Sceptres

A very good patch

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Mind Elemental
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Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Sun Jul 27, 2003 6:07 am

Why not make them buildable? It would take an incredibly long time (50 or 100 turns in a Palace), a tremendous amount of resources, bucketloads of money, a Cadiz dreadnought as an input unit, and some of the most sophisticated technologies in the game.

This wouldn't represent another sceptre being physically constructed; rather, it would model a particularly mighty House experiencing a gain in prestige that would make everyone from ordinary citizens to the other Houses more willing to defer to them. After all, you may still have the same five votes as Alexius Hawkwood, but if he has ten worlds, enough resources and firebirds to drown in, and a huge fleet of dreadnoughts, you'd still think twice about voting against him, wouldn't you?

In gameplay terms, I think that this would reward people for playing more aggressively and gobbling up more planets; more planets means more palaces means more potential Sceptre production. It would also add increased urgency to resolving late-game stalemates, and possibly increase the importance of whacking other players' nobles on ByzSec.

What do you guys think?

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Sun Jul 27, 2003 5:29 pm

Mind Elemental:

I really like your idea!

I would use Nobles now as the input unit since they are buildable. Nobles take 21 years (1 for the Officer input unit, 20 for them) to build. I could simply make the input resources for a Sceptor be very high (Gems are a good input resource for this type of stuff) and see what falls out. They'd probably at least be another +30 turns is my guess to get them around 50 years to build as you suggest.

You could then potentially upgrade your Sceptors to other Sceptor variants. Hmmm... we'll see.

I'll let this idea stew for a while as I'm rebalancing the Corinthian Galaxy's production capability right now and so will get to these ideas "soon".

I certainly have not had any problems with Nobles being able to be built as it is hard to get 100 Gems to build them. Sceptors would mostly likely be an additional 150 - 200 Gems to build, plus potentially some other resources. I'll start playing around with this idea, though.

Thanks for the comments!

Matt
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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Mon Jul 28, 2003 6:48 am

*nodnods* I see. Once again, thanks for your praise; it warms the heart of this veteran lurker! :)

Personally, I'd be in favour of other resources being necessary, if only to stop people from rushing out and grabbing every gem in the Known Worlds but neglecting their wetware, monopols, singularities, and other vital resources that would be just as important in calculating their power and prestige. :D

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Tue Jul 29, 2003 3:37 pm

Mind Elemental:

Well, I probably wouldn't use Wetware since I have a rule that requires the unit to have the technologies for its input resources researched. Since Wetware is way out there, it would take a long time to be able to start building Sceptors if I had them use Wetware.

I would, however, give buildable Sceptors enough technology prerequisites to use all the other resources, though.

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Wed Jul 30, 2003 1:50 am

*nods* I see. :)

Hmm... if an upgraded Sceptre/Sceptor (silly Holistic) were armed, does that mean that it would be unable to be captured? What other improvements could be built into upgraded Sceptres? Higher Camo and movement to help players hide them?

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Deathifier » Thu Jul 31, 2003 7:23 am

Armed sceptors could be captured if they retreated, as soon as you make them participate in combat they run the risk of being destroyed :)

Something else you might think about upgrading sceptors to - relics!
Add on a large number of resources for their construction, build them in churchs and give each individual relic their own (expensive) tech plus a base tech. Only have to be wary about their strength, which is fixed, so perhaps be selective in the relics that are buildable.
I'm not sure if this is possible though, has anyone ever tried making relics buildable?
Actually I'll go try now...

EDIT: Ok I tried, they do build but it seems to only build the first relic (tax collecting bonus).
If you could find a way to rearrange the relics to put, say a stack or planet affecting relic at the top, then buildable relics would be more useful - as it is you only need one tax collecting relic since it affects the galaxy.

Other upgrades for sceptors could be higher spotting.

- Deathifier

<small>[ 31.07.2003, 08:05: Message edited by: Deathifier ]</small>

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Thu Jul 31, 2003 8:56 am

Ahh, I see. :D

Buildable relics? That's an interesting idea! What would you make the prerequisites, etc?

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Sun Aug 03, 2003 9:49 pm

Making buildable Relics would be cool - too bad you can't change its bonus.

There are already 4 Sceptor designs in Hyperion, though none are buildable.

