Starstriker1

Join Date 03/2006

A proposed combat system for GC3

includes prototype

[edit: File has been updated so that the resolution isn't fixed to 1024x768]

I apologize for the length of the following post... I can't seem to help myself! I'll try to format it so that it's a bit easier to read.

Anyhow, I've been giving some thought lately to the combat system in GC2. To be honest, it's pretty dry... simple to understand, but it doesn't allow for a lot of variety or very interesting interactions between ships. It's pretty easy to find dominant strategies: just load up the largest hull you have with the best weapons and a proportionate number of defenses, and you have the most cost-effective, dangerous ship you can build. There's no need for mixed fleets, using different hull sizes, or even mixing up defenses and weapons (though I recognize that the latter is by design), and the battle viewer just isn't that interesting to watch... round after round of ships randomly flying in circles and hammering away at each other.

The system I would propose instead is more of a simulation of the combat instead of such a high level abstraction of it. Before I go into more detail, I realize that Joe Schmoe rattling off on an internet forum about what would make the "AWESOMEST GAME EVAR" is not particularily convincing, and that untested ideas are worthy of a fair bit of skepticism.

To that end I've prototyped my ideas for a GalCiv3 combat system in C++ to illustrate how they'd work out (you can grab the .zip at http://www.mediafire.com/?elmbc7r4zip.) It's 2D, but it still gets the point across. Since I neglected to stick a README into that, I'll put the controls up here:

Use CTRL+L to load one of the predefined scenarios at any time
Click on an object to have the camera follow it. Click on empty space to make it stop following.
Mouse wheel zooms to cursor
The - and = keys control the playback speed

You can also create new scenarios and change the weapon/ship definitions if you'd like... the file formats should be pretty straight forward (plain text, edit them in notepad, etc.), and this post is going to be monstrous ENOUGH without a tutorial for them!

Design Goals

A deterministic system... given the same seed and the same starting conditions, every battle will always end exactly the same way. The test.txt scenario in the files linked above is an example of this... the battle always ends in the same configuration, regardless of playback speed or framerate. While not currently implemented, the battles could be entirely simulated without any rendering going on as a "skip battle" feature.
Encourage ship variety
Make the battle viewer more interesting without having to create a "director" that attempts to spruce up a more abstract system
Make nods to the realism hinted at in the tech descriptions
Make battles more unpredictable, so that outcomes feel less preordained

Implementation

Ship Movement

The playing field is an infinite space, where every major gridline (which has 10 subdivisions) represents a single lightsecond. Ships have a maximum speed (currently set to 0.01c) which mainly serves to keep them from getting into relativistic territory and removes most edge cases where the simulation would "hang" because two opponents were having trouble catching each other. Aside from that, movement is handled completely by newtonian physics, with a maximum acceleration determining ship agility.

A wrinkle in here that I've experimented with: every ship is assumed to be doing evasive manuevers to avoid incoming projectiles, and this is factored into most weapon calculations as an abstracted feature. Long story short, a quickly accelerating target is hard to hit at a distance if the weapon itself has a slow projectile speed.

Don't worry about the large distances and high speeds being problematic: it's all "under the hood". Ships and weapons fire are rendered large, the realism is only there to provide an underlying consistency to the simulation.

Weaponry

I really liked the GalCiv2 dichotomy between beam, kinetic, and missile weapons. However, I think it should be tossed up a little bit. The three basic weapon types should be in a rock/paper/scissors dynamic with each other: beam weapons can shoot down torpedos mid-flight, mass drivers will overpower beam weapons, and mass drivers will provide no anti-missile capabilities. This encourages ship and fleet variety, as a fleet armed with only one type of weapons will be easily countered.

I would also suggest light, medium, and heavy versions of each weapon, with the heavier weapons being more effective versus large targets while the lighter ones are better suited to taking out smaller fighters and corvettes, further encouraging variety in ship design. I'll explain how this would be achieved shortly. I've also experimented with a couple "odd" weapons. In the .zip, most of the heavier ships are armed with "Interceptor Missiles" which are high speed missiles with low yields, but the ability to take down enemy torpedos... it's really cool to watch, and they do the job pretty decently!

