StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Via act of Q, we here at SDN are suddenly turned into a game development studio. We are given all of the money we need to develop a realistic naval simulation/FPS set in World War 2, or at least set with World War 2 era technology. Why? Because Q shares our in our grief that no true titles of the type have been made in years, and the arcade-a-thon Battlestations Midway only pleases for so long.

The goal? Just make a game Naval Sim we'd like to see made. Since it's set in World War 2, the game will probably be best suited to Japan vs. The United States. We can even include the RN and Australian Navy if we want to. Or perhaps limit one or both to an expansion? Something like that is our choice. Just keep development within reasonable technical limits.

The challenges? Among one I consider…

Accurate modeling. I'm tired of commanding my ship from those stupid third person arcade views too. I want to be IN my god damn ship. I'm not sure how easy it is to find details on accurately modeling deck plans. But seriously, we don't need to model every square inch of the ship. I feel we could do just fine taking the Silent Hunter approach. (Modeling important compartments and crew stations only.)

The sections of the ships I feel the player should be allowed to view and control from are-

-The Command Center/Bridge
-The Steering House
-The Lookout/Greenhouse
-Gun control room
-Possibly engineering
-Multiple camera views from the main deck. Bow/Starboard/Port/Stern. Etc.

Of course the problem with this is, finding things like detailed photos and periodicals we could use to accurately recreate the interiors.
Among other general things I feel should be included...

-Voice Commands - It worked rather well in Enigma. Naval Voice commands are simple and short. So they are naturally easy to implement as a control system for a game. And considering how well Enigma handled it for a game that's more than 4 years old, I think we'll have an easy time here in 2007.
-Renown/Popularity
-Free Roam/World Map
-Choice between historical or alternate history campaigns. Alternate history campaign will be dynamic.
-Player command of battle groups and fleets/theater/or just one ship.
-Sandbox/Mission Editor.
-Peace time operations - Inspections/blockade.
-Controllable ships classes of almost all types.
-Both IJN and USN campaign guaranteed. Again, RN and Australian if we feel we can hack it.
-Very scalable difficulty/realism settings. To illustrate If the player wants his Yamato to be an invincible death dealer of destruction and mayhem with triple the normal amount of fuel, ammo, health etc, so be it. If the player wants his shells to fly straight with no input from himself/weapons officer in the firing solution, that's ok. Or maybe he does want to put some work into the solution, but not much. That's ok, we can limit the necessary info so all he needs to put in is "distance" and let the system do the rest or just ignore/shut off other factors.

And, what I want the most, multiple ship classes/types controllable by the player of course!

-Destroyers
-Submarines
-Corvettes?
-Cruisers Heavy/Light
-Hell, even Carriers. (Though I haven’t thought of anything for aircraft control yet.)
-And of course, battleships!
-Commerce raiders/freighters in a potential expansion.

Implementation of aircraft would be interesting. I'm considering having the game be a flight sim as well. I mean, if we're getting down and dirty with the deck plans of WW2 ships, how hard could it be for aircraft?

Surely you can just take a camera aboard a museum ship, to get accurate bridge layouts? or is that not allowed?

For expansions, RN vs the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic might give you a change from carrier ops, if you want that. Plus it lets you hunt convoys (or sink U-boats, dependiong on preference). If you decide to add air combat, you can fly Sunderlands and try to depth-charge the U-Boats.

If you'd like to get carried away, you could make the flight sim a separate game, but let you play online as a pilot based on a carrier being controlled by other players. That way, you're not making some bastardised jack-of-all-trades game.

andrewgpaul wrote:Surely you can just take a camera aboard a museum ship, to get accurate bridge layouts? or is that not allowed?

On ships like the Iowa Class? Sure, that would be easy, since they still exist. The issue with the IJN and lots of older American Battleships is that they don't. Unless the manufacturers kept all of their old records, blueprints, and photographed the development of their ships, I don't think it's going to be easy to model the ship interiors.

CaptHawkeye wrote:

andrewgpaul wrote:Surely you can just take a camera aboard a museum ship, to get accurate bridge layouts? or is that not allowed?

On ships like the Iowa Class? Sure, that would be easy, since they still exist. The issue with the IJN and lots of older American Battleships is that they don't. Unless the manufacturers kept all of their old records, blueprints, and photographed the development of their ships, I don't think it's going to be easy to model the ship interiors.

