Capital ships..

[Paslowo]

Capitalships should have some type of perposal targeting ystem instead of having the main single hull points.

Like in Wing-commander prophacy, for a capital ship, you could cycle through subtargeting and such.

Capital ships needs something like seperate meshes for subtargeting for like:
* Large guns
* Small turrets
* Bridge
* Generators
* Engines
* Shield Generators
* etc.

And so if a player creates a capital ships, he can list the couple main complnents of the capship that needs to be destroyed in order for the capital ship to blow up:
{1}
Shield Generator (if any)
{2}
Engine
Bridge
{3}
Generators
{optional}
large/main gun mounts
small turrets
missile turrets
launching/docking bays

I don't know if this idea has been perposed yet.

[jackS]

you can already cycle through targeting turrets, which are separate sub-units with their own meshes.

More detailed capital ship design is an interesting topic to explore, and we very likely will explore it, but I'm not sure when we'll get to it - there would seem to be some more pressing topics at the moment that can hopefully be addressed with lower time investment.

More precisely, when we have an infrastructure that smoothly allows the effects of high-level modular components to be integrated (as would first be developed for stations) then we can revisit doing something similar for capital vessels in a revision-of-existing-work fashion. Until then... it'll probably have to be tabled.

[Oblivion]

Having separate modules for stations would also lessen the amount of work needed to model each station. meshes for a part will just be connected this way and that, and voila! A new station, different enough but still the same in basic design! Adds variation, both to the eyes, and for the targetting reticule, lol .

Hope you guys get to doing that.

Approach stations not by individual function of the whole. Approach station modelling by the components themselves and its use. Vary meshes themselves by species. Further vary textures by faction and subfaction. Throw in some unique components. Put teh components together for a station. And you've got something just right for a random universe as Vega Strike.

[Paslowo]

This is how capital ship steering should work in this game:
http://www.zippyvideos.com/669282352516 ... shipsteer/

[nihilocrat]

That looks like a pretty slick system for doing things. It's a bit complicated but once you've got a new heading set, you can bother yourself aiming turrets and all the other stuff involved with capships.

I think I know what game that comes from, but I forget the name. I remember playing the demo once, but I don't think the demo involved capship piloting.

[daschapa]

A ship must have a life support system, if such system is destroyed the crew dies, and the ships is now derelict... then, a player that normally can land on the ship, would have an option like "board ship" some menu
what you think?
Excuse my english

[Oblivion]

For a really comprehensive take on capital ships, we should focus more on crew. Affecting not just capships but the gameplay itself. Imagine this:

Crew Classes:
Mechanic: boosts ship self-repair while in-flight. lessens cost of docked repairs.

Mercenary: boosts shield/hull integrity. Boosts weapon accuracy/damage.

Medic: lessens chances of crewmen dying even in heavy damages. Boosts chance of ejecting all crew members upon destruction of ship.

Diplomat/Trader: decreases buy price, increases sell price. Greater effect when talking to other ships. Lessens faction point demotion by a percentage. Increases faction point increase by a percentage.

Pilot: increases ship turning capability/speed. Lessens SPEC loading time. Can pilot other fleet ships as free wingman. Lessens cost of intersystem ship transport.

and etc.

Of course balancing is a big problem.
In addition: Skill point increase the longer the crew is onboard. this is balanced by the fact that the more times you have a certain subordinate on board, the higher the chance of getting him/her(/it ) killed. Furthermore, crew skills will be based on faction adherence/species. And of course, there will be special crew, available only after completing a mission or having a 100 diplomacy on faction relations.

Ships will then be classified according to crew capacity. Interceptors will mostly have one pilot (except for certain cases, like perhaps the Andolians and the Purth). The larger the capship, the more crewmembers onboard. Unused crewmembers will be left on a planet/base/or more ambitiously on a station/base you've bought yourself (much like your fleetships. Transporting them to current location will cost money).

So, what do you think of this idea?

[Halleck]

Cool... sounds a bit like Frontier with an RPGish twist. Doesn't make much sense to have a mile long capship and only one crewman.

[Oblivion]

'sides, who wouldn't want a nice pretty pacifier hawker onboard at all times? Space gets lonely, y'know. It just gets a bit of a bitch to pay for all their space insurance.

