Combat Requirements Doc - Preliminary

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utilae
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#31 Post by utilae »

Maybe we could have space combat zoomed in based on the number of ships and the size of ships.

eg
If there was 5 scouts and nothing else, it would zoom in so you can see them well.

If there was 5 scouts and 2 titans, it would zoom in to a level where the titan is viewable easily and the scouts look like fighters in size.

If there are 50 destroyers, it would zoom out to a level that allows you to manager them.

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#32 Post by jmercer »

I think zoom levels should be up to the user. Perhaps initial distances can be based on ship sizes or sensor ranges. For instance if 2 fighters encounter each other in an uncontested system, they may start rather close to each other and the playing area would be confined. On the other hand if two large fleets encounter each other, the starting distance can be when the sensors of one of the fleets sees the other, creating a larger playing field.

It would be interesting to have battles be almost 100% strategic where broad orders are issued such as feint attacks, feint retreats, attacks and retreats from large groups of ships. Ambushes and strikes. Breakthroughs and reinforcing areas. This would mean that battles between sufficiently large fleets would play out almost identically no matter the scale. This does give reason to artificially trim back fleets to some cap, but I feel that is an easy way out of a situation that some see as a problem.

Zooming in connects the player more with the situation and huge fleets don't lend toward this gameplay but with proper GUI the player can assess what's happening to task force 2 without seeing it. Perhaps an icon with various overlays and colours can give a quick view of what is happening. Clicking it will recenter and zoom around that group (this is implementation, sorry). Also, with purely strategic gameplay, there would be enough time between events that the user can zoom in on their favorite ship and see how it's doing.

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#33 Post by Magus »

Personally, I am against a broad strategic control. While I agree that it would be interesting, I just don't think I would enjoy it nearly as much as a more visceral control. Not to mention you might end up with BotF. A fun game, but the combat options didn't appear to mean anything. I'm sure they did, but if you can't tell why you won or lost aside from numerical superiority, thats a problem.

I like the idea of having integrated ground combat, assuming it was only used against things that specifically affected the space combat (Missile bases, planetary supercomputers assisting with fire control, planetary shields, fighter bases, etc.) Actual ground combat to capture a planet should take time on the scale of at least one overgame turn.

Yaromir also brought up a good point. If these fleets are so huge, they may be split up towards other targets in the system. That would make for interesting strategic decisions: which planet(s) do you hit, and with how much? Or do you ignore the planets and head for the fleet? And for the defender, do you attempt to see which one(s) they are headed for and send your forces in (possibly belated) response, or do you focus on one world and leave the outer planets to fend for themselves? This could work a bit to reduce the number of ships in a battle (at least until there are Star Gates above every world)

One note about the size of battles: While I am advocating that multi-thousand ship battles can happen, I am not saying that they should be happening all the time. A battle like the one in my last example should be something that is remembered for a long, long time, not something just "ho-hum, I lost 1200 ships in that battle, well the surviving hundreds can meet up with the next thousand ships and keep going." A battle like my second to last example (382 ships vs. 187 ships+100 fortifications) is a major battle.

However, now I'm starting to go into specific details.. I should throw most of this into a brainstorming thread.

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#34 Post by jmercer »

I haven't played Birth of the Federation so I haven't experienced winning without knowing why, but it does sound like a problem to be avoided. I can see fleet combat requiring a lot of coding to implement so it should be an aspect of the game that is enjoyed.

That being said, superior numbers should almost always win. Now, there are ways to loose when you have more ships, but you have to try to act stupidly - sending 1 ship at a time into the heart of the enemy fleet would do it.

If you're given explicit control over each ship, the AI will always win since it can micromanage every aspect. It will concentrate fire on ships and draw off fire just as the last volley is being sent. A crippled ship will be pulled from the front just before it's destroyed (unless damage is remembered betwen fights). By limiting the grammar that can be used to communicate with your fleet you can equal the playing field and reward thought over clicks per second.