Looks like the Yamato is right out, unless we could find some interior shots or infer what the stations would look like from other Japanese Battleships.

Oh, and the Alt-History Version needs the Montana's. Thirty-two thousand four hundred pounds of explosive love with every broadside.[/swoon]

I would personally keep carrier operations of the 'select loadout, launch wave, chew pencil with worry until they return' type. High pay off, but they can also turn into the Marianas Turkey Shoot. So once you launch, you don't know how the mission goes. All planning for launch will take place on one of those boards with all the little models on it.
Damage Control should be a vital element of the final game, so you can try various things to stop a fire or keep the ship fighting. Of course, sometimes options will have the potential to spread av gas fumes all over the ship and turn it into a floating bomb, but that is the price we pay for accurate DC.

I fully support the Montana and the United States being included as 'what if' ships. But for the love of god, keep them out of the main game.

We could include more of the Midway class, since they came late in the war. United States is a kinda far fetched considering it was only a concept after the War ended.

General Schatten wrote: Looks like the Yamato is right out, unless we could find some interior shots or infer what the stations would look like from other Japanese Battleships.

I don't think it's necessarily impossible. The Yamato Movie that was done in Japan was supposed to be a pretty faithful re-creation of the ship and it's got lots of interior shots. Including things like the pilot house. If the interiors are accurate, then they MUST have gotten that information from somewhere.

US Battleships I'm not so sure about. I guess we'd have to ask Newport News and Norfolk if they have an archive of any kind.

Vehrec wrote:I would personally keep carrier operations of the 'select loadout, launch wave, chew pencil with worry until they return' type. High pay off, but they can also turn into the Marianas Turkey Shoot. So once you launch, you don't know how the mission goes. All planning for launch will take place on one of those boards with all the little models on it.

Another idea to toss around. I don't think fleets should be a single order of "send them to Guam and hope they don't die". But it should definantly be simplified. Instead of having the player build ships and aircraft, he could simply purchase from pre-programmed lists of fleet types (Carrier Fleet, Heavy Cruiser Task Force) with his "Renown Points" or something. I'm not quite certain how we would implement things like technological development though.

Damage Control should be a vital element of the final game, so you can try various things to stop a fire or keep the ship fighting. Of course, sometimes options will have the potential to spread av gas fumes all over the ship and turn it into a floating bomb, but that is the price we pay for accurate DC.

I strongly agree. "Sir, we've taken a severe hit to the lower bow... TURRET 1 REPORTS FIRE. What do we do skipper?"

Gah, if I let the fire rage it could envelop the ship or worse, cook off the ammo stores. But if I flood the turret's lower compartments, i'll lose its use and cut off a significant amount of my ammo supply. I could try the middle ground and pour as much fire fighting priority into it as possible, but i'll be cutting it close, gambling on how good and experienced my crew and officers are.


BTW, instead of the typical "Easy, Medium, Hard" campaign system, perhaps it would be better if we went with a default difficulty system based upon WHO the player is fighting for in both campaign types. Fighting for the United States for example, the campaign STARTS hard, but ends on easy. While the Japanese campaign is the other way around, increasing in difficulty to reflect the States' industrial might. Of course, the realism options will remain scalable throughout any point in the game.

Hey I also thought of a name. Armoured Sea.

Armoured Sea makes no sense.

If you want a good name, name it for what your doing
Captain. Captain something, maybe get a Jane's branding for extra twinkle.

OAN I like the Silent Hunter method, render the important interior views, then use model detail with NPC sailors to run around the deck.

I'd also add in the Silent Hunter III style of crew management, but better and tied to the difficulty.

So at the lower difficulty the crew management does not even factor in, every crewman is "good" and stays good. They don't get tired, they work in 8 hour shifts as per normal.

On the higher difficulty(Above easy, easy this whole system is off) you start the campaign with a generated chief/office rank. Ranks would be broken along traditional enlisted/chief/office ranks.
You crew selected would be part random/ part point by. The points represent your "pull" with the personnel office. As you become more successful your better able to demand more experienced officers, and less likely to be stuck with the dregs.

Officers would be different, pure point, untrained officers costing nothing, specialists officers costing points, skilled costing points, skilled specialists costing allot.

Ensigns would always be free, each having some random specialty, with points being spent to pick from the top 5% of any years graduating class.

