Utopia Planetia - maybe slightly different

[godsvoice]

posted on July 30th, 2011, 3:26 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on July 30th, 2011, 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This would be at the very end of the techtree.

Requirements:

Starfleet Engineering - All chassis researched, 2 weapons upgrades, 2 shields upgrades, and 2 sensor upgrades (fully researched star fleet engineering)

Starfleet Science

Starfleet Command

Antares Yard

Eraudi Yard

To build this station, you are required to decommission two active yards, one Antares and one Eraudi Yard. I would like it to also need star fleet engineering to be decommissioned, but thats open(i.e. everything is already researched). Once this is completed, a new station is built by the constructor... similar to a utopia planetia idea. Maybe different look though... I don't remember what it looks like from the show, is the eraudi yard the same design? It would be the largest sized building for the feds, or at least equivalent slightly bigger than the star base. So you need lots of room to build it. Limit one.

And what does this fantastic yard do? For double the cost of the ship, and 2.5x the time of construction, you get a double gold bar vessel. Either Antares or Eraudi ship classes may be built.

At this point, starfleet has researched extensively into ship improvements, and is looking for state of the art vessels. But starfleet is also looking for state of the art crew. The extra build time is for recruiting the best crew members from nearby sectors, or even some slightly further away sectors. Federation already have longer ship build times, this increases build time even more. However, the double gold bar vessels can never upgrade to Veteran. As a result of building this yard, you lose an Antares and Eraudi yard. This means you also need to spend money on an additional yard of each type. As the production line of the new yard will be slow, yet powerful.

The federation have fairly few stations to build, and get them roughly early in the game. This won't be practical until you can afford all your researches, and to decommission two yards. The construction time is lengthy. First you must wait for older stations to deconstruct, and the time to build this yard is lengthy. We can decide on that later. Perhaps thirty seconds longer than a starbase? And then to get your first ship will be another few minutes. I'm guessing it will rarely come up in multiplayer. Be similar to a borg cube. Maybe just in 3 vs 3.

With all of those balancing acts, what is your only perk? A double gold bar classed ship of any kind.

Edit: Actually, you can upgrade any vessel constructed to veteran. If it is built from this yard, regardless of class, the cost is 25/25 veteran slots. So, really not even worth it.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 3:37 pm

That sounds like a nice idea. But I find it illogical to dismantle two shipyards. Why not simply upgrade the shipyards? It also stops the production of ships. But I have the possibility to upgrade for only one Antares shipyards.

regards
Stangi

posted on July 30th, 2011, 3:43 pm

Well, originally, I was going to suggest that you would have to merge the Antares and Eraudi yard into one station. Meaning you would have to construct them side by side in planning forward...

But then I thought, for one, this restricts the station and what it can look like, and maybe isn't really that great. If players build their yards all over. But yeah, i couldn't think of a good reason for why to deconstruct the two yards.

It's mainly balance. You are giving up two regular yards of good production, for this powerful but slowly producing special yard class. But in it, you get both the antares and eraudi ship classes.

Also, I didn't want it to be like the klingon field yard. Where you still have two yards as feds, one antares and one eruadi, where you could still technically build two ships, one from each yard. That seemed more klingon.

So, I decided on the suggestion of dismantling two yards. Forcing you to build two more. While getting the added yard. it seemed more balanced and what not. i'm open to other ideas

posted on July 30th, 2011, 3:59 pm

I don't think decommissioning yards is a viable requirement.  How would the game know that they're being decommissioned for this yard?  If you decommed a yard at the beginning of the game, would it count if you wanted to build this yard later?

I don't think the devs are planning to do something like this, but if they ever did it should be based on the existing yards.  For example, once the ability is unlocked the yard can be upgraded to produce ranked ships, and maybe only 1 rank per upgrade.  Then if people were willing to make the models, the stations could change appearance once they reach a certain upgrade level.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 4:05 pm

fair enough.

we won't necessarily decommission the yards then.

you could give the yard that sort of an upgrade system.

at first the yard is looking for crew that are at 1 silver equivalent. good records with Starfleet lots of promise. Then when you upgrade it, they start recruiting ships for 2 silver equivalent. After four upgrades, they start producing ships at four gold bar.

I think this is better, and accommodates for not decommissioning the other yards. You still have to pay to get to the double gold bar, just in a different way.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 4:33 pm

Hm.. this idea somehow bothers me.

