There is some discussion of challenges in the “tribes pwn” thread that got me thinking.
Right now, you create custom ships for every possible battle–or you can, anyway.
In many cases you tweak an existing design to better deal with some novel challenge.
It would be neat to have some campaign mode where you are given certain strategic limitations, and you must design a NAVY that follows the limits.
So for example this mode would have a total budget, and a total pilot count, and even, perhaps some other limitations on certain modules for any player playing within campaign mode.
You’d then design ships, and have a certain number available within your navy. So you might have a shieldless CA design that uses only plasmas, but if you build too many, you’ll be SOL if you need some other design. A certain overhead can be abstracted for each ship as a function of its cost to maintain them, and there can be economies of scale built in as well—you get the first ship at cost, and if you commission at least X ships you get a 5% price break, and if you buy 10X you get 10% off. This encourages standardized designs instead of a navy full of 1-off ships.
Then, when facing a challenge, you’d pick from a fixed number of available ships instead of custom building ships to deal with a threat.
Sort of on the same note, its like an alternate way; you know the way there is a temporary deployment file saved? You should be able to selevt a portion of your fleet, right click and go to edit. It will only edit the ships you picked. And doesnt save them as such permanatly, prehaps just for this deployment. Only problems wouldbe when you select more than one ship, though maybe you get a tab in the edit screen allowing to pick which you are working on.
It would allow to customise the parts of your fleet to meet specific limitations, or to change some from a basic design to deal with certain things.
Yeah, that’s really the idea. Forcing a player to build an entire navy BEFORE they take any challenges. Not a pool of ship designs, but make choices how many of each type you actually have so you are forced to deal with a challenge based on a semi-realistic navy, not ships purpose-built to deal with a specific challenge.
This would encourage less “extreme” challenge fleets and err towards a little more generality, or at least navies with complementary ships to use together for different fights.
Indeed, its the finding a way to get people to build the ultimate ‘all-rounder’ fleet that I am concentrating on. To that end I started work on some long term stuff that incorporates that today, although it’s a ton of work so is likely to be a while off yet. There will be other updates before then.
Cliffski, I made another suggestion before that fits with this (and you have likely already thought of).
It would be neat to see a distinction between FTL ships, and ships without FTL drive. The current rules sort of assume this with respect to fighters (they don’t “count” for a win alone if they are the only ones left standing). It could be done easily two ways.
One, FTL could be assumed in current frigate and cruiser hulls. Then make copies of each that are “defense boats.” They’d weigh less (speed bonus) and cost substantially less.
Two, the FTL could be assumed in the current engines, then add new “sublight only” engines that use less power, cost less, and make more thrust for a given energy/cost. The challenges
Either of these additions (the 2d seems easier) would add a whole new dimension to challenges, particularly with a “fleet” paradigm that you suggest. These (stealing from Traveller) “System Defense Boats” would be faster for a given cost, and would be able to have more armor, etc. Later additions could add purpose designed hulls for them.
The “campaign” challenge idea would then allow you to build some SDBs into your navy—too many, and you’d be hobbled for challenges where you are the attacker, and FTL is required. Obviously there would need to be some new victory conditions. Defenders of planetary systems would be allowed to win with just fighters, for example—or any other non-FTL craft.
You could have a strategic mode, where you adjust your factory output and ship designs, put damaged ships under repair, take delivery of new and freshly repaired ships, assemble different fleets, then order various fleets into attacking other star systems.
The fleets capable of entering other star systems would have jump drives. Local defense ships - without jump drives - would have to remain within a system, unless they were carried; like fighters in a carrier bay. On the star map, the better the jump drives, the further into enemy territories your ships could reach. I like the idea of the jump drive being a giant exploding weapon. This would give ships otherwise handicapped by the metrics (size, weight, etc.) of the jump drives, a bit more capability in actual battles.
You could also have rudimentary ‘marine’ transport and have them invade enemy planets. The atmosphere on planets could be different for each planet, so differently outfitted marines would be more or less effective, depending on planet atmosphere. The same could go for the various star systems; by adjusting certain anomalies, different ships would do better or worse, depending upon the spacial anomalies.
The different races would basically function better in some environments over others.
You could have a freighter pool, randomly distributed amongst your star systems during each turn, so in each battle there would much more often than not, be some freighters in the area. If your overall freighter pool dwindles too far, then it’s tough for your ship factories to get their resources from the planets you own.
Cliffski, if you were to put some kind of overall ‘strategic level’ ‘wrapper/program’ around GSB, it would be really cool.
You could allow custom components. Maybe have some internal math which computes the component cost automatically, dependent upon its design characteristics. Have GSB compute component cost, instead of modders being able to write it in.
Anyway, with a good system of custom components within a strategic level to the game, there could be a vast interstellar market for exotic module designs. There could be discounts for mass production of low-tech components. There could be super powerful, highly expensive custom prototype super weapons of which there are only one copy.
The only issue I see with some of these suggestions (good ones all) is that the more long-term layers that get added, the more GSB sounds like every other space battle game I own.
Leave me the ability to blow up spacefaring fleets for no other reason than “I like KA-BOOM!”, and let me partake of the more in-depth stuff at my leisure, please.
I think a campaign is a good idea, like galactic conquest in star wars: battlefront 2: turn based, moving fleets across a galaxy, and all ships must have engines to leave their ‘home’ planet. Frigates can be transported in freighters, but takes a turn to unpack. Cruisers can’t leave system (we assume they have built in ‘sub-light’ engines. Fighters must have fighter bays.) As a option, though, not forced upon us.
Exactly. I would have no problem having all the continuity suggestions that pop up throughout these forums - mission descriptions, production resources, etc. etc. etc. - as long as I can still have the mode where GSB allows me to stick guns in a flying can and set it loose to blow up other flying cans full of guns.
'Cause sometimes when I get on the computer, I don’t want to plan. I want to blow the @#$% out of something.
The current plan is for an expansion pack where a bunch of battles are tied together, with some user-choice in which battle to fight next. This is a seperate mini-campaign map, on a different screen to the current missions, with new missions that form the campaign.
In other words, it’s all planned to be additional to the existing game. You would still have the current challenges, and the current one-off missions, just the option to play the linked campaign instead.
That means another 10 fleets of enemies and scenarios, which is why it’s taking ages, and would be an optional expansion thingy.
It’s not a set thing, it varies from person to person. The consistent trait is that such people refuse to admit that fun is, in fact, not a set thing, and varies from person to person.
I like it when everyone can get what they want out of a game. Even if what some folks want is sizably different from others.
