Battles, battles and MORE battles ! Turn based vs real time.

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Nightfish
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#31 Post by Nightfish »

I prefer to keep ground combat and space combat separate. And I think attacking one planet per turn is plenty. I could live with several attacks if the player had to split his forces to do so, but I'd prefer the system to remain a little more simple and straight forward.

Also I'd like planets to have different role in space combat than they did in MoO2. I mean, really, I can fit one missile silo on it with 2 x 7 missiles? A medium sized ship carries more than that. That's not just unrealistic, that's highly illogical, and while I don't mind a decent amount of unrealism, that's just too much.

Nightfish
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#32 Post by Nightfish »

More battles per turn will not necessarily make MP any slower. The total number of battles would sort of stay the same. After all, you can kill each ship only once.

I do think there is one thing we can safely say: We cannot use MoO2's system as is for our game.

For one MoO2 allowed you to have more ships than could enter combat. If we have something similar to that, this will disadvantage species with a high number of low quality ships.

The other - more obvious - reason is that late game battles tended to be extremely tedious and long winded. I don't really see away around that using a TB system.

(And, no: It's not helping that in MoO2 multiplayer games you tend to have no more than 10 ships. We need a system that works equally well in SP and MP games, for small galaxies and large ones, lot's of low quality ships and few high quality ships.)

OceanMachine
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#33 Post by OceanMachine »

PK wrote: Yes u can watch ur cavaliers attacks enemy - very nice view. But what they soldiers have ? Nothing - just a pure ride with swords !
I'm rather curious if you have any knowledge regarding Total War? What do the soldiers have? Different weapons types, different types of horses, different skill levels, leader traits, fatigue ratings, speed, morale, terrain capabilities, armor... You seem to not understand that any level of detail that can be put in TBS can also be put into RTS. And implemented in a more realistic way.

And it will be In FO there will all kinds of weapons - which complicates our matter. Someone said here, u can mark ships and click "order to use weapon". Yes it can be done this way. Yet still strategic battles arent end like this. They are much MUCH deeper.
Honestly, I have yet to see any 4x game (including moo2) where the battles have a fraction as much depth of Medieval: Total War. Or as many weapon types for that matter.. You've got beams, projectiles, missiles, and torpedoes. They've got many types swords, spears, axes, bows, crossbows, firearms, catapults, ballistae, cannons, etc.. And frankly there's a lot more to good strategy than having lots of weapon types..
I mean here online games on the highest level. And that is why u will never understand my point of view.
:roll:
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Tyreth
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#34 Post by Tyreth »

Well, thought I'd throw my thoughts into the mix.

First, I resent implications that real time lacks strategy. Total War was very strategic. Consider real life battles with commanders - they have time to plan strategies before the battle begins - but once it's in action there's no "pause" button. If the enemy ambushes you, then you must deal with it as it happens. Total war ran slow enough that you had time to think, but fast enough to keep you moving. It does not favor fast clickers much.

I've recently been playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a first person shooter (I play all kinds of games!). I've come to appreciate that even in games where action and decisions require a second or less of thinking time, there is still great depth. Both in the planning goals and methods of achieving it, and reacting to circumstances as they arrive. Real time in general does not kill strategy at all.

If we were to implement real time combat in freeorion I think it's fair to say the following would apply:
1. It would run at a speed that allows the mind more than enough time to translate a decision into a mouse/keyboard command - ala Total War
2. It must be designed in a way that incorporates strategy, and not just lassoo->select one unit->kill it->repeat - ala Total War
The second is entirely possible. We just need to set in blood before hand that that is our vision, so we work with that goal in mind.

Now I don't necessarily favor real time, but I don't think it's fair at all to reject it as lacking strategy. For a well done game it should combine speed of reaction with a sharp, strategic mind. For our game, it would ignore the first part (speed of reaction) and allow a sharp, strategic mind to flourish. Some speed will be required, but it will be minimal - and will give more of a sense of fear in battle. Let us rule and wage war as did Napolean and Sun Tzu!

Anyway - if we do turn based, we should use some initiative based system like Stars!. Basically, each ship has an initiative - based on technology and equipment on the ship, weight, etc. This determined firing order. That means it won't favor the person who moves first - because that favor will be obtained by making sacrifices elsewhere.

I think both systems can work.

jbarcz1
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#35 Post by jbarcz1 »

My "programmer perspective" is that having seperate TB and RT combat engines would probably be a pain to implement. I've never tried it, but it would certainly make the system harder to design. It's been done before thougH (X-Com apocalypse), and I suppose it could be done again, but it makes our jobs more difficult. I personally dont see a compelling reason to offer a choice of tb or rt combat, except as a compromise. Let's pick a system and stick to it.
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Nightfish
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#36 Post by Nightfish »

Thanks jbarcz1, that's sort of what I was thinking, I just wanted somebody with more knowledge to tell me if I was right. :)

jbarcz1
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#37 Post by jbarcz1 »

OceanMachine wrote:
PK wrote: Yes u can watch ur cavaliers attacks enemy - very nice view. But what they soldiers have ? Nothing - just a pure ride with swords !
I'm rather curious if you have any knowledge regarding Total War? What do the soldiers have? Different weapons types, different types of horses, different skill levels, leader traits, fatigue ratings, speed, morale, terrain capabilities, armor... You seem to not understand that any level of detail that can be put in TBS can also be put into RTS. And implemented in a more realistic way.
In fairness, I think the depth that he's referring to may be the amount of fine control you have over your units. The argument against RT seems to be that you are not able to control every detail of your units' behavior, and this detracts from the depth of the combats.
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tzlaine
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#38 Post by tzlaine »

Nightfish wrote:I'd like to hear from the programmers how difficult/much work it is to do both RT and TB combat for our game. We have said time and again that we need to be careful where to spend our limited ressources. This may be just my imagination, but I'd think it to be a relatively big ammount of work. Am I thinking wrong?
It would be a HUGE amount of work. I for one would refuse to do it. We need to pick one major undertaking or another.

drek
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#39 Post by drek »

On a simlair note to NF's concern:

I've never implemented anything that even vaguely resembles a real time combat engine. Does anyone have an idea of what major issues are involved?

