Anger's Alternative

the ships are not going to be flimsy, of course. they will maneuver similar to moonbreakers so that is still there too. the ships are just 'tougher' this way, in that you will have to suss out what weapons are effective against whom, and why, and then how to best exploit it.

to that end it is also a guard against one hit kills... to get those you will have to not only work out what types to use, but also which weapon will deliver it with the appropriate effectiveness (assuming it will even be possible, which looking at this model may very well be too hard to do without nerfing ships defenses)...

it is less of a rock-paper-scissors approach and more of a 'guess under which cup i hid the ball'... to that end it will pay off more to experiment with damage types AND weapon types, as well as tweaking your own defenses accordingly based on the types of opponents you expect to come across... failing to do either will make it that much harder to plod along on defaults and platitudes.

the justification for armor (which will have more impressive stats than shield) comes from playing gratuitous space battles... there, it would take the total armor rating, divide it by the number of modules to give a final armor rating. any damage that was underneath this rating would gleam off. likewise for shields. every weapon had some effectiveness vs armor and shields - some shields more or less blocked out all but one or two types of lasers, but those same lasers might do nothing to armor... you really had to think through on some builds to get the most out of them, though the game did have its flaws too... like giving plasma cannons way too much penetration (that family of weapons fires infrequently to med-long range and isn't accurate so it makes up for it with large alpha... what was unforeseen is an army of such weapons with focus fire on your fleet will annihilate more or less everything... try with frigates ). in GSB though im not sure of the damage formulas, but suffice to say if your penetration rating was too low on your weapons you'd just be flogging dead horses.

back the the rock-paper-scissors thing, ill need to elaborate on the main weapon types i have in mind... they look something like this:

autocannons - self-reloading ballistic cannons of all shapes and sizes, from peashooters to high RPM ac's through to howitzers. obviously prefers kinetic damage, rounds can be modified for thermal and em damage (everything from one damage type to a combination of all 3 should be possible).

railguns - super-high velocity ballistic cannons, tend to have low ROF. generally high kinetic with small amounts of em and some thermal damage. launcher mods can alter the damage of each type as well as ammo mods.

beam lasers - single-fire, high intensity, short duration lasers. unlike MB's beam cannon, this one will be instant-hit however it will require lock-on (instant hit and high ping don't work together well, one way to avoid it). tends on EM damage with generous thermal. no ammo mods, only launcher mods.

pulsed lasers - multi-fire, low-intensity, pulsed lasers. these recharge faster but fire in bursts of 3-9 pulses (give or take, flexible on these). damage compared to beam lasers is low, however this is the dogfighting laser weapon as it won't need lock-on.

self-propelled projectile launchers (missiles, rockets, torpedoes) - as the name suggested... these would be little more than launch bays, so the stats they would have to themselves are things like lock on time, reload duration, launch velocity, launch quantity, tube diameter, etc... rockets and missiles differ in that rockets are smaller and can be fired faster and tend not to have any tracking (though mods). missiles can upgrade their tracking via mods, and the two can customize the warhead to a degree with ammo mods. torpedoes are special in that they are large (ie, only certain kinds of launchers will accept them) and dumb, the anti-rocket that still can't track anything reliably. these are heavy damage for carrier assault and the like, idk how i feel about remote detonation at this point though, likely won't be necessary. torps will still have their impressive blast radius, and (perhaps) mods like proxy detonation, radioactive fallout (again a maybe; wouldn't do much in the way of damage but might clog engines, interrupt sensors, etc) and so on... typical damage is thermal and kinetic to varying amounts, torps get high EM damage but low kinetic or something like that.

plasma cannons - these fire bolts of super-heated plasma, as you would expect. the launcher can be modded to have different kinds of plasma, but typical damage flavor will be heavy thermal and em with medium kinetic. launchers will come in many sizes from repeaters substituting low caliber ac's through to proper 'cannons' boasting an unnecessary yield. plasma travels fast, between railguns and ac's in speed but still faster than missiles and rockets. generally the larger the gun the slower it will fire (as with everything else in general).