Now then to crewman themselves.

Each crewman has a skill level.

The basic three intial skill levels are...
Draftee(Untrained draft sailors, late war Japanese will get these) they will be close to useless until trained.
Apprentice(Just graduated from "A" school or officer training)
Reservist(Older reactivated sailors, this is their first voyage since activation)

Thus when a brand new sailor steps on your ship if you did not buy them they will be one of three grades, Draftee's are only seen if your country is having a bad time at the war, otherwise everyone starts as Apprentice or Reservists. The mix of these will be random depending on port, ship type and your fame.

Each sailor, enlisted or office has a job title(Repair, Radar, Flight Ops, Anti-air gunner), and a rating in it.
Training, Poor, Average, Good, Excellent, Outstanding. Training is only while someone is training up for a new job title.
Three subcategories for his general skill.
Heath(Ability to keep working while tired/injured, won't come down with illness)
Intelligence (Determines how quickly they can train in any job title, and how far they can advance, rule of thumb, they can advance one rank above their intelligence rating)
Wisdom (Fixing things without you directly needing you to tell them, less chance of general things going wrong)

What kind of job skills? Simple take the list of US naval certifications from 1944 and plug that in, add in any the Japanese have the Americans don't and you have your cert list.


How does this work in pratice?
Simple as this, lets say you take your Destroyer back into port, your not happy with your engineer department so you ask for a fresh draft of sailors for it.

You can keep Sailors or Chiefs as you wish. Officers and Chiefs take longer to replace than regular sailors. You must request sailor transfer ahead of time. And they won't always all be there when you get there so sometimes you might be stuck a man or two short.

Lets say you pick a new engineer chief, he comes aboard, because you payed points for him he's good at his general job, and has also been crossed trained in Damage control. In fact he's "Excellent" at both his jobs. But he has poor heath right now due to being overworked.

You can get down nitty gritty and assigned him light duties for awhile, or you can double up his work load working his eight hour shifts in engineering and another eight hours training up other members of the other shifts. But you risk him getting kill or loosing him in an accident because he's so tired his mind is wandering all the time.

In combat your people can work 20 hour shifts but they can't do it for long. You can set shift scheduals to have two shifts(1st and 3rd) on duty during combat so you have extra DC ready before going into an attack. Or for training purposes or for any of a dozen other reasons.

But enough of that, in summination I envision a system where you basically take care of personnel issues while in port, switching officers around, setting new training schedules and workups before heading out. You can if you want mess with personnel mid-voyage but you should not need to. The personnel AI will auto shift people into the first, second or third shift. You can go in behind at you want and make your second shift full of your best people, or spread them out. Or use one of a few pre-selected balancing.

Once your out of port however things should take care of themselves, your free to meddel, but if you don't want to, you won't need to outside port. Unless your making your crew work 20 hour days you don't need to mess with anything, and if you do for to long your XO should step up and say, hey you bastard, let them sleep some.


I expect crewman to eat, sleep, and train. Lose some to accidents which you will have to replace. Lose some to battle, or lose many of them.

Since the Super-Yamato is too heavy to even make it out of Port, we should probably sprinkle some more Yamato's into the Alt-History.

I'd go for an alt-hist story of a British-French-Imperial Germany-Polish alliance fighting the Japanese Menace in the Indian Ocean and the pacific.

Why? Because it would be immensely cool. Far more than yet another US vs. Japan slugfest.

As for game mechanics? Well, if you want to avoid swamping the player with bullshit (Moo3?), then you'd have to choose your battles, so to speak, and focus the game on something.

So, what I'd propose is a naval surface sim with an added real-time strategic layer and varied difficulty settings. You'd have a dynamic campaign in two modes - one when you get strategic command, and one where you don't, and are tasked with missions by the AI. Maybe some standalone missions.

1. Strategic layer

In the strategic layer, you are presented with a map of your theatre (Indian Ocean, Eastern Pacific, Oceania, Indonesia, China Sea), a list of assets, naval and air bases under your command, an "events" panel and an "intelligence" panel. And, of course, various info overlays (for example, convoy routes and minefields). Styled as a paper map, of course, maybe located within a 3d "Command post".

Naval bases are rated with several parameters: mooring space, fuel bunkers, ammo & parts storage, number of drydocks, quality of personell.

