Amen, SonOfMogh. I mean, that's what Escorts and the "Hail" button are for, right?

And his post before last help with what I was semi speaking of. (dealing with fuels ect) Since I have YET Again Confused Azh, I'll offer clairty.

In OLD Botf, when you built a ship, say 1 out of 9 for a fleet, that ship, (unless you have a training building at the home planet) was given it's lowest setting for everything. If they had a training base then the CREW "captain included had a slightly higher rating. But this only was set for warfare. All I propose is that new "ships" (Not Re-fits) be able to train by flying around the Majors sector. something along the lines of what Mogh was speaking of for fuel. We as players do not have to see them pratice targeting and other aspects. All we need know is that training Is happening! Heck even if they did as Mogh spoke of Fly to starbases, they could train "while enroute"

I know I am going to need to express myself a lot better so many to not get confused by what I'm speaking of.

Sorry about this confusion...

I know what you mean mate, general experience in space graually building XP. I guess it could work, although it would have to be VERY slow. At this moment I'm not sure whether it would be worth having the feature in, that's just my point of view of course.

Regarding experience..... I might take this opportunity to run through the ideas I had a while back about ship XP. These ideas were deemed too complicated by Gturfrey, so by all means mike, feel free to confirm that this is still the case!
Still it's worth putting up in case any part of it can be used....


This was my idea;

It wouldn't be the ship that gained experience, it would be the ship's crew. For the sake of ease the crew would be summarised by the Captain. So for example, Captain Chakotay gains experience whilst commanding the USS Hood. At a much later time, a new Galaxy class ship is built. Now Starfleet would not send out a new top of the line explorer with a recently promoted captain.... So, the Hood and the Galaxy will rendezvous, and transfer captains. The experienced commander of the Hood gets a new ship to bring his experience to, the new stand in captain of the new vessel is transferred to the Hood, to gain experience.

Additionally, I proposed the following...

Experience would be divided into 3 sections, Combat, Science, Diplomacy. Combat experience would be gained in battle, and would be similar to BoTF. Science would be gained by scanning anomolies etc, the ship would gain more research points from scanning the more experience it had.
Diplomacy was based on a thought I had that different ship classes should have different diplomacy ratings. The idea that a larger, better equipped vessel would make a better first impression when making first contacts etc, and would thus modify slightly the other race's initial perception of you in the diplomacy screen.
A ship would gain diplomacy skill by making first contacts, escorting alien vessels, and patrolling their space.

Combined with the initial captain idea, the idea is that you would assign the most appropriate captains the the right ships.

I'm aware that this is too much additional programming for little benefit, but thought it was worth retyping!

Please give feedback on my earlier fuel suggestions when you get chance Mike!

Mogh,

Personally I like the idea. IT even runs into a bit of what I was speaking of. If it can not be set into the game perhaps it could be a mod for later use. It just makes sence to me. but then I'm no Dev!

The idea of separating the crew from the ships is interesting, though I'm afraid it won't be happening in this game. I'm having to track too much information as it is, and features like this would drastically increase the size of the game state. The waiting time for multiplayer turn processing would be a nightmare.

Anyway, something to think about for BotF3: Greater Supremacy .

Looking forward to that one!

Your answer wascompletely expected as it was the exact same answer as before. Still, as a non programmer I might as well at least let you make a judgement.

Cheers for all your hard work on this.

I enjoy the hard work . Just so you know I'm not exaggerating, download the huge galaxy patch, start a game, and run one turn. Check out the file size on the auto.sav savegame. It should be around 835kb. Now consider that all that file contains is a woefully incomplete tech database, basic info for 5 races and 5 civilizations, and the data for all the star systems, planets, colonies, buildings, and ships in the galaxy. Imagine how much bigger it will get with dozens of minor races, tons more ships and buildings, detailed data for each civilization's relationship with every other civilization, intelligence activities, etc etc etc. Now imagine having to send large chunks of that data to every player on every turn. You can start to see the problem I'm running into here with complexity... 8O

Yeah, I can certainly see some of your problem!

