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Initial development of Tactical Combat

tiagocc0

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This is post is to sort out the initial aspects of the tactical combat.
You can check the screenshot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/purpleoran ... hotostream

For the components I've set 5 values, each type of component may use 1 to 5 of these values.

For a weapon (laser) I've set: Damage, Energy Consumption and Heat Generated
For a shield we would have: Strength, Amount, Recharge Rate
For a engine: Impulse Speed (In Combat), Travel Speed, Energy Consumption
And the list goes on..

I've set these kind of initial components to work with:
Armor, Shield, Engine, Weapon, Energy Generator and Battery

The first test will be on a hexagonal map but we can try something different later.
I need to set now some formulas:
- How much hex can a ship move based on it's weight and impulse speed.
- How much energy is generated, how is it consumed.
- How much hit points will a ship have, or a component.
- Will the damage hit in this order? Shield, Armor, Random Component.
- How much damage to the components will make a ship explode.

Feel free to ask or say anything about the tactical combat.
 

Malakal

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For missiles: engine, warhead, computer.

Have you considered modular missile design? For example with the starting technology you could build missiles with 3 segments composed of aforementioned components. So you could build a balanced aiming missile with 1 of each, or a powerful not guided 2xwarhead 1xengine or a fast unguided one with 2xengine and 1warhead or even a fake missile with 2xengine and 1xcomputer (making warheads much more expensive than other components would introduce decoy missiles as a viable design). With tech advancements you could introduce more segments and more advanced components (like MIRV warheads or computers with electronic countermeasures etc).

Also I think, that energy weapons need a beam dissipation value to differentiate between the models more.
 

tiagocc0

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Malakal said:
For missiles: engine, warhead, computer.

Have you considered modular missile design? For example with the starting technology you could build missiles with 3 segments composed of aforementioned components. So you could build a balanced aiming missile with 1 of each, or a powerful not guided 2xwarhead 1xengine or a fast unguided one with 2xengine and 1warhead or even a fake missile with 2xengine and 1xcomputer (making warheads much more expensive than other components would introduce decoy missiles as a viable design). With tech advancements you could introduce more segments and more advanced components (like MIRV warheads or computers with electronic countermeasures etc).

Also I think, that energy weapons need a beam dissipation value to differentiate between the models more.

Great idea. But for the missile I might leave it to implement later, noted.
So for weapons we will add Range and for laser there would be Beam Dissipation.
 

Shemar

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In order to start coming up with actual number and formulaes, think of the two extremes, a light fighter and a carrier/battleship/dreadnaught.

Let's start with movement. It all depends on the scale of the map, but generally I would say:
Major assets like battleships and carriers: 1
Medium capital ships like cruisers/frigates/destroyers: 2
Light capital ships like corvettes/gunboats/missileboats: 3
Small craft (not capable of independent interstellar flight): 5-6
These are example ratios you could aim for, not actual hex/turn speeds. Maybe multiply the above by 2 or 3 to get actual hex/turn target speeds.

As for consumption. I think ships should need about 80% of their energy output to maintain top speed, so they can recharge at a good rate if they are not firing or being fired upon, are about even with light fire, but have a negatve energy output for the turn if heavily engaged and taking fire. Energy consumption for movement should not be linear. For example it should only take about 50% of energy consuption to maintain 80% of top speed.

A balancing factor between small craft and capital ships is that small craft cannot travel independently (no sleeping/eating/living facilities), so a single seat fighter would have a much better mass to useful combat components ratio than a ship designed to be in space for weeks or months.

Generic disclaimer: In everything I write in these forums always add: "In my opinion" and "this is what I would do" kind of qualifiers. Never think that I am trying to tell you what to do with your game :)
 

tiagocc0

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Shemar said:
In order to start coming up with actual number and formulaes, think of the two extremes, a light fighter and a carrier/battleship/dreadnaught.

Let's start with movement. It all depends on the scale of the map, but generally I would say:
Major assets like battleships and carriers: 1
Medium capital ships like cruisers/frigates/destroyers: 2
Light capital ships like corvettes/gunboats/missileboats: 3
Small craft (not capable of independent interstellar flight): 5-6
These are example ratios you could aim for, not actual hex/turn speeds. Maybe multiply the above by 2 or 3 to get actual hex/turn target speeds.

I see, but then the type of engine wouldn't matter for combat.
I like the engine power/weight approach because if you make a small craft that's a fighter it will move more hexes than a small craft that's a bomber carrying a nuke or two.

