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Planetery ownership

#1
Although there are different kinds of planets in Limit theory, If we do get planetary ownership, i have some ideas and suggestions for what goes on with these juicy planets.

first off, how to obtain them? for starters, i think there should be random barren planets. these may seem boring at first, but they are easily and readily available to any faction or the player with the proper resources. I think the player should also be able to invade planets they see as desirable (although this would be a monumentally difficult task). Another way a player could be able to obtain a planet is from a faction that considers them a dear ally. if they are friendly enough with a given faction, they can be offered planets for purchase (selling sovereignty, essentially, for those eve fanatics out there), or the player can offer to buy one from the faction. Although very expensive, this comes with the opportunity of a preconstructed planet in perfect condition. No destroyed structures from an invasion, and no need to build up an infrastructure of a a barren planet. the secondary cost to this benefit is that the planet is already set in its Type (I'll go over that suggestion shortly). you can also find rare (and i mean RARE) Relic planets, with special infrastructure, technology, and/or resources/ships, the rewards vary, but all you need do is move in. these relic planets are abandoned planets of some ancient space faring civilization, and are full of surprises (automated planetary defense systems anyone?).

as for owning planets, i think planets could be built into certain categories. barren planets, and conquered planets can be built into one of three categories: Resource Planets, Commerce Planets, and Military Planets. These planets specialize in their field, but can have installations of any kind, for instance building planetary defense guns (think Hoth and star-wars) and then installing them on your resource planets. or adding a commerce hub to a resource planet to sell its excess goods, etc. but to have these hybrid setups, the player will need to produce them from their original planet types.

Resource planets are good for resource gathering, and have decent ship production abilities.

commerce planets are cash cows, they buy and sell goods, and they are also good sources for hiring your own pilots. very low manufacturing abilities.

Millitary planets are great in all forms of production, but cannot harvest resources, they are hungry, but can build fleets, offensive tech, research tech, and planetary defense tech. imagine one planet used only for ship production, another for mainly research mounted with defense guns. they are obviously poor in selling anything, are very flexible in their use.

discovered alien abandoned planets can be fun grab baskets. they are random in their attributes, and can be powerful hybrid planets. imagine resource millitary planets, or millitary commerce planets, turning the owner into the local arms dealer for their allies. or they may just bare gifts and are simply barren planets yet to have their type of industry established. these planets are all over the spectrum and can make great Capital worlds, the largest being specialized in all aspects of planetary awesomeness. getting in one of that caliber would obviously entail war at some point, as everyone is going to want a piece of the pie.

planets that are successfully invaded are procedural in whats left standing. sometimes nothing is left but a pile of rubble (still good for recycling though), while some structure may be left standing. any planetary defense structures often don't survive.

lastly, planets with defense weapons installed can support fleets close in orbit, good for safe havens during war time, although the support they give depends on the weapons. missile installations are great for small ships, and swarming single medium and weakened large ships. while more desirable Anti Capital Thumper guns can take large ships straight out of orbit, but are not reliable against medium ships, and useless against small ships. The perfect Fleet Support Planet would have no room left after planetary defensive weapons are installed. the rarest of these weapons would have to be Beam weapons, AOE nukes, and planetary flak guns (abandoned planets and high tech development), but are very hungry power or ammo wise (or both).

also for reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN8YIR60Ij0

those are my ideas for planets, let me know what you guys think :)
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Re: Planetery ownership

#2
I think planet management should be like Sins of a Solar Empire... it takes time + money. You can then sell your own goods at your own planets without a penalty or tax or tariff. Lastly, be able to build your own space stations (death star for EVERY planet baby).

Oh, and maybe something similar to a novalith cannon... (big space station that can fire inter-galactic planet killing super nukes. Yes... that is a big rocket that can take out planets from DIFFERENT solar systems).

Or be able to make Titan class warships. Either one. :)
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Re: Planetery ownership

#3
I think the player should also be able to invade planets they see as desirable (although this would be a monumentally difficult task).
I'd definitely want to see something like this. As long as it's something that you would need to acquire a fleet for. I'm thinking that the easiest way to do something like would be to do it kind of like Escape Velocity Nova did it. Therefore you would hail the planet or land on the planet and claim that you're going to invade and then immediately be kicked off the planet and a large defense fleet shows up that you will then have to deal with if you want to claim the planet as yours.

