Dear VIPs,



Here is the first design document for the expansion pack. Don't hesitate to have a look and give us your comments. For those who weren't here at the beginning of the VIP forums, we always used to share our Game Design Documents (GDD), prior to starting full speed production of massive content.



We'll be sharing a new GDD for the expansion pack every week. Please, note that this is a supah dupah mega confidential discussion until we officially communicate on the expansion content. Thank you! xoxo









Rational



Fighters & Bombers are a new kind of armament which are treated as ships during a manual battle. They bring a new strategic dimension, and can be used to launch an instantaneous invasion on systems.

Bombers are meant to deal heavy damage to the opponent’s fleet, whereas Fighters are both the first defense against Bombers as well as their primary protection. Note: Fighters deal little damage ( Sub-note: Unless they get a direct hit on the exhaust port… ).





Gameplay



Ship design



During the ship design phase, they are both considered to be a stackable module. Each type requires a special slot .

There are different models for Fighters & Bombers. The model affects the following properties:

• Evasion
• Health
• Shots Per Round
• Damage Per Shot
• Accuracy
• State bonus (for each possible state)
• Tonnage required
• Industry cost
  
  

When a ship is destroyed, one module is considered as damaged. Repair options can be used to “repair” all the damaged modules. Moreover, each turn, there is a default quantity of modules which is automatically repaired.





During the battle



Battle Sequences

Fighters and Bombers follow scripted behaviour:



Fighters:

[LIST=1]

They move during 2 rounds towards the enemy fleet (State: Moving).

There is an encounter for 4 rounds if there are Fighters in both fleets (State: Melee).

During the rest of the battle, the surviving Fighters split in two: half of them chase the opponent’s Bombers and the other half goes to support their own Bombers attacking the opponent fleets (State: On Fleet, or Chasing).

[/LIST]



Bombers:

[LIST=1]

They move during 6 rounds towards the enemy fleet. They can be chased by Fighters (State: Moving).

They bombard the fleet for the rest of the battle (State: Chased, or Bombarding).

[/LIST]





Fighters: states and targeting

During a fight they can have different states, which defines their targets and whether they are shooting or not:

[LIST=1]

Moving: In this state, they are moving from the player’s fleet to the opponent’s fleet.

Melee: They are engaged against opposing Fighters. They target them and are targeted by them.

Chasing: They are targeting a Bomber.

On Fleet: They reach the opponent’s fleet and are following the targeting orders affecting “normal ships”

[/LIST]



In order to define the damage that they deal, we first define if they hit based on the following formula for each of their shots:

TouchProbability = Accuracy – Target.Evade * StateCoefficientBonus.



The accuracy is defined by the model and, depending on the state, a bonus can be applied. When the Fighters are in “Moving” state, they do not shoot.

Then, if they hit, the damage is directly applied to the target, ignoring any defenses.





Bombers: states and targeting

During a fight they can have two states:

[LIST=1]

Moving: In this state, they move toward the enemy’s fleet.

Bombarding: They have reached the opponent’s fleet and are attacking.

[/LIST]



In order to define the damage they deal we first define if they hit based on the following formula for each of their shots:

TouchProbability = Accuracy – Target.Evade * StateCoefficientBonus.



The accuracy is defined by the model, and depending on the state, a bonus can be applied. When the Bombers are in “Moving” state, they do not bombard.

Then, if they hit, the damage is directly applied to the target, ignoring any defenses.





Turrets

There is a new module type allowing the player to defend its fleets against Bombers and Fighters. Each turret can only have one target per round. The turret automatically targets Bombers and Fighters in the following order:

[LIST=1]

Fighters

Bombers

[/LIST]



A turret has the following property:

• Accuracy
• Shots per round
• Damage per shot
  
  

Battle Realization



Fighters & Bombers follow a predefine routine depending on the following scenario. Those scenarios can be refined by considering the Fighters to Bombers ratio of each player. By using a pattern system, we can ignore the absolute quantity and create a scenario which works from 1 to 100 Fighters.



