Ship Talk
 

Let's talk ships in this thread. Like your favorite pinstripe pattern or weapons array.

Re: Ship Talk
 

My favorite ship sprites has always been the curved and pointy ships from SE:IV. I forget the race's name, but they were green skinned, with black eyes and had some accessory, either a microphone or an external HUD over one eye. Give me a s ship-set with the same feeling of space-bound grace and violent intent.

Oh, and throwing the odd curve ball, like sphere-shaped ships is always appreciated. It allows me to invest a little more into my race, and suggests at a much more interesting back story.

Now, I don't know if firing arcs are being considered, but if they are, mix it up a bit with the races. Have a race who have carried on the naval tradition of broadsides, or another who prefers balanced coverage, so that they are never caught defenseless.

Edit: The ships are the core of most 4X games, and is the main chance to show-off or give a sense of the character of an entire race. Sure, you can glean some ideas from race biography, statistics, and portrait, but most of your time will be spent watching ships, both of your own race and others. So it is important that the ship sprites/models reflect fully the most important aspects of any race's culture.

I think Sword of the Stars did a great job of that. It isn't quite a tradition 4x game, as it revolves primarily around research and combat, placing such aspects as diplomacy and economy in the background, but one thing it did very well was conveying exactly what a race was all about by the ship models alone. Harder, I admit, in a more tradition 4x with heavy customization, but still possible, I think.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Curved and pointy from SE4? With a dark, semi-cyborgish look to 'em? Yeah, that's the Xiati... their SE5 shipset isn't as good IMO as the SE4 one :P

Firing arcs? Well, it's not really decided if we'll have them or not; I'd personally like to, but it really depends on how well we can make the combat AI handle them - not to mention what Ken thinks of it!

Funny you say that SotS put economy in the background - sure, it was simplistic, but on the other hand, compared to SE4, it was kinda realistic, with the ability to earn or pay interest, and when you have lots of money saved up your populations grow happier :)

Re: Ship Talk
 

Ship design was always my favorite element of the SE series. I probably spent more time tweaking ship designs and studying the weapons tables in the SE5 ship simulator then I spent playing the actual game itself. For me ship building is a very satisfying aspect of genre especially since I tend to play a combat focused style of play in 4X games. From grazing the threads I've heard some mention a relief that SL is more akin to a SE4.5 than SE5+ for which I am also glad. I'd like to see more meaningful customization but without much of the feel of "excel spreadsheets" I found too often to be the case with SE. Weapons and ship hulls with more distinctive pluses and minuses and overall more quality then sheer quantity without loosing variety. I'd also like to see placement of components in ship hulls take on more meaning - for things like firing arcs, damage, acceleration/maneuverability.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Firing arcs do not make sense unless you have a full 3D battle environment ... and a way to tell the AI how to handle that, what most likely is out of the scope of any game. If you go with a plane, or ship-stacking like SE5, or even "limited 3D" like Imperium Galactica II (with AI absolutly unable to use it), you're doing so many assumptions about how ships move and turn, that the assumption that they could -briefly- pointed anywhere to fire at a random target seems rather minor. Remember: In space, you don't go where your bow points, but where inertia carries you (Hollywood never gets that right, they always show WW2 fighter combat ...), and turning a ship on its C.G. would require very little engine power in comparison to what you need to e.g. get out of a planets gravity well.

Placements of components should have a much bigger impact, or actually, the function of the component should have a much bigger effect on where it must be placed. (In fact, I think, SE3-5 got it almost -wrong- every time ;) ) E.g. it should be mandatory that sensors are mounted outside even the armor, unless they're fantastitech hyperspace sensors. And sublight engines must have some kind of unarmored exhaust, unless, again, you have reached inertialless gravity drives, or something. And, o.c., while armour should be a fine thing to have, it's pretty obvious that there shouldn't be a need to desintegrate every tiny bit of armor before a ship goes BOOOM ... critical hits to internals through holes shot in the armour beforehand should do that much earlier. (IIRC , SE3 got that mostly right).
What else would I like to see in space battles?
- Drifting hulks of ships that lost power (reactor), which are out of the fight, but could be salvaged by the winner. Ships breaking apart long before all their armour and internal components have been destroyed (decouple structural integrity points from components!).
- Really long-ranged long range weapons (E.g., missiles in stock SE5 are laughable: a fighter has to get there, fight, and get back, and does so over the whole battle map, while CSM barly cover the diameter of a big planet...)
- leaky and unleaky shields
- ability to retreat for both sides

Re: Ship Talk
 

I agree a full 3D environment has great application in any space game but for the sake of playability and mod-ability if SL is to be 2d I was thinking more isometric tile sets with an oversimplified z axis so assumptions don't have to be made but obviously some liberties are taken with implementation.

