Premature Evaluation: Ground Battle Visual Design Language

endlessEpp

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8 years ago

Sep 19, 2016, 1:22:09 PM

radlawnmower wrote:
Mokinokaro wrote:
The point of the ground battles is for the defenders to force several turns. It's all about stalling until your fleet arrives.
Pretty much this. When you think about far advanced waging military battles, they don't handle it via ground troops except maybe the very last few stages and that is what this is. Does the your population result to guerrilla tactics or do you tell them not to resist and to surrender?
With that said, the game is supposed to put you in the position of the leader of this faction and I think being in a war room surrounded by your generals like something out of Dr. Strangelove would be very cool.

Much better graphic. Wish I would have thought of it. This is exactly the vibe I was going for.

Taking the idea a bit further, perhaps you could replace the initial decision UI with three generals advocating for each of the three response options. From that screen, you could just quickly pick your strategy (same # of interactions as before), or you could ask the general for more info to support their point and you could dive into some more statistics and detail about your options. Once the decision is made, the general whose strategy you picked could provide you a report of what happened (rather than using the 1 line vs 1 line animation resolve that currently plays).

Mulchmeat

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Mulchmeat

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8 years ago

Sep 17, 2016, 9:49:05 PM

I just want to note that the ground battles can last several turns.

endlessEpp

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endlessEpp

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8 years ago

Sep 17, 2016, 10:38:43 PM

BlackBird1696 wrote:
I just want to note that the ground battles can last several turns.

Hmmm, I definitely forgot to consider that. I just rewatched the footage, not sure how that would work over several turns. I guess at the start of your turn it just forces you into the battle dialogue and you have to watch the animation each turn. I don't feel like any of these suggestions would be any more immersion breaking than the current solution. I'll definitely have to think about it some more though. Thanks.

solrac137

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solrac137

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8 years ago

Sep 17, 2016, 11:37:03 PM

BlackBird1696 wrote:
I just want to note that the ground battles can last several turns.

How does that works ?

Mulchmeat

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Mulchmeat

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8 years ago

Sep 18, 2016, 1:34:30 AM

solrac137 wrote:
BlackBird1696 wrote:
I just want to note that the ground battles can last several turns.
How does that works ?

There is only one battle phase each turn. So both sides fire their weapons, deal damage, and then if there are still troops on both sides left the battle continues next turn.

Mokinokaro

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Mokinokaro

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8 years ago

Sep 18, 2016, 2:01:12 AM

The point of the ground battles is for the defenders to force several turns. It's all about stalling until your fleet arrives.

MezzoMax

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MezzoMax

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8 years ago

Sep 18, 2016, 12:06:53 PM

I like your first idea. Fits the feel of an Emperor watching from a holo room. The actual footage is clearly some kind of holographic. The biggest problem with the actual footage for me is that every system consists of several planets but is conquered as a whole and the battle is shown on one planet.

Mulchmeat

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Mulchmeat

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8 years ago

Sep 18, 2016, 12:23:59 PM

I also want to say that I like the idea of news reports on battles and empire wide events (such as random/scripted events, wars starting, wars stopped, treaties/trade deals/ research agreements signed/minor factions assimilated, and population consensus) But I think news reports like that should be for empires you are allies with. And you would get reports from their end as well. Not very effective, but it would be neat to watch.

radlawnmower

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radlawnmower

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15 400g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 18, 2016, 6:29:48 PM

Mokinokaro wrote:
The point of the ground battles is for the defenders to force several turns. It's all about stalling until your fleet arrives.

Pretty much this. When you think about far advanced waging military battles, they don't handle it via ground troops except maybe the very last few stages and that is what this is. Does the your population result to guerrilla tactics or do you tell them not to resist and to surrender?

With that said, the game is supposed to put you in the position of the leader of this faction and I think being in a war room surrounded by your generals like something out of Dr. Strangelove would be very cool.

endlessEpp

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endlessEpp

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8 years ago

Sep 19, 2016, 1:07:15 PM

MezzoMax wrote:
I like your first idea. Fits the feel of an Emperor watching from a holo room. The actual footage is clearly some kind of holographic. The biggest problem with the actual footage for me is that every system consists of several planets but is conquered as a whole and the battle is shown on one planet.

Yeah, that last bit is exactly where the disconnect happens for me. I like that it's a representation, but I think even for a representation, it's too literal, in that appears to be representing just one battle out of many that would be happening.

endlessEpp

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endlessEpp

Newcomer

8 years ago

Sep 17, 2016, 8:02:30 PM

Important Note: I'm limiting discussion to purely the visual representation of Ground Battles, and trying to align them with the intent described in GDD14. If you've got an idea that would change the actual game mechanics, that's likely best left for another thread.

Disclaimer: I'm basing this on watching the Eurogamer Gameplay Video.

Into the fray!

Based on what I've seen so far, Endless Space 2 seems to be delivering on the vision of a epic space story told on a grand scale, and this is borne out in the details that have been released so far. However, the ground battles seem, at least to me, to be visually at odds with the rest of the visual design.

