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EricLarsen -> Improving Interstellar Standoffs (10/23/2003 9:46:20 PM)
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After firing off hundreds of Interstellar Standoffs and actually destroying a world with them I've got some suggestions on how to improve this feature. The IS is truly a fire-and-forget weapon, a strange oddity in this age of instant gratification.
First off the IS weapons take way too long to arrive at their targets. I had to wait about 3 years for even the closest shots to start appearing, and even longer for IS attacks across the galaxy. I would think that IS weapons would use jump drive tech so they shouldn't take near as long as they do now. I would like to see the time to arrive on target cut in half or a third.
Targetting needs to be fixed so that the city/world you select from the list is the city/world that actually gets attacked. Regardless of the city/world I chose the program always sent those IS weapons to the city/world that was at the top of the target list. Last night on a schedule of shooting off IS's every 14 months I was able to fill up the target queue for the default city/world and the program actually made the next world/alpha city the default target. Didn't play long enough to actually see if those shots actually hit that second world.
I'm not sure what the targetting problem was. I would set up production of 8 or 9 IS weapons that would all be finished at the same time, and with 2 worlds with double maximum shots I ended up with 10 or 11 IS shots per turn. I'm not sure if having multiple IS shots ready at the same time caused a problem but it shouldn't. If a player selects a certain city from the IS target list that should be the city the IS weapon attacks.
Another annoying thing was that when a city was destroyed by IS weapons any other IS weapons still in transit were automatically eliminated. Then if the city reappears a month later it no longer is a target for those prematurely and incorrectly eliminated IS weapons. Regardless of whether a city is destroyed or not the IS weapons should still fly and attack, even if they attack a blank spot on the world. They would still attract defensive fire and if the city reappears quickly they will once again have a viable target. I had this happen to me as I watched an IS destroy the alpha city and then before a month could pass the city reappeared again but all those IS weapons in transit still, probably close to 20, were history.
I really did enjoy watching the IS weapons make their attacks. At 10x speed with multiple IS weapons coming in from different directions it was fun to watch. A little boring watching the defenses shoot them down early but a lot of fun when they started overwhelming the defenses and actually penetrating to hit the cities and blow them away. This could be a really fun feature if it is fixed to work correctly and players can see the results of their attacks quicker.
Eric Larsen
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