18 replies to this topic

[Nicholas13]

So Missile Bases and Ground Batteries are described as structures on planets. So I always think that they should be buildings that damage blockading fleets and must be destroyed through bombardment. Obviously they are not though. Instead they are orbiting installations that just help defend a planet's orbital space. Is there a plan to eventually make them actually buildings on the planet or will they always not actually be what they are described as?

 

 

[Omega_Weapon]

Good question. If they don't want them to be planet based buildings, you'd think they would have changed the descriptions by now.

[LeadfootSlim]

It's a thorny problem with tactical combat. MOO2's approach worked as you describe - you had to bring bombs to your tactical combat and bomb your way through the planetary defense shields before hitting the defensive structures. Other weapons worked as well, but were suboptimal; the main thing was that the planet's shields worked as a force multiplier, allowing the ground defenses to stay alive longer and pottentially whittle the enemy's fleet down.

 

The problem is that the exxagerated miniature "planet" worked well enough for its time, but can't work so well here with a free-roaming camera. To maintain the game's "realism", the planet would have to take up half the map as a massive "wall" with structures stapled to its surface... it's not an elegant approach. So we can't physically put the defenses behind a shield unless it's just extended across the battlefield invisibly somehow, so the balance trick of using shields as a force multiplier for defense goes out the window also. As such, MOO2's lategame problem of planet defenses becoming a "speed bump" got worse.

 

However, the current tactical approach - with Missile Bases and Ground (?) Batteries floating in space as units - does enable a better-looking solution; building multiple copies of the structure to defend a planet. I've seen this mentioned in this discussion; http://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/1141-same-problem-i-had-with-moo-2-planetary-defenses-are-just-speed-bumps/page__p__14768__hl__+speed%20+bump#entry14768

[Ilserrad]

I don't know, I'm kind of OK with the idea of the planet being a wall across the defender's side of the map.

[Stelar_7]

I don't want to see a wall, but I would like to see the planetary defenses get better, and to have a reason to build planetary shields. How about take a page from Return of the Jedi, let the planetary shield project from the image as a beam to the orbiting structures, and have them get a buff to shields based on the quality of the shield the planet has. Let them be a damage block, and shield regen effect on the stat fortifications.

 

EA3 made the defenses much tougher, but they still crack to single ship assault.

[Lone_War]

I am with Stelar_7,

 

Have the planet based defenses gain a second shield once the planet builds a Planetary Shield. This second shield would have 10x Hull Strength Points for Planetary Radiation Shields to 50x Hull Points for Planetary Flux Shield to 100x Hull Points for Planetary Barrier Shield and a 10 points of absorption for Radiation, 50 for Flux and 100 for Barrier. This would mean that late game planets could NOT be taken with early game weapons as those early game weapons just don't have the punch to kill the orbital defenses. Oh and ALL Planetary Shields would get Shield Capacitors, Regenerators and Hard shields if they had been Researched.

 

Also, for the love of all that is holy, let me design my Orbital Defense Installations PLEASE... Make the Space Station a Battleship sized ship with NO Engines, the Battlestation a Titan, and the Star Fortress a Doomstar. Make sure they have 8 weapon slots and 8 special slots. Make the Missile Base and the Ground Batteries both Battleship Sized. This should stop the early game destruction of home planets via a couple of destroyers or a single Cruiser...

[Prrsha]

Yeah I don't see the need for a floating missile base and ground batteries in space when I don't know... The Space Station could have ALL of those things?

 

 

 

 

Part of the skill needed to bomb a planet was not just to have bombs equipped on a ship and have them hold back (like you do now).  In Moo1 and 2 you HAD to enter combat with those ships with missile defenses and all to get to the planet as quickly as popular to deliver the payload.  I really enjoyed this aspect of the game and using tech such as displacement devices, augmented engines, and even clever use of transporter beams to toss the bomb to the planet at a distance made for some interesting strategies (cloaking devices and bioterminators included >:3)

 

I just don't see why those buildings are built and SHOWN on planets (shields too) but are just floating in space in combat...  either make it one thing or the other please for consistency's sake.  I hope you do it like Moo2 however or even why design ships with bombs on them?  Just have something similar to a troop transport called a "Bomber" non-combatant ship.

[Ilserrad]

Kind of why I'm OK with the planet wall thing. It gives a reason to put bombs in combat.

 

Say you have the wall on the planet side of the map. You have the planetary defenses imposed on the wall. The planet's atmosphere diminishes all damage taken by the bases, except for bombs, and planetary shields provide an additional layer of defense.

Now you add in bombs, bombs are immobile projectiles that don't have accuracy, you drop them in combat with a planet, and they just start 'falling.' They can be shot down with PD weaponry, so the only reliable way to hit the planetary bases with them is to drop them from point blank range. Bombs ignore the damage reduction from atmosphere, and we could possibly add a tech that allows for a 'shield piercing' mod for bombs so they can ignore planetary shields as well.

For added fun, bombs dropped in deep space combat would just sit there, turning into minefields. Though for this they'd have to add the option to manually fire weapons.

[Prrsha]

I don't even mind if they render the planet, a simple red line would do for me.  Sometimes realism needs to make way for fun and playability and currently bombs have no real purpose nor do planetary shields.

 

I love the idea of mine fields, this idea has never been touched in a Moo game since all of the combat was turned based.  This is a great reason to add them... maybe even make them trackable to a lazy ship in the area with an upgrade.  Heck mines could be like what the Artemetis Net was designed to be in Moo2.  A planetary minefield.