There are a few other wrinkles in the system that I have implemented in my simulator: beams and mass drivers have a chance to miss the target depending on the target profile (ie, how much surface area there is to hit), the projectile speed, and the maximum acceleration of the target. Beams will almost always hit, but mass drivers will miss a great deal at long range against small targets. Additionally, missiles spawn their own object when fired which then must obey newtonian physics to reach its target... once it gets close enough to the target, it deals its damage. Finally, beam weapons may be almost perfectly accurate, but their maximum damage degrades linearily over range. It's usually still enough to take down missiles at a distance, but closer range is preferable for dealing damage.

Defenses

Again, I really liked how GalCiv2 handled defenses. The only thing I've changed is to remove the off-type defenses (since they were a complicating factor that didn't make a lot of sense... how's chaff going to throw off a mass driver?) and to remove the concept of "defense degradation". Every weapon hit needs to go through the armour/shields/point defense fresh.

This effect has the result of making weapons with higher per-hit damage more effective against well defended targets. As long as the defenses (shields, armour, point defense) are all too large to mount on the smaller ships, the larger vessels will thereby be characterized by their strong defenses. Heavy weapons will have the damage-per-shot to break through this, but the light weapons will mostly just glance off. On the flip side: lighter weapons will be most cost and space effective, so you'll have to bring lighter weapons to bear if you want to take on smaller ships effectively. Balanced correctly, this would strongly encourage the use of multiple hull sizes, since your dreadnaughts wouldn't be cost effective versus the swarm of fighters with anti-capital ships weapons! However, care must be taken to not allow ships to bring their defenses to too high a value, since without defense degradation it would become extremely difficult to pierce them with anything... a few points of defense will go a long way.

In the simulator I've provided, I've also implemented a concept of "weapon neutral armour" that defends equally against all weapon types (and presumably would be less cost effective). However, experimentation has revealed that it just doesn't work... it doesn't add anything useful, and different weapon types tend towards different damage outputs (ie, 3 points of deflectors are going to save you more HP than 3 points of point defense, since beam weapons tend to do their damage in small hits while missile weapons deliver one big blast.) The same effect would be better achieved by simply allowing components in GC3 to improve multiple defense values in differing amounts.

While I don't doubt that this'd make strategic decisions more difficult, the AI on the simulation side is surprisingly simple. The results I've already got are more than adequate, and in my case the ships are following a few simple rules:

Move towards the opponent with the lowest percentage of their health remaining
Aim to pass that opponent on one side at a distance that allows most of your weapons to fire
Fire your weapons at any enemy that gets within range, regardless of whether or not they are your target
Anti-missile capable weapons like lasers prioritize enemy missiles as targets

One can easily imagine extending this to formations or flocking behaviours, or even race specific tactical personalities.

Potential Problems

The typical battle takes about 800 ticks (where 1 tick represents 4 seconds of "in-game" time), and that can be calculated very quickly. However, I've seen battles take upwards of 3000 ticks when two ships are unable to do damage fast enough. At some point, there will need to be a cutoff where the battle is simply left unresolved, and any surviving combatants get to live for another day.

Processing time is also increased over the GalCiv2 combat system. While it can still be resolved in only a few seconds in the most cases, it's still something to take note of. Ships loaded down with missile launchers can make things a little laggier!

Potential Extensions to the Concept

Detailed stat tracking during the battle is one thing to attempt: what types of damage are crippling your fleet, average survival time of a specific ship class, etc are all very useful tools for adjusting ship design and fleet composition.

Also, I haven't really looked at how "escorted" ships like troop transports would be handled. Having them flee the battle while everyone else fights would cause its own problems, but keeping them in the battle would mean they'd be vulnerable to a chance flyby... my guess is that the best thing to do is simply to keep them in the fray and let them potentially be destroyed. However, this is something to experiment with.

Congrats to anyone who made it through that monster of a post. I hope you like the prototype... I had a ton of fun making it!

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Galactic Hunter

It gives a very interesting result, and I would love to see it applied with the graphics and... well... 3d-ness of GC2. However, I'm worried the various interactions between attacks, defences, and other factors might make the combat system a headache.