As for consumption. I think ships should need about 80% of their energy output to maintain top speed, so they can recharge at a good rate if they are not firing or being fired upon, are about even with light fire, but have a negatve energy output for the turn if heavily engaged and taking fire. Energy consumption for movement should not be linear. For example it should only take about 50% of energy consumption to maintain 80% of top speed.

A balancing factor between small craft and capital ships is that small craft cannot travel independently (no sleeping/eating/living facilities), so a single seat fighter would have a much better mass to useful combat components ratio than a ship designed to be in space for weeks or months.

Agreed.


Generic disclaimer: In everything I write in these forums always add: "In my opinion" and "this is what I would do" kind of qualifiers. Never think that I am trying to tell you what to do with your game :)

Don't worry, I may implement a lot of ideas from the forum but most because I want to see how it goes, if I don't like it in the end I will replace it for another.
 

Shemar

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tiagocc0 said:
I see, but then the type of engine wouldn't matter for combat.
I like the engine power/weight approach because if you make a small craft that's a fighter it will move more hexes than a small craft that's a bomber carrying a nuke or two.

You misunderstood. These example values are not meant to be hard coded, they are to be the rough target result for the power/weight formulaes. I most definitely want the ship's performance to be the end result of what equipment is on it, not some kind of arbitrary size/class definition.
 

tiagocc0

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Shemar said:
You misunderstood. These example values are not meant to be hard coded, they are to be the rough target result for the power/weight formulaes. I most definitely want the ship's performance to be the end result of what equipment is on it, not some kind of arbitrary size/class definition.

I see, sorry I misunderstood. Then it's quite alright.
I will keep these in mind in the first version of the tactical combat application.
 

Valloy

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Hi, I am new here but Tiago knows me. And sorry, I barely speak english but I will try.

Since we would have warp tech I would go for two different engines: the "warp and the impulse nacelles" idea as just as we have in Star Trek universe since they are, in my believe, complete different things.

And that means I vote for a Star Trek instead of a Star War space combat, meaning that I would name ships, almost every one ship, giving them a role bigger than to simply wrack in pices for general amusement.

But... I would think on old WWII ship battles. Two massive, inhabited (instead of computer floating things), and strategic limited use gunnery machines. That would work on a more strategy less tatics game. And would give the carriers an advantage, ok, then we would have some sort of Tie Fighter/Wing Commander fighting, but only if we put them in the right place at the right moment. "Ué", space navigation should be there, short fuel due to hard navigation killed more WWII pilots than dogfights.


"Ufa", well, my goal here is to keep a way to create great RPG stories. Great commanders, gunneries, mech and eletric techs, nurses (a lot of them), school teachers (we may have a female one), young ladies (think on Asuka Soryu). If we focus too much on combat we would have trouble to create characters worth to live in our dreams, instead of 0s and 1s.

My ideas of games are: Tie Fighter, Wing Commander I, II and III, Starfleed Command II: Orion Pirates, Steel Panthers, Panzer General and Fantasy General, Master of Orion I and Master of Magic (old school guy, perhaps am I not funny).


So I would suggest:
Armor (composite and thickness)
Shield (as Shemar said: at least 4 of them)
Warp Engines (warp speed may vary)
Impulse Engines (impuse pitch, roll and yaw - hehe)
Weapon (defensive, ofensive, tactial like bombs and torpedoes - energy and conventional)
Energy Generator
Life Support
Engineering (if it goes down, no repair till it is back)
Nursery (wounded people will not make it)
Crew
Marines
Computers (put a GUI interface, would imagine if it goes down haiushiuahiusa)
Battery

But all this in a simplistic view. :) Of course I cannot program anything, C++ is greek to me. I just learned to caramelldance.
 

tiagocc0

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Valloy said:
Warp Engines (warp speed may vary)
Impulse Engines (impuse pitch, roll and yaw - hehe)

I see, we could make them into two different engines, small crafts would only be able to fit a impulse engine, while any major ship would have the two of them.

Defensive ships that would stay guarding a planet could be stripped of their warp engine, they would be unable to defend other planets tough.


Life Support
Engineering (if it goes down, no repair till it is back)
Nursery (wounded people will not make it)
Crew
Marines

I completely forgot about these, this may add a nice touch.
Life support would dictate how much personnel you would have in a ship. Without it the crew would die slowly.
Engineering for repair. Nursery for aiding injured personnel. And crew and marine quarters to uh.. hold crew and marine.

A ship without marine quarters would be cheaper but could be easily taken by enemy marines if the enemy is able to board them.
 

Valloy

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Hummm, if we have marines boarding a ship would have them be beamed? Or perhaps boarding ships would do the job.

