Well, I didn't read all of this, but one can look at Titans of Steel: Warring Suns, it has a pretty detailed targeting system. It's a tactical squad level strat game, but it handles accuracy in a quite sophisticated way, accroding to distance to target, speed and movement type of target, speed of firing unit, shield strength/setting, targeting skill, size of target, etc. In a pretty simple manner. It's explained in a more or less compreensive manner in the guide (and the manual) I wrote for the game. Shield hits and shield overload are also represented failry simply.
Also, Lost Empire: Immortals has a pretty cool combat system, with ship class, combat speed, weapon type/size, angle of attack, electronics, shield absorption, shield deflection, shield penetration, etc all being factored in.

*points above* that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. (not just individual weapon' damage)

. Right, but again, these things (or at least the more finely detailed elements) require a more advanced level of programming, like vjeko said. One must find the correct mathematical functions within the programming language, and then structure the models and projections (weapons fire) so that the computer understands exactly what must be done. And then, if there is to be randomization in the firing (accuracy and such) then that must be created as yet another separate function in an already sophisticated code. I worked for a while with XNA (which I think is what cdrwolfe is using for his combat engine). The aspects that must be used there (rendering textures, 2D and 3D, tying this all in to the computer's graphic capabilities) etc, etc. is all quite confusing. While I do like the level of ideas coming in, I look at it from a programmers point of view, and I'm thinking "doable, doable, frightening, don't even wanna go there, basic stuff, basic stuff, doable, frightening, etc, etc." But yes, I agree at least the basic accuracy math should be worked out in the engine. After all, combat in Trek has a lot to do with the accuracy vs mass of the vessels fighting....

The great battles of history depended on more than just the greatest application of force. There are features of deception, formation, maneuvers, the use of new technologies and use of terrain.

Developing a system of complex weapons and individual ship abilities is good but are we just then going to let the fleet run wild? How can we push past the detail of each weapon and ship to the art of war? How can a smaller force outwit a larger and prevail? How does the human player take chances, develop a plan of battle and interact with the combat engine. Are we just going to watch the ships have at it or is it more interactive?

We do not have the use of terrain so we are left with developing new technologies, deception, formation and maneuvers. I want to see this play a key role in battle. I would love to give each major race a unique set of special abilities they gain over time. We could tie the progress of technologies to the ability for deception and conduct of special maneuvers.

Possible "special stuff":

Federation: USS Incursion, special ability: Holographic Masking System. The HMS gives the Incursion an unprecedented camoflage ability, to disguise itself as an Enemy vessel within that fleet, appearing to be so both in Sight and on Sensors. The Incursion can appear as any vessel that is larger than itself, the hull of the vessel it appearing to be projected around it.

Romulan: Perfect Cloak.

Dominion: Long Range Transporter (placement of spies onto ships that are on standdown), would need certain restrictions and requirements (Scan strength of something, two sectors range beyond 'current'?)

Klingon: ???

Battleground be *much* larger, with possible "Retreat to nearest:___" bits?

I dunno.

The holographic system would be more canon if given to Romulans (Babel One......)

Feds:Armour(The one that Voyager brought home)


Klingons: Give them cloaked mines or Perfect cloak.

Wise men!

Here is a Klingon vs Federation example of what I am thinking.

The Federation has a convoy of ships heading to a target world. The combat ships are screening the transports. The Federation fleet runs into a Klingon fleet in the same square of the map. Before the combat engine takes over and decides the outcome the Federation and Klingon human players make selections on the UI for combat.

The player has choices like:

Convoy – protect the non combat ships while you proceed to your objective (WWII Atlantic)

Charge and Engage – rush the enemy ships and do as much damage as fast as you can. This could help you break a defensive stance and move on as far as you can on the next turn. (The Battle of Trafalgar)

Delaying Action Retreat – Some ships screen and block while others try to get away (will likely see all screening ships lost when outnumbered) Deep Space 9, Once More into the Breach

Disengage and Retreat – A route, run for the hills, everyone for themselves (If all the ships are fast you could get away with more ships than in a delaying action)

Disengage and Advance – Try to outrun the enemy to your objective so they do not slow you down (an end run) That Deep Space 9 where they make a run for the wormhole.

