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Author Topic: New look at the combat system  (Read 33269 times)
Dadds
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« on: January 18, 2014, 03:54:05 PM »

Dear Sir Emi,

After much work and deliberation (and complaining etc etc) with the combat system, particularly with PvP, I would like to see the system in particular the Order Of Battle (OOB) looked at.
The way I see it, if you have a heavily laden dreadnaught type vessel in orbit around a planet, or orbital station, to "protect its assets" then i find it a bit ridiculous that 2 scout ships can get past it and go on to destroy a planet or station. So what i would love to see is a tier-type combat stage where:
1. Ships cant attack orbital stations unless first they overcome orbiting ships;
2. Ships cant attack planets until they first overcome orbiting stations and;
3. If a combat ship only fires 1 weapon out of her arsenal of 30 Mark MM lasers, i would actually like to see her remain in the field of combat to maybe get another shot off or 20? (I know you are working on this, or was talking about working on it)
And if we are going to persist with a 1 shot only policy with energy weaponry, then i would love to see something like advanced energy science, which has more than one shot per round, like double turreted laser or railgun, or perhaps an energy or ammo module that can allow for "X" amount of shots before depleting, depending on the mark of the module.

The other thing i would like to see is to moderate the power  of the marine module somewhat, to bring it back in line with reality.
I dont believe it is realistic that a laser can only get one shot off, but physically boarding ships can be done multiple times. That would mean a troop would have to be dispatched, bust open the airlock of a ship, kill/capture/torture (if you have time) all the crew and marine on board, then return back to the mother ship (who incidentally is also quite busy doing maneuvers herself in a field of combat). Then they would have to re-arm, fix up any wounded, launch again and board the 2nd ship, etc etc. Poor overworked Marine corps!!
Here are my thoughts on how to bring this scenario back to reality:
1. Marines should not be allowed to board a ship unless that ships shields are down (read all of your science fiction, watch all of your science fiction movies & series...not once can i recall that a marine can board an space-tight vessel without some of its critical systems being taken down, ie shields. Not even in star trek could you teleport to another ship "in the old days" when a ship had its combat shields up and in place)
2. Marine modules should also be limited to a one shot rule so that if a vessel has 12 modules installed, and it takes 3 modules to board a rival ship, that vessel should only have 9 modules left to use, as it is with energy weaponry.
I personally would like to see both of these things implemented, but either one or the other would be acceptable in bringing the combat system back into line a little with regard to marine modules.

Regards,

Dadds
 
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JamJulLison
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« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2014, 01:14:58 AM »

Sounds like some good ideas.  The way it is now with marines is just rediculas.  Currently normal weapons only fire once per combat making their usefulness against multiple ships limited.  Nukes are powerful but near useless because they are used up after their use and are too expensive.  Meanwhile we have marines which can not only fire once against every target they come against, they are extremely cheap and deal just as much damage as nukes.  As it stands now all the weapon stuff is unbalanced.  Back when I joined weapons seemed better balanced.  What ruined the balance was limiting regular weapons to firing once per battle rather then once per round (per target).   Yes marines was a cheap way to go back then, but there was a better balance and more usefulness for regular weapons.   Also like Dadds I can't see how a boarding pod can possibly board a ship while the shields are still up.  This isn't even transporter tech.  Which in Star Trek up until a certain point they couldn't even transport through shields.  The only way possible for a physical target to get through the shielding  was to know where the weak point in the shield and modulate their own shields to match.  Not an easy feat either. The only time I recall it being done was when Picard was undercover and helped to do this to the Enterprise.  Star Wars I will admit at times were a little more iffy on shields though. Such as the A-Wing flying into the bridge of a ship in Return of the Jedi. Anakin in The Phantom Menace able to somehow fly through the shields into a hanger bay and then trashing the ship from the inside.  The thing is I can't even see how this can be the case with the marines on here. After all the shields are still brought down first.  Getting inside would mean trashing the inside of the ship making the shields and armor not even matter. 
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Matamaure001
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« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2014, 01:51:05 PM »

It is easy for me to see marines with power armor, propulsion system, 3 small nuke missiles on one shoulder, a big blaster on the other shoulder, explosive in hand to blast the ship hull... Like in Starship trooper (not the film but the novel) and slow speed to pass the ennemy shields. With imagination, anything can be. It is to the game designer to decide. It is not to prevent us from complaining if we do not like it. I have invest a great amount in marines, if the rules changes it will be at great cost to me.
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JamJulLison
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« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2014, 03:32:58 PM »

To me it doesn't make sense on slow speed being able to get through shields. Especially since they seem to actually just be doing damage to the shield before the rest. If they were able to pass through it then damage to the shields wouldn't even be needed.    I understand it would be a loss to you.  But right now they are essentually extremely cheap nukes that you never run out of. Only downside is they are used last. It is just unbalanced.  I would think that you would rather have the combat be more balanced then worry about some losses there.  Your tech and income is more then enough to easily adapt to any changes made.
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Matamaure001
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« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2014, 03:42:55 PM »

My point was simply that it is possible to imagine such marines.
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JamJulLison
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« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2014, 03:54:27 PM »

Point taken.  Though to me it would look like our shields are no better then the shields the Gungans used in The Phantom Menace lol.  Thought that doesn't appear to be what is happening here.  I just want a better balanced combat system myself.
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Fenix
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« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2014, 04:02:04 PM »

