Raiding: Beaming Resources

posted on December 18th, 2011, 4:42 am

Can't recall if something like this has been requested before or not. Maybe.

Certain early game raiders/destroyers can gain resources by attacking freighters and lowering their shields. Once the mining ships shields are down, I'm guessing it isn't possible to have a  manual feature that allows to 'transport' resources. Transporting is for crew. However, some direct correlation between the size of a destroyer, and how much it might be able to hold in its cargo bays, when attacking a freighter full of resources.

For instance, a Ktinga is small, and gave up extra cargo space, so the amount it could raid would be slim. Other ships though could manage to directly input resources to the grand total above through raids.

Perhaps some game mechanic can be added that requires you to do something manually that is suggestive of a transporter raid. 

Would give an edge to early game battles. Option to exploit and encourage raiding of opponents mining. etc

So yeah. I would think that in order for this to be successful, the game mechanic could be something like having an option select that says 'lower shields'. No transporting is visible, but you get a direct increase in overall resources. But the shields are lowered. So you can only do this if it is safe. Ie, if you do it while enemy ships are around they will damage hull directly.

posted on December 18th, 2011, 6:52 am

As cool as this sounds, I think the early game is decisive enough as it is.  We can already capture miners and reuse them, anyway.

posted on December 18th, 2011, 6:57 am

I think the Klingon supply gain is already kinda like this, other resources probably wouldn't be too hard to add.

posted on December 18th, 2011, 8:56 am

I could see this as an officer passive.

[godsvoice]

posted on December 18th, 2011, 5:06 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on December 18th, 2011, 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As cool as this sounds, I think the early game is decisive enough as it is.  We can already capture miners and reuse them, anyway.

Well beyond early game, even mid game where you might be looking for a bit extra to build a few cruisers. To transition from a primarily destroyer raider group fleet to a larger one, you could begin with attacks directed towards their mining.

I realize we can already capture miners and reuse them, but in many cases I don't see why this would be the choice of tactics. If destroyers come across a miner, they would steal the resources from the miner. They wouldn't necessarily hijack it then play babysitter to the freighter. They would steal from one ship, destroy it and move on. Not  arguing from a standpoint of necessity, the could possible choose to capture it, and get the resources and decommission the ship for an extra small bit of resources, but it would be just as easy if say the freighter was full of 100 tri to beam as much of it as possible, and not hijack the ship. Because then you have to guard it all the way back to you station.

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Edit: Originally I actually had a much nastier thought in mind. I was considering an option of stealing directly from your opponent's collective resources. You start with 4000 2000 500. What if that was up for grabs? Considering that resources are collected at mining stations, I would presume to think that at least a portion of the resources are being kept there, while others are being shipped to the yards for fleet production. So if raiders and destroyers disable shields of miners, great, they capture some. If they disable shields of a mining station, they gain a small window of access to your overall collected resources.

Based on what freighters (x3) last docked with the mining station the raider steals a low percentage of resources. So if only di freighters docked their, they can't gain access to tri and steal that. Also, they can't just empty you of all your resources, because like suggested above, there must be reallocation of resources taking place and going to yards. So while it can be assumed that at any given moment there would be resources present at the mining stations it is hard to say exactly how much.

Also, you probably have multiple moon pairs going. So at any given moment attacking one mining station at the very best, would have a full storage of maybe three full loads. So 150X3=550 for di, and 100X3=300 for tri. And probably over half is immediately being shipped to production. But I would think you could get a nice haul of some of that left over bit.

But so yeah, I was thinking hey! maybe we can raid from mining stations, which hold a portion of a grand total of the opponent's resources... but... I didn't suggest that. I play AI games. It might be a world of hurt. The AI can build ships a lot, and while I don't normally lose the shields on my mining stations, this might change target priority. Then I'd be facing an AI that lowers the storage docks shields and drains my resources. Even if I could have the option of doing that to the AI... which would certainly be nice. I dunno, I'm open to the suggestion. But figured the freighters was a better fit. But a lot of the counter attack might be lost. Because regularly, I build 2-3 expansions I never plan to defend just to boost my initial resource intake... and those would be liabilities now.

posted on December 18th, 2011, 8:33 pm

Following your line of thought, I believe that it would be better if mining freighters get ranked as the combat units, so a better ranked freighter would mine faster and gather more resources, get a better hull or shield, and that can really change the strategy of the game, because you will get more resources when you must need them and can upgrade your tech tree quickly.