My previous examples of what orders you could give may have been too high level. A lower level grammar may be needed to balance between thoughtful gameplay and fun gameplay. I figure that the targeted audience of a MOO/civ style game is the strategic gameplayer, not the twitch-click fraglord. OK, this is a slight exaggeration of things but I'd like to see the thoughtful style of empire control carry over to combat. Better to make some people happy all of the time than more people happy some of the time.

Also, sorry for the persisting views of some newbie low-post-count nobody. We're all trying to get FO to be the game we want it to be which is something we can influence just be discussing matters. That's an amazing concept!! In the end it's the developers choice, but I think what we say here has an effect on that choice. </starry eyed democracy in action rant>

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#35 Post by Magus »

And I agree with you on the level of control, to a point. I am a frequent poster on several RTS forums in which I am the stalwart anti-micromanagement. Control of individual ships on this scale would be bad, to say the least. I just want more control than just vague orders.

The other thing that can't be forgotten here is that we are talking about a turn based or phased time system. In an RTS, some of these ideas would require rapid button mashing where the FPS fraglord (or the average C&C Generals player) rules. In a phased-time environment, you can have a little bit more detail without it becoming overwhelming for those who don't have a APM in the triple digits.

So your examples of the AI withdrawing damaged ships and switching fire as the target is destroyed, that should happen anyway, its not within your control as it happens between phases. On a phase, you can then give orders to your ships/squadrons/divisions. The grammar as you call it is limited by the amount of combat time you are actually giving orders for.

And I disagree that superior numbers should always win. Heres an example from another space combat game. You have 21 Ion Cannon Frigates. I have 10 squadrons of Laser Corvettes. I will beat the living snot out of you, because you can't even hit my corvettes, while they devour frigates. If, however, you mixed in some pulsar corvettes, you could win. But then I might have Lance Fighters to drill through your corvettes. Then you might have Interceptors, and I might have assault frigates, and so on and so forth. (This is all from Homeworld 2). Some ships should be better against other kinds of ships. When this happens, its not just numbers, but numbers and type distribution.

And /me echoes the democracy in action speech... I've long been brainstorming on a game of this type, its nice to get my ideas out there with a chance of them actually happening

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#36 Post by jmercer »

You're right, in the case of 10 "rock" ships vs 30 "scissor" ships, or 10 "big rock" vs 30 "little rock" ships, the smaller fleets would win (I'm not advocating a rock paper scissors system btw). But with fleets of similar tech and weapon levels, a larger fleet should almost always defeat the smaller fleet. I'd hate to see the case that a 300 click per minute player has the opportunity to wipe out a fleet that's 4x the size of his. Now, I don't have a problem with a player that uses superior strategy winning the same battle. Looks like we're in agreement here.

I guess leaning from pure strategy toward a more visceral feel would give this a battle feel rather than a dry simulation of a battle.

One thing I'm concerned about with the fleet battle system is what does a player not involved in the battle do? I have read suggestions that if the player has infiltration into one of the two opponents, they can watch from that side (or both). I think that, as a courtesy to the player who has to stare at the galaxy map for 5 minutes, they should have the ability to watch the battle if all parties involved allow it.

If an extra party is watching a battle, he/she should only see the intersection of information known to the parties fighting. So, only a ship that is visible by all others should be seen by the spectator. This avoids the case where a spectator has a god view and can then send information toward his buddy about a fleet waiting in ambush in the asteroid field via MSN or something.

I'm a little fuzzy on phased time. Is this a battle that lasts over several turns, or is it realtime mixed with turn based? I think a realtime with a minimum acceleration (of 1.0x) for battles that don't involve all human players and a realtime with minimum acceleration of 0.0x when all players are involved would be ideal. This forces battles that exclude others to progress along while letting people think out things as much as they wish when it doesn't inconvenience others. The 0.0x minimum acceleration would also be allowed when you're playing single player against bots/AI.

