Re: Combat: When to Fight?

Josh · **Posted:** Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:13 pm

Edit by Geoff: A battle simulator has been suggested as a way to fill time when other players are controlling battles. This is a fine suggestion, but it's not really relevant to the design thread in which it was posted, so I'm moving posts or parts of posts after my initial response on the subject to this thread. Josh's post is actually replying to Ranos' post that's quoted a few posts below, but because of the way the forum split / merge system works, I can't get the ordering to work properly when only quoting part of an old post in this case. A few other quoted posts may also appear after posts that reply to them.

Ranos wrote:

As someone mentioned earlier, have a battle simulator. The new turn starts and player A and player B have a battle to fight. Player C has no battles. He/she is given the option to play a battle simulation. This creates a random battle based on the players current technology and lets them fight it out. No experience is earned for any existing ships/crews so nothing in gameplay is effected. No other player's technology level is used.

That's the best idea I've heard.

Sadly, if you're going to use a turn-based system, these pitfalls are inevitable and I doubt there's a practical way around it. In the good old days, players put on a cup of coffee while waiting for their turn, and I'm sure people will eventually get bored regardless of all our best efforts. Hence real-time systems, simultaneous turn based systems etc.
For some reason it reminds me of physicists trying to find a way to travel faster than light.

But seriously that's a really awesome idea, whoever came up with it.

hissun · **Joined:** Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:21 am **Posts:** 4

I wote too for battle simulator. It can be perfect tool for testing a players tactics skills/tactics scripts. Also can be good not play random battle but "selected" battle, or even "created battle" by a few parametres.

Quote:

No experience is earned for any existing ships/crews so nothing in gameplay is effected.

yes.. but...

Quote:

No other player's technology level is used.

Why not - it will be better when I can play my tactics againts (selected) simulated players ship/fleet. Designs are known or this option can be affected by Espionage - better know your enemy, better prepare your tactics.

So as a implication of this it will be better to have a fleet tactics for this situation (strong enemy, small enemy) and for this and that enemy (I can prepare a scrips for battle against this Race and another against someone else).

Tactics scripts can be even be "created" via this combat simulator by pressing "create tactic" button (and than be little modified with some else tool).

General_Zaber · **Posted:** Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:20 am

Just expanding on BigJoe5's summary, I also think that when designing the simulations between the bored player and the computer, both sides should contain any kind of ship design known to the player, ie use a mix of stolen enemy designs against computer controlled version of the player's own fleet (Or enemy designs vs echother or vice versa). Just to gauge the effectiveness from a different point of view.

Anyway, just my two cents. haven't been on in a while.

Tsenzouken · **Joined:** Sun May 25, 2008 10:15 am **Posts:** 60

Thought I'd poke my nose in here before I sleep.

What about a pure sandbox? Let the player spawn ships as he wills, give them over to AI etc.

It would be interesting to be able to have an "approximate" design for enemy vessels, and be able to name them. That would be cool because you could test your performance vs. what you thought the enemy vessel was. Though, you could always be wrong...

One important aspect of ECM would be keeping the details of your ship designs from the enemy. Not just that, but you might be able to fake the energy signature of another player, so the defender wouldn't know who he was fighting at first, or at all if you could keep back and avoid being scanned.

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:29 am

Ranos wrote:

So the main point here is to reduce/eliminate the amount of time players have to wait while others do battle.

There are two possible solutions I see to this.

As someone mentioned earlier, have a battle simulator. The new turn starts and player A and player B have a battle to fight. Player C has no battles. He/she is given the option to play a battle simulation. This creates a random battle based on the players current technology and lets them fight it out. No experience is earned for any existing ships/crews so nothing in gameplay is effected. No other player's technology level is used.

Player C could fight as many simulated battles as he/she wanted to until the battle between A and B ends. At that point, the simluation ends, even if player C is right in the middle of a simulated battle.

This isn't a side game or minigame or anything like that. It uses existing code with just a bit more added in for the creation of the simulation.

[...]

Obviously these only work to a certain point so limiting the number of battles per turn and the time each battle can take should be options at the start of a game.

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:47 am

Bigjoe5 wrote:

Flatline wrote:

Another idea: the problem is players sitting with nothing to do, right?

Then why not letting theme "lose time". We could improvise a battle for them to play in, taking one of their fleet and battling against an AI controlled more-or-less-equal fleet. This won't (obiviously) have any pratical effect on the game, but the player could just amuse himself while waiting, and also make some practice with one of his fleets... What do you think?

hissun wrote:

It will be better when I can play my tactics againts (selected) simulated players ship/fleet. Designs are known or this option can be affected by Espionage - better know your enemy, better prepare your tactics.

So as a implication of this it will be better to have a fleet tactics for this situation (strong enemy, small enemy) and for this and that enemy (I can prepare a scrips for battle against this Race and another against someone else).

Tactics scripts can be even be "created" via this combat simulator by pressing "create tactic" button (and than be little modified with some else tool).

It only makes sense that an player would want to have practice against his opponents ship designs. Data on enemy tech and ship designs should be available only by spying so that players controlling battles won't be rushed, knowing the enemy is getting practice against their ship designs. The completion level and up-to-dateness of data concerning an enemy empires ship design, fleet strength and technology, should be readily apparent to the player selecting his simulation.

FreeOrion

Re: Combat: When to Fight?

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