their hangers got downgraded, (as per the mechanic you describe above), and your level 10 ground units got badly damaged but not destroyed you are going to be stuck without enough room to carry them, even though that heavy damage should represent a reduction in their size. Another stratigic element gets introduced if we end up using a mechanic that limits the size of forces that can board or defend orbitals. Let's say, for example, that a carrier has hanger space of 100. You board it with a level 10 (X100) Infantry unit. After a few rounds it absorbs 25% damage and downgrades to a level 9 (X75). If you have a carrier looped to deploy level 7 (x25) units you will have a plan in place to automatically reinforce. (If we use the automatic Beachhead critical/event that I described above, a downgrade in level might be an expected cost of boarding a station, meaning that you might have to spend several turns with deploy orders looped to fill up the hanger capacity). Conversely, the defenders could also have Carriers standing by looped to deploy reinforcements just in case they get attacked. I know I've created another wall of text here, but bear in mind that I am just describing the implications I see in a very simple gameplay mechanic of ground units automatically losing a level when their hitpoints drop to the level below them. Reducing the level of the unit with damage, with a lot of damage at once especially, makes sense as you are actually taking out units as opposed to hurting a swath of them. I have some issue with the way ground units turned out in this regard where a level 10 100x stack can be reduced to 10% hit points... and then recover in 100 turns to full power. At the cost of a LOT by the way. About half what the total price of the unit would be normally in 100 turns. It can crash you finances. It made a lot more sense for ships to repair this way. Usually in other games the number of tanks you have would be literally a number, here we have individual named units with "levels" not quantity.
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: The post above is me. I must have timed out while writing it. The sentence that reads "Let's say, for example, that a carrier has hanger space of 100. You board it with a level 10 (X100) Infantry unit." Should have said, "Let's say, for example, that an ORBITAL has hanger space of 100. You board it with a level 10 (X100) Infantry unit." I guess I agree that artifacts shouldn't be so useful in an orbital attack that their use becalmed ubiquitous. I think the idea of surprising a defender that has put all their eggs in space supremacy with a Longdoor is pretty cool though. My thinking was a Longdoor is an AX research item. And how often is someone going to spend a week of research and hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrading an Infantry unit. And that using the gravity sleds to attack without the fleet engaging would be at the cost of your infantry getting cut to pieces on the way in. For the situation where you had a lot of infantry but a weak fleet. Perhaps with the additional effect of every unit that doesn't fit in the orbital experiences a Beachhead critical hit every turn until the attackers on the inside have taken enough casualties for them to squeeze inside. They don't all have to fit on the orbital. Having 300x stack of infantry outside the orbital attacking it doesn't mean all 300x went inside at once. Again we're talking "Flavor Text" but I don't see adding a special mechanic for how many units "fit" on space station as adding much to the game, it's just complicates it. This isn't a full blown war game, there only so much you can reasonably do with having units attack in the abstract way we're doing here. The strategy is the mix of forces you bring to bear and the timing of when you bring them in or rotate them out. By the way, this "Capture" mechanic we're talking about can be used on normal structures also. You would be able to take over other peoples industry. That would make Wars viable. You may not want to take someone's cotton factory if you have no transports or interest in cotton though. You might have a war over metal mines if you are two competing metal mining corps however.
