Space Voyager

Join Date 12/2005

Warfare & fleet combat ideas

Perhaps too late, but still worth mentioning

Pheeee, the more I read about GalCivII, the more ideas/questions I have...

These are purely warfare ideas, so I've put them into the appropriate forum.

1) Does the SIZE of the hull have any impact on the probability to be hit? To use another way to ask; is a smaller ship harder to hit? Since GCII uses dice rolls this could be reflected in a smaller roll for a smaller ship.

2) An even better system would be to "burden" the weapons AND ships with a roll weight. A smaller weapon should have a +to hit roll (and the bigger it gets the lesser the chance) and a smaller hull should have a -to be hit roll. Perhaps the some hull upgrades could add +to be hit roll if they make the ship bigger considerably.

This would also make the players use some smaller weapons later in the game to destroy the fighters.

3) Can a ship that guards another ship destroy incoming projectiles? So that you would use small hull ships (harder to be hit) for point defences (against missiles) and reserve the place on your capital ships for planet/capship weaponry and other shield types. This could make fleets much more profitable.

If the chance to hit is always calculated on ship/ship bases than I guess no. 3 is pointless. Which would be a shame becouse the optimised ships will be completely useless against a different foe. This would be completely unrealistic since in real warfare you usually can get rid of deficiency in one field by adding a countermeasure placed on another platform. Like having an AAA go with the artillery insted of mounting an extra AA gun onto the artilery itself.

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1) I don't think so. It is purely rolled dice(s) based on attack(s) type(s) against rolled dice(s) based on defense(s) on a ship to ship basis. The fleet effect allows to have all ships in the fleet attacking the same ship

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And that's all the fleet effect there is?

Ok, I know this game isn't about combat, but still...

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the biggest issue to fleet combat to me is that each ship is attacked one at a time,.......

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I think the whole roll system is screwed up. For example you could have the best fleet in the galaxy and it could easily be destroyed by a lucky roll. This is just a lack of strategy and putting too much faith in the dice.

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The dices are here to represent the unpredictable. Imagine, the cocky fighter pilot doing a bold manover and destroyed a frigate (or whatever). The dice are there to "recreate" the lucky and not-so-lucky aspects of warfare that are by nature barely or completly unpredictable.

Another exemple: The battleship is taking quite a beating but still holding against 3 frigates but then a very nervous and stressed crewmember press a worng button and the battleship goes kablooey... I could go on ad infinitum like that.

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Einstein didn't believe events were based on dice rolls. But, he was wrong. One bad roll of the dice, and Earth will get hit by a meteor, destroying all of your fleets no matter how the game is programmed... so really, it's out of Stardock's hands.

If you really don't like dice rolls, perhaps you should suggest a viable alternative. Either:

A) The strongest ship always wins
or

The strongest ship sometimes loses

Deterministic games (Go, Chess) are type "A". Nondeterministic games (MOO, MoM, Civ, GalCiv, Dominions, Monopoly) are type "B". Real life is also type "B". While both types of games have advantages, notice that the deterministic ones are abstract, while the nondeterministic ones model real life (to some extent). Because reality is chaotic, games that model real life will invariably be less realistic if made deterministic... and in my opinion, less good. Is there some third system you would prefer, or do you honestly want a deterministic space strategy game?

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I don't mind the roll itself. I agree with Alexander000 that the roll is here to represent the unpredictable - lets say you can hit a ship where it has no vital systems and do little damage or hit a vital system and criple the ship with the same ammount of energy used. So I guess the roll is here to represent this.

I mind the turn based nature of the fight. Turns have consequences; all the weapons have the same reload time, all the weapons will attack one ship etc..

I know I may be getting boring as hell comparing everything to Nexus, but it IS everything I'll ever ask from a space ship tactical combat. If you wish to see it in action, here's the link (scroll down to free public servers);

www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/nexus/nexus_gameplay.zip.html
(the link had problems, so I took away the http:. Copy the link into your browser.

Once again I'll also say that under no circumstances is Nexus a competition to GC2, it only has tactical combat. But what a combat!

My biggest wish would be to implement this combat into a space empire building game and thus create the best space game EVER.

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I always wanted a turn based empire building game with huge 3d real time battles... Rome total war I love you

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Zoomba

Join Date 11/2002

+114

For an example of a purely roll-based combat model, look at combat in Civ 1,2 and 3. It used the risk model where essentially every opposing unit rolled a die and the higher number did the damage, and the lower one did not. This resulted in the infamous "Immortal Spearman" problem where you'd have a spearman you raised from the dark ages that would take out tanks. This is ALWAYS a frustrating system to use because quite often victory had nothing to do with who has the better ship/fleet, but who gets lucky with the rand(x,y) function.

The most simplified example would be in Risk where you may have an army of hundreds of units sitting waititng to attack that one lonely soldier sitting in Eastern Uzbekestan and that one soldier would decimate your entire force is you rolled poorly.

What Civ 4 did to remedy this problem was to weigh the rolls against levels of power. When you went up a tier in military units, they pretty much became one order of magnitude more powerful than the previous unit. This power rating modified the die roll. Also, the damage dealt/hit points values for units scaled up quickly to prevent a spearman from ever having the opportunity to deal a death blow to a tank in one combat round, at best it could ding it.

GC2 does a bit of this with each weapon type having a corresponding defense type, and each defense type having a rating that influences the roll versus the weapon. So a ship rigged out with the best shields won't even be damaged by the lower level lasers. The random factor comes in when you have ships on par with each other in terms of weapons and defenses (and speed, and I'm sure to some extent size too) . Imagine pitting two fighter pilots against one another. They're both in identical planes, both are the same skil level, and they both get the same starting conditions. Ultimately, there is a lot of randomness in who comes out on top in those situations.

