I'm designing a space-themed game in which the player will work his way up from flying smaller ships and eventually command large, powerful starships in fleet battles, alongside allies. I think this is an exciting premise, but I foresee a problem in its implementation: what should the player actually do during combat in such a situation? For smaller ships, this is an easy question to answer - aiming and firing weapons, dodging enemy fire, and so on. But when it comes to large capital ships, these basic functions don't scale up well. Manually aiming weapons really isn't the role of a commander, and more importantly, a large battleship ought to be covered in turrets that are capable of simultaneously firing in multiple directions. That really is a task that ought to be handled by your ship's AI, since a human player can't focus his attention in several directions at once. Movement isn't as engaging, either. For gameplay reasons and physical plausibility, a large ship ought to maneuver much more slowly than a small one. The commander should have control over this, but it probably won't consume much of the player's attention - just set in a course and leave it alone for several seconds at a time. I feel that a good answer should be satisfying to the cinematic expectations of the player, but, looking to film and TV, it doesn't seem like those famous fictional captains really do much during combat. They order shields raised, torpedoes and cannons fired, and fighters scrambled and given objectives, but those seem like mostly automatic actions, not difficult decisions that will entertain and engage the player. So if you were playing a game that put you in the equivalent of the captain's chair on the Enterprise or Galactica during a fleet battle, what would YOU want the game to enable you to do? Some possibilities that come to mind include: * directional shield management, so positioning becomes more strategic * deciding when to activate limited-use abilities, like AoE flak screens and missile salvos * special powers, like EMP torpedoes, that require thoughtful application * fighter squadron micromanagement * electronic warfare, like deciding whether to use an ability that reveals both friendly and hostile cloaked ships in an area * "commanding the rest of the fleet" might not be a bad answer, but I want the player's focus to remain primarily on his own personal ship

Some things to think about.

The biggest role of a Captain of a ship, or any officer on the ship, comes well before the battle actually begins. Your own training, and the training of your crew tend to determine if you live or die at sea. Setting ship policy and training, choices you make that affect the risk you take.

Take the Battle of Jutland for example. There were standing procedures for how fire control doors were to be opened and closed to insure safe handling of explosives for the main guns. These were safe, and should have worked. Yet still they were partly ignored to increase the rate of fire for the main guns of the battle cruisers, and are the most likely cause of the ship's total losses.

You have lots of critical, strategic choices that you have to make as captain. Position with in the fleet, which ships do you target, when do you fire your main guns? Do you have limited ammo? Limited power? How about massive energy banks that store excess reactor power while out of combat, but your ship can fire faster than the reactors can recharge your power bank? Do you reduce flak cover on your own ship to provide better protection from small craft attacking a more valuable ship in the fleet?

Your ship has just taken heavy damage, and a fire has broken out in a section. Seasoned crew members are still in the section. Do you risk the ship to save the valuable crew, or blow the air locks and snuff the fire? Forward weapon batteries and aft shields are down, do you split your engineering crew and repair both, or just one?

What all these questions and choices boil down to is that if you start your game as being in control of a single seat fighter craft, your end game capital ships are going to be radically different. You move from a seat of your pants fighter where you can blow up with a single lucky shot, to a colder, more thought out strategy game where you can stand up for some drunken boxing with other capital ships.

You should take a look at the latest implement of a Space Sim with similar gameplay features - Nexus: The Jupiter incident. Over the course of the game the player is given better and better ship, and during the course of the game the player is sometimes given command of other ships.

Over the course of the game, the player will have alot of things to do. Example, maneuvering the ship(s) around, as different weapons have different effective ranges. Depending on mission objectives you may need to place your ships to protect some transports effectively.

Let's take the context of a current day carrier battlefleet, each ship in the fleet has its role in the overall formation.

The carrier acts as a floating airbase sending aircraft for combat mission, ASW destroyers are responsible for preventing an enemy sub from attacking the convoy, Aegis cruisers are responsible for anti-missile and anti-aircraft role. Just focusing on the task itself will be quite challenging for a player.

If you want to take a WW2 surface fleet in context, then you probably have a squadron of destroyers tasked with defending the battleships/carriers/convoy, positioning the ships will take a lot of time. A commander in charge of flight missions and operations, planning the schedule (refuel, take off, patrols) of planes is going to take a lot of a person's time.

So it is up to you to define the role of the player and what the player needs to do over the course of a mission.

A few quick ideas:

1) Managing the crew. I've never really seen this done in a space game and it could be an interesting angle. More of a before and after the battle task than during combat itself, but it will still have a big impact on the outcome of battles.

2) Fighters/drones. Not necessarily micro-managing them, but it could be a strategy game type feeling, or at least add an extra dimension to the gameplay.

3) Setting ship priorities. Should the guns concentrate on intercepting incoming fire (if possible) or attacking the enemy? Attack enemy fighters or capital ships? How much power should go to shields/weapons/engines? That kind of thing.

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Original post by Talroth Your ship has just taken heavy damage, and a fire has broken out in a section. Seasoned crew members are still in the section. Do you risk the ship to save the valuable crew, or blow the air locks and snuff the fire?

I love this, that's brilliant.

I think, as people have already said, you would need to focus on the strategic side of battle. Obviously you would have the small laser guns firing constantly, but if you have a massive turret that as 1min cool down, choosing when to fire and at what could be important. If you could come up with enough strategic decisions throughout a fight, then it could be just as interesting. Maybe having your shields up is a major drain on all your resources so you have to choose when to have it up. (Or even in the context of the larger game, do you focus on protecting key areas with it)

I suppose the easy answer is you go in to a smaller fighter ship and control that as per normal except you occasionally have to make decisions for the bigger ship. However, this some what defeats the point...

