Cleaning up with " all you say isn't important"

[strooka]

I've posted many suggestions lately and Read many and all i heared was " nö that wont Be implemented cause we Need to Display thousands of ships!"

this is the Dead end for every discussion here. We neeed à " Ship Rush"
actually i'm going to Set the Limit to 15 assault ships per Player in Combat.

The result of many ships YOU mentioned - mainly bigjoe:
- nö physics
- nö Ship Details
- the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL
- how the Ships Look in Detail isnt important
- nö tactics than the c&c Tank rush
-many more limitations
- the Game fps will Fall under 30
- the whole other Parts of the Game will Slow down
-System rushes à Big Fleet kills everything - Why Build your planets?
Etc...etc.....

I don't think that you want that...

[MikkoM]

Have you read this?

http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/0.4_Design_Pad

And seen the models that pd has done?

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=2278

There are a lot of interesting points in the 0.4 Design Pad, and the models that pd has already done are quite rich in details.

[strooka]

Many like the idea to Rush everything with à Large Fleet. I Don't. There is no Fun in it.

[Bigjoe5]

It's not like I'm making the design decisions here...

The design pad clearly states that all combat assets present in the system will be in combat. This doesn't mean that every combat will involve thousands of ships, or that battles with lower numbers of ships won't be interesting - on the contrary, strategic interest will be created in battles involving low numbers of ships in a way that scales nicely to battles involving very large numbers of ships, so there will be tactical interest in the early game, but not a horrible amount of complexity to deal with in the late game.

Players will care about what ships look like early on in the game when there are only a few. And they will look nice. In the later game when there are many more ships, he will care more about how he is able to control those ships without having them crash into each other, without controlling the detailed movement and activation of individual components for each one, etc. And he will be able to do so easily and effectively.

- nö physics

If you mean that ships can't crash into each other, I don't see why that was desirable in the first place.

- nö Ship Details

As you can see from pd's models, the ships will still be very detailed.

- the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL

No - ships will be grouped in formations such that the models will overlap, or perhaps even completely cover one another - after all, if ships are grouped together, they might as well be just controlled like a single ship.

- how the Ships Look in Detail isnt important

Not in massive battles perhaps, but it's still important in smaller battles.

- nö tactics than the c&c Tank rush

The interplay between SR, PD and LR weaponry already enables extremely complex tactics without the need for ships crashing into each other, etc. Just rushing in, guns blazing will almost never be the most effective tactic.

- the Game fps will Fall under 30

Sure, on a 2010 computer. It's not like this game is going to be released tomorrow and have to run on today's hardware.

- the whole other Parts of the Game will Slow down

I don't really see how... battles have a fixed number of combat rounds, after which the combat will be carried over into the next round.

-System rushes à Big Fleet kills everything - Why Build your planets?

You make colonies so you can produce resources, and you protect them so that they won't be destroyed.

The implications of having lots of ships in combat have been considered, and the game will be sufficiently balanced so that charging in with lots and lots of ships isn't the dominant strategy, and this balancing will be accomplished without setting an arbitrary limit on the number of ships a player can have in combat.

Most of the decisions that I have been telling you about have been thoroughly discussed and debated, so it's not like I'm/we're just arbitrarily giving you orders because I/we want to be able to have thousands of ships in combat... these are decisions that have been made for a long time.

[pd]

- the Game fps will Fall under 30

Sure, on a 2010 computer. It's not like this game is going to be released tomorrow and have to run on today's hardware

It's rather on a 2006/7 laptop. And that's without any LOD, which we can take advantage of.

the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL

Hence the tactical zoom(icon substitution). Overlapping ships will be avoided. I don't think it will be even a problem at medium zoom, though.


In regards to ship details, I believe strooka is referring to weapon arcs, forward/backwards mountings, etc. All those things are inherent micromanagement, which we avoid.

Anyway, I was thinking that we are through all of this. Strooka, if you want to participate in the project, especially in game design, you have to understand it first. Unfortunately that means a lot of reading in the beginning(0.4 game design pad for example). Alternatively, you could focus on small programming jobs at first and pick up the game design stuff as you go.
You can't expect us to change everything around, just because you want it.

[MikkoM]

the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL

So the star system can`t be made so that it can fit many ships? If you zoom near to a large fleet, would you expect to see something else than a screen full of ships? This whole "the screen is full of ships which looks awful" thing seems quite strange to me.

