Master Weapons example

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One idea regarding the Master Weapon concept (J.F.C. Fuller's idea originally)
that occured to me in my drunken stupor (I have no idea why I thought of this)
would be to have say

since forts become effective at tech 20 (i.e. guns/shells start being produced
at tech 20 normally)
set lt bomber tech = 30 and
set fighter 1 tech = 40

This is just an example based on the premise that forts start firing around
tech 20. Now forts are pretty much the master weapon if you have them and your
opponent doesn't, which everyone probably recognizes so I won't try to prove
that part. So you give the forts a period where they have a free reign as the
Master Weapon, say 10 points of tech, from tech 20 to tech 30 (you can make
that tech interval 5, or 20, i.e. more or less than 10, just using 10 as an
example)

That maximizes the fun of having that weapon, especially if your opponent
doesn't

Now in empire, probably the next Master Weapon that defeats the old Master
Weapon are light bombers (by pinbombing the fort efficiency, so if you have
forts and light bombers, and your opponent only has forts, you just pinbomb the
efficiency of his forts below 60% which reduces his firing range by 1, then
finish the job of obliterating his forts with your own forts)

(this is disjoint from realworld strategy of course, as empire forts are
unrealistic, so the new master weapon that counters the forts would naturally
be unrealistic also. But it is interesting that the Master Weapon principle
holds even in such an unrealistic strategic scenario)

Next comes the fighter 1s at tech 40, souped up a little so they trash light
bombers. In that scenario the fighter 1s become the new new Master Weapon, as
if you have forts and light bombers and fighter 1s, and your opponent only has
forts and light bombers, your fighter 1s trash his light bombers, so he can't
trash your forts, while you can still trash his forts the old way with your
unopposed light bombers

This is just to try to give an example of the master weapon principle. You want
a tech interval (I used 10 as the tech interval) where the new master weapon
reigns supreme (the interval can be more than 10 of course), as that is not
only the most fun, but the way it is with real weapons, because when a new
weapon is invented it takes awhile before someone develops a counter weapon to
it.

The old chicken way some people arranged empire tech levels was just the
opposite, they first introduced the counter weapon, before what should have
been the first weapon was even introduced. For example they put destroyers with
anti-sub capability at say tech 50, and only introduced subs at tech 60. That
meant not only that you couldn't have fun with subs for awhile, sailing them
around with nothing to counter them, but was also absurd, why would anyone
invent a destroyer with anti-sub powers when noone had even conceived of subs
yet?

That was the last thing I succeeded at in empire, arranging the tech levels for
ships and planes according to the master weapon principle back in 1991, during
the last game I was diety for. But the code for that game and those tech
assignments seems to have disappeared forever, and I can't even remember what
they were. But certainly subs should come before destroyers, something like

Battleships at tech 50
Submarines at tech 60
Destroyers at tech 70

That way each ship type is a master weapon for awhile, until a counter weapon
appears (battleships reign supreme until sneaky subs come on the scene and
start sinking them, and the man with the subs is king until destroyers appear
and start sinking the subs)

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

Incidentally, it occured to me afterwards that planes on aircraft carriers on
interdiction missions should automatically attack enemy ships that come in
range and are detected. That is to make sure that aircraft carriers have the
extra attacking range that made them the new master weapon, that allowed them
to replace battle ships as the new capital ship.

Not sure whether that is already implemented in the code or not (for some
reason I don't remember that scenario taking place in a game). A simple way to
code that might be to just give aircraft carriers longer radar range, and when
an enemy ship is detected by ships radar have planes on interdiction missions
in range attack just as when enemy ships are detected by coastwatch. Possibly
that is already coded and I just never noticed.

Another tangent is that when aircraft were first invented, the earliest use in
war that was imagined for them was as light bombers (Ernest Swinton, who later
had the original idea for the tanks, wrote a story around 1908 where the
newfangled airplanes were conceived of as playing the role of light bombers,
heroically bombing a bridge and sacrificing their lives in the process). Only a
few years later did the concept of planes as fighters for dogfighting with
other planes evolve, a natural enough idea but somewhat surprisingly, even the
idea of using planes as light bombers was startling to the public mind, as new
weapons usually are. Anyway, both historically and logically it seems to be
correct to place light bombers first in the evolution of planes as war weapons,
and only later have fighters come in.

Light bombers should be relatively defenseless at first against fighters I
think, there was a rapid evolution of the powers of fighter planes during WW1.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

akorps666@aol.com666 (Akorps666) wrote in message news:<20040826123454.04588.00003256@mb-m10.aol.com>...
> Incidentally, [snip]

IMHO, this discourse on master weapons is naive in that it totally
overlooks the other 50 parameters that have to be decided upon when
designing a good set of units. Speed, attack, defense, visibility,
range, load, $$$ etc. are, as a whole, all far more critical in
achieving balanced, interesting and exciting gameplay than the base
tech level alone.

Having designed around 75 new units for the presently running Star
Wars theme Empire game, I have some doubt that the success unit design
in good-old 1991 was any more than marginally the result of the
arrangement of base tech levels according to the master weapons
principle. More likely, success was a result of careful consideration
of (or extensive trial and error of), att vs. mil (lands), mobgain vs.
spd (ships), def vs. $$ (sams), just to name a few of the many.

Incidentally, I prefer to use the Technology Tree approach to set base
tech level, whereby every capability (sonar, mine, etc.) is ascribed
some base technology and the base level is the maximum tech of all of
that unit's capabilities, adjusted by small amounts where necessary.
(I use a similar approach to determine unit cost.)

Dexter