Edited 5/29/20150-Morning
I have come across several allusions to warpgates in various places and put to you my proposition for their inclusion via a patch or mod.
*Warpgates would be the infrastructure backbone of an empire. Speeding up trade, travel, and military projection capabilities.
Justification: The Drengin used a warpgate to invade a nearby neighbor. The drawback was they had to rely on sub light travel to get the warpgate to the other system. Once the warpgate was established they invaded.
*'Long Distance' (intertile) Attacks
'Range' attacks will add strategic depth. Multi tile attacks would only be capable by certain units and not have the same strength as units using the default 'close quarter' battle. The inclusion of inter tile attacks gives the defender an advantage and
I like it warp gates are lite friendly and could be an interesting option for making your planets work more efficiently together and for invasion staging posts on the edge of other players territory.
I wonder if they could be modded in by hijacking work home system in some way.
Would it be possible to use the worm holes from the anomilies and make them into permanent warp gates.
"While stargates offered a significant upgrade from sublight travel, the immense structures are astronomically expensive to build and require placement both at the point of origin and the destination. Expanding into new parts of the galaxy via stargate took literally ages, since a stargate had to first be sent through normal space to the target star system."
"Having studied the plans in detail, the humans saw that the stargate confirmed many of their theories on how the universe worked. The humans also concluded that the stargates were rather impractical and that it would make more sense to simply create a stardrive that would allow ships to travel through folded space (hyperspace) directly. This became the hyperdrive project."
"Research firms across the planet quickly concluded that a propulsion system could be developed using the theories from the stargate that would enable individual ships to travel on their own. Those same individual ships would also be able to travel much faster than they could through a stargate. A ship going through a stargate would still take months, even years, to go relatively short distances. With the new hyperdrive system, that time would be halved with improvements possible for even greater relative speeds."
Stargates as in the lore are inefficient. The devs have mentioned Hypergates for an expansion.
I myself am fond of warpgates, especially the assault and defense aspects. I am a fan of the Starfire universe books by David Weber & Steve White. So +1 for this idea. It seems to me most people are opposed to starlane movement.
That's what I was wondering would we be able to generate one somehow, don't know is the answer but might have a dog at the xml see if it looks possible.
Stargates in lore are inefficient because you need to build one at both ends with ftl constructors that is not an issue.
I emphasized the relevant part.
Regarding Warp Gates:
They coud be very useful to- maintain some highly productive core planets andmove these ships to the outer areas of the empire- assembly of large robot forces and populating outer sectorswithin some turns- defend a vast empire with a reasonable amount of capital ships( combined with large scanner to detect enemies from far)
To build them certain ressources should be required. (2 Antimatter ...),which would set a limit to how many gates one empire can maintain.To build more of them one also has to ressearch a certain technology.
They could be integrated in other functions of the game.
- Diplomatic option to allow the use of the Warp Gates to other (allied)factions. Or even aks for construction of Gates in the territory of other players.So allies could help each other across the galaxy map.
1. My personal opinion is that instant travel across major chunks of the galaxy destroys the idea of a big galaxy in the first place. As travel gets faster, the world gets smaller. As it gets instantaneous, the world disappears. Well, not really, but regrets, I just don't like the idea of permanent gates.
2. Ranged attacks. The current system of abstraction is that fleets somehow find each other in the vastness of space and for the duration of a battle we are in fact just looking at a minuscule portion of that sector (or hex). One hex is on the order of a light-year or more. In reality, two fleets would be very hard pressed to find each other even if dumped in the same cubic light year. Astronomers have to go to some lengths to notice planets in other systems by watching changes in the brightness of stars or by spectroscopic methods. A planet is enormously larger than even a huge starship. And I am guessing the enemy wouldn't be beaming signals directly at you for your convenience. But it is a game, so we play along.
Regrets again, but I can't play along across multiple hexes. Just don't have the imagination I guess.
Your ideas are interesting to consider, please don't think I am trying to discourage you from posting them. I just don't agree with these at the moment.
Fair enough but since wormholes do exist in the game and allow instant transit over huge distances. A technology to generate a wormhole type stargate remains a possibility.
