How would you do a good space fleet combat game?

[Uraniun235]

I like space fleet battles. Homeworld and Homeworld 2 were fun for me in that regard. But at the same time, just about every game ever that's incorporated real-time space fleet combat has had some pretty significant flaws.

Like the "RTS ideas" threads of yore, let's talk about space games in this thread.


One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.


It's late so I'm having a hard time thinking of much else at the moment, but surely there's others here with strong opinions on how to do a space game Right.

[Samuel]

Do you want realism or do you want fun and consistancy?

[Bounty]

One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.

Or just go all the way and make it turn-based. The best fleet combat game I've ever played was Begin, which managed to be just as frantic as a real-time game - and it didn't even need much graphics, either

[Companion Cube]

Do you want realism or do you want fun and consistancy?

No reason to not have both. You could have a Defcon-esque view of the planets going round your solar system, and your ships flying around. Just turn up the time slider so weeks-long journeys take a minute or so, and half-hour long missile travelling times might take a few seconds. This would actually be a way to incorporate whatever level of micromanagement you want into the game, since turning down the time would give you the space to issue more detailed orders (deploy your radiators, eject your life-support sections, etc).

EDIT: And it could more than just battles too, since you'd have plenty of time to issue diplomatic communications from your asteroid bases, or arrange commercial flights, or queue up production and research orders.

[Uraniun235]

Do you want realism or do you want fun and consistancy?

Those don't have to be exclusive, but at the same time they don't have to depend on each other either; this is a personal taste thing, really.


Myself? I'm a big space opera fan, so I'm totally cool with having space opera concepts like starfighters and deflector shields. But I think there's also room to discuss how a realistic space combat game could be done in a way that's both fun and accurate.

One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.

Or just go all the way and make it turn-based. The best fleet combat game I've ever played was Begin, which managed to be just as frantic as a real-time game - and it didn't even need much graphics, either

Ehhhhh. I like to watch the battle unfold. One of the reasons I loved the PDS mod for Homeworld was seeing the big battlecruisers open fire and just hammer the shit out of their opponents. I'll grant that turn-based would probably enable as much detail and fine control as one wanted, though.

[White Haven]

What I'd love to see would be a turn-based game that then, after a battle was finished, would take that data and use it to output a real-time view of the battle, done properly so it's not 'Lol that cruiser just right-angled because it moved one square left.'

[clone1051]

One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.

Isn't Sins of a Solar Empire sort of like this, but with the big picture being real-time as well?

[Dooey Jo]

How about a game where you have real-time fleet engagements, but before every battle, you get an assessment of the enemy forces and then you draw a battle plan telling which ships to go where and do what. It could look something like the mission map in TIE Fighter. You set the points where your ships should be deployed, and can draw paths which they should follow, and what they should do when they get there. Things like "fire broadsides here" or "wait until these other guys join up, then fire at will". They could also have predefined tactics they could use if they can't carry out their orders, like "defensive" and "aggressive" and such stuff (there could also be a scripting system, so the techy people could write their own advanced tactics).

Then, when you're done, you press the big red button that says "ENGAGE". The war drums start going dum dum dum and the fleet goes to lightspeed and the battle is on! Wait, war drums? I mean space drums. Then you watch the battle unfold, and if everything starts going to hell you can issue new orders, but since the fleets are supposed to be pretty huge, it will be better to have a good initial plan and coordinated efforts within the fleet. Of course, one should also be able to start playing without a plan. This shall be called the "holy fuck" mode.

[MoralCompass]

What I'd love to see would be a turn-based game that then, after a battle was finished, would take that data and use it to output a real-time view of the battle, done properly so it's not 'Lol that cruiser just right-angled because it moved one square left.'

Galactic Civilizations II did exactly this, actually, only it didn't display the result of the battle until after the real-time view was finished.. Not sure if the first game did this or not, though.

[RedImperator]

I think the Defcon model could work really well for either a hard sci-fi or space opera game. In fact, I think it would be essential for a hard sci-fi game, since real space combat is likely to be weeks of painfully slow and boring maneuvering followed by five seconds of all hell breaking loose.

[Samuel]

One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.

Isn't Sins of a Solar Empire sort of like this, but with the big picture being real-time as well?

