The problem with jump gates is...

[Ninjafroggie]

That you wind up with a map that looks like this and you cant see your own stuff
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/271716374317817330/E287D2020D000B1758A6CD043C028AED9A4DCCCC/

[X Myth]

Looks like some Tron Bikes went to town on your galaxy map

[PyreStarite]

How did you not kill the cats first??

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by TheProcrastinator:

How did you not kill the cats first??

Oh I absolutely could...each of my border fleets could defeat the entire mrrshan navy on their own, let alone the reserve strike group that's 10 times the size. I was deliberately letting the AI races finish the tech tree to see if they could even pose a remote challenge to my ship designs...and the answer is no, they can't.

[GM Pax]

These're a thing you can build, yes? If so, I'd say you built too many of them. Do you really need so very many direct connections?

[grandnovice]

And are we gonna get star gates instant travel and dimensional portals to Antaran space?

[Dark Fire]

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

Originally posted by TheProcrastinator:

How did you not kill the cats first??

Oh I absolutely could...each of my border fleets could defeat the entire mrrshan navy on their own, let alone the reserve strike group that's 10 times the size. I was deliberately letting the AI races finish the tech tree to see if they could even pose a remote challenge to my ship designs...and the answer is no, they can't.

To be fair, the Mrrshan wouldn't be the best race to test this against anyway since they possess no racial advantage to fleet strength. Better to test it against Alkari, Bulrathi, or Terran who do have racial bonuses directly tied to fleets.

[FourteenFour]

lol, the kitties have Orion!

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by darkfire2012df:

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

Oh I absolutely could...each of my border fleets could defeat the entire mrrshan navy on their own, let alone the reserve strike group that's 10 times the size. I was deliberately letting the AI races finish the tech tree to see if they could even pose a remote challenge to my ship designs...and the answer is no, they can't.

To be fair, the Mrrshan wouldn't be the best race to test this against anyway since they possess no racial advantage to fleet strength. Better to test it against Alkari, Bulrathi, or Terran who do have racial bonuses directly tied to fleets.

True, but the meklar ate the Alkari and split the Bulrathi with me by turn 300. Since the Bulrathi declared war on me for no good reason very early on, I wound up allied with the cats. After the bulrathi and alkari were gone, both the meklar and the mrrshan ganged up on the klackons (to be fair, the klackon started the war), then a short time later they went to war on eachother. Since I was still allied with the mrrshan, and at the time the meklar were the largest empire in the galaxy (at least by # of systems controlled), I took advantage of the distraction. The meklon were finished the tech tree, so I bought all the techs from them that they had, then declared war and ate their whole empire. That's why the cats are the only ones left.

Originally posted by GM Pax:

These're a thing you can build, yes? If so, I'd say you built too many of them. Do you really need so very many direct connections?

The idea behind having a jump gate in every system is that every one of my fleets, no matter where they are, can reach any of my systems within 3 turns. This means that I can respond quickly to any threat, and can get reinforcements from whatever planet I build them on to the front line just as quickly. This also makes sudden invasions possible, since I can build troop transports on every planet and move them to the front in just a couple turns...It also allows me to keep my highest production systems working on BBs and titans, while less productive systems can take care of producing cruisers, DDs, and civilian ships, and it never takes 20 turns for those ships to get where I actually need them.

The really odd thing is that you don't get all these jump lines when you build them, they only show up after you save and load your game. The game needs to have an option to disable jumpgate lines.

Originally posted by FourteenFour:

lol, the kitties have Orion!

Yeah, But I'm the one that killed the gaurdian and got all that sweet sweet orion tech. I just didnt colonize it because I wasnt interested in playing border peacekeeper between the cats and the bugs

[GM Pax]

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

Originally posted by GM Pax:

These're a thing you can build, yes? If so, I'd say you built too many of them. Do you really need so very many direct connections?

The idea behind having a jump gate in every system is that every one of my fleets, no matter where they are, can reach any of my systems within 3 turns. This means that I can respond quickly to any threat, and can get reinforcements from whatever planet I build them on to the front line just as quickly. This also makes sudden invasions possible, since I can build troop transports on every planet and move them to the front in just a couple turns...It also allows me to keep my highest production systems working on BBs and titans, while less productive systems can take care of producing cruisers, DDs, and civilian ships, and it never takes 20 turns for those ships to get where I actually need them.

But to do all of that, you don't need a complete anywhere-to-anywhere system of jumpgates. You need a transit system of jumpgates - so no one system is more than a single, normal-space jump from a jumpgate "waypoint".

