Ship design definition

The definition of a ship design is the list of ship parts which are needed for the construction of a specific type of ship. Such a definition includes a hull, at least one engine, and it may include an arbitrary amount of other ship parts (generators, weapons, defences and any other kind of stuff).

Three constraints on valid ship designs exist:

• the total energy consumed by the various parts must be lower than or equal to the amount of energy generated by included generators,
• the total space consumed by the various parts multiplied by a “miniaturisation factor” (and empire-wide production) must be lower than or equal to the space provided by the ship’s hull,
• the ship must have a non-zero normal space thrust.

Predefined ship designs

The game includes a set of predefined ship designs. A predefined ship design is a ship design definition associated with a name and description from the internationalisation system. Since all predefined ship designs are considered to be valid, the minimal miniaturisation factor for a predefined ship design can be computed directly from the list of parts.

Empire ship designs

An empire ship design is a ship design definition identified by a name and associated with an empire. It includes a free text description, as well as a flag that indicates whether the design has been declared as being obsolete. Empire ship designs may only be deleted if no ship is actually using the design. Their names or descriptions may be changed at any time, however the design definition itself may not be modified if there are ships using the design.

Ships

A ship is identified by an arbitrary sequence number. It is based on an empire ship design. It may be given a name for identification purposes. In addition, a ship possesses hit points which must be lower than or equal to the amount of maximal hit points defined by its design, and experience points, acquired when the ship participates in battles. Ships also include a status information which indicates whether they are available, being deployed after construction, being redeployed after movements or mode switches, being redirected, undergoing repairs, being refitted or decommissioned, and a penalty which indicates the time required for a ship in any non-available status to be available again.

Fleets

A fleet is identified by an arbitrary sequence number. It consists of at least one ship (all ships in a fleet must use designs belonging to the same empire, as this determines the fleet’s ownership). It may have a name for identification purposes. A fleet has an attack strategy and a defence strategy, as well as tactics settings (target selection criterion and target selection mode). The game update identifier at which each strategy was last changed as well as the game update identifier corresponding to the latest tactics adjustment are stored, to prevent players from constantly switching these values.

A fleet may be orbiting a planet. In this case, all fleets belonging to the same empire have a mode, which is either attack or defence. The game update identifier at which the last mode change occurred is stored, to prevent players from switching from attack to defence and vice-versa too rapidly.

Fleets that are not orbiting planets are moving fleets. Such a fleet has a planet of origin; however, this information is insufficient, as fleets may be redirected at any time. A fleet’s actual origin is either an in-system location (which consists in a planet and a distance indication, that last part being positive if the origin was in the direction of the star, negative if it was in the direction of outer space, or zero if the fleet’s movement originated from the planet itself) or an outer space location (a set of x and y coordinates expressed as real numbers, since the redirection may occur at any point when moving in outer space). The time elapsed since the last movement order is required to estimate the fleet’s current actual location. Finally, the requested fleet mode on arrival is included.

Milestone 1 is definitely not a good game, in that there are no incentives for anyone to actually fight (which was also true of Beta 5, with the exception of corruption which never really worked as anticipated). If the next step had been planet management, as was initially announced, it would have made it even worse, as the relatively heavy Beta 6 rules on this point would have added complexity, but no incentive, and no reason to spend money on anything other than just “breeding planets”.

Milestone 2, reloaded

The (new) second milestone must therefore concentrate on bringing these two elements to the game.

First of all, the new ship design and fleet management system will be added. Ships will be capable of carrying three different types of weaponry (beam weapons, mass drivers and missiles), as well as their countermeasures (shields, armours and point defences, respectively). But since a weapon in space isn’t really much of a viable ship, other parts will be provided – hulls of various sizes and engines. Finally, a “special module”, the drop pod, will allow ground troops to be deployed. A few default designs will be provided, but you will have the option to customise the designs or to create new ones.

Why is this important? Because, by changing the fleet’s configurations, you might gain an advantage on your enemy. For example, if you are at war with someone who uses mass drivers and shields, you might want to construct or refit ships to use heavy armour and missiles. This constant need to adapt will cost money, which should take care of one of the problems mentioned above.

