Defence/Offence ballance

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

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guiguibaah
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Don't forget

#16 Post by guiguibaah »

Don't forget that the "wrong side of the planet" is a realism argument!!! I smell a witch hunt! Can we BURN her?!?!?! BURN THE WITCH BURN HER YEAHAHAHAHHEHAH!!





Dang, I got so excited I don't know if my reply was supposed to be sarcastic or silly.... :)
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

haravikk
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#17 Post by haravikk »

Just so long as you join the art team with your wonderful weapons-design talents, we don't mind ;)

discord
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#18 Post by discord »

defense/offensive balance? it's a dream, and you cant catch it.

atleast not aslong as you allow players to design their own ships, then it becomes a design point instead.(might add that defensive capacity was a important part of my classic moo2 design...)

but when it comes to how they handle, i'd suggest damage types, and armor/shields that are more/less effective against different damage types.

kinetic damage(massdriver/railgun/coilgun/ramming/KE missiles), wich examplifies my old saying 'primitive, but effective'

heat(laser/plasma/maser even if these happen to work in different ways....could perhaps be different damage types?)

Radiation(neutron beam/deathray)

and then we have nukes, wich is a AOE weapon(although alot less so in space), wich has all three damage types...

phased energy(phasors/other techno mumbojumbo names)

then a armor/shield has a damage rating(hit points), and a % on each damage type, for instance, 100mm steel, steel has 2/mm damage rating, and has 75% KE, 50% heat(due to it spreading the heat...) 20% radiation 10%PE

so that means it has 150 armor against KE weapons, 100 towards heat based, 40 radiation, 20 towards PE....
but this is prolly to complicated again...and i need to read up on what you guys are doing, been away a few months...

//discord

Impaler
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#19 Post by Impaler »

I would go with a simpler Kinetic/Energy split for each weapon so lets say a Rail gun is 80/10 and a Laser is 0/50 some Plasma Bombs 20/80. Oh and Nukes in space would be mostly Energy based as the material of the bomb itself is insignificant only the massive Radiation would realy effect you, an atmosphere absorbs a lot of that radiation and creates a shockwave that dose massive kinetic damage in addition to the radiated energy.

Armor would be rated in the same way so Titanium might have 40/20 and Corundum 30/30, Zortium 50/70

All the damage is handled seperatly and in parallel if either can pirce the armor then the inards take damage.

Lastly we might want to say that sheild only deflect/absorb energy based attacks which could add some interesting choices between differnt weapon systems based on your oponents sheilding.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

guiguibaah
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interesting

#20 Post by guiguibaah »

Well, you could have something like in Freespace.

One type of weapon (say energy) is very effective versus shields, only 25% as effective versus armor

Another weapon (say Kinetic) is very effective versus armor, but only 25% versus shieds.

An ion-based gun (say Ion) bypasses armor to affect systems (like in moo2) but is only 25% good VS shields

Another weapon (say Explosive) does 50% to shields, 50% to armor.

- - - -

Or, have something like in starcraft.

3 armor types. Normal, Explosive, Concussive.

Normal weapon = 100% damage, all armor types

Explosive weapon vs Concussive Armor = 100% damage
Explosive weapon vs Normal armor = 75% damage
Explosive weapon vs Explosive Armor = 50% damage

Concussive weapon vs Concussive Armor = 50% damage
Concussive weapon vs Normal armor = 75% damage
Concussive weapon vs Explosive Armor = 100% damage

All weapons VS shields = 100%
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Geoff the Medio
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#21 Post by Geoff the Medio »

guiguibaah wrote:Don't forget that the "wrong side of the planet" is a realism argument!!!
Geoff the Medio wrote:One realism argument I can't help by mention is that half of the ground-to-space direct fire weaponry would be on the wrong side of the planet at any given time...
discord wrote:i'd suggest damage types, and armor/shields that are more/less effective against different damage types.
viewtopic.php?p=11771#11771
utilae wrote:You could have something like:
A beats B, D
B beats C, E
C beats D, A
D beats E, B
E beats A, C

