Request: Simultaneous combat
 

I've noticed that when combat occurs, one side gets to fire all its weapons first, then the next side does, etc. I think it would be a nice feature in a future Version of SEIV to implement simultaneous combat, perhaps even simultaneous movement, within the combat engine. I've seen battles between two evenly matched fleets where one side is annihilated but the other isn't even scratched because of the fleet firing order. This is especially true when a fleet comes through a warppoint, all ships in both fleets are mixed in with each other. The first fleet that gets to fire has a decidedly unfair advantage, and at point blank range to boot.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

Good point.

Simultaneous is not really simultaneous!

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Patches were supposed to randomize who got to go first, but you're right. It would be a cooler game if the ships fired at each other simultaneously. That would make hot seat play even more confusing, but how often does any one play hotseat?

In the days when I played AD&D (OMG, I wouldn't admit to that in public anywhere else), simultaneous combat was still resolved one side at a time, just that the counterattack was possible regardless of the outsome of one side's attack.

The battles in SE4 could work in that fashion -- components would not be destroyed when hit, the damage would be stored and then in between turns damage to components would be applied.

[ September 20, 2002, 23:05: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

That would go a long way to making the game truly simultaneous. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

I would be happy if all ships arrived at the same time .... Not this ones and twos

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

And nice to be able to co-ordinate the arrival of ships to a location at a specific time.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

True simultaneous combat????, WOW what a concept!!!

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

The alternation of one empire fires and moves then the other empire always did seem a little extreme to me. How about alternation by ship. Initiative could be resolved by speed, experience etc. This would make a big difference in large fleet engagements where it really matters, but would make no difference one on one. I do still think the defender at a warp point battle should have an advantage; perhaps a bonus to each ship/unit's initiative.

Unfortunately, this is all just wishful thinking. I doubt Aaron would ever do this.

Kim

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">that's not the question: the real question is COULD he do that?

And Also, the idea of a permanently ready-and-able fleet is lost to me:

A fleet has been stationed over a warp point for 60 turns.
It's orders are to destroy any unidentifiable ship coming through it.
The fleet has been drilling and running continous sweeps of the warp point to see if anybody is coming through.
Nobody has come through for 5 Terran Years (60 turns).

And then, bam, a fleet comes through.

There should be a penalty because in a situation like that since the crew will not run continuous drills for 5 years under the circumstances, and even if it did, the surprise would still leave the defenders finding their jaw.

That creates 2 options:

1. Keep the fleet on a short patrol perimeter along the warp point. although some ships may go through, there is no disadvantage, with the continuous able stance. The defending fleet may even have an advantage as the crew now has the whole drill in their heads: a result of 5 year patrol.

2. Keep the fleet on the warp point. NO ships would get through without you/the fleet commander knowing about it, but they suffer disadvantages, with idleness.

The "idleness" penalty would come when:

A Ship/fleet has been sitting active in a sector for more than 25 turns.
A Ship/fleet has not recieved any orders in 25 turns.
A Ship/fleet has not recieved any reinforcements in 25 turns.
A Ship/fleet has not encountered any of their ship/friendly ships/fleets *encountered=being in the same sector* for 25 turns.

Mines and satellites will have a more workload, since they don't recieve idleness.
Fighter squadrons also recieve idleness, but for 2 turns.
Freighters and bases do not recieve idleness.

Shore-leave is now a new scrap menu item: where the ship is under a semi-mothballing where it's ship maintenence is reduced by 75 percent, and that it does NOT destroy ship experience. The crew after a shore leave will not be affected by idleness for 50 turns.

Planets with spaceports/resupply depots/space yards have the option to perform shore leave.

As soon as you start to temper a shoreleave ship with other scrap options except scrap and analyze, the ship turns mothballed, and cannot be unmothballed for 5 turns.

Scrap and Analyze is turned off for a ship that is shore leaving.

shore leave is only allowed after 20 turn service, only Lasts 1 turn, and after shoreleaving does not recieve shoreleave for 20 turns.

You cannot turn off shoreleave, it turns itself after 1 turn, you may put an extended leave for an experienced ship that Lasts 5 turns, a shoreleave automatically terminates with the presence of an enemy ship/s and cannot be turned on with the presence of enemy ships.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

The idea of ship idleness is just a little too complex for my tastes and also would have to take into account race traits such as happiness, emotionless, whether the fact the ship is using a computer or not, ect...

I do like the idea of iniative. It isn't truly simultaneous, but it's close enough. It would also make sense that smaller ships, fighters, and seekers would all get a huge bonus to iniative.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mylon, we share the same thoughts... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

Agreed.

In all the simultaneous games I've played, this is the absolute #1 priority issue that would make the biggest improvement.

The slaughter one side or the other (lopsided battle outcomes) is probably the thing that still disappoints me a bit.

The drastic results are expanded by the sizes of the forces clashing. Just once, I would love to see to equally massive forces fight it down to the Last few ships.

