Changing Cruiser Command's direction

[Siretu]

The BIGGEST problem I feel like we have right now is that the game isn't designed to show new players why it's fun. I feel like this is a big FUNDAMENTAL problem with the map. Achievement are great, and I might implement them soon, but they're not the solution. Solving the problem requires a big change in how the game works, I think.

I think this is something that we have to do a lot of thinking on and come up with a way to solve, if we ever want Cruiser Command to become more popular than it's ever become before.

Maybe focus more on wraith combat? Make it more of a several wraiths vs several wraiths? You could give three AIs all the time and have them be the main source of income. An experienced player could take it and focus the mineral income and get the kerm while the new players take wraiths. We then lower the wraith price by a decent bit.

This way, we increase the direct "fun" of the early game, by adding more action and make it more small ship-focused in the beginning. Also, if a new player doesn't understand how to play, you're not losing out on mineral income but rather just some firepower, which isn't a huge deal since you can just play defensively instead. Same thing if the new player dies: You're losing some small firepower and not potential income.

I know the AI miners aren't perfect, but they're still better than the average new player, even if that new player listens and reads the introduction. So maybe we should shift the meta-game towards more AI miners and more ship combat? Potentially starting with more wraiths as well? Maybe increasing the hangar capacity to allow for this?

When the BCs finally engage, the new players can feel like they're actually contributing since they can sit in a wraith and fire on the BC and feel super cool trying to dodge lasers and stuff. This is instead of having them sit in a miner on the other side of the map and suddenly the game ends and they had no idea what happened.

After the new player has had his/her share of action, (s)he'll hopefully be interested in the other aspects of the game. What can you do inside the BC? What was all that about? Oh, you can use different consoles? Ah, this one controls weapons!

I might be optimistic, but this is how I feel like it could work.

[WhyteDragon]

I have mixed feelings about such a metagame change, but I will post as if these changes were to occur and speak my part on what I believe would have to be altered.

I know the AI miners aren't perfect, but they're still better than the average new player, even if that new player listens and reads the introduction. So maybe we should shift the meta-game towards more AI miners and more ship combat? Potentially starting with more wraiths as well? Maybe increasing the hangar capacity to allow for this?

I just want to quickly point out that if you do make a change like this, you will have to heavily change either wraith or miners. It will be too easy to just swoop in with 3 wraiths, chain EMPs, and have 3 people shoot 15 damage pewpews for an easy kill.

If we do go with changing the metagame, I think this idea has a lot of potential. Lets face it -- once the wraith goes down, you're immediately with your back against the wall when fighting the other team. You can buy another wraith, but that puts you in a situation where you're behind in economy and the other wraith will have more upgrades -- that means you have to hope your miners don't mess up. Providing extra wraiths means you're not out of the game even if you lose one.

Combat ships are always going to be the most fun thing. Flying around in combat ships shooting people will always be awesome. The BC is simply a bigger Combat Ship that requires a lot more hands to move. Also, changing it so that you possess the AI for miners to run out and act also sets it up in such a way that you can rotate AIs around the ship afterwards to open up space for larger Small Ship Strategies, which I really like. The first issue I see, however... BC rushing is going to be very common. I think people will learn to work around it with the addition of all these extra wraiths, but just as forewarning.

What would the new metagame look like?
If you're going to do this, I easily foresee a corvette and three wraiths running around by example. What I do doubt is the Corvette being an aggressive player - it will likely end up being a defensive player chasing off wraiths. And I like that concept. One thing I will worry about is how all these small ships will work with the pinging, but we can worry about that later.

What kind of changes would you expect for a wraith?
To be honest, if you're going to expect three wraiths to be out it should be set up so that under upgraded circumstances a solowraith should have a very hard time even thinking about making a miner kill. Wraiths should have to work together in order to make a hunt occur. I suggest doing that by reducing base damage to 10, the effectiveness of EMPs, and maybe even dropping wraith hull a bit. 250 perhaps? In turn, this also offers a plus of another great potential -- reducing the cost of a wraith. Normally wraiths are too expensive to justify their repurchase. This offers the possibility to change that up a bit instead.

How do we reorganize the hanger?
If you plan to do this, I would highly suggest starting with 3 miners, 3 wraiths, and 1 corvette. In terms of space, I would highly recommend either implementing a 'scrap ship' mechanic to remove a ship from the hanger to make space for a new one or increasing hanger space to 14 in order to provide a nice blend of miners, offensive ships, chompers, and defensive ships. And maybe an infiltrator.

How many AI would you start with?
I think three is a nice number. You can either choose to send them all out mining, send two out and have one refine and keep an experienced miner out to try and snag ez kerm, or you could even keep them all on the BC doing energy transfers, weapon console, and refining while supporting player miners. You could even consider popping out a simple Corvette AI that'll respond to wraith threats and protect miners.

