Don't know about that system.. when shots are there jsut for show it might generate the wrong feedback.

First post here, but thought I may have something to add to this discussion

Firstly Matress go play Star Wars: Rebellion (Supremacy) as its combat system was excellent when it came out. Allowed for 3D attacks yet retained 2 D simplicity.

However I would raise you an Imperium Galactica 2 on that as well. The game had a 3D combat engine, yet portrayed the combat on a single plane (2D). The combat was real time with cooldowns for weapons and so on. It was closer to standard RTS fare for the combat (not a bad thing!) and it was fast paced, yet not too fast to be uncontrollable.

I think a combination of the Rebellion and IG2 combat engines would result in the perfect system for use in a BotF sequel. The good thing is both can be easily adapted for Turn Based play if necessary.


Also at the beginning of the thread Damageable Ships were mentioned. I think it would be a great idea and add to the atmosphere of the game. This could be implemented very easily if all the models were made to be modular (IE destructible bits all technically separate models) and have targetable locations (the different model sections). Seeing as it doesn't look like multiple LoD meshes will be used it would allow the use of these modular meshes as an alternative. The structure would need a hardpoint attachment system so that the bits have a set location they attach and detach from on the main ship.

Hey RSOblivion, welcome to the forums!

At the start of the thread...? Are you saying you read all ten pages? Wow, that's dedication!

By the sounds of things, you're describing a combat system similar to that used in Star Trek: Armada 1. That was 3D, but it was presented as though it was on a 2D plane. Ships could pass above and below each other though. Starfleet Command 2 has a similar system as well, with movement above or below the 2D plane only possible to stop ships colliding with each other.

I certainly don't oppose a system like that; it works extremely well, whilst being relatively simplistic - which is surprising given the fact that Starfleet Command is one of the most complex games I know of (Which is why I love it so much). But this is actually already the system that Wolfe's combat system employs, so i'm a bit confused as to what you're asking for now.

Not quite, I probably didn't explain myself very well (it was 2am and I was very tired!!!).

Basically the Star Wars version is actually full 3D targeting and fighting (though limited by coding factors back then). The IG2 combat system basically zoomed in on the planet in question (or space if not near a planet) and created a 2D combat zone.

I think if you could use the combat method (cooldowns and other activatable special weapons etc...) which is real time and use a true 3D combat zone (with Ventral and Dorsal hardpoints for respective ships) that it would be a really fun and intense experience.

If its still wanted to be turn based it wouldn't be hard to convert a system like that too turn based (cooldowns change to usage per number of turns etc...).

I have to admit I haven't seen the current tests for combat so far so I have no idea what has and hasn't been implemented.

Thanks for the welcome, I have been checking on these projects since I started playing around with BotF back in 2002. So reading 10 pages of a thread ain't that long




P.S. Mattress, where in South Wales? I went to Uni in Swansea However I am now closer to New South Wales being in Queensland

cooldown=recharge time. it's best you download current combat engine from main site and have a look if that fits what you want.

I'm writing this post in Newport, and I went to uni in Cardiff, RSOblivion. Some of my uni friends were from Swansea.

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You definitely need to download the combat system. Here's some screenies for you. They were originally posted in the staffroom but it would be a bit unfair of me to tell you to look at them in a forum you can't even access.

The images might look a little dark or strange because there are some problems with the lighting effects. Some of the problems have now been fixed, but not all of them have. Enjoy.

I never noticed before but the first pic looks like a cloaking/cloaked galaxy . Nice we got that effect now too in the engine.

Looks really good, will ship/group positioning be possible? As it would help to be able to place tankier ships in the front and have the Strike Cruisers and such shoot volleys of Photons from the rear?

Cool I lived in Swansea for a year but came from Surrey (well for most of my life!). Currently being 10 hours ahead makes contact with UK a bit harder as I'm asleep when everyone else is awake.

The pics look very good from what I can see, would love to have a play with the demo when I get the time to do so. Anyway off out so will check back later guys.

Yes, ship positioning is already possible - you have to place every ship (On your side of the battle) before combat starts, which is a little annoying if you've got a lot of ships. (A maximum of 80 per side is allowed so 160 ships per battle total)

As for shooting from the rear, the range of the weapons is quite limited, so this is difficult at the moment. Hopefully it will be improved in future versions.

