I have a small ship I made in previous game with 2 sensor modules. It now "sees" everything 11 hexes from itself. I don't recall this from Beta 5, where I made this ship design.
Bug or WAD? I wonder what would happen if I added 2 more... 22 hex range from my ship?
And the relevance on game balance in a computer game is...?!?
The game is fine. Nuff said.
When it is mathematically proven that it is better in ALL respects to build a ship with sensor on rather than use the sensor module on the station, it is proven to be broken beyond any doubt!!!Only a blind man wouldn't see it... Nuff said!!!
And who gets to say this I ask again????
Your math don`t proves anything other then you know algebra ConGratz on THAT!!! the sensors on the ships that are stack as you saying are doing a different job the the senors on the starbase do the ones on the starbase as stated are there for defense!! the ones on a sensor BOAT!!! are for long range THAT is the differnts!! and don`t pull your Hoilier then tho crap with me stating Nuff said!! I`m Not your Child!!! and if the boot be fitting be wearing IT!!!
Nuff said to you MR!!!
OK after looking it may not have been your math but that still proves what ???? to who and what does it prove??? That is not the way you like it!!! That what it about proves!!!
Excuse me... am I the only one of us living in the real world where when confronted with proof you just don't dismiss it because you don't like it.
There are no functional differences between parking a tiny maintenance free ship at a star base acting as it sensors than building a sensor module on the base itself, there are only benefits and no drawbacks. Not for a human player at least.
This is proven by crunching the numbers, and they don't lie.
Obviously no one can't convince you so I will not bother with it anymore, please keep a better open mind in the future...
I'm not sure what to think about the stacking sensors....It seems very exploitable. And not necessarily intuitive. This seems like something that would benefit from a poll or something to see where people stand.
Guess the New Yorker was right.
"Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans"
I will also leave the discussion at that point. Guess that arguing for an anti-gun-law with a Hillbilly must feel like what we did.
Excuse me... am I the only one of us living in the real world where when confronted with proof you just don't dismiss it because you don't like it. There are no functional differences between parking a tiny maintenance free ship at a star base acting as it sensors than building a sensor module on the base itself, there are only benefits and no drawbacks. Not for a human player at least. This is proven by crunching the numbers, and they don't lie. Obviously no one can't convince you so I will not bother with it anymore, please keep a better open mind in the future...
You see that's your whole problem, your trying to add real world physics to a game that is not entirely based on real world physics.
you and kordanor started all this by assuming something was broke because you did not like the effects..... I stated it was not Broke so you threw Numbers at us proving how the sensors work !!.. for what every reason!! we know they work that why you said that they broke the game!!!! and Now because I very much disagree with you I`m close minded who`s calling the kettle Black now open your mind it will be OK!!!!
oppss
oops here too
I'd like to talk about something less controversial, like galactic warming. There's this guy from the Terrans named Al Gore and he says...
If you think about it do two Hubble telescopes of equal optical power next to each other, or two radios next to each other double their optical /signal range. The same analogy is does two horses pull a cart twice as fast?
I think sensors should perhaps have different grades ,with the first unlockable grade having a lot of weight while later versions have reduced mass and increased range. In Distant Worlds Universe it takes a lot of weight to equip a sensor in the beginning and I think it slows the ship down. This will allow you to put it on a cargo class ship .
Perhaps have a weak perimeter scanner module for ships and a heavy long range scanner for cargo class. This way both parties win.
This is why I feel things can become mandatory even in sandbox:
GalCiv is a *strategy* game, the goal is to win the map/defeat opponents. This is irrefutable fact in that you can't start without opponents, or without any win-condition, and once anyone reaches this, the game will end. Advancing towards these win-condition dictates generally the *gameplay*. Hence, I will always choose the most efficient ways to come to this goal, and when this is always the same even under different situations, and even when other methods are available as well, then this is a very strong indicator that there is something off balance.
(It's a self-imposed rule but I have the feeling that strategy games are designed to be played with an emphasis on this, otherwise they wouldn't have been called strategy games in the first place.)
And this is taking alot of fun away from me because I no more have to carefully weigh my choices. The imbalance or OPness (of something ingame) actually made the choice for me, or put this choice into my lap.