[Siretu]

These two previous posts are from another thread in the CC discussion forum. I wanted to bring them over here and start a discussion on this subject alone. Basically, what I'm suggesting is the following:

* All games start with 3 AIs
* All games 3 wraiths instead of 1.
* Wraith cost reduced by 60-70%.
* Corvette cost possibly reduced as well?
* Wraith, Corvettes and Miners's health and damage are rebalanced to match the new metagame where there are a lot of small combat ships out at the same time.

Possible effects:
* Players now put 2 AIs on mining at start, one on refining and a normal experienced player on mining. The early/mid game player set-up is now: 1 captain, 1 miner/ensign(depending on what you put the third AI on) and 4 players on wraiths + corvette.
* More combat ships encourage more small ship tactics which is an improvement on the current: "Should we use the wraith offensively or defensively" strategy decision.
* New players can experiment with a wraith and losing one isn't a big deal due to the amount of other combat ships you have. I think it'll also be easier for an exceptional player to compensate for a 25% lack in firepower than to compensate for a 33% lack in mining.
* Players will now get more action in the early/mid game instead of mining all game.
* Ship damage upgrades becomes more useful due to increase in amount of ships out at the same time.
*** It'll show beginners some fun.

Now, this isn't a small change. It's relatively easy for me to add it, but it'll take time to get the balancing right. I understand that this is a big change and it'll seriously impact Cruiser Command's future. I understand that some people enjoy the mining phase and I also like it, especially when you're on teamspeak with your team and you have all the strategy talk going on and such.

I would like to discuss possible downsides and fixes to these downsides as well as other changes to do at the same time to increase the effect we're trying to achieve. This is something that I will most likely do after the summer, if there's not a lot of negativity towards the idea.

[Karl913]

This change sounds like an awesome one that l agree with entirely.

l have a few suggestions: Small fleets. l suggested this before with AI pilots that will simply follow the player. l think a feature like that could be applied here definitely. Also l think should be added: New 'special' combat ships.

(Such as: Gravity Vortex. This is an effect l found out how to make a few days ago using TentacleAttackForce effect and a PsiDisruptorApplyBehavior and just swapping the two. It created a gravity vortex that was semi-possible to escape. Maybe if you reduced the search speed on the psidisruptor effect it would decrease the pull? l think a ship like that would be extremely interesting, as well as maybe a few others like a ship that is slightly larger and requires two people to man, one for weapons and one for movement. Just as a few examples.)

[Red-Rocket]

i like karls idea of small ships following you
we could also have the choice of starting with 0 1 or 3 ai drones
reduce cost of corvettes and wraiths, theres very few reasons to continually purchase new ships
maybe have your own personal money that you use yourself for ships, ship items and player items? while the team shared money goes to upgrades, missiles and yamatos

[Siretu]

i like karls idea of small ships following you
we could also have the choice of starting with 0 1 or 3 ai drones
reduce cost of corvettes and wraiths, theres very few reasons to continually purchase new ships
maybe have your own personal money that you use yourself for ships, ship items and player items? while the team shared money goes to upgrades, missiles and yamatos

Personal money is confusing and hard to implement since I think I'd have to implement a custom money system which wouldn't work well with the current one and the cost indicators.

Reducing wraith and corvette cost is essential I think.

As for AI ships following you, I'm not so sure. I'd rather keep AIs on mining and players fighting, that way the players feel responsible for the outcome of the battle. I also don't see what AI combat ships add to the game. I'm not arguing against potentially adding combat roles for the drones in the future, but it feels like adding small ships that just follow a player is just taking development time to add a pretty complex mechanic that only serves to increase damage output on your own ship basically. However, I am definitely willing to discuss the matter further.

[Karl913]

The reasoning behind adding ships to follow you is that they'd serve to make combat more epic. A 4v4 ship combat battle.. Doesn't actually sound that epic. Also, they wouldn't have to just follow the user. They'd be the users units. They'd just fly around your ship until either an enemy comes or you tell them to do something such as patrol or attack move and then fly back.

l also notice nothing said about the new ships idea.

[WhyteDragon]

Reducing wraith and corvette cost is essential I think.

Wraiths I can agree with. Their only real use is for miner hunting, and if you want to introduce multiple wraiths as a new metagame then it becomes essential to make sure that they're not as powerful, and therefore cheaper.

Corvettes are already the bomb. They are very powerful ships with a strong emphasis on Anti-BC/Destroyer capabilities. They are not potent against miners due to their speed, and have difficulties fighting current wraiths (making them more potent against weakened wraiths, GROUPED wraiths I might add) so I don't feel as if altering them would be beneficial to the meta.

[Red-Rocket]

and the implementation of that one idea about being able to choose for yourself 1 of 3 abilities for any small ship kinda like in the HOTS campaign

[Degra]

Agreed, 2x nanite corvs can be quite effective against BCs.
Weakening corvs would take away from some strategies later than early game.