Utopia Planitia isn't just a station or something like that, it's a full complex of multiple yards working on their own... so if you build dozens of yards it would be the same thing actually.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 4:35 pm

Yeah, and then it would need to strike a balance between the new yard cost and the new ship costs.  For example, some ships are harder to rank up than others and as a result they have better officer/vet abilities.

For example, a veteran canaveral is freaking sweet because it's so hard to actually get one, same with the C-11.  The difference between a green canaveral and a double-gold canaveral is different from the difference between a green intrepid and a double-gold intrepid.  Basically the entire system would require a new level of balance testing.

Now, if one of the third Federation avatar's unique ships was a refitted station that produced ships with 1 silver bar and that avatar didn't get many other bonuses (or even had drawbacks) then something like that could be balanced.  I just don't think officer ships will ever be buildable en masse.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 4:38 pm

sorry. purpose of utopia planetia in the title was suggestive of a specialized yard design... in this case, one that produces double gold bar vessels, rallying crew with high potential.

i realized the utopia planetia in the shows was based on earth, and yes, produced multiple ships.

the comparison only goes so far. simply that it is not a run of the mill regular yard. not antares. not eraudi. it builds either of the ship classes.

it could be made to have multiple docks. thinking of the letter 'y'. there is a station at the center part of the y. and each of the lines outside is a  yard. so three yards... but again this is a klingon on thing, so i was steering clear of that line of thought.

it is a specialized yard, for double gold bar ships. utopia planetia just came to mind.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 4:50 pm

tryptic: yeah, ive suggested stations for increasing ranks before. maybe not in the books. but its just an idea thread.

we could customize each individual ship and its build time. instead of a universal 2.5x build time. maybe have the saber take 2 min, and a sovereign take nine. maybe some turn out to be 4-7x their regular build time.

but really, the cost and build time couldnt be made to help balance this? a ship going from green to double gold bar is probably on the field for quite some time. enough to destroy say 4-10 ships to fully rank. If we take in additional building costs, and building time... doesnt that somewhat help to alleviate balance?

Maybe this yard is specifically just to get the rank stats, ie off. def. and sys. in order to get the ranking special, it still needs kills like usual. the double gold bar is only for stats. in order for the officer ability, it still needs regular amount of kills??

i want the stats of a ranked ship. not necesarily the specials.

to be honest, i haven't played fleetops in like 1-2 months. then started up the other day as federation. i played against a couple of dominion. team 1 me, team 2 dominion, team 3 dominion. then i just waited till i was almost screwed for letting the two attack each other and get really high up the tech tree. then i spammed some sovereigns after like a full hour of collecting resources. 70+ sovereigns later, i had about 14 fully ranked sovereigns... the beasts just could not die. i was sitting right in the middle of one of the dominions bases. starbases, perimeters, phaser sentries, and 5-10+ dominion ships... i might have lost on sovereign. cant rememeber if i used a warp in to help. and i constantly had incoming sovereigns. but yeah, it was fantastic. i lost huge amounts while trying to get to their bases. they had plenty of ships from both sides i had to fight through first, and destroy many shipyards. but when i did get to the starbase, my 10-15 double gold bar sovereigns destroyed it in like 15-30 seconds maybe?

posted on July 30th, 2011, 5:14 pm

If you want a Yard bonus for a Federation avatar, why not give them a station that will increase the build rate or decrease cost slightly for yards close by (with a buildlimit). Something like the Utopia Stations addon for stock.

I think they were seen in Voyager, so co-ordinating the nearby yards wouldn't be a strech of the imagination.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 5:21 pm

i like the idea of researching/building something that helps with rankups, but as tryptic said it cant be accross the board. vet c11s tank anything, they can take fire from a starbase indefinitely, as they regen the hitpoints so fast. you never need to repair them, they are basically invincible. problem is unranked c11s can be killed by anything, so its rare to ever see one make officer, let alone vet. they always get auto targeted, and they die fast. and the basic requirement for getting ranks is combat, so you have to show your c11 to the enemy to farm ranks. i guess you could raid with a team of c11s and when some rank up, put them in normal fleet as tanks. but that could take all day, and if you get caught, you're c11 raiding party will be debris.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 7:45 pm

um, well c11s is dominion, isn't it? this isn't for dominion.

its a federation thing. i know feds already have a lot going for them. but the point was to give them something for their very late game. and even then, building anything with it would take forever. to get a fleet of even five ships from this yard should take a reasonably long amount of time.

but yes, it is for helping with rank ups. even if it isn't double gold bar right away. and you have to upgrade the station for that, is alright. but should get a boost. the whole purpose of the yard is that the extra build time is for recruiting nearby personal with experience. so you can't have a  ship start at green... just build from a regular yard for that. default one or two silver bars?

