many ships or fewer ships?

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Bastian-Bux
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#16 Post by Bastian-Bux »

Yeah, CPU power isn't the most important cap on the number of ships on screen.

More then 1600x1200 resolution isnt feasible to assume for the next few years. Yes, some people will have 1920x1440, but not that many.

So lets assume two fleets of ard 1000 ships each, right?

1600*1200/2000 ~ 1000

So if the if the whole screen was filled with those ships, you'd have 32x32 for each ship.

But well, there is space in between. At least 75% of a space combat screen is empty space. So down to 16x16 shipsize. MAX

So do you really want more then 1000 ships per side?

PS: Yes, i know the numbers aint fully correct, as most ships wont be "squares". But they are good enough to allow an estimate. Its not important if we settle with 500 or 2000 ships per side, but much more then 1000 ships per side doesnt make sense.

guiguibaah
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Another difference

#17 Post by guiguibaah »

I like that idea Bastion - the cap number. In truth I liked how Moo2 had their fleet caps (althouth I know some people hated it). You could increase your caps through production (starbases), Technology (Communications), or Racial picks (Warrior).


My main concern is for ships that may have an experienced crew - a crew that has become legendary in status. It would be nice if they couild have an effect on a battle, and not be the target of 1000 ships worth of beam cannon fire.


"Scotty, open a transmission to the lead ship"
"Ye's Capn', I be th Engineer, not Uhura"
"What the, oh no, not more beam cannon fire"
"Oh great, looks like we're all going to die again. Oh well"
(1000 ships fire. Everyone dies)


Next episode - Will Captain Kirk find his rabid Toupee, or will it go on to take control of the USS enterprise and earth itself?!?!??



I liked how Birth Of The Federation had their ship battles - the balance was about right. But I would have liked stronger / more hitpoints / tougher ships in the endgame.
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Prokonsul Piotrus
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#18 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

This question was raised as a by-product in the Ship Design: Stars! vs Moo vs SEIV.

Anyway, I vote 'the less ships the better'. One of the designers mentioned that we are going for '50 capital ships in a fleet is a huge late game fleet size' and I totally agree with the estimate (and if it revised down, I wont object :>).

Why? Well, I want each ship to have (a possibilty to have) a unique name, history, crew, etc. Basically, I am on the 'detailed ship stuff' idea - as close to the MOO2/SE/Full Thrust as in can get (as opposed to MOO1/Stars! stacks). But that can only be worth programming and playing if we have few ships - if we have hundreds, nobody will care about internal systems, crews or ship history. Even dozens is getting dangerous here (all who played MOO2/SE4 now that in the bigger universes you reach ship/battle mm hell). We need to avoid this at all cost!

Make each ship count!
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noelte
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#19 Post by noelte »

I also favour the less is more approach. But i guess we will have much more ships than about 50 late game! There can be many systems (say 500) with each up to ten planets. So i guess we will have at least one capital ship per system.

I really like ships having a history, maybe even my first ship survives until late game and is useful. But i guess we will need to tweak the shipyard/ ship handling system much more.
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Sh.Tac.
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#20 Post by Sh.Tac. »

The huge amount of ships give us a grand-scale epic battles, but I consider the lot of objects tends to depreciate the value of each given ship, furthemore both AI and player management becomes a problem

So it's a question of gameplay rather than CPU capabilities
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Bastian-Bux
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#21 Post by Bastian-Bux »

@Piotrus The important part of your post is CAPITAL ships.

An hard cap of 50 ships per side would make carriers a dead end.

I think even 50 capital ships are too much, cause for a balanced fleet you have to count at least 3 smaller ships per capital, 2-5 support ships, and maybe 20 small crafts and fighters?

Ranos
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#22 Post by Ranos »

There are advantages and disadvantages of both more and fewer ships.

Fewer ships allow for lots of detail as well as being able to follow specific ships and crews. The downside is that you can't have a tremendous ammount of diversity and following your crews and naming the ships would be more micromanagement, IMO.

More ships allow for lots of diversity. You could have a hundred different ship types with a hundred different purposes. You also don't have to worry about individual ships since there are dozens of each type of ship. This of course brings us to the downside that you have just a bunch of ships with no personality whatsoever. The detail during combat would also have to be minimal.

I think the best solution is somewhere in between. I think a maximum of 300 ships per battle is about right. There could still be ships and crews that distinguish themsleves and demand attention and careful managing to make sure you don't lose these great crews. Detail wouldn't be able to be very high but some would be allowed and those who are really into the epic battles would still be able to have them.

