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Space Warfare


Lu Xun
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Darsh on Discord wants space warfare with 4 different new unit types, but that's excessive and will never be implemented. The game is more based on minimalist additions, because the smaller the mechanic, the less coding is necessary, the less infinite resource glitches pop up, and the less likely it is to totally break the game.

 

So let's do something totally gamebreaking instead.

 

First mechanic!

 

Space Junk!

 

Let there be a new feature called "Space Junk". The more Space Junk up in the air, the more degraded space systems become. For instance, at 100 (it can go even higher) Space Junk, all space projects stop working and all space units stop working. At less than 100 Space Junk, projects and space units are degraded by a percent equal to 100-space junk . Space Junk decreases by 10% every 28 real life days, with the increment set by daily update.

 

Space Junk is created whenever a space-based unit is destroyed, with a scaling factor based on the amount of cities out of VM in the game. Space Junk can also be reduced by players with a Space Program by clicking on the Space Junk indicator, scaling once again based on the number of cities out of VM in the game. Once a day, players can send a mission up to collect Space Junk and take it down for retrieval, costing money and fuel, but generating an amount of metal-based raws, steel, and aluminum.

 

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Second mechanic!

Spaceplanes!

 

image.jpg


Spaceplanes are a new unit whose concept is based on current attempts at creating hypersonic and SSTO spacecraft. These can be used in a new attack called "Space Strike", which is similar to the existing planes mechanic in that Space Strike can attack any unit type, but costs 6 MAP (meaning, that if the opponent is on fortress, you can't get in a first strike unless you go in at turn change).

 

Spaceplanes are intended to be very expensive, as a type of end-game unit, so that each spaceplane costs 1000 aluminum, 500 steel, 200 gasoline and munitions just to build. These require a Space Program to build, but the number of spaceplanes you can build is based mainly on projects, not city counts. With a space program, you can build 50 spaceplanes at 10 per day, but no more.

 

So it's an interesting unit in that it's based only on a project, but not cities. Because it doesn't scale with cities, the idea is that at a certain tier, spaceplanes will be extremely imbalanced, and above that tier, spaceplanes are way less useful.

 

 

Third mechanic!

Interceptor Missile!

 

intercept.jpg


Since spaceplanes have the potential to be very broken at some tiers, players need a way to defend against spaceplanes. A player with a missile launch system can now choose to build either a normal missile or an Interceptor Missile. An Interceptor Missile counts as Spaceplanes for purposes of defending against Space Strikes and also has a chance of intercepting a nuclear strike. These missiles can be spied off, and are capped likewise at 10 Interceptor Missiles. Unlike Spaceplanes, Interceptor Missiles don't generate Space Junk when destroyed

 

====

 

So, Darsh of ODN had a cool idea, but I totally ruined everything by suggesting this as something "weird" and imbalancing. The underlying concept is that you'll have a new attack type that veers between gamebreaking and unusable; i.e, players in the early stages of the war will be encouraged to spam spaceplanes, but as time progresses the quantity of Space Junk floating around in the air will make spaceplanes completely inoperable. Players can choose to make spaceplanes stronger by spending money on expensive Space Junk collection programs to make Space Planes usable again, but others will be encouraged to suicide Space Planes simply to deny the enemy Space Superiority and force them to fight on the surface and in the atmosphere.

 

One thing I haven't mentioned is that I originally was considering making it so that Space Planes dealt damage as spies do, based on unit percentage. That helps to make them broken and overpowered under some circumstances, encouraging players to suicide Space Planes to deny the military use of planes. But this might seem too offensive to whales given that a 10 city nation with max spaceplanes could theoretically blast thousands of planes / tens of thousands of tanks / hundreds of ships in one hit.

 

Another issue is small-scale wars; i.e, alliances on the periphery conducting limited wars will see warfare very dominated by Spaceplanes as their wars will never put enough orbital debris into the air. But when the war goes largescale, Space Planes quickly lose their effectiveness and coalitions focusing on Spaceplanes rapidly end up spending billions on space clean-up to get their Spaceplanes working again, not necessarily to any avail.

Edited by Inst
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For some additional figures, let's set spaceplanes to 20 city norm with planes as a source figure.

Here's the inventory of damages from a Spacestrike (Orbital Strike?), but capped to 25% max city value to avoid being too gamebreaking in lower tiers.

 

450 planes

7500 tanks

125000 soldiers

75 ships

10 Spaceplanes

$7,500,000

500 Infra

 

When it comes to Interceptor Missiles, each Interceptor Missile is worth 10 Spaceplanes for combat calculation purposes. Remember, this is all assuming that Space Junk is at 0.

 

For scoring purposes, let each Spaceplane be worth 10 nation score. Each interceptor missile is worth 5 nation score, so at max it's 50 Interceptor Missile score and 500 spaceplane score.

 

As for Space Junk, the way I'm thinking is that it should be calibrated for 1 month of war. However, a big problem with Space Planes is that since the only way to destroy Space Planes to generate Space Junk is with other Space Planes, it's going to be impossible for Space Planes to reach 100% Space Junk. The end result is that you'd be forced to 1 Space Plane vs 1 Space Plane combat at 98 Space Junk, and above 99, the rounding means that you can't get Space Planes into the air at all.

 

===

 

In other words, this is a plane mechanic wherein no one is ever going to complain about "IQ's Spaceplanes". Just to get Spaceplanes working you need to despy someone and destroy all their interceptor missiles, which is at least 15 spy jobs.  Then if Spaceplane combat gets out of control, the Space Junk being generated turns off spaceplanes for everyone or at least leaves Fark eagerly pressing the "collect space junk" button to get money (because if res prices rise rapidly, space junk collection becomes profitable).

 

But in theory, when you engage someone mid-tier with Spaceplanes you can wipe out 75% of their planes in a first strike. In an updeclare, if the opponent's lost their spaceplanes and interceptor missiles, you can deplane someone more easily than if you were doing things with your own planes as you'd not be losing planes.

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