Galactic Gates: A Universal Solution To Major Problems

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Which is why I proposed it as a game ending super-expensive unit. Once you've built one, which will COST you, your enemy has to destroy it soon or he loses. And even the act of surviving with the amount of resources that it would take would be a significant difficulty.

As for commander sniping, the solution is to make Annihilantion the default game-end mode instead of Commander Ends.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

The way I see it, just have each commander emit some field which prevents warping in by enemies. Buildings which accomplish the same effect could be built as well.

Of course, teleportation without a receiving gate would be catastrophically expensive.

I believe teleportation to be necessary in longer/larger games, but just for logistics. Making it an offensive weapon just seems unfair and difficult to balance.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Unit teleportation is a piece of genius. Invading a planet that is completely under enemy control as I see it is impossible. You cannot surmount the build power of the enemy. Unless you build your quantum rift with your engineers that established a beach head for ? Build time minutes. Then the quantum rift blows up and it's your factories directly competing against his. How would you go about constructing such a portal, launch some nukes, throw a KEW down, create orbital gunships, use stealth and send your precious t3 engineers by their lonesome and hope they don't have radar. How exactly you establish that beach head there in lies your strategy, positioning, and all the other jazz. Actually taking over the planet becomes a Matter of infrastructure if you don't have enough units your screwed and watch enemy units start poring into your home world. Making a door in the universe takes a lot of strategy and skill, also it's not a suicide mission ever because enemy troops being the same faction can walk through the portal too. #permanent portals

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

My opinion is that moving between planets and controlling territory shouldn't be any more or less difficult than it already is on 2D maps. If there are resources on a corner of another planet, it shouldn't be any different to control than resources on a distant section of a 2D map.

You know how I think interplanetary travel should work? It should be as simple as rubberbanding a group of ground-only units, issuing a "move" order to a location on another planet, and watching them "pack up" into some type of transport that navigates to the spot you picked. But not a controllable transport, just a representation of one to facilitate the transfer. No facilities to build, no transports to build, just the representation of them.

You'd still need to pick an uncontrolled area to land, as just about anything with a gun (especially AA) should be able to wipe it out before it lands if you were to try something foolish like "move" the units directly into the enemy base.

This makes multiple planet problems a non-issue, as they would just be the equivalent of a bigger 2D map. Resource issues vanish, planet turtling issues vanish and micromanagement vanishes. An opponent would have to fortify every square inch of a planet to prevent ground attacks. And we already know there'll be options to deal with that kind of thing, ala orbitals and killer asteroids.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Destroy the planet is already the best current option for "what if the enemy turtles a whole planet". I wouldn't mind "destroying the planet" being the only answer to a overly-defended enemy planet.

If they aren't completely fortified, start on the opposite end of the planet and try to move units from space to your new base while your base also produces units.

If they are completely fortified, cannons covering every square inch of sky, then smash their planet with as many class S meteorites you can hit it with to deny the enemy that planet. It isn't capturing it for yourself, but its fair enough that their cost to fortify that heavily can at least force you to lose the resources available for yourself.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Interesting thought if the planet is too well defended just smash it, but hypothetical if you don't have any asteroids your gonna need something to invade, without being instantly smashed by the enemies build power, even if the enemy only has 50 factories and the whole bloody planet is open how is your fledgling base gonna survive, barring a moon for unit cannon

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Simple: You are not supposed to construct a forward base unless the region has been secured. So don't expect to be able to produce reinforcements on the battle site but use the same mechanisms you have used for planet hopping earlier in the game.
Transporters, canons, nukes, artillery, orbital bombardment and KEW.

A stalemate when crossing the border between two planets is not a bad thing, it just adds a new phase of gameplay.

As classic RTS usually follows the following pattern:

1. Exploit resources
2. Fortify base
3. Rush
4. Game ender

The ultimate end of the game is determined by the point in time, at which the economy of one player is sufficient to build and use game enders. At this point, the offensive potential of units starts to exceed defensive potential of existing structures by far, the game will end within a few minutes.
This type of gameplay disqualifies for games, which are supposed to last longer then 2 hours. Whenever you design a game ender class unit, it may only affect the planet you have aimed for, so the gameplay described above can take place on every new planet.
Otherwise there would be only a single exploration phase, followed by turtling and spamming game enders across the whole solar system.
Expansion in late game needs to be rewarded, not punished. If you choose to reinforce the defenses on your "frontline" (planets closest to your enemy), then thats what he has to deal with. Sniping less fortified planets in the back rows requires a sneak attack, but should never be the default for a plain assault.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Well there we have it, you are against the entire premise of the game and are trying to make this game into a different game to the one it is. Put it in a mod.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Did you not read the post above the one you just made? I think it elaborates on my point quite nicely.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I have very mixed feelings about teleportation in any game because the only way to defend against it is to either accept the inevitable losses(they show up and do some damage before you can move reinforcements to engage - in a game where victory/defeat hinges on whether you can defend your commander...), flood your territory with defenders, or destroy the means of teleportation.

I also dis-like it for the exact reason that the OP chose his thread title, because it is a universal solution. I don't like end all, be all solutions in video games. That just makes it a race to get to the end all, be all solution.

Edit: Which isn't to say that teleportation is evil, but I want it to be only one of more than a couple of options for getting around the place.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

On the subject of smashing a planet being the only response to super turtles...

Were reality could bring in some awesome, there are different size asteroids, some could be real tiny, others large. Giant ones obliterate a planet, smaller ones leave smaller and smaller craters. Why obliterate the planet when you can drop a 'smaller' rock on their main base and you land while they recover? Only if you don't want the planet in the end.

As to rock slinging being the only way to end the game, you create some sort of anti-rock defense that you may be able to saturate with a lot of rocks, but while you invest in so many KEW's your enemy could be taking the fight too you...