Air bases would be rated similiarly, and some of those parameters would change over time. You would deplete fuel, which would be resupplied by convoys and/or overland pipelines. You could order construction of additional facilities with points, which you'd gain by conducting succesful operations.

Events panel would show your objectives, events in the gameworld and orders. When you start the game, you get an overview of the situation (and a super-cool intro, of course), along with your current objectives. The general staff would then order you to do things, say "Interdict enemy convoys in this area" or "Establish air superiority over this basin", and you can do whatever you want otherwise. You plan missions for your assets, and they carry them out in real time. You take losses and manage replacements, make sure your ships have enough fuel, spares and people to run efficiently. From time to time, new ships arrive in theater, and you can request some with points (say, you've gained 2000 points, so you can request a fleet carrier to be placed under your command). Of course, if you get, say, 50 new planes, you have to make sure the ships moving them don't get sunk.

Now, the intelligence panel would allow you to channel some of your resources into other undertakings. You could, say, spend points on establishing a signals bureau or spy network that would crack enemy codes and allow you to view some enemy orders. This place could then generate more missions for you - like commando raids on bases to get codebooks or such. Information would be rated by its probable validity, and posted on the map.

The overall objective would be, of course, to destroy your enemy's ability to wage a naval war in this theatre and make an invasion of Japan (or India and Australia) possible.

Lastly, you'd be able to take direct command of battles that are the result of your strategic operations, or leave it up to the AI.

2. Tactical layer

Now, the second part of the game would see you in command of a ship of group of ships. You start your career as a destroyer commander, and work it up from there, or just command battles you ordered in the strategic layer.

First person, of course. SH III approach is good, with the bridge and/or CIC modelled (flight deck for the carriers - because we'd love to see aircraft taking off to crush the enemy!!!...or not), with officers and crew et al.

You'd be able to give all the usual commands: steering, ROE, speed, heading etc - but other ships in the group would be controlled by the AI, following a general plan set out before battle using a graphic tool of some sort.

Crew management and damage control should be a big part of the game, but done better than in SHIII - because nobody would like drag&dropping 1000 crewmen on an aircraft carrier. I'd posit Mr. Bean's model would be nice, but simplify it some more with general orders for specific departments, and a lot of automated options.

Of course, fuel, ammo, crew fatigue and consumables should be simulated. Because you'll have to know if you can run this carrier strike group of yours as hard as you want to, or it's not a simulation at all. For example, if you run your pilots too hard, you start getting landing accidents.

And, of course, it could lead to situations like depriving the enemy of supplies by bombing naval bases and convoys, only to go in for an easy kill afterwards.

On a last note: Distance and scouting has to be modelled accurately. Jesus, was Battlestations Midway shitty in that regard...

Oh yes, I should say, automation out the ass when it comes to crew management.

There should be buttons and lists to take care of everything without having to crack open a personnel jacket on any individual salior. A "Pick best qualified" button on every screen.

I forsee a screen that lets you get down and set the training of each sailor on your 1000 member crew if you like, or specify things. IE Offices should work no more than 8-12 hours a day and spend X hours training other people.

Rather than having to select Person Y and match them with Trainer X you simply set that you want this department or the whole ship trained on Job Z. For example you'd want everyone likely trained in damage control. So you can get down and set each Chief or officer or by hand. OR the easy route you grab a drop down box, select from a list of "training directives" IE simple logic statements like "train everyone in damage control, train crew chiefs in damage control." And the game handles picking out trainers and assigning them how much time to spend or you can specificy "Light(2 hours a day training in addition to their job) Medium(4 hours) Heavy(8 hours) or Full-time(They spend 12 hours a day training people but are not available for their normal job)


In addition I'd like to see some good random name generators working with a random bio generator and a random home-town generator so you can for example have a Lt Commander Engineer named Scotty.
Perhaps some sort of "crewman generator" outside the game which lets you add your own custom sailors into the crew select list. On easy difficultly you can fill your whole ship with them if you like, while on the harder settings they would just show up in the randomized pool of sailors to requisition from. And I don't just mean set their name, I mean set their skill ranks, their job titles already trained in and their background. Heck toss in the ability to export them to a simple text file so you can swap them online.

PeZook wrote:I'd go for an alt-hist story of a British-French-Imperial Germany-Polish alliance fighting the Japanese Menace in the Indian Ocean and the pacific.