You cover yourself with nodal defense fleets - you want to be able to respond to multiple prongs of attack, after all. Yes?

So, like I said, something more akin to a Metro-system map, with a few long-distance shortcuts perhaps.

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by GM Pax:

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

The idea behind having a jump gate in every system is that every one of my fleets, no matter where they are, can reach any of my systems within 3 turns. This means that I can respond quickly to any threat, and can get reinforcements from whatever planet I build them on to the front line just as quickly. This also makes sudden invasions possible, since I can build troop transports on every planet and move them to the front in just a couple turns...It also allows me to keep my highest production systems working on BBs and titans, while less productive systems can take care of producing cruisers, DDs, and civilian ships, and it never takes 20 turns for those ships to get where I actually need them.

But to do all of that, you don't need a complete anywhere-to-anywhere system of jumpgates. You need a transit system of jumpgates - so no one system is more than a single, normal-space jump from a jumpgate "waypoint".

You cover yourself with nodal defense fleets - you want to be able to respond to multiple prongs of attack, after all. Yes?

So, like I said, something more akin to a Metro-system map, with a few long-distance shortcuts perhaps.

by all means that's good enough for fighting the AI, but even in singleplayer I play like I'm fighting a human opponent. Your suggested system has a simple flaw...if I destroy the gate at one end of your long distance shortcut route, then I've effectively cut that system off from getting any reinforcement (except those already stationed locally) before i can destroy the entire system, and possibly even a neighboring system or 2 as well. By contrast, having a jump gate in every system means that even if you take out a gate, the next closest one is no more than 2 moves away. That means I can ALWAYS rapidly bring in reinforcements from other parts of my empire.

[seabo_76]

Yeah the jump gate lines do get a little annoying but I also build them in pretty much every system as well. I will have, at most, maybe 3 fleets max and those have to be able to respond anywhere quickly. And also there's usually a steady stream of replacement ships heading for those fleets so it's very handy to have jump gates everywhere.

Slightly off topic question about the Mrrshan. So considering this has been a very long game and they control roughly a 1/3 of the Galaxy.
Do they actually have Battleships and/or Titans?
Longest game i've played lasted 640 turns and I believe the Sakkra had at least 2 Battleships and the Alkari maybe 1...

[GM Pax]

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

...if I destroy the gate at one end of your long distance shortcut route, then I've [...]

.... already penetrated into my rear areas, proving my fleet insufficient to stop you no matter WHAT sort of Jumpgate network I might have built. :shrug:

Granted, I don't know exactly how jumpgates work in this game, I haven't gotten that far yet (I'm still explorign the systems, restartign games every so often to see how it woks if I do things differently), so this is purely theorycrafting for me.

...

The posts here imply, if yu build a single Jumpgate in a system, it instantly connects to EVERY other jumpgate in your entire empire?

If that's the case, that's different and I'd probably put one in every system.

I've been operating under the presumption that yu build them in PAIRS, specifically linking two systems together. In which case, I'd build chains of them threading through my empire in a network - A! to B!, B! to C!, C! to D!, etc. Ships from systems B1 and B2 might have to travel (short) normal-space jumplines to the "nexus" at B!, then a Jumpgate to D!, then another short normal-space hop to (say) D3.

But then, "nodal covering forces" - A!, B!, C!, and D! would be collection points from whence most fleets would be dispatched anyway.

And the border - let's say it's F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, and F6. Tose would get a complete cross-link, five outgoing Gates in each system. LAteral movement along the front would be "One jump or bust".

It's the system FEEDING the border strongholds, that doesn't need to be completely cross-linked to everywhere else.

...

If my assumptions are wrong .... my bad, ignore me, I'll just sit here in the corner and take notes. :D

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by GM Pax:

The posts here imply, if yu build a single Jumpgate in a system, it instantly connects to EVERY other jumpgate in your entire empire?

If that's the case, that's different and I'd probably put one in every system.

that is indeed how they work. Every jump gate instantly creates a warp lane to every other jumpgate in your empire (although the lines dont show up until after you load a saved game with the jump gates already built). This is why I always take interphased drives and never nuetronium bombs...you can travel from one far edge of the galaxy to the other on a medium map in 3 turns, I think it's 5 turns travel time on large and 6 on huge. Such a journey could easily take over 20 turns without jumpgates, and 40 turns or more on huge maps.

Originally posted by seabo_76:

Yeah the jump gate lines do get a little annoying but I also build them in pretty much every system as well. I will have, at most, maybe 3 fleets max and those have to be able to respond anywhere quickly. And also there's usually a steady stream of replacement ships heading for those fleets so it's very handy to have jump gates everywhere.

