FreeOrion

Despite appearances, v0.4 ships and combat design is ongoing. In support of this, I'd like some brainstorming on the subject of ship designs. In particular, what possible basic frameworks for a ship design are there, what pros and cons do they have, and what is preferred by FreeOrion community members?

This isn't an official poll or design thread, but rather is a source of ideas, and just as importantly, reasons behind ideas. This means that, if you have a suggestion, please try to give some reasons why it is good or bad, or interesting features about it. Problems or good features or comments about other ideas are also useful. Conversely, a list of types of ship parts you thought of, with no context of why they would work well together isn't very helpful.

For this thread, some assumptions to make and other considerations:

* Review of the V0.4 Design Pad is advised before commenting. What's there isn't (currently) up for discussion, but is the basis for discussion.

* Ships exist on both the strategic map and in combat. It is necessary to consider how a design system is applicable to both. Similarly, ships will be useful for things other than juts shooting at and being shot at by other ships, and a ship design system needs to accomodate these roles.

* The level of detail of ship designs should be appropriate, given that:
** Individual ships as the basic unit the player controls.
** Ship facing matters (in some to-be-determined capacity).

* Ships might be used in task forces of different ship types, or in groups of similar or identical role / properties, depending on available forces and the situation.

* It's not set it stone yet, but it seems likely that ships will have a size property, which is one of a few fixed options. These might be Small, Medium, Large, and Huge. Each size will likely have different advantages and disadvantages in and out of combat, none being the best at everything or particularly better than the others.

Also, consider reviewing some previous threads:
http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=931

Some issues to consisder (but not be limited to):

* Should ships have more than one type of weapon on them? Having more than one weapon requires a way to pick which to use in a given situation, which compilicates the UI. Having only one or more than one weapon of significantly different strategic role or range on a single ship would affect the strategic nature of combat, and lessen the tactical distinctiveness of different designs.

* Should the method used to place parts in or on ships be broken down into various directions in some way? Ship facing should matter in the end, but does this require design system with sufficient detail to distinguish between directions or position within a design?

* Should desing be done by free-form fill-it-up with parts, subject to mass / power / volume limits, or should there be specific slots for particular part types, or should the design involve connecting together parts on a 2D (or 3D?) grid of some sort, with no pre-set restrictions on layout? Are there other alternatives? This point in particular needs justified answers, not lists of slot or part types.

* Should there be various predetermined hull types, shapes or "kits" tailored towards a particular ship role, or kits not tailored to a role but still different from eachother in ways different from how part selection functions, or should ships properties be determined only by their parts, or parts and size? If kits, should they be only available for a particular size, or in any size? What sort of limits should they have, given the other particulars of what constitutes a design?

Thanks for contributionis and patience with the drawn-out v0.4 design process.

This is a loaded question with many design possibilities and preferences. Here are a few creative possibilities I thought of:

Design I:

Ship battles is designed and determined at a fleet and tech level. It means that you don’t load specific modules or weapons onto a ship, but rather, you research predetermined ships and you put together them at a fleet level. You research a unique ship from a predetermine ship class in the tech tree. Examples of ship class (no fancy names right now) might be short for short range weapon ships, long for indirect weapon ships… ship classes each have their own unique capabilities as well as each ship.

Instead of research using the biggest hull you’ve got and loaded it up with all the latest gizmos, you would make a few ships from short ship class and a few ships from long ship class then put them together as a fleet with mixed weaponries and gizmos or you can have homogenous fleets.

Because the player don’t design a ship by adding modules, each predetermine ship is more unique. An example of short ship class might consists of tanker -> destroyer -> capital, each progression gives you better firepower, though special abilities change so no ships gets obsolete. A tanker comes with large defense and give a defense bonus to all ships in the fleet, a destroyer could have usual high firepower, a capital have a ability to destroy any one ship with one shot. Each ship can be further refined to add more firepower and capability so for example, a tanker II makes the fleet invulnerable until the tank get destroyed first (which has interesting effect of making your fleet much like a designing a ship in traditional games).

Design I allows very interesting and more unique abilities and balance dynamics at both tactical level and strategic level. For example, you might be able to research and refine a scout ship that serves the purpose of scouting to a stealth planetary stealth missile where you sacrifice the ship to do major damage to a planet or a wonder ship late in the game. Design I is trying to eliminate the problem of traditional design where the player just stacks the latest tech onto their biggest hull. If the player is going to do that 90% of the time, it is better just to have pre-determined ships.

