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Original post by Ilaliya 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.

Why wouldn't he get promoted to a ship's captain if his fighter is less of a fighter jet, and more like a small PT boat? He isn't going to go from the PT Boat to the "Super Battle Carrier of Doom!", but he might go from the PT Boat to a Frigate or Destroyer, then onto a Cruiser or Battleship, and maybe onto a Super Carrier at the end of his career. Or maybe he'll go into special operations and take command of a smaller stealth ship doing recon runs?

Even officers in the Air Force and the Navy that get old and promoted eventually stop flying and start commanding from the ground where they can have the room to display all the data they need to do their job right. In the US Navy some of the top ranking officers assigned to a carrier's command staff are former navy pilots.

I to wonder how the pilot career tree would look like.
The Tree:
Start as noob pilot to career path to Ace (Elite)to Topgun instructor.
Branch, if your not topgun material optional go the PTboad route to a career of corvette captain.
Branch2 Instead of PTboat corvette you can go to a department what fit your training and expertise on a bigger captalship as ensign. work to head officer of department engeneer.

After some heroic missions you can get Captian of a lesser capital ship. like a Frigate and work up to heavy carriers or battlestars.

Somewhere inbetween this career tree you must go to the right academy for the right training.

So a path like this.
Fighter pilot core training earn wings.
Fighter pilot to Group leader. Not ACE. You must first have leading capability's.
Officer accademy.
Captian base training. BTboat/corvette
Specialize training. Engenering, weapon officer, security expert, etc.
full captain training. That more a allround training. Requierment for big ship captains. one specialisation and two base level training of crew roles.

So to become a captian you are at least a pilot. To run a small crew you must know some crew roles. In a 5 crew ship the captian do some task to. And there must be some skill overlap if member gets killed.

Some how you must be able to serve under a AI captain within the game. Not a easy feature.

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Even officers in the Air Force and the Navy that get old and promoted eventually stop flying and start commanding from the ground where they can have the room to display all the data they need to do their job right. In the US Navy some of the top ranking officers assigned to a carrier's command staff are former navy pilots.

It's a completely different job, from my imagination of a sci-fi world. You generally don't go from being an ace pilot to captain of an aircraft carrier. You go from being an ace pilot to training, and planning missions. The parallel I'm drawing is manned fighter = jet, capital ship = boat. But that's really not the point. My real point is that it's an entirely different game.

[Edited by - Ilaliya on September 5, 2009 3:19:49 PM]

Hey, glad to see someone working on a similar design! Going from fighter to cap ship is a very interesting challenge and I think you've identified the core problem. However, I think the problem arises in part from being too literal wrt the role. Yes, sure, there are many things the captain actually doesn't do-- firing weapons, raising shields, targeting incoming missiles-- but aren't these things fun? If they're fun for the fighter pilot they'll probably be missed by the player who makes captain.

Part of the trouble may be solved by considering perspective. Capital ship gameplay may be more suited to 3rd person, because in that perspective you can do slow and stately combat. Ships can then have firing arcs, strategic vulnerabilities, reload and fire times and varying movement speeds. I've seen this done well in the old Starfleet: Orion Pirates. I think fighters can also be done like this if you're willing to sacrifice some realism and go for a more action-oriented approach (my goal, anyway).

As far as the dreaded "two games" argument goes I think it can be solved if you're willing to provide uniform analogues that scale across ships. How can a fighter be more like a carrier? Well, one answer would be that there's no reason that a fighter can't have automated devices that it can deploy strategically, such as recon probes, combat drones, smart missiles or even allied fighters. A fighter could be more like a battleship if shield management and power distribution were similar functions across ships, perhaps with complexity increasing (or maybe even decreasing since larger ships might be expected to have more weapon options). If you do this the consistency will probably acclimate the player to larger, more complex ships without being totally shocking.

One final point: As far as the feel of being the captain-- why? You cite BSG and Trek, but unless you're making a science fiction game with adventure/RPG elements, I'm not sure it's wise to get hung up on "feeling" like the captain. Adama, Kirk, Picard, etc. all got out of the control room to do things, be it dramatic moments of interacting with the crew or getting their hands dirty on other ships or planetary surfaces. If you're not going to have any of that what's the point of trying to make the player feel like they're going to fulfill a role that's expansive when the actual gameplay you'll be engaged in will be limited to combat? (OTOH, if you are going for adventure/RPG gameplay, then ignore this point-- and keep me posted when your game is done because I'll be one of the first customers! [grin])

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Original post by Wavinator Adama...

When did he ever leave the bridge while acting as the commander of his ship?

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Original post by Talroth Quote: Original post by Wavinator Adama... When did he ever leave the bridge while acting as the commander of his ship?

I think the point is that he often hands things over to the next in command while he flies off in a Raptor. The ship's captain ought to be fairly replaceable - anyone above the rank of ensign knows enough to get the ship back to dry-dock, and certainly there are 5-6 senior officers capable of assuming full command.

If you think back to the age of sail, there are many examples of captains (Nelson, for one) leaving their ship in the hands of their first officer, while they boarded an enemy ship or led an amphibious assault against a shore installation, etc.

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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.