I'd like to see Warp Gates put in but only on colonies/systems you control. From the planet you build it on in it's orbit, and it only connects with other Gates you've built on other planets in systems you own. That's the way MOO2 handled them and it was perfect. It was also end game tech so it made sense. Wasn't OP at all.Now being able to build one in the middle of space behind a enemy empire when you don't own anything there, while that does seem cool and fun strategically to do, I could see how that could be OP and abusable. However with it being "End Game/Tech Tree" level tech, that too makes sense. Especially if it's expensive and costly to build and even more so if once built it's stationary.
Thinking about it I don't think you could repurpose worm holes since you'd need game code to allow you to set the endpoint.
I think they could be good though as a late game high level tech strategic option. I don't think they would work well in the early game they should be a major tech achievement.
I was thinking about this myself last night and you could probably make this a mid to late-game tech unlock where they have perfected warp gates to be nearly instantaneous space travel. The problem (and balance) would be that they're incredibly expensive, cost maintenance, and are easily destroyed.
Good technology like this shouldn't just die, in reality things are always re-acquired for new uses later. One little example, just look at how watches are coming back from the grave as fitness devices.
Also, I like the idea of creating new wormholes, that'd be a really fun distant tech. Maybe add some events to these guys that can cause problems too.
Agreed. I second this idea.
I believe devs did say they had plans for wormholes in the future, so I agree that there is of course the possibility of some kind of gateway travel. Although the most balanced way I could see them implementing this would be something you construct at the entrance and exit of a wormhole. The instantaneous travel across the galaxy with these already exists in the game, we already have the ability to control how often they appear when generating a map, and it does add a cool "space highway" feature. Constructing these would allow 2 way travel through a wormhole as well as a new strategic "resource". I could even see a few diplomatic options for allowing travel through a gate you control. I'm sure the devs would be able to put a flag so that players could control whether or not gateways would be allowed to be built in the map creation screen.
Unfortunately I don't see this truly happening outside of an expansion, but we can always hope
That makes good sense. I'd also suggest size / distance limitations - so you can't build huge dreadnoughts at your manufacturing capital and instantly send them to the other side of the galaxy.
Something like how they were implemented in Stars! would probably work well - you can have short distance with unlimited size, or long distance with small hulls only or something like that.
The existing wormholes are one way and not controllable. And it seems to me so far (could be wrong) that only survey ships can use them. Not so sure I think that's a good idea either...it allows one to contact other factions that you ordinarily wouldn't meet for a long time. It's a sticking point for me that the "feel" of the game ought to reflect the fact that you are dealing with galactic distances. Instant travel with railroads and airlifts in Civ made sense late game. It's the same issue I have with "ranged" warfare. I don't want Gal Civ to be "land war in space". But the original trailer for GC3 did show a massive fleet materializing out of nowhere.
Well, it's just me, there seems to be considerable opinion to the contrary. We will see how it works, might be a optional feature.
It has been great reading through the comments and ideas you all bring up. Updated the headline post with some of your ideas and will share my thoughts below.
A. Dimensional Warp (dimensional) Gates
I like the warp gate resource cost brought up by hakufu_sansaku. A resource cost prevents warp gates from being built by every planet and forces them to be built scarcely. I think this resource (current or new) should be generally found where habitual planets are not. This could push a resource rush earlier into the early colonial rush. I conceptually see a player establishing warp gates for a sector of his/her empire.
I realize (now) that warp gates is the past were not efficient. However as technology improves and study of precursor race continues a midgame tech I think would be sufficient justification for dimension gates reintroduction.
I also like the idea brought up that you could negotiate passage through another players warp gate network. First open boarders, then use of their gate network.
I am found of the idea that seizing another players warp gate allows you access to their network. I would say that on the diplomacy side, there would be three tiers: open boarders, gate access, and finally network merger (only done when firm allies)
B. Long range attacks
To Bamdorf
Conceptually the distance the fleets traverse is massive. I would still say that unique modules, buildings, and ships can justifiably have a “range” attack. Long range missiles, plucking asteroids from a nearby belts using a magnetic rail gun, and other weapon systems makes sense. I would say the range of long distance attacks would depend on sensor range and have a great chance of failing to hit the long range attack the further your target is. This would allow planets and star bases to enforce their zone of control forcing players to either take the two turns to get to the enemy space station to destroy it. Or try to bypass it as it takes shots at your fleet.