Advantages:
-more unique ships with meanings
-ship roles built-in, so no boring and dry bonuses to encourage roles in ship design
-steamlined and simplify techs: no research lasers, missiles, hulls, pre-reqs, and bunch of military techs
-easier to balance from a conceptual level
-simpler tactical battles and UI, meaning you don’t have to choose which weapon to fire first…
-a big one: much much easier to program the AI

Disadvantages:
-a big one: no putting components together (although this design eliminates annoying design cycles each time you research a new tech or refined something)
-limits possibilities and permutations of putting modules onto a ship

Design II:

Ships are design from free-form volume determine by hulls size. Larger the hull size, the more gizmos you can put in. Ship sizes are made un-obsolete by command points (logistical points idea stolen from galciv2) which you research in parallel with hull size. Command points limits the amount of ships you can build for a fleet depending on the hull size and ships in a fleet gain special bonuses. In general, bigger ship is better, but uses up for command points.

The primary advantage behind this design is the player can have the choice of designing their super ships or have large fleets of simple small ships. Both pathways are strategically balanced and each pathway have their own tactical style. Ship roles are customized by the player depending on what gizmos they add to the ship.

I like free-form because it allows more flexibility in ship design over slots. For example, you can add more engines to make a ship move faster at sacrifice of less space than everything else whereas you just have to research the best engine you can to make the same ship move faster in slot form.

In general, I don’t like ship direction with functional game purposes. If there is ship direction complexity added, then I think a simple 360 arc and forward 60 degree direction is sufficient.

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Questions like this seem strongly linked to how ships will be grouped. If the player controls a fleet of heterogeneous ships as a single entity, it would make sense to have each ship more focused into a single role. Why form a fleet out of 6 kinds of generalist ships?

However, multiple weapons wouldn't necessarily complicate the UI.
PD weapons presumably will try to shoot down everything in range without ever being aimed or activated.
SR weapons, if they have a fixed position, should probably fire whenever there's something in range.
However allowing multiple LR weapons or multiple fighters types in a single ship would indeed complicate the UI. Depending on what other choices are made, a limit on the number per ship is reasonable.


The answers to these questions depend on the way the ships will be embodies as 3D objects.
I believe predetermined hull kits with set slots is the scenario best suited to having a ship's function and abilities discernible on sight. Less visible features, may or may not need slots. This method would also work well when creating a different look for various races.
For the 3D models to work best, each hull kit should only be available at a particular (or very narrow) range of sizes. Though similar kits might be created for different sizes.

As long as the game has well-defined default rules, we should be able to allow maximum customization and still have an easy way to give individual orders. For example:

* Ships can have more than one type of weapons, and there is no limits to number of LR or fighter weapons in a ship.
* At the beginning of the ship placement, default set of rules automatically place the ships within their respective "allowed zones". Faster ship's allowed zone will be generally larger than slower ship's. Within the allowed zone, the ship is placed forward if most of its firepower is focused on SR or PD. Vice versa. Player can drag and drop ships within the applicable allowed zone if he/she wants. Also, the player can drag and assign fleet numbers, thereby making the selected ships a fleet. Or, the player may just skip this part by simply accepting what the default placement.
* Once the placement is done, you can either go straight to the battle or assign behavioral patterns. If you go straight to battle, the default rule applies and all ships/fleets are given orders to fire all of their weapons to enemy ships within range, close in, fire again, and so on.
* In the behaviral pattern assignment, you can click each ship or fleet and issue command. If you click a fleet, the following table will pop up in the bottom of the HUD: fleet number, all of the weapons equipped by ships in the fleet, and behavioral indicator. Default behavioral indicator for the fleet is fire the longest range weapon and close-in for the next longest range weapon. Default behavioral indicator for every weapon is auto-fire until out of ammo. You can change behavioral indicator to off, and we can think about other type of indicator as well (e.g. shoot 5 times LR weapon and close-in). Even player-defined indicator (conditional orders) is possible. If you want to drill down further, you press a button and the one more column populates in the table: ship name. Again, the default is fire/close-in and auto-fire and you can customize each weapon of each ship. If you don't want to do so, you can forego the entirety of this process by just accepting default orders. We will need to think about priorities/tie brakers when behavioral indicators are conflicting (e.g. remain outside enemy LR range and close in for SR attack).

This way, you can design any type of ship with many different weapons but still can control them with a manageable UI. The point here is that even when you have many weapons in one ship/fleet, you have the option to micromanage or not to micromanage.

BTW, I think generalist ship should/can be allowed here - you may decide to use a generalist ship as a lone ship in one battle, couple it up with a few other distinct ships in the next battle, and just form one fleet with 6 generalist ships in the battle afterwards. Whether such generalist ships will be fun to play depends on the balancing of weaponry, etc., not on specified rules of fleet composition, IMHO.

i think we can come up easy firing rules so the UI isn't too crazy. i find even moo3 does good enough job having the AI fire for you. the question should more 1. how much do we want tactical battles do we want for FO? 2. balance between strategy and tactics? how much customization and gizmos do players want to fit on their ship?

there are other tactical elements we can employ in addition to weapons. maybe there is a mine field to navigate, maybe there is astroid field to hide the ships... the designs can be very complicated so much of these details do we really want and which details is the most interesting.

having multiple weapons and gizmos on a ship is just fine but it depends on how the techtree is laid out. traditionally, bigger is better because big is more advanced than small ships, but we don't have to design it this way.

