tactical combat enhancements

Feature requests or ideas
eidolad
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tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

In lieu of a "suggestions" forum section, let's collect some ideas on making the tactical combat more interesting and easy to control

So let me start (and forgive if some are already there...I'm only on game start #4 and haven't seen much beyond small scale tactical combat since I'm either way ahead, or way behind by the mid-game)


1. When a player ship is selected, indicate which shield facing is facing what enemy, as the player mouses each enemy ship. *and* when I rotate/move a ship, show me which shield facing is now facing what enemy ship/planet.

2. indicate the # of turns to rearm a weapon *if* I were to fire it. In fleet combat, I may have trouble dropping the facing shield on a powerful ship...therefore, I need to close to optimum range, *and* do some maneuvering to have enough ships in position to attack a particular enemy ship's shield facing. It does me no good half of my ship's don't have their heavy lasers ready to fire...so I may only want to fire some of the ship's weapons in the preceding turns when setting up a "squadron alpha strike". (a quick moment of silence for Federation coordinated photon torpedo squadron alpha strikes from Starfleet Battles. Ah bach:)

3. Need some indication of "optimum range" for a particular weapon. Minimum: an "effective range" icon next to the weapon when I mouse over the enemy ship: green=optimal range, yellow=effective range, optional shot, red=out of range. Preferable: when I "click on a weapon" a ranging graphic shows up to display the entire arc of the weapon. Any enemy ships that fall in the range will shade "green or yellow" to indicate range, as well as highlighting which facing shield I would be potentially hitting.

4. I need to do some rough math on a) how much shield and hull are facing me in order to destroy a particular ship. So:

a) I need to know how many points remain on the facing shield *and* how much hull remains. If this information requires a unit to scan the ship so be it. *but* once the enemy ship is scanned, this sort of minimal tactical information must still be present when I mouse over the ship. At present, I can see the enemy ship information only.

b) I also need to know the *total* min-max damage output for particular weapons on my ship before firing them.

c) The enemy hull/life points are very important to track from turn to turn, so that I can detect whether that big fat cruiser over there has auto-repair capability. If "you are the borg" then I need to make some quick decisions.

5. I'd like to see some indication of how probability is treating me on the battlefield today: was that last hit that came screaming in to drop the fwd starboard shield a freak "max hit"...or am I really in serious trouble against that Lvl 7 tech ancient race cruiser and should veer off my main fleet elements while sacrificing selected (brave) ships?

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Gliese
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by Gliese »

A lot of this could be pretty easily added onto the existing combat overlay, I think, without adding or exacerbating clutter. I also wouldn't mind an option to target a facing automatically if the arc/ship movement remaining can be used to reach it... But getting back to the subject at hand, combat information - all of this would be excellent. 2 and 3 especially. Some part of me feels that 4 is a bit much however; not after a scan or two, but perhaps still giving vague estimates? I do think it should be readily apparent if hull is 'healing' itself over time, as even if you aren't familiar with the tech in-game, the horror of seeing the capital ship you just missile'd pull itself back together should give your crew a rough idea of what the craft is capable of.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

Regarding item 4: I can (sigh) settle for having a less than perfect estimate of salvo effectiveness or enemy ship health. I just want to avoid the overkill penalty for not knowing enough before I authorize the ship to fire.

But...but...after being spoiled in Master of Orion2....there are so many tactical, and ship design ramifications to knowing fine detail about how much damage I can dish out, and require, for a given situation. For example:

1. I'll need 4 regular lasers to definitely drop that shield on that starbase...great, then I can send assault shuttles. Good thing I designed my ships with two laser batteries (one large array of Huge emitters, and one small array of Regular emitters). (Though I still have no clue whether I can capture enemy starbases...or whether this does me any good during/after the combat round)

2. Still trying to find the damage threshold that *might* render a ship immobile like in Moo2. This is important because I have a "secondary battery of regular lasers" in my cruiser+ ship builds designed to whittle down a ship until I can board it. (Haven't a clue yet whether this is applicable in Horizon).

