The Future for SE IV? Does it have one?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by klausD:

But if the battle was bigger, it was a real horror to keep oversight of who did what and when. So I think an impulse system could be fine, but just if you have a few ships (or fleet formations without the option to split them down to single ships).

With the computer keeping track, it would be pretty simple. Like I wrote, every impulses movement phase the units you could move that impulse would be highlighted, ever impulses fire phase the units which could fire that impulse would be highlighted. Just click any highlighted one and give it an order, click "end orders" when you've done all the ones you want to do.

Originally posted by klausD:

BTW: GDW`s "Invasion Earth" was a great game. I liked it too (also 5th frontier war and Imperium/dark nebula - from the series) But again I think to implement a similar system for SE5 would be too complex. Just imagine how long an invasion earth like combat would Last. And then multiply it with the amount of invasions one strategic turn in SE4 could theoretically have.

Well, I would probably limit the number of tactical turns in a ground combat, as SEIV does now with a space combat, except just have the battle carry over into the next turn. I forget the time scale of Invasion Earth, but I'm pretty sure the whole game took several months of in-game time. Also, that was an invasion by a major race of a major race's homeworld. The typical invasion would be smaller. IE is the general idea of what I'd like to see ideally, though. 5th Frontier War would also be an interesting basic concept if you don't want to deal with planetary maps. Either way, my ideal would be for units to be designed in a simplified form of what is used in scenario creation for Norm Kroger's OPART series and the "equipments" assigned to the units being what you design like "troops" in SEIV.

Originally posted by klausD:

Simple Manoevring rules could be:
turning 90 Degree: a ship has to travel at least one square before turning 90 degree. If a ship has advanced manoevre it can turn without traveling one square. If a ship has a certain size and is not very manoevrable it has to travel at least X squares before turning. thats it.

Ever play Starfire or Starfleet Battles? Starfire was originally designed by the same guy that did Starfleet Battles as a simplified system (as compared to SFB) in which battles could be fought with fairly large fleets and you could design your own ships. The SE series was heavily influenced on Starfire (more obvious in SEIII than SEIV, though). The concept you describe was in both as "turn modes". A ship's turn mode is how many hexes (or squares in SEIV) it has to travel in a straight line befoure it can turn by 1 hex side. In SFB a ship has a speed at any given time which determines the column it uses on the impulse chart (in which every impulse has a row that tells you whether a ship moving that speed moves that impulse) and it's turn mode varies according ots speed, with smaller/more manueverable ships have a smaller turn mode than big ones at any given speed. SF simplified this by having every ship move its max speed but able to "move" during an impulse by expending a movement point in place (which counts toward its turn mode), and giving each ship the same turn mode at all speeds. Bigger ships also have bigger turn modes in SF, but "Advanced Manuevering" can reduce it by 1. SF did not really use the same sort of impulse system as SFB, but was readily adaptable to do so.

As an aside, turn modes would not work so well with a square grid. They'd really need to go hexagonal.

Originally posted by klausD:

A ship designer has only the option to make bigger ships (he has not to, because dreadnoughts could also occupy just one square as it is in SE4) and to pre-define the squares they occupy during the design - but with the same graphical quality as now.

The fact that you can't stack ships in SEIV is a simplification. In SF you could. The point is that one square on the tactical map is still a whole lot of space. No ship really "fills" the square it occuppies, much less hangs over into multiple squares. Not even stars and gas giants overflow their square.

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
One small thing: Make sure it's "fire, then move" instead of "move, then fire". Otherwise, static defences, especially at Warppoints, would be at a serious disadvantage...

I'm not sure I see the disadvantage of static defenders in "move, then fire", given that the attackers, IF they happened to have the fastest speed in the game, would at most be able to move 1 hex/square before the fire phase of that impulse. I'm not talking about going through all the movement impulses of a turn before anybody fires, but rather each impulse having separate move & fire phases. Not being able to move in an impulse would not preclude firing. Only not having your weapons charged would do that, which on the first impulse of the first turn of the batle would not be a problem (unless some sort of surprise rule were added - a separate topic).

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Also, couldn't this be (kinda) modded in? Change the # of combat turns to, say, 300, and multiply the reload rates by 10. But not the movement; you'd probably want to DECREASE the combat movement generated by normal engines. Of coarse, this would need a lot of balancing, but it's kinda what you want. Sorta. Maybe?

