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OrionSol
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Joined: 28 Sep 2006
Posts: 26
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 Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 3:15 pm Post subject: Supply Ships, Trade Ships, Pirates and Blockades... |
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I was posting about this in the "Ship Classes" but I think it deserves its own post.
Supply Ships... all too often wars are won or lost based on taking out your enemies ability to supply themselves. I think this should be involved somehow.
Trade Ships... Imagine making a deal with another race for trade, but then you have to set that trade up. Build a ship...select a "from" planet...and a "to" planet and set them on a repeat trade lane.
Pirate Ships... "Unmarked" fighters that won't get you into war right away, can attack un defended ships, but not effective against regular military units.
Those two ship class ideas bring in a game mechanic that would be really fun. Bloackades and Pirates.
Picture your supply line ... Defenseless ships going back and forth to your fleet. Perhaps you build enough fighters to escort them, perhaps not. And then in the middle of your offense on the enemies core worlds you have to tuck tail and return home because your supply fleet was wiped out by raiders.
Or
Your tradeships are bringing in massive income for you and the ant race next door. However, the ant race goes to war with the much larger whalelike race who starts blockading their planets...
Your income drops alot!
In response you build "unmarked" prirate raiders to hit the Whale Race's .... you guessed it, SUPPLY Ships, in order to get them to drop the blockade.
Fun? Do-able? |
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specialist
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Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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My understanding is that trade ships are going to be run by indepent traders, who will use trade docks that have been built at your starbases or planets.
Wtih that in mind, how do you tell a trade ship from a warship, with your scaners?
Some things you can say about trader ships:
They run most cost effective engines avaible. (possibly the cheapest)
They keep to the most cost effective routes- safest and most direct.
They don't have any gear they don't need, like military grade scaners, or weapons.
Given that, it seams to me, that it might be possible for a military ships to pretend to be a trader, if several conditions are met.
1) they can fool scaners that trader type engines are in use. (or actualy use trader engines)
2)they keep to trade routes.
3)they don't use active military grade scanners
4) Military patrols don't look too close at them.
Other things that having trade will do is make spying eaiser for both sides. Traders moving around gives lots of chances to plant agents, collect data, do illegal scans and other such spy stuff.
So it would pay to keep a close eye on trade traffic moving accros your borders- for spys, for sneak attacks, and maybe the odd pirate.
Military supply ships wound not be without weapons- Most likly they would be able to chase away small raiders- but would probibly be on the same firepower scale. Sence they are military transports, they don't have to worry about profit. Just getting the stuff to where it needs to be in time. Real warships should be able to smash them of course.
Raiders might be small ships that have stealth specials, and good drives to make a quick getaway. Due to the stealth stuff, and big drives, they don't have alot of fire power, and must gang up, to take down a convoy before real warships show up. Maybe they dash out of the blind zone around a neutron star, or nebula.
Alot depends on how the technology of drives, scan, and weapons blance. |
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RobHuntingdon
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Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 145
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| specialist wrote: |
My understanding is that trade ships are going to be run by indepent traders, who will use trade docks that have been built at your starbases or planets.
Wtih that in mind, how do you tell a trade ship from a warship, with your scaners?
Some things you can say about trader ships:
They run most cost effective engines avaible. (possibly the cheapest)
They keep to the most cost effective routes- safest and most direct.
They don't have any gear they don't need, like military grade scaners, or weapons.
Given that, it seams to me, that it might be possible for a military ships to pretend to be a trader, if several conditions are met.
1) they can fool scaners that trader type engines are in use. (or actualy use trader engines)
2)they keep to trade routes.
3)they don't use active military grade scanners
4) Military patrols don't look too close at them.
Other things that having trade will do is make spying eaiser for both sides. Traders moving around gives lots of chances to plant agents, collect data, do illegal scans and other such spy stuff.
So it would pay to keep a close eye on trade traffic moving accros your borders- for spys, for sneak attacks, and maybe the odd pirate.
Military supply ships wound not be without weapons- Most likly they would be able to chase away small raiders- but would probibly be on the same firepower scale. Sence they are military transports, they don't have to worry about profit. Just getting the stuff to where it needs to be in time. Real warships should be able to smash them of course.
