The Last Federation - New Combat GUI And Upcoming Combat Changes

[x4000]

Original: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-last-federation-new-combat-gui-and.html

The Last Federation is a really unique game in that it is a strategy/tactics game set inside a simulation game.  Check out our first sneak preview about it, or our preview discussing simulations in the game.  Also our recent podcast with Space Game Junkie with lots of other details, the description of your role as an independent agent in the solar system,  details on the alien races, information about the "butterfly effect" in the game, and the final scene art for all the alien races, some of the planetary art, and a written preview with info about combat.  Then we've got this first video of combat, too.  Oh, and the forums for the game are filled with lots of other detailed tidbits, too.

Alpha Information! Private alpha testing with players is currently in a very limited early form, and we will be adding more players throughout the coming weeks leading up to release.  If you're interested in signing up, please see this forum post.  Right now we do have open spots still, but we may wind up needing to close signup past a certain point, because we definitely have a pretty huge list of people at this point (and there's only so much feedback we can process at any given time).

Variety of news today!  I'm pretty slammed in terms of time schedule, so I'll be brief for once. ;)

New Combat GUI
As you can see in the above screenshot (click to make it larger), the GUI for the combat portion of the game has been completely redesigned and is a lot more attractive as well as a lot more effective in how it makes use of space.  What you're seeing in the screenshot there isn't quite final, as there are some tabs missing in the bottom tooltip area, among a few other things.  But there's a lot of goodness there, and actually this speaks very well to how the solar map GUI looks.

About The Speed Of Combat
One of the biggest comments we got about the first combat video was "wow that looks fast."  Bear in mind that I play on a really fast setting, and I should have taken that into consideration when making the video -- apologies for that.  But as mentioned in the video, if you feel the combat is too fast (or too slow, somehow), then you can adjust the speed at any time in the game.  Both the baseline speed, as well as using the fast forward, slow mo, and super fast forward buttons (and pause of course) for temporary adjustments.

Our first alpha testers got into the game and felt like the default speed was too fast by a substantial margin, which is one of those "you don't really know until you get people playing it" sorts of things.  So we've both cut the default speed by half, as well as made the speed settings more prominent when you are first starting a new game (so if you go "ugh this is too slow" or "wow this is too fast" you know that the settings even exist).

At any rate, to clarify against any concerns, this is most definitely not a twitch sort of game.  You can play it that way, if you want.  I kind of find it fun that way, actually.  But if you want to play it extremely slowly and thoughtfully, you can do so as well.  Using a really slow speed interspersed with super-fast-forward bursts and the pause key is practically like playing a turn-based game.

Asymmetry In Combat
I think my love for asymmetry is well established at this point.  In the current tests with combat, and based on my own feelings with playing with it more and more, I've come to a realization: the combat is extremely fun from a tactile standpoint and mechanically-speaking, but there is not enough going on tactically to really make it interesting for the long haul.

Also, having the enemy forces be kind of a mirror of the player forces is both dull/repetitive as well as something that goes against the spirit of the game's theme.  You're supposed to be a little rogue mercenary fleet, so having enemy forces that are similar in size to you numerically is not a great thing.  Outside of combat, you really do get the proper sense of being really outnumbered.  But in terms of in-combat mechanics, that same sort of feeling needs to persist across.  A mercenary of this sort wins by being awesome and clever, not by brute force -- again, a big theme in the larger game, but not something expressed in combat yet.

So!  What we're doing is introducing more complicated battlefields with discarded Hydral technology in them (again, very thematically fitting) that only you can make use of.  You can also use Hydral technology to get some special abilities/weapons that your enemies will never be able to make use of.  What the enemy will now have, however, is overwhelming force compared to you.  These are planetary forces versus one tiny little mercenary fleet, after all.  But by using your bag of tricks, you can even things out and get the battles won.

A big part of this is making it so that you are making more tactical decision in a more complicated battlefield.  Part of that means giving you a larger "puzzle," so to speak, where there are more enemies in more places, and more things that you can also exploit for gain in more places.  This gives you a battlefield that you need to size up, choose your intermediate objectives, and use those to achieve your ultimate objective.

Again, all stuff you already do on the larger game.  But now we're getting into that in the combat side of things, too.  Getting these things in place is my big goal for the first half of this next week, and we'll be letting in a big batch of more alpha testers when we get there.  And I'll have a new combat video around then, too.

Stay tuned!

[JAlfredGoodwin]

At a certain point, Quantity becomes a Quality of its' own.

That's the theory behind shootemups.  For this, I am now thinking either super support tech or super engines would be a great asymmetric difference for the player fleet.