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We can assume that ships will be designed by the player, MOO or SMAC-like, rather than there being preset designs unlocked, Civ-unit-like.


From the first post,

Consequently, there will be more to ship design than putting the best parts in the biggest hull. Other ship sizes will be better than the biggest at some (most) ship roles.


For this discussion, if releavnt, assume there are no command or logistics points limits, and that a player can use as many of whatever types of ships he or she has available, in or out of a battle. If we need limits later, we can use them with just about any ship design scheme.


There will be relevance to ship direction / facing in some capacity.


The basic unit a player can control is a single ship. We will likely add the ability to group ships together in some fashion, but single ships will still be separately controllable if desired.


Maybe you have 6 different versions of the generalist ship design, but use them in about the same way since the differences are minimal? Or perhaps generalist and specialist ships are both practial valid strategies, and the UI and grouping mechanisms that work for one can just be used with the other, even if not specifically necessary for it?


What if they can only engage a limited number of targets? Should ship AI decide which 2 of 5 incoming missiles to shoot down, or should the player be able to specify?


* For this and PD, what if they have ammo?
* What if there are more than one type of SR or PD weaponj on a ship, which have different effectiveness against different targets?
* What if ships have an "energy" limit, and firing beams depeletes this energy, which reducing the amount of damage a shield can absorb?
* What if you want your ships not to fire, because doing so would reduce their stealthiness, revealing them to be counterattacked?


Any ideas how to impose such a limit?


Lack of visual distinctiveness is a big downside with fully freeform design, though I'm not sure how effective kits would be at making the visual distinctiveness correspond well to ship abilities. Assuming a kit still lets the player customize the ship to a significant degree, the particular weapons, defenses and other parts that are on the ship could still be quite different, making similar-looking kits not in practice similar-behaving. How would you set up a kit, with what sorts of restrictions or options on ship designs, in order to make them convey strategically or tactically useful information in practice?


This issue is not setting up ship formations at the start of a battle... The issue is more so quickly being able to see tactically-relevant info by looking at a ship model during a battle, when things are all out of order and mixed up with lots of other, possibly-similar-looking, ships.


I think you're overthinking this. There will be no significant automated AI system to move your ships around in battles for you... the player will order ships to move, close in for attack, retreat, etc. The only thing that might be automatable is targetting in some cases, due to issue mentioned above... but in this case, we should probably avoid any player-configurable behaviour, to keep things simple to play.


Agreed... So what's the answer?


What aspects of tech tree layout are relevant, other than size issues of big = better (which will not be the case)?

Alternatively, assume that we can make a suitable tech tree. What design system for ships should there be in this case?

I think predetermined hulltypes would add a lot to game for example:

Cruiser size baseship could have -30% to manuverability & speed while +25% shield, armor points and because of circular design ship cant have heavy mount weapons but can have lot more usual cannons slots. Compared to usual cruiser it would be lot more resiliant & has lot more medium, low range firepower but fast ships with heavymount longrange weapons could kite ship to death without getting a scratch.

and many weapons isnt problem imho because cannons what can target object should fire when player gives attack command, only problem would be special, tactical weapons for example - shield overload that fires your shield energy field to do area dmg around your ship and takeout nearby weak ships. If such weapons come then those "abilities" probably should be limited .

Time for me to compile data from the many games I've played.

ST: BotF: Only non-combat uses were colonizing and building space stations. Boring.......

MoO2: ditto.

MoO3: erm... yeah.

Stars!: Here we have interesting stuff. Minefields made for an interesting strategic option, and freighters made for some interesting fun as well. but the most fun? GALLEONS! A Jack of all trades ship that could be used for almost anything, and could have the armor and firepower to be a threat in combat. But best of all it was also a freighter! Thus after you blow ships up you could haul off their remains.

SE: I'm just gonna do them collectively. Anyways... minelayers, carriers, and (at least in the later versions) Satelite launchers gave ships interesting roles outside combat. Also "portayard" ships that could repair your fleet in deep space were another great tactical option.

As for ship designing... I like the approach used in SE 3-5 where you have squares representing space in the inner hull, outer hull, and armor. Your hull has a certain maximum mass and number of engines, but there are few other considerations. Stars! was nice but the design was kinda lacking in that you had preset roles for most hull designs. MoO2-3..... Well.... It's approximately on par with SE2 in ship design.... sure it's not quite that simple, but it's not much more complex either.

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Computer programming is fun.

I also would like to see more role orientated ship design. Eg Mine Layers, Salvage/Repair Ships, Suicide Ships, Scouts, Troop Ships, Carriers, Planet Killers, Heavy Weapon Ships, Tankers, Miners, Freighters, Constructors.

