Ship design and tactical combat

[Zaimat]

If you wish to elaborate...
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[RobHuntingdon]

Of course, it's nice if we can have both...
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Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon

Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.

Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45

[Sim-Mania]

It would be great to have a variety of choices, however, unless they add something worth while to the game, they can be very distracting.

it would be good if the ships design choices allowed for the possibility for more than minor differences between the races or players, but rather emphasied the fact which can even been seen on various tv shows (e.g start trek), where designs have beeen based on differing scientific/research philosophies

e.g - Cloak and Dager
- Victory through Power
- Ability to Counter Attack
- Speed and Manoeuvrability e.c.t

[Ravana]

[RobHuntingdon]

I kind of like the design 'mentality' for lack of a better word -- like with the Federation your ships are defensive, good firepower, but really focused on sheilding and lots of ship space is devoted to peaceful pursuits as well. And then the Romulans like to sneak attack, decloak at point blank range and hit you with everything they've got, and they carry quite a bit. Etc.

I'm not sure how possible it would be to incorporate this idea here, but this would be more a racial thing than a ship design thing. Unless you want to make each individual ship you can set this for each ship -- but that eliminates the point of having to choose. You just choose the best design mentality for that ship's role -- exploration, fighting, etc.

On the other hand, if you pick a design mentality for your race, then maybe your explorers are very good but your fighters take a small hit to the amount of firepower they carry but they have extra strong sheilds... or if you prefer a warlike race maybe your ships carry extra weaponry but the sheilds aren't quite up to snuff...

Hmm, and I just noticed where we three are all from. Three english countries all halfway across the world from each other... and chatting on a canadian website...
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon

Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.

Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45

[jorgen_cab]

I do like to design my own ships, but unless each component is valuable and integrated in a balanced way, I might as well build pre constructed ships.

What I like are options that make other options a requirement and others that will not be applicable, depending on your choices made for the design.

For example, if I decide to incorporate fighter hangars on my ship, they are considered a great drain on power and only small shields and weaponry may be applied to the ship.

If I put big thrusters on the ship, there are no room for heavy weapons or hangars, and only minor shields.

Now, new technologies may change these requirements and make new combinations available.

All components may require a certain amount of energy, that way you may not use more energy than the ship has available when you design it. That could be a limiting factor also. The options here are diverse.

The most important thing is there must never be an all winning concept. All designs must have some weakness to exploit; otherwise they are not balanced in game play.

[DeckPrism]

Umm, I don't mean to spam the forum on my first day, but I do have things to say.

I liked MOO2 in that there were a ton of different things I could do in terms of ship design and several that I needed to do. (bombers, carriers, missile ships, beam ships, capture specific ships, and specials to enchance each and every last kind of design, shoot sometimes you could make a ship entirely of specials.) However in MOO3, though people modded things, after you realized that cloaking , ecm, eccm, sensors was broken, you only had about 4 meaningfull choices (best carrier, best beam, best missile ship, and quantity of best point defense). (choice of speed was basicaly a cheese factor and not particularly tactical) Even those few choices could have been better implemented. But frankly, the specials from MOO2 were more fun.

I guess I'm saying that I like simple weapon progression in a few categories, but then on top of that I like geting a special that enhances but does not unbalance.
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Do not let light shine upon your opponent's mind through a hole in your body.

[Sobriquet]

DeckPrism said:

[Zaimat]

When developing a game there is always a point where you can either add more vs. make the game/modules function or function better. Obviously you need to find the right balance.

Often times the functionality takes a backseat to the number of options. Because developers/publishers are more concerned with giving/promising players all the options they would ever dream of...

This in itself can work and perhaps even better if the player only plays the game half a dozen times. The problem of functionality starts manifesting the more you play the game and become really good at it and find out what works and what doesn't. Where ideally everything should have a meaningful and balanced effect.
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[Sobriquet]

Zaimat said -

[Ravana]

[Therlun]

my beloved moo1 had a good solution to such a situation.
you simply had not the same techtree in the next game, techs were randomized a bit at every gamestart.

i liked this much better then the moo2 "choose" approach.

in horizon the overall situation could come into play.
depending on how much the other civilizations influence your own development, every game could be different too.
sometimes the tantik as your agressive neighbour force you to develop anti-fighter techs and strong shields, in the next game the barsig flood your empire with economic techs ...

