Combat Initiative...

[evan42]

Perhaps my original proposal of having a "fixed number of turns to retreat" can still be worked around by the attacker. But I think if we make some simple changes to it, it can still work.

You are worrying about the attacker having the ability to avoid decisive battles. And you made my proposal sound like a few turns of attacks won't even inflict any damages on the retreating side. But it will. Especially if the defender(attacker in the battle) is equiped with shield/engine zapping weapons.

And we can always increase the number of turns required to retreat, so it will give the other side more time to inflict damage. Perhaps the retreating side will not always be destroyed, but many of the ships will be crippled.

A decisive battle happens when BOTH sides are commited to the battle. (one side might not be willing to fight, but has no choice but to defend the HW for example) If one side chose to evade by taking some penalties, then they should have the right to do that. In that case, it will no longer be a decisive battle. We can make the penalty a little higher to persuade the retreater from retreating. But, they should have been given the option.

Also, what I have said is for normal space combat. But, if a battle occurs at a warp point, then it's a different ballgame. For one thing, the starting positions for both sides will be much closer together (if not right next to each other). In this case, the defender of the warp point should have enough time to attack regardless of the number of turns required to retreat.

In the case of battle at a warp point, I agree that the defender should be able to choose where to place their ships. So the defender will always have the upperhand by having their ships at the optimum firing range.

[Trachmyr]

Here's an idea... Why not require a ship that wants to retreat to put a minimum distance between it and its opponets closest ship... say 30 range. The combat map will have to be made with "near-infinate" scrolling ability. This allows both speed and tactics to play an issue to retreat. For warp points, the vessel must enter the center for two rounds and must turn off its shields.

BTW, I think that there should be a definate "fix" to make larger ships require HEAVIER engines to get the same speed (acceleration?). Possibly through "Mount Types", but it would require both a min. and Max. size entry in the .txt files.

[evan42]

quote:

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Originally posted by Trachmyr:
Here's an idea... Why not require a ship that wants to retreat to put a minimum distance between it and its opponets closest ship... say 30 range. The combat map will have to be made with "near-infinate" scrolling ability. This allows both speed and tactics to play an issue to retreat. For warp points, the vessel must enter the center for two rounds and must turn off its shields.

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Putting a minimum distance of X in order to retreat will make the battle nearly impossible to play. If the opposition decides to evade the battle, he only needs to have the same speed. Sure, he won't be able to retreat, but he can just keep running infinitely, because the battle map is now "made with near-infinate scrolling ability". If the 30th-turn mandatory end-of-battle still exists, then he can still retreat without a scratch.

quote:

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BTW, I think that there should be a definate "fix" to make larger ships require HEAVIER engines to get the same speed (acceleration?). Possibly through "Mount Types", but it would require both a min. and Max. size entry in the .txt files.

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Agreed. Increasing the size of engines on larger ships through the use of mount types is a good idea. But I don't believe there is enough mount types to be used for every ship size in the game.

Another idea is to set the mass of an engine on a ship equals to a fixed percentage of the total mass of the ship. But that might require many changes to the codes.

The easiest way to go is to have larger ships required to have more engines. Which means only the maximum number of engines for each ship hull needs to be changed. So, for an escort, it needs 6 standard engines to achieve speed 6. But for a frigate, it will need 8. destroyer needs 10... and so on. Although there is still the rounding of movement points to be sorted out, but this method will be the easiest to implement.

[The Puke Empire]

Why not just reduce tactical combat to 20 turns, or 15? IMO 30 is too much, a lowly frigate will be able to inflict massive damage to a planet without defenses.

With 15 ~ 20 tactical turns, a fleet wishing to retreat would have 5 turns or so to run for the corner without fire, then 10 turns trying to survive (against AI, u could do this by spredaing your forces). Once the battle has ended I'm sure the weaker fleet will sustain some damage so they either has to head home for repairs or ditch the damaged ships and move on, which will makes em weaked and the next battle will probably be its total destruction.

In my games few battles (except planet assauts) Last longer than 15 turns.. and for planet assaults it should work this way: the defender will have sometime to send in reinforcements and the battles will unfold more like a siege: taking many turns to bring a well defended planet down.

[Snap Spelljammer]

Yeah, I think the lowly scout taking out a planet with a laser is kinda pathetic. You would have to figure that with a planet of 6 billion population, they would be able to breed faster than that scout could pick them off

I think they should make all weapons but bombs and troops useless for attacking planets. This will also force us to build bomber ships instead of just attack dreadnoughts.

I've not played multi, but with the AI I normally just build attack dreadnoughts and use them to take out planets. I don't even bother with ground combat. If I need to take over any of thier population I'll just use my subverter to take a colony ship.

This also lets me set my Strength to -50% to get more racial points =)

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Snap Spelljammer:
Yeah, I think the lowly scout taking out a planet with a laser is kinda pathetic. You would have to figure that with a planet of 6 billion population, they would be able to breed faster than that scout could pick them off

I think they should make all weapons but bombs and troops useless for attacking planets. This will also force us to build bomber ships instead of just attack dreadnoughts.

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That would make Weapon Platforms invulnerable to normal ships. If you could make normal weapons have a far higher damage per population ration than ground attack weapons it would make more sense. Ordinary beams ought to have 100:1 or so damage to kill population. So, you could harass a planet with beam ships but it would be almost impossible to destroy it. Then if "Planetary Napalm" and other ground attack weapons did closer to 10:1 population damage you'd really want to have some ships with those weapons to attack planets once your warships had taken out the WPs.



[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Psitticine]

I know it would take a lot of coding changes and may not be worth implementing, at least at this time, but the engine system I'd like to see would be based on thrust/mass.

Each engine would rated for thrust produced and that would be compared with the mass of the ship to produce a speed. Fairly simple, but it makes good Newtonian sense, especially when compared with the current system.

I'm not really sure what I think about the current cap on speed for larger hulls. Is there a rational behind that, besides possible game balance issues? Reduced hull integrity for larger hulls or some such? And is it really neccessary for play balance?

I don't really think there should be a cap on the number of engines that can be placed on a hull. It would open up a whole 'nother area of choices to be made - exactly how much component space should be sacrificed for more speed?

If you have an initiative system based, at least in part, on speed, it would give faster ships an advantage but they'd have less weaponry to apply with that advantage so I think it'd even out fairly well.

It could give even more problems with the missile dance maneuver but if may even prevent some if enemy ships have the speed to close that gap despite retreating opponents.

I think, when it comes to retreating, there's no reason not to allow faster ships to break away. I'd like to see a scrolling combat screen and the ability for ships that reach a certain distance from the nearest opponent to remove themselves from combat.

If ships of more variable speed are allowed and not every one proceeds at virtually the same pace, than interceptor ships as well as raiders become possible. Add a ship or two optimized for speed to your fleet and let them harass the enemy as they attempt to retreat. Put some engine destroying weapons on them and they'd have a good ol' time!