[Idea] Marine Boarding Mini-game *Project Dropped*

[s9ilent]

*Edited on 06/08/2009 to the survey post*



What should I try to make this script/mod like?
i.e. What features should I include, or not include
Remember, that each feature that makes the game More complex, Will require additional coding, computing power, and most importantly, will mean it will require more preparation on your part to "setup" your marine squads, and will require more multi-tasking skills to "board" an enemy ship


Survey:

Number of Weapons
-Units Have Only 1 weapon
-Units have up to 2 weapons
-Units can have up to N weapons. And the only limit to N is the: .... (suggestions? e.g. 1 primary weapon, 1 secondary)

How do you outfit marines with different weapons
-You have to produce the weapon, load it to the marines ship, then tell them to choose this weapon. Each weapon most be individually made.
-You just order them to use said weapon, and they consume XXX amount of "weapons" (and return YYY from what ever their current weapon uses)

Ammo
-Units do not consume ammo, ever. Special abilities run on a cool down timer
-Units only consume ammo for specials (e.g. grenades)
-Units only consume ammo for specials, AND there is a cool down timer
-Units consume ammo for specials and shooting.
-Units consume ammo for specials and shooting, AND there is a cool down timer.

-Ammo is "consumed" from the attacking ship. (What happens when the attacking ship is dead?) Presumably the ammo is instantly transported aboard?
-Ammo is sent with each boarding party and held on "locally" on the victim's ship. Additional ammo can be sent over via more boarding, or transport device
-Ammo is localized to squads. Squads can get more by picking it up from dead marines, raided cargo rooms, or ammo teleport/drop zones, friendly squads
-Ammo is held by EACH marine. As mentioned above, more can be acquired from the dead, raided cargo rooms, teleport/drone zones, friendly squads etc.
-Do secondary weapons (i.e Pistols) use ammo, or are they just unlimited but weak weapons.

-Ammo should be a (as in just one) unique ware
-Ammo should just be energy cells
-There should be unique types of ammo for each type of weapon

When ammo or guns are upgraded
-Affects are instantaneously applied, free of charge.
-New equipment must be issued to all troops to receive the benefit.
-Credits have to be paid to upgrade all existing equipment (And over what time frame do the upgrades get applied)

What guns should be included?
-SDM Rifles (Auto Snipers)
-Sniper Rifles (I dont like sniper rifles, as most of the combat is close quaters, so the sniper won't get used much, but a SDM rifle could still be useful)
-LMG's
-SMG's
-Assault Rifles
-Shotguns
-Grenade Launchers (Do they need secondary weapons?)
-Pistol(s) (As secondary weapons? Or primaries? or either)

Cover System
-Should I implement a Cover System?

Morale
-Should I implement a Morale System?

How should a ships auto defenses be managed?
-Just some sort of auto turret grid?
-Fighter drones patrol the hall ways?
-Some kind of ship crew system (Where the crew are armed with just "basic" weapons, and do not match marines prowess 1-1, but greatly out number them) where the essentially provide some kind of "meat" wall.
-Robots? (Remember that in X3, we don't like Xenon, so I don't like the idea of killer robots very much)

[s9ilent]

(To Answer my own survey Above)

Weapons: I'm undecided (hence the survey). But I'm thinking either, only 1 weapon per troop OR, upto N weapons per troop. (Torn between Company of Heroes and X-Com/UFO AI)


Outfitting: I'm thinking just 1 "generic" weapons ware. Each weapon consumes different amounts of this generic "weapons" ware. So you can either equip your marines first, and send them to their ships, or have weapons on the ships (or both)

As to how you actually equip squads, I'm thinking about just using a "template" system. This way you can have like an "assault" squad, and you know it might cost something like XXX weapons, and YYY ammo, and ZZZ marines.
This would also allow for marines to be recruited in entire squads (so there is less mucking about with the individual marine)



Ammo: Once again, I'm torn between the two ideas. A super complex system where each marine carries its own ammo and weapon(s). And a simple system. (i.e. The no ammo + timer idea, and the each marine carries ammo idea)

Ammo ware: I was thinking of either, a) a new "generic" ammo ware b) using energy cells as ammo (as they are common), or c) using the "generic" weapons, as both ammo AND weapons.

