Upcoming Rules Changes

[Cory Trese]

Jul 11, 2014 13:37:45 GMT -5 dayan said:

You know, not to split hairs, but when most people hear the word "carrier" in a nautical context they think of aerospace craft carriers, helicopter carriers, ships that House, maintain, launch and recover small craft. As used here, what you have here are fleet replenishment vessels:part tanker, part hard cargo transport equipped with the means to keep up with the fleet, transfer consumables, repair and refit facilities and even ferry personnel. I spent a summer in the gulf a long time ago that had a similar utility in the petrochemical industry.

Haven't had any complaints, at all, except when they stopped being able to refuel Cruisers and Transports.

Splitting hairs about terminology aside, there is no compelling reason to dilute the meaning of the concept by using some overly specific industry terminology. Been there, done that, lesson learned.

Carriers -- the name works.

[beuns]

"New Planetary Invasion Mechanics -- Much bigger difference between Scout/Bombard/Invade, more emphasis on Invasion Skill and Xeno Defense Rating"

Maybe a small tutorial to help players knowing the way it should be done...

"Carrier Refueling -- Refuel any non-Carrier ship"

Perfect to me

"Carrier Repair -- Only Fast Reactor Ships"

Does that mean that you only can repair light fighter ? If so, I would prefer something like "reapair any fighting ship" (though I don't know how the game engine could distinguish ship...)


"Going Indy -- A Political Option to convert a world to Indy"

Oh yeah !! Great one maybe another treaty to get an indy world back to a faction would help.

"Empire Events -- Random Events that force a player choice and track Reputation with the Factions as a leader"

You need to develop this one, I'm quite lost here...

[Cory Trese]

I'm adding entries to the Library for Scout/Bombard/Invade which will be enough for the average player.

You'll only be able to repair Fighters, Assault Fighters, Fighter-Bombers, and Strike Fighters. Only Fighters, and Assault Fighters are currently available in the game.

To change the rule to "Repair any fighting ship" the balance cost is just so severe that it isn't worth it. Played a dozen games that way and the end result is that the game is way less fun. Better to wait for the additional gear, options, armors, training than cut too deep into the core balance, which ultimately was destructive.

Once we get through the planned roadmap on Politics, we may very well consider another treaty that flips back to Faction ownership.

Empire Events will be shared as we go along, maybe it was premature to post that to the list, it requires at least another 10 days of work to finish.

[saltin]

Great proposed changes,I like them all.
The invasion option should probably take longer in game turns than the bombard alternative,as usually nuking something is quick and decisive.This would let us finish clearly won games faster.It takes way too long to do that curently imo.

Also dayan..lol that was funny,I woudn't necessarily call an award winning epic fine pure bred prized stallion a farm work donkey either!

[Cory Trese]

But if someone called a prized stallion a horse, you probably would know what they were talking about.

[pendell]

In any case, this is a game. So while I got exercised about being denied a fairly basic strategy common to any modern navy with pretensions of amphibious assault, I don't mind at all words that aren't strictly technically accurate. The important thing is that the general audience understand at a glance what the ship does, even if from a professional perspective it's slightly less accurate.

For instance.

The 'battle cruiser' should technically be a 'battleship'. Battleships were designed with the intent to engage and destroy any other ship they encountered. Cruisers, by contrast, were designed as long range independent vessels which would perform scouting and other missions apart from the fleet.

The 'battlecruiser' was a hybrid -- essentially a battleship with much of the armor removed in order to give it more speed. The *intent* was a vessel powerful enough to defeat anything short of a battleship and fast enough to run away from one of those.

Since there are no 'battleships'to contrast ST battlecruisers with, the battlecruiser fulfills the battleship's traditional role of 'having no fear in the valley of death, 'cause I'm the baddest %%$$%# in the valley.'

In all the star traders fanbase, there are probably a couple thousand people who know that. The people who actually *care* are probably in the dozens.

So what benefit does it give to the game to make the terminology just a bit more accurate, at the expense of confusing the audience?

Besides, 'battlecruiser' sounds cool. Thank you, Star Trek!

So .. yeah. The Trese Brothers are well advised to use words the general audience will understand at a glance and will immediately react to, on a gut level, as 'cool'. It's not like they don't have enough work to do already without confusing the audience. Those interested in professional accuracy would be well advised to see if they can get Harpoon ported to tablets!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Cory Trese]

Battlecruiser -- A class of powerful combat vessels midway between cruisers and battleships.

Fear not, pendell, there will be battleships and dreadnoughts soon =)

[fallen]

Jul 11, 2014 17:46:14 GMT -5 pendell said:

So .. yeah. The Trese Brothers are well advised to use words the general audience will understand at a glance and will immediately react to, on a gut level, as 'cool'. It's not like they don't have enough work to do already without confusing the audience. Those interested in professional accuracy would be well advised to see if they can get Harpoon ported to tablets!

I find it highly suspect that the "general audience" would be able to quote 10% of the facts you just mentioned about the historical, naval purposes of cruisers on Earth, when talking about boats.

[neveryours]

Dreadnoughts. Go big or go home. My Imperial class battlecruiser dreams come alive again.