Perhaps it should be the case that a slightly smaller map is used for multi player. I guess this suits multi player style games anyway. You've got less time to play an entire game, you also generally want some kind of conclusion also as I guess you're competing etc.

I only ever play single player, big galaxy, long game is my preference.

Yeah, I will most likely impose a limit of Tiny or Small galaxies for multiplayer games. I may let you select a larger galaxy and just pop up a warning that larger galaxies should only be played on high-speed LANs, and that I don't want to hear anyone bitch about how slow it is .

Although I am not a game designer , I do understand the huge amount of work and lines of code that go into it. I actually used to design websites, ( A long long time ago) but from what you described 10 of my sites Might just fit into that bit code wise.

But on a different note, I would like to know. When you make your ship movements do you work just on the X Y planes or do you also use the Z plane as well?

( sorry I used to be a CNC programer/operator before I was injured )

Map movements are in 2 dimensions <x,y>. I would imagine 3D combat movements would take advantage of all 3 dimensions, so <x,y,z>.

Thanks.

I'm going to sut up now and go back to teaching myself excel.

Hey, you've gotta start somewhere .

By the Masterplan on the database, you can. It even has as order:
Raid credits
Raid dueterium
Raid raw material
Raid dilithium

so it seems that stuff other than credits can be taken

Tho i imagine that them selections only come up if that perticular system has them things.

I'd still have to insist on an avoid order as I fail to see how it could make sense to not impliment one. The avoid order will pit a ship against another ship that is attempting to engage/intercept it. It's kinda like fleeing from battle, but pre-emptive instead of reactionary. Example:

You have a science vessel. Most science vessels are rather quick and agile. They don't have powerful defenses, but they do have powerful sensors with great range. A warbird is huge and lumbering. They have powerful engines but poor manuverability. They make up for it with an impressive offense.

But the catch is being able to catch up to it. And I'm not just talking movement-wise.

Agility needs to stand for something. If it doesn't, than it is an entirely useless statistic and as such, there would be little point in building defiants, promethiues's, heavy destroyers, and other agile, yet expensive ships. If Galaxies can intercept ships just as well as Defiants while bringing more to the table with better sensors, movement, and defenses... then you've single-handedly made several types of ships obsolete before you've even researched them.

Do I expect science vessels to be capable of avoiding a huge warbird? Absolutely, assuming it's the latest and greatest model. Interception pits a one ship's ability at "cornering" another ship, which in turn is attempting to avoid the aggressor as much as possible. The science vessel knows it is space dust against a warbird, so why would it let the bird close enough to attack it? It wouldn't. It'd attempt to keep as much space between it and the bird as possible, even when in the same sector. Perhaps the science vessel uses a planet for cover, or flies through an asteroid field, or simply maneuvers past the bird staying out of engagement range.

Avoidance is all over canon trek. The Defiant essentially epitomizes avoidance. Sure it's got cool hull armor and decent shields for a ship it's size, but it's single greatest strength is avoiding enemies when it chooses to. And when it does engage, it employs it's agility in avoiding weapons fired in it's direction.

However, that's not to say that the warbird can't engage the science vessel (or even the defiant). That's why I proposed a system that incorporates luck. Each ship would have a certain capability of avoiding combat entirely, engaging enemies that are set to avoid, and intercepting enemies outright. I believe all three require equations to be done effectively. The variables in the equation would be dependant on the ship's other statistics, plus a class modifier that depends on the typical role of each vessel's starship class. IE: science vessels and escorts would likely have some crazy avoidance ratings while escorts and fast-attacks (destroyers, heavy destroyers, prometheus, etc) would have some crazy interception ratings.

End-game cruisers such as Soverigns and Warbirds would likely have decent interception ratings based on their speed and sensor statistics, although their agility (or lack thereof) would add very little.