Upgrading: If I'm using the simple system, upgrades will just be universal and instantaneous. Actually... yeh probably always instantaneous and free (not including "research" costs)

Cover: Yes

Morale: Yes

Auto Defenses: I like a crew system, although I suspect that a crew system will take too long to make and set back this project. Also a crew system is complicated. I like the idea of auto-defences, but not all NPC ships carry fighter drones, also a ship could easily carry *hundreds* of fighter drones, making it very difficult to take down. A final idea is that ships have no-auto defences, and just doors force fields etc. Such that sufficiently many skilled units enter the ship to bring them down and ultimately capture the ship.

[aka1nas]

Can you hijack whatever method ego uses to load custom maps in the Reunion single player plot? I.E. like the spy drone mission or that yaki base. I did notice that there was some new load_map MD function coming in 2.5, not sure if it's relevant though.

You could make modified versions of the spacesuit ships for the marines, and give them stronger shields and maybe an IRE. It would still be a little hokey as a fps, but might still be a blast.

[spur390]

What is wrong with the current boarding system?

[chrisrico]

[Killjaeden]

You can make dynamical sektorcenes with cut-files (remember the city-flight in X3R) however i doubt that you can make destroyable objects that will create cover/craters and that stuff. You can do alot with the game but some things might not work.

Should this hole thing be roundbased or realtime? because realtime movement via scripts is propably messy and you don't have animations like walking, taking cover and that stuff. If you want to have different static models you have to change the model regulary wich can lead to some problems.

spacesuits floating&fighting in space would be a possible way but i don't think AI can handle narrow tunnels... and it would look just stupid if the spacesuits engages, flies in circles and then attacks again...
However i never saw a spacesuit fighting, when they are slow they turn around more often and have more time to destroy each other. So this could work with some thoughts about collision.

If you want to keep it 2D (in terms of movement) you can't use the AI for the fightthingy. You would have tp move the spacesuitships by script, and the firing could be done by turrets on the spacesuitship. the spacesuit-base will only be the legs, the turret-body (z-rotation) is the upper body+head and the arms+laser will be the actuall turret-weapon (z+y-rotation).

You can influence when they can shoot - by giving the spacesuits 0 laser regeneration and adding laserenergy whenever they shall fire.

€ I would set the who-can-fire-on-who by distance... i would give them new lasers with a range below 100m.

[s9ilent]

@aka1nas
Can I hijack the current system? No. You can do virtually nothing with the current system. (You can set marine levels, and say you go attack that, and that is about it).
One of my main motivations for making this system is to create a more transparent, modifiable system.

@spur390/chrisrico
. I don't like the current system. (For many different reasons, e.g. Micromanagement, the difficulty in obtaining marines, the necessity in using boarding pods/marines + collision avoidance, the above mentioned non-transparent non-modifiable attributes, lack of complexity (although this could be viewed as a positive note)
But they have nice mp3 files


@ Killjaeden
hhm... I didn't know about the sector scene files, I'll look into that. I was planning on just creating square wall tiles, and have multiple tiles to form "walls" and the ground. But that would mean I would need hundreds to create a room/ship. I'll look into it.

I'm making the system realtime, simply because it will be easier to code, as the stock script commands are already designed for that kind of thing. w.r.t animations, I don't think I'll ever be able to put in walking animations (unless someone knows how to do something tricky with the engine trails or something... but I doubt it would work). I was planning on just having a whole bunch of spacesuits floating around shooting each other. (Although they will probably be modified some what)

w.r.t Collission avoidance. I'm with you on this one, the AI most definably won't be able to handle movement, so I'm going to be doing it via scripts. (set pos, dx dy dz, sort of thing). Which is why I'm at a loss as to how I'm going to integrate "cover" into it... I could easily do an adhoc shield bubble of sorts, but not conventional cover.

