Having combat fleet formations without animations

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UesugiKenshin
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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When battle begins, click details and you will see a token battle animation. You have multiple options on how to handle the battle ie avoid, retreat, fight, or hail. Then a submenu.

It's genuinely number crunching with some luck thrown in as once...an empire was playing had an invasion and I only had a 39% chance of surviving, and the interlopers were ruthlessly annihilated. That is glorious victory.

Just 5-6 tactical formation options (rock-paper-scissors style) wouldn't need animating but then at least tactical formations are being used.

Standard game theory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_paper_scissors

I think you could do terrain modifiers due to gravity variations too in no stars to every choice of color coding too as that will play havok on tactical formations and manueverability.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... tle=Sterne
7 star types so gravity variations plus open space so 8 terrain types plus all the above as battle modifiers.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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So that's 5x5 tactical formations x 8 terrain types x whatever the current combat simulator factors. So this adds 200 options. Variety is the spice of life.

The Rotharian fleet in an X formation attacked the Khaoran defenders in a wall formation in a purple star system with no starbase.

"Violet star
This type was only recently discovered with the development of the continuous drives, whereby the extremely short-range stars shining in the ultraviolet range, mostly still surrounded by extensive dark matter fields, could be made visible by close observation. They are very variable, but they all have a relatively young star age in common."

Here are the results.

That is more interesting as long as you get damage and casualty reports and expect some break off combat and survive.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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What BotE needs, as there ramps up a time in late turns, is descriptors so combat in space is illustrated as it conjures up in the imagination of players. The AI does not need this, but human beings need to understand what happens in combat engagements. It doesn't have to be anything more than pure text, but right now, it is so minimalistic that all the power of thrilling complex vessel vs vessel or fleet versus vessel, or fleet vs fleet tactics like dogfighting just doesn't exist. It's blah when it would be intense and induce fear and make the heart race.

Say you merely said, "I rode a rollercoaster today."

It is so mundane when I have never once failed to whoop with joy when on a rollercoaster.

In BotE, the chance for complex space battles is long delayed and then, there is no payoff, no chance to feel the loss of so many brave soldier astronauts dying in flames, or no chance to feel immense relief that they survived.

It would like saying, "two samurai fought and one survived". It is insufficient explanation given decades of training and discipline and courage.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Chess is an ancient magnificent game, but if all one did was publish algebraic notation to show the moves, then likely chess would never have lasted so long. One does not get any sense of thrilling gambits and brilliant planned tactics paying off after immense strategizing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra ... on_(chess)
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Imagine a future where on the BotE combat screen you realize you will lose 100% of the time, but if you have a tactical choice of six formations, picking choice #4 Claw might let you safely evade. See that is interesting and adds a percentage by tactical formation and needs no animation.

I think players would love that. A weaker species might survive or even when evenly match choose tactical formation #2 Sphere and just win by the skin of your teeth.

You would get battle odds and pick the most favorable one.

But it can get more complex as maybe that causes more damaged ships or higher casualty rates. This is a problem as you have to limp along and avoid combat and get to a military starbase level#2 with due haste or better an inhabited system where you have some back up.

Ensign #1 "Outstanding! How the hell are we still alive?"
Ensign #2 "Yeah? It is FUBAR. Ten of my crew are dead and six are maimed and burned. You want to write their parents and tell them how lucky we are?"
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Many scifi 4x strategy games have RTS elements in 2D but few in 3D and it is silly as any computer can beat any human as a human has pitiful reaction time. Ultimately this will be totally obvious that players are just watching an animation based on mathematics. Thus the animation is pointless.

There is nothing pointless about tactical choices and the player choosing what they think has the best outcome versus evading or combat, but again, this is a mathematical outcome. Even if the gravity of stars mattered plus stellar anomalies, it still is about math. But my point is wise players would consider these factors so feel like military commanders making the best choice to win or lose and reduce casualties.

I think this is the way to go versus very expensive programming and increasing hardware requirements. I don't care about animations more than for a space battle just once. What I do care about is, "What research do I need to best outfit my starships to give them the best performance"?
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Having a mechanism to place better commanders on the starship or fleet would be great. It merely is using a higher experience and successful commander being in charge with a name. Players love that. It personalized the battle. You put someone in charge that you can count on. Then ambushes happens here a very green commander is unprepared and the player worries and maybe he or she fails, so the death of crews matter.