Also, the problem with that kind of system is that a balanced approach will never be as efficient as a focused one. Let's say a balanced fleet, with attacks against big, medium, and small ships as well as weapons of all weapon types meets a fleet with, say, all beam weapons? Sure, they would be more vulnerable against mass drivers, but since that's only a third of your fleet (and that another third completely sucks against that enemy), it means overall they come out even in combat. Where the advantage is, however, is out of combat: by focusing on one weapon branch, you are miles ahead of the competition in terms of damage output, and so you win every time against a balanced approach.

One last concern: it gives rise to incidents where the AI just says "Gotcha!" to the player because he guessed wrong on the composition of the enemy fleet.

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Starstriker1, I didn't download the exe but belive you. My compliments for not only providing ideas but also try to make them real. Also looks like you went through it to look at all possible implementation problems.
Hope Stardock will take-over your ideas and, possibly with help from you and the forum, converge to a 3rd gen battle system. I'd take as a model curren naval ships battles.
BTW, you can't say "I really liked the GalCiv2 dichotomy between beam, kinetic, and missile weapons." It's a trichotomy...

B4_life, what you say is a proof that alternative strategies can be developed.

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Well, GC3 will run on the engine for non-MoM, so we'll have a huge overhaul there alone. How about we worry about the combat system for GC3 for when we see what the gameplay is for not-MoM (aka DaD).

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However, I'm worried the various interactions between attacks, defences, and other factors might make the combat system a headache. Also, the problem with that kind of system is that a balanced approach will never be as efficient as a focused one. Let's say a balanced fleet, with attacks against big, medium, and small ships as well as weapons of all weapon types meets a fleet with, say, all beam weapons? Sure, they would be more vulnerable against mass drivers, but since that's only a third of your fleet (and that another third completely sucks against that enemy), it means overall they come out even in combat. Where the advantage is, however, is out of combat: by focusing on one weapon branch, you are miles ahead of the competition in terms of damage output, and so you win every time against a balanced approach.

While that makes sense, it doesn't seem to be how it plays out. The disadvantages versus weapon types you aren't equipped to counter is pretty pronounced... even if it's only a third of the enemy fleet equipped with said weapons, the damage that that segment will proportionally inflict is huge, and the rest of the balanced fleet generally has no problem picking up the rest. To top it off, the different weapon types seem to have a synergistic effect. A mass driver/beam fleet would seem like it has a disadvantage against a fleet with missiles (as opposed to an all beam fleet) yet what actually happens is that the lasers shoot down enough missiles that the mass driver ships can close with the enemy and rip them a new one.

I don't forsee many "gotcha" moments, so long as the strategic interface gives a brief overview of a fleets capabilities (and the option for more detail).

Also worth noting is that even in battles that have an obviously dominant force, there's a lot of potential for the underdog to do serious damage or even win... while those chances aren't high, I've still seen some remarkable upsets where, say, an all beam fleet has mannaged to eke out a victory from an all mass driver fleet. You can't take the battle results for granted, which I think is pretty cool!

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Troop transports in the real world are both moderately armed and moderately defended. They generally are resistant to most small arms fire, but anything larger will be a problem. Why couldn't you do that here? Equip them with light defenses and some type of strafing offense (I'm assuming their primary attackers would be fighter/bombers, not capital ships). They need to be hearty enough to get the troops into battle safely, but not so strong as to affect the battle's outcome beyond the ground attack.

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True... it'd also help matters if the transports were not single vessels, but groups of smaller ones.

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I haven't actually downloaded your file, and I am too lazy to read through all of these posts, so if there is a repeat of something, dont pay attention.

First of all, if you want a magnificent combat system for GalCiv3, take an example from Sins of A Solar Empire, and then improve upon it. The combat system for that game is wicked.

Second, the ground battles are FUGLY (that's Fucking Ugly to anyone who wishes to ask). Really, I have seen better graphics and gameplay come out of my grandmother's ass (not that I've ever seen her ass, and furthermore, I wouldn't want to). They could at least improve/mod this system into letting you choose strategic targets for your mass drivers, choosing the epicenter of the earthquake that causes the tidal wave, and above all else, let you choose where the hell you want to place your landing party (or the places where you would put your landing parties if you were using a fleet planetary attack system.

If there is someone out there that read this who does modding, please try my idea then send a message to Extant Faora or my E-Mail address.