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Another thought. I'm not sure whether a space station should be considered "ground" or "space". I originally envisioned it as ground and you can dump whatever you want onto that ground. I'm considering making it actually "space" which means if you want to put fighters and troops there you will have to transfer it from your hangar to the star bases hanger (new order tweak). That would make having armored or artillery useless at a star base by default. That would work into your how many fit" on a star base. It wouldn't stop 300x stack from attacking it. but they would all have to be hangar units, you wouldn't be able to dump them on the spot and leave if I made them "space" locations. Star base might actually end up being just a new gigantic, huge, "Carrier" unit with zero movement but you can upgrade its hangar, Hit points, attack, even cargo, That means it level sup like a ship not a ground unit. No x100 Starbases =) Perhaps Orbital guns can be upgraded like ground units though. And Warp Gates also, depending on what the level up mechanic is on a Warp Gate. How many ships a turn? oo000o How much "Size" per turn. Level 1 gate is literally size 1 ship per turn. other will have to wait. At 50x means size 50 worth of ships in a turn, and you would have to level it up to 3-4 to handle a single size 20 monolith You would level up warp gates for increased traffic. Not sure about large fleets though . Might be something like, as long as all the ships can "fit", the gate with x50 trying to warp a size 200 fleet will take it 4 turns. Another idea was to instead of warping instantly, the gate give your units a huge boost to their movement, depending on their level. say 10 times the "x" bonus of the gate which can go to x100 at level 10. So a low power level 1 gate might boost your move 20 scout to 200, But a level 10 gate will boost your movement by 1000x. You would use a new order to use the gate, or maybe just a checkbox on the existing move order screen, which will also ask for your destination. You get the warp boost for that destination. That makes the gate snot have to be linked to another one, and you can travel anywhere with them
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	Applied to all combat, I can see some sort of reduction in total firepower when your 500 size force is attacking a size 20 defender, but man not only is that counter-intuitive but combat is complex already =) The hangar is what allows infantry to attack ships, in space, via attack shuttles, Your defending hangar is not needed when the attackers are using assault shuttles and blowing in through the walls. If you want the "I am defending inside a star base" bonus for the defender, He's already got it. The star base itself size will draw fire away from the units in the hangar. it also shoots back, at infantry and commandos. It would probably be a new unit with its own attack values. Something that looks like a beefed up version of the Fortification, as in more firepower and not just a defensive structure. But it would actually be a "Ship" with ship upgrades.
4/27/2017 Topic: Level 10 structure can't be downgraded Doctor Dread Administrator	Hutton wrote: I have a level 10 Chemical plant in Radium right now. The upgrade button has been replaced with a message that says "Structure is at maximum level", but it took the downgrade button with it. ... whoops. I'll get on that tonight hopefully.
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	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.
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	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
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	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?
4/27/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	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
4/28/2017 Topic: Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations Doctor Dread Administrator	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 .
4/29/2017 Topic: Open a new page? (Not about:blank) Doctor Dread Administrator	This one is a little tricky because the battle page allows you to go "next Prev" across a set of battles and it has to keep the original grid search hidden behind it to do it. If you open a new page entirely you lose that. I can rework it so it function as you described while still retaining that it just isn't a 5 min fix is all.
4/29/2017 Topic: Upgrade reduction and unit updates Doctor Dread Administrator	This week we made a few fixes, balances and also made one major change to upgrades. Previously the upgrades for ground units would multiple the size of the force like this 1,2,5,8,10,15,25,50,75,100x . We wanted to smooth that out a little bit so NOW it goes 1,,5,10,15,20,30,40,60,80,100x. We updates all the units. We hope no one had a carrier with units in the right levels that suddenly would have them ejected. Also, the Construction turns for most of the ground units were lowered. Variteks used to take 80 turns and now they take 50 for example. The lower units didn't change but the higher units were brought down significantly, The special unit equivalents were also brought down Shipyard and base were brought down to 80 and 100 respectively. This will bring down the time it takes to level up a unit to level 10 (x100). Previously it would take a 80 construction turn Varitek 8000 turns (8 weeks) to upgrade to 10 normally. Now it will take 5 weeks, HOWEVER there is even more good news.... ... The time it takes to upgrade ground units has been cut in half. It used to take the same amount