What happens to transports

[icekatze]

hi hi

I got thinking the other day: "What happens to all of a faction's transports when they lose?" I assume nothing, but from there I got to thinking: "What sorts of things could a player who is losing use their extra transports for?"

I present to you, Operation Decoy Fleet!

decoyfleet.png (715.47 KiB) Viewed 14342 times

Now, I wasn't losing at the time that I took this screen cap, but if I was losing badly, I suspect I might have a lot of excess transports without available trade routes. I could use them as a physical barrier around my planetary defenses, or I could send them to an ally's territory and intervene, keeping anyone who focuses on beam weapons out of range of someone who focuses on fighters and missiles.

[sven]

I present to you, Operation Decoy Fleet!

Heh. I was actually just looking over this battle. I think you may be the first tester to have triggered the part of the battle setup logic that causes the tactical combat map to expand (as can be necessary if the the ships queued for combat wouldn't fit otherwise)

Do you remember what you were doing when the following bug popped up:

Code: Select all

Lua state\GUI\~TacticalScreen\RenderBattle.lua:133: looks like we've set an invalid draw position
Lua state\GUI\~TacticalScreen\RenderBattle.lua:133:
 Lua state\GUI\~TacticalScreen\RenderBattle.lua:144:render_battle:

(It looks to me like it has something to do with missile \ fighter tracking, but, I haven't quite isolated it yet.)

edited: more or less figured it out -- looks like it's an issue with the handling of a point-blank range fighter launch.

[sven]

I got thinking the other day: "What happens to all of a faction's transports when they lose?"

To actually respond to the thread topic -- my own basic assumption is that there's a number of important things going on in the galaxy that the players never see directly -- for example, transports from destroyed empires probably go into business for themselves, becoming part of the nebulous underworld economy that you see other hints when interacting with pirates/marauders and so on.

I think it could be fun to add some little pieces of logic that might further hint at the consequences of things like the wandering transports of destroyed empires. For example, as the marauder encounters become better fleshed out, they'll have the ability to sell slaves from certain factions, while pirates may offer their services as mercenaries. Changing just what's available in these sorts of black-markets whenever an empire is defeated could be a fairly simple way of adding a bit of extra life and detail game world.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I don't remember that bug specifically, but I do know that pretty much every bug or crash I've experienced has happened when I've been either firing missiles or launching fighters.

There was one bug where most of the screen went black, and I ended up needing to quit out and re-load after I sent the error report. I'm guessing that was the one you mean, but I'm not 100% certain that I'm remembering correctly, so take this with a grain of salt. If I recall correctly, the bug happened when I was fighting against a space station that had maneuvering thrusters in its system slots (which seems to be a default.) I may have been trying to launch missiles or fighters while its move animation hadn't finished yet... but like I said, I could very well be misremembering. Next time I get a bug I've never seen before, I'll try to make sure to write down more details about what was happening at the time.

----
As for transports, the expanded encounters thing sounds very neat. I'm sure once the diplomacy aspect of the game comes into play, it will offer a lot more narrative options. (Encountering marauders with a captured transport, loaded down with explosives, might be a fun way to make the player keep their distance too.)

Also, I don't know if fusion reactors make a ship deal more damage on self destruct, but if so, that might be a reason to upgrade the transport template, even if you hope to never need it. It could make for an interesting, if probably futile, last stand kind of fight. "One last battle to hold the line..."

[Arioch]

I got thinking the other day: "What happens to all of a faction's transports when they lose?"

They disappear, as would any warships that the faction still owns. Since (in our system) all ship travel is dependent on base infrastructure, once a faction no longer has any bases, all ships cease to function. It's also a common trope of the strategy genre that when a faction is eliminated, all of its units instantly vanish without any explanation.

Realistically, some or all of these ships should still exist somewhere, either surrendering to the conquering power, or abandoned to potentially be recovered. That's something that we should probably think about in the future, though the capability to properly process captured ships is something that's not currently well implemented (a captured ship instantly switches to your side, which I think is a bit too cheap). And from a gameplay point of view, it's not as if capturing all of the enemy's bases didn't provide enough of a reward on its own.

(I suppose one could imagine that the transports flee into deep space, taking desperate refugees hoping to stumble across an as-yet unknown distant civilization, who they can warn of the expanding galactic war... )

[Gilleous]

(I suppose one could imagine that the transports flee into deep space, taking desperate refugees hoping to stumble across an as-yet unknown distant civilization, who they can warn of the expanding galactic war... )

On no you didn't!

I would have thought that was just generic reference a few months ago, but fortunately a little bird told me (more like some guy posting a comment and link elsewhere, nothing fancy) and I know what it refers to.

As for the topic, it would be interesting if fallen factions would cause an increase in the chances of pirate/maurader events or give a boost to existing ones. Lore wise it could represent remnants going rogue.

[icekatze]

hi hi

It just goes to show how important infrastructure is in space travel, but perhaps another option would be to give the conquering player some boost in money resources to represent the stuff they captured and then automatically scrapped.

(If warships ever get an experience stat, perhaps a short while after eliminating a faction, someone's warship will get an "alien diplomat," bonus to experience. )