Yep. Covenant or Stark can tell you exactly what they got wrong though. Essentially, they failed to make more than one strategy workable (rush, burn, Advance!). Wheter they will fix that or not is still to be seen.

[KlavoHunter]

I would love to see Legend of the Galactic Heroes be used as the basis for such a game.

[Losonti Tokash]

What I'd love to see would be a turn-based game that then, after a battle was finished, would take that data and use it to output a real-time view of the battle, done properly so it's not 'Lol that cruiser just right-angled because it moved one square left.'

Galactic Civilizations II did exactly this, actually, only it didn't display the result of the battle until after the real-time view was finished.. Not sure if the first game did this or not, though.

That's just a representation of the dice-rolling that goes on behind the scenes. What he's talking about is you play the battle out in turn-based mode, then the game interprets the events that took place and renders it cinematically. I think.

[Darth Tanner]

One thing I'm thinking is that maybe the game should be arranged like Rome: Total War; a turn-based big-picture strategy game, with real-time tactical battles. That way you don't have to deal with bullshitting together a silly resource and production system in game.

Sounds like you want Sword of the Stars. It’s coming up to its second expansion pack and I at least think its pretty good. Turn based galaxy wide strategy with real-time planetary scale fleet engagements.

sword linky

[Stark]

Or just go all the way and make it turn-based. The best fleet combat game I've ever played was Begin, which managed to be just as frantic as a real-time game - and it didn't even need much graphics, either

Begin would be slow-realtime or pausable-realtime in a modern context. Don't confuse 'is easy to make' and 'was 1982' with 'must be turn-based'. Turn based = you make no money.

Take hard-scifi ideas, set them on fire. You want a radar simulator, go play Harpoon 2, complete with authentic vector graphics! VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE!

You want a slow-realtime or pausable-realtime (for the lamers) game with the player involved in strategy, tactics and resource management rather than SHOTZ TEH ION GUNNNN. You want a complex and meaningful damage model that is both interesting flavour text and shapes the game away from hp-grinding. You want effective AI so the player doesn't have to micro everything outside his area of responsibility. You want objective-based play where winning is more complex than 'I killed all the badguys who mysteriously never decided to run away'. You want a big enough scale (range, damage etc) to be visually interesting but small enough to be involved and not a radar simulator. You want a series of mechanics that produce interesting results that can be discussed in the language of tactical discourse, instead of 'I FF on their DPS and ignored their tanks until my HoT got spiked'. Really, any slowish RTS with decent unit AI and a complex damage model would work fine.

You don't need a stupid worldbuilding exercise of meaninglessness, you arguably don't even need a strategic layer of any complexity beyond providing context and consequences to battle, and you don't need stupid names for everything. Tier 3 Hypervelocity Tri-Bauxite Spears = barrier to entry.

And no, nobody wants Sword of the Stars. They want a game that a) scales and b) isn't made by idiots. Still, better combat than Sins, lol!

[Ohma]

I would love to see Legend of the Galactic Heroes be used as the basis for such a game.

There is this, which looks hilariously impossible to actually play.


I would think that something vaguely like the Combat Mission games could possibly work pretty well. You give your ships orders each turn, and then after you click the end turn button you see the (hopefully not disastrous) interactions that result between your ships and your opponents over the course of the next minute.

Though you'd have to do away with/fix a lot of the crazy obscure/useless stuff that I remember the CM games having.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sounds like the end result would be DEFCON, but with the world map replaced with empty space and some odd shapes to represent spaceships.

[The Romulan Republic]

How about a game where you have real-time fleet engagements, but before every battle, you get an assessment of the enemy forces and then you draw a battle plan telling which ships to go where and do what. It could look something like the mission map in TIE Fighter. You set the points where your ships should be deployed, and can draw paths which they should follow, and what they should do when they get there. Things like "fire broadsides here" or "wait until these other guys join up, then fire at will". They could also have predefined tactics they could use if they can't carry out their orders, like "defensive" and "aggressive" and such stuff (there could also be a scripting system, so the techy people could write their own advanced tactics).