Interesting idea, but I don't think it would work. The impulse concept requires that some impulses a ship can't move and others it can (but only 1 hex/square). To take a simplified example, let's say our max game speed is 6, so we have 6 impulses. We have four ships: #1 moves at speed 6, #2 moves at speed 3, #3 moves at speed 2, #4 moves at speed 1:

Impluse#1: Ship #1 moves
Impulse#2: Ships #1 & #2 move
Impulse#3: Ships #1 & #3 move
Impulse#4: Ships #1 and #2 move
Impulse#5: Ship #1 moves
Impulse#6: Ships #1, #2, #3 & #4 move

Any of them could fire on any impulse, whether or not it can move, if it has a charged weapon. A weapon that fires every turn would take 5 impulses to charge - if you fire it on impulse #3, it could not fire again until impulse #3 of the next turn.

[Crazy_Dog]

One thing that i like to see, is a weapons system like the one used in Starships Unlimited, Missiles use ammo and PPB / shields use energy.
For energy you need engines and reactors.
Also the arcs of fire like in the MOO2.
Other thing that i want to see is ships sizes can be race specific, ex. a mechanics race can build bigger ships than a spiritual one.

[Magnum357]

Wow! I've been gone from the board for like 3 or 4 months and look at all the new speculation that is occuring. Hey guys, lets not jump the gun here on 3D graphics for a stand alone SE game, or a combat system for SE5 (if their ever is a SE5). I've dabled a little bit with programming and know a few people that deal with 3D graphics. Programming a 3D engine for any game is not an easy endeveour! I'm not saying Aaron can not do it, but it could be a very long time before we even see any mention of a 3D space combat game (let alone a 3D style SE5).

Just building the 3D engine alone is fairly complicated and tough for one guy to do. Also, speaking of 3D graphics, compatability issues are a big concern here too. Oh, you could make a 3D game engine and program all the bleeps and whistles and runs great for the system it is created on, but having it compatible with other systems graphics cards and systems is a very daunting task, even with great programming skills of MM. Do any of you have any idea of how many 3D graphics cards companies their are out their??? Like Diamand, GeForce, RIVA, or Voodoo cards and their variants. And what about all those integrated cards they have on computer systems these days? These are just a fraction of the hardware available.

Also, that might bring another point. I've read on countless occasions that many people that play Space Empires like playing the game not only because of the game play, but also its not too hefty on system requirements. I'm so sick and tired of game companies making games every six months that literly force you to buy a system even few months just too keep up with the new games system requirments. I don't know about any of you, but I don't have money to burn just for a Computer game. That was the beauty of SE3 and SE4, it was very adatable to the Windows operating system and didn't require a hefty CPU to run it. Once you go 3D graphics, you got to realize you are playing a whole new ball game.

Hey, this would be awsome if MM could design a 3D space combat game, and I would definitly buy it because I love Space Empires, but I'm definitly not holding my breath. Who knows how long it would take to develop the game. SE4 took nearly 3 years to develope. Although Aaron does have a little more resources to work with now, I would not be suprised if it too maybe twice as long as SE4. Just my opinion on this.

[dumbluck]

BB: Hmmm. On the "Fire, then move thing": Ok, I see what you mean now. I must not have been thinking clearly.

Now, the only hard-code change (that I can see) you need for your "impulse system" is to have engines that can give fractional moves/combat turn. You'd need an engine that gave you, say, 1 move every 6 turns, (and 2 engines gave 2 per 6 turns, etc). Then you could just mod the game to work like you've proposed.

Or am I missing something else now....

EDIT: Actually, all components that generate only 1 "somethings" per combat turn would need to be modded for fractional generation/turn, not just engines. Shield Regenerators, for example.

EDIT AGAIN: umm actually, that second engine should make it 1 move every 3 turns, huh?

[ August 21, 2002, 14:34: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Now, the only hard-code change (that I can see) you need for your "impulse system" is to have engines that can give fractional moves/combat turn. You'd need an engine that gave you, say, 1 move every 6 turns, (and 2 engines gave 2 per 6 turns, etc). Then you could just mod the game to work like you've proposed.

Or am I missing something else now....

EDIT: Actually, all components that generate only 1 "somethings" per combat turn would need to be modded for fractional generation/turn, not just engines. Shield Regenerators, for example.

EDIT AGAIN: umm actually, that second engine should make it 1 move every 3 turns, huh?

