Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Homeworld is a 1999 computer space strategy plus RTS that was revolutionary in its day as it had actual combat animations using tactical formations.
https://homeworld.fandom.com/wiki/Formations
Parade
X
Claw
Wall
Sphere
A video showing these formation styles.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6HgisI1f83E

You don't actually have to show the animations, but might have a multiturn command for the fleet to use to attack and that would then hopefully modify a combat result in light of experience of the flagship commander plus the total armament, shields, hull, manueverability, speed, etc.

It's a clever way to use tactics without showing animations. Heck you could even use the existing techtree and allow knowing x tech allows the parade formation. And so forth. Nothing actually changes except some text editting, but is calculated in with the combat simulation. Or make it an aspect included in experience with preset values like commanders with 1000 points can do the claw formation.

The combat result is already predetermined regardless of the animation. The venerable chess game Battle Chess (1988) showed animations to emulate the Star Wars 4 hologram chess game, but the outcome is known without the animation.

The events screen might show combat resolution stating that Federation fleet x using a defensive claw formation was attacked by a Romulan fleet y using an offensive sphere formation and this resulted in a minor tactical win with fill in the blank casualties.

You can do the same thing with troops.

These can be easily implemented as text edits only as just spice and flavor, yet an intelligent player can imagine the battle or you if you get fancy, you show an image specific to the manuever which means maybe 25 images (5*5 permutations). They don't have to include every empire's various ship styles. Even this is not essential.

It honestly is as simple as rock paper scissors albeit with five choices.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... 1ch3af.htm
This explains various kinds of infantry and armor formations. You could pick five and do the identical thing with troop formations except expecting that the upper echelon troops are elite Spec Ops who end up commanding the engagement and thus only using text edits make it seem like tactics are at play with no necessary programming changes but slight changes in the reporting.

It's more interesting but the outcome is the same.

I would bet that just as terrain and season are major factors in battlefield outcomes that planet class would have the similar effects as the troops face various conditions like water, arid surfaces, swamps, arctic regions plus gravity variances too. Then again, most homesectors are class M so 90+% will be invading or defending a class M planet.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Parade
X
Claw
Wall
Sphere

Example
So using the above tactical formations, then two equally matched foes meet.
Romulans using parade attack Klingon using parade and it's a draw but variances due to experience of the flagship commander could result in one side barely winning.

You would do that for all 25 combinations so:
X versus Parade
Wall versus Sphere
Claw versus Wall
Etc.

You could even develop a tactical guide where with certain fleet types, some advanced formations are superior.

You coud have what is called aiuchi in Japanese swordsmanship where it's both samurai simultaneously attacking (like the scene in The Last Samurai where Algren finally gets it and instead of defending simultaneously attacks Ujio with both using the identical technique. Offensive versus offensive.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7yP9MmzyTIg

Or you could have defensive versus defensive, but most often offensive versus defensive. You can't win in chess by always defending as you are constantly in check and being worn down to a nub and then break.

It's all just text edits that can use essentially the same programming but has the semblance of using tactics.

That would seem like 75 different kinds of tactical formations and combination postures, but is just for show as it's text editting. It adds a lot to the combat result without much work.

Doing it based on combat experience encourages more combats so in my opinion is better.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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The USA is 26 times larger than Germany and so while many of us travel domestically to many states, Europeans tend to think we are insular which is nonsensical. Traveling to another nation is much easier in Europe and results in a more diverse experience than say an American visiting Indiana or say Canada.

So often either due to military service or just to be well rounded, Americans in their 20s go visit other nations. I fondly recall one such trip as not only was the culture quite remarkably different, but a traveling companion was fluent and so I had a built in translator.

Well I found out I had unrealistic expectations as I imagined she would be constantly talking in that other language, then translating what she said in English, then translating what they said, then I would speak and she would translate what I said, and so forth. I was excited by the prospect and hoping for a rich cultural experience versus just seeing the sights.

