Ship Design

[Magus]

I have worked some more on the design process. Despite other proposed paradigms such as Sapphire's capital/escort proposal, I have basically stuck with the same general idea that I started with, close to Master of Orion. However, I understand the need for simplicity and how a slot based system would be the best way to implement that. So here is MK III of my ship design proposal.


Ships are divided into 7 general size classes, summary and design process for them are as follows.

Note: Tonnage numbers are to give a general idea. Obviously, were this system to be adopted, the numbers would be subject to change. Class names, since there is such turmoil over that, could also be altered.

Parasite Craft are fighters, bombers, fire control drones, whatever. They do not have FTL, and are automatically built for any ship with launch bays. Those ships specify what kind of Parasites they want upon design, though that ratio can be changed after design. Their tonnage is standardized so that you can switch around different parasite loadouts with no hassle.
Parasite Craft: [Tonnage = 5, for size comparison]
Class Name: [Requisite]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

Corvettes are basically meant to be FTL capable Parasites.
Corvettes:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 10 to 20]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

Frigates are the first real combat starships. However, they are forced to specialize due to equipment limits.
Frigates:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 40 to 75]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

Destroyers are basically slightly bigger frigates with the ability to be more well rounded.
Destroyers:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 80 to 140]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

These fill the gap between the light strike units like frigates and destroyers, and the powerful warships and dreadnoughts. Like Battlecruisers in the British Navy, they should be able to easily outgun anything smaller, and outrun anything larger.
Cruisers:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 200 to 300]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

Warships are supposed to fill the role of general engagement platform for a mid-to-late-game stellar nation. Consider these like a Star Destroyer in the Star Wars Empire.
Warships:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 450 to 600]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:

Dreadnoughts are huge and incredibly versatile. The versatility is born of the fact that you are very unlikely to have large numbers of these, so what you have should be able to do whatever you need them for.
Dreadnoughts:
Class Name: [Requisite]
Tonnage: [Requisite, From 800 to 1400]
Hull: [Requisite]
Drive: [Requisite]
Primary Equipment:
Primary Equipment:
Primary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:
Secondary Equipment:


So what goes into these slots?
Tonnage says how big the ship is. You don't have to deal with anything beyond that, all the equipment on board is made to fit the tonnage. This option could certainly be removed if it is deemed a trouble to balance.

In the Hull slot, you choose the material the ship is made out of. Technology should not continually improve straight hull strength, but should instead create different types of armor (Reactive, Ablative, Reflective, Hardened, whatever), and only flat out improve a type of armor after a long time (in which case the ships are likely skirting obsolesence anyways)

Drives should follow the same paradigm as Hull: Not flat improvements, but differences. However, there are obviously less modifications that can be made, resulting in a likely increase in the rate of general improvements. I personally don't see this as a bad thing, though I may be alone in that. If a ship class has a non-bleeding edge interstellar speed, then don't put it in your rapid-strike/response groups...

Primary Equipment is, of all things, the ship's primary equipment. Probably armament, but not necessarily. You could have a Cruiser who has a shielding system as one of it's primaries, making it quite resilient. While any piece of secondary equipment can be put into a primary slot, the reverse is not necessarily true (Spinal armaments being the big one there).

Secondary Equipment is to cover the other aspects of the ship. Defenses are the primary things, but secondary armaments, thicker armor, better drives, redundant systems, special equipment, and so on and so forth.

If an equipment slot is left empty, the tonnage it would normally take up is distributed to the rest of the equipment, proportional to the tonnage they would normally have. Obviously, a Primary slot represents quite a bit more mass than a secondary. Multiple equipment slots may be devoted to the same piece of equipment, increasing the mass alotted to that system.

Equipment should follow the same general idea as hull and drives. You don't get better things, you get different things. Eventually, you'll get better things, but by then the ships have been in service for something approaching a century...

Example ship:
Imperator-Class Warship
-600 Mtons
-Durasteel Hull
-Ion Drives
-Turbolaser Batteries (Pr.)
-Planetary Assault Equipment (Pr.)
-Launch Bays [Ratio: 2 Fighter, 1 Interceptor, 1 Bomber]
-Ion Cannon Batteries
-Ion Cannon Batteries
-Deflector Shields
-Empty
(It's an Imperial Star Destroyer, if you didn't get that)

Or, if you prefer
Galaxy-Class Cruiser
-300 Mtons
-Tritanium Hull
-Impulse Drives
-Plasma Shields (Pr.)
-Science Equipment (Pr.)
-Phaser Banks
-Photon Torpedoes
-Plot Device
(Make it so )

Fire Away!

