Yet another warp in post of ideas

posted on July 9th, 2011, 4:53 am

The biggest issue with warp in is depending on whom you ask.

1. 3 Free ships every every 180 seconds.

2. The chance of a battleship or heavy cruiser (galaxy, weapons neb or ambassador)

3. The fact that feds don't pay up front but instead at the back end when they die.

Dominion and Klingon negate the first and second points by being able to mob a warp in fed player. Simply by keeping one more yard running than the federation has. Point 3 will give them issues if the game goes long enough. But balancing back end 40+ minute games is... a lot of sliding variables.

The Romulans can dink and dunk and murder miners and are hard to catch due to that impressive cloak. They can work around point number 2 but 1 sometimes gets them in trouble due to being out numbered and how expensive romulan ships are compared to the "free" up front cost of the warp ins.

The Borg suffer badly because they have no way of dealing with point two early game, and the aggressive deny the enemy resources is countered by point 1 and 3.

To me if you paid supply up front for every warp in, instead of at the back end when they die it'd fix 1/3rd of the balance issues. Federation supply costs are the lowest in the game. This would make it so that every warp in has a cost that a fed player has to pay attention to.

However even with that change, the borg still lack a viable way to punch it out with battleships that early. I like the galaxy but for balance purposes it is kind of a dog.

That is my penny.

posted on July 9th, 2011, 5:09 am

It would help balance, for sure, but not gameplay.  It would simply be three ships you pay for like every other ship.

posted on July 9th, 2011, 9:50 am

just to add, about point 2, the destroyer in that slot (rhode island) has the speed of the fastest combat ships (140) with the stats of a cruiser. defence 28, 2 less than an ambas, with medium range weapons, and all other 140 speed ships are short range. that rhode island is probably the best warpin you can get, not because it has the strongest stats, but because if u micro it well it should never die (specials like is bomb aside)

the other rare warpin in that slot has 120 speed and a battleship defence stat of 36 (more than a galaxy). run that away early and it will survive quite often, as it will take ages of 130/140 speed ships firing on it before it dies. it will probably get back to somewhere safe in that time. or the rest of the fleet will cut up the chasing fragile ships

about the idea, althought making feds pay for these ships will make it more balanced, that does kinda make sfc just another yard again even if its just supply. maybe if running sfc took a supply amount per minute. as u have to supply admirals (the important ones working in sfc building) with romulan ale and stuff.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:00 pm

about the idea, althought making feds pay for these ships will make it more balanced, that does kinda make sfc just another yard again even if its just supply. maybe if running sfc took a supply amount per minute. as u have to supply admirals (the important ones working in sfc building) with romulan ale and stuff.

How about, rather than have it eat-up supply once it is built, have the timer linked to supplying it resources (like the Borg Recycler)?

Turn the CoolDown timer into a Recharge timer (starting at zero), which could accept Di, Tri, and/or Supply "payments" in turn for running the timer.  If you stop payments, the timer stops.    Balancing SFC would then just turn into a numbers game of how much are those ships "really" worth at points during the game.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:20 pm

Personally i feel like the devs more then likely already have a "interesting" change/solution for warpin that we will see soon.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:25 pm

An interesting idea.  Buying special energy with resources.  It would have to be a replaceweapon, that cost like 10 dil and 10 tri to use.  Every time the button was pressed, a trigger with a special weapon that gave the station energy would be placed and then dissapear.  

The only problem is what is to stop players from getting unlimited warpins with no delay?  they just need resources, and then they just keep hitting a button and will get warpins back to back.  It would work if you could have a cool down, and a recharge, but atm you cant.  to replace the cool down with a recharge means as soon as its recharged you can use the weapon again, so you warpin, recharge, warpin, etc.  

posted on July 12th, 2011, 11:22 am

Personally i feel like the devs more then likely already have a "interesting" change/solution for warpin that we will see soon.

Most likely, however I'm just bouncing ideas around, to see if something sticks in the meantime (just because someone else started the topic).

