Ship Talk

[jars_u]

Originally Posted by pydna

...players could employ to give ship building some real depth.

Designing better ships and then using them to blow stuff up better is one of my favorite aspects of 4X so I'm in favor of the general idea of ship design having real depth that impacts combat certainly and overall game-play as a result.

Speaking specifically to both SE4 and 5 for example while numerous perhaps even too numerous weapon options existed for a player to research and use in his/her designs some of the real differences (to me) were often (but not always) too negligible to really justify one over another in any real overall design strategy.

But at the end of the day the question will be "Is the game fun?" and tedious MM (depending on what your preferences are) - especially as mentioned elsewhere - later in the game can be a serious kill-joy.

[Timstone]

I have a small question.
When I played Ascendancy I could send my ships home in one turn with the "Recaller". I know this can be implemented. Just state the following with every ship you produce: "Impaler 01 build on stardate 1979 at Earth". You can use this data to send that particular ship homewards in the blink of an eye.
Would such a system be useful/wanted.
Obviously implementing such a system wouldn't mean you have to show the data. But you could check out which ship is most antiquated or which shipyard build the most ships.
More numbers to crunch!

[jars_u]

Originally Posted by Timstone

...But you could check out which ship is most antiquated or which shipyard build the most ships...

Ship design was always one of my favorite aspects of both SE4 & 5 - but managing and upgrading all the incremental designs was certainly a chore especially as the game went on.

Unless SL affords individual ships a greater level of importance then I think most 4X games do - I would be in favor of a oversimplified and perhaps even a "unrealistic" way of dealing with this issue. Perhaps a monetary cost of upgrade only with limited time investment and generally loose or multiple valid upgrade locations.

In SE a construction/repair style ship would take too long to perform an overhaul and sending back to a shipyard meant not only the time invested in the upgrade but also a two way trip (perhaps made worse by an already damaged ship) - that combined with the restrictions on percentages of old/new component on an overhaul more often then not at least for me ships either rarely got upgraded or since no attachment existed with ships the older ones were used as bait/kamikaze ships in battle.

[jars_u]

I see on page 2 of the off topic thread there is a discussion that also address this issue in some detail - I think the off topic is now on topic and we need a new off topic thread!

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by jars_u

I see on page 2 of the off topic thread there is a discussion that also address this issue in some detail - I think the off topic is now on topic and we need a new off topic thread!

Yeah, you have a point there.

I think it's implicitly accepted that many elements of ship design are tied in with combat mechanics. It'd be kinda nice if the thread title acknowledged this, as I guess discussion of the two would be simpler if it took place in the same thread. For simplicitly, I'll quickly quote the appropriate comment here:

The way this maneuverability system would work is, combat would be turn-based, and fleets would be stuck on little "plates" - regions of space that they're confined to, with the size determined by their acceleration attribute. Each round of combat, the plates would shift in space based on their current strategic speed, acceleration, and orders from the previous game turn ("pursue other fleet" or "maintain course to Rigel" or whatever). Then the ships in turn could maneuver on the fleet-plates in a non-newtonian fashion (e.g. "move 3 km forward" or whatever); each ship would be confined to its fleet-plate, though, to avoid breaking the strategic movement calculations. Then ships would fire weapons if possible, and you go back to the plate-shifting phase, until the fleets are out of weapons range or all but one side is wiped out.

It would be interesting in this system, actually, if capital ships had little or even zero maneuverability, while fighters could zip around like crazy... would put more emphasis on the fleet formations and strategies, since you couldn't tweak those to any significant degree in combat if the maneuverability was so poor!

[Xrati]

OK, you got it.

[Gregstrom]

?? Err, I was suggesting that ship design and combat mechanics share a thread. I probably didn't make myself clear enough, sorry.

[Xrati]

I think it's implicitly accepted that many elements of ship design are tied in with combat mechanics. It'd be kinda nice if the thread title acknowledged this, as I guess discussion of the two would be simpler if it took place in the same thread.

Whaaaaat????

[Gregstrom]

Large chunks of the thread are about combat mechanics already - combat movement and how it relates to weapon firing arcs was the first topic discussed in this thread.

Unless you're purely talking about artistic design, ship design is heavily interlinked with game mechanics - they're one of the agents through which you interact with the game, after all.

[MattII]

How detailed are ships going to be, will you have to have juggle power food and fuel, or just 'supplies'?

Also, one thing I never really liked about Space Empires was the fact that if you wanted to upgrade so much as one single weapon you had to make a new design. In regards to this, I'd like to propose:
1. Ship names don't need changing if you simply upgrade the components, only if you change them.
2. Rather than having a dozen different designs, you build one general ship type and equip it with a load of 'Hardpoints', onto which can be placed whatever guns, extra shields or one-shot missile launchers you want.