3. Knowing exactly whether that enemy hull is repairing itself and how fast. Even a vague green-yellow-red color would be fine (well this may already exist)...but enemy ships tend to go boom in my early->mid games so I don't recall. Moo2 has lots of damage-modeling-goodness...so as the tasty "structure" points that underlay the "hit points"...almost like bulkheads or frames of a ship.

I'm really not here for the real-time-strategy dull "green/yellow/red" health of boring ships...I want to target subsystems, work around subsystem damage and weapons being shot away, allocate energy etc. There is this potential here in Horizon. Makes me salivate. Wish the masses would hurry up and buy this title in droves:)

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by Ashbery76 »

We need a RETREAT SHIP,RETREAT TASK FORCE button on the UI.The amount of micro having to do it is very annoying.

eidolad
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

Ashbery76 wrote:We need a RETREAT SHIP,RETREAT TASK FORCE button on the UI.The amount of micro having to do it is very annoying.
Huge: seconded.

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StoneCold822
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by StoneCold822 »

That…what he said! +1

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by Zaimat »

How would you expect Retreat to work?
- Retreat to the closest base ? (colony/outpost)
- Retreat somewhere on the map ? (player designated at the time of the order)

Tip: Currently if you ctrl+click on the map, it sets a waypoint for the whole taskforce. (you have to press enter with waypoints and the ships move). Or ctrl+right+click on the mini-map

eidolad thanks for the suggestions, will take it under consideration when we do another pass on adding more detail/info.
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Ashbery76
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by Ashbery76 »

Just to retreat out of the sector would be suffice.But retreat to the nearest planet would also work.

Does the A.I take into consideration fleet strength? It could also help for the A.I to retreat.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

My armchair warrior suggestions:

1. For the AI: Retreat to the nearest friendly starbase or missile base.

The military SF mind would say: the enemy has local superiority, so retreating to the nearest undefined colony makes no sense since, they may pursue and once again, attempt bring our (inferior) force to action. The next time we retreat...we leave a superior force in orbit of an undefended planet *and* are committed to the retreat-to-strongpoint (that should have already taken place)....and simply have lost time for the required re-concentration.

Or in "latter-day Pentagon Thinker" mode. The colonies are replaceable...concentrating force and preserving the military industrial machine to fight another day for the empire at large...takes precedence.

The human player has a lot of craftiness...we want the AI to concentrate their forces and keep them alive and make the human pay cash for victories.

Would be nice if the AI could "learn" that the retreating force was too small...and build/join it to become a large enough force to matter for the rematch.

note: missile heavy designs...with the ability to completely destroy one like-sized opponent...change this calculus significantly. especially if they have enough speed to launch/kite/retreat, and/or are willing to sacrifice certain units to achieve their kills, and preserve the rest for the next turn (reloaded and closer to matching the enemy?)

(note: i have yet to try the 90%-missile design but remember well how nasty they could be in Moo2)


2. For the player: Retreat out of engagement range for this turn and *prompt for orders*.

Circumstances may dictate a lot of decisions after that...such as routing all local forces to an intermediate point, joining them into a 10-ship fleet...and returning for a rematch, or feint/attack elsewhere to drawn down/divide that superior force, or split the force into scouts/monitors and send them to other enemy colonies...

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by FrozenFallout »

The problem I see with looking at retreat like other 4x strats is that they just have the battle end and allow you to move via the strategic map. With Horizon you cant make a strategic retreat, in other words you cant just disappear from the battle like you can in other 4x strats out there. You have to make a tactical retreat where you sacrifice some ships to save the rest.

If you just set a waypoint back to a planet or to the next sector over you just turn your forward guns away from your enemy therefor dropping your dps per turn and they move just as fast as you do or faster (maybe a bit slower if your over their tech) but basically you cant just run away they will chase you and kill you and why wouldn't they if your at war with you.

Having a button that does the tactical retreat for you might be ok, maybe having something in the Tutorial that shows an example of tactical retreat (maybe when you fight the pirates) but due to the one huge tactical map you cant really retreat the way most people are use to where you ships just flee the scene and the enemies cant follow.
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eidolad
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

I think I see part of your point...retreat cheese..."oh I know I can retreat...a battle can actually cost me nothing".


1. Perhaps have retreat as an automatic function? that is very risky with 15-25% chance to lose any ship in the fleet.

Anyone remember Imperium Galactica 2? I do with some fond memories.

