Tritanium, Upgrades, and Super-Research

[Anonymous]

posted on February 14th, 2011, 2:01 am

Last edited by Anonymous on February 14th, 2011, 2:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Just remember that you won't actually need 17 intrepids.  Warp ins like the torp neb, galaxy, and ambassador and so on reduce that "intrepid number" quite significantly, as well as the more powerful E-II.  Some of these ships count close to "two intrepids" for our purposes of comparison.  You could hit the "break even point" at around 10-12 ships quite easily.  There's also the matter of production.  If you have two yards going, and you're getting excess Dilithium, do you put that into a 800-1440 yard to make use of your excess, or throw 400 Dilithium into the weapon upgrades (an indirect form of production itself) instead and use the excess you would have put into a yard and make a turret instead?

I find tritanium to be very useful, and you want at least 2 moons of it.  I can see your point of wanting to make it completely even with dilithium in every and all respects, and hence the super-researches (might I suggest calling them "advanced researches"?  Super-research sounds to me like building dread missiles and all those A2 super bombs).  I think part of it stems from the fact that by the time you accrue a bunch of tritanium, the game could be over.  So it's either quickly thrown into research or specials or what have you.

I think you have a good idea going with the idea of advanced research.  You definitely should make a new thread about it, I think.  I'm not entirely sure what Optec and Doca's thinking on weapon upgrades is.  They nerfed them, so they definitely thought it was too powerful for their game model, but they would have to explain that.  I haven't created my shrinking machine yet, so I can't go spelunking in Optec's brain to find out why they did it.    

Edit:  I think the advanced upgrades would run similar to what the romulans have already.  For instance, the romulan turret upgrades (both the artillery range ability and the implosion device) would be the kinds of upgrades you're looking for.  I wouldn't mind some top tier researches like that in the redoes.

posted on February 14th, 2011, 2:34 am

Speaking of the dreadnought missle..... It may not necessarily be a bad idea to have it as apart of the cardassian npc tech tree. Something any player could acquire through use of the mercenary system that may make it into later versions. I'm not sure how devastating the use of one should be, personally I leave that stuff to the devs.

posted on February 14th, 2011, 4:24 am

Hmm, you make a surprisingly good point.  Having played mainly Romulans, I completely forgot about the effect of warpins.  I did the calculation with Excel 2's, and the ship number only goes down to 9.5 though.  Still I see your point, not all races get the same results.  Dominion have high supply costs, so for them the upgrade is a much more viable option.

You're also right about upgrades being a "luxury" when there isn't enough cash to warrant a new yard, but I think in that case they should still be more effective.  Proxy yarding is in fashion, and players rarely find themselves in that situation.  Well, Romulans don't anyway.  I'm less familiar with Feds 

Still, I think a boost up to 10% each upgrade is needed.  I want a player who gets 3 Di and 3 Tri moons to have an advantage over a player with 3 Di, 2 Tri.  As it is right now, he really does not most of the time.

Perhaps Advanced Research is the way to go: I need to scale down my original wild suggestions to something that could be used more often without breaking the game.  Implosion field is a "meh" ability and costs a TON, but I recently learned that it fits the bill of "insane extra tritanium, what can I do with it!?"

Artillery range turrets is horrible though.

posted on February 14th, 2011, 5:59 am

Just build a few perimeters and upgrade the defense and you'll burn through your tritanium pretty fast.

I think we can both agree that seeing more uses for tritanium would be cool.  But don't you dare talk smack about my arty turrets.  Those (while cloaked) have saved me on many occasion!