of time to upgrade a unit as it would to make a bunch of smaller ones. It would take the same amount of time to upgrade to a level 3 (x5) unit as it would to make 5 level 1 units. The construction time of the original unit stays the same, but when upgrading it now takes half of that. Going from level 9 (x80) to level 10 (x100) on Infantry which has a Construction Time of 20 turns will take 200 turns not 400 now. So NOW that Varitek unit can be built and upgraded to level 10 in about 2500 weeks, an Infantry can be upgraded normally to level 10 in a week, which is much more in line with the other construction times. Also remember, a leveled up Military base say at level 10 can product a level 10 Infantry at its normal level 1 Construction time of 20 turns, Having a high level Base/Shipyard is the way to get big units on the field quickly. There were also so balancing done on unit damage. Small changes but the bigger ones were Destroyers hit fighters like they should and have 600 hps now and Dreadnoughts damage was upped to make them more worthwhile for the money then a bunch of cruisers. A lot of the balancing is done on the premise of "The most effective units to destroy capital ships for the money should be Dreadnoughts" During the live game units will probably still be tweaked but hopefully in very small increments not like what we're doing here. Another fun tidbit is that the More Info Tab for a Group or Fleet now shows that groups actual damage vs all unit types combined. Its easier to see what your Group is actually effective against. Kaiju events don't show product weakness till it spawns now. Water Population effect is now 10x the normal, All Crops and Meats have a population effect of 5x normal. That means if water is in high demand it will negatively effect population 10x harder than a typical product. The Population Effect stats are taken on average so Water has 10x the "weight" as a typical product when it comes to the calculation. We are trying to fix a few things on the server by tomorrow and if it goes well we will announce launch date for the game to go live tomorrow as well which will probably be sometime next week
4/29/2017 Topic: mysterious puzzle Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: Seems to be a recurring problem when all three points are on a line. This was just fixed an hour ago with the update. =)
4/30/2017 Topic: mysterious puzzle Doctor Dread Administrator	Zip555 wrote: Please can I have a new puzzle, mine is not fixed Just search the two possible positions, its in one of them. Should be distance 3 straight up or down from the middle one, 15:4 or 15:10?
4/30/2017 Topic: About artifacts... Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: Two quick questions. First - can a single unit get the same artifact bonus three times? e.g. can a carrier get 3x (AX) Dimensional Hypercube for a 250% increase in base hangar space? And if so - how does it work? Say I have a maxxed out carrier for hangar space Base hangar space: 150 1st Hypercube - 375 hangar space 2nd Hypercube - is it 937 hangar space (assuming 375 base hangar space) or is it 600 hangar space (assuming 150 base hangar space)? I'd try it... but don't have enough time to build all those hypercubes! One other thing - is there an artifact that increases the HPs of transports? The reason I ask is that with the MAK attacks all over the place having transports which have a chance of surviving the attacks starts to get interesting. You cant stack the same artifact, but some of the artifacts effects do stack. I think Longdoor and Starwell Thruster will stack their movement effects and give you +30 movement. But since only big ships can have a starwell thruster but ANY unit can have the Longdoor system means only a ship can really stack them
4/30/2017 Topic: High Tier Product values have been increased Doctor Dread Administrator	We just pushed an update that increased the value of the higher tier components significantly. After literally 6 months of beta testing it has become apparent that manufacturing components and then manufacturing end products is not worth the investment. Someone pointed out a while back that you will be losing money if you buy components to make end products directly and it shouldn't be that way. The higher tier products are only viable if the price of the lower ones have all gone very low. The stats that show how much production there is on resources and not much else proves that. So we made a significant shift in product values making them 1.5x to 2x what they were before Components have gone from 250 to 325 End products have gone from 500 to 750 Services have gone from 500 to 1000 Assuming you don't even have any tech or corp HQ You can now make a slim profit buying (assuming 100% demand) 10 resources at 2000 credits plus 1000 credits to run the factory and sell 10 components worth 3250 credits You can also "break even" by buying 10 components at 6500 plus 1000 to make 10 end products worth 7500. 10 qty of Services are actually worth 1000 credits and can be profitable by anyone immediately but services are much more restrictive being tied to a single city If you have tech and a corp HQ you can be profitable simply buying the components you need and running a higher tier factory. I know this was a sudden shift in the last week before going live but hopefully it works out well.
4/30/2017 Topic: Restaurant Doctor Dread Administrator	Valhalla wrote: Vulpex, why is your post neon green? I can barely read it. I think that happens when you quote or reply to one, I'm not sure. but annoying color.

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