It is like rock, paper, scissors, but more complex. What good strategies are there, and is it better than rock, paper, scissors?
Something like this would be much more interesting than straight rock/paper/scissors. This does only seem to have only one category of equipment however... as in there's no separation into weapons, armour or anything else, which I think would be necessary.
Geoff the Medio wrote:The interactions and resulting advantages / disadvantages don't need to be 'artificial'... they can be emergent if carefully thought out.
By this, I mean the bonuses and penalties don't have to fall back to "Plasma is only 75% effective against multiphasic shielding" or somesuch... there can be more intersting reasaons for the advantages / disadvantages.
Geoff the Medio wrote: For example: An interesting difference between shield technologies might be whether or not you can fire through shields a) while they're on (and how long to turn on/off) and b) while they're being fired upon. If you can't fire while the shild is up, fighters with lots of little guns, or direct fire ships with a high rate of fire could effectively suppress your weapons by keeping your shield active so you can't fire back.

Another:Psychic/mind control might bypass shielding altogether, but only work at short range, requiring long range indirect fire to avoid...
There's certainly a place for a classes of weapons being more effective vs. shields than armour... such as kinetic vs. energy, but things can, and I think should be, more interesting than that.

Other ideas: Another class of long-range weapon might be the torpedo. The distinction between missile and torpedo in this case is that a missle has an explosive warhead to cause damage, while a 'torpedo' is designed to cut through or drill through armour. Perhaps an actual drillhead could be used, though lightsaber-esque shaped plasma might also work.

Take this to the next level, and a whole ship could be enclosed in a lightsaber shell... call it plasma armour. This would be impervious to plasma torpedo drillbits, but useless against explosives and probably neutral against energy weapons.

Any number of different beam weapons can be named by saying they shoot various particles... tachyons and muons sound cool. depending on balance needs, certain armours would be good or bad against them.

There should probably be a laser type weapon.

Reflective armour would be nearly impervious to lasers, but very weak against explosives and drillbit torpedoes.

Conventional armour is just thick sheets of metal plating on the sides of the ship, ala Babylon 5. Lasers and explosives would be neutral against this, but drills very effective.

Some sort of biological armour would be reasonable. I imagine this would be particularly effective against psychic/telepathic/brainwave/mind control weapons (which would be a few telepaths on your ship instead of big weapon banks... perhaps they'd need reactor power to enhanse/project their power however, so it's an either/or thing, and you can't put telepaths on any ship that already has a full load of more conventional weapons).

There could be radiation-based weapons... more of a field than a beam / missile / torpedo. Not sure what armour this would be good against, but it could kill crew without damaging ship systems.

A gatling gun (small kinetic energy or small-explosive rounds) would be a good anti-missle / torpedo point defence system (ala modern ship anti-missile defence). Maybe this is also effective vs. biological armour.

My key point is that a distinction between energy (laser) and explosive (missile) and armour with two ratings, one for each class of weapon, is not very interesting or strategic. A wider selection seems more fun to me...

Another good idea, imho, is for a class of weapons / armour never (or only rarely) become obsolete. You would instead develop new verions of the older weapons, with better "stats" in terms of damage, cost, rate of fire and such, but the strategic characteristics (what armour the class of weapon is good against) wouldn't change. Thus your small laser boat ship design from the start of the game stays useful even in the mid and endgame... since it's components (laser, armour, engine, etc.) get upgraded with tech.

viewtopic.php?p=11845#11845

discord
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#22 Post by discord »

impaler: dont disrespect the power of shrapnel!(it would be one hell of a frag grenade) but yes, you are mostly right.

it was mostly the idea of different damage types i wanted to get through, it makes for more variation in stuff, so that they are more then 'this one is better then the last one'...

//discord

muxec
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#23 Post by muxec »

Space Rangers like offence/defence balance can help. Ships can land on the planet during the battle when defending their planet. Planet repairs and rearms the ship.

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Geoff the Medio
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#24 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Came across some nice real world weapon / defence / hull counters theory text in Wikipedia.
Check out the "Genesis of the Destroyer" section on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer

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