Considering the last thread (
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=35013.msg536231 ) derailed into a debate about whether or not boarding is awesome/feasible/whatthefuckever, and is also ancient, I'm makin' a thread for it.
First:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAdUImprMk8 Old pre-release video (ships no longer flash red when hit)
A more recent video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO1vlP4M9GUGSB is an indie strategy game designed for the PC, that plays like a cross between homeworld and Tower Defence. You design ships, deploy them in a fleet, give them orders and then observe a hands-off battle. You can play against fleets desigend by other players in an online challenge system, or upload your fleet to play against others.
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/Basically, each ship has a model (the ships are beautiful, by the way, and are done by Charles Oines, who did work of an extent I'm not totally sure of on Battlestar Galactica: Razor), upon which are a number of Hardpoint Slots and Standard Module Slots.
Standard Modules are things like engines, shield generators, armor plating, EMP cannons that will disable an enemy ship on impact, EMP shields to reduce the likelihood of an EMP succeeding, specialized targeting computers that increase the accuracy of your weapons, and the power generators and crew quarters you'll need for larger ships to function.
Hardpoints can hold any Standard Module or a weapon, such as a Cruiser Laser (a powerful anti-shield weapon with moderate ability to deal with armor, but relatively poor range), a Beam Laser (Moderately long-range weapon that can tear through almost any armor with high damage but can't penetrate some shield types), or a Missile Launcher (Powerful projectiles with very high range, damage, and ability to penetrate shields and armor, but can be shot down by anti-missile defenses as they fly, which they attempt to counter by deploying decoy warheads when approaching their target).
Shields and weapons have connected stats: If the weapon's Shield Penetration is greater than or equal to the Shield's Resistance, the shield takes damage from its Shield Strength according to the weapon's damage. If it is not, the shot still has a 2% chance of damaging the shield; the other 98% of the time, the shot has no effect. A shield restores its strength at a set rate depending on the type of shield. Once a shield is broken entirely, however, it cannot be brought back online. Armor works similarly, but its resistance is a function of its strength, and it cannot be restored except by repair modules. Once a ship's armor and shields are gone, the HP of the ship (the sum of all the HP values of its modules) takes damage, assigned to the modules (which become less effective as they take damage) at random, until the ship finally explodes, doing armor/hull damage to any nearby frigates or cruisers with its shockwave.
Your fleet has 3 types of ships:
Fighters: one-person ships with relatively weak weapons, deployed in squads of up to 16, who rely on strength in numbers (and, at times, the 2% lucky shots) with speed instead of armor as a defense. Their armor is weak and they don't have shields.
Frigates: relatively fragile ships, easily destroyed by fighters or cruisers, but costing around one half to one third as much as a cruiser and with unparalleled damage output, especially for their cost
Cruisers: large, slow-ish, often with up to 8 hardpoints depending on the design, carrying the strongest weapons and shields/armor at a proportionate cost
You make your fleet, place them without going over the total cost and number-of-ship limits for the scenario, then assign orders to determine how your ships will select targets; you can command them to attack ships that are attacking any of your ships or just the ship you are assigning that order to (good for EMP ships, for instance, who will then disable the attackers and give your shields time to regenerate), attack ships that are already damaged, or attack ships other elements of your fleet are attacking. You can command them to stay in a fixed position relative to another ship as best they're able to with the Formation order, stay within a certain distance of a ship with the Escort order, or to simply stay mobile (it's harder to hit ships that are smaller and/or moving quickly, which is the whole point of fighters).
If it sounds good or you're just curious, I recommend grabbing the demo here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/demo.html
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Topic: More PewPew, Less QQ: Gratuitous Space Battles (Read 11125 times)