relative size of the system, planets and ships

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pd
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relative size of the system, planets and ships

#1 Post by pd »

Derived from here, this thread is to discuss relatives sizes in space combat.

Here is an idea regarding planets and ships. Percentages are always referring to the previous item in the list!
Image

There are some game design reasons to have planets larger than ships
- planets can be used as "terrain" -> The player might be able to hide a fleet behind a planet. There could be a stealth gain, if a fleet is located behind one of its own planets or a detection penalty for the opposing fleet
- planetary defenses (those satellites) could actually been shown in planetary orbit in some kind of net arrangement and one might have to move close to a planet to destroy them
- one might have to move close to a planet to bombard the surface

Personally I would like to have planets at least somewhat larger than ships. It just adds to immersion IMO.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

My first reaction is that the difference in visible size between planet size labels should be greater, and that ships and planets should be more different in size as well. I'd also like to have a star in the centre of a system, that would be a notable navigational obstacle itself, and significantly larger than the planets.

I've had this sitting around for almost four years, depicting two opposing fleets near a (fairly large) planet. I'm not sure if this is the ideal scale for things, but it's perhaps a starting point for discussion...
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battle mockup from 2004
battle mockup from 2004
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Tortanick
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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#3 Post by Tortanick »

Looks good to me Geoff.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#4 Post by pd »

I'm happy you've said this, because I feel the same.

Here is a new one, still far from the proportions in your example, but it's already getting hard to avoid having pixel ships.
Image

I'll try to work out a first mockup dealing with system scale/planets distances in my next post. Since battle occurs system wide, how long would or should it take the player to move from one planet to another, or from one end of the system to another? If the distance the ships are shooting at another in your example is the distance ships can move in one turn, it would take for ever to navigate a system even with simplified distances like in the tech demo at the moment, which I think are chosen quite well.

In the tech demo, the star looks already giant compared to planets due to the intense glow effect, which works really well IMO. I agree, that this area should be a navigational obstacle.
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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#5 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Is it necessary to have uniform ratios of size between ships and planets for different zoom levels? If not, when fully zoomed in, the ships and planets could be scaled as in my mockup, but when zoomed out, the ships could be drawn so that the biggest ones are the same size as planets. Planets and the star should remain at the same relative size though, as they are both battle terrain.

Alternatively, the UI could switch to battle icons representing units or groups of units when zooming out makes things too small. This doesn't need to be done uniformly; a particular zoom level might show larger ships fine, but use an icon for a group of smaller ships or fighters.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#6 Post by Tortanick »

So basically we just copy supreme commander? Sounds like a good plan to me :)

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:So basically we just copy supreme commander? Sounds like a good plan to me :)
AFAIK Supreme Commander had fixed scale between units and the terrain, but replaced too-small units with symbols. I'm (first) suggesting variable scale between units and terrain, which is much more suitable for FO because the units and terrain (planets + star) are already not to scale with eachother, distances between them and the units.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#8 Post by pd »

I had edited my post and you might have missed this:
Since battle occurs system wide, how long would or should it take the player to move from one planet to another, or from one end of the system to another? If the distance the ships are shooting at another in your example is the distance ships can move in one turn, it would take for ever to navigate a system even with simplified distances like in the tech demo at the moment, which I think are chosen quite well.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

It's hard to know now without a playable engine to test with, but perhaps a typical ship would take 8 or so turns to go from the edge of a system to the middle, and about two turns to go between planets that are close together?
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mockup to think about how far ships should move in a turn during battle
mockup to think about how far ships should move in a turn during battle
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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#10 Post by Tortanick »

By turn I presume you mean a battle turn, and not a game turn? How many battle turns to a game turn? infinite?

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#11 Post by pd »

Thanks, that helps and sounds reasonable. Slightly related and referring to what I've read in the DD, does this mean LR weapons could shoot from one planet to another, assuming those planets are 2 turns away from eachother?

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

pd wrote:...does this mean LR weapons could shoot from one planet to another, assuming those planets are 2 turns away from eachother?
I suppose so. Two turns would be pretty close for planets though, and would only occur in the inner solar system. Outer planets would like be (much) further apart, unless their orbits happen to synchronize on a particular turn.
Tortanick wrote:By turn I presume you mean a battle turn, and not a game turn? How many battle turns to a game turn? infinite?
Battle turn, yes. Number of battle turns per game turn hasn't been decided, and will probably be configurable during game setup. Default values will depend on how long we end up having turns take to play out (5 seconds, perhaps?) and how long battles end up taking vs. how much can be accomplished or destroyed in X number of battle turns.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#13 Post by Josh »

You can have up to ten planets per solar system right? So if you planet hopped, it sounds like that should take at least 20 turns at most to get to the center, possibly more.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#14 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Josh wrote:You can have up to ten planets per solar system right? So if you planet hopped, it sounds like that should take at least 20 turns at most to get to the center, possibly more.
Planets don't line up in a straight line on one side of the system. It would probably take a travelling salesman much more than 20 turns to visit all planets in a system.

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Re: relative size of the system, planets and ships

#15 Post by pd »

Okay, since we have 10 planet slots I thought the travel time could be 10 turns from the edge to the center just as well. This results in 1 turn going from one orbit to another, as long as one goes towards the center.
All planets shown are gas giants and they behave like in my last mockup, being 30% of the size of a star. Should stars be sized differently in combat as well?
Image
Is it necessary to have uniform ratios of size between ships and planets for different zoom levels? If not, when fully zoomed in, the ships and planets could be scaled as in my mockup, but when zoomed out, the ships could be drawn so that the biggest ones are the same size as planets. Planets and the star should remain at the same relative size though, as they are both battle terrain.

Alternatively, the UI could switch to battle icons representing units or groups of units when zooming out makes things too small. This doesn't need to be done uniformly; a particular zoom level might show larger ships fine, but use an icon for a group of smaller ships or fighters.
Yes, I think this could work really well. Maybe it should be left to the user, if he wants his ships to scale that way or if he prefers to use icons(which will have to be learned). One might also use both. This can be further explored in the combat UIthread.

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