Fleet Combat
VGA Planets has long been complicated significantly, and made extremely unintuitive, by the serial nature of ship combat. The order in which ships fight is difficult to visualize, tedious to arrange, and painful to execute. Various hacks (including the use of friendly codes) have helped, but in the end, have all made it MORE complex, not LESS.
I believe that implementing fleet combat, in which all ships at a location fight simultaneously, will simplify the game and allow for a more dynamic and interesting tactical and strategic game.
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Attercob commented
Even in reddit forums where you can vote down other peoples threads, you're generally not supposed to just because you don't like it. You're only supposed to vote down inappropriate or abusive threads.
All I read in your post was "I think VGA Planets should be played a certain way, so I don't want other players playing it differently." No one's gonna take original VGA Planets away from you. Why would you block an idea that doesn't affect you, just cause you don't like it? You sound like Kim Davis.
I read through your whole rambling post, and there wasn't a single reason why fleet combat was a bad idea. Only that it was different.
Nu has already added mods that have significantly altered the strategy of Planets. All of the Campaign perks. Stellar Cartography was pretty radical. Don't even get me started on the new Priority build que. I think the biggest change was sphere. It's such a simple change, but has had a huge impact on the way players manage their expansion, and fight a war. And all of these are optional. You can try them out, but you aren't forced to play them.
Isn't that pretty great?
Anyway, I don't think devs look at these old idea forums anymore anyway. You're probably safe that this will never happen. Which is a tragedy, cause now i'll never know if a swarm of Swift Hearts can take down a Biocide.
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Mark L commented
I wish that I could down-vote this idea, but that's not an option so here's my take on it.
Changing the battle mechanics so fundamentally would have a HUGE radical change on the game play. You can't overstate this enough. To use some other games as analogies: what if you could attack/defend in chess with two pieces? What if Pacman had 100 little ghosts that cause health damage to avoid instead of 5 that cause instant death? What if Super Mario Bros. made you fist fight each goomba he encountered in the style of MIke Tyson's Punch Out (like a reverse comparison to VGA Planets)? You can easily see that each of these would TOTALLY RADICALLY change these games. Both strategy and game play would be completely different.
The point is that changing Planets from serial to "fleet" combat mechanics, while interesting and exciting, would leave you with a totally new game that one should probably not even associate with the "traditional" planets just because the game play would be so different. I'd like to try out such a game, but I'd want it kept separate and totally unrelated to planets.nu. The ship list and specs would have to be heavily tweaked to maintain balance, as would race advantages. And obviously effective and satisfying battles would have to be WAY more complex and configurable to make it worthwhile. All of this would have to make it VGA Planets v5 (or 6 now?) in order to be viable, but not just an add-on to NU.
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Attercob commented
Huh....
Haven't seen this thread poked at in awhile. Over a year it seems.
I strongly disagree with @olegboleg.
I am not a very new player. I'm not even a new player. But I am a player, and I don't see the relevance of ranking players opinions by their experience. There are some pretty bone-headed veterans out there.
But on the note of new players, it's a pretty weird assumption to make that new players are frustrated or confused by the existing combat system. It's pretty simplistic and straightforward the way it is. Even the combat order is fairly easy to get. I think players who support this idea are looking for something a little more dynamic and complex that expands strategic options.
The game is in fact about realism. The original author of the game went to great lengths to make this game as realistic as possible. Chess is symbolicly representative, but VGA Planets is closer to simulated representation. VGA Planets is so much more than circles, dots, lines and triangles being moved around a game board in arbitrary ways. They behave according to a set of rules designed to mimic a space empire, so much so that a space empire is easily recognizable in the representation. Most unrealistic game mechanics exist due to the limitations of programming of the 1990's. You're right, that Chess was never meant to be realistic. But VGA Planets was.
This fleet combat mod was infact an existing mod for VGA Planets. It was called the Killing Floor. You're right that it was a significant change to VGA Planets... But to call it a different game entirely? In order to make that claim, you'd have to make a convincing argument of where the line was that would cause VGA Planets to be a "different" game. Cause I could argue that simply having a different collection of players who play differently, make the game a "different" game. And that's not to mention all of the addons and options that are available on the Nu platform.
Here are some other remarks about how this combat system would change VGA Planets:
"Under TKF (The Killing Floor), the smaller ships in a game are given more emphasis. Since they can attack en masse they can simply overwhelm anything in their path; ie, 3-4 Patriots (8 beams, 24 fighter bays, 120 fighters) can take out any individual ship, including the positively monstrous Federation heavy carriers (when they get them).
