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RTS Battle Mechanics and Ships

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RTS Battle Mechanics and Ships

Let's brain storm together!

from Sins Forums

By now some of you have probably realize just how much power you have in the beta process. That this isn't some late stage marketing excercise. We (you guys and us) are helping make a game together.

So let's talk about battle mechanics in space.  How do we make them more fun? What do we have to work with that will be intuitive from a strategic point of view and enjoyable to make use of?

Let's start with ships (in no order):

ASSUMPTION #1: Swarming is bad, combined arms is good.

In my opinion, we need more ships in the game. I also think that the FLEET should be the key building block of your strategy. That is, the player who utilizes "combined arms" with their fleets should be able to do vastly better than the player who is just swarming.

ASSUMPTION #2: Fleets should work together as a single combined arms fighting force

In most RTSs I play, I select several units, hit Ctrl-# and the units are grouped. I then right-click wherever and they scatter.  If I hold down the right keys, I can get them to move as a single force.

I think in Sins, it should be the opposite. A fleet should move together as a single formation by default. I should be able to put together the right mixture of ships to counter my opponent's strategy and be able to right click on the other fleet and let them fight it out while I go work on another battle elsewhere if I want (sure, I *can* micro manage the battle but I shouldn't get much, if any, advantage to doing it IMO).

ASSUMPTION #3: The fleet mechanics should be logical and require no explaining

What I mean is that I shouldn't have to look at the manual or some strategy site to figure out how to put together a good fleet or counter to an enemy fleet. 

This means we have to work with things that are obvious on screen when it comes to ships.  So what can differentiate different ships:

  1. How fast they move.  A battleship might pack a powerful punch but move and turn very slowly for instance.
  2. Rate of fire.  Some ships might shoot lots of wimpy but constant shots. Others might shoot less often but more devastating shots.
  3. Range. Some ships might have long range shot capability while others can only shoot short-range.
  4. Accuracy. How often the ship hits its target can be based on the accuracy of the ship.

Based on thes 4 simple game mechanics, one can imagine how one could put together various kinds of ships that counter someone else's fleet.

For example, you could have a Targeting Frigate which improves the accuracy of ships in a given fleet (as long as it's relatively close).  You could have a ECM Frigate which decreases the accuracy of ships in a given fleet.  Ships that have a long range may be more depenedent on accuracy than shorter range (for obvious reasons). 

Another example, a fleet that is heavy with big slow but powerful ships might be more vulnerable to an attack by a fleet of more nimble ships and fighters.  But that fleet might be countered by putting in a few anti-fighter frigates in with the fleet.

What I'm referring to here isn't rock-paper-scissors per se since one doesn't completely counter the other. It's reduction or maginfication of effectiveness that we're talking about. 

IMO, the true tactical skill in the game is the person who relies on combined arms.  The guy who just cranks out tons of heavy frigates and tosses them at their enemy should get mowed down by the player with a more thoughtful strategy.

The key thing though is that I really think that the strategies in this game should be straight-forward and intuitive.  In one of my favorite recent games, Company of Heroes, the replayability comes from having so many strategic options. And the game only has a handful of units. 

What's your view?

 

68,165 views 239 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
no space ship is going to have 1000 feet of armor too expensive and too massive


How would we know what is practical and what isn't when we are talking about technology far removed from our own??? Space is a giant vaccume with almost no friction. You could potentially have MASSIVE ships. The only thing you would have to overcome is the inertia of all that mass. When you lift weights on Earth, you have to overcome the inertia of the mass and the force of gravity on that mass (and the resistance caused by the friction of your moving weights through the air - negligible). In the depths of space, the 50 lb dumbells would be significantly lighter without the force of gravity (the weight would still take some force to move around because you would still have to counter the inertia of the mass). The "force" of inertia is much lower than Earth's gravitational effect on the same mass by several factors. The 1000 feet of armor may also be constructed with a super alloy, that is 1000 times stronger than the strongest armor we can produce now and yet, it weighs 1000 times less (and has less inertia because there are less atoms per cubic meter). Plus, if you had a ship that was measured in kilometers, a 1000 foot shell may not be all that much.
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
The "force" of inertia is much lower than Earth's gravitational effect on the same mass by several factors. The 1000 feet of armor may also be constructed with a super alloy, that is 1000 times stronger than the strongest armor we can produce now and yet, it weighs 1000 times less (and has less inertia because there are less atoms per cubic meter).