Self healing ships.

Better artificial gravity, which equals better engines and maneuverability.

In some ways, it seems that this needs to feel like Leonidas and his 300 ATTACKING Xenophon, not holding the Hot Gates.  Use better skill\tech to negate the size of a vastly larger foe.

End ramble...

[Cyborg]

We do need a way to make the battles more complicated, hopefully to complement the depth of the grand strategy part of this game. Most of my tests are trying to see, given equal or slightly greater footing to the AI, can it be exploited? Can I win with minimal effort or by cheesing the AI? The answer to date has been, in some situations, yes.


If you tip the scales overwhelmingly to the AI side just by making them ridiculously strong, I guess that's one way to do it. After all, I think it's really hard to program an AI to be smarter than a person. But maybe by adding these extra complicated features, that would make it more interesting. I kind of thought my recommendation on removing full vision on the battlefield added a level of complexity that could make things tactically interesting. Actually, I have received zero feedback on any of my alpha testing messages in the subforum from other testers.


The good news, I'm still firing this thing up throughout the day for small doses of battles, just to try out different ideas that occur to me. For other testers, please keep doing the same thing, because I notice that you could get things going for 20 battles, and then on your 21st battle there is an exception from missing game files. I don't know if that's caused by old art that is added and removed, or last-minute changes, but keep your eyes open. And the last thing is, I would love to see some kind of math export ability. I need a way to look at all ships, across levels, and strength/weakness bonuses. Balancing this is a little bit hard when the only way you can see these different numbers is by choosing them on the user interface. I could find things a lot easier if a spreadsheet gave me a heads up where there might be trouble to investigate.

[x4000]

All good points.  Would write more, but really running hard at the moment.  I don't think that obscuring parts of the battlefield is in the cards, because that is very difficult to visually represent and doesn't make a whole of of sense in space.  That said, making things more complicated is I think basically where we are on the same page.

[Gemzo]

What about nebulae or asteroid belts that you can hide your ships in? A way to obscure vision that makes sense in space. Perhaps they could have other effects as well, like altering movement speed or interfering with shots. Maybe even like, minefields that smaller ships won't have many problem with, but would greatly deter larger ships. You could have variant minefields that shields resist, or temporarily disables certain ship functions.

[x4000]

There are a lot of things that are possible, but right now the focus is on the generalized cases and making those awesome, rather than focusing on edge cases.  Once the generalized cases have been established, then the edge cases can be explored in expansions and so forth.

[chemical_art]

When I first read this, alarm bells went off that "My strategic manuevering of minimizing the enemy fleet response on a strategic levels would feel very diluted if on a tactical level". Natural, the battlefield objectives should help with this, but the concern remains:

If, even with good strategic maneuvers, tactically the enemy is overwhelming, then that whole side of strategy goes from "carrot" of easy game if using good strategy to "stick" of impossible matches if not doing good. Which is fine on intentionally hard difficulties, but a lot more concerning when intentional in the base game. I'm not saying it can be done, but tread carefully, or the result is strategy doesn't feel so fun.

[x4000]

I'm basically referring to exactly what AI War does, if that sets your mind at ease at all.  A lot of the problems that we're running into here are the same things that I ran into with AI War in 2009, and I'm actually approaching the solutions in a parallel way.

In a lot of respects, honestly, this game is kind of a successor to AI War in my mind.  It has the strategy at two levels, and is a situation where you are the small guy, etc.  That said, this game gets to do a lot of things that I always wanted to do in AI War, but could not for various reasons relating to the core design there.  This one has a lot more sides, it has a lot more thematic integration, it has more than just straight combat in terms of decisions, and it has compartmentalized ship simulations (battles) so that we can simulate a really large space without having to simulate all of them all the time at the depth that AI War.  And so that thus on the flip side, we can actually do much deeper simulations per ship in this game compared to what AI War does.

This isn't AI War II by any stretch, and anyone who likes one is not guaranteed to like the other.  They are distinct games, and one doesn't replace the other.  We're not going to stop making AI War because of this game or anything.  But there are definitely some parallels.

[Oralordos]

Not to mention you have some dedicated artists working on this. All the art looks very nice, quite a bit better than what AI War has or needs.

[x4000]

Yeah, they have been just absolutely turning out stunning work, I feel like.  I'm really jazzed about how that makes the game feel in terms of giving a sense of place and all that.

[chemical_art]

I'm basically referring to exactly what AI War does, if that sets your mind at ease at all.  A lot of the problems that we're running into here are the same things that I ran into with AI War in 2009, and I'm actually approaching the solutions in a parallel way.

