SpaceCombat Counters

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

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utilae
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#16 Post by utilae »

LithiumMongoose wrote: I would collapse Energy, Thermal, and Explosive down into just Energy.
No, energy I am thinking of as concentrated energy buring through armour. Explosive is a more forceful means against armour, trying to force the armour apart rather than force its way throuhg. Thermal seems redundant to me though.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Keep Kinetic, and make a third type called Exotic that is everything else.
Na, cause that makes exotic the best, doesn't it.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Need to have "dark matter" and "dark energy" based weapons, that was one of my favorite (and only) innovations in MOO3 heh. Probably kinetic and energy respectively.
Seems interesting, though probably unnecesary.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Chemical as a damage type is an interesting idea. Unfortunately by definition it is matter acting on other matter (causing chemical reactions), so it would be limited to use on armor and hulls. If you think about it though, the cloud type "shape" is probably the only really suitable delivery mechanism for chemicals, and once the original missile has detonated releasing the cloud, the cloud is just sitting there (or moving very slowly), at which point shields would just kind of ignore it unless they were "hard". Thus it would be a natural shield-piercing attack, at least if you buy the SG-1 theory that shields generally only notice and attempt to stop high-energy "stuff".
Corosive (as I called it) was not necesarily acid or chemical reactions to armour, it was the effective of wearing down armor, etc, like poison wears down you hp over time.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Aaaand I still say drop armor types altogether and just use the hull types (metal organic crystal energy is a nice list). This keeps things simple while still providing 3 or 4 types on both sides. I really don't think we want more than that.
I would rather hull types be a skin for a ship that determines what armor can fit to a ship.
LithiumMongoose wrote: On shields I like the MOO2 approach: one type, energy. You can enhance them with optional "mods", for this I'd stick to just "variable random phase" and "hard", which add benefits at the cost of making the shield generators much larger/heavier.
Yeah, maybe it is a good idea to have shields be just plain. Though this presents a problem that if a weapon ignored armor, it would be very powerful, bypassing the counter system. Of course this is a problem if both armor and shields were used as counters.

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#17 Post by LithiumMongoose »

Edit -- oops, nevermind. :)
utilae wrote:I reckon it would be cool if low tech stealth you had to decloak to fire. But high tech stealth you could fire while cloaked. Like in StarCraft you have cloaked units (Dark Templar) that can attack while invisible, though there are detectors to detect them. You could have a stealth value and a detection value. Whichever unit has the higher oposing stat can see/hide from the other, eg ShipA(stealth=100), ShipB(Detection=90). ShipA is invisble to ShipB and can fire while invisible. If shipB had 10 more detection, it could see ShipB.
Excellent. Just like the Klingon fire-while-cloaked thing was a big deal when it first happened in Star Trek 6, and a pseudo-perfect cloak was a *huge* deal when it happened in Star Trek 10 (though I still disagree with the concept of a "perfect" cloak).

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#18 Post by LithiumMongoose »

utilae wrote:No, energy I am thinking of as concentrated energy buring through armour. Explosive is a more forceful means against armour, trying to force the armour apart rather than force its way throuhg. Thermal seems redundant to me though.
Sort of a "crushing vs piercing, disregarding slashing" approach, if I were to make a fantasy-setting analogy eh? Okay, I'll buy that. :)
utilae wrote:Na, cause that makes exotic the best, doesn't it.
Nah, just different. Perhaps tending to have the most interesting characteristics (graviton beams being true continuous beams that damage everything they contact over their full length/range for example). I would put the Creation Cannon in energy for example. :p
utilae wrote:Seems interesting, though probably unnecesary.
Why's that? Nothing wrong with more types of guns, and the names just *sound* cool lol.
utilae wrote:Corosive (as I called it) was not necesarily acid or chemical reactions to armour, it was the effective of wearing down armor, etc, like poison wears down you hp over time.
Hmm... kk.
utilae wrote:I would rather hull types be a skin for a ship that determines what armor can fit to a ship.
Well it's not just a skin, it's what the entire ship except possibly the armor is made of. I guess I just don't see an energy/psionic hull attaching anything other than energy/psionic armor (going with the EV:Nova analogy, the person or crew would literally have one thought process for creating the ship, and another more focused, hard, rigid, close-minded, concentrating mindset for creating the "armor"). Crystalline also, would tend to shatter if you attempted to bolt metal plates onto it. I dunno, you said Ranos' armor list didn't cover a very wide range and all seemed like metal variations; give me some better examples (that aren't organic crystal or energy with small variations ;).
utilae wrote:Yeah, maybe it is a good idea to have shields be just plain. Though this presents a problem that if a weapon ignored armor, it would be very powerful, bypassing the counter system. Of course this is a problem if both armor and shields were used as counters.
I would be inclined to think pretty much only weapons from the Kinetic category would be able to pierce armor, by their nature. Sooo give this weapon type big penalties vs shields. Likewise I would think only exotic-type stuff would have a chance at piercing shields (by virtue of the unusual ways they work physics-wise), so give them bigger penalties vs most types of armor.

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utilae
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#19 Post by utilae »

LithiumMongoose wrote: Why's that? Nothing wrong with more types of guns, and the names just *sound* cool lol.
Well each new type makes the counter system more complex. Plus dark matter or dark weapons seem , what are they exactly other than 'dark'.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Well it's not just a skin, it's what the entire ship except possibly the armor is made of.
I'm talking skin as in different skins for winamp, lol. I mean you choose a hull and that is what your ship is made of. Based on this, you can fit certain types of armor intially. Eventually after reseraching in the tech tree and unlocking the other armor types of your hull type you can use these other armor types. eg Ornanic hull would start with organic armor, but would not get sub space armor for some time.

