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More Hive Skirmish Stuff

Feb 12, 2009 iry link
Quirks

Critical Skirmish
Queens and tridents dogfighting nose to nose. This doesn't cause any issues as far as playability goes since the queen typically destroys the trident in a matter of minutes, it is however odd seeing the trident attempt to outfly the queen. Sometimes the fight turns into a loop motion where the queen tries to get behind the trident while the trident tries to keep the queen in front (hard docking).

Central Skirmish
The Constellation is gone and the stationary reload platform was removed with it. Previously there was a mobile Connie that would hover extremely close to the leviathan frequently ramming while a trident sat stationary about 4km away. Now there is only the trident and it flies extremely close to the leviathan. Personally I would prefer it if the trident stayed at least 2km away from the Leviathan. When it gets so close attempting to dock with it becomes hazardous as you need to navigate the rain of concussion gauss, as well as hope that when you undock your ship is not immediately singled out by the gauss cannons. This is not a problem at long distances but very frustrating when the cannons are at most 200m away and there is little to no time to evade.

With the removal of the trident and its new spawn zone other oddities now occur, every 3 or 4 tridents actually spawn *inside* the leviathan.

Suggestions (Possibly difficult)

Finite Fleets

Make the hive fleets have a maximum total size based on its health.

Hive Fleets

Each hive queen would only be capable of commanding so many hive craft at a time before it would be forced to stop production, or wait for a new Overseer to increase its capacity to expand. The hive would be capable of producing new ships at some rate determined by how much territory is under the its control.

When a hive sector comes under attack the queen will direct more reinforcements to that sector until it comes time to pull back at which point the remaining ships will spread amongst the rest of the queen's territory while slightly slowing the queens ability to produce new ships. In case of losing a large skirmish sector and its Overseer the queen's ability to control more ships would also be reduced. Queens would not necessarily send bots to the aid of a nearby queen however nearby queens will take over control of what bots they can from a destroyed bastion.

This would allow heavy assaults on a queen's territory to starve a particular section of the hive of ships up to the point that only a handful will be present to defend the queen itself.

Ex.

Control
Leviathan - Up to 320 bots Makes queens to control hive for it
Queen - Up to 320 bots
Overseer - Adds 80 bots to queen's control ability (2-4 in bastion + 1 for each large)

Hive Production

Stronghold (Leviathan)
1 Queen per 30 minutes
1 Overseer per 5 minutes
1 Guardian per 2 minutes
1 Assault per minute

Bastion (Queen)
1 Overseer per 10 minutes
1 Guardian per 5 minutes
1 Assault per 2 minutes
2 Collector per minute

Large (Overseer)
1 Guardian per 5 minutes
1 Assault per 2 minutes
1 Collector per minute

Common
1 Assault per 2
1 Collector per minute
Small
1 Collector per Minute

Humans

I find it odd that virtually all hive presences are in constant battle with the local human forces, it would seem that only a few sectors would be actively assaulted / defended at any one time.

Each station in a system would have an interest in attacking the hive only with in that system, and would also only be capable of mounting a few pure NPC assaults at a time. I imagine hive skirmish working on a somewhat similar basis to the convoys, stations send out a few occasional assaults, but if a player shows up and picks mission X then a force is launched just as an escort mission would be. In the case of a critical or central skirmish the player would be directed to a staging area from which the NPC fleet would then warp to the target sector. A staging area would only be used in the assaults that involve a capital ship.

I'm not too sure how human fleet could be made finite without causing some major levels of frustration when a player shows up to to a skirmish with no NPC aid. Perhaps a limit on how many NPC ships are capable of being out at anyone time could be used. As the number of players fighting in a system increases the thinner the NPC fleets will become as a system's fleet strength is spread across all active skirmishes.
Feb 13, 2009 Aticephyr link
*approves*

Good thinking.