Well OK - as long as I can eject my warp core.
This is the warp core drink at Quarks bar, part of the Las Vegas Star Trek The Experience

and she is in the process of ejecting someones warp core

lol

That's one big drink.

That is wonderful about taking a run at the 3D combat engine. You mentioned how allies could warp in to help. I recall in the original BOTF it was win or lose. No ships could flee or last to a new turn if they did not win the fight. It would be nice to see retreats and or other ships popping in.

Got any other cool ideas ?

How about the chance of a worm hole entity or some other random threat near the sector joining the battle as well?

Wow... You sure have done your homework there Strings. I had just about forgotten about ever posting that... Wasn't it in something like "Ship Tactics" or something like that?

BTW, you can just call me Fox if you want.

I have been so concentrated on models and audio I have not taken the time to play Supremacy or BOTE. Is the code compatible with a battle taking more than one turn? Can ships retreat or hold out a turn for reinforcements to arrive?

With large fleets I guess it would be more a mater of setting up parameters for an AI to use on your behalf during a round of combat? That is to say a first person shooter would seam impractical with a fleet. Or could you fly a formation of ships like a first person shooter?

If not you would click off tactical options for the AI to follow before the first combat round? After a few rounds it would be equal to a turn? You could try to retreat on a round? You might have to leave a ship or more to cover your retreat? New ships could show up if you stay in for a number of rounds equal a turn? I still can eject my warp core if I so chose?

Err what do you mean by an FPS, i don't think the 3D combat wil represent Strings defiant demo. I could be wrong though.

Regards Wolfe

I didn't want the battle engine to be the first bit of code I do with XNA, so I decided to make the defiant game to help familiarise myself with the language. The defiant game does not depict how 3D combat will be like in BOTF2.

Right, I'm ready give out a specification of features to be implemented in the 3D Battle engine. I might start a new thread for it, this thread is getting long and not many will read this far, plus it's not on topic anymore

Well start with basics i guess, RTS style click and move system, 3rd person 'spherical' camera with right mouse button rotation and scroll zoom.

Your choice on 3D movement or just sticking to a plane.

Regards Wolfe

High end features aswell

Incorporated Physics engine would be nice
Probably need to incorporate a decent soundFX engine
Persistant destroyed hulls with collsion detection
Not just looming moons but actual moons and objects which add some strategy to what is essentially a void
Automatic AI for your own ships at your choice so your not to overwhelmed micromanaging everything

All the other bangs and whistles, lighting, shading or whatever there called these days

Regards Wolfe

you forgot: getting paid for all this!

I'll hold out for a Studentship

Regards Wolfe

Physics engine? You've been reading up about haven't you?

Just readin what people have put, the Troop Transports never actually performed combat in BOTF - indeed there wasn't any actual combat during planetary assault. All that happened was you got a message saying system x invaded x people dead x ships lost, or system x repelled invasion, x people died in the attempt, x ships were lost. If we were to include a new method of invasion with visual eyecandy, we might want to discuss this in more detail...

I'd say we build an ego shooter first like strings did with the ship battle and then gradually build up a netpanzer-like ground combat (for all who don't know netpanzer, here's the source code and game: http://netpanzer.berlios.de/download.html ). In fact we could right away take this source and do a quick invasion game like in C&C. Of course, all this would be selectable as =ON and =OFF so if people don't want it, they don't need to make such a fuss about ground combat. In Single Player however, this could be lots of fun when an AI is added to the originally MP-game netpanzer..

That netpanzer game was built by a guy that I personally knew from school like what, a decade ago, and I gotta tell you he was the "king of coding" in our class (though he quit the project years ago and someone else now is in charge who I don't know really..). So the game really is a good piece of work to start from!

Infinity looks interesting, i wonder if it will be free or have a small fee?

Also there are plenty of free physics engines out there i'am sure, incorporating one into the combat engine would be nice though not essential.