The further you get from equal, the less random the encounter becomes.

Life can be very deterministic given the proper circumstances. Look at the military situation of the world today. No single nation can oppose the US in a war. No company in the US can compete directly with WalMart if they are foolish enough to do it. A mom and pop electronics store can't compete on prices with the likes of BestBuy. In war and economics, the further you get from parity, the more deterministic everything gets.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2396

If GalCiv were a tactical strategy game I'd agree with some of your points. But it's not.

There are PLENTY of games out there that let people micro manage individual units and determine their greatnest at how well they are at tactics.

But people like me, and there are a lot of us, have relatively few games that are about strategic skill. That is, the ability to build an empire or civilization or combat force and direct them into action. Galactic Civilizations is about strategic victory, not tactical prowess.

Anyone who has actually played GalCiv II, and I wonder if those complaining about dice rolls have even played it, realize that given enough rolls, that the system works out very well.

It is not as if A and B roll one time. A and B may roll 10 or 20 times and when you average it out, there isn't very much randomness in outcomes.

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Frogboy is right.
If you have more 'rolls', the average data will show the very likeness the battle would be ended in %-s.

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I've not seen the "immortal spearman" syndrome in GC2. One of the reasons for this is because in GC2, the range for attack and defense values is much larger than it was in Civ3. In Civ3, the highest attack value for a ground unit was what, 16? GC2 starts off at the same place, with a ship with 1 point of attack and no defense. My early-midgame defenders have 8-12 attack even before bonuses, which is almost as good as Civ3 endgame units, and after bonuses my endgame ships hit 100-300 points of attack. The 1 point defender isn't going to touch that except in the most extreme of cases. Those midgame defenders of mine might inflict some damage if they attack in huge fleets, but there's just not that much they can do against those endgame behemoths.

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to slug it out in GRAND style. I don't need to control them.

I understand that the development of such a feature may be far beyond the reach (time&money, not talking about knowledge) of Stardock, but one can dream, right?

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That doesn't mean that you SHOULDN'T want the battles to look nicer and more realistic. I'm also one of the people who likes strategy much more than any tactical part, but it sure would be beautifull to see these ships that I designed with love, care, development and money to slug it out in GRAND style. I don't need to control them.

I understand that the development of such a feature may be far beyond the reach (time&money, not talking about knowledge) of Stardock, but one can dream, right?

Umm......you seem to be describing exactly what is in the game right now.

You design your ship, form fleets, attack enemy ships/fleets and you see the ships you designed flying about shooting at the enemy. In the lower middle of the screen you see a shot by shot report scroll by as the battle goes on. To the left and right of that message window you see the health of the ships in battle drop as they take hits. Ships move left, move right, circle the enemy, they pull upwards to climb above the enemy and nose downwards to get below them. When you attack a starbase you see the starbase in battle.

The only thing you don't get is the ability to give commands to the ships, and frankly I don't miss it. I get to see my ships fight, then I go back to the strategy of expanding my empire which is what the game is really about. Well, it may be a case of trying to save my empire, you don't win every battle afterall!

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Yes, combat is in the game, it was never a question. The "problem" (not really) is what kind of combat. How it is performed, viewed and calculated. Really, if you would have checked the Nexus movie I gave link a few posts above you'd SEE what I'm talking about.

And don't get me wrong, Nexus also uses rolls to a certain effect; how much damage a shot will make isn't always the same. But the "chance to hit" is presented by the beam/topedo/whatever ACTUALLY hitting or missing an enemy's ship. The shield effect is represented by ACTUALL shields, reducing damage of the beam. Shields care also effective against some weapons, less against others etc..

It also uses targeting, allowing ships to target and disable specific parts/devices in ships. The AI uses this system very good, so GC2 using such battles would be a nice SF movie... Phenomenal, really.

Oh, but it has NO REPLAY value. At all. Once you've finished it... you've seen it all. We want empires!

Thatnks God for GC2.

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Ah, i see now. I still think its a bit disapointing, but life truly is random. Thanks for the info

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f you really don't like dice rolls, perhaps you should suggest a viable alternative. Either:

A) The strongest ship always wins
or

The strongest ship sometimes loses

Deterministic games (Go, Chess) are type "A".

not sure i agree about chess.... nothing is more satisfying than mating with a pawn.

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So found a thread about that case

___________________________________________
Hi there,

so after some steps in the Campaign game (Now I am on the map after the defeat of the Dread Lords)

So what I am really missing is that feature of placing my troops (ships) , have generals and so on.
Not that I want to play that battles out, but to tell them (Armies, Fleets) before the battles, what they have to do in the case of a battle.

As there is already a game, where this is somehoe implemented I mention all who are intrested that they have a look at this sort what I am meaning. It is the basic idea and could even improved a lot.
The other game,
Dominions II
http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/

GalCiv II would be even more intresting, when you see your designed ships more coordinated ...

What do you think, a possibility or just waste of time ?

THX for reading, have a nice day.
_______________________________

Will have a look at that Nexus game, maybe it is same as that of Dominions ...

Tried to download and then looked at the homepage of Nexus ? Is it that RTS game ...
maybe I am wrong, but that sort of battle wouldn't fit for a 4x game ?

Try Dominions II BATTLE SYSTEm ... it is fun and could be improved A LOT and could be used for Space and Land Battles ...

Could be a chance that GalCiv II AddOn have such battlesystem ? (As it could be used for Multiplayer also)
Maybe one of the Devs has an opinion ...

THX

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hhhmmm ... with landbattles : In some way, that whole Planet map could be used where the battle would take part.
So the defender has to protect his buildings ... maybe too complicated, as than you have to make for each planet an attack and defense strategy ...

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nothing is more satisfying than mating with a pawn

Huh Huh. "Mating"

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