Cruiser vs frigate/SotL

[Emelio Lizardo]

There is no way that an armored cruiser be in any danger from a wooden ship with old ball cannons. Heavy gun vs wood should have an order of magnitude multiplyer and cannon vs steel ship an order of magnitude malus.

[Tregon]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

True, I don't like the design decision. I think it's bad for the reasons stated. Well, many users like bad design, I can't help that.

No, what you suggested is bad design.

Because it automatically turns city and economy building game into mad cruiser rush. There are no alternatives, because cruisers trump all.

One of hardest and most critical parts of game design is balancing. Your suggestion is completely unbalanced and would hurt the game.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Originally posted by Chuckawookie:

...
But is it fair to say that something is bad design because it's not realistic? Must all games be perfectly realistic in order to be good? ...

Nothing can be perfectly realistic, but we should do so as much as we can. I'd suggest intermediate units. But the objection is more about nostalga than 'balance'.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Originally posted by Tregon:

...
No, what you suggested is bad design.

Because it automatically turns city and economy building game into mad cruiser rush. There are no alternatives, because cruisers trump all.

One of hardest and most critical parts of game design is balancing. Your suggestion is completely unbalanced and would hurt the game.

First of all I object to the fetish of "balancing". There's a mad rush to cruisers anyway.
What is it exactly is being balanced?

[Humble]

I guess it's mostly balanced, it's help wooden ship more useful for slow, weak player to catch up, while avoid "I win button" by first getting cruisers, so in sense they make cruiser weaker.

Gunboat is great when come overwhelming of defense and offense, it's great for player who had smaller number of island, yet had lot of influence because they don't had lot of island.
Gunboat is cheaper but cost more influence when build swarms of gunboat (I was talk about 30 to 60 gunboat! vs 15 ship of line/frigates, many target meaning it's hard to get rid of that number of target vs few target, more firepower, more health point when united, working vs powerful ship.

Frigate is great for quest escorting, and ability to shoot 2 enemies on both broadside, it's never good defense and offense of island, but good at open sea where escorting.

Ship of the line is dangerous close range (it's not good accurate long range unless you got item buff for it), it's rich man for defense and offense, and not want to build large number of gunboat. It's not good escorting,

Battle Cruiser with range buff item are awesome, can take out any harbor defense outside of range (unless harbor defense got range buff, but A.I never seem to do that, only work for player, I assumed)

Monitor is great late game escorting, can shoot anywhere but less firepower than frigate, frigate is faster when flow with wind but monitor is faster against wind (same for Battle Cruiser)

Flamethrower Monitor and Cruiser is great take out wooden ship faster than normal monitor and cruiser but normal monitor and cruiser is better fighting vs flamethrower due speed and range.

Flak monitor is nice to had but not must had, it's AA only vs airship, very few A.I had airship that had bomber, I think, key to control sky is take every island in new world that had resource to build airship, same thing the arctic world.

Any Airship with bomb is awesome, so it's based bomber, there is War airship for Air vs Air, but rarely use, Just watch out Flak Defense, it's great debuff heavy speed on airship. so you might want use battle cruiser with range to take out Flak Defense or AA, before spend Airship with bomb, bomb away everywhere.

They make sure every ship are useful, not one be all be all to replace all other ship. All ship had upside and downside.

Real reason, it's gave weaker, slower player a fighting chance, is why wooden ship help great with defense, but offense is other story, if they build lot of flamethrower defense, Ouch!.

[Tregon]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

Originally posted by Tregon:

...
No, what you suggested is bad design.

Because it automatically turns city and economy building game into mad cruiser rush. There are no alternatives, because cruisers trump all.

One of hardest and most critical parts of game design is balancing. Your suggestion is completely unbalanced and would hurt the game.

First of all I object to the fetish of "balancing". There's a mad rush to cruisers anyway.
What is it exactly is being balanced?

Really?
Do you understand that unbalanced games fail massively.

And rush is not to cruisers as much as it would be with your system. Everything else would be secondary to cruisers in your fetish, because single cruiser would wipe out huge fleets of wood ships without fail.

Now, with SOL presenting real and lethal threat to cruiser when used in larger numbers and using wind to close up, you cannot just ignore everything and only go for cruisers.

Failure to balance how game works leads to extremely poor gameplay.