An interesting idea.  Buying special energy with resources.  It would have to be a replaceweapon, that cost like 10 dil and 10 tri to use.  Every time the button was pressed, a trigger with a special weapon that gave the station energy would be placed and then dissapear.  

The only problem is what is to stop players from getting unlimited warpins with no delay?  they just need resources, and then they just keep hitting a button and will get warpins back to back.  It would work if you could have a cool down, and a recharge, but atm you cant.  to replace the cool down with a recharge means as soon as its recharged you can use the weapon again, so you warpin, recharge, warpin, etc.  

That wasn't quite what I was thinking.   

Basically what I'm proposing is that there would be three buttons on SFC (one for each type of resource).  Clicking on any one (or all of the buttons), would begin transmuting that resource into either Special Energy, or just incrementing the current timer. 

I'm not exactly sure what each resource is "worth", but right now, the Borg Recycler consumes about 0.3 supply/second to produce either Tritanium or Dilithum.  So using that as an example, you could envision the following "rates of consumption" to gain either special energy or increment time to call-in Warp-In support (All existing caps would still apply):

Dilithum  -  Consumes 8/sec to increment a value of 1
Tritanium  -  Consumes 2.5/sec to increment a value of 1
Supply  -  Consumes 0.3/sec to increment a value of 1

With all three buttons enabled, this would consume approximately the cost of an E2 to generate enough energy to call-in the first Warp-in (assumed an energy start of zero), and maintain the current 250 second "cool-down".    Obviously, the resource consumption values could be made more or less costly to "balance" the early-game issues.

Does this make more sense?

posted on July 12th, 2011, 1:29 pm

I see.  It is less possible that way, but more balenced.

I still don't think you should pay for the ships up front though. Maybe a cost over time, or simply do it the way it is now.

posted on July 12th, 2011, 3:43 pm

I'm in favor of SFC consuming resources per second. The one downside is once warp in cap is reached, resources will still be consumed. In the long run that could be costly. But it keeps the ships free while giving them a price tag.

posted on July 12th, 2011, 3:45 pm

I'm in favor of SFC consuming resources per second. The one downside is once warp in cap is reached, resources will still be consumed. In the long run that could be costly. But it keeps the ships free while giving them a price tag.

just because u arent begging starfleet for help doesnt mean those admirals stopped drinking romulan ale

personally i wouldnt mind sfc hurting feds after they reach the cap. they could always decom sfc once they have all 10.

posted on July 12th, 2011, 4:44 pm

normally by the time warpin cap reached the feds have a huge fleet anyway i only see the continued cost affecting really long games plus the feds can expand rather easily so it could work out ok

cool idea by the way 

posted on July 12th, 2011, 4:55 pm

Why not charge for each warp-in slot? start the game with just one and pay X amount of Dil/Tri to add another slot. that way you don't pay up front for ships and you also can't get 4 "dogs" in the first 10 minutes of the game. My 2.5 Cents. (I like it the way it is but I am also an independent thinker).

posted on July 12th, 2011, 5:47 pm

Buying the slots themselves makes way more sense.  Then, you can keep the max cap, but also have the payment you all soo badly want.

The question is, how on earth would you do that?

posted on July 12th, 2011, 5:54 pm

Upgrade similar to the Starbase one would work, though each upgrade would need a new cap file, new ship odfs for each cap and new Warp-In file for the different cap upgrades.

Would probably need about 10x the current Warp-In ship, Warp-In cap and Warp-In weapon odf files even without counting the Nebula Warp-In.

[remore]

posted on July 12th, 2011, 5:58 pm

Last edited by remore on July 12th, 2011, 6:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Or go about it backwards. Have SFC cost 9 warpin slots itself. and each "Upgrade" pulls one of those slots. you can say each slot was "Free'd up" admittedly its not as pretty but its far easier.

Edit: Thought of this after. you could use a "resource" as a slot for example what are now collective connections (not sure what it really is, haven't looked). can be produced at SFC for an amount of dil/tri and then each warpin uses one, and when the ship is destroyed you gain one back.