Designing Alien Races and Ships for HW2

[crobato]

They always said that the conception part of the game is probably the hardest. We know that perfection is in the details, but then, it is also in the vision of the whole. For that case, we must also study how other successful RTS games are able to implement their player races.

The reason for this importance is that how you design your player race will play a crucial part in how you design your ships and narrative. You can't invent a ship out of midair and just assign it to a race just like that. You have to invent the race first, and then the ships and tech trees to go with it. From the beginning you build in both the distinctions and game balancing into a race instead of petty equalizers like making ships equal.

One of the big weakness of the original Homeworld is that the two player races are too alike. Aside from a few ships, the two races are actually mirror counterparts of each other with different skins. Another game that wasn't outstanding in that area is Star Trek Armada, where all four races were roughly equal but truly not distinguishable from each other since all their ships and tech trees are roughly equivalent (even for the Borg).

Starcraft is a good example of race distinction-balancing right from the start, where the approach begins right with the design of the race themselves. The basic Starcraft race structure---balanced humanity vs. swarming race vs. high tech enigmatic race---is quickly adopted by many. Another game following the Starcraft tripartite structure is Conquest Frontier Wars. Earth 2150 has this approach too, but the differences are more subtle, sociological, and more technological (since all races are human based).

Star Trek is always a problem because its races weren't designed for games, and adapting them while keeping them balanced while keeping them faithful to TV canon isn't an enviable task (this is usually the bane of Star Trek as a strategy game.) I like to see how Armada 2 could do it. Note that it has six races this time---Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Borg, Sp 8472, and Cardasssian.

One of the problems of Homeworld and Cataclysm is too few races. I know they made an argument about the graphics card can't hold textures, but I don't buy it, considering how other games are able to to have three races or more.

Cataclysm tried to address one problem of Homeworld and tried to make races more distinctive. However, it's still limited to two. The Beast seems to be a variation of the Zergling, but we still don't have the Protoss equivalent as a playable race (maybe T-Mat or one of the Unbound.)

(Part 1 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

However, in Cataclysm, the Beast didn't really fit the Zergling paradigm well, especially after the patches. The Beast is supposedly the swarming, overwhelming entity, and somehow, in the attempt to balance the game, that vision is lost. In the end, both Taaw and Beast didn't really stand apart from each other significantly, especially when the Beast acquired Taaw techs. The Taaw seems to have incorporated both Human and Engimatic race qualities, based on techs acquired from artifacts (like Siege Cannon) and the Bentusi.

Actually for me Cataclysm looked like it followed the Myth structure (remember this game?) where you have Humans vs. Undead.

Imperium Galactica 2 is also another game with primarily tripartite structure, although in MP, seven other distinctive races are added. Here once again, you see the medium Humanity, an aggressive, swarming race, and an enigmatic high tech race.

There is also another lesser known race structure where you can have four to five races, and each race differs by their cultural and technological element. I will deal with that later.

So waht if HW2 takes the Starcraft style paradigm? This is what I consider to be the 'easy way out' in terms of audience familiarity and recognizability but by no means, the only other way.

This leaves you with three races to start with.


(Go to Part 3 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Caldias]

I think the beast and Somtaaw were pretty well done, much better than the simple ship design differences of the Kushan and Taidani. However, I agree that there should have been another race. I'd like to see a more sinister unbound entity. I am envisioning a spherical ship, that detatches parts of itself as fighters, becoming the shape of an apple core, with some strange weapon in the center. That would be cool.

[ceejayoz]

The thought of a space-going apple core fails to instill fear in my heart :p

[crobato]

We start with the middle or Balanced Race. This is of course, usually the Human Race.

I think here, the Kushan, 'Taaw, Taiidan distinctions all go down to the crapper, replaced by one generic Human race instead. This would suggest that the epoch period of the game must be set well in advance of Cataclysm, so such that the distinctions between all the races have blended together and now they all face a common goal---survival. Thus all the techs of these races are molded into one.

The Primary characteristic of this race is balance, durability and a healthy reservoir of technology. It's power lies in equal amounts of strike craft and capital ships, along with supporting technology. This race shows a lot of multipurpose versatility in its ships, much like the 'Taaw.

However I will take out two things. Purposedly designed kamekaze craft and things like Hive Frigates should belong to the aggressive swarming race, and uber cannons like the Seige Cannon, to the enigmatic high tech race.

Then we have the aggressive, swarming race. Instead of the Beast, let's start with a clean scratch of paper and design this race from scratch. They could be insectoid for instance.

The Primary characteristic of this race is Swarming. Thus it's heavily strike force based and has a large variety of strike craft. It's got carriers, hive frigates and Hive Destroyers. Resourcing is super efficient, and production times for strike craft is low. It's got all sorts suicide craft. Ships tend to be specialized, not multipurpose.

However, its capital ship strength must be relatively weak compared to the A and C races. It's sensor range also tends to be weaker, and so is its overall tech variety. It does not have as many special weapons or tech perks.

The Third Race, our Engimatic race is likely to be a new Unbound race. This race must rely on technology to win, not numbers. It's production times are slow, matched with long research times, and its ships and equipment are expensive.

However, it's noted for its strong capital ships and fast self-healing rate among ships. It's tech tree is deep, with the most powerful sensors and cloaking devices, as well as force fields, gravwells and ubercannons like the Siege Cannon.

Note that this is not the only way to implement a race structure. There is another way, similar to the ones used in the Sid Meier games.

(Go to Part 4 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[reki]

ha - fear the space pips, ceejay.

i guess its not that unrealistic that intelligence technology advances to the point of every race being able to keep up with the latest universal technologies, bar one or two adaptions. the kushans saw the wisdom in omitting defence fighters and making self healing supps & the taiidanis saw the doltery of the drone frig and picked a field frig instead.

beast & som are very different, & like crobato said.. its caused some major balance issues. i agree, though - if devs have the time and money to balance a few completely different races, it would be a super game. i guess it is an issue of time/cost in a game like this, however.

[crobato]

Note how the tripartite structure suits different players and their strategy habits.

The Aggressive Race favors the beginner, as well as really gung ho types who just likes swarming.

The Middle Race favors the moderately experienced players who like a balanced approach to the game.

The Advanced Race favors the advance players, and preferably so, since it requires quite a bit of experience to master its special techs (e.g. like Repulsor Shields and such.)

Another approach in designing races is one based on our own sociological patterns. One of the games that used this pattern effectively is Microsoft's Allegiance. Another user of this pattern is Earth 2150.

Here are some examples:

1.) Fascist Regime --- This race has moderate tech and economy, poor stealth qualities, but very strong weapons techs as well as durable hulls. Moderate accuracy and range for weapons. Moderate cost and build times of weapons and ships.

2.) Capitalist Regime --- This race (or company) has high tech, with good stealth, speed, and sensor quality, superior economy and resourcing, but weaker ship hulls and only moderate weaponry. However, weapons show great accuracy and range. Highest cost and build times of weapons and ships.

3.) Communist Regime --- Can builds lots and lots of fighters and ships, but inferior tech. Weak economy, moderately strong hulls. Weapons strong, but inferior range and accuracy. Inferior stealth and sensor qualities. Lowest and build times cost of weapons and ships.


Note how the balance of Energy vs. Projectile weapons fit into these schemes. Projectile weapon techs are more easily seen with lower tech races or swarming races, while Energy weapons are primarily used with advanced tech races. The Middle Races will of course, use both.

(Go to Part 5 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom.)

[crobato]

There are other variations as well, but not as better known:

4.) Revolutionary-Pirate-Mercenary Regime --- Poor tech development, poor economy, but based on salvaging and acquiring techs from other races. Potentially, it can acquire all techs across all races and combine them for its own. Ships show a lot of versatility, and quite balanced. The Allegiance Belters, the Homeworld Turanic Raiders, the Bora colonists of Tachyon and the Starfleet Command Orion Pirates tend to fit into this category. Note how they contrast against the speed/sleekness of their traditional enemies, the Capitalist Regimes, such as the Gigacorp of Allegiance and Galspan of Tachyon.

5.) Religious Fanatic Regime --- Particularly hard to demonstrate. In Allegiance, the RIXX faction is also the religionists, but show quite a high level of tech. So is the New Order of Dawn in the game Ground Control. Ditto with the Kadeshi in Homeworld. My guess is that this race has poor economy, but high tech, with lots of fanatics willing to die for their cause.

6.) Yellow Peril Regime --- This is sort of an Asian evil empire based on Western stereotypes of Japanese and Chinese culture, with scheming generals and emperors spouting Art of War quotes. House Liao and Kurita of Battletech fits this category, but Liao does it better. Surprisingly the Romulans in Star Trek tend to fall into this as well. The weapons of this regime isn't the best, but what they can't get out of strength, they get out stealth and speed. While their warrior race is honor bound, their leaders are not, relying on scheming and treachery. You usually don't see this in RTS, but more in grand civ strategy games. Speed and Stealth are the strong qualities of this regime, with emphasis for sudden, swift strikes in the offensive, but does not favor long drawn out defensive battles or attritional battles.

Another variation of the Yellow Peril Regime combines this and the Communist Regime, to create the new Genghiz Khan horde regime. As such this regime takes both the qualities of Yellow Peril and Communist regimes, but sometimes substracts from both as well.

(On to Part 6 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

Once you have decided on the culture and type of player race, you can begin the design and specs of the ships.

I've read how so many fans submit their imaginary proposals for game ships. Unfortunately, game ships cannot be designed seperately and ahead of the context of the culture of the player race.

In Paramount studios, alien ships for Star Trek are designed with the cultural ethos of the race in mind. Klingon ships for example, are intended to be jagged and aggressive, while Romulan ships are intended to be sinister and stealthy. These rules are told and enforced to the game developers designing non TV canon game ships for their Star Trek games. It is a prerequisite before Paramount applies their badge of official authorization to the final game product.

Here again, how game ships should look, must reflect on the player race. The Allegiance Belters, Tachyon Bora colonies, the SFC Orion Pirates, all have a gritty, all function, no nonsense look. Corporate regimes like Allegiance's Gigacorp, Tachyon's Galspan, all have an expensive, sleek look. In Wing Commander, the catlike Kilrathi ships have this aggressive claw design on them, just as the Lyrans in Starfleet Command.

Somehow this lesson is lost with Homeworld. The Taiidani ships seem more appropriate for the Kharakian race, but the developers did a switcheroo. The Taiidani ships still look more primitive as the type suited for a nomadic race, while the Kushan ships, with their blocky totalitarian looks, seem more appropriate for that of an empire.

In Cataclysm, the supposedly minor Kiith Somtaaw seem to enjoy ships that appear quite well advanced over their fellow Kiiths. Some ships also, appear remarkably insect like, such as the Kadeshi Pods, the 'Taaw Leech, and the Hive frigs.


(on to Part 7 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Spaz]

Ok, I like this rant, but its a bit long. Taking forever to get to your final point.

Like I see it, HW should have many more than just 3 races. It should have many, like the taiidan, taaw, new beast (or something like), unbound bentusi, unbound turanic (like in To Unbind), Kadeshi(if possible), and a few others. There doesn't have to be defined settings for the races: one doesn't have to be the uber powerful, uberslow race; etc.

-Spaz On SpaceCrack

[Lord Vorkosigan]

Great ideas/thoughts/whatever so far, crobato. Can't wait for part 7.

[AntaresSITH]

sorry spaz but i am not your opinion

crobato is the first one in this forum, that writes something usefull. he brings up examples uses good argumentation (not just "i like it and cuz of that i want to have it in HW2")

the example of starcraft is very good. SC is one oft the BEST real time strategy games i know. if u think about the fact that it was released 1996 (or so) it is awesome to see how many people are still playing this "old" game. nowhere else are the races THAT balanced then SC.

by the way crobato:
just one question:

u played master of orion 1 or 2 didn't u?

[Tronno]

I agree with Spaz - the designers need some breathing room to create the number and style of races they feel would actually improve the game. Somehow I don't think that using a tried-and-true formula would create a very innovative product, however well made it may be.

The races in HW were varied because they combined several types of existing races into one, generating a less stereotypical enemy/ally. For example, the Bentusi were the nomadic merchants with a little bit of religious fanaticism thrown in. The Kadeshi were the "protectors of the garden" and a race of lost exiles. The ghost ship, despite the fact that it feels like an artifact more than a race, has an unknown past that allows the player to imagine and speculate. I could go on and on. The Taiidani - the main nemesis - took a backseat to this myriad of characters for four consecutive missions.

In other words, there doesn't have to be a specific template for the races in any game as long as their existence adds to the experience in any positive way. I, for one, can't wait to see what Relic has in store for us.

;)

[Mazar_Paktu]

Like i said: 3 things

1. i don't like the starcrafty sort of races in a game like homeworld. give us the communists/religious fanatics/escaped slaves/etc. like in alpha centauri w/alien crossfire exapnsion

2. yay tronno! i agree, not just 1 big bad guy, more than 3 races. also, if you played throuch the single player in HW, you'll remember that a lot of techs you use are based on captured enemy ships/trade/necessity. if they were left to develop on their own they would probably be quite different.

3. none of these things you've said fit the kadeshi or the LC of Earth 2150. what about them. kadesh=very honorable-techie-communists, LC=parlaimentary-communist-techies

[Omi-kun]

crobato: This is really good, it's like reading fiction - addictive. You do have a very good point, balance is a very important key to RTS games but sometimes the story takes precedence and races doesn't become exactly balance but enough so it wouldn't matter too much.

And about more than one enemy, IMHO there should only be 1 primary enemy and there can be *allies* to that central rival and a small number of missions could be devoted to dealing with them. But to have several primary enemies may disturb the formula that we, the HW fans, are used to and love. But I'll try to make my ship with a style to it.

Crobato, you should get an editor and repost this in one good post for all to read. It's exactly what we need to prevent another Cataclysm (no offence intended).

[Tronno]

Umm...in my original post I meant that there should be one main race and several minor races that aren't necessarily affiliated with the major enemy. I just thought I ought to clear that up. :)

[crobato]

One thing I must say that there really should not be any technological barriers in having three to more races. Earth 2150 for example, can put it as many units into its battlespace, and that has three races. Conquest Frontier Wars also has three. ST Armada has four, and Armada II (slated to be released Nov-Dec this year) will have six. That makes these games more complex than Homeworld is the use of bases and a more varied terrain. However, bases and terrain is not needed for a Homeworld type game.

Homeworld and Cataclysm actually stands in the thin line between the two kinds of RTS games in the market today:

1.) The Base Building/Resourcing RTS embodied by Starcraft, C&C, Warcraft and all the like.

2.) The Purely tactical RTS which gives you a limited amount of units and let's you decide the best way to use it (e.g. Myth series, Ground Control/Dark Conspiracy, ST Dominion Wars, etc,.)

Homeworld is in the thin line because it does not have fixed bases, but it has resourcing, researching, and manufacturing, although its trees for that are quite shallow, compared to a game like Earth 2150. But like the purely tactical RTS, it relies on tactical formations and micromanagement.

To understand "management", you need to look at a game like Conquest Frontier Wars. In this game, you have a system where you can create an "admiral", assign the admiral to a fleet, and the admiral will take care of the rest for you, freeing you to manage your economic and research affairs.

How will gameplay in Homeworld 2 should evolve? Homeworld was pretty much a first generation RTS in terms of its gameplay structure. The game play ended up rather simple---the best formations for a certain type of craft in the largest numbers possible. Thus you have organized "swarming" of super scouts, devilish defenders, and hellish heavy corvettes. The end result was a series of patches designed to fix this swarming, the super scouts, the defenders, and although they never did 'fix' heavy corvettes in Homeworld, they finally did so in Cataclysm.

Frankly, there is nothing in real life tactically wrong with swarming or the rush attack. It is a fundamental basis in warfare---the Mongol Hordes, the Blitzkreig. But in games it leads to a predictable formula, which in the end will bore players out of the franchise.

A good game must be designed with the basis that there are several ways to skin a cat.

In Cataclysm, there is an honest attempt to remedy the swarming or rush phenomenon. This is a characteristic of 2nd and 3rd generation RTS. In Conquest Frontier Wars, there are controls like a limited number of Command Points, which function like Supply Points in Cataclysm.

However, for any game to be real, it is impossible to relinquish swarms or rushing without costing its credibilty (the command point ceiling in Conquest Frontier Wars seems quite artificial). This often leads to the creation of "super" wide area effect weapons, like those seen in Brood Wars, ST Armada, and finally in Cataclysm. However, using special weapons of mass destruction, also open up a can of worms on its own---they are actually less tactical than swarming.

If swarming is to produce as many numbers as possible and released them on the enemy, special weapons are mainly researching the uber weapon as soon as possible, then inflicting the said weapon on the enemy.

Both can be quite annoying, and furthermore has created an invisible conflict between players who prefer the swarming style, and those who like uber weapons. This is why Brood Wars or Cataclysm have met some criticism when uber weapons are introduced in a scenario that did not had them before. In games that already have them, it can be quite annoying. For example in Earth 2150, after carefully building up your bases, you might find yourself under artillery or ICBM attack, blowing up your bases from missles being shot from nowhere.

How we design our alien races and factions, and our ships from that, and given this consideration, will play an important part in determining game play. The objectives is to give them tactical variety, different approaches to a goal, but not to bias one approach over the other. Every tactic must have their advantages and disadvantages.

Everything must have a yin and a yang.


(On to Part 8 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Mazar_Paktu]

oops is that what i sounded like tronno? sorry, i meant what you just said.

also, in Earth 2150 there were anti-missile defenses. remember?
(i haven't played the expansion thingy yet, so i dunno about artillery, but how about static defense?)

finally, i thouht the kushani were more minimalist & nomadic(nomadic?), all those struts and exra gun barrels on the taiidani take up resources....

(p.s. my favorite number is not 3 it is 7)

[crobato]

The Kharakians are supposed to look more primitive and designed for atmospheric flight, since they developed their ships originally in the planet. That's why the Taiidani ships were originally meant for the Kharakians and why they were originally given Kharakian names (becoming code names when Kharakians switched to Kushan ship models).

I played Homeworld campaign from the Taiidan and Kushan ships, and I honestly felt that the Taiidan ships truly felt more the part. This is in addition that their special ships are more defensive, while one of the Kushan special ships are more 'evil', the Cloaked Fighter. In any case, future ship designs should truly reflect more of the culture of the originating race, and not as 'generic' as they were in Homeworld.

[crobato]

The easiest way for Homeworld to do a multiple race is do the Starcraft thing---add the Third "Engimatic" race---since Cataclysm is already two thirds there. But again, this might smell too obvious---many games from Imperial Galactica 2 to Conquest Frontier Wars have this scheme already. But then again, it would be so typical that audiences will still accept it anyway.

But there are other ways. This depends on how you envision your story scenario.

1.) In the far future, the Kiith---now having rebuilt their populations and have become much stronger---have now declared war on each other for the dominance of Hiigara.

2.) Different lost Hiigaran races, like the Kadeshi, have begun their return to Hiigara. They will contest the dominance of Hiigara against the Kharakians.

In any case, this should be a multirace scenario.

Should we have different campaign choices based on the player races, all leading to different endings? Someone has suggested that, and this is what I think.

No.

I think first of all, Homeworld 2 must be a single congruent story, like playing through a serious science fiction novel, with one wham bang ending. All these games with multiple single player campaign points, playable from different races, tend to have shallow unfulfilling stories, with short campaigns each (like 10 missions). Save the multiple race combat for the multiplayer and skirmish modes. The only time I find you can have a truly filling multiple view point single player campaign is when you got so many missions to flesh out the storyline for all the races (e.g. like in Ground Control or Earth 2150).

Still like any well written story, there should only be one focus, one main character, one main hero race, that we should follow, and everything must unfold from that point of view. Part of Homeworld's interesting narration lies in the unfolding of the universe and events from one perspective. It would not be the same if it had been a dual single player campaign, with some single player missions fought from the Taiidan side.

Call it creative discipline.


(On to Part 9 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

The multiple Kiithid scenario reminds me of Cyberstorm II, the ill fated attempt to create an RTS and sequel to Mission Force: Cyberstorm, probably the best turn based mech game ever. In Cyberstorm II, the humans are divided into several megacorporations with different characteristics on each side. (For those not familiar with this, this is part of the StarSiege-Tribes universe, and took place a few millenia before Tribes.)

So you design your warring Kiithid based on different social characteristics that are actually analogous to present day Earth. The advantage-disadvantage of this (based on your viewpoint---this is truly a double edged sword) is that you get to discard all the old HW and Cataclysm ships and start with a new slate.

1.) Fascist, "Iron" Kiithid. This is a highly aggressive, militaristic Kiithid. Moderate technology, moderate economic efficiency and resourcing, strong armor on their ships, moderate cost of ships, combined projectile/energy/missile weapons. Moderate sensor and poor stealth ability. Moderate salvaging capability to obtain some weapons and techs to improve. Moderate self healing. Strongest on capital ships.

2.) Capitalist "Enlightened" Kiithid. This is the advanced, liberal, capitalistic Kiithid. Strong technology, strong economic efficiency and resourcing, fast ships, weak armor, high cost of ships, mostly energy weapons. Fastest Self Healing. Highest sensor and stealth ability. No need for salvaging.

3.) Communist "Horde" Kiithid. This is a very aggressive, fanatic Kiithid driven by radical religious or ideological persuasions. Weak technology, weak economic efficiency and resourcing, fast ships, moderate armor, lowest cost of ships, mostly projectile and missile weapons. Has the best salvaging tactics needed to improve weapons and techs. Weakest Self Healing. Lowest sensor with moderate stealth ability. Noted for suicide craft and best strike force

Note Energy and Projectile/Missile weapons.

These can be very strong balancing tools. The Energy weapons have infinite ammo but slow firing rate. Projectile weapons must require reloading.

In any case, races that use projectile weapons have a basic weapon that has near infinite ammo supply, but stronger weapons like missiles require reloading on all smaller craft. Large cap ships can have infinite missile supply.

It seems however, the Starcraft approach again. We can't seem to help this---the basic Starcraft concepts are actually analogous to our social models---the Communist (Zerg), Fascist (Terran) and Capitalist (Protoss). Earth 2150 seemed to do a better job of bucking the stereotypes (which I actually find quite prophetic in the case of the United Civilized States and the Eurasian Dynasty). Still,we still have one communist state in Earth 2150.

We now take another alternative.

(On to Part 10 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Spaz]

A few things (Not Pertaining to HW):

Mazar: I have lost all respect for you because of this one statement:

Reelect Gore-Liberman 2004


And Crobato: Serious Typo here...

the advanced, liberal, capitalistic
Don't ever put "advanced + liberal" or "liberal + Capitalistic" in a sentence together again. Youre offending something deeper than whatever soul I have.

No Bed-wetting Liberal could EVER survive in a Capitalist system. If you can, then you AREN'T a liberal or its NOT a Capitalist system. If you are a bedwetter then we should ship you to Afganistan and add you to the target list.



A few things (Pertaining to HW):

1) The Three Race idea is tried and true, and also very classically boring. It has been used in innumerable games... and its beginning to show.

2) A Multiple Race (more than 3) with a VERY expanded tech tree, depending on how you run the course (one single player campaign, but different ways of playing it, with different scenarios). You could run the course and capture some of this race, some of that, get some ions over here, and develop some very interesting combinations for ships (I liked the idea of interchangeable parts (like in MW3, have slots and tonnage, with armor and speed). I would find it much better to create MY perfect ship than have to use some else's.

Please, some feed back on this.

-Spaz

[crobato]

By liberal, I mean advanced philosophically, not the emotional whiners that make up the left wing of the Democrat party. There are so called "liberal" parties in the world that are actually staunchly conservative, such as Japan's LDP.

The three race idea is tried and true, and while it is overabused, it is still better than the even more abused two race system. The most obvious complaint about any two race game system is how quickly players wanted to add another race to it. An example of a two race game, Ground Control, could not help but add a third race in its expansion pack.

A three race is minimal. More races are even better but for every race you add, you also add greater game complexity, and not to mention game development and debugging cost. From a business point of view, you will still sell a five race game versus a three race game for about 30 bucks US.

This is not to mention the increased probability of dealing with balancing issues that can arise with four or five races.

Frankly, I don't think Relic could handle developing more than three new races from scratch in one time if they were to start with a brand new code. However, I think they can add more races if they approach HW2 as a super expansion of HW rather than a brand new rewrite. They can base two or three of the races from previous races, than add one or two more new ones.

[crobato]

That alternative is to take the existing races and add one or two new ones. By building on what we already have, we save time and effort. But we must also take some time in particularly differentiating these existing races, since they don't particularly stand much apart from each other.

To begin with, all races must have the same number of ship classes. This is to prevent things like in Cataclysm, where by basically the Beast having four different kinds of fighters and three different kinds of corvettes, you could belt the 'Taaw dead which only has three different kinds of fighters and two kinds of corvettes. Each ship class becomes its own production pipeline.

Hypothetically, Homeworld and Cataclysm has already four players races, with three (Bentusi, Kadeshi, Turanic) non player ones. Kushan-Taiidan-Turanic isn't really that distinct, nor are they distinct from the Beast either, which is essentially all three of them with some new properties. The 'Taaw is so different from the rest of the Kushans that they seem to be altogether, a different race.

This is how my hypothetical race structure will be.

1. Hiigaran-'Taaw (balanced race)

2. Imperialist Taiidan-Turanic (piracy race)

3. Kadeshi (swarming race)

4. Unbound (engimatic race)


Each race will have three fighter types, two corvette types, two frigate types, two large cap ship types. I like the Cataclysm SP support structure, so we should have two carriers and one Mothership for each.

The basic structure will be:

Fighters

1. Scout Type
2. Interceptor
3. Bomber

Corvette

1. Heavy or Missile or Multigun Corvette
2. Any Unique Type here

Frigate

1. Beam Frigate (single or multibeamer)
2. Any Unique Type here

Big Ships

1. Destroyer (no more separate generic and missile destroyer)
2. Dreadnaught/Cruiser

Utility Ships

1. Multipurpose Resourcer
2. Multipurpose Controller

Command Ships

1. Carrier
2. Mothership


Despite the races sounding like having a class Starcraft structure, the races are actually a hybrid of sorts.

The Kadeshi for example, actually posseses Swarming, Piracy and some Enigmatic qualities. They are a bunch of religious fanatics that happen to have access to some very old and powerful technologies from ancient races.

The Taiidan-Turanic pirates, for example, possessed both Balanced and Piracy qualities. Instead of an infection beam, they now have a computer override beam.

The Hiigarans possessed a bit of Economic, Balanced and Enigmatic qualities. They are the most efficient in resourcing, and the best sensors to boot. They possess a lot of strong defensive technology.

The Dark Unbound has very strong healing properties, defensive and wide area effect weapons.


(on to the Part 11 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

A disclaimer first. Any ideas here are for the public domain. I won't mind if Relic or anybody takes any of the ideas I mentioned here, or whether they arrived to a parallel or similar conclusion.

Let's begin with the Hiigaran race. We assumed that the rest of the Kiith may have licensed the Somtaaw techs, and licensed a few more from the Bentusi. The result is that the new Hiigaran forces are more like the Somtaaw than the Kushans in HW.

Fighters.

1. Recon. I don't see any need to change this design except for a new special ability---cloaking. What's the use of recons if they can't hide. Upgrade: Advanced Sensors. This will detect cloakers.
2. Blade Mk 7 Interceptor with mass drivers and missiles
3. Acolytes with linking technology and energy cannons, missiles in Acos, and EMP with ACV.

One thing I didn't like in Cata is that energy cannons seem more effective on cap ships, but not against fighters. In my observation, I keep seeing Beast Raider interceptors with mass drivers constantly nailing Acos with energy cannons, so much I don't research energy cannons at all. In fact, I would rather see energy cannons either as an option, or used only in certain ships.

I don't see the need of having both plasma cannons and energy cannons since they seem to do the same things. So I don't see any need to make a seperate plasma bomber. I won't make a separate production line for ACVs since you can just link the Acos for it. ACVs are not true corvettes in my book.

Corvettes

1. Hammer Heavy Corvette with fast tracking turrets, with EMP. Slightly less punch than old Hammer but could track fighters better.
2. Utility Corvettes with light turrets. These corvettes could salvage or repair, combining the functions of the old Salvette and Repairette.

Enough said on these.

