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Freighters combat screen?

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:24 am
by StepNRazor
Is there anyway to change the way combat with freighter is handled?
Currently it is handled as non combat ships like transports or op's.
The reason I am asking has to do with population being killed off automatically, maybe the attacker would rather the population land and make them slaves, or maybe the attacker is just a ff or dd blockading with intent to kill off shipped pop. So an option would be nice, Attack N freighters (pop) or attack colony X. Normally when you attack a colony defending ships are engage as defenders, freighters would attempt to bypass war ships and would need to be chased down and killed thus either kill the freighters or attack the colony.
Here the part I thinking might be problematic, freighters used to resupply a colony’s food or minerals pop consumption and exports of same, and rp as well.
I am not certain if this can be done and also if it would be worth the effort. I was just trying to fix a pop killing loophole.

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:38 pm
by ALEX|D
hmm

If u block a colony and some frighters with enemy´s pop arrive, then u wanna get that pop as slaves ?

If some fightes arrive u want that combat screen opens ? So that the freighter try to come through to the planet, and the blocker has to try to shoot the frighters down !?

btw ... in moo2 u r able to crap freighters, but for what reason :?: , since they dont cost any maintenance !?

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:54 am
by StepNRazor
Think in terms of a monster world.
Case 1:
If you have just some scouts or dd's on enemy monster world, enemy has 10 pop being shiped this turn so it mightr be better to have those ships attack and kill pop freighters to slow enemies prod.

Case 2:
You have invasion fleet ready to capture you want those 10 units of pop as slaves so you dont want the feighters attacked.,

Alterante case where enemy wants to kill off his pop, assume there are no 1 pop colonies. Enemy see's you fleets eta and send pop to arrive thus killing off his pop.

This is the heart of what this post is about, not sure as what is the best way to achieve it.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:51 pm
by ALEX|D
... this would be more realistic ... but this would also be hard to do, I guess.

LB should say, what is possible and what not.

Ur idea is good, but I think, atm we should work on other things, like nourich switch ... !

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:12 am
by Turbo Beholder
More than sensible. And that way freighters can use wormholes (it's annoying to see ETA 4-10 when it's 1 for battle ships and even colonizers).
But then why not to do the same with other utility ships ?
I.e. Colonizer is Cruiser hull (it's big) with EFT and "weapon" Colony Pod — excluded from any repair. Or better 8 lesser Colony Pods. If one receives critical hit - why not, new colony just will have 125000 people less...
Outpost ship is lesser and with equally hull-cramming (but single) Outpost Pod "weapon".
All unusual things should be weapons because Special bits are all used (and if 2 or 3 will be freed, there's better uses for them anyway), while weapons are limited only by weapon stats table (so when we'll find how it's referred in code, limit will be 65535 slots) and even have extra fields. Fixed size on colony/outpost kits etc. is not a problem anyway.
If you want to design special ships without EFT, but with few weapons and shields (or, stars above, battle pods) — fine. But this should be somehow reflected in upkeep cost.
Transport even better. Just needed to set up Marines count for Landing Pods much like Troop Pods (and immobilizing enemy ship in Transport move range is good idea... :D ). As a side note, Colony Ships also may have extra guards on board.
Also would be good to to enable invasion with Assault Shuttles.
BTW: do planet (and transport, but they don't) vs. ship (and starbases) Marine units already interact in any way, anywhere in game ? It seems not. Perhaps they would have different sizes (e.g. 10:1 or 20:1) to shift Ship vs. Transport and Shuttle vs. Planet strongly in favor of normal methods, but possible via new ways (Titan's contingent vs. 1-2 Militia colony will be sure overtake anyway, but nothing serious vs. planet full of powersuited marines and tanks).
I don't know yet how current # Marines count is realized - but if it can be moved to saveable structures, it's even better: no need to initialize it from hull data each time, there's planets with barracks...
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BTW, freighters as such would have another problem: they haul not only colonists from specific colony to specific colony, but also food on "joint account". Will they somehow do so while having specific locations, or they should appear when you transfer people and vanish back into quantum uncertainty on delivery ?
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Anyway such things likely would work only in human-only games, AI can't even manage well things it already have and not readily upgradeable.

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:25 pm
by Rye
Tactical combat for freighters seems awfully pointless to me, personally. If anything, I'd vote for a change on results. Instead of the enemy automatically destroying the freighters, perhaps assign them a percent chance of survival? Say... 20-30%?

I mean, in the tactical screen, it would be as simple as turning your unarmed freighters around, moving away from the enemy, and hitting retreat. That's awfully tedious and time consuming.

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:38 am
by Time
More than sensible. And that way freighters can use wormholes (it's annoying to see ETA 4-10 when it's 1 for battle ships and even colonizers).
I agree.
All ships need to use wormholes automatically. To me, this was a bug that was never fixed by the shipping date.

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:22 pm
by Astax
I think that freighters should be out of tactical. But there should be a way to target enemy freighter pool.

For example: You have 40 freighters in your pool, with 35 in use. Your opponent uses his ships to attack your freighter pool, this can cause destruction of 7 freighters, you are now at 33 freighters and -2, meaning you have starvation somewhere, as food shipments were destroyed. Or maybe the freighters destroyed were carrying pop? You lose 200k pop per freighter lost if it's carrying pop.

How would attacking freighter pool be handled? Well current game engine does not support a good way of doing this. But I thought about designating certain type of ships as corsairs. Send those ships to enemy systems and while they maintain the orbit, they cannot blockade outright, but instead try to intercept enemy freighters.

These ships would be small and fast so they can intercept freighters at the outskirts of the system, vs a Battle ship that can blockade in orbit. Difference is while you try to intercept, your opponent may have a fleet in orbit, but your fleet that's pirating has a chance to evade engagement. This is different from a fleet that is blockading, and can't evade engagement.

If your intercepting ship fails to evade engagement from the garrisoned fleet, they will fight in tactical, and you will be destroyed or retreat. You won't destroy any freighters that turn.