Gravity and movement aside (Babylon 5 as a entertainment perspective of done "more correctly" then others perhaps) I'm thinking more akin to facing as in X-Com (Chaos Gate, Jagged Alliance) with individual units. If I picture individuals as ships from a game play not realism point of view I think it makes sense or at least could work.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I think if you want firing arcs, then you should play a flight sim. :) It is assumed that within the game that a ship will present it's weapons to it's target without all the micro-management of firing arcs. As both of you stated, the AI will not come close to being able to deliver a good performance in that area, leaving the game lacking abilities to be able to provide an entertainment factor. Basically, the game will suck! :shock:

Re: Ship Talk
 

MOO2 had firing arcs, and surely it didn't suck? ;)

If we find that firing arcs prove impossible for the player or AI to manage in combat, we can certainly give all weapons the ability to fire in any direction like in SE5 - it's not set in stone :)

Re: Ship Talk
 

I think another applicable example of firing arcs as well as movement is from The War Engine which actually has its roots here at Shrapnel Games as WDK2K. The full game is available for free download - it had firing arc's (that in the unit editor could be defined) as well as some rules for movement and momentum that I think would translate well to ship combat (acceleration time required in order to get up to full speed/maximum number of hexes moved) as well as requiring deceleration time which would sometimes require you or allow you to plan to crash into something.

Now that I think about it I haven't seen anything in the threads debating hexes vs squares etc. any general thoughts on that?

Re: Ship Talk
 

Perhaps because the movement system is Cartesian-vector-based (like Stars!), not hex or square sector based ;) Yeah, I know, now that everyone knows, there's gonna be a lot of complaining... :P

Note however that unlike Stars!, Star Legacy will have in-system movement as well as interstellar movement; planets and such are not "abstracted away" as they were in Stars! ;)

Re: Ship Talk
 

:confused: Cartesian-vector-based ...so the Cartesian coordinate plane can still be done in hexes RIGHT? :D

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Stars! But on old image of an SSI game comes to mind but I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!

is this the game you are referring to?

Re: Ship Talk
 

Yes.
That THE STARS! GAME of ultimate and everlasting fame - which lots of people would be still playing today (and some still do, actually), if it ...
A) wasn't a 16-Bit game written for Win3.1
B) had TCP/IP network gaming capability
C) had more exciting combat than an auto-resolved chessboard
D) had any AI to speak of

;)

Re: Ship Talk
 

Forgot - no, you can't do vector-based thingies in hexes.
No squares, no hexes.

Only small dots and and long movement arrows. ;)


Btw., I'm still not convinced that firing arcs make any sense.

How will ships be depicted in SL - with engine at one end only, as usual? And combat will be cartesian-vector based as well?
In that case, firing arcs are especially moot, because, as you'll remember, in space your engines are fighting inertia and gravity, not athmosperic drag. If you want to go 90° to the left, you'll have to point your ship ~135° backwards and fire your engines.
Now, if you're spining your ship around anytime to manoeuvre anyway, you can surely point it at a target for the short time required to fire the big spinal gun.

Moo2 got this completely wrong, as they completely left out inertia - for longitudinal movement. But turning the ship costs movement points, what does not make any sense from a physical p.o.v., because the energy (and therefore time) required to turn the ship is much lower than whats required to make it move somewhere.

Moo2 is also a striking example why firing arcs don't make sense, even from a game design viewpoint: By using "front only" you can pack much more weapons than the AI (mostly uses "front + sides"), and most fights are over before the ships get even near each other.

Now if the battle plane(?) was much bigger, and the firing speed of the ships much lower, and movement & turning speed much higher (no firing on every movement turn), then firing arcs would make a sensible difference ...

Re: Ship Talk
 

I would not want to sacrifice game play for realism but I think in ship design most games (certainly SE4 and 5) depict engines at one end only but I think maneuvering thrusters not at that end should be required for general movement. I think in a 2d x, y axis tactical map firing arcs could be depicted in a simplified way that would still have a significant impact on games especially for capital size ships:

* bow placed weapons - 180 degree arc (360 if turret mounted)
* port/starboard placed weapons - 180 degree arc
* stern placed weapons - 180 degree arc

assuming there is no z axis "top" and "bottom" would not be meaningful.

