FreeOrion

To achieve having both huge epic style battles and ships with strong personality at the same time there could be few hero ships and huge amounts of faceless non hero ships. The hero ships would have strong table turning abilities and also strong defenses so they don't get nuked right away too easily. The heroes would gain experience enhancing their abilities and personality while the rank and file type ships does not. Perhaps they would also be more extensively modeled with destroyable components, energy managment and such. Maybe simply integrated with the special abilities, like an ability to increase firepower for a short time while engines are cut to model "power to weapons".

I'm liking where this is going. At the risk of overloading the programmers, it would be nice to have commanding officers (CO's) created when the ships are created. If they do well in a battle, they gain experience, making their ship more efficient. They are able to recieve promotions to larger ships, taking their experience with them. During battle, there is a chance that the bridge is hit and the CO killed, and of course if the ship is destroyed.

A few additional points:
1. Officers level up, so a level 1 officer is qualified to command a small ship, a level 2 officer can command a small ship squadron, a level 3 officer is qualified for a medium ship, etc.

2. The establishment of space academies produces officers that level up 50% faster, and/or start at a higher level.

3. If a large ship is built without a qualified person to command it (I think level 5 in the example in #1), then that ship suffers a command penalty. It moves slower, gets hit more easily, misses more often. If that ship survives, the commanding officer gets experience 25% faster than normal, as they recieved knowledge more valid to their current post from the battle.

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Basically, a randomly generated captain "Honor Harrington" would work her way up the ranks and eventually be a fleet commander.

Well the idea was that there is only a handful of these flagships/heroes/CO and a few hundred/thousand plain vanilla ships.

well, every ship has a captain. there would be a number of captains equal to the number of ships, but only a few ships would have admirals (heros) at level 10 or whatever.

Ok, I didn't touch on the subject of where the flagships/heroes/admirals/COs/whatever-they-are-to-be-called would come from. I guess one decent way is to have them evolve from the vanilla ships captains. Seems a bit sophisticated to me compared to say, simply "building" the heroes directly. I am not saying it's a bad idea, but it would probably get complicated.

blah

@solidcordon:

I like it.

Why don't we go all the way, and make the game sorta like Dungeons & Dragons? I'll state the basic princicples:

1. surprize round: one player basically gets a free shot at the enemy, with the enemy's guard being down.
2. main rounds: the player with the highest rank (or some other system) gets to go first, then the other player. I'd say that if a level 5 captain (the highest rank in the fleet is used, others are ignored until that person is killed) was fighting a level 4 captain, the level 5 would get 5 of the previously mentioned intervention points, and the level 4 would get 4. If one player has extra intervention points at the end of the round, they must use them or lose them.

With a phased time system players can go at the same time. They all have there turns, see it play out. Plus you could have far more than two players in a battle.

I would also rather have ship combat to be based more around ships, rather than captains. I would like there to be no heroes and at the least having important ships more controllable, while less important ships are nameless may be ok.

I would like to state my most vehement objections to the concept of Hero ships. Unless they are carrying Ancient/Progenitor/Precursor/Orion/etc. things. A ship with a singularity cannon is allowed to be uber.

What bothers you about hero ships?

On the other hand, why should we bother with hero ships?

Every good story needs a hero, and a villain...

good point. But why a hero ship (nameless crew?), instead of a hero captain?

still have to hear from magus.

I'd have to agree with the anti-"Hero ship" crowd if Hero is some degree of a special designation.

I'd say maybe have some ship experience (so ships are more experienced), and of course your empire should probably have some Large ships (of a size that it has no more than few dozen of). But not a 'Hero ship'

Now for ship experience (heroness) v. captain experience (heroness)
the issue there is the whole Galactic Civilization Factor, in which an individual should not be the determining characteristic... a Ship could last and last... a person can't

If you want Hero ships, then you can't have many ships in a battle, or, the hero ships are significantly tougher than their counterparts to give them a chance to retreat. And even then, you wouldn't be using them to their full potential.

Imagine what Warcraft 3 would be like if you could not ressurect your heroes (with experience intact).


A hero system is good, but if you have lots of ships, the scenario will be something like this...


"This is Captain-General Hero Xbblt of the Starship GGvvGGpttl, arriving in the 4 sector! We have trained LONG and HARD for this day, our entire empire is behind our efforts to attack the system of OH NO A HUGE MISSILE SALVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH"


"This is Commander-Chieftan Hero Harry Wright of the T.C.S. Repulsor. We are the strongest ship in the fleet and we shall not fail! We have arrived at our attack destination with the 3rd, 4rth and 5th fleets to invate the planet C'Tharl! Although there are only three hundred ships defending the fleet, we are confid...' (Log is cut short, an unexpected result of the three hundred ships focus-firing on the T.C.S. Repulsor.'


"This is the audio log of Hero-Whisper-General Grunt Gablunk! We arrive here to protect our colony from the invasion of th... WHAT? WE were hit with WHAT? Shields at 90%?!? We must retreat, or we'll end up like the late Grunt Grruublik! I SAID RET XXXXZXXxxxxzzzxxxxzxxzzxxxzzxxzzzzxxzxxzZZ (end of log)."

_________________
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

You said the answer here as you were lining out the problem. Just allow players to resurecct (sci fi translation: mind transfer clone) their heroes and make them really tough to kill. Then add huge defensive bonuses to the heroes so focusing all fire on the hero would be a valid but not overly effective strategy. It's a gameplay no brainer to me but I'm sure as hell a lot of people will come with semi-realism arguments that heroes should be just as easy to kill as everything else.... like with action movies you just have to put up with it, at least it will be possible but really hard to kill him. I mean who wants to see an action movie where the hero dies in the first five minutes "the end" even if its realistic...



We want hundreds of ships in epic battles so your hero's ship needs to stand out from the crowd. He needs to be hard to kill, wheter it's becouse of some exotic shielding, awesome evasive abilites, or simply having a massive battleship. The hero would have battle turning abilities, like the CO abilities in advance wars mentioned. An experience system for every single ship you have is too much detail, so I think there needs to be a clear distinction between the hero and the bulk forces. If everyone can eventually be a hero... then noone really is a hero.



Heroic captain with a hero ship. I don't see how you could have one without the other. Both ship and captain needs to be special in order to turn the tide of the battle by itself.