I think the economy part of the game need a retouch 

posted on December 18th, 2011, 11:32 pm

Oh man and this is why you always should read the guide first! I found this in the guide

"Why don't civilian units have an experience system?
The developers don't like the idea of civil units gaining ranks through civil processes, as they don't believe it is right for vessels that you merely command to be promoted for doing ... what they are there for!  Just flying around a moon is not the most kick-ass achievement. Experience will probably remain for military vessels only."

So no ranks for civil units!

posted on December 19th, 2011, 6:32 am

Hmm, well I was going to respond that it wouldn't make sense for ranked up freighters to have increased production for the simply reason of cargo space.

If right now a freighter can haul 150 and 100 respectively. It shouldn't be that ranking a ship, promoting the captain, all of a sudden means the captain now promoted makes this sudden realization,

"hey guys! after my promotion I looked back over the specs of the ships, and did you know we had this entire cargo bay on the left side here that we've never used! Dear me, we can mine twice as much now! hurray"

So without revisions to the freighter itself, I don't really like increased production. I know the dominion mixed tech was neat, with its freighter, but that is built at different costs and such. It isn't through rank up, its through mixed tech.

So yeah, destroyers and raiding parties. As for specific numbers, roughly 50 di, 50 tri-ish? Per ship. A really good raid will consist of maybe 5 ships, if they time it right they can maybe grab 250 from two miners. This would mean that when you are attacked you actually would stop mining so that the raiding fleet wouldn't be able to steal from you. Among other things. Perhaps this even leads to new technologies/research. I.e. anti-transporter technology the freighters can activate on their ships to prevent this. etc

posted on December 19th, 2011, 10:19 am

Oh man and this is why you always should read the guide first! I found this in the guide

"Why don't civilian units have an experience system?
The developers don't like the idea of civil units gaining ranks through civil processes, as they don't believe it is right for vessels that you merely command to be promoted for doing ... what they are there for!  Just flying around a moon is not the most kick-ass achievement. Experience will probably remain for military vessels only."

So no ranks for civil units!

All you have to do is add larger hold upgrades either from a research station or on the individual ships themselves. What I mean is give them upgrades similar to starbases just instead of weapon upgrades increase the size of their hold. While the ship is upgrading it cannot do anything else like the fed repairships. Simples 

posted on December 19th, 2011, 10:10 pm

I could get behind miner upgrades as a mid/late-game tech option. God knows that the Romulans in particular could use miner upgrades.

posted on December 19th, 2011, 10:24 pm

I don't know about improved freighters.

However, we could create a new niche with this, a mid game ship that has a role of raiding the enemy's economy.

Considering most of the ships we currently have as destroyers would fulfill the role of intercepting enemy ships and engaging them.

Therefore, a new ship equipped with both decent weaponry and storage/cargo space for raiding. We may have destroyers, but we don't really have raiders that do raiding. So, a raiding class of starships.

It definitely works for Romulans, and Klingons in my view. Dominion would also use it I would imagine. I'm not sure the Borg would, I mean, I know they assimilate and absorb other ships, but I don't think they'd create a specific craft to go out and look for small amounts of resources collected by other races when they have resource collectors that gather much much more. Then feds, which may or may not support a raiding class ship. Maybe.

posted on December 19th, 2011, 10:31 pm

Therefore, a new ship equipped with both decent weaponry and storage/cargo space for raiding.

With the upcoming unit-profiles-system, I think that "decent weaponry + storage- and cargo-space" sound alot like a possible allround-profile. I doubt a Defiant would have the space to store Dilithium for example. You'd rather expect that from a Galaxy-class vessel which is still well-armed and flexible in terms of cargp-space and such.

A vessel that comes in mind for that "steal the minerals"-stuff just needs to be ok in terms of weaponry and speed, because miners usually are slow and weak-defended.

posted on December 20th, 2011, 1:42 am

True with upcoming changes this would not really be an offensive or defensive specific ship, but probably an all-around ship.

I wasn't really even thinking of a large scale ship being devoted to this. I.e. Galaxy or Defiant.

More a Cruiser or Destroyer sized vessel.

But yep.