Supernova 2: ships design

I’m currently doing probably the most complex and difficult part of the game, that is balancing the two armies units types. Usually we have in normal games the also known “rock-paper-scissors” theme.

For those that don’t know what it means, read this quote directly from Wikipedia related entry:

“Combat or strategy-based video games often feature RPS-like cycles in their characters’ or units’ effectiveness against others. These often attempt to emulate cycles in real-world combat (such as where cavalry are effective against archers, archers have an edge over spearmen, and spearmen are strongest against cavalry), or simple elemental trinities such as fire, water and air. Such game mechanics can make a game somewhat self-balancing, by preventing any one simple strategy from dominating gameplay.”

In my game, I have this scheme so far:

Scout: strong against Battleship, weak against Interceptors
Transport Troops: strong against Cruisers
Cruiser: strong against Interceptors, weak against Transport
Interceptor: strong against Scouts, weak against Cruisers
Battleship: weak against Scout

the transport are strong only against Cruisers because they can board the ship and kill all the crew. This operation is not possible vs other ship classes because they have much more crew onboard and the assault would be ineffective. They have no weaknes vs a specific opponent because they are actually vulnerable vs anyone’s attack 🙂 they get dangerous only if they can go nearby a Cruiser or a Planet to conquer.

The Battleship on the other hand is strong vs anyone, since they have both long and short range weapons, but are weak against Scouts because they are hard to target in short range. Of course a single Scout can’t destroy a Battleship in few turns, but without any help from support units like Interceptors or Cruisers, they can have hard time killing the Scout while it keeps shooting on its tail, doing slow but constant damage…

Then of course there is the Mothership. It is by nature is the most powerful ship of each army, so doesn’t have any particular weak point, but is strong against anybody. Indeed will be quite hard to destroy it during a tactical combat 🙂

Supernova 2: unit balacing

Ok now that the battle is working completely, I have to start doing a simple process, but long: assigning all the units statistics, weapons, armor, devices and so on. Simple because I’m only editing a spreadsheet, not writing complex C/C++ code (I’ll then import the values inside the game at runtime). Long, because even if I plan everything “on paper”, of course when I test the data inside the game itself I always find that one side is more powerful than the other 🙂

I’m going to put emphasys on the fact that the Red Legion is more aggressive, has more damaging weapon and stronger armor, while on the other side, the Blue Army has more range of view / fire, faster and maneuvrable ships.

Some games solve the problem by having almost identical units from each side, but I think that while this ensure balancing, since in my game there isn’t going to be multiplayer, is better to have 2 very different playing styles based on which faction you choose 😉

Here I go, more time on my game spreadsheet…

Supernova 2: computer AI

Ok just finished to program a big milestone in Supernova 2 development… computer AI during the battles ! 🙂

While not perfect, it offers a good challenge from what I could try on the game. In the last few days I was about to cancel this project or switch to a different battle mode (maybe similar to magic stones, with cards instead of real ships in a battlefield) but in the end I kept trying and I found a decent solution.

Now is all about balancing the game, finishing several custom ships for each faction, and testing everything. I thought I would have been able to finish it by end of february but of course I was wrong 😀 so this time won’t make any statement but I really think that, if I can work as the last week, I’d be able to release it in mid-April, just in time for my birthday… 🙂

Supernova 2: firing arc

firing arc

What you can see in the image above is the firing arc in action 🙂 I’m very proud of this last addiction I’ve done in the Supernova 2 battle, because really opens lot of new strategic possibilities for the aspiring star-generals. What is firing arc? each weapon has several statistics, and beside the usual damage, range, etc, there’s also firing arc: in practice determines if the weapon can hit an enemy, using his angle value. In the example above, we’re shooting from the green ship on the left, aiming at the other ship below (the one with the cross-air over it). In the panel on the top-right you can see a list of the weapons installed on our ship, followed by a number and a color: green means the target is in range and weapon can fire, orange means the target is in range, but the weapon firing range is too narrow to hit it, and finally red means that the target is outside the weapon’s range.

I also changed the way you move the ship: rather than a unique straight movement, you can move as long as you have movement points: this lets you use the most maneuvrable ships like the scout to exploit holes in the enemy fleet, moving them in good positions, to strike them from the side or from behind.

I really think there should be very good variety in battles for Supernova 2. Stay tuned for more news!

Supernova 2: the battlefield

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It’s been a while since I updated my dev diary of Supernova 2: I went through a relocation and a temporary connectivity problem (well, lasted 2 months…). Now I’m back with a stable connection so I thought to give an update.

In last 2 months worked on the battlefield – everything else is basically done. Building the fleet, researching technologies, and so on, works (unless of some very well hidden bug). Now comes the most interesting part, the fight itself 🙂

The ship placement phase is done, now I’m experimenting with the ships movements and actions (attack, conquer a planet, etc). My goal is to have lot of options available, and consequently various methods of winning a game, but of course this will take a lot of time and experiments.

However I’m optimistic enough to say that I could have this game ready before the next 2 months… I’ll see if I can release it before march 🙂 now excuse me, getting back to work!