Planet Balance etc

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OmegaRenegade
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Planet Balance etc

Post by OmegaRenegade »

Ok, so I been busy lately and baalz has been slacking off in his letting me know there is something I need to read about planets job... so anyways here's my thoughts

So planet balances... well there are quite alot of holes and bugs in planets, and several key things aren't in yet or aren't working right.

1) Research. Currently research bonuses dont stack or properly, the idea was that you'd have 5 total levels of research per tech (most techs anyways). So once that gets fixed planets will receive higher bonuses.

2) Orbital Defence Stations (I call them ORB's... kinda pictured death star type things, I dunno). Well, they aren't even in yet... In essence they're supposed to be a second line of defense between mines and planets themselves.

3) Mines. They just really aren't as affective for defense anymore, they're not much of a deterrent, and even adding the change to include repairs in how many and how hard mines hit wont change they're usefulness.

There are of course other things, interest on lander banks isnt working right, PSP's, spies and defence planets aren't in yet either.

But even when those things are added and are working right, I fear planets will still be lacking, as we've seen, 6 guys can take down a 70, and maybe we need to get away from the using mines as defense idea... anyways here's a list of ideas I've had or heard in discussions with people some of them are small, others pretty big.

Planet Defense. I suggest all planets get a static 50/50 Gens/Hangers increase. Turrets should do 400dmg each. Planets would recieve the standard bonuses from building primary buildings on top of this.

Population. Lander planets should receive a random pop bonus of 100-150M once the capital building has been established. Also each key building would have a different amount in which they increase a planets population, so landers and resource planets might grow faster than say a research planet.

Planet Ownership. Building is even more a team effort now than before, and I'm of the mind that planets should no longer be owned by a single player, but by the alliance as a whole, up to the number of people in that alliance.

ORB's. I'd like to see these take the place of mines in defense. Built and deployed from a planet, they attack ships trying to get thru the sector they are in. They also defend alliance assets IS with them (for instance if deployed above a planet, both planet and station join in the battle, but only the station takes damage until its destroyed.

Landed Fleet. Have them fire on raiding ships from the planet, but dont take damage until the planet pops.

Ship to ship weapons. Reduce the damage that conventional weapons can do to planets significantly. 10% maybe?

Fed Protection. You can't get fed protection if you've had a raid weapon on your ship in the last 24hrs.

Research. Change drone engine research to drone damage. Add Jump Nullifier research that adds a device to ORB's to create a field that makes JD impossible to use or jump into the field.

Planet Notice Board. So alliance mates can leave notices for each other on build instructions or other things.

Planet Feature Alliance Role. Create a player right to access the advanced feature on alliance planets (ie research, bank, spies, ORB's etc)
Last edited by OmegaRenegade on Wed May 07, 2008 9:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Baalzamon
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Baalzamon »

<Omega^lit> http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9568
<Baalzamon> OR
<Baalzamon> i need you to do the planet guide
<Omega^lit> ya?
<Baalzamon> for the sections that haven't been coded in yet, put in what you want, and we will use that as the final say for how things work.
<Baalzamon> if you want input on it, i'm willing to help discuss and develop ideas
<Baalzamon> but i need you to get this going ASAP
<Omega^lit> ok, in that case, I'll do it after work
<Baalzamon> not many people even know about the spies
<Baalzamon> lol
<Baalzamon> i doubt that the majority of the beta team knows about them even
<Omega^lit> i know

Just so that people know.
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piratedan
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by piratedan »

well the final mines/forces damage formula is still up for debate correct? I think the consensus is that having the forces effectiveness being based on the owner of the stack DRAMATICALLY reduces the amount of damage that they do and if it was returned to the old formula with the tweak of CD's firing when mines fire, then minefields may still have a place in the game as far as planetary defense goes. I like the idea of the tweaks to research and planetary defense weaps and orbital forts and networked defense grids, but would like to know some of the details on how those are supposed to work? Do they offer support fire to any alliance planet on the grid? would things like placing a planet on a network grid be expensive, like 250m a pop to keep some balance in place to support that firepower, or should it be even more expensive or less? Spies?
Baalzamon
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Baalzamon »

Thats what OR is writing the guide for, but since the spy thing was one of my "special" thoughts, I'll elaborate on the basis of them.

What a spy would do is slowly deteriorate the planet that they infect. I think that when we were talking about them, we decided to make it more of a thing where spies make defenses weaker when the planet is attacked. Spies are created by a long, expensive research proccess, and then "injected" if you will into an enemy planet through a special weapon/technology that you pick up on the planet that the spy was researched at.

Of course, this is something that was made at least 6 months ago, and I'm going by what I remember of it. When OR's guide comes out in the next couple days, it will be much more clear.
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Harry Krishna
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Harry Krishna »

This thing about spies sounds like a conversation that Baalz and I had some months ago.

