And by the way.......

CONGRATULATIONS ON REACHING 700 REPLIES!!!!!

I still stand my promise to give everyone +1 Karma when this post dies!!!

Hope some of it comes back my way.....

This is the kind of translation I could've used, although that's not how I read it.  EF's posts remind me of Zyx's sometimes.

I dislike the idea of a hard cap on weapons or defenses, though.  At that point you may as well just define per-ship values as in Sins and remove customization entirely, which is a Bad Idea from my perspective, as that's one thing that makes GC(2) what it is.

Really?  What was our solution?  Crap...

*wanders off to get lost in the rest of the thread*

Because it doesn't fit. This goes back to the question of why you're adding a mechanic.

Most RTS games have unit caps to discourage certain kinds of behavior. For example, some units are so powerful in mass quantities that the game has to provide a mechanic to keep massing such things from being too easy.

Also, RTS games not only have a unit cap, they also have a quantity of units that the player is allowed to have currently, based on the number of some building or unit. Overlords, Supply Depots, and Pylons serve this purpose in StarCraft. This is an integral part of the advancement mechanic in this game.

TBS games don't have any of these features. The only thing a unit cap would do in a TBS is force turtling; you can't afford to attack anyone, because someone else will take the opportunity to attack you. Or you get double/triple teaming.

Oh, I'm not; I'm letting the fact that it is overall a poorly conceived idea do that.

If you're having to put arbitrary caps on the ship construction mechanic, then you should just change it. It seems like what you're wanting is something more rigid than the GC2 ship construction scheme, like a slot-based model. One where you have chassis that have slots, but what can go in each slot is fixed. So an early-game ship might have one attack slot and one defense slot. A mid-game ship might have those plus a utility slot for powers. End-game ships might have 2 attack slots and/or 2 defense slots. Some might have "generic" slots that can hold any kind of module. And so on.

Alright, and now for a bit of spoofy magic...

Triangular tiles on a true Geodesic sphere -- how's that for 3D immersion?

Sim Earth(s) modernized and while it spins (we can move the left-side top corner boxed planet surfaces, even zoom in already, don't we?!) the clouds project some shadows on your incoming Capital Icon right there clockwising its way above the equatorial Horizon.

But, watch it... soon after a Korx invasion transport is slowly approaching and - in fact - from the Sunrise glow you couldn't really detect that it was within a Fleet.

Bye, bye Flat World and welcome to the era of realtime 128b graphics produced by hyper cards!

But weirdly, you're trying to shove it all down our throats.

Retaliatory comment #1 -- that makes sense.

And who would they continue playing against, please tell me? Oh, okay - i'd be watching a simulation of AIs gameplay, right?

Are you really taking me for a fool and absurd silly human player here or not?

GC2 is a single *Human* player game that opponents driven by algorithms TRY to prevent me from reaching any Victory conditions. I'd prefer skipping the busy work involved when it's demonstrably obvious that i am too near from these for any code to catch up -- in such a way, that the context itself (including the opponents still weak, poor, stuck on two planets enough to have the toggle condition of admitting it *you lost* on by design and triggered by calculated undeniable superiority FACTS.) can also understand.

Silly rules are compiled, not defined via theories & MY suggestions.

Retaliatory comment #2 ; that makes sense.

Doesn't matter.  This is the Internet.

I was specifically speaking of the bottom part of your post in reply #709, which comes very close to a personal attack.

-

If I'm reading this correctly, you seem to have confused the idea of an auto-win condition with the idea of playing after winning.

The argument about a generic auto-win condition (GC2's diplomatic, influence, tech conditions aside, as they're not necessarily good ways to do it but hardly bad ways to do it) intends to soften it by allowing the game to continue if the auto-win threshold hasn't been reached.  The specific portion you quoted from Alfonse is where he's talking about what the AI must do to justify that you don't have the means to always defeat it at that point in time, which I, as someone who codes as a hobby, don't believe we have power to do that yet.

So am i, but there's a reason; if there's one area complex enough to give at least a fair chance to AIs against human intelligence this is the ONE.

Lemme try being clear and be patient, it may take awhile;

Beam*Shield + Missile*Point + Driver*Armor is a three layer process that enforces matchup leveling between the nature & capacity of weaponry to obtain results.

By attrition, ships come & go. Combat experience puts an edge overthere, values and quantity of components_modules puts some more overthere. Fleeting, logistics, puts advantages overthere too.

If you were to evaluate combat odds on Attack/Defense *caps*, the variety loss wouldn't compensate for a lack of supplemental assets on any given ships for a simple reason; hull sizes would stop meaning anything.

Forget engines, sensors and supports *ALSO* for (yep, again) the same simple reason; quality (or effectiveness by design rather than amounts) stops being relevant.

It's a guessing game of hit the right spot with the right stuff. Defensively, you escape destruction. Offensively, you wreck havoc.

If you put it that way, i also figure it's worth it. But let me add something important; there are exploits in the current "rules" that allow me to indirectly continue playing in some situations such as declaring war to turn off the definitive Influence win trigger after x number of turns for example -- and many other tricky steps to take while we keep everything on hold.

I want this whole "thing" expressed ON the UI by some fine-tuning & deterministic popups (designed within the code to be as less intrusive as possible and yet helpful IF i want minimal control over some of the decisions) that, in fact, allows me to identify causes & effects as it pertains to any of the AIs reasoning.

And btw.....

Thanks for the Karma Zyx

I'm neither conservative nor a douchebag.