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#20 Post by LithiumMongoose »

utilae wrote:Well each new type makes the counter system more complex. Plus dark matter or dark weapons seem , what are they exactly other than 'dark'.
Cool, mysterious, the very incarnation of "exotic", lol. They're what Zeratul and the Dark Templar make their 'warp blades' weapons out of. :p

Honestly I would just add them into the standard beam and projectile-weapon lists. Actually I don't remember if MOO3 had both, might've been just the Dark Energy Beam, but they differentiated it by making it the longest-range beam in their tech tree. Personally I was thinking it'd be cool if that honor went to tachyons, but DE/DM could be higher up in the tree with second-best range and significantly more damage, or something.

If you mean what are they from a realistic standpoint... dark matter is the more commonly known of the two, it's the stuff no one's been able to see or identify yet (hence dark) that is deduced to exist because it is necessary to account for all the "missing" mass in the universe. Without it, the universe would have stopped expanding long ago, or something. Dark energy is a newer scientific concept, and they don't know much of anything about it either yet. The term was coined because they were having trouble explaining all their results about the universe with just dark matter I think. Plus they needed something for it to be interconvertible with (like normal matter and normal energy are ultimately the same thing). I'm sure a google search would turn up more if you're really curious, but as it is I *am* pretty sure these are real astrophysics terms.
utilae wrote:I'm talking skin as in different skins for winamp, lol. I mean you choose a hull and that is what your ship is made of. Based on this, you can fit certain types of armor intially. Eventually after reseraching in the tech tree and unlocking the other armor types of your hull type you can use these other armor types. eg Ornanic hull would start with organic armor, but would not get sub space armor for some time.
Ah... This could work. I'd still like to see a full list though. :)

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#21 Post by PowerCrazy »

Geoff the Medio wrote: And, most importantly, rather than coming up with a list of fluff names for various ship parts and their counters, it might be better to follow Powercrazy's lead, and design the countering system from an abstract view first. Decide how many types of defensive, offensive and delivery mechanism components you want, and how they form a web of strengths, weaknesses and mutual exclusions. Then, having an apparently well balanced and interesting web, decide on what fluff justifications are given to each. This might be impossible or impractical to do, but it's if it is possible, it's probably a better way to design this system. How well this system works doesn't really depend on whether or not "subspace" is a damage type and what it is weak or strong against, so much as whether the system as a whole is well designed.
Thank you.

I know we all want our system to have neat little names etc that each person comes up with. However if we get caught up in semantics about what a Phase Beam consists of and how its different from a Subspace beam we won't get anything done.

What we need to do is come up with how many weapon types/armor types/shields etc. we want. And then come up with an interesting matrix that will relate all the relevant items. We must be careful to insure that not too many factors are included in our matrix especially considering that many of the features in FO have yet to be decided. Ship Size, races, the way combat will function etc. Thus adding special cases like Weapon A counts as both Damage A and B exept against Armor C where it counts as E, is useless and convolutes the weapons matrix.

So what I suggest is we decide a few key things:
1. How many Weapon types/damage types/armor types etc. we want.
2. How many Bonuses/Penalties does each have (they don't necessarilly each have to be the same.)
3. Any extra considerations, such as weapon type coupled with armor type equals increased damage, or decreased damage, etc.
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#22 Post by Zpock »

To me, a good countering system isn't all about having some different armor (and shield) types and damage types with different damage modifiers against each other. Some of this is a good thing and I think starcraft got it right. It should be pretty soft counters, like generally +/-25% modifiers. I also think all armor types should have varying modifiers to all damages. It's a little unelegant when you have a single damage type +50% one damage type -50% the rest 100% on all armors. What about separating damage in a few different types, like energy/kinetic/etc. Then give each armor a resistance % against the dmg types. Like organic armor 20% resistance to energy, 40% to kinetic. Then the weapons would do different dmg, like:
laser 5 energy dmg
rail gun: 7 kinetic dmg
plasma gun 3 energy dmg, 3 kinetic dmg

It's not as complicated as it looks at a first glance. It's very similar to RPG games like diablo so it's intuitive. If you put more then one type of armor on a ship, the resistances could be averaged. There could also be devices that increase resistance (or decrease the enemies!), with diminishing returns and caps of course.

I would also give the armor types some other bonuses to make them more interesting and diverse. Organic armor would get regeneration for example. The above and this makes choosing what armor/weapons you put on less of a no-brainer choice (if he goes that i go this).

There are some other things that can be done to make certain weapons more effective against certain armor types then just direct modifiers. If there is a threshold that gets substracted from the enemies dmg (like how shields work in MOO1), it decreases the effectiveness of weapons with a high rate of fire more then one with a slow rate of fire but the same damage per second.

Something from stars! I like is how the countering system works with beam deflectors, missile jammers, targeting computers and beam capacitor. A missile jammer would decrease the chanse of a missile to hit the ship. The beam deflectors would decrease dmg done by enemy beams 10% each. The targeting computer would increase your missiles chance to hit an enemy ship but also increase your initiative (highest gets to shoot first). The beam capacitor would increase your beams damage by 10% each. A battleship had 2 slots for 3 electronics each and one general purpose slot x1 you could put these things in. If you made a missile ship and put in 7 computers you would get a good chance at shooting first and the highest possible number of missiles hitting. But a missile ship with 3 jammers could sometimes be a better choice against other missile ships, less good vs beam ships. A beam battle ship with capacitors and/or deflectors is useful against another beam battleship, but would be eaten alive by a missile ship. If you put on jammers, you would do better against the missile ships but worse against beam ships. This is just one part of the countering in Stars!, there is also a lot of who shoots first (different weapons have different initiative), who moves first (lighter ships), how far you move, and how long range you had. Then there was special weapons doing good dmg vs shields but no dmg vs armor and missiles did 2x damage on armor once shields were down. And more stuff.