The idea at that time was to make it so that an alliance could subvert the population against its owners with disinformation campaigns and other subterfuge. Tactically, it sounds like the basics were worked out: you create a spy/disinformation system and plant it on an enemy rock. Over time the disinformation turns some % of the population to an unfriendly status. Once the population becomes unfriendly to its owners, the planet becomes more easily conquered when attacked, e.g. the subverted population cooperate with the attackers by lowering defenses, etc.

The flip side of that conversation was that the planet owners could become aware of the spy network and fight back with countermeasures of their own...say for instance, by paying a lot of money for public relations campaigns that would reduce the unfriendly factor and perhaps eventually get rid of it all together.
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Baalzamon
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Baalzamon »

The thing is, when I originally mentioned it, it was pointed out that that would make busting a planet TOO easy, so we tweaked it a bit.
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Target
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Target »

OmegaRenegade wrote:1) Research. Currently research bonuses dont stack or properly, the idea was that you'd have 5 total levels of research per tech (most techs anyways). So once that gets fixed planets will receive higher bonuses.
What happens if say you research 1-3 lvls on one research planet and 4-5 on another, then the 1-3 planet gets busted? Do you still have 5 total lvls researched or do you only have 2?
OmegaRenegade wrote:I fear planets will still be lacking, as we've seen, 6 guys can take down a 70
When you say lvl 70 planet, are you referring to a 100gen/100hanger/10turret planet? If so, do you think if 10 people are busting a lvl 70, do you think that 1 person should be dieing each round?
OmegaRenegade wrote:Planet Defense. I suggest all planets get a static 50/50 Gens/Hangers increase. Turrets should do 400dmg each. Planets would recieve the standard bonuses from building primary buildings on top of this.
Adding turret damage is a bad idea without redoing all of the defenses of the planets. What you're proposing will result in a lander with 250gen/250hanger/20 turrets. And if you want a lvl 70 planet (100gen/100hanger/10turret) to be as deadly as they were in SMR1.0, then what kind of damage will a lander do? 2 deaths per shot?

I think planets are impossible to fix without deciding a limit on ship defense. Without that, one of two things will happen:
1) planets will be pumped up in order to kill someone with /50 defense and therefore hurting smaller alliances and others who have defenses around /30.
2) people will have ships with /50 defense, and be at no risk to die to planets.
OmegaRenegade wrote:Planet Ownership. Building is even more a team effort now than before, and I'm of the mind that planets should no longer be owned by a single player, but by the alliance as a whole, up to the number of people in that alliance.
What would happen if say you have 10 planets and 10 members and someone leaves/gets booted from your alliance? Does your smallest planet go unclaimed?
OmegaRenegade wrote:Landed Fleet. Have them fire on raiding ships from the planet, but dont take damage until the planet pops.
I think this is a bad idea. An alliance can just go though a galaxy taking 1 shot at each planet looking for cream. Also, they will know who has traders/hunters/raiders.
OmegaRenegade wrote:Ship to ship weapons. Reduce the damage that conventional weapons can do to planets significantly. 10% maybe?
I don't think we need to do this, maybe a smaller change. The issue is how much damage planets do to players, not the other way around.
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Freon22 »

Target wrote:I think planets are impossible to fix without deciding a limit on ship defense. Without that, one of two things will happen:
1) planets will be pumped up in order to kill someone with /50 defense and therefore hurting smaller alliances and others who have defenses around /30.
2) people will have ships with /50 defense, and be at no risk to die to planets.
While you have some good questions your item 1 is a cop-out. I have read this type of cop-out many times in the pass. Someone aways say this or that will hurt the small guy. But at the sametime the small guy is already being hurt and it is just a ploy to keep things to ones favor. Another thing the small alliances could never attack a level 70 planet in the pass so why now? If a small alliance want to complete with large alliancies then they need to work and get large themselves. If planets can be poped so easly then what is the point of building one? Why park on something that 6 well build ships can take down? With the game not being so turn based now it would be better to park in fed and arm up for Ops.

There has to be some insurance that only a well organized large fleet can take down a fully built planet.
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Incision »

I think before we go pumping up planets... we need to get all features IN first, then test?

As it stands right now, I guarentee no fleet can take our lander. It has 20k shields...4k drones... turrets do 281 dmg and we have a lot of shields/drones on back up.

If you start pumping up level 70 planets.. good luck on level 135... Maybe the best advice is to speed up planet building, because that I believe is the biggest downfall, you can get super ships faster then a planet can get max hangers or even half max.
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Harry Krishna
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Re: Planet Balance etc

Post by Harry Krishna »

Incision wrote:... Maybe the best advice is to speed up planet building, because that I believe is the biggest downfall, you can get super ships faster then a planet can get max hangers or even half max.
Getting big ships should be SLOWED, not planets sped up.
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