I am trying to come up with a system that will perform space combat simulations with out the player heavily involved. My thought is that the player is in the role of a ship mechanic and would not have a lot of control over how a fight progresses. But he can have an effect on the out come if he designs a ship well. I have tossed around the idea of have the player make general suggestions on how the ship should be used (i.e. long range or short range). But I really would like to find a way to incorporate the actual gun placement. For example: if player a builds a ship that has high powered long range weapons on the right side and all of the armor on the left the ship would soon be shot to pieces. However if the armor was placed around the weapons on the right side the ship would survive many more battles because the right side would be the only side the pilot would show the enemy. Of course the ship would also move in a strange way unless the ship was balanced. I don''t want to end up with a mini RTS game in the middle of my building game. So… are there any novel ideas on how I can accomplish this?

an old RTS game called 'Deadlock' used this system. You controled an alien empire, each with streghts and weaknesses and you decided what you would build, including troops, and where to send them. You clicked the next turn, and the results of your decisions showed. If an enemy building or troop was in the same block as yours then a battle would happen.

They had AI for this, levels for the units and the usual unit type advantage, like you used a plane agains an anti-aireal defense building, it would lose quickly but three planes could take it. I think you can still download a trial version, google for it.

EDIT: How about making the player able to design the behavior or the ship he builds? don't make it like programming or too complicated tought

[edited by - Coz on December 11, 2003 7:50:22 PM]

There is a series of books called the nights dawn trilogy which has an interesting concept for space combat.

Basically all ships carried a large complement of combat wasps. Combat wasps are like guided missiles with a load of submunitions in them like nuclear bombs and kinetic missiles (giant bullets). The cool thing about them was they also had AI. The combat wasps could be fired offensively or defensively. In fact a standard tactic was to fire a wasp at an opponent, they would have to fire three in return to neutralise it. If the attacker kept this up, the defender would run out of combat wasps and would be capturable.

I think this could suit your game. You hava unique captains who''s skill at combat decides how they use there wasps, use probability to determine how many wasps hit, determine damage.

The idea of the non-interference building game sounds a lot like Starfleet Starship Creator.

In that game, you created your ship, with crew, and sent them off to die to do missions. You had very little interactivity, you just watched them warp around and fall into blackholes and hit asteriods and stuff, but the premise was really interesting...

Kudos if you get your version to work.

"Insert witty quote here to take credit of." ~Mushu.

I looked at reviews of Star Trek Starship Creator (STSC) and pretty much everyone said it sucked. The biggest complaint was that after you designed your ship you sent it off on a mission and watched it blow up. EVEN THOUGH this is much like real life, I am rethinking my idea of no control over combat. My own experience from games like moo3 shows that I always control the combat (even with its inherently crappy controls) because I hate it when things go wrong and I can''t fix it. Now, before I turn my post into a rant about moo3, I still want to have a game based primarily on design.

STSC allowed people to design ships but only on certain chassis. All of the ships with that chassis looked the same. In the real world you can take a chassis and make it look however the heck you want. Sure the wheels will be in the same location and the weight of the vehicle will be limited but the body can change drastically. I want the same effect in my game.

It would be best if this was just a side add-on to a MMO space shooter, but I am realistic enough to be quite happy with a solo, non-internet, non-multiplayer, even non-real time, game. (I set the bar low so it looks like I jump higher).

My goal is to create a game where unique, well thought out, designs are given the highest reward. Unfortunately, I am having trouble finding the path to reach that goal.

Just take all the aspects of MoO3, change them, and you''ll have a good game.

I tend to agree

I hope this works out for you. It''s a very good idea, but the implementation will be difficult. Good luck.

This to me is a great idea, and a genre that has not yet been realized. To do it justice you''d need some form of physics engine. At least a crude one, and a rather intricate collision detection system. The nearest game I can think of where you build things and then let them battle it out was something called...MindRover, I think?
Basically you have a chassis with a certain number of module slots. You can then take different modules, like thrusters, sensors, weapons and the like, and rig them together with a logical AI system. For your example you could do away with the AI logic system and use direct player control.
Figure you could have the player buy a chassis, with the price increasing exponentially with each additional module slot. So you could have massive capital ships, but they would be rather costly. Then the player can add armor modules around the outter edge, all contributing a given amount of mass depending on how thick they are. Then add thrusters and weapons inside those. Your ships speed would be dictated by how many/how powerful the thrusters are, and how much mass they need to push around. F=ma and all that good stuff.
So, in your example, the player that puts all his weapons on one side will lose them as they are facing the enemy and are not protected by armor plate. Also his ship will steer terribly as all the mass is concentrated on one side.
On the other hand, if he can make it controllable by positioning his thrusters in some crazy manner, then he could possibly concentrate fire from all those weapons, then swing his armored side around to deflect attacks. Such are the trade offs of ship design you''d like, yes?

Enough of my ramblings..what was I talking about again?

That is exactly what I am talking about. I was thinking about having the player just design and the computer do the fighting but I realized the computer or the program wouldn''t know how best to use each unit. I am starting a new thread on just that issue.