Frigates

1. Dervish Multibeam Frigate.
2. A new Hiigaran Defense Field Frigate with repair and supply functions.

Note. I want the Hiigaran race to be a defensive one. DFFs on Taiidans didn't seem to reflect the character of an aggressor race. This new frig combines it with the functions of the Supply Frig in HW.

The Dervish I think, does its job well as a new gen assault frig. At times it can hurt like a true ion frig when fighting in large formations.

Special or Microships

1. Sentinels with force fields.
2. Gravwells.

No need to change the Sentinels which act as Defenders. I would reduce their SP cost however from Cata.


Utility Ships

1. New efficient Tug-Resourcers with limited Salvaging ability, Crystal processing. Special ability---ramming.
2. Processors

Workers are lame and fragile. Learn to target them early and you win the game.

I like the old HW Resourcers in their toughness. Their new special ability is to ram like tugs. When a bunch of these resourcers are attacked by an enemy frig, you can use one or two of these to ram the enemy ship away from the other resourcers, inflicting deadly damage at the same time.

They will self heal if they are not constantly fired upon. While they can salvage wrecks or crystals, they will not salvage a live warship, otherwise they would become too dangerous. Salvaging should be on ships that are fairly cheap and vulnerable, not tough and expensive.

Processors are unchanged from Cata.


Capital Ships.

1. Deacon class Destroyer
2. Archangel class Dreadnaught

No complaints on these two fine ships.


Carriers

1. Shaman Carrier
2. New Mothership (New ability: Balllistic Missile)

The new mothership must reflect the ideas from the Somtaaw Explorer class. This means modular construction with support units.

Instead of the siege cannon, the new mothership constructs a missile of mass destruction, and sends it towards its target the same way.

The theme of the new Hiigaran faction is utility, economic efficiency and defense.


(On to Part 12 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

Now on to the Pirate Race.

The Raiders constitute both unique Turanic designs, and the designs they sheepishly copied off from the Taiidans. Their special abilities like in stealth, deception and salvage. Like the Beast, their tech level is low, but they can acquire techs from copying. Their economic efficiency is the poorest of the bunch. Little in the way of healing since they don't really value life so much.


Fighters

1. Firrkan for scout. Possess Cloaking for special ability.
2. Bandit for Interceptor. Possess Cloaking for special ability.
3. Kaark Plasma Bomber. Possess Mimic for special ability.

Corvettes

1. Brigand Missile Corvette. Mimic for special ability.
2. Thief Corvette. These have moderate armament, can salvage and cloak.


Frigates

1. Assassin class Ion Array Frigate. This has been improved with Beast version specs and cloaking.

2. Kudaark Assault Frigate. An old favorite with new special ability---mimic.


Capital Ships.

1. New Taiidan destroyer that combines both the Skaal
Tel and Skaal Fa missile destroyers into one.

2. Qwaar Jet Heavy Cruiser. Another favorite. Now has computer override beam (works like Infection Beam)


Command ships.

1. Lord class carrier. This carrier is improved with the computer override beam. More armored but contains less SP than equivalents.

2. New Mothership design. This has modular construction and SP crates. Also has computer override beam.


Microships and Special Ships.

1. Leech. Cloak and stealing are pirate attributes so this weapon should belong here.

2. Cloak Generators. Like the old HW thing.


Utility Ships

1. Resourcers

2. Resource Controllers.

The Turanics are not very imaginative so they're using Taiidan designs on this one.


Mimic and cloak modes will automatically disengage the moment the ships started firing.

Primary weapons are mass drivers, plasma cannons and missiles, reflecting their lower tech status compared to the Hiigarans. Unlike Hiigaran race, they don't have energy cannons. Energy cannons in Hiigaran ships should give the Hiigarans a slight advantage in cap ship to ship combat. However, the pirates can acquire any tech from any race whose ship they salvaged.

Due to their low tech, the pirate ships generally cost cheaper to make and has shorter production times than the Hiigaran ships, which gives them an advantage and partly compensates for their poor economy.



(On to Part 13 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[crobato]

The Kadeshi are back and they want some payback. In addition to their swarming capabilities, they managed to capture some Kushan ships during the last Kushan visit and copied these ships for the Kadeshi's own.

Their general characteristics are fanaticism, bordering to the suicidal. However, their religious cast has access to some ancient technologies and they will resort to piracy to acquire other techs.

Their economy is generally better than the pirates, but not the Hiigarans. The Kadeshi lack the Turanic's cloaking and deviousness but they do have better techs. Their ships are the cheapest and fastest to make. Due to their fanaticism and disregard for life, they lack any self healing of any kind except on large capital ships. Due to their cheapness and quick building, their ships lack special abilities except for Pod Frigates, Hive capital ships, and minelayers.

Note: the original HW Swarmer and Advanced Swarmer stats are unplayable. Their guns are as strong as a Heavy Corvette, their armor like a Defender but their range is such that they can only make two or three passes before they squeal for fuel. It's like the HW Bandit stats, which had tremendous armor but poor guns (like something with a Defender's armor and scout guns) and was adjusted into that of a more balanced interceptor in Cataclysm.

Fighters

1. Arrow scout. Thanks to left over scouts from the last Kushan visit, the Kadeshi managed to copy them and use them for their own purpose.

2. Swarmer. Balanced now like a general purpose interceptor with the range to match.

3. Advanced Swarmer. Doubles the firepower of the Swarmer but doubles the cost and production time as well.


Corvettes

1. Minelayer and Salvage Corvette. This is a new type of corvette with two functions.

2. Suicide Corvette. This is for the kamekaze banzai fanatics.


Frigates.

1. Multibeam frigate. Old HW feared classic with the same attributes.

2. Pod Frigate. Works like a Hive Frigate. Sends swarms of drones towards the enemy. Carrries a medium gun.


Special ships and microships.

1. Swarmer Drone. Like the 'Taaw swarmer drone in Cata.

2. Hyperspace Inhibitors.


Large Capships

1. New Kadeshi Drone Destroyer. Ion beams and mass drivers with swarmer drone capability.

2. New Kadeshi Drone Heavy Cruiser. Ion beams, mass drivers with Swarmer Drone capability and hyperspace inhibitor.


Command Ships.

1. Carrier class Needle Ship. Got ion beams, and the same class of Needleships seen in HW.

2. Super Needle Ship. A much bigger Needleship with support unit rings along its stalk. Got ion beams and hyperspace inhibitors.


Utility Ships

1. Kadeshi Worker. Looks like a large Swarmer. Harvests with Salvaging capabilty. Harvests quite fast but fairly vulnerable.

2. Kadeshi Processor. Looks like a very large Pod


Note: Kadeshi ships have tremendous speed and firepower but mediocre armor.


(On to Part 14 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Rapter09]

What we see in StarCraft is probably one of the pinnacles of a number of totally different races nearly perfectly balanced for in-game combat. But the real question is - for a games confined production time and costs - could a game with 4+ race be balanced properly? I think we shall see one of the fruits of this labor represented in the upcomming WarCraft 3 release, by Blizzard sometime next year (hopefully).

Is it possible to have more than 6 well balanced? I consider Blizzard to be one of the better developers when it comes to terms of balancing races and such since the success, and even they knocked off The Burning Legion as a playable race because of balancing issues, and several other features as well dealing with Undead Legions.

If such a thing were possible - with so many extra races, a Homeworld 2 with a hodgepodge of multiple species ranging from Kushan, The Taiidan Republic, Kadeshi guards, to the imperialist Taiidani and Turanic Raiders could be a very successful game. I was sort of dissapointed that you didn't have the ability to play the Kushan or the original Taiidani forces in HW:C, and I think that is something an 'advanced' Homeworld 2 should take into consideration. But like I said, the logistics for so many races - even 4 - can get turn into a fur-ball real quick if it's not executed correctly.

The reason I refer so greatly to 4 or more races is because even though StarCraft is a great amongst the RTS community even 3 can get quickly boring and it has been done 'before' so to speak. If I was to create a Homeworld 2, I would avoid the old style and jump up to a 4th race - even if it was to just add that little tid-bit of originality to it. Afterall, Homeworld was a world shattering perspective change (in a sense) and in order to avoid stale and repetitive features, more things would have to be added.

Maybe there could be species within the game that do take the qualities of some RTS races. (hoping the following wasn't mentioend before... as I didn't read the entire thread)

One of several options; jumping between fixed and movement are the Turanic Raiders

For fixed Turanic Raider bases, perhaps insanely armored, unmovable Raider outposts, such as those hinted in the HW:C manual. Where it could be capable of producing the Assassin (or perhaps an upgraded version, since the Assassin is really quite crummy - we all knew that) and several other 'cannibalized' and make-shift capital ship class vessels. However this would conflict with such long range weapons like the Siege Cannon, making a fixed base an easy shot for a shell.

If not fixed, the Lord is a good option, but then this poses the balancing issue of bringing the raider forces up to par with heavy capital ships that come into play. Even though the Raiders are not capable of building capital ships like Assassins from a Lord (since the size of an Assassin seems to mock a Destroyer in sense of size - those Mag Arrays wouldn't get out of a Lord without a couple breaking off) I think it would be a viable option to steal ideas from the Protoss here. Think of it as reinforcements that cost money. For a price (and a certain warping time, just like Protoss warp in soldiers from Auir) you could call in an Assassin through a hyperspace link. Due to the Assassin's cruddiness the warp time should be low and the cost low as well, however this runs the risk of over-reaching Raider tactical doctrines which deal primarily with hit-raid-and-run missions, as well as the misconception that would be percieved as 'mass production' since as of current evidence there seems to be no indication that the Turanic raiders produce Assassin's on a mass scale.

I'm not going to really get into the nitty gritty of unit hierarchys but I think you can get the general jist of what I'm trying to say. Anyway, i've added my 5 bucks worth of crumminess, so I'll sign off now and hit the sack.

G'nite.

[dzurlord]

The Lord Carriers in Cata kill a dreadnought with sublime ease. Something like 30-40% life left when the dread blows. Easily the most powerful ship in the game. And for some reason you can upgrade it with advanced sensors too:)

Edit/ I hate making typos, k?

[Demon Talons]

You make very good points but I really have to ask,Do we HAVE TO HAVE a super HI Tech race?One of the great things about HW and HWC was that there was none of the familiar mold i.e a swarm race a middle race and a Hi tech race.Yes we do hvae the bentusi but they are like traders and only defend themselves.I dont have the need of playing 4 races in single player but in multiplayer i want to be able to play 4.Also in HW we had the feeling of realism (dont take it literally but you know what i mean).There was no swarm race or hitech race.Also in your tech trees i find some things wrong.In the histories of all these races there are no reference of any of the races having a lack of regard for thier pilots and ships with the exception of the Kadeshi.I think 4 races would be manageable but if they pulled it off right it would be Very Fun to play.For instance The Raiders,Kadeshi,Taiidan,are the ones i Really want to see in HW2.I dont want to see the Bentusi as a playable race.WHat they do with the 4th race is up to the devs but so long as they have those 3 there i will be happy.I have faith in the devs of HW and HWC and i feel that what they make will blow us away again.And if it doesnt well there is always ORB or starmageddeon.(But I still like HW and the background)

[crobato]

Don't take it seriously. These are just hypothetical examples.

Pirates, being practical people, are the least likely to sacrifice their lives since they're after their own profit. So I don't believe they should have suicide craft.

The examples are merely how to craft a ship fleet based on the culture of a race.

Ultimately the balancing has to be done by fine tuning.

Note that non player ships are ridiculously strong, but only to serve as a plot device. If the Lord class is turned into a true player ship, it would have been appropriately balanced. A good example is how the Bandit got properly adjusted from HW to Cata. In HW, the Bandit got Defender level armor but scout like guns, but in Cata, the armor is cut, the guns improved so that the Bandit is roughly equivalent to a standard interceptor.

The game Star Trek Armada is a game with four races that is essentially balanced but what they essentially did is sterilize the race personalities (Fed, Romulan, Klingon, Borg) so that they are essentially tasteless and the same with each other. I like to see how Armada II could restore the race distinctiveness without killing balance.

A high tech race can be balanced by increasing the costs and production time of its units. As a result, it must battle via quality versus quantity. However, this may not be enough in some cases. A high tech race will also have a slower start, although it will have a stronger finish. By this, it will be more vulnerable at the start, so it will have more defensive technologies and weapons to begin with, while more offensive techs and weapons will manifest themselves towards the end.

Frankly, there should be a small material cost that comes with tech development. All RTS games tend to have this, but oddly enough, not HW and Cata. The only cost is in the building of research modules or labs.

In multiplayer, a team with different race combinations can actually be quite effective (like a combo 'Taaw-Beast team, where the 'Taaw player actually feeds his Beast teammate with techs and resources, while the Beast player goes after the Workers of the opposing team.)

[x-crispy]

I don't see the Kadeshi resorting to mass produced units.

If anything, their tech progress, as well as their build times, is slow and ponderous. Their tech shows generations upon generations of slow, methodical improvement. You don't see especially radical units coming from the kadeshi, like you do with the other races. They are powerful. Maximum speed, maximum power, maximum armor.

A race that's fighter based doesn't mean that it builds cheap. "Swarming" synonymous with cheap fast units, but in the Kadeshi's case, it refers to their style of attack.

[crobato]

Originally posted by x-crispy
I don't see the Kadeshi resorting to mass produced units.

If anything, their tech progress, as well as their build times, is slow and ponderous. Their tech shows generations upon generations of slow, methodical improvement. You don't see especially radical units coming from the kadeshi, like you do with the other races. They are powerful. Maximum speed, maximum power, maximum armor.

A race that's fighter based doesn't mean that it builds cheap. "Swarming" synonymous with cheap fast units, but in the Kadeshi's case, it refers to their style of attack.


The Kadeshi mods don't reflect that. Although building a Multibeamer is slow, the Swarmers breed like rats.

And if you capture a Kadeshi Swarmer in the game, it only costs 25RU. That's the cheapest unit by far in the game---it takes three Swarmers to match the cost of an Interceptor, and each Swarmer has triple the firepower of one.

[dzurlord]

Plus 50 of them in sphere kill a mothership in under a minute. Heh, relic could have made missions 7 and 8 impossible by adjusting the AI to do this.

[dzurlord]

Demon, Beast was designed for swarming. You won't see a beast player in Cata use Ions except for a CS rush and there won't be frigates unless I infect multis or rammers. I'd like to see beast return to HW2 as an almalgamation of all the other races in the game, but different each time you played them. By this I mean I would like a randomization factor built into the the beast, ie the same number of ship slots as cata but you would have different available ships at the start to research and build each time, making them a race for those who like some of the ships from each race but not all of them:)

[crobato]

Some notes. I put a minelayer with the Kadeshi because not only are they the swarming type, but also very territorial. Thus minelaying to protect resources is consistent with their character. They will also minelay newly discovered resources to claim as their own.

The Kadeshi minelaying corvette will however, pack some armament of its own, with the firepower similar to a light corvette.

The Raider faction will gain slightly better bounties than the rest of the factions if bounties are enabled in single player or multiplayer.

I am revising some notes as follows: both Kadesh and Raider scouts are now capable of afterburning or boost special function like in the original Homeworld.

The fighter structure for the Kadeshi is revised as follows:

1. Swarmer --- for Scout and Light Interceptor duties. Special function---Afterburn or Speed Boost. Lacks cloaking and long range sensor capabilities however.

2. Advanced Swarmer---for general and heavy interceptor duties. Special function---Afterburn or Speed Boost

3. Suicide Swarmer---Swarmer designed for kamekaze attacks. This works as the "bomber" for the Kadesh. Functionally like the Mimic in Cata but with the holoprojection qualities.



The fourth race, the Dark Unbound, will be basically similar to the 'Taaw ships, but stronger weapons and armor at the expense of greater cost and production times. The Unbound generally reside only in their largest cap ships, and a minion race pilots their strike craft and smaller capital ships.


1. Fighter

a. A new Scout Type whose sensor range is greater than all the other factions. Cloaking for special ability.

b. Interceptor. Acolyte variant with energy cannons. Special Ability: Afterburn.

c. Bomber. Super Acolyte variant with ion beams.

2. Corvette

a. Multigun Corvette type with energy cannons and EMP.

b. Utility Corvette for repair and salvage. Can be upgraded to lay probesand mines.

Frigate

a. A new type of multibeam frigate, similar to the Dervish. EMP for special ability.

b. A new type of Defense Field frigate. Healing for special ability.

Utility Ships

a. Worker. Special ability: healing and salvaging

b. Processor. Special ability, healing.


Microships and Special Shps

a. Defender/Sentinel (with shields) Note these could create a spherical shield.

b. Gravwells.


Large Capital ships

a. New type of Destroyer. (Energy cannons and ion beams, no missiles or mass drivers.)

b. Dreadnaught (similar to Archangel. Special ability, Repulsor.)


Command ships

a. Carrier (Support Modules, Energy Cannon. Special ability: Repulsor)

b. Mothership (Support Modules, Energy Cannon. Special Ability: Siege Cannon).


This is a strong race, best in healing and defensive weapons. They have however, the highest cost in ships and the longest production times. The exclusive use of energy weapons means their firing rate is limited against projectile or missile weapons.

In fact the cost production relative ratio for the races is as follows: Cheapest and fastest to the more expensive and longer production times.

1. Kadeshi
2. Raiders
3. Hiigaran
4. Unbound



(On to Part 15 of the Rant of Supreme Wisdom)

[Omi-kun]

I hope I'm not reiterrating everything that's been said, but, here it is:

With 4 [distinctive] races HW maybe the best RTS to be played in multiplayer. However all of them have to be balanced and that's what this thread is about.

But what if the races weren't balanced out in the conventional sense? Similar to Homeworld's way of canceling out advance technologies and ship classes, what if the 'protos' like race had the highest tech, low production rates, and almost invulnerable
except for harvesting operations and supply vessels or a support modules on all advance ships? Therefore giving it a severe weakness that other less advance technological races can pursue besides the normal low production rate/high costs.

There can be two types of high tech races as well, one with the echelon of advance techs but they're still in development and so requires less research times and the firepower will be the greatest. However this is mitigated by substantial production costs and the chance of failure during combat operations or limited usage (like that of the gravwell generator) - this will fit nicely with the Imperialists.

The other advance race can take on a more conservative route. Starting with already advance base (be it a command ship, carrier, or a mothership) with relatively high defenses so it can withstand attacks in the beginning to be able to research the long lines of technology it needs before being able to create destructive ships. Its technology is more stable but may not necessarily be as powerful. - The Sjets can easily fit this race, although I don't think HW2 will be concentrated on just one particular kiith-unlike Cataclysm.

As mentioned by many others before, the outlawed race would indeed add an extra flavor to the game, that is, a playable outlawed race with a more in-depth outlook and information pool on it. It can be rather unstable since most of its technologies are
salvaged/backward engineered. Their technologies maybe vast and numerous considering they have been around for quite sometimes now. Their primary weaponry would be a flagship of some sort - not too powerful, primarily used as a symbol rather than a contender. Surrounding this would be squadrons of strikecrafts, since this is basically their main force. Frigates and higher requires too much cooperation and pirates and bandits aren't well known for mutual relationships or trusts. - Perfect for the Turanic Raiders, although it would really spice them up if they were to partner with the Taiidani in the SP missions of HW2, IMHO.

A better-organized race relative to the outlaws is primarily the swarm race. Though I wouldn't advice Relic to implement a true swarm race, having the Kadeshi as a playable race would be very gratifying, if for only several days/weeks. This would definitely be a newbie's favored race, however I think this race should be the easiest to defeat when matched by more experienced gamers in any other race. Even the outlaws, who is likely to be one of the intermediates' favored choice. Though the swarm race has the quantity it does not have the tactics down. Outlaws have survived this long because of experience and luck, so undoubtedly the pirates will have some tricks up their sleeves against swarm race. However, I believe there should be a subtle edge to the swarm race (besides their numbers) that experienced gamers could utilize and defeat most other races (controlled by same experienced gamers).

Well that seems to be 4 races already, but I'll add 2 more:

A well-structured race with previous background experiences in combat is the Hiigarans. If HW2 were to continue HW then I must assume that they will be combining all the kiiths one more time in a joint operation under mutual interests against another threat
(most likely a returning siege from the Imperialists, or possibly under a clone of the emperor, again, this is my 2cents). Thus this race will be a compilation of the all the kiiths under the flag of Hiigara. Quite possibly under Karan Sjet once again they will
have a well-rounded navy with a great variety of ships (some multipurpose, and some special). Their technology will be still based on the original HW ships, but with upgraded hulls, armor, engines, and firepower and pulse several upgrades.

Another quite similar race will be the Taiidani Republic; they've used the technologies of the Imperial Taiidani and probably worked along side with the Hiigarans so they'll have similar technologies as the Hiigarans. This is purely speculation of course. However they would distinctive them selves by the freedom they now posses (the oppression is different than that of the Kushan because they have been deeply oppressed for many millennia by the Empire) and well hints of originality in the designs of the Republic's ship style, sort of like the 70's when Americans were finally freed from the cold war.

Well that's all from my pocket, I'm just about empty and not sure if I managed to express anything that hasn't already been said.

[crobato]

The races are designed to fit the novice to advanced players. This sort of race design structure is actually used in Imperial Galactica 2, where the aggressive race, the Krehim is for novice, Solarians (Mankind) for intermediates, and an advanced tech race for advanced players.

Before I proceed, I have another alternative for the Kadeshi fighter structure.

Before, I wrote Scout, Swarmer and Advanced Swarmer. The other alternative is the Swarmer for scout and light interceptor duties, the Advanced Swarmer for Heavy Interceptor duties and the Suicide Swarmer for the Bomber duties. The Suicide Swarmer truly blows things up. In essence, it is like the Mimic fighter before without the Mimic qualities.

The Kadeshi isn't as easy to blow up. Consider for example, they have minelayers that they can lay mines against your resourcers. These minelayer corvettes have a dual purpose---they are also deadly salvagers. The Hyperspace Inhibitors prevents anyone from a hyperspace rush against their positions. Furthermore, the Kadeshi and the Raiders can salvage techs to raise their tech level---like the Beast.

The stronger tech races, like the Hiigarans and the Unbound, are more vulnerable at the start against the early swarmers like the Kadesh and the Raiders.

Every race has a mothership that can kick ass, but in different ways. The Kadeshi Super Needleship packs a bunch of ion cannons and can dish it out like a dreadnaught. The Raider Mothership has the Computer Override beam, which acts like the Beast Infection Beam---this assimilates enemy ships. The Hiigaran Mothership can build the Cruise Missile (different from the Beast Cruise Missile). This one explodes with wide area effect. And the Unbound Mothership has the Siege Cannon.

The whole point of this design is that it is in not that we balance particular ships---no---instead we balance the race as a whole.

The basic organization I laid out here actually incorporates both HW and Cata tactics (note how the Raider faction is similar to the Beast in Cata). This is because I respect the principle of continuity and the belief that HW2 should respect the legacy of its predecessors and build on them, instead of completely redrafting the entire universe and ship structure. After careful observation of the players, I noticed that what they really do want is something to build on HW and Cata, and not go off with an entirely new game, new universe, new races.

[AntaresSITH]

just one more comment on ship designs

the first thing i did when i started to play HWC in multiplayer was searching for the most balanced unit in it.
the unit, that got the most abilitys for its price.
it must be able to stand fighter swarms and still take down cap ships faster than the other can rebuild it.

first i thought the MBF woulf match these demands, but it got less firepower in one direction.
so i chose beast and looked at its units.
and i found the hvy corv.
this ship was the ultimate one
low time to resarch (180sec)
good armor
good firepower
good speed
can take out fighters swarmers ...
lowest cost of all corvs
it got all the advantage, i searched for

consequence
because too many people were killed by beast (main reason BBB) and here with corvs they made it the most ineffectiv unit in game

doesnt matter i thought so i take the second best unit
the Multiguncorv
but it didnt work. the only reason was the research time of this unit (~300sec)
u couldnt get it fast enough to stand fighterswarms

( always taking a taaw as enemy, good beasts are rare and often even less a match)

nowadays i am killing most people playing taaw with just fregs (DFF, IAF)
i use interceptors just for defense

perhaps u now claim
"there is another forum just for strat"
but thats not the point !
the point is that there are plenty of units in HWC but u just need (with every race) just 2 or 3 of them

interceptor: average defensive unit matches my demands for defending against fighters
cloak fighter: good unit but often u cannot afford the 90 sec for sesearch
bomber: too expensive (120/3), too long research

hvy corv: too ineffectiv
multicorv: too long research, too few armor (for attacking a MS)
missilecorv: ineffectiv against fighters, too long research
cruisemissile: too expensive against taaw (vs beast it can be a key unit)

IAF: extremly specialized unit (idea from all HW inits), it's worth its cost
DFF: also VERY specialized unit

cruiser: MUCH TOO long research

on the other hand taaw win games just with 1 unit
the missolyte

continuing here ( i am in school right now and the teacher is watching me :-)

[crobato]

Thanks for the input but I don't know how it is relevant to the discussion. In a theoritical design for a game, the build and research times for every unit is yet to be determined, and so are their firepower strength, range, ship speed and agility. In short, the numerical values are a total unknown, and we're not going to deal with that, since these values are only determined in the finishing and refining phaser of the game, from beta testing and all that.

Still it is easy to understand that each player relies basically on two or three units of the game, even though each player tends to rely on different units. (Actually, what I do is open up every fighter and corvette available for the Beast, and produce on all of them. Sooner or later you quickly swarm all over the 'Taaw player with a mass mixed unit swarm.)

[AntaresSITH]

my comment wasnt finished :-) crobato
this were just examples from my point of view

the main point is, that if u hardcode unitstats there always be an unbalancing.
there are hundreds of people out there, who search for the best unit (or combination of u max up to 2 ships), find them and exploit them as much as they can.
they wont bother if there are other units
the existense of cap ships is useless if u can *rush* your opponent.
all my games
in HW (ok this is long time ago :-)
in HWC
or in starcraft
found an end THAT early normal players would just have scouted their enemies

HWC: on small to normal maps every of my games is won or lost after 15 min, even if it takes 3 more min to really kill my enemy
on large maps this lasts about 20 min
starcraft: even after the 1.08 patch still attack your enemy after 4-5 min with a douzend of berserkers or a group of of marines with medics

...
(more later still school :-)

[crobato]

That kind of scenario you mention would work only if you have resourcing in the game to go after the resourcers. That won't work in what is called the Uncle Sam setting (used in many Earth 2150 MP games). There is no resourcing---the credits pump automatically in fixed time intervals, so you just build fighting units as you research them. That's possible with HW and HW Cata. Even if you have resourcing, but you have rich frequent injections, you create an Uncle Sam scenario.

Under Uncle Sam settings, you only concentrate on researching and combat. With no resourcers to kill, your early rush will be met by the enemy CS and its fighters it already pumped out. In Earth 2150, the bases and defensive fortifications are too tough to be taken out with an early rush. This is one game that is well balanced---the small units that you can build quickly are not strong enough to take out fortifications, while the large units that can only do so take time to research, build and cost a lot too. You can't do that in ST Armada too, since early units are dead chicken against phaser turrets and torpedo platforms you can build early and at a low cost. Another game where it's impossible to win via an early rush is Conquest Frontier Wars, because early units don't pack enough grunt to wear out bases and stationary defenses.

Believe me, you can tune a game easily to favor large craft---if you heavily armor and arm a CS, as well as the resourcers and processors.

For example, if I allowed a slow floating defense pod---think of it like a floating AA turret---to be researched and bought early in the game, see what it can do against a pack of fighters. All this is just a matter of allowing defensive technologies to be introduced, built and researched early in the game.

[Rapter09]

Perhaps Homeworld 2 could see a more homogenous Kushan force. What I mean by this is though the Kadeshi defenders are quite militant about their 'turf' so to speak, they are in fact Kushan as is hinted within the campaign. I think it would be cool to see either an alliance, or perhaps a grand reunification between the two forces, with new technology's spawning from this, thus creating a more varied experience in the game. Of course this could create an all-powerful Kushan force, so perhaps the idea has been ruled out before. But certain flaws could always be introduced to balance things out.

Once again I regress, and state that a concept built around (...and advanced upon, mind you) the basis of StarCraft's most fundemental principles; All units roughly even with no god units, (...and with a good variance of unit designs) could be highly successful if pulled off correctly.

