You could probably do a sci-fi version of Sid Meier's Ace Patrol? Or move Crimson Steam Pirates into space instead of water and steam punk.

You're right though, in that I don't often see turn based space combat games, even the Star Fleet games tended to implement everything real time. I think there was a fairly recent re-release of one of those not too long ago, not sure how well it held up.

EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot, I think Battlefleet Gothic got announced a while back: http://www.pcgamer.com/battlefleet-gothic-armada-announced/

I started writing one, then the company I was working for went bust.

For a turn based space combat game to be fun on a computer, IMHO you need to add lot's of complexity to the combat system, but hide it in an easy to use GUI.

For example I made a big thing of sensors.

Ships could have active and passive sensors. Similar to modern submarines. Making the decision to go active became a very big part of the game.

For the player it's a single decision, flip the switch and you light up space with various emissions. In the game code it was far more complex.

Weapon systems had detection sensitivities and frequency ranges. Seeker heads had sensitivity and hardening which allowed for ECM systems.

I remember one test when my passive sensors picked up a vague heat source on my flank, so I went active and found a dozen missiles bearing down on me.

The AI had seen a flash of infra-red when one of my ships made a heading change, and launched a volley of heat seekers in the general direction.

When I went active I could see them and deploy countermeasures, but couldn't maneuver as that would have given them a hot target to attack.

I really liked that game, wish I still had the source code.

The thing is ship vs ship is far less exciting than soldier vs soldier (terrain, trenches, formations, visibility system, morale, etc). Anyway, approaching it as a traditional hex based tactical wargame seems to be a dead end.

I think the problem is failing to capture what's unique about space battles. It REALLY isn't the same. Maneuvering is fairly different than foot-soldiers: they can go any direction. Having ships committing to a direction limits their possibilities for turns to come, and gives the opponent a partial read into hidden information (making it, limited hidden information).

Likewise, having different "areas" (front, flanks, rear) and different weapon systems' firing arcs increases the importance of positioning and helm.

I am opposed to a HEX grid. I think the power of the PC is to make it a pixel-perfect movement environment based around the concept of maximum helm rotation capabilities (varies from ships to ship) and maximal acceleration (varies from ship to ship). Heavier ships could even "drag" as they turn, to simulate their lack of ability to retain inertia.

They made Panzer General's clone in space (it was Space General maybe?) but it got terrible reviews.

I'll look it up, but given it may have been a mediocre game, I'll add a "grain of salt" to my findings. Thanks!

You could probably do a sci-fi version of Sid Meier's Ace Patrol? Or move Crimson Steam Pirates into space instead of water and steam punk.

You're right though, in that I don't often see turn based space combat games, even the Star Fleet games tended to implement everything real time. I think there was a fairly recent re-release of one of those not too long ago, not sure how well it held up.

EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot, I think Battlefleet Gothic got announced a while back: http://www.pcgamer.com/battlefleet-gothic-armada-announced/

Thanks, I often find that naval games capture the essence of what 2D space combat can be all about. The theme may not be as exciting to me, but the mechanics are fairly similar (I know for a fact that X-Wing Miniatures' mechanics were borrowed from a naval game, and it works great for that game).

For a turn based space combat game to be fun on a computer, IMHO you need to add lot's of complexity to the combat system, but hide it in an easy to use GUI.

I fully agree. Part of me wanting to make this game is that I started with a system that is too complex though, so I'll still need to simplify it to make it effective.

Ships could have active and passive sensors. Similar to modern submarines. Making the decision to go active became a very big part of the game.

Currently, all of my systems can be on/off, and making them on gives you a bonus or added feature, but it increases noise emission and power consumption. Noise makes you easier to target, whereas power is in limited supply, and the source can get damaged, reducing total output, forcing you to make decisions.

I remember one test when my passive sensors picked up a vague heat source on my flank, so I went active and found a dozen missiles bearing down on me.

I trust there was fog of war involved? (aka, you wouldn't have complete information about the battle unless you used sensors?)

The AI had seen a flash of infra-red when one of my ships made a heading change, and launched a volley of heat seekers in the general direction.

Was that ship cloaked?

But as a designer, it's worth picking up for research if that style of gameplay interests you.

Has I been looking for 3D, I would totally agree, it does look interesting if only from a purely theoretical approach (I've watched a few videos).

I liked that it was not as 'noisy' as games such as gratuitous space battles can get (where you can't really tell why you've won or loss an encounter).

Any similar game in 2d perhaps? Can be very dated, I really don't mind.

Not that I know of, but my first (and only ) finished hobbyist project is a TBS space game focusing on ship-to-ship combat back in... 2009, I think.

Being my first game, it's rather unbalanced and unpolished and it's very slow moving, has hotseat only, no AI, no LAN or online play, so you'll have to control both sides to get a feel for it (just use a small map, two players, and jack up your resource-gain-each-turn so you can upgrade rapidly). If you have someone to try it out with, it'll be more enjoyable. And it is feature-complete - it implemented all I was wanting to implement (except fullscreen ).

I wouldn't hold my game up as some great bastion of design - but if you're just looking for ideas, my intention was to have ships of differing stages of tech research fighting each other. There are ten different levels of tech, and when you are at, say, level 3, creating a ship when you are at level 3 produces a level 3 ship, and when you upgrade further, it (intentionally) doesn't upgrade your old ships. Each ship can also purchase and install equipment (better thrusters, different forms of shields and beam weapons, warp drives, and so on), as well as redirect power to boost or weaken the different pieces of equipment (primary weapon, secondary weapon, thruster, shield, accessory) further attempting to increase the diversity of the ships fighting each other. Also, when ships get wounded, it has a chance of damaging their weapons or disabling their shields or thrusters.

