Alpha plans, as of the 29th.

[mrhanman]

I think FF-style battles in a space conquest game could be interesting.  Especially if you could "program" ship behavior in a manner similar to FF12's gambit system.

Anyway, I'm glad more depth is being added to the combat portion of the game.  I've been having fun with it so far, but it's a little too simple.  Everything feels too automatic, as though my input has little outcome on the battle.

[Tridus]

I think FF-style battles in a space conquest game could be interesting.  Especially if you could "program" ship behavior in a manner similar to FF12's gambit system.

Anyway, I'm glad more depth is being added to the combat portion of the game.  I've been having fun with it so far, but it's a little too simple.  Everything feels too automatic, as though my input has little outcome on the battle.

Gratituous Space Battles was like that, and it's pretty fun.

[x4000]

I've been having fun with it so far, but it's a little too simple.  Everything feels too automatic, as though my input has little outcome on the battle.

Yep, I think that about sums it up.  Mechanically it is very fun, but the core problem there is that there are too few objectives, so there are too few choices for you to make beyond deployment order and positioning.  Having to choose between battlefield objectives is one of those things that really brings out the "I must interact with this in a major way or I am going to die" side of things.  Hopefully by tomorrow evening!  We'll see.

[nas1m]

That is an excellent question, and one I am still working on, heh.

In general, these will be more "specialized" ships, ala AI War in terms of how their roles are not so broadly defined.

Count me intrigued. Luckily it's not like you guys haven't a bit of expertise in coming up with esoteric *cough* creative ship classes ...

[x4000]

Hahaha, yeah.  And I am actively pillaging AI War for ideas, too, to be honest.  I don't want to do them exactly the same way here, but there have been just a super huge number of good ideas over there, and a lot of them fit here in various contexts, too.  I am roughly planning on doubling the number of ship classes in the next couple of days, along with various other stuff being added to battles to make them have sub-objectives, etc.  And there were already plans for more pilot types -- that will at least double or triple at some point prior to 1.0, too.

Now that our framework for all of this stuff is in place and working, it's not all that hard to add new ones, comparatively speaking.  Balancing all these will be harder, of course, but that's part of why I'm making a push to add these things sooner than later.

[nas1m]

Hahaha, yeah.  And I am actively pillaging AI War for ideas, too, to be honest.  I don't want to do them exactly the same way here, but there have been just a super huge number of good ideas over there, and a lot of them fit here in various contexts, too.  I am roughly planning on doubling the number of ship classes in the next couple of days, along with various other stuff being added to battles to make them have sub-objectives, etc.  And there were already plans for more pilot types -- that will at least double or triple at some point prior to 1.0, too.

Now that our framework for all of this stuff is in place and working, it's not all that hard to add new ones, comparatively speaking.  Balancing all these will be harder, of course, but that's part of why I'm making a push to add these things sooner than later.

Are there any plans for making some of these new classes restricted to one or more of the races?
Could be good for some extra variety. And it would make the races "look" less samey in combat aside from their faction lights, I guess... (not having played the game yet)

[x4000]

Yes, probably one ship class per race will be unique to them.  And most likely the only way you will be able to have that ship class in a game is by which race's homeworld you crash onto.  Right now there have not been enough things that are absolutely-restricted based on which homeworld you crashland onto, and having a choice between one of eight ships in that manner appeals to me for those purposes.

[Mick]

I'm unsure how battlefield objectives in a space battle can really make a lot of sense. Isn't the battlefield objective of any space battle pretty much always going to come down to "blow up their ships while keeping mine unblowed-up"?

If there was some kinda boarding-type option, you can basically have a strategic choice between getting extra resources from a battle vs a safer option of just blowing them up. That doesn't feel appropriate though since this seems to be more of a fight between squad craft than multiple big honking battleships.

Perhaps a option of disabling vs destroying, as a way to extract scrap resources from the win?

Space battles in sci-fi television have never seemed particularly strategic. "More power to shields!" What? As opposed to less power? The battles seemed pretty much determined by who showed up with the bigger guns. The times where any fancy strategery came in were pretty much where there were environmental options for them to do clever things with. "Lead them into the nebula and then blow up the cryptoneutrino particles!" Of course, it's not like you can set up every battle to have special things to take advantage of, and it's not like choosing to take advantage of them is necessarily some interesting strategic choice if it's always better.

