FreeOrion

Sounds like we will probably want a generalized heuristic search function over the starlane graph. We could used a simple shortest-ETA heuristic in order to suggest travel routes to players and the player could then modify the route any way they want. For the AI, we could plug in a more advanced heuristic so that it can figure out what route it wants to travel.

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Empire Team Lead

I think, if the Player selects Fleet A, and moves around with the mouse over other Planets, there should be a red line indicating the shortest way. If for some reasons (e.g. the 10-doomstar-fleet nearby) doesnt want this way, but another, he would have to shift-click the first waypoint of the other way he wants, and moving the mouse over planets would then give him the shortest way from the waypoint to the planets.

A nice addon would be, if moving around the mouse, the player gets a red line showing the shortest way, and a dotted red line showing the second-shortest way, and by pressing 2 while alt-clicking the target he selects the second-shortest way.

I like elfstone's idea.

I like how MOO3 handles this. You choose the average number and length of starlanes on galaxy generation. The only thing I'd add to this would be a mini-map example of each kind, just so the player sees exactly what 'many starlanes, moderate length' really means.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Forgot to mention, the reason why I want to be able to change offroad costs also is so that in a game of no starlanes a player can send their fleets to a location in space somewhere, between planets, ready for an ambush or an unexpected assault.

Eg, in Stars! planets can only detect cloaked ships a certain distance - so you maneuver those ships between planets so that it remains unobserved.

I didn't think we were going to have deepspace movement. Wasn't it just going to be movement between stars as was the case in the MOO games?


JB

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Empire Team Lead

I don't recall having discussed deep space movement. I assumed we were since I've been playing Stars! a lot recently and had forgotten that some games don't have it.

Maybe one of the game design guys can remember if we do or not.

There has been discussion of moving ships between stars, to a positions into open space, not much discussion, but some, in this thread.
http://www.artclusta.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=46

We never had an official public review about deep space movement. But I seem to remember that we had a certain amount of consensus about using a movement system like MoO2.

Well, I'd like to have deep space movement as an option as well. Using starlanes should be the usual thing, but for advanced players the startegic possibilities of deep space should be open. To be choosen at the start of the game of course. And no support for single play (to cut AI difficulties).

Thus in a MP advanced players could use deep space movement, while inexperienced players and the AI don't have to worry about it.

There is a prob;em with a No Starlane game. Namely the range of ships. With starlanes its not a problem because we limit the number of hops for various engine classes. However for no starlanes we don't want a player to be able to bomb your homeworld on turn 25. So we have a few things we can do.

1. Draw a circle around each planet and you can move with starlanes to any planet in a circle which increases with engine speed.
2. Have a seperate tech (fuel cells) a la MoO 1-2. Which increases the circle size.
3.Limit the number of starlane hops depending on engine tech. That way if there is a starlane that is VERY long you can use it on the first turn of the game. and if you expand to a planet on the other side then you can simultaneously have expansion on both sides of the universe.
4. some kind of combination?

If we want to make a no-starlane game possible then we should go with 1 or 2.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

The Circle thing should only work for non-starlane travel, in starlanetravel the maximum length of a starlane should be limited.

I think range should apply to both starlane and offroad travelling. Starlanes aren't wormholes as far as I am concerned. I prefer to view things in more of a Star Wars manner where star lanes would equal a well mapped and free-of-trouble route through space. Also I don't see a compelling gameplay reason why starlanes should make you travel further. Starlanes are already X times faster than offroading so going off road is already sufficiently unattractive, no need to through another negative into the mix.

The star-wars idea is quite nice, but how will the range-thing be done? I didn't like the system of moo2, where you can fly from A to B, because C is close enough to B.

So, if you have a linear universe having planets at positions
1 4 9 50 55 57
And you have bases on
1 4 57
it would be easy to fly from 4 to 51 with a range of 5, since 55 is only 2 away from your closest base.
I think the refuelling system of space-ward ho is much better, but maybe the moo2-system is easier for gameplay, and less fleet-micromanaging-intense.



Also, i don't think offroad travel should be a racepick but a technology, and total invisbility would be an extremly powerfull pick.