Fighters



[LIST=1]

They take off from their fleet and move towards the enemy’s fleets.

Different potential cases:

• There are no Fighters / Bombers in front of them: They continue directly to the opponent’s fleets and start firing at them
• There are only Fighters: They engage a fight until one of the sides is completely destroyed. The winners then go to the opponent’s fleet.
• There are only Bombers: They engage them and chase them until they are destroyed. Once they are destroyed, they go to attack their opponent’s fleet.
• There are both Fighters & Bombers: They first target the opponent’s Fighters. Once they are destroyed, they go to chase the Bombers. Once they are destroyed too, they go to attack the opponent’s fleet.
  
  

[/LIST]





Bombers

[LIST=1]

They take off from their fleet and move towards the enemy’s fleet.

Once they reach the enemy’s fleet, they bombard them until the end of the battle.

[/LIST]





Example

[LIST=1]

Initial situation; Bombers & Fighters are near their fleet

Bombers keep moving towards their target while Fighters kill each other.

The green squadron reaches the opponents fleet: the Bombers start attacking while the Fighters distract the turrets. On the red side, the Bomber is currently chased by Fighters and is going to try to reach the opponent’s fleet.

[/LIST]





Important Scenes

[LIST=1]

Fight between Fighters.

Nosedive on a battleship.

Fighters chasing each other, as well as Bombers.

[/LIST]





Content



Common Fighters[/SIZE]



There are 3 archetypes of Fighters for each race:

[LIST=1]

Anti-Bombers: They are specialized in chasing Bombers.

Melee Fighters: They are more efficient when in Melee state.

Invasion Fighters: Less efficient in battle, they do a great job when used to invade a system.

[/LIST]





Race Specific Fighters[/SIZE]



Hissho

There is an additional Fighter which is well balanced and efficient in every area: chasing Bombers, melee and invasion.



Amoeba

Peaceful as they are, they have an additional Fighter which is a decoy, dealing no damage, just used to distract enemies’ Fighters.





Common Bombers[/SIZE]

There are two archetypes:

[LIST=1]

Anti-ship: It is specialized in bombarding the opponent’s fleets, dealing heavy damage.

Evader: Dealing less damage, it focuses on evasion, making it hard to for enemies to destroy it.

[/LIST]





Race Specific Bombers[/SIZE]



Pilgrim

Using their Resistance tactics, they developed a Bomber able to avoid the Melee phase, thus avoiding the enemy’s Fighters and capable of reaching the opponent’s fleet directly.



United Empire

They developed a Bomber which is dedicated to invasion, increasing the probability of destroying Improvements.





Faction Traits

Some new traits need to be created, related to Fighters / Bombers.

This sounds great. I am confused about "bombers" and "invasion". To me, a "bomber" would attack planets and perform invasion. The type of small craft which attacks capital ships would not normally be called a "bomber". I guess those are usually armed with "torpedoes". I am not sure if the terminology should be changed.



How does this system interact with invasion? I was not able to find that.



I would really expect Hissho fighters to dominate. Perhaps their ships should be weakened once fighters are available? In my hissho mod I had increased the CP cost of each ship: cruiser, battleship to 3 CP, dreadnought to 6 CP.



Will the tactical "movie" show all these fighter and bomber interactions? That is, will a person watching the movie understand these different phases and interactions? That will be really cool! If you show a youtube trailer of this, you will really build excitement for the release.

I'll still have to digest this, but thanks for sharing, first!



Now a few things that came to my mind, when reading through this:



[LIST=1]

You stated the same behaviour for bombers and fighters for all three range-turns in a combat situation



While I see the sense in the fighters going first, being caught somewhere in the middle and going on after the fight is won, you also stated, that a downed fighter means that a module on the carrier is damaged and that that module can be repaired during combat, e.g. by the allpowerful engineering card.

Keeping that in mind, won't fighters and bombers reinitiate to fight e.g. in phase 2 or even during any phase? This might mean that an engineering card spamming opponent could block fighters with his restarted fleet, every new phase, right?

