New race(s)

[Veedeejem!]

It's been the same 4 races for what, 10 rounds or something now?
Why not throw a new race or new races into the fight?

Some suggestions:
- a subverting race (i thought it was nice when zik was subverting, obviously most ppl don't agree with me on that)
- covert ops race, ability to steal ship designs etc etc
- a 3d race that kills like ter & xan do

If anybody else has some ideas plz post them (constructive critisism only plz, no need for another flame-fest )

[Nadar]

More than 4 races? Poor DC's

[Alki]

make 1 ship and 1 race in whole game, alliance who overkills the best wins!

[Zero]

The thing about adding a new race is that it needs to have a theme as with all the other races, such as Xan with the cloaking and Zik with their ability to steal, etc...

I think it would be great to introduce a new race but before that can be done there needs to be an orignal theme for the new race, not a theme that is a rip-off of another race (ie. subversion).

I would suggest a few but television has idled the imaginative part of my brain so I am unable to.

[edit] just noticed I have overused the word "theme" a bit there but like i said, TV killed my imagination

[furball]

You need a decent theme, and that's been the main sticking point since the birth of races. Subversion is inherently broken, for starters.


Personally I have nothing.

[Zero]

Ok. Now i havent thought this through too much and it will probably be a crap idea in retrospect but here we go.

How about a "Infecting" race.
Basically they will infect a small amount of ships (due to low damage) and these ships are doomed but not for 12 hours or so.
When they return to the base planet they will infect other ships, thus killing them also. BUT, this can be combated by introducing a new ship/structure called "Healers" which, if there are enough of them, will stop any spread of the infection once the infected ships return to base. (say, maybe 1 healer stops the infection of 10 ships or 20% healer structures will stop all infection, 10% will halve the infection and so on...)
If we say each infected ship can infect *4 of the ships damage (so is a vsharrak is infected, which has damage 4 then if there are no healers then the vsh will infect frigates with damage 16).

For this to work the "Infection" race must have a high init (not as high as Zik's though), weak damage and high armour (making them similar to terrans in that respect but faster).

Now this race could turn out to be rubbish if everyone has healers but thats something for the creators to work out if people like the idea.

Feel free to develop the idea instead of just saying why its rubbish.

[Clogg]

What about a growth race.

Fast build pace since they grow there building.
Organic fleets that have some sort of regenerate ability (if 50% of the fleet is killed 5% grows back or something like that).
Slower research (genetic mutation takes a while).
Etc.

Could bring a new element to the game

[madman2k30III]

Originally Posted by Zero

The thing about adding a new race is that it needs to have a theme as with all the other races, such as Xan with the cloaking and Zik with their ability to steal, etc...

I think it would be great to introduce a new race but before that can be done there needs to be an orignal theme for the new race, not a theme that is a rip-off of another race (ie. subversion).

I would suggest a few but television has idled the imaginative part of my brain so I am unable to.

[edit] just noticed I have overused the word "theme" a bit there but like i said, TV killed my imagination

how about an anciant race that is small in numbers who have sum outdated and sum advanced technologies. and set it up so only the top 50 are allowed access to it. there main feature could be that they are able to cut travel time in half but have weaker armor and weapons than all other races. think about it you dont need to defend no more so you may aswell just use this race to go on roiding sprees and become fat hungry targets

[rop1964]

what if that new race had displacer field (50% of hitting them in combat) or phasing (attack then teleport away) making them dreadful but fun, with a low initiative, high armor but low fire power.. can be a feared race!

[Gate]

Originally Posted by madman2k30III

how about an anciant race that is small in numbers who have sum outdated and sum advanced technologies. and set it up so only the top 50 are allowed access to it. there main feature could be that they are able to cut travel time in half but have weaker armor and weapons than all other races. think about it you dont need to defend no more so you may aswell just use this race to go on roiding sprees and become fat hungry targets

The top 50 planets? Being that races are picked at the start of the round, how do you decide who will be top 50?