Defensive Stances – circle the wagons, hold your position and overlap shields and fields of fire. (You would not be able to move much in the next turn)

Delay – Try to hold the enemy ships in this sector for an extra turn by repeated hit and run. This would limit the movement of enemy ships in the next turn.

Envelope – With overwhelming numbers bring all ships into an interlocking field of shields and fire around what you hope will be a smaller enemy defensive formation. You would not be able to move very far next turn. Deep Space 9, What You Leave Behind

Target Transports – go wolf pack / sub hunt WWII Atlantic trying to stop an invasion (your best chance of taking out some transports if you are outgunned.

All this would influence the combat engine and the outcome. It is like a complicated game of rock paper scissors.

A second row of buttons might begin to light up as you develop new technology. Here you would see the features to make your fleet appear larger or better armed or weaker and smaller. You might even make them look like a different race. You hope to influence your opponent into a bad stratagem.

Some great ideas in this thread, reminds of 2004 when these boards were alive.

Ok, I'm no programmer (faaaar from it), but I see a reality check coming on. Let's face it, all this complicated stuff won't make it in. (please feel free to correct me anyone with some experience with these things).

Let's look at one aspect, maneuverability. BOTF handled this very cleverly, each ship had a "defence" rating, this in conjunction with the opposing ship's accuracy, determined how likely it was that ship would get hit by phaser fire. The Defiant and Miranda moved at exactly the same speed and in exactly the same way, but the Defiant got hit a lot less. Different ships moved at different impulse speeds based on their basic class, (scout, command etc), but speed didn't really factor into how well they could evade fire, (Edt the starbase defence rating to match the Defiant and most shots will miss it. This was clever, and simple.

Unfortunately this also ruined combat to a large extent. See, all the destroyers had the fastest impulse engines, and as such they rushed ahead of the larger ships in any engagement. As a result they were all annihilated by the initial barrage of photons meaning you lost all your small ships whenever you had a battle. Given that the Defiant class was an expensive and effective unit, I'd often wish the few Defiants I had could stay with the Ambassadors etc until the fleets were close in, giving the Defiant the chance to do some damage. Some kind of system is needed to choose the speed at which either certain wings or other groups of ships engage, as well as the way they engage. This is completely essential and therefore needs to be figured out.

A good way would be the option to redeploy in the tactical combat screen much like redeployment works on the galactic map. Put certain ships together in a group and give them a joint order. Attack pattern- circle, Speed- full impulse. Select another group which might consist mainly of Sovereign and Galaxy classes, and order them to advance slowly forward, and minimal speed and bombard from a distance. These are ideas not too far out from the system in BOTF, yet they give a huge amount of control over individual ships.

Sorry for double post, but having issues typing anything past a certain length. Just wanted to say I started typing before Kenneth's post, and I wanted to be the first to say they are really good ideas.

I like your ideas KoB and SoM, system should be easy and effecive.

I am glad you agree about looking beyond how the combat engine calculates shields and weapons. It is crucial to the function of the combat engine but does not call for any player interaction. What is the fun in that?

Double posting:

Using some of the ship models I could come up with graphics for each race's combat options. This would be an ingame image button for each combat option.

It would work better still if we can come up with ways of making the selection of options unique to each races technology and ways of war. An example would be that the Klingons have more and better delaying actions and charge options. The Romulans have a powerful deception and cloaking wolf pack to target transports. The Cardassians are, as we all know, very ugly. Well you get the idea.

