I don't know if the following thought was discussed or not. I browsed through a lot of the gameplay discussions but didn't notice it. If it's already in or already decided on, then say so Otherwise, I think the following idea would be worth discussing.

One of the things that pissed me off more than anything in BoTF1 was the pathing that the computer would use if any angles/turns were needed for a ship to get from one system to another. For example, if I need the ship to travel up and left for 3 squares and then left just 1 sqaure, BoTF would lay out the path for you and the ship would fly that way. That's cool.

Well, execpt that it has to travel through a neutron star and a black hole if it is to use that path with the chance of being destroyed. Ever path a ship and have it blow up in a sector with one of those anomolies? Happened to me.

What would have be mint is if it were possible to set "waypoints" that the ship will fly to. The ship will continue flying to each waypoint, until it reaches one, and then it will fly to the next waypoint, if there is one set. This would have allowed me to fly the ship to the sector next to the black hole, set a waypoint, then send the ship in a different direction, and essentially allow me to plot the ships path around the black hole.

This would also work well incase a ship's path accidently goes through enemy space. I've inadvertently sent a ship through enemy territory and a small taskforce of Romulans materialize out of nowhere, beat the crap out of it, and then get all pissed off at me in diplomacy.

I was thinking that shift-click on an area of space while determining ship movement would set up a waypoint. Multiple waypoints could be set up until a normal click is used, which will set the final destination for the ship and end the ship movement sequence. Now, you could limit the amount of waypoints, although I don't know what to limit them to. From a programming perspective, I don't see much reason to limit them (or to not allow dozens of waypoints per ship if a limit is deemed neccessary) and shouldn't be too bad to impliment the queue required for the system to work. However, I do not know how expansive the game will be or how many ships will exist at the same time. Also, I'm not familiar how movement is currently programmed, and could possibly require modification to the movement code.

I have been considering the idea of multiple pathfinding modes. This would allow the player, when moving a fleet, to select whether to take the fastest route, the safest route (avoiding dangerous anomalies and enemy fleets), or some sort of exploration route (visiting uncharted systems along the path). I'm open to ideas on a good way of implementing this in the UI, other than prompting the player every time he or she moves a fleet.

Azh, your idea of waypoints isn't a bad idea, either. It would certainly give the player more direct control rather than letting an algorithm decide the best route. I'd like to hear what the others think about this.

I say go for it.

You might wanna talk to Jig about it as well, Mike. Jig has probably had a few thoughts about this as well.

I would definitely add an "exploration" movement option. Highly useful for the science vessel and such. Set the ship to avoid engagements, hit explore, and forget about it. I also suggest that the exploration mode will check new systems when an undiscovered system shows up in the ship's sensor range and if the system is within travel range (don't want ships trying to get to planets that are beyond it's engine range). I think it would be a realistic behavior for exploration. And I hope it won't be too complicated to impliment.

The safe route is another good idea. I'm assuming the ship would attempt to avoid engagements at all costs (like in BoTF1) even if enemy fleets are in the same sector.

The AI-controlled options are nice and definitely could have their uses, but the waypoints will give the user greater control over movement, not to mention it might be easier to program then AI-controlled modes since it's just a queue that is determined by the user and not the AI.

In either event, if they were implimented in BoTF1, I would have used them all so fear not - they are viable options that are useful.

Oh, another thought that just occured to me... there should be a way to safely navigate a sector that contains a destructive anomoly such as a black hole or neutron star. Perhaps it would take twice the movement to navigate it (for example, a ship with movement of 1 would take 2 turns to pass through the sector, but would do so without risk of being destroyed.) Thus, a ship with movement 2 could pass through the sector safely in one turn. A ship with movement 4 would pass through the sector safely using 2 units of movement, and then be able to also move 2 more squares (unless there's another anomoly, which it would pass through safely using the remaining 2 movement it has left for the turn.) My justification for this is that 25% of the events that has ever happened in Star Trek is that they sit there and study stuff, often requiring them to get rather close to dangerous objects like that. Also, it would be a really sweet place to hide a fleet of ships without dooming them all.

