Fix to movement problem
 

I recently read in a thread that the distance to move sideways is about equal to moving 1.5 spaces. Without ditching the chess board style layout, I remembered some demo of a game I downloaded like 8 years ago which the squares were 6 sided honey come shapes which fit together. This gives you an equal sideways movement. The only true problem I see with it is the fact that individuals create their own ship images. Isn't a 6 sider a hectagon?
The next step in realism for the game would to dictate the direction the ship was facing to fire, and rate of speed to turn.
No hard U'ies in a Dreadnaught.
I would go with larger ship images if I went to the honey comb shapes though. More details.
If you limited the way a certain type of gun could fire, you could add a lot more strategic game play. It would give smaller escort and destroyer class ships more of a use than just what you had to use at the beginning of the game. More types of weapons too, like phaser banks (sweep to all sides-lower power) and extra thrusters to make them hard turns that dump over coffee cups.
If you implemented splash damage and fixed the fleet ordering problem( one ship moves at a time in a fleet instead of all together) you would have an awesome tactical simulator in the game!
You could build sE5 out of all these options alone and sell it as is.
add comments!

Steve

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

People have asked Aaron for hex grids for years and he keeps saying "Never!". It's a good idea and I like it, but it just won't happen. Aaron likes his squares.

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

Does anyone know of a good space combat game that uses these ideas? It's been a while since I emerged from my SE4 cave. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

Hex grids are hard. The only programs that use 'em are fairly simple, I suppose because they spent all their time working on the Hexgrid system http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

I don't know how hard hexes are to program, almost every traditional computer wargame uses them. The hard part would be 3-d hexes!

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

Hex's aren't all that difficult and they actually involve less checking for an AI, multiples of six rather than mulitples of eight. The only reason why I've never wanted to write one is that you can't use a simple data structure, like a two dimensional array, to hold a game board. You have to use something more complicated like a graph.

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

Then thats probably why MM wanted to only make it 2D with squares. I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, the game is a little out of scale anyway. Also, you don't get much more advantage out of a Hex gride system yet you do gain more program time, complexity and possible errors which means more patches to fix bugs. Although I would like to see Hex too, it is probably just not important enough and too much work for MM to do.

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cyrus:
The only reason why I've never wanted to write one is that you can't use a simple data structure, like a two dimensional array, to hold a game board.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, a hex board would could easily be stored in a 2-d array. One axis of the board is your first array subscript; another axis 60 degrees away is the second subscript. Any member of a regular 2-d tesselation can be described by only two coordinates; the coordinate axes, however, won't necessarily be orthogonal to one another.

The only problem then becomes that along one diagonal [i,j] --&gt; [i+1, j+1], the distance is 1, while along the other [i,j] --&gt; [i+1, j-1], the distance between hexes is two.

LL &lt;-- shoulda majored in math.

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

I'm quite happy with the existing systm, but for those who aren't, I know of a cool freeware tactical combat game (on the amiga, calld simply "evil") which has a nice system: One movment point to rotate 45 degrees left or right, and then 3 or 4 points to move fwd.

Although that wasn't a space based game, this model works well for SE4 because in space it takes a lot of time and energy to change direction.

------------------
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

Re: Fix to movement problem
 

I think there's a computerized Version of Star Fleet Battles that uses a hex system, plus firing arcs, turning radius (based on speed, even), shield facings (!), etc.