w.r.t 2d-3d -and turrets
Hrmm.. interesting idea, I had never considered a "turreted" weapon.

w.r.t Who can fire on who
For computation simplicity, I'm making it such that everyone in a room can fire on everyone in a room, and in adjacent rooms. This is because typically I'd expect a room to be < 100m, and I don't want to write something to detect for "walls" in between here and there (e.g. You can't shoot through a wall round the corner)

so in the case of an L shaped room, with a person on each L

Person X
||
||
||
||
\\=============Person Y (<100 m away)

I simply make the || corridor one room, the == corridors another room, and make the \\ a third room.


I'm trying to cut down on the distance calculations, as they involve square roots, which take up a bit more CPU, then check object against array (at least I think it does...)

[Treelor]

If you make it realtime, I want to know how you propose to do the command system. The current ES commands are not nearly efficient enough to control troops in something as fast-paced as marine combat.

[s9ilent]

I'm going to make the commands objective orientated.

i.e.
You set the strategic objects, if none is set, it defaults to take the enemy bridge.
And you can also set individual squad (tactical) objectives, go here, go there, do this/that.
(There will be no controls for commanding single marines, unless a squad has only 1 unit, but I will allow for retreat commands for single units within a squad. e.g. to recall your wounded units for evac)


So for example, you might have sent 4 squads of 5 marines to the enemy ship
The strategic objects could be something like, take the engine room, take the bridge.
But then half way through the battle you may have decided to re-order several squads to clear out several of the turret controls, they do the turret mission, then return to the strategic objective.


The commands I plan on implementing are (Available at both the strategic and tactical level):
-take (room) objective
-force move and take objective (don't stop to engage unless room blocked/at final objective)
-hold (room) objective
-hold room entrance/exit
-retreat/retreat to room

And then at the tactical level (i.e. squad level) you can bring up a menu to order individual marines to retreat.


Any "special" abilities that I later implement will be done at the squad command interface, but can be tied to a individual unit, or the squad. (e.g. a squad leader might have a boost morale ability, which is run from the squad command menu, but if the physical squad commander dies, then obvious the squad can't use that ability any more)



As for how I will do the actual interface I'll either
a) Use wings (although, binding the command menu for such a wing could be tricky... I'll have to be create with the command check scripts)
b) Have a dummy place holder unit to represent a squad (similar to how a wing works I guess)
c) Just have marines as individual units, and do something trick with the name/ID to make them list correctly.

Then by using a command menu-custom menu, you can issue the orders.










-updated post below-
Ok, a refinement on my previous stuff
Marine health will be fixed (e.g. at 100/1 000 or some relatively simple number).
Shields, will be used as "morale", which will be a system similar to company of heroes.
The name of the Marine, will contain the Name, and weapon held by the unit. E.g. "Julian Brennan Laser Rifle", the unit ID will contain any specials that are affecting the unit (or possibly armour, I'm uncertain at this stage whether or not I want specific "heavy" armoured units
I've decided to make physical damage ENTIRE handled by the script editor, with only shield (morale) damage being handled by the game's engine (with area of affect morale damage being handled with the script editor again).
Movement will be handled with the stock move commands, but I will lock the roll axis to keep things 2d/linear

[s9ilent]

Here are my proposed weapons specs
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=thD5snRbzfkT4tVylTwKCEA&output=html

All things held constant, a Marine has 100 hp, 100 Morale

if sqdist <= sqrange, accuracy = accuracy
else accuracy = accuracy * sqrange / sq distance
(sqdist, is the square distance from us to the target, sqrange is the square of the range on the table)
Range values have yet to be normalized (i.e. it will probably be 100* its current value)

Armour will probably float around 1-3 for standard armour, 5-7 for med's and 10+ for heavies.

Grenade damage also decreases with range. (dam = basedam / sqdist from blast). It will have bonus damage vs units in cover when struck from the side/back

Skill will be factored in like this: Factor = 100 + skill / 200. So at 0 everything is at half, and at 100, everything is at full. (e.g. Waiting times are *1 - * 1.5, Acc = base_acc *0.5-*1 etc.)

