Civ2 Space Depiction

[Harry Tuttle]

I thought we could rehash the Star Wars Idea thread from last year and think of some ideas of depicting space in a Civ2 environment. http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...hreadid=145922

I was thinking of ways to depict travel between the stars in a Space=Ocean Environment and came up with this idea:


Jump Gates - In a scenario with two or more star systems seperated by a barrier or distance a gate unit could represent the entry/exit point for a system.

a. The gates would have to be controlled by another civ that does not have to use the gates for travel (or is inanimate in general), thereby allowing all the other civs to "attack" the gates.

b. Each gate will have a high defense making them near impervious to the attacks to allow for regular travel.

c. Each system must have seperate gate units in the rules.txt and units.gif.

d. Whenever a ship "loses" against a gate the ship is "recreated" at another gate in another system using the create unit event. For example, if Spaceship is destroyed by Gate A then Spaceship will be created next to Gate B. Voila, you have interstellar travel.

Drawbacks -

a. The unit killed scoring will be screwed up.

b. The amount of truly unique units used in a scenario will be lowered as duplicate gates will have to be included in the rules.txt and unit.gif files.

c. I'm not sure but there might be a one turn lag between moving a newly event created unit which creates a "sitting duck" problem.

d. Only one unit can travel at a time between gates. Carriers with stored troops or fighters cannot pass without losing the units in the hold.

e. In order to get the gate unit graphic to appear correctly the unit would have to be a land unit and stationed on a one tile island, otherwise the unit is greyed out.

f. If troops or fighters are to be transferred then they would have to be offloaded and sent through the gate one at a time, provided the gate is a land unit and thus be attackable by other land units. A land tile would have to be present next to the gates allowing for the units to be dropped off after traveling via gate. Also, only units that have the marine flag can directly attack the gate from the ship, so any 1 movement units without the marine flag will have to be offloaded onto a land tile next to the gate and next turn be transported (or have the ship move into a city, but this creates more problems).

g. The events file will be filled up quickly with events for each kind of unit for each gate. I presume that any use of the jump gates will be limited to only certain types of units, perhaps units without organic operators due to "the extreme duress put on organic matter when jumping". Caravans could jump, but trade commodities would be wiped back to hides, which might actually be a neat penalty for traveling via the gate versus slow travel.

h. Units created would have to have a home city assigned. Since cities can be captured and one city cannot take care of all the jumped units for a civ the units would have to be homed to NONE. This is not entirely implausible as each ship jumping to a far off star system would have to be somewhat independent.

i. Veteran status for the units would be hit or miss. Depending on the unit creation event the newly created unit could be magically promoted to veteran status or demoted. It's also possible to make the decision that all jumped units are veteran by the simple fact that they jumped, or that all jumped units are disoriented after jumping until they re-assert themselves in battle.


Drawbacks C - F present a problem where surprise and movement after unit creation is an issue. Though, in an open map, where star systems can be reached through regular movement on the map, I would suspect that the jump gates would be used only in the event that the destination is in friendly space or if the units jumping had sufficient defense to withstand an immediate attack. Large invasion forces would be able to travel without using the gates.


Is this usable?

[Alex Woehr]

I like HT's idea, except that I don't think ToT will let you specify the type of unit that is defending in a UnitKilled trigger without using CSPL.

An alternate idea, one which has been roling around my head for a while, would be to use both ToT's multi-maps and gigamap capabilities and we might be able to represent an entire galaxy. One map would be our galaxy map (mostly ocean=space), upon which we would put our transporters (in this case, probably different types of suns). On the other three maps we would put our star systems separated by Nebulae (i.e. impassable land terrain, or perhaps units). Hyperspace-unworthy units (fighters and whatnot) would be banned from the first map.

Disadvantages:
1) This will take a LOT of work (4 gigamaps )
2) This idea does not accurately portray distances between systems, and
3) This does not accurately portray the act of going into hyperspace.

[Harry Tuttle]

I had made a similar comment in the thread I linked to in my first post. Most people think of hyperspace as increased speed and movement, but really it can be thought of as simply being able to move great distances. By regulating non-hyperspace capable units to the system map you have essentially created that concept.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Alex Woehr
I like HT's idea, except that I don't think ToT will let you specify the type of unit that is defending in a UnitKilled trigger without using CSPL.

Damn, I knew it was too easy. I have to get back into scenario creation, I'm losing my marbles.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
Damn, I knew it was too easy. I have to get back into scenario creation, I'm losing my marbles.

Actually, now that I've had time to review the process on my home computer...

...there is a way to make the gates work. I had to think about my previous use of the unitkilled trigger and the Corral I used in Gold Gulch.

One civ will act as the Gate Civ. Any player units killed by a certain unit of the Gate Civ will be recreated at the exit point in the destination star system.

The "gate unit" (land unit) is set on an island in an enclosed circle of land called the "gate complex". There is one city on the land, bordered by the inner ocean terrain and the outer ocean terrain. This city operates as an entrance to the "gate complex".

Once in the circle a ship will have to attack and kill the "gate unit" to activate the operation. Once the "gate unit" is killed another ship unit is created for the Gate Civ. This other unit called the "vanishing point" can attack both land and sea units. The "vanishing point" unit has the missile flag which will destroy the unit once it has attacked. This unit also has very high attack and defense so it will always win.

The "gate unit", once destroyed, will automatically be recreated on the same spot. The "gate unit" will be recreated immediately and can be attacked multiple times creating multiple "vanishing point" units to attack multiple units wishing to make a jump from within the "gate complex".