Another game I like the countering system not involving just weapons and armors in is eve:online. It had 2 types of devices that could be used to make the enemy unable to target you and shoot back. You could try to overcome the other guys sensor strenght with so called ECM. There was 4 types of sensors so you had to use the right ECM module and he could also have modules increasing his sensor strenght. The other way was to decrease his targeting range. If someone wanted he could mount modules increasing his sensor strenght and/or targeting range. That way he could beat someone trying to attack him with electronic warfare but would of course be weaker against someone who focused on brute force instead. The brute force guy would risk getting beaten by someone using the electronic warfare right, of course.

I don't think FO should just blatantly copy these systems as they are even tough they do work. The latter one might need adjusting to work in a strategy game instead of a one ship each elite-type game. But I think something similar with lots of different gizmos to play around with would be nice. Someone said something like many independent systems linked to each other is better instead of just one massive system with 20armor types vs 20weapontypes. It gives the player more then one system to worry about but they are not that hard to understand in themselves.
Last edited by Zpock on Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Ranos
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#23 Post by Ranos »

I had those categories and mized the subspace category the way I did to try to balance things out, which many people have mentioned before. Those of course can be moved around and I'm atarting to think that maybe they should be.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Adding new concepts to the mix other than weapons, armour and shields doesn't necessarily mean the resulting system will be more complex. For example, you could start by scrapping 1/2 to 2/3 of your shield and armour types, lumping the shields and armours together under "defences" and (optionally) scrapping 1/3 of the damage types. Then add in factors relating to delivery mechansims to the mix (simplified from the previous suggestions), and then add a few different types of PD to defences, and maybe include engine speed and ship size factors as well. The resulting total number of part options wouldn't necessarily be much different than your list.
Delivery systems are pretty much covered by the damage types:

Weapon Type (Delivery system)------------------Damage type
Beam---------------------------------------------------Energy, Thermal, Phased
Bolt-----------------------------------------------------Energy, Thermal, Phased
Projectile-----------------------------------------------Kinetic
Subspace-----------------------------------------------Subspace
Wave Emitter------------------------------------------Energy, Thermal, Phased
Missile---------------------------------------------------Explosive
Torpedo-------------------------------------------------Explosive

A better system than the one I made will be used, but I was attempting to actually draw out a workable system with names for examples instead of letters.

PD is for missiles, torpedos and fighters, there isn't much else that can be covered by PD. While PD is a countering system, it's one that is countering how powerful missiles, etc. are. Engine speed and ship size would just complicate matters, IMO, by adding confusing things into the system. How would engine speed and ship size effect the weapons? Causing the weapons to miss maybe? That is manueverability and is something completely different. Why would a small ship be effected by a certain weapon more than a big ship? Without actually making a system, it's hard to imagine how the system would work.

This is also why it would be difficult to make a system using letters and numbers for the items being countered. You can make the system all you want, but then you have to figure out what you are going to put into that system. What if something doesn't fit into like you wanted it to? You then have to completely rework the system just for that one thing. If you start out with names and purposes, you still have to adjust the system, but it is easier to do.
Geoff the Medio wrote:You lost me... "couldn't get enough fluff to it" ?
I couldn't think of enough names for weapons to make it a category. I was looking at acids only and it seemed it would be a very limited area.
Geoff the Medio wrote:I don't follow... Whether you decide on 6 damage types before , simultaneously with, or after deciding what the types will be, you're going to have the same limitation: 6 damage types. Are you suggestiong there is some other limitation that arises...? How/why/what?
If you look at my system, you'll notice I have certain damage types grouped together in certain areas. Reactive armor exists today and effects armor piercing and directional charge weapons by exploding outward to mett the incoming explosion/projectile, which forces it outward and doesn't allow it to penetrate the armor. If I had just gone with a A is stronger than B & C system, how could I assign names into the system and make it work like it works? I'm not saying it's perfect, but certain armor and shield types were named because they primarily target certain damage types.
Geoff the Medio wrote:If you were playing an RTS, would you rather that (for example) all 3 playable factions/races had the same set of 60 units, or that each race had 20 units of its own that no other race/faction had? Which is more diverse?
I have never played StarCraft or WarCraft III so I don't know for sure if those work the same as WarCraft II. In WC2, each side did have the same units, they were just named the same. Peasant=Peon, Footman=Grunt, Archer=Axethrower, Demolition Team=Sappers, Submarine=Turtle. Although SC and WC3 have counters in them where WC2 didn't, I'd be willing to bet they work similarly. Basic Foot unit for all, Basic Ranged unit for all, Basic Mounted unit for all, etc. RTS also aren't the best example since the units are pretty much set with little or no customizability. Even if they do allow you to customize units, it wouldn't be on the scale of FO.

Nobody is going to design their ships exactly the same, but if you give the same things the same penalties all of the time, that will result in similar tactics and strategies having to be followed all of the time.
LithiumMongoose wrote:Aaaand I still say drop armor types altogether and just use the hull types (metal organic crystal energy is a nice list). This keeps things simple while still providing 3 or 4 types on both sides. I really don't think we want more than that.

