Draco Review

[RTGPete]

Stripminers were brought up several posts back.  The safety of building on a centralized world versus using regular mines on multiple colonies comes to mind -- those kinds of decisions are fundamental to how Draco works, so it makes for an interesting discussion.

[hobknob]

A few thoughts.

 

In the beginning the only way to get a jump on industrial requirements is to colonize.  You can do the math to see what the ROI is, but it is not that far off so for many empires that is the way to go.  I don't find it of much value to mine low yield planets so I don't, but others do.  What is low yield is not fixed but based on many factors.  The primary of these is if the planet is in the home system, how defensible is the home system, are there good yields of some other desirable material on the planet and how can I defend the colony. On the HW just about anything is fair game since it is handed to you.

For most folks iron will be needed most so I will base this on iron.  If you have a planet with yield of 1000 for iron you could colonize with 4000 pop give or take the support installations.  At this point you will mine 2.4M iron a turn.  To get the same result out of stripmines  and the industries needed to convert RAW to iron will require 120,000 pop or a 30:1 ratio.  If you sit home and rely on stripmines you will use 90+% of your industrial power to convert RAW to iron.  It gets better as you get better tech and once you get to advanced industries and advanced stripmines the number would drop to just under 15k and this does not consider Industrial Bonus nor power costs.

If instead of 1000 for the yield you found a planet of yield 1500 then the same amount of pop would net you 4.4M iron.  

If you can find planets with yields that high it will always be better to mine them, however most yields that are considered to be good are in the 400-600 range.  At those numbers the gap is much narrower.  Using a yield of 500 with 2000 mines it would take 30,000 pop to do the same thing with RAW and industries. or a 15:1 ratio.

 

As you can see stripmines become more viable as yields go down.

 

From my experience you colonize a lot in the beginning since tech is low and enemies are far away.  In a few years tech is better, you may have gotten improved industries/stripmines and would rather expend effort on building up a defensible HW so this makes the use of Deep Core Surveyors desirable.  At the same time the low yield mining colonies that were better than nothing are now a liability so return migration starts to happen.  Better to bring them home than to let an enemy capture them.  A few high yield colonies can be defended to a certain extent, but not all.  So, the empire shrinks back to the Home system and the use of stripmines which will reduce overall production by up to 90% as opposed to being able to mine for resources.

 

A starting HW has an industrial output of about 110,000,000, for 450k insustry

The same HW converted to Improved with no industrial bonus and only 400k improved industry will be 300M.  

An advanced world is close to 900M and by the time you get there you should have industrial bonuses so actual production could be closer to 2B

 

That sounds pretty good, however, the amount of iron, lumber etc. mined does not change and with DCS's being limited in scope to barely minimal improvements all this extra industrial power will only be fed by stripmines.  You can pretty much figure that the amounts mined will be paultry compared to required and can be left out of the calculations all together without too much problem.  So once you get to advanced with bonus the balance point will be something like 1.86 to 1.  So for each 2 industries you add you will need 1 Advanced stripmine.

All of this coupled with distances traveled, slow ships, poor engines even at the highest levels and the scarcity of mining colonies empires will find it challenging to feed them selves.

This says nothing about an empire that is growing by several 1000 a turn so could have twice the industrial capacity but no more deposits to mine.

 

Planet Cracking would not change the long term need for materials but if the yields were not reduced from andromeda then they could be quite useful in the mid term.

What would also be nice is improved and advanced mines that mine better and what about those mining shuttles the DMX use?

I would never choose to keep using stripmines of any variety, but if that is the design of the universe....

 

 

 

 

[hobknob]

I never thought planet cracking would be contentious...

Anyway, here is the next one...

1)      Reduction in shield strength

a.       This looks to be a pretty decent reduction and I think it is great.  I have lost billions of tons of shipping to fleets for a number of reasons without doing any significant damage since the shields would be back to full the next order.  Draco will be much more about attrition and being able to wear down the enemy force, even if the only way to do it is with suicide wave attacks.