[Skaro]

I like your approach Magus, it seems somewhat similar to the customization in Battletech like so:

http://www.battletecharchive.net/clanwa ... tlord.html

http://www.battletecharchive.net/clanwa ... kenna.html

http://www.battletecharchive.net/clanwa ... texas.html


We could basicly set up a model with weights and sizes (slot points?) for various weapons and equipment like:

Name: Heavy ion cannon
Damage: 60
Weight: 10 tons
Size: 3 slots

Name: ECM
Range: 20
Weight: 0.5 tons
Size: 1 slot

[queue]

Refering to Magus' proposal I had some own ideas:

1. Ship Building Costs: The building time could be calculated by the tonnage, f. e. 2+tonnage/40 turns. So a frigate is build in 3 turns, a huge Dreadnought in 37 turns. The PP per turn depends on chosen hull, drive and equipment. Equipment cost is only counted once per item, even if it is used in 2 or 3 slots. So specialized ships are much cheaper than ships with many different items, and more ships can be build in the same time.

The other ideas could be seen as a try to implement the pros of the capital ship idea in a slot based system:

2. max ship xp/ranks depending on size class: a ship earn xp and is promoted to a higher rank when reaching a given amount of xp (shown as rank of the ship commander or whatever). The maximum rank, a vessel can achieve, depends on its size class. We could even have parasites get xp, or leave this to real starships. Each "promotion" comes with a small bonus (better aiming/evading etc.).

3. The two highest ranks (only reachable by battleships and dreadnoughts) unlock special equipment slots, when refitting the ship. So a battleship could be refitted with one special, a dreadnought even with two. But only, if these ship were in service a long time and earned their rank in dozens of battles. This would make such big ships very individual and valuable, because of their xp. The player would sacrifice smaller ships to hold the "capital ships" alive and let them escape, if battle is lost.

4. Standard equipment only for hig "capital ships" (i.e. hyperdrive): This could be achieved by using tonnage prerequisites for such equipment. The first hyperdrive system could require a minimum of 400 Mtons ship tonnage to be installed (opening starlane for hyperdrive requires a minimal mass... gravity field... blah-technobabble).



With this proposals we have all pros of the capital ships:
- huge, valuable ships with traditions (xp, ranks) and small grunts/escorts
- rare specials
- possibility to have capital ships as "hyperdrive tow ships" for the whole fleet
- advanced design and refit cycle only for capitals (special equipment, central role for fleet FTL-Movement, heavily depending on FTL-Tech)


@Skaro: I think you misunderstood the proposal. Slots are not a measurement unit for equipment space, but a kind of focus for the equipment. So, no equipment should be using more than one slot, but one slot "phaser" could mean f. e. 2 spinal mounted phaser banks plus 6 smaller banks with wider firing arcs etc.
Or, to use your example, heavy ion cannons could require a primary slot, because they are a central design design decision for this ship, where smaller ion cannons could be installed in a secondary slot.

[Magus]

queues got it more right on the slots, its more like this:
I have two cruisers, one of 200 Mtons, one of 300Mtons.
I put "Ambiplasma Cannon" as a primary for both.
Lets say for the 200 one, It would automatically equip... Well, if we say primaries are approx. 3x secondaries, and drives/hull/essentials take up 30% of the ship...(pulling those numbers out of my ass here), it would have 45 Mtons worth of Ambiplasma cannon. But the 300Mton cruiser would have 67.5 tons worth of Ambiplasma cannon. And a 40Mton frigate's Ambiplasma primary would be 12 Mtons. What that translates into in actual guns... well, it could be something like the frigate having 3 4-Mton cannon, the light cruiser having 4 8-Mton, 2 4-Mton, and a 5-Mton, and the Battlecruiser having 2 14-Mton, 3 8-Mton, and 3 5-Mton cannon. (again, completely made up)

The only pieces of equipment that I can think of that would actually demand a primary slot would be spinal armaments, though if people think of others they could certainly stick them in.