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First of all, if you want a magnificent combat system for GalCiv3, take an example from Sins of A Solar Empire, and then improve upon it. The combat system for that game is wicked.

It's also built for a real time strategy game, which makes it completely incompatible with a galciv game. Besides, I always found those battle uninteresting to watch unless you set the camera to follow a strikecraft, as everything else stayed completely immobile and just hammered on each other with whatever they had.

Second, the ground battles are...

...not relevant to this thread?

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What I meant by using the combat system from Sins of A Solar Empire is that you should make it look epic the way it does in that game. As in having the ships flying around and getting into strategic positions with the computers help (and everything going along those lines). However it would be nice as well if the whole ship combat system was the only Real Time Strategy part of the game

. That way it would be even more epic!!!

Actually getting to control your own ships would be AWSOME!!!

No more unnecessary casualties

(the AI would do the same thing of course

)!!!!!!

Hope this clears my idea up!!!

LET'S RAGE!!!!!!!!

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...tactical combat is a bit of a dead horse topic... there should even be a sticky thread on it.

Also, you might want to take a look at the files I stuck in. On top of more interesting ship and fleet design, making things look cooler was one of my main design goals.

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I'll see what I can do about checking out your files.
Until then.........
ROCK ON!!!!!!!!!

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I've updated the first post with a new file link. The newer build has projectile colours by team (to make things easier to understand) and interpolation between frames (which stops your eyes from bleeding at low tick rates).

Just for redunancy's sake, here's the link.

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Thanks, I'll download it sooner or later!!!

So RAGE!!!

Steve says you'll want to!!!

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...sorry, what? Please make just a little bit of sense.

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Just Rage.

It's all there is to it.

And Steve is a friend of mine.

He's crazee.

As am I.

Point is that you should Rage.

It doesn't have to make sense.

ROCK ON!!!!!!!

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Starstriker,

Well done on your simulator.

Remarkably, a friend and I developed a very similar thing about 10 years ago! Not that it was as nice as yours of course

My dream for the battle system is very similar to yours. Deterministic, but chaotic, and depending on the subtle choices made by the player in entering the battle.

To me, the key to gameplay will be aligning the R&D in the game to subtle changes in armor, weaponry, speed, deceleration, etc, which give the ships character, and a complete AI that is able to be controlled by parameters. What I mean is that before entering battle, or as an SOP before a turn, the player decides how he wants his ships to fight. He could change a bunch of parameters like:

- At what range should I open fire with missiles/beams/guns?
- What should I prioritise as targets?
- How aggressive should my fleet be?
- What spacing should ships keep between them?
- What should I prioritise in the way of movement?
- How low on fuel should I be before making my way back to a base / carrier?
- What damage must I take before breaking off?

All of these would just be numbers on a slider, which the player can set. The AI routines would use that number in key spots to decide what to do.

That way, a player gets control before a battle, but none while in it (remains deterministic).

This is a similar concept to that used in several existing games, although with other themes, and never done as well as I would like.

Of course, graphics technology and so on would deliver a nice interface and display of the battle. Too easy.

Combining such a battle system with an excellent strategic layer like GC would deliver a great game. Alternately, you could deliver an excellent tactical game, with a cut down strategic layer, something I have thought about quite a bit!

Cheers for giving it a go!

Hunter

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Also had a ball creating my own weapons and ship types, and trying them all out.

Maybe we could make Galciv III now and save Brad the trouble

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

The problem with a complex simulation with more input from players is that both human and computer players must have a clear understanding of what their input will do to change the battle. At the moment input is determined by the characteristics of the ships you send into battle, and it isn't hard to figure out that in the course of one battle, better ships stand a better chance of surviving. However one could also say that fleets of cheap throwaway ships with sufficient firepower can overcome even the best ships, despite being destroyed in the process.

Despite having fairly simple inputs for one battle, strategy in GC II requires the human player at least to consider what will happen if a recently victorious fleet engages in another battle (because so long as a fleet has movement points, it can continue fighting) or if an enemy fleet engages it next turn. You can't fight a war for long if you're losing military assets faster han you can replace them.

In other words, you need to take reinforcements or ambushes into consideration, unless the current limiting factor of fleets (logistics) is abandoned.

