Proteus Test Game 3

I’m a father of three, children don’t need training to destroy things. :wink: Finances, social life, ambition, hope… :laughing:

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Yes ! Children could be corrupted, I mean inspired to read good science fiction books, maybe from Orson Scott Card ? HA HA !

If it’s something that I do to my own planets in a defensive last-ditch effort to win a pyrrhic victory over a huge incoming fleet, then I’m not sure that I would find a use for it except for a few instances.

First, if it was already too late for me, and I didn’t mind losing the star and infrastructure in order to stick it to my enemy. Or second, if my enemy made a mistake and sent a huge fleet to an outlying, low-value star and it wouldn’t cost me much in the way of infrastructure to kill the fleet.

Either way, it doesn’t seem to have a lot of strategic value. I don’t think I’d want to use it on a powerful star just to keep it out of an enemy’s hands, I’d prefer to try and arm up and take it back.

If we eliminated the infrastructure and star loss, then we could treat the “bomb” as a huge, one-time injection of ships that kill the fleet on the way. Just to encourage further discussion, what if each star was able to “forcibly conscript” pilots, or “nationalize the workforce” which would give a big bump in production (or a one-time influx of ships), but would be followed by a cycle of significantly decreased output. This would up the defense, give a severe penalty, and would serve a similar purpose as the nova bomb without the star loss. I know that I would definitely use that functionality.

If I had an offensive nova bomb, that maybe could destroy up X number of ships, and X number of infrastructure points, I would definitely use that as well to soften up a super hard and valuable target. I’d only want to have one of these per empire, and it could start at the home star at the beginning of the game. It would need to be transported via its own carrier, and was in jeopardy of being destroyed during combat. However, once it leaves a star for it’s final destination, it will always hit, and will always do the damage. This gives everyone the same opportunity to utilize the weapon, and it’s not just something that the biggest player and outrun the rest of the galaxy to and have another way to beat us all down.

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If everyone had an offensive nova bomb, everyone would use one, to take out the infrastructure of another player’s hw. It would become a predictable nuisance.

I think it a player should sacrifice something to build and use it, to ensure it is used only for strategic, potentially game altering reasons. Like potentially halting the momentum of a strong player. Maybe those opportunities only happen rarely, but then it would only be used rarely. Or it would be used poorly, to the detriment of the user. Plus it should alter the terrain. But it also by definition would alter the win condition, ie one (or more) stars fewer required for victory

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I hear your thoughts about being a predictable nuisance if everyone started with one. If it were to be based on a sacrifice, then that sacrifice would need to be something that everyone could do at any time, so that it doesn’t become a tool for those with an already roaring infrastructure. Maybe you need to sacrifice one of your own stars to create this horrifying weapon? Draining the power from a sun in order to deliver death and destruction to your enemies? And perhaps you’d need to have a minimum level of econ, industry, and science on a star before it has the infrastructure necessary to create such a weapon. This would ensure a bit of buy-in, a significant loss to the player that would make everyone think hard about its use, but not so much that it was a tool only for the game leaders.

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Again though,losing one star is something the leader would be able to more readily absorb than others. Maybe it should strip a percentage of total infrastructure from across the whole empire or something more universal? But then which stars does it strip it from.

Although really it just adds too many complications and/or potential unbalances for me. Maybe it just collapses wormholes or something instead?

its his own carrier’s that have that much in them btw :innocent:[quote=“SteveLawUK, post:126, topic:5767”]
Maybe it just collapses wormholes or something instead?
[/quote]

Or what if these nova bombs only targeted infrastructure and reset a star back too 0/0/0 and you could aim it at those super worlds and make them restart their industry as in the game right now if someone takes a 10/15/10 star they still get too keep those 15 points of industry

About the nova thing, it also would be take into account it cannot be used by players that just start the game, plays 2-3 ticks and AFK. So starting with one of them may be not the better thing…

Nope, it’s not mine! At this point you also could be able to see it, is near your stars. Although it’s fast as a thunder.

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Hush now, let’s never speak of it again… :kissing::notes:

Thunderstruck

When I originally envisioned the nova bomb, I thought it might be an intresting way to bring the game to conclusion, stars start exploding all over the place and the total star count would drop.

I also envisioned it slowing the exponential growth of the galaxy, as soon as players can afford bombs, they will start being used everywhere, and then players will stop growing, perhaps even shrink back down to where they cannot afford to buy bombs any more.

I did imagine they would be offensive and that players would have to choose between sending ships in to dig out a defending enemy, or just destroy the star, forcing them to flee back or attack. I think you would want to do it to enemy stars so that you permanently weaken the enemy’s growth.

Perhaps it could be a tool you use when you are low on ship count, but have a large economy, and you want to start attacking an enemy who has done nothing and has lots of ships.

If they were say 10k each, we probably not have seen one for the first two weeks perhaps, but the galaxy in our current game would be a smoking ruin.

I kind of liked the idea that you can use them to destroy an enemy, but it slows your own growth becuase when you take thier part of space, it has less stars in it.

I am a little concerned however that it would not be used like I imagine an instead players will sit back and blow shit up just to watch the world burn. With no intention of using it as a tool to win.

Also, I worry that if we opened up large gaps in the galaxy, you might need to be making really long slow jumps to get anywhere, which gives more time for the defender to build more shops and move them into place. Rather than going out with a bang, there is a danger the game would kind of die in a whimper! Dark empty galaxies with just a few players clinging to rocks.

I’m kind of tempted to just implement it for fun, to see what happens.

It would just be a special expensive carrier, and the first star it hits it destroys!

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my reaction to your description of the pros and cons is: ick, what a clusterf— fwiw

Blowing up a choke point star could mean many cycles of researching HR and maybe also Scanning to bring back more traffic in that part of the galaxy.

What if the nova bomb was weaker ? just destroys infrastructure, ships and carriers, but not stars ?

To be honest, a completely chaotic game where everyone has access to nova bombs might be fun for a bit…I definitely see the possibility for stagnation, but it would certainly be exciting while it lasted.

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What? New neptunes pride bits! Where do I sign up?

Might need to tweak the width of the shaded number box for fleets… :grimacing:

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It alone has more ships than many countries!

Makes me think of something like this:

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Welcome Back @Rosslessness!

We’ll start a new game soon. I need to just find some time to get my head around what if anything need to change for the next round.

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And we’ve got a one million ship empire! (Is this the first?)

This game was well balanced.

Maybe relocating wormholes so they only appear in the edges may be the single change more could improve it.

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