the only reason there is no gravity in space is becouse everything is falling at the same speed

a ship 1 mile long with a 1000 feet of armor made up of any kind material would generate its own gravity it may not be very strong grav but it would be there

think about it like this almost 10 football fields long

and then you have to have an engine that can move that mass which depending on how fast you start out may kill everything on board

again a better idea is thinner hull maybe 36 in of armor for a warship and the ability to self repair minor holes


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Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
Not true, in orbit, everything is in free fall. But the further you go out, the less effect gravity has on an object. Gravity is not a term we use like love or hate to describe a concept, it is an actual physical force.

Also, it would be 3 1/3 football fields long. 100 yds in a football field, 3 feet in a yd. 1000ft/3 is 333.33 repeating yds.

The simple solution to the engine is not to make one big enough to accelerate that fast. All you need is one big enough to accelerate at a reasonable speed, which the bigger the ship, the bigger then engine can be.

I do however agree that 1000 ft is a bit out there. But 36 in wouldn't be enough to stop even some space debris. I would say 10 ft would be a good amount of armor.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
the ability to self repair minor holes


Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
But 36 in wouldn't be enough to stop even some space debris. I would say 10 ft would be a good amount of armor.


Have we just been lucky in our own voyage into outer space??? Did the first moon rocket in 1969 have this kind of armor???
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
The space shuttle hull is (I believe) 5 inches thick in some places, and that can shrug off a hit from space debris up to detectable sizes.

Anyway, let's get back on topic: We're trying to work out game battle mechanics here. Mass/thrust ratios and armor thicknesses take a backseat in this conversation.

Any concievable ship is on the table, but the essential questions is 'is it fun?' Secondary to that is 'is it balanced?' (so as not to ruin the fun of other players or ships), and 'is it effective?' (so it can be fun for me).

The categories proposed by Frogpoy are potential ship statistics. He's left some out (toughness, for example), but each ship statistic is a means to an end.

What is that end? Ships that are fun to use because they are useful and not unbalanced. If we can achieve that goal for every ship type (and believe me, that's a hard goal with lots of different ships), then we have a game with lots of depth for players to delve into as they buy certain kinds of ships to customize their fleets.

How do we achieve this?

1. Each ship must have a purpose. There must be at least one duty or function that it performs well - though it can certainly do more than one.

2. Each ship must be effective at a certain duty for the cost of the ship.

3. Each ship must not blatantly exceed the ability another ship's primary duty given the relative ship costs.



For example, let's go over the Flak frigate and the Carrier:

The Flak Frigate has one duty: Kill fighters and bombers. It does little damage to other ships, so that's pretty much all it's good for.

The Carrier on the other hand has several duties - it's primary job is long-range anti-ship striking power, but it can become an anti-fighter and bomber ship by building fighters and let's say it's bombers can hit planets too. Furthermore, let's say that the Carrier's fighter groups can kill fighters and bombers as well as two Flak Frigates. (Leaving out the range of special abilities and different builds of fighters / bombers on the carrier to make the argument simpler).

This is okay if the Flak Frigate costs about one-tenth as much as a Carrier does. The Carrier is a useful ship because it can do all these different things, and the Flak Frigate is a useful ship because it can do the AA job of a carrier about five times better for the same cost.

When you build a fleet, it will be a matter of deciding what functions that fleet can perform, and the choosing ships to fulfill that role.

Let's say that you know your opponent is a carrier-maniac, and you can expect his fleets to consist of nothing but carriers and waves of bombers and fighters (along with a few escorts). Knowing this, you can customize your fleets to beat his - the battle plan you make is to destroy his fighters and bombers and then go after the vulnerable carriers. So you need lots of AA and then some anti-ship punch. To this end, you load up on Flak Frigates and several carriers of your own, and throw in one or two Kodiak frigates and battleships. You set your carriers to build nothing but fighters, the idea being that when your two fleets meet, you can wipe out the waves of fighters and bombers he sends at you and get close to let your battleships and Kodiaks crush the enemy carriers.