The second problem remains, however. Why would you go fight your neighbour if there is no actual reason to do so? The solution is relatively easy to find. Why are there wars, in the real world? The major reason for that is resources. As a consequence, the resource system which was planned for Milestone 4 will be added in the next release. However, to keep things simple for now, resources will only be found on planets (which will remain the only available map objects for the time being), and won’t come in too many varieties. Most advanced technologies will require resources to be used.

While what we just discussed hopefully took care of both major problems, they introduced new ones.

A consequence of the new fleet system is that the hastily designed, totally unbalanced battle system from Milestone 1 has to go. This is not a bad thing, it’s just worth mentioning.

Many ship parts, many new types of turrets (as they would have to follow the same pattern as ship weapons), mining facilities to extract resources… The line-based research system of Milestone 1 will not be sufficient to handle this. A graph-based research system, similar in structure to Beta 5′s, will be implemented. It will not feature any optional technologies at this point, as this would require some form of technology exchange. In addition, the “research budget” system used in Beta 5 will be replaced with a much simpler system allowing per-technology control.

In addition to the above features, which should introduce major changes to the gameplay, a few minor elements might be added, depending on how much time I have: a new user interface as well as replacements for both internal messages and the “normal” messaging system. The French translation may or may not be included.

Because of my relatively heavy schedule, Milestone 2 will be released sometime between April and June of 2011.

So, what about Milestone 3?

Milestone 3 has become more distant. It will definitely feature the new planet management system (from M2 in the initial post), the new economy and in-system objects (M4). It will also include forums, although its alliance management will remain simplistic – this will allow Beta 5 to finally rest in peace. It might also include the new universe structure, but that is a big “maybe”. A few alien races might be present as well.

There are two main types of hulls. Standard, mechanical hulls are the most basic option, while it is possible later in the game to create biological ships if the proper technologies have been researched. Biological ships, while leaving slightly less internal space available, are more robust and possess natural regenerative properties; they also include a basic power generation unit.

In addition, it is possible to categorise ship hulls according to their size. Indeed ship hulls come in all sizes and shapes. The size of a ship hull determines how the ship will be used.

Ships using tiny hulls are appropriate as scouts, or later in the game, when miniaturisation has been perfected, as small fighters. Tiny hulls imply a high maneuverability but a low firepower and protection.

Small hulls make very good fighters. While still being highly maneuverable, they can support many more components than tiny hulls and are usually somewhat more robust. The default fighter design is based on a small hull.

Medium hulls are useful to make ground troops carriers, or high-power fighters. They are much less maneuverable by default than their smaller counterparts, but are clearly more robust.

Big hulls are appropriate for high-powered local defenses, or basic hyperspace-capable carrier crafts. They are about as maneuverable as a fridge, tho. However, they can take a beating before blowing up.

Huge hulls make excellent capital ships. Their size allows them to be outfitted with lots of weapons as well as hangar bays for smaller ships. While having a very low maneuverability, they are very robust.

Enormous hulls are, well, enormous. Whatever one might want to put inside a ship, it’s likely that this type of hull can handle it. However, their maneuverability is low, and while this is amply compensated by their great robustness, they will require a crew to fly.

Gigantic hulls are almost as big as possible. They are capable of carrying loads of equipment and are highly robust. They require a crew and are not quite maneuverable.

Colossal hulls are the biggest hulls available. Even gigantic hulls are small compared to these mastodons. Their maneuverability is as low as it gets, and they require a crew. But on the other hand, these can really be made into flying fortresses that can take as much of a pounding as an entire fleet of smaller ships.

The list of hulls players can use has been divided between mechanical and biological hulls. Both lists are ordered by size.

The first one deals with mechanical hulls.

The second list regroups biological hulls. None of these ships have direct equivalents in Beta 5, and none are available by default.

The first set of hangar bays is designed for mechanical ships. The various categories of hangar bays have different sizes, allowing to carry more or less smaller ships.

