The 'perfect' Combat Engine.

[Wandows]

As the topic says this thread is about the 'perfect' combat engine (knowing that perfect doesn't exist), according to my own personal preference and believe of what an interesting system would be, but hopefully detailed enough and with enough arguments to be a decent suggestion for planetarion. I have no idea if this idea can be achieved at all, but this is an outline of what i see as a 'perfect' combat engine for Planetarion.

The problem
My problem with the current combat engine (and stats) is basicly three things, initiative, targetting and the number of ships. Initiative as it is at the moment is probably the most damaging factor to the stats, because as soon as a (non-EMP) ship has an initiative advantage over its direct opponent (the ship that is supposed to kill it), it is simply pointless to order that unless it is built in high quantities (this is an oversimplification of the truth, but it comes down to that).

The other major issue is targetting, due to every ship only targetting one other class, in alot of cases you will rely on only one ship to protect you from a certain class. This immediatly involves initiative aswell, because as soon as your only ship against the enemy class is shot before it fires, you lost any chance of winning or putting up a fight. Another factor is the free kills it allows, as to me it doesn't make sense a fleet would let itself be destroyed without firing a single shot in return. This also makes combat less exciting as in most cases it is one side that does (most of) the damage.

And finally, the amount of ships. As others have already explained in numerous posts, this makes stats hard to balance (combined with the above mentioned issues) as there are simply alot of ships involved that can (greatly) alter the efficiency of fleet combinations, by it either being over- or undertargetted.

As mentioned above i find these factors to make the combat part of the game (basicly the game) extremely boring as in general there isn't alot of playing field with these stats. Each race has it's fixed pod classes with flak and through that their assigned target races that they can roid, leading to everyone knowing exactly what they are up against from the moment they get incoming or attack a certain target (not entirely true, but lets not make it too complicated here).

Solution
There are a few things that i think would be needed to change in order to make it all work:
-Remove initiative from the game.
-Return of multiple targetting.
-Return of agility, weaponspeed, guns and their power in some way.

First of all remove initiative from the game. It would be far more exciting to have all ships fire at the same time and the winner being decided on fleet combination and fleet size involved. I do realise it means there will be more losses overall and that there would have to be looked into finding a way of balancing out a fair amount of losses for the asteroids you can steal.

Next to removing the initiative, it would like to see multiple targetting back. There is no reason for a ship not to open fire if its desired target isn't available, surely no sane pilot would let his ship be shot to pieces and only watch as his ship explodes in his face. I am aware that with current statistics it would become a huge mess as any battle would mean fleets get slaughtered unless one side runs. I'm not sure if sure if there should be more than one target class per ship before firing at all other ships depending on the amount present.

Targetting more than one class is why agility, weaponspeed, guns and power would need to return in some form. The exact values for agility, weaponspeed, guns and power wouldn't nessecarily need to get back in the game. But a way to balace damage efficiency is important to avoid huge massacres. Essentially with multiple targetting and no initiative, there needs to be a way to alter the efficiency of ships as they fire on other targets than what they were designed for. To pick an example: a ship designed for taking out Fighters, should be rendered near useless at taking out a Battleship (sure it should be possible, but so resource inefficiet its simply not worth the trouble).

There are (as far as i can tell) two ways of doing it, a still pretty static way that could fit in the current statistics and one by adding the above mentioned values to the stats. The static way would require classes to be numbered (Fighter=1, Corvette=2, Frigate=3, Destroyer=4, Cruiser=5 and Battleship=6). Then a relatively simple (yes, my math skills ain't particularly great) function could then used to alter damage efficiency when shooting at another than primary target along the lines of damage = (total_statistical_damage * (1 /(class_difference+|-1^2))*3), where class_difference = (primary_target_class-target_class) and the +|- indicator is just to point out that it should be -1 if the class_difference is negative, and +1 if it is positive. A ship X with Fighters as primary class shooting at Corvettes would get a class_difference of -1 (1-2), where a ship Y with Cruisers primary target shooting ar Corvettes would get 3 (5-2) as class_difference. Ship X would get an damage efficiency of 75% as (1 / (-1 -1 ^2))*3 = (1 / 4) * 3 = 0.75 and ship Y would get a damage efficiency of 18.75% as (1 / (3+1^2))*3 = (1 / 16) * 3 = 0.1875. Damage distribution can be done the same way as currently, but firing the most shots at the ship that is most present.

