Space Combat; Balance of Tactics and Replayability

[vynom]

Hey everyone,
Over the past few days(and even the days of working on other aspects of the game), I have been having trouble coming up with a decent repeatable form of space combat.

The plan is to use either turn based or real time combat, but in a 1 vs 1 style, similiar to pokemon style events(heck thats what I based the movement on for the game).

Now, Ive contemplated a couple systems, but they all seem to be lacking.

Turn Token
Token based system, each turn you get 10 tokens, certain weapons are worth certain points.

Real Time
Weapons can be fired as soon as charged or ready.

Target Oriented
Like the game FTL, select your weapon if its charged, and select the target(ship or system like weapons module)

So those are a few, and I want to hear your thoughts on what you feel would be a battle system that would be interesting, yet something you would find interesting even if youtre doing it repeatedly. Keep in mind the game is top-down, and the majority of the game is based(or will be based) on a huge galaxy, the interactions with planets, stations, factions, and trading. So it plays an equal role in the scheme of the game.

Just for graphical reference, its more of a GUI styled game. So Ive leaned towards the token based, but undecided. A mix and match idea would be great too.

[JovialFeline]

You could always do something wild like simultaneous turn-based. Envision a trainer battle where each player selects an attack but instead of doing the attack immediately, the game waits until both players are ready and executes their actions at the same time. That's the basic idea.

Since you don't know what your opponent will do until your own turn is already submitted, there can be lots of second-guessing what the opponent will do and how you can counter it. This would likely work better if you had a decent number of different ship systems, because it would open up more counter and counter-counter possibilities. Red tries to disable Blue's shield generator with a missile, but Blue launches a defense drone to shoot it down; Blue tries to board Red's engine room by teleporting over but can't lock on to the newly cloaked ship, etc. It would be extra work creating a computer-controlled player capable of putting up a challenge, though. Computers are not paranoid by nature, nor are they creative.

Eh, I'll just show myself out.

[Plu]

How big a ship are we talking? I personally loved FTL's approach. You use a turn-based system to do something order-based if your ship is large enough, where you can give 3 orders each turn and you have a bridge full of officers that can accept all sorts of different orders to do things. Rather than manually targeting weapons this would just let you do something like "all weapons, target their engines"

Of course you'd need to find enough interesting bridge people and orders to work with, but if your game is exploration based you can probably fit a lot of things in there. Sensors and jammers, communication with aliens, away teams and boarding parties, various weapons, shields, maneauvring the ship itself, etc.

It would probably give you more of a captain-y vibe if you are limited by how fast you can bark orders instead of just having full control over every part of the ship at all times.

[vynom]

@ JovialFeline -
Actually, the concept seems pretty good, and doesnt just rely on the weapons at hand, you have to try to guess what the opponent will do.
Have a "Weapons" Select(still based on turn reload so the biggest weapons cant be used as often), but also an "Action", like engage shield, maneuver I, II, II, or maybe even a Board(can use the stats of the NPCs on board for possible takeover... very intriguiging idea!

@ Plue -
Well... The plan as it is now, youll start with a small homely civilian ship with a single blaster. The largest ships are Capital Cruisers, so you may run into one on occassion, but speed would allow you to get away, however, some vessels like a Frigate would be able to go up against a Cap to level it out, and a Bomber Fighter would be able to take out a Frigate, etc. Thats the discrepency I see with a crew, a smaller ship will have lesser of a crew, but youll likely run anwyay.

[shatterblast]

How big a ship are we talking? I personally loved FTL's approach. You use a turn-based system to do something order-based if your ship is large enough, where you can give 3 orders each turn and you have a bridge full of officers that can accept all sorts of different orders to do things. Rather than manually targeting weapons this would just let you do something like "all weapons, target their engines".

+1 to FTL (Faster Than Light). I haven't personally played it, but I hear it's quite addicting. I'm more into games I can control with my gamepad though.

[vynom]

And the combat engine has been decided on-

It seems that every time I get set on a way to handle combat, I steer towards the FTL style... guess when something works you stay focused on it. I actually started over with the development of the game just to fit combat in more evenly, and not just patching it in(also going from a single ship up to 5 depending on skill, allowing combat with the systems and planetary weaponry).
The version I finally settled on was a real-time, non turn-based. Youre flying around the system, you have range and the scanner picks up other ships/stations. If one of the weapon thats installed on your ship has the range, you have the option to fire it(will use an aggro system for enemeies attacking you or running, and adds some additional player skills).

I also hope to extend certain aspects of the battle system, such as boarding enemy vessels, to planetary combat, using the same system but the option to deploy ground troops. And using ground to space weapons would now work as well. Seems to be sufficient for now, only time will tell!