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Frogsquadron

Frogsquadron

8 years ago Jan 25,2017, 16:01:00 PM

Horatio update - Focus on the space battle

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Hey everyone!


The Horatio update is nigh, kinda like a certain science guy! What a great pun. Wish we'd come up with it for the tech tree blog yesterday. Anyway, the space battle changed. What's new? Quite a few things. Let's get started!



First off, deck building has changed somewhat: there are now 16 battle play cards in the game. Players start with 5 cards unlocked, 3 of which make up their starting deck. Deck size can be increased through research, and more cards can be unlocked through both research and hero skills. Card effects have changed for more complex effects, which can be useful or not, depending on the situation. Deck cards can be changed for free every ten turns, otherwise it will cost you influence to do so!


Another big feature that's been requested quite a bit is the possibility of moving ships across flotillas. Want all of your heavy hitters to be on the flanks? That's now a possibility! Simply drag and drop your ships between flotillas, with a lower CP requirement to unlock additional flotillas. Fleet configuration will be saved between battles to reduce hassle, as well as three presets to sort your ships in flotillas by range, put an equal number of ships everywhere, or mix ranges for all three. You may now also compare the two fleets using one of three buttons, to check their respective: military power, energy/projectile ratio, range mismatch. You'll also have noted that icons now represent ship roles more accurately.


Because of these changes adding immense amounts of combinations, we've had to remove the simulation of the opponent's plays, but added instead the last 3 plays used against the player by this opponent. This way you'll be able to mislead your enemies during unimportant fights, to reveal your real strategy in the ultimate battle!





There are also a few changes happening during battle, such as firing ranges being fixed by phase, and an improved, brand new scan view! The ship labels are now displaying damage taken (with misses, shield damage reduction, and hull plating) on the left side gauge, and damage inflicted (with misses, shield damage reduction and hull plating) on the right side gauge. The shield gauge now surrounds the HP gauge. The flotilla is labeled when the camera is far away from a ship, and trajectories and targeting are shown on the galaxy floor (this bit is still WIP). Flotillas themselves appear on the HUD, with a list of ships per flotilla (with HP state displayed, and more detail to come in the next update).


The free cam is improved, too, with left shift to accelerate camera movement, and left-clicking to lock a camera on a ship, then using arrows or left click to rotate, and mouse wheel to zoom.


Finally, under the hood, we reduced the "hard counter" aspect of energy vs projectiles, so that shields now also slightly stop projectile weapons, and never completely stop energy weapons), and increased defense module efficiency. One of the purposes of these changes is to create a choice between taking into effect the range intentions of the card when choosing a play, or the effects on the card themselves!



Of course, this isn't a final version and we're interested in your feedback on visuals and gameplay feel, so please leave your comments both now and once the update releases and you've had a chance to try them out!




Come back tomorrow to learn more about another feature of the Horatio Update... the Horatio!




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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 4:10:50 PM

What exactly does firing range fixed by phase mean exactly? That is no where explained unfortunally

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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 4:18:58 PM

Basically, each range phase is as long as the other two now. 33.3% for each, and this, depending on each flotilla pair's range intentions.


This means that if you both have short range intentions, all three phases will be resolved at short range. If you have a short range intention on one side, and a long one on the other,  the three phases will be resolved at long, medium, and short range, all with an equal duration.


Hope this makes more sense.

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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 6:44:17 PM

I have question about ranges too - what range is between for example unpaired left flank flotilla and enemy center flotilla or left flank and enemy left flank?

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 8:29:45 PM
Frogsquadron wrote:

Basically, each range phase is as long as the other two now. 33.3% for each, and this, depending on each flotilla pair's range intentions.


This means that if you both have short range intentions, all three phases will be resolved at short range. If you have a short range intention on one side, and a long one on the other,  the three phases will be resolved at long, medium, and short range, all with an equal duration.


Hope this makes more sense.

This was also my question. I am still a bit confused. What happens to different pairs? So if left flank is a pair of both short range flotillas, they will fight 3 phases short range. And the middle lane, which could be short vs long, would fight a long - medium - short range duell? So the left flank pair would try to close in as fast as possible to engage in 3 short range phases, while the middle lane would go trough all ranges because of outmanoeuvering each other? And this will happen simultaniously? So this would mean all flotillas will only shot at their pairing flotilla?