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Quoting Marvin Kosh,

reply 18

The problem with a complex simulation with more input from players is that both human and computer players must have a clear understanding of what their input will do to change the battle.

Actually, I think the player and AI should only have a vague notion of how their parameters will affect the battle. It can only be a 'guess' at some level. If you set missiles to be fired at range 10 instead of range 5, will that mean more effect or less? Well it depends on whether the enemy has set his ships to avoid missiles or to try and suck up the damage. I want a chaotic complex simulation, where 'just bigger and better' is avoided at all costs.

Of course, the point of research is to make things bigger, faster, more impact, more defence, etc. But these should be subtle changes, and complex ones, with many variations. Just for a ship's movement, I can think of slightly improving the: Turn rate, acceleration, deceleration (may be different?), maximum speed, others? For a weapon, you could slightly improve the range, damage, arc, recharge rate, accuracy, etc. If these changes are subtle, one cannot really be sure what will make the critical difference in a combat. Especially when combined with different tactics.

In other words, you need to take reinforcements or ambushes into consideration, unless the current limiting factor of fleets (logistics) is abandoned.

Sure. That is mainly a strategic factor though, not a tactical one. Different tactical stances (acceptable losses, etc) are required to meld with different strategic situations.

I wonder if Starstriker is still amongst us?

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I am, actually... just haven't checked these boards for a few days! I'd assumed the thread had long since died. I'd figured that I'd done a crappy job of selling the system, what with that text-dump first post and utter lack of screenshots. In fact, I just finished up a new, more concise pitch and a few screenshots last night with the intent of posting them right now... not sure whether I'll do that now. At any rate, a newer version of the simulator can be found at http://www.mediafire.com/file/jcosfko0ajo/BattleSystemPrototype.zip, which includes more scenarios, a couple bug fixes, and better chase AI for the ships and missiles (linear algebra finally came in handy!) Galactic Hunter, I've considered a lot of the things you've mentioned. My own inclination is to keep most of the low level tactical considerations (fleet formation, target selection, etc) decided by the ingame AI... possibly with per-civilisation tactical AIs to add racial personality into the fight. I do like the idea of some player input prior to the fight, but I think it should be kept away from micromanagement and more towards general strategy. Basically, let the player set fleet "stances" such that they'll act aggressively, conservatively, defensively, etc. If you added in a rule along the lines of "at tick #1000 all surviving vessels warp out and the battle is considered resolved", the aggressiveness of a fleet would become a very important consideration. By having it play defensively, for instance, you could have the fleet attempt to avoid as much combat as possible, ultimately causing the battle to cause less damage to either side. Alternatively, aggressive fighting would use high risk tactics that would attempt to finish the fight as soon as possible, whatever the cost in materiel. I don't think that micromanagement to the point of "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes" is necessary here, and might even be deterimental since it would be harder to understand. I agree that the integration of this system with R&D is extremely important. For instance, focusing on a single weapon branch would need to have diminishing returns, so that you couldn't get away with simply building a few godlike particle beams. Variety needs to be the key to victory, and having the ability to rapidly build up a tech branch such that it overpowers a player using a less monotonous approach is counterproductive to that. Also, there is a TON of fun you can have with this setup once you stray from the basics. For instance, in the stock definitions I've set up there are a couple specialty weapons: the light railgun and the interceptor missile. Both are built as anti-missile systems for mass driver and missile weapon types respectively that do a respectable job of the task, but at a cost: the light railguns are nearly useless as combat weapons if any armour is involved and have a fair chance to miss versus missiles, and the interceptor missiles are at risk of being hit by point defense weapons themselves. Similarily, the Plasma Beam weapon is a beam weapon that can't target missiles (since it has such a crappy refire rate) but has high damage to pierce beam defenses. In all three of these cases, you could forsee these weapons being spinoffs of their respective weapon branches on the tech tree, perhaps even race specific experiments.

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...the quick reply butchered my post formating. I hit the enter key in there a few times, honest!

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At any rate, a newer version of the simulator can be found at http://www.mediafire.com/file/jcosfko0ajo/BattleSystemPrototype.zip, which includes more scenarios, a couple bug fixes, and better chase AI for the ships and missiles (linear algebra finally came in handy!)