Units that have low morale become suppressed and they face another factor, morale%. When morale drops below a certain value, they are classified as pinned and they will not shoot. Marines are capable of capturing pinned marines.


And I hope on implementing other specials later (e.g. hand grenades, smoke/gas/poison etc.)

The Assault damage type will be like war hammer. They can shoot when moving, at half the fire rate and half the range. The other types don't mean anything atm.

A -1 deploy time means the weapon can be fired on the move (with no penalty)

[s9ilent]

To all who are interested in the project Idea: I've come across a "conceptual" roadblock, so if possible, could I get you guys to answer my survey? (its on the first post)




I'm sort of turn between a super complex game and a simple game. (Also I'm not to sure if I want this to be like a wide scale battle sort of game, or a small unit tactics sort of game. I.e. do I focus on individual skills, building a complex AI for complex things like room entry techniques, or just a general strategy game, DPS, HP etc.)

[Snowship]

Survey Answers:

Number of Weapons
-Units Have Only 1 weapon

How do you outfit marines with different weapons
-You just order them to use said weapon, and they consume XXX amount of "weapons" (and return YYY from what ever their current weapon uses)

Ammo
-Units only consume ammo for specials (e.g. grenades)

-Ammo is localized to squads. Squads can get more by picking it up from dead marines, raided cargo rooms, or ammo teleport/drop zones, friendly squads

-Do secondary weapons (i.e Pistols) use ammo, or are they just unlimited but weak weapons.

-Ammo should be a (as in just one) unique ware


When ammo or guns are upgraded
-Affects are instantaneously applied, free of charge.
-New equipment must be issued to all troops to receive the benefit.
-Credits have to be paid to upgrade all existing equipment (And over what time frame do the upgrades get applied)

What guns should be included?
-SMG's +1
-Assault Rifles +1
-Shotguns +1
-Pistol(s) (As secondary weapons? Or primaries? or either) +1

Cover System
-Should I implement a Cover System?
Yes

Morale
-Should I implement a Morale System?
Yes

How should a ships auto defenses be managed?
-Just some sort of auto turret grid? +1

-Some kind of ship crew system (Where the crew are armed with just "basic" weapons, and do not match marines prowess 1-1, but greatly out number them) where the essentially provide some kind of "meat" wall. +1

[s9ilent]

Ok after some thinking, I'm going to do something like this:
(This one is Ghost Recon/Battlefield inspired)

You first have to create a marine "Unit Type"
-You give your units primary weapons (exactly 1, no more, no less, so at a minimum, a unit should have a pistol).
-Next you can have one "secondary" weapon. (Not a pistol) The secondary weapon is a rocket launcher, medical supplies or.... grenade pouch?
-Then you give them however many "specials" you want to. There will be a "weight" max, in which point you can't load up any more equipment. Also, the more weight a marine has, the greater their "aim" time is (slower reflexes) and the slower they move.
-Some specials, are single use (e.g. A grenade can only be used once, but you can hold multiple grenades) Medkits are single use
-Some specials are multi use but need ammo. e.g. A rocket launcher, uses rockets. A grenade launcher, uses grenade launcher grenades. Medical equipment (i.e. The Magic Defibrillator like on Battlefield) can "restore" downed marines.

Weapons will include
-Light Machine Guns
-Assault Rifles
-Sub Machine Guns
-Shotguns
-Turreted Heavy Machine Gun (Used by auto defences)

Specials include:
Smoke Grenades- Used to temporarily obscure the vision of units, reducing their accuracy. Automatically used versus turrets.
Flash Grenades- Used when entering rooms with hostile marines. Temporarily disables nearby units.
Grenade (Explosive/frag)- Does damage to stuff. When thrown at non-supressed/non-pinned units. They will dive away from the grenade (thus leaving their cover making them easy targets for friendlies) as well as causing damage. (I'm not particularly interested in making a HE and Frag. grenade.. too much effort... I may consider it later if armour becomes more prominent however)

Grenade Launcher- Allows grenades to be fired further. Can only use grenade launcher grenades (also available in the same 3 varieties)

??EMP/Ion Grenade??? - Disables auto-turrets
??Incendiary?? - Useful for marines in cover, forces them to relocate. If no other cove is available, they will have to fight in the open.