Using your freighter example, they would likely have a low-end avoidance rating, if freighters exist at all in BotF2. They are slow, not very agile, and have poor sensors; those three stats make up the core of the avoidance equation. However, I would expect the freighter class modifier to add some avoidance ability as I would highly expect the other variables to be very close to 0. Even considering the class modifier, I would expect freighters to have some of the worst avoidance ability in the game, with colony ships and "planetary assault ships" (if they are in the game, too lazy to check the DB, but I'm using the BotF1 reference to help flesh out the example. you know... the ships designed for "assaults" that you never built) as a close second and third.

I fully believe that a freighter should be capable of escaping the cluthes of a ship once in a while. I'd attribute it to luck. That's like a VW Bug escaping from persueing police officers in their V8 cruisers. Is it likely to happen? Not even close. But could it? Absolutely. And that's what the avoid/engage/intercept equations are designed to protray and is why I suggested them in the format I did.

Needless to say, it is still a WAY better idea to escort your freighters, colony ships, and troop transports than it is to send them solo. But I still want the possibility of those ships escaping harm as that possibility always exists.

Food for thought: If you did away with the "avoid" order, then a Klingon troop transport would essentially engage every single troop transport of opposing races that it comes across. I question how "realistic" that really is considering the typical statistics of troop transports. That's not even mentioning what happens with the non-combats of other races. If a Fed colony ship comes acorss a Romulan colony ship, is there a battle? What kind of battle is it? A staring contest? Rock-paper-scissors? Thumb war?

I don't see how you can remove the avoid order. All you can do is make ships more or less likely to avoid/engage/intercept other ships. Yay equations!

BTW: I'd be onboard with seperating ship experience into different categories. Defiant and Prometheus class vessels, for example, would have little use for sensor bonuses. Meanwhile science vessels would likely excel in attaining sensor-related experience. Considering that those ships usually avoid combat, I would not expect them to have significant combat experience. However, being long-range science ships, I would expect them to become adept at damage control as all sorts of hazards, natural or not, exist in the fringes of known space. But the lack of combat experience would do little to increase their avoid/engage/intercept modifiers that more combat-oriented ships would gain. And your heavy cruisers would pretty much remain as well-balanced ships.

Don't worry, I'm not getting rid of the Avoid order. I've been giving it some thought, and here are the factors that I'm considering including in the calcuations. I emphasize considering, because this is far from final. Some of these will weigh heavier than others. I've hastily ordered them in roughly descending order of relevance.

Avoiding Vessel
Stealth/Cloak Rating
Speed
(*)Ship Class
Maneuverability
Crew Experiene
Random Component

Intercepting Vessel
Scan Strength
Speed
Maneuverability
Crew Experiene
Random Component

(*) Non-combatant ships may receive a small avoidance bonus, unless being intercepted by a ruthless race. Troop Transports would only receive such a bonus if being intercepted by an honorable race that they are not at war with.

Really, it makes a lot more sense to leave it in, as if someone doesn't like it they can simply set all avoidance values to zero, and intercept ratings to max.

I'll probably go somewhere in between this and what Mike is proposing. Good work.

I should add that I still hope to allow modders to script their own fleet orders. This would require some programming background and knowledge of either C# or Python, depending on which route I go.

I was thinking about this over the weekend as you had mentioned previously of incorporating a ship's cloak rating into the chance of avoiding combat. I think the exact opposite should occur.

If you can cloak (and you're up to date on your cloaking tech), you are already 100% promised to avoid battles if you choose to. Nothing can find you, let alone target you and engage you in battle.

However, if a non-cloaked ship is avoiding engagement while being persued by a cloaked ship, the avoiding ship would be at the disadvantage of not knowing where the cloaked ship is (and thus, the only available option would be to hope to outrun it as maneuverability would supply less of an impact; why would you go in one direction or another when you can't see the predator?) Perhaps being cloaked would simply grant the intercepting ship an equivilent bonus to overcome the bonus an avoiding ship receives from agility rather than a straight-up modifier (I like either option).