And cutting travel time in half sounds like a horrible, horrible idea to me, as eta8 or less attacks are utterly undefendable. Because we all love it when the bigger players can roid anyone they want to with no hope of being stopped?

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Clogg

What about a growth race.

Fast build pace since they grow there building.
Organic fleets that have some sort of regenerate ability (if 50% of the fleet is killed 5% grows back or something like that).
Slower research (genetic mutation takes a while).
Etc.

Could bring a new element to the game

This is the best idea I've heard so far, but it still has trouble fitting in with the current universe.

Having mother ships that breed little fighter swarms would be cool, but I'm not sure if it would work

[Appocomaster]

You could have a race with faster returns from combat (say -3/4 ticks).
Or one that has a special (expensive) battleship that improves combat ability of the other ships.
Or ships that do more damage / gain more armour when they defend / attack ...
be inventive people

[isildurx]

How about a 1337 race, where every shipstype is limited to 1337 ships?

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

You could have a race with faster returns from combat (say -3/4 ticks).
Or one that has a special (expensive) battleship that improves combat ability of the other ships.
Or ships that do more damage / gain more armour when they defend / attack ...
be inventive people

isnt possible with the current game engine as far as i know
in order to do it, you'd have to have them -3/4 ticks faster into battle
likewise with ships that improve the stats of others, its a logical nightmare to bootstrap that sort of ability into the combat engine
imagination isnt the problem, practicality is

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Phil^

isnt possible with the current game engine as far as i know
in order to do it, you'd have to have them -3/4 ticks faster into battle
likewise with ships that improve the stats of others, its a logical nightmare to bootstrap that sort of ability into the combat engine
imagination isnt the problem, practicality is

By the time we're implementing these ideas, the code will have been updated

[Phil^]

i can hear kloopy having a panic attack from here
redoing the combat engine and ticker code is a rather large job

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by Phil^

i can hear kloopy having a panic attack from here
redoing the combat engine and ticker code is a rather large job

Pfft. Copy/paste and changing a few variable names. Easy

[Alessio]

Some race that is made to assist [insert name here]


That have an 1 tick faster defence eta's but 1 tick slower attacks
Faster construction building.. for scans.. Slower production

And carrier ships : Big ships with weak fighters.. that can get shot but regenerate after like 20 ticks..
The fighter shoots the enemies of carriers obviously
If carriers are classed CR for example or small once classed FR.. their main roiding fleet should be the same classes.

Multiclass fleets appear to be bad in attacks.. but they can own in defences
The FI are free thus expendable.. and should be able to get shot down in time

A defensive scan race with carriers



yeah yeah I know my suggestion isnt original

[Entium]

A race that has ships with the ability too leach additional salvage, i.e. the ships do less damage, but for every enemy ship they destroy, the race receives a part of it's building cost.

[The Real Arfy]

The fact that the characteristics of any given race and planet are pretty damn customisable (e.g. Construction/Mining/Research/Production/Security) and the fact that all races are pretty much the same (Every race has a special type of resource they use - ofc except Xan - and also the simplicity of the stats etc) kind of eliminate any chances of real variance between races, and hence the creation of an original one. The races these days usually are redefined each round by the stats, and we are given the opportunity to fine-tune them to our own playing style.

Basically, I don't think a new race is really feasible, or worthwhile, or necessary, without a long recode of the combat engine. I much prefer new features to internal customisation, such as Morale/Government which is being discussed.

[Shyne]

Originally Posted by Squidly

Pfft. Copy/paste and changing a few variable names. Easy

I don't think its managed dynamically, probably each possibly combination of attack is written in the code....

