Orbital Warfare/Planetary Seige

Discussion for the Next Big Thing, which is purely theoretical.
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LactoseTolerant
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Orbital Warfare/Planetary Seige

Post by LactoseTolerant »

Orbital Warfare/Planetary Seige Outline v.1.01
A proposition on the finer details of taking over a planet.

I'm not dead yet! Still working on a simpler version.

Layout:
The map is laid out in a 3000x1500 vertical rectangle. The attackers will start from the north side. The defenders will hold two positions in the southern half.
1500 north of the bottom (the middle of the map) will be the initial postion of the defender's fleet (See "Combatants")
800 north of the bottom will be the defender's orbital defenses (See "Combatants")

Objectives:

Planetary Defense:
The objective of the planetary defense is to destroy the enemy fleet's dropships (if they are attempting to capture the planet, see "Combatants"), or to destroy the enemy fleet and force a retreat.

Attackers:
The objective of the attackers (in the case of a planetary seige and planned occupation) is to escort their dropships to the planet's "surface", the lower end of the map (See "Combatants"). If a certain amount of the initial dropships are lost, the mission is a failure and the planet cannot be captured.

Combatants:

Attackers:

Combat Fleet
Standard fleet of warships. However, any ship larger than 400 size is prohibited from crossing 750 distance from the bottom of the map (due to possible re-entry into atmosphere). Any ships smaller than 400, including strikecraft can enter the 750 distance.

Dropships
Dropships are required to capture the planet (if the attackers are intending to). They are heavily armored, but lightly armed. Dropships start at the top of the map. Their movement is a single order to the planet's surface (the bottom of the map). Once the dropships have been ordered, their course cannot be altered. However, they can be set to retreat in a similar fashion, by ordering all dropships to the top of the map. The attacking fleet cannot retreat safely before the dropships reach the top. If the fleet does retreat, the dropships are lost.
The amount of dropships needed to conquer a planet is dependant on the planet's population. More of this will be worked out as soon as planetary population and resources are worked out.

Defenders:
Defense Fleet
Plays the same as the attacker's combat fleet. Includes as many in-galaxy ships as the commander chooses.

Orbital Defenses
Stationary platforms that are heavily armed and armored, but completely immobile. Default tracking of these platforms are 180 degrees, facing north. Defense platforms, once purchased on the planet, are for use on that planet only, and may not be moved to another planet. Defense Platforms have a 1.5x bonus in Mass Allowance/Threat Level to compensate.

Pre-Combat Preparations

Attackers
The commander will set the terms for advance and retreat, as well as dropship launch. The commander also sets the retreat conditions for the dropships to turn around.

Defenders
The defending commander can organize his available orbital defenses as he may please, but all defenses are within 750 of the bottom of the map.

Post-Combat Conditions

Victory Conditions
As soon as the minimum number of dropships required "lands" on the planet (touching the bottom of the screen), the battle is ended and the attacker wins. The defender wins when no enemy forces are present in the battlefield, or if the attackers have retreated.

Devastation v.1.1
Depending on how well the planet is defended, the loss of the orbital defenses will cause a drop in planet morale. The revised formula is this:

Post combat morale loss:

Code: Select all

(-(((I-E)/I)*100)^2/300)*C+M
Porportion constant:

Code: Select all

C=I^2/200
Where "M" stands for inital Morale, "I" stands for inital number of defense platforms, "E" stands for ending number of platforms, and "C" stands for the balancing/morale constant.

The post combat morale loss number is the percentage of morale remaining.

Example:
Both planets take the same percent of damage (50%).

Planet A has 10 defenses. Therefore, it's porportion constant is .5
Planet A loses 5 of those defenses. Therefore it's percent morale remaining is 95%.

Planet B has 30 defenses. Therefore, it's porportion constant is 4.5
Planet B loses 15 of those defenses. Therfore, it's percent morale remaining is 62.5%

The premise of this system is that the more damage done to the orbital defenses, the more morale will drop (due to the loss of loved ones, etc). However, this effect scales non-linearly as the initial number of platforms increase. This means that a small planet losing all of it's platforms will be less devastating on morale than a large, heavily defended planet losing a third of it's defenses. This is also to add risk to overloading a planet with defenses and playing "turtle". Depending on how orbital defenses are, the proportion constant may scale more slowly to compensate.
Last edited by LactoseTolerant on Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by jwa8402 »

Hmm that sounds intriguing but why not use planet sprites? You can have orbital installations rotating around it with the planet itself having too high hp to be destroyed and not able to move of course.Then you could have installations on the surface(weapons, modules) that can only be taken out by precision penetration munitions(railguns and the like). Dropships and bombers could essentially be the same thing, having to get in close enough to take out all the installations, or maybe some easy to see sprite near the center that when destroyed signals the planet's capture. All this would allow for true 'space' combat, with ships coming from all sides at the planet in the middle. Meh, yours will probably work better, its just an idea.
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Post by Nutcase »

I tried that once, Jwa.
Didn't turn out so well.
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Post by Chiiro »