- the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL

No - ships will be grouped in formations such that the models will overlap, or perhaps even completely cover one another - after all, if ships are grouped together, they might as well be just controlled like a single ship.

If something looks awful, it is having a single ship model that supposedly represents for example a group of 20 ships. This makes the game look very old and undermines any good battle visuals. In the year 2010, game developers shouldn`t be forced to use cheap tricks like this anymore.

[Bigjoe5]

- the screen is Full of ships which looksAWFUL

No - ships will be grouped in formations such that the models will overlap, or perhaps even completely cover one another - after all, if ships are grouped together, they might as well be just controlled like a single ship.

If something looks awful, it is having a single ship model that supposedly represents for example a group of 20 ships. This makes the game look very old and undermines any good battle visuals. In the year 2010, game developers shouldn`t be forced to use cheap tricks like this anymore.

Yeah, that part was mostly just idle speculation...

[strooka]

plz mention that i talk about implementation details that are directly may come soon and you discussed theroretic stuff. as you see, much stuff has to be reconsidered as the code grows, cause some theoretic things aren't finally practical. lets see what you say when the whole thing is being tested and you have a look on it by yourself. i was nearly at the point to make a mod from the scratch. but i choosed to implement all the code in the main project and let it you enable/disable it through the options db. when i finally build a mod, cause there are too many differences beween how i want it and you want it, there could be a mod be built easily by switching some options. what the mechcommander2 stuff concerns, i'm going to make a mod secretly now. but this concerns only artwork, and consists of a scenario.

[Bigjoe5]

How large are you making the ship models appear with relation to the planets? Most ships probably shouldn't approach the size of a small planet (but this will obviously have to be re-evaluated when we have something to test). A few hundred ships shouldn't be filling up the whole system.

[strooka]

it's up to you when you test it and set the varialbe for every model in the .ini file

[pd]

How large are you making the ship models appear with relation to the planets? Most ships probably shouldn't approach the size of a small planet (but this will obviously have to be re-evaluated when we have something to test). A few hundred ships shouldn't be filling up the whole system.

There's going to be a dynamic zoom. Only when zoomed in the most, will there be "almost realistic" proportions(ships smaller than planets). When zooming out, planets will become smaller, as expected. Ships will get smaller as well, but not at the same rate. At some point, perhaps medium zoom, ships will be as big or bigger than planets. When there is overlap or when zooming out further, ships will be replaced with icons(tactical zoom).

The FOV will probably have to change as well(30mm when zoomed in, 80mm when zoomed out for example). This means perspective will be more obvious when zoomed in, when zoomed out, it will almost be an parallel projection. Alternatively the FOV could change depending on the camera angle in relation to the ecliptic(needs experimenting).

There are a couple of things that need to be fine tuned and adjusted to make this work nicely, but such a system is the only way to properly handle a battle map as big as ours.

This has been discussed in 0.4 combat UI and it's going to be detailed/summarized in Version 0.321 - dynamic zoom, icon substitution.

[weaz]

Well I for one go with the idea that a fleet should have a limited number of ships. I would like to see about max 40 ships in a combat per player , makes it easy for my human neural network to control them. If more are used I suggest a Heroes of Might and Magic approach - max 10 units or say 16 grouped.
As for the planet, physics dictates that a ship will always be much much much smaller then a planet, perspective dictates that zooming in and out on the combat field should only change the ship size not the planet/ planet rings. I suggest making planets look like something of the background. One of the coolest part during the combat would be a dynamic planet that rotates and perhaps shows moving clouds but that is part of some other discussion. For a perspective on planets and combat system Homeworld is the best example to give

[eleazar]

As for the planet, physics dictates that a ship will always be much much much smaller then a planet, perspective dictates that zooming in and out on the combat field should only change the ship size not the planet/ planet rings.

We know, and we don't care. Realism is not a priority. See our philosophy page.

Think of the combat display as an advanced HUD that allows the commander to direct system-wide battles while also seeing object that really differ enormously in size and proximity.


As for the rest, the general approach is already decided based on a lot of discussion and integration with the rest of the game. If you want to add something to that discussion you need to become familiar with the discussion that's gone before, in the link pd just gave: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1983