Planets

[Baalzamon]

Alright, we need to have planets done. By the end of this round, I would like to see all planetary plans finalized, by the end of next round, I would like to see all planets ready to be put in the game.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df3bnjgc_13cnb624fz&hl=en

This link shows what has already been designed by myself, and OmegaRenegade. What we already have can be changed, I have no objection to it, but I think we need to develop the rest of the planets before we can even start to go back and fine tune the others.

[Kahless_]

1 simple thing i would like to see changed is the price of buildings.. Should be increased dramitcally.

Also...And i'm pretty sure i'll be at odds with most of you here, I'm counting 8? different types of planets of offer here. I'd encourage us to focus on halving that number. Capitol, Shield, Drone and Research. I believe this offers a good comprimise between wonderful innovation while still maintaining some of the simplistic roots of SMR.

I can see that planets like commerce, gun platforms and defense platforms would be cool, but i just don't see them as truly necessary. It just seems to me that too much focus is being put on making 1 aspect of the game great. It seems out of place having all these different building combinations in a game where every other activity is a simple activity (Trading and Excavation for example).

Not trying to belittle any of the work thats been done on planets, but i think a simpler model is required to get the game going.

Just my 2 cents, not sure how much that counts for these days though with the ausse dollar crash

[Infinity]

Yes on the build price.

Yes on the simplicity, I'd tho keep resource planets but make goods production work (and ofc fix the dropping interest bug).

For research planets remove most/all that don't work and add something like "industry development" for those goods production's effectiveness.

[Edgecrusher]

Well, actually I like the different possibilities planets have to offer, it's just that we haven't seen any of them because they're not implemented. Why don't we start with a simple 4 (Lander, Drone, Shields and Research, providing research actually works) and extend gradually from that. That also means we can cut down on the research, and develop that gradually as well.

[Baalzamon]

OK, so it seems the agreement is to perfect what we have currently in the game, being Landers, Drone, Shield, Resource, and Research, correct?
A few ideas:

Landers:
Keep all current properties (meaning possibly buildings)
Once a "Capital" is completed, instant jump in population by about 25% (throwing this number out here, what do you think?)
Once a "Capital" is completed, turrets take .25 less time to build (base value, before any trader stats change it. This is to help build faster, to keep planets on par with ships upgraded)


Drone:
Keep all current properties
Once a "Drone Control Tower" is built, build time of both Hangers and Reserve hangers take a base decrease of .25, generators get an additional .25 (this is to keep it in line with its role)

Shield:
Keep all current properties
Once a "Shield Relay" is built, build time of both Generators and Reserve Generators take a base decrease of .25, hangers get an additional .25

Resource:
Keep all current properties
Make the buildings actually work.
Once a "Starport" is built, build time of all resource builds take a base decrease of .25, all combat related builds get an additional .25
Take out the "Goods Exchange". There is enough money in the game, no reason to put more in. And alliances can watch their resources, they shouldn't be rewarded for dropping Lux onto a planet when Lux don't help with builds.

Research Planets:
Point Singularity Weapons- Get Rid of It
Dispersal Field Generators- Get Rid of it
Espionage- Get rid of it.
Make the rest work.
With builds of "Advanced Research Lab", 5%research time is taken off (max of 10% with 2 advanced labs)



General Thought:
Every 2k Slaves that are on planets cause 5% faster builds (base value). This makes alliances have to choose between having to stock planets all the time and have fast build times, or else rarely need to stock anything and having basic build times.



Reactions?

[Swagman]

Take out the "Goods Exchange". There is enough money in the game, no reason to put more in. And alliances can watch their resources, they shouldn't be rewarded for dropping Lux onto a planet when Lux don't help with builds.

Maybe I don't understand 'Goods Exchange', but how does anybody get rewarded for dropping Lux on a planet ?, as you deposit goods you loose xp, so I can't see the benefit ?

[Baalzamon]

Goods Exchange was supposed to be a part of the resource planets that would sell the excess goods off at base port sale price (for example, say 1 lux=1,000 credits, and there are 1000 lux on the planet, using the GE, you turn that into 10,000,000)

[Edgecrusher]

I agree with all of Baalz' suggestions. We can think of more planet types as we the game progresses.

[JettJackson]

i like all these changes

[Infinity]

Well, that's sweet Let's go one step further with this.. Baalz mentioned speeding up builds and population growth, which Edge and I discussed recently in beta chat, what I'd also like to see is more structures on support planets, that is higher defense and fire power. On most planets I'd suggest adding more hangars...

Why? Well, support planets seem to easy to be busted. Currently, landers get deadly when they hit 4k CDs, then how hard the bust will be depends on amount of shields they have, more shields, longer the bust, till we reach lvl140, so what I was thinking is getting support planets to 2800-3000 CDs and perhaps some additional turrets.

Thoughts?