It sounds the strategic decision in combat is going to more or less boil down to what loadout you bring into it, and what order you splash it out (almost makes it like a deck-building card game played in real time). What kind of things are going to encourage the player to change things up between battles? Is this something that you want to encourage? If a battle goes completely south, is a player going to be able to recognize what they did wrong and how they could have done better (can they learn from it), or is it going to feel more or less random?

EDIT: If any of this sounds like criticism of the current system, that it not intended! I'm more or less thinking out loud from the perspective of someone who has no idea how any of this plays out beyond watching part of one video.

[nas1m]

Yes, probably one ship class per race will be unique to them.  And most likely the only way you will be able to have that ship class in a game is by which race's homeworld you crash onto.  Right now there have not been enough things that are absolutely-restricted based on which homeworld you crashland onto, and having a choice between one of eight ships in that manner appeals to me for those purposes.

That is good news in my book! Really looking forward to round 2 .

[x4000]

I'm unsure how battlefield objectives in a space battle can really make a lot of sense. Isn't the battlefield objective of any space battle pretty much always going to come down to "blow up their ships while keeping mine unblowed-up"?

The idea is to basically have various forms of "powerups" (for lack of a better broad term" scattered around the battlefield.  This is all ancient hydral technology that has been left behind -- which is actually very fitting thematically for the game, incidentally.  You can choose to just fight your enemy head-on as now, but if you ignore the hydral technology on the battlefield, your enemy will capture them and overwhelm you with that extra force.  Conversely, if you are overmatched by your enemy but play your cards right, you could capture enough technology to overmatch them in return.

So it's not like these things are extra objectives in the required sort of sense.  But it's something that makes there be more than two points of strategic importance on the battlefield, and which thus means that your and enemy forces may be splitting off more to go secure these extra objectives, rather than either just escorting your flagship in some fashion or charging the enemy in some fashion.

[nas1m]

I'm unsure how battlefield objectives in a space battle can really make a lot of sense. Isn't the battlefield objective of any space battle pretty much always going to come down to "blow up their ships while keeping mine unblowed-up"?

The idea is to basically have various forms of "powerups" (for lack of a better broad term" scattered around the battlefield.  This is all ancient hydral technology that has been left behind -- which is actually very fitting thematically for the game, incidentally.

Are we allowed to keep them after combat? Or are they just some short-term power for the duration of a single combat (or potentially multi engagement combat run along the lines you mentioned)? I think I would feel a bit of a let-down if I fought for something during combat only to loose it again afterwards...

[x4000]

It's just a temporary thing, for the most part, if you do not have hangar space to store them.  But for ones that you do have hangar space for, you can keep them.  A lot of these things are fixed-position stuff that nobody can take with them at all in general.

[nas1m]

It's just a temporary thing, for the most part, if you do not have hangar space to store them.  But for ones that you do have hangar space for, you can keep them.  A lot of these things are fixed-position stuff that nobody can take with them at all in general.

I was about to say that being allowed to keep them would likely throw open the door to balance hell - but...
Here you come with a solution which sounds feasible. Cool .

[echo2361]

The idea is to basically have various forms of "powerups" (for lack of a better broad term" scattered around the battlefield.  This is all ancient hydral technology that has been left behind -- which is actually very fitting thematically for the game, incidentally.  You can choose to just fight your enemy head-on as now, but if you ignore the hydral technology on the battlefield, your enemy will capture them and overwhelm you with that extra force.  Conversely, if you are overmatched by your enemy but play your cards right, you could capture enough technology to overmatch them in return.

I'm glad to see that the power ups will have some kind of an explanation behind why they are there in the first place. It bugs me in games when you can to capture point A for a 25% boost to weapons damage with no explanation as to how point A works or how it came to be there. I could see the Hydral leaving behind automated space hangars and turrets throughout the solar system. Hopefully they won't show up on every map though, or else they could get predictable and boring.

What exactly are the plans for the capture mechanic itself? Is it just a simple system of moving ships near the objects for a set period of time to capture them? Or is there a little more complexity to it? I'd like to suggest a system where the flagship launches a shuttle with an engineering team to take over/hack the old Hydral equipment. The shuttle could have modest health and speed, but no weapons so it creates a scenario where the player has to make decisions about if he wants to escort it. He risks the enemy taking the shuttle out if he doesn't, but he also risks leaving his flagship under defended if he commits too much of an escort.

[x4000]

Yep, boarding shuttles are a plan.