SuperNova II: Space War Discussion

A space strategy macromanagement game with turnbased battles.
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jack1974
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Post by jack1974 »

I plan to put the "mothership" present in Supernova 1 in the game, so it has double face: if you choose to deploy it on the battlefield, you have extra power during the battle, but if you enable the win by "killing leader", if you lose the ship you also lose the game.

The technological superiority would be determined by how fast your discover all "global" technologies present in the game, but to do that you should always allocate lot of resources on tech research, weakening your other areas (military in particular), so you could be more vulnerable to enemy attacks.

I'm still thinking about that option, since indeed if I make the game very wargame oriented (and that would be my idea to be able to release the game before christmas) I could change that winning option into something else... must think about it, the idea you suggested to capture research point is good, must think how to implement it into the wargame part, but has potential indeed 8)
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Post by KnockOut »

Just saw the latest blog about the tech tree.

Sees weapons will vary based on damage, accuracy, range, energy required, and recharge rate. And it seems like the Rock, Paper, Scissors will be Torpedoes, Lasers, and Missiles. And it seems like the energy required is basically the size of the equipment based on earlier blog entries.

User Interface looks phenomenal but perhaps too many techs that can be overwhelming. It's usually a lot easier to decipher non-military techs than military ones.

In purely statistical terms damage * accuracy = average damage. So there's really no need to have variance of damage versus accuracy. Unless there are powerups that boost damage(in which case you'd want a weapon with accuracy) or boots accuracy(then you'd want a weapon with high damage).

Also, in statistical terms there's no need to make the tradeoff between lower stable damage versus higher damage but with greater variance. The only time it matters when you need an exact amount of damage when you kill an enemy but you won't know that before you go into battle.

I'm a bit conused on what you need medium range for. The Short Range is for Meat Shields. Long Range is for glass cannons. Medium range would only matter if there are area effect weapons like say a bomb that affects the first two rows. In that case Medium range ships would need Medium HP :)

Another reason medium range weapons would matter is if they have a unique path that no other weapon has, a movement akin to say the horse in chess.
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Post by jack1974 »

About your suggestions:

The tech definitely won't be overwhelming, there won't be many techs to discover even if will take lot of time. I have counted about 95 techs so far in total, including neutral/red/blue, so it isn't really a lot :)

I don't understand exactly what you mean for the damage. There will be uber powerful weapon that do 25 dmg, but maybe have 50% accuracy so will miss 1 out of 2 shots, while other that do 5 dmg but have 90%, so will miss 1 out of 10 shots.
But maybe I understood, if I explain you how will be the battle will be easier: you have the map and the grid with distances, each cell is 1 distance. You can move the ships and shoot with weapons that have different ranges. So isn't just "attack here" and stop. You can choose what weapons to fire, based on the range or on other factor.
There will also be another aspect that is the angle of fire. If you hit another ship from the side or even better from behind you'll get a damage multiplier. That way a group of smaller ship can get behind a big one and destroy it. This because there will be also the rotation speed: some ships can have high cruise speed but be extremely slow (since are big) to rotate/change direction (exposing them to enemy fire).
As you see there are lot of variables - I decided to move away from the Advace Wars system to embrace a more "complex" one, even if I'm sure that is easier to understand it playing just a few turn than trying to explain it by words :lol:
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Post by kaiser »

I'm a bit confused too honestly.
If I understood correctly: there is a map, say like "Fantasy General". But the various ships will be able to attack at variable ranges, like 1 cell but also 10 cells?
I think what Knockout means is that instead of accuracy you could put min-max damage. Like laser beam that does 2-5 damage. Maybe is a better idea, I don't know.
You say also that you can fire the weapons singularly. It means like Master of Orion 2 ? for example if I have only 1 long range weapon is obvious that I can fire at a distant ship only with it. But what if the ship is very close and I have 3 different weapons, but all 3 can hit it? I can choose not to fire all of them? why I should choose to do that?
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Post by jack1974 »

Ok I'll try to explain better, even if I think that once I have the system working will be enough 2-3 screenshots to make you understand instantly 8)
Yes there's a map with cells, and the fire distances can be very far, like even 10 cells (of course depends on the weapon). So you can have "long range" ships firing before other, but maybe doing less damage (a sort of artillery).
Then you can have fast small ships that can move and outflank bigger ones to fire at close range and destroy them (this will be a common tactic).
It will be like Master of Orion 2 except that the weapons get fired instantly (in that game you see each single missile fired traveling to the target!).
Why I wouldn't want to use all my weapon at once? quite simple: let's say your battleship has 2 scouts in front of him. With one of his superweapon he can try to destroy a scout, then with the other 2 he can fire at the other. That's it, multiple targeting :)
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Post by jack1974 »

Hello,
I have currently no plans for multiplayer on supernova 2 sorry. I don't think I have the technical knowledge and the means to make a good one, so rather than have a crap multiplayer mode I prefer not having one at all :) so unless I can hire someone to do that part, I don't think it will be present in the final release.

About the beta trial of course, I released all my games in beta before putting them "officially out". I'll announce here once there's a beta version available.

What you say, artillery barrage, will be possible in the strategic map indeed. The strategic map is the wargame part, to be clear, not the galaxy map one. In that one you only see which planets you own and you can plan your next attacks.

Yes, even if I didn't wrote it in the blog, actually right now there are some weapons that can fire independently on the direction the ship is facing, like the missiles and beam weapons. Instead the biggest one like torpedoes and bolts have much narrow fire angle :)
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Post by kaiser »

Been following your development diary blog. Very cool stuff :)
About the 360° degree weapons hope you won't put too many though. It would almost eliminate the strategic aspect of facing different angles of fire. So if you do, please put it only in the big ship (I think you call them Mothership in Supernova 1).
But not in common ships, otherwise I think would do more bad than good to the game 8)

Can't wait to play a beta version BTW!
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Post by jack1974 »

I'm not sure yet how common and how wider will be the angles of most weapons: however as always I'll try to balance them, so maybe a weapon will be able to hit 360° but do little damage, etc :)
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Post by KnockOut »

I can't wait for the game. All your journal entries have been a bit vague. "I had problems with this but I came up with a solution!"

I have no idea what the game's going to be like. I can't wait. :)
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Post by jack1974 »

Hah well, I like how is turning out. I don't think will be a "hardcore" game though. Too hard to make a good AI. Still I think I made a decent job, considering the challenge.
Beside that the macromanagement part should add lot of variation to the battles. Probably is the biggest game I ever made, Magic Stones has more content, but in term of lines of code this one is insane :lol:

Right now I hope to make the v1.0 release at end of April...anyway as always, will make several updates after the first release, there's so much that can be added in such a game...!
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