On gates, I agree with the two gate, expensive version proposed again and again, so it becomes a logistics tool between well secured locations. But it should be an option, not the final solution. If the only downside is investment requirement, you're designing the options wrong.

For example(using the transport with speed options proposed somewhere):
Gate pros- secure, instant, no range
gate cons- running cost + large incremental cost per unit, large investment, requires end gate

Transport Pros-choice of cheap or fast transport, nothing required at destination, no range
transport cons-vulnerable, medium incremental cost (fast) small incremental cost

Cannon Pros- similar speed to fast transport, but lower incremental cost than fast transports, less vulnerable (smaller is harder to hit)
Cannon cons- no control after launch, limited range, one way

As you can guess, some details are missing from some of the items, but the goal was that each has a different purpose, and depending on what you need or how you choose to play, you build what is most useful.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Exactly. As I see it, if someone wants to teleport units on top of your commander to kill him, then the forewarning will be enough for the commander to move away and position defense troops at the same location (it should be very visible where each single unit would emerge).

I am fairly certain that most of us are ignoring the thread title by now, and so should you.

If teleportation is implemented then it will be just that, one among many with its own merits and drawbacks. Even if it is a one way teleport without a receiving gate.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Yeah, the original topic was something that was wildly different to what we are really discussing now. Speaking of which, I apologise in advance for going off topic.

Regarding the asteroid thing and the comment I made about it being your last course of action. I'm sorry I didn't give you a proper response earlier. I hadn't time. So here is a little justification for that comment:

Simply put if you make something cheap and easy enough to do then people will just do it all the time. It's a case of balancing the effectiveness of the unit and cost to the player.

Again, if it's cheap and easy to do and can end a game in an instant it needs to be pretty easily countered. So anti-asteroid defence batteries would be cheap and effective - rendering asteroids pretty much useless. IMO it is this that would go against the entire premise of the game. Not making them an expensive but effective means of destroying a planet.

Capturing a planet as opposed to annihilating it should nearly always be more beneficial to the player. If you just go around destroying all the planets in a solar system then you just miss out totally on a huge part of the game that takes a lot of time and money to create (as mentioned in the post by exterminans page 7. Although moving asteroids around the system is a large part of the game - I imagine not all of it is to do with smashing planets. Some of it will be for resources and defence.

I think I already made a point of suggesting that hard to crack planet defences might warrant an asteroid as a last means. This should be a cataclysmic and epic (for epic read awesome?) event in the game. And that's the thing with epic events. They become considerably less epic the more regularly they occur. If every game ends with an asteroid then maybe that's OK. If every engagement ends with an asteroid I think it will detract from the awesomeness of the event.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I've been meaning to change my original post for a while now, so don't worry about discussing things that are only slightly related.

I'd prefer it be kept related to the gating concept, which appears to be the case when you discuss teleportation and how it will influence battles.

If the options are to either gate onto a planet, or destroy it, that's still relevant to the original concept.

Destruction shouldn't be the only option. In games with more than 2 teams (which should happen if there are going to be massive 40 person games), obliterating an opposing planet would mean you have one less planet to use when warring against the last few enemies.

Thus, gating (and all other forms of planetary conquest) are probably necessary if you desire to win.

All the other ideas are generally secondary at this point. Resources have been discussed into oblivion, so this really only centers around teleporation and gameplay related to it, with gates as a means for it to happen.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

See this is also an issue. I see gates and teleporters as very different things.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Exactly. The gates would be, by necessity, a well defended building. Teleporters would be completely different as they are individual units. Honestly I think if the title of the thread was changed to something like "Galactic Gates: A Universal Solution To Major Problems". Most of the more annoying 'I hate teleportation' posts wouldn't exist. I would say they wouldn't be able to claim much of what they do, which are stupid things that have already been well addressed by many posts, but I'm not naive enough to be that pathetically hopeful.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I view this as innevitable really. Turtles happen. However I'm also not all that worried about it. Covering every single inch of a planet so well that you can't even clear a beachhead with artillery is not going to be cheap.

I think it is safe to assume, that launching a KEW will actually be cheaper than turtling that hard. So that will all just naturally sort itself out.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Ah, so you see gates as some sort of massive interplanetary portal, and teleporters as units which can themselves teleport (like the commander when given the teleporter upgrade)?

I'm much more comfortable with the idea of gates rather than teleporters. Perhaps my post was poorly worded in this regard. I don't think units should have the natural ability to teleport, gives them far to much of a tactical advantage IMO.

Oh, and used your suggestion for the title.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

AWESOME!
But back to the point. I feel that many are not seeing a difference regardless of MY posts alone, not even counting the many well written and thought out ones I've seen. I don't think too many are realizing that Uber is apparently JUST making the game engine.

From what I've heard that can take at least a year to get roughly functional, especially as this seems more unexplored terrain then most games. So it starts to settle down into what can we do the most with for the least amount of variables.

I think I suggested earlier to making a precursor to the full transport Gate that provides a basic storage and production value. Now I'm not saying it needs anything extremely complex to determine how much it produces. I.E. for every 10 mass/energy you produce OVERALL through out your empire they get 1 each respective. That way it might keep it simple and not involve massive processing to calculate it's production. Heck you could just have it where only 1 can be made on a planet but it gives you 2k of storage and 10-15 production. This might all be ignored depending on how the actual game takes place and the decisions on the economy goes.

I think that if we are going to allow teleporting in this game, we darn sure better have anti-teleport structures, to deny the ability to teleport to a given area. One thing I really disliked about SupCom2 was how overpowered I felt the Aeon Space Temple was, to be able to teleport instantly some insane huge army into the middle of your base, or wherever they wanted it to go.