Realtime or turnbased tactical combat?

[Sabin]

The weapon-charging idea might have merit...for example, charging a weapon takes extra supplies, and if overcharged beyond the component's ability to store it, it can cause damage? The same can go for shields and the like...

[HP Delron]

Sabin said:
The weapon-charging idea might have merit...for example, charging a weapon takes extra supplies, and if overcharged beyond the component's ability to store it, it can cause damage? The same can go for shields and the like...

There is a lot more you can get from charing weapons than just a little kickback for overcharing. Depending on how the weapons handles a charge it can provide some very interesting atvantages (and disatvantages). I'll try to go over some of the kinds of charing weapons, and what they mean:

Held-Charge Weapon: This is weapon that must be charged before use. Upon reaching a full charge it can be fired. This weapon is capable of holding the charge on the weapon until you are ready to fire it. This can be helpful in several ways, if a weapon has a high damage output with a charge time to compensate, you can start charging this weapon before you get to the target an be read unleash some major damage when you get there. A variation is the Degrading Held-Charge weapon in which a held charge degrades over time (lowering overall power of the shot), and cannot be re-charged until the charge reaches a certain point (most often 0).

Instant Charge Weapon: Any charged weapon that must use it's charge as soon as it is ready. This of course means a target must be avaible once the charge is done.

Fixed Fire Charge: This is any charged weapon that must aquire a target before it can begin it's firing cycle. This provides the oppurtunity for a target to slip out of firing range while the gun charges, making so they must hold charge longer (possibly degrading) if it's a held-charge weapon OR redering the shot useless if it's instant charge weapon. This can of course be offset by accuracy/damage scale of the weapon itself.

Gradual Charge Weapon: This is a weapon that can be fired at any point in it's charge up until the cap( if it has one). With damage going up the longer you store energy. It can of course addtionally be any one of the other types, Held, Instant or Fixed Fire.


Now these are just my own loose terms/definitions. I'm sure somebody out there has explained these concepts better than I have but I think it shows how charged weapons could make for more decisions on the battlfield.

[Fyron]

"Held-Charge" and "Instant Charge" weapons are already present as weapons with different firing rates.

How would you physically explain a "Fixed Fire Charge" weapon?

"Gradual Charge" weapons would be interesting, but probably impossible to get the AI to use effectively. In the hands of the AI, they would either always be weak rapid fire weapons or they would always be powerful, slow weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

The name "Fixed fire charge" dosen't sound right.
"Delayed Fire" perhaps.

But the mechanics as described would apply to a missile weapon which must lock onto a target in range before it can fire.

[HP Delron]

Imperator Fyron said:
"Held-Charge" and "Instant Charge" weapons are already present as weapons with different firing rates.

Note nessicarly, in that they are different when the time you cannot fire occurs. With a weapon that has fixed fire rate it starts the battle ready to go, and then has to cool down. In the case of a weapon that has to charge first, it can be ready to fire in the case of battle across long distances. But in a case where say you are going through a warp point and start on top of your enemy you won't have chance to charge up first. This is the kind of disatvantage the the weapon that could justify them having higher attack power or accuracy.

Instant charge weapons I should explain are really meant to go as a sub-type to the fixed charge weapons. Once again imgaine you had a stard ready-fire weapon and an enemy ship comes in range. You begin to charge you big cannon X, but they move out of range your weapon fires instantly missing them.

How would you physically explain a "Fixed Fire Charge" weapon?

I don't know you could throw in some junk about launching an some kind of anchoring signal at the point of the target that energy beam jumps to.

You could make something about the system being fragile and needing the weapon to lock into place before i can safely be fired, keeping it from tracking a target.

Any number of things that really invovle saying it requires complex information on the position of any enemy fancy calibrations and whatnot.

"Gradual Charge" weapons would be interesting, but probably impossible to get the AI to use effectively. In the hands of the AI, they would either always be weak rapid fire weapons or they would always be powerful, slow weapons.