What we see with most games are a delema of rushings made by strike craft. I think, to counter this, instead of forming a large and methodical strict mobile unit base, it should be possible for early construction of anchored defensive emplacements. That is a concept that I think could be highly successful to end those short games. These anchored defenses would be great against strike craft, but highly vulnerable to capital ship class vessels. Perhaps some capital ships are designed specifically for anchored emplacement annhilation. I cite the Terran Siege Tank from StarCraft as a basis for this; Long range and good "bunker busting" (taking the term for SC) ability. Or perhaps, while moderately well armored against the weapons of strike craft, like recon vessels and scouts and such, they would be extremely vulnerable (I'm sure the gentlemen at Relic could make up some elaborated scientific backing for this, as well) to ion beams, for instance.

These defensive emplacements - when constructed - would take up a sphere formation around the Mothership, and with minimal drive power they could follow the Mothership around, either in Hyperspace or in real-space, with a drive system relating slightly to the precariously slow fusion drives that the Mothership has, however, these emplacements would not be movable by the player, but could be selected to target specific craft.

I say it's either that or give the Motherships some better weapons, and not those puny mass drivers :).

---

Oh, and before I go, Omi-kun, I believe asked what my age was before Dyntheos closed my thread in General Discussion; I'm 14, and will be 15 on January 19th of next year.

[Omi-kun]

To Rapter09: Regarding the anchored defenses, these should be a one time units such as the probes. With just enough drive power to get out of the hangar and be inserted to a point 30km or so away from the Mothership. This way it will be strategically important and vital to position the MS or at least to know where it will be at if if the base defenses are immobile once in placed.

The mothership can still move, but this way the player must have foresight to do well. Dr_17 Alpha had a very good model of something very much similar to the anchored defenses you're talking about, btw.

[Alpha_Monkey]

This guy REALLY knows his stuff!
-applauds raptor-

As well as stopping rushes and being cool, this (combined with minefields, gravwells, etc.) could create some form of front-line, and hence a lot of xtra strategy, both in defensive and offensive roles. I see outflanking, bottlenecks, excellent multi-phase co-ordinated assaults.

woo-hoo:D

[Rapter09]

Originally posted by Omi-kun
To Rapter09: Regarding the anchored defenses, these should be a one time units such as the probes. With just enough drive power to get out of the hangar and be inserted to a point 30km or so away from the Mothership. This way it will be strategically important and vital to position the MS or at least to know where it will be at if if the base defenses are immobile once in placed.

The mothership can still move, but this way the player must have foresight to do well. Dr_17 Alpha had a very good model of something very much similar to the anchored defenses you're talking about, btw.

Indeed, and it all fits in quite nicely with a unit design as well. With so much equipment and energy shunted directly to weapons and armoring systems you wouldn't have much available power for the drives. So literally what we could do (if you wanted to get REALLY realistic) is to strap a booster onto the thing and fire it off into formation, and then have the booster break off when the " anchor " is deployed.

This poses even more tactics than I thought. Like the following for instance:

Use a Salvage Corvette to attach itself onto a contructed defensive emplacement. While it's connected to the turret, use the "special" key and select an asteroid. What this would do would order the corvette to attach the turret onto an asteroid. This has major implications dealing with surprise attacks, as well as resource pocket defense. This would make players divise more resource defense tactics, rather than simply defending with a large wing of interceptors (or related strike craft).

Addition : Ahh, which reminds me. Due to stable anchoring within the asteroid's core I think it would a viable realistic addition to increase the range and damage of the turret.

When attacking the newly constructed asteroid-emplacement it also gives the emplacement a handicap. Other than a direct firing arc in the front of the asteroid, the rear and better part of the sides would be a literal 'blind spot' dissallowing the emplacement to open fire from those angles. In a sense this kinda balances things out (slightly)

[crobato]

To counter swarming, the best means is to improve the availability and cost of defensive technologies early in the game. In fact, the whole tech tree should be arranged that defensive techs are researched early with more powerful offensive techs researched towards the tend. This is also a matter of cost adjusting defensive techs, versus offensive techs.

One of my ideas for defense technology is a "floating" pod that you can attach to guard any resourcer, controller or capital ship. This pod only moves with the protectee. The pod has frigate like armor and has multiple turrets. It can be built at a low cost and researched quickly. In other words, it's similar to a Sentinel, but what it's really a Frigate like vessel. Sentinels should also be modified to have a both low SU and RU costs.

The problem of a stationary defense is that it would require long range weapons to be any effective, because simply all the enemy has to do is just stay out of its range. Once your forces start to move around, these defenses stay behind. Stationary defenses cannot follow workers and processors around. The problem of workers is that they stray, allowing them to be vulnerable.

For stationary emplacements to work, the entire resourcing scheme must be overhauled. For me, an excellent resourcing scheme can be found in Conquest Frontier Wars.

Let's junk the small asteroid/gas resource system. HW are bland as they are, just a series of small asteroids and gasses set in different patterns. What if we have, large asteroids. These asteroids should be about the size of a capital ship to a mothership.

Our new Resourcer is a spider like base that once constructed, is assigned to attach itself to a large asteroid. These asteroids will take a while to be used up (let's say 100,000 RU's and over). These things are actually Refineries. Various defensive structures---either attached to the asteroid, nearby asteroids, or left floating in near orbit, help protect the Refinery.

Yes this adds some tactical depth because the player should now design a defense around the Refinery, while the Attacker has be more imaginative to take down these defenses. These defenses could lay things like healers and shields around the refinery.

Once the asteroid is used up, the Refinery and stationary emplacements can be scrapped and moved to another asteroid. This will entail the creation of another kind of ship---the Assembler, that is capable of building fortifications and refineries. The refinery is its own processor as well. The Assembler can also tear down bases, salvaging its SU and RU values, although there will still be some loss in RU value.

If the Processor is its own stationary base or ship, and you have transport ships that needed to shuttle resources from the refinery to the Processor, the transport ships themselves would be vulnerable to any swarming attack, and this would render the scheme ineffective.

All fortifications can be upgraded--->mass drivers, energy cannons and tracking missiles. It is possible that we can have fortifications of different sizes: turrets -> platforms -> forts.

I should add that standard resourcers and harvesters can still be present to harvest smaller units. One scheme I like to consider is that dead ships leave fragments that resourcers can harvest. (Scrap harvesting is part of C:FW).

Ultimately large ships must be the fort busters, if not large swarms of bombers and missile carrying craft. Either way, you need a substantially large force to overwhelm these defenses. A mothership can even situate itself in the protection of such defenses.

Think of it like Earth 2150 in space. This game has such tremendous defensive power that even with Uncle Sam settings, battles with the computer AI can draw for hours. In fact, when you got your horde trying to attack an enemy base, defensive emplacements launching hordes of missiles can decimate your swarm in seconds. You cannot rely on a few unit types to win---attacks require integrated coordination between ground and air forces, sometimes sea forces, and even these often sustain heavy casualties.

But the problem of increasing defensive power is exactly that---you can lead to long drawn out battles of attrition that can last for hours.

You have to tailor how long you expect a multiplayer game should be. Around 30 minutes to an hour should be good enough. There should be a balance between offensive and defensive capability, such that games are not too short, and not too long.

[Omi-kun]

Regarding the Anchored Stationary Defenses: These defensive fortifications are for defending key areas such as resource pockets and bases and other vital components (potential targets). Thus they would be best be stationary and be relocated by either salvage corvettes or a carrier (loaded with these defensive turrets then later to be dropped in another area when the carrier reaches that destination).

If they were to be able to latch on to or guard another unit, their firepower and range will have to be degraded in order to allow room for an extended drive system and propellant. Further more the advance armor plating on it will either have to be researched or will cost more and require more time to build - if defensive measures are too easy to utilize then there will be players who will abuse them.

Crobata: your idea of defensive research in the beginning is quite right, but that should depend on the race. As previously mentioned, more fanatic races will use different strategies during combat. So the more head-on races will probably be able to research offensive technologies first. However this means the majority of their forces will be sent on an offensive attack wave, leaving their home vulnerable to enemy attacks.

This leads to another key area: Intelligence. The head-on type races will not require nor aquire advance sensors because of their personalities and strategies. This enables other (more cautious) players to be able to research advance sensors and defensive measures to block enemy attack waves and also be able to gather information on the enemy and quite possibly be able to launch a small (but deadly) strike force to eradicate the foe.

If the setting is two very experienced players (or of the same level) then the battle will undoubtly last a long time. Experienced players can build supreme perimeter defenses and render them selves invulnerable to enemy assaults. However all weaponry must have one or more draw backs and therefore give the invading force a loop hole to punch through - only through expertly timed diversions/attacks/retreat/strategems.

[AntaresSITH]

well crobato

uncle sam games:
i got the experience, that there are few of these money-maps in HW and HWC. they are only played for fun or by newbs. i am always amused if i see such settings.
i dont like disabling part of games. u have to manage the HOLE game or u have to accept to be called a newb.

one question:
why are there cap ships in general? if u take the reality as an example, cap ships are produced to minimize casualties.
cap ships got more reserve systems, got more abilitys like better sensors, broad bandwith of weapons and of course better armor.

but does anyone bother casualties in PC-games? no !!
so one main reason for cap ships is lost. the only reason is their toughness and firepower. but in quite every PC-game a lot of small units got more firepower than large ones.
also cap ships arent able to split if u have to face attacks from several sides. small ships are not so tough but much more flexible.

if u introduce such fixed devence platforms in 3D there will surly be possibilitys for exploiting.
fixed units have to be very tough and must have long reach weapons 100% coverage and weapons against ALL craft type.
agreeing with that point
but how looks your idea of placing these turrets?
should they be built in free space?
should they have a one-use burst engine to be placed after internal production? (like probes in HW)
should they be unmoveable on its own and transported by special ships? (like workers)
there MUST be a way of placing them
so why should i use defensive units for defence?
i also can use them for offence?

if they are tough, got long range and perhaps are also cheap
hehe :-)
i get a ship that is able to build those next to my enemy and kill him with immobile units. if i got trouble i retreat my producing units back to those turrets which are placed behind and dont reach the enemy any more.
just remember:
"always do that, what your opponent dont expects"

[AntaresSITH]

another thing of unit design is:
1.design for single player game?
2.design for multi player game?

if is is single player u can introduce every unit u like even if it is useless the next mission after it is introduced

if it is mutli player only the most effectiv units will be used.
the main target of most multiplayers is winning only few just play cause of cool textures and cool ship design. this is of course also important. but imagine a player who decidesto get one of the best players he wont be very interested if this or that detail is visible on his destroyer.
he will just be interested in efficiency nothing else.
he wants to to kill, to win, to prevail.
i am one of these persons
yes there was a time i enjoyed the units because of its looks. this was the time i played the single player missions. there u need details, u need atmoshpere, u need a plot.
but NOT in multiplayer

survival of the fittest

[crobato]

The lack of sufficient stationary units (probes don't count) is one major difference HW has with other RTS games. In one sense it can be a weakness since strategy is often a game of position. HW and CATA being fleet based, often ends up with the same basic strategy---sending waves of ships against the other---and the only primary difference being the disposition and the organization/formation of the ships.

It's strategy, but it's not deep strategy.

If you have stationary defensive units, one player can immediately recon for denser asteroid patches (where resources are more common) and then stake it out with a defensive turret or pod.

Likewise, so will the other player.

This creates a new tactical dimension where each player forms "spatial" territories defined by the presence of these fortifications. Strike forces will be attacking bases and positions; defenders intercepting them.

Defensive stations can either be free floating, or attached to asteroids. They can either be mass driver, energy cannon, plasma cannon, missile or ion beam based.

[Alpha_Monkey]

Uh, off topic I know,
but where is DR17? I haven't heard from him in weeks.
Is he a guidestone regular now or something?:confused:

I would have thought he'd have a helluva lot to say on this...

[Demon Talons]

You see the early defense Stations are a double edged sword.WHat might seem like a good way to stop rushes may quickly turn into rushes themselves.Example i build 20 defense platforms and saying that we decided on the one use rockets.Send them into the enemy base or near his base.All of a sudden he has instead of weak fighters with ok armaments a wall of defense platforms who if sent to an enemy resource patch or a patch that you know he will use before will easily kill him while you take the time to build up your forces and kill him.

Now there are a number of things that we could do to make this not happen.

1.Put a limit on the number of these ships produced.Like 5 per carrier and 5 for your command ship.

2.Let it have really weak armor but compensate with range and ok guns so that if someone does manage to get some fighters or a frigate in the platforms die.

3.Have them be unmovable unless towed by a "special tow ship"and let them clamp to asteroids.I like this one the best because it solves the problem of having the anti rush unit become a rush unit itself.It also stops them being put into battle as a force of thier own as the tow ships would be slow and they would not be able to react quickly to enemy attacks.And last but not least the ability to clamp onto asteroids would let them protect workers.
What do you think good ideas or bad?

[Alpha_Monkey]

Someone already suggested a limited movement range to prevent that, and the 'roid thing.

Maybe they could be included as an upgrade to the RController. It could deploy them like a DroneFrig, 'cept with a larger radius...

Or maybe an upgrade for the minelayer??? Not so handy for early game, but still...2 flavas of mine...?

[Rapter09]

Originally posted by Demon Talons
[B]You see the early defense Stations are a double edged sword.WHat might seem like a good way to stop rushes may quickly turn into rushes themselves. Example i build 20 defense platforms and saying that we decided on the one use rockets.

Me and Omi-Kun I believe came up with the idea that when built they would simply take up sphere formation with no player control other than being able to tell them to attack specific targets. I simply stated the one-time use rocket to add a bit of background as to how this would be accomplished.


Send them into the enemy base or near his base.All of a sudden he has instead of weak fighters with ok armaments a wall of defense platforms who if sent to an enemy resource patch or a patch that you know he will use before will easily kill him while you take the time to build up your forces and kill him.

Now there are a number of things that we could do to make this not happen.

1.Put a limit on the number of these ships produced.Like 5 per carrier and 5 for your command ship.

Yeah, I was thinking about that as well.

I also stated that it would be a fighter\corvette only defense (I think). Building a platform capable of raking a capital ship with some serious firepower would be a bit too strong. I thought the fact that ion cannon did some massive damage, and probably outranged it, would be a good balacing factor, making a wall of these things ineffecient when dealing with capital ships.

Moving away from this, has any one mentioned a idea for a sort of base concept centered around that of Myth? With a limited number of units to work with, where tactics means everything, and even 1 or 2 losses is a stunning blow? I found Myth and Myth 2 to be a very tactically satisfying game when the forces were equal, even if it got frusterating at times.

[Mr.Popo]

In my opinion, the taaw 'super super' cap ships should not be in Homeworld 2. I felt that Cata was slated towards newbies that fell to the swarm constantly because of the gross lack of balance between fighters and capital ships. There were, essentially, much more tactics involved in creating a fleet beyond "build a bunch of MBFs + Dreads, attack".

Between these two distinct races, there was no balance (energy cannons, armor upgrades, etc), superweapons, and unbalanced capital ships. It is my belief that beyond some cameo appearance in SP, I don't think that the Cata ships should be in HW2 MP. That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.

When you were beaten in Homeworld, you wanted to know why, and you might try to look over the recording or something, and you'd find that exact point of, "If I sent my battle group here, I would've killed him no problem". That was another thing Cata. Blunders were too easily covered up. If you sent your battle group out of the way and left your CS open to attack, you might use an SW (depending on how far into the game your are) or your ridiculous amount of RUs to cover it up no problem, causing the MP games to be dragged out for two to three mind numbing hours.

Call me stupid, stubborn, or anything you want, but I really don't want Homeworld 2 to be tainted by millions of other sci fi clones involving the swarming, in-between, and technologically advanced cliches that are recycled over and over again until the very basic formula makes you want to vomit.

[crobato]

Rapter, if you like Myth type, purely tactical games, the best game for that is Sierra's Ground Control. Make sure the package you buy must have the free Dark Conspirarcy expansion back that adds a third faction and powered suits.

For Mr. Popo, any distinction at all, no matter how cliqued, is better than no distinction at all. In any case, a low tech-swarming model vs. a high tech, cap ship model is pretty much inevitable and a realistic result of natural sociological consequences. It even reflects the old Cold War scenario (NATO vs. Warsaw Pact).

In my hypothetical models, I've inserted other charactertistics to make sure that what we have are different colors, not black or white, or shades of grey.

The Raider faction, for example, is highly utilitiarian. It's the only race that still uses plasma cannons and missiles, and heavy reliance of cloak and mimicry. The faction gains technology through salvage, for example, improved armor levels. But weapons tech remain the same. As in Cata, Bandits have superior weapons accuracy over the 'Taaw/Hiigaran fighters.

The Hiigaran faction is noted for its superior economy and the robustness of its ships. It's fighter weapon disposition is balanced---mass drivers and energy cannons. (All races have ion beams). As the defensive faction, they make the strongest static fortifications.

The Kadeshi faction relies purely on mass drivers. It can salvage technology, such as imiproved armor and more efficient engines. I am considering limiting the range of their ships to the level of fighters in Homeworld, (but not as short as the Kadeshi in Homeworld). Other factions have the improved engine efficiency seen in Cata. Their firepower is brutal, but short ranged, and not particularly as accurate.

The Kadeshi also have large capital ships that are among the strongest in the game, but their build times are long and expensive. Once built, they are capable of launching drone attacks. They are also capable of some freakin' defenses, since they're protective of their resources. They have minelaying and hyperspace inhibitors. There is no way you can make a cap ship rush using hyperspace once these inhibitors are on.

There is a whole bunch of defensive techs, you can rely on. The Hiigarans have their gravwells back, which is nice to stop the Kadeshi in their tracks. The Raiders can cloak their bases---you can't swarm what you can't see. The Unbound can rely on superior intelligence---they got the best sensors.

Thus I have race differentiation set on different factors.

1. Type of weapons used (Energy weapons vs. Projectile weapons vs. missiles). Weapons vary in range, firing rate, damage and capacity.

2. Sensor ability.

3. Cloaking ability.

4. Defensive capability (gravwells, defense field, force fields, minelaying, forts)

5. Heavling ability.


To Demon,

You can't rush defensive embankments because they take time to assemble, and in during that time, they're vulnerable. Also, defensive units take up SU. The more defensive you are, the less you have for your offense.

To all,

There is no super-super ship, but the heavy cap ships are necessary to bust through heavy fortifications. The heavy cap ships themselves are vulnerable to strike craft, which in turn are vulnerable to various defensive technologies that in turn, can be countered by cap ships. The result is to create a paper-scissors-rock or jacken system of balancing, forcing the offense to be played with a combined arms approach.

[Demon Talons]

Im sorry I meant to put I didnt say they were my ideas and i did take the suggestions that you guys put up.Sorry for forgetting to say that.Also basically im just saying that balancing this anti rush unit would be hard.

[Rapter09]

A Kadeshi Super-Capital Ship class unit equal to a Heavy Cruiser would be an awesome site, I think. If you were to bring it above the level of the Swarmer Multi-Beam Ion Frigate, than it would have no less than 8 ion beams.

[x-crispy]

Kadeshi heavy cruiser concept:
http://members.home.net/crispyindex/art/kadeshihc_ink.gif

Not necessarily practical, but fun to ponder.

[ceejayoz]

very cool :)

[Zartax]

Regarding the statment that you cannot have multiple campains and still have a strong story I'd like to mention StarCraft which implemented this very successfully by having the story continue when switching race.

About the defensive turrets, I'm not sure I like that idea really. In all RTS games I've played I've always been a very offencive player, rarely building defencive structures even if they are availible. I instead defend myself with my offencive force. Defencive structures are often stronger but with the lack of movment. This gives an advantage to the defensive player who can defend with both structures and units and since the structures are stronger they have quite an ease task to defend themselfs.

Usually, this is solved by having the structures outranged by some sort of artillery. But I've yet to see a artillery in HW. Making the structures being anti-strike craft only, to avoid rushing, would render strike craft virtually useless in any offencive position, like quick hit 'n run raids..., which is one major task they have. Creating them strong enough to take on capital ships would just give the defendet even greater advantage.
In SC, which is the RTS I have most experience from, rushing were often not countered by defencive structures (or at least not rushes on me, since I keep away from defencive structures) but by the time it take to transfer the rushers to the opponents base, in which he has time to build some extra troops, and fend of the attacker.

Defencive structures also has the drawback to a game of sipping resources from the building of an attackforce. With a smaller attackforce there is smaller chanse of breaking the enemy's defences, espessially if he also has strong defencive structures. This tends to make games long and boring.

Now, I'm not all-against defencive structures, but if implemented, they must be implemented with care and have enough drawbacks and loopholes to give the attacker an easy way in, if he playes his cards right. Outranged, vulnarable to sertain weapontypes or just downright weak.

The idea of having a harvester attach to a very large asteriod and creating i minelike structure which gan be defendes is apealing though, since it gives a new aspect to the game, creating "bases". But, as said earlier, defences must have many flaws.

[Zartax]

Oh, and by the way.

The three-race system with one low tech swarmer, one middle tech humanoid sort, and one powerful enigmatic race should more be considered as a guidline than a rule if implemented. In StarCraft, which I consider have used this system very well, thngs are not stricly like that. Some examples are: The Battlecruiser. This is the strongest unit in the game, and it belongs to the middle class race. The guardian, devourer and ultralisk all belong to the swarmrace, but are still very powerful and have high toughness. The hightech race have the weakest workers and the carriers can be considered as swarmers although you have to build the carrier first.

What I'm saying is that there must be variations in the races too, not just between them. Otherwise it will just be a game of overpower vs overbuild vs die in the middle. And of cource, lots of special techs (magic) to surprise your opponent with.

[Rapter09]

Well there doesn't have to be artillery neccesarily. After all this is space and there doesn't have to be any 'indirect fire' weapons - unless you could use the Siege Cannon as an example. Maybe a ship with range a little longer than an ion beam would be good for frying defensive emplacements. However that was simply an on the fly idea, not too much thought went into it.

What we are looking at is a fairly moderately priced defensive structure that takes up 'supply' (How much, I dont' know). It would have the stopping power to knock down strike-craft swarms, and do good damage to corvettes, but would be outranged by most capital ship class units. Aside from that it would be immobile.

But perhaps we are looking at something that's becomming too repetetive. I don't honestly think Relic and Sierra will make 3 games the exact same. There could very well be some fixed player-operated structures in Homeworld 2, because if you do the same thing, just with different races and a different story-line 3 times in a row, things get boring and repetitive. Maybe defensive emplacements could work out to be a good feature when actually implimented, and at least it would be a change from the everyday mass-fleet mindset. Honestly I kind of find the 'fleet-only' aspect (after 3 consecutive games) boring and repetitive.

Of course, if Relic were to add the Kadeshi as a playable race, regardless of other features, i'd buy the game, but that's just me :D.

I think we should start thinking of ideas that would not only satisfy our needs as fans, but also bring in new ones. That means new concepts, new ideas, better features, a more broadened look.

Just throwing out some ideas at random here; perhaps a limited-unit battle on a planet (that could be expanded upon). Bigger ships with more guns, equaling maybe a mass-scale type of ship that, even though it doesn't totally 'own' everything it's a bloody strong ship, but with an insanely long build-time. A more variety of weapons would be nice, other than mass drivers, missiles, ion beams, plasma bombs and such. I think HW:C was a step in the right direction, and it opened new doors, but I don't think it was a step that was taken too far. Though The Beast and 'Taaw were different species they were still fundamentally the same, and perhaps to offer a more varied gaming experience it would be prudent to exemplify more original features. We seem to be beating around the bush of originality, adding more races and such, but not expanding the scope of the game as a whole.

I suppose it all comes down to the rigid concepts that Homeworld is based around and it seems that in order for it to remain the Homeworld we all know and love, that we can't expand upon it much. So perhaps it's a good idea to shed the bonds and shackles of a direct and almost exact duplicate and embrace a different sense of game. I'm sure that - if Homeworld 2 is being developed and not cancelled - that Relic is most likely toying with most of these concepts and changes because - and this sort of goes without saying - they are not only selling the game to us; the hardcore fans, they are also selling it to the greater market and trying to bring in more revenue by gaining more fans, and as such (man I regress too much) 'we gotta change the game, d00de!'

[Nemesis_Star]

i belive crobatos has to little new innovation despite the fact that it was stated that HW2 will not be a continuation of cata (which me and my friends believe wasnt even half as good has hw) but a continuation of HW alone

i would have more units than what crobato has their and only two sides but they would have different units unlike hw

and i would have sub sides like in E:B4D that u can recruit to adapt your forces

a more defences so the game lasts longer

like turrets and force feild projectors that stay in their force feilds unlike sentinels

they would be hyperspaced into place

wherever u want and u could then hyperspace them again

wait a sec and ill make my own sides and their should definatly be a better story line than everyone decided to kill eachother

and hyperspacing wouldnt cost money it would like have to recharge or something

[Mazar_Paktu]

hmmn... isn't the whole defense-asteroid thing kinda like the autogun concept? (i really like the idea, but i am just pointing this out as a fact)

Also... Please!!! no missiles on capital ships. (excluding the missile destroyer, which was dedicated to just that) It makes the ship too powerful against fighters and capships (this makes it really annoying). Let's just bring back the old Avatar-class Heavy Cruiser, it was (but this is just me) somewhat more realistic for the role.

Another: Why are all other kiithid using somtaaw techs? we have to assume that others had developed new techs, even though we didn't see them....

Finally: Why are you limiting the number of frigates/corvettes? it seems like there are way too few, being only one or two for each.

P.S. I have now changed my quote to something (I hope) less contrversial.

[Omi-kun]

...HW2 will not be a continuation of cata... but a continuation of HW alone

like... force feild projectors that stay in their force feilds unlike sentinels


That's quite a contradiction there. Since HW explicitly stated in the manual: "Short of the fantasy of an all powerful energy shield," on page 15 second paragraph. And Cataclysm has sentinels with shields..... you get the idea.

Since, however, HW2 will most likely going to be a sequal to HW and not Cata, they'll probably not be any sort of shields unless it's very rudimentary and has factional backups just like they do with most of the technologies HW incorporated.

One thing to note on defense turrets, their ammunition supply will not last forever, and perhaps there should be an option to turn the ammo limit just like the fuel cap in HW. So then modified salvages will be loaded with excess ammunition and will dock with the defense turrets to resupply. This concept is much like that of a new development in remote anti-tank weapony (it was in Pop-sci several months ago, it can operate for months and only need to be resupplied when it's ammo stock runs dry).

[Rapter09]

The problem with working from HW is that they have 15 years to condense into. I didn't really like Cata when i played it. The 'taaw just arn't my thing. At least in HW you had that united feel where everybody under you, though they were frm different Kiith backgrounds - were working together. With the 'taaw it was them agaist the Beast.

[crobato]

The limitations in the number of ships are only arbitrary ('Taaw and Beast only has two kinds of frigates.) If you have too many kinds of ships, players will use each type as a production line to pump out more units than the other (like a Beast player does).

Thus every race must have the same number of classes of ships.

In my observation, players tend to concentrate on two or three different shps anyway. Still, I'm considering expanding the lines of the fighters to four, corvettes to three, frigates, well, I'm not too sure about that.

Cap ships without missiles are not realistic. Strike craft with missiles are deadly enough (I've killed Beast capital ships with a single alpha strike from missilelyte swarms.

However, there is a distinct difference between capship and strike craft missiles. Capship missiles are more agile to chase strike craft, but are not strong enough against cap ships unless shot in large numbers. Strike craft missiles are not as agile to pursue other strike craft, but causes more damage on cap ships.

I didn't think of this before, but if Relic is to use Cataclysm material in HW, Relic may have to pay some licensing money to Barking Dog. However, this may not preclude the possibility that 'Taaw ship designs will still be used as part of the general Kithid forces. Sierra is the ultimate say for that---since technically now, the artwork should belong to them. They can save money recycling some Cata designs.

The question is---do you still want to see the Acolyte, the Dervish, the Deacons in HW2?

Or do you want to see some new designs for a change?

If not some of the 'Taaw ships, then quite likely we will have functional equivalents but with a new design. (e.g. like an all around multibeam frigate).

Wow factor would suggest that we will still see some legacy ships, but in order to impress the market, we're going to see a lot more of the sexy new ones.

My feeling is that when it comes to usually showcasing a brand new sexy ship, the obvious one would be on the fighters, particularly the Interceptor type. I would give it a very high chance in HW2, that we will see a brand new interceptor type. Frankly I think the Acolyte, Blade and Bandit fighters are a little lacking on that department when compared to the Taiidan interceptor. I am not exactly thrilled to see these fighters in HW2. One of my bets will be this---the HW ships that you didn't get to play in the MP part of Cata, will make a reappearance in HW2.