Convincing the player he's commander of a starship?

Well i would think about this.

Space ships would be a sub fps level, the size of a space ship. You can walk around, in FPS style. Where you obviously can go to a bridge. Where you can take the captain seat. But also your replacement officer Nr1 / 2 / 3, depending how big ship and crew is, can do that. The seat wich would have some top level touch screen. Wich each offer high level command menu's. In front of you you have the main sensor big screen. With zoom capabities.

That wil give you some Captain of a space ship emersion. It feels partly like running around normandy in Mass effect. Exept it won't miss the bridge feel. There you go to 3000AD series. Or Xseries capital ships.

The gameplay isn't as fast as fighter combat.
You can take some pounding. that makes it more slow pace and more tactical. But time is still of the essence. And each hit you take set you back. You can target systems. wich makes the combat more tacical. But your need enemy ship build intell. To get te most out of it. Tactical officer experience will help get the odds prefere your ship.

I think there is one rule to take in mind. The Player is the Captain. Not the whole crew. In a time where you have Battleships in space. You don't have to aim like in WWII. There is fast auto tracking. The people who coördinate it. Can do alot them self. So Captain only give higher level orders as target priorities. And battle tactics gameplay.
Also turrets come in many sizes and also effectivness agains specific targets.
Experience crew should know that and act acordingly. No baby sitting crew!

Wat does a captian do. Command its officers, who command ther crew under them.

The gameplay would be communicating with officers on bridge who are resposible for a specific task.

Example the pilot at the helm. Get a menu specivic to the situation. something like crysis fast Hud menu. If in deep space. there wouldn't be a dock option. But in combat you can give some evasive pattern commands. That it! No player flying. Flying is done for you.

The weapon officer communication menu can give you target priority's and act acordingly. you keep track of progress of battle and adopt acordingly your tactical options.

The gameplay could extended to boarding ships or counter boarding.

Optional if on a mission a task is crusial. And the captian have high level of experience with this task. Due to his career past before becoming a captain.
He can take over. But in that case nr 1 take al other captian task over.

in such case you get advance menu to do very specific things. Like the weapons and tactical screen. To guid the schooting yourself. This could be common if your ship is small and have a smal mostly un experience crew. Who don't get the most out of your ship. Like your first non critical missions in a corvet size ship with 10 man crew. in the mean time your nr1 AI takes over al other captain task. Wenn you are dedicated to that crusial task.

I also do have thinkin about a similar kind of game.
My insparations comes from Xseries Startrek fleet comander universal combat.

Crusial point I think are the menu screens and crew AI, and captian officer interactions. Then making those destructable FPS level like space ships. Problem is, bigger then corvettes or massive fleet balttes. Don't go well together with such detaild and interactive ships.

This is not something for beginners to start with. And you have to make hard choices. but it's the game kind I like the most.

So to put in fleet command feature. RTS gameplay. That forces gameplay with many bigships. How ever carrier gameplay would be more doable. You get partly a RTS like gameplay. But specivic one. Carrier gameplay.
You can have more fighters active in game then lots of bigships.
Plus you have the most basic part of RTS style of gameplay, in game to extend your game to fleet gameplay.

It could be solved to get the interactive detail lowerd and more abstraction of obvoius behavior. The higher level RTS battle the more abstraction is needed.
You would be in Fleet tactical room doing admiral stuf. This room give you a projected hologram interface like Homeworld game has. The minute you activate it. it takes over your whole screen and you go from FPS like view to RTS like view. your ship is controled by a very experienced AI nr 1, avoiding front line battle. As the flag ship is the command center. And dealing effectivly with directed enemie attacks.

I recently bought a board game called "Wings of War". In this, the payer has a set of card that are manoeuvres that they give to their plane (it is a WWI/WWII aircraft dog fight game). You could do something like this.

Have the player as captain be able to give orders to their crew (eg: pilot) that are like the cards in Wings of War. These "cards" are manoeuvres or tactics that you want the crew to do.

So an "order" could be: Immalmann manoeuvre: The ship does a half loop up and reverses direction. Or it might be: Target Forward Shields: Gunnery crews focus their fire on the selected enemy's forward shields. And so forth.

Each crew position would have a set of such orders that the player can "play" on them and the crew tries to perform them to the best of their ability. The player would never run out of these, they could only have one order given to any one crew section (and the player might be able to section off sets of crew as they like before the battle - or even during the battle).

This way, the player can play these orders as needed, but they don't have direct control over the ship. They have control over it's crew.

As others have mentioned the shift will likely be from action to more logistical/management styles of play. You should try examining some simulation games like Silent Hunter 3 or Battlecruiser 3000AD and see how they handle command positions, although you should be wary of BC3000ADs interface.

Quote:

Original post by Vivarium I'm designing a space-themed game in which the player will work his way up from flying smaller ships and eventually command large, powerful starships in fleet battles, alongside allies. I think this is an exciting premise, but I foresee a problem in its implementation: what should the player actually do during combat in such a situation?

You hit the nail on the head with this. What you are really talking about is two completely separate games (with distinct mechanics). So why not split it into two games, that interact with the same game world? It's not like the star fighter pilot gets promoted to being a captain of a capital ship anyway. He gets promoted to a wing commander. It's the brash young ensign fresh out of the academy that makes captain one day. How does he do this? By becoming a department head (engineering, security, astrometrics, etc), and moving up the chain of command by not dying and saving the ship from time to time. It might be interesting to combine these (perhaps through multiplayer?). But I would design them as completely separate entities.