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So, I'm under the impression that this is an actively developed game. If not, then hopefully a sequel is in the works. Anyway.
My aim is to add further depth to the CURRENT combat system.

The idea is to add a maneuvering/initiative aspect to the game. This would work as a statistic on Ships and Engines, and possible have skills to affect it as well, or passive growth with your character.

Ships would have a base initiative value, with larger ships having LOWER values, and freighters probably being lower for their class as well. Engines would also have a value, which for game balance reasons should be higher on lower "usefulness" engines, and lower on the faster or utility engines.

The second part of the idea is to allow you, the player, more control over special engagements. So if you have long-range lasers, you can actively try to force a long-range combat even on non-long-range AI, and the opposite for if you use rapid-fire lasers, and maybe nebula as an option as well.
This would either be a pre-combat option set in your character screen, or an option that you select at the engagement phase of each combat (at the stage where it gives you the "hostile ship approaching" flavour text.

This would have a chance of succeeding based on the difference in initiative. However, for the NEXT part of the initiative mechanic, an attempt at forcing engagement terms would reduce your EFFECTIVE initiative for the remainder of the combat, to reflect the time lost in maneuvering.

The second part of this mechanic is that many skills and event skills would scale with the relative EFFECTIVE initiative of the ships, especially special event skills like closing gaps and fleeing, with a higher chance for the ship with an advantage.

Thirdly, the ship with the highest EFFECTIVE initiative after the engagement phase would take the first turn, instead of the player always firing first.

Fourth, special skills such as AP have a chance to turn up that scales with effective initiative ratings.


What I expect as consequences: More depth in choosing equipment, possibly requiring some rebalancing of weapons that give advantages at certain ranges.
A reason to use different engines.
More even combat between different classes of ship, as smaller ships would commonly take the first shot, and would have a higher chance of obtaining extra AP during combats.
More friendliness towards multiplayer in a future iteration.*
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Solar1313: So, I'm under the impression that this is an actively developed game. If not, then hopefully a sequel is in the works. Anyway.
My aim is to add further depth to the CURRENT combat system.

The idea is to add a maneuvering/initiative aspect to the game. This would work as a statistic on Ships and Engines, and possible have skills to affect it as well, or passive growth with your character.

Ships would have a base initiative value, with larger ships having LOWER values, and freighters probably being lower for their class as well. Engines would also have a value, which for game balance reasons should be higher on lower "usefulness" engines, and lower on the faster or utility engines.

The second part of the idea is to allow you, the player, more control over special engagements. So if you have long-range lasers, you can actively try to force a long-range combat even on non-long-range AI, and the opposite for if you use rapid-fire lasers, and maybe nebula as an option as well.
This would either be a pre-combat option set in your character screen, or an option that you select at the engagement phase of each combat (at the stage where it gives you the "hostile ship approaching" flavour text.

This would have a chance of succeeding based on the difference in initiative. However, for the NEXT part of the initiative mechanic, an attempt at forcing engagement terms would reduce your EFFECTIVE initiative for the remainder of the combat, to reflect the time lost in maneuvering.

The second part of this mechanic is that many skills and event skills would scale with the relative EFFECTIVE initiative of the ships, especially special event skills like closing gaps and fleeing, with a higher chance for the ship with an advantage.

Thirdly, the ship with the highest EFFECTIVE initiative after the engagement phase would take the first turn, instead of the player always firing first.

Fourth, special skills such as AP have a chance to turn up that scales with effective initiative ratings.

What I expect as consequences: More depth in choosing equipment, possibly requiring some rebalancing of weapons that give advantages at certain ranges.
A reason to use different engines.
More even combat between different classes of ship, as smaller ships would commonly take the first shot, and would have a higher chance of obtaining extra AP during combats.
More friendliness towards multiplayer in a future iteration.*
Hi,

sorry for the late reply.

This is an excellent idea and I have added this to my plans for an update
in the near future. It´s easy to implement and adds another layer to the
complexity.