For a player controlled jump with multiple ships this all happens within two turns, one to kill the "gate unit" and one for the jumping ship to be killed by the "vanishing point" unit.

This method takes at least three seperate events to work for one gate and one jumping unit type:

UNITKILLED=GATE UNIT > CREATE VANISHING POINT UNIT
UNITKILLED=JUMPING SHIP > CREATE JUMPING SHIP UNIT
UNITKILLED=GATE UNIT > CREATE GATE UNIT

For a non-player controlled jump this could happen within one turn by removing the "gate unit" entirely leaving the "vanishing point" unit to roam the "gate complex", attacking ships after they enter the "gate complex". Multiple vanishing point units could be created using events, potentially widdling down the events to:

TURN=EVERY TURN/EVERY 5 TURNS > CREATE VANISHING POINT UNIT
UNITKILLED=JUMPING SHIP > CREATE JUMPING SHIP UNIT

An extra unitkilled event will have to be created for each type of unit that is intended to jump, with multiple "gate complexes" having a seperate civ, events, and "vanishing point" units.

I checked out the "sitting duck" problem and it is not present. Newly created units have full movement upon creation.

So, what do you think now? Will it work?

[Palaiologos]

Why don't you just represent gates by transporters?

And some spaceships could have the "native transport" capability allowing them to make hyberspace jumps anytime.

You could have an abyss "hyberspace" dimension map that gives huge movement allowances to the units. A unit could teleport in, move 20 squares and then teleport back to the original map-20 squares away.

You can regulate the allowed teleport routes in the rules.txt.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
Why don't you just represent gates by transporters?

And some spaceships could have the "native transport" capability allowing them to make hyberspace jumps anytime.

You could have an abyss "hyberspace" dimension map that gives huge movement allowances to the units. A unit could teleport in, move 20 squares and then teleport back to the original map-20 squares away.

You can regulate the allowed teleport routes in the rules.txt.

Well the only drawback to this would be that carriers and transports wouldn't work since the map would be all land. Also infantry would need a way to travel between worlds besides crossing space without a ship. A purely spaceship based scenario could work, much like MOOjr.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Alex Woehr
I like HT's idea, except that I don't think ToT will let you specify the type of unit that is defending in a UnitKilled trigger without using CSPL.

Actually, and I just tested this, the unitkilled trigger works if a human player attacks the gate and loses. You see, the whole reason why it will work is because the Gate Civ is named as the attacker.

So yes, my original idea should work. This should wittle down the events to one event for each unit and a set for each gate.

[Alex Woehr]

I knew that your first idea would work, except that you could have at most only one or two gates in a scenario. The event would look something like this.

2 civs: Gatekeepers, Spacefairers

@IF
UnitKilled
unit=USS Enterprise
attacker=Gatekeepers
defender=Spacefairers
@THEN
CreateUnit
unit=USS Enterprise
owner=Spacefairers
veteran=no (or yes)
homecity=NONE (or Earth)
locations
x,y,z
endlocations
@ENDIF

The problem would be that you would need a separate gate civ for each hyperspace route. Another variation might work better. If you had a highly structured quest-based scenario (Star Trek, for example, ), you could have the unit event spawn in multiple locations, and block locations from preeceeding quests with foreign 0-mvt units. You could even use flags here with an @AND statement to redirect the hyperspace route.

Don't get me wrong, though. These are all very good ideas. They're just looking for the right home.

[Harry Tuttle]

Good show. Well quest based or not I think it can work on a limited basis. Problem is making room for the Gate Civs in a wide ranging scenario. I'm going to try and use this in a non-space scenario and see how well it works.

[Timor_Leste]

(So I finally had a chance to read the attached link)
You'd have to use ToT in the method I came up with- but I don't know ToT too well, so this may not be doable...
Interstellar space would be ocean, while interplanetary space would be land with the impassable flag. Spacecraft (units with "ignore impassable" flag) would be separated from starships (stronger, more powerful ships sailing on the interstellar ocean).

Advantages/Thoughts-
1) Planetary defense forces would have a definite role and not be blown away by starships. Could use Koby's design of using 9 or so ground tiles to depict large planets.
2) Spacecraft could be land units, limiting them to interplanetary space, or air units, making them carry-able by, ah, carriers.

Problems I can foresee-
1) How the AI would handle (or mishandle) all of this.
* The AI does love Helos...
2) How the cities would build spaceships, since many wouldn't have access to any "ocean" (interstellar space).
* Could create a strip of interstellar space running through the interplanetary region- but it seems entirely too forced. I could rationalize it away by saying the ships are using the planets gravity to swing through the system, like our satellites do.
*Could give starships a paradrop range out to interstellar space.

[Edit]- The intent of the paradrop idea is to make them unbuildable, but evented in to certain cities/planets that're within the paradrop range of interstellar space. [/Edit]

[N35t0r]

You can't paradrop into ocean.

I do think that using 9-tile planets with the city in the center and edited shipbuilding capabilities is best. You'll need to 'paradrop' the ship into the outer ring of the planet and then move it off to space. The AI will never do this, though.

[Timor_Leste]

Originally posted by N35t0r
You can't paradrop into ocean.
I do think that using 9-tile planets with the city in the center and edited shipbuilding capabilities is best. You'll need to 'paradrop' the ship into the outer ring of the planet and then move it off to space. The AI will never do this, though.

Focusing on what I didn't know, I forgot what I do...

I suddenly seem to remember that the AI loves to paradrop into a city to capture it.

[N35t0r]

As a matter of fact, it's the only time the AI will ever paradrop, AFAIK.