It would add so much to the game and is more than animations.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Blotunga made a few sentence comment in the German wiki that he was considering upgradeable ships! This is a huge deal. Who cares about the cost? Cost is nothing. Upgradable ships would be awesome and practical and in terms of game design, likely is expensive to balance the game as the players spends down their treasury.

Sir Puff Cake never wanted that in the original BotE.

You could scrap old ships to recycle materials, but that is irrelevant for the Omega in my latest save game. Their experience is important. I wish you can use the bridge crews of stolen starships as what they know is what is valuable. The Omega make the best starships now, so the theft of ships is just like gun control.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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In all the wargames I ever played...
1. The AI elects not to repair units
2. The AI tends to use more units that are less expensive
3. The AI avoids retraining.

That means you figure out ways for the AI to cope or rewrite the AI. Or both.

But BotE is different as there is no charge incurred on repair. Just sitting on a training facility raises experience so it is a passive costless feature. That is superior coding to me. I want to know if the AI takes advantage of these options?
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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If I could retrofit my starships, even though winning is certain for the Omega, I would spend 20 million out of 28 million to do so. No question. This is unnecessary and illogical and purely emotional to have the best.

The AI would never do that.

In Civ3, you could do unit upgrades based on research and adequate treasuries. I always did it. It was delightful.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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This is where logic is cruel, as with low level ships, you swarm in a fleet, and attrition is high, but you win . So many casualties though, but your upkeep drops. That is brutal.

You would sacrifice all those stolen starships on suicide missions. Imagine doing that in real life. Morale among veterans would plummet. You would win, but your combat percentages drop. Those bridge crews would despise you.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... -Erfahrung
Impact of the crew experience

The existing experience makes a difference: A (e.g. stolen) ship with X experience has a better chance of winning a fight than a ship with identical specifications and less experience.


Effect in combat

Source: CombatShip.cpp

Each experience level brings a 20% bonus on repairing damage. In addition, the probability of being hit is higher.

Example: Level 4 Veteran = 4 x 20% = 80%.

Hypothesis: If the maximum hull thickness is also assumed here, it would be like this:

max.sheath thickness 400
Damage 50% = 200
Standard repair in a ShipPort: 10% = 40.
Bonus "Veteran" 80% of 40 = 32 more damage recovery points, so 72 per round.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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So you really do not want to scrap old ships as that experience is precious. And if you could retrofit starships, it would be the best of both worlds as you preserve the crew's ability to have a higher chance of attacking the target and repairing more damage, but then they are in a more lethal ship.

A wise player hundreds of turns earlier, say from turn #300 when the economy is balanced, then starts making custom ships and letting them acquire high levels of experience. Which is what I did for the community with the Omega advanced save games at Lambrecht.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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You could have five types of formations with a complex idea of guessing what the enemy would chose as a formation as some would confer advantages versus other formations. That is pure logic and instinct and luck. That would be an amazing tactician's game. You would be commanding the fleet to have the most advantageous formation, but sometimes trying to psych out the opponent.

"He thinks I will do a sphere formation, but I'm going to use a wall because I presume he will use a sphere."

You at trying to guess what they would think you would do and guess what they will do to cope.

Or you could reason that higher experienced crews could also have a manueverability boost as they are aware of their starship's attributes, that they can coax just a little more manueverability out of the vessel because of their discipline. That is a simpler system. This is rational as heavy cruisers and dreadnoughts would have the best crews and the highest performance and efficiency and likely are very disciplined under fire.

The former needs an AI change and the latter does not but is just part of better experienced spacecrews.

Either way is a space combat formula change .
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Being ambushed means not being in an organized formation, thus your crew is screwed as all of you were caught blindsighted and are not ready. So the former way then encourages ambushes, and the latter way likely makes no difference.

The former way would be amazing. There honestly would be tactics in BotE and you would have to be cognizant of the enemy's position when in range or risk being ambushed.

See technically your shields are down, the beam weapons are not powered up, nobody or a skeleton crew is in the torpedo bay and so not ready to load the correct torpedoes in. That is a horrible situation to be in. It's FUBAR...and your sleepy crew is getting roused out of bunks, th red alert is going off, and tying to get to their posts ASAP. Meanwhile, you are taking damage.
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