On shields I like the MOO2 approach: one type, energy. You can enhance them with optional "mods", for this I'd stick to just "variable random phase" and "hard", which add benefits at the cost of making the shield generators much larger/heavier.
utilae wrote:I don't think a very wide range is covered here. It seems like metal armor with small variations. I think woven isn't very good and resonating is like a subspace armor I guess, isnt it.
Using hull types means all types would have to be usable by all races. While I'm not opposed to this, I favor having the hull types preset for each race. I also said:
Ranos wrote:The easier way was to come up with a few different armor types (six to be exact) and allow all hulls to mount them, but with different names.
While the six I have listed use the Metal names, each hull type would have the same armor type but the names would be different. Yet at the same time, they don't need to be different. Woven can be metal fibers, organic fibers, crystal fibers or energy fibers. Either way it doesn't matter.

For the system to be able to work, at least from the way I see it, every aspect of it must be equal or multiples. I used 6 for all of mine because thats what I came up with. If you changed it to 3 damage types, 4 armor types and 2 shield types, how would you balance it out so one armor type didn't have more strengths than another? If everything isn't balanced, it favors one thing over the other which would lead ot cookie cutter builds.
utilae wrote:
Ranos wrote:
Armor
Doing this would give the same races the same two armor types all of the time and therefore, certain races certain benefits and advantages.

That would be ok, if a race has a set hull, and the hull had set armor types (i like my idea for hulls and armor though, yeah i know, i am biased).
As I said, this would limit diversity in builds and lead to the same races having to use the same shields to counter the weaknesses in their armors.
utilae wrote:Shield 6=Heat Shield ???
Thought of that but was looking for a better name. That would probably do though.
utilae wrote:With both shield and armor types the weapon has to get through two types of counters.
eg Kinetic weapon VS Particle Shield + Woven Armor
The weapons damaged is effectively reduced twice. And the weapon has to deal with two layers of counters, rather than just one.
Yes but while that ship would be strong against kinetic you also have to take the weaknesses into account. A ship using Woven Armor and Particle would have the following bonuses and disadvantages:

Energy 0, Thermal 0, Phased +1, Subspace -1, Kinetic +2, Explosive -2

Woven is +1 against Energy but Particle is -1 which zeros it out. The above ship would be very strong against kinetic but very weak against explosive.
utilae wrote:I disagree with 'Phased' as you describe it. I think that phased should be closer to sub space. The way you describe it it is jut another type of energy that fluctuates. Also I think that thermal is too common, ie heat can possibly be found in all weapons (which is why you propose to mix explosive with other types, i don't like that idea).
I'm not saying that anything I wrote should be set in stone, it was merely an attempt to show a workable countering system. Thermal is produced with just about everything, but there are weapons that have their primary means be thermal for burning through. Maybe just throw it in with energy but I like it as a separate category.

As for explosive mixed with other types, lets look at the torpedos I listed. Plasma Torpedo, it does Thermal damage (because it's plasma) but when it impacts, it also explodes. Subspace Torpedo, it does subspace damage but explodes on impact. Missiles would be the same. No matter what kind you had, it would act with an explosive force, therefore needing to be in the explosive category while also doing some other form of damage. Photon Torpedo would do Energy damage, Nuclear Missile would do Thermal Damage, Scatter Missile (blows up launching hundreds of small projectiles at the target) Kinetic. The list goes on. Thats why I said to mix them with other damages. If you just go with explosive, you neglect another damage type that they do.
utilae wrote:Corosive (as I called it) was not necesarily acid or chemical reactions to armour, it was the effective of wearing down armor, etc, like poison wears down you hp over time.
I couldn't figure out how to get a bunch of weapons that would fit in the chemical category, but by naming it corrosive and puting anything that would eat armor opens up the door. It could be chemical, it could be biological or it could be technological (nanites).
LithiumMongoose wrote:Sort of a "crushing vs piercing, disregarding slashing" approach, if I were to make a fantasy-setting analogy eh? Okay, I'll buy that. :)
Thats an excelent analogy. Slashing = Energy, Piercing = Thermal, Crushing = Explosive. Now I have a reason, even if it is somewhat twisted, for having Thermal be a category. :D
LithiumMongoose" wrote:Why's that? Nothing wrong with more types of guns, and the names just *sound* cool lol.
I think the more names for weapons that we can come up with, the better. Just because we come up with 300 doesn't mean they will all be used, it just allows for more names and differences in weapons.
LithiumMongoose wrote:If you mean what are they from a realistic standpoint... dark matter is the more commonly known of the two, it's the stuff no one's been able to see or identify yet (hence dark) that is deduced to exist because it is necessary to account for all the "missing" mass in the universe. Without it, the universe would have stopped expanding long ago, or something. Dark energy is a newer scientific concept, and they don't know much of anything about it either yet. The term was coined because they were having trouble explaining all their results about the universe with just dark matter I think. Plus they needed something for it to be interconvertible with (like normal matter and normal energy are ultimately the same thing). I'm sure a google search would turn up more if you're really curious, but as it is I *am* pretty sure these are real astrophysics terms.
While many scifi games/movies/TV shows make Dark Matter out to be this exotic, invisible to the naked eye thing, the way the astronerds mean it is different. Dark matter is stuff we can't see because it emits no light. Planets are considered dark matter. They emit no light and don't reflect it strong enough for us to be able to see them at this distance. Other dark matter is brown dwarfs, black holes and interstellar gases. Since we don't know enough about what is out there, it is quite possible that there is matter that not only doesn't emit light, but absorbs it. This seems to be the common perception of what dark matter is in the scifi area.
PowerCrazy wrote:Thank you.