Sure, I could do something else, like roleplaying, or dumbing me down, or ignoring stuff I could do - but all this would essentially contradict my personal reasons of why I started up the game in the first place.
And that is why I think that arguments which support ingame balance or the strategical aspects of the game do "weigh more heavy" than other arguments such as roleplaying or realism etc
The perfect vision for this game would be if
- no loopholes, exploits, bugs or overpowered stuff which leads to cheesy gameplay is there to use
- the AI changes/adapts his tactics reactively to what the player does so that tactics/strategies that did work in the past might not work in the future
- the player/AI have alot of different choices at their hands and both have to carefully think about which one to use, and when. All ingame stuff should be able to see a specific situation in which it would be the best choice, although it mustn't happen in every game.
In GalCiv2, even after years and years of development, there are still so many loopholes or imbalances present that, even on suicidal the AI will always loose no matter how bad you play - if you just keep these weaknesses in mind (and I'm not talking of bugs here, but a simple going full tech, lease-buying empty hulls on longest term lease, declaring war early, upgrading all hulls to maximum attack, suing for peace in trade for all planets & ships --> win; will do). So if you want a challenge there you have to NOT use a dozens or more things/mechanics; but it would have been simply better if this stuff would have been taken out of the game, or closed for abuse.
The funny thing is that sometimes you even use bugs, exploits, or OP stuff and you are not even aware of it. At that point the argument of "simply don't use it" doesn't work.... Others might consider it a generic feature. Only a minority of players actually reads these forums.
And this is what I feel should happen to GalCiv3 now. IMO this is what Beta-testing is all about. You can't always add to it - this will only result in overkill. For example DarkAvatar saw a huge nerf in engine power, sure sure it was fun zipping in 2 turns from left to right in a gigantic galaxy, but it was unbalanced as heck as you could just slip past enemy fleets with superfast armed transports and take out the single defender and conquer enemy planets even without air superiority. And if the AI did that to you (when you left unguarded planets) it felt annoying as hell because the attack could occur from well over sensory range.
The good news for us is that the modding capacity of this game is tremendous and with some dedication, all of us are going to play the personally perfect balanced game anyway.
Hmm maybe nebulas should reduce scanner range significantly. Maybe have them act more like a mountain that can create blind spots. If you are on the left of a nebula it blocks almost all scan ”light” to the right on it.
..
I wonder if certain people here actually build sensors on their stations... and if not you can wonder why?
I'm not surprised they don't even know what math l'm talking about either. They simply don't seem to even grasp the concept of what l'm trying to convey to them.
This is why I feel things can become mandatory even in sandbox:GalCiv is a *strategy* game, the goal is to win the map/defeat opponents. This is irrefutable fact in that you can't start without opponents, or without any win-condition, and once anyone reaches this, the game will end. Advancing towards these win-condition dictates generally the *gameplay*. Hence, I will always choose the most efficient ways to come to this goal, and when this is always the same even under different situations, and even when other methods are available as well, then this is a very strong indicator that there is something off balance.(It's a self-imposed rule but I have the feeling that strategy games are designed to be played with an emphasis on this, otherwise they wouldn't have been called strategy games in the first place.)And this is taking alot of fun away from me because I no more have to carefully weigh my choices. The imbalance or OPness (of something ingame) actually made the choice for me, or put this choice into my lap.Sure, I could do something else, like roleplaying, or dumbing me down, or ignoring stuff I could do - but all this would essentially contradict my personal reasons of why I started up the game in the first place.And that is why I think that arguments which support ingame balance or the strategical aspects of the game do "weigh more heavy" than other arguments such as roleplaying or realism etcThe perfect vision for this game would be if- no loopholes, exploits, bugs or overpowered stuff which leads to cheesy gameplay is there to use- the AI changes/adapts his tactics reactively to what the player does so that tactics/strategies that did work in the past might not work in the future- the player/AI have alot of different choices at their hands and both have to carefully think about which one to use, and when. All ingame stuff should be able to see a specific situation in which it would be the best choice, although it mustn't happen in every game.In GalCiv2, even after years and years of development, there are still so many loopholes or imbalances present that, even on suicidal the AI will always loose