I like this idea. For a game I am supposed to only have to check once or twice a day major combat against two large fleets or against a large colony should take some time so that when I do log in I have a chance of reacting to it. I guess what I am trying to say is make sure the pace of the combat matches the pace of the rest of the game.
Thoon - We've had an orbital on the design table for a while now (the art's done already) called a Hyperspace Wake detector that can increase your visible range / send notices of incoming ships but with all the other revisions / fixes we've been doing there just hasn't been time to get to it yet.
As for combat taking time I like the idea particularly because it allows for players to pull in reinforcements or as for help from allies but I can't really speak to the logistics of adding in new players / ships into combat in real time. One thing that does come into question is how we'd go about displaying that visually since one of the goals is to eventually add in a more visual representation of combat. You've probably seen this floating around but this is what we've been working on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjhTu8oR1N0 So in the case of a battle that takes 30 minutes per round I'm not sure what the best way to display that would be. My first thought is that you could simply have the combat view be a post battle recap that's attached to the battle report like it is now. So you'd still see the planetary battle animation going on to show there's a battle going on there but you wouldn't see the detailed view until post battle.
Something else we'd need to do is change the background in the ship roll up for all ships currently in combat so we could more clearly indicate that they're in use. (technically they should also move to the 'under ai control' position of orbit but I think most people think of that as simply a place to manage harvest routes.
Because it is just a place to manage routes. Even the harvesters on routes themselves pull into your regular ship position to the right of the planet. If that other spot is meant for AI ships to actually be located in, it isn't happening.Originally Posted by Leedot
Lee - I'm not sure if it has been discussed before, but I was looking at your excel spread sheet have few questions about Orbitals.
1. Mines look like they will be the strongest orbital with the highest initiative. Do they expire after one attack or will they stay active until taking dmg? Because if they don't expire after attacking, it will be impossible to take over anything. For example we take 1 Monitor to attack an outpost. If you have at least 3 mine fields at this outpost, they will kill Monitor and remain intact. So you would need at least 2 monitors and a lot of luck to come out victorious from this battle. Now look at the CO value of the mines and Monitors and Skills required. I'd say mine orbitals are overpowered! But if they do expire from 1st attack, then it would be fair balance with the listed stats.
2. There are a few skills that boost orbital build speed and orbital damage, but you rarely see anyone build any orbitals at colonies, especially with the combo ship transformations. What I was thinking is to maybe adding a build time to the ship conversion into orbital? Otherwise orbital defenses and advanced orbital defenses skills are not very useful at all... I'd only train those two skills to exploit awesomeness of the mine fields.
3. Orbital Shipyard seams like a pretty important Orbital and takes for ever to build. Currently there is no information about it in the game as far as Attack and Defense. Do you think you could add it to the excel sheet? Same goes for other non combat orbitals, I'm wondering what it will take to destroy them.
Ok, I haven't been ignoring this thread but I knew Zark was almost done with the test script and wanted to field test the numbers a bit more before making any more posts. Now that I've had a chance to do some pretty extensive testing of various scenarios I've updated all the numbers to reflect what I'm currently using in the test cases.
A few changes of note -
- Colonies have a lot more DEF / can target more ships but do less damage per attack. This is because with the old numbers it made more sense to just use a ton of weak units to overrun the planet's defenses. Now you -can- take a 400mu planet with a lot of small units or even a good number of high damage units but having a mixed group is the most efficient.
- Orbitals are more expensive / less powerful. They're still about 5x more cost effective than a ship of the same price but of course they're immobile so I think that's a fair trade off.
- Instead of using a priority list ships prioritize the strongest target that they can kill in a single attack so they opt for destroying as many targets as possible over doing the most damage possible. This winds up working pretty well for maintaining the desired balance in terms of keeping a mixed grouping of ships for optimal performance without having the ships be overly dumb.
- Defenders get +5 initiative on the first round of attack always if they're in orbit of a planet they own.
So far from all the testing these numbers / system feel pretty solid / balanced and I haven't really seen an battles where one side was wiping the other unexpectedly. With the (1-10) initiative variance you do get some upsets every now and again when the numbers are close but I like that it's not deterministic down to an exact number of ships.
Supamand - As for non combat ships / orbitals currently anything that doesn't do damage lives or dies with the planet.
I'm not sure if there is some other pending change that covers this, but given that you currently can't see the composition of an enemy force before engaging (when at war), can you add a feature that allows you to "evaluate" an enemy force before combat to see if you stand a chance?
I'm thinking of something like the "consider" feature in most MMORPGs, but I don't care how it's implemented (just showing the ship list would be good enough). It starts to get really frustrating going in to battles blind in this regard, especially with the lack of combat reports. Too easy to have entire fleets wiped out when you guess wrong about defenses, etc.
Quick question:
What is ETA for those changes. I am not in a hurry since old scheme worked OK for me.
Last edited by SG7; 06-16-2012 at 01:00 PM.
Jet - We'll be expanding the range of visibility to cover an entire solar system so if you're in the system you have visibility into the entire system. Complete battle reports will also go up with the revised combat so if someone posts a fleet at the sun set to war status you'll be able to at least get info on how many ships are posted at the sun.
SG7 - I don't have an eta for these changes just yet but they'll go in as a group so they probably won't affect your current game.
A quick update, Tsagoth is moving on to implementing the new combat server side now that Zark and I have been able to do a ton of scenario testing offline and feel that the system is sound and the new numbers are looking pretty balanced. We'll also be implementing the extended time frame combat that Thoon suggested so each round of combat will take 30 minutes. During that delay you or other players will be able to send in reinforcements or pull their ships out of combat.
If a player orders all of their ships to retreat they're pulled out of combat immediately be the remaining fleets get a free round of attack on the departing ships as they leave. If a player has multiple ships / fleets in play and only orders some of them to leave the number of ships that may open fire on the fleeing fleet is reduced by the number of ships remaining in combat; This is done to simulate the effect of some ships staying behind to lay down a covering fire.
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)
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