Raiders might be small ships that have stealth specials, and good drives to make a quick getaway. Due to the stealth stuff, and big drives, they don't have alot of fire power, and must gang up, to take down a convoy before real warships show up. Maybe they dash out of the blind zone around a neutron star, or nebula.
Alot depends on how the technology of drives, scan, and weapons blance. |
For that matter, even when you and another race are at war, there will almost certainly be neutral traders that you will not want to close your borders too (or maybe couldn't because it would cripple you economically and/or push another enemy into the war on you opponent's side). These too would make spying easier, because what merchant captain is not going to be interested in selling info on what he saw to everybody's intelligence arms they can find? Including yours of course, but also your opponent's.
As for disguising as traders and all that, yeah that *might* work to some degree, but I think that would usually fit better in a commerce raiding or commerce protection scheme. Unless your ships are "super battlewagons" where one ship can carry enough weaponry to glaze a planet, you are almost always (if not outright always) going to operate in a fleet for any kind of useful invasion. But going after merchies (and protecting against pirates) is far more often than not a solo job for individual ships.
And if pirates are in the game, then cheap engines and such may well hold true, but unarmed very likely would not. For that matter, few if any ships will be using full-up active detection. Planetary bases probably will: they can't move, anybody with half a brain has to know they exist, so there's no reason to hide. But active detection almost always puts your ship into a position of "shouting at the top of your lungs" such that others see you far before you see them. You may carry them, but you will almost never use them until combat is joined (and maybe not even then).
RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon
Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.
Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45 |
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specialist
Explorer
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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| RobHuntingdon wrote: |
For that matter, even when you and another race are at war, there will almost certainly be neutral traders that you will not want to close your borders too (or maybe couldn't because it would cripple you economically and/or push another enemy into the war on you opponent's side). These too would make spying easier, because what merchant captain is not going to be interested in selling info on what he saw to everybody's intelligence arms they can find? Including yours of course, but also your opponent's.
As for disguising as traders and all that, yeah that *might* work to some degree, but I think that would usually fit better in a commerce raiding or commerce protection scheme. Unless your ships are "super battlewagons" where one ship can carry enough weaponry to glaze a planet, you are almost always (if not outright always) going to operate in a fleet for any kind of useful invasion. But going after merchies (and protecting against pirates) is far more often than not a solo job for individual ships.
And if pirates are in the game, then cheap engines and such may well hold true, but unarmed very likely would not. For that matter, few if any ships will be using full-up active detection. Planetary bases probably will: they can't move, anybody with half a brain has to know they exist, so there's no reason to hide. But active detection almost always puts your ship into a position of "shouting at the top of your lungs" such that others see you far before you see them. You may carry them, but you will almost never use them until combat is joined (and maybe not even then).
RH |
Pasive or active sensors use would depend on how it is possilbe to detect a ship.
If a ship in drive is dectable for light years, then you don't need active sensors to find it.
However, you might need active sensors to find ships not in drive, or if drives are not dectable at a distance.
Active vs. passive sensors would also depend on mission, and ship type. A fleet of battleships on patrol in home space might use active, as they don't care who sees them. A scout/spy ship would almost certainly not use active.
Also if faster than light drives are used (are they?) then there may be some sort of "noise" produced when a ship makes the tranzition from sub-light to FTL.
Also if FTL drives are used, you must have sensors that are also FTL. Else you can't see where you are going. Would passive FTL sensors be possible? Could you "see" a mine feild or other space junk without some sort of emmited signal?
For a space empire game to be any fun, there must be FTL data transmission.
Otherwise you have delay in data colection, and in order tranmission.
Given that space is big, it might be clever to have deap space "listening posts" that would look for inturuders with passive sensors. Perhaps active too, if the listening posts were cheep, as they would get blasted 1st in a shooting war. |
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RobHuntingdon
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Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 145
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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| specialist wrote: |
| RobHuntingdon wrote: |
For that matter, even when you and another race are at war, there will almost certainly be neutral traders that you will not want to close your borders too (or maybe couldn't because it would cripple you economically and/or push another enemy into the war on you opponent's side). These too would make spying easier, because what merchant captain is not going to be interested in selling info on what he saw to everybody's intelligence arms they can find? Including yours of course, but also your opponent's.