Well, yes, as you say, if MM just did the coding so that you could assign things fractional combat-turn frequencies it would be pretty close. Assuming changing the "Number Of Space Combat Turns" in settings.txt actually does anything (I never tried it).

It would also be better if the combat speed of a ship was not 1/2 the strategic speed, so the "finer gradations" of speed would count for something in battle. Of course, if the implementation was via giving engines a separate ability for combat speed and strategic speed, with fractional abilities allowed in combat speeds, that would do it. Except not halving the combat speed would effectively cut the combat map area to 1/4 of present. Unless we also got a retreat rule I would not like that - too easy for slower ships to "corner" faster ones that don't want to fight. So, idealy the size of the combat map would go up or become moddable.

In combat today, the fastest thing is combat speed 10 (a fighter with 9 Small Quantum Engines, an Afterburner III and the Propulsion Experts racial trait). That says 10 impulses would work, meaning 300 "impulse" turns per battle and we'd need fractional combat movement points & recharge rates in 0.1 increments. That is actually pretty clean - no need to mess with the map, just the ability to specify combat speed generation separately from strategic for everything (engines, components that give movement bonuses, vehicle hulls that give movement bonuses, the Propulsion Experts racial trait bonus) and have it accept values in 0.1 increments. This could probably be done in a patch. Then the mod would just divide everything by 10 except the "Number Of Space Combat Turns", which it would multiply by 10, and we'd be off to the races.

However, without also highlighting which units can move/fire this turn it might a bit awkward to use. It also would not skip turns where nothing could move or fire. Those issues are potentially patchable, though. A simple box around the square of something that could move or fire would do - say red if it can fire, yellow if it can move, orange if it can do both. Lack of any boxes showing would cue you to click "end turn". It doesn't get to simultaneous fire resolution, either, so the first guy to move in range still gets an advantage.

If, aside from afterburners which only work in combat, we wanted strategic & combat speeds to be the same then the maximum combat speed would be 19, the map needs to be doubled in every dimension just to hold our ground on the "cornering" issue, and the numbers don't work out so neat. Probably too messy for a patch, but for SEV

[dumbluck]

OK, BB, now my head hurts. Cut that out!

Seriously, why would you want reload rates in fractions? You'd want reload rates in multiples. After all, if there are 10 impulses in what now constitutes a turn, a CSM has a 30 impulse reload rate. APB has a reload rate of 10 impulses. Surely you don't want to have anything with a reload rate of 1 impulse!!! (can you say, "uber-weapon"? )

[Pax]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
OK, BB, now my head hurts. Cut that out!

Seriously, why would you want reload rates in fractions? You'd want reload rates in multiples. After all, if there are 10 impulses in what now constitutes a turn, a CSM has a 30 impulse reload rate. APB has a reload rate of 10 impulses. Surely you don't want to have anything with a reload rate of 1 impulse!!! (can you say, "uber-weapon"? )

With a turn-length of 10 impulses, you might want a low-damage PDC with a reload cycle of 2 impulses (5 shots per turn), to represent a fast-firing, ultra-low-caliber defensive weapon. Or halve it's damage and give it a reload cycle of 1 impulse. Bang away every impulse, for piddling damage. Would be nice in that, for low to-hit situations, at least SOME of your PDC would hit every turn,a nd eventually ... it'd rack up some damage, which is better than none, on every impulse.

AND ... that'd make Fighters with Emissive Armor more interesting; if those 1-per-impulse PDC did 5 damage each, then, Small EmAr III would become -very- useful. Yet the PDC, even if it hit a non-EmAr target, would only do 50 damage over the whole turn, so it'd not be ludicrously overpowered IMO. Especially if much-shorter-range than normal PDC.

[dogscoff]

say red if it can fire, yellow if it can move, orange if it can do both.

Or maybe some other colours completely, since some ppl have troubling distinguishing between those three...

Chromatic nitpick aside... you wouldn't have to have fractional shield regeneration. If the minimum of 1 shield point regenerated per impulse is still too high, just multiply all shield, weapon & damage Ratings up by a common factor (say 10) and then recalculate the number of impulses needed for regenerators.

In other words, the minimum of 10 shield points regeneration per turn wouldn't be a big deal, if a shield generator I produced 500 points and a DUC I did 150 damage.

[Suicide Junkie]

What's the big deal about the minimum regen rate?

Just have a 5 point/turn regenerator provide one point every other impulse.
Or, equivalently have a reload rate for regenerators.