The Autogun concept is exactly what I mean. But instead of using salvage corvettes to tow them, they---like the probes---are give a one use rocket pack that will move them to the desired location and once in place, will stay there forever until they are dismantled.

In any case, I am thinking of overhauling the ship lineups to include defensive fortifications, as well as a new kind of utility ship that will process, salvage, assemble and scrap.

I like to make a distinction between boarding and salvaging. Salvaging is only good for heavily damaged (25% life and less) or dead ships. For capturing fully live enemy vessels, this should be called "boarding" or "capturing". I don't think that an expensive utilty ship should go out and "capture" enemy vessels---a more dedicated ship, cheaper and in the corvette class, should still be the ones to do it.

The races I suggested here are not completely swarm vs. middle vs. enigmatic type. The Kadeshi for example, are quite equipped with defensive technologies like mine laying, and some high tech ones like hyperspace inhibition. They got strong fortifications due to their zeal in protecting their own resources.

The Raiders isn't just a "middle" race, but a stealthy one, relying on surprise attacks and capture. The Hiigarans are defensive, but they got some Unbound techs that came from the Bentusi, some of whom came licensed from the 'Taaw.

In another note, I've playing Shattered Galaxy for the first time, and all I can say is >>WOW<<---pure addiction. This has give me some ideas how a MMORTS should be done.

[dzurlord]

Play Beast then. Somtaaw, kushan, taiidan and turanic in glorious harmony:p

[Spaz]

How I see things:

3-4 Races. With this Idea, that would be more than certainly enough.

MASSIVE Technology tree. I mean MASSIVE, as in it would take you literally weeks to go through all of them.

Technology is DEPENDENT on what you salvage/capture/encounter.

Multiple Paths for SP. If you do this, you might encounter this race. (What would have happened if the message pod had been destroyed, or if you scuttled the research module?)

2 Types of Multiplayer:

First is LIKE normal, you have normal rules (which can be modified with the help of Options) and normal starting out fleets for 1 of the 3 or 4 races. Injections, Resourcing, etc... all the normal rules.

Second is only RELATIVELY like normal. Most of the rules are still in there, except fleets are customized, based on what you have gotten from the main game. Fleets and Maximum fleet size would be dependent on your abilities in SP and your particular style of doing things. Some fleets would have very high strike wing offense, but nothing left for defense. If you had blocked the intial wings, they got screwed.


More on Custom Fleets and Ships:

Fleets would be customized based on game path and all that, not to mention whether or not you decided to SALVAGE anything.

Ships would be customized or created based on points... sortof... You find a new tech and decide you want to upgrade your existing fighters, well... it'll cost you and extra 10 ru's per ship. You find a new tech and drive for a corvette... so you want to make them work together... Well, in order for your brand new fighter to have speed, you have to sack some armor, or visa versa. You get the general idea.

Ship Designs are probably unlimited, because they are still gonna cost you something, and the harder you work for it, the more you are rewarded.

SU's: SU's are expandable as is fleet size. You encounter the naggarok... well thankfully, you all ready have a beast counter-agent and proceed to deconstruct the thing. You just picked up an @$$ load of RUs and inertialess drives, super caps, advanced hyperdrives, and the deth rays, plus innumerable other things. This would reward and encourage real First player battles, salvaging, and Exploring. Well, now that you can build a super cap, you design it, build the sections, construct it, and now you can make more command ships like they were nothing. SU's is ALWAYS dependent on Resources. Not much else to SU's.

Ok, thats it FOR NOW... Please don't flame me... I just got back from work and its already 1AM. Please kindly correct my mistakes so I can argue with you when I'm awake.

-Spaz

[IgnusDei]

Hello, this is my very first post, so i take a bow to you all and say hello, and hope you will listen to my insignificant babble.

How does the idea of non-playable SPECIALIZED races sound?
By speciallized, i mean races fascinated by a single technological, socioligical or even philosophical aspect?
For example, we could have a race obsessed with structural perfection using metallurgy: they would create complex, highly resistent endo-structures and armours for their ships. This affinity to solidity could also affect the way their governments work, and even their own history. There might also be a race obsessed with control, that make EXTREMELY manoeuverable ships, and the directionnal control of ion beams AFER they are fired (anyone seen an anime space battle? that's what i mean:p ).

This is not a very new idea: Take the Breen, from Startrek: apparently, their speciality is keeping things "cold".
There's also the ferengi, who are obsessed with commerce and profit, to the point that it defines their interpersonnal relationships.

Of course, playing as any of these specialist races would be either excrutiatingly painful, or downright boring. That's why these races should be in the background, in order to make the HW universe richer and more "alive" than HW or HWC (at times i felt the taidani and the kushani were the ONLY races in the game:rolleyes: )

Well this was my suggestion

[Nemesis_Star]

i would definatly get rid of that thing u are talking about where each ship has a seperate assembly line ships that are similar would have the same assembly line like all the fighters all the corvs and so on

that seems more sensible to me

and about the defence platforms i got an idea nfor a like space like flame thrower thing that mabye projects plasma and burns up fighters it would be ineffective against cap ship because it isnt hot enough to burn them and it could incenerate alot of fighters at once

and maybe instead of hyper spaceing platforms i thought mabye u could use salvagers to pull them into place or maybe both

[Omi-kun]

Crobato: The assembly line and production rate/time can be varied with different races. If all of the productions are exactly the same than that would create an inconsistency in cultural and strategical/tactical differences.

Say the swarmer race has 5 major class of fighters/corvettes. This means the player would probably concentrate on just 2-3 series. Now that would not be good to just have 2-3 production lines going full steam and the other lines doing nothing at all. So lets say the swarmer race has developed (this could be from the beginning or required to be researched and implemented) parallel assembly lines to build two crafts of the same class at the same time. By class I mean like two defenders at the same time - not two fighters at the same time.

Now say the advanced race has 14 different but highly specialized ships. They can produce all of these at the same time and so does not require parallel production lines. Of course, all of this is suspectable to tweaking and changing before this concept can be ideally inserted into the game and it's interface.

But my point is each race does NOT have to have the same number of ships to be balanced.

[Omi-kun]

Originally posted by IgnusDei
How does the idea of non-playable SPECIALIZED races sound?
By speciallized, i mean races fascinated by a single technological, socioligical or even philosophical aspect?

There are probably not many sucessful races to can survive for millenias without adapting and mutating their spectrum of technologies and weaponry. However, the Kadeshi and the Bentusi could qualify as specialized races.



That's why these races should be in the background, in order to make the HW universe richer and more "alive" than HW or HWC (at times i felt the taidani and the kushani were the ONLY races in the game:rolleyes: )

Well this was my suggestion

The HW SP campaign was very rich, especially when compared to Homeworld: Cataclysm. There may have been parts where only Kushan and Taiidan seemed like the only two race, but that was to serve to enhance the plot of the story: Kushan has found their hiigara and the Taiidani is in the way.

[dzurlord]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Omi-kun
[B] By class I mean like two defenders at the same time - not two fighters at the same time.

No. 2 defenders every 9 seconds would unbalance the game, or any other ship like that. Imagine if you built scouts in every 5 slots in HW. 25 scouts per minute would kill any swarm build while you went corvs, caps, whatever.

[Omi-kun]

Again I was only offering an alternative. Don't kill the messenger.

The swarmer race could research a more efficient production line where it focuses on parallel productions, such as building multiple components at the same time and therefore can produce four fighters at once - but at the speed of building 3 fighters.

Again, that is only an offering - the concept is, anything within the concept is only an example. So in the future, dzurlord, argue against the concept, not the example.

[SWPIGWANG]

I can't believe how uncreative people's minds are. Of all the possible living things that could exist, you have to follow the
"The three-race system with one low tech swarmer, one middle tech humanoid sort, and one powerful enigmatic race " idea.......

The fact is such a system is plain unoriginal, as are most of the ideas put forward.

Look at the list given, almost every trait given to races came from human cultures, and its implentation is not even new! (sterotypical social systems.....)


Just look at this
"The Kharakians are supposed to look more primitive and designed for atmospheric flight, since they developed their ships originally in the planet. That's why the Taiidani ships were originally meant for the Kharakians and why they were originally given Kharakian names "
huh? Why can't it be that the Taiidani ships were made for atmospheric flight to suppress rebels while Kushans need it only for mothership defense?

"Also... Please!!! no missiles on capital ships. (excluding the missile destroyer, which was dedicated to just that) It makes the ship too powerful against fighters and capships (this makes it really annoying). "
HUH?
We can have missiles that don't do crazy tracking right?

"To begin with, all races must have the same number of ship classes. This is to prevent things like in Cataclysm, where by basically the Beast having four different kinds of fighters and three different kinds of corvettes, you could belt the 'Taaw dead which only has three different kinds of fighters and two kinds of corvettes. "
HUH???
Good Taaw players still kicks Beast ass right? (and remember the crazy beast whining when the patch came out)
Does that mean that the game style must be the same for all races, with similar fighting power at the same tech tree point?


You people are too stuck in the ways of RTS junk......

". The result is to create a paper-scissors-rock or jacken system of balancing, forcing the offense to be played with a combined arms approach. "
THAT IS THE STUPIDEST POPULAR RTS IDEA EVER.........

Let me explain. The fact is to create paper-scissor-rock balancing system, what suffers is the real tactical combat. Real strategy doesn't come from rock-paper-scissor but from different uses of different units in different stituations, for example tanks beat infantry on flat terrain and vice versa in mountains. Rock-paper-scissor balancing results in rock-paper-scissor game play, with set units coming out of build orders.

What is tactics and what is rock-paper-scissor?
Tactics: Hiding salvetts in a swarm to disable the enemy assult frigates for a short time. Enemy try to kill all salvetts before that happens.

Rock-paper-scissor: Assult frigates beats Corvetts class ships.

[SWPIGWANG]

Also

You can't have a RTS without rush, you can only make a rush take more time. (see AOK.....)

The key is not to make game without rushs, but one that makes rushs fun and strategic.

Boosting defense would only do three things.

1. Delay rushs (since offence must out strip defense in the end or number 3 would occur...and that point is the point of the rush)

2. create rushes with defensive units (Tower rush in AOE, TownHall rush in AOK, early cannon/bunker seal in SC, Mothership rush in cata)

3. Result in perfect turtle game

[Alpha_Monkey]

I think we should take the realworld combat model:

-speed up fighters.
-decrease fighter-to-cap damage
-introduce rudimentary PointDefence to large caps
-introduce new bombers (torp.vettes?)

This should put fighters in their place, as C.A.P for the fleet, and escort for AlphaStrikes or torp runs.
Missiles added to 'ceptor (minus speed/manuvrability), weaker than acolyte missles. Think air-ground missile.

"tower rushes" could be prevented by limiting movement of PDs. A few hundred metres, perhaps. You probably could only afford a few at the start, anyway.

I agree with SWPIGWANG on missiles. SSM's could be short-ranged, kinda nippy, but weak. Keeps off fighters, defends against missiles (sorta).
In RL, stand-off missile assaults are the most likely fighter attack (eg: Blinder/Backfire bombers + Kingfish missiles). The Strike craft barely enter radar range.
'least this stops swarming by scouts...

[SWPIGWANG]

Forget "Real World" models, as a game like HW is not made for realism.


tower rushes" could be prevented by limiting movement of PDs. A few hundred
metres, perhaps. You probably could only afford a few at the start, anyway.
Typical rush

1. Move mothership to enemy mothership.
2. FIRE the PDs.

That will happen unless the mothership moves so slow the game's defensive structures are as restricted as ones in C&C games.



This should put fighters in their place, as C.A.P for the fleet, and escort for
AlphaStrikes or torp runs.
The problem is interface, not unit balance. C.A.P. is almost impossible with the current interface(micro insanity). As for escorts, they are already used that way.

Also, remembers missiles can be anything. We could have giant anti-cap missiles or macross swarm missiles or anything.

[Thrawnkkar]

I dont know how many of you played Wing Commander, but Im sure its alot... But with this Missles on Caps ideas, All of them? So all Cap ships are going to have to be made larger to hold the Missle Storage and Production bays?? What about Flak? the CAPS Shoot out Canisters at random distances that explode at that distance. They would only be the size of a Shoe Box and could easily already fit on a Cruiser...

Just my Two Cents

John

[crobato]

Problem is, this is a space game, not an infantry game. Ground based combat actually allows for more opportunites of exploitiation. A space game isn't about a game of positional advantage (high terrain vs. low terrain; jungle warfare, mountain warfare).

Creativity is not the issue; depth in the game is as well as sellability to the public. Don't use Cata as an example since to my opinion, it's basically a failed game (it's enough to make Sierra wonder if HW2 is a viability).

Look at the history of Cata

1. Beast Build bug and having more production lines---this turned many 'Taaw players off (some permanently from the game)

2. Patched the Beast up. Now this turned many Beast players off, some permanently from the game.

End result---you turned off many players from the game. Lack of viability meant no one will invest the money to make the patch to fix the last patch. HW Cataclysm boxes in the store bargain bin basket.

Suffice to say, 'Taaw players beating the Beast is not an excuse why the Beast should have more production lines. In prepatch times, without using the build bug, between players of equal ability and knowing enough to use both, the Beast comes out with an advantage because you can engage more production lines, not to mention it does not need money to research them. Once the Beast starts assimiilating the 'Taaw units, it acquires more production lines with each type.

If the game has no resource injection, and with small starting resources, the prepatch Beast comes with an enormous advantage because once the 'Taaw workers are toast, the 'Taaw player starves to death, and its effectively game over. Those Workers too, are easy to bust, compared to the old HW Resourcer that takes a lot of damage.

So what does the 'Taaw player have? Special weapons like the uber Siege Cannon to blast everything; leech them to death; hive them to death; missolyte them to death; mimic-kami them to death.

It's either using special gimmick weapons (siege cannon or leech); or swarm them to death with one type of weapon.

I won't call it tactical or deep either.

A clique of three races is still better than two practically identical races with imbalanced units. When the majority of players resort to one or two ships as a tactic (e.g. defender or heavy corvette wall) you have the situation of unit imbalance (vs. faction imbalance.)

Unit imbalance is another turn off for players.

Homeworld and Cata still runs in the rock-paper-stone system, and so does every RTS game out there. While the counter is no guarantee, some weapon types are designed to counter one weapon system but left vulnerable to another. Gravwells help counter swarms but generally unprotected against cap ships. DFFs are not invulnerable against ion beams. You need an R-P-S system to establish the infrastructure for tactics in the first place. If DFF frig is vulnerable to ion beam frigs, escort it with strike craft, which in turn are vulnerable to a DFF. SW, what you're just pointing out as an example of tactics is merely coordinated R-P-S.

Yeah sure, we need some turtling in the game. Like I said, games should not be over in less than 20 minutes between equal players. There should be enough hurried pace of development and yet sufficient defense that we are likely to see a median game run of about 20-45 minutes.

So what if you have a defensive rush? Real battles have one force setting up a fort near the enemy lines. That's actually part of tactics. A defensive rush is not without its counter, e.g. the defenses of the other, whether it's a rush or not, and that will surely occupy your opportunity SPs. In CFW, you try doing that and you won't have enough CP's to make more mobile units. The problem of using one tactic is simply that you cannot use another. Mounting a defense rush means less opportunity to do another form of rush.

When you have some form of fortifications, you will take some thought in sending your rush *straight* towards the enemy. In a ground RTS, you got terrain to be concerned about. In a space based RTS, you don't have this handicap. The game Conquest Frontier Wars or ST: Armada for example, is really a "ground based" RTS that merely uses space as a backdrop, with nebulas and wormholes acting as terrain like mountains, hills or seas would. Terrain acts like a natural defense---you cannot just run your units straight into the other's resourcing operation----you still have to go through so much natural barriers to do this.

You can't do it in HW. So people just go straight and hunt down the resourcers, and once that is done, without any resource injections or bounties, the game is practically over.

What kind of depth is that?

Mind you that is a valid tactic, but it means one type of tactic will predominate instead of a *variety* of tactics.

We're not encouraging hour long games either. Like I said, we're looking for something that can generally last a little longer, say 30 minutes. While there is no guarantee games will last in the sweet spot of 20-45 minutes, there should be sufficient offense and defense, and handicaps for both. Defenses also take time to build too, you know. Static defenses have one big handicap---you can go around them, and building this will be at the opportunity expense of other ships.

Games become more complex (and hardware burdened) as more unit classes are involved.

The danger of having more races is that for a fixed number of budgeted total units in the game, having more races, means less units per race (total number of units per game divided by the total number kinds of races). The game is not that interesting because each race must have a minimal variety of units. The greater the unit variety, the more interesting a game becomes.

However, from the development side, that means more developer cost, more complexity, more debugging and beta testing. There is always a complexity vs. development cost issue for a package you're going to sell for $40. Adding more races and units isn't going to justify to the buyer an increase in cost (e.g. selling a four race RTS at $60 bucks compared to a 2 race RTS game for $30.)

Another way, is to forget about race balancing period, by having each side have the identical set of units. But to make that game interesting, you must have an extensive depth of units. Again, this is based the formula above (total number of units per game divided by total number of kinds of races). In that case, the last number is one, since the factions are totally identical.

The example of this extreme (one basic type of race fighting as different factions with access to four categories of units) is the MMORTS/RPG Shattered Galaxy.

Homeworld and Cata are on the less races/more unit end of the spectrum. So is the game Ground Control, except for its expansion, which added a third race with an equal amount of units.

Games with three or more races (come to think of it, Starcraft isn't that much actually), have fewer basic units per race (not counting bases). This also includes Earth 2150, Imperial Galactica 2, Conquest Frontier Wars, ST Armada (which as four) and the upcoming Armada 2 (which has six). Not exactly an RTS, the Starfleet Command games has six races, but basically only has six types of units.

But some of these games however, like IG2 and E2150, got tech trees and extensive update/modifications for the few basic units they have. A Jaguar mech in Earth 2150, can be fitted with any permutation of six different weapons types on three hardpoints. This makes their actual unit variety much greater than it looks from the manual.

Thus it's up to the buying public as to what spectrum they prefer (less race types, more basic units) vs. (more race types, less basic units).

[dzurlord]

Originally posted by crobato


Look at the history of Cata

1. Beast Build bug and having more production lines---this turned many 'Taaw players off (some permanently from the game)

2. Patched the Beast up. Now this turned many Beast players off, some permanently from the game.

End result---you turned off many players from the game. Lack of viability meant no one will invest the money to make the patch to fix the last patch. HW Cataclysm boxes in the store bargain bin basket.

Suffice to say, 'Taaw players beating the Beast is not an excuse why the Beast should have more production lines. In prepatch times, without using the build bug, between players of equal ability and knowing enough to use both, the Beast comes out with an advantage because you can engage more production lines, not to mention it does not need money to research them. Once the Beast starts assimiilating the 'Taaw units, it acquires more production lines with each type.

If the game has no resource injection, and with small starting resources, the prepatch Beast comes with an enormous advantage because once the 'Taaw workers are toast, the 'Taaw player starves to death, and its effectively game over. Those Workers too, are easy to bust, compared to the old HW Resourcer that takes a lot of damage.

So what does the 'Taaw player have? Special weapons like the uber Siege Cannon to blast everything; leech them to death; hive them to death; missolyte them to death; mimic-kami them to death.

It's either using special gimmick weapons (siege cannon or leech); or swarm them to death with one type of weapon.

Crobato, please check the build times for beast as compared to somtaaw. Somtaaw full fighter production is 20+ fighters a minute. Until beast infects somtaaw ships, which happens in most games in the 20-25 minute mark it must use epa to match somtaaws build(I'm counting ACV's being unlinked here) .
Leech-Never works except against newbies.

Seige Cannon-Only works against taaw, I've died twice to it and I'd already lost those games.

Mimics are useless once beast gets adv. sensors.

Missolytes are a problem, but they are stoppable, I've lost one or two games in the last month to them only. I only play beast btw. The only imbalance in cata is the difference in ru income between somtaaw and beast early on and slight overpowering of missolytes. The reason why people really don't play Cata is because of the no of people who like to run around saying "Cata sux" when they've played it once or twice or only the demo.

Longer games=Larger Maps.

Flak=Heavy Vette burst attack thrawnkkar.

Omikun-point noted:p

[crobato]

We're not talking about build times, but the fact that the Beast has six pipelines for serious fighters and corvettes (Bandit, Bomber, Cloak Fighter, Brigand, Heavy and MGC) while the 'Taaw has two (Acolyte and Avenger). Sure you can unlink the Avengers to get two more Acos, but 'Taaw lacks a serious corvette. When you have carriers involved, you got eighteen pipelines you can put produce simultaneously, while the 'taw still only has six. That gets worst if the Beast managed to assimilate the Acos or Avengers. And before you can start buiding Acos, you got a hanger to build, and if your starting resources is set to small, and the number of initial Workers is limited, you would have to allocate one way or another (hanger or more workers), where as the Beast can get started in interceptors early, and then bombers, which can sic on workers quite early. Seems to me that 'Taaw tends to favor larger maps with bigger resources, frequent or larger resource injections.

What some peole view as "game tactics" I see more as exploiting game technicalities. That's what ultimately turns me and people off from this game. It simply turns to something how fast you can research, build and rush.

Also,




The key is not to make game without rushs, but one that makes rushs fun and strategic.

Boosting defense would only do three things.



This statement is quite contradictory. Without any defense, rushes *are* straightforward. It is defense that forces rushes to be precise and strategic.


Also my continued response to this thread will be limited in the near future as I will be spending more time in other games (or migrate to Shattered Galaxy.) In short unless I see some "future" with Homeworld 2, I guess I will be moving on to better things.

[Alpha_Monkey]

Actually, cata had a few nice interface ideas:

-patrol waypoints (handy)
-build/tech display on HUD (very handy)

um...new paintjobs on salv'ed caps?


This statement is quite contradictory. Without any defense, rushes *are* straightforward. It is defense that forces rushes to be precise and strategic.
Exactly.
With defenses (pd's, gravwells, garrisons, minefields) to circumnavigate, bottlenecks, graveyard ambushes (I hope), etc.
Or u could have RedArmy style breakthru's...

[TamedSheepFSI]

I would like to see more use of Super Cap ships in HW2. In Cata and HW, super heavy cap ships were used less and were vulnerable to swarms. If there is any way that Relic can make the game-play more balanced out as in ship use, the game would be close to perfect. Just a thought.

[TamedSheepFSI]

Another thing. Both HW games( Cata and HW) were overall offensive games. There was no typical defense other than what you use for offense. That is the HW series' weakness.

[crobato]

The weakness of HW is that capital ships are strafed to death, which I think is nonsensical. Even in WWII, no battleship, cruiser, destroyer or frigate gets strafed to death. Even transports don't get strafed to death unless you're only a small one.

To destroy a capital ship, fighters have to be equipped with either missiles or a wide area effect bomb. Once fired, they have to be reloaded by docking again. The Acolytes got the right idea.

On the other hand, I don't think even a frigate or even a resourcer should be strafed to death either, even by a Heavy Corvette. Sometimes for the purpose of rationalization, the so called Plasma Attack Bomber class should be removed, and instead the monicker Bomber should be attached to Corvettes instead. Instead of a Heavy Corvette, you should have Missile Bombers (the Brigand is a right example), and a new type of corvette called a Plasma Bomb corvette---now properly called Plasma Bomber. In short, this Plasma bomber is now based on the Corvette chassis. dmille had the right idea in his Raider mod.


Thus your strike craft breakdown would be as follows:


1. Recon/Scout
a. Advanced Sensors Upgrade
b. Cloaked Upgrade

2. Heavy Interceptor
a. Missile Upgrade
b. ECM upgrade

(not cloaking but reduces distance of detection and AA effectiveness.)

3. Bomber (formerly Corvette)
Plasma Bomb/Cannon standard
a. Missile Upgrade
b. ECM upgrade

It's possible you can remove the entire Missile Corvette anyway (a Corvette with an infinite missile supply is kind of unbelievable, considering even the Missile Destroyer takes pauses if its initial stock of missiles have run out.). However, the Bomber/Corvette has more missiles to use than a Fighter, so two or three more attacks before it has to redock for resupply.

[dzurlord]

To kill swarms in Cata you use either a proc scuttle(taaw) or IAF scuttle(beast). The support frigate fills this role in HW too. Besides, you have dfg and grav to stop swarms, for an example.

Crobato, it is the build times that matter. If for example, I played Subjugate and I was only allowed to build scouts and defenders, whereas my opponent could build only cloaks, bombers and interceptors, I'd probably win. Dmilles PB vette was a nice idea, though it was too powerful.

[crobato]

Yes, but the problem in the case you mentioned is that it is hypothetical. In Cata, you don't have a defender and the enemy also has a scout. Thus, you both have scout and interceptor---making both sides even there, but then the Beast also got a bomber, a cloak, missile corvette, MGC and an HC.

I would only agree build times do matter, but only if the enemy does not have the same or similar ships and pipelines ---something quite different in theory, like a Kadeshi. I tested the Kadeshi mod, vs computer AI, no fuel burn and no ship cap limit, and those Swarmers breed pretty fast, literally overwhelming the opposition.

I know about the ship scuttling, but sometimes even these ships blow up on a Missilyte alpha strike (I've seen entire carriers blew up on a single alpha strike), and their effects are diminished if the swarm moved away, or kept their distance in a sphere. That is if you decided to use a swarm against these ships---a few missile corvettes would give a Proc some trouble, and the opponent has my blessing if he wants to blow up his Proc just to take out a few corvetes. What if a smart player sees this tactic coming? Just remember that a swarm can easily move away, and scuttling ship cannot chase them. Procs are expensive and take time to build. Are you playing this in a big map full of resources? Your workers isn't being raped yet and you're not starved for resources? The scuttling ship not being stopped from moving by a single salvette sticking on its side?

Gravwells and DFGs are better counters, but gravwells aren't playable in Cata, and a DFG can't stop missiles. I like good old AA. One can say that a Defender or an MGC is essentially a flying AA platform. In a hypothetical game, if a defender or MGC can be researched and produced earlier, there will be more weight in the defensive side of things. But as someone said before, moving defenses ultimately becomes an offensive rush on their own---the entire mothership, the DFGs, the Defense fighters, gravwells, defenders and MGCs right down your throat. To stop that from happening, defenses have to be stationary and positional.

[dzurlord]

No salvs in Cata hehe. Plus workers wont salvage unless the target has been damaged under 50%. Depending on formation you can take up to 50 fighters out with a scuttle, I've done it and had it done to me. I play CQ and AFB so big map full of ru's is nope. A smart player hmm. Ok here's an example from the HWU cata boards. TamedSheepFSI ran into FrostAliveguru using a Hive rush build. When he went after Frost ru op, his swarm ran into 3 processors guarding it. Dead swarm, he died, processors still left over.

How would stationary positions work effectively? For example, if they had a one time use engine like the probe, you'd simply see people building them, then using them to supplant their main forces when the MS is attacked.

On the other hand, if you could only give them a guard order, then people would order them to guard a ship, then use that ship to attack the enemy.

[crobato]

If you noted in my previous essay, the defensive platform is actually either something that anchors against an immovable asteroid or built in empty space using an assembler ship. It's not like a probe that flies one time to anywhere you like.

The platform takes time to build, in which case both it and the assembler ship is actually vulnerable to attack. You can't simply build platforms in hostile territory without serious protection. You can build it near hostile territory like a jump off point for attack though.

If you are familiar with the defensive platforms used in the games ST: Armada (phaser turret for example), or the ion cannon turrets in Conquest Frontier Wars, you get the idea. These games also use an assembler ship to build bases. Put some of your own defense platforms in resource rich asteroid belts and see how it detracts your enemy's resourcing efforts.

As far as offensively goes, such platforms cannot be used for a direct attack on the CS itself or against similar positions. Since they're immovable, they can't be used as escorts. But used wisely, you can have a concept or strategy of "defense-offense" where you can isolate or hem in the enemy, preventing him from easy access to resource belts, or limiting his movement.

[crobato]

Salvettes are good for picking off a more bothersome threat in HW than scuttling frigates; kami resourcers. Like I said, you don't need to capture the resourcers, just immobilize them or take them off their track. The death of a single salvette compared the loss of one large vessel is more than worth it.

