Missiles don’t have life support on them and all that extra effecincy killing crap, the more a portion of a ship is taken by useless parts (the human) the less effective it’s going to be. I feel like it’s a reach to say piloted fighters would ever be viable in space combat at the ranges we’re considering for I:B, you’d just use remote control or AI or any number of other solutions.
But, is a game, and fighters are fun, so bring on the fighters!
Bombardements are best against immobile targets, and that is precisely what orbital defenses are.
In a realistic way, you can always swarm a static position with rockets or missiles or even hurling asteroids, after all. Of course, being immobile has its advantage: no need for all those thrusters. More space for missile launchers, defense, etc.
Still, if there’s no space fleet, even the greatest forteress is but a sitting duck.
I’d see the orbital defense only effective as a rally point / local protection (by local i mean a place with reduced angles of attacks) / small administrative center. And indeed, small ships can always manage to sneak through and go on the planet.
However, large structures and planets will add the effect of cover for the first (How many are they? All signals are just blurry …) and “far side” for the second (These rebel scum will never suspect this ;))
I don’t believe it does. At a 51:1 resource ratio, balance would only be achieved if the first 50 attacks resulted in the destruction of the B-2. The 51st guy gets through and destroys the city. That balances things out, requiring equal resources by both parties. That’s on average, of course. Some city attacks would only require 25-30 while others would require 70-75,
But that’s not an analog to a B-2 attack. It’s a Cylon wave attack, which is only entertaining for the one Cylon who gets through with the nuke. Everyone else groans and goes back for another ship and another try.
I consider it far better to let the 50 fighters attack the city and let each one do its own increment of damage before being damaged in turn and driven off, or simply destroyed.
That’s not the point in question. It is the combination of cheap fighters and powerful weapons.
The 50 conventional fighters that attack the city can destroy it because they (collectively) have an equal investment in the fight - and there’s no way that they can just get in a lucky shot and take out the city. Players have a nasty habit of making their own luck in games.
If there is something on the surface that ships need to visit repeatedly, then there will be a constant stream of ‘transition activity’.
Take your fairly stock RTS gameplay (or Unreal Tournament Onslaught) and run with that. The buildings from an RTS translate into cities or space stations or some installation on an asteroid or some such thing.
Instead of destroying everything that the enemy has, that infrastructure is organized into a support network. The goal is to gain control of an intact subset of that network. So some nodes can be destroyed, to deny the enemy of their use, while others should be isolated so they can’t contribute, but the resources needed to destroy them are saved. Still others can be captured, so that the attackers can gain the abilities of that node.
Then there would be rules to decide when a node becomes vulnerable to destruction, to isolation, to conquest, etc, per Unreal Tournament Onslaught.
From there, consider how an assault might go. Send down assault boats and their job is to destroy the city shields. Players fly down through space contested by smaller ships, land at the appropriate points around the city. Once all those points have been ‘captured’, the city shields drop and the big ships outside the atmosphere can blast the city to pieces. Meanwhile, the defender’s big ships have arrived to blast the assault force to pieces.
If an assault is on a city on an airless planet or a space station then the cap ships can get that much closer because there’s no atmosphere to keep them away.
A conquest would be much the same, but there would have to be some kind of activity within the city to take over control. Capture those points around the city, but leave the shield up. Instead, do some other game thing that declares a capture of the city. Said capture could be opposed by the defenders. Captures are more involved affairs, requiring more resources than just taking down the shields and blasting the city. Also, a capture needn’t involve capital ships.
An isolation might be a specialist task to break a link between cities. Perhaps capture the connection points between two cities and do ‘game thing’ to break the link. The connection will only stay broken until the opposing faction steps in to take it back. Think of that as more of a skirmish. Or a feint.
A big operation would involve trying to work in to capture an entire subnet all at one time - subject to the rules of which installations can be affected, etc.
While equivalent resource requirements might sound like a good balancing method, I think it’s too simplistic to work past the theory stage.
You can’t put offense and defense into a one dimensional chart, 100 defense vs 100 offense should be a relatively close match, but if your defense is an anti-capital railgun and the offense is a bomber squadron you aren’t going to be having a good day.