if this were to apply to other races... then i have no idea. recruitment seems like a federation thing.

i was trying to give klingons a good idea in the other thread a couple weeks ago.

as for borg, not really super good with that faction, plus don't they have a redo coming? so i don't go ideas for them, they'll all probably end up being premature once the redo comes in. plus they're getting commond cube.

romulans... can't really say. i want them to have a better turret strategy! ships are great. don't really have ideas.

same for dominion.

its mostly late game things I'm wondering about. borg definitely have something in store for them. klingons do already have a tech tree, and therefore a long game pretty much built into the faction. but trying to give them something with the uncloaking thing with brels and such. this would be decent for feds, as they have no late game change. they get everything as of star fleet command. so maybe

romulans and dominion, maybe an idea for them to in the near future. i just find the dominion economy hard to manage so i don't play them as well. something to help them easier manage their economy or build more than one ship after prototype? i had a thread about varying ways you could go about mining and economy with miners etc a while back. anyways. yeah.

posted on July 30th, 2011, 8:41 pm

i was tallking in general about "buying ranks"

for feds specifically: nova has awesome rank benefits, moar warpins. akira has its torps that for officer deal great area damage, and at vet just ignore your shields. canaveral increases your stations sensor range whenever canav is near, and gives the canav awesome cloak detect. and a ranked defiant is like the defiant in ds9, bringer of death to all.

the ships that are more expensive/weaker, are harder to get ranked, and have huge benefits when ranked.

[godsvoice]

posted on July 30th, 2011, 8:49 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on July 30th, 2011, 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well, particularly for dominion, i guess we could technically make anything work.

but when i think of jem hadar, its that they're bred for war.

and, they're more or less cloned equally? so you literally need them to go out and get fighting skills

i don't picture a jem hadar taking an aptitude test, or demonstrating good team work leadership abilities throughout their career. although, I'm sure they do, as vortas appoint them to first and second. its just... different?

but hey sure, a way to get various ranks for factions is sweet.

but yeah, i see your point that different classes offer wider ranges of abilities once ranked. again, all i can think of is curtailing ship cost.build time.

edit: what would you pay for a nova ranked fully? how long would you be willing to wait for its build time type of thing. if we really make it significant... surely it must have some effect. you can get a star base for 2000/1000. A sovereign is already what, like 900-1100 dilithium... i actually don't know. but if you double the cost of sovereign, you are pretty much saying you are willing to pay for a star base to get that fully ranked sovereign. and wait a heck of a long time to get it. so if someone wants to pay that much for it... doesn't that sort of filter through for balance?

[godsvoice]

posted on July 30th, 2011, 9:04 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on July 30th, 2011, 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

so i did some snooping

sovereign 935 di. ish. 250 tri ish. 115 build time

phalanx 1250 di ish. 380 tri ish. 169 build time

i think i remembered those about right.

i was suggesting 2x build cost, and 2.5 build time. so. 1870, 500. for a sovereign. and pretty close to five minutes to build. for a phalanx, roughly 2500, a bit more actually, i rounded down for 1250. and a build time upwards of seven minutes.

edit: looking at this a bit more... haha. this is pretty expensive. i don't think this is undercutting it. i imagine people would be very selective about how they used this yard. you aren't going to throw thousands of di around waiting for five minutes for a ship and do that too many times. even if you did this three times in 15 minutes. you'll run through 3000 di easily most likely.

this buffers a fleet for a nice look to use it once or twice. but you still need ships from else where for numbers. even with warpins. so, i dunno. maybe it is true that different classes vary greatly between green and double gold but still. any ship put to veteran consumes 25/25 slots if its built from this yard. so if you really, really, really, wanted the nova that bad. spend something 1200 di, and wait five minutes, and use all your veteran slots for 2 extra warpin slots? who would argue? i think this is pretty fair? i don't see people using this yard to build a fleet of ships. its a very expensive way to getting 2-3 ships nice ships. lol unless you are playing single player

if you wanted to abuse this with the bigger ships, you pay a pretty penny. clearly. and wait for it.

smaller ships with their nice specials. perhaps if 2x, and 2.5x doesn't work. let's say the eraudi yard is 2 and 2.5 times. we'll make antares yard 2.5x the cost, and 3x the build time. or just for certain ships that are worth that.

either way. going for one of those ships is likely to cost you at least 8-900 on the cheap end for a little intrepid, or upwards of a star base otherwise.