The ground battle starts with three choices, these are represented with small pictures. I think this works well. The pictures are nicely representative and give some flavour to each choice.

However, once the selection has been made, we get a scene with a red and blue army. Each army has soldiers arrayed in a single line (not a very modern, let alone futuristic battle formation), and then a brief animation plays.

The battle ends, and suddenly you're kicked back out into a planetary system view and notified that the single line of soldiers you just watched have captured all the planets in your system by beating your one line of soldiers. It just seems a bit disjointed.

Two suggestions then, both based on the premise that as an emperor of a galaxy, you will not be on the front line of a planetary ground battle, but instead fed information through advisers.

Suggestion 1 - The War Room (reuses as many art assets as possible)

The underlying idea here is that you are viewing what your army generals would be viewing to assess the combat from their army bases.

Uses the exact same art assets as the current version, but provides visual context so that they look like holograms popping out of a map.

A static painting of army generals could provide context on first use, but fade in the background (of the conscience) on subsequent playthroughs.

Initially a representative view of the planetary system appears (i.e. not true colour, making it obvious this is a representative view, and tying it visually to the blue and red units that will appear). The map then zooms into one of the planets. The holograms then begin to flicker into view on the map, acting as representative markers for the actual armies (i.e. not in a line, so it looks like more than one battle is taking place at a time. A battle could be between two units). After the battles resolve, the view zooms out to show the planetary system again. The results then flash up on each of the planets, but slightly out of synch, so that it makes it appear that battles happened simultaneously but were unique.

Advantages to this approach: Doubles down on the idea that the battle is representative, creates a feeling of greater scale

Suggestion 2 - The News Feed (the lots more coding and artwork required option)

The one idea that isn't captured in the above, but seems to be an underlying concept in the design document and in fact the overall design of this game, is that population is more than a stat and should have a feeling of personality and character.

Since the above (and the existing) visual design, just shows representative units, it completely misses the civilian element of a ground battle.

The underlying idea here is that you are getting second hand glimpses of what is actually happening.

This would unfortunately require extra code and art assets. I would envision a second AI director feeding you a shotgun blast of different scenes from the ground level (showing the impact on population centers) and infographics (providing the necessary data to understand what happened).

Examples scenes that I would envision flashing in and out in the background: Drone footage of enemy troops advancing, the aftermath on civilian centers, "hand-held" footage of fleeing civilians, guerrilla style warfare with civilians fighting back, planetary maps showing troop movements

The disadvantage here, is that it would require a tonne of work and could easily look stock/repetitive after a while. The advantage being that it really focuses in on the impact to populations of ground battle, making it more personal while still appearing representative and maintaining the distance that an emperor of vast galactic civilization would have.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. I'd love to hear further ideas, or whether or not anyone else had similiar reactions to seeing the ground battles.

Yours truly,

The Endless Critic

Updated 8 years ago.

VIPlo_fabre

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This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGLYu94U3IU remembers us that "impossible" is only a word.

VIPlo_fabre

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50 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 19, 2016, 1:24:13 PM

Agree wit most said in this thread.

A ground battle with infantry lines in an empty meadow, and then not only all this planet, but a hole system is conquered? A no sense to me.

I think they should look for another representation before game release (it's good as placeholder in EA). I understand that representing this is difficult, as no one has seen a battles in solar system scale. What you're saying has more sense: generals with holograms and a score bar for each faction, or something like this, mixed with space-battle like scenes. Not sure how much work is ti, but if thre's no change, I'll simply skip ground battle fights and go for the result screen, ES was good enough without this.

MezzoMax

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MezzoMax

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8 years ago

Sep 19, 2016, 7:08:07 PM

Well my suspension of disbelief goes so far that my own explanation is this: In every system there is one hub, like a megapole administrative city. Then the ground battle is fought around this hub area. Whoever controls this controls the system. Something to strengthen this explanation is the fact that you build structures one time for all planets, even if you colonize a new planet in the system. You suddenly don't have to build these buildings for the newly colonized planet, it just gets the benefits. So perhaps this hub area is on your first colonzied planet.

In an interstellar conflict if you control the solar sytem with your ships you pretty much control the system. You just can rain death from orbit and obliterate every resistance cell. David Weber illustrated this in his novel Out of the Dark where an alien invasion force obliterated earth defense in mere minutes after dropping rocks from orbit. (The ending of the book....urrgs.)

VIPlo_fabre

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This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGLYu94U3IU remembers us that "impossible" is only a word.

