Warp Points

[dr_david1]

I realize that the game is deep into development but I wanted to give my opinion on warp points. I really hate them! Its was the single worst thing about MOO3. A free space like the original would be much better. I am interested in others thoughts on this.....

[Long Dead Fingers]

Well, apparently one of the devs commented during EA2 that other modes of propulsion were being considered, so unless they've rejected it outright as a possibility since then, hopefully it means the issue isn't a dead horse.:)

[Stelar Seven]

They were looking at off road travel. I think the current way point finding system could do it. Force us to get close, scan for one then go to it, then go to the other system.

Let defenders also go to way point, cool deep space battles ensue. Back door attack possible but not unbalanced.

[NE14PIE]

In peace, I really think if they took the starlanes out you would not like it (to those advocating this) In a game where the AI comes for your world and plays fair, that is fine - but from my experience it cheats on MOO2 so that you never get to defend, it is using a strategy similar on MOO CTS. In this game, you would have constant attacking ships coming in, so you move your defenders to that system, then the attackers change direction on their turn - either going back if you have enough DPS at all systems to stop them or arriving at the system you didn't put any ships at last turn. They then waste that system and retreat when we you attack them next turn (Assuming you can)

What I feel this game needs is a late game tech that can break the stalemate of two giant fleets sitting opposed to each other, so you can launch an empire wide invasion. Some form of one way travel off the lanes.

[Namoge]

Apostate has the idea that i was thinking, do it like Moo3.. starlanes for quick travel but permit leaving them and traveling outside them.. but with an "off road" penalty that makes it take longer.. has back door and solves the whole issue

[Doombringer]

That might make the top end drives actually do something...
(right now pretty much all star lanes are 1turn travel with lesser engines)

[NE14PIE]

One other thing they can consider is battle in the star lanes, that occurs when two fleets pass each other. This gets round some stalemate situations where if player A in a superior position sends their fleet towards player B, player B cannot simply send their fleet back in response to attack player A as the two fleets would fight in the starlanes, whereas now, they cross over each other. It is only an issue on lanes that take more than 1 turn to traverse. I have used it to my advantage and the AI has used it to theirs.

I appreciate I am in the minority liking the star lanes, it is in the top 4 bug bears from what I can see. Lack of turn based combat (I am fine with), lack of commanders (I would like these) and the research tree ( I would like there to be some race or trait based tech ) being the other three.

@ Namoge @ Doombringer - what do you see the problems being for having off lane travel?
Should the ships land at a warp point or directly at one of the planets in the system. What about intercepting the fleets when you see them coming in? Also do you want to be able to move the fleets once you have sent them on their way, so if you aim at planet A, get close, and see enemy fleet B is sitting there waiting for you, you can redirect to enemy planet B on your turn and attack - or do you want the fleet to have to exit warp over original target. Keeping in mind AI can do the same.

[Davor]

Originally posted by NE14PIE:

One other thing they can consider is battle in the star lanes, that occurs when two fleets pass each other.

While not a bad idea, I am liking how MOO is almost feels like it's actually real. By that I mean look at some of the people saying founding a new colony is too slow. It's suppose to be slow. Not fast at all. Now what you suggested as I said is not a bad idea, for me at least it will take the realism out of it.

After all isn't going in a star lane suppose to make you go faster? So it's for movement only? What happens when you stop in a star lane? How do you do your manovers in something that is just to make you go fast from point A to point B? To me it's like going down a slide not an escalator. Once going down you are going down fast so you can't do a back flip without basically falling off the slide and dieing or causing major harm to yourself.

I can't see how you can have combat in a star lane. That would be like 2 boxers trying to box each other going down a slide, how can you really do it without falling off the slide?

I like how MOO feels realistic. Another reason why star lanes shouldn't be the only mode of travel. We should be able to make star bases in the middle of no where that cost alot to keep up and then use them to intercept fleets in the middle of space if not using a star lane.