The strategic depth comes in when your opponent sees your AA-heavy fleet and diverts his own battleship armada to your sector... maybe he wasn't as carrier-heavy as you assumed.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
hm... I like your ideas Comassion. esp. because it would eliminate swarming.
but give me a second to whip some minds into order:
How would we know what is practical and what isn't when we are talking about technology far removed from our own

limits of mass-energy?
The "force" of inertia is much lower than Earth's gravitational effect on the same mass by several factors

inertia isnt a "force" and it doesnt apply a "force" or even a force like property. it means that if you have a massive-ass ship, you are going to need unfeasable amounts of energy to move it, having 1000-ft wide armor is simply inviable, unless you propose some way of breaking the laws of physics, which I dont think we have (the only way we know how to break mass-energy conservation so far is to send it to another universe. even theoretically there isn't a way to get it from other universes predictably)
the only reason there is no gravity in space is becouse everything is falling at the same speed

um... I dont think so...
if you mean that in orbit you dont fall out of the sky because you fall up as fast as you fall down... yeah, but in space things only fall if they get too close to a very dramatic gravitational field... they dont "fall at the same speed"
and has less inertia because there are less atoms per cubic meter

you are limited by the atoms you have, currently light metal alloys arent exceptionally strong and strong metal alloys are not especially light, and they are certainly not going to end up 1000 times lighter than our current alloys.
The simple solution to the engine is not to make one big enough to accelerate that fast. All you need is one big enough to accelerate at a reasonable speed, which the bigger the ship, the bigger then engine can be.

trouble is that for engines there is a certain point at which you are only adding enough power to move the engines, and your ship ends up being far more massive than feasible

not to mention those engines would have 3 football fields of metal on them...
I would say 10 ft would be a good amount of armor.

this is more resonable.
Have we just been lucky in our own voyage into outer space??? Did the first moon rocket in 1969 have this kind of armor???

first of all
1) not going that fast
2) Earth dominates its orbit, there really isnt significant debris around to worry probes. what matters is fast moving debris in interstellar travel. The science community already knows that debris is an issue, especially at those speeds (at those speeds even dust is a problem)
Anyway, let's get back on topic

good idea. but I digress
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
um... I dont think so...
if you mean that in orbit you dont fall out of the sky because you fall up as fast as you fall down... yeah, but in space things only fall if they get too close to a very dramatic gravitational field... they dont "fall at the same speed"


no that is not true

anything in orbit around another object is actually falling toward that object ie the earth is falling toward the sun but the forward movement of the earth is fast enough to keep it from actually hitting the sun and more or less keep us the same distance from the sun

yes i know in one part of our orbit we are closer to the sun but the earth when getting closer to the sun in it's orbit picks up enough speed to sling shot us around the sun instead of into it

and when moving away from the sun the suns gravity slows us down enough to keep us from flying out into space

the only exception to this that i know of right now is the moon which is slowly moveing away from us becouse it moves slower in orbit than we rotate this the gravity of the earth is slowly acculearting the moon


Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
Understanding orbits
There are a few common ways of understanding orbits.

As the object moves sideways, it falls toward the orbited object. However it moves so quickly that the curvature of the orbited object will fall away beneath it.
A force, such as gravity, pulls the object into a curved path as it attempts to fly off in a straight line.
As the object falls, it moves sideways fast enough (has enough tangential velocity) to miss the orbited object. This understanding is particularly useful for mathematical analysis, because the object's motion can be described as the sum of the three one-dimensional coordinates oscillating around a gravitational center.

WWW Link

this is simpiler than mine
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
i think the only way a fleet mentallity will work is if the ai is able to use it to otherwise you will have to build a swarm to country it depending on how big the swarm is
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
Some very interesting discussion. However, I find myself wondering how much some of you have played the game so far. Seems to me many of the things mentioned are already in Beta 1.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only things mentioned not already in the Beta1 are: the ability to maintain a given formation, a limit to the 'ammunition' (or energy to fire weapons), and a reduction in capabilities as damage is taken.

