Should i use realtime or turnbased?

[Lemmy]

I had this idea about making a space battle game, the idea is that two or more players get a number of points, and they can then spend their points on designing their own ship(s). Once that's done, the game starts on a (random) map and the players fight it out. You can assign ships to a group and command the ships in a group as it is one ship.

But i'm not sure if it should be realtime or turnbased, and even if i knew that, there are still some variations to consider,

Real-time all the way, the basic clickfest ala command & conquer

Real-time with pauses, the pauses would occur at set intervals, and last a fixed time, or untill the last player indicates he is ready to continue, during the pause, the player can check the ships and give new orders. Maybe you can only give orders during the pause?

turnbased, one player at a time, during each turn a player can move all of his ships

turnbases, one group at a time, each group has a sequence, which is equal to the ship with the lowest sequence.

turnbased, one ship at a time, no groups with this option, each ship has their own sequence, depending on their design, the player can move only that ship during the turn, ships with higher sequences will eventually have more turns.

[ColdWizard]

how about turn-based, one ship at a time, but allowing ships to be either solo or assigned to a group (groups move at lowest)?

[Lemmy]

that actually makes more sense than my last two options

[ColdWizard]

i made sense!

i wonder how that happened



are you going to have MP and scenario support at release or add it in later as an expansion?

[Lemmy]

well, i'm not planning on writing an AI, so it will have to be MP at release, if there ever wil be a release off course...


*see how i evade your request for scenario support, i'll be a real developer some day *

[loinburger]

I'd say either real-time (without pauses) or else turn-based groups. Real-time with pauses can get extremely annoying in MP, turn-based by player gives too much of an advantage to the person who goes first, and turn-based by ship would take far too long to resolve combat.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Turn-based but with a set amount of time (which you define at the beginning) before the game automatically rolls over into the next turn. ie: The games Deadlock and Max have this option.

[Urban Ranger]

Your game sounds surprisingly like the classic board game Statfleet Battles which has a nice way of playing out combat. I can fill you in more if you're interested.

[Lemmy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Your game sounds surprisingly like the classic board game Statfleet Battles which has a nice way of playing out combat. I can fill you in more if you're interested.

tell me more, i'm interested now.

[Urban Ranger]

Starfleet Battles is a game of several intertwined ideas.

The first one is each ship is limited in what it can do each turn by amount of energy available. Energy is required for everything from firing weapons to movement to maintaining life support and there is always not enough of it to go around.

The second one is the phased combat system. The game is turn based, and each turn is further subdivided into "impulses." For historical (in terms of this game) and design reasons there are 32 impulses to each turn. Ships may or may not move in an impulse depending on its speed. The faster a ship, the more it can move.

A ship that moves faster has initative over a slower ship. A ship that has initative moves last in an impulse but fires weapons first. Each captain must decide whether he will fire in an impulse and what weapons to fire separately and at the same time.

[Lemmy]

The second one is the phased combat system. The game is turn based, and each turn is further subdivided into "impulses." For historical (in terms of this game) and design reasons there are 32 impulses to each turn. Ships may or may not move in an impulse depending on its speed. The faster a ship, the more it can move.

that is way more complex then what i'm doing

i'm keepin it simple with the turn-based, well, simpler then that, each ship has a sequence, for example 15, and a counter.
Here's what i do to decide whose turn it is, i look through all the ships, and see who has the highest counter above a certain number, i use 100 now. If there is no ship with a counter above 100, then i raise the counter off all the ships with their sequence, and check again, i do this untill there is a ship with a counter above 100.

Each ship has movement points, and each weapon has a fire rate, or reload rate, which means they can only fire once every [fire rate] turns. A ship can fire and move in the same turn

[Urban Ranger]

There's another simpler system.

Suppose the game is turn based. At the beginning of each turn each side decides initiative by an appropiate method.

Then each ship is moved one hex and each side decides whether to fire weapons or not. This is repeated until all ships run out of movement points.

Turning is usually handled by a "turn mode." It is just a number that says a ship must go in a straight line n hexes before turning 60°.