Another (stats wise) more complex way of doing it is by adding more values to the stats. Agility to represented a ship its movability (the higher the better) and weaponspeed that tells the precision of the guns. Weaponspeed versus agility would determine the chance of a gun shot hitting the target, then the power that gun determines the damage dealt to a ship. This does mean that a gun shot can't hit more than one ship: if a gun does 5 damage, while its target only has 4 armour, the 1 unit of excess damage is simply lost in the destruction of the targetted ship, just like a ship with 6 armour takes two hits of 5 damage to destroy (losing 4 damage in the process). Although this method is statistically alot more complex (also to understand for new players), i think it allows for alot more and better strategical options in the end in terms of more depth in technologies and gameplay. Think along the lines of improving a ship(class) its agility, its weaponspeed, increase the number of guns or the power of the guns through researches. Adjusting (one of) these numbers through researching is overall less damaging than only having armour or damage to adjust (should we go down that road).

The stats would get very agile small class ships with ver low armour, opposed to very slow and high armour big ships. While ships targetting small class ships get very a very fast weaponspeed and low power per gun. Alot of their shots fired at big ships would hit the targets, but the power per gun is so low it would barely damage them.

EMP would have to be adjusted with the removal of initiative. This can either be done by still keeping a form of initiative to make EMP shoot first, or EMP could get a defence shield instead of stunning a target. This shield would simply take an X amount of damage before being destroyed, after which the ship(s) themselves will be targetted. Question is whether to do this on an individual ship basis (which basicly means the ship just has increased armour), or that it becomes a large shield that first has to be penetrated before any ship can be destroyed.

Another thing that would be required with these changes, to avoid making the stats to complicated to balance, is reducing the number of ships. Basicly everyone should get access to the same list of 20-30 ships. Each race would still get two different Pods to somewhat 'force' the use of all classes and get some diversity in the ships used, perhaps one or two ships could be added to each race as flak ship for the Pod to make their roiding fleet a bit different from average. Strenghts and weaknesses would be found through the choises each player makes in the ships they build, rather than having the obvious statistical strengths and weaknesses per race as we have them now.

Result
Now for those who haven't fallen asleep yet, why is this so much better? In all honesty i can't claim this combat engine in the end will be better for Planetarion, as it basicly depends on the type of player left in the game. And i can't really foretell the stats as balancing stats isn't my strongest point in that sense, hence i based my suggestion on what i and others i spoke to appear to be enjoying most in this game. The game is centered around combat and atm it is pretty much one sided in terms of how a battle will end, you either win (without losses) or lose (without inflicting much damage), hardly ever is it anything in the middle. And therefor this suggestion to hopefully change the combat engine (and stats) so that fighting for asteroids becomes normal again, rather than the launch->land/recall on defence game we have now. That in turn should make combat (and thus the game) more exciting as battle reports actually show something and may even surprise players at times.

One thing that might become a problem is stagnation, as asteroids will most likely become more expensive to get and that might be a problem for players who have been getting used to roiding planets for no losses (or recall if they appear to be losing quite a few ships). Atm i don't really know a direct solution to that problem apart from giving asteroids more value and/or more income per tick. It can also be made harder to destroy ships (more armour/agility and/or less damage/weaponspeed) to make it more worthwhile to stand and fight than run your fleet.

It has become long enough now and i hope i didn't forget to cover everything involved, feel free to shoot it to pieces or suggest better alternatives. In either case something has to be done about the current combat (engine) in the game .

