Shipyard & CC_07

[dingusdangus]

QUOTE (spideycw @ Aug 18 2009, 08:22 PM) Hey ding,

just wanted to say don't ever feel you can't say your ideas just because you are newer than some others. I am happy you put more thought into what you said than people who have been here far longer!

Thanks Spidey, I appreciate that. There is something very psychologically satisfying to me about making the SY tech path mimick the basic structure set up by the other three tech paths, but maybe that is just my OCD side coming out. The symmetry is glorious. It also seems that SY's uniqueness is part of why it is so difficult to balance, so perhaps making it more like the other tech paths would make that easier

Dingus

[Vlymoxyd]

SY used to work like other techpaths, but it was changed to the completely messed up form that we have today by DN, which is the base core of CC. You get all cap ships for less than you used to, but getting a single cap out cost much more.

[Spunkmeyer]

Hi.

As I've been pointed in this direction, I'm going to inject a few comments which will certainly be incredibly insightful, as I don't know anything about DN shipyard and remember very little about everything else anyway.

For newcomers: the shipyard tech tree used to be very similar to how all other techs are. Drydock basically gave you cruisers and tech 3 versions of everything. In classic Alleg the problem was caps were dogmeat to everything, that's what we fixed in AllegPlus. We ended up with a shipyard that could go against all three techs. Sup had the easiest time against it, followed by tac, followed by exp but the differences were minor, perhaps ~15%, no more. So that part of the problem is solvable. Shipyard still wasn'tl used much though.... better than before, but not ideal, not enough to spice things up. If someone used it, they had a good chance of winning with it, but I would say 85% of games had no SY.

The issues were 1) scaling 2) necessity

We took great care to make SY balanced for a given number of players. A+ caps could not be nanned well.. so a couple of nans helped, but more were worthless. Back in the dark ages, (I don't know if that's still the case) nan trains used to be universally hated. Now caps had 3 or 4 (supposedly) badass skycap turrets. We made those stronger, and reduced the effect of nans on caps. Also improved the effectiveness of missiles (so they were harder to shoot down) and skyripper. After the changes the typical attack force would be:

1 nan + 1 nan/scout (to help avoid getting eyed) + 3 or 4 turrets + pilot all in one expensive but strong ship that could, if gunners had their act together and the scout was doing his job, punch through.

As you can see that's a force of 6-7, so there wasn't any need to scale it for anything less than an 8vs8. But we had to make sure a team of 8, not caught asleep and with full blown advanced tech, can take that cap down. Including exp. Problem is, this scales only so far - games up to 16vs16 were fine. but anything more and caps were dogfood again. So my first conclusion: without a scaling mechanism, shipyard can only work for a narrow range of game sizes and it's probably not worth revamping

The second issue, which is what that thread linked earlier was trying to address, is necessity: why would you build shipyard instead of building a second tech to complement your primary one? That gave better results primarily because it was cheaper. So the second conclusion: shipyard must be and economically viable alternative to building up a second tech Moving He3 Yield (which probably ties as the most useful GA with PW damage) to SY promotes this, as well as reducing the lingering exp dominance. Another interesting idea was to put level 4 defensive ship research in shipyard (Super Fighters/Interceptors/Stealths), but it was never implemented/tested.

OK back off to my hibernation. Hugs and kisses all.

[Compellor]

While I do not particularly support making SY into a proper 4th techpath, because it would constitute too large a change to the way the game is played, here are my thoughts on the subject.

The first rule of a techpath is that it must give you (at least) one combat ship with no monetary cost per unit. Typically this ship carries a single player, but while that may be for the best, I am not certain it is strictly necessary. The ship should also be capable of keeping up with cons and miners - you shouldn't be able to have adv miners unless you can also have a combat ship capable of 120 mps, though that might require the ship carry boosters instead of having a 120 mps base speed.

The second rule is that this ship must be upgradable to a version which is unquestionably better but otherwise the same. Adding a third turret to a free ship that already has two is an extremely minor upgrade. Doubling the size of the ship would be an extremely questionable change, and at least a minor nerf. Reducing the speed and maneuverability of the ship is an unacceptable nerf. So a free destroyer would not be a reasonable upgrade to a free corvette - what you'd want is a heavy corvette, researchable in drydock.

As a general rule, no free ship should be able to damage bases, with the exception of a galv-analogue. Any galv-analogue should be weaker (in terms of damage, or research cost, or etc) than galvs, for reasons I'll go into shortly.

Other techpaths do not provide anything like the wide variety of ships a shipyard provides - I am loath to simply remove ships, but this issue must be dealt with carefully.

All proper techpaths have clearly defined roles that they excel at, and a limited capacity to perform the other roles as well. The roles I have identified are:
Acquiring new territory - Exp
Mining, or otherwise making money - Exp
Holding territory, and preventing the enemy from acquiring territory - Exp (tac is good at the latter but I felt the two go together)
Removing the enemy's hold on territory (destroying/capturing bases) - Sup
Ending a game when the enemy won't resign - Sup (almost a natural extension of killing bases, but I thought it deserved its own role)
Disrupting the enemy's economy - Tac

Notice that Shipyard isn't on this list. It can do some of these things, but at present it isn't the best at any of them. Part of that is just the sheer cost, of course.

Shipyard is good at breaking through well-defended chokepoints, but I decided it isn't a proper role because it's something tac basically can't do at all, and you can go a whole game without having to really break a camp. The only time you can't outmaneuver or ignore a well-camped aleph is when the campers are turtling in their last sector - this thus falls under "Ending the game," a role that supremacy is otherwise slightly better at, if mostly because of the cost difference.