plasma lances - i also prefer calling these plasma 'raptor's, due to early prototypes of the concept in other games and the distinct sound and feel i gave it (think back to the plasma weapons in Independence Day, that sort of 'oomph' but with a faster projectile)... the end result looks sort of like the beam cannon in moonbreakers, but has the power and bang behind it more closer to a plasma cannon. the weapon itself would in many ways resemble the PPC of mech warrior canon, with one major difference that you will either come to love or despise before you finish reading it... hold-to-charge. the idea is that you build up a large amount of plasma under proportionately absurd pressures, and then release a faster, hotter, harder bolt of plasma. the drawback is you have to charge it for comparable damage to plasma cannons, and in turn it has a longer cooldown and far greater heat generation. damage profile would be mostly thermal, a lot of kinetic and small amounts of em.

those are just the weapon classes themselves, overviews though...
so no, it isn't going to be as simple as 'em-modded autocannons will destroy their shield', i imagine most would balance their shield and then re-balance it again as preference for some weapon types changes. the complexities of the defensive side of things also throw a spanner in the works of anyone trying to just match advantages to weaknesses - you might be able to beef your shield's em resistance up (P1), but likely at the expense of how much em will leak through when the shield is breached (P3) or even lowering the threshold for a breach (P2)...

dogfighting really will come down to having a good variety of damage types as well as how big the chunks of damage are that you dish out - you will almost be required to have a peashooter and a cannon, a laser pointer and a space-scud... i figure it is a fantastic way to discourage OP builds and retain the skill factor when constructing a ship from defenses through to the weapons... imo anyway

There's a danger I see in all this - if it gets too complex, then combined with a twitchy flight model and the high speed nature of moonbreakerish combat, most pilots won't have time to think & remember what weapon to select and use against which enemy & when.

In a furball it'd be a nightmare to try and keep track of everything and adjust in time, many pilots would probably just end up choosing their biggest cannon and blasting it at all & sundry. Let me correct that, many male pilots - I'm sure my wife & daughter would have no trouble, built as they are for multi-tasking

thats something i need to balance, yes... too much going on will ruin the experience...

however, playing strike suit zero i figure it is ok to have alternate weapons for primary and secondary. having a small selection of weapons at your disposal during play should work even if you have an unimaginable amount of options otherwise... it can work but it would also need some explanation or an intro to advise players to have a variety of weapons at the ready, as sticking with only weapons of one damage type (for example) would leave you potentially unable to deal with a target that has beefed up that one defense to a silly degree... (note: it will not be possible to have an impenetrable defense except in the rare circumstance where the weapon is the weakest possible and defense is close to the strongest possible with all other conditions favorable towards the attacker, and even then i would try to avoid it)

im thinking something like having up to 3 primary and 3 secondary weapons, but only being able to fire them one at a time. the extra weapons sit in reserve slots and the active weapons are triggered with mouse buttons as now. in SSZ you can cycle your primary and secondary weapons with keys, i think i would prefer to have it: F1&F2 = primary alternate weapon slots, F3&F4 = secondary. activating a slot will trade weapons with the 'active' slot. these can even be plastered on the HUD somewhere to make it easy to tell what slot holds what...

Another thing that could be done is to have all weapon types inflict damage on all defense types, just to different degrees. For instance, a high explosive weapon would inflict (pulling numbers out of the air) 100% of its damage on hulls, 70% on armour, 30% on shields. An EM weapon would inflict 100% damage on shields, 30% on armour, 50% on hulls etc. So even if you're blasting away with the wrong weapon you can still get kills, it just takes longer.

longshot wrote:Another thing that could be done is to have all weapon types inflict damage on all defense types, just to different degrees. For instance, a high explosive weapon would inflict (pulling numbers out of the air) 100% of its damage on hulls, 70% on armour, 30% on shields. An EM weapon would inflict 100% damage on shields, 30% on armour, 50% on hulls etc. So even if you're blasting away with the wrong weapon you can still get kills, it just takes longer.

