Monthly Archives: May 2012

3D ship designer and ship customisation

Posted by Brendan Drain on

One of the things I’m particularly fond of in 4X games is custom ship design, both for cosmetic and gameplay reasons. There’s something special about designing your own ship setup and then testing it out in battle, and I really want to capture that magic in Predestination.

To achieve that, I’m developing a 3D lego style ship designer in which you slot together pre-made blocks to create your own ship designs. Most of the blocks will be purely cosmetic, but some will affect gameplay. You’ll add modules like shield generators, thrusters, weapons, armour plates etc to design your own custom loadout. You’ll also be able to research special mount blocks that give certain module types bonuses or modify their operation in some way, like long range or point defense mounts for weapons. A mock-up of the system is below:

The current design is kind of like lego, with each block having exposed faces that other things can be connected to. For example, you would get corner pieces that connect on three sides, straight pylons that connect on either end, and finishing pieces like spikes that only connect on one side. There will be a number of different hull sizes, with larger ships starting with a larger number of base hull blocks and a larger area in which to design the ship.

Each size of hull will have a fixed power output in MW and each module (weapons, shields etc) you can add to the ship will have a maximum power rating. When you add a module, you’ll set how much power it will draw from the hull, up to the module’s maximum power rating. The more power you draw, the more effective the module is. For example, a Class I shield generator may provide 10 HP per MW and 1 regen/turn per MW, or a laser cannon could provide 1 damage per MW.

Example:

Research:

In 4X games, war is a technological arms race to develop better weapons, defences, sensors and speed than the enemy. Your enemy develops ion cannons, so you need class 3 shields. Your enemy builds ships with neutronium armour and you design a counter-fleet with armour-piercing projectile cannons. You’ll be able to research bigger ships and better weapons, shields and other modules as the game progresses. Bigger hulls will have higher power outputs, and better modules will will have higher maximum power ratings and be more efficient.

For example, laser cannons may have a maximum output of 50MW and an efficiency of 1 damage per MW. You might later research ion cannons with a maximum output of 100MW and efficiency rating of 1.2 damage per MW. In the frigate example above, you could replace the two laser cannons with one 100MW ion cannon, or with two ion cannons downgraded to 50MW. Shield modules will similarly have a maximum hitpoint and recharge rate per MW, thrusters will have speed per MW etc. Other special modules like tractor beams and troop pods will have a fixed energy usage.

Tactical combat:

This ship design process opens up some interesting new gameplay possibilities for tactical combat. You could design a fast ship with no defences to hit the enemy first, or build an artillery ship with no thrusters but a huge tank and long-range weapons. As better weapons have higher maximum power ratings, you’ll eventually need to use larger ships to get the most out of them. This should encourage players to build smaller fleets of larger ships.

Module mounts will add tactical tradeoffs to the modules attached to them and let you mould ships to fit certain roles. Long range heavy weapon mounts would increase the range of the attached weapon but also increase its drain on the ship’s power core, so a 100MW ion cannon would take 150MW to power. Capacitor weapon mounts would half the power drain on the ship’s core but the weapon would only be able to fire every other turn. There are plenty of other possible types of mounts, you could even have them for shields or thrusters.

Next week I’ll have a post up on designs for the tactical space combat that these ships are used in. I’ve been prototyping the tactical combat mechanics using a chess board, and it feels pretty solid. I’m going to start prototyping these systems now in-game.

Energy as a tactical resource

Posted by Brendan Drain on

I haven’t really talked about energy generation, energy storage, and what you’ll be able to do with energy yet, so in this post I’ll throw my current plans out there. Every building requires energy to operate, and if there isn’t enough energy some buildings will switch off until power is restored. There are several types of power plant available:

  • Solar: Basic renewable power source. Twice as effective on Desert and Barren planets. Doesn’t work on Toxic planets.
  • Geothermal: Basic renewable power source. Twice as effective on Molten planets. Doesn’t work on Tundra or Ocean planets.
  • Fossil fuel: Consumes fossil fuels, but outputs more energy than solar or geothermal plants.
  • Nuclear: Consumes uranium, and outputs more energy than a fossil fuel plant.

There’s limited space for buildings in a colony, so you’ll want to waste as few as possible on energy generation. Fossil fuel and nuclear plants will save you a lot of space, but will consume resources. You’ll be able to research technologies to improve power plants, and because we’re using a tree system for research, many of them will be mutually exclusive. You might have to choose between improving solar or geothermal power plants, or choose between renewable sources and fossil fuels.