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Don't worry about being 10 hours ahead - that's what the forums are for! ...Unless you mean contacting your family...but we're one big happy family here so you can forget about them.

Does that 80 ships per side include 3 way (or more) battles? I guess that begs the question, how will multiple opponent battles be handled?

atm. you can only mix fleets and have them under one side's command. Later on I assume there will be up to 9 participant groups in-game, the 6 major races, minor races either fighting for themselves or attached to a major empire command, random entities like the Cristalline one, and of course the all-opposing Borg. They could possibly all come together at one single point at the same time.

Now THAT would be a battle i'd like to see. The most i've ever sene in BOTF was a three-way. And usually one of them retreats.

That would be very good. Multiple opponent battles with loads of firepower and a couple of factions wanting to destroy everything! Would make for very interesting results!

I know it would be extra coding but what about adding phaser/photon/disruptor hardpoints to the ship models (unless its already done). This would allow you to place Phaser banks and Photon tubes in the correct places on the different ships. Just makes the deception of reality better for the players.

Also there are some ships who have far more than 5 Phasers/Disruptors (like the Reman Warbird!) which would be amazing to have relatively accurately represented.

Also as an aside, in BotF it was old and couldn't represent the different firing anims that would be needed for the different races and weapons. Is this going to be corrected in Supremacy?

I beieve this is either in the process of being done or will be done later. Hardpoints will definitely be in. We're also discussing ideas for implementing the Phaser arc effect where the two points of light join and then the beam fires! Obviously discussing doesn't mean implementing - even a game as graphically uber eyecandy as Legacy doesn't have that effect implemented - but we can still hope the discussion bears fruit.

Ironically that animation is actually really simple to accomplish using dynamic textures (thing Flatout 2/Ultimate Carnage) like those used for damage in havoc physics games. The textures can change dynamically as the firing animations are called by the engine (basically its an extension of the animation process where the textures change first and the trigger for the beam is after, then a second trigger upon beam completion causes the textures to revert back to the original). That's how I understand it, but I am no coder so I don't know how it would be implemented by CmdrWolff.

With the different animations I am hoping that disruptors and all the other different weaponry can have a proper animation rather than the BotF copout where it was every race with phasers and photons. Disruptors aren't beam weapons to my knowledge, and Klingons use a modified phaser array as well as disruptors and torpedoes.


Also I would like to add that I was extremely disappointed with the Romulan ship line up for vanilla BotF. This was somewhat altered in UM3/4 but still had some very big issues. In UM4 it was good to see the Valdore (some say Norexan class) Battle Cruiser, but to see it less powerful than a Warbird was very disappointing. Also with the majority of the ships being non-canon it would have been great to have some of the models from ST Armada or Star Fleet Command. Bridge Commander even had some interesting meshes which could have been used, but it seems the Romulans were not too popular (though slightly moreso than the Ferengi). I am currently messing around with ship config's and model choices to see what a good Romulan Armada might consist of (I must note that I dislike the TOS Romulan ships as it was done when ST was in its infancy and the designs of the Rom's were just kitbashes of Miranda's or just Klingon D7's with different colours). I have substituted the TOS period with the Enterprise ships as they are very Romulan and very detailed which complement and support the latter designs rather than look out of place like the TOS ships.

The Klingons are known to have used both Bolt-like weapons (Always known as Disruptors) but also Beam weapons (That have also been referred to as Disruptors). There are good shots of Klingon weapons in some of the DS9 episodes, with them also using beams of different colours. (Usually Green and Red) Dafedz has got a clip of the battle from the episode called Way of the Warrior on his site Here.

Wolfe knows that we want lots of different weapons effects though - he wants them himself. Having them in is purely about what the combat system is able to handle and whether he knows how to do it. It might take some time to get all of the weapons in, but no dout they will all make it in eventually.

As for the Romulan ships, I agree with you about the poor quality of the models, (Except the original Romulan Bird of Prey, that's a relatively good model) but according to canon, the Romulans got Warp technology AND most of their early Warp-capable designs from the Klingons during a very short-lived (And rarely mentioned afterwards) alliance. That is the canon reason why their ships are so similar.

The shiplist is full of non-canon designs because there aren't any canon ships that would fill the roles that we need them to, so there will certainly be some creativity in there. And the Valdore/Norexan is in as the Romulan Sovereign counterpart battleship, so you won't be disappointed on that front.

I would like a torp that when fired it turns into 10 torps.

kind of a MIRV weapon? Maybe the Prometheus gets one .

