Military

Discussion on game mechanics, balancing etc.
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ForFunAndProfit
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Re: Military

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

Well, the raider/escort category in the original game basically had ships that acted as both. If you left smaller (faster) ships in port in your home city, they would protect the cargo travelling between ports out on trade. Escort ships in this regard I think would be better suited for this role than say, a Raider. Although they could probably be both. I want to balance role, design and technological advance here. Any suggestions on how to do that?
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Trilarion
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Post by Trilarion »

The problem with explicit escort ships would be that the player has to additionally manage them (like assign to a certain route or giving commands or ...) but it if sea trade war is not so important anyway it would just make the game more complicated.

From a general point of view:
- Advanced technology makes you more powerful. Obviously a dreadnought of 1900 with the superior range can easily kill the whole fleet of Lord Nelson from 1800.
- Better organization makes you more powerful. Lord Nelson fought against a spanish and french fleet of higher numbers, but his ships had a better skilled crew and so he could win. Another example is the russian-japanese sea battle of Tsushima 1905 where the russians were exhausted after traveling a long distance.
- Higher numbers makes you more powerful. 10 ships against 1... the outcome should be clear.

Now how we can exactly translate this into a rather simple but thrilling system of ships and interactions I am not sure. Maybe you can just write an as detailed as possible first try and then we iterate on it. It should be a set of properties and rules that together define the naval battle part of our game. Or just anything that goes a bit more into detail.
ForFunAndProfit
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Re:

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

Trilarion wrote:The problem with explicit escort ships would be that the player has to additionally manage them (like assign to a certain route or giving commands or ...) but it if sea trade war is not so important anyway it would just make the game more complicated.

From a general point of view:
- Advanced technology makes you more powerful. Obviously a dreadnought of 1900 with the superior range can easily kill the whole fleet of Lord Nelson from 1800.
- Better organization makes you more powerful. Lord Nelson fought against a spanish and french fleet of higher numbers, but his ships had a better skilled crew and so he could win. Another example is the russian-japanese sea battle of Tsushima 1905 where the russians were exhausted after traveling a long distance.
- Higher numbers makes you more powerful. 10 ships against 1... the outcome should be clear.

Now how we can exactly translate this into a rather simple but thrilling system of ships and interactions I am not sure. Maybe you can just write an as detailed as possible first try and then we iterate on it. It should be a set of properties and rules that together define the naval battle part of our game. Or just anything that goes a bit more into detail.
I had the thought earlier that the simplest way to do this would be to allow for three ship-types in an era instead of two, going by the old system in Imperialism. Perhaps two "specialty" ships (say, Q-Ships and submarines-ish category,) on one end, and then your lightest, intermediate and heaviest ships. Somewhat like how they tiered infantry.

So you'd have a category something like this, according to utility and logically scaling up in cost:

Lightest:
Frigate
Screw Frigate or Paddlewheel Raider (one of those :P )
Destroyer

Intermediate:
Ironclad
Armored Cruiser
Battlecruiser

Heavy:
Ship-of-the-Line
Predreadnought
Dreadnought

"Specialty"?:
Torpedo Boat
Submarine
Q-Ship


The way to add incentive to use them, I figure, would just be to have different economic requirements. A smaller nation or a nation less rich in resources could be using that French-derived "young school" of thought strictly building smaller ships and maybe, say, a cruiser as a lead ship out of a gobbing horde of smaller vessels.

On the other hand, it still allows for your sort of classic Line of Battle-style engagements. Commerce raiding could be even more vital since if you have say, submarine groups around somebody's harbor, if you spam enough destroyers or start sneaking out Q-ships, it should go away.

The other alternative here I see is to make smaller ships like destroyers the least "advanced" out of the ship selection. That way by the time you end up at the endgame, your selection would look something like this:

Commerce: Clipper | Paddlewheelers | Freighters
Combatants: Destroyer | Predreadnought | Battlecruiser| Dreadnought

With the least "advanced" ships being those smaller and cheaper ones suitable for escorting and raiding capacities to a lesser extent, much like how raiders would anachronistically stick around after everyone was building "advanced ironclads" (which I consider predreadnoughts,) and armored cruisers.
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Trilarion
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Re: Re:

Post by Trilarion »

ForFunAndProfit wrote:...The other alternative here I see is to make smaller ships like destroyers the least "advanced" out of the ship selection. That way by the time you end up at the endgame, your selection would look something like this:

Commerce: Clipper | Paddlewheelers | Freighters
Combatants: Destroyer | Predreadnought | Battlecruiser| Dreadnought

With the least "advanced" ships being those smaller and cheaper ones suitable for escorting and raiding capacities to a lesser extent, much like how raiders would anachronistically stick around after everyone was building "advanced ironclads" (which I consider predreadnoughts,) and armored cruisers.
I don't understand what you mean exactly by "least advanced". Does it mean available earlier or does it mean less destructive or just very cheap?

Anyway it's a good concept. Unfortunately I cannot think much about it now because the next release is coming very soon (sunday Jan 6th was the plan) and I still have to fix one or two things before. I will comment more after this. :)
ForFunAndProfit
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Re: Military

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

I meant ships that are developed earlier on turn-wise than others. My apologies for being less clear.
ForFunAndProfit
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Re: Military

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

What kind of infantry should we work on? If we add specialty units, this helps us diversify nations' orders of battle.
Veneteaou
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Re: Military

Post by Veneteaou »

It's my opinion that for the time being we shouldn't be adding any specialty units if we can add them at a future date. With a small team and a ton of work to do already, anything we can afford to add to the game after we have a functioning game should be left for that time.

My vote is for working on the basic units of Imp1: Light/Medium/Heavy Infantry, Light/Heavy Cavalry/Artillery, Militia, and possibly Sappers or Generals.
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Trilarion
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Re: Military

Post by Trilarion »

ForFunAndProfit wrote:What kind of infantry should we work on? If we add specialty units, this helps us diversify nations' orders of battle.
I think this is a good idea and I would incorporate this, but as Ven said not in the first iteration. So for the first working version of the game all units will be the same for all nations, then we can specialize and I think I have a good way, having special traits. Like the English get a special trait to Ships (being english gives +1 to attack or so) and the French get +1 attack to Infantry ... . This will certainly add flavor and I wrote it down. We will implement it then further down the road.
ForFunAndProfit
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Re: Military

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

Sounds like a great plan. I'd like to incorporate an option for themed naming of units like for instance having Germans having different names for their regiments compared to the French instead of everyone having '1st Regulars'. Nothing too complicated. Something like a naming template would suffice at the least!
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Trilarion
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Naming templates

Post by Trilarion »

No problem will easily be incorporated. If you want to do some work, make a proposal how the units should be called for all the major nations in the original scenario. :)
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