Hell that could be a good reason to have star lanes Make a star base that can set up interferance in open space so in a certian radius no ships can travel by warp speed so the only options then would be star lanes. Maybe even have thse interference bubbles also effect Star Gates as well if they are in there way, so this way Star Lanes are cruical then, and then using choke points for end game, not begining game is a great idea.

[Eddab]

Originally posted by Simpson3k:

Originally posted by Apostate:

I like the star lanes. With range my immersion gets crushed. Why is there an invisible wall in space where I can go no further? I know we are used to that silliness from moo1 and 2 but it's absurd. Are we beaming the ships their power from the home system?

Range limit with fuel in the ships and owned planets in a certain range to fly back- refuel - and start again. Really that difficult to understand?

Originally posted by Apostate:

Mechanically both lanes and range limit space travel. However since we don't have any physics for ftl IRL no one system is more realistic than the other. We have currents on air travel and ocean travel. Who is to say exploiting some kind of gravity phemenon isn't how we will go ftl someday and that such a system wouldn't be space roads?

So you assume there is an invisible wall around our real solar system that requires us find the space lane to travel to another star?

Originally posted by Apostate:

In any case from a game standpoint we have more short and mid game destinations possible with lanes over range, so no systems can ever be outv of range, and thus completely safe. We get earlier interaction with the AI races and a more complicated offense and defense as empires grow.

Yep everything is in range right from the start, despite the fact that an empire in the center of the galaxy with unpenetrateable def blocks the way to the opposite end of the galaxy even if you have researched all techs and exchanged all techs you couldnt research..so forever out of reach unless you fight through it or go the diplomacy way.

Originally posted by Apostate:

Also we get an ai that can challenge humans with minimal cheating, which is the goal that is the reason the lanes were used in the furred place.

Yup adapt the game to compensate the lack of AI coding instead of adapt the skill of the coding to the game YAY

#1, The only way to add fuel in the way you describe is to have every individual ship keep track of it's fuel reserves, and deplete the fuel depending on speed and engine and overall energy usage. And a way for the ship to get stranded with no fuel left. Or we force the ships to head back to the nearest fuel depot to refuel at 50% or 25% fuel left.

The powerplants for the drives could also be a type of zero-point-energy powerplants, where we tap quantum effects in vacuum for energy, and then we only need water for reaction fuel for small attitude adjustments.


#2 I would love to see non-refutable proof of either system in real life. However, whatever plausible FTL-system one chooses, there will be limitations as to where one can go, whether we call them space lanes, trade lanes, warp points, or anything else.

With true free travel one could *never* intercept an enemy fleet unless they choose to close with the defender. Information, as in positions, acceleration vectors, and such, can never move faster than the speed of light. This means that if ships enter starsystems around 40 AUs out (the Kupier belt, or the orbit of pluto), AU = Astronomical Unit, about 150M km, or 8 light minutes, a planet at 1 AU from the star, Earth for example, would not know about the fleets arrival until 5:25 hours, at best, and 5:40 hours at worst.

Then we have the thing about space people seem to forget. the sheer vastness of space. Even if we have pickets out at a chosen border, lets say 40 AUs, that is a sphere with a surface area of 1256 square AUs, or 188,400,000,000 square kilometers (117,750,000,000 square miles). These numbers are mind boggeling and shows that the only way to intercept ships that are less than 1 kilometer in diameter is impossible to do, without insane amounts of luck.

Even if one makes magical ships that can accelerate to, and decellerate from, just less than light speed instantly, there is still no way to intercept an incomming fleet that doesn't want to be intercepted.


#3 This is a game design choice and comes down to taste.

If one wants realism, there is still the issue of distance. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across. If we can travel at 10 light years per turn (3 times the distance stom the sun to Alpha Centauri), that is still 10,000 turns to go from one end of the galaxy to the other.
Lets pick a small galaxy then, at only 10% the size of our own, still leaves us at 1,000 turns from one end to the other.