As for disguising as traders and all that, yeah that *might* work to some degree, but I think that would usually fit better in a commerce raiding or commerce protection scheme. Unless your ships are "super battlewagons" where one ship can carry enough weaponry to glaze a planet, you are almost always (if not outright always) going to operate in a fleet for any kind of useful invasion. But going after merchies (and protecting against pirates) is far more often than not a solo job for individual ships.
And if pirates are in the game, then cheap engines and such may well hold true, but unarmed very likely would not. For that matter, few if any ships will be using full-up active detection. Planetary bases probably will: they can't move, anybody with half a brain has to know they exist, so there's no reason to hide. But active detection almost always puts your ship into a position of "shouting at the top of your lungs" such that others see you far before you see them. You may carry them, but you will almost never use them until combat is joined (and maybe not even then).
RH |
Pasive or active sensors use would depend on how it is possilbe to detect a ship.
If a ship in drive is dectable for light years, then you don't need active sensors to find it.
However, you might need active sensors to find ships not in drive, or if drives are not dectable at a distance.
Active vs. passive sensors would also depend on mission, and ship type. A fleet of battleships on patrol in home space might use active, as they don't care who sees them. A scout/spy ship would almost certainly not use active.
Also if faster than light drives are used (are they?) then there may be some sort of "noise" produced when a ship makes the tranzition from sub-light to FTL.
Also if FTL drives are used, you must have sensors that are also FTL. Else you can't see where you are going. Would passive FTL sensors be possible? Could you "see" a mine feild or other space junk without some sort of emmited signal?
For a space empire game to be any fun, there must be FTL data transmission.
Otherwise you have delay in data colection, and in order tranmission.
Given that space is big, it might be clever to have deap space "listening posts" that would look for inturuders with passive sensors. Perhaps active too, if the listening posts were cheep, as they would get blasted 1st in a shooting war. |
Not necessarily. Oh things certainly *could* be done that way but they don't *have* to be so.
For example, under normal circumstances a ship (or drone or whatever) under power would likely create a significant electronic signature. But not always. Think for example of the cloaking devices in Star Trek, or the Ghost Rider drones in the Honorverse. Space has lots of background "noise" to deal with, with sufficiently powerful EW and sufficiently low power settings on the engines it would be quite possible for even an honorverse style "hiding" far short of ouright star trek style cloaking. So a ship under power *might* be more detectible... but then again it might not.
Ditto with FTL. Warp engines in Star Trek made a big signature that could be detected a long distance off. For that matter in Weber's Dahakverse and many other popular sci-fi series this is also so. But not always. Star Wars there was no warning a ship was coming until it popped out of hyperspace. Ditto for the Honorverse. It depends on how the game is set up here. For that matter depending on the style of hyperspace adopted for this game even the ability to see hyperships coming might be limited again by how much engine power is being used. If the FTL drive is an "always on" affair it would be different from a burst-effect "jump engine" like Babylon 5. In B5 you had basically the 3 or so seconds the jump point took to form as your only warning, and if you weren't actively at battle stations it might well have made no difference at all. In the Honorverse the alpha translation made a big splash you could see for light hours or even light days depending on the sensitivity of your detectors, but the hyper generator apparently was only necessary for the actual translations between hyper bands. Even in an always-on situation hyperspace is almost always portrayed as an exceptionally energetic alternate dimension of some sort, so it's concievable that a sufficiently slow approach and enough EW could hide the FTL drive signature in the background noise.
Now in Horizon last I heard you were supposed to be able to go anywhere (regardless of whether there was a star nearby or not). And you are supposed to be able to attempt to intercept incoming enemy ships. This does suggest some sort of always-on drive and FTL sensors of some sort. But it's still quite possible that my original point would still stand, that a ship would not use active sensors because no matter what the reach (whether miles/kilometers, light seconds, light minutes, light weeks/months/years/whatever) the distance at which passive sensors can detect your active sensors are almost certainly going to be roughly twice the distance at which you can get a return from them. And that's basically the deep space equivalent of shouting at the top of your lungs while playing hide-and-go-seek.