While you don't have salvettes in Cata, you have another convenient substitute to stop a scuttling Processor---a ramming tug. Unfortunately, the Beast does not have this, unless it managed to salvage one. So there, that is a problem with the Beast.

Sometimes a player would scuttle a cap ship or resourcer held by insufficient salvettes---even though I had no real intention of capturing his ship. To force them to scuttle was the real intention in the first place.

Dead Hive swarm (without taking out their frigs) costs nothing for the other guy---they will rebuild soon enough at no cost. Not worth blowing up a processor just for that.

However one thing scuttling tactics cannot stop if the enemy swarm is targeting your Workers. In a no bounty, low to med starting resources, small map with finite resources, with no starting Processor, 'Taaw starves easily just by targeting their Workers. And Beast researches plasma bombers out fast too. No need to destroy his CS---once the last of his Workers is gone, it's game over unless he has reserve money to replace them. Maps and initial configuration can make all the difference in this game.

A Processor can't chase a swarm and you can't blow up your processor near your Workers either, or you'll blow your own workers too.

One thing to note about Cata is that ship blast radius is much more powerful than in HW, and strike force AI seem more flawed than in HW. Fighters and corvettes seem to attack much closer than they were in HW, and use less speed, exposing them to more damage from scuttling. Corvettes seem to crowd against their target in Cata, although the Brigand still tends to circle widier, while in HW, corvettes circle their prey at a distance. Since we're talking of a hypothetical game, these characteristics may not be present; and scuttling tactics may not work as well in a hypothetical game.

All the seeds for swarm balancing should be innately built both into the design of the defense and the strike ships themselves. It should be up for the player to resourcefully use them. Scuttling ships work in an offensive way, but they're not a consistent anti-swarm strategy nor used as an excuse not to have innately built in swarm balancing measures in the first place.

[Omi-kun]

Originally posted by dzurlord
Omikun-point noted:p


Thanks:)

Good posts everyone, however, I think we're deviating from the original topic. Recommendation: start a new thread in Cata strategy?

[SWPIGWANG]

You need an R-P-S system to establish the infrastructure for tactics in the first place. If DFF frig is vulnerable to ion beam frigs, escort it with strike craft, which in turn are vulnerable to a DFF. SW, what you're just pointing out as an example of tactics is merely coordinated R-P-S.
But the problem here is that research and build pipelines often follows the R-P-S system and that result in R-P-S games with 3 basic build orders and each beating to one and losing to one. While not all battles results in this, this happens often enough (in games like SC for example...HW is okay).


So what if you have a defensive rush? Real battles have one force setting up a fort near the enemy lines. That's actually part of tactics. A defensive rush is not without its counter,
So what if you have any rush? The problem is that it shorten the game into a frenzy of build orders, like any rush. All decent RTS have counters to rushes, and defensive rush is the same, but such a rush is still boring.



What some peole view as "game tactics" I see more as exploiting game technicalities. That's what ultimately turns me and people off from this game. It simply turns to something how fast you can research, build and rush.
....true

But the guy with most units should win right? A rush is only the result of the statement.


Yeah sure, we need some turtling in the game. Like I said, games should not be over in less than 20 minutes between equal players. There should be enough hurried pace of development and yet sufficient defense that we are likely to see a median game run of about 20-45 minutes.
There are no terrain and the map is 3D in HW, so traditional fixed defenses would be useless as the enemy can just bypass them. Mobile defenses would mean camping by the resource patchs...



This statement is quite contradictory. Without any defense, rushes *are* straightforward. It is defense that forces rushes to be precise and strategic.
Nope, as any offensive force can be used for defense. So in crazy no defense games, offensive is the best defense and the battle is between who can control their forces and build best, and unlike a R-P-S system, microing and split second controls is the key. (Hivemind vs hivemind.... :D ..vett wall be vett wall.... CS rush vs CS rush....)

The amount of skill require to win is still the same, but the skill is concentrated on microing.



Exactly.
With defenses (pd's, gravwells, garrisons, minefields) to circumnavigate, bottlenecks, graveyard ambushes (I hope), etc.
Or u could have RedArmy style breakthru's...

In games like HW (terrainless), defending the closest resource patch to the enemy usually means victory.



When you have some form of fortifications, you will take some thought in sending your rush *straight* towards the enemy.
When you have some form of fortifications, you will change the way you rush, but not not rush.

All RTS games must let offsense outstrip defense at some point, and that is the point of rushs. Sure in AOK with the crazy townhall defending rushs are delayed to at least 20 minutes into the game, but they are still rushs as they rely on the initial lack out units of the enemy and fast build. The result is 20 minutes of building and dying to a rush, which is worst than 2 minutes of building and dying to a rush IMO.


The best RTSs does not discourage rushs, but makes them fun and varied.

[crobato]

Nope, as any offensive force can be used for defense. So in crazy no defense games, offensive is the best defense and the battle is between who can control their forces and build best, and unlike a R-P-S system, microing and split second controls is the key. (Hivemind vs hivemind.... ..vett wall be vett wall.... CS rush vs CS rush....)

The amount of skill require to win is still the same, but the skill is concentrated on microing.




Offense as defense sometimes does not make the best game. It will boil down to this---who strikes first is more likely to win. Who builds the most and in the fastest times wins.

That does not boil down to adding depth in a game.

Furthermore, the opinion on the majority of RTS games out there does not support the concept you talk about. Most RTS games I've seen use a strong R-P-S balancing concept.

For example, I'm playing Shattered Galaxy now. A unit that is dedicated for land battle (like a powerful flamethrowing unit) is vulnerable to air attack. A mobile unit with SAMs on the other hand, is vulnerable to ground attack. Weapons that can fight both air and land, have reduced damaged potential. Do you want fast mobile units to capture points of contention quickly? Or do you want slow well armored units to occupy and defend your own?

Now imagine this---before you reinforce a game, what will be your choices? Which units to use?

Guess what? You can't rely on the same strategy every game. Everytime you enter a game, the strategy is unknown---you can live and die by the choices you make.

You can go in on a game with tanks, which will plow right through enemy infrantry but guess what, you just found out your enemy is relying heavily on airpower and artillery.

Homeworld may be three dimensional in space, but it's certainly not three dimensional in game play. Other than its spatial three dimensionality and good graphics, it's RTS structure is quite mediocre. If you like to see what I mean, check out Conquest Frontier Wars.

Shallow development trees for example, afflicts HW. I can research every tech in Cata and HW in the same amount of time that would only bring you a small fraction of the technologies available in Earth 2150.

The lack of positional strategy for example---situationing a defensive platform to provide the best coverage, and position is an important element in strategy.

Sure, static defenses can be bypassed, but they are often bypassed anyway in every ground based RTS game. That's not the point. These defenses are set up to defend resource patches, forcing the enemy to come to them.

Microing an split second controls are overly dependent on connection bandwidth---in an RTS game, the connection demands are much more extreme than an FPS game like Quake due to the large number of units. Large masses of units forces a lot of system dependent overloading that causes lag and other dependencies on internet technology. You need to move away from that. Nothing got more boring quickly than to fan formations of units across the screen in a frenzied click fest, trying to pick on this small ship on the screen.

I used to play another game, a large multiplayer (up to 120 players) RTS-space sim called Allegiance. Beautiful R-P-S approach in their system. If a faction decides to go with the tactical stealth approach to nail down your miners and destroy your economy, it leaves them vulnerable to a conventional bombing run.

An R-P-S system does not have the luxury that you can implement all forms of strategic approaches. Because you are limited in your resoures and time you must CHOOSE. For example, in Allegiance, you basically have three major tech trees---Tactical, Expansion, Superiority---and one counters the other. You can rush the other guy with stealth bombers and dogfight them with stealth fighters while the other guy hits your bases with commando ships and high speed interceptors.

In short, you cannot implement all the choices available in a time or resource budget.




But the problem here is that research and build pipelines often follows the R-P-S system and that result in R-P-S games with 3 basic build orders and each beating to one and losing to one. While not all battles results in this, this happens often enough (in games like SC for example...HW is okay).


Happens only in longer games when you have pretty much exhausted on approach and you have resources to do the other.
In the initial to midphase you don't have that luxury.





The best RTSs does not discourage rushs, but makes them fun and varied.



It does encourage quick monotonous rushes, and does not make them fun or varied in the long run.

In a game where the only defense is mobile units that are basically alike with each other? It basically ends up to this:

1. Research faster
2. Build them faster
3. Hit them first.

What kind of variety is that? It's important to give games some legs, because longer drawn out games tend to be more interesting. When both sides are more fully realized, the potential of the game starts to open up.

Having units that counter one or the other, adds variety. In fact, the need for variety dictates this form. Variety dictates both a strength and a weakness. The Ying and Yang in every unit design means R-P-S is inevitable and is followed. No one needs five or six different kinds of interceptors that is just a variant of one or the other.

Stealth units to attack the other's resourcers. Scout units to hunt down the stealth units. General purpose fighters vs. short range high speed anti bomber interceptor units. Bomber units and flying turrets.

Defensive systems add variety. Don't mistake micromanagement of formations as variety because it isn't. Variety is about a coordinated combined arms approach, exercised in precision---your ground units hitting the enemies AA, while your aerial units pound on their ground units. It's studying your enemy's position, then proceed to peel off his defenses methodically, rather than overwhelming it all the time.

You know what you can do to swarms in E2150? You can see your massed attack of cheap units get decimated in less than a second, when the enemy bomber drops a few plasma bombs right in the middle of them. Or gets decimated when caught in the crossfire of several defensive outposts. it does not matter how fast you can "micromanage" them. They're dead in two seconds. Guess what?

You begin to realize your attack has to be a lot more creative than that. You begin to concentrate your attacks on one outpost at a time, using preferably longer ranged weapons. You need to hit his power supply, so the defenses are immobilized. You need to cover your units with fighters and other AA. You need to lure out the bombers with a decoy force, then nail them in an ambush using units with long range AA. Just pray he doesn't unleash his own units at you, but if he does, you might as well take cover of your own defensive embankments, adding to your total firepower.

That's what you call variety. That's what you call tactics and precision.

[dzurlord]

Maybe I should boot up that old Moon Project demo.........

[Nemesis_Star]

DID ANYONE LISTEN TO ME

i said similar units [for example all of the fighters] could be built from the same pipeline

second of all

crobato other people and I dont want to have a fabricator [conquet fronteirwars unit] in hw2 that builds the turrets

second i though conquest suck total a55

the salvagers could carry turrets and the tech tree could be increased with more units

but no upgrades like in cata upgrades suck total a55 also they make the game a game of micromanagement

in emperor: battle for dune [u should check it out] the defencive units were quite powerful and were only out ranged by artillery and some couldnt attack air

but everyone was still complaining that rushing is to powerful

the artillery units are relativly late in the game and the flying units are even later

but u cant have turrets everywhere

the ordos [the best rushers] just deploy their cobra canon and watch it blow up your harvesters and over run u with a two or three unit combo

really easy

one guy posted the build order on the message board and newbies who used it rose up to rank thirty

the thing is the ordos rush can be stoped easy by using fremen [a sub house that all of the factions can get] to destroying the cobra canon

and then the rusher can run u down with all of the low on life ordos units u kill them easy

the problem is if the average person gets beat by the same tactic 3 or 4 times they will say it is bad and complain for a patch or something rather than find a way to beat with a strat other than the one they always use

side note: and yes i know the E:B4D ladder sucks a55, i hate it to

[SWPIGWANG]

It will boil down to this---who strikes first is more likely to win. Who builds the most and in the fastest times wins.

So how will defenses change this? You still need to build the fastest to win. (strike first or not)



I can research every tech in Cata and HW in the same amount of time that would only bring you a small fraction of the technologies available in Earth 2150.

yeah....with laser 1, laser 2, laser 3 -> heavy laser 1, heavy laser 2, heavy laser 3.....rocket 1 -> rocket 2 -> rocket 3..... Repairer 1 -> Repairer 2..... 105mm cannon -> 105mm x 2 -> 120mm -> 120mm x2

BORING (unless you are playing the ED :D UCS DIE :p Muhahahaha)



but they are often bypassed anyway in every ground based RTS game. That's not the point. These defenses are set up to defend resource patches, forcing the enemy to come to them.

With the lack of choke points and highly disperced resources in HW, defenses can only cover a tiny amount of resource.

Not like say BGH (oh NO!), one choke point can cover 2 huge unlimited patchs.....



I used to play another game, a large multiplayer (up to 120 players) RTS-space sim called Allegiance.
...hum.... Controlable units.........



You know what you can do to swarms in E2150? You can see your massed attack of cheap units get decimated in less than a second, when the enemy bomber drops a few plasma bombs right in the middle of them. Or gets decimated when caught in the crossfire of several defensive outposts. it does not matter how fast you can "micromanage" them. They're dead in two seconds. Guess what?

Guess what, 20 hans with atomic bombs kill EVERYTHING..... so people no longer swarm with lame Tigers but with big bombers...big difference. (or loads of Plasma Jags or something)

Also, in the original E2150....MOON RUSH KILLS ALL :p (and Fat Girl Rush kills (not to E2150 levels tho) in Moon Project)

A commander can kill zillions of flashes with D-Gun, but people still rush with them.....

Furthermore, the opinion on the majority of RTS games out there does not support the concept you talk about. Most RTS games I've seen use a strong R-P-S balancing concept.

OK, here is the deal.

R-P-S system results in game results decided VERY EARLY for people with the same skills. (that is assuming R-P-S is build into tech tree)


So now you play Starcraft 1v1 Zerg vs Toss....

Game 1

Both players starts with a build order that have been predetermined by the masters of the game.

So one player goes for reaver drop while another goes mass lings -> ling + hyda rush, both builds up according to strategy. Both attempts to peon recon, but was stopped before geting into the enemy base.

Boom, toast protoss....

Game 2

So player goes early muta and another goes mass goons, both did this before recon.

Gone is the zerg.


So what is wrong with the picture? Well, the game is like Rock-Paper-Scissor and the game is decided when both players decides their build orders. All too often, the costs of changing tech trees is so expensive and early recon so difficult, the build orders and the game is decided before the fighting starts!

So you end up with a game thats like rock-paper-scissor...with the victor decided before seeing what the other guy is doing!?


I do not disaggree with R-P-S when its NOT BUILD INTO THE TECH TREE.

It would certainly suck finding your army completely useless because your enemy just luckily used the right build order to counter yours, BEFORE KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.


Than again, that is a major problem only in 1v1, but 1v1 counts.



Guess what? You can't rely on the same strategy every game. Everytime you enter a game, the strategy is unknown---you can live and die by the choices you make.
Guess what, you are forced a strategy before meeting the enemy because of the tech tree, and if you picked wrong...good bye.



the problem is if the average person gets beat by the same tactic 3 or 4 times they will say it is bad and complain for a patch or something rather than find a way to beat with a strat other than the one they always use
So true..... esp. the lame tawws :p (thus the patch....)

[crobato]

A defensive fabricator (Assembler unit in Armada) is not much different from a minelayer. They should be about the size of a Processor.

The only difference is that it takes time for them to spit out the autogun turrets. The Autoguns themselves cannot travel from place to place, but you can give them order formations. In theory, you can move the turrets place to place using salvettes, but that will be really dumb if you try to rush them into an offensive area, since it's quite clumsy and cost wise, an assault frigate would have been more cost efficent.

If you don't know how to set up your defenses---the best is to utilize them in a spherical formation or wall---they can easily be beaten.

The really big embankments must take some time to build and research.

Nothing cannot be beaten. Let;s say the Autoguns come into three flavors: Two Gun Autogun (equivalent to a light Corv in firepower) Quad Gun Autogun (equivalent to a Heavy Corv in firepower), and Bunker (equivalent to an assault frig in firepower). You build a wall of Quad Guns and put a repair frig behind it.

There is always this alternative of eventually sending scuttling ships to blow it up.

Defenses are not fool proof. But they can delay and impede your progress, buying enough time for the player to do his development and build, mount his own offense or counter attack. While you're busy with his defenses, he might be sending his formations already into your vulnerable fleet.

Also, I think Emperor of Dune is pure crap (it's not as well reviewed as Conquest, and Conquest is quite innovative in some respects; it's currently the best game out there for high level macromanagement IMHO.) I like the concept of Supply Lines in Conquest, and it forces you to think in ways you don't usually experience in an RTS. The AI in Emperor, just sucks in IMHO and so does it's interface.

I like Earth 2150 as a model for RTS games because it is probably the most thoroughly designed RTS out there in its Moon Project expanded form. No RTS game out there has its depth of weaponry, except possibly for Shattered Galaxy. E2150 does have what you call game enders though---like artillery and ballistic missiles---if the game turtles into a overly powerful defensive formations, but these comes handy but comes very late in the game, and even these have counters. It forces a methodical approach in offense. It's damn frightening to see an entire base fire massed rockets from their launchers right into your attacking army (but you can mount rockets too in your offensive force). But you need to draw out his own forces, and knock off his AA, so that your bombers can go in there and nuke his power stations and his builders. You take out the Power stations, his defenses get paralyzed and his production goes to a halt.

Putting a limit on the units on the game will force the player to sacrifice defense for offense, or offense for defense. This is what the Command Points system in Conquest does, and so is the SU system in Cataclysm. (Tactically the best RTS game out there is Sierra's Ground Control. This is no macromanagement, research or resourcing, just plain tactical micromanagement. Anyone who has seen this game close up can easily see why it won the vote for best RTS in the year 2000, even over Cata.)

[SWPIGWANG]

E2150 is a Campy game (to me that is).... every decent player appears to live till Nuclear missiles and bombers.....than its a matter of mass bomber/nuke/plasma/weather...with few exceptions such as pound ground tactic and moon/fatgirl rush.

Its just pure camp turtle in Uncle Sam.......

[crobato]

Originally posted by SWPIGWANG
So how will defenses change this? You still need to build the fastest to win. (strike first or not)


Defenses slow down the rush. This will let the other player build up his own techs and numbers.




yeah....with laser 1, laser 2, laser 3 -> heavy laser 1, heavy laser 2, heavy laser 3.....rocket 1 -> rocket 2 -> rocket 3..... Repairer 1 -> Repairer 2..... 105mm cannon -> 105mm x 2 -> 120mm -> 120mm x2

BORING (unless you are playing the ED :D UCS DIE :p Muhahahaha)


What's really boring is swarm after swarm.

This is the greatest PISS off of any RTS game.

This is the reason that stops potential players from entering the market.

Building en masse as fast as you can isn't a deliberate and methodical strategy.

It is ULTIMATELY BORING. This is a complaint repeated one after another by potential players that eventually turned elsewhere like sims or FPS.

This is a serious enough problem in RTS development that the entire course of second generation games after Starcraft, and including SC's expansion pack, is to reduce swarming.

In fact, one of the common traits of a next generation RTS game is the development of a flexible unit cap system to *manage* (not eliminate) swarming and hoarding---

The Command Point system in Conquest Frontier Wars
The Support Unit system in Cataclysm.
The total maximum cost of units on field in E2150.

In Armada and Conquest, you also got a Personnel factor. You cannot build enough ships if you don't have people to man them. This means you got to build something like a Barracks first, to be able to man these ships, and build a lot of Barracks.

Guess what?

That slows down your early rush a lot.




With the lack of choke points and highly disperced resources in HW, defenses can only cover a tiny amount of resource.


I've seen a lot of maps where this is not true.





Not like say BGH (oh NO!), one choke point can cover 2 huge unlimited patchs.....


You only need to protect one patch, and put your CS in it as well.





Guess what, 20 hans with atomic bombs kill EVERYTHING..... so people no longer swarm with lame Tigers but with big bombers...big difference. (or loads of Plasma Jags or something)


Yes, but it sure takes time to build up to that, and the other sides have their equivalent (LC with bombers and plasma bombs.)




Also, in the original E2150....MOON RUSH KILLS ALL :p (and Fat Girl Rush kills (not to E2150 levels tho) in Moon Project)

A commander can kill zillions of flashes with D-Gun, but people still rush with them.....


Not in my experience. Moon ship hulls are rather weak, and their overdependence on limited rocket ammo is a problem for a sustained battle.

Moon power stations are the worst to rebuild once they're knocked out, except for the saving grace that their defensive plaforms are self powered.





So what is wrong with the picture? Well, the game is like Rock-Paper-Scissor and the game is decided when both players decides their build orders. All too often, the costs of changing tech trees is so expensive and early recon so difficult, the build orders and the game is decided before the fighting starts!

So you end up with a game thats like rock-paper-scissor...with the victor decided before seeing what the other guy is doing!?


I do not disaggree with R-P-S when its NOT BUILD INTO THE TECH TREE.

It would certainly suck finding your army completely useless because your enemy just luckily used the right build order to counter yours, BEFORE KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.


Ahem, that does happen in Allegiance and Shattered Galaxy, although in the case of SG, you do have a minute to check out the game to redeploy your forces before you enter.

In any case, in SG, You cannot truly determine what are the choices of forty other players going into the game, so you can only pray you made the right choice. if you don't, stick close to another squad that has the means to protect you.

Flamethrowing Imp Kills Manticore AA battery
Manticore AA battery kills Pelican Fighter bombers
Pelican Fighter Bombers Kills Flame Throwing Imp

Solution. If you happen to enter the game with flame throwing Imps, stick close to a Manticore, or the other guy's bombers will get you.

But you will need your own teammates with Pelicans to pre-emptively knock out the other team's Arbiters, as these are artillery units that can nail your Imps and Manticores at a distance.

But beware, what if those Arbs are protected by Manticores and fighter Hawks?

So again, you see the RPS system working beautifully in Shattered Galaxy.

The wrong kind of rush gets your ass kicked badly.

You cannot make a blind rush. The enemy has artillery. Some units lay mines---both in the ground and in the air.

Team rushes are made with the coordination of a large variety of units---Arbs pounding artillery, heavy tank Behemoths moving in, covered by infantry and organic units with combined air and ground capability, air support being called in. Rushes are in the true Combined Arms support.

Fast units have weak armor. Strong units are slow. Again, a balance. If you got fast units, you rely on micromanagement for hit and run attacks, while heavy units just sit there and gets blasted. Tanks are pretty vulnerable to artillery as they are too slow to run away from them, but fast units can run ahead. so fast strike units like the tricycle Pegasus must go in and knock out those Arbs, if Manticore AA protect the arbs, causing heavy casualties in your teams' bomber strikes.

But what if Zappers laid mines for your Pegs to trip in?

See how one unit counters the other?

This is what makes SG such an indepth experience.

Some players complain about "pigs", but I don't really find them a problem with some good air support.

I myself keep Pegs when entering an offensive game early. If you're able to snatch the enemy's POC (Points of Contention) before his reinforcements comes in, you can grab and win the game early. This is how you win a game against superior faction numbers.

But when it comes to defending POCs to the death, there are heavily armored Imps, Wraiths and Behemoths. I've won games where I held on to POCs as long as I can against superior forces till the time runs out.

You got only 20 minutes to win or lose. Capture the other guy's POC's while defending your own. The whole POC objective in Shattered Galaxy forces a balance of offense and defense.

In any case, if you picked the wrong kind of squad when you entered the game, get them killed fighting (so they still pick up experience points), and you can replace them with your proper units, assuming you have the right type in your reserve inventory.

The RPS system cannot be built into the tech tree, but with the individual units themselves. No game ever builds RPS into the tech tree.

SG doesn not have a tech tree---only an RPG system with four groups of tech development based on unit categories---Infantry (like Mechs); Mobile (tanks and cycles), Aviation (bombers and fighters), and Organic (mutating evolving bioweapons). The units you choose to make up your squads are your units until you sell them (they're always resurrected in the repair shop anyway.) Your choices determine your advancement path. You can have units on one catetory, or units in all four categories.

Every Category has one weapons to counter one or the other. The same unit like a Wraith infantry mech can be outfitted with a purely AA weapon of higher damage potential or a multipurpose ground and air weapon with lower damage potential. Another unit like the Imp can have a ground only flamethrower of greater damage, or a multipurpose weapon of lower damage.

So what if you make a squad, half Wraith with AA, and half Imp with flame throwers? That will cover all grounds yes?

The problem of mixed squads is that they are a jack of all trades, and a master of none. Three Wraiths can't do much against a wing of aircraft, and three flame throwing Imps can't do much against a squad of Shades. You got to have six of the same type for to be able to truly dish out some punishment.

The concepts in SG is quite clear.

Generalization means being a master of none, while specialization means taking R-P-S types of risks---and learning to coordinate yourself with someone who can cover your weakness.

It is part of the game.

Making choices is about strategy, and part of strategy is the gamble.

In the case of Allegiance, every tech research path has counters against the other tech tree, as well as disadvantages.

For example, if you took the Expansion development against Tactical (stealth), Interceptors has flash probes that they could use to spot stealth fighters. But Stealth fighters could snipe at Interceptors which has poor sensor range, unless the Ints are joined by Scouts with superior sensors.




Guess what, you are forced a strategy before meeting the enemy because of the tech tree, and if you picked wrong...good bye.

So true..... esp. the lame tawws :p (thus the patch....) [/B]

That really does not happen in RTS games except in Allegiance. If you picked a Superiority path while the other picks Tactical, you may have some problems. If you found out your enemy team went stealth, oh boy, you got your COM ordering a conventional bombing run heavily escorted with scouts with healers. If you failed to knock out his Tactical Base early, the enemy stealth fighters get stronger and nails your Miners (very much like Resourcers for Homeworld). You're in big trouble when his Stealth Bombers comes out.

If you're the guy, with a Stealth Fighter, and a bombing raid enters your sector with heavy scouts, your SF can't kill a bomber fast enough, unless you got enough SF's or some guy in a scout that managed to dump mines near the wormhole. Or if your COM is smart enough to put autoturret drones and mines in the said place. (Depending on faction, you do you have a basic Interceptor, Scout or Fighter to combat with, but they don't stand much of a chance against turreted bombers unless you got numbers---and those turrets can be manned by players with deadly accuracy. One player nailed over 20 fighters in the course of a game from his turret.)

That really happens in that late lamented game (Allegiance went out when DirectPlay had serious problems, the Zone servers can't keep up, and the players egos started clashing. It couldn't deal with a basic problem in massive multiplayer---stacking. Stacking is where experienced players all bunch up in a team, creating a massive imbalance against a less experienced team.)

[crobato]

Originally posted by SWPIGWANG
E2150 is a Campy game (to me that is).... every decent player appears to live till Nuclear missiles and bombers.....than its a matter of mass bomber/nuke/plasma/weather...with few exceptions such as pound ground tactic and moon/fatgirl rush.

Its just pure camp turtle in Uncle Sam.......


You won't say the same thing if you got a 50,000 CR limit on the game (this means all your units and bases on the field cannot exceed a total of 50,000 credits.) Cut back on the credit injections too.

I can build up a total campy game in Homeworld too if I built up twelve Avatars guarding my CS and over two hundred fighters and corvettes guarding it (with frequent resource injections).

Every game has means of setting conditions that can dictate the nature of the battle.

[Zartax]

Originally posted by SWPIGWANG

OK, here is the deal.

R-P-S system results in game results decided VERY EARLY for people with the same skills. (that is assuming R-P-S is build into tech tree)


So now you play Starcraft 1v1 Zerg vs Toss....

Game 1

Both players starts with a build order that have been predetermined by the masters of the game.

So one player goes for reaver drop while another goes mass lings -> ling + hyda rush, both builds up according to strategy. Both attempts to peon recon, but was stopped before geting into the enemy base.

Boom, toast protoss....

Game 2

So player goes early muta and another goes mass goons, both did this before recon.

Gone is the zerg.


So what is wrong with the picture? Well, the game is like Rock-Paper-Scissor and the game is decided when both players decides their build orders. All too often, the costs of changing tech trees is so expensive and early recon so difficult, the build orders and the game is decided before the fighting starts!

So you end up with a game thats like rock-paper-scissor...with the victor decided before seeing what the other guy is doing!?


I do not disaggree with R-P-S when its NOT BUILD INTO THE TECH TREE.

It would certainly suck finding your army completely useless because your enemy just luckily used the right build order to counter yours, BEFORE KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.



You never go completeley for one strategy and leave all other options out. If I go for reaverdrop I always have a basic defence that can handle attackers or at least delay them until I can get the reavers back. I never leave an open entrance, for example, not building anything that can take down air units. The timedelay in building the necessary thing to do a certain strategy often leave you with some extra resources in the meantime to build a basic defens and backup.