So we would need:
- teleporters/beam devices or
- docks to host ships (perhaps carriers would have docks as well, so any ship would dock a boarding/scout/service/luxury ship). Of course, without luxury ship you would never carry on a king/queen/diplomat/rock star/mob chief.

:P
 

tiagocc0

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Valloy said:
Hummm, if we have marines boarding a ship would have them be beamed? Or perhaps boarding ships would do the job.

So we would need:
- teleporters/beam devices or
- docks to host ships (perhaps carriers would have docks as well, so any ship would dock a boarding/scout/service/luxury ship). Of course, without luxury ship you would never carry on a king/queen/diplomat/rock star/mob chief.

:P

At first you would need to dock, then later after researching a teleport tech it would be possible to beam them up.

So at first you need blow their engines and then later you will need only to blow their shields.
 

Malakal

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We brainstorming ship component modules now? Then here are my ideas:

Basic Contruction of the ship:
1. Ship hull - represents the total mass of the ship and its "hit points", the bigger the ship is the more hull value it has, so it is simply a matter of sticking more modules onto the design.
2. Armor - how much of the ship hull is used for purely defensive purposes, could be represented as a percentage (light armor - 5% for example).
3. Shields* (not necessarily construction but a part of the defense infrastructure)

With this design in mind lets discuss modules:
1. Power generation and propulsion:
a. Power generation - reactors, batteries, other, serve as energy source, their role is to power ships systems, engines (main energy consumption) and weapons (mainly beam weapons)
b. Propulsion - engine modules, either energy based or fuel based (for less advanced ships), would be a good idea to implement many methods of FTL travel (either the classic other dimension - hyperspace, or also classic wormhole generators or maybe inertialess drives)
2. Crew accommodation - crew quarters, medical bay, marine compartments, bridge etc.
3. Storage space - empty space on ships designed to transport either goods or weapons like fighters and bombers, also colony modules, outpost modules
4. Utility modules - labs, manufacturing plants, refineries, mining plants, food production, life support, terraforming modules
5. Weapons - depending on weapon design and types, some weapons could take more or less space as an additional way to make them all different.
 

Destroid

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If you are planning on having the player manage the energy outputs and consumptions of his ships, you should probably have only a few of them per side, no more than 6-10. Unless you use energy as a sort of 'time unit' for how many actions a ship can take per turn. Perhaps there would be an ability to overload your reactor (say a button) to give increased output at a risk (or guarantee) of system damage? Better engines in this case would grant more efficient energy usage resulting in higher (potential) speed.

For weapons, you could fire energy weapons as many times as you had energy, where projectiles/missiles/drones would be restricted by barrels/launch chambers/tubes. I always thought the launch tubes/ammunition options in MoO2 were good, even if they allow you to make pretty unbalanced ships for that game.

Are you planning to make facing important? If so it might be a good idea to make each different drive type have different values/costs for straight line movement and turning, to allow for more variety.
 

tiagocc0

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Malakal said:
1. Ship hull - represents the total mass of the ship and its "hit points", the bigger the ship is the more hull value it has, so it is simply a matter of sticking more modules onto the design.

It's a nice concept like you said people would always stick as much components as is the limit.
I'm thinking about a ship having armor and shield to hold back the damage, after that the damage will start hitting the components, so each component will have hit points. If a % of components is destroyed like 80% then the ship explodes or something similar.

2. Armor - how much of the ship hull is used for purely defensive purposes, could be represented as a percentage (light armor - 5% for example).

Noted, we could mix, they would hold back a percentage and it's hit point would decrease until there's no armor left.


a. Power generation - reactors, batteries, other, serve as energy source, their role is to power ships systems, engines (main energy consumption) and weapons (mainly beam weapons)
b. Propulsion - engine modules, either energy based or fuel based (for less advanced ships), would be a good idea to implement many methods of FTL travel (either the classic other dimension - hyperspace, or also classic wormhole generators or maybe inertialess drives)

Sword of stars have some very interesting space travel concepts:

"The discovery of the so-called "subspace" dimension has allowed Human propulsion engineers to take advantage of the gravitational stress fractures of the universe."

"Hivers have been spacefarers longer than any other species currently known to Humankind, possessing sublight travel technology for over a thousand years. Although much of that time was spent merely colonizing their own home system, the introduction of gate technology allowed them to successfully become an interstellar civilization."

"The Liir use an inertia-less "stutter" drive, which creates movement through space by teleporting the entire ship in tiny spatial increments of a millimeter or so."