[Sobriquet]

These are great ideas Therlun. That is just the kind of thing that would go along way towards replayability. Not knowing from one game to the next if race 'A' is friend or foe. Not having a clear path to technology everytime. This I would like to see.

In fact, it could actually dictate how you are able to finish the game. Let's say your tech tree doesn't have uber-weapon slice and dice. This forces you to concentrate on diplomatic channels to overcome your foe.

[Sim-Mania]

[Therlun]

in moo1 there were 6 areas of technology, and every tech was in one of them.

weapons for example included things that made "ouchie"...
at every game start the game decided which techs you could research.
there were about 50 weapon techs, of which you could research around 25. (depending on race. psilons for example got more[race of scientists ], silicoids got less, because they had a disadvantage in all tech areas but computers)

sometimes in this 25 techs there were no bombs (or only very advanced=>very late avaiable bombs), which created a problem.
if your enemy had planetary shields you could not penetrate his defenses with your beam weapons!
you had many possible solutions like trading a bomb tech with another race, spying on a bomb tech, developing missiles (which arnt as good as bombs but better then beam weapons on planets), develop biological weapons(evil! galactic crime! you got condemned by the other races for this. you could blast a planet to hell with bombs and noone complained, but if one pop-unit died of biological weapons...), design ships and fleets that had so many and/or so strong beam weapons that they could do a little damage to planets even if they had shields, or you could develop a special technology for example black hole generators to handle planets.

things like this could happen in every tech area and every set of techs.

this tech-system (which IMO alone made moo1 far superior to moo2) was one of the main factors for the replayability of moo1.
you could never know what main weapons your ships would have, because you never knew which weapons you could research.
there were no "best" tech-trees to go after simply because of this variability. you had to adapt your strategy to the situation which created a challenge.

of course if was not perfect...
the impact on the game was generally not unbalancing because weakness in one area could often be compensated with strength in another, but it was not completely balanced and sometimes luck or bad luck could be TOO important in a session.
and while the pace of technological development was slower then in moo2 (were your ships were obsolete when they were finished beeing build[grammar?]) it was IMO still a bit too fast, esp. in the late-game.

very nice were generation-changes as i call it.
a time when you develop a tech that is so good in this session(and probably only in THIS session and its special circumstances), that it will heavily influence the next 100 rounds of the game.
i remember a session were i was busy defeating my main enemy the silicoids, when they developed cloaking devices and began kicking my butt! my offensive came to a stall and soon i was on the retreat....
it took some time to regain my superiority. and not weapons or shields made the difference, but engines!
with superior propulsion i developed, my new ships had a huge strategic advantage, i could avoid fights with his fleets, and deep strike on his planets fast and brutal.

all in all i think the technology of moo1 was and IS one of the most fun and "most very overwhelmingly best" tech-systems ever created.
[as you might have noticed im quiet a big moo1 fan ]

p.s. sorry for the long post. it became an outburst of my love to moo1

[Sim-Mania]

[Sobriquet]

[Zaimat]

The implementation of research is different in Horizon. Although the very basics will be similar.

I'll note a few things:

. Reseach is slow, lots of upgrades as you progress, you will have to make choices (you got direct control on what you research) and stick to them otherwise you will be a jack of all trades but master of none (this isn't necessarily bad although it may be).

. You will not have access to every tech every game although some techs are guaranteed (race specific). In fact it's unlikely you'll play 2 games alike or with the same techs list.

. Techs are very much tied into the game and like most things in Horizon interact with everything else. So yes in some cases you can apply it directly to the situation you are in and having or not having it can be the difference between different choices of actions (that's a nice way of putting it ).

[jp161]

Hello!
I'm really interested on this game... Even the fact that developers direct to Babylon 5 and Stargate is enough to me to watch the game's progress.. But if it's looking this good as Horizon is looking atm, it just might get to my gotta-buy-that-game list, which is quite small

btw, my 2 favorite tv programs were (and still are, though on computer) Babylon 5 and Stargate =)

[Sobriquet]

Hello jp161, and welcome! I think most of us are sci-fi die hards of sort or another We're all looking forward to Horizon.
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