I know we all want our system to have neat little names etc that each person comes up with. However if we get caught up in semantics about what a Phase Beam consists of and how its different from a Subspace beam we won't get anything done.

What we need to do is come up with how many weapon types/armor types/shields etc. we want. And then come up with an interesting matrix that will relate all the relevant items. We must be careful to insure that not too many factors are included in our matrix especially considering that many of the features in FO have yet to be decided. Ship Size, races, the way combat will function etc. Thus adding special cases like Weapon A counts as both Damage A and B exept against Armor C where it counts as E, is useless and convolutes the weapons matrix.

So what I suggest is we decide a few key things:
1. How many Weapon types/damage types/armor types etc. we want.
2. How many Bonuses/Penalties does each have (they don't necessarilly each have to be the same.)
3. Any extra considerations, such as weapon type coupled with armor type equals increased damage, or decreased damage, etc.
How can we come up with a set number of types of things we want, without coming up with the types themselves? How can we make them interact with eachother without knowing what they do? How can we make special considerations as you list them without knowing what we are using?

If we come up with all of the names first and then group them into categories, everything will look good, work well and make sense to people. If we go the other way around, things that should be different may get squashed together and things that should be the same may get pulled apart.
Zpock wrote:If you put more then one type of armor on a ship, the resistances could be averaged.
I think only one armor type per ship should be allowed. Same with shields. If you allow more than one, you start to lose the purpose of counters.

I've said this before and I'm going to sy it again, the countering system should be simple and not highly complex. KISS. Make it more complex and it will be very confusing for people.

Many of you have pointed out problems with my countering system, but not one of you has made up a countering system yourself. If you don't like mine, then fine, but make one so the rest of us can see what you think would be better.
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Geoff the Medio
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#24 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote: Anyway, I wasn't bringing the argument itself, so much as ressurecting the idea of using weapon delivery mechanisms as part of the counter system.
I think delivery mechanisms adds too much extra complexity. Really weapon type sums up the delivery mechanism a little.
eg kinetic=mass driver or non explosive missile (even though the missile is self propelled, it is really treated like any other bullet) or bullet.

Things like the delivery mechanism are taken into account when you have the missile following a ship.
I agree that delivery mechanism is often linked with damage type (Ranos mentions this also), but it isn't so exclusively. In particular, fighters have small beams on them, which presumably have the same properties with respect to various shield types as do the larger capital ship weapons. Missiles may have explosive or more exotic warheads. Clouds may be chemical or flak-based. and so forth.
Ranos wrote:Engine speed and ship size would just complicate matters, IMO, by adding confusing things into the system. How would engine speed and ship size effect the weapons? Causing the weapons to miss maybe?
I'm not suggesting having a modifier to damage to represent the importance of different delivery mechanisms vs. engine speeds. The countering aspects of these would arise naturally out of the fact that the missile or fighter has to fly itself over to its target, or the beam has to be within range to fire, and ships that are faster can do this, or prevent others from doing this, more easily (unless they're flying with something else that's slower...)
LithiumMongoose wrote:...the cloud type "shape" is probably the only really suitable delivery mechanism for chemicals
What about short-range spays of chemicals, organic kamikaze drones or unguided chemical pods lauched towards the enemy that burst on contact?
LithiumMongoose wrote:I dunno, you said Ranos' armor list didn't cover a very wide range and all seemed like metal variations; give me some better examples (that aren't organic crystal or energy with small variations ;).
There are only a few not-extremely speculative types of physical armour in my mind... They include Ablative, Composite / Reactive and Bulk Rock (asteroid ships with important parts under tons of natural rock...). To this, some exotic ideas (perhaps stolen from SMAC) can be added, like Plasma Shell, Probability, Neutronium. Then again, some of Plasma Shell, Probability and Neutronium could easily be fluff names for more advanced forms of the other three... Maybe three or four types of armour is all that's needed? Multiplied with as many shield options, that's quite a lot of combinations to choose from...

Perhaps there's no need for armour types at all. Indvidual armours could be rating against each damage type, and named or classified according to what damage type(s) they are most effective against. (This is sort of the reverse of the MoO system where weapons are rated against armour and shields, I guess...)

If I had to pick some damage types now, I'd avoid anything "weird" sounding, such as "phased" or "dark matter" or "exotic". The types Energy, Kinetic, Explosive and Chemical (aka Reaction? Corrosive?) pretty much cover it, though I could see adding an additional type for gravimetric / spacetime manipulation (though perhaps those exact terms are a bit limiting... a better name is needed, and subspace isn't it). Also, as per Zpock's (and others') suggestion, rating weapons power in all damage type (many would have mostly 0's) would be good.
Ranos wrote:If I had just gone with a A is stronger than B & C system, how could I assign names into the system and make it work like it works? I'm not saying it's perfect, but certain armor and shield types were named because they primarily target certain damage types.
The names you assign are not as important as the overall system being well balanced. If a well balanced system doesn't perfectly fit the names and interactions you've thought of, that's unfortunate, but not really a big problem. Maybe we won't have a "reactive armour" if it doesn't fit into the web as designed. Maybe "reactive armour" is weak against chemical damage, even though there's no obvious reason for this to be the case from a fluff perspective. This is not a huge problem.
Nobody is going to design their ships exactly the same, but if you give the same things the same penalties all of the time, that will result in similar tactics and strategies having to be followed all of the time.
Not if there are several viable choices within the options given to each race. Even with some limitations, things would play out differently depending on the situation in each game. If the same equipment choice / strategy is used every time because it's the best for that race, then the game isn't well balanced.
How can we come up with a set number of types of things we want, without coming up with the types themselves?
By thinking about the strategic implications of the number of things and their interactions. What they are called is (comparitively) irrelivant.
How can we make them interact with eachother without knowing what they do?
By drawing countering lines on a graph or assigning bonus/penalty numbers to a chart, and thinking about how the abstarct system would work strategically.
How can we make special considerations as you list them without knowing what we are using?
By deciding what abstracted types will synergize or be mutually exclusive with what other types, in order to make the whole system more interesting and condusive to the player having interesting and difficult strategic decisions to make. The fluff can be fitted to this later.
I think only one armor type per ship should be allowed. Same with shields. If you allow more than one, you start to lose the purpose of counters.
Agreed. Seems like an instance where KISS applies well.