[test3244]

eventhough someone may implement oblivion's idea into the game, i'm afraid it might change the gameplay from spaceflight to large ship battles, which it might not make any sense for players to fly giant buildings since there are plenty of space games that has large ship combat.

[lee]

Having separate modules for stations would also lessen the amount of work needed to model each station.

The same could be applied to ships. Hulls could be extended, engine and weapon bays added, turret mounts could be installed ...

It doesn´t matter what a ship looks like unless it needs to be suited for operation in some dense medium like an athmosphere or a liquid. The only problem would be to attach modules in a way that maintains the structural integrity. You don´t want to fall your ship apart from the forces of acceleration when you lay into the engines --- but it can happen ...

[triato]

How about hit boxes for diferent ship systems. For example you hit the back of the ships and you may disable the engines (if the ship has its engines behind)

I agree that it would be great to be able to disable and board ships, however I think that to do it we should do more than just shooting untill it is disabled, we should also have to shoot certain parts and maybe in certain order.

[lee]

I agree that it would be great to be able to disable and board ships, however I think that to do it we should do more than just shooting untill it is disabled, we should also have to shoot certain parts and maybe in certain order.

It´s very difficult to only hit, for example, the engines or mounted weapons of a fighter.

Maybe take the shields down, then shoot with a special weapon that uses special ammunition you have to carry a limited supply of around, to finally disable a ship for a limited period of time.

[loki1950]

there are special weapons for disableing ships leech and the like as for disableing sub-units of the ships is part of Klauss's revision of the damage model that he rightfully has on the far back burner as the ORGE intagration has priority it would also mean remodelling all in game units with sub-units that where indavidually damageable etc.
so there is lots of work involed here and human nature being what it is who will do it.

Enjoy the Choice

[lee]

Hm, I´m seeing still a lack of descriptions for ammo types and ships. I could try to make some, but I don´t know if someone else is already working on that.

At least for descriptions of ships, I would need some more background info about the factions. Maybe it´s in the wiki, I haven´t looked that up for a long time.

[klauss]

1) As Loki said, but even better: it's been incorporated into the Ogre To-Do. It's part of the "Model redesign thingy" - a task in which I redesign the way graphical/physical models are stored. Basically, it will contain lots of info, and among those, criticals placement (term borrowed from BattleTech). Basically, a critical is something that if damaged, produces subsystem failures. Criticals would be assigned while mounting the subsystems (upgrades or whatever), either automatically or manually (at first, fully automatic, given that we lack the GUI to do manual assignment). Automatic placement would have defined zones for defined upgrade types. For instance: This zone for engine stuff, this zone for capacitors, this zone for... and so on. Detection would be based on "upgrade name patterns" (simply put: upgrade category). Anything more specific requires manual placement, which would also be an option (only for modders at first, then for users when/if the proper GUI is coded).

2) JackS has a very detail list of ammo/weapon types. Let me dig up a PM he sent me describing them, to avoid him the hassle of rewriting it himself (I hope he doesn't mind me publishing a PM - I think he won't):

(...)

So, assuming one has the ability to diddle with the surrounding space (leaving discussion of whether this, or any other stated principle, was/could be a good choice for a fundamental assumption to another time) how might one construct a shield?
Well, I thought perhaps one could set up something based around gravitic shear forces (locally violent, but, with opposing forces mostly cancelling each other out at greater distance due to super-linear falloff).
I then figured it would probably be worthwhile to augment such a setup with an EM component, so as to assist against charged particles, as charged particles are easy to accelerate, and therefore a likely choice in assorted weapons systems. So, when descriptions (minimal as they were) were written for shields, they were reffered to as providing a combination of gravitic and electro-magnitic protection.

Now, where did this lead me (at least as far as I saw it) - almost everything except for something that looks like a shield should penetrate a shield in some manner to some degree.
(a brief aside: ship collisions are somewhat outside the scope of this post - suffice it to say that they should be much more catastrophic than they are, but the reason is not related to shields - it's that our damage model only works on energy right now, and doesn't look at time related components, so if a ship smacks into something at 300m/s and bounces off at 100m/s in the opposite direction we apply damage due to the loss of kinetic energy, but don't currently address the problem that, if this collision took 1/10 of a second, the ship experienced an acceleration of 400g's, the pilot should be paste (even assuming some (limited) means of inertial compensation as a cheap way to warp space may be deemed to provide), and the ship should be assorted bits of fine debris - this is a bug, a feature failure in need of fixing. We don't have a model for acceleration tolerance, clearly, we need one.)

