A new Star Wars game?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Just want to let you guys know that Utsanomiko knows what he's talking about. He's got about a dozen different games planned that he's been working on for about 3-4 years, down to the minor plot and game mechanics details.

[Bob The Great]

Just a few thoughts here. Wouldn't the addition of playable pirates/independants and the planetary management sort of conflict with the role of the player as a military officer? Not to shoot at your ideas, or anything, but I think it would hold much truer to both SW and a realistic military RTS to not have planets that answer directly to you. The same thing can be accomplished with regard to aquiring new ships and personnel, and refuling by docking at friendly planets or space stations and using an economic system built around experience points and contacts with high-ranking characters rather than actual credits.

The system you are describing would work perfectly for a small group of smugglers or pirates. Unfortunately, I don't think it would fit very well with the roles of either Imperial or Rebel fleet commanders. Fleets are supposed to be mobile entities. They need to be able to be called to any place in the galaxy at any time. But if their commanders are worried about protecting "their" planets rather than assisting with a major assault in another sector, this is not good. The tasks of planetary management, city and shipyard building, etc. in SW are all done by the Imperial Moffs or Rebel Governers, and it just seems kind of out of place to have Naval Admirals laying claim to a large number of planets, especially in the Imperial Navy.

Plus, a planet management system would require all playable sides to be balanced at the start as far as industrial holdings, shipyards, etc. This throws out the window the idea of the Rebellion being a small force, operating in secret from several basically worthless planets or covert underground groups on major planets, while the Empire is this huge monolithic entity that controls and has access to the vast majority of the galaxy's resources. The game Rebellion did things this way, and it was one of the failings of the game, imo.

It would be cool to be able to defect completely and start your own faction, especially after ROTJ, but then you run into the problems of supplying yourself, holding enough planets (as if the Empire is just going to let you start your own little rebellion somewhere), trading with other planets, building up your planets, replacing ships, etc. Plus, after a while, your planetary holdings would get very large, and it would be difficult to realistically manage them while commanding a battle fleet. I think it would be far easier to just make use of the existing infrastructure on either the Imperial or Rebel sides to keep yourself supplied.

Now, I can see missions, especially on the rebel side, where you would have to secure a convoy from a friendly planet, and escort it back to a base, or protect some mining operation or something to gain favor with a planetary governer. However, I think these ought to be scripted missions, not set up by the player himself, you know?

I definitely think that pirates, independant factions, and business conglomerates (Trade Fed style) should be in the game as NPC's, and how you deal with them should affect the game. Including, as in the example above, missions of diplomatic importance dealing with other factions, especially for the rebels, but for the Empire too.

The idea of co-op single player is really cool. That could open up a whole new dimension of replayability. Likewise access to goal-oriented missions in the instant action mode.

[Utsanomiko]

So, what is the scope of this game, then? I'm assuming they're not going for much beyond exclusive fleet-management (in other words, X-Wing Alliance with a different gameplay and perspective, with capitalship emphasis), so any RTS 'overseer' management and Escape-Velocity-esque suggestions are probably too different.

So then, if this game is going to be a tactical simulation game with heavilly-scripted missions, it wont stay popular for long. They'll run though the campaign once (twice, if they didn't find a friend to go co-op the first time through), do some Instant-Action games, and get bored of the repetition. But if the dev. team has some really solid familiarity with tatical games, then they probably already have a good idea as to what features need to be implemented to add that variety of choices factor in there. (sorry, it's late, and I'm drawing a blank for most game design terminology)

I guess the main point now (assuming that's the direction the team prefers to take) is how to balance the realism/accuracy of SW with playability. One one end, if every task is done by how a real Captain would do it, the game would be reduced to being unplayable due to the fact everything has to be relayed to and from lower-ranked officers, with little visual guides to correspond to player decisions. On the other hand, the 'overseer' perspective used by almost all strategy games provides an excellent perspective of all the goings-on of a given taskforce, and the results of decisions, but has little grounds in accuracy, and fails to provide a true simulation sense of it all.

