Combat Revisions

[destrkta]

Only reason I've stopped build dreds is that cost effectiveness vs battleships is asstoundingly bad, and the fact that I've lost them to planets that are colonies (which I would never have attacked in the first place)

[Supamand]

Hmm so if planet/colony does have only 1 ATKSPD, then you really would need to build up mine fields and orbitals early in game to defend vs players. Otherwise a planet can only kill 1 ship per round.

I'd suggest to maybe making ATKSPD for planets = population / 20mil = 20 ATKSPD (for 400mil pop planet)

But planet killers I really not even sure about those. But knowing the sheer coast of the unit, I would want to see it with low initiative but rather high ATKSPD.
Just think back to Death Star from Star Wars. It had 1 main weapon to kill planets (check), but it also had a ton of surface mounted cannons and carried a bunch of fighter ships.....
So, unless you guys figure out a way for planet killer to spit out unlimited amount (but no more than 10 at the time) of fighter ships. Thank I'd advise to set base ATKSPD to ~10

[Royce]

If target assignment is random, and target number is limited, couldn't people spam probes as decoys?

[SG7]

I just think loudly. There are many games where combat is vital and it works well. Rules are transparent and no one complains. One example of such games is CIV III, CIV IV.
These rules can be easily transplanted to EoE.
1.Is there really a need to come up with complex and sophisticated new rules?
2.Is anything wrong with combat in existing games?
3.I am curious why one of the existing battle schemes from popular games was not implemented.

[Troy McCauley]

I just think loudly. There are many games where combat is vital and it works well. Rules are transparent and no one complains. One example of such games is CIV III, CIV IV.
These rules can be easily transplanted to EoE.
1.Is there really a need to come up with complex and sophisticated new rules?
2.Is anything wrong with combat in existing games?
3.I am curious why one of the existing battle schemes from popular games was not implemented.

Combat in Civ takes up hundreds of thousands of lines of code and was developed by a huge dev team.

Zarksoft is a very small team and they are trying to improve the game based on our feedback, just saying "do what someone else did" is not helpful unless you are gong to provide some examples of how it can be implemented here.


As for what we can do to improve the system, I like atk speed mainly because it adds a different variable that can be used to differentiate the ships. Also I think random assignment is a bad idea as it makes it very easy to exploit the system such as the previously mentioned probe spam tactic.

One way to do it would be for Ships to target ships of the same class first, then the largest ship/target, then orbitals, then planets.

This prevents using worthless units to make larger ones invincible but still provides value for having escorts and makes atk speed a useful stat. Thus having escorts protects your capital ships from being swarmed by smaller ships. Which is exactly the role such ships play in actual warfare.

I like the idea of giving players a reason to have a mixture of ships as opposed to just building fleets of 200+ Dreads. but i definitely dont want to see fleets with 500 probes wandering around.

[SG7]

Combat in Civ takes up hundreds of thousands of lines of code and was developed by a huge dev team.

Really? Do you have real data for it?

I am trying to be helpful. CIV is very well researched by its game funs and combat system is well documented. It is much easier to mimic existing scheme than to come up with a new one.

[Royce]

Really? Do you have real data for it?

I am trying to be helpful. CIV is very well researched by its game funs and combat system is well documented. It is much easier to mimic existing scheme than to come up with a new one.

The proposed scheme isn't particularly novel. Aside from random target selection, it sounds like a zillion RPGs I've played.

[catswift]

I don't see an issue with "probe spam". You would only do this is you couldn't build anything better (due to limited object count), and from my experience I'm maxing my object count with cruisers by day 3. If someone needs to defend against that, and all they can build are probes, all the more power to them.

[Royce]

I don't see an issue with "probe spam". You would only do this is you couldn't build anything better (due to limited object count), and from my experience I'm maxing my object count with cruisers by day 3. If someone needs to defend against that, and all they can build are probes, all the more power to them.

A moderately wealthy player would have no difficulty dismantling a chunk of his harvesting fleet and building dozens or hundreds of probes to accompany his attack fleet for a major invasion, then destroying them all and rebuilding harvesters/cargo ships. Probes can also be made very fast, so if combat takes any length of time, planets could keep chairing them out. Also, because you're maxing your count with cruisers doesn't mean other people are (I am not), nor does it mean you would under the new system. All you need is a couple of large ships, and many probes, and you have a good chance of surviving and winning every battle. Your probes take most of the damage, and you can rebuilt them almost instantly at negligible cost.

[catswift]

Probes can also be made very fast, so if combat takes any length of time, planets could keep chairing them out

This is a separate issue which will need to addressed, thanks for bringing it up. Planets in combat should have their production queues halted while the planet is in combat (after all, the colonists are busy earning the ATK points per m). It won't stop the dedicated player from flooding ships in from other planets, but at least then it requires dedicated micro-management to pull off.