Special equipment for capital ships: The only kinds of really special equipment I would like to have would be Orion Artifacts. Those could have a preset tonnage, and wipe out however many equipment slots it would require to fit it in. Although, some equipment may not fit if the tonnage is too small (a secondary launch bay on a Frigate is 4 tons, but the parasites are 5 tons. doesn't quite work).

Personally, I'm against large experience effects (like extra equipment) for ships. Small bonuses are fine, but large specials should either just be really expensive, so they are already valuable, or Orion Artifacts. One other note on experience: make sure you lose experience, permanently, with damage. Sure, the ship can be repaired, but the people can't be, and the casualties aren't replaced with veterans.

If you want experience to play a larger role, I would do it with Admirals similar to Total War generals. Especially since I am generally against the concept of refitting (Sure, we can upgrade your engines, even though that means slicing apart your hull, ripping the core of your ship out, putting a new one in, making sure everything interfaces fine with systems they weren't designed for, replacing all the systems you had to destroy to get the old drives out, not to mentions the ones that can't interface with the new technology, etc, etc.)


Just a disclaimer: I really like the general concept of Sapphires proposal, but I think a more standard system is the way to go for FreeOrion. I am not necessarily a majority though

[skdiw]

I have a few ideas:

1. this idea is like tonnage one. you can build any tonnage ship you want (no size restrictions), and the shipyard determines how fast (tonnage/turn) you can build. note that it's possible to build mulitple ships per turn. the tonnage is one factor that determines the subspace speed/acceleration (the other factor being the engines) and size of hull. each arnaments takes up a certain amount of size and maybe some tonnage. Special weapons costs a lot of size, so you its necessary you build a large ships.

comments: this idea is simple; ties multiple features together more neatly (speed in tactical, builds multiple ships, how global queue and ship productions relationship, less clutter in military tech); however, one weakness I see is the only difference between large ships and light ships is speed, specials, and production rate to promote ship size variety, which might be on the weak side.

2. ship sizes or classes are each researched in parallel, meaning at start you can enchance your designs of mark I, II, III, IV... independently. each class of ships has its own character, such as the ability to equip specials, earn xp, or move faster. research tech enhances the character of the class, or some other bonuses. this idea uses the slot system. each class has slots to reflect the character of the ship

comments: advantage are rps and roles built in and clearly defined, UI can be made very simple for some ship classes. however, there could be many category that clutters the tech

3. a mixer of 1. and 2. this idea is just like 2, but instead of slots, you have hull sizes to put your stuff in.

4. similar to 1. except instead of shipyard being part of limiting factor, there is a upper tonnage limit, which you expand through research.

[Moriarty]

I'm wondering if it's possible to have ships built not by tonnage/turn but rather by taking complexity into account along with tonnage.

i.e. which of these would take longer to build:

Dreadnaught: 600 tons - 50 Mark VI lasers, 1 shield, 1 engine, some armour

Battleship: 500 tons -5 Mark V lasers, 10 anti-planet bombs, 5 Point defence lasers, 1 EMP cannon, 2 missile racks, 3 torpedo tubes, 1 shield, 1 shield augmenters, 1 engine, 1 afterburner, some armour, ECM.

Obviously the battleship is much more complex, but as it weighs less wth the current proposel it will get built in 5/6ths the time. I'd suggest they both take about the same time, because a lot of effort would be required to get all of the battleships systems to integrate, whereas the Dreadnaught could almost come off a mass-production line.


The reason I think this would work is because you _have_ to have a well balanced force. If all your ships are dedicated to only 1 thing, then they won't stand well against enemies who are able to modify their combat tactics each battle without re-building their entire fleet. It's how modern Naval fleets work (fewer more capable ships).
This way you wouldn't obviate the ability of a player to build fleets of larger but less rounded ships.

[queue]

When building time decreases, overall production cost decreases, too. That would make very specialized big ships cheaper than fleets of small ships.
Why building 30 "beam frigates" (let's say 20 pp for 3 turns => 60 pp each, 1800 for all 30), when a single "beam dreadnought" (20 pp for 30 turns => 600 pp) has more firepower and hull structure?
Both designed only with one primary beam weapon and no other equipment, frigate for 40 Mtons, dreadnought for 1400 Mtons.