Regards Wolfe

Hey, sorry I haven't been following this thread, but I've been busy lately and haven't checked many of the forums aside from answering questions in the Supremacy section . Really glad to have you onboard, strings, and btw, Visual Studio has a slick class designer built into it in case you were unaware--it beats down most UML modelling tools that I know of .

Still gotta get your Defiant demo working on my system, though. EDIT: er, nevermind, I just did

No problem Mike take your time, you've been busy with Supremacy these past few days. I'll check out VS's built in class designer, I didn't know it had one, cool!

Wolfe I'm glad to hear the physics engine is not essential but yes, 3D sound or just sound at first will be added. I also agree on more strategy whenever we can add it; the exotic battle locations can be refined for that purpose. I also hate micromanaging so a fire at will order to all ships would be nice.

Ok, to add more strategy during an invasion, can we add a a "request reinforcements" option for the defenders. (details for that system to be discussed too, later) But what we've essentially done here is made a time limit for the invaders to fight through the defenses before back up warps in after X number of turns. This is analogous to a medieval siege, or *puts on gandalf hat*, like in Lord of the Rings, Gondor knows you're there and have sent for aid (request reinforcements), you need to get your orcs past the white walls of minas tirith (orbital batteries) before the horsemen (warp 9 ships) and ghost army (cloaked ships) come and pwn you.

/dies from geek overdose.

Question is, where do the backups come from? Unless we're considering having multi-turn combat as meaning actual game turns rather than combat turns I don't see how bringing in reinforcements would be realistic - or even make sense if your entire fleet is on the other side of the Galaxy or even non existent.

Irrlicht can easily be integrated with the Newton physics engine, i've got one of the C# wrappers installed now, though i haven't tested it, simply because i don't know how

Also Irrlicht comes with its own sound engine IrrKlang i think so its worth a look.

Regards Wolfe

Yeah and the answer is simple, restrict backups to only from sectors 1 square away. The ships coming to help will then have one square's worth of fuel deducted from them when the next turn starts, so they have a reduced range in the next turn.

I think that preserves some sense of realism, and is not too complicated.

Are you talking about Supremacy or BOTE in regards to the coming into battle with one less turns fuel?

Also, I think that units should be able to reinforce from as far as 4 tiles away depending on both the speed of each of the ships involved and the duration of the battle. For example, if you are heavily out gunned you could use delaying tactics in order to allow for more reinforcements to arrive.

Here is another question I just though of... Should units that moved into enemy territory be eligible to receive reinforcements under the same rules as units in their own territory?

Ah, do the two games use different systems regarding range/fuel? I haven't checked oops.

Hey I quite like how you reworked the idea, so now say a ship can move 4 tiles in one turn, and it is 3 tile away, then it can be called in to help. And the next turn it will have just 1 tile movement left (speed of ship in tiles per turn) - (tiles travelled to get to battle). We have to work out how many turns delay per tile travelled, hey maybe a ships's max warp speed can finally factor into tangible gameplay! Yeah putting all this will hopefully introduce more tactics and strategies.

It does make sense that the rules should be changed for reinforcements when you're in enemy territory, since they control the communication networks there. Yet at the same time we risk making the game too defensive, we're increasing the strength of outpost/stations and putting orbital batteries in the tactical battles. Can this work with some balancing?

Step away from the programmer, Fox, he's working for Supremacy now!

...So obviously he's talking about Supremacy fuel costs.

lol assimilate him MOE, wheres Kenneth when you need him

Regards Wolfe

But seriously, I still want to make the combat engine work for both projects, but at the moment I don't know enough about the process of making C++ code (which is how BOTE is coded) work with XNA/C# code (which is the language I'm using to make the combat engine). But that will change as I read more about it.

Regarding the fuel thing, I haven't been able to download a copy of BOTE since the link has been taken down (for de-trekking), but I understand now that it does not use fuel, still that shouldn't pose any problem. The penalty for the next turn for ships can be implemented differently in BOTE and Supremacy, but the basic idea is to reduce how far they can go for the turn afterwards.