Starbases are not mobile homes to be shunted from one world to another.
Examples of what has been moved recently. A BHD starbase moved to Yank in order to service new players. A BSE colony built in orbit of a gas giant was moved onto the surface of the same giant. The SMS were reseeded in order to account for their new neutral status. A starbase was moved off Falconia when they became player controlled and assets exchanged hands.
At no time will the GM move a starbase to prevent it getting a good kicking or move it to a location where it can give another faction a good kicking.
Ships are free and plentiful (yes there are officially thousands now in the game), use them not the GM. If you do not want the starbase, sell it or scrap it. If you do not want to pay for it, give it to someone who does or downgrade it to outpost status. Come one guys, play the game.
I'd certainly argue for moving my current starbase, if it didn't have over 300 factory, merchandising and recruitment complexes which would become totally useless if it were downgraded to an outpost.
Putting starbase moves into player control would possibly open up commercial opportunities too. We could charge big bucks for moving 200,000 MU's in-game, rather than automagically.
TonyH
80% recovery of all other types though... Or even just 60%.
On top of this, decisions like choosing the site for a starbase need to have major implications. Make them changeable and you weaken the gameplay - if anything can be changed, there are no significant decisions. That's no fun.
rob
In BSE, it was fairly common that if a starbase was captured, the attacking party would demolish the starbase. By the time a counter assault could be launched the following week, there would be nothing left of the colony to recover. Making complexes more difficult to demolish (and preventing recovery of the modules from demolished complexes) helps to overcome this.
Personally, I also very much agree with Rob's point about preserving game history.
Richard
AFT
A feasable way to limit the demolishion of complexes but allow the recovery of a proportion of modules would be to require them to be deactivated first and have a high work-hour requirement: Say 5000 hours or more, per complex.
This may be undesirable from a game history perspective, but in my opinion its got to be orders of magnitude more realistic than simply having several hundred thousand MU's teleported to another system.
A captured starbase can be destroyed easily the day after full control has been established. Just issue a "scrap complex" order for each type of complex present and then "destroy item" (or whatever the order is) for every item in the starbase inventory.
Personally I think this is silly and should be prevented. Demolishing complexes shouldn't be instant and "free" (it costs no work hours to destroy complexes). So is switching on/off complexes being taken out of the following weeks budget of workhours - surely the workhours need to be available from excess hours at the start of the starbase week to perform such actions?
It would be better (and give people a chance to launch a counter attack) if to destroy complexes you first have to switch them off and then it cost futher workhours to scrap them.
On the subject of destroying items in a starbase, should (is?) there a mu limit on the quantity of items that can be destroyed a week? Maybe a workhours cost for this needs to be implemented too? Destroying 1000mus of stuff takes 'x' workhours.
Alternatively what about scrapping 25% of the complexes per week per order, so it is still worthwhile taking a starbase but at least it gives the original owner some chance of getting some of the complexes back.
The idea of it costing stellars is a good one. Call it demolition costs. The spread of a starbase should also be taken into consideration. A complex is going to be more expensive to scrap if it is packed than disperse as it may damage other complexes when scrapping it.
Andy
If realism is sought then the amount destroyed per week should be depending on the size of the ground forces in the colony and a factor of their firepower. The local population probably wouldn't be too keen on helping with the destruction (might even resist it ?).
So if a ground party is very large and the starbase small, then it would be possible to destroy it in a week. If the starbase is huge it will take months and not max 4 weeks (= 25% per week).
Why would you want to send in a GP (at a loss of equipment and lives) to capture a starbase if you only plan to destroy / dismantle it?
If destruction / removal was the aim then wouldn't it be better achieved with an orbital bombardment from a fleet of warships or something?
| QUOTE (Soren @ Oct 8 2003, 01:52 PM) |
| If realism is sought then the amount destroyed per week should be depending on the size of the ground forces in the colony and a factor of their firepower. The local population probably wouldn't be too keen on helping with the destruction (might even resist it ?). So if a ground party is very large and the starbase small, then it would be possible to destroy it in a week. If the starbase is huge it will take months and not max 4 weeks (= 25% per week). |
Ok but when you scrap a complex you do it for one or two reasons.
First you are the long term starbase owner and want to get rid of a couple of complexes that you don't need anymore. I wouldn't send the troops in here. I'd send the qualified engineers and demolition experts. I think of this as knocking down a high rise building in the middle of lots of high rise buildings. You want to do as little damage to the surrounding buildings as possible.