"The Morrigi use a Void Cutter gravitational drive. A Void Cutter engine, once engaged, uses gravimetric focusing to bend space-time around the ship, accelerating it to FTL speeds."

"The basic principle at work in the Tarkasian faster-than-light system is the generation of a warp "field"—an envelope of force, which surrounds the body of a Tarkasian ship. Within this envelope, the ship is essentially a non-event in space-time, having very limited interaction with the standard four dimensions of the Continuum."

"The Zuul are introduced in the first expansion for Sword of the Stars, Born of Blood. They are scavengers and their ships are rough, random things made of chunks of other race’s ships and technology. The Zuul use something known as a Tunnel Drive to tear through the fabric of space-time and down into the nodespace flow between stars."


4. Utility modules - labs, manufacturing plants, refineries, mining plants, food production, life support, terraforming modules

This is nice, noted.

Most of the rest I agree with you.



Destroid said:
If you are planning on having the player manage the energy outputs and consumptions of his ships, you should probably have only a few of them per side, no more than 6-10. Unless you use energy as a sort of 'time unit' for how many actions a ship can take per turn. Perhaps there would be an ability to overload your reactor (say a button) to give increased output at a risk (or guarantee) of system damage? Better engines in this case would grant more efficient energy usage resulting in higher (potential) speed.

For weapons, you could fire energy weapons as many times as you had energy, where projectiles/missiles/drones would be restricted by barrels/launch chambers/tubes. I always thought the launch tubes/ammunition options in MoO2 were good, even if they allow you to make pretty unbalanced ships for that game.

Are you planning to make facing important? If so it might be a good idea to make each different drive type have different values/costs for straight line movement and turning, to allow for more variety.

There will be facing, I see, some engines would turn better, others would go faster.

I like the idea of energy limiting movement, noted.
I have two possibilities, the one you mentioned or you start with a great storage of energy and it goes down faster than your generator can handle, this way battles should be fast.
 

Valloy

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Hey, I would think on a Paranoia like universe as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_% ... ng_game%29

In my understanding that is what we have in Fallout.
So we would make people be ejected to the other ships instead of shooting down the engines. People would die usually due to malfunction and bad (no) planning, and things would usually goes wrong when they are triggered.

But I guess people here would prefer a more direct aproach game instead, no problem. :(

But as an example: in the very beginning we have a hull, a glorius spaceship build by a given planet (they do not have money to build Star War like ships) and there is a mix of new tech plus an young crew (old smart guys will stay alive at home).
So, instead of thinking on developing done by planet scientists, we might have to test them out even on a combat like situation. Well, again, I am saying that because I am thinking on a more RPG like game than a tactical/strategical game. Instead of keep gathering beam/kinects machine cool names with their own stats we would have to focus in a smaller time scale, the first lasers, a few nuke weapons, deflective shields (not absorption, reactive...).

Not sure, a Reunion style game...

And one more thing. I hate Civilization tech tree. MOO is far more smart. Who in the heck stays 50 years studying Polytheism, and only that? MOO will give you an option to do so if you want, when the case (propulsion to colonize a 4 parsecs away planet or Tundra to colonize a 3 range parsecs Tundra 80 rich planet - what happened to me). :)
 

tiagocc0

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Valloy said:
So we would make people be ejected to the other ships instead of shooting down the engines. People would die usually due to malfunction and bad (no) planning, and things would usually goes wrong when they are triggered.

Hmm, this gave me an idea, what if when you just researched a technology like laser, it won't be as optimal as it could be, then you have to use it to improve it stats as a general stat for your entire race.

For example there are two races, one is technological advanced but have a small empire (Race A) and the other is less technological advanced but has a large empire (Race B).

Race A researches Laser I then Laser II and finally Laser III and then starts making big ships with Laser III.
A total of 5 big ships.

Race B researches only Laser I and then starts pouring small ships like crazy, they go and make 100 of them.

Race A would gain experience by building the laser, the more you build, the better you get at it.
Race B would get a lot more experience because it built a lot more lasers.

Then they start a war, Laser III does double damage compared to Laser I.
Both of them loses almost all of their ships and then they build more.

But now Race B Laser I does 3/4 of damage compared to Laser III of Race A.
Because Race B used much more lasers than Race A.

Both got experience and the damage increased, but Laser I of Race B increased it's damage at a much greater rate than Race A Laser III.

There would be a limit at how much it can be increased and the experience you get adds to the next technology so if Race B researched Laser II it would start with some experience because it had so much experience with Laser I.

Does it make sense?
 