I too would like the formations and a limit on 'ammunition', but a weapon will still fire even with a hole in the hull, and neither will it's effect be reduced. A man, on the other hand, will definitely have a reduced fighting capacity with a hole in his chest, but we are talking about ships.

But in actual warfare, complete anhilliation of one side or the other in a given battle is uncommon. Depending on the era and the medium, the losing side usually got at least a portion of their forces out of the battle, and often the winning side would cease pursuit up to a point in order to lick their own wounds.


I believe this has nothing to do with what you have available to you (ships, abilities, etc.) in the game or with the game mechanics. Rather it is because the goals in actual warfare are different as compared to warfare in this game. In actual warfare the agressor is usually not trying to conquer each and every other group in his known universe. And yes, there are exceptions, but they are just that!

In this game there are no exceptions. You win by conquering all other players in the universe; thus one must continue to pursue in an attempt to annihilate the opponents military as well as destroy his/her infrastructure in order to make that planet become one's own and a willing contributor to one's economy. Why? So that one can build another or bigger fleet in order to continue conquering. Why don't we let the wounded retreat(?) ... because they will heal themselves and come back to battle us again.
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
In response to the idea that RoF is not important unless you have armor that stops some number of damage:

Why don't we use the heavy cannon on a main battle tank to destroy unarmored soldiers? It is certaintly accurate enough, and it virtually guarantees a kill. The reason is simple; it is overkill. Use of small arms is more effective because you can make many, many more shots, and less of the 'damage' you can inflict is wasted. I would like to see the larger ships armed with weaponry that is simply not efficient to use on smaller ships because it is /too/ powerful.

To use an example, lets say scouts have 50 health, and we have some weapon capable of dealing 10,000 damage per second, but only fires once every five seconds. We also have a weapon that does 100 damage per second, but fires twice every second. Which would you rather have when fighting scouts?
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
anything in orbit around another object is actually falling toward that object ie the earth is falling toward the sun but the forward movement of the earth is fast enough to keep it from actually hitting the sun and more or less keep us the same distance from the sun

primarily, thats not a classification of all space. secondly I said
if you mean that in orbit you dont fall out of the sky because you fall up as fast as you fall down

.
yes i know in one part of our orbit we are closer to the sun but the earth when getting closer to the sun in it's orbit picks up enough speed to sling shot us around the sun instead of into it

I completely understand the physics behind orbits. but that doesnt apply in space, only when relatively near an object's gravitational pull are you even "falling". additionally things dont "fall together" in orbits, thats why pluto takes some odd number of centuries (around 2.5) to orbit, while we only take one year.
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
true earth and pluto don't fall together. distance

but a man inside a ship falls at the same speed as the ship

Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
true enough, but I relate back to the first point; that is a specific circumstance, it does not apply to all of space.
the only reason there is no gravity in space is becouse everything is falling at the same speed

be more careful with your wording.
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
actually it does apply to all space after all sol is in orbit around the center of the galaxy right
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top


Why don't we use the heavy cannon on a main battle tank to destroy unarmored soldiers? It is certaintly accurate enough, and it virtually guarantees a kill.



A minor point - we do use the main cannon on a tank against soldiers, we just load it with a different kind of ammo (High Explosives, for example) that's better suited to killing soldiers. With a straight anti-tank round (say you had it loaded thinking you'd see tanks), a hit = one dead man, but even with modern targeting it's quite possible to miss a man-size target at range with a tank's main gun. A machinegun can miss quite often too, but if you hit 10% of the time and you spit out a hundred bullets, then that guy is just as dead.

This is an example where I agree with you that rate of fire is important - in real life. A machinegun bullet has a very high chance of killing or incapacitating a soldier that it hits, and when it comes down to it a machinegun will ultimately kill more enemy troops in the open in the same span of time than a tank's main gun.


