EvilJedi has asked me to get some ideas together as to what the tech-trees should look like for the different races in his Sins of a Galactic Empire mod, which is discussed here:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331584
So let's start to have the discussion people: What do YOU think needs to show up in the tech tree?
Examples include:
Do NOT say things like, "The empire suxor, plz make them kik @zz" I need details to make a tech tree, not tips on balancing (controled by EvilJedi) or general statements about the mod.
-Grand Admiral Prawn
UPDATE 12/16
Okay, I've started looking at what people have said, and I've started to get an idea as to what some of this should look like. Since most of you have been talking about Alliance and Empire military properties, I figured it was a good place to start. Here are my sketches of what things could look like (Prototype section hasn't been done yet - I may wait until there's some commitment either from EvilJedi or anyone else to develop ship icons first - it would be hard to tell what you're researching when you don't remember what it looks like).
As an immediate disclaimer, nothing here is even remotely final - revisions can and will be entertained. And, as always, EvilJedi has final control of the mod.
Some thoughts that can't be immediately displayed on the research tree:
One of the biggest things I've been thinking about is drastically upping the benefit of research. Screw this 5% increase at a whack - I think it could be much more interesting if, for instance, if the first couple levels gave 5% a pop, the 3rd and 4th gave 10% a pop, and the 5th and 6th gave 20% a pop. Shoot, that's a 70% increase! Talk about an incentive to do your research!!! Clearly, there would need to be some limits, lest the Empire blow up an entire system before anyone knows they are there, and yes, I realize that we'd need to make the higher level research more expensive and more time consuming. However, I'm always dismayed with the way that a fully-updraded weapon only does 20%-30% more damage. It doesn't seem much like "researching weapons" so much as "making sure the weapons are working today"
As always, feedback appreciated/encouraged.
Well as the Rebels have maneged to get shilds onto fighters they prolly have the most advanced shield tec i would geuss(allowing shield upgards to strikecraft at medium/high lvl)
The empire seems to like big things with lots of pewpew imo, that would translate into more weapon reshearch( RoF and counters to armor > dps) and stuff like the interdictor cruiser to kepp stuff in place long enough to kieel.
The Empire is a brute force faction so they should have researches focused on dealing more damage and absorbing damage, specifically more armor and more HP.
The Rebellion doesn't the manpower or resources to focus on brute force or repairing hulls, so they should focus more on shield points/mitigation, rate of fire bonuses, and faster ships, especially when it comes to phase jumping and charging phase drives. Having some actual combat ships, and not just scouts be immune to phase inhibition would be good. Also since they are a rebellion culture and culture effects are important. Rebellion culture should be feared worse than Advent culture. I also wouldn't mind a few late-game researches that give their concussion missiles and proton torpedoes a small chance for shield negation.
And the Empire gets the Deathstar after how many research units? 7?
As for the CIS, they should be very strong economically. One of their core members was even called the Trade Federation, and they had to have had a massive industrial base in order to produce the droid armies that they did.
To reflect this, they should be able to get cost, production, and build speed upgrades very quickly and cheaply.
1. The alliance could have a droid upgrade that would increase the fighters speed, fire power or something like that. You could start at R1 droids and go to R3's.
2. The Aliance should get population and defence bonuses on exteme climate planets like ice worlds and volcanic worlds this could be a passive skill or in the research tree the skill could be called "Secret Rebel Base Planning" or something to that effect.
3. The Mon Calamari capital ships should have a "IT'S A TRAP" skill that would first and formost play a "IT'S A TRAP" sound clip and then either a kol like shield bonus or grant immunity to any slowing or paralizing attacks that would allow the ship to escape.
Well, the Empire could start with Imperial Star Destroyers, then research more advanced designs (like MkII).
Also, I think the Empire should get upgrades that reduce their build prices since they're a massive industrial juggernaught; some of the them could be slave labor upgrades. Maybe slave labor upgrades could be on a per planet basis, which lowers the allegiance of that planet? The idea being enslaving some or all of the natives tends to make you less popular. But don't let them improve their build speed, building things in a ponderous fashion seems to be a theme for them.
