Currently, I don't see the point of sensors on most ships.
What I generally do is create "sonar buoys", basically cargo ships with nothing but sensors on them. A few of these can see who quadrants of a medium map, ensuring nothing gets through my territory without my notice, and its far more efficient than placing sensors on all of my ships.
In addition, because of the buoys, I never feel the need to get strong sensors. Even the basic ones provide plenty of distance when massed on a cargo ship.
I think sensors need a change to make them more generally useful (some combat bonus), or allow only so many sensor modules on a given ship.
Of course, if people don't want to build them it's fine - nobody forces them. But then there might be those who simply want to use all the possibilities a game offers them to their advantage, whether the AI can do it or not. I guess vs. a Human player will we see AIs that lack in one field or the other for quite awhile still...
It's an artificial limit to me not to build sensor ships when the game offers the possibility to build them. When I remember past GC II games having sensor ships did never seem the primary factor for me winning a game, much more important was to get a well running space empire up that can deal with any challenge. For example if I allow my opponents to get ahead too much in research or economy sensor ships won't save me.
Maybe it is, but until it gets changed that way I see no reason to stay away from building what I see as the best option or approach to deal with a certain issue.
A shipyard building a sensor-only vessel cannot build a combat vessel at the same time. Could be not significant depending on the exact situation, but there might be situations as well when you need to get firepower, not sensors.
And yes, knowledge about the enemy *is* a huge advantage. That's the primary reason to have recon/early warning drones, aircraft and ships these days. Even when there are still smaller countries which don't field anything comparable.
Not going to sugar coat it, I like using them. Why? AI cheats, there I said it. I'll watch the AI make a perfect B line to a ship or planet way outside their sensor range. Also the fact it makes sense to build them regardless. It's my form of military intelligence. I'm not going to call the Pentagon and tell them the use of satellites gathering IMINT is cheating.
Well... I think we just feel different about how to play games... me personally like a challenging game and abusing loopholes in the mechanic to gain huge advantages is something game balance can fix as is the case here... if it is done then you don't have any "artificial" limits anymore and need to adapt to the new situation. You can still use sensor scouts just with more reasonable range. It is for the same reason I play my games without any tech-trading. I would like tech trading to be a bonus you get when trying to develop something a trading partner already knows, that would make more sense and be more balanced as it benefit the one with lower tech than someone with better technology.
I play on insane maps with super slow game speed and tech progression and I can build an army of scouts long before I ever need or have time to build a single military vessel. On a smaller map and normal game play things might differ though. But smaller sensor scouts with two or three sensors are still more important early on than any combat ships. If you know the strength and make up of pirates or enemy ships you don't need to produce as many warships to counters their fleet. I see no scenario where I have a few sensor boats in the water spying on the enemy before I have any military ships available. Early tiny ships are basically produced one per turn anyway even on super slow speed... so I don't see the problem. larger sensor ships are not necessary until a bit later.
I really don't see how one can't think that a single ship being easily able to cover an entire sector with sensors are NOT a balance issue, especially when the AI don't get that benefit.
I'm not sure the AI cheat or rather know where your ship last was seen and so head in that direction. It is rather hard to tell, but I hope the AI don't cheat in that way.
Nerfing sensor boats does not eliminate its tactical importance it just BALANCE the game so there is not such a huge player advantage... a human player don't need it... we are smarter than any AI anyway.
If anyone like to use them that is fine by me, I don't care... for multi-player we might as well lift the fog of war altogether since most such games are played on relatively small maps.
There is currently a bug that the AI knows where all planets are. I don't think it knows where everything is because I've sent sensor and scout ships into enemy territory while I war and they don't bee line for them but they definitely know where planets are and it does seem like they find ships with sensor range. So right now they AI doesn't need sensor ships because they know where to find all the planets and from there they can find just about everything they need to find.
I build sensor ships, and early game too, because they are the most efficient way to explore. Later they are the best defense I have in knowing if someone is coming to do me harm. Now I want that sensor net to be able to detect incoming threats, everyone should be able to agree with me there, right? This is also the realistic expectation, all nations that have their act together have early warning systems to detect potential invasions and the same will happen in space when we get there. So what is the best way to set that up? At the moment its sensor ships because they have a much larger range than planetary or starbase sensor range.