Taking that beyond training, your statement also applies to the battle itself. Again dropping back to the age of sail, you have a wide range of tactical and strategic decisions in the initial stages of the battle - but once you close with the enemy, about all you can do is decide whether to a) continue trading blows, b) break away, or c) board the enemy.

Option a must inevitably lead to one of b or c, b may or may not lead to c, and c always results in the battle ending. Not much of a decision tree [smile]

Well taking 17 century naval battle is totaly wrong. Even on land in tribe wars 10000 vc tribe leader show leadership to lead the attact. In that day you just must be a leetest slasher and there are enough in the tribe to take over. But wenn the leader falls. It get chaotic mid battle. But that was then. The higer the chain of command the leader keep back.

instead taking 17 century naval vessel.
Take the captian of USS Nimitz. Does he go out there to kick but him self. I do not think so.

The captain is the most experience person for the captain task of a full crew. NR1 is often de Next in line with some decent experience. But there can be large gaps. Next in line the experience can be to low.

So in modern warfare you don't put you high commanders in the front line.

In TV shows wich are most unrealistic and more Hero focused. It's very common.
For Captian also hero do special ops. Like Enterprise "with that dude from quantumleap" . Wenn dit he did advance combat training? That would be believable if he had MAKO back ground. But also a Mako image and apearance. "MAko" Startrek early Combat brach of military crew. in our time it would be Navy seals.

A good example is starbuck swat like hostage situation screwup where she shot Appollo.

Well Adama do get out wenn the going isn't tough.

A good example is wenn pegasus looses captain cain. And the first replacement had not much time to prove him self, but the second replacement wasn't captian materieal and wenn Appollo get 4th captain he trowen into the deep. And had to learn on the fly. Those are very critical moments.

Loosing your captian has a much greater impact. Aldo replaceble but a huge setback. Espacialy in mid battle.

There is also something like crew moral and trust in leadership.

How to make me feel like a commander: Instead of many smaller and simpler decisions you have fewer bigger and more complex decisions. If I play my cards right, the battle is won before it begins, Sun-Tzu style.

As swiftcoder said the decision tree isn't very deep. But what if you have to take much, much more into account in each decision? Thinking for two minutes twice is as much gameplay as thinking for one second 240 times (if I got the math right). Assuming the thinking is the fun part of course.

Think Chess. Or Poker. Real battles seems to be more like a game* of bluffing and risk management.

*) Calling battles games is kinda sick, but you know what I mean.

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Original post by swiftcoder Taking that beyond training, your statement also applies to the battle itself. Again dropping back to the age of sail, you have a wide range of tactical and strategic decisions in the initial stages of the battle - but once you close with the enemy, about all you can do is decide whether to a) continue trading blows, b) break away, or c) board the enemy.

I think what I'm trying to say is that a skillful player can take all information into account, correctly evaluate it and always take the action most likely to succeed. Including going into battle in the first place. A newbie might as well flip a (three-sided) coin. I'd play that game, shallow decision tree or not. :)

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Original post by Talroth Quote: Original post by Wavinator Adama... When did he ever leave the bridge while acting as the commander of his ship?

Memory's not as good as it should be, but along with the other examples cited wasn't he walking around on a planet that had some potentially dangerous temple that lead to Earth, along with the president? And didn't he go into a supply depot just to inventory weapons, almost get killed and have to fight a Cylon hand to hand (Kirk-style) in the very beginning of the series? In fiction they don't really make this stuff make sense-- there's no way that you expose your top leaders to unknown danger.

Yet we respond to the more personal involvement-- we find it stirring, and it tends to somehow confirm our significance in an age where most of us really aren't. What's worse, if you extrapolate the kind of combat action suggested by the OP along with current trends, it's only going to get worse. Why fight a battle in ships manned by flesh that can only withstand limited G-forces when you can likely design robots or remotes that can perform better and faster? Most fiction ignores this because it's not heroic.

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Original post by SuperG There is also something like crew moral and trust in leadership.

I think there's a lot of potential in this direction, but again unless its just numbers you're going to stray into stories and personal narratives, and that takes you farther and farther from pure combat.

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Original post by Kekko How to make me feel like a commander: Instead of many smaller and simpler decisions you have fewer bigger and more complex decisions. If I play my cards right, the battle is won before it begins, Sun-Tzu style.

This is a cool idea in theory but would it really translate to real-time gaming? In chess you plan far ahead but your moves are resolved instantaneously. I'm having trouble seeing how this would apply to two ships closing, firing weapons, deploying counter measures, etc. Maybe I'm only seeing the blow by blow gameplay, but if the battle is already decided before you engage because your positioning and resource management (or whatever) was so good, why sit through the battle? (Actually, on second thought there is that cool game being developed by Positech, Gratuitous Space Battles, which is all about pre-planning and then watching the fireworks, so maybe it would be fine if it were pretty enough).

A quick thought:

When you are piloting a small fighter or what have you, you are still working within the strategic framework of a larger ship and it's commander(s). The gameplay elements which are present in both scenarios are the strategic elements. If you allow the player to fly the fighters in the early stages, make the strategic aspects of the battles transparent to them, and give them more power to devise or influence strategy as they are promoted through the ranks.