Enemies when?

[Kensei]

Any ETA on enemies? I wanna PEW PEW already...

[St1kZ]

Początkowo opublikowane przez josmith7:

Początkowo opublikowane przez StikZ:

I hope, they let the players decide wether they want to fight something (or someone?) or not, and that they make it possible to select an enemy-free chillmode.

Your hope is answered. The devs have consistently said, from the very first time they mentioned combat, that combat will be an optional setting.

So let´s hope they keep their promise.:)

[Kensei]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mowglia:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kensei:

I don't think it needs to be THAT indepth...I mean at that point it would be Stelaris with a pipeline...

The danger is that enemies will just be of the pop-up variety, or simply exist to hinder expansion due to them defending planets.

Which, let's face it, would merely be annoying.

Strategy is the way to go, even if it's fairly basic. Stellaris is rather complicated; they don't need to go anywhere near that far =:)

PS. One of the biggest 'flaws' with DSP is there's currently not much point in the late game. Combat is an opportunity to change that, and hopefully the devs will take maximum advantage of it.

Popup is definitely the worst possible thing to happen. In that case I'd just disable enemies altogether. Grand strategy though I think would divert quite a lot from the purpose of the game.
Endgame certainly needs an enemy, but I think it has to be a completely different kind of entity. No production lines for you to raid or disable supply routes or manuever fleets around.

[Mowglia]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kensei:

Endgame certainly needs an enemy, but I think it has to be a completely different kind of entity. No production lines for you to raid or disable supply routes or manuever fleets around.

Yeah, there is more than one way to skin a cat for sure.

There's no point in trying to copy Stellaris given we've already got Stellaris for that, lol.

Strategy just means planning to meet a long-term objective, and as applied to something like DSP basically means "ebb and flow". That is to say that it ought to be possible to do well against enemies (combination of planning and action), and it ought to be possible to lose out against enemies. In terms of design the details don't really matter (to us), as long as enemies give us plenty to think about, and our choices result in gain/loss.

Bonus points for having a mode where enemies can make the game difficult, in a similar way that bad decisions while playing on x0.5 resources can make the game difficult.

The more there is to think about, and the greater the influence our behaviour has on gain/loss, then the more interesting DSP will be.

Regarding implementation and details, OGame used a system where you'd build a fleet from various ships (fighters, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, etc), research would buff their capabilities, and you'd wang them at an enemy fleet/planet.

The precise outcome of a battle was determined by rng, ship stats, and (importantly) the numbers and ratios of ships relative to the numbers and ratios of enemy ships/defences.

It was incredibly simple stuff, almost laughably so. But it worked because the range of possible outcomes was diverse, and a skilled player would almost certainly rise to the top. It reminded me of chess in some ways, but not because of any grand strategy. More that such simple pieces, with such simple moves, on such a simple board, could yield surprisingly interesting outcomes depending on what the player did and when.

In OGame the reward for victory was resources (from destroyed ships), which you used to build more ships/defences.

Such a system might work rather well with DSP. We've already seen the epic visuals involving rockets and solar sails, and huge fleet battles would fit in quite nicely with that. It could be quite a spectacle, and fundamentally simple, yet contain enough depth to keep us amused indefinitely.

Now I'm not saying that they should do this...

I'm merely using this as an example of how a system employing relatively few simple variables can provide surprising depth and longevity. Once the wheels are in motion you're pretty much just a spectator (although you can recall your fleet); the thinking is done beforehand when deciding what and how much to send. Even an idiot could do it in seconds, although an idiot might not get the same results as a skilled player (depending on the choices they made) :D

When we're talking depth and strategy, it doesn't have to be like Stellaris, where you can spend hours (or even days) poring over the minutiae, and setting things up just so, before you execute some grand plan.

It's perfectly possible to have a simple system that takes only seconds to execute, and indeed, perhaps only even gives us a few minutes to consider our options (under certain circumstances). The strategic element can be derived from how these confrontations pan out over time, and how the player responds to that :)

[Kensei]

You make a fair point, however the timing is the important. For example there's a big difference between enemies being a problem early game vs them taking notice of you when you're already building a Dyson.

As for the fleet, I don't think variety would be possible, considering you'd presumably need to assemble ships much like the sphere rockets. Unless there's some kind of orbital shipyard where you pump all of your production output into in order to make frigates, destroyers, carriers, battleships etc.

Honestly I see this being a quantity problem. It's highly likely that even in the presence of a complex fleet, a spam of small and cheep vessels would outperform via swarming.

Let's face it, accounting for the massive size of the playing field, the large amount of supply ships and the potential scale of a player empire, it's highly unlikely that anyone would have a specialized fleet of any kind.

Maybe a special ship carrying planet cracking ordinance and 1-2 basic multipurpose ships such as interceptor drone carriers for space superiority and a standard mid to heavy class warship would somewhat work, but I don't see anything more nuanced to ever be viable on a galactic scale. Even in Stellaris spamming small cheap ships was almost, if not more effective than piling up the dreadnoughts.