Nope. Others would speak at length and I had to encourage my traveling companion to expand upon at length what the conversation was about when after 20 minutes of a particularly animated conversation then filled with gestures, tonal variety, a gamut of facial expressions, laughter, and then she simply stated, "He... told... a... joke."

Well that is what the combat results are like in BotE. Don't get me wrong. Obviously I think the game is terrific, but all this effort is made for 200+ turns to develop the economy, infrastructure, learn tech to produce unique troops and ships of various types...and then the combat results are very terse in explaining what happened. When the whole point of a military strategy game is to ramp up the excitement by so many kinds of units with varying modifiers to different kinds of combat.

That is why sounds are played and unique animations and a modulation of sensory input then provokes a range of experiences like tension, fear,dread, anticipation, pleasure, concern, etc. But creating those elements are very difficult versus text. Simple text as feedback within a game can be as exciting as a well written novel.

And combat is much more than descriptors but motivation,justification, threat assessment and relief that a threat has been dealt with. Or it can be regret as the enemy might be worthy adversaries, or honorable, or a veteran feels remorse at genocide at a personal and at a far reaching effect during the occupation and inevitable guerillas/partisans then likely counter-attack or do sabotage until after ten years some sense of pacification happens. And what of the damage to their society and the termination of their natural development? Soldiers are not automatons, but struggle with the ramifications of combat.

That's why say a strategy game with RTS elements like Medieval 2 Total War then has an attribute system where not only does the battle experience alter the commander personality, but also building infrastructure, and training troops, then end up changing the personality and ethos of various commanders. And not only that, in the process of a raw recruit electing to attend a military academy, they brought with them their personal history of experiences, failures and successes, initiative, emotions, physicality, spirituality or lack thereof as well.

Some of those elements are programming that has a weight based chance of being one way,while some portion are not just templates but have some variety along a continuum. But 75% are just text elements that add spice and flavor. That is an opportunity to make the players care as this induces ressonance between the human player and the characters within the story and milieu of the game. In the last ten years, Hollywood stopped caring what the audience thought and so many Americans feel totally detached from the characters as they are so unlikable and cannot relate to their character or the character's arc within the narratives.

You want players to feel horrible at whatever the battle outcomes ends up being.

That is why Star Trek in all its iterations was so compelling.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Battles are not like watching the outcomes of two teams competing within a sport. It's personal where buddies get killed and their lives are snuffed out like candles that never get lit again. And the enemies die and those enemies are not just stereotypes and one dimensional, but are the same way...and extinguished...no matter how much you are trained to detach your emotions.

A Klingon warrior is not a genocidal maniac, but cares but modulates their feelings in terms of the sacrifice for the empire versus personal honor. And that would be easy at first when young, optimistic, and naive, then haunt them over decades as the faces of the dead enemies appear in their dreams...and cause nightmares.

This is why so many soldiers who see naked warfare especially during occupations, then get severe PTSD and become suicidal. Everyone is not a weepy mess, but they also are not souless robots either.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Artistically this is the why and how and when that music within soundtracks then evoke an emotional response.

Anticipation
Striving
Tension
Fear
Dread
Hope
Weariness
Danger
Resolution
Victory

And these elemens are buried to various degrees within the music that make up a soundtrack. It's hard to feel genuine victory without a compelling score that helps communicate it and drives it home. And that is actually false within a battlefield milieu where the smell of burning, the screams of the soldiers, the horror, the blood, are what actually happens.

Which is why Trekcore is useful as over a gigabyte of music is just waiting to be listened to. And this makes every turn unique while 90% of the time doing the minutia that allows the player to 10% of the time to wage war.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9h5GUq-MJtA
The Messenger is an underrated film about the battles of Joan of Arc. She begins naively and can't wait to fight,then is shocked and stunned by the carnage.