Your sensor outposts are more likely, but a planet isn't terribly likely to be trying to hide either. For that matter, short of a Dahakverse-type genocidal "search and destroy" invasion wave of aliens just about everybody else almost certainly knows you exist, and if they know you exist and have even the slightest of clue where you are in relationship to themselves finding your planets will not be *that* hard. I think it will be up to planetary installations and "fixed" installations like orbital starbases to do most if not all active scaning until combat is actually joined.
RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon
Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.
Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45 |
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specialist
Explorer
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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| RobHuntingdon wrote: |
[
Not necessarily. Oh things certainly *could* be done that way but they don't *have* to be so.
For example, under normal circumstances a ship (or drone or whatever) under power would likely create a significant electronic signature. But not always. Think for example of the cloaking devices in Star Trek, or the Ghost Rider drones in the Honorverse. Space has lots of background "noise" to deal with, with sufficiently powerful EW and sufficiently low power settings on the engines it would be quite possible for even an honorverse style "hiding" far short of ouright star trek style cloaking. So a ship under power *might* be more detectible... but then again it might not.
Ditto with FTL. Warp engines in Star Trek made a big signature that could be detected a long distance off. For that matter in Weber's Dahakverse and many other popular sci-fi series this is also so. But not always. Star Wars there was no warning a ship was coming until it popped out of hyperspace. Ditto for the Honorverse. It depends on how the game is set up here. For that matter depending on the style of hyperspace adopted for this game even the ability to see hyperships coming might be limited again by how much engine power is being used. If the FTL drive is an "always on" affair it would be different from a burst-effect "jump engine" like Babylon 5. In B5 you had basically the 3 or so seconds the jump point took to form as your only warning, and if you weren't actively at battle stations it might well have made no difference at all. In the Honorverse the alpha translation made a big splash you could see for light hours or even light days depending on the sensitivity of your detectors, but the hyper generator apparently was only necessary for the actual translations between hyper bands. Even in an always-on situation hyperspace is almost always portrayed as an exceptionally energetic alternate dimension of some sort, so it's concievable that a sufficiently slow approach and enough EW could hide the FTL drive signature in the background noise.
Now in Horizon last I heard you were supposed to be able to go anywhere (regardless of whether there was a star nearby or not). And you are supposed to be able to attempt to intercept incoming enemy ships. This does suggest some sort of always-on drive and FTL sensors of some sort. But it's still quite possible that my original point would still stand, that a ship would not use active sensors because no matter what the reach (whether miles/kilometers, light seconds, light minutes, light weeks/months/years/whatever) the distance at which passive sensors can detect your active sensors are almost certainly going to be roughly twice the distance at which you can get a return from them. And that's basically the deep space equivalent of shouting at the top of your lungs while playing hide-and-go-seek.
Your sensor outposts are more likely, but a planet isn't terribly likely to be trying to hide either. For that matter, short of a Dahakverse-type genocidal "search and destroy" invasion wave of aliens just about everybody else almost certainly knows you exist, and if they know you exist and have even the slightest of clue where you are in relationship to themselves finding your planets will not be *that* hard. I think it will be up to planetary installations and "fixed" installations like orbital starbases to do most if not all active scaning until combat is actually joined.
RH |
Granted sensors game could work a number of ways. However, what ever way it actualy does work will have some tactical/stragtical implications. For instance, if ships use mostly passive sensors, and fixed bases use active sensors. It would seam most likly that the sensor range for a fixed base would be larger than a ship, unless it turned on it's active sensors.
(turning on a flash light allows you to see better) This could have a pretty improtant "home court" advantage in a space war. Unless the invaders made a point of taking out key sensor bases.
Also unless sensor range is large compared to average star density (or distance between bases) then there will be gaps in active scan coverage. These gaps would be the perfered routes for invading fleets to get by early warning bases and get at critical targets (home worlds). These holes would be of crital concern to defenders. Patrol craft would be most likly used to plug the gap, if pasive cheep sensor stations were allowed they would be used too. Also there would be a big push to build a shell of sensor bases around your empire.
It would seam the sooner you knew about hostile ships, the more ships you could concentrate to take care of them. So a signifigant amount of resources would be spent on the sensor issue.