 

[Sakarissa]

Adv Stripmine (ASM) = 500 Adv Hvy Machinery = 9,000 Raw Resources

Adv Industrial Center (AIC) = 500 Adv ConMats = variable output but maxes out at 5000 tons of input so we'll use that.

To get at an even amount between the two you would need 5 ASMs (Generating 45,000 Raw Resouces (RR)) and would need 9 AICs (accepting 45,000 input tons). That would generate 4,500 tons of Iron a turn for 2,500 AHMs, and 4,500 ACMs. 

Now, let's say I have a yield of Iron at 604. If I put 2,800 mines on it then I generate 907,200 Iron a turn fairly efficiently for a cost of 1,400,000 CMs. If I go the route of ASM/AICs to generate the same amount, I would need 1,008 ASMs and 1,815 AICs with 3,000 AIC input lying fallow. That takes 504,000 AHMs and 907,500 ACMs for a total cost of 1,411,500 materials. So, it's slightly cheaper in materials to go with the specific mines.

1,400,000 materials (specific mines) vs 1,411,500 materials (ASM route)

2,800 Pop vs 2,815 Pop

 

Let's increase the Iron yield to 1328 and put 5,500 mines on it (not max number of mines but a reasonable number of mines due to the costs of moving pop around in Draco).

4,279,000 Iron for 5,500 pop and 2,750,000 materials (CMs)

vs

4,279,500 Iron for 13,314 pop and 6,657,000 materials (AHMs and ACMs)

 

And that's not mentioning the additional production costs for AHMs and ACMs versus CMs. Plus the cost of moving large numbers of pop around. I'm still hoping for Improved Colony Berths to make it easier. And, as HobNob pointed out, with engine thrusts severely downgraded, ships with colony berths are pretty much 1 AP (with a large number of CBs). You could go the route of 1 CB on the ship with multiple engines to get higher APs for 1 CB but the cost in making enough engines to make this worked (like a 1,000 ships with 1 CB) is prohibitive. Now, if you are populating a colony 1 jump from your home system, that's a 4 turn round trip for a 1 AP colony berth ship.  I found it was more economical to create large 1 AP ships rather then the swarm of small ones.

[Sakarissa]

Reduced Shield Strength - I like this. It makes armor and repair bays far more useful. You might get a few combat pulses at full strength damage output before the shields are blown down and integrity loss kicks in to decrease your damage output. Becomes more of a slug fest. I can see empires forgoing force shields on their combat designs and opt for more armor and/or weapons. The argument can be made that enough damage output on the first combat pulse (the only pulse you are guaranteed full damage potential since you are at full integrity - at least for this example) is the best hammer. If you have enough to blow down their opposing shields on the first pulse, you are starting to degrade their damage output. And tonnage dedicated to repair bays takes away from other items. However, the ability to self repair (at the beginning of a turn if I'm correct) means that a ship can be wore down a fair bit or even destroyed if enough waves come at it during the turn. 

[hobknob]

This next one will probably be a bit more controversial and has multiple parts to be considered.  Engines and movement cap

1)      The first, and to veterans, the most obvious change is the AP cap of 8 movement points.  In short this was to prevent really high AP ships conducting lots of moves in the database and to prevent somebody moving fleets around the universe quickly.  I believe there are two issues here, the first being the intent to slow things down and the second how it has been done.  The second will be addressed below.

a.       As I see it, the intent to prevent fleets just moving around to different WP’s and thus avoiding defenses has succeeded and failed.  Now instead of running around each other quickly if one is willing to spend the orders to do it, fleets can largely miss each other as war fleets are typically 1 AP.  The defender has no ability to see a fleet and pounce on it then return to its station. What I have actually seen are many fleets just slipping by each other because a defensive perimeter cannot be set up.  This last bit is a function of a 3-d universe that is mostly unknown.  In addition, should you not guess correctly with your 1 AP fleet you will never be able to catch and overtake an enemy.