VIPlo_fabre

Cosmonaut

50 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 21, 2016, 9:48:07 AM

MezzoMax wrote:
Well my suspension of disbelief goes so far that my own explanation is this: In every system there is one hub, like a megapole administrative city. Then the ground battle is fought around this hub area. Whoever controls this controls the system. Something to strengthen this explanation is the fact that you build structures one time for all planets, even if you colonize a new planet in the system. You suddenly don't have to build these buildings for the newly colonized planet, it just gets the benefits. So perhaps this hub area is on your first colonzied planet.
In an interstellar conflict if you control the solar sytem with your ships you pretty much control the system. You just can rain death from orbit and obliterate every resistance cell. David Weber illustrated this in his novel Out of the Dark where an alien invasion force obliterated earth defense in mere minutes after dropping rocks from orbit. (The ending of the book....urrgs.)

this hub idea will explain this. Still I feel you can't put all improvements on a singles planet, and distance between them will make hard to control. This battle animations, is far from what they did with space batlles, and it looks more like phalanx with guns or a 19th century/WWI line of soldiers in front of another.

Mokinokaro

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"The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long."

Mokinokaro

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39 500g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 22, 2016, 5:08:24 PM

I think part of the issue is that ground battles can take several game turns to resolve (by design) while space battles are resolved in one game turn.

The main purpose of ground battles is to stall an invasion, not stop it. It's to hold out until the fleet arrives.

Ashbery76

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Ashbery76

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36 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 22, 2016, 5:25:05 PM

Mokinokaro wrote:
I think part of the issue is that ground battles can take several game turns to resolve (by design) while space battles are resolved in one game turn.

The main purpose of ground battles is to stall an invasion, not stop it. It's to hold out until the fleet arrives.

Well that does not make sense.It's like comparing Trafalgar to the whole Napoelonic war.The battle for planets should take a fair while for realism and to stop quick blitz of empires.In the EndlessSpace expansion I could take a whole empire in one turn which is not good with dropping troops.It made the game easy because the A.I rarely used the system.

Updated 8 years ago.

Ashbery76

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Ashbery76

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36 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 22, 2016, 5:28:15 PM

lo_fabre wrote:

this hub idea will explain this. Still I feel you can't put all improvements on a singles planet, and distance between them will make hard to control. This battle animations, is far from what they did with space batlles, and it looks more like phalanx with guns or a 19th century/WWI line of soldiers in front of another.

Oh come on.It looks like that because people have bitched about having Moo2 planet battles visuals for ages.I would prefer it like Moo3 tried with battles over planet regions that lasted many turns.

endlessEpp

Newcomer

endlessEpp

Newcomer

8 years ago

Sep 22, 2016, 6:52:51 PM

Mokinokaro wrote:
I think part of the issue is that ground battles can take several game turns to resolve (by design) while space battles are resolved in one game turn.

The main purpose of ground battles is to stall an invasion, not stop it. It's to hold out until the fleet arrives.

Yeah, I didn't initially consider multiple turns because the demo footage resolved in one turn. Now that I've though about it some more, I think multiple turn battles will make the current visual representation even more disjointed from what it's attempting to represent (with the obvious caveat that I've yet to see how it is implemented over multiple turns).

In the spirit of trying to be constructive, rather than just criticizing.

From a UI perspective I think it could work like this:

Turn 1 - Notification pops up indicating a planetary system is being engaged in a ground battle.

If ignored, the local population will try to fight back, but army will not engage.

If notification clicked, the user will be presented with the following UI:

Note: The comment editor wasn't playing nice with my custom HTML, so I threw together this crude representation.

The top area will show made-up tactical plans/holo-units and be surrounded by statistics that are actually useful.

Underneath, the three tactical options will be represented by a generals/senate-members each advocating for their view.

Once an option is clicked, the UI disappears.

<Note: The user's choice is not resolved (visually) at this point, emphasizing the idea of battle duration>

Turn 1+n - Notification pops up showing the result of the battle

If the battle is won or lost (and notification clicked), brief animation plays showing either holographic simulations, or a montage of "actual" footage (see parent idea).

If the battle continues, AND the notification is ignored, the previous tactical decision will be repeated.

If the battle continues, AND the notification is clicked, a brief animation will play (same style as for win/loss) showing the previous turns choice be resolved in the "Statistics!" area above the three tactical options and then be replace with the current statistics (as before).

Benefits: If users get tired of the animations, they can either ignore them, or bypass them by selecting their strategy immediately. On subsequent turns they can either manage to the fine level of detail, or let things be and just be notified as the battle resolves over time.

Updated 8 years ago.

Mokinokaro

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"The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long."

Mokinokaro

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39 500g2g pts

8 years ago

Sep 22, 2016, 6:58:49 PM

Ashbery76 wrote:
Mokinokaro wrote:
I think part of the issue is that ground battles can take several game turns to resolve (by design) while space battles are resolved in one game turn.

The main purpose of ground battles is to stall an invasion, not stop it. It's to hold out until the fleet arrives.

Well that does not make sense.It's like comparing Trafalgar to the whole Napoelonic war.The battle for planets should take a fair while for realism and to stop quick blitz of empires.In the EndlessSpace expansion I could take a whole empire in one turn which is not good with dropping troops.It made the game easy because the A.I rarely used the system.

Your reply isn't making much sense? Ground battles DO take multiple turns. They're supposed to.

Fleet engagements however are one turn. You take out the invading fleet and the ground invasion is over.

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