I like the new one.

My own inclination is to keep most of the low level tactical considerations (fleet formation, target selection, etc) decided by the ingame AI... possibly with per-civilisation tactical AIs to add racial personality into the fight. I do like the idea of some player input prior to the fight, but I think it should be kept away from micromanagement and more towards general strategy. Basically, let the player set fleet "stances" such that they'll act aggressively, conservatively, defensively, etc.

I think there is room for both levels. I see a screen full of parameters that I can set, per fleet, or squadron in a hierarchy (that is, set it for all, or a subset). If you want a particular fleet to be aggressive, to stay closer to enemy, or to provide escorts for another fleet, or to concentrate on anti-missile work, then you set it. I think there is some joy to be had in seeing small differences in settings produce large differences in tactical results. Especially in a rock/scissors/paper world which you are constructing.

Also, there is a TON of fun you can have with this setup once you stray from the basics. For instance, in the stock definitions I've set up there are a couple specialty weapons: the light railgun and the interceptor missile. Both are built as anti-missile systems for mass driver and missile weapon types respectively that do a respectable job of the task, but at a cost: the light railguns are nearly useless as combat weapons if any armour is involved and have a fair chance to miss versus missiles, and the interceptor missiles are at risk of being hit by point defense weapons themselves. Similarily, the Plasma Beam weapon is a beam weapon that can't target missiles (since it has such a crappy refire rate) but has high damage to pierce beam defenses. In all three of these cases, you could forsee these weapons being spinoffs of their respective weapon branches on the tech tree, perhaps even race specific experiments.

I agree there is a ton of fun there. I just see smaller increments than you maybe? I see an interceptor missile as one branch, with the ability to improve its damage, acceleration, turn rate, AI routines, recharge rate all separately. Many, many choices that way about what to improve.

Had some fun inventing my own weapons and ships. Would have more fun if I could set some parameters that influenced the AI and other things (leading targets, distance from enemy, bunching/anti-bunching of friends, etc).

There are of course many refinements possible. One would be to have damage inflict progressive random damage to systems (played starfire or Star Fleet Battles? Gosh I am old school!). A hit could knock out a weapon, or the ability to turn left, or reduce acceleration, etc, etc.

I can see the elements of a great tactical game

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Also interesting how the quality of the game changes with the ratio of acceleration to top speed. If you lower max speed by 5 or 10, the approach looks very different.

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I haven't experimented too much with the max speed... it's basically just there to keep the ships from entering relativistic territory. At 0.01c, it doesn't come into play often... despite the utterly ridiculous accelerations involved (something like 400-4000Gs... I did the math at one point.)

My thoughts on tech progression are similar... instead of unlocking new weapons with each tech, you'd, say, improve the yield of missile warheads, or build a range extender for particle beams, or introduce faster charging capacitors for your railguns. A weapon could itself be a combination of several researched components... maybe even designed or configured by the player! Lets also not forget the possibilities with race specific tech trees, which I'm sure any GC3 would involve.

Take this far enough and you could have a great tactical game for sure, though I'm inclined to keep that as minimal on the user end as possible. I'm not so opposed to user control as I am to micromanagement: discrete control options, for example, are preferable to sliders and numbers. This is proposed as a tactical system for a game that is otherwise strategic in nature, after all. It needs to be simple to control, and easy enough to disregard the details of. To me, "stances" seem to be the best compromise.

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The greater the fraction acceleration is of max speed, the more 'linear' and 'like a warship in the ocean' becomes the simulation. When the fraction is low, it shows off the newtonian notions more clearly, and fleets 'fly by' each other, pop off a few shots, and then turn around for another run.

When I increased acceleration, the ships look a lot more controlled.

I did some work on scale, and figuring out how big planets and stars would be using your scale.

Earth would be 4 little squares on your map in diameter, but be 50,000 little squares away from the Sun. The Sun would be 46 Big Squares in Diameter.

One would have to decide whether to go for tiny planets in order to scale it so that movement between elements of a system is possible in battle, or whether to simply base a combat around one element or another (the sun, a planet, an asteroid belt, empty space, etc). I prefer the second of these.

Choosing the second option means we could actually lower the G forces, maximum speed by another order or mag or 2, and still keep everything in scale.

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