Overall, fleet battles are going to be tricky to do satisfactorily in a way that doesn't grind the game to a halt for others. A Civ style of moving the spearman onto the barbarian is probably the best way to do fleet battles in multiplayer, but it robs us of the experience we love from MoO.

I'm not sure the 2D/3D has been resolved. In the end, it's not up to us, but I'd like to see a full 3D fleet battle. That does complicate matters greatly. It pulls in the requirements of 3D modelers and skinners to this mainly sprite based game. The good thing about starship models is that they're easier than human models. The eye can tell if arms aren't proportional to legs, but who cares for a troop transport? Also, if we emphasize fleet battles, we don't need overly complex ship models.

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#37 Post by Magus »

Phased time is this:
The game is paused. I issue all my orders and hit the end turn button. When all have ended, the game springs into real-time for a specific duration and the orders are carried out. Then, after the real-time interval, the game stops again and new orders can be given. Basically simultaneous turn based.

Since we seem to be the ones doing some heavy debating on this, perhaps it would be better to do this via IM. My AIM address is "Magus TLSC"

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#38 Post by jmercer »

Phased time would level the playing field between the 300 actions per minute clicking machine and the 105 year old grandmother quite well. The only reason I don't like it is that it doesn't line up with my first thought about what fleet combat should be. I'll have to give it some more thought.

One reason I don't like it is that I'm afraid it would take away from the Epic feel. My idea of an epic feel is laser bolts flying everywhere.

Actually, perhaps the pause in the phased time could have an epic feel if done properly. This would be laser bolts, missiles and torpedoes all frozen in time along with explosions. It would give it a bullet time feel. Throw in explosions like in that CG cartoon of transformers with the animals, the liquid fire look, and phased time could look very sharp.

It would be best if discussions are kept here in the open for others to comment on, besides, I don't have an AIM account and I'll be running between my office and the lab for most of the day.

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#39 Post by utilae »

jmercer wrote: One thing I'm concerned about with the fleet battle system is what does a player not involved in the battle do? I have read suggestions that if the player has infiltration into one of the two opponents, they can watch from that side (or both). I think that, as a courtesy to the player who has to stare at the galaxy map for 5 minutes, they should have the ability to watch the battle if all parties involved allow it.
Players could chat, play ping pong, extended empire management time, if they have spies or sufficient scanner tech then they can watch a battle.
jmercer wrote: If an extra party is watching a battle, he/she should only see the intersection of information known to the parties fighting. So, only a ship that is visible by all others should be seen by the spectator. This avoids the case where a spectator has a god view and can then send information toward his buddy about a fleet waiting in ambush in the asteroid field via MSN or something.
I think if a player has sufficient scanner and communication tech in range of the battle then they can watch the battle. If one of your ships is nearby, then scanners can reach, so you can watch the battle. If you have spy agents on some of their ships, then you can watch the battle. If you planetary scanners have the range, then you can watch the battle. You could even have probes out in deep space.
jmercer wrote: I'm a little fuzzy on phased time. Is this a battle that lasts over several turns, or is it realtime mixed with turn based? I think a realtime with a minimum acceleration (of 1.0x) for battles that don't involve all human players and a realtime with minimum acceleration of 0.0x when all players are involved would be ideal. This forces battles that exclude others to progress along while letting people think out things as much as they wish when it doesn't inconvenience others. The 0.0x minimum acceleration would also be allowed when you're playing single player against bots/AI.
As Magus said Phased Real Time is basically semi turn based on which all players have a order phase where they make their moves, then when they have all pushed the end phase button the battle is carried out in real time for a duration. Note that during this real time duration there are to be no orders given (otherwise good rts players would get an advantage). Then it goes back to the order phase, etc.

One extension of this idea is that a combat could go for a maximum of x minutes per turn, so if the combat has not finished when the time is up, then combat would be paused and continued next turn. This would give an epic feel since the battle would take many turns and it would not force the players to rush because the battle will not end this turn.