LASERS and other coherent EM radiation - hard to get a beam of light to interact strongly with this setup at all (unless one assumes that photons passing through the distorted topology can be convinced to dump energy and shift down the frequency spectrum in return for degrading the desired topology - but the more that I've thought about that, the less it appeals to me, so let's not spend much time there) but it might interact weakly, de-focusing the beam. For low frequency radiation, de-focusing is going to be quite detrimental (in terms of the likelihood of armor being capable of dealing with incoming beam) but one imagines that xasers and grasers are still going to be quite damaging even if the incoming beam is distorted and defocused. Hence, at best, fair protection against low end laser weapons, to negligible protection against high-end laser weapons. This tranlucency (not transparency) has the benefit of making it easier to explain how EM spectrum sensor data gets in, but causes some problems with pilot-line-of-sight (upon further reflection, I've come to the opinion that chuck raised an excellent point with respect to his comment about the insistence of early astronaughts on capsule windows - there are only two major human groups in the VS universe with pilots that likely wouldn't demand the same, if not windows per se, then some semi-direct optical access (I also briefly, and not in particular seriousness, pondered the notion of an "optical fuse" )- but this delves into a whole other train of thought, so I'll stop it here for now.)

Solid objects - should interact fairly strongly with the shear forces. Complex objects could end up giving up non-negligible amounts of energy in undergoing deformation or otherwise smacking into bits of themselves. However, given high initial velocity, sizeable portions of the incoming remnants of the object will not be sufficiently diverted and will still intercept the target. This is still a preferable scenario, as a defocused impact of something more resembling dust and shrapnel should be a lot easier for armor to handle than an intact shell. (Unless of course, one doesn't have armor, in which case one may have just traded one set of holes for many sets of holes.)

Particle beams -
A) Charged - high velocity makes them hard to divert with the gravitics, again just gaining a defocusing, but that's what the EM systems are there for helping out with. Still, in the end it's just a very good defocusing and diverting, and can't be expected to stop all the incoming particles completely.
B) Neutralized - EM field doesn't help in any meaningful way, defocused, moreso than a laser, but protection is pretty poor, and it's mostly up to the armor.

Plasma -
A)Net-neutral, or B) net-charged clouds of high temperature ionized particles that are likely to be fairly effectively diverted by an EM field unless the plasma density was quite high at the time of intereaction (still efficiently diverted in such a case, but perhaps not effectively).

Shields and shield-like weapons -
Directly act upon the topology created by the shields, significantly degrading them. However the directness of their interaction also means that their effects do not penetrate the shields.

How I saw this playing out in terms of game mechanics:

Firstly, as shields degraded (topology becoming unstructured, shear forces going away), anything that penetrates a shield already would penetrate more. The EM field wouldn't degrade in the same manner as the space-warping component, but it was only useful in mitigating charged particles anyway.

Lasers - would seem to be quite nasty beasts in that they mostly ignore shields, especially at higher frequencies, except that lasers have lousy energy efficiency, especially at higher frequencies, and especially given that laser inefficiency tends to materialize as waste heat. Thus I saw lasers as weapons with extreme cooling problems, either resorting to open cycle cooling (venting coolant = limited ammo, limited refire rate) or _very_ slow refire rates (also a source of perhaps interesting complexity if/when any form of heat modeling gets implemented). Likewise, the higher frequency lasers would be prohibitively expensive and potentially bulky beasts, probably not found in small craft. Additionally, as they don't interact strongly with shields, they wouldn't be good weapons for degrading them rapidly. Range would be good though, (lasers don't degrade as the inverse square, but diffract according to something along the lines of RT = 0.61 * D * L / RL
where:
RT = beam radius at target (m)
D = distance from laser emitter to target (m)
L = wavelength of laser beam (m)
RL = radius of laser lens or reflector (m)
)

Solid objects - Lower energy requirements (could also have internal energy sources, as per rockets), easier cooling solutions, good rates of fire, degraded by shields but degrade shields, and become increasingly effective as the shield degrades. Limited ammunition. Can be augmented (at increased size/cost) by addition of shielding, and/or nuclear or anti-matter warheads. At the (expected relative) velocity these would be impacting at, conventional explosives would not be useful additions. Damage does not decrease with range (although for reasons of limited processing power, a "max range" still needs to be specified engine level).

