SUGGESTION: Rebalance Map Travel

[TheSuit]

Right now one of the biggest issues is moving around the map especially when being attacked on multiple fronts.

It isn't fun waiting 5 minutes for your fleet to travel to reach a defense point.
There is no point in having a small defense fleet that will be instantly crushed by a max fleet.

Instead give all races their on Unique Gate Mechanics

--CHANGES--

Gates are now Tier 3 Military Tech for all races

1. Vesari
Gates Unlimited -> 3
But gains a new capital ship -> Valgrind ( Norse for Entrance to Valhalla )

The Valgrind capital ship is unique - it transforms into a gate and can transform back into a ship. While acting as a gate it cannot move or fight back. It takes 120s to deploy and 60s to undeploy. It can be reduced by 50% by 2 ship upgrades each reducing it by 25%.

Multiple Valgrinds can be deployed on the map, but eats up your Fleet supply.

2. Advent
Teleport to Home world -> Beacon of Light
Using Unity you can teleport your fleet in a gravity well to any becon of light ( Tier 4 civilian planet structure )

Becon of light requires it be on a planet with 100% culture to act as a teleport point for the fleet.

It also allows you to use your unity cannon to "give a planet 100% culture"
So there are some combo mechanics involved also.


3. Terran
Grand Highway

It converts Entire Asteroid into a Massive Gate. So all planetary slots are used.
Grand Highway can be used by all players but requires enemy faction to capture it like a derelict. But requires 120s todo so.

Grand Highways also gain +8 defense slots.
Any ships that travel on it - travel 20% faster to destination.

It is a double edged sword

[chris.mcgrory1]

or get 10 influence and buy phase gate, and put them in strategic positions around your territory so your only ever a few jumps away

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by chris.mcgrory1:

or get 10 influence and buy phase gate, and put them in strategic positions around your territory so your only ever a few jumps away

Lots of problems with that

1. Not all maps have traveler NPC - big issue
2. If enemy forces kill NPC homeworld the ability no longer available
3. Making new gate has a huge cooldown of 10 minutes

[Fendelphi]

It is part of the strategic decisions(where to commit forces), and the gates are part of the unique "super power" of the Vasari.

If everyone have access to pseudo Phase Gates, everyone should also have access to pseudo culture bombardments and pseudo planetary bombardments.


Also, I rarely have issues with being attacked on multiple fronts. What are you doing to leave yourself so open to attack and have them break through your lines?
Especially now that ships and defenses are much more durable, it takes a while for an enemy fleet to break through a well fortified gravity well.

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

It is part of the strategic decisions(where to commit forces), and the gates are part of the unique "super power" of the Vasari.

If everyone have access to pseudo Phase Gates, everyone should also have access to pseudo culture bombardments and pseudo planetary bombardments.


Also, I rarely have issues with being attacked on multiple fronts. What are you doing to leave yourself so open to attack and have them break through your lines?
Especially now that ships and defenses are much more durable, it takes a while for an enemy fleet to break through a well fortified gravity well.

That's why vasari gets a carrier that can act as a phase gate to compensate.
Which is why Vesari gets something more powerful a moving phase gate.

You put your 3 primary gates on construction planets.

Then have deploy your mobile phase gate on the enemy planet. Suddenly you have a never ending swarm of troops

They stlil keep their unique cultural identity.

While making the game less boring for other races.
Who have to slowly move their army 5 - 10 minutes while you watch a youtube video in the background

[Nongenti]

Sounds roughly possible for the most part on form of modding.
Could be worth creating a mod as proof of concept and test case, to see how those gameplay changes would actually play out.

In general thing that require new model assets may need a lot of reason to be necessary, since those are quite time and cost intensive to create.

[Athena]

This is partially why I didn't gel with the game personally. Every time I went out to take the offensive, I would get attacked from another direction and had to fly back. Which took forever.

To me, this travel time heavily pushes towards turtleing.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by TheSuit:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

It is part of the strategic decisions(where to commit forces), and the gates are part of the unique "super power" of the Vasari.

If everyone have access to pseudo Phase Gates, everyone should also have access to pseudo culture bombardments and pseudo planetary bombardments.


Also, I rarely have issues with being attacked on multiple fronts. What are you doing to leave yourself so open to attack and have them break through your lines?
Especially now that ships and defenses are much more durable, it takes a while for an enemy fleet to break through a well fortified gravity well.

That's why vasari gets a carrier that can act as a phase gate to compensate.
Which is why Vesari gets something more powerful a moving phase gate.

You put your 3 primary gates on construction planets.