I understand, but the difference is that your scale of "strategy" has gone a bit grander in this game. Part of the appeal of "grand" strategy is that good strategy on a higher level "strategic" makes the lower level "tactics" easier / more even. Writing this off, as you seem to do (whether you think so or not) makes the "strategic" phase feel..lessened or cheapened.

For better or worst, this game is running many parallels to the Total War series, which features two distinction modes, a grander, strategic map, and an individual, tactical combat phases. Other games have done this, as well I'm sure. It's not the same in that you don't own land, but it is the same that success in both phases decide if one wins.

Anyway, that "grand" part of the game is meant in normal gameplay to ensure the player can exploit the AI, so that when combat actually occurs, the player has an edge. that is the whole appeal, that the player has an edge on way or another. Whether it be defending a really great spot, or demoralizing / spliting a seemingly unstoppable army, etc, that is the whole point of the grand map. On the harder difficulties, the AI is stronger so that the player has to depend on setting up these situations, but on "standard" play it is not expected.

This game, with this update, is going with the idea that this disparity of forces is the norm. This is absolutely different from AI War. Compared to TLF, AI War is purely tactical. Because AI War is tactical, the whole point of the AI outgunning is a much easier premise then TLF. Why? Because you can't affect it in AI War. In other words, you aren't trying to wage diplomacy or "grand" strategy for your tactical forces. It just is. You (the player) aren't wasting time trying to change that. However, if you decide to implement these grander elements, you have to make the player feel that they help. I already know there are plenty of sticks if you mess up the grand strategy, but I'm not hearing carrots. The key for grand strategy to have both.

So...to try to put it a different way yet again...in many grand strategy games, a key carrot for great strategy is your tactical situation is at least balanced / in your favor if you manage strategy well. If you make it so that by default you need good strategy just to have even a decent chance of tactical victory (being over gunned massively makes the odds stacked as such) then there is no carrot, only the stick of failure. This just...doesn't sound fun. I can't find another way to put it. If I master strategy, and still find myself cutting teeth on a tactical level, that just isn't fun.  I guess I worry about that. Many of my complaints of AI Wars, both past and present, in a general sense relate to that problem as well.

[Cyborg]

  This one has a lot more sides, it has a lot more thematic integration, it has more than just straight combat in terms of decisions, and it has compartmentalized ship simulations (battles) so that we can simulate a really large space without having to simulate all of them all the time at the depth that AI War.  And so that thus on the flip side, we can actually do much deeper simulations per ship in this game compared to what AI War does.

AI War's grand simulation on a massive scale is a selling point, though. Part of the new player experience of that game involves such a massive scale and your imagination just takes it from there.


I know we are not there yet on creating a deeper combat simulation here.

[x4000]

@chemical_art: I think you're missing my point, to some extent.  What you do in the strategic side absolutely DOES matter, and with these changes it will matter even more now than it did in prior versions of the game (not that anyone played that aside from combat practice).  We have the same ideas about what makes grand strategy good.  Being outnumbered does not mean you are weaker.

I guess the example I will give is Batman.  If Batman was just going around fighting another guy like Batman, and they both just ran around and punched each other and did the same sorts of things with the same skills... that's boring.  But instead, Batman is always hugely outnumbered, his foes fight very differently from him, and in fact there are more villains than him.  That said, Batman is a complete badass.  He has all sorts of gadgets that his foes don't, and in fact his preparation (both of his own body, and his stealth/intimidation skills, and in improving his gear) is a big part of why he has an edge going into each fight.

I like Batman a lot.


@Cyborg: Oh, I don't disagree at all about why people get into AI War, and the role of imagination, etc.  It's a very specific sort of scenario, though, kind of a scorched-earth lone survivor place.  I love that sort of thing.  But with this strategy game, we're able to do a lot more in terms of worldbuilding in a very literal way because it's got more personality and depth to it.  In a lot of ways that is what I love about the Dwarf Fortress stories, is that there is this sense of personality and of a living world beyond just you.  You get crazy AAR stories in AI War as well, but they are mostly "I can't believe that the AI pulled that" or "I can't believe I survived that" or whatever.  With Dwarf Fortress, you get more personal tales of woe and hilarity.  This is somewhere in between, I think.

[orzelek]

A lot of things to change I see
I'm waiting for that new combat video - as I wrote before combat as it is will not be a fun part of game for me. It makes me also a bit hesitant in terms of getting into alpha - might not be a good tester if I don't have fun with game.

[x4000]

There will be a new combat video this week, probably the middle of this week, we'll see.