[Ron7684]

Originally Posted by Shyne

I don't think its managed dynamically, probably each possibly combination of attack is written in the code....

ive tried doing that once, with a small script its hell, with PA, it'd be torture for kloopy

Anyway, i like the idea of one ship having effects on others. Sorta like auras, say on ship with 0.1% extra dmg aura up to a maximum of 100 ships (10%). It would be really cool. Or say like a special ship that costs a lot, but can only be used once and has a nice bonus like -1 init. Basically, these bring more unpredictability to the game. if you're doing a calc, the -1 init ship might turn the battle around, but if you make it cost something, maybe even make it cost asteroids, it would make the calc'er think about whether the attacker would send it with the fleet or not. Come to think of it, i think for a -1 init ship, a good cost would be 60 roids (distributed based on race 24:18:18 or 20:20:20). The only thing i can think of against this is when people get massive roidfat they can mass these to get rid of their roids while still gaining something. Maybe limit it to 1 at a time or can only produce 1 every 24 hrs.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Everyone seems to be forgetting initiative as a ship attribute - a long time ago i suggested a race of double initiative (re-attack) ships, who were like the uber xans (taking the Xan ideals of small ships and high firepower and good (to medium, as there were two init levels ) init. It freed up Xan as you know it to hold more medium (FR) classes etc.

[NitinA]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Everyone seems to be forgetting initiative as a ship attribute - a long time ago i suggested a race of double initiative (re-attack) ships, who were like the uber xans (taking the Xan ideals of small ships and high firepower and good (to medium, as there were two init levels ) init. It freed up Xan as you know it to hold more medium (FR) classes etc.

That brings up some pretty nifty ideas... Double inititive ships could be multi-facted--though I think this would require some level of recoding to the engine.

Some possibles:

The first initiative could be EMP, but would fire *after* Cath EMP, and the second would be normal, and fire after regular kill ships. This way you'd fire twice, but *after* other divisions. With one EMP and one normal, one ship wouldn't have a 2x kill advantage ratio over other ships in the universe.

2 initatives of normal firing. One would fire right after Cath EMP, These ships could be armour hogs (they have 1/2 the damage of a normal ship with standard armour), and the second initative would fire with normal kill ships. This way they kill the same amount of ships as a normal ship of another race since they fire twice, except that half of the ships killed are destroyed earlier, and the other half destroyed later. Would be intresting to see some ships that cross fired against these ships in the middle of the two initatives. EMP would be the main defence (with possibility of cross-fire ship def, though it would take losses--but only half of what you'd expect from a normal 1 time fireing ship of that sort)

Wow.... I'm going to stop now, as my mind is going crazy envisioning tons and tons of possible 2-fireing ship combos/styles.

-NitinA

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by NitinA

Wow.... I'm going to stop now, as my mind is going crazy envisioning tons and tons of possible 2-fireing ship combos/styles.

Indeed .

I had actually set my Zealots (as i called them) to have between 60-70% of the Terran's Firepower - thus they would kill between 20-40% more than a terran would, but at the cost of lower armour. Having said that, my Terrans have alot more firepower than the current ones, but instead are less well protected. anyway, i dont think that 50% is enough to compensate - you are taking alot of risk by sending a ship that can be killed before it has 'fully' fired, and i think that risk should be compensated - as with Xans, they need to do alot of damage early else they will be blown out of the stars, so a proportion of them wont be firing again which is compensated (to an extent) by greater firepower.

[Veedeejem!]

There are some very good ideas here, maybe we will see a new race in 5-10 rounds

[Kjeldoran]

How about a suicide race?

A race with ships that cannot shoot but only selfdestruct. Obviously, selfdestruct ships do far more dmg then any other shiptype, but the great disadvantage is the loss of your fleet whenever you've encountered a conflict.

To compensate for the heavy losses, you can either make such fleets incredible cheap or give an amount of salvage upon their selfdestruct.

For attack purposes, this race can outplay the bluff tactic which XAN uses, only doing far greater damage yet also having far higher losses. Alliances can use such fleets to actually hurt the enemy (far more then XAN).

For defence, attacking this race has a higher risk then any other race.