It's not very fun because it takes so long to play a match (a three-player match took over an hour and a half, if I recall correctly), and because more powerful ships simply crush weaker ships (each step of power was too great a leap), but if you're just doing general research, maybe you'll think of an idea or two while glancing over it.

Hey Servant, thanks for sharing that. I'll have a look!

Always cool to bounce off ideas off other designs and get inspired.

After testing it, I totally buy the 'power management' system which is a bit akin to what I had in mind. That being said, I never quite figured out how to get research points at all (and I found that capturing an enemy planet was perhaps a bit too easy, as I could simply ignore their ships and go straight to the planet and capture it for the 'GG').

Also not sure what ship levels does aside from unlocking more ship parts? (which I could not use given I couldn't figure out how to generate tech pts).

Resources weren't balanced (I ad fuel shortage despite running only 2 ships and having over 7+ planets) but that's ok. I got the idea. I felt however that almost everything required the same static amount of each resource which made having different resources a bit mundane in this context.

Still, for a first foray into actual gamedev, that was a surprising little unpolished gem, thanks for sharing it with me :)

Thanks. The interface is a bit wonky when it comes to UX design. Tech points can't be generated or harvested, they have to be bought. You can right-click on the various resources in the header-bar to convert between them at a cost. Any resource can purchase 1 tech point for 350, or, by right-clicking on the tech point part of the headerbar, you can buy 1 techpoint for 100 of each resource. You can also make "trade offers" with other players, despite being at war with each other.

Also, if I recall correctly, you're unable to capture enemy planets if there is any enemy ship within X spaces of that planet. It's a very short radius though - like two steps. Even once the ship is destroyed, you have to wait an additional turn to capture the planet (I think), allowing the enemy to move another nearby ship into range to prevent capture. (But by having one your ships within 5 or so steps of the planet, the planet can't produce more ships, otherwise the enemy would just produce a ship during your one-turn delay before capturing). If these rules were explained clearer, so players understood it, it makes it so you basically have to incapacitate or destroy all the enemy ships in nearby space (within one turn's worth of enemy movement) before capturing the planet.

Ships can be temporarily "disabled" for however many turns you want, so they don't take any fuel costs while disabled. This lets you, in theory, park fleets defensively in locations in a disabled state to save costs, and if you remember to awaken them manually when enemy ships approach.

Different planet times given more of different resources - the purple are the gas planets which give the most fuel. Planets also very in size (tiny, small, medium, large, huge), giving more resources. Gas planets are slightly rarer, and what with the random generation of the planets (except for the four corner starting planets), it's entirely possible your solar system was badly laid out. On your map, you can see what type of planets are what (but unfortunately, not their sizes - oops) by toggling different map options (switching from coloring planets by owner to coloring planets by type). Because of the nature of the orbits, most of the planets are clustered in the center of the map by intention, to create a concentration of high-value resources in what would be a heavy conflict area.

Ship levels, if I recall right, also increase the (non-visible? ) base stats of the ship. Strength, defense, health. The jump in strength is way too high, if I remember right. Though I did some last-minute tweaking of that, during playtests, so that might've been adjusted some in whatever was the final build way back then.

It's a finished project, but not a well-designed one (plenty of good ideas, but poor execution and lack of iteration and tweaking of the design).

Thank you for trying it - I don't want to derail your thread anymore, but if you have any questions about the mechanics or design you're welcome to PM me about it.

Hey thanks, I'll give it a second look soon bearing that in mind. I really want to see how technology really affects the game.

I am opposed to a HEX grid. I think the power of the PC is to make it a pixel-perfect movement environment based around the concept of maximum helm rotation capabilities (varies from ships to ship) and maximal acceleration (varies from ship to ship). Heavier ships could even "drag" as they turn, to simulate their lack of ability to retain inertia.

Not that I think you're going to do this, but just as a caveat, I think there's a design flaw in a lot of turn-based tactics games with pixel-scale positioning. It's not just because of the (pseudo)continuous positioning, but because they so often combine continuous positioning and discrete weapon ranges. This means that during movement the player has to judge continuous angular distances between invisible hitboxes, and sometimes from a perspective POV, in order to know whether or not they can attack, whether they can fit into a gap in the battle, etc. So it's hard to even gauge the current possibilities of the battle, let alone possibilities a turn or two in the future.

So my maxim for things like this is "Continuous positioning requires continuous weapon efficacy", where a ship being 103 pixels away rather than 100 pixels away doesn't mean it can't be targeted. It might be a bit less accurate, or a bit less powerful, but there shouldn't be any actions that are 100% effective at distance 100 and 0% effective at distance 103.

(Apologies if that's obvious to you. I just mention it because it certainly wasn't obvious in the past.)

I trust there was fog of war involved? (aka, you wouldn't have complete information about the battle unless you used sensors?)

Not fog of war in the traditional sense. More a fundamental modelling solution.

A small signal (heat, EMF, gravity) at a long distance cannot be accurately detected at long range by passive sensors, so the game displayed a vague image rather than an accurate one.

Was that ship cloaked?

No. I didn't allow cloaking in my game. What actually happened was that ship was equiped with kinetic missile launchers. Kinetic missile launchers "throw" missiles in a general direction. The missiles then stay passive (engines and sensors off) until either they detect a target using passive sensors, or they have been in flight for a user controlled amount of time.

So launching them does not create a sensor spike.

I was lucky they had thermal sensors or the moment I went active they would have had me.