Squad Editor Finalization

So this is an editor that has not been discussed for some time, but is also one of the things that I think makes the Strategy Mode so unique. Here I will try to give a final draft of the current concept on the Squadron Editor, to provide us an opportunity to revise or improve where necessary, and to wrap up this part of the concept.

Squad Editor

The Squad Editor is an editor accessed from the player's Military panel. (The different panels are Government, Economy, Military, Religion, Society, Technology, and Diplomacy). Just as the Creature Creator in Spore was divided into three sub-editors (the Creator, the Texturing, and the Test Area) the Squad Editor is also divided into three sub-editors.

Units

Weapons

The first sub-editor, or tab, in the Squad Editor, is the Units tab. Here, the player will be able to equip and save his units for use in the game. Upon accessing the Units tab the player will see a mannequin in the shape of his organism on the Test Area. This mannequin is what the player will use to equip weapons and armour on to to create his units. A list of Tech Objects of the player will be available on the side. It will list only Tech Objects with a Handle Function Part in them, i.e. Tech Objects tagged as "Tools". Amongst these the player will be able to find any weapons he wishes to equip his units with. Once a TO is selected, the player can drag it and attach it onto any of the highlighted grasper points on the mannequin.

The TO's in the list will have their important stats listed beside them. These will be Damage Type:
Slash
Pierce
Blunt
Ballistic
Energy
There will also be Damage, Accuracy, Range, and lastly, Weight. The Weight of a TO contributes to how much a unit is carrying. The more weight a unit carries, the slower they move and attack. Each species has a specific Weight Capacity, measured in kilograms. Weight Capacity is something determined off the design of your organism, and represents their overall strength. All units of a species have the same Capacity. The closer you reach the capacity, the more you are slowed down. A unit cannot carry any more weight than their capacity.

TO's that are specifically equipped by units by means of graspers (which are usually the Tools) must be less than or equal to 25% of the unit's Weight Capacity. This means things like spears, swords, and shields. For example, a unit with a Weight Capacity of 25kg can wear a 15kg backpack, provided it does not make the total weight exceed the capacity. However, any Tool it equips can only weight up to 25% of 25kg, so 6.25kg. The weight a unit carries affects their movement and attack speed with the funtion:

1 - (W/C)/2 = m

Where W is weight carried, C is Weight Capacity, and m is the resulting modifier to the move and attack speed.
For example:

1 - (17/25)/2 = m
0.66 = m

In this case, movement and attack speed would only be at 66%.

While equipping the unit with weapons, the player will get a warning if the weight exceeds the capacity, and will also have a visual representation of the total weight compared to the weight capacity of the unit.

Armour

Once all the weapons have been equipped on a unit, the player can proceed to attach armour to the unit. The body of an organism will be identified and categorized into separate parts. Each limb will be one part, the head, if possible, will be identified as a part, and the remainder, aka the body, will be identified as a part. The player will attach armour individually to each body part. They can colour it and alter its shape and appearance, but not change its stats (unless they change the type). The total weight of the armour will be the surface area of the parts covered multiplied by the density of the material used. The tag of the compound used to make the armour determines what protection it gives against the different damage types.

"Polymer" gives added protection against Slash and Ballistic, but less against Blunt, Pierce, and Energy.
"Metal" gives added protection against Blunt, Pierce, and Energy,

(((Here I need some help. We need to come up with equations for how each compound tag group provides their respective armour properties. I also feel like I am short on compound tags for materials usually used for making armour. I just overall need a lot of help on determining how armour will be implemented in game.)))

The player will also be able to add on further FPs and TOs to their units, such as backpacks and explorer gear, which are not strictly combat oriented but can be helpful for units to have.

There will also be a list of organisms domesticated by your species. These can be dragged and attached to your organism, turning him into a mounted unit.

Vehicles

At the bottom of the screen on this tab, the player can also choose to replace the mannequin with a vehicle selected from the TO list. Here the player drags mannequins into the vehicle to fill any crew positions it requires. The player can also drag a domesticated animal onto the testing area and tether it to the vehicle, useful for making units like chariots. Once complete, they save it as a unit with any tags they wish.

In game, vehicle TOs cannot just be built in a building to be available for use in battle, or any other purpose. Vehicles must first be built in a factory or some other building, then shipped over to a barracks, and then recruited as a unit. Only then can they be used as a unit.

When complete, save the name of your unit, and it will be saved into your unit "bank" or "vault". Next time you build a building with the "Barracks" FP in it, you can recruit units you have designed at that building. You also can add any tags you want for the unit. This is for later in the Formation tab.