But during this time, the two fleets are closing in on each other. The distance between the fleets would therefore grow smaller. If now you'd keep a fixed turn-scheme for, let's say, fighters restarted in mid range phase, they'd still take as long to reach the enemy fleet as in the long range phase?

This would effectively mean they'd grow slower, each phase, which is confusing me a bit. Wouldn't it make more sense to make the velocity constant and therefore shorten the time the bombers or fighters need to reach the other fleet, depending on the range phase?

It might be especially interesting, if the flak in the melee face of each fleet could shoot down fighters that are trying to shoot down their own bombers.

Are you planning to combine new combat cards with the fighters/bombers-system?



Okay, there are several things I've got in mind for that. Firstly, if you are planning to make new combat cards, there are two natural possibilities, that could alter the whole battle:

a) Afterburner - Fighters and Bombers speed is increased by 50% for the whole phase

b) Let 'em come - Fighters and Bombers are withheld from launch for 2 rounds

If the enemy had no fighters, card a) would give a huge strategic value, but could of course be countered by another card (or even a formation, but let's not jump to other topics, here ).

On the other hand, if your fleet has a few ships bursting with flak/flarak, you could opt to let the enemy ships close in, into the range of your own flak capital ships, to quickly decimate the enemy fighters, on the cost of your own fighters being hit now and then, of course.

Especially powerful a tactic with high evasion fighters, perhaps, since the probability of friendly fire might be heavily outweighed by using this increase in firepower, where it hurts most.

Secondly, you could use all kinds of cards or formations on the ships themselves, to better ward them against fighters and bombers. I'm thinking of "high voltage field"-style, like in Moo2, for example.

Waves of "repaired" fighters and bombers vs recharging/-fueling fighters and bombers



So summa summarum, your fighters and bombers have infinite energy and ammunition, but not HP, of course.

I had expected them to be sent out and recalled, each range phase, but this system has also advantages and bombers are definitely something else, than reusable rockets, now. ^^

Retreat is the death of us all!



What happens, if a fleet retreats? The fighters and bombers are sent out in the first phase, the fleet jumps away. No jump engines on the little ships, right? So this would effectively mean, they'd be lost and ALL carrier modules on the fleet would be damaged.

Maybe a researchable card for keeping the fighters in, when you're going to retreat, doing it by default or even going as far as to have a "recall" card, which costs a whole phase, might be options.

[/LIST]

Okay, that's my input, for now. As I said, I'll still have to digest this.

There are different models for Fighters & Bombers. The model affects the following properties:

Evasion

Health

Shots Per Round

Damage Per Shot

Accuracy

State bonus (for each possible state)

Tonnage required

Industry cost

So based on reading this there will be 9-10 different models for fighters and bombers (3 for phases + 1 racial). Does this mean 9-10 different modules - total of 19 snub-fighter modules for the player to choose from (this is also assuming there isn't multiple levels of each module with different stats)? That seems excessive... I'd encourage consideration of a module designer for these (and weapons) - remove the excessive bulk by the listing of all available combinations and let the player design their own. Besides it's 'funner' than simply picking module XIII from the ship module list.



Invasion



I'd argue that bombers should have specialized mode for invasion instead of fighters. Bombers logically should be able to do massive infrastructure damage to a planet far over and above fighters.



Now this brings up an interesting point, should planets have their fighters/bomber structures that only function in a defensive role protecting the planet from fleets?



Repair



Regarding repair of the snub-fighters during combat, how will you address this? Honestly, I think the best decision would be simply that fighter modules don't repair during combat. Again how will you address if the carrier is destroyed? Will those fighters/bombers be instantly destoried or last to the end of combat?



The point above regarding repair and travel time for the new snub-fighters, will they travel from their ships with the long range time or will it adjust based on phase? 6 -> 4 -> 1?



Travel Time



Based on what you described fight travel for two turns, fight enemy fighters for four and I'm assuming travel two more turns to enemy capital ships. That would put them at the start of the short range phase? Similiarly the bombers should arrive medium range (phase 2) half way through since the travel is 6 turns. Is this correct?