Also, scouting is very inportant. If you decide a stradegy that can be fatal to you if the other guy has the right counter, you must ALWAYS check out what he is doing now and then. If you do not, you can only blame yourself.
Secondly, you always have a turnpoint, a place where you can decide to continue with you strategy or choose another path without loosing to much. At this point you should have scouted your enemy, and if not, you go the safer path that doesnt involve do or die strategies. You NEVER go beyond the point of no return without being almost certain that it will not be a fatal misstake.

So you should never have a game that is decided before the players have seen eachother, unless both are plain suicidal maniacs :).

[SWPIGWANG]

You won't say the same thing if you got a 50,000 CR limit on the game (this means all your units and bases on the field cannot exceed a total of 50,000 credits.) Cut back on the credit injections too.
While its posible to play just a mine game(and let the wuss LC beat ED...no way :eek: ), CR limit games are hard to find (and I HATE them :mad: )



You never go completeley for one strategy and leave all other options out. If I go for reaverdrop I always have a basic defence that can handle attackers or at least delay them until I can get the reavers back.
Quite hard against mass lings even with lots of cannons if you want to have the spare money for teching.



not building anything that can take down air units.
However, beating half a dozen mutas before they rape the probes requires loads of investment..... Now if the enemy is good, that may be your undoing.



So you should never have a game that is decided before the players have seen eachother, unless both are plain suicidal maniacs .
Tell that to the players that goes for 6 lings and mass ring players.... (while they are never the best, they win often enough... more than seige rushers in Cata....)



you must ALWAYS check out what he is doing now and then. If you do not, you can only blame yourself.
Recon is hard in SC.... those peons die fast. (and smart players hide tech buildings in remote places in the base...) Spending $$ on recon units is also expensive when there is only 5 combat units...

That tiny difference in $$ may result in a loss in fast rush games....



you go the safer path that doesnt involve do or die strategies. You NEVER go beyond the point of no return without being almost certain that it will not be a fatal misstake.
Do or die strategies often are far more powerful than general strategies.... Marine medic loses to marine-SCV-Medic attack (the DoD of DoD strategies :) ) and a good player DoD player would woop general strategy players overall.



Defenses slow down the rush. This will let the other player build up his own techs and numbers.

And let the other player builds up 24 carriers? You win with the same trick, only at different times.


What's really boring is swarm after swarm.
A swarm is a swarm, and late game swarming is even worst than early game swarming, as it becomes ordering units out the production line on blind attacks without any control. The large number of late game units means guy with most units win 99% of the time as microing does nothing at that level.

I've see 2500 medium tank vs 1500 Mammath tank battle in RA I(mucho money map of coz), and I don't want to see it again.

And 24 hatchary pumping out zillion units swarm with commands as simple as clicking attack and than clicking the minimap. (BGH...but hey, some people must dive into bad maps right?)



In Armada and Conquest, you also got a Personnel factor. You cannot build enough ships if you don't have people to man them. This means you got to build something like a Barracks first, to be able to man these ships, and build a lot of Barracks.

Guess what?

That slows down your early rush a lot.
No early rush means late game swarm...so much better....

Did supply rules in SC stop rushs or swarming? 200 supply limit and no build until depos...hell even Warcraft II had farms, did it stop grunt rushs? (or even Warcraft I....)



Not in my experience. Moon ship hulls are rather weak, and their overdependence on limited rocket ammo is a problem for a sustained battle.
A main base just dropped outside your base (unspotted of coz) and endless pumping of mg moons can be deadly as moons takes no research...... and they get 2x mg then rockets.... and blow up your miners/power (damn ED taigas are weak...) ...or do raids on unfinished buildings.... (almost impossible to defend as building based weapons don't have the range)

There are other rushes, like the ion rush (fun :D muhahahahaha)

[crobato]

One thing I don't like about Moon units is that they quickly wither out from 20mm fire alone, and it does not take much to take out the solar panels in the base. You need to rebuild them individually too. Still, I think the Moonies are the strongest faction over all, although not necessarily unit by unit.

I prefer a late rush than early rushes. Nothing pisses off players than early rushes. It's a lot more dramatic, if not cataclysmic. I simply love the essence of destruction when both sides lose units by the hundreds. The problem with early rushes is that it particularly shows the inherent weakness of one faction's tech and resourcing infrastructure early on. Picking the wrong faction could determine the game already with experienced players, e.g. pre patch Beast player already sending plasma bombers after your Workers when you can' t even get your Hanger up yet.

Simply said, some factions, simply by the accident of their design, are going to suffer slower starts than others. You would need a lot of beta testing on this area alone before you can work out some balancing arrangement, and that balancing arrangement will often mean slowing down the development or build of the faster faction and the additional defensive perks on the slower faction. You're back on ground one.

This is even a greater flaw than building an R-P-S system on the tech trees. In short, your fate is pretty much predetermined when you choose your faction. End result: game dies an early death. This is why game design trends look to discourage early rushes, aiming more for mid to later rushes.

Who says late rushes are just about the production line? A well prepared defense can cripple a late rush, especially since the other player would also have time to build his units, all just waiting for you there in an ambush. When you blow your forces against his entrenched defenses, he will be in the position for a massive counterattack against your now, vulnerable bases.

Early rushes are even more of a research time and production line thing, like people countin the exact number of seconds you have a Plasma Bomber available. At this point, you are no longer thinking *in* the game, but looking to exploit inherent flaws in the game design.

[Spaz]

<-- I stopped reading after the 5th post of the exact same thing -->

Here's the breakdown:

<-- Capital ships --> are BIG in real life. REAL BIG. And in cool space sims they are SUPER BIG, like Executer > TIE in Star Wars. Cap Ships are the main offensive defensive part of a fleet. They are the base. You try not to lose your cap ships. When a cap ship goes under, there is a BIG boom. Especially if it wasn’t just killed, but actually destroyed (Cap Ships can be killed by killing bridge and engines.)… If you blew up the reactor (or whatever they use to power the ships) don’t you think there would be a small nuclear blast going off? The cap ships weren’t big enough, and the fighters were too big.

<-- Capital Ships Vs. Fighters/Vettes --> A Capital ship doesn’t concern itself with fighters. It has AA guns and missiles (or something similar) to take care of fast moving targets and fighter escorts. Fighters are used in great number or with high potency (Bombers). Fighters CAN be used to take out caps by targeting engines, bridges, or weapons systems. If you had 100 Acolytes all attacking the Naggarok’s engines I’m sure you would win. It would lay dead in the water waiting for anti cap ships to come and finish or salvage. HOWEVER most Battle Caps have AA guns (fast fire, fast tracking turrets) that rip fighters to shreds. So really it is more of size vs. numbers.

<-- Fighters --> Fighters/Vettes should come in multiple classes, anti cap, and anti fighter. Anti cap would be slower or otherwise more properly equipped to target CapShips with hordes of well placed missiles or torpedo type devices (wouldn’t REALLY sink a cap, but do some nice damage (more targeted (like engines)))

<-- Ships in general --> CUSTOMIZABLE. Have a bunch of custom ship designed tailored to your fighting style. 6 Fighters, 4 Vettes, 3 Frigates (maybe more), 2-3 Cap ships, 1 Carrier type, and 3 Resourcers. I believe in fully customizable ships. A slow but powerful cloaking recon… A Bigger Worker with ARMOR! A fast destroyer, and a BIG destroyer. Use different body types for that race. Each Additional part would add weight, cost and production times ( cloaking will cost you this much.) ( Certain body types would have maxes (like in Mech3))(this game would be probably 2 cds, but a lot of games have been getting big like that.

<-- Offensive/Defensive --> If Cap ships had Point defense and people brought out enough processors then the rushing would end (dead fighters = no rush + wasted RU’s)

That is all for now, I bring more later. Please pay attention and keep a relatively open mind.

[dzurlord]

Capital Ships should not be the be all and end all to a game. Turting is boring. I was playing another guy in Cata and neither of were able to force an advantage before we reached a certain tech point, so the game stalemated. zzzz.

If you bring enough processors online?

So you want to play scuttle wars?

Powerful cloaking recon=cloaked fighter.

[SWPIGWANG]

One thing I don't like about Moon units is that they quickly wither out from 20mm fire alone, and it does not take much to take out the solar panels in the base. You need to rebuild them individually too. Still, I think the Moonies are the strongest faction over all, although not necessarily unit by unit.
Only dummies relay on lame solar panels.... (battary drops saves ASS...and drop it in some planet far far far away = living battary)

A moon rusher usually drops their 1st solar powerplant and battary in a land far far far away (not accessible by land units) and use the starting detector to find your base. Drop the main base near by and wall you in. The rest is just pumping out units as moon 1 is tougher enough to take out unbuild buildings without much loss. Than you face death. (unless you are really good, unlike me :( ...or do a reverse rush with fast ion as 1st tech)

Oh, Crion is the best land to land unit...period



This is even a greater flaw than building an R-P-S system on the tech trees. In short, your fate is pretty much predetermined when you choose your faction.
Thankfully, all moronic developers knows about this because of endless whining, so this aspect is somewhat balanced.


You're back on ground one.

Since as a result of whining and patching, early rushs tends to be balanced...so whats wrong?



Who says late rushes are just about the production line? A well prepared defense can cripple a late rush, especially since the other player would also have time to build his units, all just waiting for you there in an ambush. When you blow your forces against his entrenched defenses, he will be in the position for a massive counterattack against your now, vulnerable bases.

And thus turtling gains popularity in such games...and people HATE turtling.

turtling is like camping...everyone hates it, espically in FFA....

If a late attack with superior numbers can't kill at late turtle...then you might get the infinite turtle game (ever seen a BGH map covered in toss cannons... I have).


I prefer a late rush than early rushes. Nothing pisses off players than early rushes. It's a lot more dramatic, if not cataclysmic.
I hate both, as my mouse skills means I always lose in early rushes and I also hate seeing crazy mass attacks with the crazist builder win. (at the extream(injection type games), defending is ineffective in SC as it requires FAR FAR more micro that can be used to make dozens of stargates...)

The sweet spot is a evenly matched mid game, with equally divided micro time between teching, building and fighting.

Thats why I haven't played a normal ruled SC game in a year and half, sticking only to 'use map setting' maps like zone control, dipolimacy, Braveheart, and WWII maps.

[crobato]

Developers have not really figured out inherent balancing early in the game. By some *accident* in design, one faction seems to end up building faster. When equalled, the cost of an early rush can sometimes be the lack of resources to build bases in the longer run, since you neglected on your production and research. (There is always a good chance your early rush can be defeated.) I think it's a little more of a problem with HW because you need to tend to production and research means manually, while in E2150, they can be set automatically, leaving the player free to concentrate on micromanagement.

Even in the *accident* of a map design---player A is much closer to a big resource patch than player B, guess who will win in an early rush.

As for batteries for the Moonies, relying on those excessively means you're going run out fast, especially if you got factories pumping units. You can't sustain a long term infrastructure with that or your factories will starved out of power. Nothing is more annoying than those lightning warnings on your bases that ain't got no power. Solar plant cannot sufficiently charge batteries without the panels. And if you keep dropping batteries, you also use up too much money. If you disperse the way you build your base, like trying to surround you, it also makes his position vulnerable to a concentrated attack.

If you're building far away from land unit attacks, there is no point in having to use batteries, is there? Solar panels would have been safe. Solar panels are vulnerable to air attack, and hiding them from land attack won't make a difference. It's the Bomber or Han helicopter with the big bomb that you should watch out anyway.

The Moonie does not need batteries or power plants to encircle your base anyway, since his defensive forts have self powered. He only needs to just drop those towers. But to string them along in a line makes it easy to cut with attacks.

[Zartax]

Originally posted by SWPIGWANG
Quite hard against mass lings even with lots of cannons if you want to have the spare money for teching.


However, beating half a dozen mutas before they rape the probes requires loads of investment..... Now if the enemy is good, that may be your undoing.


Tell that to the players that goes for 6 lings and mass ring players.... (while they are never the best, they win often enough... more than seige rushers in Cata....)


Recon is hard in SC.... those peons die fast. (and smart players hide tech buildings in remote places in the base...) Spending $$ on recon units is also expensive when there is only 5 combat units...

That tiny difference in $$ may result in a loss in fast rush games....


Do or die strategies often are far more powerful than general strategies.... Marine medic loses to marine-SCV-Medic attack (the DoD of DoD strategies :) ) and a good player DoD player would woop general strategy players overall.


If he goes mass ling while I reaverdrop I just fly my reavers back and drop them behind my zealot wall and they'll splatt the z-lings to slime. Then I drop my reavers in his base, game over.

I don't have to take his mutas before he kills all my probes, just kill them soon enough for him not to make to much damage. I can always build more probes, and mutas cost more than probes. Yes, my resoucing is slowed, but he needs to build more units and we still are equal. Now, you can win with mutas if the other isn't prepaired and vice versa, but the trick is to know your enemy, and prepair for his actions.

Ling rushes can be handled with some micromanagment and if you survive, you have the upper hand since he has wasted all his time and resources on the lingrush.

I usually never recon with a worker since that is loosing money, and money is life i the beginning of a game. I usually scout with my first one o two combatants, and try to keep them from dying.

Yes, DoD may often be more powerful, but if the other know what you are doing, you are dead, since he is prepaired. And a good boyscout is always prepaired. :)

[Mazar_Paktu]

We're really getting off topic here, aren't we? From desigining races to arguments over defenses to starcraft tactics. Where will we go next?

[Spaz]

Paktu just pointed out a very valid point: We are arguing about tactics now.

Let us get back to designing a race.

Agreed that HW2 should include at least 3 races if not more, but we should scrap the SC tri-race idea and just do something interesting.

What the three+ races should be would be determined by the time setting. You aren't very well going to have unbound Turanic running around if the game was set pre HW.

[SWPIGWANG]

If he goes mass ling while I reaverdrop I just fly my reavers back and drop them behind my zealot wall and they'll splatt the z-lings to slime. Then I drop my reavers in his base, game over.

They'd kill you before the robotic get warped in...its hard to fend them off with 1-2 gate...and I died many times.



but if the other know what you are doing, you are dead, since he is prepaired.
Only if they know and isn't suck on a tech tree and did recon, both are a lot to ask for in SC.



Yes, my resoucing is slowed, but he needs to build more units and we still are equal.
But he have more $$ in the end...and your resoucing goes back 10 minutes... You'd stave to death. (and a good muta rusher takes out only probes...only many and many times)

So of the Luna Corperation build...thats for fastest rush with least drops and least vulnerability to conuter rush.



Paktu just pointed out a very valid point: We are arguing about tactics now.

The design of races determines tactics...

Anyway....here is a few races.

1. A race reliant on automated production that had just suffered a great, great war in which most of the population has been wiped out by a biological weapon. The few remaining survivers used their relativily undamaged productive infanstructure and build up a fleet of giant ships and drones with the least amount of people in it. Due to a slow repoductive rate, they have since ended the war and scattered across the galaxy, each individual mastering the power of a huge fleet. The result is a semi-nomadic highly individualized race in which each individual is their own nation. Only in battles that threatens their existance does they fight together. Most of the time each individual acts on their own and command their giant ships to battle according to independed their will.

2. A race evolved from terra forming plants. In the planet system inside the galatic core lies planet with basicly even distribted sunlight across all regions, with basicly no darkness because of a number of unique factors. The planets flourished and soon a complex ecosystem was created. Afterwards, a slow shift to semi-regular sunlight causing forced plants to adapt, and the plants evolved to control the overall environment. All kinds of messaging chemicals soon was created as no single plant could ever have much effect, and planet wide messaging system was established. Plants grow in intelligence to understand the data and calculate complex calanders and climate infomation. After all these years, what is now so called the great awaking happened as the chemical langrage have superceed their environmental needs and all forms of communication was opened and a kind of awareness was created. The nature urge to expand and the great senstivity to knowledge and observation soon results in fast technological advances. Afterwards a collective breeding program was than started to breed a animal like plant under the collective control for purposes for creating what plants can't grow themselves. Space flight was the next step after this, and they took it.

The look of a average individual is that of a huge mutilayed flower with thousands for leaf-baggish like structures, but their are really thousands of different lifeforms in it. Each individual seems to be able of great data processing ability, but lack the 'great awareness.' While they are relativily immobile, their ability to create the deadist toxins means they are quite dangerous.

*This race's attributes is among the most unique in the universe, with extream intelliegence gathing ability and superior ability to manipulate the 'environment', including other races of spacefaring cultures. Their behaviour is unlike any animal based intelligence with no apprent knowledge of common emotions such as love and our primative analysis suggest they are logical, with decentrialized thinking but centrialized intelligence and is completely different. Their fleets are highly unique and great ability to change the environment, from grav. wells, hyperspace hibiters, cloak generators and what appears to be a huge defense frigate field and other unname field generator doing things as varied as degrading command and control to weapon damage reduction. Their race seems to lack light strike craft, and the lack of reflexes by this race is commonly reguarded the reson.

[Ghent]

This is homeworld, ok ? NOT starcraft or Conquest. Me thinks crobato has been playing too much Conquest:FW lately and not enough Cataclysm. Otherwise he'd know that swarming (much to my chagrin) is highly dominant now in Cataclysm for BOTH 'taaw and beast.

HI... Energy cannons are NOT for capship - capship battles. THey're homing projectiles that nearly always hit the target. Hmmm, what could these be used for ? If you answer cap ships, WRONG, if you answer "anti-strkecraft" bingo.... you're right. The ONLY real use of Energy cannons is to counter the people that not only swarm but take advantage of FS (formation switching) bugs in the Cata game engine.

HI... there's plenty of old races in HW and Cata to expand upon, we don't really need a new race yet. The technologies and variety needed to make it interesting becomes muddled and risks being too much of a duplicate of another race.

HI... Taiidani Empire was fighting internally against the rebels for several hundred years most likely. Little technology innovation, very industrialized, utilitarian, etc. Kushan started with a boom into space, they didn't gradually get there. Their ships were designed for space, brand new ideas, brand new tech, OR they were designed based on captured technologies during the exodus. They also spent at least 60 years, most likely more, goind around their own solar system collecting resources and exploring and improving tech, while building the MS.

HI, Kadeshi = swarmers.

HI, Lord Carrier = able to build ICAFs. Just barely enough room, however, a small resize for both units (Lord = larger, ICAF = smaller slightly) would sure help.

HI, dark mysterious unbound race = T-MAT.

HI.... spelling of T-MAT = T-MAT :P (tiamat is from Conquest:FW, and is most certainly not the same, and not how Relic spells it)

[crobato]

Me thinks that Cata's swarming is actually a lot more organized, and even then, it has clear limitations. You can't do one hundred or two hundred ship swarms like they do in Homeworld with the unit caps off. 'Taaw for example, can only best swarm with one type at one time (Hive frigs or Acolytes). A well timed Processor Scuttle can take out half of your swarm.

Beast however, remains to be the better swarmer because I can do a mixed unit swarm (all ship classes pumping out ships in at least eighteen production lines if you got two carriers also). Mixed unit swarms especially wiithout any formation and micromanagement can be so confusing to deal with---it's all a mass of chaos pecking you to death. Where are Defenders and MGCs when you need them? At this point, the Beast is replacing units as fast as you can kill them, unless you do a Processor scuttle, but you can't build Processors fast enough. What's real terrible is that most of the Beast ships are stronger than their HW counterparts----they're tougher and build faster, like the (prepatch) Heavy Corv and Cloaked Fighter. Only exception is the Bandit, which in HW had a scout like guns, and Defender like armor, whereas in Cata, they got Int like guns with Int like armor.

As for Energy Cannons being an anti-swarm thing, I think they suck on that. Even though they follow a target, they only do so in a limited way. More over their firing rate is also limited---energy cannons can't fire fast enough to stop a fast moving swarm. For me, energy cannons appear to more useful in anti cap ship battles due to their range---Hive Frigs for example, can pelter IAFs to death from a distance, even without using their drones. If they got mass drivers, they have to close in. Acolytes with energy cannons are more of a disadvantage against opposing interceptors packing mass drivers, but they're more useful dealing with opposing frigates, workers and Heavy Corvettes, since the Heavy Corv is too slow to evade an Energy Cannon.

As for Homeworld being Homeworld and Starcraft being Starcraft, that is the problem. HW is just two practically identical races. You would think that given the storyline they should be so much more different. I played Ground Control, and even with two races at the start, the characteristics of the two opposing armies still differ significantly.

Cataclysm is already HALF STARCRAFT. Beast is not much different from a space Zergling, while 'Taaw combines both Terran and Protoss characteristics (e.g. borrowing techs from Bentusi). Taaw is so different from Kushans that it was the Beast instead, that plays much closer to the original Kushans. Some of the area effect weapons like the Repulsor reminds me of Protoss.


The other model I've seen is something similar to Civ, and its a model I've seen with Ground Control, Allegiance and some other games:


1. Totalitarian Fascist Race (e.g. Iron Coalition)---Toughest most durable ships of all, poor stealth qualities, moderate economy, powerful capships, chunky ship styling. Driven by the notion they are the superior nation and that might makes right.

2. Megacorporation (e.g. Microsoft, Galspan, Gigacorp,)---Weak cheap ships, superior economy, weaker capships but more varied in models, sleek styling with the fastest ships. Got the best research and resourcing techs. Can build ships faster and cheaper above all others. Relentless seeks profits above all.

3. Religious Fanatics (e.g. New Order of Dawn)---Weak ships, high technology, extremely reliant on one kind of weapon like energy type weapons, strong swarmer with suicide weapons, good in commando hits and raids, moderate stealth qualities. Ships tend to show more of an alien styling with fairly weak protection. Fights for their god.

4. Freedom Fighters, Pirates (Bora, Raiders, Belters, Orion Pirates)---durable ships able to use the widest variety of weapons. Good stealth qualities, moderate to poor economy. Very chunky looking ships. Fights for independence and freedom. Very mercenary and not very honorable.

5. Genetically Engineered Race (BIOS) --- Good stealth qualities, fairly long research, moderate economy. Generally got the best infantry if they have them. Not good in numbers but individually, got the best ships. You don't fight them one on one. Sleek advanced looking ships. Driven by the notion they are the superior race.

6. Warrior Race (Klingon, Kzinti, Kilrathi, Lyran) --- Furry, hairy, sometimes catlike. Ships look aggressive. Got good stealth qualtiies if they have them. Ships emphasize speed and firepower for the lack of protection. Not good in numbers and generally weak economy. Just loves to fight, honorable tendencies.

7. Stealthy race (Romulan, House Liao) --- Fairly Oriental characteristics. Emphasis on speed and stealth for their tactics at the expense of protection. Moderate economy, tends to be high tech with special weapons and abilities. Superior in sabotage, espionage, and sensor range. Inherent belief of their cultural superiority. Unusually looking ships.

[dzurlord]

100 or 200 fighter swarms? Er yes you can do that, and quite easily too. You're forgetting crobato, that by the time beast has those ships+carriers, taaw should have nearly completed all techs. Somtaaw is also designed as a capship race as opposed to beastie, which is designed for swarming.

Ghent: FS is easy to do, and yes, while it lets you own newbies, anyone who learns it well does fine against the other person. It is not considered a bug by either BD or the Cata community. And yes I did read their answer in frstkors post there.

Acos with energy cannons swarm beats beast swarm with FS. Just ask Eiden if you don't belive me. He lost 110 fighters to 30ACVs and 20 acos with energy cannon while killing 10 of them.

[crobato]

The most I can do is just over a 100, but I don't want to scrap some of the capital ships guarding my CS. I've gone over 200 to 300 in Homeworld. In any case, Cata swarms are basically one type (either this or that situation). You can't build something like two dozen Avatars in Cata.

How could you lose so many fighters over Acos with energy cannons? Boggles my mind. Sounds like someone is using a fixed formation (wall or X). Dealing with Acos with energy cannons, I prefer to buzz them with a mixed swarm with no formation (recons, ints, cloaks and bombers, mixed with corvettes like MGCs, HCs and MCs) into a chaotic cloud. Toss in a DFG or two of course. I actually fear Hive frigs more because their swarms make a good job in decimating Beast swarms.

Also there is something wrong in the Aco's attack AI scripts when they attack a capital ship. I remember losing 80% of my Aco swarm when a mothership blows, compared to 20% loss in a HW swarm attacking a mothership. For some reason they buzz too close to the target (reminscent of the Kadeshi Swarmer AI) so if a big ship blows, it takes them all with it. In HW, the attacking ships keep a considerable distance away.

[dzurlord]

The other guy was using FS. Eiden doesn't use it. Heh and I doubt he was using fixed formations. Plus once beastie gets to 100 mixed fighters it's rather easy to overwhelm your opponent(Not all at once I'm talking about constant reinforcement here). Due to the high turnover rate, I don't usually worry about losing those fighters. I either have a dfg around and switch to sphere just before the CS dies, or kami everything into it for a quicker kill. Anyway, this thread needs to get back on track hehe. Onto the next part of the rant of infinite wisdom please:D

[crobato]

Anyway, I've been looking at the race suggestions, including I remembered those from the old board.

The problem is that people love to create imaginative alien races, but they seem more suited for writing an original science fiction novel with.

What's really important is that once you designed the culture, anatomy, and character of the race, the ships should be consistent to the culture and character of such.

Call it the Star Trek lesson, in which case the starships designed must be consistent to the character of the race (technology is not a factor).

If we have a plantlike race, can we assume that the ships should look plant like, maybe based as huge capital bioships that are generally tough to kill but slow to grow? Think something in the line of Vorlons/Species 8472.

If we have an insectlike race, can we assume that the ships should also be insect like, acting like a hive with swarms? Ships that are so many but easy to kill? This can be a race of extremes----fast swarming fodder accompanies by huge ships that are slow and very tough to kill.

If we have a reptilian race, can we assume ships that look ferocious and tough, but slow in maneuver? (Gorn race in Starfleet Command is a good example).

How about a race of aliens that live in a gas giant. Ships are aerodynamic because they are needed to fly in the atmosphere of the gas giant. Their resourcing is highly dependent on gas resources (like one of the races in Conquest Frontier Wars). Their ship hulls are fast and agile, but weak. The ship designs often have a winged theme to them (like Klingon ships).

How about a race inspired from the Tholians of Trek? This is a silicon based lifeform highly dependent on crystal processing. Ships are tough but slow, and are highly dependent on the use of energy and electrical weapons like EMP. Their ship designs are highly symmetrical and crystal like.

Some of these races allow you to link into more powerful forms, especially with the Crystal Race.

These are examples of races if you want to go beyond the StarCraft structure. It may require art that is a bit more creative than what we have seen so far, since ships in HW and Cata all resemble like human piloted ships from Earth, no matter who they came from.

[Spaz]

I know this is sad and really bad, but here it is:

anyone ever watched Titan AE all the way through?

It was a pretty bad movie but I fell in love with the electrical race.

Imagine this: it doesn't have ships, par say, but its SU's are how much energy is being used, you could call all your ships back (and have no fleet) and use your ms's Main weapon, but be
unprotected, or have a massive fleet stretched very thin!!!

THat would be cool.

This race would only used electical forms of weapons, armor. Be highly dependent on crystals and sucking the energy off of other ships (think of an energy leech that just drains electrical systems (makes ship slower, energy weapons less powerful)). This race even had a cool name: "The Dredge" <-- Ain't that cool?!?

-SPAZ ON SUGAR!!!

[Spaz]

what happened to this thread?

[crobato]

I'nm looking at how a race with crystal ships can be made. Not wanting it to look too much of Titan AE, i figured out that a hollowed out cylindrical look with six or eight facet sides would do.

[Ben Tusi]

okey yeAH WE SHUD HAV TEH UTLRA SPUR MEGA ANIME FRIGET OF DOOMS!!!1 AHAHA

OKEY YEHA IT WUD HAVE 2034 ION CONNAN DRIVER MASS THIONGS ADN 234999 BAXZILION TURetS AND TEH ULTIMIT SUPER ULTRA Cponnan oF TEH DOOMZ dETH AND DESTuctshUN! TISH FRIGET SHJUD BE ABIL TO DETRoY A SUPER MEGA SULTRA DEaTH FLEET OF eVAL TADIN OR WHATEVER !!! HAHA WTF R I 1337 THX

Moral = No super ships at all. Super. Ships. Suck.