b.       From my own experience I would say that I have more individual fleets and ships that are far less capable.  A lot of resources are tied up in a fleet that can move once a turn.  

c.       The good side of this change is most likely in the savings to the core database running the game.  I am sure turns process much faster with less movement to process.

d.       Another unintended consequence to me personally is that I have no spare AP to tempt me into more orders/turns. I simply run out and have nothing left to do.

e.       It was stated that high AP fleets were avoiding fuel requirements by using Gates, which I think was supposed to be wormholes. Nevertheless neither gates nor wormholes are present in Draco so higher AP fleets are still subject to all normal fuel costs.  All together the proper sequence of wormholes does incredible things in Andromeda.  They are also very time consuming and a real pain to set up in the first place and then have to be defended or risk capture or destruction.  They also tend to run out of Caldaran crystals to run them.  Their main advantage is with super large fleets and those are not likely to ever appear in Draco due to other changes.

2)      The second part of the change was the method and that has been to reduce the strength of engines.  Starting engines have a strength of 450 and seem to go up very little.  In Andromeda engine strengths double at each level until you got to the really top end which had a single engine with power of 300,000k+.  Engines in Draco seem to increase in increments of 50 or 100. A hard cap has also been used to prevent designs going past 8 AP. There has also been a reduction in engine research cost as well, according to Pete.

a.       I really have nothing positive to say about this change.  The top speed of 8 AP was really not too bad, all things considered.  Even in Andromeda it was pretty rare for ships not in a long convoy route to use more than 10-12 AP even when they had 50-100 or more.  However, reducing engine performance this drastically has many draconian consequences that are sucking the fun out of it for me.

                      i.      >30-40% of mass being required to get to 2 AP is too much

                      ii.      Engine mass should never need to be above 20% for multiple AP in my book and should just go down with better tech.

                      iii.      In my view, the normal player should be able to get to 4 AP with <20% of mass and the higher end systems should get you to 8 AP at 25% of mass with the    top tier engines getting you well below 20%.  Best engine in the game seems to get you to 8AP at >60% of mass in engines.

                      iv.      The other part about this is that low AP ships can’t skim effectively for fuel.  One of the main reasons to have high AP fleets in Andromeda was to be able to refuel on the road.  In Draco a war fleet will be 1 AP and will have almost no capability to skim for fuel unless large numbers of fuel skimmers are used.

b.       In a nutshell, the AP cap is livable; the poor performance of every known and every estimated engine is a game breaker.  The fix is simple, increase engine performance across the board.

c.       Another part of the problem is skimming.  Every aspect of movement was left the same after the engines were killed.  Something needs to change, warp point fuel costs, make fuel shuttles smaller, increase their performance, provide “improved versions” and “advanced” versions, get rid of fuel requirements all together with total conversion engines or with TWD engines or perhaps some other tech that converts standard fuel to “X-fuel” on board thus reducing the amount of fuel required to move.  Something, anything needs to be done as this part of equation is broken.

 

As an afterthought, I have been playing multiple positions in Draco for 3 years now and the movement changes have not grown on me.  I could embrace the 8 AP cap if the engines could actually get you to 8 AP, but they can't .  They are way out of balance to the rate of increase of everything else in the universe.

 

 

[hobknob]

There is one more part to engines so I will add it now rather than wait.