Zpock
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#25 Post by Zpock »

I'm going to put up my dmg system in a more comprehensive way.

The 4 weapon types:
Energy
Kinetic
Explosive
Corrosive

Each weapon would do damage of one or more types. A few fluffy examples:

Laser Beam
5 Energy

Rail Gun
8 kinetic

Plasma gun
6 Energy
3 Kinetic

Starshine glow missile
2 energy
2 kinetic
2 explosive

Space Parasite
5 Corrosive
3 Kinetic

Dark Exotic Matter Pulse Nova
15 energy
15 kinetic
15 explosive
15 corrosive

You get the idea...

The weapon types could be spread out on the tech tree and delivery methods (fighter, direct fire, missile, etc) so that a tech tree has more weapons with a certain damage type and one delivery method more oftenly associated with the damage type. So if you know you are facing fighters you know that they will typically do energy or explosive damage (unless their bio fighters!) so in addition to PD you might want that kind of armor. Not sure if this is good or not.

Armor and shields, unless shields are decided to be of one type, would have resistance to the weapon types. If an armor has 20% resistance to energy the laser beam would do only 4 out of 5 damage. Fluffy examples:

Metal Plate armor
20% resistance to energy
20% resistance to kinetic
20% resistance to explosive
20% resistance to corrosive

This would be an armor type for those who do not wish to take chances with the dmg system. It could be either done away with or made very bad (like 10% to all) if such an option shouldn't be.

Organic Armor
10% resistance to energy
40% resistance to kinetic
10% resistance to explosive
30% resistance to corrosive

Energy Armor
50% resistance to energy
0% resistance to kinetic
10% resistance to explosive
40% resistance to corrosive

Heisenberg Anti-Neutronium probability plating
0% resistance to energy
0% resistance to kinetic
60% resistance to explosive
0% resistance to corrosive

As you see I would favor not spreading the resistances evenly (same total resistance). This brings out something interesting, assymetrical rock/paper/scissors. That is you play rock paper scissors but say that rock gives 10 points if you win, scissor 3 and paper only 1. At first you think, doesn't that make rock unbalancedly good? However rock is such an obvious choice, who would take scissors and risk being beaten for 10 points? Paper suddenly seems like a nice option, even if it only gives 1 point... It get's much more strategical then normal RPS, where a completly random strategy can't be beaten. In this system you would just go rock all the time against a random player. It's worth a thought at least, having a more or less assymetrical RPS system in the game. Here most armor types are vulnerable to explosive damage, but there's one armor that's really good against explosives but sucks against everything else. This makes explosive damage stand out from the other damage types a little in it's own way.

The resistances are more of a way to simply organize the armors. We could have all the fluffy names and all we want but they would be easy to keep track of for the player since all just have varying resistances to the 4 types. Instead of a lot of "this is good against that specific weapon and that but bad vs that". Another big advantage of the resistances is that it can easily be used in a intuitive way with non-armor gizmos. We could have modules that increase resistance, as an option to adding more armor. Modules that boost resistance for a short amount of time. Modules that can lock onto other ships and increase their resistances. Modules that can lock onto enemy ships and decrease their resistances. Modules that effect all ships nearby increasing their resistances, or decreasing them.

To prevent one from abusing this to get 100% resistance there would be diminishing returns, a module giving 10% more resistance to a ship with 50% resistance alredy would only give 5% for an example. Then cap it at 75% or something. This would all be very familiar to anyone who has played fantasy games such as diablo.

Multiple armor types on the same ship, could be good limiting it to 1 armor type as said.

LithiumMongoose
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#26 Post by LithiumMongoose »

Zpock wrote:The 4 weapon types:
Energy
Kinetic
Explosive
Corrosive
You know, I'm almost starting to think Kinetic should be rolled into Energy, since they're both piercing-type attacks. And I still like Exotic as a damage category, even though it wasn't well-received heh: one tries to get past by boring a hole, one tries to crush/destroy the armor, one tries to disolve the armor over time, one tries to attack or get past the armor in bizarre/unusual ways physics-wise. But in lieu of that, the quoted list is satisfactory to me.
Zpock wrote:As you see I would favor not spreading the resistances evenly (same total resistance). This brings out something interesting, assymetrical rock/paper/scissors. That is you play rock paper scissors but say that rock gives 10 points if you win, scissor 3 and paper only 1. At first you think, doesn't that make rock unbalancedly good? However rock is such an obvious choice, who would take scissors and risk being beaten for 10 points? Paper suddenly seems like a nice option, even if it only gives 1 point... It get's much more strategical then normal RPS, where a completly random strategy can't be beaten. In this system you would just go rock all the time against a random player. It's worth a thought at least, having a more or less assymetrical RPS system in the game. Here most armor types are vulnerable to explosive damage, but there's one armor that's really good against explosives but sucks against everything else. This makes explosive damage stand out from the other damage types a little in it's own way.
Hmm...
Zpock wrote:Multiple armor types on the same ship, could be good limiting it to 1 armor type as said.
Wholeheartedly agree. It should at least be *possible* to come up with a system where that isn't necessary, and if so we should do it, b/c not doing it complicates things a lot.

