Starship Foundry/Battles Game Idea

[Hotfoot]

Okay, here's the idea: You know those games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius? Build a base and let it get invaded? Well, instead of that, how about build a starship and go on adventures with it?

The basic concept is simple. You need the following things to make a starship: Bridge, Power, Engines, Armor, and Weapons if you plan on getting in a fight. Taking a page from GalCiv2 and Evil Genius, why not let the players create the layout of their ships from the word go? Lay down the bridge, crew quarters, power planets, weapons systems, sensors, armor plating, cargo areas, etc. Each system not only determines how the ship behaves, but how tough the ship is. When the ship takes damage, it takes damage to specific subsections based on where it was actually hit. Armor will ablate, bulkheads will seal to prevent further damage, etc. Things like putting your bridge on the outside of the ship could result in bad things as a result, ships could be bisected by beam weapons, etc.

This is inspired, in part, by the way, by this game, and a few ideas I've had brewing for a while now.

Anyone else interested in this sort of thing?

[frigidmagi]

*raises hand*

I would be.

[Faqa]

Didn't the original Master Of Orion do this way back when? I'm pretty sure it did....

I approve of this idea. Although frankly, it would need a good combat system as well, not just a tacked-on one. Probably a bear of a project.

[Hotfoot]

Wouldn't be hard to do a decent combat system with it, you could do real time or turn-based. Turn-based would be easier, most likely, but still.

I'm not looking at something super fancy at the moment. Sure, it'd be great to have totally deformable structures, but in reality, having things get "hulked" and vaporized at appropriate levels of damage would be easy enough to do and have the same affect.

[Hotfoot]

Okay, I've been thinking about the damage system, and here's what I've got so far.

Protection is a hitpoint system, but with two additional value thrown in, damage resistance and penetration.

Damage resistance will be a flat number most of the time to represent the minimum amount of force/energy/what have you to do damage to a specific section. So if a slab of armor has DR 10 and a damage 50 attack comes in, 40 damage will get through to the rest of this calculation.

Penetration, however, will be a percentage of the total hitpoints an object has. It will also be modified by the weapon attacking (if there will be just one value attached to the weapon or if it will be modifier and modifier is unknown, but I'm partial to modifier and modifier as it will allow weapons to damage components differently). Different weapons will behave differently, for example, missiles will be doing damage spread out over a wider area, and so have a less chance of penetrating than a highly focused laser or a DU AP round from a railgun.

For example: A 120 damage missile explodes on the hull of the starship. DR is 20, so we're down to 100 damage. The armor has 400 hitpoints, and the final penetration value with the missile is 50%, meaning it needs 200+ to do damage to the internals. The missile still does the damage, but fails to penetrate. A few more hits, however, and we're going to start seeing bleedthrough.

Meanwhile, a 80 (60 after DR) damage AP railgun round hits the same armor, but this time the penetration value is 10%. Now 40 points is the threshold, which it defeats. 20 damage will now be done to the internals, which are usually going to be much easier targets to damage.

This itself can lead to several tactics, like relying on penetrators to do damage early on, or using missiles to soften up an opponent so other weapons can more easily destroy internals.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Okay, here's the idea: You know those games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius? Build a base and let it get invaded? Well, instead of that, how about build a starship and go on adventures with it?

The basic concept is simple. You need the following things to make a starship: Bridge, Power, Engines, Armor, and Weapons if you plan on getting in a fight.

Didn't the original Master Of Orion do this way back when?

Actually, it was Star Control 2 instead of the original Master of Orion. SC2 ship building is pretty much simplified, though, but it works.

[frigidmagi]

I find this combat system interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.