THe AI is pretty dumb anyway. I honestly can't say I care or feel sorry for them.

Suicide Junkie said:
The name "Fixed fire charge" dosen't sound right.
"Delayed Fire" perhaps.

Well the fixed more refers to the where the weapon can hit more than anything. I've always been bad with names.

But the mechanics as described would apply to a missile weapon which must lock onto a target in range before it can fire.

You are right it is very much like a missle. Only in that missles are seekers and after the lock and ready to fire peroid there is a chase peroid in which they can be ready to fire.The charge weapon that would hit at the moment of fire, so the "Chase" peroid would either be eliminated or change to the speed of the firing ship not the acutal seeker.




Once again, i'm afraid i wasn't very clear in explaining what i mean and those cheesy names didn't help much either. So instead I guess i'll just try to supply hypothetical situations for charging weapons to apply in.


"Big Charge Cannon A" is a weapon that must charge for 20 seconds before firing. Once charged it can hold it's charge until an apporiate target is found and fired upon.

I will be comparing it to

"Big Regular Cannon" it is a weapon that has 20 second cooldown betwen firings.


Now the first situation we will compare these in is a situation where both forces start on opposite sides of the battle field (conveintly enough 20 seconds travel time apart).

A Ship with "Big charge cannon A" begins to charge it weapon as ut moves.

THe two ships meet. And both of them are ready to fire. Even break. From that point on really the weapons will still be evenly matched.


Now in the next situation one player is going through a warp point. And meet with enemy forces on the other side. Now the ships armed with the regular cannon can open fire and cripple the enemy ships while the charging ships are still building up power. In fact by the time the charge ships are ready to unleash the first slavo, the regular cannon ships are to fire their second.



now this second weapon will be "Big Charge Cannon B".

It also has charge time of 20 seconds, but it cannot hold it's charge. It must fire immedtiarly after the charge is compeleted.

Once again the begin 20 seconds away on opposite sides of the battle field. However this time seeing that they are armed with chargign cannons and have begun to build them up the other side holds off. Wasting the first shot. Once they get in battle range, so long as the regular cannon ships are faster they can actually dart in out of range so as to get their shots in without ever getting hit (staying outside the fire window of the charged weapon).

This has some important implications. This means you could have devastatingly powerful charged cannon weapons that could decimate larger slower ships with sheer power. But small ships would be all but immune to the fire, the cannon could just never keep up with them. A regular cannon could just wait till they came in range, pull of it's instant shot and wait out the cooldown.

Now situation in which they start on top of eachother might give back some of the power to the charging weapon if it charges fast enough to prevent a dart-out form point blank range (as opposed to skimming the outer range of the weapon).


lastly "Big Cannon C" would be can cannont that locks on to a certain area and could fire in there. Now if it can't hold it's charge it's really just a more restriced version of "big cannon B". If it can hold it's charge it's basically marking a section of the battle field as death zone, it could be used to rescrict enemy movements (unless then want to get blasted). It works even better if the weapon in question has some kind of splash damage, if thats in SE5 that is.


You can even link charge time weapons to have a regular cooldown before they begin another charge.

Heck if really needed to make an even bigger difference, you could take a page from many RPGs and make charge cannons that need stability and slow down/stop charging when they take a hit/big enough hit.

[Suicide Junkie]

Note that direct fire weapons will still have a time-to-target after being fired.

When two DUC ships attack, both with fire... and then shortly after, both will be hit and possibly both be destroyed.

[HP Delron]

Suicide Junkie said:
Note that direct fire weapons will still have a time-to-target after being fired.

I suppose. I honeslty always saw beam weapons at least as instant or near-instant weapons.

When two DUC ships attack, both with fire... and then shortly after, both will be hit and possibly both be destroyed.

I'm afraid i've hit a vocabulary barrier here. "DUC"?