Engage bout

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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jinlanid
Space Squid
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:26 am

Engage bout

#1 Post by jinlanid »

"Decoy ship" is a big problem even if we applied "KISS hard targeting" and "missile system". If you have only a big ship and a scout, that scout can attract a lot of fire power for your big ship.

So, what about we have an extra "engage bout" before current 3 bout.

Say, in engage bout, only "small ship" can participate the combat, "small ship" means fuel efficiency bigger than 100%.

When your fleet is moving in the space, you probably put your small ship at outer area.
And also, small ship is much simpler and much more faster to switch into combat status. When big ship start to engage, they usually already finished a small skirmish.

If all participated enemies(small ships) are destroyed, stealthy ship can return to stealthy status. So if your stealthy small ship group destroyed enemy scout, they're still invisible in later bout.

Maybe need some balancing, small ship can use this bout to launch fighters.

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3433
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Engage bout

#2 Post by Ophiuchus »

Gamma burst slingshot is intended to address decoys (base hull ships, ships without shields), not missile system.

Why would "small ships" be less affected by decoys - they mostly carry the same weapon systems ?

I am working on simple combat ranges. We can make the heavier weapons smaller range (e.g. spinal), so they would not shoot in the first bout but weapons effective at downing decoys (e.g. the burst slingshot) would.

Also just upping the number of bouts while scaling damage levels makes decoys less efficient. If the number of bouts is high enough, it is the structure that counts, not the number of targets.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

jinlanid
Space Squid
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:26 am

Re: Engage bout

#3 Post by jinlanid »

Engage bout can lessen "decoy ship" problem because big ship don't participate engage bout.
Only small ship participate engage bout, so only small ship waste fire power.

If you have a lot of small ship, then wasting is still big. So maybe we can make "small ship" be defined as fuel efficiency > 100%, or even maybe fuel efficiency must == 200%. Just make only scout size like ship can participate. In any fleet, scout fire power is OK to waste.

Slingshot way sounds better. Maybe we can add a "slingshot bout". Only "super long range weapon" like slingshot can fire in that bout.

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