Ending combat

[khanuk]

I fully agree with Dogscoff - it doesn't make sense that you cant just decline combat even if you have the faster ship.

If MM do pick this one up, then I think you should not be able to automatically decline combat in certain circumstances, for example if you transit a warp point with defending ships on the other side, you will then have to run the gauntlet and rely on some nifty footwork to Last out the 30 turns

[Spyder]

I think that escape should be based upon initiative disparity. If your initiative is significantly higher than another's, then you should be able to escape unharmed. However, the closer together you are, or, if he's higher than you, then you will face a higher risk of forced combat for the number of turns determined by the disparity.

Lets say that if your initiative is higher than his by 5 or more, you can choose to not fight at any time and remain unhurt. For each tick mark less in disparity, you have a 20% less chance of escaping, and in the instance where you do not, you must fight for the number of turns equal to the disparity before escaping.

Initiative can be modified by many things including cloaking tech, average ship speed, sensor tech, remaining movement, etc.

Another way it could be done is using remaining movement. If you warp with no movement left after warping, then you're going to fight...no way out. However, if you warp with movement left, the you have a percentage chance to evade equal to the percentage of remaining movment.

[dogscoff]

There are easier ways to implment escape:

1> The SEIII method, whereby if you reach the dge of the map / warp point and have movement points remaining on the system map, you can click an escape button and be sent to the next sector.

B> Make the tactcal map bigger. If the corners were far enough away, a faster ship could just keep up the chase for 30 turns.

iii> A variation on B> really: Wrap the tactical map so that if you fly off the right hand side of the map you reappar on the left, asteroids style. It may not seem very realistic but you could argue that it's a 3D space and you've just done a huge loop the loop

[Nscaler]

quote:

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Originally posted by dogscoff:
There are easier ways to implment escape:

iii> A variation on B> really: Wrap the tactical map so that if you fly off the right hand side of the map you reappar on the left, asteroids style. It may not seem very realistic but you could argue that it's a 3D space and you've just done a huge loop the loop

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Or you could make the tactical map floating. It's only so big, but the center of the map is kept centered on all the ships. Of course that'd allow cheating by sending small fast units to 'anchor' a couple corners.

[Phoenix-D]

Wraping wouldn't work so well..because the fleets would start *very* close to each other.

Phoenix-D

[capnq]

As an alternative to wrapping, I'd suggest eliminating the borders on tactical altogether. You could define the "center", and track ships' positions relative to it. Maybe allow you to leave combat at a certain distance away from the center.

[Gryphin]

My thought on "excape" or "decline" would be a item under "Orders". The selected ship or Group could be given escape orders and the success would be based on the AI decision to pursue and the relative speeds and weapons of the ships involved. Then again, I would not want to have to write the code for that option. Just a dream.