no matter how bad you play - if you just keep these weaknesses in mind (and I'm not talking of bugs here, but a simple going full tech, lease-buying empty hulls on longest term lease, declaring war early, upgrading all hulls to maximum attack, suing for peace in trade for all planets & ships --> win; will do). So if you want a challenge there you have to NOT use a dozens or more things/mechanics; but it would have been simply better if this stuff would have been taken out of the game, or closed for abuse.The funny thing is that sometimes you even use bugs, exploits, or OP stuff and you are not even aware of it. At that point the argument of "simply don't use it" doesn't work.... Others might consider it a generic feature. Only a minority of players actually reads these forums. And this is what I feel should happen to GalCiv3 now. IMO this is what Beta-testing is all about. You can't always add to it - this will only result in overkill. For example DarkAvatar saw a huge nerf in engine power, sure sure it was fun zipping in 2 turns from left to right in a gigantic galaxy, but it was unbalanced as heck as you could just slip past enemy fleets with superfast armed transports and take out the single defender and conquer enemy planets even without air superiority. And if the AI did that to you (when you left unguarded planets) it felt annoying as hell because the attack could occur from well over sensory range.The good news for us is that the modding capacity of this game is tremendous and with some dedication, all of us are going to play the personally perfect balanced game anyway.
I still don't see why you see this as so overpowered and game breaking, its just view distance. Of the victory conditions for the game none require greater view range and military is the only one to really improve with extended constant view range. For influence, alliance and tech victories knowing where things are isn't really important other than protecting your assets and if you keep a decent defensive military on your planets you don't need the view range. None of those victories care one whit about what you can see, just what you've accomplished, you don't have to see a planet to flip it if you have enough influence to do so. The same goes for tech and ascension, you build the ascension gate or tech thing, what you can see matters not at all. Again the alliance victory doesn't require you to wipe out the other races that won't play nice, you can get your allies to do that. Although it is more efficient if you do it yourself. Even military doesn't require that, it just makes it easier, you know exactly where to send your fleets to invade and engage their fleets but it isn't required, build yourself a nice death fleet as Paul likes to call them and park it next to their planet, they will try to defeat it, the AI will send waves of ships and a human player will build his own death fleet if you just leave it there. There is no requirement here it just makes certain aspects of the game easier.
Also I will point out again that those "OP" sensor ships have disadvantages to them, they have crappy range and generally only 1 engine so even a small ship with 2 engines of the previous design and the crappy default laser will take them out.
First of all they don't have crap move or range. My sensor boats about five to ten turns into the game has 6-8 move good range and 20-25 heX scanning range. The first one are slower but so are all other ships as well.
This trivialise early scouting into a none issue. This is especially appearant if you have many AI or play on a smaller map. You can quickly grab all the good stuff before the AI. Sure... on harder difficulty the AI cheat to some extent, but that is another discussion.
Then you have the sepparate issue with the imbalance between station and ship sensors which some don't seem to be able to recognise.
The point I was trying to make is that, because the game has victory conditions, I play to win, and that, at the best of my abilities, and therefore, ignoring stuff, not using stuff etc is unsatisfying to me. It was more a general note of why I think some things become mandatory under certain presets.
Maybe, but in most setups you might solve these problems. Let's say you have a sensorship by turn2, which unveils 3 habitable planets in 3 different directions. Next thing you need is 3 colony ships, and it will take you some time to get them and send them en route. In the meanwhile your slow sensorship has all time to travel into a direction where you think that other planets are. Once you've settled on the 3 planets you will gain additional range from these planets, your sensorship can use that, and should, by that time, have already arrived at a location where its perimeter might unlock other planets. You simply repeat this until you're done. In a way your sensorship follows your colonization, while its outer perimeter guides this colonization. If you can raise enough sensorships you can do this in all directions.
This way you'll also come into contact with other AI more earlier, can trade earlier, secure resources earlier etc. There might be some gamesetups with rare habitable planets were your sensorships could not find any planets or run out of range, but if you carefully plan ahead you could sacrifice some sensors for additional range or speed or both.
