While I had considered posting about fleet strategies and tactics, I thought it would be more appropriate to start from the beginning – the battle system itself.
There are two major computations performed by the battle system. First, space combat is computed. Once this part is over, and provided there are still attacking ships in orbit, computations regarding ground combat are performed. Once these two main chunks have been computed, experience points are attributed.
This posts attempts to explain what the various steps of each computation are and how they work, generally speaking.
This flowchart shows the essential steps of the battle computations. Exit conditions and various internal steps have been omitted for clarity.
Space combat
The first step of space combat is fleet updates. When attacking fleets first start a battle or when fleets join an ongoing battle, they suffer “time dilation” which causes them to be less efficient for some time. This time dilation effect must be decreased over time.
Once fleets’ time dilation strengths have been updated, ships need to undergo various systematic updates: ships that can repair themselves will regain hit points, countermeasures will recover from previous damage absorption, and weapons will charge or cool down. If no weapons are ready to fire, then the space combat computation is over.
If there are weapons ready to fire, the first step is target selection. If a weapon already has a target, there’s a chance it might still select another target – this depends on a fleet’s strategy (for planet-based weapon platforms, there is a fixed, very small probability of target change). If such a change needs to occur, or if the weapon had no target for some other reason, it will seek a target based on the fleet’s (or the planet’s) tactics – basically, it can select targets by size, weaponry or defences, with different priorities. An attacking fleet’s strategy will determine whether the weapon may target the planet’s infrastructure.
Once weapons have selected their targets, they may fire. A computation is performed to determine whether the weapon actually hits, whether the shot may be intercepted and which amount of damage it would cause on a “naked” ship from various variables such as the ship’s experience, current hit points, manoeuvrability… When a weapon fires, there’s also a small chance of a critical hit, which cannot be intercepted and deals twice as much damage.
Depending on strategy settings, some ships may try to intercept shots aimed at other fleets or at the planet. Such an interception depends on how successful the aim was, and on various other factors such as how many hits the intercepting fleet might sustain. A successful intercept will cause the ship that intercepted the shot to take the damage – which is particularly useful to defend planets. No ship can intercept two shots in a single battle update, however.
Once the destination of all shots have been computed, the corresponding damage is inflicted to ships and buildings. Ships may have countermeasures which can sometimes absorb part or totality of the damage. Of course, should a ship or building reach 0 hit points, it is destroyed. In addition, any ships or buildings that provide ground armies will have their army strength reduced accordingly.
Ground combat
Once space combat has been resolved, and provided there are any attacking ships left, the computation of ground combat begins.
First, the ground defence advantage is computed. It is determined by the amount and type of ships supporting ground troupes, by the amount and type of military buildings, and by the population’s happiness.
The support that fleets provide for ground armies may vary depending on a fleet’s current strategy. Fleet strategy also determines whether ships that carry armies should drop the troupes to the planet’s surface or attempt to extract them.
Once the system knows which armies are on the planet, providing there are both attacking and defending armies, ground combat is computed. The damage dealt by either side is mostly determined by the advantage value, although their respective sizes has an influence. Finally, damage is applied to armies (and to the corresponding ships or buildings).
Assigning experience points
After all actual fighting has been computed, experience points are given to ships (buildings will have no XP in milestone 2, but that might change later). The amount of experience points granted to a ship is determined by the damage it inflicted to other ships, by the shots it intercepted, and by the damage the ground armies it carries inflicted.
Next time…
… I will explain the mechanics of space combat more precisely, and how it is affected by fleet tactics and strategies.