All in all, the race would be for advanced players (like the Zik race is/was) because if played bad, you'll lose your fleet quite some times but when played well, you could be more fearsome then any other race.

The fleet should have a higher init, equal or lower then Zik. The ships have no armor (obviously since they selfdestruct) but when e.g. XAN kills one of their ships, it'll take some dmg aswell because of the blast.

So even a succesfull counter against an attack of this race would result in losses for the other race ...

rgds Kj

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Kjeldoran

How about a suicide race?

A race with ships that cannot shoot but only selfdestruct. Obviously, selfdestruct ships do far more dmg then any other shiptype, but the great disadvantage is the loss of your fleet whenever you've encountered a conflict.

To compensate for the heavy losses, you can either make such fleets incredible cheap or give an amount of salvage upon their selfdestruct.

For attack purposes, this race can outplay the bluff tactic which XAN uses, only doing far greater damage yet also having far higher losses. Alliances can use such fleets to actually hurt the enemy (far more then XAN).

For defence, attacking this race has a higher risk then any other race.

All in all, the race would be for advanced players (like the Zik race is/was) because if played bad, you'll lose your fleet quite some times but when played well, you could be more fearsome then any other race.

The fleet should have a higher init, equal or lower then Zik. The ships have no armor (obviously since they selfdestruct) but when e.g. XAN kills one of their ships, it'll take some dmg aswell because of the blast.

So even a succesfull counter against an attack of this race would result in losses for the other race ...

rgds Kj

1 ship fleetcatching.
impossible to balance.
also, if it's self destructing, it should surely do damage to the defence (if it's destroyed before it can explode among attacking ships, surely...?)

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

1 ship fleetcatching.
impossible to balance.

explain?

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Kjeldoran

explain?

It self destructs in each combat, right?
send 1 ship at the fleet, the fleet is in combat, you kill it all. All the ships get blown up trying to fire at this 1 ship.
If you have it so that you only loose those ships firing, then it becomes sort of like old steal without the steal.
I think it'd be very hard to balance - medium/high armour as it's firing last, but huge damage as it has to compensate for loosing the ship.
great for suicide defence I guess, but otherwise...

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

1 ship fleetcatching.
impossible to balance.
also, if it's self destructing, it should surely do damage to the defence (if it's destroyed before it can explode among attacking ships, surely...?)

Hard to balance yes, not impossible imo.

If you manage to take out the fleet before it can selfdestruct, then you'll still take losses because their explosion radius is far wider then that of other race ships. Maybe turn this explosion into a massive EMP blast which immobilize some nearby enemy fleet.

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

It self destructs in each combat, right?
send 1 ship at the fleet, the fleet is in combat, you kill it all. All the ships get blown up trying to fire at this 1 ship.
If you have it so that you only loose those ships firing, then it becomes sort of like old steal without the steal.
I think it'd be very hard to balance - medium/high armour as it's firing last, but huge damage as it has to compensate for loosing the ship.
great for suicide defence I guess, but otherwise...

No I mean, if the ship explodes, it deals an extra 20 random dmg on the shiptype that fired upon it (given that the fleet attacking this ship need to come in closer range hence are effected by the explosion).

So your 1 ship fleetcatch would result in the loss of your 1 fleet and maybe 2-5 losses of your own ships. Also, Cath still has the ability to freeze it so it cannot explode or do anything at all.

Mind you that it would be an advanced race, harder to play with but when played well, having greater benefits aswell.

[rop1964]

the way i see a suicide fleet , is not 1 ship vs a whole fleet.. but fleet vs fleet.. like japanese kamikaze vs us carrier and bs. so you send you fleet of self exploding ships.. if they fire(self-explode) first they deal extra damage, but if they re shot down, they do nothing.. just like kamikaze planes , either they hit their target or fall in the ocean. each ships having a target class.. seem faisable..

