Hot posts in thread: ISG Dev Diary #4: Space Combat

There was one game which 4X fans don't want to talk about which bothered to explain that. In that game you multiple weapon mounts to choose from and they were divided in two broad categories: turreted and spinal. Well turreted were not exactly called turreted, their names a ordinary "point defense", "light mount", "heavy mount" but their description alluded to being turreted or something like that. In any case they were contrasted with spinal mount which were described as fixed mount which literately required aiming with a whole ship. But the actual combat contradicted the description because all mounts produced 360° coverage and spinal mounts were abstracted with lower rate of fire (and greater range and damage).

 

A few comments from wet navy experience,

Movement should not affect fire. They are seperate in real life and I agree with the implementation here particularly for kinetic and missile weapons systems

Rotating in place, no reason why not in space, (no friction or gravity acting against you), on the water it is something else entirely.

Weapons overload brings to mind the days of wooden ships when one could increase the powder for range, load double shot for more kinetic damage or load chain shot (two smaller projectiles linked by a chain) to strike at the sails of the vessel (engines)
And my favorite, hot shots, where the projectile was heated first with the intent to cause fire to break out on the target.

A comment not from wet navy experience

Where is the self destruct?

 

Interesting article, thanks for sharing.

The design appears to be simple enough and that is a good sign.
- The heat system is intriguing although I just cannot shake the nagging feeling of it potentially becoming a nuisance.
- The movement all in all appears to be sound, though I most certainly miss variety from it. There have been games out there which portrayed different methods of movement even on a tactical level quite nicely and how it can affect tactical game play.
- Some actions sound a bit dodgy:
> Free rotation - sure its just a game, but rotating massive objects, especially completely might be just as hard as it is getting them to move from A to B. While free rotation would be completely reasonable for small vessels or ones built with maneuverability in mind, I would most certainly not expect my largest ships to be able to rotate 360 degrees without sacrificing all their movement in the process.
> Scavenging - time scale issues.. how is a single turn sufficient to 1) board a ship 2) look it through for valuable stuff 3) strip valuables 4) cart it off the ship 5) unboard? If scavenging takes more than a single turn, then does that ship have to stay there until it is done? Why not just save that action for after battle, when the winning side can look through the wreckage in peace?
> Boarding - again, time scale.. I would most certainly expect boarding to be a multiple turn action.
> Fleeing - if you can flee in a single turn, combat will easily degrade into a benny hill chase around the galaxy. There should be some sort of cooldown, or drive spinup delay on fleeing too.

Also, I would consider attack to be an action as well, not something you can do in addition to taking your two actions. Hell, why not take two attacks, if you decide not to move?

- Experience gain in combat: you realize that I would start running around disabled ships just to rack up "combat experience", right? Experience gain has to be tied to actions other than being in combat, otherwise it promotes unnatural engagements, where you linger around or delay combat just to earn more XP.

Regardless of the above comments, I find this an interesting and good foundation for a combat system, which I am sure you will refine further still.

 

Hi everyone, this week we propose to discuss our solution for the space combat!

The space combat design is heavily inspired by the space combat system of Master of Orion 2 with some novelties related with the inclusion of a heat system, energy overload actions and action credits.

The combat is turn-based and will be played in a square grid just like in MoO2. The ships will be 3D but with a top down view perspective like in MoO2. The 3D is here to justify some additional features that we are still testing to provide a better and more immersive combat experience.

Heat System

Each ship has an associated heat level at a given time. Heat levels can change for several reasons such as being hit by an enemy's weapons or through excessive use of energy overload actions during combat.

Critical heat level indicates that, in the next turn, the ship may malfunction, or even explode. So, you will be making a decision between keeping the excessive heat and jeopardize the ship's integrity, or to cool-off your ship at the tradeoff of seeing your actions limited for the next turns.

Overload Actions

The player can decide to allocate additional energy to shields, weapons and engines above their nominal specifications, which we call "overload actions".

The overload will provide temporary benefits to the ship, from enhanced shield performance, better weapons or faster movement. The tradeoff is that the ship will see its heat level increase. So, you must be careful not to reach critical heat levels.

Ship Actions (action credits)

Each turn, each individual ship has 2 action credits to spend.