i agree in principle but at the same time i dont want to have all 3 layers damaged by peashooters... hence the needlessly complex layering and P-values

I love these ideas. Having three damage types with different resistances would allow for some pretty good tactical warfare, because it would essentially require you to match your armor and weaponry to the opponent. Might I suggest having the option to reconfigure your loadout in the middle of a match?
What I mean is this: What if we gave pilots the option to have multiple loadouts at the start, and as the match progresses, they choose a different loadout according to the tactical situation. Keep in mind, switching loadouts does not automatically reload weaponry, to help avoid trolling by using a full salvo of high-yield missiles, suiciding, switching to a different loadout, suiciding again, and then going back to the first loadout with a full missile bay.
I'd also like to suggest a way to look at (Read: Spy on) the enemy loadouts. Maybe have a probe to look at the enemy's loadout?
To help balance it out, I'd like to suggest that each person has the option to either look at the enemy's weaponry, OR they could prevent themselves from getting probed. A player wouldn't be able to do both at once.

To help avoid monotony with the ships, which is a problem that Moon Breakers does have, maybe a person could build their own ships. Here's what I was thinking:

First, they select what ship class that they want. This would almost immediately reduce the maximum number of weaponry that a person can use. (In Star Conflict, an Interceptor can't use large missiles, while a Frigate can't use unguided rockets, just to give an example of what I'm talking about.)
Once that's done, a pilot can pick and choose different parts for their ship to have. These parts can include the main hull, which would have different parts that can be attached. Each of those attached parts could have different modules attached to them. Engines could have special afterburner parts, or the wings could have hardpoints for either heavy cruise missiles, rocket pods that launch a salvo of small, unguided rockets, or even a separate machine gun. A pilot could also choose what weapon goes on which hardpoint. That could open up many, MANY tactical options. For example, having the outermost hardpoints on a turn table would allow those (but ONLY those) hardpoints to aim backwards at a chasing enemy.
Aiming backwards would make a person think twice about staying on your tail, which is another problem with Moon Breakers: In a match, if an enemy gets on your tail, there is almost no way to avoid getting killed, unless you have a wingman, but that's a different story.

Hmm... You know what? Another good tactical ability could be the option to keep a friendly player targeted, to know where they are if they need help. You could also send buffs to them specifically. A good friendly-targeting system would be one like what Star Conflict has, where it shows a view of the ship, as if you're looking through a camera.

Another thing that might be cool, would be the option to have multiple players on one ship. One of the biggest drawbacks to the Empire frigates in Star Conflict is that when you aim with the Disintegrator, you're leaving yourself open to attack. A multiplayer ship would help prevent this problem by allowing one player to fly the ship, while another handles all of the weaponry systems.

One thing that would be absolutely amazing is free roam, where a pilot could just fly around, exploring the cosmos. Maybe, a pilot could find rare goodies in free roam, or even try their hand at asteroid mining, where they can then sell the raw materials for a profit. This would allow for more gameplay styles than just "Blow up the enemy before he blows you up". Working spaceports would be cool too, be they in orbit or atmospheric. (Hmm... If we use these ideas, we could potentially have a great Space-based MMO on our hands...)

Just an idea.

in no particular order...

free roam - i would like it but this isnt going to be MMO oriented in any way (inevitable with free-roam, mining, stations and so on), this is a game where people just want to fly around at breakneck speeds around obstacles and blow s*** up. i do too... im after 'UT in space' in this regard, i guess. however a sort of free roam will be available to test ship builds, but not much more than that.

multiple players on one ship - don't want to go there. even trolls aside, it is going to imply either a pre-arranged team, or that people can jump ship, neither sounds acceptable to me in this type of game.

targeting friendly players - could be worth while but it would need to facilitate some other feature / mechanic; on its own there isn't much point.

getting module / weapon into - in mech warrior, when targeting someone you can see their loadout, and ECM is the monkey wrench. seems fair to do it that way...

