what type of game are we creating...

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

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#91 Post by PowerCrazy »

Also I think that the weapons should be different with respective armor. And the only difference between ships would be Size and Cost. Otherwise every ship can do everything. Now naturally it would more cost effective for a carrier to be giant. That way more of a swarm effect. But a player would not be forced to build only giant carriers.
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

iamrobk
Space Dragon
Posts: 289
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 12:27 pm

#92 Post by iamrobk »

Like I said before, I think that different hull's should be selectable, with larger hulls having more space but also having a larger base price. You would then be able to "fill" the hull with whatever you wanted (as long as it would fit), which would also add to the cost. Completely customizable, really.

luckless666
Pupating Mass
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:16 am
Location: West Sussex, United Kingdom

#93 Post by luckless666 »

hmm... perhaps we sould look at space empire IVs way of doing this!
Chris Walker
| c.walker (at) mgt.hull.ac.uk |

WorldForge.org

PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#94 Post by PowerCrazy »

Why? We already have a good system with Moo, MoO2, and even MoO3 as far as ship design is concerned. And I'm pretty sure no one would complain if we kept those.

Now as far as tasks forces go or even whether they will exist is going to be HEAVILLY debated. But the actual ship desgin process is fairly uniform with maybe a few small tweaks (filters and how to seperate specials etc.)
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

User avatar
skdiw
Creative Contributor
Posts: 643
Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2003 2:17 am

#95 Post by skdiw »

PowerCrazy wrote:Also I think that the weapons should be different with respective armor. And the only difference between ships would be Size and Cost. Otherwise every ship can do everything. Now naturally it would more cost effective for a carrier to be giant. That way more of a swarm effect. But a player would not be forced to build only giant carriers.
I think my way is more elegant than having rock explicitly beat scissors... We have discussed this matter on the ship combat thread. my idea was
skdiw wrote: Under my proposal (found in the thread), heavy armor is used with big heavy ships because big ships have more HP to use that heavy armor. Amor also cost Ax+B so it's not worthwile to put heavy armor on small ships. I think your idea is too complicated. We can use your explaination on the manual, but for gameplay, I think simple HP and cost effectiveness is still better.

The way defense mechanism should work is the damage is first apply to shields, then to armor, then check to see if ship gets destroyed. Each hull size has a base HP number. Armor multiplies that number and adds B points (Ax+B again). The armor provide Ax+B damage absorption value: A can be zero or some fraction, B is constant damage drop. The shield provides a similar defense. The difference between shield and armor/HP is shield is rechargable during combat and after the armor/HP is half destroyed, any incoming attack has a chance to destroy the ship. (the rest is something else, but someone mentioned ship destruction so I'll leave it here too)The probablity of destroying the ship is proportional to damage taken after half of the HP is gone. For example, lets say your shield is completely destoryed. The enemy now fires a missile that deals 500 damage to your 2000 armor/HP. Say your armor absorb 10 points, so your HP is down to 1510. The next round, 2 missile comes over penetrating your shield and hits you. Your HP is down to 530. The probability of you living is 530/1000 or 53%. Alternatively, we can just forget the % and just say you die when all your armor is gone. Or do something funky like root probablity so heavy weapons are more likely to critically destroy a ship giving high damage weapons another strategic effect.
So instead of saying that this beam beats this kind of armor, we try to work it out naturally using simple math. Some thing like heavy armor absorbs 10 damage. A beam that deals 12 damage that takes up 1 space won't be as effective as a missile that deals 30 damage that takes up 2 space. Naturally, ppl will use missile boat against heavy ships using hit and run tactics because it's more effective. The enemy might expect this and use beam ships to counter those missiles since you can pack more beams and shoot more missiles down than using missiles.

I think if you code it elegantly using only a few parameters and some solid formulas, we should get the rps that we are looking for without the rps. Having this kind of armor be good against x, but bad against y and z seems more bulky than it has to be.
:mrgreen:

User avatar
utilae
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2175
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:37 am
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

#96 Post by utilae »

It wouldn't just be weapon beats armour. It would work with your idea for calculating things (your idea seems good and logical).

So, a weapon would not just beat armour, more that a weapon gets a bonus against the armour or the armour gets a penalty against the weapon.
eg
Laser - good against anti missile armour, poor against anti laser armour.

anti laser armour
-laser damage reduced by 50%

anti missle armour
-laser damage increased by 50%
-missile damage reduced by 50%

User avatar
skdiw
Creative Contributor
Posts: 643
Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2003 2:17 am

#97 Post by skdiw »

I know what you are talking about. My point is that explicit bonuses seems bulky.

There are advantages doing it your way and its fine. For one, it's much easier for players to understand the concept, but they have to memorize a long table if you have too many nested rps. And secondly, it's easier to balance for most ppl. My way is a bit harder unless you are pretty good with math with a handle on probablites, curves, and modeling.
:mrgreen:

guiguibaah
Creative Contributor
Posts: 441
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:00 am

Armor Types

#98 Post by guiguibaah »

I really like the armor idea - In Battlezone 2 you could configure your tanks with 3 kinds of armor protection when it became available.

Energy - Gave a 70 % reduction in damage versus Energy attacks - Beams, lightning, plasma.

Kinetic - Gave a 70% reduction in damage versus kinetic weapons - Missiles, explosions, bullets, gauss guns, etc.

Static - Gave a 30% reduction in damage versus all weapon types except gravitronic.

- - - -

Weapons could be divided into 3 classes. Energy, Kinetic and Gravitronic.

Gravitronic would be a weapon obtained later that would do full damage, irregardless of armor class. Like a gravitron beam. Graviton beams (or singularity attacks) wouldn't do that much damage but they would be a good standby.

Like in starcraft (which used the explosive / concussive / normal) attacks, shields would absorb all damage irregardless of the type of weapon. Shields could reduce damage, say subtact 2 damage points per 10 points of damage (so only 8 is applied to shields like in Moo2).

- - -

That being said, this could make for a special spy mission - steal ship plans. If you notice that your enemy has a heavily armored fleet with explosive armor (IE: they want to withstand the pounding your planetary missile bases will deliver them) you'd build a lot of beamships.

... But I would like to see beamships that take 3 turns to charge and fire (with the possiblity of being disrupted) but when they fire, boy you're in trouble.
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

Post Reply