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Cosmic War

System: Giant Islands

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System: Giant Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 21 May 2022 03:32

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cosmicwar.net wrote:1700-radius desert planet with 60% water coverage and metal hand-placed only on islands. Plus of course a 2000-radius gas giant as an alternative source of metal. Better brush up on your naval tactics! But vehicles might also come in play while contesting the biggest islands in the early-game, and don't forget hover units and submerged bots or nano swarms!


Download: http://cosmicwar.net/systems/giant-islands.pas

This is what we're using for tomorrow's war.

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We've done planets with lots of water before, but nothing like this. This is a pure island planet—the largest ever made in PA, and therefore with the largest islands. This is what a medium-sized island looks like:

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As you can see, there's plenty of space for a quick vehicle battle in the early-game, and a couple of the islands are even larger than that.

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That said, don't stay long on vehicles because T2 naval can probably hit almost anything on almost all the islands, and that would be devastating to a vehicle player. I am just saying that if you land near someone on the same island, a couple early vehicle factories might give you that 1v1 win, but, depending on the setup, going all-naval will also be an option.

No metal in the water at all means people will be fighting over the islands, which we've never done before. There is also the gas giant, but that only makes T1 metal so you'd need a lot of it to counter players who have a couple of decent islands. I can think of another potentially cool strategy, but I'll keep it to myself for now, and there might be more I haven't thought of.

Once you're done making vehicles, if you make vehicle factories, switch them over to hover units, but keep in mind those can be slaughtered by naval units, so they must be guided around them.

The main challenge with this planet, I think, is guiding your navy around. Because it moves so slow, if you send it somewhere, and need it back to defend in a hurry, it won't be happening, so solid scouting and long-term planning are a must, all the while orbital forces can move back and forth between the gas giant super-fast with impunity and must be defended against.

I think this will be another unique system in our library to whip out when we feel like it, that'll give us interesting wars for years to come. I sized the planet at 1700 because that seems to be the sweet-spot for little to no lag given current CPU limits. That said, due to the slow movement of the navies, plus the existence of the gas giant, we could definitely see some lag if people bunker down on their islands and just keep churning out massive navies. I thought about shrinking the planet down to 1600 or 1650 to compensate for that eventuality, but in the end I couldn't do it. I really want to see the biggest islands possible but still floating in huge seas, and 1700 was the lowest I could be happy with.

We'll see what happens. Be sure to load the system and take a look yourselves in advance, if you want to take your time thinking up a landing spot and strategy. DON'T open the system in the System Designer, because that will break the system. All systems with planets larger than the limit of 1300 break when opened. If you break it, just delete the system and redownload it.

If you want to give people advice on naval units/strategies, post in the Strategy thread [ > ]. I don't know much about naval except that subs are strong, gunboats are for sniping fabbers in the early-game, and anti-air ships shoot down a lot of air.

This will be a good opportunity to brush up on our naval knowledge.


P.S. The "No Metal" in the System Designer in the first pic is a bug. There is 100 metal, but because it was hand-placed in a map larger than 1300, it shows as zero there.
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icycalm
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