Tuesday 10 December 2013

Fleet Leaders

Quick post about the fleet leaders and experience system I have planned which I am currently working on.

 

Command Hierarchy

Each ship can be assigned to a Squadron which can have a maximum of 9 ships in them. They will follow the same orders, work as a group and keep in formation (if you want them to).

Wings are the next level up and can command a maximum of 4 Squadrons (possibly more when researched).
All of the Squadrons assigned to the Wing will follow the same orders, so you can assign orders to a large number of ships all at once.

Fleet is the highest level. It can hold any number of Wings or Squadrons. You probably wont be able to give specific orders at the Fleet level and I haven't decided yet if more than one Fleet will be allowed.

 

Leaders

Each Squadron, Wing and Fleet can be assigned a leader character. This leader will earn experience from battles they are involved in. If any of the ships the leader commands was involved in destroying an enemy ship then they will gain experience towards their skill level.

The leaders skill level will give specific bonuses depending on where they are placed in the Command Hierarchy:

Squadron Commander: 5% bonus to damage per skill level
Wing Commander: 5% bonus to maximum speed per skill level
Fleet Commander: -5% ship upkeep cost per skill level

The only way for leaders to gain experience will be in command of a Squadron. To do this they will need to be in the lead ship. If the ship gets destroyed the leader dies.

You will be free to reassign leaders whenever you like, but only if there are no enemies nearby.

 

Traits

Traits provide bonuses to all ships the leader is in command of. When a new leader is recruited they may have a number of traits, but they cannot be gained in other ways. A few examples:

Mining Specialist - Gives a 20% bonus to mining yield
Shield Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to shield hit points and recharge
Energy Weapon Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to energy weapon damage
Engine Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to ship maximum speed
Transport Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to cargo capacity

Trait effects will cascade down the command hierarchy and are halved at each level. If you have leaders each with the Mining Specialist trait at the Fleet, Wing and Squadron levels then it will give the bonus of 35% (5 + 10 + 20) to the ships below.

 

Proficiencies

As leaders gain experience they also get better at commanding certain types of ship. For example if the leader only has Cruisers in their Squadron, experience will also be added to their Cruiser Leader skill which provides bonuses only for Cruisers.

If there are more than one class of ship in the Squadron, experience will be distributed evenly to the relevant proficiencies.

 

Medals

Leaders will also be able to earn medals when they achieve certain goals (total ships destroyed, ore mined, cargo transported etc..) Some medal examples:

Long Service Medal (Awarded for time spent as an active leader)  - Gives a 10% reduction to ship upkeep costs
Bronze War Medal (Awarded for total ships destroyed) - Gives a 5% bonus to shield and armor hit points

 

Potential Problems

The whole leader system is designed to be completely passive. You wont need to manually spend skill points. They can just be left alone and they will automatically gain new skills, proficiencies and medals as they do stuff. So it shouldn't require much micro-management at all. Of course you still might want to check on them occasionally to ensure you are making the best of their abilities in their current position.

As the player can take manual control of any of their own ships in the game, there is the problem of what happens when taking control of a Squadron leaders ship. Should that leader continue to get experience for ships you destroy?

I don't really want to add a special type of leader character that represents the player as I would like the player to be able to take control of another ship once it gets destroyed.


Much of this is not fully implemented yet, so would very much like to hear your feedback and suggestions!

Friday 6 December 2013

Galaxy Map

The past month I have mainly been working on the galaxy map screen to make it more informative but still trying to keep it very minimal.

(150 planets, 1 player, 3 AI)

The sector icons are now colored to show the different planet types. Surrounding each planet there are small circular icons to show if there are any ships in that sector. (green = player, red = enemy, blue = allied, white = neutral) 

It hasn't been implemented yet, but you will be able to hover the mouse over the ship icons to display the number and class of ships at the planet. Hovering over the planet icons will also show more information about them.

(25 planets, 1 player, 3 AI)

The jump-gate links and borders are colored based on the owning factions relations to you.

There may be more than one enemy/ally that will show the same colored border and jump-gate links. So to distinguish each faction, the smaller circle at the center of each planet icon will be used to show its unique "faction color".

However this is not shown in the screenshots as the faction and relation colors are currently identical for testing.

Empire Sphere of Influence

(Very rough sphere of influence style empire maps)

I have also experimented with rendering some "sphere of influence" style empire borders, but ran into performance issues with the really large maps. I think it maybe covers up too much of the screen, hiding all the stars in the background which look nice as you move around the map. (the stars use 3D positions)

I have abandoned this approach for now, in favor of the smaller overlapping borders you can see in the first two screenshots.

Planet Colors


Colors used for each of the different planet types have been tweaked slightly. Volcanic was difficult as the planet graphics are limited to just one color and no detail. (lava or rock?) 

Each of the types (Temperate, Desert etc.) have a few variations so they won't all seem identical.

Miscellaneous

  • Galaxy generation code completely rewritten (now cleaner and more efficient)
  • Probability distribution working properly for planet types, bonuses and trade goods
  • Detailed galaxy log created during generation with lots of statistics (using for balancing)
  • Started on the high level AI for factions (aware of all the objects and territory they control)
  • Initial design work done for the different government types 

 

Bonus Screenshot

(The leftovers from a large cruiser battle)