Spice -> Fuel server ONLY

Ideas for improving Starport:GE

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JuliusCaesar
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Spice -> Fuel server ONLY

Post by JuliusCaesar » Tue May 20, 2014 2:15 pm

I credit this idea to DarkSide on Hydra, who mentioned it a half hour ago from this post.

His idea was to make a server were fuel doesn't regenerate, but can only be spice-dumped. I thought this was an interesting concept as it would radically change the nature of colonies, make deserts amazingly important, and make the game feel a lot more immense feeling. I've always wanted a more mad max style of game, where "oil" control is important.
He who controls the spice, controls the universe!
Fuel Regen balance:
Obviously there would need to be some balance changes (which, /can/ be made server specific right?) to implement this idea. I thought it would be a fair trade off to start with 2k fuel, and have the ability to naturally regenerate only up to 1k, and even then, have that regen rate very low, maybe .25/minute. Token fueling would be limited to maybe 1k/day, spice-free. IMO, the spice-dump cap would have to be raised to accommodate such a server, maybe change it to 1-2k at a time, and increase the rate at which the engines can process it. Ideally the rate of fuel regeneration would be the same as an average server, maybe even higher depending on what ideas I have for the server could be implemented, and the only difference is it would need spice.

Changes to building:
The planet count per system would also have to be high. Maybe change the makeup of the galaxy too, make deserts more rare? Alternatively, the rate at which planets make spice could be tweaked to favor deserts more, and the balance of 50,000 spice in a refinery-> actual usage of spice-fuel would need to be tweaked, and the research spice mining would be more rare. Oh, and the requirement of spice for building purposes would be heavily lowered, or even removed entirely, turning it entirely into a fuel resource. Maybe some kind of lock would have to be made available on refineries, to prevent contractors from stealing spice, or at the very least have persistent notifications when contractors take spice, maybe in the news.

Changes to invading:
Its obvious that such changes would radically nerf invading, so to fix this I would propose lowering the weapons cap on planets to some balanced point, making reshielding and renuking less fuel-costly. I also think this would turn invading less into a grind, and more into sick caps, as no one wants to waste more fuel or time than necessary, right? Another idea I thought might be paired well with this server is to have weapons factories have a greater shields capacity, I'd suggest three or four times higher, and make the average distance between ports higher, maybe 1 port for every three or four systems? This would make wars a lot more based on the "geography" of the galaxy, secret planning and build ups, and to this end, a unique server layout would be ideal, perhaps something similar to a scaled down HC or Hydra. I've also always wanted a cold war type build ups on servers, and I think having a new scanner ability built into existing scanner types that gives four levels of over-all weapons factory size would be GREAT. Such as:

1: Empty/no-wf
2: Some weapons
3: Moderately full
4: STACKED

This means invaders could particularly set targets, and wars wouldn't stagnate too quickly due to lack of weapons and fuel, but rather be based on spice control. The scans could only be done ON the surface, which adds an element of risk to such sneak attacks, what if someone sees you land? Is it a misland? Is he prepping for war? WHO KNOWS! Looks like you better start scanning yourself!

I very weakly suggest lowering solar cannon damage slightly, maybe 10%, but definitely increase the power of surface missiles and photon torpedoes against lasers, to counteract the tendency builders would have to simply not build weapon factories or sell them off. If anyone can invade your planets with skill and a relative lack of weapons, its probably best to have something better to fight back with, right? This would also make layouts more important, as no one will put a semi-transparent weapons factory on a BBQ layout.

Lastly, I thought that randomly generating wormholes would be cool to have rather than black holes. Instead of having a fixed mouth and exit, allowing for one way travel, maybe have randomly selected pairs of stars turn into black holes, allowing for two way travel between points, basically making them unstable wormholes, that change origin and destination maybe...every week or two? This would help to balance out the potential stagnation from having few ports and the fuel/shield interplay.


Workload:
I don't think too much of this would be difficult to code, except the wormole part, and adding the scanner ability, but it would be very difficult to balance. Correct me if I'm wrong toonces, but wouldn't much of this just be changing variable values? In order to minimize the balancing difficulty, it would be best to have this server be a relatively small rebang. If gets popular and well balanced, maybe the settings could be made into a new difficulty, "hardcore".

I know these are big changes. And I know not everyone will share my ideals and interests with them. Some of these ideas would work alone, some of these won't. I only hope that something can be taken from them and make this game better, and I really see a lot of potential in this. Toonces, this game uses python right? If this interests you, I will gladly try and learn it in order to help out, much like muffin did with blitz. I have some CS experience, but its very amateurish at the moment.

And to anyone who sees this post, please critique my ideas. What do you see wrong with them? How can they be made better? Thanks for reading this light novel.

And again, I credit DarkSide for the original idea, and the rest of my suggestions are merely to try and make it work.

PS: hug ship mods.

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Lookingglass
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Re: Spice -> Fuel server ONLY

Post by Lookingglass » Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:50 pm

I like this idea though it already has something that toon few wouldn't go for. Limiting token fueling would decrease income from a server and seeing as toonces has already killed servers because they didn't make enough in tokens he wouldn't make a server that limited token fueling. Other then that minor detail I think everything about this potential server sounds awesome.

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