re ship construction...
at first it will be minimal, ie, pick your ship hull and plaster it with wings fins modules and weapons... at least until the game gets to a playable point...
after that i would be looking at approaches like in Robot Arena (http://www.robotarena.com/screens.htm) for building the ship. RA's method isn't exactly fast, so im looking into compromises between, essentially, in-game modeling and rapid building of ships. its why i made the reference to Spore, that sort of ease and freedom is what im after, but appropriated for single-pilot space ships

I got this idea not only from star conflict, but also from the Ipad game Galaxy On Fire 2, since there is shields, armor, and hull: armor and hull cannot regen, and if the hull is destroyed, you go boom and game over.

FireOfEarth wrote:I got this idea not only from star conflict, but also from the Ipad game Galaxy On Fire 2, since there is shields, armor, and hull: armor and hull cannot regen, and if the hull is destroyed, you go boom and game over.

that's the plan.

should point out though, that just about all space shooter games that have hull (or armor), work this way. at the least i have yet to find one that does it differently aside from moonbreakers.

thinking on it some more, the defense parameters are excessive, but the idea i like... so ive simplified it some but there are one or two things that remain ambiguous, you'll see what they are quickly...

the parameters have been simplified to 2 per damage type per defense layer (not counting hull, which takes all damage uniformly). the two parameters are Pr / Point of Resistance and Pb / Point of Breach. damage below Pr is ignored as before. damage scale between Pr and Pb rises quadratically such that D=Pr results in 0 dmg, D=Pb results in D dmg. the largest difference between raw and final damage is at D=Pb/2. the positive difference between raw and final damage will be expressed as visual effects, eg, a bullet worth 20 kinetic dmg that does 5 dmg in damage will have a visual spray coming off the shield / armor worth 15 pts...

numerically the calculations look like this:
incoming damage (D) between 0 and Pr = 0 final dmg.
D between Pr and Pb = D * (D - Pr) / (Pb - Pr) final damage.
damage is most reduced when D = max(Pb/2, Pr).

so then what to do when Pb < D, or even when Pb << D?
it depends on the interpretation you take of Pr and Pb... when D<=Pr, the instantaneous damage is supposed to be totally nullified by the defense layer. when D<=Pb/2, the defense layer is absorbing as much of the damage as it can as D approaches Pb/2 (parabolic peak). for Pb/2 <= D <= Pb, the instantaneous damage starts to overwhelm the defense layer and damage is too great to absorb or resist. when D approaches Pb, almost no damage is resisted due to the 'strain' on the defense layer.

if we are talking about a charged/powered shield, i interpret Pr and Pb like so - forces below Pr are totally dispersed, forces above Pr are too strong to completely disperse; forces at Pb/2 are maximally resisted (defense layer is damaged), forces reaching Pb are too strong to be resisted at all (incoming damage = actual damage).

what / how should the shield react for incoming damage that is higher than the threshold where damage cannot be resisted at all anymore? should the excess damage leak through to the next layer, and if so how much excess damage is fair? leaving things as they are, damage above Pb simply is not resisted, so final D = D for D>Pb. however i feel that something, anything, ought to happen above that point... defense breach makes the most sense (ie damage above Pb leaks into the next defense, armor or hull or whatever), but remember that these are instantaneous damage numbers (one explosion, one bullet impact, etc) so the situations where this can occur is limited to weapons with very high alpha... penetrative damage can only be justified on the fact that the shield regenerates without end, so the typical scenario to consider is a survivor of a high caliber weapon - their shield will have suffered 50%-90% damage within 1-3 hits or so, but surely internal component damage would happen too... (basically, sidewinders surviving to 1 bar from a rocket / missile and back to full shield in 20-25 seconds... fun, but without some permanent damage it may go on without end, which won't be fun for everyone else necessarily)

for that matter i'm not sure armor is even necessary, but some sort of hull below shield i would want to keep. so at the least you have ship HP and shield HP in some form...

thoughts so far anyway...

ive started a V3 notes thread in the moonfix section (figured this is the best place for all to see who have been out of the loop for a while), this one will keep the debate and planning going while the project finds its feet again - likely once there are specs to work towards...

its a placeholder atm, but i've left something to feed discussion...