Stored energy as a resource:

Any energy above the building requirements of the colony will be stored in any energy storage buildings you have. Stored energy will be a currency that is spent to perform tactically important tasks and take gameplay shortcuts. While resources like uranium, ore, and fossil fuels can be transferred between planets, energy can’t. If you need to use a lot of energy on a planet, you have to generate it there. Below are a few ideas for things you can spend energy on once you have researched the appropriate technologies:

  • Spying on enemy planets
  • Firing long-range missiles at enemy planets
  • Scanning planets
  • Firing ground batteries during a battle
  • Absorbing damage to the planetary shield
  • Creating wormholes
  • Destroying planets
  • Cloaking planets
  • Transporting material to other planets
  • Replicating material

Energy as an offensive/defensive tool:

Energy will be used to power offensive and defensive structures like ground batteries and planetary shields. During a battle in orbit of a planet, you will be able to spend stored energy to fire ground batteries at enemy ships, but if you lose the battle that will leave you with less energy for the planetary shield. If your ships are destroyed but you have a planetary shield, every turn the enemy can bomb the shield until it’s down. Once it’s down, they can either continue bombardment or send troops to capture the planet. When the shield absorbs damage, it draws an equal amount of energy from the planet’s reserves.

This siege mechanic will let players hold out for a few turns before their planets are taken over or destroyed, giving them time to mount a defense fleet or perform a counter-attack. It would be theoretically possible to make a planet with ridiculous energy generation capabilities and massive energy stores that could withstand a huge siege for a long time, but such a colony wouldn’t be very effective at anything else as all its building space would be used with energy storage and power plants.

 

Those are my current plans for energy, but as always they are subject to change as I start implementing the system and see how well it works. If you have any ideas for things you would want to be able to do with stored energy, please leave a comment with your suggestions. Nothing is off-limits right now as I’m still throwing ideas around.

Dev update: New planet exploration features

Posted by Brendan Drain on

I got to work on the planet exploration a bit more this week, and added in a lot of the planet exploration features I described last week. You can now queue up as many scout missions as you want and they will be executed in sequence. When a mission starts, it takes an energy cost from the planet’s reserves, and if that energy isn’t available the mission will wait until you have enough energy before starting. You can now delete scout missions, and they are now sent from the nearest settlement you own for reduced travel time. Below is a video showing some of the new mechanics:

 

Resource Distribution:

I want players to be able to figure out the most likely places for resources to be before they start scanning, so there needs to be some kind of visual clue in the terrain. In the final game each planet will be randomly generated and put together from a large set of continents and islands, so whatever visual clues I use have to be obvious to players looking at unfamiliar terrain too. My solution was to pull in data about the height, slope, and environment type of points on the map and assess them for suitability. The new system works like this:

  • Ore deposits: Found in elevated areas with a high slope (mountains, crater rims etc). Each planet has a certain number of ore sites based on its size and mineral richness. So a small mineral poor planet may only have two or three of them but a large rich one could have 20 or more. You’ll build mines on these to extract them, which produces one ore per turn. Certain buildings (factories, shipyards etc) will require ore each turn to function.
  • Fossil fuel deposits: Found on land in terran, swamp and gaia worlds, sparse and randomly distributed on ocean and tundra worlds, and not available on any other planet types. You’ll extract these with a mine/drilling station, providing 1 fossil fuel per turn to the colony. You can use this to run fossil fuel power plants, and certain types of factory will require both fossil fuel and ore to work. Fossil fuel power plants will output more energy per unit of space than renewable resources, so they’re more efficient but at a cost. These deposits might have a finite number of units in them.
  • Uranium deposits: Very rare, and found on land. You’ll extract this with a uranium mine, and will need a special storage facility to keep it in. You can use it to fuel nuclear power plants, which output more energy per unit of space than fossil fuel plants. It’ll also be required as a resource to build certain things, like long-range nuclear missiles that you can launch at an enemy planet.
  • Food sources: Found around the coastlines. The number of these has a random factor but is based on the planet’s climate, so terran planets will have more than ocean or swamp. There are none on desert, barren, molten, toxic, or tundra worlds. You’ll build farms on these, each one increasing the food output of your farmers by a certain percentage.
  • Research materials: On terran, swamp and gaia worlds, these are found just off the coast and in icy regions. You’ll build a research station on these, increasing the research generated by your scientists by a percentage.

Ore, fossil fuels and uranium will all have intermediary storage buildings that you can use as a material buffer to store production up when you aren’t building anything. If you have 10 ore per turn coming in but your shipyards can use 20 per turn, you might want to store up materials for a while and then quickly burn it all on ships. The ability to store materials also opens up some interesting diplomatic options, like trading resources with other races. You could stockpile uranium and ship it to another planet to build weapons, or set up a trade deal to supply a neighbouring star with fossil fuels, or even just offer a trade of ore for technology.