While speed is an issue, I think the broader issue of defense is the reason that they are OP (and am very exited by the talk of defensive megastructures being added to newAnacreon
. Don't forget Gates! Never forget Gates!). Not just the raw stats and numbers of defense but how empires can organize too. This thread was prompted by the utter destruction of the ancient (200+ cycles iirc) empire of Dogeland by a sneak attack from the second and fourth most powerful members of the Barricade Pact Alliance in less than a cycle. This success wasn't because Dogeland was weak but rather because they hadn't consolidated their forces in a while. Watch TV and catfighter were able to roll up all the small pockets of space and ground forces and when they took unreinforced sector capitals many worlds with starships rebelled and joined them.
I'm pretty sure they didn't run their jumpfleets into any of Dogeland's Gorgos, because that would be silly. If Dogeland had their Gorgos and other starships spread in sensible garrison forces, a few thousand on resource worlds, 10k on important planets like jumpyards and academies, 50-100k on the capitals it would have been a whole different story. The Pact might have been able to take a lot of lesser worlds but even then the casualty rate would have been much higher. I understand the lack of reinforcement though, it takes me over 1000 individual actions to fully reinforce my empire with Gorgos and it's organized to the point of OCDness. I can only bring myself to do it about once a week.
It's been asked for before, but the ability to import ships/troops to a world to a settable level would be an enormous improvement. That whole 1000+ action reinforcement thing(which I should really do every day to stay at max defense potential) would be reduced to just a few trade route designations.
Oh, and Gates would make attacking with starships a more valid option while also encouraging more limited wars (you can only gate starships to places you have in gate range). Not to mention the possibilities of galaxy spanning gates networks being taken over by aggressive upstart outer rim barbarian empires. Come on, we all want that to happen at some point. Maybe a way to balance megaconstructions in general would be to have them consume resources in order to function or go dormant (then new empires could potential "awaken" "ancient artifacts" long abandoned by their builders.
george moromisato wrote:
4. Perhaps jumptransports should have certain limitations on the kinds of troops they can carry. E.g., perhaps they cannot carry exotroops.
I strongly dislike this idea. Why wouldn't they be able to carry them? Although I like that this implies that normal transports would be added (and they totally should be!) I just don't think that jumptransports carrying exotroops is a problem. Exos are already very difficult to make, taking up by far the most worlds to produce out of all units. And if this was changed, most people would just switch out their exo production to Law&Order caps, maybe a bit to extra transports. And then what? No imperial guard on jumptransports? No troops at all?
A small change that would make a decent but not OP improvement to citadels would be to remove the light jumpdrive requirement to make jumpmissiles. I know, I know, where is the jumpdrive for the jumpmissiles coming from then? But hear me out! If it was set up like this it would be a little easier to build citadels at your borders (i.e. just out of range of your trade hubs) as supplying them with basic resources is easier when you don't have to worry about the logistical problem of messing with your normal jumpship production chain to get a surplus of light jumpdrives that you then move to the border-citadel. Individual supply chains for light jumpdrives is inefficient and, in the case of border-citadels, adds additional weak points making them a generally undesirable defense option currently. Couldn't hurt to lower their attrition rate a bit too. A barren/greenhouse citadel could have max 100,000 instead of 60,000ish. This would also make it easier to establish citadels in enemy territory, a lesser form of aggression. Right now it's all out total war or nothing.
Anyway, the election results are in and my countrymen decided to vote for another 1000 years of darkness, so I need to go play some Toribash and drown my sorrows with cider and the blood of noobs.