computer games

Supernova 2: turn around

Today added another feature to the game, which will be an important factor in the wargame part: it is ships’ turn rate.

As I said before, the angle from which you hit the enemy will be important, since hits from the side or the back will do much more damage. So, beside moving your units in good spots, you’ll have also to consider the orientation. Each ship will have a peak speed and a turn rate, independent from each other. Some ships could have a high speed, but be very clumsy when turning around, being very vulnerable expecially in the short range battles.

An user in my forums asked me about rotating turret (expecially in big ships). That makes sense indeed, otherwise would be too easy to destroy a big battleship with a couple of scouts! of course each weapon will have a fire angle. Some will have 360° of fire capability, so in practice doesn’t matter where your target is, they’ll be always able to hit them.

I’m thinking for now to make this division:

1) beam and missile devices, typically short range weapons, will have very wide angle of attack, but usually will do less damage
2) bolt and torpedoes devices, typicall long range weapons, will have narrow angle of attack, but usually will do more damage

of course that’s just a generic rule, there will be exception. Also when you come to short range, will be very hard to avoid being hit, so short range weapon will be always deadly in closer combat, while long range one will do lot of damage from distance (to borrow a term from modern warfare, “artillery barrage”).

I am still fleshing out everything of course, so for now I haven’t yet made an implementation of all those features in the wargame. Won’t be easy but I’m progressing fast recently…