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[Criptfeind]

Thanks for stopping by zer0sum. And thanks for answering our questions. Although now by expectations for this game are much higher!

Cloaking devices and jammers will not render your ship invisible to the eye but you will not be able to detect them on your sensors.

This is a interesting way of doing it, and I must say I quite like the idea.

Now, one question I have, how does ordering ships around work? Do they follow your flagship around, or do you split them into fleets and tell them where to go?

[Girlinhat]

He said during an invterview that ships are mostly AI controlled, with a variety of AI presets like "missile ship" and "laser brawler" and whatnot.  For the most part it's simply "tell them to go there and leave them to it".  Since every space 4X has fleets of some kind (usually the ctrl-F# variety) I'd hope those are here too.  Although I'm curious if you can make and/or edit AI in-game.  Since mod support is in, I assume there's a couple of text files for AI, but in-game AI design would help too, in case the game doesn't quite cover all your needs.

Also, ramming attacks?

[zer0sum]

No ramming attacks!  I have toyed with kamikaze fighters though.  Also, in MOO2, you could detonate your ship to do damage and I might bring that concept over.

Ordering ships around is your standard RTS fare.  Most things can be accomplished a context-sensitive right click.  However, in the ship design screen you can customize a design's behavior.  It's really quite simple.

You choose:

(1) Prefer small, med, large ships for targets

(2) Vulture, cooperative, or independent behavior

(3) Preferred engagement distance on targets

(4) Retreat at... variables

and a few others.  You assign weights to these behaviors with sliders, and then the AI will pick the best target and maneuver accordingly when it is locked in battle. 

If the ship is not in battle then it will just idle, or orbit a planet.

Also, I do have the ability to simply assign a ship to the automated defense fleet.  So you can order it to join the defense fleet and while you can order these ships around all you want, in the absence of orders, the AI will move your defense fleet around to where it thinks it needs to go.  The Computer opponents use the same logic. 

Finally, you can create custom fleets with the control-grouping seen in regular RTS games. Ctrl-1 for the first fleet, then just hit 1 to select it and order it where you need it to go. 

[Sirus]

No ramming attacks? D:

Ok, kamikaze fighters are a good step, but I want to play as an entire kamikaze RACE. Charge in, fire ze missiles, ram the survivors. Overwhelm the lesser species with sheer numbers and unflinching self-sacrifice.

[zer0sum]

No ramming attacks? D:

Ok, kamikaze fighters are a good step, but I want to play as an entire kamikaze RACE. Charge in, fire ze missiles, ram the survivors. Overwhelm the lesser species with sheer numbers and unflinching self-sacrifice.

I can do this.  What I'll do is add a command, like Control+K, and then you'll have to select a target.  Your ship will fly right up to it and then detonate its warp core, damaging all ships (including friendlies) in the area.  I've made a note of it. 

[Girlinhat]

Main battleship: 5,000 engine power, 10,000 armor strength.  It has no weapons, it simply charges in and rams through ship after ship!  When you get Battleships ramming into enemy stations, getting stuck, and firing their way through I'll be content.  Or using the enemy station as a shield by ramming into it and forcing the enemy to fire on their own station :3

Are there plans for "keep fleet at X strength" orders?  One thing that always sucks about big empires is trying to keep fleets stocked, especially in realtime (compared to turn based).  If you could assign a planet to "upkeep defense fleet" and it would auto-produce new ships, that would solve it.  Just have an order for "keep the fleet at this level" so that it replenishes losses, and if you add a new ship then it ups the bar and keeps the production level there.  With so much emphasis on controlling the flagship, I think this sort of macromanagement controls would help a lot to allow the player to focus less on micro-shipbuilding orders and more on pushing the empire.

NINJA: Explosive ships sound good, but they don't have re-use.  It'll work, I suppose... ramming tends to be OP most times it's used anyways.

[Flare]

Main battleship: 5,000 engine power, 10,000 armor strength.  It has no weapons, it simply charges in and rams through ship after ship!  When you get Battleships ramming into enemy stations, getting stuck, and firing their way through I'll be content.  Or using the enemy station as a shield by ramming into it and forcing the enemy to fire on their own station :3

If he's going to make ships capable of doing this, he might as well just give you a missile template to put stuff in instead of giving ships meant for some other purpose .

[Girlinhat]

...ship missiles.  Like, missiles that are ships.  GLORY!

[Jopax]

Have you thought about modifiable weapons tho.Basically you have a few slider for some different stats (rof, range, damage, accuracy, stuff like that) and you get a set amount of points for a certain tech level of that weapon (higher levels give more points and some bonuses i guess) to distribute as you see fit.Maybe even make it so that a certain number of points in a certain stat gives some kind of unique bonus to a weapon. Like say if you give a laser a high enough RoF stat it will turn it into a continuous beam weapon or if you say give it enough range and damage it turns into a burst laser lance of sorts.

Anyways, really like the idea of this, sadly my online money is pretty non-existant X(

[Zangi]

Relevant to my interests, posting to watch.

Amassing lots of ships and using em to steamroll won't be a valid tactic would it?

[Girlinhat]

Ships incur maintenance cost, so if you've got the economy to back a fleet then you've already expended a lot of effort making money worlds, and thus it's a valid tactic.  But then, if you've got that large of an empire, it's not a fair fight.  Ideally your opponent would be steamrolling right back at you, otherwise the competitors are mismatched and you can't say "this is overpowered".  But no, you can't slowly build up a fleet over time and zerg rush.  You'll be paying maintenance on all those ships, making a cap on your max fleet size based on your economy power.

[Flare]

I remember playing in a similar system in Warrior Kings. Since all soldiers need food, you will always have need of farmers back home to maintain them. Along with the unit cap, this meant that you will always need to balance the number of soldiers that a farmer can feed. I got around this and zerged my enemies a few times simply by having very few soldiers in defence in order to build up the stockpile of food until there's enough to kill all or most of my farmers and simply produce all military units. There's a significant risk with this obviously, while you might gain around 50% more soldiers, the chances of rebounding if you fail or if your opponent holds you off long enough is practically none if you don't do enough damage to their infrastructure as you have done to your own.

[Girlinhat]

If you can produce units quickly enough and store enough cash to "buffer" your economy long enough for a zerg rush...  well, you're balancing on a knife's edge there and risking very serious miscalculations.

[Flare]

It does tend to be incredibly risky, considering that in the game, buildings and walls are often melee proof, which is good to train up your units, but not so good when you're on crusade. The farms you can have your units set fire to, but you usually have to avoid a siege if you can. As my massive number of units are a constant drain on the food bank, having them smash ineffectively at the walls isn't an option. The siege engines aren't all that fast either, meaning you'll have to bring a lot a sapper and build it there too unless you're already in the end game. The good thing about this is, is that due to the simple quantity of the units you have, you can soak up a lot of arrows and projectiles aimed at your way providing cover to siege engines that wouldn't otherwise be there taking hits for it.

[Girlinhat]

...I have no idea what you're talking about, and it doesn't pertain to StarDrive in any case.  Point is, it sounds like there's no unit cap, which is great because I, for one, hate arbitrary limits, but you are capped by how strong your economy is.