 

1)      The reasoning for reduced AP was also to make available AP more important and meaningful so you had to choose and not just hit every space or go around, in my words.  Also, there was the desire to reduce alliance activities that were 50 AP away.

a.       This is spot on in my view, however the example was using war fleets of multiple AP, not 50 or 32, but a few.  Well, in Draco war fleets are 1 AP, not two or three or 4 they are 1.  8 AP will give the flexibility described and make those AP count when you only have a few movement points left and lots of choices.  No choices because the fleet is 1 AP is no fun and not worth it. 

b.       Even with the games absolute best engine, Mk VI total conversion engine your best AP with 16% (estimated based on available data) of mass devoted to engines will barely get you to 2 AP.  Again, the 8 AP cap is not the issue it is the engine strengths that are too low.  They really need to be amped up to at least double what they are currently are and then need to be coupled with some way to reduce fuel requirements and to increase skimming efficiency.  In my view ships should be well designed at 4-6 AP with a reasonable amount of tonnage devoted to engines at mid Antimatter engine levels and 8 AP with reasonable tonnage in the early Gravitic if you should so choose to go to the end of the engines then the reward should be 8 AP at much better than reasonable.

c.       Again, it is fine to have 8 AP as a cap, I don’t agree with it or like it, but it is ok as long as other things are also balanced so game play is not killed.  As it sits, game play is being killed unless ones only goal is to hunt down DMX fleets that only seems to move once a year.

d.       The final point of limiting alliance activities seems to be a non issue.  If you have an alliance then they do what they do.  Case in point in Andromeda one of my positions is attacking another position with allied help and I am probably at least 50 hops away.  Exactly what this is trying to prevent, however we didn’t start off like this we have ended up like this after 15+ years of playing and expanding.  In fact it is one of the few things that keeps me playing after this time.  It is not easy, but that is where the targets are found.  I can easily see a future for Draco where it is time to give up and call it a day because you really don’t want your war fleet to travel for a year just to get to an opportunity to use it.  Low AP sounds good and works ok in the early stages of the game, but works less well to not at all in the mid to later stages.  If it doesn’t work, who is going to keep paying to play?  It can’t be changed now but putting HW’s close together would also solve this.  Fleets travel to targets that they have available, if they are 50 away that is where they go.  An alliance moving a long way away will not in itself give the defender any better notice.  It’s all about planning and part of that planning is about only letting your enemy see what you want him to see. 

e.       More about alliances hitting from different direction and such.  In my experience this is not going to happen.  The game combat system does not reward small strikes and you leaves yourself open to defeat in detail.  In addition, almost every battle I have had with allies we were all pushing to the enemy from the same direction.  Only at the very beginning would you be likely to have allies on opposite sides.  Alliances are made with your neighbors who are available for trade and help, much less somebody who is across the universe.  This would be different if we knew the map and had coordinates and could be pushing to meet in the middle.  Even then, the nature of the combat system is geared heavily towards "biggest force wins".  While it may work, I have rarely seen it even tried and less so to be successful except at long distances from the HW or end target.  By the time you get to the real defenses you will almost always have joined up with your ally.

 

Good Day

 

[Sakarissa]

While I won't address each point individually, I can live with the 8AP cap. In fact, my fastest ship (a defenseless scout) is only 4 AP. I had to use 74.5% of the ship's tonnage to get there. That was with Mk II Fusion Engines. I have better engines now and could drop that % down a bit and probably get a faster scout. However, it's DMX bait. I have lost several of them to the DMX. I have worked up an armed and armored scout ship but with my current best engine, it's looks like 3AP. Not bad but I wouldn't consider it a main battle line ship by any stretch. It can successfully defend itself against single DMX minelayers, light cruisers, and heavy cruisers. Hobknob does bring up a good point about engine thrust values. They are on the weak side and i also feel that the nerf-bat swung a little too hard on this part of the game. With the current system, I have resigned myself to the fact that large warships will be 1 AP no matter what. I kinda picture a 2 billion ton warship being pushed along by a single Mk I Nuclear Engine. Seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? Even with stronger engines, I don't expect a 2 billion ton warship to have much more than 2 AP or possibly 3 AP if the design sacrifices enough tonnage for engines. The trade-off will ultimately be firepower with armor and shields a close second. Having improved and advanced versions of the venerable Fuel Shuttle would help address the refuel issues. Currently, I've been putting more fuel shuttles on my designs than I do in Andro to make sure my ships can refuel faster. And 1 AP warships simply won't be able to help with an ally 50 jumps away. It would take 50 turns (almost 2 full real-time years) to get there. And how old will the tech be on that ship when it get's there? Long range cargo ships are possible with a couple of nifty techs out there so I'm not too worried about them. I will say I do miss my Planetary Cargo Gates in Draco.