As such, I think you should remove the cloaked bonus from the avoid order and add it to the intercept order. However, this should only apply when cloaked and if undetectable. Otherwise all the cloak in the world won't help you. Also, I'm not sure why you don't have the scan rating in both avoidance and interception. Scanning for celestial bodies in a sector or other anomolies would be just as useful for the avoiding ship as sensors in general for tracking/anticipating the fleeing ship.

Also, I highly suggest that you make the baseline engage order act as your proposed intercept order, while using a multiplier (probably based on class type) to increase the effectiveness of interception orders. Keep in mind, if there are 20 ships in a sector set to "avoid" and 20 ships in a sector set to "engage", there's a really really really high chance combat will be occuring in reality, so some math to generate that possibility is required. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but after reflecting on what you intended the avoid and engage behaviors to be, I don't think they'd be realistic and I believe some more gameplay options and tactical decisions will be available using a completely equation-based system to determine if ships avoid combat or are intercepted (both via "engage" and "intercept").

I have a thing against absolutes. I like options and possibilities. At heart, I'm a HUGE theorycrafter. I'm a fairly decent mathmatician and algebra is quite easily a big strength of mine. I like having a chance, no matter how slim, to be able to do something or avoid something most find impossible. I want the biggest, slowest, 0-warp 1 in 5.78 years ship to be able to avoid ships (within reason of course) that it would normally have no business avoiding. On the flip side, I want to see Enterprise-era destroyers intercepting state-of-the-art science vessels, normally a ship such as the NX would never be capable of doing. 99 times out of 100, those situations wouldn't occur. But I want to see that 1 in a 100 chance. Because it could. So if I seem pushy on this system, just keep this in mind.

Cloaking is NOT an absolute. Cloak Strength counters Scan Strength. Depending on how close the two values are, you may:

- See Nothing
- Detect a fleet, but have no idea who it belongs to or what ships it is composed of
- Detect some of the ships in the fleet
- Detect all of the ships in the fleet

A 3rd-generation Federation Scout would likely detect all the ships in a 1st-generation Romulan fleet. It would probably only know "something" is out there if it encountered a 2nd-generation Romulan fleet. It wouldn't see a thing if it encountered a 3rd-generation Romulan fleet.

From a simple mind:

I wonder if this is perhaps going a bit to far tech wise. It is one thing to be able to do all kinds of interesting things, yet another to develop and implement.

I tossed this out here to see what kinds of fun regarding movements should be talked about or have new ideas spring up.

I'm all for keeping it real.. As in really fun to play.

Fleet movements are turns left, right, (if possable) up, down. speed, warp or impulse.

What happened to fun and simple to play? I Apologize but all this high tech this and that get to be a bit overwhelming. For me. to many things to do just to make a simple movement of my ship or fleet and I would lose interest real quick... Not that it cannot have its complex side, as we all know it does just from viewing a tiny fraction of code. but please!

Mstrobel, I can say I am honored to have you build this, with all the coding and other things that go into it. What I have seen and played with I enjoy very much.

Azh, Dude, No offence man, but Tone It Down!! This is a game for goodness sake not a plan for taking over the Universe! I like a lot of things you mention that would help make the games better and more enjoyable to play, but too often it reads like your taking this way too serious!

I love a great discussion but this is getting a bit weird for my taste. And I know it is NOT my place to say anything as I contribute just about Zip! But when I do , I try to keep it short and sweet. And Lively.

Again I Apologize to all! I'm not mad, just concerened.

Well i have embarrassed myself..

thanks for reading this.

Hawk.

Hawk, i see it looks complicated all this chat but i think its all going to be hidden features as in they work in the background and within the normal commands like from botf 1.

I think there talking about how to program the engage/avoid/raid/cloak commands as you see in botf 1 and just trying to work out what they should do for this game.

So it wont be as complicated as you think when its all done.

Cloaking and Scan Strength should be taken inot account when both avoiding adn intercepting.

