Topic: Ruleset and other game play Specifics

[[UFP]Exeter]

basically Do As Your Told.

[FPF-DieHard]

basically Do As Your Told.

That option for programmable attack patters would be cool, especially with Fighters and PFs.

[FPF-DieHard]

at this point . . . should we split the conversation between Tactical and Strategic in different threads?

[Corbomite]

Sure fancy attack patterns and the like are cool, but the problem with that is you are flying your own ship and can't pay attention to what they are doing. Unless the AI can handle itself well on its own "Do as I tell you" is the best thing there can be. There will have to be some level of autonomous behavior for the AI so you can at least send them off to their death's with some measure of confidence.

[FPF-DieHard]

Sure fancy attack patterns and the like are cool, but the problem with that is you are flying your own ship and can't pay attention to what they are doing. Unless the AI can handle itself well on its own "Do as I tell you" is the best thing there can be. There will have to be some level of autonomous behavior for the AI so you can at least send them off to their death's with some measure of confidence.

Fighters and PFs would be nice.  I'd like "harrass" to mean "dump drones and range 12 and fly back to the carrier."

[Corbomite]

Oh, sure. The fighter/PF commands in SFC worked well as tactical instructions. It was the fighter's tendency to go AWOL at the slightest provocation and you having to go fetch them instead of fighting that was the problem. The ship fleeting was another issue. It actually wasn't too bad at slow speeds. They kept up and did what you told them, but as I have pointed out before, the AI is terrible at power management, so at high speeds they would have a nervous breakdown over whether to keep up with you or charge weapons, achieving neither very well.

[[UFP]Exeter]

at this point . . . should we split the conversation between Tactical and Strategic in different threads?

  I see no point yet as I will mainly focus on one first, probably the tactical.

Sure fancy attack patterns and the like are cool, but the problem with that is you are flying your own ship and can't pay attention to what they are doing. Unless the AI can handle itself well on its own "Do as I tell you" is the best thing there can be. There will have to be some level of autonomous behavior for the AI so you can at least send them off to their death's with some measure of confidence.   

 

No more firing on a ship to get it to act stupid.  My thought are attack patters with some specified commands.

[Corbomite]

As long as they execute those commands without deviation so the sole blame for a disaster can be put squarely on the shoulders of the pilot , then OK.

[Tulwar]

We don't need to go into AI behavior at this point.  Nobody has indicated that they have the slightest clue as to how weapon tables work.

The SFB tables are hardly perfect.  Disruptors and Photons actually started with the same probabilities.  Storing energy over 2 turns gave the Photon an advantage, so SFB propped up the Dizzies with DERFCTS and UIM modules.  To make our own tables, you simply have to determine energy input to damage ratios for given ranges, and differentiate weapons by expressing that ratio with different probability statements.  In SFB, the basic equation for heavy weapons was 1 energy to 2 damage at minimum range, progressively dropping to 1 to 1 and 2 to 1 as range increased.  That is, for both Disruptors and Photon Torpedoes, if you fired at medium range, you would average 1 point of damage fro every point of energy you put in the weapon.  There are simply different ways to state '1' in terms of probability.  The photon is easy: 1/2 x 2 = 1.  The disruptor is more complicated, but when you add the 6 possibilities together and divide by 6, it comes out to '1.'

From here, you can start making more exotic probability ratios by moving the power to damage ratios inward, like the Hydran Fusion Gun, or outward, like the ISC PPD.  There was a lot of cheese incorporated in the PPD, so it's not really a balanced weapon.  The probabilities of that weapon and the Hydran HB were too complicated for easy math, so I lost interest in figuring them out, way back when.

Phasers all use a modified version of the same table, and since phasers are the same across all races, they make little difference.  Seeking weapons are the only weapon of art in the game.  I think the drone control limit actually derived from the number of phasers the Big E was equipped with.  I personally think the phaser II races were given a raw deal by making them pay the same amount of energy for a weapon with 2/3s the power and a <100% chance of killing an incoming drone, but that's another story.

[Javora]

I came up with some type of damage chart tonight.  Bear with me, it's 3:30 am and I just woke out of a dead sleep.  Basically the whole game works on a percentage and goes something like this:

Take the largest ship in the game (actually in this case it wouldn't be a ship but a star base but anyway) take a star base, it's shield emitters would always start at 100% using the best shield emitters.  Where as a FF-L would start at 35%~40% of a star base max shield strength, a BB would have a 80% max and so on.  The same game mechanics can be applied to hull integrity.  A star base would have 100% hull integrity whereas a missile would have 1%.  Ships Captains can upgrade shield emitters on their ships that can give the ship an extra 5% depending on the grade of shield emitter.  I guess you could do the same thing with hull integrity using a better plating material.

