posted on May 15th, 2009, 7:03 pm
Last edited by Anonymous on May 17th, 2009, 11:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
At this time there have been several ideas ventured as to how we may make the Dominion more in line with their canonical selves.
The current Dominion style is a mere regurgitation of Rom/Kling/Fed styles with little emphasis on the unique attributes that made the Dominion formidable in DS9. Agreed, that we do have prototypes and supplies as an added element, but those fail to bring out the true nature of the race.
Some may argue that the pure tech has an increased build speed but for those of us who have played it, although we most certainly see things leaning in the right direction, we are still not quite at the canon Dominion. (After all minor increases were present in borg ships througout A1 and A2, but we all knew that in spite of seeing a borg cube with 1200 crew and slightly stronger shields, it was no canon Borg).
This "hedge towards the correct dominion" is what we see in the current implementation, and hope that the ideas below will culminate in a more complete dominion style, the way FO brought out the canon Borg.
The dominion in canon were known for producing ships quicker than any alpha quadrant race. In effect spam was an art for them, just as extreme power was a trait for the borg (which has been brought out in a very balanced manner in FO). The only constraint the founders were faced with were - resources, build time (which although much less than the feds still existed for putting a ship together), and crew: Kcel white- K-cel white was a major concern for the dominion, and in almost every engagement the alliance was focused on Dominion K-cel facilities and Shipyards.
Since the mods are playing with the ideas of making the Dominion more in line with the canon style, I would like to run these points by you to see if some could be implemented.
1. Add an additional resource to the Dominion tree - K-cel White. This will be a unique dominion resource just as "Collective Connections" is unique to the borg and helps being balance to the borg side.
We've already ventured this specific element in Dircome's thread on Race specific resources.
To recap -
The dominion will start out with a fixed amount of K-cel white. Kcel white as a resource will only be "synthesized" from a K-cel white facility. It cannot be mined, but will need to be synthesized from supplies.
The facility will in of itself have an option to increase synthesis rates as well as optimize rate of supply consumption to continue the synthesization process. optimization will be akin to decreasing rate of supply intake for x amount of k-cel synthesis. More facilities can be built to increase the rate.
Supply mining will continue as usual. Based on the below mentioned implementation, we can now reduce the supply costs per vessel for their construction.
The k-cel white that is synthesized above will play a central role in Dominion gameplay just as it does in the canon series.
The base amount of K-cel which starts out at x value just as the other resources do, will constitute a limiting factor on dominion ship building. The dominion will need to keep the K-cel white supply positive. Once the supply goes negative crew on all dominion ships and installations will start dying.
to explain how this will work:
Kcel will not be diminished for the construction of a ship. Rather it will start to diminish over the life of the ship once it emerges from the shipyard. The rate of depletion of the k-cel white will reduce based on the class and crew size of the ship. For example a jemhadar scarab ship will deplete k-cel by 1 every 10 seconds. A v-16 on the other the other hand will deplete K-cel by 9 every 10 seconds (as it has 450 crew vs 50 crew of the fighter.). If 2 ships are of the same crew complement, the one further right on the shipyard build selection menu will deplete a fraction more. Mods will need to balance this rate as this is the key to controlling the dominion fleet - a it is in canon.
Prototypes do not deplete K-cel.
It is now left to the player to plan his fleet based on K-cel reserves. The K-cel facility itself will be unlocked only after the research facility and shipyard are built. K-cel synthesis will need to be researched only once at the sbase for the Facility and all other facilities to become operational.
In extreme cases, if the player lets his K-cel white get zeroed out i.e Kcel reserve = 0. All ship building stops.
Crew on all installations (shipyards, ships, sbases etc) will start to die at the same time at the same rate. The only difference now is that instead of k-cel being depleted, your crew on all your facilities is now being depleted.
Installations like Sbases and shipyards etc will not be recrewable until the k-cel supplies are +ve.
This rate is dependent on ships in use. So even if a ship has 3 crew members it will still deplete the full rate.
Once a ship is at 0 crew, its depletion rate is removed.
A good example of how this is to work is as follows -
Take a fleet of 1 v-16 of 450 crew, 1 jem fighter of 50 crew, 1 shipyard of 350 crew, and 1 sbase of 1200 crew. Since the crew is dying out at the same time at the same rate, the jem figheter will be crewless first. Once it is crewless its depletion is reduced from the pool. so now only the v-16 at about 400 crew will continue to deplete. In this case, the shipyard will be crewless first. The crew on the v-16 and the Sbase and the V-16 will still die, until the V-16 is now crewless.
Once the player has no more ships in the fleet, his depletion ends.
At this point he is as good as lost. he can beam from the sbase to near by mining ships and then to mining stations tog et his supply mining back to start replenishing. but at this point he is as good as lost.
If a player finds himself overdrawn and starting to lose crew cos he has overstretched himself, he will need to decommission ships to reduce their draw on the pool of K-cel supplies.
Note - this is going to hold true for Dominion ships (even from the mixed tech yard dreads etc.. of course dreads will draw the largest from the pool). In the breen-dominion mixed tech avatar, breen vessels will not draw on the pool. they will still be slow to build and have the same resource requirements as they now do.
This point is specifically relevant as it will prevent the Dominion spam and will act as a balancer to the dominion side, much as priority and connections balance the borg.
Pursuant to this key element that will restrain Dominion spams and be the primary marker against dominion spam, we have the following changes to the dominion style:
1. reduce build time for dominion fleet ships (not construction or miners) by 25%.
2. reduce supply requirements for constructing spaceships.
3. modify Dominion shipyards to be more like the Klingon small shipyard - they should be upgradable to up to 4 extensions for the small and large yards. Mixed tech yard stays unchanged.
Cost will be dilithium, trilithium and supply for each extension. Each will be costlier than the next.
since the Dominion yard is circular, the extensions will be north, south,east and west. I would prefer to look at the Monac yard as a good design sample. A central structure which is what we have now. Then arms that link to secondary smaller structure(s) or extensions. cost to build each ship will be the same as it is now.
4. Dominion bugs should remain with the same stats (maybe +2 offense). However, the bug collision damage will increase based on its rank. A double gold bar Veteran bug should be able to knock out a full vorcha.
the rest of the game dynamics should be fine, but may need to be tweaked here and there.
Please feel free to share your thoughts, especially if you have other ways of making the gameplay for the Dominion more canon.