From the database Masterplan. Just food for thought.

1.14 / Ship Orders
In BOTF you had some orders you could use on your vessels, on the map (not in battles). This is the new list and much better compared to BOTF:

Engage (stand ready)
Avoid (avoid)
Cloak (only for Romulan and Klingon vessels - or captured vessels that have this ability)
Raid (credits, installations, etc…)
Redeploy (group with other ships)
Intercept (Intercept enemy shipping in your territory)
[b]Pursue (Select pursue, then select an enemy ship. Your ship will follow theirs until it catches up. When you catch up the ships fight). This stops the AI from hiding its ship or ships in an adjacent sector to avoid a fight. Obviously, a faster ship will get away, weaker ships would head home to force the enemy to break off pursuit.
Research To research certain anomalies, and other things. To receive resources/research points/etc… (see Research and scanning)
Replenish Automatically head to the nearest allied facility, where you can replenish your vessels with Torpedoes. (see below)
Patrol For Scouts only - You can pre-select a patrol route, particularly useful along enemy borders.
Explore For Science Ships and Explorers only - plot a course of exploration for your Science Ship (see below)
This means automated wandering and scanning (research) of anything it comes across
Relief Effort Assign the ship to respond to medical emergencies and natural disasters. In this mode the ship will activate is Population Health bonus (this is what Hospital Ships are for - Ship Stats for more)
Distress Signal (see 1.18 below) as in run out of 'fuel' and need a lift.

Pretty cool overall though. I think anyway.

Just to be clear, we're not discussing the general intent of the orders. We're discussing how they should be implimented.

I think it's safe to say every single one of those orders will make the game and they will do what that general description says they will do. The devil is in the details.

Agreed. The orders are simple but we've got to make sure the system behind them is fair and relevant.

I'm really looking forward to playing a game with these features

I put up the list, as there was ambiguity. Azhdeen put forth some ideas on the first page of the thread that on the second page had to be clarified. Thus be cautious with terminology.


I think the current debate as I see it is about what happens when two (or more) ships end their move in the same sector.

Intercept: Ship sit in one sector and moves in reaction to a hostile ship/fleet moving in range to its sector. Honestly, other than the percentage listed, it was a mystery as to how it worked. You had to be in your own sector but it would jump into any sector.
Priorities and how it works needs to be discussed.

Persue: Useful for hunting enemy ships. I would like this to not be territory dependant like Intercept. (But could modify any algorithm for it) It follows until the target is out of range, disappears (ie cloak), other orders given or catches up.

It’s these two that are causing most of the debate.
Avoid: Simply meant; to try to avoid an encounter. It only worked if the other side was also doing Avoid, or they couldn’t see through your cloak. Else it didn’t work.

Engage: was just the opposite of Avoid. Would interrupt what ever the other force was up to.

Accurately, these caused Encounters or Contacts to occur. What Azhdeen is proposing is that when ships end in the same sector that the above ‘automatic encounter’ doesn’t always occur (at least with Engage).

This has some promise, but I worry about some odd things occurring. As an example: the early stage of the game, you have few warships and some young colonies. It’s possible for a lone transport to in and take it from you. Thus you park a destroyer over it. You don’t set Intercept because you want it to stay put. It would then guard the system.

But now with any randomness, it’s no guarantee. Hypothetically the algorithm could make it unlikely, but it’s not impossible (unless the algorithm made it so).

As for decisions, mstrobel what do you want to do?

(It may be viable to first put in the algorithm so that it mimics BotF 1 behaviour and then just change it later, and make it MODable.)

I suggest you break down intercept into:
INTERCEPT - works in your own territory. Won't follow ships that go out of your borders.

HUNT - worsk everywere. Will hunt any enemy ship inside sensor range





As far as sneaking by and capturing planets, why not all planet have a basic sensor array that increases chances of detection/interception/engagement in that system?
The more powerfull the sensor the greater the area that is scanned.
The closer you are to the planet with the sensor hte greater the bonuses.