In an ideal conflict where your defenses are setup against exactly what the enemy is attacking with, yeah spending a few more resource points might stop the attack altogether, but what you choose to defend yourself with should be atleast as important as how much you spent on it.
I understand the issue with having a relatively cheap bomber blow up expensive infrastructure, but high risk high reward plays should be possible. A ratio like 1:50 is pretty ridiculous, I imagine that would be a scenario where somebody gets fired (out an airlock) for extraordinary incompetence and/or treason.
As far as planetary gameplay goes, small to medium space craft would be ideal for air support, and the rest of your post sounds pretty good.
Except for the bit about atmosphere keeping capital ships away from planets; unless pressurization standards are significantly different for large ships I’d think the gravity would be more of a concern. Of course the technical and gameplay issues of having a capital ship perform close air support are significantly more important than why and how they do or don’t.
The balance is on game time, not resources. In most games, resources usually equate to game time, but it is the player’s investment of his own time that serves as the means of balancing gameplay.
I disagree, per the above. If my team spends on the order of 100 hours building up a city, it should require an investment on the order of 100 hours to take it down. The game should not permit the city builders to build a city that is non-viable, and the game should not permit the enemy to throw some cheap asset at it to take it down.
The caveat there is if the city builders decide to take risks. Then other players can then exploit whatever risks they take.
Most important is that the game needs to let players know what risks they are taking.
Random piracy is not an observable pattern that allows players to determine their level of risk. A complex city building system with more built-in exploits than Windows Vista has the same problem. “Oops. You forgot to deframmitz your power stations, so enemies can bring in triple-hydrated Borz ships on alternate Wednesdays and take all your warehouse contents.”
I know that there are gamers who like that sort of thing, but I am not one of them. It is a classic war of hangars, where decisions around choice of systems determines the outcome of a fight, not use of those systems.
[quote=“Kenshkrix, post:44, topic:598”]
Except for the bit about atmosphere keeping capital ships away from planets[/quote]
Keeping capital ships outside of atmospheres is a gameplay design choice. Because the ships involved are FTL-capable with artificial gravity and all sorts of other unreal capabilities, restricting them from entering atmospheres is not a difficult fiction to build.
I consider it an excellent design choice because it ensures that capitals are not “do everything” ships. They do specific things, and they are not needed for their ability to blow up cities. They are needed to control space while capturing cities. That will likely involve blowing up ships.
I actually favor a fiction that has ships generally unable to affect non-ships. The larger the ship, the less practical it is. This turns out to be a very useful fiction to explain away lots of things in a procedural universe, such as why ships cannot make craters on planets, push aside the dust in a planetary ring, and so on.
I want to add one single thing to that.
I generally approve that bigger shouldn’t automatically mean better at everything.
But there should be certain circumstances where, albeit having a lot of drawbacks, there are rare situations for bigger ships to
I just oppose an invisible wall, immune targets or similar.
And yes. The only reason for that is because it would look cool. And I’m not ashamed to be simple as that sometimes.
Like a last stand for capitals, the chance of it influencing the game drastically are rare or insignificant, but the wow effect will be great.
As an example, an “annihilation game mode” is running on a server (I don’t oppose JB’s ideas, I just add variety). The fight is going on for quite some time and the last outpost on a planet is nearly destroyed. But in orbit the defenders manage to damage the attacking capital significantly. In this special ocasion the captain decends into the atmospheres, capital guns blazing (as said above, not doing a lot of damage to the outpost but still) hunted by the whole defending team trying to stop it. Finaly the ship crashes into the outpost taking it with it.
This action was insignificant as a bombing party would have destryed the outpost anyway.
But it surely was something special to experience. Call me romantic, whatever.
So I was rather busy in the past few days. Back to the discussion. (Only 30 posts to cover hm.) Although the last few posts were about resources and the game structure, I’d rather get back on the original topic of the thread, that is the realism and technology in the game and how that translates into game play. If I’m the one derailing here and not the other way around, feel free to split this into a new topic. 
If by personal, you mean something directed at you, no, not at all. This is a forum where we are expressing our views and debating them. I’d rather not get bugged down by personal stuff, I’m here for the gameplay (and possibly technology) discussion only.
