Speaking of stellar surge beam...

[Captainspire]

ok I finally got the Black hole generator
I got the stellar surge beam
And I got the Planet Ship

I cannot place a stellar surge beam on anything.
Now When I get the stellar surge beam on a planet, nothing can get to me. The best fleets just end with the might of 4 of them on a planet.

But the stellar surge beam is not even a option to place on the ships. Is that intentional?

I can't think of another way to defeat planets that have stellar surge beams defending them.

Fleet Placements.
Because of the all powerful SSB cannon, I'd feel better being able to place my fleets far away and launch missiles or fighters to try to take out the SSB cannons.

"Stealth" Generator.
What and when does it hide me. Had to find out the hard way it doesn't do anything in combat....yet?

SHIELDS
Also, the shield that says it puts damaged elsewhere? The one after force shields? A bit misleading. It seemed the damage goes from hitting my ship on the port side into the core, to hitting the ship on the starboard side into the core. Still kills me. Its just a slightly more powerful shield. At this rate, I'm more comfortable with you Naming the shield modules Shield I, Shield II, Shield III, And so forth

Miniaturization
I'll admit it, I want to have rail guns on everything. but being limited to 4 on a ship, makes it obsolete fast. I would love to see miniaturization as a feature down the line. It's all that darn math....

PLANETS
I must be missing something. I dont see a planet bonus to tell me how much more in production or Trade or research bonus a planet gives me. I see the race bonuses, but that's it.

MENUS
The planet window on the left side. *sigh* Every time I select a planet, then select what to "produce" on the right side, the planet menu on the left auto scrolls right back to the top. This makes it harder when I have a lot of planets.

MAP VIEW
Is there any way to be able to scroll out to the gull galaxy map yet or farther out on the combat sequence?

I'm still loving the game by the way.

[sven]

But the stellar surge beam is not even a option to place on the ships. Is that intentional?

Hrm, yes. That's a bit of a bug. The stellar surge beam is a "siege weapon". The only standard ships that can mount siege weapons are the Orthin Dreadnaught and Gunship. However, Dreadstar should also be able to mount siege weapons. I've posted a quick patch to enable this (r13807).

[sven]

Is there any way to be able to scroll out to the gull galaxy map yet or farther out on the combat sequence?

For the strategic galaxy map, no, there's no zoom. See also the UI FAQ.
In a tactical battle, you can increase the max zoom out rate a bit by going into Options, and turning on "expanded tactical zooms".

[sven]

What and when does it hide me. Had to find out the hard way it doesn't do anything in combat....yet?

Distortion field generators, limpet missiles, and Orthin shield capacitors are all currently unimplemented, though you can mount them on your ships. Fixes should not be too far off.

[evil713]

I want to request an upgrade to the stellar surge beam, a weapon specific ability called "Waste Energy Explosion."

Essentially if a target is destroyed by the stellar surge beam the remaining damage is done in a radius around the destroyed ship +5 to +10 range around it, making it a fleet wipe weapon alla macross or yamato.

[Captainspire]

I want to request an upgrade to the stellar surge beam, a weapon specific ability called "Waste Energy Explosion."

Essentially if a target is destroyed by the stellar surge beam the remaining damage is done in a radius around the destroyed ship +5 to +10 range around it, making it a fleet wipe weapon alla macross or yamato.

That's almost like radiant energy or reactive. Like firing a laser beam and anything 1-3 meters from the visible light gets affected in some diminished way. This would be great in games like Homeworld where you can make a lot of ships but with the ability to kill a battleship with 2-3 shots, it's powerful enough I think. But to take that idea to have plasma bombs (mines ) that have an area effect damage. That way its not so over powered to damage so much.

Also, thank you Sven for the information. I really appreciate the effort you folks put into this work.

[evil713]

nonono do the math, I use stellar surge on a battleship and assuming I kill it in one hit, bad shields bad armor theres still maybe 150 damage that beam does not do, and can radiant out, doing some damage.

However there are those situations where you are using it on destroyers and cruisers, where the ship takes 80 points of damage and blows up you still have a wopping 320 points that goes to waste and a lot to kill.

make that 320 or less radiate out and wipe out that little pocket of space. This is the situation I am talking about. you can even hard limit it so its damage -full hull hitpoints, so hitting a ship till its nearly dead and then stellaring it does not give you the optimum damage output for the blast, and as a blast it gets weaker the farther it goes out, but still a large blast.

[Unbroken]

Hmm.

Given the way the SSB works right now, if I were to encounter the AI using it on a planet, I would very happily drown that planet in cheap, disposable ships in order to take advantage of the massive overkill factor.

I'm not sure if giving the weapon a residual AoE is a good idea though. Unless SSBs are prohibitively expensive, you'd have little reason to use any other weapon if they were that effective against ship blobs. Even then, a dread star packing an SSB shouldn't be something you throw around haphazardly; it should be an asset you want to defend at all costs on the battlemap.

[sven]

I'm not sure if giving the weapon a residual AoE is a good idea though. Unless SSBs are prohibitively expensive, you'd have little reason to use any other weapon if they were that effective against ship blobs.

I have similar concerns about balance. The SSBs, as currently implemented, are already bordering on overpowered. Swarms of destroyers are the one arguable counter for such massive single-shot weapons, and giving SSBs a special that would make them far stronger against groups of light ships feels like it would make the balance issues worse.

That said -- I'm less worried about balance in the case of really late game weapons -- getting godlike weapons as you get into the end game *is* fun, and the game is likely nearly over by the time they come into play.

During the alpha, I had a test build where I pushed the AoE damage done when ships where destroyed up to absurd levels. You could shoot off a single weapon into the middle of the opposing line of battle, and cascade explosions would radiate out, destroying dozens of enemies with a single shot. It was nothing like balanced -- but, it was awesome. Creating a specialized weapon that has the potential to do something similar, in specific situations, is an idea I'd like to try exploring at some point.

From a technical standpoint, it would be easy enough to give a weapon some sort of "little doctor"-style special that significantly increased the AoE damage done when it destroyed ships. That would create a chance of cascading destruction if you where going up against a bunch of lightly armored, tightly packed opponents.

[Unbroken]

That said -- I'm less worried about balance in the case of really late game weapons -- getting godlike weapons as you get into the end game *is* fun, and the game is likely nearly over by the time they come into play.

The other case to be made for super-weapons is that they help end the game faster. I think it's safe to say all of us have had games where we get to the point that we know we've won, however we are stuck with the tedious job of cleanup duty. Having these sorts of mechanics/weapons/etc. to shorten that final phase as much as possible is definitely a good thing.

From a technical standpoint, it would be easy enough to give a weapon some sort of "little doctor"-style special that significantly increased the AoE damage done when it destroyed ships. That would create a chance of cascading destruction if you where going up against a bunch of lightly armored, tightly packed opponents.

It's hard not to be tightly packed right now. The dimensions of the battlemaps may need to scale based on the size of the fleets and/or based on some sort of global tech level. This is otherwise a good avenue to explore further.

[Ashbery76]

That said -- I'm less worried about balance in the case of really late game weapons -- getting godlike weapons as you get into the end game *is* fun, and the game is likely nearly over by the time they come into play.

Maybe there should be an option for some of these techs to pop up in explorations events for players who like a bit of unbalanced fun.I liked that in DW,SOTS and GC2 you could suddenly find your game totally change.