Of course well belanced ships are better, but if someone can build 2 or 3 specialized fleets of "bulk dreadnoughts" with high firepower instead of one well-balanced, he can switch his tactics easily by sending another fleet, or even combine different fleets.

And I don't want to see smaller ships become obsolete in late game, like in MoO2.

[Magus]

Taking Complexity into account is fine, though not necessarily how you mean it.

Lets take two ships. Frigates, specifically, each 75Mtons. This is near the beginning of the game, with only a few advances.
Frigate 1:
Hull: Titanium
Drive: Nuclear
Primary: Laser Cannon
Secondary: Deflector Shields
Secondary: Extra Armor
Secondary: Extra Armor

Frigate 2:
Hull: Ablative Ceramic
Drive: Nuclear
Primary: Spinal Ion Cannon
Secondary: Deflector Shields
Secondary: EW Suite
Secondary: Enhanced Drives.

Frigate 1 is a very simple design. Deflector shields are the only things that have much tech in them at all. Frigate 2 though, its EW suite, Ablative armor, and Spinal Ion Cannon are all quite complex gizmos. As such, while they are both 75Mtons, the cost of Frigate 2 would be higher. But see frigate 3 now...

Frigate 3:
Hull: Woven Transuranics
Drive: Antimatter
Primary: Antimatter Torpedo Launcher
Secondary: Antimatter Torpedo Launcher
Secondary: Antimatter Torpedo Launcher
Secondary: Antimatter Torpedo Launcher

Obviously, the tech base is significantly higher. Even though it is a far "simpler" design, the components are much more complex. If it were 40Mtons, it would still be more expensive than either of the heavy frigates above. Integration would be a bit of a concern, but integrating 28 Mtons of Antimatter Torps would be fairly complex in its own right. A better example would be a Warship that has both primary slots taken up by an Orion Singularity Cannon. That thing, not the ship: the cannon, is going to cost more than about 12 conventional Warships, though the design may be "simple" (ship wrapped around really, really big gun)

I would also point out that your battleship design could not be built under the current system, there aren't enough equipment slots. Specialization is in many ways mandated by the limited amount of equipment, larger ships getting the capability to be more versatile.

Building time does not necessarily have to scale with cost. I have not been keeping up with the economic side of this game, but you could have shipyards that can produce 500Mtons of shipping a turn, period. However, putting all the resources into complex designs would cost more than simpler ones, and would be more costly to maintain.


skdiw, I would rather have a straight tonnage-based system myself, but that was rejected earlier in the thread.

[skdiw]

When building time decreases, overall production cost decreases, too. That would make very specialized big ships cheaper than fleets of small ships.

I'm wondering if it's possible to have ships built not by tonnage/turn but rather by taking complexity into account along with tonnage.

we can also attack a tonnage to each weapon. alternatively, using one of my idea, if hull size is porportional to tonnage, that will also solve the problem. Then again, it depends how you structure the techs.

Why building 30 "beam frigates" (let's say 20 pp for 3 turns => 60 pp each, 1800 for all 30), when a single "beam dreadnought" (20 pp for 30 turns => 600 pp) has more firepower and hull structure?
Both designed only with one primary beam weapon and no other equipment, frigate for 40 Mtons, dreadnought for 1400 Mtons.

its a problem. but it's noteworthy to point out that the time difference can be a difference.

Of course well belanced ships are better, but if someone can build 2 or 3 specialized fleets of "bulk dreadnoughts" with high firepower instead of one well-balanced, he can switch his tactics easily by sending another fleet, or even combine different fleets.

I would like to play with a mixture of specialized ships, thus making the fleet balanced, rather than a fleet of balanced ships.

And I don't want to see smaller ships become obsolete in late game, like in MoO2.

likewise. that's why smaller ships should have some role or advantage. speed, shorter time frame to build... something. Although, when balancing smaller ships, it's crucial to consider how techs affect ships sizes. traditionally, as you research up the tech tree, bigger ship sizes are unlock and they are better than your other ships as they should to compensate all the rp investments you made. that progression of tech dictates that bigger is better, and is something to consider if we want this for FO.