[crobato]

Originally posted by Ben Tusi
okey yeAH WE SHUD HAV TEH UTLRA SPUR MEGA ANIME FRIGET OF DOOMS!!!1 AHAHA

OKEY YEHA IT WUD HAVE 2034 ION CONNAN DRIVER MASS THIONGS ADN 234999 BAXZILION TURetS AND TEH ULTIMIT SUPER ULTRA Cponnan oF TEH DOOMZ dETH AND DESTuctshUN! TISH FRIGET SHJUD BE ABIL TO DETRoY A SUPER MEGA SULTRA DEaTH FLEET OF eVAL TADIN OR WHATEVER !!! HAHA WTF R I 1337 THX

Moral = No super ships at all. Super. Ships. Suck.

There are no mega ships here asshole.

[Alpha_Monkey]

Don't call him an asshole for that post... I think (I hope) he was trying to make a point...I think...

[Ben Tusi]

The point is, I don't want any "Sup[ar mega dETH KLASS CSUots" type of ships in HW2. Perhaps I should have made that a little more clear.

[crobato]

Originally posted by Ben Tusi
The point is, I don't want any "Sup[ar mega dETH KLASS CSUots" type of ships in HW2. Perhaps I should have made that a little more clear.

Out of topic.

There is no mention of mega ships here, or is it about mega ships.

[Spaz]

Ok, About the Titan AE race, I thought that was a very cool, very different idea for a race, being as everyone is always talking about making HomeCraft 2.

PS: Ben Tusi: you're an idiot. "Sup[ar mega dETH KLASS CSUots"

[Bazman]

Originally posted by crobato
Anyway, I've been looking at the race suggestions, including I remembered those from the old board.

The problem is that people love to create imaginative alien races, but they seem more suited for writing an original science fiction novel with.

What's really important is that once you designed the culture, anatomy, and character of the race, the ships should be consistent to the culture and character of such.

Call it the Star Trek lesson, in which case the starships designed must be consistent to the character of the race (technology is not a factor).

If we have a plantlike race, can we assume that the ships should look plant like, maybe based as huge capital bioships that are generally tough to kill but slow to grow? Think something in the line of Vorlons/Species 8472.

If we have an insectlike race, can we assume that the ships should also be insect like, acting like a hive with swarms? Ships that are so many but easy to kill? This can be a race of extremes----fast swarming fodder accompanies by huge ships that are slow and very tough to kill.

If we have a reptilian race, can we assume ships that look ferocious and tough, but slow in maneuver? (Gorn race in Starfleet Command is a good example).

How about a race of aliens that live in a gas giant. Ships are aerodynamic because they are needed to fly in the atmosphere of the gas giant. Their resourcing is highly dependent on gas resources (like one of the races in Conquest Frontier Wars). Their ship hulls are fast and agile, but weak. The ship designs often have a winged theme to them (like Klingon ships).

How about a race inspired from the Tholians of Trek? This is a silicon based lifeform highly dependent on crystal processing. Ships are tough but slow, and are highly dependent on the use of energy and electrical weapons like EMP. Their ship designs are highly symmetrical and crystal like.

Some of these races allow you to link into more powerful forms, especially with the Crystal Race.

These are examples of races if you want to go beyond the StarCraft structure. It may require art that is a bit more creative than what we have seen so far, since ships in HW and Cata all resemble like human piloted ships from Earth, no matter who they came from.


the problem, i think, is that the developers can get a bit lazy, take ST: Armada for example, what you had was 4 diverse races, and what happened, they played identically, mainly because i think they just couldn't be bothered with designing a style and ships consistant with the races, the best you can hope for is that the developers are motivated enough to take points like the ones your making and spend time developing a race instead of just making up any old crap and selling it just to make a quick buck.

[crobato]

Armada 2 has gone gold now, and the developers has assured that there will be greater race distinction, even though two more races has been added (Species 8472 and Cardassians).

The design of an RTS remains to be a relatively new art. Games that were released had their preconceptions done almost two years before they were launched. A game like Armada, launched in Feb 2000, had much of their preconception stage in '98-99, and didn't had much of the hindsight we have now on the design and execution of an RTS. For that matter, being a pioneer, Homeworld lacked that hindsight.

Thus as the art progresses, we can expect to see more hindsight going into the next generation of RTS games.

[Spaz]

Let me post something that will get this thread alive again.

We need to design races that PLAY differently than just look different. The Beast did a semi decent half ass job of this. It researched differently and could push itself in one area for a while, I thought that was a cool idea.

SO: HW2 should have 3-4 races, 2 that are pretty standard, but have different ships and abilties, then 1 or more that play completely differently, like the aforementioned Crystal, Plant, and Dredge races.

[crobato]

When having multiple races, it's easy to fall into factional stereotypes. To create a complex race model is actually easier on a Civilizations type game where you got more factors to model a race from.

On an RTS however, we do not have political, spy, and trading attributes. Remember in Civ like games, some races are natural traders, democratic and whose economies are more prosperous than those who are warlike. Imperial Galacitica 2 and MOO2 are very good examples of such implementations.

On an RTS, we are much more limited on how we define a race, and a race is mainly defined on the attributes of its ships and the capabilities of its production.

Beast is only a halfway decent implementation. Where it failed is not having unique ships. For me, Beast always felt like an improved legacy of the old Taiidan/Kushan/Raider forces.

I want to remove the technicalities in the factors of production. I don't really like one race to have more ship classes that open up to more production pipelines. Every race must has the same number of ship classes whether its few or many. If we must have a swarming race, it's better to adjust the rate and cost of production than having more pipelines.

This leaves ships as the defining attribute of the race.

What are the ship factors that we can make to differentiate one race to the other.

1. Appearance. This is obvious.

2. Speed.

3. Armor Protection

4. Manueverability.

5. Nature of Armament

6. Special Weapons and Attributes.

7. Cost

8. Speed of Production.


These attributes are applied on the six ship categories:

Fighter
Corvette
Frigates
Utility Ships
Capital Ships
Special Ships


Between 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8, imagine having a slider bar for each. Some races must be faster than others, while others are tougher. Some races build more cheaply, while others built with greater armament. .

On 5 and 6, you need to be more imaginative, but careful to avoid overpowerful special weapons.

Special weapons are very tricky to design. We don't want to turn off players with weapons that affect the entire context of the game, but we must have some kind of anti-swarm buster either.

I am considering removing Kamikaze and Scuttle ship commands in exchange for more varied dedicated missile craft, like a variant of the Cruise Missile with some moderate wide area effect damage. Kamikaze and scuttle represent an unrealistic abuse of the RTS system---no other RTS game exploits mass deliberate suicide as a way to win. It's better to create weapons that act more like dedicated kami or scuttle craft. The Mimic had the right idea, but why use people if you can use AI drones instead.

These weapons act like guided bombs, such as a probe bomb or a Pod bomb. You build them, you send them flying on the enemy, and on a special command, they will detonate. As a balance counter, such bombs have limited speed and can be intercepted. They also impose a cost penalty to produce.

They are in effect, space artillery.

[Koshy]

What ever happend to the T-Mat ?:confused:

[crobato]

Originally posted by Koshy
What ever happend to the T-Mat ?:confused:

I'm not sure if people like to play an evil Protoss like race.

[Zartax]

Originally posted by crobato
I want to remove the technicalities in the factors of production. I don't really like one race to have more ship classes that open up to more production pipelines. Every race must has the same number of ship classes whether its few or many. If we must have a swarming race, it's better to adjust the rate and cost of production than having more pipelines.


You don't seem to have noticed that others have mentioned that more ship-types doesn't necessarily mean more pipelines. Production doesn't have to be carried out the same way as in HW.

[crobato]

Originally posted by Zartax


You don't seem to have noticed that others have mentioned that more ship-types doesn't necessarily mean more pipelines. Production doesn't have to be carried out the same way as in HW.

When you have 3 pipelines of the same build time and four pipelines of the same build time, the more pipelines will still have an inherent advantage. You can shift the production model to something similar to Earth 2150 (which has continous production)---but that is a different game, which allows you to build any number of factories. In those games, they pump up out ships batch by batch. You know how long it takes? Do you know that when you're building X number of A type, you can't build B type on the same factory?

The result can be very ponderous. This sort of production model (building one batch at a time) reduces any meaning of having more object classes in the first place, since player will end up not using most of the classes anyway since they'll be too busy held up making one type.

It is not elegant to control those pipelines by artificially slowing down the production of the ship classes just to compensate for having more pipelines. What's the point of doing this anyway? It's actually harder to experiment and fine tune for race balancing.

Fact remains, all races must have the same number of ship classes. Differing the number of classes in a race introduces new variables that potentially imbalances the game. You cannot have that imbalancing variable---even most other RTS games control this by having the same number of object classes for all races. You differentiate races more effectively by focusing in the characteristics of the object classes, not in their number.

[Koshy]

Maybe the T-mat are not just evil but are misunderstood I can see an interesting story where the T-Mat are involved in some kind of conspiricy . Like maybe the T-Mat are stuck in an death contract with The Bentusi where they have to do what the Bentusi say or be destroyed. And the Bentusi use them every now and then to kill there enemys or bad relations or peaple who dont pay there debts in order to protect there image of kind people who roam around and sell stuff.

[MrNonchalant]

Since I haven't been able to access the Relic boards recently I missed alot of this conversation, so I brought up the print version and told it to print. So, I could catch up. I found out an interesting fact. Did you know that even in the print version, which is basically just text, that this thing is still about 95 hard copy pages long?!

[Zartax]

Originally posted by crobato
When you have 3 pipelines of the same build time and four pipelines of the same build time, the more pipelines will still have an inherent advantage. You can shift the production model to something similar to Earth 2150 (which has continous production)---but that is a different game, which allows you to build any number of factories. In those games, they pump up out ships batch by batch. You know how long it takes? Do you know that when you're building X number of A type, you can't build B type on the same factory?

As in StarCraft? You solve the problem of only being able to build one typa at a time by having more productionbuildings, all producing different types, or just alternate between the types you want to build.


Originally posted by crobato
The result can be very ponderous. This sort of production model (building one batch at a time) reduces any meaning of having more object classes in the first place, since player will end up not using most of the classes anyway since they'll be too busy held up making one type.

Wrong, it removes ONE meaning of building different classes. In HW, the primary reason of building different classes is most of the times just to produce more units than the other guy, not to get a well designed attackforce. The trick is to force players to use more than one unittype by making it advantagegous to have more than one unittype. If two players, one which has pumped one kind of unit, and another, which has two kinds of units face eachother, the odds of the multiunitplayer winning should be much higher than vice versa.


Originally posted by crobato It is not elegant to control those pipelines by artificially slowing down the production of the ship classes just to compensate for having more pipelines. What's the point of doing this anyway? It's actually harder to experiment and fine tune for race balancing.[/B]

I think the misstake we both do here is to assume both players have unlimited resources. It is only if you have very large resourcedepots that you can gain much from having more pipelines than the other. I mean, what use is 50 pipelines when you only can afford 25 ships?
Problem no: 2 is that in HW you dont gain pipelines with extra factories (exept carriers, but they are only available in very late games), but with research. The buildingspeed of one unit is always the same, and you cant speed it up when needed by building more factories. This renders some tactics useless since you cant produce the certain units fast enough. And this in turn makes the game more shallow.
The solution is to give the players some control over productionrate, and the game some.


Originally posted by crobato Fact remains, all races must have the same number of ship classes. Differing the number of classes in a race introduces new variables that potentially imbalances the game. You cannot have that imbalancing variable---even most other RTS games control this by having the same number of object classes for all races. You differentiate races more effectively by focusing in the characteristics of the object classes, not in their number.[/B]

You can balance the game and still have a different number of classes for each race. This would probably bring more depth to the game, but as you say, it is hard.

[crobato]

Originally posted by Zartax
[B]

As in StarCraft? You solve the problem of only being able to build one typa at a time by having more productionbuildings, all producing different types, or just alternate between the types you want to build.



Which is not an option in a Homeworld game. You cannot build an indefinite number of carriers.





Wrong, it removes ONE meaning of building different classes. In HW, the primary reason of building different classes is most of the times just to produce more units than the other guy, not to get a well designed attackforce. The trick is to force players to use more than one unittype by making it advantagegous to have more than one unittype. If two players, one which has pumped one kind of unit, and another, which has two kinds of units face eachother, the odds of the multiunitplayer winning should be much higher than vice versa.


Excuse me, but people do design their attack forces in HW. This becomes difficult in a single pipeline system, and it is impossible in HW where the number of carriers (production centers) are strictly limited.




I think the misstake we both do here is to assume both players have unlimited resources. It is only if you have very large resourcedepots that you can gain much from having more pipelines than the other. I mean, what use is 50 pipelines when you only can afford 25 ships?


A lot of games are played with plenty of resources and injections.

Pipelines matter, not with slow building capships, but with quickly pumping out cheap strike craft in mass. In some RTS games, that does not matter since they got weapons to blow up cheap units en masse---games where the balance of power lies in the super high tech unit or weapon, but in Homeworld, the balance of power is in the cheap units en masse.




Problem no: 2 is that in HW you dont gain pipelines with extra factories (exept carriers, but they are only available in very late games), but with research. The buildingspeed of one unit is always the same, and you cant speed it up when needed by building more factories. This renders some tactics useless since you cant produce the certain units fast enough. And this in turn makes the game more shallow.


Huh? I can start production simultaneously on three carriers for one type of craft. In Somtaaw for example, I can speed up production of Acos by building Avengers then unlinking them. If you got two carriers, you can quickly build a swarm. In Beast, I can also start production on other craft (sc/int/clk/bom/hc/mgc/mc). If Beast infects Acos and Avengers, the you add a total of 9 more pipelines with two carriers. An Avenger counts as two pipelines because you can build two Acos with it.




The solution is to give the players some control over productionrate, and the game some.


Another area for potential abuse.




You can balance the game and still have a different number of classes for each race. This would probably bring more depth to the game, but as you say, it is hard.

I don't think differing the number of classes for each race adds more depth. It doesn't. It does not make a difference. It only makes one race more boring than another.

What adds depth to a game is ADDING more classes EQUALLY for all races.

[Spaz]

Here is what I really don't get: Short of Computer power and RU's, why CAN'T you build infinite units and carriers and the lot? If I had 1000000000000000000000000 RU's and a lot of free time, shouldn't I just be able to KEEP building, maybe having a limiter like 100 ships per carrier? But 2 carriers... thats just weak.


CRACK IS GOOD

[crobato]

Your system will fail if you have the ability to build infinite units and abuse it. Homeworld, in particular, will crash. Also the system gets laggy. Technically, RTS games in particular, are even more bandwidth dependent than FPS games. Every unit you add to the game eats a little more memory and a little more bandwidth.

I remembered on time I got to over 700+ ships in a completely unlimited Homeworld battle and at that point, even with a 700MHz Athlon with a Geforce, the system started to lag considerably.

[MrNonchalant]

Crobato poses a good point. Though if you really want to try it your way Spaz, there is an option in the menu which allows you to get rid of ship capping.

Edit> I just noticed something, everyone on this page besides Alpha_Monkey and Ben Tusi don't use avatars, I wonder if that's indicative of the type of person that would post here.

[crobato]

I used to have a cool Prometheus class starship avatar that I still use if I post on the Star Trek Armada forums. I didn't link it here though, because I'm concerned whether those stuff can contribute to the instability and lag of the BBS software.

[Alpha_Monkey]

I wonder if that's indicative of the type of person that would post here.
Meaning what, exactly?

[Fissure]

It would make more sense if you had, say, 3 fighter production lines that could be each assigned to build whatever type is needed than to have 1 line for each class. Three more lines could be added for each carrier, and possibly the number of lines could be upgraded to 4 per building source through research. Common sense dictates that researching a new ship class would not add more hangar room needed for a new assembly line. If I'm bomber swarming, the only reason I'm building scouts at the end is to get fighters out faster. It's the same with a corvwall: the only reason lcv's are being built is to get more corvettes out in the same amount of time.

Also, being able to mass-produce one ship type won't lead to abuse. For example, if someone tries to triple-pump bombers to get 9/min, yes, they will very easily kill someone doing a cap strat, but they will also die to a scout/intie strat a whole lot easier than if the had done a mixed swarm.

If anything, this will make recon even more important, as this will make strats even more do-or-die than the 3/0 bomber swarm possible. Finally, this will enable a greater variety of strats, and variety = fun.

I hope this makes sense to someone besides me.

[MrNonchalant]

Meaning what, exactly? I'm not really sure. Perhaps scientific purests who, for the most part, don't put much stock in material posessions such as avatars? I don't think that, but it's probably indicative of something...

[crobato]

Originally posted by Fissure
It would make more sense if you had, say, 3 fighter production lines that could be each assigned to build whatever type is needed than to have 1 line for each class. Three more lines could be added for each carrier, and possibly the number of lines could be upgraded to 4 per building source through research. Common sense dictates that researching a new ship class would not add more hangar room needed for a new assembly line. If I'm bomber swarming, the only reason I'm building scouts at the end is to get fighters out faster. It's the same with a corvwall: the only reason lcv's are being built is to get more corvettes out in the same amount of time.

Also, being able to mass-produce one ship type won't lead to abuse. For example, if someone tries to triple-pump bombers to get 9/min, yes, they will very easily kill someone doing a cap strat, but they will also die to a scout/intie strat a whole lot easier than if the had done a mixed swarm.

If anything, this will make recon even more important, as this will make strats even more do-or-die than the 3/0 bomber swarm possible. Finally, this will enable a greater variety of strats, and variety = fun.

I hope this makes sense to someone besides me.


Yes that would make a lot of sense too. If you got a lot of ship classes, you are NOT permitted to start production on all of them.

A pipeline means that one production line is available. Three pipelines means that you can start production simultaneously on only any of three ship classes. A mothership can have three pipelines, while a carrier only has one.

Note that this system goes beyond what HW and Cata has but can easily be implemented.


Another system that can be used, called production diversion, and I believe it's used on other games, is that once you start building simultaneously on different ship classes, your overall production actually slows down in proportion. Thus if you want to pump out 20 fighters of one type fast, you don't start anything to interfere with that production. But you are making those 20 fighters, and started a new production of 20 bombers, the rate of production is forced to slow down in proportion to the load. Thus 50% of the production capability is forced to be shared with the bombers.

If I am building 20 fighters and five bombers at the same time, fighter production speed is reduced to 80 percent, as 20 percent of the production capability goes to the five bombers. But increasing and decreasing bomber production will increase and decrease fighter production rate. While the scenario mentioned is actually simplistic, the actual production times will be determined by the complexity and cost of the craft. The simultaneous production of a destroyer would probably affect the overall production rate more than just a few cheap scouts.

This will force you to be very careful in the selection and building of your units, and you just don't start making from five ship classes just to make a huge mixed unit swarm.

The systems above may heavily penalize cap ship production and use in a game, BTW.

So a mixed system using both limited pipelines and production diversion can be implemented. How?

We have a pipeline per category:

Fighter-Corvette-Microship

Resourcer-Utility Ship-Frigate

Destroyer-Cruiser-Carrier

Each pipeline can undertake multiple builds, but within each pipeline, production efficiency is diverted as you started building more ship classes simultaneously.

However, the production status of one pipeline that does not affect the other. What is going on building the FCM group, isn't going to affect the RUF group or the DCC group. E

This adds a sense of realism since a production assembly line for fighers and corvettes, isn't going to be used for frigates, or the production line for frigates, isn't going to be used for destroyers.

This represents that each group has its own unique manufacturing facility. Production diversion only works within each facility, but it will not affect the others. Thus, if you're building lots of fighters, it will not affect the rate of production of the cruiser you're building.

[crobato]

There is another question if you could put a variable slider on the production diversible pipelines.

For example, a ship has both power and labor reserves. You can increase the power allocation for the DCC production line over the RUF production line, increasing the rate of production for destroyers at the expense of frigate/worker production.

The danger on this, is that you can use it to abuse the FCM pipeline (Fighter Corvette Microship), to pump out fighters faster there.

As a balancing element, increased power allocation helps boost over all production efficiency up to 20%, but beware, power and labor allocation will also affect other systems in the carrier or command ship (weapons, shields, special actions.)

[Fissure]

I agree that it's probably a better idea to group fighters, corvs, and microships (assuming they will be used at all) in the same group of pipelines. However, I think that having a set number of pipelines per class, each one capable of building one type of ship at a time, makes it much more customizeable. If I want 2 pipelines set to interceptors and 1 to attack bombers, I think I should be able to do that. How many resources are diverted to a certain class should not be dependent on how many ships are queued. Say I want to quickly build 10 scouts and slowly keep a constant stream of cloaked fighters. In my system, I could just divert 2 pipelines to building 5 scouts each and queue up 20 cloakers in the third pipeline. In your system, either they would wind up finishing at the same time or I would have to go back into the build manager again to order the cloakers built.

If this doesn't make any sense, it's probably because it's 11 pm here and I woke up at 6.

At least we can agree on one thing: the old HW build system should be taken out.

[crobato]

Enjoy your sleep, and you can read the following in the morning.


..z.zz.z.z.z...


Boing...


Okay then, it's the morning.

Earth 2150 has an interesting system where you can queue up ships in order. For one weapons factory, you can make "orders" ahead and don't bother. E2150 also has an interesting research system where the research items are also queued. Thus, at the end of the research, you don't need to go back to the menu and start a new production or research order. This allows you to concentrate on the battle especially if the battle is an important one.

If applied to Homeworld terms, a queue would be something like this:

24 Scouts
24 Attack Bombers (Next to be produced)
24 Interceptors
12 Heavy Corvettes.

The queue would finish the production orders at a time. At the end of the last order, the production stops until you make a new order.

This is the E2150 one at a time mode.

There is also another production mode in E2150 and its called continous. Assuming I use Homeworld as an example again,

In continous mode, I set the queue to Scout. I do not need to specify any number.

The factory will simply produce one scout after another. Continously until I tell it to stop or when you run out of resources.

Under continous mode, if I also clicked Interceptor in addition to Scout, the production would be like this

Scout, Interceptor, Scout, Interceptor, Scout, Interceptor, indefinitely until the order is stopped manually or when you run out of money. (If you run out of money, the queue is still present and resumes at the moment of any cash injection). Adding a third or fourth ship class adds to the alternation---scout, int, bomber, scout, int, bomber, and so on.

In both modes, you can always add to existing queue even as the queue is still in process (add a new build order over on top of existing ones, or add a new ship class.) Likewise, you can also subtract the orders while still in queue so long the process on that order has not been undertaken yet.


I like the research queue in Earth 2150 in particular. If applied to Homeworld, early in the game, I can set up a queue like this

1 Corvette Drive
2 Heavy Corv Upgrade
3 Interceptor
4 Frigate Drive
5 Ion Beam research


And once the queue starts, the system will automatically perform the research in that order, and you don't need to manually start a new process when one process stops.

As some techs do not manifest until a base tech is researched, you can add to the queue even while the queue is on process---

e.g.

6 Multigun Tech
7 Cloak tech

As you can see the queue itself is not restricted to a particular tech tree.

[SWPIGWANG]

Simple method to deal with all this crap.

Make one factory ship build one ship at a time.

Anyway



Under continous mode, if I also clicked Interceptor in addition to Scout, the production would be like this

Scout, Interceptor, Scout, Interceptor, Scout, Interceptor, indefinitely until the order is stopped manually or when you run out of money. (If you run out of money, the queue is still present and resumes at the moment of any cash injection). Adding a third or fourth ship class adds to the alternation---scout, int, bomber, scout, int, bomber, and so on.

And remember you can queue unit production proportion in continous mode. Say if I clicked on interceptor once (1/1) and scout twice (2/2) in continous mode, the production result would be like

Scout, Intercepter, Scout, Scout, Intercepter, Scout, Scout, Int....

The rest of the above rules applies.



Now, the real question is what happened to this thread? :confused:

[crobato]

The problem of Homeworld is that the number of production units is very limited. Thats why you cannot have something strictly building one thing at a time. You cannot build an N number of factories like you do in Starcraft. You have one mothership, and two carriers.

Hence the Pipeline, which is in effect, a factory assembly line inside a carrier. It's like having multiple factories inside one carrier.

If producing a swarm takes too long a time, people will start twiddling their thumbs and say, "the heck with it" and uinstall the game. If you produce one thing at a time, it encourages production of monotonous swarms (eighty Missilytes heading towards you). I think people are ready for a bit more variety. They loved the old HC Corvwalls with the supply frigate on the back, with a fighter swarm protecting the wall from kami scout attacks. We got to have a little help to induce mixed unit swarms or attacks. A little production flexitility helps in that.

If you produce one thing at a time, people won't be making large ships, which takes longer to produce, and as a result, everyone would just be swarming each other.

I realized how important production is towards the usefulness of the unit. In HW, one of the most wasted units is the cloaked fighter because it took too long to build and too long to research. In Cata, it's plays a greater part because of its production and research accessibility.

I just like to prevent abuse of pipelining production and at the same time, avoid the straight jacket of nonpipelining. I don't like a game where people endlessly talk in threads discussing production and build issues. When I first saw this in the old forums, I felt something was inherently wrong about both HW and Cata. People should be talking about tactics, not about building 100 Acolytes in one minute.

[Fissure]

Originally posted by crobato
If producing a swarm takes too long a time, people will start twiddling their thumbs and say, "the heck with it" and uinstall the game. If you produce one thing at a time, it encourages production of monotonous swarms (eighty Missilytes heading towards you). I think people are ready for a bit more variety. They loved the old HC Corvwalls with the supply frigate on the back, with a fighter swarm protecting the wall from kami scout attacks. We got to have a little help to induce mixed unit swarms or attacks. A little production flexitility helps in that.

If you produce one thing at a time, people won't be making large ships, which takes longer to produce, and as a result, everyone would just be swarming each other.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't building one unit at a time exacly what you are suggesting? Sure, this queue system requires less micromangement, but only one ship from each group of classes is being built at the same time. This means that, if HW build times are kept about the same, it will take about 15 minutes to build a decent-sized (50 ship) swarm. With building one unit at a time, capital ship strats will start to dominate because the strike craft will not be in big enough numbers to damage them. A constant pump of attack bombers yields 3 a minute, while an assault frigate will come out every minute. Three attack bombers will take at least 2 minutes to kill one, and that's not counting attack passes. The strength of fighters is being able to build several of them simultaneously for the same RU drain as one frigate pipeline.

I have to go now, so I'll post more when I get back.

[crobato]

What I'm suggesting is that you can build multiple units at a time, but the rate of building these multiple units are not multipled. Simultaneous production should still be possible but on a more limited basis. At the same time you cannot have strictly uniprocessing production because the production units in a game like this is very limited (three at best), and if you only have uniproduction, it will be cap ships that suffer.

If you're building a capship, and your production lines are tied until building that cap ship, since you can't build anything else, you would be left with a vulnerable position as your strike craft forces suffer from attrition. Players will stop building cap ships for that reason, and focus on putting the cheapest and fastest produce craft as many as possible, either sending them to combat or to suicide them. This contributes to the Starcraft horde phenomenon.

This is why in some games, high level units (the equivalent of a large cap ships etc,.) require construction of a seperate production facility dedicated only in their construction. This frees the lower facility to construct cheaper units in mass. There will be no tie up, and this high level advanced facility will build the high level units.


In theory, assuming the build time of classes A, B, C, are all the same, building a 40 unit mixed group of A, B, and C, should be the same as a 40 unit group of A only. This is what I am aiming for in a managed pipeline approach.

If you slow the rate of strike craft production to favor cap ships, the result is that other users will complain. Shifting the balance from one to another, does not alleviate the problem. People will simply produce the one unit that has the most efficient build time/cost per damage/firepower, whether it's an attack bomber or assault frigate. The game loses variety and it becomes monotonous.

The solution is to have both sides take the cake and eat it.

[dzurlord]

Ok first, max taaw aco production is 33 acos a minute with unlinked acv's. Second the only reason why people use acos that much is because of the ridiculous missile damage.

What would be interesting would be having 4 fighter types, yet only 3 fighter slots. So you could only produce 3 fighter types at a time, yet you could chose whether or not you wanted recon/intie/cloak or intie/cloak/bomber etc.

[crobato]

That's what we're trying to agree on, using a limited number of pipelines so that you can only build three simultaneously (per carrier or mothership of course.)

As to the exact number of strike ships needed per race, it's something I'm still thinking---whether to have a rationalized system like the Somtaaw, or to have redundant variety like in Homeworld.