I like this system of combat (phased time) because it is probably the best improvement over the moo2 system. What Moo2 combat needed was an equal chance to give orders instead of the attacker having the advantage. It also needed a way to control many individual ships (ie as a group) when the numbers of ships became to great. Plus it needed a way to speed up those situations (waiting for all thier ships to move and attack and then all your to move and attack was annoying).

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#40 Post by Magus »

Didn't even think about the possiblity of bullet-time style effects... that'd be very cool.

I would be against multi-turn space combats. If a turn represents a year, and we're ignoring time-dialation, that is an extremely long time to be fighting with no respite. If a fleet wants to withdraw to elsewhere in the system and strike again next turn, that's fine by me.
Ground combats though could easily last multiple years.

One other core requirement that I'm not sure has been mentioned:
Control of your ships should be simple and groups of ships should be able to be ordered or be the target of orders (and not just the enforced groups that occur on the larger scales).
If we had the number of controllable objects reduced to about 50 from 1000, but we still had to order them individually ala MoO2, it would still take forever. A HW style control would probably be best.

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#41 Post by utilae »

Magus wrote: I would be against multi-turn space combats. If a turn represents a year, and we're ignoring time-dialation, that is an extremely long time to be fighting with no respite.
I think each turn should be 4 months, then it would work better.

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#42 Post by Aquitaine »

Geoff the Medio wrote: So IMO the solution is to have each player's ship limit be determined as a fraction of the technical limit, where the fraction is determined by the relative ship strengths in the system for all the players. So if there are 800 ships in the system total, and one player has 25% of these, another has 60% and the last has 15%, then those players would get to use 25%, 60% and 15% respectively of the 600 ships limit during the battle.
This is entirely too complicated and nobody would ever have any idea of what was actually going to show up on the battlefield.

A 'stack' in TW is basically our version of a 'fleet' - it's a group of units, I think capped at 16 units (each of those 16 having between 30 and 120 soldiers, depending on the unit and the 'unit size' game setting). In TW, you pick what's going to show up on the battlefield by selecting one stack to attack, and then any other stacks nearby are automatically considered reinforcements (which can either join you on the field if they're under AI control, or else take the place of your units as they're killed and be under your control).

In FO terms, this would require you to group ships of a like make to form something similar to the TW units, and then we can simply cap the number of groups under the player's control at one time. So if you built 10 MkI Cruisers, 20 MkII Destroyers, and 5 MkII Corvettes, you could either create three groups, or split the destroyers into two groups if you were so inclined, and so on; so it would be similar to TW, except that the player has control over the number of units in each group (up to a maximum, probably based on ship size; in TW, the maximum is high for infantry, lower for cavalry, and lowest for things like Elephants, 'heroic' infantry units, and siege equipment).
What is a "stack" in Rome: TW ?
I strongly suggest that you and anyone else interested in this process pick up a copy of one of the TW games; Shogun and Medieval will run on older hardware (Rome is fairly demanding) and their combat systems are similar in design.
Rome allows you to put the reinforcements under AI control and commit them, which is fine with me if it's technically feasible.
What does it mean to "commit them" ?
It means that, at the start of the battle, you select whether or not you want the reinforcements to come along with you under AI control (as you can never control more than 16 units, although how many soldiers are in those 16 units depends on a game setting of 'unit size' so it ranges quite a lot) or whether you want them reinforce your units, meaning that, at the start of the battle, they begin off the battle map and do not come on until you have less than 16 units. (If you start with less than 16, they enter immediately, although not from the same place as your units). So you can have them in reserve (thus not 'committing' them) or have them join you, but you only get direct control of them if you have room in your stack; otherwise, you have to trust the AI not to get them all killed, which is something most people did not do (although the recent expansion pack may have changed this). It's a very ambitious design, though, having the AI try to figure out what you are doing with your troops and then help you with its share; the game also lets you put any of your regular units under AI control if the battle is very hectic.
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Re: Epic Feel

#43 Post by Aquitaine »

guiguibaah wrote:Aquitaine, what is your definition for "Epic Feel"?