For the Alliance, let them research salvage, which returns resources when a ship is lost, and gives somewhat less resources for when an enemy unit is destroyed. But I think they should be able to research a faster build speed in the late game. Oh, and maybe the ability to turn a medium sized ship into a defense platform (pulling out the engines) which increases survivability and firepower. And perhaps more upgrades that focus on concussion missles and proton torpedoes since the Rebels always seemed to use them more than the Empire did.
From the movies and what I know of the canon, the CIS seems to be about larger numbers of inferior ships. Afterall, they are a faction of pennypinchers, so can you say "lowest-bidder"? I agree that it makes sense to give them an economical edge. But I think it should be largely confined to trading, so they have lots of credits and about average everything else.
For the Republic, I'm not so sure. Except unlocking new, more advanced ships as you move down the tech tree. It would represent the idea that they're rediscovering/re-applying the knowledge of how to build warships. Also, give them some beam weapons, it would provide some needed variety in weapons loadout, plus you do seem them used on LAAT's and briefly in the opening of Ep 3.
the rebellion should definately get something like the 'insurgency' tech from the current tec.
maybe also that vasari tech 'slave labour' that lowers cost for units would work, of course under a different name like 'independence fighter discount' or whatever.
likewise, the alliance may be more about resource efficiency, since they don't have that many, so you might give them more and earlier resource upgrades. furthermore, with a more decentralised and losely based structure, you could lower fleet maintenance for fleet supply. or least lower research cost or tweak it to their advantage.
they could also get some sort of experience bonus, I'm thinking more of a faster rate of accumulation in comabat.
also, the rebells could get some more immoblising techs like the ion gun and defensive techs like the shield generator. fits them more to defend and disable rather than bluntly destroy.
the imperial side on the other hand would have the imperial adacemy which would give them more buyable upgrades soon.
also, the empire is about brute force, so their ships should be more expensive and in general more geared to offensive. their cultural aspects ... well hard to say, I would leave it at the standard 3 labs. maybe not as strong as the alliance's, but never underestimate the psychological strength of a well propagandised iron rule.
their ships could be slower, slower in phase space and also in general. of course not so terrible that rebels can always and ever fleet and it becomes just frustrating.
I'd also like the bigger capships to have to be researched. like for imps, the vic II is available from the start, but the rest has to be researched. at different levels. like the imp I+II require maybe 2 labs and the executor 6 labs or sth.
ok, not all research, but that's what came to my mind.
Well I think the CIS should be like the TEC in a lot of ways. They should get a lot of trading and extraction upgrades giving their economy an edge. They should also have research to get their building costs, and times to be lowered. For the military they should have mainly support upgrades like better and more fighters.
I also think the empire should be armor,hull and weapon based.Their ships should be slower and slower hyperspace. Their counter would be the Immobilizer 418 and tractor beams. They should get good planet population upgrades(coruscant...).Something like the emperors capitol. They should get to reasearch to add additional strike craft to their squads as their tactics was to spam fighters. They could get the refinery upgrades with frieghters getting larger cargo. I think their culture should be crappy since some ships(Executor) were partially built to instill fear to keep control of systems. So maybe it wouldnt be out of line to have to station a ship on some outer worlds to keep allegiance. The empire could research a defensive gun(hyper velocity gun) for defense(from eaw). They could also get really good bomber and fighter upgrades but at large expense because they went from the tie fighter to the tie defender and tie bomber thru gunboat,missile, and scimitar. I think they should get better logistics abilities. One way you could unlock ships is research a contract with kdy and then that unlocks a special ship factory that only builds that type and you can have only one of(thus logistics upgrades). If you have important assets at different locations(as in rl) then you will spread your fleet out for defense more to defend those. It could be a solution to enormous fleet spams in mid game for fear of raids on important factories and such. Maybe you could research thrawns battle plan and get a rate of fire bonus(same with all factions).You could use diff characters from different sides for various bonuses. The extended sensors could be probe droid logistics or somethin to detect incoming ships.Overall the empire should be powerful,large numbers and inefficient.