[Fissure]

Let me get this straight: if I'm building scouts, ints, and bombers, which, for simplicity's sake, each take 15 seconds to build, then one of each class will come out every 45 seconds (build time * # of production lines used), right? The problem with this is that, if the build times are kept the same, cap ships will be used more often than strike craft. Unlike capital ships, strike craft need more than one pipeline (or semi-pipeline, in your case) to be used effectively. An assault frigate drains about 9.6 RU/second, while a scout/int/bomber pump drains only slightly more at 10.2 RU/second. Using your system, the scout/int/bomber pump would only drain 3.4 RU/second.

How does this consumption factor into combat? In the HW system, after 3 minutes it would wind up being 3 assaults vs 15 scouts, 10 ints, and 9 bombers. While this may look very unfair at first, it actually isn't. The fighters might have 3.25 times the combined firepower (818 vs 246, but this is taking the ingame stats as canon, even though I'm pretty sure it's scaled down for larger ships), but the frigates have 10 times the combined armor. Of course, I'm not counting attack passes or the frigates not being able to hit the fighters in my firepower calculations. However, many people have said that assault frigs can hit attack bombers pretty easily, and destroying them will take out half of the swarm's firepower. They would also be able to get some lucky shots against some of the other ships. The fighter swarm would win, but even though fighters are designed to kill caps, a decent percentage would be damaged/destroyed.

What was my point again? Oh yes: in your system, it would be the same 3 assaults vs a measly 5 scouts, 3 ints, and 3 bombers. Counting attack passes as halving firepower, the swarm would take 6 minutes to kill the three assault frigates. Once the attack bombers were down, the assault frigs could basically ignore the fighters and have a field day tearing apart the colls. The cap person would have enough time to research and build a few lcv's to deal with the remaining fighters.

Based on this, making fighters build slower would only make them more useless.

[Spaz]

JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST! You people are STILL arguing about this crap? MY GOD!

<-- enough of the screaming and ranting -->

Easy way to fix this: each production ship (carrier, mothership, etc) has a number of production points or whathaveyou. lets say, 100 or less. These points could in theory be upgraded to more using research. Each ship class will have a required PP requirement for their production. Fighters will be around 5- 15, corvs 10-20, frigs 15-30, caps 30-60, anything bigger 60 +. Does that make sense? If you think about it, all production places have a set production limit... you couldn't produce 10 boeing 707s as fast as 10 hondas in the same factory. ANYWAY, I just wanted to add that partial idea to the suggestion box. But you guys won't pay attention anyway.

[dzurlord]

Essentialy, you just described the support unit system in Cata.

[Spaz]

are you braindead? clinically ill? legally retarded? DO YOU HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR YOU MORONIC STATEMENT?!?

The support system in Cata (I have cataclysm) is for determining the # of ships you can HAVE, not PRODUCE. This is very similar, however used for an entirely different purpose.

Let me elaborate further on my idea:
Your carrier has 50 production points (PP's). Now, you can choose to produce at the same time: 10 fighters (PP:5); 5 fighters and 1 frigate (PP:25); or one Capital ship (which on a carrier is highly unlikely, and on the mothership might be classified under a different point system...) (PP:50). Please tell me that you understand by nodding twice or responding with something intelligible.



Edit:
I just realized that my post conflicts with my sig and location information. I just wanted to let you know that I am aware of these inconsistencies.

[crobato]

Originally posted by Fissure
[B]Let me get this straight: if I'm building scouts, ints, and bombers, which, for simplicity's sake, each take 15 seconds to build, then one of each class will come out every 45 seconds (build time * # of production lines used), right?

You got me all wrong. Of course the capital ships will have a longer build time, while the cheapest ships will have the fastest build time. Your entire example is moot because the production times of every unit will naturally differ. When I meant theoritically, it's only good for that particular example mentioned.

The point remains is that cap ships have a seperate pipeline of production. Producing fighters does not stop you from producing capital ships at that moment, and neither does making capital ships stop you from making fighters.

Second the damage system isn't based on the deduction of HP. The damage system is never that simplistic. Attack Bombers may have slightly higher damage than Interceptors, but ABs sure make much shorter work of frigates because of their greater armor penetration. Multigun Corvettes have much greater overall firepower than a Heavy Corvette, but they take much longer time to kill a frigate because of their low penetration.

Third, capital ships have different damage facets. Rear and lower facets are weaker and incur greater damage when hit. Ditto with strike ships.

Fourth, you also have to assume that every shot will hit. It's not going to. Strike ships have a much greater chance of hitting a slow frigate, than a frigate hitting a fast fighter. That's why in Homeworld and Cata, ship's speed is part of the balancing quotient (they slowed down the Beast HC from 550m/s to 500m/s to make it a bit easier to hit, remember?)


In the system I'm studying,

Fighters/Corvettes/Microships/Probes have two or three pipelines. Note that these ships will still the short production times typical of strike ships.

Frigate/Resourcers/Controllers/Generators have one pipeline.

Processors/Destroyers/Carriers/Cruisers/Dreadnaughts have one pipeline. These ships will still have one long production time.


Thus any three classes of strike craft can be made simultaneously with one class of frigate and one class of big ship. All these production processes can be undertaken without affecting each other except for the funds.

[dzurlord]

Originally posted by Spaz
are you braindead? clinically ill? legally retarded? DO YOU HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR YOU MORONIC STATEMENT?!?

The support system in Cata (I have cataclysm) is for determining the # of ships you can HAVE, not PRODUCE. This is very similar, however used for an entirely different purpose.

Let me elaborate further on my idea:
Your carrier has 50 production points (PP's). Now, you can choose to produce at the same time: 10 fighters (PP:5); 5 fighters and 1 frigate (PP:25); or one Capital ship (which on a carrier is highly unlikely, and on the mothership might be classified under a different point system...) (PP:50). Please tell me that you understand by nodding twice or responding with something intelligible.



Yes, what you've just described would result in swarming non-stop. Taking this in relation to Cata, what you've described would result in 10 acos from a carrier every 12 seconds.

[Ender's Shadow]

Holy Crapola!!

I just walked over from the Research Station and it took me three hours to read this post (even with skipping the tactics stuff back there). Here's my 2 cents:

1. Scrap the whole research idea. Replace it with modular ship design that functions basically the same way. In essence, all of your technology already exists. You just choose how you want to put it together and it takes time for your scientists to put it together into a working ship. Simple designs would be quick. Fighter chassis+engine+sensors package=scout. This takes X amount of time to design and test. Once the initial build is done then it takes much less time to actually produce(I'll get to that later). Cap ship chassis+drive+hanger+ion cannon+missile bays+etc.=combat carrier. Takes much longer to design and test. It was unrealistic in Cata to go out without the technology to make ships that already exist in the first place or be able to research the technology so fast.

2. Command/Cap ship(s) are modular too. Want to add some hangers? Knock yourself out. You'll have to build a different type of hanger for each class of ship. Takes your scientists some time to design, test, and construct it. Each hanger you build is a dedicated production line for each ship chassis and can produce them at a set rate. Your build rate of the ships you design is based on the equipment you add to it. Simple/small ships quick, complicated/large ships slow.

3. Each ship chassis has a set number of modular attach points. Fighters just a few, cap ships many-many-many. Want to just build fighter hangers on your Cap ship for rapid swarm development. Cool. Oops, used up all of your attach points for hangers, should have put some defensive weapons and more engines on there too. Guess you'll have to take the time to dismantle your hangers and add weapons. You should have thought of that first since three Hyperspacing Resourcing Multibeam Frigates just popped in without an invite.

4. I would suggest some sort of SU or personnel system limiting the total number of "stuffs" you can build. A defensive turret say uses 2 people while a Cap ship chassis hanger uses 327. You either only have a set number of people you can use or you have to build additional "habitation modules" to house them. It could be either people or SU it really doesn't matter. Just depends on the type of game you want to play. If it was people, you would want to be careful about sending them all off to die in a suicide swarm attack since either they are non-replaceable or time consuming to replace. You could even have escape pods, rescue your peeps, and put them in ships you already had built and waiting for them... but I digress. I don't think that you should be limited to "1 CS and 2 Carriers". Just ultimately limited to the total number "stuffs" you can construct and man.

5. You have to get your resources to the construction facilities or take the facilities to the resources. I never liked the fact that resources thirteen light-minutes away were all being added to the great stockpile at once. Of course Hyperspacing Resource Frigates would fix that problem. You could add a Resourcer Module and Storage Module to any ship that has room. Hell, nose up a Cap Ship chassis with those modules and a Hanger on board to a crystal or asteroid and go to town!

6. Ships with consumable supplies (like missiles, bullets, or fuel) would either have to carry extra supplies in a Storage Module, return to a ship with a full Storage Module, or get serviced by one.

7. Now, come up with your story and races, modify your modules to look like they belong with that race and go to town. I would suggest that you follow the ideas you've already come up with and only let certain races have certain technologies. You could allow each race to gain each other's technologies as they capture ships or form alliances. That would make you think hard about sending a ship with race specific technologies out to get captures. Mmmm... strategy. I like the idea of it being like 200-300 years in the future, all of the "human" races have aligned to fight some new menace like the your Crystal People or the Carrot Tops. Or have the "humans" get stuck between the Crystals and the Carrots in some war or other.

I hope you all see where I'm going with this. Modular ship design opens up the possibilities for tactics and no two games would be alike. It solves the problems of production lines and how many of each type of ship you get. However, taking time for the initial construction prototypes counteracts the lost research time. That way you couldn't just design the ultimate Super-Duper-Ship right off the bat. It takes time to get complicated componenets to work together.

Sorry if I came up with any ideas that someone already came up with but I'm new to this area of the Boards.



I guess that was more like my $3.50. Later...

[Fissure]

Originally posted by crobato
Thus any three classes of strike craft can be made simultaneously with one class of frigate and one class of big ship. All these production processes can be undertaken without affecting each other except for the funds.

I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you had said that the RU drain had to be shared between the different classes of fighters, so the production time would be increased if more than one type was being built. It seems we were actually talking about the same thing, but just weren't able to state what we really meant. One small question, though: if I have these three fighter pipelines, can I devote 2 pipelines to attack bombers and one to interceptors? Or does each pipeline have to be a different class? We might need to tweak the number of pipelines, as having too few will slow the game down too much and make it drag on too long.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned the fact that not all the shots would hit. I didn't factor in the locational damage as all those numbers were giving me a big enough headache as it was. As far as I know, there is no penetration factored into the damage values, only a random base damage (between the min and max entries in the .shp file) and a multiplier based on the tactics setting.

[crobato]

The reason for pipelining vs. uniprocessing is to avoid the game being dragged in the first place. It also prevents users from de-emphasizing slower build units.

I'm still thinking whether it's a wise idea to have two pipelines in a single class. The good thing about this is that it can speed up slow build ships. The bad thing is that it can be abused to create monotonous swarms.

But I think that monotonous swarms can be prevented if you can carefully balance the damage-firepower/build time-cost per unit. The idea is to prevent one class of ship to have a superior firepower/build time ratio over the others. Otherwise, everyone would be flocking building this same ship, and strategy goes down the tubes.

To prevent overemphasis on firepower/build time ratios, you would also need a more complex firepower and damage model. You must have armor penetration, different damage facets, projectile speed, weapons range, target accuracy, weapon vs. armor qualities, splash damage, and so on.

I'm sure that Homeworld or Cata has some sort of damage penetration factor or otherwise, everyone would be building MGCs instead of Heavy Corvettes, as MGCs actually has superior firepower output over Heavy Corvettes.

[Fissure]

Originally posted by crobato
I'm sure that Homeworld or Cata has some sort of damage penetration factor or otherwise, everyone would be building MGCs instead of Heavy Corvettes, as MGCs actually has superior firepower output over Heavy Corvettes.

That last statement is totally incorrect. Let's consult the .big file:

Heavy Corvette:
Guns: 2
Damage min: 28
Damage max: 36
Fire time: 2.7

Multi-gun Corvette:
Guns: 6
Damage min: 6
Damage max: 7
Fire time: 2.0

Now, if we average the min and max damage, multiply by the number of guns, and then divide by the fire time, we find that the damage per second comes out to:

HCv: 23.7 (ingame firepower rating: 22)
MGCv: 19.5 (ingame firepower rating: 19)

So, the heavy corvette does have greater firepower and a faster build time (25 vs 28 seconds), which is why people use it instead of multi-guns.

Note: the Taiidan HCv has a fire time of 2.8, so it's damage/second is 22.86


Fighter class needs two (or maybe even three) pipelines to keep up with cap ship production if build times are kept about the same. Three attack bombers can't do very much damage to an assault frig. They would kill it, but it would take a) a long time and b) a lot of micromanagement to keep them from taking hits. It would take even longer with more general fighters, like interceptors.

On a completely unrealted note, I also want to see more realistic attack passes. When fighters turn around, they should not turn on a dime; instead, they should make turns at full forward throttle so that instead of a back-and-forth motion of attack passes, they will be in the shape of a figure 8.

[Alpha_Monkey]

I think the turning is due to space physics...I think it was better covered in one of DR17's old threads.

Basically, assuming fighters have a 4-point thruster system, it's just easier to flip rather than bank...though admittedly it makes them a bit of a target...

[crobato]

The Build times are not the same for all craft. The point of the pipelining is to make pipelines available for slower craft to build. Scouts will still have the fastest times, cruisers the slowest ones.

Realistic firing passes can be accomplished with greater adherance to the physics of momentum and inertia. It will consume greater processing power to compute trajectories, but---BUT---it is more suitable for multiplayer, because in anticipation of lag, the game can make better *prediction* of the ship's course.

Since processing power is more abundant than bandwidth, this is a reasonable exchange.

[Zartax]

Originally posted by Alpha_Monkey
I think the turning is due to space physics...I think it was better covered in one of DR17's old threads.

Basically, assuming fighters have a 4-point thruster system, it's just easier to flip rather than bank...though admittedly it makes them a bit of a target...

You're so right. It's much easier to just flip around than to do a aircraftturn. Since there is no air, the only way to rotate the craft is by small thrusters pointing in all directions. Therefor, the quickest way to turn back is to:

1, Shut down the main thruster.

2, Use the small thrusters to flip over and point in the right direction.

3, Put the main thruster to full power again.

[cxxx{::::::::>]

Originally posted by Ender's Shadow
I would suggest some sort of SU or personnel system limiting the total number of "stuffs" you can build. A defensive turret say uses 2 people while a Cap ship chassis hanger uses 327. You either only have a set number of people you can use or you have to build additional "habitation modules" to house them. It could be either people or SU it really doesn't matter. Just depends on the type of game you want to play. If it was people, you would want to be careful about sending them all off to die in a suicide swarm attack since either they are non-replaceable or time consuming to replace. You could even have escape pods, rescue your peeps, and put them in ships you already had built and waiting for them...

I have been thinking along these lines myself as I have always been uneasy in sending loads of scouts etc on missions of no return. OK I know its only computer people, but hey they have rights too!!! It would also be fun to pick of the escape pods of your enemy(I can imagine the sound of screams already) maybe even if you could be bothered to collect them you could replension your people stock. Also I think the idea of people manning ships could be expanded so that damaged cap ships for instance would be much less effective after so much damaged. for instance a burning cap ship surely would have hull breaches that would have say killed people in the engine rooms, so engines would be less effective.

Anyways thats my 50c worth. What ever happens I want HW2 NOW!!!!!

[crobato]

I would prefer to eliminate any Kamekaze option as well as scuttle options. If there is a scuttle, it won't create a big bang. Ships are not meant to be bombs or guided missiles. For those purpose, it would be more elegant to have dedicated kami ships, more in the lines of the Cruise Missile or Mimic in Cata. It is much easier to control game balance and govern the use of such tactics this way.

For scuttling, I propose a minelayer corvette that would do both that purpose and minelaying. A wall of these corvettes set on a scuttle would create a wide area bang, as a result of their mines going off at the same time.

[cxxx{::::::::>]

Originally posted by crobato
I would prefer to eliminate any Kamekaze option as well as scuttle options. If there is a scuttle, it won't create a big bang. Ships are not meant to be bombs or guided missiles. For those purpose, it would be more elegant to have dedicated kami ships, more in the lines of the Cruise Missile or Mimic in Cata. It is much easier to control game balance and govern the use of such tactics this way.

For scuttling, I propose a minelayer corvette that would do both that purpose and minelaying. A wall of these corvettes set on a scuttle would create a wide area bang, as a result of their mines going off at the same time.

I agree with that but not the method, in real war the scuttle and kami options are real, so can be used as a weapon in desparate situations prehaps. Another way to stop needless scuttles and kami players is to make crews a limiting factor. At the end of the day it does not matter how big a fleet is if their is no personal to use it, because they have been sacrificed in scuttle/kami operations.

[SWPIGWANG]

Maybe the HW people are decendent of the Japs....

[MrNonchalant]

I agree with CXXX, Kami is a desperate measure. You can't always build dedicated ships for that purpose in a the middle of battle. Even less so if that's your last ditch effort to stop the attackers.

Also, SWPIGWANG, I, at least, consider "Japs" an ethnic slurr. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[crobato]

In real war, even in the most desperate of times, Kamekaze is not often the measure even with the Japanese. In fact, crashing your Zero into an American battleship won't do anything.

Every Kamikaze craft is specially prepared for the task. Their armament is often stripped, and much of the space left for bombs and explosive. Dedicated craft were built for that purpose such as the rocket propelled, bomber launched Baka bomb.

The Kamekaze pilots were specially selected for this task and each one mentally and religiously prepared for the occasion for days.

The Japanese High Command in fact will forbid any pilot of considerable experience to fly kamikaze missions except as protective escort but are forbidden to do the act themselves. All Kami pilots are young, inexperienced and only has basic flight training.

Scuttling is also never used as an instrument of war in WWII.

The fact remains, that if you are well acquianted with World War II, the facts actually support my proposition that kamekaze acts, even in the most desperate of times, were actually planned, organized, and specialized in execution with specially prepared craft.

A plane, even many planes, crashing into a large ship will not sink a ship, unless said plane must carry a bomb.

[MrNonchalant]

I consider myself pretty knowledgable on WWII. In fact it's one of my hobbies. Usually battleships weren't the target, carriers, with their wooden, vulnerable decks were. Crashing your zero into it would cause considerable damage, especially with a full tank of fuel. True, during the latter part of the Kamikaze campaign they did start to use specialized planes, but these were to increase the effect, not make it feasible in the first place. Although the campaign was ultimately not successful, it did pose a huge threat to American warships. Often standing patrols were kept were they might not have been in fear of a Kami attack.

It was still last ditch, even though planned out. The relatively slow speed of the American advance allowed a long time to plan. At that point the Japanese knew they were beat, even though they refused to admit it to their people. With Homeworld, however, you have comparatively no time to build specialized ships. When you start a game, your resources, time, research, and RU's, are stretched enough that building a wing of fighters that can only be used for a purpose that may never occur is guaranteeing the enemies success in the first place.

[dzurlord]

Originally posted by 1 SL Chris Z-S
I agree with CXXX, Kami is a desperate measure.

Um, no in Cata kami is used all the time to kill workers etc. If you go up against someone with more fighters than you one of your first options is kami. I would like scuttling taken out though.

[MrNonchalant]

My point was not that Kami wasn't used frequently, but that in the last ditch capacity there is no time for building specialized ships.

[dzurlord]

Ah.:eek:

But people wouldn't be using them as a last ditch capacity, as the ships would be used as mimics are nowdays.

[MrNonchalant]

Little hard to follow there, could you restate it? It doesn't make any sense currently.

[dzurlord]

Quite simply, they wouldn't be used as a last resort ship.

[crobato]

Originally posted by 1 SL Chris Z-S
[B]I consider myself pretty knowledgable on WWII. In fact it's one of my hobbies. Usually battleships weren't the target, carriers, with their wooden, vulnerable decks were. Crashing your zero into it would cause considerable damage, especially with a full tank of fuel. True, during the latter part of the Kamikaze campaign they did start to use specialized planes, but these were to increase the effect, not make it feasible in the first place. Although the campaign was ultimately not successful, it did pose a huge threat to American warships. Often standing patrols were kept were they might not have been in fear of a Kami attack.


Does not change from the argument that the Japanese did use specialized planes with specially chosen pilots.

Most of the time, Zeros won't have a full fuel tank by the time it gets to the combat zone, and with only half a tank and a light frame, it doesn't do that much damage. Hence the need for specialized craft because even the Japanese knows that sacrifices must cause considerable damage to be worth it.

Furthermore in real warfare, not all pilots or soldiers would commit to such an act The Germans for example, would fight to the last bullet or round, but once that was expended, they would willingly surrender.

Also, no RTS game would commit to main units that would self destruct. Just about every other RTS game, if they ever use scuttle or suicide units, these are specialized units (the minelaying Zappers in Shattered Galaxy for example.)

[MrNonchalant]

I agree with you that under ordinary circumstances there should be a specially designed ship for Kami purposes. However, other ships should still have that capability for last ditch operations.

[crobato]

Under last ditch circumstances in real warfare, scuttle does not produce the kind of devastating effects you see in Processor scuttles, short of putting a nuclear bomb in it. But putting a bomb means a degree of specialization. You simply cannot turn any ordinary ship into a scuttle bomb just like that. No ship engine has that capability (not even one with a nuclear reactor) and even the ammo inside a warship is not enough for that purpose.

One controllable alternative is provide an explicit Plasma Bomb upgrade option on certain ships---Supply Frigates, Resource Controllers, Processors, Resourcers, Repair Corvettes, Minelayers. This would make the "S" Scuttle command available in their command menus.

[SWPIGWANG]

Every Kamikaze craft is specially prepared for the task. Their armament is often stripped, and much of the space left for bombs and explosive. Dedicated craft were built for that purpose such as the rocket propelled, bomber launched Baka bomb.

Not every...considering ramming B-29s (and bailing out before impact if possible) was a tactic a few pilots used.

Ramming ships does require planning however, as the plane itself does little damage and a bomb must be loaded. But thats often the only prepration done.



carriers, with their wooden, vulnerable decks were.
True. British carriers with 2 inch armored deck was almost invulnerable to kami attacks. Its the american wooden decks that makes kami effective.

[Spaz]

Im amazed that 100 people, all gamers, can't come up with a decent solution to creating a race... in 5pages. I find that rather funny.

[crobato]

The planes that had to intercept B29s were all specialized for that task (no Zero could go up that altitude.) And as I said before, even the Japanese leadership explicitely does NOT allow experienced pilots to engage in suicide actions.

Plane ramming by the Germans are far more frequent, but even they had to resort to specialized modified fighters. Even then, the German fighter leaders discourage such actions (a pilot that lives today can help defend tomorrow.)

Once again, there is no precedent for the kind of kami you see in Homeworld. That aspect of the game is totally unrealistic.

[Nemesis_Star]

the ships use fusio generators not fission like we use today if they were to self destuct it would be as if every two atoms in the ship was ten atoms of plutonium in a nuclear fission reaction [self distruct bomb] therefore creating an explosion of astronomic proporsions that any ship could easily do because of the fusion reactors

that is just what would scientifically hapen if it all didn't just turn into a huge plama bomb from the building heat first

but it is science fiction anything can happen

what if all of the ships in homeworld were supposed to be remote controlled

people u cant make assumptions in science fiction

[SWPIGWANG]

The planes that had to intercept B29s were all specialized for that task (no Zero could go up that altitude.)
Not so. While Zero can't go up that high due to a lack of two-stage turbosupercharger, many Japanese land base intercepters can (with performance loss). Fighters like Ki-61, Ki-100, Ki-84 and N1J2 can reach the B-29 without modifications. Zero was 2 years outdated by that time, with the A6M5 Zero introduced in the 1942-3 period. (A6M8, with a new powerplant delivevering 40% more power was planned starting at around 1944 but never went into protyping...)

Or course thats not like sending 250 scouts into a mothership, but consider the fact that we have no proof that either Taiden or Kushans are human and their emotional system maybe total crap by human standards.

Its only a game (and there are far greater realistic parts to this game)


does NOT allow experienced pilots to engage in suicide actions

Considering the fact most pilots have only <10 minute experience in combat...to hell with it.

[crobato]

It is extremely hard to even create an uncontrolled fusion reaction. A hydrogen bomb actually had to use a smaller fission bomb as a cataclyst to force nuclei together.

A controlled fusion engine isn't going to be like that. It uses far more minute amounts to create a small controlled plume of fusion reaction. Magnets would create an electromagnetic bubble that will compress the nuclei and hold this plume. Gas is then superheated through this fusion into plasma state to create jet propulsion.

Despite popular assumption, this system isn't going to be a bomb, much like runaway nuclear reactors. A nuclear reactor out of control merely superheats and melts through its casing. Theoritically, the reactor would burn through the Earth and to China, hence the name for this phenomenon as the China Syndrome (also the name of a movie of such event starring Jane Fonda.)

A controlled fusion engine cannot pump enough matter to create such a state, as it produces far less energy and all of it in a controlled manner. The danger of a chemical explosion between the heavy hydrogen isotopes and the oxygen onboard a space ship actually poses much greater risk.

Once again, kamikaze and scuttle is a dumb idea. There is no historical precedent for it to be used like the way it is in Homeworld. Kami and scuttling any ship turns that ship into a potential missile and the combat game style is profoundly affected in ways the developers did not originally anticipate, and certainly it is not in the spirit of the way combat is designed in the game. In fact, Homeworld and Cata is pretty much alone in this category amidst all the other RTS game designs. While kami and scuttling should be allowed in some fashion, it should be through a controlled manner, through dedicated units (like the Mimic in Cata or the Zappers in Shattered Galaxy.)

[crobato]

Most of the pilots flying the Shoki, Raiden, the Frank, and the KI-100 are a bit more in the experienced side. Japan didn't have much of these advanced interceptors left, and whatever few they had, it tended to be flown by more experienced pilots. You can read more from Saburo Sakai's biography Zero! Some of the engagements flown by these experienced pilots combined with better planes are able to inflict losses. Four Corsairs or Hellcats were lost in one dogfight with KI-100s with no lost on the KI-100s over a Japanese airfield. Certainly those KI100s are not flown by inexperienced pilots.

I forgot his name, but a daredevil pilot flying a Shoki (Japan's equivalent to a Focke Wulf 190) scored the most B29 kills for any Japanese pilot. He went on to start a Japanese restaurant in the Washington DC area.

Also we have proof that the Taiidan and the Kushans are humanoid given the shots within the game and the manual. This includes the scene of the famous Somtaaw torture device using a humanoid subject (most like Turanic, implying the Raiders are also humanoid.)

[SWPIGWANG]

The problem with Fusion power is need for superheated plasma (1million degree C I think) for such reaction to occur.

crobato, your arguements are largely based on a pre-pratical fusion technology and on safe reactors that is never suppose to blow up.



A hydrogen bomb actually had to use a smaller fission bomb as a cataclyst to force nuclei together.

The fission bomb doesn't act as a cataclyst in the chemical sense, but is used to super-heat and super-compress the fusionable matter.



Magnets would create an electromagnetic bubble that will compress the nuclei and hold this plume. Gas is then superheated through this fusion into plasma state to create jet propulsion.

While this is the method most current tech-spectulators believe in, there are different methods, such as laser/neutral particle containment and fusion-electric based drives.



Despite popular assumption, this system isn't going to be a bomb, much like runaway nuclear reactors. A nuclear reactor out of control merely superheats and melts through its casing.
However, this is given the assumption that containment does not fail compeletly at once. If the containment (due to fusion, no contact containment is need, and such system can fail/turned off at a instant) fails compeletly, the plasma would super expand and blow up the reactor core. It would be unlikely to do more than that with current technology, as the containment field is so weak that only minute amont of plasma compressed lightly is in the reactor, and the rapid expansion would mean a fast loss in temperature and pression, stopping the fusion reaction. Given some hyper techology that allows super compression of plasma, the damage can be far greater.



A controlled fusion engine cannot pump enough matter to create such a state, as it produces far less energy and all of it in a controlled manner.
It is a far cry for current technology, but with who knows what future tech, it might even be possible to compress fusion plasma to the extent of a fission explosion/small star and the energy output should be enough to do the job.

Also, remember that scuttle function might be build into many reactors, and such a reactor would have a different design as it would allow a dumping of fuel into the reactor and a short period of extream compression, followed by a competely loss of containment. Such a reactor does not exist but could very well boost the effect of scuttling greatly.