In response to the idea that RoF is not important unless you have armor that stops some number of damage:

The reason is simple; it is overkill. Use of small arms is more effective because you can make many, many more shots, and less of the 'damage' you can inflict is wasted. I would like to see the larger ships armed with weaponry that is simply not efficient to use on smaller ships because it is /too/ powerful.

To use an example, lets say scouts have 50 health, and we have some weapon capable of dealing 10,000 damage per second, but only fires once every five seconds. We also have a weapon that does 100 damage per second, but fires twice every second. Which would you rather have when fighting scouts?


You are quite correct in pointing out that this is the other extreme of weaponry in a hitpoint system - powerful weapons can indeed be too powerful to fight off small swarms of ships if they fire too slowly (or from an accuracy standpoint, miss too much). However, it does require that you have really slow weapons with incredible amounts of damage. The more powerful and slower they get, the fewer ships they become effective (or, I should say efficient) on.

On the other hand, the big weapons have front-loaded damage - you get a bunch of those in your fleet, and when you go up against other large ships you can often defeat them quickly, before their faster-firing weapons can inflict as much damage.

Right now though most of the ships in Sins have significantly higher hitpoints than the damage inflicted by various weapons. Even the Kol's big weapons take several shots to kill a frigate.

So for the DPS of a weapon to become less of a factor in hitpoint mechanics (and make us look at RoF or Damage Value instead), you need either damage reduction (subtract damage from each shot, makes high ROF weapons weaker) or overkill (weapon kills target, extra damage wasted, makes high damage weapons weaker). And of course you can do both, which adds to the various uses for each weapon type, and makes them worth looking at beyond "this is the highest DPS ship I can use, therefore it must be the best possible attack ship".
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top

actually it does apply to all space after all sol is in orbit around the center of the galaxy right


You do realise that the galactic core is about 2.45 × 10^17 km away right?
at an aproximate weight of 4.0 × 10^26 kg, and putting the weight of a man at 100 kg. he experiences a force of


6.67×10^−11 * (4*10^26 * 100) / (2.45 × 10^20)
or a grand total of 0.01 Newton of gravitational force to the core.

Back on topic:
So for the DPS of a weapon to become less of a factor in hitpoint mechanics (and make us look at RoF or Damage Value instead), you need either damage reduction (subtract damage from each shot, makes high ROF weapons weaker)

I was under the impression that was the current function of armor in the game.




Would you like to know more
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
You do realise that the galactic core is about 2.45 × 10^17 km away right?
at an aproximate weight of 4.0 × 10^26 kg, and putting the weight of a man at 100 kg. he experiences a force of


6.67×10^−11 * (4*10^26 * 100) / (2.45 × 10^20)
or a grand total of 0.01 Newton of gravitational force to the core.



i also relieze that gravity is the weakest of the four natarul forces and of all four of them it is the only one without an off switch ie it is always on


The strong nuclear force
This is the force that acts at small distances within an atoms nuclei and maintains the stability of this nuclei in spite of their tendency to fly apart because of the Coulomb repulsion due to similar charged particles. This force only acts at very short distances. At about 0.5×10-15 m the attraction between nuclear particles due to the strong nuclear force begins to decline. At the distance smaller than about 10-16 m the Coulomb force is more pronounces and particles of similar charge start to reject each other.

• The weak nuclear force
A weak nuclear force exists between all pairs of elementary particles. It is the exclusive force between electrons and neutrinos, but the same force (albeit much weaker than the electric or strong nuclear force) exists even between two protons.

• The electrostatic force
We define the electrostatic force only for charged particles at rest. It is know for more then two centuries that in Nature we have positively and negatively charged particles. Where protons are positively charged particles and electrons as negatively charged. All macroscopic matter is basically electrically neutral, because the magnitude of the negative electric charge carried by electrons is equal to that of the positive electric charge carried by a proton and all atoms in their natural state contain equal numbers of protons and electrons. Based on these properties it is known that in electricity like charges repel and opposite charges attract.

• The gravitational force
The gravitational force is based on and proportional to an objects' masses. A larger object of similar density will 'pull' harder on a smaller object of the same density. It was Isaac Newton who described his 'universal law of gravitation' in 1666.