[XelNaga]

I like all of your ideas, but unfortunately, as you said, it will increase the (imo) main problem of combat in PA these days: no fights. Cap or recall, stay or run, almost no real combats. Since the losses won't pay off.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by XelNaga

I like all of your ideas, but unfortunately, as you said, it will increase the (imo) main problem of combat in PA these days: no fights. Cap or recall, stay or run, almost no real combats. Since the losses won't pay off.

That's not a problem with my score suggestion.

[Tietäjä]

One problem.














There's nobody to re-code the combat engine nor code a new one, if there was, I'm sure it'd been done already.

[Gio2k]

I can't imagine a combat engine without ship inititiatives. If you remove initiative, you might as well remove ship classes. It would be boring as hell.
Secondary targetting could be interesting.
However, i don't see much problem in the combat engine. The whole idea is to interact with your gal mates and alliances mates to cover your weak spots.
I think the better solution is a balanced set of stats. Granted, the more races there are, the harder it is to balance stats.

[Cochese]

Originally Posted by Wandows

First of all remove initiative from the game. It would be far more exciting to have all ships fire at the same time and the winner being decided on fleet combination and fleet size involved. I do realise it means there will be more losses overall and that there would have to be looked into finding a way of balancing out a fair amount of losses for the asteroids you can steal.

Initiative is at the very core of the game dynamic though.

Sure, some ships don't get a chance to fire--as you mentioned--but that's largely based on stats more than a fundamental flaw with the combat engine. One ship may be useless against a certain other ship (initiative-wise), but may be useful against another race.

If everything fired at once, you'd have a very messy combat scenario. EMP would be useless, Cloaked ships would lose their advantage, and I can't even concieve of how stealing would work effectively.

Next to removing the initiative, it would like to see multiple targetting back. There is no reason for a ship not to open fire if its desired target isn't available, surely no sane pilot would let his ship be shot to pieces and only watch as his ship explodes in his face. I am aware that with current statistics it would become a huge mess as any battle would mean fleets get slaughtered unless one side runs. I'm not sure if sure if there should be more than one target class per ship before firing at all other ships depending on the amount present.

Targetting more than one class is why agility, weaponspeed, guns and power would need to return in some form. The exact values for agility, weaponspeed, guns and power wouldn't nessecarily need to get back in the game. But a way to balace damage efficiency is important to avoid huge massacres. Essentially with multiple targetting and no initiative, there needs to be a way to alter the efficiency of ships as they fire on other targets than what they were designed for. To pick an example: a ship designed for taking out Fighters, should be rendered near useless at taking out a Battleship (sure it should be possible, but so resource inefficiet its simply not worth the trouble).

Can't help but totally agree there. Not having multiple targetting removes important tactics and strategy from the game.

There are (as far as i can tell) two ways of doing it, a still pretty static way that could fit in the current statistics and one by adding the above mentioned values to the stats. The static way would require classes to be numbered (Fighter=1, Corvette=2, Frigate=3, Destroyer=4, Cruiser=5 and Battleship=6). Then a relatively simple (yes, my math skills ain't particularly great) function could then used to alter damage efficiency when shooting at another than primary target along the lines of damage = (total_statistical_damage * (1 /(class_difference+|-1^2))*3), where class_difference = (primary_target_class-target_class) and the +|- indicator is just to point out that it should be -1 if the class_difference is negative, and +1 if it is positive. A ship X with Fighters as primary class shooting at Corvettes would get a class_difference of -1 (1-2), where a ship Y with Cruisers primary target shooting ar Corvettes would get 3 (5-2) as class_difference. Ship X would get an damage efficiency of 75% as (1 / (-1 -1 ^2))*3 = (1 / 4) * 3 = 0.75 and ship Y would get a damage efficiency of 18.75% as (1 / (3+1^2))*3 = (1 / 16) * 3 = 0.1875. Damage distribution can be done the same way as currently, but firing the most shots at the ship that is most present.