But that's the obvious. Just thought I'd emphasize it at this late hour.
Good night, and Magical Sky Pixie bless.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

This game is first and foremost a military tactical simulator. When I said you have other vessels to command I didn't mean they would "belong" to you in the sense that they would be carried from mission to mission, it was intended to mean that they would be assigned to you for the duration of a mission, or would be sent in to reinforce you against an enemy counter attack. As for heavily scripted missions there would be a few (such as the battles of Hoth or Endor), but we would aim to write an extremely indepth random mission generator (not the usual go here shoot that) for making up parts of the single player campaign. Thus we would on the one hand have the battles everybody knows lovingly recreated in excessive detail, and on the other hand every time people played through single player campaign they could expect to play missions they've never seen before.

Having the ability to capture systems then bend them to your needs would seem like a good idea, but it would ruin the military simulator aspect of the game. For example if you hold say 20 star systems out of the 120 total you suggested, given the Empire at the height of its power is generally accepted to have had 25,000 Star Destroyers, imagine how many Star Destroyers alone you might have (100? 500? 1000?), that would rather ruin the idea of micro managing your own ship or, for that matter, even controlling individual battles when you have your own "empire" to build and manage (especially if its large enough to rival some of the post-ROTJ warlords). What would happen rather quickly is that it would become Imperium Galactica 2 or worse SW: Rebellion where you would send huge fleets of ships against your enemies huge fleets with little thought for individual Star Destroyers tactics let alone those of fighter craft.

[Connor MacLeod]

Hmm.. sounds like an interesting project.

To Aaron and Dolman: If you need a detail researched (canon/EU, or such) just PM me, and I'll probably be able to find it. I have quite a collection of research material to draw on, should it be neccessary. (which is probably useful, if you're researching from SWTC or SD.net, since both sites DO draw from both. And the website isn't *quite* up to date with everything.)

I'd suggest the only real details from teh EU you might be interested in would be technical or statistical. Just drop me a line

[Connor MacLeod]

This game sounds alot like Independence War 1 and 2, or the Battlecruiser 2000/3000 series (anyone remember Battlecruiser and its numerous incarnations? ) You control a single cap ship (sort of like in a flight sim, just its much much bigger than you'd normally want) or maybe a small squadron of cap ships (your "wingmates" such as it was) and perform missions. Right?

If so, it sounds like the first and foremost part is that commanding a single, big ship, and all the resources therein, is the Focus. Logistics might play a small indirect role, but it won't involve much "trade" like a game such as Wing Commander Privateer did. You probably receive allocations of supplies from HQ (probably same for both Rebels and Imperials) and if possible supplement it through bartering with other ship captains perhaps (scrounging, probably more common among Rebels) theft/hijacking, or bribery. Maybe Imperial Captains can shake down planets in their systems for supplies, too? (Give me food or I'll reduce you to cinders). Of course, if you waste supplies too much, ytou might have problems

It also sounds like you'd want it to be more open ended. Less story driven (which might be too inflexible - the others were right, that might limit replayability) and more career driven. What I was thinking of was a "network" of branching possibilities. Say you start at the bottom, with a system patrol craft. No hyperdrive, not much of a crew or armament. Your main duties migth be escorting/guarding transports insystem, patrols, fending off pirates, customs duties, etc. Do a good enough job and you might be promoted to another ship. Say an Escort Frigate. You're pulling convoy duty now, long-range patrols, escorting some starships as screening elements, or pulling more daring attacks (striking at pirate bases.) Then maybe you move up to heavy cruisers..engaging Rebels, mercs, and the like. Eventually working up to a Star Destroyer. Lucky captains might even command an Executor class