There is the default Sceptor, the Royal House Standard, the Statue of the Prophets, and the Wyrd Beacon of the Pancreator. None of them are buildable right now, but are meant to be added with the Galaxy Editor. Here are their design intent:

1. Sceptor - standard Sceptor, have given them a 100 FB income bonus - have 8 movement points and are hover just like the originals.
2. Royal House Standard - 500 FB income bonus, but cannot move and cannot be loaded. Meant to be placed in a Palace on a homeworld - you control the Palace, you control the planet's sceptor.
3. Statue of the Prophets - same as the Royal House Standard except 1000 FB income bonus and it is Foot instead of Hover (not sure why I did that!).
4. Wyrd Beacon of the Pancreator - combat Sceptor meant to be given to a non-House player's homeworld Palace. Has incredible attack abilities, meant to be added with 100% loyalty. This Sceptor has 1005 FB upkeep and is a Crawler with Psy and Ranged Space weaponry.

If I made Sceptors buildable, I'd certainly have to work on the other designs as they probably wouldn't fit.

The funny thing about Sceptors is that they affect the elections, but everyone wants to hide them. In reality, the Sceptors, should be immobile, and represent something significant. If a Palace has a Sceptor, then it is a symbol to the other factions of a House's power. If they are hidden away somewhere nowhere to be found, then how can they serve as that symbol?

So if I started working on Sceptors and made them buildable, I'd probably make them not loadable and immobile. You could then build them, but not move them after they were built. This way, the Sceptors' locations are known and people will have to control those cities to control the vote(s) that that planet confers.


This also would serve as a way to limit the number you could build because the more you build in the Palace, the fewer unit slots you have to protect them.

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:10 am

... That's a very, very good point. Hmm. I suppose that if buildable Sceptres just represent a House accumulating power, then whether they should be movable/loadable would depend on how important a symbol the Palace itself is.

I can certainly imagine that the Palaces on the homeworlds would have a tremendous amount of symbolic value to an occupier -- look at the importance attached to Berlin and Moscow in WW2.

For Hawkwoods and Hazat, with their no-backing-down outlook on life, maybe they should receive more RHSes and fewer sceptres? That might also force the Hazat player to fight for Schemadin in the Corinthian Galaxy.

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:51 am

Those are some good suggestions. It would give certain players a different strategy to playing the game if they had different Sceptor types and some could move theirs while others couldn't.

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:21 am

Whee!

While we're at it, why not give some sceptres to the Imperial Guard? That would give players a reason to beat on them -- sadly lacking at the moment, unless you really want those extra cities on ByzSec.

A bunch of RHSes in the Palace, plus one in every other Guard city, on ByzSec would be good -- I can certainly imagine that the other houses would sit up and take notice of someone who managed to seize the Imperial capital. :)

<small>[ 05.08.2003, 10:23: Message edited by: Mind Elemental ]</small>

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Wed Aug 06, 2003 7:03 am

Whee!

While we're at it, why not give some sceptres to the Imperial Guard? That would give players a reason to beat on them -- sadly lacking at the moment, unless you really want those extra cities on ByzSec.

A bunch of RHSes in the Palace, plus one in every other Guard city, on ByzSec would be good -- I can certainly imagine that the other houses would sit up and take notice of someone who managed to seize the Imperial capital.
Hmmm... that's an interesting idea. As such, no one declares the Regency because they don't want to cause such a stir, but if they got some extra votes it might make declaring it much faster and players might be wanting to try and go for a fast win. Would sure bind the other players against them, but if the Regent had those extra votes, they might be able to attain a quick victory. Hmmm... would be interesting and would make for a fun first 10 - 20 years if they went for it early!

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Sat Aug 09, 2003 8:48 pm

Okay, beginning work on making Sceptors buildable!

We'll see how this goes, I'm going to increase the Armor of the Wyrd Beacons of the Pancreator (WBotP's) as well, since right now they have 0 and will be destroyerd 85% of the time when hit.

I've already changed the Corinthian Galaxy to have all the Sceptor Designs available and so here are the changes:

On Byz2, each House has a Statue of the Prophets (SotP's).
On Earth, each House has a Royal House Standard.
On each House's homeworld each House has a Royal House Standard in their Palace.
The other 2 Sceptors remain the same.
Key Rebel worlds all have Statue's of the Prophets.
All League and Church Sceptors have been changed to Wyrd Beacons of the Pancreator (all 100% loyalty). As such, unless I give them more Sceptors, you cannot capture their votes - once destroyed, these votes are lost forever. This represents a decrease in the power of the Church and League.