Particle beams -
A)Charged - low yield electron beams can already be made with very high efficiency - but cranking up the power will drop the efficiency a lot. More importantly, any charged particle beam suffers from severe thermal and electro-static bloom. The constant on the superlinear (I believe it's actually an inverse-square) decay in beam density can be helped by using more massive particles, or accelerating to relativistic velocities for the sake of time dialation, but at the expense of efficiency (significant relativistic velocities are a _huge_ energy investment, neutrons are dead weight to an EM accelerator, and only so many electrons can be conveniently added to or removed from an atom). To make matters worse, one's ship will accumulate net charge if repeatedly firing a charged beam, unless the excess charge is bled off somehow (I've seen indications that alternating between positive and negatively charged firings is a "bad idea (tm)" due to creating a current loop involving the vessel). So, to sum up, the range is pretty bad, the efficiency is questionable, there's probably a hell of a refire delay as one cleans up the charge accumulation problem, and EM fields can do a lot to defocus the incoming beam. However, if you are close enough, and your particle density is high enough, then what does get through would do nasty things to armor, surface mounted electronics, and throw off lots of secondary radiation.
B) Neutralized - (and by neutralized I don't mean "neutron beams", because I haven't the foggiest idea how to generate or accelerate them effectively in anything resembling a coherent beam unless we start talking about space-warping that is probably powerful enough that'd we'd have to go back and revisit the whole "can't do to much to photons" issue which I'd rather not, and besides, that would probably mean that shields were impervious to just about anything... which is rather much not the goal either) more specifically, a beam of particles that has been rendered charge neutral; one in which oppositely charged particles (likely electrons) are added back in after acceleration (both must have been accelerated) to neutralize the beam. This will almost certainly defocus the beam, and again almost certainly drop efficiency even lower. However, it avoids the local charge accumulation problem, this removes electrostatic bloom, leaving only thermal bloom, increasing range, and it also negates the effectiveness of EM fields to disperse the beam at the target. However, it also negates the current and charge accumulation effects on the target that might damage electronics. Still, plenty unpleasant on impact, only mildly affected by shields, but range isn't as good compared to lasers, and efficiency is only questionably better, and could easily raise similar cooling/refire issues.

So, as for beams - mediocre range due to bloom effects, efficiency questionable, neutralized beams achieve good penetration against shields at cost of even lower efficiency, charged beams have lousy penetration against shields, but can probably be used in efforts to disable the target's electronics (at the least, those present on the surface, or accessible by necessity (engine/reactor) - the core protected elements are going to have to be in some faraday cages with optical links to the externals (optical links don't like shear forces though, so they could break with some probability upon impact or impact resembling damage). Ammunition (the particles in question) necessary, but in sufficiently small quantities per firing that it can either be ignored or modeled as extremely cheap, small, and plentiful. Some noticeable degradation of shields due to some interaction.


Plasma - Last I investigated, unless there's some way to make plasma somehow generate its own magnetic fields of exceptionally interesting (read: somewhat absurd) strength, or one wants to accelerate the plasma to very high velocity (which would start to look something more like a shorter pulsed version of the the beams above), it's not going to be an effective weapon at anything beyond the shortest of ranges, because it expands like no one's business (our dear friend the inverse square law, but with indications of unforgiving constants, the prevalence of plasma weapons in many sci-fi works notwithstanding) and in every direction. High-tech flamethrowers with interesting electrical properties are cool, but not very effective unless one is close enough to read the serial numbers on the target's fuzzy dice, neverminding the effects of EM fields on ions, which further limits effectiveness.

In short, one could build the bolt (short pulse) rather than beam version of a particle beam, and it would be rather similar to the particle beams, and not what one traditionally calls a plasma weapon. Or, one could build a reasonably efficient plasma weapon, but be limited by rapid falloff to the shortest of ranges. Ammo for plasma weapons should be in the dirt cheap, small, and exceptionally plentiful category. If you're actually close enough to get any reasonable number of particles past the EM fields, you'll do nasty things to the electronics, and you can probably afford to keep firing for a while. Shield degradation can be somewhat more pronounced than particle beams if more matter is being thrown at the target.