Demolitions Charge- Used for breaching doors, and destroying ship systems.

Rocket Launcher- Fire rockets. Can be used for taking down turrets. Can also be used for breaching doors and destroying systems, but demo charges are better and cheaper.

Armour- Available at various protection levels, ranging from your basic vest, vest and helmet, vest helmet neck guard + extremities guards, heavy armour (fully enclosed suit)

Medkits- Heals a unit up to some maximum percentage.

Medical Equipment- Allows incapacitated Marines to be revived. Possibly increases the effectiveness of medkits. Is reusable



There will be one "Military Supplies" ware that is used to arm ALL of your marines. Each piece of equipment will take up some units of supplies. In battle, units can use this generic ware, BUT!!! they can ONLY scavenge more (e.g. grenades) ammo off other units who also have the same ammo. e.g. If you pick up a medkit (worth 4) supply units, you can not use it as a grenade (worth 3 supply units). But if you find a supply cache you could get medkits OR grenades from it.



e.g. You might make an "Medic" unit. So you naturally give it medical supplies and some medkits. Because its a front line unit, you give it armour and because it has little weight left, you might give it an SMG instead of a rifle.
Then you might make a few more units, like an "Heavy Assault" unit with Rockets, an LMG, heavy armour.
Then you might want to make a forward assault unit, with an SMG for close range combat, light armour (as heavy armour also has negative reaction time affects), and many flash bangs and grenades.

After you've made a few unit types, you will then organise a squad to use xxx of each unit type and viola, they'll arm them selves accordingly.






As for how they will tie in with the 3 main skills. Fight will help with shooting and accuracy (of specials e.g. rockets/grenades). Mechanical will make your explosives do more damage (which helps with breaching doors more successfully with less ammo). And engineering will control medical (as marines are in space suits, there is a degree of engineering, + the medical bits should be automated), slicing open doors, slicing ship systems, and ultimately slicing the ship it self.

[s9ilent]

Just another quick survey question:

What is it that you think the 4 skills should do? (Fighting, Engineering, Mechanical, Hacking)

Fighting will generally affect firing accuracy.

Obviously Hacking will be used for finally taking over the ship, and "hacking" ship systems along the way but which systems? (e.g. Over ride a turret station).


But what about mechanical and engineering. I'm much of a fan of the "cutting" in to the ship idea, as if you've cut one whole, why don't all the marines enter through it. I don't see why all marines have to cut their own entrances.

I was thinking that "skilled" tasks could include: Medkits/Suit Repairs, welding open doors, blowing open doors, destroying systems, the afore mentioned hacking turrets; with possible ideas into disabling "life support", power (lighting), gravity or other battlefield affecting variables.

But then what skills should these use, and under what conditions (e.g hacking is done at a computer terminal)

[s9ilent]

After weighing up the conceptual pro's and cons of this script project, I've decided to drop it:


Pro's:

• Transparent System - People would know exactly what does what, instead of the current black box system
  
• Customisable - As it would be run by the S.E, everything can be moded.
  
• Mid Combat effects - E.g. You can raid an enemy ship and steal/disable/destroy things, with out actually taking over the ship.

Con's

• Limited UI - Mouse interface is limited, there is to command bar, many hotkeys are already in use
  
• Automation vs Player Interaction. For it to be "fun", I think it should be interactive. E.g. You don't just move and attack, but you use "specials" or something (*anything). But then the AI should not be stationary targets, and should do things to. But then given the limited UI, what exactly is it that the player does, to given them an edge over the AI??? <--- this is the real killer, because if you don't "do" anything, your not really playing -so why have the system at all
  
• Ammo ware consumption vs Volume. e.g. A marine might carry 4 grenades, but how much volume in a cargo bay should that take up? IMHO, less then 1; But even if you had 1 volume per grenade, you can easily stack 100's of volume in a ship, making marines into nade spamming monsters. (Which is undesirable)
  
• Initial invasion of enemy ships is the most risky phase of boarding. But because of AI anti collision, co-coordinating such a feat between multiple boarding craft can be near impossible.
  