Then, when you're done, you press the big red button that says "ENGAGE". The war drums start going dum dum dum and the fleet goes to lightspeed and the battle is on! Wait, war drums? I mean space drums. Then you watch the battle unfold, and if everything starts going to hell you can issue new orders, but since the fleets are supposed to be pretty huge, it will be better to have a good initial plan and coordinated efforts within the fleet. Of course, one should also be able to start playing without a plan. This shall be called the "holy fuck" mode.

This is a good idea, given it allows epic real time battles while still making it possible for the player to coordinate things.

This also reminds me a bit of Battlestations Midway, a World War 2 tactical game I started playing recently. Unfortunately you don't get to set the whole battle plan before the fighting starts, but the game does include both a map where you can control the whole battle, and the option to switch to piloting a specific unit as well. I'd probably go with something like that.

[Mr Bean]

Your doing it wrong
You know what you really need? A Mix of Silent Hunter and Klingon Academy, that's right I went there.

So here's the game(For reference I'll give it a Star Wars theme)
You are Admiral Placeholder, you are in charge of the 122nd Imperial Fleet with it's newest Flagship the IMS Imperial Star Destroyer. Do well and you will be given more challenging assignments. Do poorly you will be assigned a Coverette in the outer-system chasing tariff dodgers and guarding unimportant Convoy's. You will have a selection of hundreds of randomly generated scenarios(Under "Simulations" for quick-play) plus a campaign and base difficulty with and an AI which will adjust difficulty on the fly or leave it static your choice.

Your viewpoint is via your flagship, lose it and you die but you have a lot of control over it, while that single Tie Bomber you have almost no control. You are also free to shift to flag to any decent sized ship(No Commanding from your Tie Fighter but you could from that Corella Bulk Freighter your assigned to protect anyway)
Engagements would be Homeworld style totally 3D space but with the additions of physical objects(Planets, comets, suns) Space travel would be much quicker to represent SW's speeds. Navigation hazards could be a great help or a great hindrance(Astriod fields forcing you and the enemy to slow down, comets which can be used for fighter or small ship cover) None of this planet off in the distance, it's there, it's big, it dwarves your ship and get to close and you'll be taking ground or space station fire if it's hostile.

Thus on your flagship you can step in and micromanage if you wish or leave it up to the AI Captain when to roll the ship(When shields are down on one side). As the Fleet admiral your job is to win the battle so a large number of formations and tactics is key. A combination of almost Football style playbook and SH style manual movement. Various ships have special abilities(Starfighter's, Superlaser's, gravity wells) Microjumps, everything. Fit it all in there.

[KlavoHunter]

I would love to see Legend of the Galactic Heroes be used as the basis for such a game.

There is this, which looks hilariously impossible to actually play.

Incorrect. I have actually played the demo of this, and enjoyed it very much, even though it was all in Japanese. It was very much playable, even without understanding the language.

I surely am missing out on the finer points of it, but if there was an English version of this, or an English 3rd party patch, I would buy it.

[JointStrikeFighter]

World in Conflict in SPACE

[The Romulan Republic]

World in Conflict in SPACE

How exactly would that work? Combat in space is taking place in a completely different environment. I suppose some elements could carry over, but wouldn't game play have to be quite radically different in many respects?

[Samuel]

World in Conflict in SPACE

How exactly would that work? Combat in space is taking place in a completely different environment. I suppose some elements could carry over, but wouldn't game play have to be quite radically different in many respects?

He means no base building, units that are balanced and vaired with powers, special perk abilities, the Soviet Union and the USA and a big FU to logistics.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Dont forget off map support.

"NEED 20TA FOR DEATH STAR STRIKE"

[open_sketchbook]

I wouldn't mind seeing a Warhammer 40k "realistic" (read: 3d space and full-weapons range) game, really just to see several miles of space cathedral spew atomic death into other absurdly baroque voidcraft for a few hours at a time. 40k could actually make a pretty good setting for that sort of game, because in system maneuvering takes a while, but not forever like in a hard sci-fi setting or instantly like in Star Wars-type settings, while FTL is a crapshoot. Basically, I see a TW style sector map where you plot the campaign, request and refit ships at the Navy bases, and so forth, and then an infinitely scaling, real-time (with time-speeding options) solar systems where you can battle and move freely. Planning a move would be a long-term gamble, and you are pretty much committed when you arrive.