Oh and I definitely agree if the snub fighters are launched they should be considered destroyed on retreat. Maybe - if you retreat during long range phase, then the. Snub-fighters would have time to return. Hmm retreat cards give x turns of unblockable dmg before retreat occurs, if the snub-fighters can return during that number of turns then they're save otherwise thy are left behind.



Battle Cards



These could be lots of fun, could suggest tons of different ideas. Definitely prefer tactical style cards where they gain/loose a function rather than just a straight up damage card or repair card. The flat dmg increased/decreased or repair cards always seemed to be boarding on cheating/boredom for me. Cards such as protect friendly bombers at all costs, or snub fighters move 50% faster, or fighters harass enemy capital ships preventing retreat are well... Better.

OK before I start giving my input I need to understand something. You start off by saying that fighters and bombers can be used for invasion but then don't talk about how that is going to work. What classes as an instantaneous invasion? I'm rather confused here.



I know there are different modules for invasion and battle but I'd like to say that personally I think it would make more sense if bombers and fighters could have invasion capabilities and when this is active they can only invade. Completely specialise.

Sounds very complicated and from the description pretty hard to imagine how it actually works.

Also it doesn't sound very viable if nothing else drastically changes.

6 turns to reach the targets means that half of the combat is already over. So there's not a whole lot of time they will do something. So they pretty much suffer the same fate as Kinetics.

Interesting, I really like this concept. As to the actual combat and its effects, I will have to reserve comments until I have tried this out or learn more, because I am not sure I fully understand the impact this will have. That being said, I am optimistic this will make combat much more interesting and diverse, and new weapons can almost always be balanced and rebalanced once added to combat. Plus, I always thought it would be fun to have Battlestar Galactica style battleships. :P



On the other hand, I am quite concerned by the concept of instant invasions:

Meedoc wrote:


Fighters & Bombers are a new kind of armament which are treated as ships during a manual battle. They bring a new strategic dimension, and can be used to launch an instantaneous invasion on systems.

Are we now going to have situations where entire systems can be taken by a sneak attack? If so, are there going to be some sort of defensive structures or defensive soldiers we can build to stop this?



I am concerned because it sounds as though there will now be no time to defend against an enemy invasion at all, and this will change the focus of the game substantially, from one where there needs to be a critical balance between economic and military considerations, to one where the equilibrium strategy is an all out invasion rush. While I am all for making invasion viable, there is a big difference between viability and making it the only reasonable strategy.



Right now, I can already overrun enemies very quickly using the current invasion system (just ask DMT); I really don't want to see this made even more instant without any way to prevent it.



That being said, if we are able to build and transport ground troops (or something equivalent) to prevent these invasions, then perhaps this will just add a new dimension to the game. Oh and by instant, are we talking 1 turn, or 0 turns? Because if it is truly instant, I can see the faster clicker winning a lot of games due to the simultaneous nature of the play, even when someone has a fleet standing by.

Something else that came to my mind:

Where is the "real" difference between flak and turrets, flavour-technically? It makes no sense, that something that shoots at rockets cannot shoot at fighters and vice versa.



I'd advise to instead rename the flak to decoys/mines, that let the dumb missiles explode early, but that won't affect piloted machinery, of course.

You wouldn't even need to change any of the graphics for the combat (even if the techs needed new ones for the decoys instead of new graphics for the turrets... ).

@All

First of all, keep in mind that a document related to the invasion will come soon and will detail how fighters, bombers and new element will enhanced the current invasion system.



@Davea

Yes the idea is to have the best Fighters in the Hissho's hand.

We really want to have a battle with epic interactions between fighters, bombers and even bombarding the other fleets. We plan to do a huge focus on that and we hope it will be exciting for the players!



@Nosferatiel

1)

No, the healing card will not repair those modules, and for the expansion we will certainly rework the battle card and add new ones. So do not worry about the current overpowered card, because it will change.