Of course, it doesnt have to be that linear. Maybe you're not an aggressive "ladder climber". You might like commanding corvettes, frigates, and light cruisers. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you rotate to differnt kinds of craft (Corellian corvettes, Corellian gunships, etc.) Maybe you become well known as an "expert" in your chosen field (gaining a measure of respect in a different fashion.) Maybe you devote more time to hunting pirates. Maybe you're more of an escort captain. And there could be dangers to commanding bigger ships (Anyone remember Captain Needa? Admiral Ozzel?) Larger ships can carry greater risks and more dangerous/important assignments.. where the chances of screwing up are greater. You might also try commanding carriers or interdictors. Maybe the equivalent of Acclamators in ground assault roles. Maybe you're assigned to a Dreadnaught or Victory STar Destroyer if you warrant a bigger ship, but aren't important enough to warrant an Imperator

In the Rebel side, things might be different. You start out by stealing/highkacking a ship from the Imperials, and seek to find more. You might be a privateer on an escort frigate, command a medical ship, run blockades in a Corellian Corvette, make specforce/commando drops/intelligence pickups (think tantive IV).. commerce raiding.. and maybe, if you command a Mon Cal Cruiser (or even a Home One type cruiser!) you'd end up engaging the Imperial Starfleet!

Of course, an Imperial Captain could always choose to defect to the Rebels at a later date. Although defecting with something like an ISD might be difficult!

I'd think that in keeping in line with the "Independence War" motif, the conflict is probably localized to a sector or part of a sector, rather than being across a large part of the galaxy (maybe even a few systems?). Working for a Moff or an Admiral in charge of the Sector fleet, who gives you your missions. (Or on the Rebel side, being under the command of the Cell Leader for your sector) Keeping it local simplifies things, and really, a Sector can be large enough to support such a game (easily dozens, hundreds, ior even a thousand or more systems per sector!) Decisions about ship allotments and assignments is not up to you, although you may be attached to a larger squadron (or have one attached to you) or even apart of a bigger group action... but you probably wouldn't command many ships directly (but you might still participate in larger battles.)

[jenat-lai]

I noticed some guys from

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Talking along these lines.... great ideas here too.

[Lord of the Farce]

One thing I can think of is AI that is challenging, but doesn't cheat. There's not much more pathetic than an AI that just won't stop chasing an obvious decoy even when under fire, and just as bad is when you set up a clever ambush, and the AI just goes straight for your real force like it's omniscient.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I was thinking of more realistic capital ship combat (instead of taking out "shield generators", oyu have to have a capship overload them). What were you planning for this game to be like?

[Darth Yoshi]

It has a nonlinear storyline, right? So that means that I can defect at anytime I choose!!!

[Mr Bean]

I'm thinking your Loyal Imperal Crew might say NO to that one Yoshi and shoot you

If your lucky that is...

[Darth Yoshi]

Yeah, but it'd still be cool to have that option. And who said anything about the crew? I'm thinking with a nonlinear storyline that you take lessons in running a Star Destroyer by yourself, then blast out of the shipyard.

[Mr Bean]

And who said anything about the crew? I'm thinking with a nonlinear storyline that you take lessons in running a Star Destroyer by yourself, then blast out of the shipyard.

Thats what the Storm Troopers on the Bridge are for

[Cpt_Frank]

btw you also need the absolutely crucial skelleton crew of 5000 to also defect with you, you can't run a ship that big alone (ever thought about stealing a battleship?).

[Connor MacLeod]

btw you also need the absolutely crucial skelleton crew of 5000 to also defect with you, you can't run a ship that big alone (ever thought about stealing a battleship?).

To my knowledge at least one Star Destroyer was hijacked. It was in the Bounty Hunter Trilogy by KW Jeter. A highly-placed stormtrooper officer defected and hijacked the destroyer (with help, but killed all his cohorts - I doubt he had 5000 helpers there..) to sell for spare parts.

Also, we learn that ships (at least in small ones) in yards like KDY appear to be navigable by one person using a tug (probably tied into the ship's nav/control systems via slave rigging. Recall that a full slave rig can allow a single person to control a whole ship.)