I definitely agree with the suggestion made by Dadds and I actually have an addition to make. With regards to the combat timer I'm under the impression that of course the power of your ships determines their length but that generally it takes so long because you are powering up ALL of your weapons/shields etc. Now if we take Dadds energy module idea into consideration this is an idea I would really love to see added as well. Give the player the option to only power up a certain amount of weapons/shields. This would open up the game for the following possibilities.
#1. When you have a ship with like 10 mil power fighting someone with a ship of 300k power, it makes no sense to power up all of your weapons and shields to take care of it, why not just power up what you need to get the job done? Thus it would lower combat timers.
#2. If these energy modules only have limited energy to power weapons or shields or something then by only powering up what modules you need in order to win you can conserve these modules for bigger fights, or vice versa you could make your enemy waste some of it's energy by attacking it with a ship designed for that exact purpose.
#3. With the ability to choose to only power up some modules rather than all of them it enables a great deal of more tactical variety, more to this point it could allow more surprises to happen where someone with a large and powerful ship could underestimate their opponent and end up being defeated because they didn't use enough of their modules to fight.

As far as how to implement something like this I believe there are two fairly simple ways you could do so. Either you could go into the ship's combat settings and turn certain modules on/off before the fight (though the power of your ships doesn't update very quickly so that would take a certain amount of figuring out how long you would have to wait before it took effect and that might reduce the effectiveness of this idea), or you could just have combat default on using all the modules like it does now and then after the combat timer has started there could be an option to reduce the timer not with QP's but rather by reducing the amount of energy your ship will use and thus the number of modules that will be active in the battle.
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« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2014, 04:06:40 PM »

It is already possible to power up and down modules.  You just rotate the crew in and out of them as needed using marine bays and living quarters.
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Fenix
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« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2014, 04:13:27 PM »

True but that doesn't actually lower your power since in the case of marines especially, they still attack. Of course with powering down shield by removing the personel it would probably lower your power significantly. Partially it also kind of bothers me that our ships seem to have infinite energy to power shields and weapons and engines and what not, in a lot of sci-fi movies/series taking out whatever generates energy for that ships weapons/shields/engines is a critical tactical move that often plays a major part in those battles/chases.

*Edit to remove typo's
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« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2014, 04:15:18 PM »

Actually it can lower the power by quite a bit. Even on the weapons. Though if your running a boarding ship then you will not be able to really power down.
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Fenix
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« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2014, 04:28:59 PM »

Hmm, well yea I guess it would lower your power a lot more than it does for me, I guess I didn't take into consideration that higher level weapons still take the same amount of personel to operate them. Still I would really like to see something like that implemented, I think it would add a better sense of realism to the battles as well as create more variety in tactics.
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« Reply #11 on: January 19, 2014, 04:34:28 PM »

I agree.  It would certainly be better to be able to do it that way.  Then we wouldn't have all this crappy needless crew shuffling.
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Dadds
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« Reply #12 on: January 21, 2014, 09:11:26 AM »

yeah i often use power downs to deal with nest cleanups and small targets....the trick is to not have a huge marine contingent as some players build. That only gives you one option: long combat timers with powerful rated ships.
Consider this Fenix: a MK I marine holds what 1000 marine? a laser holds 50. I equip 3 or 4 laser class (mmmm lets not show off with numbers, say mark C or CL) Ok a mark C laser fully manned has 154,500 power of weaponry, a Mark CL has 229,500 power. ok maths time 3 fully manned laser C = 463,500 power to weapons.
Power them down to equal 0 for that module, and you add 150 marine to your marine module (about 450 power or so)
That is a power down ;) OK not everyone has a mark C or CL laying around to idly power down, but the top and clever corp do, and is a huge tactic in reducing combat timers to suit the specific target. Time is money. I hope i dont give away too many of our tactics to point out these legitimate tricks to tactical combat scenarios.
If you just go with 20 Mark M marine modules however, doesnt matter what you do to your weaponry to reduce combat timers, it wont matter much what you try to do. We at IMG try to be a bit more versatile in our ship building. Happy to show you a blueprint or two one day ;)
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« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2014, 09:47:13 AM »

and @ Matamure:
Quote
My point was simply that it is possible to imagine such marines.
Sorry, but i live in the real world. ie, real combat world, real flesh and blood, knowing lots about technologies and weaponry. Sorry, but if you were to throw at me 75K screaming, blood-thirsty marines at me, i would just find a mediocre Hiroshima (read OLD TECH) nuke, to just remove those frothing at the mouth fighters and move on without a blink of an eye. This is even before you manage to somehow punch a hole through the side of my electro-shielded, and diamond fortified, armor on the side of a juggernaught that can orbit a stellar body without issue. Not possible in the real world, and any fantasy reader would probably also chuck the book away as being too fanciful.
I am sorry if you have invested all your power into marine, as has Raphael. (and i notice that the two of you are the "top two" players hmmmm another point made with imbalance)
The simple fact of the matter is: We could all just as easily invest in marine only tech, and be up there with you and raphael....so then what do we have? every player building the very same ship and just not doing anything imaginative in the game. When the two ships meet for a combat, it will take over a week of combat timer to resolve, unless one party gets bored or forgets and clicks on jump by accident.
So that would be the end of pvp or challenge. so why have weaponry at all?
Its nice to play some science FICTION games, but it has to revolve around some real sciences, or it just becomes ridiculous. (my fluffy bunny with a BB gun beats your tactical, thermo-nuclear device just because i says it does)
The game states its a realistic space exploration simulator...well, not in this universe it isnt
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Dadds
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« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2014, 12:58:15 PM »

verything beats the fluffy bunny...
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