For me it boils down to really enjoying the ship building aspect of 4x games and wanting to tweak and really eek out the best designs possible so I don't want to sacrifice options whereas with something like economy I be more willing to K.I.S.S. it.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I can see some point to firing arcs. If you have a drive system that requires your ship to have a bow and stern, then maneuvering is quite restricted while you're firing.

Mostly I'm with jars_u - I'd far rather have a combat system that's enjoyable than a realistic one.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Since I seem to have opened this particular can of worms, I'd have to also request that combat not sacrifice enjoyment in favor of realism. Being the nervous diplomat that I often am, I also have to say that I will, of course, live with whatever combat mechanics the developers in their infinite wisdom choose to bless the game with ;)

I like firing arcs, I find them more realistic from a ship design aspect than, say, that magic ribbon around the Enterprise that shoots out phasers in any possible direction. Designing and producing a weapon system that has a full unobstructed 360-degree view would be orders of magnitude more difficult than simply placing separate weapons to the aft, fore, and so on.

That said, I've never really considered the physics and realities behind space combat. This may indeed not be the most realistic way to do things, but it is something I am familiar with and know I enjoy. If it turns out that firing-arcs are unnecessary or contrary to fun-making, I'll gladly give another system a chance.

Err, I forgot to hit the quote button, and the posts I wanted the reference seem to be too far back to grab from below, but here's the gist: Ed, I wasn't at all knocking the SotS economic model. It works great. I was merely shining my torch on the fact that the game is heavily geared towards blowing ships up, and researching bigger guns that allow one to blow up ships in new and interesting ways.

Re: Ship Talk
 

To avoid my long diseration on ship design, just hit summaries.

Including firing arcs adds in options like:
Fixed fire weapons
Turrets of varrying widths of fire (45/90/180 degrees)
Broadsides

Vector based movement adds options like:
Much more varied movement (thrust to mass ratio for example)
engines who's ability to turn the ship varies
Flying Backwards to fire at the guy tailing you
Limits on maneuverablity depending on the pilot (Rasberry jam anyone?)

One thing vector based movement & Firing arcs actually make more desirable is fighter craft. Smaller mass ships are easier to maneuver for less fuel. (are we tracking fuel?)

With the power of computers today, it would be just a matter of Math to do a "near-real physics" for space combat. I say "near-real" because real physics doesn't make for drama in space combat.

Re: Ship Talk
 

In sum I would like to say:

YES! :D

Re: Ship Talk
 

As simple as it was - anyone who remembers the classic arcade game Asteroids - I think did a fair representation of 2D space movement. Adding weapons mounted in places other then just the "front" and converting to turn based movement - conceptually at least to me I think would be good general starting point.

Also just for the record I thought it was strawberry - but I checked - your right it was raspberry.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Complex combat play, leads to less playing enjoyment. Especially when you have to design them. You start the game with "maybe" some default ships and then spend the rest of your time designing them! No fun there. If you want to design ships with arcs and such, then I believe you will turn a lot of players off of the game. KISS rules are now in effect...

Re: Ship Talk
 

I'll start by saying again that I certainly both understand and appreciate the need to balance things for the sake of game play/fun/entertainment and certainly KISS rules play a part of that.

But I totally disagree in the respect that designing ships is no fun. While combat is only 1 of the big 4 "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate" - to me the other three only prop up my ability with technology and resources to better blow things up with. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus - and I am biased towards the one that packs heat. :fire:

Ship design was always one of my most favorite aspects of SE4 and most certainly of SE5 - what I did find to be lacking in fun area was the management of both ships and ships designs (upgrades) which could use some KISS treatment.

Speaking only in the sense of general game play ideas and pipe dream wants I would like to see capital ships take a much larger significance (firing arcs being a portion of that) and be far fewer in number then normally portrayed in most games - making both ship design and smaller ships more critical to game play.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Building your ships IS fun. BUT when you have firing arcs involved it becomes a greater strain on those players who don't care for such detail. The game has to appeal to the masses ($$$) and with that in mind, like all other things for general use they get dumbed down. The game will not sell on firing arcs or not. It will sell on playability for all level players. Modability will keep it from becoming boring and add new challanges.