Of course, manuvering it/running it and fighting it are two differnt things. But slave rigging (tug-towing too) probably would suffice for the sublight/hyperspatial control needed to hijack it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Of course, I suspec tthat Hijacking a STar Destroyer is one good way to make yourself a highly wanted felon. The aforementioend example from the Bounty Hunter books also proves this (the Bounty on the stormtrooper officer was high enough to warrant Boba Fett's interest, which must be high indeed considering the kind of Bounty Hunter he is.)

[Bob The Great]

Whether or not a hijacking like this can be done doesn't necessarily mean that it should be done. With regards to the game, probably the best way to handle selection of sides would be to simply have a defection decision point, maybe where you are approached by a Bothan spy or something, and you have to decide whether to remain loyal to the empire and turn him in, or defect, along with several of your key officers. I highly doubt that in a "real life" situation, you would get away with an entire battlegroup, or even a single ship, given the number of convenient coincidences necessary to allow a single person (or a small group) to set up the kind of slaving rig everybody's talking about, and not have it be overridden elsewhere in the ship, etc.

Remember, SW ships are not built like ST ships. Systems are distrubuted as far apart as possible, have multiple redundencies and security measures, and commands from the bridge can be overridden manually at local points. I don't think it would take long for your chief engineer (assuming he's not one of the officers in on this defecting thing) to realize what's going on, cut power to the engines, and sound an alarm.

I think after this decision point, the player should end up with a random pick of his officers (since it's almost guaranteed that all of them won't defect) and no ships. The rebels would then fill in the gaps in your staff with their own officers, with comparible experience levels, and give you command of a small battlegroup, maybe with orders to complete some mission that will prove your loyalty to them.

This eliminates the problem of having large imperial ships fighting on the rebel side, and forces the player to adjust to a slightly different command staff (as in "rl") I know, I know, the Neb-B frigates are imperial ships, so are the Correlian Corvettes, but those are older small ships, and it may be possible for a team of infiltrators to nab those from planetary defense fleets and such. The Imperial Navy would be a very different story. Nevertheless, I don't think it's a good idea to have the player bring a bunch of ships with him if he defects.

non-linear storylines are pretty cool, but in this game, it seems like it would be better to have certain key points along the storyline that cannot be ignored or come back to later. Defection would most certainly be one of these, as would key battles or other incidents that heavily affect the storyline.

[Utsanomiko]

Alright, so most likely this game will be a pretty solid Tactical Simulation. I didn't see that untill Aaron Ash cleared it up later, so I just ploped down the first suggestions of gameplay that came to mind.

So what kind of games in this genre are you familiar with? I haven't played or read about many, so I'm not sure what features or choices need to be emphasized for this type of game.

What kind of control scheme are you guys planning to implement, besides the concept of 'walking around on the bridge and giving orders to officers and helmsmen'? Since the current design seems to revolve around receiving ships and equipment as per the mission, most choices will probably involve modifying ship formations and firing orders. What are your plans as to giving players a sense of varying choices and results if that's done via bridge orders? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how intuitive and useful will you make the realistic control scheme be under the game's limited choices. I'm not saying it's not possible, but let me ask the question using the 'Critic-Who-Doesn't-Get-It' perspective for a second, and see how you defend or re-define your design:

"So the player has to go tell one of eight different guys to toggle a specific system or order on that ship, which might only have five different settings, maximum. Why not put that all into one menu bar: eight buttons for each system, five for each setting. Most developers that make the game be played the 'hard way' do it when the game sucks; if it doesn't have any good gameplay options for the player to choose, they just make them harder to choose. So what's so fun about playing your game the hard way?"

Basically, I want to know if you have some intuitive device in mind that you haven't mentioned, or have an idea to implement that will innately make the gameplay entertaining and useful, that isn't inherent with the basic bridge-command scheme you've outlined.

That's about it for now.

[Bob The Great]

well, it seems to me that balancing realism and playability will be one of the things that makes or breaks this game. I agree that giving orders individually to various crewmembers, at least by having to walk over and talk to them won't fly. It would be very difficult to give multiple orders in quick succession and respond to changing combat situations.

