Big Storms

[rdouglass]

Storms are IMO not meaningless. Many times I've set up bases of operations deep in enemy territory inside a storm. It's quite effective when you can build a few SY's and replenish fighters, sats, etc.; refuel / resupply; or just build up an attack force within the enemy's territory.

I 'discovered' this by accident a LONG time ago. I got one of those 'spacial anomolies' that transported a SpaceStation with an SY half way across the map early in the game. Didn't (at the time) know what to do with it so I started building. Of course, I couldn't do any diplomacy or intel untill we had a Warp Point connection, but I still could raid 'em...

[Growltigga]

I agree. It took me a fair while on a hotseat game with the cat to wonder how on earth he kept on slipping light cruiser squadrons into my rear systems and playing merry havoc with my commerce.

Pondered that one for ages until I discovered that base space yard lurking in a storm the little rascal.

The other tactic storms are good for is where you have a border system with a storm 2 or 3 sectors away from the warp point to the enemy sector. Plant a minelayer in the storm, watch his ships sneak through to raid your systems and meanwhile, lay a nice field on the warp point. It is a right laugh when he sneaks back through right into your minefield.

If I have a storm near an inhabited planet, I also like trying to sucker the enemy to attack that planet by maintaining stacks of fighters and warships in the storm.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
[...]this could be done by having it so that when a storm is specified in SystemTypes.txt, it also takes a size parameter, size being a number from 1 to 169 (the number of sectors in a system) [...]

Better. Make the storn's size defined by a number from 0 to 6 ... said being the number of squares of "Radius" from the centerpoint. A 0-radius storm would be the current, one-sector-only storm. A 6-radius storm would be the whole sector (the center, 6 to each side, that's 13x13).

Round storms would be best, ofc, but ... *shrug* ...

[Wardad]

oops, I forgot which color storms are good hiding against which sensor level.

[Fyron]

The color is independant from the abilities. It is completely random.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
(Or, add a way to generate one stellar object a certain distance from another... currently you can generate another object in the same sector or orbit, but not a certain distance away...)

I am pretty sure you could add several storms and give them all an exact position. Like one at 2,3, one at 2,4, one at 3,3, and one at 3,4. This would give you a storm the size of four sectors.

And I think you can even make it a special storm type in the sector abilities file so it will aways be the same picture, if you want the storm to look consistant accross it's whole size.

But it wouldn't be a random size and placement the way you want it to be.

Geoschmo

[capnq]

I forgot which color storms are good hiding against which sensor level

You're thinking of nebula systems, not storm sectors.