Also what happens to long vs medium? Would this be one phase long range and 2 phases medium range?

Or short vs medium? Would this be 2 phases medium and 1 phase short?


And what would happen if you put all your ships in say left flank and the enemy all in right flank?


Sorry, I am a bit mind blown. I guess I just have to dive into combat. Would be nice if you could elaborate a bit on that.

Thanks, keep up the good work!

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8 years ago
Jan 26, 2017, 2:17:16 AM

I love that we can move ships around and assign them to their own subgroups. It definitely increases the strategic aspect of fights. I must admit that I'm not that excited about the battle cards. I may be misunderstanding their use, but if it's like the battle cards in ES1, then it will feel like rock-paper-scissors for every fight. I hope I'm wrong on that latter aspect, though. Regardless, keep up the awesome work! When will the Horatio update be fully released (tentative dates are fine)?

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8 years ago
Jan 26, 2017, 4:31:00 AM

I'm always iffy on cards and card deck. I understand random worldgen is a part of any good 4x game, but I have to question whether a cards mechanic will help the game as a whole. Puts too much onto chance rather than skillful managing of the (please bear with the cards reference) hand you were dealt from the beginning.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this mechanic more? Is it more a concept of ship tactics and "cards" are just fancy words for it?


Other than that, current planned update information gives me much hype. I look forward to it, I just hope you can elaborate on Cards and assuage my fears.

Cards feels like a bandwagon sort of decision if they ARE just.... well, cards.   But I do still love the direction you guys are taking the game.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Jan 26, 2017, 12:02:48 PM
Drzewo wrote:

I have question about ranges too - what range is between for example unpaired left flank flotilla and enemy center flotilla or left flank and enemy left flank?

As I said in this topic (among interesting discussion about weapons): in every phase, the paired flotilla is a priority target and is always on the flank, but if the guns (for example on the other flank) cannot see it but can shoot another flotilla, they seize the opportunity to fire based on real distance. To be honest, we're not totally happy with this implementation because it's almost impossible to plan (and thus precisely model) this additional damage. We're thinking about other solutions but none are entirely satisfactory at the moment.


MezzoMax wrote:

Also what happens to long vs medium? Would this be one phase long range and 2 phases medium range?

Or short vs medium? Would this be 2 phases medium and 1 phase short?

Here are the ranges table:




Short

Medium

Long

Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3
ShortShortShortShortMediumShortShortLongMediumShort
MediumMediumShortShortMediumMediumMediumLongMediumMedium
LongLongMediumShortLongMediumMediumLongLongLong


MezzoMax wrote:

And what would happen if you put all your ships in say left flank and the enemy all in right flank?

First of all, we put the constraint to have at least one ship in the middle lane, to avoid completely useless battles and increase slightly the predictability. Also you can note that we now feedback the morale bonus: the damage and accuracy of your fleet are increased when you have more (alive) flotillas than your opponent (from the start or during battle). That gives you more incentive to spread your ships.


And that’s also one of the reasons why we set the 3 intention ranges with the effect on the card. Because you can see this constraint in the “last cards used by your opponent”, you can more easily predict in which flotillas you will see their ships.


Stevezor wrote:

I'm always iffy on cards and card deck. I understand random worldgen is a part of any good 4x game, but I have to question whether a cards mechanic will help the game as a whole. Puts too much onto chance rather than skillful managing of the (please bear with the cards reference) hand you were dealt from the beginning.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this mechanic more? Is it more a concept of ship tactics and "cards" are just fancy words for it? 

Just to clarify, there is no random in the available cards for each battle. You decide which cards (between 3 and 5) you want among all your unlocked cards (currently only by technologies). Then before each battle, you can select one of them. I understand the words (card, deck etc.) could be unsettling or misleading but don’t worry, you will keep control of your strategy.




Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Jan 26, 2017, 9:28:48 PM

Thanks Mysterarts for the explanations. This makes much more sense. Looking forward to testing it. Keep up the good work, the game is really shaping up pretty damn good.

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8 years ago
Jan 30, 2017, 2:42:54 AM

After 230 hours of this game I love to see the updates as they come out. This last one made it feel like a new game to me.

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