Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

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Admiral_Dana
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Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#1 Post by Admiral_Dana »

Well, this is my first post. I stumbled on Free Orion today, and love it so far. Its complex, deep and the only thing that made me sad was the lack of enemy AI, but Im sure that will come with time.

I had an idea for ship types, as oppose to the ship sizes that are being suggested. Ill list them out with a quick description of the roles of each.

Frigate - Small, lightly armed and armoured, but fast. Can be used primarily for scouting and small scale conflicts.

Picket Ship - This is basically a point defense ship. Slightly larger than the frigate, it is designed as close support for larger ships. Could give it a special reduction in resource costs on the ship(Space, power, etc) Allowing picket ships to carry more point defense weaponry.

Destroyer - Basically pack hunter ships, designed to operate in large numbers to tackle and take down larger ships.

Cruiser - The first of the big boys. Capable of long range fire, moderate shields, armour and speed.

Heavy Cruiser - A step up from the Cruiser. Heavier armour and Shields at the cost of Speed and Manouverability.

Battleship - A big hitter. Slow, cumbersome but with massive firepower, heavy armour and moderate shields. Few Point defense weapons requiring the ship to have close support from smaller ships.

Carrier - As the name suggests. Head armour and shields, very slow, few weapons but can launch swarms of fighters for defense.

Dreadnaught - Huge ship, lumbering, slow, bugger all manouverability. But, Heavy armour and shields and bristling with weaponry.

Command Ship - As a Dreadnaught, providing combat bonuses to friendly ships in the same system it is in/same battle.

Titan - The second to biggest ship that can be produced, it flies like a brick, has massive shileds, armour and hull and huge weaponry with huge ranges.

City Ship - Basically a mobile base, capable of housing and supporting a fleet. Cannot be moved without the aid of advanced drive technologies.


These are only ideas and only for the combat ships. You will of course have various utility ships too. For instance Asteroid mining ships, Troop Transports, colony ships. You could even have a ship that can open up jump lanes from the system they are in, to a system the player owns, allowing a fleet stationed there to jump into the enemy system and launch a suprise attack.

I hope that this is useful. Would love to hear good ideas and comments.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

You seem to be describing ship roles, or what has been called ship roles in previous FreeOrion design discussions.

It's not clear what exactly you're proposing, though. You've listed some names and some characteristics you associated with them, but what do you propose should be done with the "type" classifications you've listed (or "role labels")? Something in the UI? A modification of the available hulls or a means by which to plan available parts and balancing thereof? Or...?

FYI, currently hulls in SVN are just called small, medium, large, etc. due to lack of creativity and time spent making more interesting ones. It is expected that there will be more hulls with a variety of differences, and not just a single line of fast/weak/cheap to slow/powerful/expensive.

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utilae
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#3 Post by utilae »

I've seen this crop up a few times. I would say he is proposing ship classes, which basically is a combination of role and size really.
I prefer that these things are separate because well you have more power in designing things, eg Scout, make it small or large rather than just a scout that is small. =)

marhawkman
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#4 Post by marhawkman »

Yeah one thing I've noticed from SEV is that the smallest ships really don't make great scouts. Putting in your best sensors and a decent supply regeneration capability takes up almost all the space in the hull.
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Josh
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#5 Post by Josh »

An Idea occured to me: how about ship templates? I'm betting some designs are more common than others, and after a while it's bothersome to have to generate a new ship design every time a new tech comes along. Beginners can be intimidated by the choice involved, and experts get bored of having to go through the motions.
If that's the case you could have templates set up for the players that have the computer detect the equipment you have and simply have the computer generate a ship design the ship for you.

Example Templates:
  • Attack Ship: Loads the heaviest guns and best combat systems while trying to remain relatively mobile.
  • Defender: Packs as much of your best shields, armor, and point defenses as it can. Mobility is not important, and engines are expendable.
  • Missile Carrier: Carries as many of the best missiles available.
  • Fighter Carrier: Carries as many of the best fighters available.
  • Stealth Ship: Loads the best stealth devices available and then your best weapons. Protection is less important, but shields are very useful.
  • Scout: Best detection systems and fuel. Better engines and point defenses if possible.
  • Troop Transport: As many troop carrying bays as possible. Armored if possible.
  • Colonizer: Best colony module, and then as many fuel pods and engines as possible
Click a template, see what the computer gives you, then tweak. Or not. Maybe you like what the computer gave you. I'd keep it to 8 templates; no way you can think of every possible design combo.

