Romulan sneaks

posted on April 20th, 2010, 2:14 pm

Recently Dave Denton made a post which sparked this idea:

The romulans as we know are sneaky. so i have two ideas:

1) give their constructor a cloak

this could be balanced by requiring a costly research for the idea. possibly the research could be done at the cloaking generator.

this would allow the constructor to sneak into places and build stuff. possibly even allow them to build while cloaked. the building they are making would obviously be visible. this would be funny if a constructor could slip into your base and make a turret to annoy you. you would have to watch carefully to make sure your enemies dont catch you with your trousers down. imagine your surprise when the shiny (or rusty) new b'rel you built gets flattened by a turret you didnt know existed.

2) allow the constructor to build from a distance.

this could also require a research maybe.

the building would obviously be much slower as the worker bees have to travel a large distance to build. this would make for some interesting gameplay

this has two huge problems i can see, the constructor would have to be prevented somehow from constructing through an asteroid field, worker bees shouldn't be allowed through. also what if you are building at a distance and your enemy sees the building under construction, the game wont allow them to shoot the building, but they may not be able to reach the constructor. it seems silly because in reality the enemy could just shoot the new building.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 2:23 pm

1) It could, and lost that ability due to balance concerns. The enhanced cloak detection is unlikely to make it any less unbalanced. Buolding while cloaked is also a stock, non-research feature. Move constructor behind the base and build a Starbase/Shipyard.

2) Build from a distance is an exploitable cheat. Build as many Starbase/Shipyards as you have free constructors behind the enemy base from the safety of your base.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 2:31 pm

your criticsm about building a starbase behind your enemy's base is why i suggested counter-blances.

to go for this idea you would need to build expensive stations and do expensive research before you can cloak. then you have to save up the money for a starbase, which isnt cheap. all the while you enemy will be building combat ships and starving your expansion. so its not as easily exploitable as it sounds on face value. if you are careless enough to let your enemy build a starbase in proximity to your base you deserve your defeat.

an additional counter could be to make construction take longer while cloaked. or any constructor that has the cloak ability constructs a lot slower.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 2:37 pm

That might slow down the exploit potential for a while, but people who use exploits tend to be good at what they do.

Even if this does manage to provide some balance, I'm not sure it would convince people (including the devs, who are the ones you need to convince) to put back something that hasn't been there since V2.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 3:17 pm

Good ideas, Myles 

posted on April 20th, 2010, 3:20 pm

haha thx for the inspiration.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 3:36 pm

yep, the race redo will feature a lot of sneaky stuff for the Romulans, including some refiting for the Mogai

posted on April 20th, 2010, 3:38 pm

cant wait 

this game just gets better and better.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 3:50 pm

I always thought the Romulan constructors should have access to the stationary cloak, at least (but not build while cloaked).  I can't wait to see the changes.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 4:12 pm

Sounds like an interesting idea really dude, maybe there could be a seperate construction ship which you can build after your first research station which can cloak past enemy defences and then decloak to build the hidden outposts. That also gives the possibility of limiting what structures this second covert constructor can build such as; only allowing it to build a t1 shipyard and defence turrets? How does that sound myles?

posted on April 20th, 2010, 4:17 pm

limiting its construction potential would stop it from being able to sneak away and rebuild of your main base got destroyed, i would like it to be able to rebuild lost bases.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 4:29 pm

Why remove cloak in the first place if you intend to put it back?

posted on April 20th, 2010, 8:22 pm

Because when they (theoretically) put it back, it's made a lot better (balance-wise), but it takes a while to make it that way and it probably isn't too high on the priority list.

posted on April 20th, 2010, 10:01 pm

so..... we always hear about this elusive redo, for fediies for roms for borg for new races..... when exactely does this all happen, is this like one of those in 3-4 year deals or inside of a year or what....?

posted on April 20th, 2010, 10:07 pm

you know when they get around to it.