I don’t really understand how you think this is a spaghetti argument. You missed missed my point apparently.
I never said infantry doesn’t get AT weapons. It’s just that your small arms are bad at killing tanks. There’s an important difference here. If you want to kill armor, you must make the preparation of actually taking the said AT weapon with you. But instead of dwelling on this simple example, let me construct a better argument then:
You are right, my point of “I’ve seen this done before” is not worth anything on it’s own, so let me bring a few examples: EVE*, ArmA, BF2: Project Reality, World in Conflict; to name ones I’ve played for a long time. (*EVE is kind of special because strictly speaking it uses straight up health bars and a single damage model, but if you look at the actual gameplay, it’s appropriate to say that, practically, certain kind of fits always lose to certain others) These games all feature the mentioned mechanic in some shape or form. You can see what I said previously in this post:
If you know these games, you might notice that they are all heavily (if not completely) focused on multiplayer. A single player not being able to combat all enemy types means that teamwork with other players (whose equipment and skills let them deal with other kinds) is necessary. So this kind of differentiation leads to more team play. You can also say that it does in fact make singleplayer activities frustrating at the same time. I’d personally not rate this as a big problem, since afaik both IB and the MMO are planned to be multiplayer only games. I see no point of multiplayer if cooperation nets no benefits. =)
Still, I must admit, getting into fights that you can not win because you didn’t fit your ship right a few hours ago is not that fun. So this brings us to the next thing: The information you have about others. Using the Battlefield 3 example, that game does not have information gameplay. Yes, you spot enemies, but you are fighting on a 4k by 4k map (?), you don’t really choose engagements. You run into someone, you start shooting at each other, one of you dies. The surviving guy runs into an other enemy in like 5 seconds. There are no long term choices involved in choosing who and where you want to fight. Therefore you are completely right, undefeatable enemies would be really annoying, and really unfair. But IB is supposed to take place in a whole solar system where your engagement range is within hundreds of kilometres at best (based on what we know about the game so far). Which means you can be really far away from things that you don’t want to fight. So suddenly our gameplay choice of creating asymmetric encounters leads us to new game-play elements: now you need scanner/information gameplay, which bring new items, and new ship types. This also means that teamwork just got even more important. Your fleet will need ships dedicated to finding out what you are running into, so you can choose favourable engagements, and avoid things that you are not equipped to fight against. This way the “oh my god I keep running into guys I can’t kill, this is so unfair” just became “you are bad at scanning, play better and this will not happen again”.
This is just a short part of what kind of teamplay and variety this brings (not on a “we want our players to do this” way, but in a more fundamental, game mechanic level). To wrap up with some personal preference, I understand that depth != complexity, and that complicated gameplay is not always beneficial. In my personal opinion however, the best kind of multiplayer gameplay is where you have to depend on others, and I don’t see this being a core part in a general space FPS. I’d be really happy if IB did not end up as a simple point-and-shoot dog fighter game. (Which is, like I said in the past, pretty much a CoD in space. Something that was done before countless times. I fail to see how the engine’s main features would benefit such a game, or on what basis could IB compete with similar games that are already out there.)
In the warp system where ships cannot affect non-ships, it is possible for a ship to become a non-ship by dropping out of warp. Getting back into warp is something that only a small ship can accomplish by itself.
If a capital drops out of warp while over a city, it’s going to literally drop out of warp. It will fall and hit the planet, possibly crushing parts of the city. It would be a waste for all but the most critically-damaged capital that was able to impact a critical section of a city. Or was the size of the entire city, I suppose.
So if the ship is already looking to “go down” and the city is a convenient target, it would be possible.
But that’s not INS’s warp system, so… shrug
I suspect they’ll have capitals rolling in to pound installations to slag.
I feel your pain. Especially frustrating if graphics have been created to illustrate the point. It might be me, but the first time it was discussed, there was much more unbridled enthusiasm. I just can’t be bothered to retype all the deeply detailed articles that I typed previously. Several of which would have been perfect for this particular thread. One titled ‘A Classless Society’, another specifically about the role of ‘Carriers’ and small craft. All I can do is rephrase what I remember from memory.