The more I read this thread, the higher and higher the ships in combat seem to get. (Latest count I read was max of 50,000 ships).
It certainly isn't 50,000 ships. Look at it this way:

In a SP game of any of the Total War series, you are typically fielding between 800-1400 soldiers at once, as is the enemy. In an MP game, each side is fielding this many, so the game has to be able to withstand @6000 soldiers on the field, plus terrain/building/vegetation detail. I believe they advertise up to 10,000 (and have some screenshots of this) but I've never tried this -- perhaps I'll go give it a shot. :) (anybody up for some Rome MP?)

This number changes if you say 'give me larger unit sizes' or 'give me smaller unit sizes' and there are four or five levels you can set 'unit size' to such that, in FO terms, the maximum number of cruisers in a single unit group could be 20 or it could be 40 or anywhere in between. You change this setting if your hardware can handle it.

This number for us is not going to be determined by anybody in this thread going 'yeah, eight hundred sounds good.' It is a technical decision. We need to aim for something reasonable, obviously, and come up with something like (off the top of my head):

Hull Max # Per Unit
---- -----------------
Lancer 200
Frigate 120
Corvette 90
Cruiser 60
Battleship 30
Titan 15
Doom Star 4

Because 'epic' does not just mean 'so many ships on the battlefield you can't see any stars' -- it means you have to be able to really follow what's going on and to pick out your 200 lancers as well as your 15 Titans; MOO3 failed at this and you can't really even see detail on any ships smaller than Titans (and even then, the detail is grainy and hard to make out if you install cloaking devices). I imagine the art dept. at QSI must have gone ballistic when they realized that their hard work in creating @10 ship classes for each of @8 racial types would go down the toilet as almost every one of those assets looks like a dot on the screen! But then we have the advantage in that graphic equipment is simply more powerful today than it was then, so hopefully this will not be too much of a problem.
Compare this to something like Freespace 2, when at the time you had (at most) 5 capital ships (total) in the system - the models were richly detailed, and the way the combat was done (charging of beam cannons, firing, flak guns, music, etc...) made everything seem epic.
I agree that FS2 does it better, and I think we'd be fortunate to have ship combat look like FS2's. But I still think MOO3 failed; yes, you don't need to give orders to your individual ships, but it's like watching every space battle from the other side of the star system. All you see is lights in the distance. Hardly epic.
I just wanted to point out that the scale of something is all relative. The more you zoom out to view a huge battle of scale, the less of it you actually see (and hear, in terms of sound effects). The more we go into larger fleets, the less we are going into ship design and more into taskforce design. (In some ways, a task force of picket ships, escorts and core ships is just like one big multi-purpose ship).
And this is a valid consideration. But I think we would be repeating a mistake of the past if we allow space combat to become so high level, so top-down, that you can never really tell what your ships are doing or what they look like. TW handles this quite well; you can always, at any zoom setting, tell one unit from the next and see enough detail to know they have spears versus swords or bows; but if you zoom in, you get more detail, you hear soldiers complaining or fighting or yelling in retreat. TW is aware of this scale factor, and that's something we have to pull off as well.
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Slightly off topic...

#44 Post by Magus »

This is Epic
That picture only has 15 capital ships and one ruined space station. And a few hundred Strike Craft. But even if you filter out the Strike Craft, it still gives the impression of "Wow. This is big."

Aquitane, in that table you list, are those numbers the max amount of that type in combat, or the max amount of that type as one unit in combat? If the latter, that seems completely reasonable.

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#45 Post by Aquitaine »

Yes, the max type in one unit, e.g. a unit of archers in RTW with the 'large' unit size setting is 80, but you can, of course, have a bunch of units (all 16, if you were really weird).
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