Hide staryard info

posted on February 8th, 2013, 5:25 am

This idea may have been suggested before... I might have even posted before, but I searched and cant find anything...

Basically the idea is to make it so your opponent cant see your build order out of your yard. Thinking about it, I find it odd an enemy knows what ship your building, and especially what you plan to build. This really gives an advantage to a cloaking race, or really anybody who has a scout in range of the yard.

I have two similar proposals:

#1 Make it so that your opponent(s) can not see what you are building, or your build que.

#2 Make it so that your opponent(s) can not see your build que, but can see your build order.

I think this could allow for a bit more surprise and emphasize quick reaction skills, and active scouting.
Right now we have situations such as this:

Player #1 Has ship X building in the yard and has ship Y in the building que.
Player #2 sees this and builds ship A and B to counter ship X and Y.

Under the proposed changes player #2 would not know this just by having a cloaked scout on the staryard, or by scouting near the staryard, instead he would have to take note of the enemy fleet during engagements, as well as scouting the enemy fleet.

posted on February 8th, 2013, 5:29 am

I agree, some races *cough* dominion *cough* are FAR to easy to scout build orders and counter too. currently only the borg have the advantage of waiting till the last second to build there ship, and thus test the fastest reaction time.


I support this 100%

posted on February 8th, 2013, 6:29 am

Fleet Operations is a slow fleet building game, so checking build queues is perfectly reasonable in my opinion . It's not possible to react after the fact in most cases, you have to plan for what your opponent can do. We already have several build orders in 327 where you purposely hide your queue by not putting everything in it at once, so there's added "skill" in hiding some (limited) stuff there, or even faking your build queue.

In V4, there's a lot more scouting and aggressive scout-hunting in general, so if you can, getting a quick glance at a shipyard is a nice way to see if your opponent is pulling the wool over your eyes with some wayward research stations - or a good way of tricking your opponent with a fake build queue. .

posted on February 8th, 2013, 7:29 am

And I do take into account that V4 will change many things, and that has to be taken into account.

However I still contend that this would emphasize gameplay, but I did voice two different ideas exactly do the the things you just mentioned Dom. So perhaps the ship you are building should be shown, but I think it would add to the game if the que is not shown.

Certainly faking build ques as current is a strategy, so that would be eliminated. However I disagree with you that its not possible to react to a change in ships. I dont think it would be too disastrous unless you let your opponent get more then 4-5 hard countering ships (in early game), and I would say at that point, why did you let them get those ships without noticing.

I would contend a greater emphasis should be put on seeing what stations have been built, knowing your opponents options given what you know and have scouted, i.e. what your building, what ships they have built, what their estimated resources are, what stations they have, etc. Rather than just being able to sit with a scout and see what they are building, and plan to build.