These templates do not discriminate by size. Nothing stopping you from having a huge scout. :)

Also, if specialty systems exist, templates would be biased to certain ones. Maybe defenders would prefer systems that protect the whole fleet, and attack ships would prefer powerful battle computers that enhance their weapons.

If you need a really unusual ship for a very specific purpose, you can still go in and blueprint a ship design the old fashioned way.

Other Common Ship Types in Sci-Fi
Healers (for repairs)
Kamikazes (for emergencies)
Boarding Vessels (for capturing)
Bombers (for enemy planets)
Inhibitors (for traps)
Super Weapons (for laughs)

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Ron_Lugge
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#6 Post by Ron_Lugge »

Templates might also be useful when it comes time to do the AI -- the AI would probably end up doing the exact same thing to design it's ships, after all!
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ship design templates, by that name, have been suggested a few times before. There was an empty tab in the design screen for template that I think got removed from v0.3.13, but which was labelled "Templates", and was intended for future use for such an automatic ship design maker. It's discussed a bit here (arbitrarily selected from posts returned after searching forum for "ship design template"):

viewtopic.php?p=29843#p29843

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Josh
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#8 Post by Josh »

O neat. Um, I didn't see that.

So anyways as what Lugge just said, AI will probably use some form of this too.

But I don't agree with the first post of this thread; users have much more power available to them to design their own ships, and you can't think of every kind of ship they might want to have. Sizes have the power of versatility in their favor, so no, I don't think it would be wise for FO to have strict, specific ship types like city ships, frigates, asteroid miners etc...

It's too pigeon-holey (highly technical term :roll: )

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IConrad
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#9 Post by IConrad »

"It's too pigeon-holey"

The word you're looking for is... ssssymbolisssmm... (says Willem DeFoe)

Or, you know, sequestering or disenfranchising.

I //do// like the idea of self-sustaining colonies on a mobile platform of some form. (City in the stars...) It would even be interesting to see a race that could not permanently colonize worlds but instead only built city/planet-ships for its development/population.

That being said; being able to pre-select a ship's role at time of design would be rather useful not just to the AI-players but also to simplifying the programmatic development for combat AIs in general. That way, you could assemble a fleet and the AI could, if left "fallow", determine what the fleet ought to do based on relative tech levels and ship roles.

I'm sure a sneaky player could figure out some way to tweak that AI to their personal advantage (say by putting heavy weapons on a scout ship...) but most such exploits could be found in playtesting and the rest would just be how a human player could keep his edge at higher levels of difficulty. :)

marhawkman
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#10 Post by marhawkman »

The templates idea has been implemented in SE5 since the beginning. It works decently well.
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General_Zaber
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#11 Post by General_Zaber »

Kinda off-topic but I don't like starting new threads.

I know we already have a meter for orbital defenses that covers things like missile bases and defense platforms, but I really liked the idea of orbitals the way it was implemented in MoO3 (I know that's rather heretical of me, actually liking parts of that oft-steroetyped game) I don't mean having to micromanage all those star bases on all your planets, but rather occasionally builidng a Death-Star-esque orbital fortress in a key system to provide a significant boost to that planet's defenses.

These Star Fortresses (or whatever less corny name you want to call them) would be designed, and treated in combat, as huge, immobile ships in orbit over the planet their built on. They'd be built as very-expensive buildings on planets with large-enough shipyards, and they'd be movable (albeit slowly and expensively) from planet to planet or system to system provided their travel isn't impeded by combat.
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MikkoM
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Re: Ship Types(An alternative to simple sizes)

#12 Post by MikkoM »

IConrad wrote: That being said; being able to pre-select a ship's role at time of design would be rather useful not just to the AI-players but also to simplifying the programmatic development for combat AIs in general. That way, you could assemble a fleet and the AI could, if left "fallow", determine what the fleet ought to do based on relative tech levels and ship roles.

I'm sure a sneaky player could figure out some way to tweak that AI to their personal advantage (say by putting heavy weapons on a scout ship...) but most such exploits could be found in playtesting and the rest would just be how a human player could keep his edge at higher levels of difficulty. :)
Are you suggesting here that the player would be completely free to assign a role to his/her ship design? And the AI would use these player assigned roles as a significant way of determining how the player’s fleets should act in battle?

In my opinion it would be better if the game would select these roles to the designed ships, based on what you put into your ship (parts). This way both AI and human players could be treated equally and hopefully we would see less idiotic AI behaviour, as players couldn`t cheat the AI so easily with these roles.

Anyway if I can remember right something like this was already discussed during 0.4 design discussions, but I can`t remember if there were any significant decisions made considering this.

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