[Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#1
A very very old suggestion that has been talked over a few times in the past but never really came to a unanimous conclusion. Dev team seemed to like the concept but no final decisions were made. I've made a fair few modifications to the suggestion and tried to balance it out in terms more relative to the modern universe standards.

The original concept was a joint effort between myself and SquirrelOnCrack, have at thee!

PART ONE

Siege Technology

Cost

Metal: 15,000
Crystal: 10,000
Deuterium: 2,000

NOTE: Cost doubles per level.

Pre-Requistes

Weapons Technology 5
Computer Technology 3
Espionage Technology 5
Research Lab 8

Description

Siege technology works similarly to Expedition in that there are a limited number of slots you can
have for sieges. For each second level of the siege technology the number of slots available
increases by 1. This means you need level 2 Siege Technology before you can actually
send a siege mission. This works up to a maximum of 5 available slots for sieges at level
10.

The other important factor about this technology is that for each level, your time you can
spend holding a planet under siege is increased by 10 minutes. For example, at level 2,
the point where you can actually send 1 siege mission out, you may only hold the siege for
a maximum of 20 minutes.

Siege is launched from the mission select screen and can only be chosen if you have a Demolition
Ship in your fleet. The siege time is selected from the dop down box to the right, the same place
you would choose the ACS defend stay time.

Things to note

Siege can destroy a single level of building on a colony, the time taken to siege is equal to the
time taken to deconstruct the building in question by the target player.

As you can see the seige time is limited, it would get difficult to justify the upgrade of this
technology eventually. Level 15 would give you a maximum seige duration of 150 minutes
(2 hours 30 minutes). With this in mind my idea is as follows:

As you cannot destroy any of the high level buildings without a very long seige duration, this was
designed this with ACS Siege (exactly the same as ACS attack but with siege elements) in mind.
With more than one persons Demolition Ships in the attacking fleets the time available for siege
is calculated by adding together all participants Siege Technology levels. For example, if two people
were ACS sieging with level 12 tech each, the maximum time for their combined attack would be
240 minutes (4 hours).

NOTE: This is not designed for universes without the full ACS system.


PART TWO

Demolition Ship

Cost

Metal: 5,000,000
Crystal: 3,000,000
Deuterium: 500,000

Pre-Requistes

Seige Technology 2
Shield Technology 16
Weapons Technology 14
Hyperspace Engine 7
Shipyard 14
Graviton Technology 2

Statistics

Structure Points: 8,000,000
Shield Strength: 70,000
Attack Points: 700
Cargo Capacity: 500,000
Base Speed: 100
Fuel Consumption (Deuterium): 20.000

Rapid Fire

Against Solar Satellite: 5
Against Espionage Probe: 5
From Death Star: 10

Description

This massive vessel, rivalling the size of the mighty Death Star is the only thing capable of
destroying buildings on a colony. It's huge size renders it extremely slow, but very capable.
The Demolition Ship is equipped with several huge Graviton projectors. These weapons are a
complicated marvel of scientific research, they are able to project nets of graviton
energy that attach themselves to buildings, literally pulling them apart, completely obliterating
them on a molecular scale. Due to the sheer complexity of these weapons, a research level of 2
in Graviton must be attained. However, the operation and effect of these weapons takes time,
in effect, rendering them almost useless in ship to ship combat. For this type of fighting, it is
equipped with several high powered Ion Cannons, these serve only to drive away small attacking
vessels, lacking the firepower for the larger ones. To make up for it's lack of combat capabilties
it has been equipped with very powerful shields, making it good at surviving heavy fire.

Other things to note

To siege a players world, the attackers must send at least the collective amount of Demolition
Ships that equal the level of the targeted building. For example, a level 30 Metal Mine requires
at least 30 Demolition Ships in the attacking fleet(s). Secondly, the attackers must send at least
the collective amount of Deuterium with the sieging fleet to power the Graviton matrix, that is
defined by this formula:

(Target Building Level * 1.000.000) * (1 - (Weapons Technology Level / 100))

This basically means that it costs the attackers 1 million deuterium for each level of the building
they are targeting, with a reduction modifier equal to 1% per level of the attack initiator's Weapons
Technology.

If any of the numbers does not meet requirements, the siege will fail at it's target and cause a
backwash as explained below.

The demolition of a building will scale it down by 1 level. To lessen the destructive ability
this entails, demolition cannot occur on moons or a players homeworld, only colonies.
The destruction of a building appears as a normal construction would on the players buildings
screen, if the player already has a building in progress, the mission will be rejected from
the mission select screen before the launch. If the player begins constructing a building while
the seige mission is en route, the mission will fail. The seige will state it's beginning or
failure at the bottom of the Combat Report, just like a moon destruction mission. This means the
Demolition Ships must survive all 6 rounds of combat. Mission failure causes a backwash in the
Graviton Weapons on the ship, destroying not only it, but the entire fleet that survived with it.