When you pressed the "retreat" button your ships would attempt to "emergency warp out" of the battle grid....some would explode...I guess from engine overload.

So every battle was a dice throw and meant something since retreat could be very expensive.


2. Otherwise the sheer size of the battle space, I think would train human players quickly to understand that one or more units of the fleet must remain and fight, or, choose to "scatter" groups of ships in different directions...knowing that some would be pounced on. I like the idea of showing an example retreat...even a screenshot in the manual showing "football playbook" arrows for a plausible sacrifice/retreat would be useful.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by CrispyMouse »

The way I see the retreat working is that the ships would automatically try to evade the enemy, rather then the current always try to engage the enemy. That way I can tell some ships retreat and then go focus on a different battle.

As is stands if I give orders for a ship to move somewhere and then go auto (or go to a different sector) the ship's orders change to full speed ahead to engage the enemy.

I would love to set "postures" for my ships so that when they are in auto combat they don't just engage the enemy.

Normal Posture: Maneuver to engage the enemy will all weapons (our current auto)
Stand Off Posture: Engage the enemy at furthest range possible (so missiles only)
Disengage: Fire if fired upon, but attempt to avoid the enemy.
Retreat: Fire if in range, but attempt to flee from the enemy.
Carrier: Launch fighters, fire if in range, but attempt to stay out of range.
Part of the posture would also allow you to select the primary and secondary targeting.
For example:
Target smallest vessels
Target largest vessels
Target same size vessels
Target missiles
Target fighters
Target starbase
Target planet

I don't know if any of you have played Stars! but my postures are basically from that game's battle orders (to read up on how combat worked in Stars! http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/%22G ... 3_Jan_2002 )

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

Ah yes Stars!

The idea of "scripting individual tactical ship behavior" reminds me of Distant Worlds...where the AI is basically just calling various scripts for each individual ship.

Why I don't play Distant Worlds any longer: Problem is that in Distant Worlds this AI script behavior could be easily duped into doing exactly what you want. For example: the default patrol order is for AI ships to instantly micro-jump and engage enemies as they enter a system. the human player sees smaller fleet is orbiting a starbase (and is too tough to handle because of the starbase). So all the human player had to do was send a superior force in on the edge of the system. The smaller AI fleet would leave the protection of its starbase and engage. Goodbye AI squad.

So I would immediately wonder if I could manipulate the AI into a "retreat mode" that causes ships to flee some of my ships...only to fly directly into another group of ships big enough to take out that "retreating ship". Or worse yet...the retreat scripting is flawed and considers the "edge of the map is where the AI needs to go"...even if the edge of the map is well within range of player's pursuit ships....when instead the best tactic may have been something else like...check-every-turn-for-nearest-enemy-and-retreat-from-it


As a preference, I would rather the combat AI take into consideration the entire available units...and *fight them effectively as one unit together* for the target objective...i.e. kill-some-of-my-ships-no-matter-the-cost, retreat-everyone, missile-kill-then-retreat, etc.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by hlemmur »

Ashbery76 wrote:We need a RETREAT SHIP,RETREAT TASK FORCE button on the UI.The amount of micro having to do it is very annoying.
Agree but you should be able to set it when a ship/fleet sets off and only change it whilst still in communication range - I really like the tactical combat engine (I know its simple, but there are some fun hidden depths to fleet construction and use) but hate the way my lightly armed scouts charge straight towards enemy battle fleets rather than run away.

In that vein, you should only be able to manually control fleets that are in Communication range. After all, if they are out of comms range you would have to rely on the Admiral on the spot ... just like in pre-c19th warfare.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

hlemmur said: "In that vein, you should only be able to manually control fleets that are in Communication range. After all, if they are out of comms range you would have to rely on the Admiral on the spot ... just like in pre-c19th warfare."

a nice enhancement idea to consider.

Of course I could quibble that every single fleet engagement requires command by the onsite commander anyway...unless we would like to postulate *unjam-able real-time interstellar FTL command and control for space battles*....holy cow, David Weber's Adm. Honor Harrington would have been out of a job, with all of those bored overweight armchair Admirals sitting back on the homeworld fighting her battles! The human player in this case is just omnipresent.