Best regards

Niels
Great! One thing that I'd like to stress a bit more about my idea that didn't come through as strongly as I thought is the impact of forcing a type of engagement, this needs to have a substantial penalty on initiative in my opinion, otherwise you could end up with the ship forcing the engagement regularly still having higher initiative (which should be possible, especially if the ship class is lower, but should not be common), which by the rest of the idea would put the other ship at high disadvantage since they would have low success chance at the special actions related to engagement types. Also, that it's not guaranteed, so there is still some risk (otherwise especially long range destroyer setups would be very easy to abuse, and most long range in general).


A further thought is how the selection of engagement type would work-
My thoughts on this is that long or short-range choices would normally be available, with corresponding penalties displayed. However, special engagement types should SOMETIMES also be available -so you could DELIBERATELY fly into asteroids or nebula or minefields if you wished, and very rarely the ability to steer yourself into a time flux. A choice of two to three non-standard engagements per battle would seem to be a good medium between no choice and too much.

Thanks for listening, hope my ideas are useful!
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Solar1313: Great! One thing that I'd like to stress a bit more about my idea that didn't come through as strongly as I thought is the impact of forcing a type of engagement, this needs to have a substantial penalty on initiative in my opinion, otherwise you could end up with the ship forcing the engagement regularly still having higher initiative (which should be possible, especially if the ship class is lower, but should not be common), which by the rest of the idea would put the other ship at high disadvantage since they would have low success chance at the special actions related to engagement types. Also, that it's not guaranteed, so there is still some risk (otherwise especially long range destroyer setups would be very easy to abuse, and most long range in general).

A further thought is how the selection of engagement type would work-
My thoughts on this is that long or short-range choices would normally be available, with corresponding penalties displayed. However, special engagement types should SOMETIMES also be available -so you could DELIBERATELY fly into asteroids or nebula or minefields if you wished, and very rarely the ability to steer yourself into a time flux. A choice of two to three non-standard engagements per battle would seem to be a good medium between no choice and too much.

Thanks for listening, hope my ideas are useful!
Very useful, thank you.

I am thinking about allowing pirates and bounty hunters to set up ambushes, which could allow them to choose engagement events like asteroids, nebulas or minefields.
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nielsbauer: Very useful, thank you.

I am thinking about allowing pirates and bounty hunters to set up ambushes, which could allow them to choose engagement events like asteroids, nebulas or minefields.
Why limit it to pirates and bounty hunters? Anyone should be able to pull this off if the enemy ship is a transport or something with a known destination. If you're attacking a target that has somewhere to be, it should be a manageable plan for anyone. You could also have the player be susceptible to this if they are on a transport/escort mission.
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nielsbauer: Very useful, thank you.

I am thinking about allowing pirates and bounty hunters to set up ambushes, which could allow them to choose engagement events like asteroids, nebulas or minefields.
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blakekl: Why limit it to pirates and bounty hunters? Anyone should be able to pull this off if the enemy ship is a transport or something with a known destination. If you're attacking a target that has somewhere to be, it should be a manageable plan for anyone. You could also have the player be susceptible to this if they are on a transport/escort mission.
Well, the idea is to differentiate both professions. If all professions play the same, the replayability would decrease. I can´t see why the trading professions would want to set up ambushes. Their skills and ships are not focused on attacking, but rather on defense. I am open for discussing this. What do you think?
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blakekl: Why limit it to pirates and bounty hunters? Anyone should be able to pull this off if the enemy ship is a transport or something with a known destination. If you're attacking a target that has somewhere to be, it should be a manageable plan for anyone. You could also have the player be susceptible to this if they are on a transport/escort mission.
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nielsbauer: Well, the idea is to differentiate both professions. If all professions play the same, the replayability would decrease. I can´t see why the trading professions would want to set up ambushes. Their skills and ships are not focused on attacking, but rather on defense. I am open for discussing this. What do you think?
I think I agree on the point about using it to differentiate professions, but I would hate to see awesome engagement options lost to specific classes at the same time! Perhaps this "ambush" mechanic would allow very high chances of unusual non-standard engagements compared to normal, rather than being the only way to do them?