Soldiers feel both along a continuum. The joy of victory and then are appalled by the cost of victory.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Each ship could have a personna or mood where the morale of the crew then results in them being battle weary or relaxed or wildly enthusiastic and ready to draw blood, or fat and bored, or profoundly affected by their losses. Then the players know they got to get them to a hospital, or shore leave, or get retrofitted, or repair damage so that ship is at maximum efficiency when they finally are needed again.

Some ships may have naive raw recruits on maiden voyages; they are green and wet behind the ears. Others are grim reapers and death dealers. Others have lost too many battles and so doubt themselves.
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Combat results

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Combat results seem excessively genocidal. War is honed to use an adequate amount of ships to provide transport, air support, and repel the enemy's own fleet.

One could technically include all manner of troops but also mechanized infantry (as the Ba'a's stomtroopers seem to be) and even submarines and AAVs ie amphibious assault vehicles. Some sectors are waterworlds and so it would be interesting if to take them required amphibious vehicles and air to water type submarines.

Or a minor race ends up being subterrean and thus bombing runs have negliable effect to soften up the targets. So that should require special vehicles and tactics.

You would expect EMP weapons to destroy technology and thus induce en mass attrition. One wonders if that is what metagenetic weapons are?

You would expect neutron bomb effects that maintain all the buildings (infrastructure is intact), but the entire world has to be repopulated.

Otherwise the bulk of time use standard tactics and units. But it doesn't have to be all or nothing with billions of deaths. That seems counter-productive.

It could be a war of attrition through a siege. It could be a siege with a negiotiated settlement where the invaders agree to leave with a ransom or not occupation but a forced alliance (like the ancient Greeks offered to then not have to have large standing professional armies but instead forced to militarily support). Or forced one-sided trade agreements. Or forced release of technology.

How could there be any meaningful war as many minor races have neither troops nor ships? Why would they not just surrender? Battling uselessly as the defenders until 12 billion die seems far fetched.

Would there not be a likely partisan response in resistence? I would think so and for many turns and on higher levels where nothing can be built as the people are not compliant and all the supply chains are disruped.

Show me an instance where such massive genocide did not have huge political effects. It's the potential fodder to feed religious partisan efforts coupled with jihad and asymmetric warfare.

Large scale en masse firebombing and atomic detonation x2 largely broke the Japanese warrior spirit even to present day and rather limits the Japanese Self Defense forces both economically, spiritually, and militarily.

You would suspect that it would be ruinous to future recruitment. You do not want to crush the civillians only suppress the existing military and make it illogical to continue a resistence movement with most of the Star Trek minor races.

As a game mechanic, then a sharp reduction then pacifies but simultaneously limits industrial capacity. It largely is too powerful because it's attacking the home sector when other planets have likely also been populated and there would honestly be an immense number of planets in most sectors as that is not a solar system, but likely encompasses many solar systems. The listing is likely one vital star system and many useful diverse planets within a sector. Some may be also M class and so a retreat position to prevent total occupation.

A risky battle can be won, then the invader loses as there is no way to hold it. Soldiers make poor occupiers and are not law enforcement officers.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Cardassians are not genocidal Nazis. Neither were all Germans officers and standard non-commisioned officers in WW2 were not one dimensional characters. So wanton genocide with billions dead would deeply scar even the most brutal ones. It could pervert the veterans on such invasions and they would simply quit in moral outrage as the Obsidian Order can't justify this. It's too counterproductive to esprit de corps.

There would be no US Marines without esprit de corps. They would be disgusted yet few are so loyal disciplined soldiers.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... de%20corps

Butchery results in barbarous practices that dissolves chain of command and loyalty and it would become a free-for-all. It provokes insubordination. Those soldiers might disobey orders and seize the planet and create their own race.

You might create a new Jules Brunet.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instan ... murai.html
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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GalCiv2 had various modes in which the player could see many kinds of cinematography of the ship to ship or fleet attacks and defenses. But watching them slowed down the game as maybe you had 50 such attacks across the galaxy. You couldn't control every ship and so combat resolution is based on calculations.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ufgBlJHM8zw
This shows a Star Trek mod version.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Now knowing that, then Sins of the Solar Empire went overboard with the concept and yet again it's pure math on who wins and loses. It looks great but is just eye candy.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNotFolCTPo
This is a Star Trek Armada mod for that game engine...and I believe of a German design team.

