[MOD] The Anarchists (WIP?)

Here’s an idea for a new race that could be balanced and relatively easy to build. I am not intending to do the work myself, simply because I am not motivated enough to do the graphics work, but this is a start of a design document that anyone else could run with if they desired. Graphically it would not take much work as they are basically just rocks.

The Anarchists.

The Anarchists are not so much a race as they are anarchists that have escaped from all sorts of races and taken refuge, hiding in asteroid belts. They have no government structure at all. All dealings between them is pure anarcho-capitalist, free market. This does mean that they also have no organized standing military. They are not however a bunch to be trifled with. Their society has made for a highly efficient production system and at least when trading amongst themselves, their products are dirt cheap due to their concentration of capital on production. Labor costs for them tend to be quite high, and so they are also big on automation. This is especially so when it comes to security, many of their warships are entirely unmanned. They do have warships to deter the other races from trying to steal what they’ve got, but they are designed in such a way as to minimize costs and maximize results.

Anarchist warships are invariably hollowed out bits of asteroid. They look like asteroids. In fact telling them apart from asteroids is very difficult until they start actively accelerating or firing weapons. Building their warships out of asteroids has a number of advantages, and a few disadvantages. Asteroids are a dime a dozen when you live in an asteroid belt so the costs of even their largest hulls are virtually nill, just the cost of hollowing out whatever needs to be hollow. Armor too, while being nowhere near as strong on a ton by ton basis as other race’s armor, is absolutely free, it is simply asteroid rock that has ‘not’ been hollowed out. Many of the standard components for warships are produced quite cheaply, making it very easy for the Anarchists to field extremely large fleets for their money.

The downside for Anarchist warships is that they are absurdly heavy and move very slowly. The sheer physical size of the ships (rocks) makes it very difficult to shield them, and given that much of the utility of their approach is bolstered by the enemy not knowing which rock out there is a warship or just a rock, makes shielding their ships counter productive. So while in theory their ships ‘could’ be shielded, most builders don’t bother. Besides, who needs shields when you’ve got all that rock. And shields are expensive for something designed to get shot at.

The nuts and bolts mechanics:

Anarchists do not have fighters (not exactly), unless captured from other races. They have small rocks (frigates), large rocks, really big rocks, insanely big rocks, and small moon sized rocks. All of these rocks typically have lots of rock in them (armor). They do not tend to have lots of weapons. Why bother with lots of weapons when the cost of weapons is more than half the cost of the rest of your ship? It makes more sense to spread that cost among a few ultra cheap rocks. This means relatively few weapons slots, and way too many non-weapon slots, with the expectation that most of them would be filled with heavy and virtually free armor.

Anarchist hulls would ‘not’ have an armor bonus, but neither would there be any stacking penalty to their armor, which on a slot by slot basis is crap, but with the amount they put on can turn any decent sized rock into a tank. However their ships can take an extraordinary amount of punishment resulting in double the standard hit points. Many of the standard internal components of ships are produced very inexpensively, but that would be reflected by special modules (not fancy modules, just cheap standard ones), not an overall cost reduction, as weapons are expensive (not expensive compared to other races, just expensive as judged by anarchists). The idea is to encourage large numbers of very slow, highly armored ships each with just a few weapons (or even one or none). So a standard ‘cruiser’ hull might cost merely 10, it would have an integrity boost of 100% and a shield ‘boost’ of -80%. (Noting again that their rock armor would cost nothing.)

Weapons that would be unique to the Anarchists would be a couple of weapons loosely based on the Order radiation gun, weapons that do sustained damage over time. The idea here is that while their fire may be dispersed, while their enemy is spending time blowing up lots and lots of rock, anarchist weapons are still doing their damage. Given that they cannot move very well, they would have long range versions of these weapons as well as short ranged ones.

This last I am not sure about, but it would be something I would try if I knew how to build it mod wise: They would also have ‘very’ long ranged seeking weapons that would function much like really brain dead fighters, screaming in at high fighter speed and simply blowing up. They would be engaged by fighter defenses, not drone defenses. (This would serve to, among other things, keep opponents honest and guessing as to whether they would need fighter defenses.)

Reserved, just cause I can.

Its awesome how so many Modders started to make New mods in a short time, i’m very happy with all of you! :smiley:

About this mod, the idea of fighting against huge rocks with weapons sounds awesome, i cant wait to see my fleets trying to catch the real enemy inside a group of normal asteroids =D

That set of game mechanics sounds alarmingly like those of the Tribe; those space hippies who are blessed with the infuriating, almost damage-proof ships. I’m not raising a note of concern due to the fact that the Anarchists may be operating with the same tactical “feel” of the Tribe…“it’s not plagiarism, it’s an homage!” :smiley: What actually worries me is that the Tribe have seldom been favorably regarded or viewed as a balanced race precisely on account of that same doubled hull integrity. I am unsure that your new Anarchists would be well-served by following in their footsteps.

The Tribe’s hull integrity bonus was seen as so disruptive to game balance that there was a serious initiative in 2010 to petition Cliffski to nerf it down from 100% extra to 80% extra. Sadly, the campaign went nowhere. :confused:

One of the very few things which held back the Tribe to any helpful degree was the fact that all of their racially-unique weaponry consisted of very-short-range guns. I shudder to think what a Tribe-esque race armed with a significant long-range arsenal (Anarchists-only weapons which do not yet exist in GSB) would do to opposing forces. The ability of Tribal warships to carve you up with their incredibly rapid-fire kinetic artillery and autocannons while shrugging off vast incoming damage is scary enough. Untethering a very Tribe-like fleet from the necessity of coming up close and personal to give you a poignard under the sternum is not A Good Thing.

I think that what’s known so far of the Anarchists is very cool and I would like to see them in-game. I’m just worried about the present way in which you’re brain-storming how to make their hulls racially distinctive and interesting. I hope that you won’t interpret my post as just a case of sour grapes. Rather, I’m hoping to steer you away from significant pitfalls.

Yes, the increased hit points is Tribe like, but the comparison ends there (or so I think). Tribe has super fast repair mechanisms that Anarchists would not have, and even if they did, likely would not use them (see below). Tribe has ships that can move, whereas Anarchist ships would be virtually stationary, relatively speaking. And while most of a Tribe ship’s slots would be used by equipment that gives hit point value to the ship, most of an Anarchist ship would be rock armor (it’s free and they aren’t going to use shields, so they better pile it on), which would ‘not’ give hit points to the ship. So while they are getting a large hull bonus, in practice their hulls probably would not have more hit points than other races. In any case, the actual bonus would be something that would certainly be heavily tweaked in play testing.

An Anarchist ship is designed to be cheap. A cruiser hull might well cost no more than some other race’s frigate. A repair system on such a hull would raise the cost by as much as 20%, and would find most of it’s repair capacity rapidly and uselessly wasted on repairing armor that is being blown off far faster than it can be repaired.

A idea that popped into my mind to give the Anarchists a unique long-range feel without making them horrifically overpowered: Divide their long-range weapons into two categories: extremely accurate (“seeking”) weapons that fire very slowly, and the reverse - weapons that fire relatively quickly but would not be a guaranteed hit against a planet if that’s the target. (In game terms, high tracking/high fire_interval and low tracking/low fire_interval).

I do like the idea of this race. Hopefully it will come to fruition!