*Cardassian attack formations generally seem to consist of lining up as many ships as possible side by side with their large forward phaser trained on the enemy. It's odd that BOTF chose the cardies to be the only race with aft weapon coverage since that seems completely at odds with their style. I think since Cardassian tech is often lagging behind other powers they put all their effort into producing one epic weapon per ship and put all their effort into avoiding getting outflanked and keepng their bow on the enemy. All the secondary phasers on a Cardassian warship only come out when dealing with something incredibly light and meneuverable, and if Caretaker is anything to go by they wouldn't harm a decent sized ship.

Cardassian strategy should be slow movement, keep formations tight and try to isolate a single enemy ship and gang up!

*Klingons are exactly as you say, rush rush rush, they should be quick and nimble at impulse with lots of weapons but crap shields. Charge and overwhelm the enemy in close, and obviously the BoP type ships would have short range.

*Romulans would stay cloaked as long as possible, then I guess largely fight like the Cardassians. Their primary ships are incredibly immobile at impulse so if the opening barrage isn't enough then they'll just overwhelm the enemy with as much firepower as possible.

*Dominion strategy would be a lot like Klingons.......

*Federation would be the most balanced and varied I guess. They will spend by far the most time circling and maneuvering as most Federation ships don't have 1 primary beam weapon, they can move off to the side and still lay down some impressive firepower.

For movement with ships that have varying acceleration rates (all fed ships do full impulse, it's just a matter of how long it takes them to get up to speed, or change direction of travel. Defiant would be able to make tighter turns than an Akira for instance)

[edit]gorram it, hit submit by accident.
continued:

for movement -blablabla- rates, each wing would move relative to the ship with the slowest acceleration. By relative, I mean that each ship would move seperately, but as a group.

And seriously, take a look at Homeworld 2 if you haven't. any newly built vehicle would move inf ormation with it's carrier until actually given a specific order. tell mothership to move, and the rest of the new/repaired ships that are in the parking positions will move with. Including Turrets that can fire before being "Deployed".

And since we're talking turn-based, we could leave it all to the AI, or have a bit of Supreme Commander-style order-issuing.... Give orders manually to each 'wing', and as has been suggested, regroup ships for the combat round.

Formations would work similarly to H2's system, so you would shift-select several wings of redeployed Akira's all working together, and give them a Guard command and click on the grouped-together support vessels... and all your defiants, and other fast-attack ships can be given combat-move orders (fire at any ships in range, or double order, attack specific but also then, control-click on wher eyou want them to move.)

any savvy player could then chain together orders through a 'turn simulation' with expected enemy fleet movements, and upto 3 turns ahead, give orders for each of those turns... and then just see which works best.
...

So lets see:

Ship Behavior: Agressive (+Weap, +Acceleration for maneuvers, - Shields); Neutral, Defensive (+Shields, -Weap)

Wing Behavior: Formations, Guard or Offensive orders

Fleet Behavior: Overall, The various options given by umm.. in edit so don't see who said about the general play style of retreat/engage etcetera.

And in between that, we can manually give orders. Hands-on, or Hands-off. And until a decent AI for it all can be made, I guess a forced hands-on thing for the interactions between ships would be made. Player vs Player would naturally be part of it.

One other thing, when it's multiple players , in either FFA, or single/Team vs Team, (1v2, 2v2, on so on) extra features would be good for Combat' Expansion packs. Getting a bit ahead there though.
Things like, in a Fed/Rom/Kli vs Dominion/Card, A pair of Defiants, wing of B'Rels and a Rommie Warbird serving as a 'carrier' where all the far-smaller allied ships take refuge in the great expanse between the dorsal and ventral hull,... And it cloaks (taking the other ships into cloak with it, then the warbird gets close, and all hell breaks loose! Open that Can of Whoopass!

Awell, I can dream..


And if you played Away Team or Armada 2, you'll know what I meant by the Incursion+HMS. It was the focus of the first game, and a hero ship in the second.

This is just my opinion, but I'd hate to see any of the crazy stuff from Armada make it in. Didn't the Vor'Cha have a torpedo that bounced off multiple ships and the Sovereign have a reflective shield???!