I'm going to key off Deathifier's suggestion of making them have high spotting, something like 10, 15, 20 for the Sceptors, RHS's, and SotP's. WBotP's are not going to be buildable at all, methinks. I'm thinking none of the sceptors will be loadable (disband them back to a Noble if you want to move them), and all will have 0 movement. We'll see about turns to build, but I'll probably target +10, +20, and +30 for the Sceptors, RHS's, and SotP's for a total of 30, 40, and 50 years, respectively. Right now the Firebird income has increased from 500 (100*5 Sceptors) to 2200 (100*2 Sceptors + 500*2 RHS's + 1000*1 SotP) - this certainly gives a big boost to a House's starting income, but I may even change the income each sceptor type generates from 100, 500, and 1000 to 500, 1000, and 2000 for a Sceptor, RHS, and SotP. This would more than double a House's starting income from 2200 to 5000 (500*2 Sceptors + 1000*2 RHS's + 2000*1 SotP). This would be a big boost to starting income and is a pretty radical change, but might make the starting game funner. I'm not sure, we'll see, I'll need to do some calculations to see how much that is going to affect the starting game (the changes I've made have already done that).

I'm then going to give 5 sceptors (assorted ones probably) to the Imperial Guard, and give 1 to the Palaces controlled by the Ministries on their various homeworlds and 1 on Earth. I'm also going to probably give some to the Vau (5?, one in the Mythos Palace, 1 on Kanhap Adin, 1 on Earth, and 2 on Vau - probably Statues of the Prophets).

If you do the math, a House that gets the Ministry on year 10 will have 5 votes, plus the 2 for the Ministry they get for a total of 7. If they declare the Regency, they'll get 5 more votes for a total of 12. Now if they sign a Holy Writ, they get another 7 for a total of 19 votes. The other Houses will have 24 (5 for each House, plus 2 for each Mininstry). The Regent will only need to get 5 more votes (less if he goes after those owned by a House) to win the game on turn 20. This could make for a very fast game, but will turn the game into utter chaos if this is done - I think it could be an incredible amount of fun!

I'll have to think hard about these changes to the Corinthian Galaxy.

Should have these changes done today and a new beta to boot!

Matt
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Re: Sceptres

Postby Mind Elemental » Sun Aug 10, 2003 2:13 am

Hmmm. Really interesting ideas! :D They would drastically change the early game, that's for sure. If the players were raking in more firebirds, that might make the early-game scramble for cities, map-selling and pay-slashing/tax-increasing a little less frantic... in turn, that would probably help the Decados on Isenias, and the Hazat on Schemadin. And giving sceptres higher spotting would probably make it harder to swipe them with high-camo units.

I'm not too sure I like the idea of turning the Church and League sceptres into WBOTPs; that would discourage people from invading them, and I kind of favour the opposite approach -- giving people incentives to invade the non-House players (Symbiots, Vau, rebels, Church, League, Imperial Guard). On that note, if I'm not mistaken, the Symbiots have a sceptre on each of Johnson and Daishan (well, the rebels have them, but the Symbiots are gonna get them really soon)... perhaps they could be given a SOTP or two on Chernobog? They are the main threat to humanity, after all.

Hmm... declaring oneself Emperor that early in the game sounds really interesting, but are you sure that the players would be able to grab the Imperial Guard sceptres? The Guard's stacks, at least in Corinthian, are fearsome. :D

Looking forward to seeing the next beta!
Mind Elemental

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Re: Sceptres

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Sun Aug 10, 2003 2:21 am

Excellent points!

Okay, the mod changes are done, just updating the Corinthian galaxy.

Okay, no WBotP's for the Church or League, SotP's instead. The Rebels get WBotP's in their Palaces - should make capturing those a lot of fun (not the one on Earth, it stays as a SotP), but Nova Terra, probably Ix-Ranith, and maybe two other Rebel-controlled planets.

I'll look at the Symbiot planets, but I didn't notice them having sceptors there. So, I think I'll probably add some to Chernobog, Johnson, and Daishan.

Okay, back to updating...

Matt
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