[madman2k30III]

Originally Posted by rop1964

the way i see a suicide fleet , is not 1 ship vs a whole fleet.. but fleet vs fleet.. like japanese kamikaze vs us carrier and bs. so you send you fleet of self exploding ships.. if they fire(self-explode) first they deal extra damage, but if they re shot down, they do nothing.. just like kamikaze planes , either they hit their target or fall in the ocean. each ships having a target class.. seem faisable..

only way this would work is if there was an alliance banking system that funds your suicide runs otherrwise this race would be pretty pathetic and always finish last. think about it you recieve orders and a nice resourse donation to build this massive suicide fleet to take out the top players in the gal you are attacking. if you were to do this on your own you would get wiped out everytime and find it hard to recover but with the alliance funding the attacks you would grow back faster

[_Kila_]

how about a race with low armour and high damage, but the ships would be really expensive and they could have a special "flak" ship which has high armor and does no damage at all but can flak for any class.

[Smudge]

A purely defensive race (maybe for Scanners?) who are allowed PDS

[Shyne]

Originally Posted by Veedeejem!

It's been the same 4 races for what, 10 rounds or something now?

Shall we rename them then?

[rop1964]

only way this would work is if there was an alliance banking system that funds your suicide runs otherrwise this race would be pretty pathetic and always finish last. think about it you recieve orders and a nice resourse donation to build this massive suicide fleet to take out the top players in the gal you are attacking. if you were to do this on your own you would get wiped out everytime and find it hard to recover but with the alliance funding the attacks you would grow back faster.
madman2k30III

not really.. if you make the cost of ships similar to that of the xans.. they can build a good fleet in no time flat.. and attacking them would be just as dangerous as if they attack you.. i see potential in this one though the exact design would be a hard thing to balance.. how much would the ships cost, how fast can they be built, armor/firepower rate, etc,, need to be well thought but can provide a good new race.. :-)

[Veedeejem!]

Originally Posted by Shyne

Shall we rename them then?

I don't quite see how renaming them would lead to a new angle in this game. The whole reason I started this thread is caus I believe that 1 or 2 new races could make this game more interesting & more diverse.
It would be nice to have some rpg influences in the game, like upgrading ships, structures, maybe even your entire planet. Something that would give each player the opportunity to go his own unique way.

[CrazyConrad]

Originally Posted by Veedeejem!

I don't quite see how renaming them would lead to a new angle in this game. The whole reason I started this thread is caus I believe that 1 or 2 new races could make this game more interesting & more diverse.
It would be nice to have some rpg influences in the game, like upgrading ships, structures, maybe even your entire planet. Something that would give each player the opportunity to go his own unique way.

You mean more complex, scaring ppl away instead of attracting them?

[rop1964]

why adding new features would scare ppls away? when the races were introduces, it was a new features!, when the tech tree was redisign it was a new feature, adding new ability dont scare ppls away, it attract them. the mean by how we introduce them may be complicating thing and that is what must be prevent, but say adding new way to make your ship stronger is not a bad idea per say. or having new way to have more ressources is also good.. we just have to make sure those idea are implement so players can benefit from them. :-)

[Veedeejem!]

Originally Posted by CrazyConrad

You mean more complex, scaring ppl away instead of attracting them?

If some change scares people away from games, then we would still all be playing pong

[Intruder]

On Brazillian clones there is one new race, insectoid i even talked about that to apocco.

tbh i dont know exactly how it works cos i left the game before the race were introduced but seem that playing with th insect race you have those special habilities:

obs: There is 2 different games and the isect race have different habilities there, i dont remeber exactly wich one is so i mixed habilities. May not be exactly this way too, as i said, i dindt pay attention.

- Damage is dealt acumulated. If you have 200 ships who does 1 Damage each They will shot as if a single shot of 200 DMG. This Dmg would hit one ship with 50 armor and the rest of the Damage would go to the next ship defending untill all damage was spent ( in case 4 ships destroied )

- Figther as pods

- They have a special Ship ( BS ) called Queen. This ship when sent with other ships give them some special bonus. I dont know tbh wich bonus is, but feel free to invent

Some habilities i dindt mention cos they were made by thir combat system, presuming more then on shot per ship, and some other stuff

[Pinkerton]

A cloaking race like Xan, but insted of cloaking the ships you cloak the actual number of ships!!! Brilliant.