Why? Because it would be immensely cool. Far more than yet another US vs. Japan slugfest.

Personally, I want America in the game mainly because I happen to like American equipment. I've got a thing for the Colorado and New Mexico Class BBs particularly. Yes god damnet I know they were old WW1 dreadnoughts. But hey, maybe an alt-history scenario could depict a really generous lend-lease program?

Naval bases are rated with several parameters: mooring space, fuel bunkers, ammo & parts storage, number of drydocks, quality of personell.

Air bases would be rated similiarly, and some of those parameters would change over time. You would deplete fuel, which would be resupplied by convoys and/or overland pipelines. You could order construction of additional facilities with points, which you'd gain by conducting succesful operations.

One application of this system that would be interesting would be the quality of routine maintenance and checkups on your ship. If the maintenance crew at the base sucks, I may pull out of the harbor only to find my Number 3 engine seize up half way to Singapore because someone doing the overhaul didn't set the timing correctly. Though the player himself wouldn't be penalized for such a thing I imagine. (IE: Loss of points due to canceled operation.)

Parts storage is also an interesting idea. The gun control's range finder is broken and I need a new one. But surprise! We don't have any because you failed to prevent the enemy from cutting off our shipping!

Now, the intelligence panel would allow you to channel some of your resources into other undertakings. You could, say, spend points on establishing a signals bureau or spy network that would crack enemy codes and allow you to view some enemy orders.

Dude, I never thought of that. Breaking your enemy's naval codes would be AWESOME.

This place could then generate more missions for you - like commando raids on bases to get codebooks or such. Information would be rated by its probable validity, and posted on the map.

This brings to mind operations pertaining to landing forces and invasions. Perhaps the player should also be given missions like...

-Aid in beach invasion by covering advancing forces.
-Help transport said forces to landing area
-Destroying surface installations.
-Remaining on site for random artillery requests from infantry advancing inland.
-Evacuation of severe wounded from area of operations and returning them to friendly ports.

The overall objective would be, of course, to destroy your enemy's ability to wage a naval war in this theatre and make an invasion of Japan (or India and Australia) possible.

I imagine the player could provide detailed support to the Army everywhere on small islands like Guadalcanal. But if I'm invading, say, China, eventually the Army is going to so far inland my support will be irrelevant. The enemy country will still exist for a little while, but is non existent as a naval power now. Essentially player victory.

On a last note: Distance and scouting has to be modelled accurately. Jesus, was Battlestations Midway shitty in that regard...

Ohhhhh yes. If I ever play another game that depicts the Kongo's maximum firing range as a laughably flimsy 1700 yards i'll commit Hari-Kari with a plastic spork.

On easy difficultly you can fill your whole ship with them if you like, while on the harder settings they would just show up in the randomized pool of sailors to requisition from. And I don't just mean set their name, I mean set their skill ranks, their job titles already trained in and their background. Heck toss in the ability to export them to a simple text file so you can swap them online.

Something to add to crew management, rescue and recovery. Say you're fighting a losing battle against the enemy fleet. You've fought valiantly, but you're little Fletcher just isn't going to beat that Fuso. It would be interesting if the player could decide to keep fighting until the ship sinks underneath the crew's feet, or decide to SAVE the lives of as many crewmen as possible and order "abandon ship" BEFORE it sinks. This will take it out of the battle completely, but if you've got an experienced crew aboard the ship, it might do you better to recover them and save their lives for another day. Recovery could be handled via seaplane, submarine, or friendly passing ship.

What I’d want is scalability, the ability to command the war on anything from the grand strategic scale, deciding which axis of advance to pursue ect… down to commanding one ship or plane in a tactical battle with a limited area map. You would be able to chose to command at any level, and switch between levels, while the AI will just follow some historically inspired formals to take on the other jobs.

A Drakafic naval sim would be kick ass on so many levels.

Sea Skimmer wrote:What I’d want is scalability, the ability to command the war on anything from the grand strategic scale, deciding which axis of advance to pursue ect… down to commanding one ship or plane in a tactical battle with a limited area map. You would be able to chose to command at any level, and switch between levels, while the AI will just follow some historically inspired formals to take on the other jobs.

It would be cool to create multi player campaigns that are saved online. So if you're unimpressed with the AI, you and your friend/s can fight over the Pacific Ocean online. I've heard somewhere of games that have multi player campaigns but don't actually know any though.