It has been suggested here repeatedly to move He3 yield to exp. If we are making SY the ultimate endgame, or a pure support path, then I don't particularly support the idea. However, if we are to make SY a fourth techpath, I feel we must shift some of Expansion's roles to Shipyard, and rebalance its ability to perform the other roles. Exploiting (mining) territory would become the role that Shipyard excels at - Adv Miners and He3 Yield would be shifted to SY; we might leave He3 Speed to Exp just because GAs are weird like that. I'm not real sure about ship speed, I need to think that through some more. We could do a complete reshuffling of the GAs, I dunno.

Anyway, this nerfs Exp pretty bad, so their ability to take territory should be buffed. Buffing HTTs would make them better at removing enemy territory, and that's not desirable. Buffing Adv cons seems the obvious choice, perhaps by moving them from Adv Exp to basic Exp.

Shipyard should not be anywhere near as good as Sup at killing bases. The present situation, where SY is very effective in absolute terms, but not very cost effective, isn't what I would call an optimal solution. I favor a focus on missile frigate style gameplay, that is, base-killing capships shouldn't ripcord.

One issue with making SY into a fourth techpath is that you can build shipyards on any ol' Ni-Fe asteroid. I have no idea if a fourth techrock is feasible without a code change, or even desirable. Alternately, you could make SY an any-techrock path, like Research, but I'm not sure that's really a solution, since tech rocks are still in much better supply than, say, U rocks. You could also get really wacky, and break SY into three techpaths, for a total of six. Also wacky would be making it build on He rocks.

As for holding territory, SY should be not as good at defending bases as exp, and not as good at stopping con spam as tac, but in general it should be better at holding territory than expanding or killing bases.

SY could use a small buff in disrupting enemy economies, but some variant of the assault ship could fix that right up, acting in a manner similar to Rix SR scouts.

In retrospect I haven't been very clear about which assertions I feel are generally true and which are only applicable to this hypothetical change of SY to a fourth techpath, so just feel free to assume the latter.

[zombywoof]

Expansion should be Expansion, taking new territory and mining it out.

Supremacy should be Supremacy, dominating on most aspects of the game.

Tactical Labratory should be the whole "keeping the enemy from expanding" deal, killing miners and cons.

I think, for the most part we've got that down.

Expansion is really good at taking new territory... and at mining it. Adv miners and cons, He speed, He yield, and ints.

Supremacy is the dominant damage-dealing techpath. dumb3 + gat3 deals more damage than mini3. In a lot of ways, Sup is better at killing miners than Tac, and it's certainly great at killing @#(! because not ONLY can they easily kill cons/miners, but with minepacks can camp alephs and with galvs can kill miner bases. Supremacy is about being overwhelming, about the ten galvers that just rushed into your sector, the five figs jumping on your miner with 1 nan, and the twenty figbees/xrm2 bbrs that TP2ed to your exp.

Tac lab is really good at killing miners and cons... while I think a rush of five adv figs is better than a rush of 5 adv sfs in terms of killing 1 miner, I do think that 5 adv sfs will kill a lot more miners than 5 adv figs (if used properly). That's what's great about Tac, you can easily have most of your team defending with just one or two people being disasterously effective on the enemy econ.

Where do I see SY fitting in?

Personally, I'd like to see SY be something that is an attainable endgame tech. I would like to see a fair number of games where both teams have advanced tech end up SY vs SY. Like, "Ok, well, we're richer than them but they still got heavy ints and pulse probes. SBs isn't going to solve this problem, so we're going to shove a frigate down their throat." SY is there for when you screwed up and accidentally let them get tech too, it's the expensive backup option.

To that end, I'd like to see each techpath bring something unique to SY. Something like, you don't get skycap unless you went Tac, you don't get SkyRIP unless you went Sup... that sort of thing, where SY isn't just SY, it's "Tac+SY" or "Exp+SY" or "Sup+SY." I mean, Sup and SY already have a great synergy with Attack Carriers, but maybe Attack Carriers and Assault Ships have Supremacy (or alternatively, TP1/2) research as prereqs. You can't get defensive ships like Devestators and Vettes unless you go Exp. You can't get ripcording capships that damage bases (like Cruisers, Battleships) unless you go Tac.

[Compellor]

QUOTE (Compellor @ Aug 25 2009, 05:48 AM) One issue with making SY into a fourth techpath is that you can build shipyards on any ol' Ni-Fe asteroid. I have no idea if a fourth techrock is feasible without a code change, or even desirable. Alternately, you could make SY an any-techrock path, like Research, but I'm not sure that's really a solution, since tech rocks are still in much better supply than, say, U rocks. You could also get really wacky, and break SY into three techpaths, for a total of six. Also wacky would be making it build on He rocks.

This change might also be appropriate regardless of what we intend SY to be. If you make them build on any tech rock, then that generally prevents you from planting a shipyard in an occupied sector, which is currently a favored tactic. In that case, I think it would be more reasonable to reduce the cost of the actual shipyards from 15k to 10k, which should make the tech more attractive. Once again, I like forcing you to either slip an assault ship into a sector or force your way through with a frigate.

[spideycw]

QUOTE (Compellor @ Aug 25 2009, 03:51 PM) I think it would be more reasonable to reduce the cost of the actual shipyards from 15k to 10k

This is not a bad idea. Reducing the cost of a shipyard to that of a regular tech base is something I think we should consider.

[DasSmiter]

Not unless we're going to make it require a tech rock.

[zombywoof]

P.s. there are other rocks already hardcoded iirc. "Thorium."

[IB_]

How about reducing garrison cost to 10k too.