Re: Ship Talk
 

We are experimenting with firing arcs, and we have a simple way of implementing them. They will be part of the component modification system, similar to the mounts in SE4 and SE5, or the weapon modifications in MoO2.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I hope you include the option of 360 degrees firing without limited arcs.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I'm with Q on this one. Allow the players to decide if they want firing arcs or not. AND DON'T forget the AI's for arc firing, that will take a lot of work to implement! :eek:

Re: Ship Talk
 

:up:

Re: Ship Talk
 

I was under the impression that this game will have a 2D style of battle system.

It does make sense to makes things more simplistic in the interests of maintaining acheivable game dynamics without resorting to a more complicated 3D style gameplay.

I urge the makers to look at "Gratuitous Space Battles" to see a balance of ship customisation on a 2D plane versus something more elaborate like Sins of a Solar Empire. I for one have no qualms about embracing either style. I hope that in the same vein as GSB it takes a playful approach to working within the confines of unique interplanetary battlefield conditions, like nebulas, asteroid belts playing some role in affecting battle dynamics. This should keep things interesting, and provoke gamers to utilise the space environments to wage a battle and outweigh which ship types to bring into the fray against their opponent. Should make for interesting choices in battle tactics and skill rather than maintaining a might in numbers tank rush that has a propensity in happening most times.

Cheers.

Re: Ship Talk
 

GSB didn't really excite me but I thought the overall concept certainly has some merits that can be utilized in a turn based execution. I agree that having a legion of ships and just throwing them at the enemy is a non-starter. I'd really like to see fewer ships (certainly fewer capital ships) and a greater emphasis placed on crew experience (minor bonuses) or even a very minor RPG aspect for ship captains (again capital ships) maybe something similar to Advance Wars.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Heh, if we have heroes with battlefield-wide or localized effects like the CO's in Advance Wars (I liked how in Days of Ruin the CO actually had a location on a unit and only affected nearby units ;)), we really ought to have a captain by the name of Kwok who's a master of programming AI-controlled drone units, and thus provides a bonus to seeking missile weapons! :D

Re: Ship Talk
 

Actually, perhaps even better than MOO2 style "mercenary" heroes, would be if heroes appeared like the "Great People" in Civ4 based on points earned by an empire, but then the heroes could also be renamed by the player or at least have names selected from a list based on the empire that spawned them and their role!

So if you're using a Klingon shipset, your military heroes might get names like Kahless and Kor, but if you're playing as, oh, I dunno, the Polish Revivalist Dominion (hehe, anyone get the reference?) you might get heroes like Walesa (a political leader) and Wojtila (a religious leader) ;) Of course the Klingons would have political and religious leaders, and the Poles would have military leaders - I just can't think of any names at the moment :P

Re: Ship Talk
 

Kazimer Pulaski comes to mind... :doh:

Don't forget the science or mining hero! Where they bring advantages in their fields to your empire.

Re: Ship Talk
 

How would an empire earn points? Some kind of prestige system?

Re: Ship Talk
 

Not sure, it was a vague idea :P Maybe you build "academy" facilities which produce leader points, or maybe they could even be generated based on what a ship or planet is doing... a ship with lots of experience might have a chance to generate a legendary commander on board, while a planet with lots of research labs could have a chance to generate a legendary scientist?

Re: Ship Talk
 

Maybe a prestige system? The leader would need to be present at important events to gain prestige points (PP) and you could decide how to spend them to improve the leader's abilities.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Most games that have training set limits on how much you can get. The rest is based on actual combat or science missions. It makes sense, you can't become a legend sitting in an academy! (although I know some people who think so) :rolleyes:
Also, once assigned, the officer could not be transfered to another ship. This will avoid heavy game mechanics to track this.

Re: Ship Talk
 

The option to choose and further customize a "leader ability" to me would be welcome and also allow for further customization (attack bonus, trade bonus, etc.) I also agree that there should be a severe limit on abilities gained strictly though training (vs experience) and would also add that the officer/politician etc. should not only be tied to a specific ship but should die if the ship is destroyed - which would add an element of a high value target vs a green ship.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I noticed early on Ed mentioned Stars!

One of the design aspects of Stars! I loved is that shrewd design can compensate for lack of technology (within reason).

A lot of posts mention players want firing arcs for weapons. Thats fine, however what I would love to see is the ability through shrewd design to compensate for lack of firing arcs.

For example.

Lets say my beam weapons only fire in a 90 degree arc. My opponent has vessels with beams that fire in a 180 Degree arc. Economically I can't research to a new tech AND build a new fleet in time to defeat him.

so I look at my design options and realise I can compensate partially by giving my vessels better manoeuvring jets (turn facing quicker) and better computers (getting better initiative).