I think just about everyone agrees that starbase and planet sensor ranges are low and should improve and don't scale with progression as much as they should. So the question is where should the balance lie? Personally I think sensor ships should be default and you should start with premade ones like the scout, colony ship and constructor you start with. The way sensors work now is intended and I know Paul mentioned using them in a stream months ago.
Bottom line for me is they can nerf sensors if they choose to do so and I will play on. As long as I can build them I will build them. I like em.
I think the balance is somewhere in between the best sensor ship and the best bases/planets as is now.
I really think that dedicated sensor ships have too great a range and bases too low. The mechanic should be balanced so we end up somewhere in between. I also think stations should potentially have better range to balance up the fact they are immobile, not to mention it makes sense..
As far as I know, there are no diminishing returns on any of the weapons or defensive components. [Ship rating] = round([component count]*[component rating]*[bonus]) is a setup where you will ALWAYS see an increase in the appropriate ship rating if you increase the number of components mounted. Therefore, it's not a diminishing returns system, at least not in the way proposed for sensors. The ship rating for sensors is sensor range; if you put diminishing returns on the range granted by sensors, you will have something like [sensor range] = round([component count]*[component rating]*[bonus]*[scaling factor]^[component count - 1]) or like one of the formulae I gave in the earlier post which you responded to. In this sort of situation, there are values for [component count] where you gain absolutely nothing except wasted effort from some of the components installed.
Optimizing leftover space because you get a size discount or something like that does not concern me, it's when you have to strip out components from a design because those components quite literally do nothing for you now that you've improved your technology that is the problem in my view.
That depends on how you scale the diminishing return. If you do it like I described there is no problem with better technology...
I think that a cap on the number of sensors on a ship would be good. Ether a hard limit or some sort of increasing size as you add more... probably just a hard cap, maybe 3 or 5 or something. That way you actually have to get more advanced ones.
It's all good...Blaze, I see your point and I am certain you have the best interests of the game in mind. It seems cheesy and you want the game to be free of cheese. It is the nature of all good men to stamp out cheese and corruption wherever it is found. I often find myself often wondering, one of the X's stands for exploit and as long as an exploit is available and the devs haven't seen fit to remove it, why let it bother you. They will never get them all. Just don't use them yourself and it is as if they do not exist. I don't use this exploit to the extent described. I build the biggest I can from turn one, and that is it for me.What about building 12 or more econ bases around a planet? Is that not an exploit. I don't do that one either. I could but I don't. It is just too much for me and it detracts from the casual nature of the game as I see it. I try to play the game in the way I tend to my business, Pragmatic, with an occasional lapse into Benevolence Hell, I love this game, but I don't even finish 90% of the games I start. I play until it gets tedious or stops being fun. The few exploits I use and how I bamboozle the minor races should be of no interest to anyone as long as I am not bragging about my high scoresIf they start recording high scores like they did with GCII, I will be more on board for attending to details like this. I hope you appreciate the good humor in which this was intended.
All good bud!
I agree on the star bases. Personally, I think they are too cheap. Perhaps I am not thinking of it right, but to me they are massive objects. It should probably take multiple constructors to build just the lowest level star base. They should also probably lose effectiveness when there are multiple star bases on a system. There is a reason why each nation only has one or two stock exchanges!
Putting multiple telescopes in parallel allows one to create an interferometer that gives greater resolution. Although the visual range is the same it becomes possible to resolve smaller features (ships, planets, starbases) with more sensors.Sensor range is, in theory, infinite. We already have telescopes that can see almost to the edge of the observable Universe. But we lack the resolution to directly observe planets near us. Improvements in resolution, not range per se, is what sensors should be viewed as.
True, but that is using a very small focal point, not an overall detection. Now, you COULD argue that fixed point assets like planets or star bases COULD be seen in greater detail, but to say you would see a small ship or fleet light years away with a telescope would be a bit much IMO. Now detection based on fleet size could be interesting, but then again would probably just be cheesed by human players.
<Edit> Of course, by the time any of the things in this game are remotely possible, we will all be dead No one while know who was right </edit>
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