I like the idea of a menu bar for control. It could be made effective and intuitive, and could even be rationalized as carrying around a datapad, or wearing a command monocle or contact lens. Hell, it could even be just a method of managing your own thoughts, and then using voice acting the convey the message to the appropriate officer.

Probably, most of the formation setting, goal assignment, and the like would be done in a breifing room prior to the start of the actual battle. This way you could have detailed control over things, including goal setting, formation setting, event timing, triggers, nav points, personell and resource assignment, etc., without having to worry about the situation changing as you try to implement your plan. I think this should actually be the most important part of the battle, as a crummy plan will leave you trying to micromanage all of your ships in realtime combat, which won't work very well, especially with large fleets on each side. This would really mean that good tactics and good planning would win missions, not seat-of-your-pants piloting and lucky coincidences.

During the battle, when you are actually on the bridge in command of your ship and fleet, your carefully laid out plans would unfold on their own, with you being able to set limited additional goals or orders on the fly. Here's how I think this should work.

A couple of thing should be visible at all times during battle: a brief damage report on your ship showing critical systems status', a box showing fleet status (maybe just names, class, and color-coding the show damage), a box showing the selected friendly target (or group or friendies) and a box showing other selected targets. This would work kind of like the command system in MechWarrior 3, where you could assign overall goals by deselecting all friendlies and giving the order, or give a goal to a specific ship by selecting it, selecting another target, then giving the order.

There should also be a menu system that you can mouse over to expand to more options. *side note (this will tell you how much of a nerd I am) : i actually spent most of my geography class last week designing a bridge interface for exactly this purpose.* You would have several major catagories (helm, gunnery, fighter command, fleet command, ground assualt, and some others) and would have various commands under each one, including a detailed management screen for each catagory (these detailed screens would require you to leave your trusted officer in command of your ship until you returned). For example, fleet management would have options like attack selected target, defend selected target, disable selected target, board selected target, ignore selected target, cease fire, proceed with goals, reform around flagship, retreat (hyperspace out), go to nav. point (would be set in battle planning), and a preset formations menu. Ground assualt would be somewhat simpler with options like launch preplanned assualt, recall assualt, and go to detailed ground assualt control. Btw, an orbital bombardment screen could be integrated into the gunnery control menu. Once you chose any one of these options, a voice actor could deliver the commands to the appropriate officer ("Have the Thunder target that ship.")

Navigation would be the most difficult I think, especially since absolute distances are pretty useless in space. Perhaps a system using nav points set up in the planning phase combined with some generic nav commands (90d. port yaw, etc.) and a limited manual control mode (maybe that would require you to be standing at the nav station and unable to give orders to your fleet or something, to keep people from overusing it).

It might seem like it would be difficult to manage all these menus and walking around and looking at a holo map, etc., but I think it can be done. Perhaps during normal operation, the player could move around the bridge at his leizure with a mouse/WSAD control scheme, then by holding CTRL he could use the mouse the access the menu system, and by holding SHIFT he could use the mouse to remotely rotate the holo-map. various other keys would be permanently linked to the holo-map (for selection, etc.). Maybe TAB could toggle between walk-around mode and close-in holo-map view (you may have to walk to the map). This would allow the player to move around realistically, and still have ready access to the menus and the map. Plus, if you wanted to know where a ship was relative to something else, you would need to glance at the holo-map.

Anyway, if anybody wants more detail on anything I said here, let me know. I can type up the stuff I thought of in geography class and post it. Right now, it's still in the margins of my notebook.

[pellaeons_scion]

Sounds great Bob. Post away, Id love to see this in detail. Sounds kind of similar to a Bridge Commander approach...but not so cheesy

[Bob The Great]

Glad you like it. Gimme a couple days, and I'll post the rest. I have a test tonight, so studying's gotta come first.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Sorry I havent posted in a few days but I've been moving into Uni and trying to get net access to work.

