Difference between revisions of "Talk:0.4 Design Pad"

Latest revision as of 18:48, 8 September 2010

Andrev, please use the forum for such extensive discussion. This page is intended to discuss content for the wiki page page of the 0.4 design document. It's not intended for feedback on actual game mechanics.

I'll leave this page here for a while, so you don't loose all the stuff you've written.

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General Bullet Points

• Combat will be rendered in 3D. Ships will be represented with 3D models. This does not imply movement in 3D space; it only refers to representation on screen.

• Combat occurs only inside star systems, and is a system-wide affair; all combat assets in a system will be present on the tactical map.

• FO is a turn-based 4X strategy game (primarily) with a RTS-TBS hybrid battle system (secondarily). The pseudo-real-time battles should complement the TBS strategy, and strategically interrelate with it as much as possible. Combat should be important, but other paths to victory should be just as viable. Other strategies than combat should prevail over combat in some cases, or work best in combination with combat.

• The level or detail of player control of ships should minimize the need (or ability) to micromanage individual ships. Not requiring players to be concerned with single-ship facings or subsystem activation will eliminate a major potential source of the "clickfest" micromangement problem. Most interesting tactics can arise from the relative positions of groups of different kinds of ships, and do not depend on details such as the facing of an individual ship.

Ship Designs

• Hulls of a particular size tend to have some common characteristics and uses. The various hulls will be balanced so that all sizes (and all hulls within each size) are useful and an optimal fleet will have a variety of the available sizes, doing different strategic roles within the fleet.

• Ship size will likely have some relevance to tactical balance. Ships of different size may be differently useful for different jobs in battles, and may be differently useful overall in battles, offset by cost or non-battle considerations.

• There will be several different (sized) hulls on which ships can be designed, which are distinctive in that they are better or worse in ways that affect how well they do various roles, but can be used for roles including ones they aren't particularly well-suited. Different-sized hulls are also visually distinct and will have obvious associated characteristics, which should be easy to describe, discern and understand for players, rather than fully role-independent generic hulls which have no association to particular roles. In this system, it's not as easy to see what a ship is or can do as it would be if there were easy-to-see roles inherent in the ship's form or appearance, but it's better than having no information such as might occur with fully generic hulls.

Planets in Combat

• Orbitals are satellites that give a planet offensive capabilties.

Fleet Supply System

The supply system should conform to several goals:

• The mechanics of the supply system should be clear and easily understood by players.

• The player mainly interacts with discrete in-game objects like ships, fleets, buildings, etc. Abstracted sliders or numbers entered to pick how many supply ships to have in an empire, or how much money / production to spend on supply, or how many abstracted, unseen "privateers" to hire are not fun, engaging or easy to understand regarding their direct effect on the actual in-game objects.

• If resupply costs anything, that cost should not vary rapidly from turn-to-turn, or due to immediate state of an empire's fleets. This could cause large, unpredictable variations in the amount of PP consumed by the supply system, which would make planning and allotment of available PP to queued production projects difficult.

• Supply should be interruptable by other players, in order to provide ways to fight large supply-hungry attack fleets without a similar defensive large fleet. Smaller fleets of cheaper, faster supply-route cutting craft can position themselves behind the attack fleet to cut its access to supplies and cause it to weaken over time.

• Supply routes need to be long enough to allow battles to occur reasonably far from an empire's home territory, but not so long that securing supply routes is trivial, or battles can occur anywhere in the galaxy. Empire shape and cohesion should matter.

• • Range at which supply can be delivered should vary with tech over the course of a game. At the start of the game, supply should be limited and local only, but near the end of the game, it should be much easier to provide supplies much further away.

• Sources of supply shouldn't be trivial to set up. In particular, if it is possible to plant a trivial colony anywhere and be instantly supplied near that system, it becomes too easy to get supply far from one's own empire, and distant-supply considerations are circumvented.

Mechanics

Ship Upgrades / Part Refinemen

• Ships can be upgraded by researching refinements to their parts. When a refinement is researched, all parts on existing ships of type that were refined instantly gain refined stats / features / function / properties.

• There is no way to change the design of a ship after it is built. The only way to "upgrade" a ship is by researching refinements to its parts.

Battle Map Layout

• The battle map is centred on the system's star
• Planets are located around the star, at random positions or at positions determined by some algorithm, possibly moving turn-to-turn

• Starlane endpoints are a medium-sized area of space - not a point, but not a very large region. An entire fleet should fit into the starlane endpoint area. Endpoints are oval or curved-oval in shape. There are gaps between endpoints of different starlanes.
  • Endpoints are located in a ring of space surround the rest of the system. The circle is thin relative to its diameter, but has some finite thickness.
  • Ships can only enter or exit a system via a starlane endpoint on the map

• Around planets and stars there is a ring of space, of thickness about equal to a planet diamater, which is considered to be the orbital space of the planet (or star). Ships in this space are "in orbit" of the planet, and can interact with the planet in ways ships futher away can't, and may have other tactical effects applied to them.

Exiting Battle

• Battles end if all ships in the battle are allied / mutually non-hostile.

Combat Objectives

Possible combat objectvies include:

• Destroying enemy ships
• Invading or evacuating a planet (attackers provide cover for transport/assault ships or else perform orbital bombardment; defenders either engage attackers or provide cover for evacuation ships)
• Transit (attackers attempt to get from point A to point B; defenders interdict attackers or else cause attrition)
• Reconaissance (maneuvering a stealth ship past sector defenses/scanners to drop or retrieve an agent)
• Surgical Strike (targeting a specific installation either in the system or planetside)

Battle Pace, Timing and Orders

The combat engine will be hybrid real-time and turn-based. Individual turns will play out in real time, but player input, through orders, will only take effect once per turn. Orders may be given at any time (paused or not) and are queued to be processed in subsequent turns. During turns, between the times when orders take effect, the player(s) have no ability to alter the outcome of game events (other than orders given before the start of the present turn). Player(s) may request a pause at any time, but pauses only occur and the ends of turns. Current thinking is that a turn should be somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds. (Example: Knights of the Old Republic)

TBS system can be too slow and make be unable to capture any real sense of tactics (Example: Master of Orion 2).

Other comments
Technology arrangement
I thought about balancing arrangements because strong imperia usually have too many impact to his economy. For example if strong race is producing 1000pts of research and weak race - 100pts then is stupid idea to give this same bonus to their production - 10% bonus give bonus for strong empire like a total production of weak race! Stupid. The proposed solution is this same bonus for both races as percent from average production from both races: At this case it was 1000+100 = 1100/2 = 550; 10% is 55pt per both - in result race has bonus depending from his partner. If partner is weak, this race have 1000+55pts production (5%). If partner is very strong, bonus is higher 100+55pts (55%).
Economy arrangement
This same effect but with money.
Black market & pirates
On black market should be available all goods (stolen technologies, resources, ships, food) and each race can buy it. Of course these goods should be offered by pirates, which can attack other races for money etc, etc.
War
On some games players decide to attack others without war declaration. It is no system to control it. Good system is add official "non-aggression pact" with 3 turn for cease-fire. Of course breaking "non aggression pact" and immediate attack is still possible, but how to regulate it with muliplayer game? One option may be "trust factor" which add -5% bonus to all tradements with NAP-breaker but non smaller than 0. Free space Model created in FO looks similar as Space-Empires with closed ways between stars. IN my opinion all stars should be available on galaxy map. Player can travelled to each star as they want, with only fuel limitation, and engines consumption.

Of course, this is no criticism but my personal free comments to 0.4 version.