You would know what ship was attacking but not how many. Maybe you could get a %makeup of the fleet but not the actual amount. They would have low fireing power for balance. or whatevr...I didn't really think it through

[higginz]

Scousers / Chavs
basically steal the ships, but instead of using them, they take out the cdplayer / laser turrets and sell them for drug money / resources?

Someone mentioned americans, strong weapons and technology but shoot their mates as much as the enemies...

Women
instead of shooting ships, they whinge and moan and make them do the washing...tho this would probably have the same effect as cathaars emps, but you cannot win against women....

what do u think guys?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Women
instead of shooting ships, they whinge and moan and make them do the washing...tho this would probably have the same effect as cathaars emps, but you cannot win against women....

HaHHAAHAHAHA - so true, so true

[yada-yada]

mb kamikazi race?for ei. ship called bigbadaboom well u get it I hope that is why it called kamikazi it suicide on your fleet so if u have 2k bigbadaboom ships which are FR targeting FI, u kill all fi there is but all your ships are dead ,or race which do swaping, ie. your ships become enemy and his ships become yours and swaping couldnt be used with other race only with that primary

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Pinkerton

A cloaking race like Xan, but insted of cloaking the ships you cloak the actual number of ships!!! Brilliant.

You would know what ship was attacking but not how many. Maybe you could get a %makeup of the fleet but not the actual amount. They would have low fireing power for balance. or whatevr...I didn't really think it through

"Xandathrii split into two factors, those who favoured the old way of full cloaking at the cost of weapons and around, and those who prefered the new way"

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by rop1964

why adding new features would scare ppls away? when the races were introduces, it was a new features!, when the tech tree was redisign it was a new feature, adding new ability dont scare ppls away, it attract them. the mean by how we introduce them may be complicating thing and that is what must be prevent, but say adding new way to make your ship stronger is not a bad idea per say. or having new way to have more ressources is also good.. we just have to make sure those idea are implement so players can benefit from them. :-)

Adding new features doesn't scare people away. Making things more complicated alienates some players though.
The whole basis of Planetarion is, and hopefully will always continue to be, this:
It can play from (almost*) any browser. The basics are fairly simple to get - I know some people who've learnt most of the game basics in a few days. A lot of the game play comes from interacting with the community, politics.
However, there are more complicated things, which make the game more interesting for the more experienced players. If anything, this area has diminished a bit in some of the more current rounds, and could well be improved again. That's one of the reasons I love browsing through these forums, trying to find things that kick in mid-late game that we could use in the future, to keep people occupied. :-)



*mobile phones etc

[rop1964]

Originally Posted by Intruder

On Brazillian clones there is one new race, insectoid i even talked about that to apocco.

tbh i dont know exactly how it works cos i left the game before the race were introduced but seem that playing with th insect race you have those special habilities:

obs: There is 2 different games and the isect race have different habilities there, i dont remeber exactly wich one is so i mixed habilities. May not be exactly this way too, as i said, i dindt pay attention.

- Damage is dealt acumulated. If you have 200 ships who does 1 Damage each They will shot as if a single shot of 200 DMG. This Dmg would hit one ship with 50 armor and the rest of the Damage would go to the next ship defending untill all damage was spent ( in case 4 ships destroied )

- Figther as pods

- They have a special Ship ( BS ) called Queen. This ship when sent with other ships give them some special bonus. I dont know tbh wich bonus is, but feel free to invent

Some habilities i dindt mention cos they were made by thir combat system, presuming more then on shot per ship, and some other stuff

i like the idea..

some ship could be self replicating, other boosting combat, or defense or damage (being organic ships, they would "heal damage" over time.. parasite other ships, etc