Making use of the Sprite Under effect, you could put a planet sprite under a 'Capitol' structure of the planet which would be located at the core of the planet 'ship', and then from the capitol parent different structures. This would allow for hitting everything BUT the planet, if you place several structures on the planets surface or in orbit around the planet through the use of rotsections.
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Post by LactoseTolerant »

jwa8402 wrote:Hmm that sounds intriguing but why not use planet sprites? You can have orbital installations rotating around it with the planet itself having too high hp to be destroyed and not able to move of course.Then you could have installations on the surface(weapons, modules) that can only be taken out by precision penetration munitions(railguns and the like). Dropships and bombers could essentially be the same thing, having to get in close enough to take out all the installations, or maybe some easy to see sprite near the center that when destroyed signals the planet's capture. All this would allow for true 'space' combat, with ships coming from all sides at the planet in the middle. Meh, yours will probably work better, its just an idea.
Making use of the Sprite Under effect, you could put a planet sprite under a 'Capitol' structure of the planet which would be located at the core of the planet 'ship', and then from the capitol parent different structures. This would allow for hitting everything BUT the planet, if you place several structures on the planets surface or in orbit around the planet through the use of rotsections.
It's a good idea, but I never quite intended for the planet to be a sprite. At the bottom of the playing field would just be a large, large planet background for aesthetics. The defense platforms could become a completely new market, and be deployed separately from the planet. Although the "capitol" idea is a very intresting idea, the destruction of it would kill all the defense structures, and cause massive morale loss... which actually may be of some use :shock: .
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Post by Chiiro »

LactoseTolerant wrote: It's a good idea, but I never quite intended for the planet to be a sprite. At the bottom of the playing field would just be a large, large planet background for aesthetics. The defense platforms could become a completely new market, and be deployed separately from the planet. Although the "capitol" idea is a very intresting idea, the destruction of it would kill all the defense structures, and cause massive morale loss... which actually may be of some use :shock: .
An additional little perk of having the planet as an actual object, is that you can decide whether to capture it, or just GLASS that piece of rock.
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Post by jwa8402 »

@Nutcase Either here or via pm, mind explaining what didn't work? I know the one I released wasn't set up right cuz it still had movement, but I've modified others many times and had no problems. They function just like a station...

@LT: Makes sense, but wouldn't the 'background' be a sprite too, with all the same problems? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Sure would be nice to be able to import backgrounds into the sandbox... If you make a section additive, do bullets go through it? Seem to remember someone doing that for a demo of the new features. If so, you could be able to hit the targets on a planet without actually destroying it or being limited to aoe and railgun attacks. Or perhaps I'm too tired and that makes no sense.
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Post by Chiiro »

jwa8402 wrote:If you make a section additive, do bullets go through it? Seem to remember someone doing that for a demo of the new features. If so, you could be able to hit the targets on a planet without actually destroying it or being limited to aoe and railgun attacks. Or perhaps I'm too tired and that makes no sense.
No, however you can make use of the function in the Eff tab that draws a sprite under the section, these sprites can't be hit.
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Post by LactoseTolerant »

jwa8402 wrote:@LT: Makes sense, but wouldn't the 'background' be a sprite too, with all the same problems? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Sure would be nice to be able to import backgrounds into the sandbox... If you make a section additive, do bullets go through it? Seem to remember someone doing that for a demo of the new features. If so, you could be able to hit the targets on a planet without actually destroying it or being limited to aoe and railgun attacks. Or perhaps I'm too tired and that makes no sense.
Chiiro wrote:No, however you can make use of the function in the Eff tab that draws a sprite under the section, these sprites can't be hit.
Actually, I was thinking of using the "Terrain" option in BSF itself, so it's truely part of the background and impossitble to hit, but is there for the aesthetic value.

Updated the "Devastation" section with a formula.
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Post by Nutcase »

Well if you don't use and surface based targets, certainly get away with the planet being a piece of scenery. If you try to get any sort of planet basted targets you pretty much have to place the thing like a ship/station.
And of course orbital bombardment is great fun while it's not on you.

Jwa: Mostly due to the fact that I used multiple sections for the rock itself and being a bloody perfectionist, the thing turned out a bit to funny for me.
(Too small, and I managed to blow up the core without affecting it's atmosphere and crust which happily floated into my fleet.)
(Funfact: the explosions only appear in the centre of a debris sprite.)
And I dislike it when my few hundred metre ships are half the size of a planet. That and I was mostly looking for a way to make a destructible surface without killing the computer.
(I wanted to glass the place)
Basically me being a bloody perfectionist again.
But what Chiiro said could work, gonna try it tomorrow or the day after.
Sometime during the weekend.
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Post by Squishy »

I am thinking a kind of 'tower defense' game arrangement from what I understand of Lactose's opening v1.01 post.
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Post by LactoseTolerant »

Squishy wrote:I am thinking a kind of 'tower defense' game arrangement from what I understand of Lactose's opening v1.01 post.
In a way, yes :wink: . I'm also trying to upen up a market for defense platforms and urge people to design in that branch for more variety. Makes fighting over a planet much more than fighting on a map with a planet on it.

And why are you all so destructive :o ?

I think the planet method could work well, as there's a "Critical Object" module that can be used as a kill trigger, which would mean that there would be definite setups for orbital defense platforms. Although that may be a bit too complex, to Arcalane.
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Post by Silverware »

I think it has good promise too, its definitely better than just killing off all enemy forces in the system, this provides much more tactical uses of platforms and other static defenses.
And I don't think it would take much more time than a standard battle would, the initial set up might take 5 more minutes or so to place the static defenses how the player wants them.
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Post by derekiv »

I think that glassing could have a positive or negative effect on your moral, depending on you and your enemies "template". If your of opposing views, maybe you get a morale bonus for wiping them out. And they get a moral bonus if they get glassed. Thing is, they may not learn about the glassed planet, other than a cessation of communication.
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Post by Nutcase »

Until the ships they'll inevitalby send to investigate (fail to) report back.
And I've got a feeling that until you've got ships the size of Lucifer, it might be a bit difficult to glass planets in a reasonable amount of time without a shitload of ships.
In which case, I presume it'd be more of a case of vapourise the cities and take the rest.
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