FG = G (mM/r2)

Where:
FG = the gravitational force
G = the gravitational constant (=6.67x10-11 Nm2/kg2)
m = mass of object
M = mass of the Earth
r = distance between the center of the two masses m and M.



From all four basic forces gravity is by far the weakest at short distances. At a small scale at the level of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and even biological cells both nuclear forces and the electrostatic force are the dominating players. However, at a longer distances both the nuclear forces are reduced to zero, and only the electrostatic and the gravitational forces remain of importance. At even longer distances only the force of gravity prevails.

The dominance of gravity is one of the most obvious phenomena seen in our solar system. It is gravity that keeps the planets orbiting our Sun, gravity keeps the Moon rotating around the Earth, but gravity is also the main enemy of our precious china and glassware!

All the forces we see and experience around us, like our muscle force, the hydraulic force of car brakes, the frictional force when sliding, the elastic force, the force that the Earth atmosphere exerts on a barometer, electrical force that starts a car engine, etc., etc., etc., are forces deriving from these four basic forces as described above.



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Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
I think your still missing the point. Despite the fact you said it yourself. From what it sounds like, you are still supporting your argument that gravity applies to all space. Which technically is true. If a man is floating far away from the earth, the galactic core will pull on him a bit, but it will be such a negligible force that it might as well be no force. The reason why our sun, and every other star, orbits the core, is because they are so damn big and dense.

So yes, if you want to get technical to the point of insanity, you are right, gravity applies to all space. However, once you reach a certain point, it essentially disappears. And for the record, falling at the same speed as the object your in doesn't cancel out gravity or anything, otherwise you wouldn't be falling in the first place.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
true but if you and the ship aren't falling at the same speed 89either the ship or you wil push on the other or if your for enough away from earth and sun the ships grav and yours will pull on each other

yes you do have gravity it is just so small that the planets grav is able to keep things from clinging to you

thus a ship with a 1000 foot armour wouldn't require to go as far as a ship with only 36 in.
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
Please try to stay on topic guys, so we can keep focused on battle feedback.
Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
ok i guess the main question is

is the ai programmed only for swarm and if so how hard would it be to program it for for fleet action

the reason is two fold

1 if a fleet is stronger than a swarm then the ai needs to be able to use that tactic if it wants to

2 and is some instance a swarm would be better than a fleet and the ai needs to be able if possible to tell the difference

otherwise in either case the ai tactics won't stand up to human tactics enough to give a challenge
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
i read the top 3 posts and skipped down here...

bah @ you guys lol, the game is gonna be boring as hell if the backbone of the strategy is fleet compositing, if the battles can be left to themselves once you've put together a fleet, then you just took out 100% of the tactics and left us with only strategy

i seem to be one of the very few here that want a tactical element to this game, i want direct and precise control over my ships, if i micro-manage (you guys seem to abhor that word and associate it with mindless mouse-clicking, i'm talking about small-battle tactics) my battles i should most definitely gain a large advantage, that is if i am smarter than the computer (and since people programmed the computer never having played online games, i don't suppose that would be too hard)

i for one would never play this game if all it was about was collecting resources and building fleets, don't kid yourselves by saying the placement of your fleets is a crucial part of the strategy, because planets take awhile to die and these space lanes make it pretty obvious where your defenses should be
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
A quick note here, for my first post on this particular forum:

A ship taking damage from heavy weapons should have either a slower rate of fire or lower accuracy or both than it would normally have. This is to simulate the " thrown to the deck " affect so common in shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. A ship under a truly withering assault should have a very hard time using its weapons to good effect.

So, the idea would be that in fleet to fleet combat, focusing all of your heavy weapons on a single enemy should actually cause you to take more damage than if you focused on a few different enemy ships, because ships that are not under fire have less variables to deal with when aiming and firing their weapons. This is not to say that the best effects would be had by having every ship engage a different opponent, but that their should be a balance between the number of ships being fired upon and the overall effectiveness of the barrage.

Of course, I cannot actually participate in the beta, but seeing as this is a brainstorming session. I just hope I have interjected an idea that already has a mechanic in the game...