The building the attackers want to seige can be targeted with a drop down box
that appears after the mission button has been checked. Just like IPM strikes, only this time
you have to specifically target a building type.

While the attackers are sieging a planet, the siege fleet will show up on the Espionage Report
of the target planet under a new tab called "Siege", sort of like Reinforcements. However, they
will be vulnerable in the fact that people attacking the target planet will hit the siege fleet first,
ignoring any other fleet or defense on the target planet. This makes siege fleets very vulnerable
to attack while they are in action.

Unlike Moon Destruction missions, a backwash event in a Siege mission will create debris.
Image
When people ask me plz because it's shorter than please, i feel inclined to respond no because it's shorter than yes...

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#2
It is clear that you have put a lot of thought into this however, you said that it would take a specific amount of time to destroy a building and it would be based on how long it takes to construct that building. My question is will that be based on how long it would take the defender to build that building because if so that would punish them for building nanites or will it be set amount of time per building level.

eg. 30min/lvl a level 30 mine would take 900 minutes to destroy or 15 hours.

Overall I think this would do one of two things

1st it would drastically change game play or
2nd it would be nearly useless and become like expedition tech is now

I don't think either one would be good for the game
Those with nothing to loose have the most to gain. Long live the Miner!

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#3
The siege time is based on how long it takes the defender to deconstruct the targeted level of the building. It would be based on their Nanites and Robot Factories, yes.

Something else I forgot to mention; if a siege is successful on a planet with only 1 building at level 1, the planet will be destroyed upon completion. Allowing for clearing spaces inactive/rival players are holding with roamer/undeveloped planets. However, completely empty planets cannot be targeted with siege. A note to remember; neither can moons or homeworlds.

Some of the suggestion could use a bit of rethinking, but that's what we're here for. :)
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When people ask me plz because it's shorter than please, i feel inclined to respond no because it's shorter than yes...

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#6
why would you want to lvl down your farms? Also, if siege ship is in orbit sieging planet, it is attackable anytime right, just JG in some rips to kill it? Like expedition, Id never use, why lvl down people you farm and crash, get higher lvl fleeters out there doing this for the lulz on people lets see more players just quit losing nanites they worked hard for etc More ships would be cool to add to what ships there are but this is terrible idea to lvl down peoples building , just crash them lol On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being bad and 10 awesome, Id just say this is retarded
Last edited by xxxx on Sat Jan 08, 2011 12:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#7
This is the worst and most overused idea on these forums in my opinion. For players whom are not fleeters, they make their growth through their guaranteed points... in their buildings mainly. With hundreds of RIPs floating around already, miners are already in trouble. Yes, there are some big miners, but buildings on planets are suppose to be safely spent resources for passive players. 100% against this.
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Death begins with life's first breath, and life begins at the touch of death.

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#8
xxxx wrote:...doing this for the lulz...
Clearly you did not take in how hard it is to actually pull off a successful long duration siege. Anyone "doing this for the lulz" are likely to not keep their ships for too long. Nevertheless I do understand this is one of those suggestions that have an extremely slim chance of ever making it in game, thank you for your, rather verbose, review.
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When people ask me plz because it's shorter than please, i feel inclined to respond no because it's shorter than yes...

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#9
Istalris wrote:
xxxx wrote:...doing this for the lulz...
Clearly you did not take in how hard it is to actually pull off a successful long duration siege. Anyone "doing this for the lulz" are likely to not keep their ships for too long. Nevertheless I do understand this is one of those suggestions that have an extremely slim chance of ever making it in game, thank you for your, rather verbose, review.

Alot of people are mining to fleet later, I think alot would like to see more fleets flying out there to hunt. Id hope to keep it to being about hunting, getting crashes than messing with players infrastructure that as is , is an achievement, and takes discipline that most dont have to do. I have played a game before where you can lose your work, your too busy rebuilding all the time and not making armies!

Re: [Evaluation Needed] Planetary Sieging

#10
Being able to hit the other guy hard like this sounds fun but at the same time i have seem a lot of players quit playing over a lot less.
This would also make it so big players could knock the little guys back to the start over and over you would need better newbie protection.
Maybe if each planet had a population and you needed xxx number of people to run each lvl of build and xxx number per ship in a fleet you could raid the planet kill the people and stop there production for a time until the population grows back.
This would also give the unneeded colony ships some thing to do after you get your planets, use them to fleet save some of the population just as you would res.
This may open up the need for a new ship The Mother Ship or (mobile planet).
Just a crazy thought. tell me yours.
cron