Noxter gameplay and Flagships

posted on August 15th, 2011, 5:02 am

This post is going to be very, very long.  You were warned.

I've had an idea recently about how Noxter gameplay could work, when it's reintroduced.  I also have a plan for how the mechanics could be introduced beforehand so we have a chance to playtest them before using them on an entire race.

Noxter ships aren't built the same way as other races'.  I know it feels very similar to the Zerg from Starcraft, but it worked great for them.

The Noxter are very mobile, but in most cases they will stay in one place and, if the breeder is used as their resource drop-off, mine from one moon pair.  If it's a core part of their gameplay that they can relocate their base, they need to have an economy that allows them to stop mining for a while without hurting their ship production.

I think that the Noxters should operate on a sort of swarm logic, with the breeder spawning larvae in groups of 3 every few minutes.  Their cost will be relatively low, so that their "birth rate" is more of a limiting factor in the beginning.  But the most important thing will be their experience.

Noxter ships will gain experience in groups.  When a noxter gets a kill, the experience is split among all nearby ships you control so it takes longer for them to rank up, but when they do they all rank at once.  In addition, Noxter ships will gain experience slowly over time.  While it won't be fast enough to realistically get ranks without fighting, it will help if your entire brood is close to ranking after a battle.

In addition, Noxter ships will all have a set of synergistic effects that only work on others of the same rank.  A small speed boost, for example 3 points for each ship in the brood.  Since ships rank up in groups, their rank will determine which "brood" each ship is attached to and they get their combat bonuses from flying with family.  The experience required for each rank is greater than the one below and the experience gained over time gets slower the higher the ship's rank, so separate broods will tend to get closer to each other and combine with a little guidance from the player.  Once you have more breeders you may decide to save up your larvae to create a large, united brood instead of getting your ships out faster but without perfect unity.

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Now, the prototype idea of this is Flagships.  I propose that a few iconic ships of the existing factions change the way they gain experience so that they rank up based on nearby kills instead of individual kills.  These will represent certain classes of ship that were designed to be flagships and have the potential to lead the fleet.  While their rankups will be slow, they will be certain and once they reach double-gold they have the option to become a Flagship INSTEAD of a veteran.  There can only be one flagship at a time and it costs around 50 supplies to promote one.

There could be some new classes for this, but what I had in mind was this:
Federation: Galaxy and Sovereign.
Romulan: D'deridex (Not Tavara because it isn't especially a fleet ship, more of a dreadnought)
Dominion: V-15 Dreadnought and Breen Battleship
Klingon: Luspet and Brel.  The Brel only gains experience this way when weapon fatigue is active.

Obviously the idea could be refined a lot, but this would allow for special things like the Galaxy X and other iconic ships from the show.  It would also give these classes something unique to offer, which they currently lack (or are under consideration for a rebalance)

What do you guys think?

posted on August 15th, 2011, 7:45 am

Well written, hope the devs take there time read and if its good, implement it.

posted on August 15th, 2011, 8:58 am

Nice collection of ideas.

However, at the moment, we dont have finite plans on how the Noxter gameplay will work, as we want to redo the gameplay of the existing factions first. Yet, it is very likely that the Noxter will play very different from how they were done in the old beta (we just did not have the possibilities to do it as we liked) and should also be quite different from what you encounter in the generic RTS game.
Its quite likely that the Noxter will not use experience much - or at least not the way the 3 "alpha quadrant powers" use it, as a single Noxters mental abilities are very different from those of a human. Their thinking is usually a lot more static and experience should not have a large impact.

Yep, the idea of flagships is floating through the forums till the times of beta1. Yet, we are strongly against hero units as they can be found in many RTS games. The veteran system is a variant of it we like and I think its also a lot more fun to make the heros yourself. Its unlikely that we will introduce flagships for all the factions. Btw, the Tavara is actually the flagship of the Romulan home fleet (oh and will get a new model down the road. its still a placeholder since beta2!). Yet i think the faction redos will deliver some candy for those who like heros, flagships and unique characters

posted on August 15th, 2011, 9:27 am

Really good ideas here. I can see you getting into dead ends with small surviving groups of nox having to hang around until some others get to tier rank.
Still one think FO lacks is a race that can recover from the brink. If your back gets broken you're done and the ability to flood out ships in a "charged up" spawning pattern could be the thing to turn back defeat.
(I love the valient last stands of klingon mining operations - but they're largely ineffectual)

posted on August 15th, 2011, 3:32 pm

Yeah, A few changes would need to be done.  The Tavara would probably be a flagship for the Romulans, I just didn't like the idea last night at midnight for some reason.

The point I was thinking of from the beginning is that some ships don't tend to rank up as easily.  Canaverals, for example, are very difficult to get to higher ranks.  And a while back we were discussing the descent class and how it has trouble getting ranks when it feels like it shouldn't.  Usually it has something to do with their firing patterns.

Romulan ships have a built in mechanic that causes their experience to sometimes pile up on an individual ship.  Similar to the T-15 effect, as soon as a Romulan ship ranks up it gets a new ROF bonus that causes it to do more damage for the next few seconds which can cause it to rank again instead of your other ships.  It's possible for a Romulan player to focus experience on just one of his ships in order to rank it up quickly, but I don't see this as a bad thing.

I was just thinking about specific ship classes that are famous heroes from the show but seldom get to rank up in the game.  In lieu of a full-blown area XP mechanic, maybe they could have a passive that says they take less experience to rank up, with a downside that their crew combat strength is lower.  For ships that were originally sciencey like the galaxy, canaveral, C-11, singularity refit etc.  I realize this ability would not be equal across races because it's not as important for cloaky races and the Klingons don't have any sciencey ships.

posted on August 15th, 2011, 4:43 pm

I was just thinking about specific ship classes that are famous heroes from the show but seldom get to rank up in the game.  In lieu of a full-blown area XP mechanic, maybe they could have a passive that says they take less experience to rank up, with a downside that their crew combat strength is lower.  For ships that were originally sciencey like the galaxy, canaveral, C-11, singularity refit etc.  I realize this ability would not be equal across races because it's not as important for cloaky races and the Klingons don't have any sciencey ships.

I don't know, the ships may be mainly science/exploration before combat, but the crews themselves are still trained military officers with any non-combatants and non-essentials offloaded before battle (or not onboard at all for non-Warp-Ins).

Civilian ships like the Constructor or Freighter would be more believable (except the Borg and Dominion ones).