Malakal

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Just please dont go the GalCiv route of Laser I, II, III, IV... That damn tech design would be singlehandely enough to ruin the game for me. Yes, make up some names (beam focused laser technology, high energy yield lasers, hyper compressed spatial lasers etc etc), but DO make them a bit different and worth using.

What I enjoyed in MoO2 was the concept of miniaturization and applying new modifications for older weapons. That made them competitive and often more useful than new, untested techs. I think you should find place for something similar (HoI3 had good ideas with theoretical and practical applications of tech).
 

tiagocc0

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Malakal said:
Just please dont go the GalCiv route of Laser I, II, III, IV... That damn tech design would be singlehandely enough to ruin the game for me. Yes, make up some names (beam focused laser technology, high energy yield lasers, hyper compressed spatial lasers etc etc), but DO make them a bit different and worth using.

What I enjoyed in MoO2 was the concept of miniaturization and applying new modifications for older weapons. That made them competitive and often more useful than new, untested techs. I think you should find place for something similar (HoI3 had good ideas with theoretical and practical applications of tech).

Haha, don't worry, that was just an example.

That's true, the more technology you had the more space you had in your ship too, right?

I will take a look at HoI3.
 

Valloy

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Would work. :)
But all I meant was:

- We came for you dammed Blergs and we will have our revenge.
- I see.
- Take a look on our brand new Highly Focused Tri-Laser Beam (HFTLB) weapon and tremble.

SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

5 minutes later

- Cap. Jiukeiusyws this is Cap. Orloshhyt speaking from Massive Dreadnought Capital Ship. Did you request backup.
- Well, humans again. These crap do not stop to procriate.
- Oh ok! But did they mention an Incredible Disperse Tri-Laser Beam (IDTLB) weapon?
- No, sorry. All I remember by now was a shoooosh.

:P
 

Destroid

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MoO2 (not sure about MoO) had a very elegant system to improve weapons by miniaturisation - each tech level beyond its own in the field made the weapons smaller (and cheaper?) so you could fit more. This was their way keeping a player still in the game if they decided to research gravity well generators or other misc technology instead of the next beam/missile/projectile weapon. There was a limit to this so eventually you had to research a new weapon or fall behind.
 

Shemar

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Destroid said:
Are you planning to make facing important? If so it might be a good idea to make each different drive type have different values/costs for straight line movement and turning, to allow for more variety.

In addition to that, each ship component should be assigned to a side. When he ship takes damage it generally goes to the hull, but it can also score a critical hit (the probability depending on the amount of damage relative to how much damage the ship has already taken/HP left) on a ship component, chosen from the ones that as assigned to the hex side that took the damage.

For weapons that side would also determine their firing arc. Engines woudl always be on the rear hex and bridge always on the front. Ships could have different levels of armor and gunnery on different sides, maybe even different shields.
 

tiagocc0

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Valloy said:
Would work. :)
But all I meant was:

- We came for you dammed Blergs and we will have our revenge.
- I see.
- Take a look on our brand new Highly Focused Tri-Laser Beam (HFTLB) weapon and tremble.

SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

5 minutes later

- Cap. Jiukeiusyws this is Cap. Orloshhyt speaking from Massive Dreadnought Capital Ship. Did you request backup.
- Well, humans again. These crap do not stop to procriate.
- Oh ok! But did they mention an Incredible Disperse Tri-Laser Beam (IDTLB) weapon?
- No, sorry. All I remember by now was a shoooosh.

:P

I think this would add a nice atmosphere to the game, but it would change the game completely. We could do an addon later about this, possibly.


Destroid said:
MoO2 (not sure about MoO) had a very elegant system to improve weapons by miniaturisation - each tech level beyond its own in the field made the weapons smaller (and cheaper?) so you could fit more. This was their way keeping a player still in the game if they decided to research gravity well generators or other misc technology instead of the next beam/missile/projectile weapon. There was a limit to this so eventually you had to research a new weapon or fall behind.

This is some we could maintain then.


Shemar said:
In addition to that, each ship component should be assigned to a side. When he ship takes damage it generally goes to the hull, but it can also score a critical hit (the probability depending on the amount of damage relative to how much damage the ship has already taken/HP left) on a ship component, chosen from the ones that as assigned to the hex side that took the damage.

For weapons that side would also determine their firing arc. Engines woudl always be on the rear hex and bridge always on the front. Ships could have different levels of armor and gunnery on different sides, maybe even different shields.

This is nice, for amor we would have to place it on the side you want, the shield needs just one item anywhere and then you would change where the shield goes on the fly.

It would be nice if we had a system like gratuitous space battle were you see the picture of the ship and it has lots of slots, then you go and put the components into the slots.
 

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