I had a similar idea which I think you saw on the "other" forum, but no maths to support it. This is basically the same thing I've been wanting to see in PA...the farther "off" from the targetting/shiptype, the "worse" the efficiency would be.

Makes sense to me.

Another (stats wise) more complex way of doing it is by adding more values to the stats. Agility to represented a ship its movability (the higher the better) and weaponspeed that tells the precision of the guns. Weaponspeed versus agility would determine the chance of a gun shot hitting the target, then the power that gun determines the damage dealt to a ship. This does mean that a gun shot can't hit more than one ship: if a gun does 5 damage, while its target only has 4 armour, the 1 unit of excess damage is simply lost in the destruction of the targetted ship, just like a ship with 6 armour takes two hits of 5 damage to destroy (losing 4 damage in the process). Although this method is statistically alot more complex (also to understand for new players), i think it allows for alot more and better strategical options in the end in terms of more depth in technologies and gameplay. Think along the lines of improving a ship(class) its agility, its weaponspeed, increase the number of guns or the power of the guns through researches. Adjusting (one of) these numbers through researching is overall less damaging than only having armour or damage to adjust (should we go down that road).

Agreed again.

Another thing that would be required with these changes, to avoid making the stats to complicated to balance, is reducing the number of ships. Basicly everyone should get access to the same list of 20-30 ships. Each race would still get two different Pods to somewhat 'force' the use of all classes and get some diversity in the ships used, perhaps one or two ships could be added to each race as flak ship for the Pod to make their roiding fleet a bit different from average. Strenghts and weaknesses would be found through the choises each player makes in the ships they build, rather than having the obvious statistical strengths and weaknesses per race as we have them now.

I'd rather see custom fleets than forcing people to use the same list of ships. As a Xan player, there's really no need for anything bigger than Destroyers...and personally, I'd have a pure Fighter, or Fi/Co fleet myself.

It would be more interesting to have the option of sticking with one or two classes in such a way, while having the ability to (perhaps) research different weapon types for those ships.

Maybe if that was the case, you'd lose something by only having one or two classes of ships...

[LordBlackheart2000]

As for your perfect game engine, most of which was in the game once before being removed.

Round 6 was when the 4 orignal Races (with 12 ships each) where added which i still have the stats for when ships had 2 classes that they could shot at, while 2 ships each for the terran & cath could shoot at any target, with the xan having 3 & the zik's having just the 1.

But they still had Initiative but it did make the game far more interesting but for the lack of different pods as you only had the 1 pod which in its self limited your fleet choices, but the ziks had the smuggler which was always good for stealing those resources

[crazypyro]

Aye i would like to see multiple targeting come back as well, and i see your point about initiative. How's this for a simple solution, Leave the Init. add the 2nd target class, create a second level of initiative as well.

i.e.
class - Init. 1 - Target 1 - Init. 2 - target 2
Fighter - 4 - Frigate - 2 - Fighter

So in a battle say there are no Fr to shoot at, so after the frist round of shots are calc'd, the Fighter readjusts its target priorities and gains a lower Init. to target. It essentially creates two battles within a battle. I'm sure this idea is flawed and several ways so pick it apart it was a 5min idea so to speak


P.S. I'm working an a fair and accurate formula system to create stats as to where you only add Damage/Armour then determine Class/Target, will be a bit linear but it lets us concentrate more on creating a balanced class/target system while keeping Arm/Cost and Dam/Cost relative. May not seem to have relevance to this topic but then again stats effect the combat engine

[Osidiradadumpf]

Originally Posted by crazypyro

Aye i would like to see multiple targeting come back as well, and i see your point about initiative. How's this for a simple solution, Leave the Init. add the 2nd target class, create a second level of initiative as well.

i.e.
class - Init. 1 - Target 1 - Init. 2 - target 2
Fighter - 4 - Frigate - 2 - Fighter

Thats the same I was thinking about. It will make defending easier and you have always at least two ships to defend with. Also, it would make almost always sure you have losses when attacking/defending, which will prevent the absurd buildup some planets are now having.