Ooh i've played a game called shattered mirror or something on a friends Playstation. They had MIRV Photons in there. God I loved that game. Shame it was ruined by the fact it was on a Playstation instead of a decent console.

The Prometheus is definitely gonna have to be a special ship in the combat system. You'll have to wait and see if there's anything planned for it, Spok. No promises...but we'll likely want to do something...

You would have to ask the question about the Prometheus Tactical Cruiser
splitting into three ships as well in the combat engine. It would not be impossible
to build the model, three models, but we would have to ask
Wolfe about the code for that.

Well it ain't goint ot happen i the current code i can tell you that for nothing , it would probably cause more problems then is worth having.

However when or if i rewrite it i will look into someway to allow it to occur.

Regards Wolfe

Look at me talk. Like I have a lot of time to make more and more models each day.
It was only one Voyager episode and not worth the bother if bother it is. I was
wonder if it could fly as three models from the same starting point but then immediately
come apart in the combat setting - No biggie. We can think about it for BOTF3.

The current problem is tracking the three ships and how they are kept within the game logic and memory, also in order to allow the three parts to come together i would probably have to write some kind of 'movement script' to reposition them correctly before joining.

Probably a host of other problems like how do you deal with indivdual ship segments getting blown up and overall ship death.

Regards Wolfe

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Hi Sheva, thanks for your comments. I know for a fact that many of your points will be supported by other people, such as .Iceman. Let's take them one-by-one though.

First, whilst each shipyard can potentially build thousands of ships, I seriously doubt many systems will reach their potential. Ships require Raw Materials, Deuterium, and Dilithium to build, and cCredits and Deuterium to maintain them. And whilst it gets easier over to time to produce more and more resources as your technology advances, the cost of building the later designs also ramps up. So whilst you *could* pump out ships, that doesn't mean you will actually be able to do so. And the build/maintenance costs are far from being set in stone. If we find people really are capable of pumping out thousands of ships, then we will increase the costs until it reaches a better balance. Player feedback will be crucial in this respect.

For "KI", i'm assuming you meant the AI. Not all of the ship orders are complete yet. Some ships will be capable of performing special orders, such as Intercepting enemy fleets. This is an automated order, and causes the ships to hold their ground. Then, if an enemy fleet comes into range, your fleet will give chase and engage. If the enemy fleet moves out of range, your fleet will then turn around and move back to their original position. Other ships, such as Scouts, will also be able to use their long-range sensors to give you readings of enemy fleet strengths. If you notice an enemy fleet is gathering in one place, that can give you warning of a potential enemy invasion. Your planet-bound sensor arrays can also give you warning of fleets near your borders. You can also build special systems such as Sensor Jammers, that will disrupt the enemys ability to detect the size of your fleets - but so can the enemy. These different abilities all mean that the game has the potential to be surprisingly strategic in nature, and means the game won't necessarily be the bloodbath you imagine it to be.

As for giving systems "support points" as you surmised, Mike is actually looking for a new support system, and your suggestion may well be the way to go. Obviously the specifics of the idea would need to be discussed further, and that assumes Mike likes the idea though.

The shields/hull system was the way it was done in BOTF, and we've just happened to carry it over. We actually discussed the idea of having hull armor as well as hull points at the start of the year, but it hasn't been mentioned in a while now. The real indicator of the problem is Wolfe's combat system though; once you've worn enemy shields down, ships are nothing more than dog food. Obviously this will be tweaked in future, the numbers have only been worked out on paper so far. But the ships really did have low hull point values in BOTF, and people don't seem to realise that.

As for ship experience...expect changes soon. We've got some surprises planned, but you'll have to wait and see. It's definitely going to be a new feature that BOTF never had though.

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Umm...we DO intend to include this. Unlike in BOTF, Orbital Batteries will play as crucial a role in system defense just as Starbases did. Orbital batteries will be present and will fight off enemies during combat. Kenneth_of_Borg has actually already made the Orbital Battery models.

I repeat, your Credit and Deuterium availability will still limit the number of ships you can build. Each ship will require a preset amount of Credits per turn in maintenance, and will use up Deuterium as they move from one sector to another. If you bankrupt your Empire, your industrial output will falter, and if you run out of Deuterium your fleets will become stranded and unusable.