Features that block sensors (nebula, neutron stars?) would be a major pain to keep patroled.
I could see some major battles played out in thoses areas.
Also different races may have different technologies- so perhaps all out comes are possible, and everyone may not be playing by the same rules. |
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RobHuntingdon
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Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm good points. Also along those same lines, what I would *really* like to see is an AI that's smart enough (and sneaky enough) to have some heavily stealthed light combatants that can sneak in and make you pay for underdefending your rear areas. One of the main reasons I so detest the idea of starlanes. True they give you the flexibility of creating fortress systems, but A) the AI has never been smart enough to reciprocate in any game I ever played, and B) they are rediculously unrealistic. Space is a huge 3D area and it's bad enough trying to squeeze that into 2D to begin with. Once you throw a horribly designed "roads" system in it becomes much worse.
Even without starlanes, most AIs aren't smart enough to react to your forces heading out by counterattacking. And with starlanes the temptation to just make a huge hammer and start smashing your way through the enemy becomes far too easy to pull off. Some games (like MOO3) penalize you with happiness penalties in undefended systems but that doesn't *really* do the trick -- and often it's easy to "cheat" and get around by building hulls without any weapons or anything else useful to minimize maintenance costs.
In a real war you always have to have a reserve powerful enough to deal with any realisticly possible counterpunch from the enemy (or a sneak attack from another unexpected enemy) and can only actually go on the offensive with whatever is left over. Which is *very* hard to make work in a computer game, but something that I would love to see become more common someday. An AI smart enough to counterpunch you as soon as they realize you are coming at them would be a really swell thing, even if all we can get is a crude first version of it that isn't terribly effective, just the fact that the AI actually DID it would make for a huge "wow" factor.
RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon
Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.
Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45 |
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Zaimat
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Joined: 08 Aug 2003
Posts: 350
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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Your assessment is pretty accurate.
As of now, sensors work in this fashion: All ships have universal sensors (passive), the range of which and detection is based on the tech level.
Planets, orbital stations on the other hand have active FTL sensors and can detect much larger distances.
Listening posts (planets colonized for the purpose of keeping track of an area of space) are one strategic reason to colonize a planet in Horizon.
Fleet patrols are also very important and integral part of the game, not just for detection but also for interception before it's too late... Since it's open space with no artificial choke points and there will always be gaps. They also provide security in that sector for trade.
Sensors and scanners can be developed further but for now I think it covers the basics. It would be possible for example to add a special module on a ship to become a mobile megaSensorShip but adding more stuff complicates balancing and AI testing which isn't necessary at this point.
Drive systems in Horizon are FTL, for simplicity it is assumed ships are always travelling at FTL speeds as needed.
Coming back to the original topic, trade ships are automated (think independant merchants or corporations). There is no mechanism to pretend military ships as trade ships.
Trade ships/routes are a source of income/trade to your economy as well as provide information and spies can use them (automatically) to slip into enemy territory. The actual routes ships take is not managed by the player, they take the safest most protected routes. Your job is to create the environment for them to thrive not to manage them.
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RobHuntingdon
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Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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That sounds really neat.
Might be nice to be able to fund piracy in the espionage subgame if you can't do it manually in the main one...
RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon
Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.
Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45 |
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specialist
Explorer
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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How are mines expected to play into the trade protection / space patrol issue?
Seams like two possible way mines could work.
1) They are cheep and easly carried in numbers great enough to mine general areas.
2) They are not so eaisly carried, and can practialy only be used around important targets.
Offencive mining around trade routes might be possible. Also protecting your important words.
Unless they are a pure combat mine- dump them out an hope those in hot pursuit run into it.
How many mines per light year makes a good mine feild? |
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Zaimat
Dev. Team
Joined: 08 Aug 2003
Posts: 350
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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Just to add on the scanner functionality. The more "scanners" active in an area, the stronger the detection level in the area. Scanner systems have a range and strength and it's affected by distance (further in the distance, weaker it gets).
As for Mines, I really want them in but as of now they are on the future version list. Their implementation had a lot of implications, not only setting them up but also how does the player and the AI deal with them. And the plan was for two types of mines, offensive and defensive. Offensive mines would be launched like missiles where as defensive ones would be a general mine field in an area of space.
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