The result is that whilst my design isn't as advanced it can hold its own (in the short term) against my opponents design.

This only one strategy, ideally it would be great if there were three or four different design strategies players could employ to give ship building some real depth.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Sorry, but for me that's sound like micromanagement hell and the AI.... :(

Re: Ship Talk
 

You will probably die! :shock: Anticipation and strategy are two key elements that you want to eliminate by giving someone a "work around" to being out played in your designs. You want to penalize a player for designing a better ship then you.

Re: Ship Talk
 

No Xrati not at all.

My point is better technology is not the be all and end all for fleet victory. Well thought out design and overall strategy should play a major part as well.

Weapons systems are not the the only factor to influence combat. Electronic Warfare, Targetting Systems, Chaff, Decoys etc would also play a significant role as they do in our present day military.

Q, as for too much micromanagement or the AI couldn't handle it. I figure if a 16 bit game from the 90s written in Visual C could handle it. A game written now could easily accomplish this.

Cheers

Pydna

Re: Ship Talk
 

Designing better ships and then using them to blow stuff up better is one of my favorite aspects of 4X so I'm in favor of the general idea of ship design having real depth that impacts combat certainly and overall game-play as a result.

Speaking specifically to both SE4 and 5 for example while numerous perhaps even too numerous weapon options existed for a player to research and use in his/her designs some of the real differences (to me) were often (but not always) too negligible to really justify one over another in any real overall design strategy.

But at the end of the day the question will be "Is the game fun?" and tedious MM (depending on what your preferences are) - especially as mentioned elsewhere - later in the game can be a serious kill-joy.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I have a small question.
When I played Ascendancy I could send my ships home in one turn with the "Recaller". I know this can be implemented. Just state the following with every ship you produce: "Impaler 01 build on stardate 1979 at Earth". You can use this data to send that particular ship homewards in the blink of an eye.
Would such a system be useful/wanted.
Obviously implementing such a system wouldn't mean you have to show the data. But you could check out which ship is most antiquated or which shipyard build the most ships.
More numbers to crunch!

Re: Ship Talk
 

Ship design was always one of my favorite aspects of both SE4 & 5 - but managing and upgrading all the incremental designs was certainly a chore especially as the game went on.

Unless SL affords individual ships a greater level of importance then I think most 4X games do - I would be in favor of a oversimplified and perhaps even a "unrealistic" way of dealing with this issue. Perhaps a monetary cost of upgrade only with limited time investment and generally loose or multiple valid upgrade locations.

In SE a construction/repair style ship would take too long to perform an overhaul and sending back to a shipyard meant not only the time invested in the upgrade but also a two way trip (perhaps made worse by an already damaged ship) - that combined with the restrictions on percentages of old/new component on an overhaul more often then not at least for me ships either rarely got upgraded or since no attachment existed with ships the older ones were used as bait/kamikaze ships in battle.

Re: Ship Talk
 

I see on page 2 of the off topic thread there is a discussion that also address this issue in some detail - I think the off topic is now on topic and we need a new off topic thread! :confused:

Re: Ship Talk
 

Yeah, you have a point there.

I think it's implicitly accepted that many elements of ship design are tied in with combat mechanics. It'd be kinda nice if the thread title acknowledged this, as I guess discussion of the two would be simpler if it took place in the same thread. For simplicitly, I'll quickly quote the appropriate comment here:

Re: Ship Talk
 

OK, you got it.

Re: Ship Talk
 

?? Err, I was suggesting that ship design and combat mechanics share a thread. I probably didn't make myself clear enough, sorry.

Re: Ship Talk
 

Whaaaaat???? :confused:

Re: Ship Talk
 

Large chunks of the thread are about combat mechanics already - combat movement and how it relates to weapon firing arcs was the first topic discussed in this thread.

Unless you're purely talking about artistic design, ship design is heavily interlinked with game mechanics - they're one of the agents through which you interact with the game, after all.

Re: Ship Talk
 

How detailed are ships going to be, will you have to have juggle power food and fuel, or just 'supplies'?

Also, one thing I never really liked about Space Empires was the fact that if you wanted to upgrade so much as one single weapon you had to make a new design. In regards to this, I'd like to propose:
1. Ship names don't need changing if you simply upgrade the components, only if you change them.
2. Rather than having a dozen different designs, you build one general ship type and equip it with a load of 'Hardpoints', onto which can be placed whatever guns, extra shields or one-shot missile launchers you want.