The second set is designed for biological ships. Their biological nature makes them all extensible, allowing them to store more ships than their mechanical counterparts.

Biological generators are generators based on biological reactions. They are of course only compatible with biological hulls.

Zero-point generators rely on advanced knowledge of the universe’s underlying structure. They are based on advanced concepts and considered to be compatible with both mechanical and biological ships.

In this first post we introduce the mechanical generators – which are of course specific to mechanical ships. A second, later post will present the other generator types.

Passive generators are generators that collect energy from external sources and convert it.

Nuclear generators are generators based on nuclear reactions. They are the most basis power source and the first level of nuclear generators is the one available to all players at the beginning of the game.

Anti-matter generators are based on matter / anti-matter reactions.

Missile countermeasures come in three different types.

• Anti-missile weapon systems (AMWS) are weapons that try to shoot incoming missiles to destroy them; this type of countermeasure uses a lot of space on board.
• Electronic missile countermeasures (EMC) try to fool an incoming missile’s guidance system to prevent it from reaching its target. They are much smaller than anti-missile weapon systems, however they are very demanding on the ship’s generators.
• Physical missile countermeasures (PMC – for lack of a better name) use advanced knowledge of the universe’s structure to get rid of incoming missiles. While these systems use quite a lot of space and energy, they are more efficient than EMCs or AMWSs.

Do you have other ideas of possible missile counter measures?

Do you have ideas of other categories of missile counter measures?

Some missiles exist in different variants, depending on their guidance and propulsion systems. This is not the case for all missiles, as some of them really require advanced automation or powerful engines, while others are really too basic to be worth an upgrade.

The type of guidance system can be either automaton (A), which is the most basic, intelligent (I), where the missile uses artificial intelligence up to a “human” cognition level, or Hyperturing (H), where the missile is actually much more intelligent than you.

Propulsion systems for missiles include chemical propulsion (C), which is the most basic, ion drive (D) and graviton drive (G).

Do you have other ideas of missiles?

Do you have other ideas of missile guidance systems? Do you have other ideas of missile propulsion systems?

This system is very simple and easy to manage, both for game internals and players. However it lacks a great deal of flexibility and it isn’t very realistic. We’ve also had a lot of requests around new types of ships to be added in the game, to increase interest.

Since we are very attached to designing a realistic game universe, we thought a bit more of the concept of ships. A ship is mainly a hull inside which and on which are installed various categories of equipment. The different types of ships we were proposing so far were mainly predefined sets of hull and equipment.

To increase the possibilities in the game, we merely considered it would be way more fun to have players define their own ships, using predefined parts, than just provide them with predefined designs as in Beta 5.

Therefore Beta 6 will feature a real ship design system, where players can assemble their own ship categories, using parts such as hulls, generators, engines (normal and hyperspace), control systems (for biological ships), weapons, defenses, communication devices, jamming devices, navigation systems, detection systems, hangar bays (to carry smaller ships through hyperspace) or ground assault modules. The number of parts which can be integrated in a design is only limited by the total size of these parts compared to the hull size, and can be increased even more through a set of miniaturisation technologies.

Along these regular pieces of equipment, some special modules provide very advanced abilities, but at a high cost both in room aboard the ship, resources and time to produce. These include special weapons and defenses with a tremendous effect on enemy fleets and planets, cloaking systems, etc.

Each category of ship parts of course features different levels or upgrades, which allow for the design of hundreds of different ship categories. Some predefined designs are of course available for those who don’t have time to play around with ship design, but these predefined ships might not be enough when facing carefully crafted ships in battle.

 What do you think of the ship design possibility?

Do you think it is too complex for an online game?

Do you think it could bring new possibilities to the game?

What kind of features would you see associated with ship design:

• exchange of designs among players as long as the one receiving the design has the required technologies?
• association of a picture among a list of available predefined pictures or from uploaded pictures (moderated pictures in the last case)?
• upgrade / downgrade from one design to another for all ships belonging to a design on a per empire / orbited planet / fleet / ship basis?
• other features suggestions?