Even better would be if you can implement an intimidation factor. You know have the NPCs be able to recognize that you have a HUGE fleet in orbit and that they stand no chance. Therefore forcing them to choose between death or surrender.

One final note that would be awesome to see in planetary control is the ability to blockade planets. This may already be capable by setting fleet members to patrol but just something else to think about.
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Re: Planetery ownership

#4
TMRNetShark wrote:Oh, and maybe something similar to a novalith cannon... (big space station that can fire inter-galactic planet killing super nukes. Yes... that is a big rocket that can take out planets from DIFFERENT solar systems).
Two things:

1) planets are not going to be destructible;

2) if we get to own planets, it would really suck to have your own planet—which was very expensive and took you a looooong time to build—wiped out by a deus-ex-machina weapon (an unstoppable rocket from another system (= out of nowhere) would exactly be that); it's equivalent of the game randomly saying "you lose", and would therefore be a terrible idea, game-play wise; because

3) you wouldn't really expect to get this insane weapon if the AI can't have it, too, would you?

(Okay, that turned out to be three things, but anyway.)
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Re: Planetery ownership

#9
Well, I doubt the game would be in real-time. The scale I'd hazard a guess at would be 1 Real Hour = 1 Game Week, because you're in space and it takes time to go places.

But then if you get into some ridiculous hour-long NPC fleet battle, then it might be odd to call it a week. But then again, "space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
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Re: Planetery ownership

#11
Dadalos wrote:from another post on the forums someplace it was fairly well established that times a non factor in the game.
I merely mention this for theoretical roleplay purposes. Obviously, anyone can pretend that any amount of time has passed when they're playing a game like this.

But in terms of the game engine and real-time temporal constraints, would terraforming be possible in Limit Theory? (I.E. Does anyone know if Josh intends to include it as a part of planet management/ownership?)
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Re: Planetery ownership

#12
Grumblesaur wrote:
Dadalos wrote:from another post on the forums someplace it was fairly well established that times a non factor in the game.
I merely mention this for theoretical roleplay purposes. Obviously, anyone can pretend that any amount of time has passed when they're playing a game like this.

But in terms of the game engine and real-time temporal constraints, would terraforming be possible in Limit Theory? (I.E. Does anyone know if Josh intends to include it as a part of planet management/ownership?)
my understanding is that with everything being procedural, every planet may have its own quirks, its up in the air though if thats going to effect how planets will operate, ie infrastructure or management. I think that being able to choose what you want to do on the planet and then that planet being only for that branch of management (ie, my ideas) would make sense, as its unlikely space faring races this advanced would have problems dealing with weather or geology, they just find a quiet spot and setup shop. although it would be fun to have procedural events based on upon the planet.

say your building a resource planet that is actively volcanic. every once and a while an eruption or some activity will damage infrastructure, and you have to fix it, or have technology advanced enough to slowly self repair, allowing random events to only dampen overall efficiency, and even then it would still be better to actively repair it yourself.

and stormy planets or dusty ones may have weather that slows down production, but not mining.

these random events could even work the other way around. for instance, on a Goldilocks planet with lots of sunshine, whenever their are bright, sunny days near essential infrastructure, there are boosts to energy from solar panels, as they are a secondary power-source. the people that work your planet for you take advantage of this and boost their production temporarily. the player sees a percentage boost in resource gathering or production as a result.

this would definitely make planets more dynamic, and some better or worse than others :D. PCG at its finest.
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Re: Planetery ownership

#14
Our current and limited understanding of how planets are supposed to work are that they will be basically be big space stations. (You land on them, you trade with them, and you can own them) It has been speculated that NPC's and the player will start on a plant. (so you will have a "home world") I highly doubt a planet can be destroyed.

How factions control and claim planets is a big unknown at this point.

My impressions are that Josh does not have plans to make planets super complex.
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