All actions can be used/spent when the player wants during their turn in any sequence desired, as long as there are actions left to activate. The possible actions are:

- Move: Player can move the ship as far as the engine speed allows. The player can decide to spend one move action, or two, therefore he can move the ship twice.

- Rotate: Player can rotate the ship freely (360º).

- Flee: Player can issue the flee command to retreat from battle (the flee will then take place in the beginning of the next turn).

- Scan: Player can decide to scan an enemy ship to reveal details according to the sensor system installed. The enemy ship will be marked as “scanned” somehow, for the player to know who was scanned and not afterwards.

- Salvage: Allows the player to obtain loot from the battlefield from debris of destroyed ships. The ship must be right next to the debris in order to salvage, for now.

- Board: Allows the player to board an enemy vessel.

The only exception is fire, which can be done at any time during the turn.

Movement

The ship movement follows an inertial pattern like the one found in Master of Orion 2.

So, ship movement shall depend on the ship direction and the previous movement profile. If no movement was made yet in a turn, it means that the ship is “stopped” and we can move in more directions. On the contrary, if a move has already been made, it means the ship is in movement and that the next possible position is conditioned by the inertial laws

Better engines translates to more movement points in combat. Additionally, when designing your ships, you can increase the maneuverability level of the ship which increases combat speed further (more possibilities for smaller ships, less for bigger ones)

Overloading engines gives you more ship range in that specific turn.

The engines' status can be "overload", "nominal", "damaged" and "broken". A ship with a damaged engine can only move at half speed.

Engines can be damaged or broken by ship critical heat or by enemy hits which target the ship's structure.



Defensive System

Each ship has three levels of defense: Shields, armor and structure (or hull).

The hull's strength can be modified while designing your ships by adjusting the "Hull Reinforcement" modification, which enriches the hull with more armor material.

During combat, shields can be overloaded providing bonuses to shields, from better absorption rate, blocking points and recharge rate.

Shields can be adjusted to provide 90, 270, or 360 degrees of protection to your ship.

The shields' status can be "overloaded", "nominal", "damaged" and "broken".

Damaged shields cannot be overloaded and they lose the recharge rate capability.

Shields can be damaged or broken by ship critical heat or by enemy hits that target the ship's structure.

Firing System

There are three types of weapons in the game that can be used in combat: Beams, kinetics and missiles.

Beams are versatile weapons that see their damage dissipate with range. They tend to inflict the lowest damage of the three types, but are quite accurate.

Kinetic weapons do moderate to high amounts of damage, which doesn’t decrease with range. They are particularly suited for close range combat. On the negative side, kinetics are the least accurate of the weapon types.

Missiles are very effective for long range combat. They have unlimited range, don’t suffer from range damage reduction, tend to inflict the greatest damage and are the most accurate. The downside is that they take time to reach their targets, and can be destroyed or countered in the process.

Weapon firing arcs will be defined during ship design and can vary between full, front, front-sides and rear coverage.

Weapons can be grouped for focus firing on a target or fired individually in order to hit multiple targets

The weapon's status can be "overloaded", "nominal" and "broken". Weapons can be broken by ship critical heat or by enemy hits which target the ship's structure.

Special Systems

Special systems are ship components that offer special abilities other than shield and armor protection, and weapons. They are either present in the ship or not, contrary to weapons where a number can be set.

Examples of special systems:

- Gyro Destabilizer: Spins target ship randomly.
- Cloaking Device: Ship remains unseen until it fires.
- Tractor Beam: Brings ships closer, good for boarding.
- Repulsor Beam: Pulls ships away, good for not being boarded
- Combat Jump Displacer: "Teleports" a ship to a different location in the combat grid.
- Bomb Rack: Enables planetary bombardment.
- Fighter Bays.
- Bomber Bays.

Crew

For every turn in space, the crew gains an experience point. Every enemy ship destroyed adds experience. When the crew gains enough experience, they level up to the next rank and their ship gains further combat bonuses.

Status

The space combat mechanics are already implemented for the most part, but there's some major work left to be done related with adding some missing functionalities and improving the current mechanics, as for UI overall improvements.

Now please let us know your impressions, your ideas and suggestions.

Thank you all!