Shields-and shield based weapons-
Ammo, none. Shield penetration, none. Efficiency, mediocre-poor, hence refire, fair-slow. Target shield degredation better than any other damage source. Transmitted damage after shield collapse (topology unstructured) worse than any other damage source, but non-zero. Damage vs. unshielded objects significant.

Missiles - Mostly depends on warhead type. Shielded kinetic is one option, single shot weapons of various types also options, as are bomb pumped lasers or simple nukes. Ultra-low-yield (0.5 - 1 ton range) fusion warheads are presumed commonly available (preferable to chemical explosives due to the manner of transmission of the energy, namely, high frequency radiaton and neutrons).

Yes, it was an even longer post

[triato]

Deleted cause it was about something else.

[triato]

It´s very difficult to only hit, for example, the engines or mounted weapons of a fighter.

Maybe take the shields down, then shoot with a special weapon that uses special ammunition you have to carry a limited supply of around, to finally disable a ship for a limited period of time.

I meant it only for cap ships, fighters would be disabled on a more probabilistic way (shoot till it is disabled or if youshoot to much destroyed)

Of course a disabling weapon would be a good idea, however such weapon should take more time to disable the ship than it would take you to destroy it.

[lee]

It must not become too complicated, or we will need programmable combat computers that constantly try to figure the best method of doing damage to enemy ships. Of course, the battle computers would also select and fire the weapons and fly the ship to achieve maximum efficiency.

Pilots would be mostly spectators. At best, they might be degraded to deciding about the current goal, which might be one of either ´continue fighting´ or ´try to flee´.

But since pilots need live support systems and can only withstand so much forces of acceleration, they would be eliminated and replaced by flight controllers on a capship, a station or a planet who define the goals of fleets of ships remotely.

Simply nobody would be so stupid anymore as to risk his live as a pilot.

[triato]

It must not become too complicated, or we will need programmable combat computers that constantly try to figure the best method of doing damage to enemy ships. Of course, the battle computers would also select and fire the weapons and fly the ship to achieve maximum efficiency.

Pilots would be mostly spectators. At best, they might be degraded to deciding about the current goal, which might be one of either ´continue fighting´ or ´try to flee´.

But since pilots need live support systems and can only withstand so much forces of acceleration, they would be eliminated and replaced by flight controllers on a capship, a station or a planet who define the goals of fleets of ships remotely.

Simply nobody would be so stupid anymore as to risk his live as a pilot.

On military things in the future many vehicles may be more effective being teledirected or directed by AI. However politics, culture, etc. may keep pilots in their seats anyway.

In my game view, to hit certain parts of the ship you would have to lead aim to them and would not have AI aiming for u with the exception of turrets.

[lee]

However politics, culture, etc. may keep pilots in their seats anyway.

Would you take place in such a seat? You would always have to face that your actually obsoleted and hopelessly outperformed by automated or remotely controlled vehicles that will blow you out of space before you even come to realize what is going on.

In my game view, to hit certain parts of the ship you would have to lead aim to them and would not have AI aiming for u with the exception of turrets.

Automated aim could do that much better than any pilot, especially when you have to switch around between maybe 20 different weapons to adapt to the changing situation.

It´s fun in the simple way it is, but overdoing it in the way jackS proposes, would take the fun out of it. Realism is not neccessarily fun.

[triato]

What I mean is that we should not become decision makers only, however I agree we should not be overworked by flying the ship.

About my coments on politics, etc. those were for fiction and future especulating only, not for how would like a game.

[nihilocrat]

Sorry to quote a really old post, but..

there are plenty of space games that has large ship combat.

Whoaaa... where did you get that from? Please list these "plenty of space games" which allow the player to pilot a cap ship. There are plenty which have cap ships in them, but the fighters and other strikecraft are still the focus in these games.

[robothead]

i think he ment space games that has capital ship control only..

let me get a few listings:

EVE: Online(commercial mmo)
Nexus: Jupiter Incident

I agree that games especially this one where with menuverable or agile crafts(unlike large ships like capital ships) should be the main focus of the game. As long as that happens, I don't mind about having capital ships in the game.

[robothead]

for capital ships you shouldn't beable to actually control it however, i would suggest capital ship to be mostly operated on.

that doesn't mean capital ships will be more appealing to players in the long run.