That's another reason whilst different ship types will be capable of executing different orders; every ship type will have particular uses. Your premium battleships might be capable of wiping out fleets on their own, but that's just about all they can do. A fleet of smaller ships would be a lot more capable, would present a harder-to-hit target during combat, and would probably be cheaper to build and maintain too (Remember the game hasn't been balanced yet, ignore the current costs in this respect for the time being).

We've always intended that the game will present players with at least a bit of a challenge. Both myself and Mike would like there to be some strategy in the game as well. We've both fans of Sins of a Solar Empire, so don't be surprised it you see some features from cthat game making their way into Supremacy as well. [/end hint]

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Yes, when ships physically move from one system to another, then they use fuel. If they are stationary, they won't use any fuel, but they will still require credits as maintenance.

No, you will not be able to upgrade your ships through special technologies. Mike made a conscious decision to not include this feature; the BotE (Birth of the Empires) team have this as one of their main features, and he wanted to differentiate Supremacy from BotE. It would also require major programming changes anyway so it's not exactly the easiest of features that could be tacked on.

...However, *some* ships do get upgrades of a kind. The Constitution class is both the Federation Cruiser II and III, because the Cruiser II is the TOS-era design, whilst the Cruiser III is the Constitution refit. The same thing happens with a rare few other designs as well, such as the Klingon B'rel, which gets two refits in this manner. Ships that are known to be long-lived also have a relatively long life span in terms of the tech requirements needed for the next design. The obsoletion list also generally works on a two-generation system; ships will only be removed from the build list if it is two generations old. So for example, gaining access to the Sovereign class will still allow you to build Galaxy class ships, but Ambassador class ships will be removed from the build queue. The only ship designs that this rule doesn't apply to are the non-combat classes - Transports, Colony Ships, Construction Ships, and Hospital Ships, which have a one-generation obsoletion system because of their non-combat nature and relatively few design numbers.

There are several reasons as to why we have departed from trek canon in this particular respect; for a start, there are a lot of ship designs in the game already. If we were to include upgrades for each of those designs, the research list would be flooded with upgrades. Ok, you could then argue that you would just need to increase the number of tech levels, but this would mean extending the research list - which would then mean much, much longer games. Some people - such as myself - do enjoy looong games, but not everyone does. We need to strike a balance in that respect. So then you could say that the amount of research needed between advances could be reduced - but this then cheapens the technologies and means that advancing isn't such a big deal. There are therefore a lot of things to consider in making such changes.

Another reason for the lack of ship upgrades is that having a highly-populated shiplist is difficult to manage and maintain; what purpose can you realistically give to soo many different ship designs in a game? Ship designs need to have a specific role and purpose. Randomly adding ships to the game *just* because they've been in the shows/films isn't a good idea from a gameplay perspective.

And the final reason for the lack of ship upgrades is the game database. A single ship in the game requires a huge amount of information to be entered - vessel types; class names; ship names; industrial, deuterium, Dilithium and raw material build costs; build requirements; tech requirements; credit maintenance costs; weapon names; weapon numbers; weapon types; weapon damage; weapon re-fire rates; shield strength; shield recharge rate; hull strength; sensor strength; sensor range; maneuverability rate; crew sizes; science ability; crew-science ratio; population health; stealth/cloak strength; ship speed, fuel range; fuel reserve; fuel usage; and probably a number of other stats that i've forgotten about. So as you can imagine, adding a single ship to the game database adds a hell of a lot of info that needs to be processed by the game - the same goes for the upgrades, as these also need all of the exact same information to be entered; the game would treat them as a separate ship design, even though players wouldn't see them that way. So the more ships - and upgrades - that are in the game, the more information that needs to be processed. And the more information that needs to be processed, the slower the game will run.

The ships that are in the game strike a balance between having ships that would have a usable function, and having as many designs as we can realistically have in the game. That said, the game is easily moddable, so I doubt it'll be long before people start modding their games to include all sorts of weird and wonderful designs, so upgrades could still make it in.

If you wanted a simpler way of handling it simply have the model split apart (minorly, still occupying the same grid square) rather than it actually be treated as separate ships, maybe having multiple firing points. Its basically a short-hand way of doing it but it might be more worth doing that than lets say coding something that creates new ship objects. Not to mention what happens when one part is destroyed how will that be resolved in the actual game itself having 2/3rds of a ship Having it treated as one ship with just a unique animation for moving/firing would be an easier solution.