Being that these are not sea vessels, that whole paradigm needs to be tossed out. Folks, just quit vomiting forth that stuff. Space isn’t water and ships don’t float. and they ALL go fast, no matter what you think.
Larger spaceships should be classless.
This makes sense. There is no reason other than volume or serviceability constraints, that any vehicle cannot be used for almost any role. Even if it cannot do it as well as other designs. That sort of makes the “design class” system pointless. Especially if any game is allowing a modular system. A modular system, not too unlike EVE- Online is the key. The hull being just a container for parts. The parts would determine the role to be played. Build your hull out to be a freighter or a carrier or a battleship. It doesn’t matter.
Larger classes by dint of carrying capacity can perform many roles. This leaves the major limiting factor to be ship specifications. About the only specs that would matter are Mass, Internal volume, Strength and a few other limits.
Any large ship will have FTL as standard fit unless it is specifically built without one for special purposes…
Small ships require bigger ships to move around. Some people will hate this idea but you have got to put things in perspective. There is absolutely no need for large ships if small ships can do pretty much the shame. So many people who have wrongly concentrated all their spaceship fantasy goals in recreating Luke Skywalker’s adventures. Besides that, smaller spaceships should also be classless. Because they are so small, they will automatically be disallowed to take on the role only suited for larger classes. Mostly this is because of limits in Mass and dimension. Small ships will never go faster than small ships, but they’ll get to the limits of their acceleration faster and they’ll affect a course change faster.
Now the major question is, what role do carrier born craft have? The article probably defines it at least as well as I have answered before. The major being, there will always be a need for a human in the loop. Especially at greater distances when there is only a AI alternative. That is about the only real reason there should be a manned component to smaller vessels. This devolves the pilot a bit though. He becomes a bus driver. His cargo can be death or something more benign. the modifications to the hull would reinforce those aspects.
Because of the severe limits to the hull of a small ship, it is completely reliant on a larger ship for maintenance fueling and bringing it to a friendly port. It has to be that way or there is no point to most larger craft. Any gear stuffed into the hull of a small craft demands a trade-off that reduces it’s usability in something else. For instance, one will never get a bomb truck to be able to carry a load of death AND be a useful sensor platform. Otherwise, though. the vessels would appear very alike. It’s not unlike the direction modern combat aircraft are going in reality. No one can tell at a glance the difference between a F/A-18 loaded with bombs as opposed to loaded with Jammers.
Which brings me to another point. There are no fighters. The large ships are the fighters. They are designed to wallop each other in titanic struggle. the small ships are the vessels that enable this to happen. That being said. Small ships are relegated to the role of interceptor, utility truck, bomb truck, sensor platform. whatever other roles that fit. They don’t generally carry ship killers as this then reduces the useful role of larger ships. * Who needs expensive big ships if one can FTL around with my wing of snub fighters carrying ship killers, right? * That is why small ships should not easily be capable of carrying much that can kill a ship outright. Unlike some here that think a Small Ship has some sort of inherent super-ability over large ships, there is nothing but it’s economic feasibility to put a man closer to some sort of action. There is no ability to sense better, carry more, shoot more accurately, or hell, even go faster. It’s just cheap for what it does. Carry a man.
Build your fleets based on those principles.
Small ships are:
Forward intelligent Controllers/Decision Makers.
Cheap method of sensor extension.
Economical bomb trucks.
Intelligent Interceptor
General Utility Vehicle.
A landing craft.
All of these are things that perhaps no drone or missile can do as well.
This means that any game should aspire to give the player a FTL equipped “large” ship as the first player owned ship.
I had skipped this post when you made it, but I agree with pretty much everything you said. I very much like the fact that you converge on the idea of ships specializing, where the result is a need to - and being able to - pick and choose their fights. The overall effect is that players are pushed towards the idea of cooperating and planning.
One gotcha in any specialization scheme is that there may not be anyone to interact with in that specialized way. This is just a reminder that every ship needs to have a share of general capabilities as well. An AT guy is still a rifleman, a driver, etc. He has a specialization, but that doesn’t define his entire existence. Nobody has suggested otherwise, but it is something to be careful about.
Hear hear.