Slightly off topic question about the Mrrshan. So considering this has been a very long game and they control roughly a 1/3 of the Galaxy.
Do they actually have Battleships and/or Titans?
Longest game i've played lasted 640 turns and I believe the Sakkra had at least 2 Battleships and the Alkari maybe 1...

Actually they do, they have 6 BBs in their main fleet at Grusna. They are beam loadout ships and have about 2100 attack and 7900 defence (they pack a small number of heavily modded plasma beams and disruptor cannons, but I dont think they have adamantium armor). The meklar also had battleships before they died out, but they were only 950 attack and 10k defense (they were equipped mostly with pulson missiles), so the mrrshan fleet crushed them. Although to be fair, this game was before the latest patch. The game I started after the patch has seen the AI deploying cruisers MUCH sooner (by turn 100 I was seeing them from 4 races). I'm only at turn 250 and havent seen any AI BBs yet, but that could easily be because one of my 2 borders leads to an empty (no planets) system, and the other border is neighboring the darloks....and since I own a string of systems along the remote edge of the galaxy, nobody is really itching to fight me, and I'm not really itching to fight them...my plan is to sit and do research, peacefully forgotten in the 2 massive klackon vs. everyone else and meklar vs. everyone else wars that are going on, until I finish the tech tree and start building my ultimate ships. I would love to attack the terran khanate first when that happens (because every 15 turns or so they threaten to attack if I dont give them 1/4 of my credits...of course they never actually do, but its annoying), but they are on the far side of the galaxy and I'll have to destroy the darloks to get to them.

It should also be noted that I've deliberately drawn this game out this long...my entire empire is gaia-ified and every last planet should have nothing left to build but trade goods by turn 720 or so (most of them already do). I had the tech and the forces to just rampage across the map killing everything several hundred turns ago. Like I said, I deliberately wanted the to let the AI finish the tech tree to see IF it built BBs and how good they were (they're effing TERRIBLE...seriously, my cruisers can take on 2 BBs and win with ease) The meklar were the first AI race to finish the tech tree somewhere around turn 600 or so (thats when the war with the klackon started), the mrrshan finished around 670 (and even then I had to help them along with a couple of research treaties and trade deals that I fronted the credits for just to keep them from getting murdered by the klackons back in the 300s). I also wanted to see if i could get ALL the techs through trade and/or espionage just to play around with some systems I normally forgo in the research tree. The only tech I know I'm missing is nuetronium bombs, because only the meklar and the mrrshan made it that far into the tech tree and they both chose interphased drives as well. There may be another tech or 2 that i'm missing, but if so I havent noticed it missing.

*edit* Side note, has anyone EVER seen the AI terraform a planet? Or even just build a radiation shield or toxic processor on those relevant planets? I have not, and I think this is a large reason why human players can start to really leave the cpu in the dust with such ease once terraforming becomes available.

[GM Pax]

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

Originally posted by GM Pax:

The posts here imply, if yu build a single Jumpgate in a system, it instantly connects to EVERY other jumpgate in your entire empire?

If that's the case, that's different and I'd probably put one in every system.

that is indeed how they work. Every jump gate instantly creates a warp lane to every other jumpgate in your empire [...].

Soooooo ... in terms of how they work, New "Jumpgates", is actually old "Stargates".

Gotcha. Even building them only "every other" system would then still plaster those warplines all over the map on you. Bugger.

They really do need to make them less stupendously-visible, then.

Oh, and: //me pulls out a datapad and stylus, and starts taking those notes he mentioned ... :D

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by GM Pax:

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

that is indeed how they work. Every jump gate instantly creates a warp lane to every other jumpgate in your empire [...].

Soooooo ... in terms of how they work, New "Jumpgates", is actually old "Stargates".

Gotcha. Even building them only "every other" system would then still plaster those warplines all over the map on you. Bugger.

They really do need to make them less stupendously-visible, then.

Oh, and: //me pulls out a datapad and stylus, and starts taking those notes he mentioned ... :D

Sort of. If I remember correctly, the stargates in moo2 allowed you to move a fleet from any system with a gate to any other system you owned with a gate in 1 turn. In this version you still have to drive that distance (hence the interphased drives...slower drives = less distance covered per turn). Once you get ion drives, you can travel down all but the longest of natural warp lanes in 1 turn, so jumpgates are really the only time outside of combat that late-game drive tech matters.