• A healing/shield regenerating/revival of incapacitated marines is essential for game play reasons. But given these affects, the only risk you face is complete encirclement (which is a risk that should only be encountered by the defending team -or a really poor attacking force.. but that's your fault...). This essentially reduces the risk of the attacker to just the initial boarding phase
  
• Mid combat effects really would benefit from a subsystem scheme. I haven't finished making this yet
  
• Actual combat could be improved if there was a defending crew (not marines, but less combat able units that physically run the ship), but I also have not started making this yet.

And for completeness, I'll put up a bit of info of what I had devised so far (in case anyone picks this up later, or is just curious)

Units have some fixed HP, and shields. Shields are the main defence. When their HP drops below a certain level, they don't die, they become incapacitated. They must then be revived (or carried/teleporting away then revived). When incap'ed, they can be captured or outright killed.

The 4 weapons I decided upon was, the SMG, Carbine, AR, LMG. When stationary weakest to strongest goes SMG<Car<AR<LMG. When moving, it is reversed LMG<AR<Car<SMG.

After much consideration, explosive grenades are not to be used inside ships, only EMP grenades. And the main "hit points" indicator is shields.

There 4 modes of "cover", Normal (standing in open), prone (pinned in open), In cover (shooting from behind cover), ducked (ducked behind cover). Further more, the affects of a smoke grenade (or similar) would provide further cover to those behind/in it. Cover is directional, meaning flanking units is a viable tactic. I had also considered an "EMP Gas" grenade (or just some lasting area of affect grenade) designed to discourage camping.

Boarding pods would work normally, moving up to 5 marines at a time. They would also have a temporary stun affect to the room the marines invade.

Transport devices can move 1 unit in or out every 30 seconds. So either 1 marine, or a crate of ammo. If you take an enemy transport pad, you can have unlimited transport capabilities to that room. (i.e. you can bring in or out as many as you want in that room, but are still limited 1 transporting in/out 1 person/30s in other rooms)

When a defending unit is incaped, they will be transported back to their transport pad (if any) where they will be revived by a medic (if any), thus giving the defending team an advantage. It takes a few seconds to be transported back, so if an enemy closes in quick enough they can either kill them, or disable their transport (if researched). To negate this you must either capture the enemy transport pads, or take out their medics. (There are multiple transport pads through out larger ships, giving the defending team multiple staging areas, thus making completely encirclement difficult). The defending team can transport to any friendly controlled transport pads.

The defending team has turrets everywhere, they are designed to slow the attacking team. They also provide "some" incentive for forward attacks with out tacking out secondary pads/objectives (so they run into less turrets). There where various forms of turrets, from simple hallway guns, to larger ones at strategic positions.

I had considered the idea of "deployable auto-turrets" available to either team, but given the ammo volume problem, a ship could easily have 100's of them which is undesirable.


-And a bit on script design

I made a complex accuracy equation. A=wpn accuracy, R=range to target . Final accuracy = Skill/100 * A^2 / (A^2 + R ^2)
Which has nice properties like bound between 0 and 100, decreasing for increasing R, and increases for increasing A. However, at the ranges that will most likely be taking place (20-50m) the difference between the different guns accuracy (150, 300, 550, 600) was negligible.

Smoke used a simple rotation of the smoke grenade, then compared whether 0<x<target x, and |y| < smoke radius

Cover also used a simple rotation then just did cover * (cos theta) ^2
(But I didn't actually use cos theta, I did 1 - opp/hyp ^2, which is equivalent) i.e. If you square on, cover = 100%, if your completely sideways, its 0.