Rifraf
I know just enough to be a danger to myself
- Joined
- 25 Aug 2013
- Messages
- 1,236
- Age
- 51
Hi all. I wanted to get some opinions/ideas on possible game play changes for mods. Now I know people say do what you want since it's your mod and I get that and I've read threads here and over at FO and FF with similar posts about mod balancing and game play ideas and such, but I guess I don't know what I want to add/change so was looking for more ideas.
Sorry for the wall of text and if anyone has the inclination to read it all I'd really like to hear your thoughts/ideas etc.
I guess for instance special weapons. I don't care for them so I usually limit them in my personal mod. It does take away a lot from play though so that's not always the best option (Though Major Payne had very few in his Borg Incursion mods and I loved them.) There weren't any "special weapons" really in the shows with what could be a few exceptions (jamming sensors, disruptingshields etc..) so you have to get creative.
Or take research. In stock A2 or FO for that matter you start with a couple small ships and have to research to move up to bigger/better stuff or just building a better shipyard or research station gets you access to better ships (as in stock A2.) Well, unless your mod spans multiple eras then why would you have to research a better ship that's in the same era as the ships you already have just to have access to it? Again, game play come into effect here, but I'm trying to think of ideas around this. Like you would have access to all ships at the start and only their resource cost would prevent you from building them right from the start so you build some smaller ships for basic defence/raiding until you get more resources to build the bigger ships.
I can see not having access to the Defiant, Prometheus or Sovereign Classes until later, but if you're in the TNG-Voyager era then you pretty much have access to everything else already. I'm not trying to make the game hyper realistic, butperhaps a little less fantastical.
For instance I set the Borg up to have 2 additional levels of adaptation if you will. After you research X you can build a Sphere or Cube or whatever that take say 25%-50% less damage from all weapons then the next level takes even less damage. Gives the impression of them adapting like they did in the shows. The downside of this is you need multiple shipyards to accommodate all the different levels of ships you can build. Then you give other races the ability to modify their weapons so the Borg can't adapt as easily. I know tons of odf's, but gives the desired effect.
I've always wanted to to implement game play where the Dominion beam weapons go through the shields of the Fed and Rom ships/stations early on, but not the Klingons just like the show. Then after you research X their beam weapons no longer have that advantage. Need to find a way to counter though as you can't research too early due to costs which leaves the Feds and Roms too weak against the Dominion.
I never liked the idea of only being able to counter certain ships with other specific ships, but I don't necessarirly want to just throw in tons of closely matched ships and say play. This whole idea is based on AI play so the AI would never be as cunning as a real player had harder to implement. Therefore it still has to be fun, but find other ways to make it interesting.
I've been toying with the idea of basing it off Supreme Commander in that you have different tiers of ships/stations/weapon emplacements and such and you have to move up tiers. That's not really realistic either, but may be interesting to play it this way?
Sorry for the wall of text and if anyone has the inclination to read it all I'd really like to hear your thoughts/ideas etc.
I guess for instance special weapons. I don't care for them so I usually limit them in my personal mod. It does take away a lot from play though so that's not always the best option (Though Major Payne had very few in his Borg Incursion mods and I loved them.) There weren't any "special weapons" really in the shows with what could be a few exceptions (jamming sensors, disruptingshields etc..) so you have to get creative.
Or take research. In stock A2 or FO for that matter you start with a couple small ships and have to research to move up to bigger/better stuff or just building a better shipyard or research station gets you access to better ships (as in stock A2.) Well, unless your mod spans multiple eras then why would you have to research a better ship that's in the same era as the ships you already have just to have access to it? Again, game play come into effect here, but I'm trying to think of ideas around this. Like you would have access to all ships at the start and only their resource cost would prevent you from building them right from the start so you build some smaller ships for basic defence/raiding until you get more resources to build the bigger ships.
I can see not having access to the Defiant, Prometheus or Sovereign Classes until later, but if you're in the TNG-Voyager era then you pretty much have access to everything else already. I'm not trying to make the game hyper realistic, butperhaps a little less fantastical.
For instance I set the Borg up to have 2 additional levels of adaptation if you will. After you research X you can build a Sphere or Cube or whatever that take say 25%-50% less damage from all weapons then the next level takes even less damage. Gives the impression of them adapting like they did in the shows. The downside of this is you need multiple shipyards to accommodate all the different levels of ships you can build. Then you give other races the ability to modify their weapons so the Borg can't adapt as easily. I know tons of odf's, but gives the desired effect.
I've always wanted to to implement game play where the Dominion beam weapons go through the shields of the Fed and Rom ships/stations early on, but not the Klingons just like the show. Then after you research X their beam weapons no longer have that advantage. Need to find a way to counter though as you can't research too early due to costs which leaves the Feds and Roms too weak against the Dominion.
I never liked the idea of only being able to counter certain ships with other specific ships, but I don't necessarirly want to just throw in tons of closely matched ships and say play. This whole idea is based on AI play so the AI would never be as cunning as a real player had harder to implement. Therefore it still has to be fun, but find other ways to make it interesting.
I've been toying with the idea of basing it off Supreme Commander in that you have different tiers of ships/stations/weapon emplacements and such and you have to move up tiers. That's not really realistic either, but may be interesting to play it this way?