Galaxy idea <comments wanted> From: jdc@access1.digex.net (John Cochran) Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 00:00:00 +0000 I've noticed that routes in Galaxy are almost useless if you have several different types of cargo ships. To give an example from a game I'm currently playing. My homeworld is 14 LY from a colony with size of 950, but only has .19 for resources. An effective way to work around the low resources is to ship MAT to the colony. I can keep the colony supplied with all the MAT it requires with 2 ships of type MatHauler 60 0 0 0 40 using a drive tech of 1.2 I could set a route for MAT from my homeworld to my colony, except this route will cause ANY unused cargo ship to ship MAT and I don't want this to happen. It is also annoying to have a COL route set and have one of those large MatHaulers to go out carrying only 10 units of colonists. If you have routes set up, you have to spend a lot of time figuring out when the route is going to mess you up. You might as well not set up any routes and load, send, and unload all of your ships manually. My suggestion to fix this problem comes in two parts. 1. Allow fleets to be noncontiguous. What I mean by this is to allow the various groups that make up a fleet to be at different planets or in hyperspace at the same time. I also would not consider a group to leave the fleet if the group is given an order. Once part of a fleet, always part of the fleet unless transfered to another fleet or seperated from the fleet. 2. Allow routes to be defined using A. Starting planet of route B. Fleet handling route C. Cargo type D. Destination of route This would allow you to create a "merchant" fleet to handle a specific route. It would also allow you to have several different "consumers" for MAT or CAP being generated at a single world. Note: It would be possible to define a route from a planet that you don't own. However, only EMP routes would be legal from source planets that you don't own. This capability could be used to establish trade with an ally and still have your empties return to you. To solve the problem I described above with my resource poor colony, I would: 1. Create a fleet and have 2 MatHaulers join it. Lets call this fleet MatSupply. 2. Create a route from my homeworld using the MatSupply fleet for MAT to my colony. 3. Create a route from my colony using the MatSupply fleet for EMP to my homeworld. Now my 2 MatHaulers would continually shuttle back and forth between my homeworld and my colony transfering MAT. Because the route wouldn't affect any other cargo ships, I wouldn't have to always examine what cargo ships are at my homeworld or my colony. Also, if I had a second resource poor colony near my homeworld, I could set up a second route that would also suppy MAT to that world from my homeworld. If I had a world that was the target of several routes, I could arrange for the empty cargo ships to return to their points of origin instead of only 1 location. This modification would make routes far more useful. Effects on the game. I don't see any bad game effects due to the routes. You can do everything manually that you can do via the routes described above. I do see some effects that the fleet modifications would have, but those effects are minor. They are: 1. Time on target attacks. If you have several different groups scattered over a small area, you could have all of them join a fleet. You could then send the fleet towards a target planet and guarantee that all of the groups would arrive at the same time for the battle. You can currently do almost the same thing manually by launching the groups on different turns to have them arrive at the same time. The differences are: A. You could make a mistake calculating how long it would take each group to arrive and cause the groups to arrive on different turns. The modified fleet wouldn't have this problem. B. The modified fleet would have all groups launch the same turn instead of different turns if they were launched manually. This is the only real difference I see in how fleets act. 2. Groups within a fleet are subject to routes. I don't see this as a problem because you have to specify which fleet you want to be subject to a route. 3. You can have fleets "go on patrol". If you consider all ships without cargo holds to be holding a cargo of EMP, then you can arrange a route between multiple planets that would be "patrolled" without your having to manually send them. Command changes. No changes to the syntax of any existing fleet commands. The route command changes from: R source cargo [dest] to: R [fleet] source cargo [dest] The reason for the optional fleet specifier is to maintain backwards compatability with older versions of Galaxy. All cargo ships that are not members of other fleets would be considered to be a member of an unnamed fleet. This unnamed fleet would not contain any ships that don't have cargo holds. Hope to hear some comments, John Cochran Referenced By Up