To make it easier to realize, we think that fighters & bombers are going to take off at the beginning of the fight (1st round of the Long Range) and they won't go back to their hangar before the end of the fight.

In order to destroy fighters & bombers attacking a fleet, there will be turret modules, but using flak may be interesting indeed.



2)

Yes, new cards are going to affect these new mechanisms!



3)

We thought about it too, but it may be too much confusing, less fun to watch and harder to plan.



4)

If a retreat is planned for the first phase, we can simply cancel the launch of fighters & bombers. But, if you use an offensive retreat which is countered, you may spend the rest of the fight without using them. we might think about a defensive deployment for the end of the battle though.

In the case of a retreat during the 2nd or 3rd phase, the fighters & bombers will be automatically destroyed.

@Iblise

We wanted to avoid micro management by doing fighters & bombers design but we will reconsider the question. However, I totally agree that designing its own fighters & bombers is funnier and more rewarding. We may have a compromise by suggesting preset of fighters & bombers and adding a possibility to customize them.



Invasion

Like I said, there is more to come on the invasion (probably next week).



Repair

Sure they won't repair during a fight; they will only repair between turns.



Travel Time

Both Fighters & Bombers should reach the opponent's fleet after 6 rounds: the middle of the Medium Range (each phase lasts for 4 rounds)



@Ail

There is going to have a revamp of the battle system, and using fighters and bombers may be a new strategy, combined with high defensive ships. More information will come in the upcoming weeks. =)



@KingJohnVI

Next week you'll tell me if the proposal on the new invasion system seems fun or not. The instant invasion will not be that easy, and will have consequences. But that’s enough teasing for today.



Thanks for your first feedback

Thanks Meedoc, good to hear. I'm certainly looking forward to testing this out.

Meedoc wrote:


We wanted to avoid micro management by doing fighters & bombers design but we will reconsider the question. However, I totally agree that designing its own fighters & bombers is funnier and more rewarding. We may have a compromise by suggesting preset of fighters & bombers and adding a possibility to customize them.

One thing that Space Empires V did was have the fighters and bombers component options very limited by their tonnage, so you could really only put in a handful of components, in this way designing the fighters and bombers was a matter of selecting the 3 or 4 parts you really wanted, and ignoring the remainder. For example, a fighter might require a small engine component for 20 tonnage and a cockpit for another 10, and the remaining 20 tonnage was filled with your choice of missile, beam, invasion module, or kinetic style weapon. Since the engine and cockpit were always required anyway, it would have made sense to just let the player pick their weapon modules to make it simpler, but space empires V was never known for its simplicity in anything. The total of 50 ton fighter could then be added to your cruiser at a cost of those 50 tons (and the materials/production cost of course). Alternatively, you could design a cheaper 40 ton fighter/bomber as well, and place that on your ship.



In any event, I'm not sure if this is something worth implementing or not, but I thought I'd throw it in as a possible design concept IF fighter/bomber design is something that is eventually implemented.

Meedoc wrote:


@Nosferatiel

1)

No, the healing card will not repair those modules, and for the expansion we will certainly rework the battle card and add new ones. So do not worry about the current overpowered card, because it will change.

To make it easier to realize, we think that fighters & bombers are going to take off at the beginning of the fight (1st round of the Long Range) and they won't go back to their hangar before the end of the fight.



4)

If a retreat is planned for the first phase, we can simply cancel the launch of fighters & bombers. But, if you use an offensive retreat which is countered, you may spend the rest of the fight without using them. we might think about a defensive deployment for the end of the battle though.

In the case of a retreat during the 2nd or 3rd phase, the fighters & bombers will be automatically destroyed.

Okay, one matter on top of that.

Why don't you start the fighters during turn -1, in the preparation phase, so fighters and bombers will alway be automatically destroyed, if you retreat. This would severely affect gameplay, if bombers/fighters would explicitly not fully regenerate or not regenerate at all on lanes, but only when the fleet is in orbit, unless you got, let's say, a hero with "spare parts hoarder" or anything alike, to allow that very repair on the fly.