As I think about it perhaps the problem lies within scaling of these modules with the cargo hull. Historically, this hull always posed some problems, for example, in Dreadlords you could upgrade ship using the cargo hull into a medium hulled ship (ie. gaining +20 hitpoints out of nowhere). In TOTA using a cargo hull together with a good hitpoint mod a specific weapons would make more lethal combat ships than medium hulled frigates. Granted, they were more expensive but you didn't have to research into hulls at all.
Now this is my personal opinion but I get th eimpression that cargos are more ment to carry huge functional modules to form freighters or transports. Therefore the need for much capacity even at the startup of a game, and small stuff like sensors simply never got balanced versus this capacity.
BTW let me get back to a post from you the page before, I forgot to reply to that:
If you take your chances it could also mean your colony ships don't find anything. Which will probably mean a certain defeat. At least, on harder difficulty settings and if AIs have much more planets and potential power it should really mean it.
With the sensorship however you still wander in safe grounds. You might loose 1 potential planet because the cost raised for this sensorship could have been a colony ship.... but it's not that this investment is lost into the blue. You still have this ship after the colonyrush and can use it strategically, even upgrade it to something else, the game will remember the initial costs. This ship might find you resources, perhaps you can see where alot of anomalies lie and guide your surveyor manually therein, circumvent pirates, knowing what others do is always good, for example you can see at what planets the AI sends his colonyships, and deduce from that how much time remains to beat him to them, or in a negative case, stop your ships premature or send somewhere else. Nothing more frustrating when 1 turn before arrival the planet is taken by someone else! There's just too many advantages here to ignore them.
Ironically, this thread is probably accelerating the heat death of the universe.
It is for the reason you stated above I do not feel your point is valid since you are going to either mod in diminished returns on sensors or mod sensors on star bases. I really do not see the problem with increasing the range to make the map more viewable in terms of exploration. Why would I want to build ten scouts when I can build one ship that does the job of ten scouts in less time?
Let me ask you this. What is the point of having the ship designer to make our own customized ships if we cant make ships that extend the viewable range of the galaxy? Might as well advocate removing the ship designer from the game since this is means that allows us to do this. I have stated from my first post on this issue that I do not and never have started any of my games with a 100% pure sensor ship and I never will. But I want that choice should I feel the need and necessity to have it.
One person builds a sensor ship and everyone assumes sensors are overpowered for the simple reason this can be done. I strongly disagree with that assumption. Senors were never an issue until some jack wagon built a sensor boat and said we can't have this is the game. Senors are working as intended.
Here is how I see this whole issue. Some tester built one didn't not like how it made his star bases look bad . He didn't want the AI to catch on how to build them. He does not want others to use them in his MP game because he doesn't want to lose out on gaining most of the habitable planets for himself. So he wants ship sensors changed for his own selfish reasons and mislead all of you to follow him.
I have been a tester since the alpha 2 stage. The ship designer has been out since January, don't you think the testers had an issue with sensors don't you think we would have caught onto this and demanded a change long before now? I find it ironic that it's few recent Beta buyers who have been the loudest people asking for this limitation also the fact that the very ones who have been the most vocal also primarily play in Multi-player mode and couldn't gave a flying frak about those of us that do not.
That's pretty selfish reason to to change something that was never broken to begin with.
So, why are sensor upgrades for starbases in the game, if they are never a meaningful choice to begin with? Trick beginners?
Simply because Star bases are still an important part of the game whether or not you build a sensor ship.
Just wait until someone fleets several scouts and you see the same issue you are all complaining about with one sensor ship. I am sure someone going to say no sensors on scouts because fleeting makes sensors overpowered.
I should do this just to prove my point.
Why don't you answer his question... is that so hard. The quesion is not why starbases is in the game, it is why starbes sensors is in the game?
Why not answer the actual question for once?
It is much simpler to deal with smaller scouts since you can chase the off, large sensor boats not so much.
That being said I'm not against sensor boats in MP, you all play with the same rules.
Listen here Mr. DENSE. I answered his question and once again you reject the answer I gave. Starbases whether or not the senors on them preform poorly are still an important part of the game for mining, culture, and military. If you were not so bias against sensor stacking you would see this too.
WE STILL NEED STAR BASES REGARDLESS!!!
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