It would make the ziks ofcourse again more stronger, but it would also give the Cath a fighting chance as then now can kill more shiptypes. And as an extra bonus you can reduce the number of shipstypes for each race.

[LordBlackheart2000]

For those that never played r6 here is the terran stats (sorry its a bit messy)


Name Cl T1 T2 T3 Int Agi wpsp Guns Power Armour EMPr
Terran
Harpy  Fi Fi Co Fr 18 38 37 3 1 5 65
Phoenix  Co Fr Co Fi 25 25 22 2 5 10 55
Gryphon  Co Cr De -- 26 24 13 1 10 12 65
Centaur  Fr Fi Co -- 31 23 45 7 2 25 65
Chimera  Fr Fr De All 32 22 23 5 2 35 70
Drake  Fr De Fr Co 33 19 17 5 3 45 85
Pegasus  De Fi Co -- 17 23 45 12 3 50 75
Unicorn  De Bs Cr De 37 17 10 3 25 85 80
Hydra  Cr Fr Co -- 42 13 22 7 16 140 70
Syren  Cr Cr De All 43 10 15 8 15 180 75
Wyvern  Bs De Fr -- 35 12 15 12 27 160 90
Dragon Bs Bs Cr -- 46 5 10 12 40 450 95

[Thrud]

I've always thought that giving the base fleet, better init, armour and damage would reflect the fact that the pilots didn't have to travel to get to the fight, and since they didn't need big engines and fuel the ships could be better armoured and armed, or more guns and more leg room, and maybe free meals and a smoking section at the back.

It would probably be a a good idea to make it that the extra bonus is only applied when the fleet has been at home for a certain number of ticks, so that a returning fleet isn't instantly converted to a super fleet. Could also be used as a penalty for running a fleet with the pre-launch as the big guns and armour had to be removed before launch. It does of course make bcalcs inaccurate.

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Initiative is at the very core of the game dynamic though.

Sure, some ships don't get a chance to fire--as you mentioned--but that's largely based on stats more than a fundamental flaw with the combat engine. One ship may be useless against a certain other ship (initiative-wise), but may be useful against another race.

If everything fired at once, you'd have a very messy combat scenario. EMP would be useless, Cloaked ships would lose their advantage, and I can't even concieve of how stealing would work effectively.

I know i went a little far by suggesting it, but it doesn't nessecarily have to be as damaging as it may sound. I admit that with the current statistics it would become a mess, and that it most likely would never work properly without the return of agility,weaponspeed, guns and power. But the statistical differences between classes could be made quite big. By that ship efficiency differences in the own class could be made slightly bigger aswell, still resulting in ships outperforming other ships. I know it is a problem though as we've got quite used to loss-free battles and turning that around to battles where losses are inflicted as soon as there are ships on both sides of the battle would ofcourse be quite a change (both in game and the mind of the player). But by making ships (overall) harder to kill, this doesn't have to be as messy as it seems, it would just require better knowledge of the game to know when it would(n't) be wise to stand and fight.

I'd rather see custom fleets than forcing people to use the same list of ships. As a Xan player, there's really no need for anything bigger than Destroyers...and personally, I'd have a pure Fighter, or Fi/Co fleet myself.

It would be more interesting to have the option of sticking with one or two classes in such a way, while having the ability to (perhaps) research different weapon types for those ships.

Maybe if that was the case, you'd lose something by only having one or two classes of ships...

yup, there's alot that can be done with the ships essentially. But it all depends on the combat engine and how races should be played, like different ships per race, or common ships and some race specific ships supporting the pods fleets of that race, or only common ships and other bonusses for planet development decided per race. Alot of different setups could be tried and tested here.