View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0015225 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - New Unit Ideas - Economic and Utility Units | May 19, 2014 5:33 am | May 29, 2014 6:17 pm | |
| Reporter | TheokGrundor | Assigned To | |||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 7.028 | ||||
| Summary | 0015225: Clean Up Drones | ||||
| Description | I'll admit I'm a bit of a hoarder in games and I hate seeing potential resources going to waste and with the new salvage mechanics I'm always stuck deciding between Military stations to defend or Logistic stations for more metal. And maybe I just don't know how to use them but currently the only purpose i see for cleanup drones is to remove minefields on enemy planets and that doesn't really seem like enough reason to have its own unit. It would be nice if i could get those cleanup drones to improve the efficiency of scrap collection. They are called "cleanup" drones after all. Other uses they could have is maybe some way to protect other ships from/cure them of reclamation damage, re-processors, and zombies. I believe the mechanics of reclamation is that if a ship dies with less than half reclamation damage then it will transfer to a nearby ship, so maybe a Cleanup drone could intercept the transfer of reclamation and negate it? I just feel that a unit needs more purpose than being a simple minesweeper. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Yeah, I think they should be seriously repurposed to do something related to Salvage. Since the AI never rebuilds anything (at least I never noticed it, their mines just stay broken forever at least), cleaning up their stuff isn't important enough for an own unit. We could just have that functionality added to remains rebuilders or engineers. One possible way could be to make them able to patrol around, gather Scrap from one system's orbit and deliver it to the command station on another world, allowing you to get salvage from neutral/AI planets next to yours (albeit slowly) or have them deliver scrap to your high-efficiency planets (with logistic stations, or straight-up homeworlds). In that respect they'd end up being a numerical addition to Salvage all the while requiring some effort (setting up their "source" worlds to grab scrap from and "target" worlds to deliver it to and making sure they aren't in danger on the way) and making the game feel more "alive" (I love anything that results in a constant flow of ships throughout the empire, be it allied/zombie ships or setting your constructors' waypoints to the frontline and having them fly instead of just using warpgates). The justification for this design and gameplay-wise would be "Player can unlock these with knowledge and put a bit of effort in and get better Salvage efficiency out of it". |
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My feeling is mostly that scrap is a largely automatic process, it doesn't really have a lot of player input options. Aside from the command station choice there is really no way to designate a planet as a higher priority for scarp reclamation which would be advantageous on border worlds and choke points. It seems it would be fitting to, in the case of a fleet wipe, to prepare yourself to maximize the gains from fending off a reprisal wave and have a collection method to harvest scrap with efficiency to get your fleet back up ASAP. I would really like to see a more active way to manage the new scrap mechanics especially because they are now so embedded into the game economy. |
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Base problem: cleanup drones can only get rid of already blown up minefield remains. underlying problem 1: you have to fly your fleet past the minefields to get out into the system and protect the drones while they work. underlying problem 2: you often blow the minefields up by simply hitting them with a starship over and over again and then taking it back for repairs so that the incoming fleet ships will be safe. solution 1: since the AI doesn't rebuild things, get rid of cleanup drones and stop having it's minefields leave remains behind. solution 2: make a new AI plot where they seed minefileds into systems when waves hit? I do like the idea regarding getting rid of reclamation nanites, but then it just becomes another ship that I set every planet to auto build 1 and forget... so I can't really endorse that. :( |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 19, 2014 5:33 am | TheokGrundor | New Issue | |
| May 21, 2014 4:42 am | Shoat | Note Added: 0038232 | |
| May 21, 2014 4:43 am | Shoat | Note Edited: 0038232 | |
| May 21, 2014 4:44 am | Shoat | Note Edited: 0038232 | |
| May 21, 2014 10:00 pm | TheokGrundor | Note Added: 0038267 | |
| May 29, 2014 6:17 pm | malkiel | Note Added: 0038383 |