Impaler
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#27 Post by Impaler »

t seems theirs a strong desired for a a damage type that can hold a lot of misilanious Science Fluff stuff like "Tackyon cannons" and "Black Hole Generators". Utilae is using the name Sub-Space and Mongoose is calling for an "Exotic" catagory. What ever its called I think its a nice idea and it could serve the purpose I outlined in my first post for "Normal" damage aka a Damage type that dose full damage to all Armors reciving no penalties or bonuses. It kinda makes sense to, a blackhole wont care what your armor is made of before sucking you in.

For the Remaining catagories I think the Explosive/Kinetic/Energy breakup sounds best. I think we can fold almost anything into that. Corrosive I think could be folded into Kinetic because Kinetic implies matter on matter contact. I dont think Corrosive can stand on its own because it would seem to be restricted to only the Organic races. My thinking behind Thermal was that all Energy weapons actualy work by making the target Hot and melting/burning it and I wanted to avoid confusion with the "Energy" Hull. But it seems no one else realy liked the idea much.

I like the Armor types Ranos posted
Ablative - Pieces break off to prevent damage tranferring to other pieces. - Thermal & Phased/Kinetic & Explosive
Reactive - Explodes outward to deflect incoming shots. - Kinetic & Explosive/Thermal & Energy
Woven - Thin strands of armor materials woven together to form strong compact armor. - Energy & Kinetic/Subspace & Explosive
Polarized - A magnetic field runs through the armor giving it a minor shield effect. - Energy & Thermal/Phased & Subspace
Resonating - A sonic field runs through the armor causing it to vibrate microscopically. - Subspace & Phased/Kinetic & Thermal
Dense - Made of super tensil solids that are capable of holding together under extreme pressure. - Subspace & Explosive/Phased & Energy
I could see most if not all of these existing for Organic/Energy/Meta/Crystalinl Hulls. Woven for example is realy just a structure, it could be woven plasma energy for an Energy Hull, woven flesh fibers for Organics, woven steel on a Metal Hull ect ect. Its descriptive but not restrictive to any Hull material type. Some of the names might need a bit of work ofcorse but this is a firm foundation to build on.

That said I think 1 Penalty, 1 Bonus system I layed out will be the best way to go as its got nice symetry a bit like the MtG color wheel. Once you learn the wheel the single armor name gives a great deal of information, an individual type break down as Zpock proposed would I think require much more learning on the players part "Oh they have Krobnium armor whats that strong against?" Under my proposal you only need to know the type and point value to know all relevent information about it.

To express it in fluff-less terminology so as to make PowerCrazy Happy...

Weapons
1 - Bonus vs C&F, Penalty vs A&B
2 - Bonus vs B&E, Penalty vs C&D
3 - Bonus vs A&D, Penalty vs E&F

Armors
A - Bonus vs 1, Penalty vs 3
B - Bonus vs 1, Penalty vs 2
C - Bonus vs 2, Penalty vs 1
D - Bonus vs 2, Penalty vs 3
E - Bonus vs 3, Penalty vs 2
F - Bonus vs 3, Penalty vs 1


Image

Here is a Diagram

Oh isshues of Race Balance. I think each race should have a preferense (either through reserch, combat, consturction Bonuse) for a particular type of damage. They also have preferences and possibly restrictions to 2-3 differnt armor types that would follow a pattern along the wheel such as always having access to 2 adjacent Armors. Its a bit like having a 2 color deck of cards in MtG, each can cover the weaknesses of the other.

Weapons doing more then one damage type and having more then one armor layer could work but the math needs to be very simple in my opinion or the player is going to get realy confused. I am wondering if 5 energy damage and 5 Explosive from the same weapon would count as 2 seperate attacks of 5 or one attack of 10 that is half explosive/half Energy. Things that mitigate damage would be much more powerfull vs these hybrid attacks if they are considered seperate and get mitigated twice. My consern with Armor is that if attacks are required to penatrate one layer after another and recaluclate for each layer then we will have a mess on out hands. Some mechanism by which the armor "blends" into some new hybrid entity that can be calculated in one step is needed. The player could then get a read out of the relative Bonus that they would get against the 3 main damage types.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Impaler
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#28 Post by Impaler »

Some further elaboration of how stuff will be calculated.

If something is a "Damage Nulifier" it acts to subtract a fixed number of points off of an attack, shields in Moo1 and armor in StarCraft work this way. Attacks never change the Armors Value no matter how much damage gets through to the "meat" underneath.

Damage - ( Bonus/Penalty x Armor Value ) = Damage Done


A "Damage Mitigator" acts it reduce an attack by a %. Attacks of smaller size are much more advantagus here because they will never be completly useless no matter how thick the armor.

Damage x Bonus/Penalty x % Reduction = Damage Done


Ultimatly most games have a "Damage Sink" underneath all their defences that just passivly absorbes damage untill its depleted (at which point the "thing" in question usualy dies or another "layer" is exposed to damage). Armor works like this in Stars!, MOO1 and many other games. Shields work this way in most games as well.

