LOOK IN BETWEEN THE --- --- FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO SKIP WALLS OF TEXT!
So I've been thinking.. w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶l̶e̶m̶o̶n̶s̶... Buildings in the game have only one goal: Repel attack (and take away from your money pool in the campaign).
But military buildings are the ONLY thing you ever see in the game, sure their is a huge sprawling city illustrated on a campaign map but when you invade all you see is the coastal defense buildings (and a windmill in the background if your lucky).. So i guess they leave cities unguarded and have defensive structures in the middle of nowhere? or everyone in the whole universe is a marine?
Another thing is that cities are permanent, they don't change (unless you brutally take them over which lowers the amount of coin you make), and they don't develop.
I had an idea of adding a "production" tab for buildings which, while in direct combat gives the building a hindrance (it will be big and might eat coal, or something i dunno yet). But outside of combat they provide a key role in the overall gameplay by buffing cities in various respects (depending on the module).
Possible examples (there will be limits on how many you can build per city to balance i think):
City shipyards too small? make a building with a factory!
Not making enough cash? Should have made (expensive) banks to get an advantage in the long run
Need a technology that does NOT exist on your campaign map? Research it (for a lot of credits and time)
Production modules should be a timely and somewhat expensive part of infrastructure. While you can go without it, taking the time to make buildings like this will benefit you in the long run..
If you can keep them safe, or else its a lot of wasted effort and hurts the city (as the buff reverts and can damage your economy without all them jobs)!
I think this is a cool 'optional' gameplay feature that allows you more control of your cities so they aren't just "im protecting that spawn point on the map and that's it" and it also makes attacking/defending cities a whole lot better because it is not just a Win/Lose scenario anymore as you can intentionally attack infrastructure components and leave to cripple armies elsewhere (like attacking a research station, stopping the production of death lasers, for example)!
A disconnected thought: Maybe factory modules can be attached to certain airships/landships to create "builder" ships, these can move around the map to create FOBs, which are like small shipyard towns but can't generate income.
But because your creating 'settlements' these should be expensive (you gotta set it all up, right?)
FOBs start with a building that was the "builder" airship and the FOB is destroyed when that one building is taken down!
Builder ships are destroyed in the process as far as 'airships' go because it becomes an immobile building, not reversible!
Can you tell us already if you planning to add text details (more options on the map) or physical details (special buildings to place on the defense screen) ?
I think that, in addition to "production" infrastructure, there should also be resource distribution infrastructure. that way, if two fleets attacked a certain city in quick succession, and repelling the first had entirely drained the defenses's ammunition stockpiles, then when the second arrived, the defenses would only have partially full ammunition stockpiles. the amount refilled between battles would be based on elapsed time since the last battle. this would start out as a slow refill, and could be accelerated with additional infrastructure. this could also apply to airships (and potentially landships) where they would have to refuel and reload at a friendly city between battles, or arrive at the next battle with some coal/ammunition lost.
I think this might be a cool idea, TortgaGreen. But it might take away from the gameplay if not done right which worries me.
(i think) Either it's going to be not lenient enough which will reduce fleets/cities to make one move and then need to be put out of action for a few game "turns" (which will dramatically slow down the campaign).
Or people will just get around this limitation by doubling their stockpiles on a per-ship basis, which then the change only translates to: to make good ships you need a bigger ammo stores along with more coal stores.
-edit- You seem new to the forum, Hello and welcome, always great to see new people getting in on Airships! :D
I'd certainly be in favour of a recovery period on ships and defenses. As long as it's implemented at a macro scale and doesn't require loads of fiddly knobs and micromanagement. I wouldn't want limited resources of ammo or crew or anything like that, but a sort of resupply speed could be integrated fairly smoothly (at least at a game design level).
How I can see it working:
There's already supply hatches, it could be good if more supply hatches can improve the recovery speed. This could get complicated so i'll try to explain simply:
A Ship has 10 supply. Each day in a city it will recover 1 crew, 3 coal and 3 ammo. A Ship with 20 supply will recover 2 crew, 6 coal and 6 ammo. At it's simplest incarnation - more supply = more supplies provided.
The supply is separate from it's cargo capacity, so the larger the storage capacity the more supply you would want to provide the ship. Improperly supplied ships will spend weeks in a city simply recovering it's own expended ammo and fuel, where as a well supplied ship can be in-and-out in no time.
Benefits:
1) Fixes steamrolling from overpowered fleets.
You'd have to resupply all your expended ammo and fuel between attacks. Travelling too far from a captured city too quickly could cause you to lose your ships due to lack of provisions due to the inability to supply them fast enough.
2) Defenses would have an inherent advantage over airships.
Ground defenses would ALWAYS be resupplying ammo between battles. They can turtle against sustained attacks from the same fleet much easier. Cuz admit it, the defenders are too easy to kill as it currently stands so they could use some minor buffs.
3) More "soft" variation in ship designs.
By varying the ammo/coal storage and supplies you could design ships intended for long drawn out battles far from home, or smaller "fighters" that need refueling every battle.