Then have deploy your mobile phase gate on the enemy planet. Suddenly you have a never ending swarm of troops

They stlil keep their unique cultural identity.

While making the game less boring for other races.
Who have to slowly move their army 5 - 10 minutes while you watch a youtube video in the background

The Vasari Exodus Titan's ultimate ability is to create a temporary "tunnel", a new phase lane, that your fleets can go through. So your suggestion is not really adding much to the Vasari, other than allowing their specialty to be utilized way earlier in the game for every faction, while the other factions keep their unique ability to manipulate culture/bombard planets.
So no, I dont think they have kept their cultural identity. It might potentially be a better version of what you intend for the others(although it will still cost them a lot of fleet upkeep and at times be slower to utilze), but the fact remains that both the TEC and Advent now have unique capabilities that others do not have access to, while the same is not true for the Vasari.

But now you have created a new problem as well.
Let us say that you built a couple of pseudo phase gates, and they are already in place, then the Vasari attacks you at full force on the other flank, reinforcing their fleet as they go(according to your suggestion).
You will then have to move your main fleet(that might be in the process of an assault on another player) to the nearest phase gate of your faction, then fly to the closest gate for the area that is under attack, then move to the attacked location to defend it. That would realistically still involve several jumps before they arrive. And if the enemy destroys the gate you wanted to go to, before you send your fleet, you have to take the "long way" anyway.
You are still playing wack-a-mole(since your overall strategy/playstyle hasnt changed), but you have just made the opponent stronger/harder to remove. And while you "quickly" run back to defend your systems on one end, the area that you were previously attacking is gathering its forces and attacking on the other side.

It is the same problem in every RTS. If you are currently attacking one player, let us say to the east of you, and then you are attacked by a different player from the west, you will rarely be able to get your main force into a defensive position in time, if you only react once the attack has already started.
You can avoid such problems through several means. Diplomacy is the obvious one, but it is also possible to create small, effective defensive forces(each faction can easily create 3-500 pts worth of ships that are effective in bolstering static defenses) that can bolster strong defensive positions.
Having scouts/spies that can give you movement readings way ahead of time is also important, so that you can move forces based on good intel, rather than end up being surprised when a massive invasion suddenly arrives at your doorstep.
And of course, the option of striking first, taking momentum and deny the opponent the ability to attack you in the first place.

If you speed up "how fast the game plays", ie, movement, the time you have to respond correctly to a threat decreases, and the importance of good intelligence and smart decisions increases. If forces can move around the big theaters of war 3x faster than usual, you only have 1/3 the time to react and make a decision.


The other, but similar problem, is when you are on the offensive rather than defensive, and the opposition is able to quickly respond with a massive fleet. It basically makes it impossible for you to send smaller strike fleets to harass border worlds or try to outmaneuver the enemy fleet, depending on where those gates(that they have much earlier access to) are placed. It means that the only way to realistically get anywhere in an invasion, is with a massive fleet, because defenders will respond faster.
And if you are unlucky, they will bog you down, which would leave you open to an attack from a different player, and we are back at square one, except now, the pieces on the board moves around faster, but your construction/build times remain the same.

As for "move their army 5 - 10 minutes while you watch a youtube video in the background"(which is exaggerated), you do know there is a speed up button, if you feel you need it, right?

[Brave Sir Robin]

It's annoying and I get it. I sometimes even just quit a map early if it's too open, because I don't want to play 'whack-a-mole' with the constant AI backdooring.

This sort of thing is why I eventually turned off the rotating planets option. The AI is very good at one thing, which is using their maphacking to constantly backdoor you the instant your fleet moves away. In fact you can actually take advantage of it it's so blatant, by moving your fleet one jump away, wait for the attack, and immediately jump back to try and force the all-out fight. In earlier versions where they didn't respond to attacks on their home world, it was easy to win even against the hardest AI by just going for the throat while they couldn't resist attacking your minor worlds while your fleet was 'away'.

[Outdated]

!: love that the factions have different advantages.
Mobility and phase gates are the big thing when it comes to the vasari and if we made that common we would have to talk about the advantages of the other factions as well.
For example garrisons for everyone.

II: as for the base problem.
the easy solution to this is is to play with homeworld victory on.
untill they have a titan with mobile rule they are forced to defend their homeworld just like every other player.
don't run after them, make them fight you were you want.

III: each of the factions has already counters in place for this.
advent for example can either slow movment in gravity wells or completly secure planates from bombardment damage.

TEC can use garrisons that will, given the enough phase lane connections, swamp every attack or can even harrass enemy forces on a wide frontline.
alternatively TEC can simply overpower their enemy by massively supperior economy.