Perhaps even expand that idea so that more destructive objects require more time to safely traverse. Black holes are easily THE most destructive objects in the galaxy, so it could be argued that to safely pass through a sector that contains such an object would take more time then, say, passing through a sector with a neutron star.

This could create some interesting strategies. If I think there might be a fleet of ships hanging out at a black hole, I could send in my own ships. Since I'm attempting to intercept them, I might forgo the "safe movement" penalty. Also, since combat is never safe, the ships run the risk of being destroyed by the black hole during combat, which could drastically swing the battle in favor of myself or the other guy. And any ships that attempt to flee will automatically forgo the "safe movement" option and run the normal risk of getting pwned by the anomoly.

There's a lot of interesting tactical strategies that could result from stuff like this.

I don't think that would be too difficult. I have fleet orders implemented programmatically, so there is a lot of flexibility. We could do your waypoints idea but have a separate fleet order called "Exploration" which recalculates its course every turn based on the unexplored systems in range. Below is the current API for a Fleet Order.



A fleet order can override any of those members, so there are a lot of cool orders we could implement. Players will also be able to script their own orders in C#, which will be compiled dynamically at runtime. You could also extend existing orders. So if you wanted a different Explore order for your big capital ships that would engage enemies rather than avoid them, you could extend the ExploreOrder class and override the WillEngageHostiles member.

Oh, this is a bit off-topic, but as I was writing this, all of my MSDN stuff came in. I have more software than I know what to do with now.

Load up Visual Studio 2005. Good stuff . By the way, if you want a good book to learn .NET and C#, check out Jeffrey Richter's CLR via C#, 2nd Edition. Even a seasoned developer can learn a thing or two from this book.

I'll have to order it, thanks.

Got another question on movement :p

How is intercepting ships going to work? I have a few thoughts on it, but I'm curious to see what you have in mind/established already.

I figured I could create an InterceptOrder class that derives from the FleetOrder class that I posted above. When the InterceptOrder::OnTurn() method gets called during each turn, it could examine all fleets nearby looking for an enemy fleet moving in the approximate direction of your territory. It could then plot an intercept course and store the other fleet's identifier as a private variable, in case it needs more than one turn to catch up (that way it knows which fleet it's tracking). The two would engage in battle, and assuming your fleet survived, it would then try to intercept another fleet (or the same fleet, if it heads for your territory again).

Perhaps to expand on that a little bit, the player could actually target enemy fleets to intercept. When a player selects the intercept command, they now have the option to target an enemy fleet in scanner range. If targetted, the taskforce will make every attempt to intercept that fleet for as long as the fleet is visible/detectable. If you just want to give the fleet a broad intercept order that will attack anything that comes in range and near your territory, then simply click intercept and rightclick or somehow cancel out of the select enemy fleet process.

This adds a bit more flexibility, and helps alleviate the trouble of intercepting enemy fleets in neutral/enemy territory. Ever get frustrated trying to gun down enemy fleets flying around just outside your space? I have. It also makes pretty logical sense - if a ship is detectable, then you should be able to intercept it assuming you can catch it while it is detectable.

If the ship falls from sensor detection (out of range, cloaks, etc), then the ship's intercept order will get canceled automatically and will not take further action (other then engage hostiles that enter the sector it is currently in.)

Note: just for clearification, I'm thinking that any enemy vessels that are detectable from anything (scanners, science vessels, other ships) can be capable of being targeted by the intercept order. Once the ship disappears from view on the galatic map, the intercept order is canceled.

I think it's a pretty solid idea, allows for a bit more realistic interception, and shouldn't be too difficult to include.

I think the Pursue order pretty much does what you're describing. Give the masterplan another read over and see if that's the case.

Perfect, I didn't see that the order the first time through. Thanks.