 

A fun tactic I would like to do in Moo2 was to attack the planet with bio terminators then warp away when things got bad.  Little by little these guerilla attacks would whittle down the planet to nothing.

[Stelar_7]

I would rather see a "floor" than a wall. That would be way less immersion breaking. However I like the idea of the planetary defenses being at the distance they are, with the planet not taking fire. In MOO2, I'd just blast the planet from max range with missiles, or heavy mount weapons. I never took bombs. In this MOO I do take bombs, you need them to hurt bases. That's cool.

 

I would like to see more though. The planetary missile bases are a joke, PD neuters them fast. Especially when ships get enough PD range to support each other. However if planets had "defense slots" we could customize that would be epic cool. Have 4 or 6 "Slots" a star base takes up 2 or 3, missile and gun satellites 1. Orbital ship repair yard, 1 or 2, commerce station 1 or 2.. we could have a whole level of detail for the orbital stuff and it would all add to depth and to tactical combat. (Just please, please make the orbital stuff immune to earth quake damage).

 

edit, also slots could be based on the size of the planet. Small planet 4 slots, huge planet 8 slots... 

Edited by Stelar_7, 04 May 2016 - 04:28 PM.

[Ilserrad]

Floor decoration is fine. As long as it's not the whole floor. Mostly just a 'you have to be this close to effectively bomb the planet' thing.

[LeadfootSlim]

Wow, the "planet floor" idea never occurred to me! I'd be very pleased with that... Still, it makes bombs a bit strange, as going into Tactical would circumvent the enemy's ability to stop you from bombing them. You could arguably choose to make bombs simply behave as they do now, but keep the planet floor for visuals' sake.

[Ilserrad]

Not really. If the planet floor is only on the defender's side, attempting to bomb from anywhere else would be mostly useless as slow moving bombs would get devoured by PD fire from the planet.

[LeadfootSlim]

Ilserrad, on 04 May 2016 - 06:00 PM, said:

Not really. If the planet floor is only on the defender's side, attempting to bomb from anywhere else would be mostly useless as slow moving bombs would get devoured by PD fire from the planet.

 

Ah, that makes sense. Then perhaps it'd work to have a UI line across the map, beyond which bombs can reach the planet's surface? A "goal zone" if you will.

[Prrsha]

LeadfootSlim, on 04 May 2016 - 01:42 PM, said:

 

Ah, that makes sense. Then perhaps it'd work to have a UI line across the map, beyond which bombs can reach the planet's surface? A "goal zone" if you will.

 

That idea worked in Homeworld 2 or was it 3.  One of the goals you had to accomplish was to shoot down missiles (or bombs if I recall) from reaching a red zone of the planet or you'd lose your homeworld.  (It was part of the storyline of the game).  It at least shows it is has already been done with success in a tactical combat game engine.

[KronikCurtis]

Has anyone noticed a way to repair damaged defense structures? 

I fended off the first Antaran attack and my missle base was severely damaged. I assumed that it would repair over time like ships would. There was an operational starbase in orbit as well. A few dozen turns later a stronger Antaran fleet returned, heading for the same planet >.<

When combat began the missle base was still damaged with barely 10% health and was quicky destroyed. It appears my only option is to scrap it and build another one? 

[Laegad]

1 - Forum necromancy is evil

2 - Yes, there are still some bug, and the repair problem is one of them.

     Dev seems to completly stopped to work on the programme, and these bug will probably be never fixed in futur.

     Fortunalty, some modders began to fix these bugs.

     The repair bug is fixed in a no-official release, watch this thread:

     http://forum.mastero...-since-release/

     It's a shame; A bug i reported to dev since some week is not fixed yet, and modder fixed it in just 1 or 2 days.

 

Edited by Laegad, 03 March 2017 - 07:26 PM.

[Soylent_Greene]

LeadfootSlim, on 01 May 2016 - 06:46 AM, said:

It's a thorny problem with tactical combat. MOO2's approach worked as you describe - you had to bring bombs to your tactical combat and bomb your way through the planetary defense shields before hitting the defensive structures. Other weapons worked as well, but were suboptimal; the main thing was that the planet's shields worked as a force multiplier, allowing the ground defenses to stay alive longer and pottentially whittle the enemy's fleet down.

 

The problem is that the exxagerated miniature "planet" worked well enough for its time, but can't work so well here with a free-roaming camera. To maintain the game's "realism", the planet would have to take up half the map as a massive "wall" with structures stapled to its surface... it's not an elegant approach. So we can't physically put the defenses behind a shield unless it's just extended across the battlefield invisibly somehow, so the balance trick of using shields as a force multiplier for defense goes out the window also. As such, MOO2's lategame problem of planet defenses becoming a "speed bump" got worse.

 

However, the current tactical approach - with Missile Bases and Ground (?) Batteries floating in space as units - does enable a better-looking solution; building multiple copies of the structure to defend a planet. I've seen this mentioned in this discussion; http://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/1141-same-problem-i-had-with-moo-2-planetary-defenses-are-just-speed-bumps/page__p__14768__hl__+speed%20+bump#entry14768

 

I never understood why the game doesn't allow for the hollowing out of an asteroid to make the defense bases? You get a nice thick layer of rock armor and cheap construction!
As you hollow it out, the material you mined either is processed as ores or converted to a lava like paste to cement the walls with!

[Partythenwork]

i could make a mod to allow you to build a large defense base in an asteroid belt/field.  but what characteristics and benefits would get for this type of base?  would you want it to be a jump gate?  would you want it to generate credits or research?