I don't have time to answer individually (internet costs 5p per minute in my uni...) but here's a few ideas I've had over the past few days: Firstly I thought we could make a handheld holoprojector like the one the Death Star was seen on in AOTC, this could be used for displaying very detailed readouts of different aspects of the ship (such as the status of each turbolaser or fighter etc...), it could also be used for displaying a map of the battle an issuing movement orders in a similar style to Homeworlds movement order interface. Another idea is to allow the player to press a number key to "snap" is view to a particular crewman and allow you to issue orders to him from any point of the bridge, this would be a simplified menu allowing only basic important commands and would be the equivalent to "shouting" the orders across the bridge.

I've got loads of other ideas but I'll develop them further and make a big post about them later.

[Cpt_Frank]

I don't have time to answer individually (internet costs 5p per minute in my uni...) but here's a few ideas I've had over the past few days: Firstly I thought we could make a handheld holoprojector like the one the Death Star was seen on in AOTC, this could be used for displaying very detailed readouts of different aspects of the ship (such as the status of each turbolaser or fighter etc...), it could also be used for displaying a map of the battle an issuing movement orders in a similar style to Homeworlds movement order interface.

Idea: On the bridge of an ISD there's a corner with holoprojectors which could fulfill this duty.

[Bob The Great]

Yeah, a handheld holoprojector would be sweet. Even better than a datapad, because the information could be displayed in your normal view of the bridge (without having to look down). Likewise with having access to detailed information on it like status of damage or repairs to specific points, a current detailed list of fighter and ground assets, etc. One thing, though; I think it should be a little bit heavier duty projector than the ones seen in TPM and AOTC. Those appeared to be little more than picture viewers and data storage, while this would need to be very functional, and IMO should be a little bigger to allow for a keyboard or whatnot.

However, I also think there should still be a large central map projected from the ceiling onto the bridge itself. I realize we've never seen this sort of thing on an ISD bridge (though there was one in ROTJ during the rebel briefing), but it seems like it would be the most efficient way to issue orders to other ships and to get an overall view of the battle. handheld projectors are good and all, but I see no reason to use one for map management if the ship itself can project a much larger and more detailed map.

Oh, hey! Idea just hit. --> have two maps, one projected over each crew pit. One map would display the local battlefield (in orbit around a single celestial body) and the other would show a system wide view. This would help immensely in coordinating multi-front attacks, or in quickly spotting and reacting to enemy reinforcements closeby. Again, yeah, I know we've never seen this on an ISD, but then again, we've never really seen an ISD in pitched battle either, so we can't say that they don't have something like this. The only time I can think of where they might have showed up was the scene where Admiral Piett shouts "Intensify forward firepower!" before having his bridge blown up. However, Piett didn't really seem to be commanding his forces at that point. He was just looking out the window, and could have had any projectors off.

Overall, maybe the handheld holoprojector would be most usefull as a means of getting detailed information about your own ship and as a secondary means of viewing the surrounding battefield (perhaps from a different angle or level of zoom than the main projector).

I also like the idea of number keys snapping your view around to focus on a specific officer, then maybe further using the number keys to enter submenus and choose commands(BackSpace to back out of the menus or ESC to drop them alltogether and respond to some other threat). This would be a great substitute for the mouse-driven menu system I outlined earlier, and would actually be faster too, once you learned to use it.

So, at the end of it all, here's my vision for command and control in this game. Ahem....

General walking around would be controled by the mouse and standard WSAD controls. You could walk around the bridge pretty much wherever you want (you're the captain after all), and wherever you get the best view for the moment.

Two main ceiling mounted holoprojectors would give a view of the local battlefield and system wide view, respectively. The zooms and viewing angles could be controled wth the mouse by pressing CTRL or SHIFT respectively to access each projector, then using a Homeworld style mouse camera control to adjust the view.

