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[Antsan]

Yeah, it seems to be a huge waste of resources if officers are largely short-lived to make them very individual.
As to how it could be done: Have their AI work a bit differently? I don't know, modify their weights for different goals or something like that. I don't know how your AI works.

[Retropunch]

Yeah, it seems to be a huge waste of resources if officers are largely short-lived to make them very individual.
As to how it could be done: Have their AI work a bit differently? I don't know, modify their weights for different goals or something like that. I don't know how your AI works.

One of the big things that I've learnt building this game has been how you smallish effects (such as AI tweaks) don't really become all that apparent to the player. For instance, I tried having ships retreat at a higher health point as a side effect of low morale; unfortunately it was pretty much impossible to tell the difference unless you made it that one hit made them retreat. Broader brush strokes are needed plus special abilities/big boosts in certain areas will probably be the best way to tackle it.

How I'll probably do it is that captains (which will most likely just be tied to one ship) will have special abilities plus prefer certain types of targets/activities. If I could merge these together well enough it might end up with some interesting results, like say a destroyer that is great at fighting carriers or a frigate captain which can quickly disable enemy weapons.

The key I suppose is broadcasting it to the player - if they weren't sufficiently informed they may well not realise that the destroyer is doing a better job at fighting carriers than other destroyers (as it may just look to get a few lucky shots in) and the same for the frigate captain. It's also making them actually do something significant without breaking the balance (if it is ever balanced!)

[LordArchibald]

I toyed around with making them a lot less rare and having a bigger impact if they died, but a freak run of two frigates getting blown up plus a crit strike on the capship caused a huge drop in morale.

Escape pods

[Retropunch]

I toyed around with making them a lot less rare and having a bigger impact if they died, but a freak run of two frigates getting blown up plus a crit strike on the capship caused a huge drop in morale.

Escape pods

That would definitely be interesting!!! Especially if these were bomber/fighter sized escape pods which could get shot down on the way back.
I think I'll do that for captains, but will probably leave officers as they are. Partly it's because I want to have a sort of expendable resource that affects morale so that  morale fluctuates in battle.


As an update, I've finally got all the states working except for Sacrifice which I'm leaving until I've got morale a bit more balanced. Currently it causes everyone to sulk if it gets too low. I've also given the other side a 'fear' attribute, which causes them to fight harder the more ships they lose, rather than the other way around.

[dorf]

I have this idea that you can select officers for ships, where officers have different character traits which make them act differently.

Yeah, it seems to be a huge waste of resources if officers are largely short-lived to make them very individual.
As to how it could be done: Have their AI work a bit differently? I don't know, modify their weights for different goals or something like that. I don't know how your AI works.

One of the big things that I've learnt building this game has been how you smallish effects (such as AI tweaks) don't really become all that apparent to the player. For instance, I tried having ships retreat at a higher health point as a side effect of low morale; unfortunately it was pretty much impossible to tell the difference unless you made it that one hit made them retreat. Broader brush strokes are needed plus special abilities/big boosts in certain areas will probably be the best way to tackle it.

How I'll probably do it is that captains (which will most likely just be tied to one ship) will have special abilities plus prefer certain types of targets/activities. If I could merge these together well enough it might end up with some interesting results, like say a destroyer that is great at fighting carriers or a frigate captain which can quickly disable enemy weapons.

The key I suppose is broadcasting it to the player - if they weren't sufficiently informed they may well not realise that the destroyer is doing a better job at fighting carriers than other destroyers (as it may just look to get a few lucky shots in) and the same for the frigate captain. It's also making them actually do something significant without breaking the balance (if it is ever balanced!)

This might end up being an unrelated/hypothetical post but here it goes..

What if the officers/ships act differently to player's expectations? Should the player just accept it or will s/he be able make changes to the behaviour?

In an unrelated game example:
let's say we have an arena-based, combat-oriented game where you lead a group of individuals. And it just so happens that the most powerful unit you have, is a coward.
Will the match be pleasant to play for the said player? Or for the opponent, for that matter?
What should change to make the said match pleasant?

[Retropunch]

This might end up being an unrelated/hypothetical post but here it goes..

