The original MOO did have stargates. They were fairly expensive to build and could only be built around one of your planets. They (I think) where lost when a planet was conquered. You could only travel between two stargates. So, you could get anywhere in your empire in one turn, but going to somebody else's planet required good, old fashion engines. I always thought that the stargates in MOO where one of the cooler items and I could see them having a place in GC. MOO built them as part of the ship queue, which I think would make a lot of GC sense. They would become a fixed ship in orbit of the planet with a maintenance cost, etc. This is also an obvious solution in terms of storyline as well, after all everyone had stargates originally and dismantled them (now they would be instantaneous, unlike in the story line).

With this, having slower speeds on large maps wouldn't be such a big deal in terms of game play since you would have a means of getting across your empire in a reasonable time.

Unless the AI is changed to deploy it war fighting forces better no amount of speed nerfing is going to help.

I always thought that the stargates in MOO where one of the cooler items and I could see them having a place in GC. MOO built them as part of the ship queue, which I think would make a lot of GC sense.

I've been plugging for teleportation gates that are managed as starbases. Making them a planetary structure does make some GC sense to me, but IMO we'd get a more interesting set of strategic choices if they were expensive starbases (especially if starbases remain as delicate as they are currently in late games).

This is also an obvious solution in terms of storyline as well, after all everyone had stargates originally and dismantled them (now they would be instantaneous, unlike in the story line).

Could be the last tech in the propulsion branch of the techtree, which BTW is really... hmm, unorthodox to be polite. Ion Drive *after* HyperDrive, and after that Impulse Drive?! This really needs reviewing IMO. Doesn't make any kind of sense. Given this, I still can't imagine what every race used for propulsion before HD...
But a StarGate together with HyperWarp engines (call it HyperGates or whatever) could be a plausible addition to the game. Not saying that it would solve any speed issue though. That should have been spotted and fixed long ago.

Someone suggested a 1 attack per turn limit. That makes some sense. You could also have an internal damage model going, so that when ships take damage, the internal systems are affected. Ships that take engine damage, or weapons damage, aren't likely to push forward with another and another attack.
Another thing I find somewhat unorthodox is small ships having autonomies comparable to larger ships. One guy crammed in a cockpit will not be able to function properly for long, life support or not. Maybe reducing their range wouldn't be a bad idea.

Wormhole Generators

Not a bad idea.

Although the only other thing I can think of would be only allow 1 ship per week to go through it, or maybe only being allowed to have one generator.

Just a thought.

Note: I'm not in the DA beta, just playing regular GC2, take this with a heaping mountain of salt.

A possible alternative to the 3-move super ability is to make it so that the super ability slows a ship down to the number of engines it has. That way it won't take forever to get to Yor planets in a gigantic galaxy, but it still slows players down. I've never had more than eight engines on a ship (even in Gigantic), and IIRC the AI can project up to eight moves out.

Just my two cents.

Frogboy: If you want to nerf engine, I think that the best way to do it would be to limit the amount of engines to one or two per ship, and not just to make them big and expensive.

Otherwise, you've just made it harder to make super fast ship, but not impossible. For example, on suicidal when I play the diplomatic game and I can get the AIs to destroy each other for me. When they are weak I can just mop up the rest of their forces easily , and blitz their undefended planets with troop transports. By just making engines bigger and more expensive you're going to make that tactic harder, but still completely doable. I would just need to put on even more engines (I almost always have a technology advantage, so even with nerfed (which means only about half filled) huge hulls I can kill their planetary defense forces) and put less troop modules but more engines onto my transports.

I'm somewhat sad about this though, because colony ships and constructors will also be affected. Slow constructors and colony ships are highly annoying IMO.

Ahh this is exciting news to me, where everyone was complaining that the AI needed to be buffed... little did I realise that we needed to be nerfed, hehe... it makes so much sense now!

Ugh. Please for the love of God, don't make engines bigger and cost more. I already HATE ship speed the way it is.

Maybe what I'd ask for if you HAVE to would be raise space in Large and up. Small and Tiny are already limited and just fine.

you can make first two engines normal size, and every next one larger for the size of one engine, like 1 1 2 3 4 5 6...

so, to calculate final speed for engines with 5 speed:

speed 5 with 1 engine (size of 1 engine) would be "slow"
speed 10 with 2 engines (size of 2 engines) would be "normal"
speed 15 with 3 engines (size of 4 engines) would be "fast"
speed 20 with 4 engines (size of 7 engines) would be "very fast"
speed 25 with 5 engines (size of 11 engines) would be "extremely fast"
speed 30 with 6 engines (size of 16 engines!) would be what!?

include speed bonuses and starting ship speed and you have very nice ship speed distribution with normal and fast ships common, other ships very rare...

you can make all engines normal size and reduce speed gain per engine, but it would cause problems with impulse drives having 1 speed, then 0 speed, then 1 speed again... maybe put speed in decimal form, but discard numbers after the dot...

I'm not all that surprised to hear the AI is designed for "small move" ships. I am surprised to learn Frogboy thought people would limit themselves to those type of ships though! For me it wasn't a question of trying to cheat the AI...I just was too impatient to wait forever for the ships to get where they were going on gigantic maps.

I'm looking forward to the rebalance. It should make gigantic maps more "epic". Attack a large peaceful and weakly armed civ at your peril because by the time you reach their core worlds, they may have been able to assemble a massive fleet to meet you. And vice versa of course. Also, those speed boost modules will suddenly become a lot more worthwhile for defence and anything that increases the value of military bases gets a big thumbs up from me! (I like the idea of military bases, but they're underpowered at the moment.)

As far as how to rebalance, I don't think you need to do anything complicated. Just make the engines big and mostly a function of hull size. You *should* be able to pile up engines onto a hull and make it super fast if you want, *but* once you've done that you shouldn't then have room to *also* make them powerful attack ships, or have room for loads of troops etc as you can at the moment. High speed should come at a heavy cost to utility.

(Oh and as far as the Yor ability goes...scaling sounds better than a hard speed cap, once the engines have already been rebalanced. Halve the speed or something. Anything that's *still* fast after a rebalance and an extra speed reduction is going to be pretty useless in all other departments)

Attack a large peaceful and weakly armed civ at your peril because by the time you reach their core worlds, they may have been able to assemble a massive fleet to meet you.

Sounds like Ender's Game.

BTW I thought this change would be in the latest DA. Has anyone noticed if it is and do they have any comments about the implementation?

Sounds like Ender's Game.

Yup, and it also may very well have a 12 year old at the helm.

Aaaannnddd, the ship's technology will be outdated by the time it reaches it's destination (barring upgrades).

Yup, Ender's game.

BTW I thought this change would be in the latest DA. Has anyone noticed if it is and do they have any comments about the implementation?

The engine size change is in, as far as I can tell. I have a b2 game going where I have warp engines. In normal GC2, about this time in the game, I could have 5...maybe 6 on a ship like a colony ship or constructor. Now, I max out at 2, 3 if I skimp on some sensors and life support.