Weapon damage would also be based on percentage.  A Phaser III may only do 1%~2% damage where as a Phaser would do 1%~6% (keeping in line with the board game we were going to use).  Damage can be adjusted based on range of the attacking ship at the time the weapon is fired for range weapons obviously.  A ship firing at point blank range would have a 100% of that 1%~6% damage whereas a ship firing at maximum range would only have a 1% of that 1%~6%.  Plasma F Torps on the other hand would maybe do 10% close range.  The thing is this percentage based easily scalable and we can even allow players to have a slider for damage output for Phasers.  Things like ECM or ECCM can decrease or increase a ships chances by 5%~10%.

Using a game mechanics like this is easily scalable, the math isn't rocket science, and in this case it falls in line the TNG story lines where you would always hear about shield or hull integrity is down to whatever percentage.  I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier.  Me and a friend of mine from college came up with this after AD&D changed over to the 2nd edition rules and after a night of drinking we thought we could do a better game system while drunk.  This was the result.

[Corbomite]

Good ideas, keep 'em coming.

Just to let everyone know, Exeter and I had an organizational meeting last night. Now that he has his test environment built, his next priority is going to be getting ship movement worked out, so we are still in the boring stages here. All combat starts with ship performance so that is what needs attention first. We'll keep people updated as new goals are reached.

[Captain Adam]

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[Javora]

I like what Tulwar wrote and I don't think it will be hard to include that into my "100% Game System".   

Holding energy into a weapon can easily add an extra percentage to the base damage percentage.  Take a overloaded Photon as an example, for every point of energy held into a Photon tube can add and extra percentage to the base damage amount.  Energy issues that Phaser II have can be fix with this system.

Speaking of energy, we can use the same system for energy output for each star base or ship setting the bar with a star base.  Each weapon, tractor beam, transporter, ECM, etc., will cost a certain percentage amount.  Smaller ships will only have 35%~40% of the total output of a full star base.  This keeps restrictions realistically based on ship size.  This system keeps our options open if we ever want to go down the road of total ship customization.  I'm not saying we should allow ship customization but I'm saying we should keep our options open.

With ship movement I'm going to flip the script a little bit.  Ships with less mass will be able to get to 100% movement faster than a larger ship.  All ships should have the same max speed, that is one of the many things that SFC got right.  The only thing we need to figure out -this is where I need help, is how much distance would equal 1% of speed.  Although here is a thought, what if instead of actual ship speed the game ties movement to a percentage of the map.  Although that might not work with fighter movement since the size of a fighter is such that it would never hit 100% movement, maybe 50%.

[Javora]

Javora,

That's exactly how I work my own shiplist, the Starbase has mostly everything that I consider 100%, as I go down from BB, to CA and etc, I use the percentage based system to calculate, it's an excellent way of balancing the game for maximum fun. Very awesome to apply this to the core of the game.

Thanks Adam, just proves that great minds think alike.  Back then we figured that Full Plate Mail would be 100% armor, working our way down to Leather armor would equal 35%.  Damage from every weapon starting with Pole Arms to a Dart would cause a percentage of damage.  Saves vs whatever and attributes were based on percentage, max Wisdom for instance was of course 100% adjusted for race (Elf, Dwarf, etc.).

One thing I was thinking last night was to change Scatter Packs shuttles.  That is to give players the ability to tell the shuttle when to fire it's missiles.  I'm ripping off the Delayed Blast Fireball here, but I think it would be a cool addition.

[Javora]

Sorry but I want to add one more thought.

Ship movement that I listed earlier might have issues when switching from the tactical to strategic map.  We may have to develop a two tier speed system based on what map the player is using at the time.  I need more time to think about this, but I wanted to get that thought out before coding began.

Edit:  Thank God I have the day off, this is going to rack my brain...

[Captain Adam]

.

[[UFP]Exeter]

My thoughts and please corect

W have a starbase, let say a shield is at 100% and is value is 200

A battleship would have 80% of that, maybe 160 at full strength

Through power management and shield reinforcement maybe at 105% or 168.

The limit, undecided, maybe 150%

My intent is to use a starbase as the starting point.  Anyone, have the details for a starbase?

 

[Corbomite]

You're jumping ahead about seven steps. You don't even know how power curves are going to work yet.

[[UFP]Exeter]

No, need to create ship structures.  If I create one it will be ready to derive from.  Also will make the power curves follow the same ratios unless changes are made.

[Corbomite]

Then I suggest continuing with the ship development as we decided. Star bases sit a little outside the realm of starship fleet combat. That is not to say they are not important and relevant, but since they don't move they have a different doctrine associated with them compared to ship combat, on which SFB/SFC are based. One thing at a time. Don't let the bright shiny's distract you from getting the skeleton of the game operational. If things go as planned, players will be able to mod these things for themselves and then it won't be your problem anymore.