What if the officers/ships act differently to player's expectations? Should the player just accept it or will s/he be able make changes to the behaviour?

In an unrelated game example:
let's say we have an arena-based, combat-oriented game where you lead a group of individuals. And it just so happens that the most powerful unit you have, is a coward.
Will the match be pleasant to play for the said player? Or for the opponent, for that matter?
What should change to make the said match pleasant?

Very interesting points, and something I'm currently struggling with. I really wanted to have the player feel like a commander rather than a god - your units have a mind of their own and are swayed by your commands by varying degrees depending on morale and the numbers of officers you have (and a few other modifiers). However, finding the line is very, very difficult as having such a lack of control (or finding units doing something completely contrary to common sense) can become very frustrating or just seem broken.

In the latest match I set up, I ordered a fighter screen with all fighters to protect the capital ship - this was followed by about 70%, which left the remaining 30% to get completely destroyed by the enemy as they were so hopelessly outnumbered. Similarly, I ordered my frigates to engage bombers as I was against a carrier capship which was pumping out huge amounts of bombers - only one did and the other three just went to attack the capital ship - this just didn't make sense, especially as I had destroyers who can't tackle bombers that were already going to the capship.

I tried doing a Total War style retreat under low morale as well, but, due to the nature of the map and the fact that all ships are individuals this doesn't really work out.

I'm really not sure what the best way to tackle this is. Probably it's just putting in contingencies in the AI to react to specific situations better (such as if there are destroyers and frigates are ordered to attack bombers) but I'm sure there will constantly be edge cases that I miss.

Any thoughts on this would be really helpful - I'm hoping to launch a new version soon as I've made a lot of progress but I'm wanting to get a bit of the meta game ready first.

[cerapa]

From your description is seems that they don't actually have mind of their own. An independant actor wouldn't randomly ignore an order if ignoring it would result in them getting outnumbered and killed.

You need to set up a system of what they themselves want to do, which most likely would be sitting back and letting everyone else do the fighting. So if you were to send them an order to retreat, they would follow it instantly, but giving them a waypoint to the middle of an enemy fleet would make them think twice.

You could set up all sorts of behaviours. For example you could make every commander/ship have it's own value of for example how much it tries to stay out of range, how much it wants to deal damage, etc. So some captains might just do crazy suicidal runs because they want to deal maximum damage, while others would be constantly kiting because they hate being in range, and so on. Your own orders would be added into the weighting of different actions, so a skittish captain would for example proceed to a waypoint by going in a big circle around enemy forces or just decide that it isn't worth the effort and sit back.

[Retropunch]

All good ideas - though the problem is how the player perceives/experiences it is very different (in a 2d top down space game) and some of these values are difficult to balance and make obvious to the player.

For instance, when a bombers hull drops to a certain level they return to the capital ship to repair. However bombers are normally either destroyed or shoot their missiles and then return to reload (and therefore are destroyed) anyway. If I lower the threshold of damage to say 50% instead of 75%, they never ever end up getting into range and continually just run away. Obviously there is number tweaking to do and this can be improved, but overall the player either thinks that the bombers are rubbish or doesn't notice any avoidance tactics.

Similarly I tried to give a 'long range' or 'short range' AI to frigates. Some would prefer to attack from a distance and others would prefer to close. However, this really doesn't show much in play as if you have a short range frigate attack a long range frigate they both have to switch to short range engagement (as the long range one running away to a distance would just get blown up).

My thought is to keep fighters, bombers and frigate all pretty simple. They basically do their own thing, but they respond to actions when it's appropriate more (and they all attend fighter screens!). For bigger captained ships I'll try to basically make each individual ship have a role (dictated by the captain) -  they'll stick to their role but the player can give orders which will be followed if it makes sense.

[LordArchibald]

For bigger captained ships

Capital ships, the other (frigates) are escort ships. I think the standard navy nomenclature would fit here (capital ships have an officer, escorts ships haven't).

[a1s]

For [individual officers] to work you need to have some sort of attachment to the officers (more than just minor stat. boosts), and I can't see of a good way of implementing that properly at the moment, as you've got so many officers who are all disposable and die often.