I somehow believe this proposal would remedy the issue. You have my vote (and the vote of my friends). Great idea.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

[quote]Originally posted by TerranC:

Quote:

And Also, the idea of a permanently ready-and-able fleet is lost to me:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See, I had a simpler explanation to myself why ship on a warp point has an initiative advantage. Either the "warp" capability of the engines is separate from the movemement capability, or the ship is in some "non-real-space" or some such technobabble. Whatever, exiting a warp point put the ship or it's crew unaware or unable to react.

Modeling shoreleave to improve crew effectiveness at a small penalty of having the ship ready would be a great addition to the game, however. For all ships, not just those that partol warp points, ships on a long trip would also benefit.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

You all have good points about initiative and surprise affecting battles at warppoints. My concern is primarily with fleet firing orders. Someone replied with a proposal for ship-based instead of fleet-based firing order; this doesn't sound all that hard to do and would go a long way toward realizing simultaneous combat and movement. And I like how crew experience, ship speed, etc. all play into who get to move and fire first.

A few years ago I wrote a C++ program to simulate battles with simultaneous movement and combat, lots of text output but I never managed to couple it to a GUI. Based on that experience, I don't think it would be all that hard to implement this. I also included the effects of ship explosions causing damage to nearby ships, that would be a cool feature to add as well. Give people second thoughts about using point-blank or short weapon range.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

Another by product of this initivative thing is that ... The Talisman go first player will not wipe your fleet out every single time.

Lets hope that MM decides to work this out with this game. Instead of leaving it as is.

For this ruins mid to late games... Every time.
I have seen a fleet of 200 ships get wipped out by a fleet of 120 ships who went first. And the fleet of 120 lost about 25% of their ships. Unbalancing to say the least.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

I would love to see something along these lines done. Unfortunatly it is not as easy to implement as it appears on the surface. It would require a massive rewrite of the combat engine. So many things would have to change. For example:

Currently once initiative is determined, that players fleet gets to move all it's ships, then all it's ships fire. One suggestion would be to calculate inititive on an individual ship basis instead of by fleet. However, would this work with the current fleet mechanics? Would a ship in formation break formation to move and fire?

Simultaneous fire as well has problems. As it is now ships can move in to max range, fire and then move as far away as their movement will allow. In simultaneous fire everybody would move and assign targets and then fire at the same time. Does this mean you don't get to move away after firing? And who moves first? What if you move first, target a ship and they move out of range before the simultaneous fire phase?

Another suggestion is to move and fire the ywa it is currently done, but not apply the damage until the end of the combat turn and apply all damage simultaneously. This seems the most complex, but is may actually be the easiest to do. One problem I do see with it is PDC fire on missles You might have to allow PDC damage to be applied instantly unstead of waiting or your missles would still hit the ship even though they were actually blown up.

I am not hopeful of any of these beign implemented in SEIV, however I am hopeful that something along these lines will be done for SE5. Especially since the next SE game, "SE: Quadrant Wars" that is supposed to come out before SE5 is being billed as the combat engine for SE5. That will allow him to concentrate strictly on this portion of the game and get it working the way he and we want it and then he can plug it into the SE5 game as a whole.

Geoschmo

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ooops, I didn't think of that. Now you gotta think, fighters drones sats which are targeted, if the PDC doesn't know what it's done.

Tractors, Repulsors, and Wormhole beams have to go first.

Engine destroying weapons, and the other special weapons have to go first as well.

Yeesh, what a mess.

See, maybe there's nothing wrong with the current system. There's just some FUD in combat, like it should have.

[ September 24, 2002, 18:59: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In light of all the examples you raised, I agree, it would be a lot harder to implement than I first thought. I certainly didn't take into account static fleet formations and "move-fire-move again" tactics with my crude combat engine. Good thing I didn't quit my day job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
I have some other ideas (like splitting combat turns into sub-turns or impulses) but all are CPU-intensive and would slow the game to a crawl. I hope the SE5 combat engine will offer some improvement.

Re: Request: Simultaneous combat
 

Or he could just make the combat occur real time... On auto... That would clean up most of the problems.

Initative or one ship moving at a time etc... does not work. The Problem is not removed.

Everything should be occuring at the same time.

If that ever occurs then combat will work in seiv. Until then it is flawed.

That way range works. Ship movement works. Fleets work. Units work.

I doubt this will happen.

So perhaps the combat system should be set where
the movement is the same as it is in regular ship movements.

And the creation of Temp Damage and Temp Ship Destroyed. So that all ships can partake in the battle. And at the end of each combat segment all damage is changed from temp to real.

I could detail it out later. It would be a long post.

But the juice of it is One combat turn is made up of many segments. That way the current game turn based engine could be used.

But that kind of system would need initative based on crew experience, fleet experience, computers, sensors, current damage. etc...

Not based on movement or engine numbers.

Then they build the number of actions out of this for a ship or unit and then run though the segments removing action points from the highest to lowest. And away you go.