4) Room to expand.
Potential to add a much richer strategic element over "more guns and armor". Support vessels - Extra supplies for other ships in the fleet. Carriers - Floating resupply bases you can fly around the map. More sabotage options - Reduce ammo resupply rates, reduce coal rates. Environmental effects could make resupply more difficult - hurricanes reduce resupply speeds. More strategic options in battle - Battle damage/fires could destroy supplies which would eventually kill a ship over time well after a battle, or force it too retreat.
Personally I'd steer clear from any sort of micromanagement of "shells" or "crew" but a simple "10 supply = 1 crew, 6 coal, 6 ammo" and it simply requires "2 days" or some arbitrary period of time
"Need a technology that does NOT exist on your campaign map? Research it (for a lot of credits and time)"
Well, I like this whole infrastructure idea, but this is the idea I especially like.
What good is having a ship with various unlockable technologies if you can only hope to get the ones you need, making premade ships with more than one or two custom technologies really hard to get, so if you want a set of unlockable technology you gotta keep designing new ships based on the particular technologies available to you. Research would fix that, though I really agree it should take a lot of time and money to research them. Maybe even a tech tree, so you can't research anything, making conquered technologies especially useful as you could get technologies from anywhere in the tree, even if they aren't available to you for research at that point.
well, I suppose in setup, you could adjust the restock rate, but there would be a cap to keep steamrolling avoidance. in response to the observation of ships might just start doubling up stockpiles, that would actually be fairly good because it means the best ship isn't necessarily the toughest or best-armed, but stockpiles would also be an important factor. I do think that the "supply=rate of restock" idea, as a ship with one tiny cargo hatch couldn't fir near as much stuff through per second as, say, a large door.
Upgrading infrastructure really needs to be a thing because how can you justify having a fleet of capitol ships when every city in your empire has only tiny shipyards?
right now when you click on a city you get the options: create ship, build ship, defences. it would be cool to get a new tab called: city. in wich you can build buildings said throughout this thread such as a research building, or factory. these buildings would obviously need specific modules that make them do this. and whilst researching, you could see the progress bar on the tactical map. this would also open opportunities for spies to sabotage research.
if this would be added to the game it would probebly be at the strategic overhaul update acording to the dev plan.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
LOOK IN BETWEEN THE --- --- FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO SKIP WALLS OF TEXT!
So I've been thinking.. w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶l̶e̶m̶o̶n̶s̶... Buildings in the game have only one goal: Repel attack (and take away from your money pool in the campaign).
But military buildings are the ONLY thing you ever see in the game, sure their is a huge sprawling city illustrated on a campaign map but when you invade all you see is the coastal defense buildings (and a windmill in the background if your lucky).. So i guess they leave cities unguarded and have defensive structures in the middle of nowhere? or everyone in the whole universe is a marine?
Another thing is that cities are permanent, they don't change (unless you brutally take them over which lowers the amount of coin you make), and they don't develop.
I had an idea of adding a "production" tab for buildings which, while in direct combat gives the building a hindrance (it will be big and might eat coal, or something i dunno yet). But outside of combat they provide a key role in the overall gameplay by buffing cities in various respects (depending on the module).
Possible examples (there will be limits on how many you can build per city to balance i think):
City shipyards too small? make a building with a factory!
Not making enough cash? Should have made (expensive) banks to get an advantage in the long run
Need a technology that does NOT exist on your campaign map? Research it (for a lot of credits and time)
Production modules should be a timely and somewhat expensive part of infrastructure. While you can go without it, taking the time to make buildings like this will benefit you in the long run..
If you can keep them safe, or else its a lot of wasted effort and hurts the city (as the buff reverts and can damage your economy without all them jobs)!
I think this is a cool 'optional' gameplay feature that allows you more control of your cities so they aren't just "im protecting that spawn point on the map and that's it" and it also makes attacking/defending cities a whole lot better because it is not just a Win/Lose scenario anymore as you can intentionally attack infrastructure components and leave to cripple armies elsewhere (like attacking a research station, stopping the production of death lasers, for example)!
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
A disconnected thought: Maybe factory modules can be attached to certain airships/landships to create "builder" ships, these can move around the map to create FOBs, which are like small shipyard towns but can't generate income.
But because your creating 'settlements' these should be expensive (you gotta set it all up, right?)
FOBs start with a building that was the "builder" airship and the FOB is destroyed when that one building is taken down!
Builder ships are destroyed in the process as far as 'airships' go because it becomes an immobile building, not reversible!
Aerial Emperor
Yep, having more details in cities is definitely something I'm going to figure out as part of the strategic update.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Looking forward to it!
But what do you -as the games developer- think of any of the things i said above?
I'd love to hear opinions from you since you are the person who has the final say in everything Airships!
Captain
Can you tell us already if you planning to add text details (more options on the map) or physical details (special buildings to place on the defense screen) ?