Mostly, in terms of weapons and effects I would like to see geometry used well, eg Blast Radius Type attacks, lines, rebounding, bullets, clouds, stationary objects, massed projectiles, nets, intelligent weapons (eg breeding bullets, they have babies), leachers (bullets leach to targets).

I like the design system in stars, though it was limiting, it was fun. SE sucked big time. Three layers, etc is too much to deal with. Moo2 had the perfect setup with a simple list system. A few pictures/icons of weapons/systems would have made it a bit more colourful.

Actually I found the layers in SE to be useful for sorting the 3-4 dozen components I was putting in the hull. Since SE didn't have a quantity for items it made things much easier to handle. I gotta agree on stars though. It WAS fun, annoying at times, since most hull designs had a preset role, but fun.

_________________
Computer programming is fun.

Role-oriented ships can be created by the player by simply putting in only the weapons of the player's choice and nothing else to a given ship and by naming the ship design as such. There is no need to restrict ships for a specific goal. If we want an easy access to such design, this can be done by a pre-designed template, not by restricting the design choices. In this regard, I second a modified version of MoO2 design system, which gives you good flexibility.

Also, in terms of graphics, it is much simpler to have 5-6 different sizes of ships with unique graphics for each size. If ships are role-specific, would we have unique graphics for each role-specific ship with different sizes, which could be many times more graphic models? If there will be no unique design within a size, what is the point to restrict ships design anyway?

Obviously the PD AI will need to make some decisions. Certainly the player shouldn't be required to target every single missile he wants blocked. We seek to avoid clickfest.
If the player has control over the PD weapon targeting, i believe it should be at a high, general level. For instance you could instruct PD ships to do some of the following:

* protect itself
* protect a specific ship
* protect all ships

* concentrate on the most powerful missiles
* concentrate on the easiest-to-shoot-down missiles
* shoot down all missiles

Ships should fire all SR, PD weapons whenever there is something in range that such weapons can damage. See next answer.

* this could be appropriate to a turn based game, but i don't think this level of "battle micromanagement" is appropriate for a battle simulation that allows 3-5 seconds per turn. The player can't be expected to balance multiple limited supplies of ordinance for anything but a handful of ships. I would seem sensible to have unlimited supplies of ammo for SR, and PD weapons, and possibly some kinds of LR.

* obviously cloaked ships wouldn't fire until de-cloaked (assuming that firing gives away their position).


Simply do not allow the player to mount multiple LR weapons of different types on his prototype.



I don't claim to have this all worked out, but...
Basically, various ship components would be 3D models which would be attached to the 3D hull models at various preset attachment points (slots).

Kits for a medium size ship would have different shape. (Perhaps there would be 3-6 per size.) A defensive kit might be round, because round offers some natural advantages. An assault kit could be wedge shaped. A kit adapted to scouts might be elongated. The more specific abilities of the ship would be made clear by the attachments to the hull. A science ship would have "radar" dishes attached, a scout would be not much more than the oversized engines. A missile ship would have missiles mounted all over it. And the Z-1 Missile-rack would look different from the Z-5, etc. The repair mechanism on a repair ship would be prominent, and take up a lot of slots.

Various kits of the same size might have a different number of slots of different kinds. The player wouldn't be forced to use the "scout" kit for his scouts, but the scout kit would have more slots for engines, making it the reasonable choice.

And a great way to give value to large and small ships is to require a much larger investment in "maneuvering thrusters" to make a big ship equally maneuverable as a smaller one. Physics back that one up.

If weapons have a limited radius of fire, (the most obvious way to implement "facing must matter") then all sorts of tactics naturally follow. Big ships would struggle to bring the big guns to bear on a target. Small ships would attempt to maneuver around the big guns to fire on less sides.

My preference is to have the player create the role through seeing which systems and weapons go together to suit a certain ship design role. I would like this instead of "choose 'scout', 'loads ship with scout equipment, -25% weapons, etc"

The player would have complete power in customising ship designs, we would merely provide certain systems and weapons that lend themselves to certain roles of ship design, eg radars, cloaks for scouts, etc.

Completely open ended ship-design would:
• create ship which had little connection to their on-screen representation, and/or
• add several more years to development.

It hardly matters. It worked in Moo2. Choose a ship image, its a carrier or fighter, whatever in your eyes. And to have a ship model for each role type would certainly add years onto development, although I think this is still exagerated, but it depends on how many models, there are etc.


This is the bit where I laugh. What I suggested was probably the most simple method for ship design, ie like Moo2. Saying some weapons lend themselves to certain roles. This was done in Moo2, eg you could have carriers, missile ships, beam ships, but there were a limited amount of roles in my view.

So yeah, it won't add on years of development time. Please.