Do what I call the "X-Com model" (no idea what's it's "really" called) - give them names and make them progress ("level up".) That way, you start out treating them like space fodder, but eventually notice the few talented (and leveled) ones and try to keep them safe (at the expense of other fodder, natch). Note that you don't have to display stats to the players, just name and rank will do, they'll know instinctively that Commodore Jones is a more valuable officer than Ensign Smith.

One of the big things that I've learnt building this game has been how you smallish effects (such as AI tweaks) don't really become all that apparent to the player. For instance, I tried having ships retreat at a higher health point as a side effect of low morale; unfortunately it was pretty much impossible to tell the difference unless you made it that one hit made them retreat.

Do you mean one captain decided to retreat earlier, or everyone?
The first one you don't have to notice (although, if you want to- implement "battle line collapse": every friendly unit that "sees" (i.e. is within a short distance) a retreating unit takes a morale hit, and may itself retreat because of it)
The second one should be noticeable, as your whole fleet will be more inclined to bug out faster. You might consider adding "damaged" graphics (they're not in your HTML5 demo) to show that indeed your ships are not retreating because they're beaten, but because they're cowards.

[Retropunch]

Good points all around.

I do like the X-com model and I think I'll implement something similar. I want the player to be aware of some traits, but they'll probably be quite loosely defined.

Re: A1s,
I think damaged graphics would help, but it's currently too fast paced to be able to clearly notice such things. I've decided to slow the pace down quite dramatically, this will lead to a lot more tactical gameplay hopefully (and have the added advantage of making retreats/actions a lot more visible), but I'm now a bit worried there won't be enough to do. I really don't want this to be a sort of auto-resolve game - I want every battle to have meaning and be a really hard slog, but it's difficult to do that and go down the more macro route.

Any ideas of other 'macro' controls would be really useful!

[Retropunch]

META!
So things are coming along well - the systems are all generating and they've all got a few statistics behind them. What I've gone for is a semi-random approach - the placing of systems is fixed but which system is where changes. So sometimes the Atlas system might be top left, sometimes bottom right. The map is then divided into roughly 4 quarters, each being controlled by a different faction.

So in gameplay this has a number of effects. For instance, the Atlas system (a heavy manufacturing system, with a strong military presence) might belong to the OCS, who are a faction that loathes slavers/pirates and will do anything they can to hunt you down. Them having a heavy manufacturing/military system will obviously be a strong buff. Other times it might belong to the RPS, who are more open to trading with you, and would therefore allow you to buy more heavy gear.

This also allows me to have more narrative elements, as I can just refer to the systems regardless of where they are. This might cause a few balance problems (lets say if you had to do a dangerous run between Atlas and Cronus, it'd be wildly different if they were right next to each other or the other side of the galaxy) but I'm strictly ignoring balance for now.

I'm not sure how deep I'm going to go into planets/stuff like that. I had initially thought about doing a 'jump to system' and then have a secondary map which was another 5-10 planets that you could fly between. However that's currently a bit too much at the moment - currently you just jump to a system and then either an event will happen (interception, distress signal and so on) or you choose from a number of options (loot, capture, hijack ect.).

Image below with placeholder sprites:

[Calidovi]

snip

Do you plan any benefit to occupying a system? Are locations intrinsically more dangerous than others and only serve the purpose of quests?

[Retropunch]

Do you plan any benefit to occupying a system? Are locations intrinsically more dangerous than others and only serve the purpose of quests?

Some systems are definitely more dangerous than others (this is random +modifiers from the system and faction), and staying outside of a system uses up fuel all the time. Whilst in a system you automatically repair capital ship damage, gain fuel and random events pop up. When you get to a system, you can set up a general focus (such as recruiting crew, targeting shipping lanes etc.) as well as going on specific missions.

The idea is you basically move from one system to another with sort of hit-and-run tactics - the longer you stay in one system the more attention you attract. At the same time though, you need to balance this with fuel/repair/crewing needs. Hopefully that'll be interesting enough on it's own, and then I'll try to add in a few narrative elements on top.