Commander
I think that, in addition to "production" infrastructure, there should also be resource distribution infrastructure. that way, if two fleets attacked a certain city in quick succession, and repelling the first had entirely drained the defenses's ammunition stockpiles, then when the second arrived, the defenses would only have partially full ammunition stockpiles. the amount refilled between battles would be based on elapsed time since the last battle. this would start out as a slow refill, and could be accelerated with additional infrastructure. this could also apply to airships (and potentially landships) where they would have to refuel and reload at a friendly city between battles, or arrive at the next battle with some coal/ammunition lost.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I think this might be a cool idea, TortgaGreen. But it might take away from the gameplay if not done right which worries me.
(i think) Either it's going to be not lenient enough which will reduce fleets/cities to make one move and then need to be put out of action for a few game "turns" (which will dramatically slow down the campaign).
Or people will just get around this limitation by doubling their stockpiles on a per-ship basis, which then the change only translates to: to make good ships you need a bigger ammo stores along with more coal stores.
-edit- You seem new to the forum, Hello and welcome, always great to see new people getting in on Airships! :D
Commander, Engineering Corps
I'd certainly be in favour of a recovery period on ships and defenses. As long as it's implemented at a macro scale and doesn't require loads of fiddly knobs and micromanagement. I wouldn't want limited resources of ammo or crew or anything like that, but a sort of resupply speed could be integrated fairly smoothly (at least at a game design level).
How I can see it working:
There's already supply hatches, it could be good if more supply hatches can improve the recovery speed. This could get complicated so i'll try to explain simply:
A Ship has 10 supply. Each day in a city it will recover 1 crew, 3 coal and 3 ammo. A Ship with 20 supply will recover 2 crew, 6 coal and 6 ammo. At it's simplest incarnation - more supply = more supplies provided.
The supply is separate from it's cargo capacity, so the larger the storage capacity the more supply you would want to provide the ship. Improperly supplied ships will spend weeks in a city simply recovering it's own expended ammo and fuel, where as a well supplied ship can be in-and-out in no time.
Benefits: 1) Fixes steamrolling from overpowered fleets. You'd have to resupply all your expended ammo and fuel between attacks. Travelling too far from a captured city too quickly could cause you to lose your ships due to lack of provisions due to the inability to supply them fast enough.
2) Defenses would have an inherent advantage over airships. Ground defenses would ALWAYS be resupplying ammo between battles. They can turtle against sustained attacks from the same fleet much easier. Cuz admit it, the defenders are too easy to kill as it currently stands so they could use some minor buffs.
3) More "soft" variation in ship designs. By varying the ammo/coal storage and supplies you could design ships intended for long drawn out battles far from home, or smaller "fighters" that need refueling every battle.
4) Room to expand. Potential to add a much richer strategic element over "more guns and armor". Support vessels - Extra supplies for other ships in the fleet. Carriers - Floating resupply bases you can fly around the map. More sabotage options - Reduce ammo resupply rates, reduce coal rates. Environmental effects could make resupply more difficult - hurricanes reduce resupply speeds. More strategic options in battle - Battle damage/fires could destroy supplies which would eventually kill a ship over time well after a battle, or force it too retreat.
Personally I'd steer clear from any sort of micromanagement of "shells" or "crew" but a simple "10 supply = 1 crew, 6 coal, 6 ammo" and it simply requires "2 days" or some arbitrary period of time
Captain
"Need a technology that does NOT exist on your campaign map? Research it (for a lot of credits and time)"
Well, I like this whole infrastructure idea, but this is the idea I especially like.
What good is having a ship with various unlockable technologies if you can only hope to get the ones you need, making premade ships with more than one or two custom technologies really hard to get, so if you want a set of unlockable technology you gotta keep designing new ships based on the particular technologies available to you. Research would fix that, though I really agree it should take a lot of time and money to research them. Maybe even a tech tree, so you can't research anything, making conquered technologies especially useful as you could get technologies from anywhere in the tree, even if they aren't available to you for research at that point.
Commander
well, I suppose in setup, you could adjust the restock rate, but there would be a cap to keep steamrolling avoidance. in response to the observation of ships might just start doubling up stockpiles, that would actually be fairly good because it means the best ship isn't necessarily the toughest or best-armed, but stockpiles would also be an important factor. I do think that the "supply=rate of restock" idea, as a ship with one tiny cargo hatch couldn't fir near as much stuff through per second as, say, a large door.
-edit- hello Firebird11!
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
@Lukamash, I know the struggle :D!
Captain
Upgrading infrastructure really needs to be a thing because how can you justify having a fleet of capitol ships when every city in your empire has only tiny shipyards?
Midshipman
right now when you click on a city you get the options: create ship, build ship, defences. it would be cool to get a new tab called: city. in wich you can build buildings said throughout this thread such as a research building, or factory. these buildings would obviously need specific modules that make them do this. and whilst researching, you could see the progress bar on the tactical map. this would also open opportunities for spies to sabotage research.
if this would be added to the game it would probebly be at the strategic overhaul update acording to the dev plan.