The rebellion should get faster ships,faster jumps, and better shields. ALso rebels should have best plantet health upgrade as their bases are dug in. Real good sheild upgrades. Maybe an assault upgrade that allows certian ship to capture others. However they should not be able to capture a ssd and depending on size of ship sd either as they have huge crew compliments. Rebels always seemed to try and capture ships where the empire didnt really care. They should get the insergence upgrade early thus forcing empire to garrison ships for defense. They should get good culture upgrades maybe best in game. Maybe a pirate contract where they get pirate ships like the ra. They should get high upgrades on the cost for pirates bounty. Maybe a research like rebel sympathy where they get ships for cheaper. They could get spy infiltration where they get a bonus for implanting a spy(ship damage or detecting incoming ships). Maybe superior guerilla tactics that give them some kind of ship bonus. Obviously high ion tech for rebels and defenses. I like the driod upgrades r1,r2,r3...
I am for a large extensive research tree s it makes games more interesting for longer.
Said about the rebels
hmm is it not the empire that deals with pirats and bountyhunters, the rebels despise them. Imho it should be the empire that has *cheap* pirats, and in the 2'nd thrawn trillogy it's the empire that are buying ships from pirats
a top level millitary reshearch for the empire could be /Dark Jedi admiral/ making fleets more efficiant -- frigs/cruisers +5% dps if in range of flagship or something like that
ah u are correct. Im not knowledgeable past the movies but i forgot the empire did hire bh and such. I was grouping them with pirates cause thats sorta what they are to the empire in a way or they use similiar tactics
The reason the Empire doesn't use shielded fighters is because they want their fighters to be cheap to produce and fast. More advanced fighters are shielded however.
thrue, but they seem to favor cheap stuff and mass production + a few super weapons, the TIE intercepter does indeed have shields but it never finds widespread use in the impire
they seem more in line with the USSR than the USA in mindset(Big suprise there eh Oo)
don't confuse efficiency with 'cheap'
In the movies xwings go down in all of a single hit more than tie fighters, their shields are effective vs glancing blows but not solid hits (of course xwing and tie fighter drastically upscaled the number of hits a player ship could take but that was a game mechanic) The empire needed to deploy tie fighters to millions of worlds and millions of ships and stations, you are comparing mass produced fighters for an entire galaxies military to highly illegal production of vessels for an insurgency group and groups wealthy enough to bribe local officials.
A tie fighters role when stationed was to engage civilian and merchant craft that were running blockades or patrol lines and provide fighter escort for bombers and gunboats, they didn't have to be all that heavily armoured because most merchant ships were unarmed (imperial policy to confiscate anything that could be a threat, remember Han's quad turrets were VERY illegal and it took two force sensitives, and one of the best pilots in the galaxy to fend off three tie fighters...) if tie fighters were insufficient then blastboats or patrol cruisers would rapidly enter the scene.
In deployment operations, star destroyers and other heavy vessels would use tie fighters as force projection by leaving a squadron in an area to to perform its mission (escort, support, patrol, search etc) while the capital ship went to the next system needing its attention, recovering the squadron later. For planetary invasion and subjugation Ties would be expected to provide air cover after bombardment (either orbital or from bombers) and eliminate planetary defense fighters (illegally modified, probably very poorly crewed and mostly old) and do strafing runs on soft targets once anti aircraft batteries were pounded to oblivion.
In all these roles you do not need a heavily shielded, hyperspace capable, expendable munitions armed, multipurpose fighter, you need something very fast, manuverable, hard to hit and with big guns (which ties had for their size) you would have a limited number of blastboats, gunships and bombers that would be specialized and vastly more effective than a multi role fighter and much more efficient at projecting your firepower and capabilities surgically.