How much time would it take to construct a RT engine vs. a TB one?

krum
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#40 Post by krum »

I'm ambivalent RT or TB, I'd say use the one that's easier to code. PK is right, you can never have as much control in RT, but with a preparation phase and pausing, and slow enough combat, it won't be a problem. And RT has some advantages too.

jbarcz1
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#41 Post by jbarcz1 »

drek wrote:On a simlair note to NF's concern:

I've never implemented anything that even vaguely resembles a real time combat engine. Does anyone have an idea of what major issues are involved?

How much time would it take to construct a RT engine vs. a TB one?
I've implemented a 2D action game engine, which is similar in concept (though the input system is different)

Basically, for every object in the world, you figure out what it would have done in the time since it was last updated, then you update it. This means moving, changing speed, applying damage, etc. Then you re-render a new frame based on the present state of the battlefield.
The trick is to get it all done quickly, because if each pass takes too long, you get choppy performance and its no fun. This is much harder to do over a network, but it can obviously be done. There are tricks that they play to get it to work. I've never implemented a RT game engine that worked over a network, so I can't really say how much longer it would take us. I would guess though, that there would be a lot more tuning and testing required than there would with a TB game.
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tsev
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#42 Post by tsev »

Nightfish wrote:I'd like to hear from the programmers how difficult/much work it is to do both RT and TB combat for our game. We have said time and again that we need to be careful where to spend our limited ressources. This may be just my imagination, but I'd think it to be a relatively big ammount of work. Am I thinking wrong?
It depends on how its done. Turn based wouldn't be a big deal. RTS, however has its own set of difficulties with it. In TB, you don't need to worry about a ship's turn rate, acceleration, mass, etc. Well, you CAN worry about it, but it gets abstracted into the combat system. RTS you have all of that, plus moving the ships, collision detection... But you get to see your ships in action, and thats whats nice about it.

That being said, RTS would be much harder and take longer than doing turn-based. Now, as a programmer, I think it would be a whole hell of a lot more fun to code RTS than TB. I'm actually a fan of the hybrid BOTF system, albeit, as someone said earlier, it does have its flaws.


Edit: I may have misunderstood NF's post....was the question "how hard would it be to write 2 engines for the same game?" If it was, then I'd give a definitive and unqualified 'no'. We need to choose one system and go with it.

However, FreeOrion SHOULD end up being highly mod-able, not to mention open-sourced, so if we end up doing an RTS engine for combat and somebody doesn't like it, they are well within their means to go ahead and write a TB version of the combat engine. ;)
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Nightfish
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#43 Post by Nightfish »

Yes, the question was "how hard is it to do two engines for the same game :) I didn't really want two engines, don't get me wrong. I was just curious and I think somebody else said we should do two engines? (I may be wrong there)

Good to have feedback from the programmers here. :wink:

Nightfish
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#44 Post by Nightfish »

I'm interested in how MoO3 handled taskforces. I don't know the game, so I was hoping someone who does might post a short discription? Thanks! :)

drek
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#45 Post by drek »

How Moo3 Handles Taskforces

Short version: Badly.

Long version: After drudging through the abjact dullness of moo3's ship design system, you build a few ships. Each ship has a class (like DnD classes). Don't remember the names exactly, but it boils down to "Long range" "short range" "point defense" "scout" "troop transport" "missiles" (i think that was a separate class) and maybe a few I've forgotten.

When a ship is built, it is automagically moved to the reserves. Oddly, you can move any ship to the reserves, even if it's deep in enemy territory.

To get ships out of the reserves, you build a taskforce. Each task force has a class, roughly parallel to the ship classes. Each task force also has a size. In order to make a taskforce of the desired class and size, you need to have a combination of ships of the required classes. For example, before a task force can be a certain size, you have to have some scout ships added to one of the outer rings.

Oh yeah, rings: a taskforce is made up of rings. You can only put certain types of ships in each ring, and then only in certain quantities. Since the manual is crap, and the in game help is crappier you have to experiment to discover which class of ship you can place into which ring for which class of taskforce.

Finally, you have your taskforce. Woot! You move your taskforces around the galaxy map just like you would ships in moo2. Once you get to the combat screen, you control your each taskforce as if it were a single unit--although the ships will fire and take damage on an individual basis. This looks and plays like a gimpy version of Total War.

The Final Analysis: Taskforces (or Fleets as I'd prefer to call them) aren't a bad idea but everything Moo3 touches turns to $h!^.

Suggestion: We start calling Moo3 Goo3 (Gimp of Orion), and use some sort of fleet or taskforce game mechanic anyway. Just because Goo stunk it up doesn't mean the idea can't work.

Brainac: I always liked the way he talked back in the old Superpowers cartoon. :P

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