The numbers could be lower, but not by much. Less than 200 ships doesn't make for an epic battle. I think 300 is a pretty good number to go with.
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guiguibaah
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Ship types

#23 Post by guiguibaah »

I disagree - in midgame Moo2 I sometimes would fight with 5 battleships, and each of them were completely distinct

One had reinforced hull, heavy armor, Auto-repair (15% per combat turn), best shields, and had nothing but lots of Continuous Autofire PD lazers on it.

Other was nothing more than a giant missile x2 boat

Another had augmented engines, inertial damper, and 6 45 deg graviton beams pointing at front.

Another was a maxed-out ship just to capture other ships. Full assault pods and assault shuttles.

One was a carrier.

Last was multi-purpose ship with 3 tractor beams.


- - - -

Anyhow, I think having ships like Homeworld would be interesting - Say, Scouts, Fighters, bombers, Pinnaces, Sloops and Corvettes are the ships you mass produce in clumps (stacks) and group them up. They don't get experienced crews, they don't last long, but they are quick and cheap to make. Their design is simple, some only go on carriers, and are cheaper to scrap than to refit (in some cases).

A Scout having say 5 hp and a Corvette having 100



Frigates, Cruisers, Battleships and Titans have crew experience, crew history, easier to refit than to scrap, are much tougher and are made individually (not in stacks).

A Frigate would have say 1200 hp's and titans 6000


This way we can put a lot more detain on the bigger ships, and minimize detail on the smaller ones, thus drawing something of a happy medium.
Last edited by guiguibaah on Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ranos
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#24 Post by Ranos »

That may be but either you had multiple ships of each of those versions that you didn't take into combat or you were making a new ship design for every ship you built.

I think the number of ships in battles should reflect the total number of ships a player has. If it is 50 ships per battle, an empire with 150 planets shouldn't have more than a few hundred ships. If it's 200 ships per battle, that same empire should have maybe a couple of thousand ships. If it's 1000, then the player should have tens of thousands of ships total.

If these aren't balanced then it looks alittle ridiculous. If you have 50 ships per battle but ten thousand ships even in the late game that seems really stupid to me.
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guiguibaah
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Neither

#25 Post by guiguibaah »

- Neither, It cost me less to produce and keep refitting those battleships than it did to make new ones. As long as one could retreat before it was completely destroyed, it was repaired and ready for battle. As a result my empire did not have to keep producing a lot of smaller ships to make up for fleet attrition - something that invariably happens when you have larger numbers of ships.
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#26 Post by Ranos »

So you didn't build new ships, but every time you refit those ships, you had to design a new ship. Frmo your list, you always designed a different one for each ship so you still did a lot of designing. That is my point. To get diversity with a few ships, you have to do a lot of designing for only a couple of ships.
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utilae
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#27 Post by utilae »

I think it would be good to have few ships in early game, eg 3-5 and a fair amount of ships in late game, eg 5 largest ships, 10 nextlargest ships, 15 medium ships, 20 smallest ships. About 50 in total or 100 would be ok (alot of ships would be ok if it could be manageable for the player). There should be smaller amounts of large size ships and more small size ships.

Impaler
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#28 Post by Impaler »

I like Guigi's idea for scaling detail on smaller/larger ships but I would still like to see some reflection of the skill of fighter pilots as thouse fighters pilot aces have a lot of Sci-Fi material wrapped around them (most of which is inpired by WWII in the Pacific). First off fighters and Corvettes are best handled at the "Squadron" level as was done in HomeWorld 2. That alone alows us to simply things a great deal as 1 squadron would esentialy count as 1 ship, when you see they flying around their a little wedge of ships flying around like their the Blue Angels (aka embeded in a clear block with no relative movment) That will significantly reduce proccessing needed to display them. A single experience value for the Squadron dosn't seem to hard to do especialy if their are only a few ranks involved (0 bar,1 bar, 2 bar, 3 bar). Names might also be generated (Alpha Squadron, Gold Squadron, Eagle Squadron ect ect) if thats desirable.
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Ranos
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#29 Post by Ranos »

If there are more than 20 ships per battle, task forces are the only way realtime could be controlled well. What I don't want to see is the MOO3 style TFs where all the ships stay together and do these cute little turns and pirouettes. I would like control to be at the TF level but movement to be at the ship level. That makes the battle seem more intense and enveloping for the player.

What would you rather see, groups of ships standing off from eachother shooting or smaller ships weaving in and out of large ships firing as they go?
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MisterMerf
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#30 Post by MisterMerf »

Can we please both camps?

I, for instance, want to see indescribably massive armadas. I want the might of a thousand systems to appear MIGHTY, dammit!

Others want to invest their energy in a single ship of a single group and see them fight their noble way across the galaxy.

I can only see both of these being possible by scaling the size of the galaxy.
Can we have both 50-star galaxies and 500-star galaxies and still have decent gameplay in both?

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