The rebellion on the other hand needs to preserve the ships it has from losses and REPAIRS and pilot injury (shields provide this)because they have very limited resources to replace costly fighters, repair costly fighters with costly highly illegal smuggled parts from undergound manufacturers and get good recruits that would stay alive long enough to rival an imperial academy recruit. They need to have expendable munitions (torpedos) to attack targets of oppertunity when using a larger vessel is utterly suicide or would take a very limited heavy hitter off another job. They need to be able to work outside of a mother vessel and hide easily (a hyperdrive allows the mobility to shift bases and perform independant missions)
the empire could afford thousands of trillions of tie fighters if it needed to (they built two deaths stars as a 'budget oversight' hidden in a single spending bill that wasn't worth the senate's time to review), the rebel alliance couldn't afford to lose a single one of its tens of thousands of ships. So in effect you could claim that the empire not only fielded a more efficient fighter for the cost and mission, but also was vastly more fiscally responsible than I think almost ANYONE gives them credit for. when stacked up against more effective fighters the tie seems lacking, but that's only because it was a better tool for the assigned mission (besides even with the 25K ISD fleet complement alone the empire had 1.6 million ties, 300k tie bombers, 50K skipray blastboats and 125k assault gunboats available and that's not counting a sngle other vessel in the sector group or any other station or planetary garrisoned forces and none of the reserve or augmented sector/fleet forces) and I have to believe that an ISD that is deploying a garrison to a planet is ferrying the fighter complement as well so it would have well over 300 fighters on board (with 72 assigned to its own air wing) which would bring ties to most every population center over 1 million people.
Dang thats nuts. Where do you get all these numbers???
read about 60books or visit the starwars wiki
speaking of numbers ... hmm is it 250000 crew for a mark1 stardestroyer vs 6000 on a sins cap ship? i geuss thats the diffrence between a galactic and a solar empire.
On topic, is it Palpatine's empire or Thrawn's empire, the 2 have vastly different views on everything from pirats to reshearch
Star Wars must have unions that why they require a lot more crews.
LAWL
lol good one
This should be in the modding section imo. Wish we could get this moved.
Empire: The empire should rely heavily on large Capital ship with strong hulls and armor and armed possibly with good fighters. It really shouldn't matter how good or bad TIE fighters are, it's a gameplay scrafice in order to force more capital ship usage. This is your capital ship behemouth class.
Republic: The republic should rely heavily on strong cruisers, namely the Venator-class and have a good balance between hull. They should also have strong fighters and possibly rely a lot on them. This is sort of a balanaced faction and getting the Venator to be the right cost/power is essential here.
CIS: The CIS shoudl almost be a zerg like race. They should have good economy buffs but to balance this, their ships should be more expendable and less effective 1 on 1.
Rebelion: The rebels should be similar to the rebublic in that they rely on fighters and non-capital ships but differ in that they favor very heavy shielding and anti-matter specific powers. Their fighters could also possibly get an added boost vs. frigates and capital ships.
Truth be told, you can try and recreate every ship as faithfully as you want but that will sacrafice gameplay. As it stands now, there are too many redundant ships and balancing issues. I know this isnt a ba;ance thread but propper designing of the classes would go a long way to solve the problem. The Empire's super weapons are also going to be very hard to implement without unbalancing the whole thing.
I like more focus on teching. Sins currently has little focus on teching and more on spamming ships.
I think that the reason SINS currently doesnt involve much research is that it takes way too many resources to get any real return on your ships.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with that one. For a couple thousand bucks and a thousand crystal/metal, you can max out most ship techs, for a meager 20-30% gain. That's not a lot of money, especially in a big game. Over the course of one hour, 1000 crystal or metal is 0.28 per second, which is less than one asteroid each. 10,000 credits is 2.8 credits per second, which is about one planet. If it's a two hour game, you can half that (and so on).
In other words, most of these technologies are pretty cheap. Two or three planets can pay to upgrade all of your weapons and defense in 1 to 2 hours, all for the cost of a couple cap ships (or a couple dozen cruisers). I think most people would say that the overall benefit outweighs the cost, since you can get around 30% more HP/SP and damage out of it (total increased combat effectiveness is >50% per ship.
My theory for why you don't get so big a return (as compared to other 4X or turn-based strategy games) is because they were trying to woo RTS gamers, who are shocked to learn that upgrading your units can lead to making the units 2 or 3 times more powerful. I mean, the 20-30% gains in SINS are on a par with Starcraft upgrades, not typical 4X games. (Also, the time to upgrade is pretty fast in SINS in my opinion). Thus, my thoughts as to making research more useful, costlier, and more time-consuming.
PS - I'm an avid RTS gamer, so don't think I'm hatin' on RTS here - but RTS and 4X are different game genres, and SINS borrowed from both.
that is why it's called a 4xrts
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