The local map would reflect the friendly and enemy selections made by the player (discussed more later) and the locations of goals and nav. points. Ships would likely be represented by icons or low-poly models (see reason below). Their names and the other ships in their batle line woud be shown upon selection. They would also be color-coded to show damage, and exchanges of fire/explosions would not be shown in detail, to encourage players to actually look out the window sometimes and behold the glory rather than live and breath inside this holo-map. I'm still a little undecided about whether this low-detail thing is a good idea. If anyone has any input, I would very much like to hear it.

The system-wide holomap would show fleet locations and rough compositions, in addition to planets, space stations, shipping lanes, etc.

The player would carry a handheld holographic projector at all times. This projector would have three main display regions, each of which could be expanded (by pushing out the others) for more detailed information.

The first would give information on the damage to your ship during battle, including a "schematic" view of your ship, listing a brief status for each of the critical systems. In expanded mode, you would be able to scroll through all of your ships systems, including all support craft and ground units, and view the status of repairs, set limited repair priorities, and generally micromanage stuff.

The second display would project a view of your selected friendly target or group, including general damage (shown as a color-code on the ships name) and current orders. In expanded mode, you would be able to view detailed damage reports for a single ship.

The third display would show a view of your selected enemy, neutral, or other non-friendly target. It would display shield and hull strength and known damaged systems (much of this information may be inaccurate due to the nature of war, but it should give you a good general idea). This last view would not be expandable because I can't think of anything else to put in it.

All together, I think these displays should take up roughly the bottom left 1/6th of your screen and should be visible at all times, unless you turn them off. A "3-d look" to them, along with some little hologram colored stuff below should be enough to remind you that they are indeed a hologram, not a permanent part of your vision.

The number keys would snap your view to an appropriate officer, and bring up one of the following menus, with the listed subchoices. Each of these commands that pertains to a ship other than yours will be issued to the selected friendly or battle group, or to all ships if none are selected.

Fleet Command (com. officer) - attack selected target, defend selected target, ignore selected target, disable selected target, board and capture selected target, cease fire, proceed with goals, recall all fighters (from that ship), reform around flagship, retreat (random micro-jump), go to nav. point, preset formations menu, go to fleet strategy room (would leave second in command in charge of the bridge). Choosing the strategy room would load a seperate room with giant high-detail holoprojectors, many different scale maps, 2-d extruded maps, homeworld style fleet controls, and oodles of stuff you can do. Note that this would not allow you as much control over your own ship, instead trading it for control over the others. This would be a good area to be in if your ship is on the outskirts of a system, not fighting itself, and you are commanding an assualt on the other edge of the planet; or if you need to redefine some goals or nav points real fast. However, this is a bad place to be if your ship is in heated engagements, because you wouldn't have the same options for your own ship as you would for other ships. This is purely to balance this aspect of the game and keep it from turning basically into Homeworld.

Fighter Command (Bay officer) - attack selected target, defend selected target, ignore selected target, cease fire, proceed with goals, reform around mothership (ship launched from), dock with mothership, launch all (applies to your ship only), go to nav. point, go to support ship management room. The support ship management room would not include battle maps and stuff. That sort of control can be handled from the fleet strategy room. The support ship management room would allow you to set custom mixed squadrons, including transports, landing craft, and shuttles, recall individual ships (as opposed to an entire squadron), set wing leaders, and stuff like that.

Ground Assualt (Imperial Army Commander) - launch pre-planned assualt (this would have been planned in the battle planning phase I talked about on the last page, before the battle starts), recall assualt (all ships), go to ground assualt strategy room. The ground assault strategy room would list all the availible ground units and resources from all ships at your disposal. It would have a large 3-d holo of the planet, with key cities and resources marked and color-coded according to allegience. Other projectors would have detailed 3-d maps of battlefields and key areas, allowing you to plan assualts, along with insertion and extraction points, set goals, choose commanding officers and what units to use, or modify goals, etc. in real-time battles in-progress. You would even be able to micromanage assualts, or have several going at once (with several good army officers commanding them). In this way, I think the true scale of a planetary invasion would be preserved, without making it impossible. Pacifying a planet should not be an easy thing, but capturing a bunch of key cities and natural resources should simulate it pretty well. Keep in mind also, that your ship can leave troops on the ground to fight for a couple of cities while you go and do other things, only to come back later to pick up your troops after a permanent team has arrived. Of course, this would mean that your troops would have nowhere to run if things got hairy, but that's the price you pay.