Also this would alleviate concerns that the new weapons could be underpowered, as they'd have no influence in phase 1.



On another note, I'm missing the answer, whether fighters survive their capital ships, if those are destroyed during the fight, at least til the end of combat?

Meedoc wrote:
@All

First of all, keep in mind that a document related to the invasion will come soon and will detail how fighters, bombers and new element will enhanced the current invasion system.

Ahh ok that makes more sense. I was wondering why you mentioned it and seemed to forget about it.

Can i just say that coomenting on this until we get more information on the how invation is planed. Fighters should move faster then bombers but it migt not last the whole battel.

Noooo.. don't listen to Nosf >.>. Turrets are WINNING... Flak is so 20th century tech



Truth be told, I'd loved to replace flak with point defence lasers (I tried mod-wise too), surely missiles should be able to differentiate between flak and spaceships. Flak is just metal chunks fired to either fool an/or destroy missiles. Give me counter missiles and point defence laser clusters!



Always wondered why there aren't preset designs as new ship classes are unlocked, or at the ability to store designs from previous games. I imagine that it cannot be too complicated, programming wise, to expand on the ship builder to include new designs. I'm still holding out hope that ill get my weapon module designer

iblise wrote:
Noooo.. don't listen to Nosf >.>. Turrets are WINNING... Flak is so 20th century tech



Truth be told, I'd loved to replace flak with point defence lasers (I tried mod-wise too), surely missiles should be able to differentiate between flak and spaceships. Flak is just metal chunks fired to either fool an/or destroy missiles. Give me counter missiles and point defence laser clusters!

With decoy, I rather thought of something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_%28countermeasure%29 , even if I probably just used the wrong word with "decoy".

Decoy would be the right word. One of my early modding goals was to make a special class of missiles that increase intercept evasion of missiles fired from that ship. In essence a decoy missile and another missile that decreased enemy ship flak interception values, a jammer of sorts. Unfortunate I never really made headway into this project.

Why is it like this :

The turret automatically targets Bombers and Fighters in the following order:

[LIST=1]

Fighters

Bombers

[/LIST]

Shouldn't it be the other way around ? Bombers are lethal for ships, they should target them first, no ?



About flak/turrets : maybe each different kind of defense could help prevent fighters/bombers : shields would reduce fighters/bombers speed (or reducing the evade stats by the power of the shield), flak would have a chance to kill bomber's torpedos before the hit but the explosion would still do some damage (so it would mitigate damage), deflectors would have a chance to deflect bomber's torpedoes (thus canceling damage from them. Maybe even redirecting it to the enemy)



The idea is that an all around defense would be the most efficient against fighters/bombers.



Did you plan new heroes abilities tied to those fighters ?

Another question from me:

Normally, all weapons are fired by one ship at another. Fighters seem to have one intermediate zone, where everything fights everything and bombers are also followed by the remaining fighters, everywhere, right?

Does this also mean, that after the target ship of a bomber squad is downed, this squad will immediately start to bomb the very next ship in line?



I'm just imagining the following scenario: I build a onehit-fleet without any defense, but half of the fleet only with fighter slots and half of the fleet full of bombers.

My ships are destroyed in the first round. Now, if (as is still unanswered), the strike craft survive til the end of combat, this would mean, that they'd be capable of killing the whole enemy fleet, if the firepower is sufficient and the hostile defense is deficient? o_O



Any fleet without fighter/turret protection is then easily counterable by one or two monobomber-destroyers, maybe killing off the enemy fleet til the end of the third phase. This could, in this combination, end up totally overpowered. XD

I guess you'd have to build fighter/bomber defenses on your ships then.



In any event, this is why they need us; to test it and let them know.

KingJohnVI wrote:
I guess you'd have to build fighter/bomber defenses on your ships then.



In any event, this is why they need us; to test it and let them know.

And in honesty we will need to test it before we know for sure how this is going to play out. I for one can't quite picture how this is all going to come together under current knowledge. Looking forward to it though, sounds like this will be a great addition to battles.