#4 I challange all of you to make a better AI, and then sell it to the highest bidder. Until then, we will have to suffer through what the big companies offer us. My experience from playing MoO 1,2,3, CtS, is that AI is increddibly hard to make competetive without restricting the human player. MoO1s AI was attrocious at making war decisions. MoO2's AI struggled with the same. MoO3,s AI wasn't too bad at moving fleets around, but was attrocious at building space fleets that couldn't even defeat a fly. MoOCtS's AI is still under development, and we'll just have to wait and see.

[dr_david1]

Some really good feedback. I appreciate the opinions on both sides. The warp point supporters seem to be very few. I like to hear those opinions but the common theme I keep reading is that its easier. Of course its easier, thats the point and the problem. This game is looking to be a re-skinned MOO3.

[Davor]

I am not understanding where this "fule range" equales ships returning to base to refuel. MOO never worked that way.

[Eddab]

The fuel range could be explained in many different ways, all depening on how long a turn actually is in game time, ie, a year, a month, a week.

It also depends what one mean with fuel, if it is fuel for the star drives or reaction mass for attitude controll, tiny boosters for turning and rotating, general maintenance need for the star drive, and so on.

Until we can agree or specify what we mean with the different terms we will never get anywhere.

[Davor]

Originally posted by Eddab:

The fuel range could be explained in many different ways, all depening on how long a turn actually is in game time, ie, a year, a month, a week.

It also depends what one mean with fuel, if it is fuel for the star drives or reaction mass for attitude controll, tiny boosters for turning and rotating, general maintenance need for the star drive, and so on.

Until we can agree or specify what we mean with the different terms we will never get anywhere.

Agree, so I will say what I believe fuel is. To me, fuel range is the maximum range a fleet can travel and no futher just like in MOO1, 2 and 3. Then you have research that can extend your fuel range.

So in the begining of the game fuel range was what 4 or 5 parsecs? With extended feul tanks you can make a ship go 1.5 times further, great for scouts, louse for battleships.

What would you say feul should be?

[Davor]

Originally posted by Antoni:

I personally like the warp points.

Saves wasting turns aimlessly wandering around open space, only to find that you've been going in the wrong direction for an hour and missed everything.

I don't understand what you mean. I can do this easily with star lanes. At least if I made a mistake as you say, I can go to the planet directly. With star lanes, I have to zig zag for no added benifit at all.

Ah zig zag. How Skyrim became bigger than Morrowind by artifically making the map bigger that way.

Is that the reason why we have star lanes? To make the map bigger because if it pretty small?

[Davor]

Originally posted by Antoni:

Honestly, i am too busy multi-tasking with my colonies and doing other things to worry about what my ships are doing or how much fuel they have left.

I am sorry, I do not undersand this at all. Can you please explain what you mean. I think we are thinking different things. MOO never played that your ships run out of fuel like other games, for instance Star Driv 2 or Distant Worlds.

You know in MOO games ships don't run out of fuel? When people talk about having Fuel Ranges in a MOO games I thought they were talking about how it worked in MOO 1 2 and 3.

Ships can only move a certian distantce outside a colony or colony post. So say you can move 5 parsecs or that can equate to 2 or 3 or mabye 4 or 5 "jumps". This way you want to discover further, you have to set up a colony out post that extends fuel ranges or if you want to colonize further out, you have to make a bigger colony ship with extended fuel ranges on them. Trust me, making that in MOO 1 or 2 in the begining of the game, added a lot long time to build. Later in the tech tree you can discover better fuel ranges so it will be 6 or 7 jumps away and then discover more fuel ranges so you can be 10 or 12 jumps away.

The game right now is just like missles. Missles and Fuel are unlimited. Taking a small piece of what makes MOO, MOOless.

So by adding in fuel ranges in the game, you will never EVER worry about having a ship return to base to refuel.

[dr_david1]

@Davor Its not about the fuel at all. There is no fuel. Its only about how far a fleet can travel. The fleet can still move around and explore but it has a limit to how far it can go based on techs. Nothing more.