2 ship ideas that work together

from Stardock Forums
1) New type of ship: "Missile Ship".
Characteristics:
- Attack: high
- Defense: 0
- Hitpoints: low
- Speed: 0-3
- Range: 0-2
- Cost: 40, cheap!
- Abilities: destroyed during first attack

This ship should become available in mid-game or late game, when there are Battleships

Basically it's a player controlled guided missile. Such a ship would help solve the current "supership" problem. Player could mass produce these and throw them into powerful enemy ships. One way to think of it as trading manufacturing capacity for reducing enemy hitpoints.
Since this ship is only good for attack, small fighters could be employed to take out these ships. So now small fighters can serve the purpose of defending bigger ships.

2) New special Ability for ships: "First Strike"
When attacked, ships with First Strike ability with attack first. So the game would treat the battle as tho the ship with First Strike has made an attack. This ability shouldn't work against other ships with First Strike ability.

This ability should be available for small fighter type ships, not big ships.

This ability would work very nicely with the Missile Ship idea: Player would tend to stack big ships with small First Strike ships. Missile Ships would always get intercepted when attacking that stack. The enemy could then counter this strategy by attacking the stack with big ships, which force the defending First Strike ships to fight first, and they will always lose to big ships.

It's a solid triangle of balance! kinda like "rock-scissors-paper"
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, Cari's reciently put in an "Anti-Matter" missile that you can build with basically the same suggestions as you has above. Once the art department gets us a missile image, we'll get it in the game ;)

I also like the First-Strike idea, but pre-ceeding that in the "list of ship stuff to get in" is the bombardment unit. The bombardment ship will have limited attack and def against warships, but when attacking a planet the vessel will kill off (randomly) 1/99th -> 1/3rd of the population. This is, of course, if the United Planet's votes it into existince. They will be turned off by default.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
First Strike ships are necessary to protect the big ships against missile attacks. As I said before, they insure a triangular balance system.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The way ML mentions "rock-scissors=paper" makes me think his reasoning on his idea is circular. If a=b then b=c hence c must= a. But I can't help but think there is a catch in what he describes, some trick to it he expects to take undue advantage of.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, the order in which ship fires has nothing to do with the winner. If it's the AI player's turn, and they are the attacker, they shoot first. If not, the human ship shoots first. If the defending ship wins, it is shown firing a third and final shot.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Lucky Jack, I'm not interested in making gameplay weaker.

CariElf, what I have been talking to has nothing to do with animation
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
What ML is talking about is definatly a semi "rock-paper-scissors" meathod of battle. Right now, all ships function the same. Some are faster, some are stronger, some are more defensive. Standard fare with unit based games. This idea would add a bit more depth to the functionality...jsut a bit, mind you, but enough to further strategy (which meens Brad would have more AI code to write, wihch is why it may not make it in for 1.0).

You'd have 3 types of ships..

Normal Ships: First attack goes to the ship who instigates the battle. Vollys go back and forth till one is out of HP.

MissileShips: Ships that last for only one volly of battle, but deal a huge blow to the oponent.

First-Strike Ships: Quick ships that get in the First Attack even if they're on the defensive. Also the first to step up to a fight when in a fleet.

Now lets say you have your SuperAvitar class ship that took you 60 turns to make. However, the enemy has missiles that could take out your new baby with 3 easy hits. Put a few FirstAttack ships in the fleet, and the Avitar ship will be protected for a while, unless a super ship comes along and takes the first-attack ships out beforehand. In which case you'll need YOUR missiles on hand to take out their supership before it gets to your first-attack ships. And suddenly you have a bit more strategy thrown into the mix.

Again, however, for this sort of thing to be implemented correctly, the AI would have to recognize these new patterns of attack/defense and plan accordingly.

So much to do, so little time....I wish it was October again (:(