Second you've just taken over the starbase by force and want to run it. Again you may need to scrap complexes same as above really.
Finally you want to destroy the starbase. Yeah sure send in the troops, but in order for simplicity you want one type of order and not two. If you really wanted to do it anyway you could do it via special action or even set up a ground party and attack the base with military items. These's nothing stopping you from doing that.
Andy
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ Oct 8 2003, 04:03 PM) |
| newbie question. Why would you want to send in a GP (at a loss of equipment and lives) to capture a starbase if you only plan to destroy / dismantle it? If destruction / removal was the aim then wouldn't it be better achieved with an orbital bombardment from a fleet of warships or something? |
What happens if a starbase has a load of space defences but relatively few military items? Why risk the fleet? If you did so then you would have to make damn sure you had enough warships in reserve to counter any counterattack and destruction of cargo ships. Cargo ships are the ships you want as well to ship in infrastructure to defend anything you capture so protect them at all costs.
Andy
A single soldier cant destroy a building, unless he have a few months and got the right training for it, thats not part of basic military training.
A tank could fire on a building, to get it to collaps, but really how weak are buildings in Phoenix? they dont all collaps when a starship fires on them, so why should a few troops be able to do it, especially without demolition equipment
If it takes 4 weeks to demolish a building then good, but also have it cost people to do it, anything else is crap, as it means 1 man could wipe a starbase, which is really wrong!
| QUOTE (Harlow @ Oct 9 2003, 12:16 PM) |
| A single soldier cant destroy a building, unless he have a few months and got the right training for it, thats not part of basic military training. |
Sure he can, all he needs to do is set it on fire.
if demolishing complexes was changed to take X weeks or X man hours, then shouldn't the same apply to building complexes?
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ Oct 11 2003, 03:53 PM) |
| Hi, if demolishing complexes was changed to take X weeks or X man hours, then shouldn't the same apply to building complexes? |
Please, for the love of the True One, no. Developing starbases is slow enough already with having to build/ship in 1000 MU per complex, and a month long tooling time for mass production. Having a build time on complexes would make me quit the game, I can say that now.
It just seemed to make sense that if you change one then you should change the other as well.
I suppose it feasible to consider that in the advanced world of phoenix, there are robotic helpers that can construct complex's? I mean why waste man hours if a robot can do the job? Perhaps these robots are part of the module complex.
It would be nice if you could rescue modules when scraping complex's. The idea of using man hours to do so suggests that a certain degree of intelligence is required to save a certain percentage of the modules, whilst also preventing capture and dismantle operations, occuring way too fast.
Dave
import loads of basic modules, build waaay too many recruitment complexes, scrap the complexes after a bit, use all the recovered modules to build research instead?
hmm - dont like the reusable module idea.
If you scrap a complex then you could maybe keep a percentage of un-manufactured base components (x metals, y basic elements etc)?
I was thinking of instances where you would want to move a starbase, or incorporate it into another base. From time to time, players end owning more than one starbase on the same planet, it would be nice to be able to merg the bases (though results in KJC making a loss due to one base being run instead of two).
Another situation is where you have a base that you've built up on a world which may have been economically adventagous at the time (resources, minerals, etc), but is not longer the case. The only option here is to turn into an outpost (Which if some of these bases have over 100 factories is a bit of a waste), or to continue running it and use it to suplly other bases with items.
Could possibly be a GM checked thing. I.E. You have to send in an SA to see if it's possible to decomission complex's? The GM could then set the number of work hours required, and the conversion rate you would get.
Just some thoughts.........
Dave
| QUOTE (DMJ @ Nov 14 2003, 11:46 AM) |
| Another situation is where you have a base that you've built up on a world which may have been economically adventagous at the time (resources, minerals, etc), but is not longer the case. The only option here is to turn into an outpost (Which if some of these bases have over 100 factories is a bit of a waste), or to continue running it and use it to suplly other bases with items. |
The idea (at least when you have more than one base) is that you have ones that make money, and ones that have good resources... It is a bit idealistic, but the general concept is that some worlds will be garden worlds with decent populations/economies, and some airless rocks with loads of minerals (because you haven't had a population mining them for centuries, if nothing else!).
In practise, most starbases are somewhere in the middle, but you should balance your starbase portfolio to maximise what you want to do in the game. That usually means at least one starbase that's useful for very little other than making stellars.... and several where you haven't got a cat in hell's chance of making a profit
Dan