I'll check it out.
Let me know if you need me to draw more attention to it from the Moonfix group.
I can also move the existing stuff into an archive to clean up that section.

im not too thrilled about everyone jumping on board right now, i don't have that kind of time yet, and probably wont for 3 more weeks due to life circumstances.

im tempted to leave everything as is in the moonfix section, at least until the spec is done. we can then take the spec and open a dedicated forum (or whatever we decide to use) using that as the source material for discussion...

Hi anger, fwiw I think you should keep the spec under wraps while you're thinking it through, only asking for input on specific points where you're not certain that what you have is the best solution or where you just want feedback.

If everyone dives in with comments and ideas you'll be overwhelmed trying to keep up and you'll lose focus on what you wanted to achieve. Software's best developed by benevolent dictatorships, not by democracies

longshot wrote:Hi anger, fwiw I think you should keep the spec under wraps while you're thinking it through, only asking for input on specific points where you're not certain that what you have is the best solution or where you just want feedback.

If everyone dives in with comments and ideas you'll be overwhelmed trying to keep up and you'll lose focus on what you wanted to achieve. Software's best developed by benevolent dictatorships, not by democracies

the big irony here is that i have the range of possible specs in mind, and am after feedback to narrow it down to what people will actually enjoy playing
i can't write the specs behind closed doors, if there is anything i have learned so far it's that everyone here has moonbreakers in common but where we differ is virtually everywhere else - i could do it but the only guarantee is that i would enjoy it and most others wouldn't...

even that aside, left to my own devices i'll lose interest; i need to participate actively in discussing these ideas to build up interest in them, it isn't enough that i have ideas in their own right.

Ok In that case might I suggest starting with a simple brainstorming on what is fun (gameplay wise) and what is not, and go from there?

it's loosely what im doing - as i find the time, im noting down the details of things i would like to add on top of moonbreakers' gameplay and mechanics. at the same time anything i detail is subject to review and scrutiny by anyone...

i think it is necessary this way as a compromise... since my game designs tend to get very very complex and intricate, and often needlessly so, i need people to point it out when i get carried away. the flipside is i have a lot of such ideas to go over in detail. ie, write down in enough depth and reasoning for others to make an assessment of said features before i get too comfortable with it and start to consider them as being in the end specs.

that is what started fracturing the project imo, too many assumptions / too many ideas presented as a package at once, with not enough room / time for debate surrounding it. so this is a way to still unload all my ideas, still have them debated, but without anything slipping through since i like to present these ideas in the form of short novels.

Ok, understood. I do think though that someone has to eventually decide what's going to be done after the debate etc on each point, and make the decision known to the community working on the game & that is that until/unless testing down the track proves that a change is needed. Hence my comment re benevolent dictatorship.

I've been involved in a game that worked as a democracy before, and the end result was that I never felt authorised to work on anything as there were always people who disagreed with every change, discussing/voting on things was a slow tortuous process, people with loud voices & frequent posts were heard rather than those with the best ideas, and the game lost focus on what exactly it was trying to become. I'd rather not see that experience repeated

i like to think of this as a 'russian' democracy - you have the vote, i have the say

I have little knowledge of this project's situation right now but I kinda like it. Can I alpha test?

Also I have an idea. Why not make the customization similar to kerbal Space Program's? It will have freedom of customization while still staying within your faction's tech boundaries. and the ship won't look ridiculous.

kerbal Space Program's - not familiar with it... any more details?

We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Abstractness wrote:We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Did you died?

Loki wrote:

Abstractness wrote:We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Did you died?

No, still sitting on the moon. we never run out oxygen or water or food. The game is constantly being improved so maybe they'll add the possibility of dying because of lacking resources.