[Magus]

I would have no problem with Dreadnoughts being available from the very beginning. Now, it would take you about three centuries to build it without the preexisting tech base, but you could do it. Larger ships get the advantages of versitality and larger equipment (even if you mount the same weapon on a corvette and dread, the dread will mount bigger, longer range armaments). Smaller ships get the advantages of speed, maneuverability, and quick production (not necessarily per-ton, actually larger ships should be slightly better at that, but the ability to launch several ships and have them active while a larger vessel would still be moored in drydock).

Late game, I would actually expect smaller ships to become more prevalent. If 12 tons of weaponry can blow up 200 tons of ship near the end, why make each enemy shot kill more of you? Average ship size I would expect to start low (because you can't afford more), go up (as you can lay down larger hulls), and then start to drop (as smaller ships can destroy things far larger)

[utilae]

Small ships have another ability. Segmentation (a funny word I know).

You have no ships.
If you want to build a large ship, it will take 20 turns. If the enemy attacks on turn 10, the large ship isn't built, you are done.
The solution is to build 20 small ships (equals 1 large ship & takes 1 turn each). If the enemy attacks on turn 10, you will have 10 small ships. You are ok.


If your large ship dies, you have to build a new one. You are prone for 20 turns.

If one of your small ship dies, you can build a replacement in one turn. You are only prone for one turn (where you have 19 ships instead of 20). Of course it is likely that all 20 ships could die, but at least you can have some ships built, if the enemy was to come by the next 10 turns.

[skdiw]

we call "segmentation" as quicker production, or shorter production time frame. -_-

[Magus]

The "segmentation" as you call it is a critical part of the balancing. Large ships take far more punishment before they die, and can carry equipment that smaller ships can't. The overkill effect (100 smalls equal 1 large, one shot from a ubergun does 10% damage to large, but can only kill one small), flexibility in deployment, and having smaller ships out while larger ones are still building.



Edit: This would be a second post, except that double-posting is wrong and no one has seen fit to post after this...

I have been thinking about the relative sizes of different ship classes. In MoO 1, there is a distinct ratio between the sizes:
125 Small = 25 Medium = 5 Large = 1 Huge
(Proof: Start a new game, look at the ship sizes. They'll be 40, 200, 1000, and 5000, with some change added on to each of them for your level 1 instead of level 0 construction technology level)

I would like to implement a similar idea, so it is easy to gather the approximate strength of an opposing fleet. Here is what I started with
1 DN = 3 BB = 9 CA = 27 DD = 81 FF = 243 CV = 729 PC
A note here: A Dreadnought is supposed to be catastrophically huge, they aren't the commonplace vessels like in the Honorverse.

Now, keeping the Parasite tonnage at 5, this would bring the rest up as follows:
CV-15 FF-45 DD-135 CA-405 BB-1215 DN-3645
Those could be upper-bounds, lower-bounds, or median values if tonnage is still variable.

Now, powers-of-three ratios is fine within a size class in either direction. But for "battles-of-extreme-epicness," where you have 10+ DN equivalents on each side, you could have nearly 5000 hyper-capable hulls, or nearly 15000 total ships. I personally have no problem with this. But the poor people programming it might, not to mention however this is represented graphically. So I'll make a suggestion in that area: Icons.

For those who were unfortunate enough to play the game O.R.B., it had a system in which ships were overlayed by icons representing them at long range, the icon being fixed in size so that you could zoom in and see the actual model. Similar to the Tactical Overlay of Homeworld, except specific ships could be picked out rather than size classes. Icons would be easily customizable for making your fleet look unique, and quite easy on the processor/gfx card. Now, there should still be models, for whats a game without eye candy, but the models would only be visible if you were close enough to them... which comes to the second portion of this suggestion: realistic ranges.

If a group of corvettes is escorting a Cruiser, they might be about 20km away from it. Weapons ranges would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of km. Because a phased time system would be in place, time is not a constraint. Between order phases the game could operate at some large value of time compression, and the order phases could run at normal time. This would allow ships to fight in battles across a stellar system without FTL, and without battles taking hours.

This would obviously require a powerful system of fleet management, and I'll write up my suggestion to that... when I can be more coherent. This whole type of warfare has never really been done before, so I can understand if you want to ignore it completely. But I'd like you to at least think about it.