Gunnery (gunnery officer) - attack selected target, defend selected target, ignore selected target, disable selected target, board and capture selected target (yeah, I know, it's not gunnery, but where else to put it), fire at will, prefer support ships, prefer capital ships, cease fire, go to orbital bombardment room. The preferences as to support vs capital just means that given a choice your gunners will choose one over the other. The orbital bombardment room would basically allow you to choose a key location on the planet that is within your ships range (city, or whatever) and blast the shit out of them from orbit. This is a good tactic to soften up enemy defenses in preparation for an invasion, or to open up a landing zone for your troops. You could choose saturation fire (turn everything into smoking rubble), military targets (fires on troops, guns, defenses, and military installations), civilian targets (fires on power plants, waterways, bridges, highways, etc.), or free targetting (allows you to set specific targets to be destroyed from an orbital scan). Of course this would all be useless if they have a planetary shield, unless you happen to have a torpedo sphere!

Hyperspace Navigation (Hyperspace nav. officer) - emergency retreat (random micro-jump), jump to hyperspace nav. point (preset in planning phase), hyperspace jump room. The jump room would basically let you jump wherever you wanted in real time. There would be a certain ammount of time neccessary for your ship to calculate the jump path (with a blind micro-jump, it would be negligible), and your ship would immediately disengage any targets it was firing at and orient itself for the jump. This would allow you to jump back and forth between two battles or two planets in the same system, to drop off fighters or troops, or update orders to a battle line, then jump back to fend off some rebel attack elsewhere. The scale of the jumps, I think is very important. You should be able to jump from any one body (planet, moon, etc.) to any other, or just to some point in space. However, intersystem or intersector jumps would take too long and any battle you left would be over by the time you got back. Garrison moons and the like would actually be important, since they are close enough to the planet to reinforce it quickly, and so an assault on that planet would like have to take out the moon first, or launch a simultaneous attack. Multi-front attacks would also be feasible. You should also be able to time your arrival at a place (more on this later under pre-planning).

Sub-light Navigation (nav. officer) - pitch (generic 90d. port, etc.), yaw (same), roll (same), go to nav. point, go to selected target, hold, manual control (requires walking over the nav. station), go to set orbit screen. This last command would pull up a model of whatever body you are near on your personal holo-projector. It would temporarily get rid all other images from the projector and almost fill your screen. Here you could set the path of your ship's orbit, its velocity, and its altitude.

Before each mission, you and your officers would meet in the fleet strategy room and set up a plan of attack. The options here should be very diverse. You should be able to assign ships to different battle groups, assign officers to command each ship, redistribute ground units, set formations, set nav. points (which are very important, unless you want to manually pilot your ship all the time), set hyperspace nav. points (regroup point, etc.), set goals for each battle group, adjust the timing of things (ex. when the second arm of a pincer jumps in) and set triggers (ex. when reinforcements arrive, move to this nav. point).

Anyway, that's my vision. If anyone has suggestions, or if I left something out, feel free to say so.

[Utsanomiko]

Well, Bob, those are some pretty good ideas, as well as good priorities on good, functional gameplay. I'd chip in some more, but quite frankly I'm out of ideas for this stage in planning, and I'm busy working on my own game designs, as well (had to abandon one recently, as I couldn't come up with an original story/setting for the gameplay to reside in. Unless anyone wants to work on a strategy simulation for Neon Genesis Evangelion, but i'd rather do my Warcraft III mod first. Busy, busy...)

I'll check by tomorrow night. Once again, good ideas here, and don't forget Imperial Torpedo Spheres! Those things are a must in orbital bombardments.