Other:
Multiplayer:
Any thoughts on simultaneous turns, turn timer options for multiplayer?
Mechanics:
Literacy - maybe its just me but the idea of a bug race with vast thralls and with only the high caste (leadership) counting towards literacy (ie tech modifier) I find appealing. But that might just be my drive towards wanting to renact starship troopers talking
Yes I've checked it out the anomaly just performs the Wormhole action which looks like a random one way teleport though we can't be sure it couldn't except parameters without seeing the code the game uses to implement that action.
Personally I think Wormholes should be a late game tech and you should have to construct both ends using transports, they should then allow ships to instantly travel between the two endpoints. They should have light defenses similar to shipyards. So they would need to be protected if you placed one in or near enemy territory.
The problem is, what's nearby? I can build a starbase that can cover (parts of) two, three, sometimes even four or five star systems systems, and you really don't expect distinct systems to be separated by less than a couple of lightyears (heck, if I'm playing as the Terran Alliance, we know how far away the nearest stars are, and yet I can still have a single station covering both the Sol system and a star which has to be a minimum of ~4 lightyears away, and which is arguably more distant since it's not usually one of the three Centauri). You want to pull an asteroid from that "nearby" asteroid field and shoot it at a "nearby" target with a magnetic railgun? It could very well take several years for your projectile to arrive at the target location, when each turn represents a single week. On top of that, the distances represented within each tile are inconsistent, to say the least; Earth and Jupiter may be as far from each other as from a planet in the next system over, and the stated tile dimension is 1 "adjusted parsec," a unit of distance whose official size (according to the game developers) ranges from just under 2% of an AU to about 10 real-world parsecs (from here; Draginol is Frogboy, if I understand things correctly), though I feel like the upper end of that range might be off by a factor of 10 (it'd make more sense to me if the 'adjusted parsec' was based off of how many parsecs a hyperdrive could cover under ideal circumstances; the 'adjustment' would then reduce the tile dimension to account for non-ideal conditions). Regardless of whether or not the upper end of the distance range covered by an 'adjusted parsec' is correct or a typo, you're still looking at a unit of distance which is enormously variable; any two tiles can have dimensions which differ by seven or eight orders of magnitude, with distances ranging from "maybe it's practical to engage with sublight weapons" to "hell no, they'll be long gone by the time anything we shoot at them gets there."
I would add that even at the low end of the tile dimension, it's unlikely that the game's weapon systems are capable of engaging, if the battle viewer is even remotely accurate. The minimum tile dimension is ~2 million miles (~3 million kilometers), which is about 10 light-seconds; judging by travel time of the lasers in the battle viewer, the maximum engagement range of standard ship-based weaponry is not more than 1 light-second as a rough estimate and probably much less. Homing missiles and unguided subluminal projectiles are demonstrably capable of missing at combat ranges, and as such it's likely that their performance will be worse at the ranges implicit in attacks launched from several tiles away, if they're even really capable of reaching the target within a reasonable period of time.
Personally, I tend to feel that the game plays out over a much, much smaller part of the galaxy than might be thought from the title 'Galactic Civilizations.' Toria and Drengi are known to be separated by about 20 light-years and it took the Drengin ~250,000 years of exploration to find them. It's probably a reasonable assumption that Toria, when discovered, is towards the edge of Drengin-explored space; if you assume a constant exploration rate and that the entire volume enclosed in the smallest sphere encompassing Toria, you get an exploration rate of ~0.13 cubic light-years per year, which would indicate that Arcea and Drengi are within ~14.7 lightyears of one another (this seems reasonable; the Drengin stargate which was bound for Toria crossed 20 ly in about 70000 years for an average speed of 0.00029c, and a Drengin probe launched with the intention of delivering the stargate plans to Arcea took 25000 years to arrive; if the separation is 14.7ly, this gives an average probe speed of 0.00059c, comfortably superior to the stargate but not excessively fast, and roughly four times faster than anything that humanity has put into space of which I am aware, aside from radio transmissions), that Arcea and Toria are within ~23.1 ly of one another, that Arcea and Altaria are within ~23.1 ly of one another, and that Earth is within ~23.4 ly of Arcea. A quick Google search indicates that there are probably about 2000 stars within 50 lightyears of Earth, which is reasonably consistent with the expected number of stars on an Insane map.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