You honestly don't need the combat animations as long as you have thrilling descriptions. You would have standing orders and then the enemies standing orders and then text descriptors and like rotate through sound effects. Then bettrer damage reports and assess what part of the fleet stays versus those who must head to a shipyard for repairs and maybe rest and relaxation (R&R for the non-wounded who go on shore leave, while many are in the infirmary).
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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One of my favorite aspects of Medieval 2 Total War was the RTS in it which meant a savvy player using tactics could beat a stronger opponent using clumsy ones. You could out manuever the stronger opponent and exhaust them and get them in a position where they were fighting uphill and so then crush them.

But that is the rare exception. Most strategy games don't actually have tactical elements. Instead the combat is just for show. When it's fighting using many spaceships, then it's not likely you were actually using true RTS tactical control. This is why BotE does not need combat animations. But the players expect to see them. Somehow you communicate this better so they play BotE as they don't realize they don't actually do tactical RTS but the battle is computer "autoresolved" by pure math in a combat simulator.

The only way you could do true tactical RTS on a tablet would be with gestures. You would select a unit, and a target, and do a gesture, and the units would engage in dogfighting. Even that is not like Medieval 2 Total War tactical combat. You would ascertain shield placement and strength and try to do attacks on sides of ships where the shield placement causes weak defenses and so some damage until shields are down. Then use strong torpedoes to crush them.

In a RTS combat sim, units flee the battlefield as they realize they are broken. So combat doesn't always mean they die, but are humiliated by the commander using bad tactics. So there should always be a mechanism to "breaking off combat".
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Within space combat, you would warn off the enemy by hailing them and giving them the honorable chance to flee the engagement as it's better to try to persuade them they are hopelessly outmatched then destroy expensive veteran professional soldiers and monumentally expensive starships.

That is straight out of Sun Tzu. He tried to be benevolent to the losers and so absorbed veterans who had lost but had not executed them but treated them with respect and allowed them to hold on to their dignity. Thus they fought for him as their loser original commander was the reason they initially lost. There is no dishonor in that.

"Your commander was outmatched and nearly got you killed. I promise not to do that and will give you victory." You better mean it though.

Sun Tzu is obviously in the public domain. You can read his military maxims which are pure genius even today.
http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.

17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.

18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.
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Re: Having combat fleet formations without animations

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Say you have a cloaked ship and want to create an ambush. Nearby systems are owned by several others, but the remaining sector or unaffiliated system is the passage by which players and the AI get to this region of space/time. So if you placed a cloaked fleet there...you just set up an ambush.

I wish we had a save game editor or a map editor, as I could create an intense, densely packed map, with stellar anomalies to block entrance and egress. Then lure in the unsuspecting with juicy systems with many type M planets and terraformable ones. You can cause conflict and contested territory using these strategies.

You create a perfect chokepoint. If surrounded by nebula, you can effectively create a fortified position as that position is very defensible.

You can places resources or not and control the planet class, and thus create the barren Cardassian worlds. That is why they began invading other worlds owned by minor races as the Cardassians could not feed their people.

I could create a sea of nebula that people would avoid, or hide there. I could place anomalous entities versus randomization.

Then a great 40x40 would exist as an option to load and try as all the major races in the home systems to stay alive versus canonical locations. Map placement of minor and major races is what creates the impetus for war and the likely attitude because they fear them, yet have no history yet.

You see, in most cases, the minor races know their home system is prone to a blockade as without vessels, they are very vulnerable. They may have robust defenses or excellent troops or special buildings that will ultimately confer protection against ground invasion, but honestly, they have to choose a side. They cannot likely create an armada unless they begin with one by design like the Xibren.
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