Making large ship combat more skill based and less brute force

[Mr.Steam]

The other day my son and I were battling 1 vs 1 with medium sized ships. The battle was pretty much just trying to be the first to reduce the others shields to zero. Once my sons shields were down I hit him with a missile that pretty much ended the fight. I think battles between large ships can be tweaked to include more commander skill, and not just brute force.

1) POWER REDIRECTION - Power could be adjustable while in flight mode between shields, thrusters, and weapons.

a) THRUSTERS - increased acceleration and turning ability. If you need to flee, max out power to thrusters.
b) SHIELDS - increased shield capacity or recharge, great for defensive maneuvers.
c ) WEAPONS - increased DPS, lay down some serious firepower, but at reduced speed and shields.

2) SHIELD REDIRECTION - Shields can be adjusted for more protection in the front/back, port/starboard, or top/bottom. Each block face would receive a buff/nerf depending on the shield setting. If the forward shield was increased all blocks would take less shield damage if hit on the forward block face. EXAMPLE: A hit to the front block face by a weapon that does 100 shield damage would only take 50 shield damage. The same weapon hitting the rear face of a block would take 150 shield damage. This would encourage combatants to find the weak side of an enemy ship and exploit that side. The Captain can adjust the shields from a panel to best meet current conditions. If one side of the ship is more heavily damaged you could increase the shield strength on that side to compensate for the damage. The downside to this is you would need to detect which side of a block the weapon hit. This may add some CPU load, but I would guess it wouldn't be too large a problem, but I am not a programmer so I don't know for sure.

A simple hot key panel could be displayed with sliders to adjust the different settings. I think this would allow a skilled Captain to gain an edge in combat.

 

[Criss]

This would be one crazy feature. There will be a new health system introduced eventually. It will hopefully prevent core-killing as the primary way of taking out a target. Redirecting power would be cool but there should still be hardcaps implemented so people don't suddenly accelerate out 10 sectors in a second.

 

[Mr.Steam]

This system does resemble the current overdrive system to boost speed, but the main difference is it would also boost speed and turn rate at the cost of shields and weapon power. Also you wouldn't need a ton of extra blocks to use this system, it just redirects the existing power. I would think you would only divert max power to thrusters if you really had no choice but to flee the field of battle, the drawback being you are susceptible to attack while retreating. Sometimes it is better to retreat to fight another day than die gloriously in battle.

At the very least I would like to be able to turn shields off or to minimal shielding to save power. This would be really useful if generating power required fuel (which may be an option some day). This would save fuel that would otherwise be burned to power shields that are not being used when not in combat.

 

[TwoNiner]

Although this is a good idea I can't see this being impemented anytime soon, in the mean time if you are thinking of having more strategy in your fights try fleet battles with multiple players on both sides, that's where strategy really starts to become crucial.

 

[Mr.Steam]

I am anxiously awaiting fleet control with AI ships as most of the time I just play on a local server with my sons.

It will be awesome to look out over an entire task force in wedge formation.

 

[TwoNiner]

Many of such fleet battles have been taking place among the major factions, and has been caught on camera. Such is an example.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

So basically exactly the same system as is used in the Freespace games?

I'm ok with this.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Off topic but I really like how close you are with your son. Unless it's a nickname for a friend, but that's still cool.

Anyway, yes there is a need for more tactical based combat in game. But what can we do to encourage it? Maybe the changes to how ships work will encourage it.

 

[Ithirahad]

Hm. What if the pilot couldn't use these options in flight mode, forcing them to have another person(s) with them to reroute power to different subsystems?

"Lieutenant! Reroute all power to engines. I'll try to pull us out of here, but we need more speed!"

"Aye sir!"

Or:

"Sir, an enemy fighter wing just decloaked off our aft end. They're firing... Ion cannons!"

"Reroute all shield energy to rear facing and launch our own fighters. I'll provide support with the missiles. Oh, and Ensign Derp, get off your rear and go launch the corvette. You and it aren't doing any good sitting around here."

 

[jayman38]

Forcing a second person to reroute power would be an interesting change. However, I think that should be turned off for the default game. (RP servers could turn it on easily to take advantage of it.)

I think a good way to increase tactical change would be to give shields an "armor" value so that default weapon damage doesn't do quite as much damage against shields as they do against blocks. (Maybe the damage reduction could be a per-weapon value, so that beam damage is reduced more than cannon fire and missiles, or vice versa.) At the same time, make it so that support (tertiary) systems can reach 100% effectiveness at only 50% of the block count. This will better encourage the use of support-style systems, because it can be difficult for people to keep adding support blocks up to 100% block count just for that effect, when it's currently equally cost-effective to simply increase the core weapon block count.

 

[Mr.Steam]

So basically exactly the same system as is used in the Freespace games?

I'm ok with this.

I haven't played Freespace, but I know some older games I have played, like Star Wars X-wing, allow adjusting shields. Plus pretty much every sci-fi show includes some mention of "routing power to the aft shields!".[DOUBLEPOST=1414253508,1414253287][/DOUBLEPOST]

Off topic but I really like how close you are with your son. Unless it's a nickname for a friend, but that's still cool.

My 11 year old son and I play LAN games all the time together, in fact he is playing UNTURNED right now, another of our current favorites.

 

[NeonSturm]

At the same time, make it so that support (tertiary) systems can reach 100% effectiveness at only 50% of the block count. This will better encourage the use of support-style systems, because it can be difficult for people to keep adding support blocks up to 100% block count just for that effect, when it's currently equally cost-effective to simply increase the core weapon block count.

If you only have primary and tertiary, you need 50:50
If you have primary+secondary and add tertiary every part is 67:33
2*2 = 4 & 2*2*2 = 8
2+2 = 4 & 2+2+2 =6 !


I think the suggestion (see OP) would be useful for small ship vs big ship games.
Ships which receive focused fire can increase their evasion and shields, while currently not targeted ships can deal the damage.

Because of this I agree and like this idea. (though it is suggested before)

I see small ships will increase evasion through thrust, while big ships will increase shields - each one increasing their primary advantage.
I also see small ships instead increasing their shields if they can't evade accurate lasers, which will be a nice mechanism to have.


But I worry about cubes again. On weird-shaped ships a 45° hit can randomly hit top front or side face, while a cube can much easier force only one face to get hit.

I also worry that it forces a design to have fissures - Imagine:
. H H H H H H H H H /
. /
. /
. /
. H H H H H H H H H /
. /
. /
. /
. H H H H H H H H H /
with H being hull and / being a wedge
If you target from the right it would be much easier to hit the upper or bottom side of a block than hitting an side face, except you fire EXACTLY from the side.