In terms of 'special abilities' as it were, as you're aware it's unlikely that you'll get specific classes working together in such a complicated manner. I did have a few ideas though for race specific attributes that might make combat more interesting...

*Federation- When a ship reaches Legendary XP it receives a far greater bonus than Legendary ships of other races
*Klingon- All ships receive XP at a 30% faster rate than other races
*Dominion- All ships start out with Regular XP and do not gain any XP thereafter, they also get a 50% damage boost from ramming
*Romulans- It is impossible to tell the XP and current damage of a Romulan ship in battle
*Cardassians- All ships start with Regular XP but can't go higher than Veteran

That suits each race I think. Federation gets their "hero ships" like the Enterprise etc that outperform other ships of the same class by quite a margin. But since there's not going to be many of them it doesn't unbalance the game.
Klingons will lose a lot more ships due to the amount of battles they have and the fact that many of their classes have poor shielding (BoPs etc), but rapid XP gain makes up for this slightly.
Dominion ships are cheap and expendable, since they are mass produced and blow up easily it makes sense you wouldn't be worrying about XP with them (also Jem Hadar barely live past their teens so it makes sense).
Romulans get no XP boost but extra sneakiness!.
Cardies are all about reliablity, there are no crap units, but no exceptional ones either. Perfect.

What do you think?

It was the Akira, actually. The Chain Reaction Pulsar.

AII's Special weapons:

Federation
All Races Scoutships: Tachyon Detection Grid ~ detects cloaked vessels.
Defiant Class Destroyer: Antimatter Mines
Aegian Class Support Frigate: Shield Enhancer ~ boosts allied shields
Akira Class Cruiser: Chain Reaction Pulsar ~ special torpedo that strikes multiple ships successively, gaining power with each hit. Limited to 3 ships I believe.
Steamrunner Class Artillery: Engine Overload ~ damages the engines of enemy vessels.
Nebula Class Science Ship: Shield Disrupter ~ Disables the shields of enemy vessels
Gemini Effect ~ Causes "temporal disturbance" that essentially duplicates a ship for a short time. IS BASED ON TECH SHOWN IN SHOW THAT DID THAT VERY SAME THING, ONLY WITH DATA
Point Defence Phaser ~ Shoot incoming torpedoes. nice idea.
Engineering Team ~ beam over people, gives boost to repair rate on target ship. One item to be good in Supremacy.
Sovereign Class Battlecruiser: Corbomite Reflector ~ based on an idea Captain James T. Kirk used as a bluff a century prior.

Klingon
B'rel Bird of Prey Destroyer: Gravity Mines ~ same as defiant.
Koloth Class Suport Frigate: Weapons enhancer ~ provides increase in range and effectiveness of weapons.
Vor'Cha Class Cruiser: Polaron Torpedo ~ Torpedoes that can pierce through target shields to strike it's entire damage potential on the hull of a ship.
Fek'lhr Class Science Ship:Death Chant~ increase rate of fire and crew effectiveness
Repulsion Wave ~ pushes ships away from the vessel, damaging it and disabling engines
Ion Storm ~ creates an ionic nebula that damages ships.
Energy Dissipator ~ drains 'special weapon energy' from multiple ships, rendering their special abilities offline for a time.
Negh'var Class Battlecruiser: Ion Cannon ~ Big Damn Disrupter.
Jach'eng Class Dooms-I mean, Suicide Sh- I mean, aw hell whatever: Shockwave ~ Ships' only weapon, destroys both ship and enemies in a particular direction (aim 90 right, wave of destruction goes about 40 degrees or so up and downward from said wave.

I'll leave out the Rom, Card and Borg ones.

I'm not saying either, pull those from A2,... But the Incursion featured in "Away Team" first. And that game came before the Episode of Enterprise! But like the Ditl article on Akiraprise, it could be suggesting, in-universe, Section 31 had a hand in the creation of the Incursion's Holographic Masking System, inspired by the tech we saw in those episodes. We know Section 31 existed since *before* the launch of the NX-01 too (Reed used to be one of em or something)