But I won't quibble since sending a fleet out of comm range should have some sort of penalty...but would like to have these exceptions considered:

...except if we can have Legendary Heroes in a patch/expansion : then I demand control of my out-of-range fleet if commanded by one:)

...except if I choose a race pick: "Battle command extends beyond comm range"

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by CrispyMouse »

eidolad wrote: So I would immediately wonder if I could manipulate the AI into a "retreat mode" that causes ships to flee some of my ships...only to fly directly into another group of ships big enough to take out that "retreating ship". Or worse yet...the retreat scripting is flawed and considers the "edge of the map is where the AI needs to go"...even if the edge of the map is well within range of player's pursuit ships....when instead the best tactic may have been something else like...check-every-turn-for-nearest-enemy-and-retreat-from-it

As a preference, I would rather the combat AI take into consideration the entire available units...and *fight them effectively as one unit together* for the target objective...i.e. kill-some-of-my-ships-no-matter-the-cost, retreat-everyone, missile-kill-then-retreat, etc.
In my mind the retreat mode is not a static give the order and they run to with out thinking. They run in the safest direction they are currently aware of (i.e. based off of scanner information). If you encircled them and they didn't know about your fleet one sector over, they might flee in that direction. When that fleet comes into range, they reevaluate to determine do I change direction, do I try and run through the enemy and hope I survive until I'm behind them, do I turn around and engage the group I was fleeing from because I have a better chance of surviving passing through their field of fire then the fleet in front of me.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

Yeah I take your point(s), I guess I just want more "situational awareness"...but AI coding for that sort of thing must be quite involved. Even big budget games like Civ5 have horrible/inefficient behavior...much less grouped-unit-coordination like what (I think) you and I are wanting. Whoops getting a bit off topic.

Back to Horizon: if the devs have scripting that fairly (without 100% radar coverage "cheat") allows the AI to react/prempt in response to another player's "observable movements/orders"

...then I'll have to "eat the navigational deflector" after falling to the floor in awe. Sorry a bit of old school trek there.

Though I would rather focus the tweaking of the AI to be better at fleet management/upgrades/defence/attack than on retreating, I would make sense to have the AI make a better call on when to retreat, and then perform the order well.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by jelliejones »

The next primary component of Foundry Tactical Combat is active buff tracking for yourself and your target.


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Last edited by jelliejones on Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

eidolad
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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by eidolad »

Um, what?


Anyway, another set of suggestions:

1. Get the AI to stop building "scout" class ships except as explorers, say, once that AI empire builds its first shipyard. These scout ships are just basically big fighters and seem useless against the other classes in most cases.

The AI isn't smart enough (yet?) to use scout ships in the middle game in units of 6-10 such as:

- cover a planet while a missile base or shipyard is being built, or cover against individual transports trying to take a new colony

- raid/destroy undefended planets

- kill colonizers and explorers


2. Dear AI: thou shalt never move a single combat ship away from a friendly starbase unless in a group of at least 4-6.

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Re: tactical combat enhancements

Post by Xyquas »

eidolad wrote:3. Need some indication of "optimum range" for a particular weapon. Minimum: an "effective range" icon next to the weapon when I mouse over the enemy ship: green=optimal range, yellow=effective range, optional shot, red=out of range. Preferable: when I "click on a weapon" a ranging graphic shows up to display the entire arc of the weapon. Any enemy ships that fall in the range will shade "green or yellow" to indicate range, as well as highlighting which facing shield I would be potentially hitting.
Oh yes, this would be extremely useful. Half of the time in combat that I don't spend with moving ships I spend on looking if that damn enemy ship is in weapons range already. I'd like to see a circular overlay around my ship showing all ranges as circle segments.

Example: My ship has some heavy lasers in the forward slots, regular lasers in the left and right slots and the light ones in the rear slots. So I'll get a large segment in the front 120° for the heavy lasers, a smaller segment to the left and right and the smallest to the aft of my ship. Areas where heavy, regular and light weapons all come in could be colored orange showing that this is a range where it's far for one weapon but close for another. I probably should draw an image but I hope you get the idea.
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