Damage x Bonus/Penalties = Damage Done

Current "Health Value" - Damage Done = New "Health Value"


My preferance is for 3 layers

Shields - Damage Nulifiers or Mitigator that dont have Bonuses/Penalties
Armor - Damage Nulifier with Bonuses/Penalties
Structure - Damage Sink with Bonuses/Penalties (ship "breaks up" aka dies when this reaches zero)

Alternative means to killing a ship

Destroy "Bridge" causing ship to be "Dead in the water" aka unresponsive and unmoving. At end of combat any such ships will be captured by the winner if hostile and repaired if alied. This could be based off a Random Roll each attack or be an option you can choose to target.

Destroy "Power Core" causes ship to blow up big time, possibly same effect if you hit the ships amunition magazine (which is how most real warships were destroyed in the age of sail and up into WWII). Again possibly something you can target or random roll for.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

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utilae
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#29 Post by utilae »

Geoff the Medio wrote: I agree that delivery mechanism is often linked with damage type (Ranos mentions this also), but it isn't so exclusively. In particular, fighters have small beams on them, which presumably have the same properties with respect to various shield types as do the larger capital ship weapons. Missiles may have explosive or more exotic warheads. Clouds may be chemical or flak-based. and so forth.
You have to think of fighters using the terms target and targeter. A fighter is a target, of type armor. A fighter is a targeter of type weapon. So a thats how a fighter would work. A fighter may have an armor type of 'metal' and a weapon type of 'explosive'. When the missile is a target the armor is taken into account. When the missile is a targeter the weapon is taken into account.
Geoff the Medio wrote: If I had to pick some damage types now, I'd avoid anything "weird" sounding, such as "phased" or "dark matter" or "exotic". The types Energy, Kinetic, Explosive and Chemical (aka Reaction? Corrosive?) pretty much cover it, though I could see adding an additional type for gravimetric / spacetime manipulation (though perhaps those exact terms are a bit limiting... a better name is needed, and subspace isn't it). Also, as per Zpock's (and others') suggestion, rating weapons power in all damage type (many would have mostly 0's) would be good.
Whatever we call it it should be some kind of quasi dimensional space time thing.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Ranos wrote:How can we come up with a set number of types of things we want, without coming up with the types themselves?
By thinking about the strategic implications of the number of things and their interactions. What they are called is (comparitively) irrelivant.
Actaully what the are called is very important. We have come very far already with names. I think that everyone is got the same idea in terms of A beats B and is beaten by C. Each of use have come up with 5 or 6 types for weapons and armor. So I think we have consensus there. I think 6 is a nice number.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Ranos wrote:I think only one armor type per ship should be allowed. Same with shields. If you allow more than one, you start to lose the purpose of counters.
Yes, I think there should be only one type of armor/shield per ship. In fact I am thinking of eliminating the traditional shield as we know it. I want to combine armor and shields as one, similar to Zpocks system below. More on that soon.
Zpock wrote: The 4 weapon types:
Energy
Kinetic
Explosive
Corrosive
There seems to be consensus on these types.
Zpock wrote: Each weapon would do damage of one or more types. A few fluffy examples:

Laser Beam
5 Energy

Rail Gun
8 kinetic

Plasma gun
6 Energy
3 Kinetic

Starshine glow missile
2 energy
2 kinetic
2 explosive
This is an awesome idea, and it could be very flexible.

Now shields:
Basically a weapon is as Zpock put it. And armor is the same, but armor and shield are now one. Shield is now a type. So an armor could be:
Kinetic=20
Explosive=10
Shield=70

There would also be a type that matches shield for weapons.

Zpock wrote: Metal Plate armor
20% resistance to energy
20% resistance to kinetic
20% resistance to explosive
20% resistance to corrosive

As you see I would favor not spreading the resistances evenly (same total resistance).
Yes, I see your point. We should avoid evening it all out then.

quote="LithiumMongoose"]
You know, I'm almost starting to think Kinetic should be rolled into Energy, since they're both piercing-type attacks. And I still like Exotic as a damage category, even though it wasn't well-received heh: one tries to get past by boring a hole, one tries to crush/destroy the armor, one tries to disolve the armor over time, one tries to attack or get past the armor in bizarre/unusual ways physics-wise. But in lieu of that, the quoted list is satisfactory to me.
[/quote]
Kinetic and energy are not both piercing attacks. In my mind kinetic is more impact damage (it hits and stops). Energy is more of a force (it hits and tries to continue).
Impaler wrote: Corrosive I think could be folded into Kinetic because Kinetic implies matter on matter contact. I dont think Corrosive can stand on its own because it would seem to be restricted to only the Organic races. My thinking behind Thermal was that all Energy weapons actualy work by making the target Hot and melting/burning it and I wanted to avoid confusion with the "Energy" Hull. But it seems no one else realy liked the idea much.
No kinetic implies impact. Corrosive is melting/wearing/poison/disolving/corroding. I think the melting property of heat that you describe is more of a corrosive quality.

PowerCrazy
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#30 Post by PowerCrazy »

Impaler that looks all well and good.

But I see only 3 weapon types, I assume a 4th one would be "normal" damage where it does full damage to any target?

I tihnk we might want a little more complex, such as 2 bonuses 2 penalities, but this is a good start.

Also all weapons do not have to fall into the damage types, we can have hybrid damages. As well as special case damages.

But I do agree that we only want one type of armor per ship, and then maybe one type of shield.
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

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