The biggest individual general change to game strategy is simply this:
One of the base principles of war set out by Sun Tzu was to outnumber your enemy at the point of contact; TKF makes this worthwhile, where VCR could not. If you can concentrate your firepower, when the enemy must divide his, you will win every time. Under the normal VCR program, concentration of forces was far less important, since the point of contact was limited to ONE SHIP fighting. Under TKF, general strategy is made simpler. You'll have to learn how to think slightly differently, think a little bit against the way that we've always had to with VCR installed. For newbies, this will be easy, but for people who've lived and breathed single ship combat for years, it could prove difficult. Using TKF requires a fundamental difference in the way that we approach combat using VGAP, the impact is especially felt in the mid and end games... and if you haven't prepared for it...The roles of fighters and torpedoes are different now. Fighters are best used when the enemy doesn't have them, and the best defence for a fighter, is more fighters."
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olegboleg commented
i strongly disagree with this.
i assume its mostly very new players that will support this and i understand the "frustration" that may overcome you at first when you learn and learn and there is always something you did not think about or did not know. and Battle Orders are very very complex. But what you are suggesting makes this game into a very very different one.
the game is not about realism.let me draw you an analogy:
Chess is not realistic. You do not just go ahead and just change the chess rules so that you can move all your tiles at once because its more realistic, do you? you can make such a game and maybe its good, buts its not chess.i think there a re many aspects of this game that could be changed and it would be an interesting thing. And thats why there were AddOns and now there are game Options like stellar cartography.
But this is to much of a change to still call it the same game.
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Reg commented
Well it's now 2 1/2 years and there doesn't see to be much happening with this. hope that changes at some point.
The killing floor years ago and lots of good orders but some that was missing:
1. attack ships with shields (for your torp ships).
2. attack ships without shields -
Attercob commented
Actually it's more realistic.
If five guys fight five other guys on equal terms, chances are even the winning side will take losses. But if 50 guys fight 5 guys, then the winning side is almost certainly going to go to the larger group AND they stand a better chance of fewer or no losses.
But I agree, that fleet behavior controls would make fleet combat much more interesting. Things like target prioritization, or aggressive/defensive fleet stances would make extremely dynamic battles. Having some ships with orders to flee and escape (freighters) while other ships having orders to escort, guard, blockade, decoy. And on the other side you have ships with orders to persue weaker targets, or focus on stronger ones. Some ships with orders for fire-supression, & fighter interception. And give other ships orders to ignore blockades and go straight for the vulnerable planet, or freighter. So much potential.
A final note...All games will always be unbalanced to stronger players. That's why they're considered stronger.
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Raw commented
If some form of fleet combat were implemented, it would need to to be intelligent focused attack and not random target selection. Random target just makes for a "biggest fleet takes all" game where the smaller player can't even inflict any losses. Talk about unrealistic! In general, I see fleet attack making the game unbalanced in favor of the already stronger players.
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Lord Helmet commented
So, fleet combat is not going to happen, why not decline it and give the votes free?
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Richard Hendricks commented
Just link up to Gratuitous Space Battles and record the fight that way. :)
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Danny commented
I have a couple of ideas for fleet combat.
It might be possible to setup fleet structure.
If there could be a list of combat options for each fleet. Example charge combat, circle in combat, ranged combat, maintain distance combat, fight with fighters only, etc.
You could set up each fleet to fight differently and have two fleets engage in the same combat. Example fleeing one includes six Deth Speculas and fleet two contains four Patriot class carriers.
Fleet one could be set to charge combat and the second fleet to fight with fighters only.
There are other suggestions that I have that this is good for now.
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veldan commented
What were all the fleet combat addons for 3.5? I remember the killing floor, and I've heard phost had its own fleet combat system. Did they all work about the same from an end user perspective?
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Rob Bos commented
"Go play another game, if you don't like this one."
Please keep the comments positive and related to the feature request. Moderator, can you delete that comment and this one?
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Suntzu commented
I agree that this should be an add-on. However, we'd have to consider a different ship list to balance the game. I think the game is well balanced currently (as far as this is possible with 11 totally different races) and introducing TKF changes everything...
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Luke commented
absolutely agree!
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Nick Albright commented
I agree with this. This kung fu one on one battle just isn't realistic. We used to used The Killing Floor previously. Having it be an option would be great!
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Rob Bos commented
(Anon) - I disagree. You could have more fighter ships, and more available fighters in the air at any given moment. Fighter ships could even stay back and launch fighters while an ablative layer of ships soak up the torpedoes. A Merlin, being able to soak up a nearly infinite quantity of torps, would be a good example.
Beam races would be more level against the fighter races.
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xorx commented
It could be an add-on, like the TKF.
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Anonymous commented
I believe this would cause more issues then solves, fighter carriers would become obsolete since you would have mire lasers to shoot them down. Torpedo ships would gain alot of power...