[Hobo]

hobknob  quick question for you .And this might be a stupid one anyways  Lets say pete changes the engine thrust would you have to scrap your ships and build new ones or would they take on the new eng thrust ratio

[Sakarissa]

If he made a change like that, I would imagine the new engine thrust ratings would be enabled on your existing engines. "Your engineers found this strange button on all the engines. When they pressed it, the engines started working far better than in the past. When it was investigated, it was discovered that an engineer failed to document this button and all engine efficiency suffered. This engineer has been severely punished."

 

[hobknob]

I think you might want to scrap some designs, but a change should just be a database modification.  I cant see any downside to an existing ship going from 2 ap to 2.9 or 3 or even 4 ap.

 

[rfouasnon]

The 8 AP change ( enforced by making the engines weak ) was the reason I am not playing in Draco . Progress is slowed to a crawl in the new region . What would take one turn in Andro to do , takes at least 10 turns ( if not even longer ) in Draco . No P or U gates , no wormholes ...no thanks , I have plenty to do in Andro . 

[The Fremen]

19 hours ago, rfouasnon said:

The 8 AP change ( enforced by making the engines weak ) was the reason I am not playing in Draco . Progress is slowed to a crawl in the new region . What would take one turn in Andro to do , takes at least 10 turns ( if not even longer ) in Draco . No P or U gates , no wormholes ...no thanks , I have plenty to do in Andro . 

so begs the question... if changes were made would you consider running a position in Draco? 

[rfouasnon]

Probably not anymore , since we are terrorizing 446 and totally destroying that position , and we are gearing up to destroy the remnants of the minicheroptera position . I am plenty busy in Andro , where before it was looking kinda boring . We have reactivated 4913 ( a monster position ) , and we have a good idea where 2964 moved his 200 million pop to . 

[hobknob]

What with the Holidays and all I got distracted so here is the rest of my informal review.  Enjoy, or not as you please.

 

1)       Gates are gone…

a.       This change was probably needed and will not be missed for awhile.  Even in Andromeda it was years down the road and then they did not work well at first.  However, once the kinks got worked out they became invaluable.  The biggest problem in my view was that they allowed an enemy to gate off all of the pop and spoils the turn before you had a chance to land troops or drop bombs on the planet.  This just forced him to move to a new planet to start again.

b.       The biggest problem is that as empires get bigger they need to move more stuff.  This could have been done by freighters or by gates.  Moving tens of billions of tons of stuff by freighter is a bit more of an effort than with a few TR orders and a gate.  Without gates empires will find it more difficult to grow and to feed themselves with resources.  With all the other things that have been changed to inhibit empire growth the lack of Gates will likely not be that big of a deal.  It will certainly help to keep empires smaller and as I understand things that is a desired outcome.

c.       Gates are a long term item and the impact of not having them is well off.  In Andromeda it was also the stepping stone for an empire to jump to the next level. 

 

I would also point out that in a) above there could have been other solutions the prevent folks from gating away or impose a higher cost.  I sure there are many options but I will stick to  the two I like best.

1) Create a ship component that interferes with a gate so once you get to a planet it blocks any gate function or just eh enemy gates. 

2) The other idea is similar in that  a "Gate Dampener" is deployed to a planet and then the gate tax is increased so that instead of suffering 2-4 % loss when gating in/out all your stuff the gate tax would be increased.  This could also be increased with the number of these "gate dampeners" present.  Maybe on of them only adds 2% to the gate tax but each additional one increases it by some amount.  They would need to be fairly high tech and be pretty large and take up loads of ship space.

 

Anyway, they aren't in Draco so that is that...