The best case I can see here would be a wave mechanic enemy. Where you have an incoming attack vector and a timer. If you're in the way, you have to deal with it, if not, let it go.

This of course doesn't present an objective, and simply results in an annoyance. So in order to actually have fleets, the only approach I see as viable would be for YOU to invade THEM. As in, build up a fleet and send them "outside" your galactic bubble, and do to "them" what they do to you.

Could also be a cooperative effort. Say the enemy is at the center of the galaxy and every player has to send fleets there to damage the opposing force.

[[CH]the_minimalist]

no need for enemies... this would destroy the whole game like it is now.

[Songbird]

I think a lot of you all are forgetting that this is an automation and logistics game. Interaction with enemies will also fall under the realm of automation for the most part. The requests for things like an intelligent AI play against, or diplomacy, are pretty ludicrous. We'll be probably looking at things like setting up escorts for your transports or defenses for your Dyson sphere when it comes around. Direct combat is going to have to be something that can be done on the player's timetable if it will exist, e.g. attacking an enemy base, rather than needing to actively follow the enemy actions around.

[Mowglia]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kensei:

Honestly I see this being a quantity problem. It's highly likely that even in the presence of a complex fleet, a spam of small and cheep vessels would outperform via swarming.

I had to laugh...

Because of course this was an issue in Stellaris (not sure whether it still is; it's been a while), and OGame if I remember correctly. Also your choice of words reminded me of Goonswarm in Eve :)

But yeah, who knows what they will actually do? I just hope that enemies provide depth and interest in DSP, rather than fall into the annoyance/hassle category.

Like in Skyrim. When you forget to avoid that fork in the road. And your soul weeps in a small dark corner, as you hear the words "You there, traveller; over here!" for the 294835th time...

[Kensei]

Balancing fleet ships is a difficult problem in game design, both mechanically and statistically. I'm not surprised that in most games trash spam is a reliable approach, since of course any well designed game must also include trash spam as a viable strategy. It's not an easy solution.

I agree that it doesn't really matter, as long as it's not as annoying as constantly being shot by arrows into the knee. But then again, I used to like the Dune game on the SEGA...

[MazdaEldorado]

I was thinking about the whole NPC thing. It would almost be interesting if there were "locals" that you had to deal with. I know it's dark but removing residents from a planet or having to deal with them in some balanced way... like extracting resources from the system without agro'ing them to you. It's just interesting to think about encountering sentient life when tapping into a star cluster. Also with the way time works in DSP you could see a society go from stone age to space age. I realize this is all overthinking it but I kind of like the idea of playing a DSP game and dealing with being "good" or "bad" when trying to accomplish your mission of building a sphere.

[Funky UserName]

enemies could also just defend and protect their home system

[Buttflap]

I would enjoy an option to build up some kind of defenses, like Factorio. I love this game as is, but I would definitely turn ON a combat option if it was available, when done well and not dumb AI that are useless. They seem like good devs though so I have faith.

[Shahadem]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mowglia:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kensei:

Honestly I see this being a quantity problem. It's highly likely that even in the presence of a complex fleet, a spam of small and cheep vessels would outperform via swarming.

I had to laugh...

Because of course this was an issue in Stellaris (not sure whether it still is; it's been a while), and OGame if I remember correctly. Also your choice of words reminded me of Goonswarm in Eve :)

But yeah, who knows what they will actually do? I just hope that enemies provide depth and interest in DSP, rather than fall into the annoyance/hassle category.

Like in Skyrim. When you forget to avoid that fork in the road. And your soul weeps in a small dark corner, as you hear the words "You there, traveller; over here!" for the 294835th time...

It was and is even more so now.

The smallest ship class had insane defense via having an Evasion stat that Capital ships were not given and Capital ship weapons were kept nerfed into the ground by having tiny accuracies (this is also a problem in Eve and has been for years) when in reality they should have near perfect accuracy since they are just using computers to predict trajectory and the technology should allow large size turrets to rotate just as fast as smaller turrets. This evasion stat gave the smallest ships such a huge advantage that a fleet of unupgraded ships were still capable of winning endgame engagements with a high degree of certainty as ship cost increased with the technology tier of its equipment so if you used tier 1 tech the ship was dirt cheap. The overpowered bs evasion stat was available even for tier 1 ships.

While the new system doesn't have an Evasion stat (I think), Capital ships no longer have damage mitigation via armor so there is absolutely no difference in the capabilities of a small ship verse a Capital ship outside of resource cost where small ships are still cheaper.

I really hate when game developers refuse to give damage mitigation to capital ships in the form of requiring high penetration values to damage or penetrate the shields and armor of capital ships, values that smalller ships shouldn't be able to reach.