Formations

In the Formation tab, the player customizes their own formations for their units. The player will have a top-down view of the test area. They will be able to select unit tags, as they created in the previous tab, and then assign them a shape and colour. These coloured shaped will then be organized into a formation and saved by the player. A picture will be taken by the game of the top-down view of the formation, and will be converted into the icon for that formation for the in-game button it has on the GUI. Once in the game, the player can select a group of units and put them in any of the formations that they designed.

For example, say I created a Spearman in the Unit Tab and I tagged him as "Infantry" before saving. I also created some Swordsmen with the same tag, and some Archers with the tag "Skirmishers". Now, in the Formation Tab, I select the tag of "Infantry", and I choose for it a green circle. I place green circles into a square, and I save it as "Square". Now, whenever I am in game and I select some units, I can order them into a "Square" formation. The units will move into a shape as designed in the editor. As they move and attack, they will more or less stay in that shape. However, this would only work for units tagged as "Infantry". Any other units, such as my archers, would just not respond to the order.

Say I later made a formation in the Formation Tab, where I selected the "Unit" tag and gave it an orange square. Now, I have tagged all of my units with "Unit" when I saved them. I use the squares to make a wedge, and I save it as "Wedge". In game, I can select my units and order them into "Wedge" formation, and whatever units I have will respond, because every unit I saved was tagged with "Unit". This way, I can create universal formations that all units can respond to, or specific formations for specialized situations.

The player will start with some default universal formations, such as Box, Loose, Wedge, and Column.

Vehicles saved as units are treated the same as other units, and are dealt with by what tags you gave them. Vehicles that have been saved in the Tech Editor but not registered as a unit cannot be used in the Formation Tab, since they have not been tagged in the Unit Tab.

Squads

The simplest of the three tabs, but also the one the editor is named after, this tab is where the player creates and edits their squads. When reaching the later stages of the game, battles will involve more units, and the player might not want to deal with loads of individual units at a time. Instead, units can be built and commanded in groups when they are saved as squads. A barracks can recruit an individual unit, but it can also recruit a whole squad at once.

The player simply selects the units in the squad, and the number of each unit. Then, the squad is saved and given a name, such as "Infantry Brigade", "Tank Brigade" or whatever name the player wants. Squads can also be assigned tags, and this allows squads to be handled in the formation tab the same as units. A formation can consist of squads shaped into a wedge just as it can consist of individual soldiers. Once recruited, squads can only be selected as a whole.



There you go, the lengthy current concept on squads. If you managed to read through it, please post what you think, and see if you have any ideas for improvement, since I feel there are some areas that are poorly explained or lacking refinement.

I like it. Its simple, player understandable, fun to create and scientificaly accurate.

I might be able to help with the armor equation, but I'll have to play around a bit to find something suitable.

This concept is incredible - I can't decide which aspect of the game I'm most excited about now.

One thing I'm really curious about is the prospect of having domesticated animals as part of a unit. You mentioned that animals would be tethered to a vehicle, but would it be possible to have animals without vehicles as well? This would allow cavalry to be created as well as infantry and artillery.

When you spoke of animals on organism units, you had them mounted. What if they had a domesticated species play the role of hounds or something? Not everything domesticated would be big enough to ride. .3.

The person before me beat me to my first idea, but what about domesticated flying creatures, what use could they have? It is possible for flying creatures to be domesticated, look at hunting falcons today. Of course the question would be finding a use for a unit that would be mounted/using a flying domesticated creature, maybe aerial cavalry if it's big enough, or a recon.

Thoughts?

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

...and scientificaly accurate.

Scientifically accurate?

@Oliveriver:

Yes, part of the above concept mentions attaching units to a mount, thus turning them into a cavalry unit. I will try to make it more noticeable in the layout.

@Doctor:

Animals don't need to be process through the squad editor to do that. All the player has to do is select them give them whatever attack order he desires, provided they are domesticated.

@Immortal Dragon

For the time being, we will ignore domesticated flying creatures, just to see how well this works, but that will definitely be something we come back to because it would make for some really fun gameplay. However, it would be challenging to handle the altitude of the unit, because normally units only move on two-dimensions in RTS games, and even flying units stay at a fixed height.

[quote="NickTheNick"]

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

@Doctor:

Animals don't need to be process through the squad editor to do that. All the player has to do is select them give them whatever attack order he desires, provided they are domesticated.

Yes, that would be true you wouldn't have to put your domesticate species through that, I'm just saying, what if you wanted to attach a small, presumably predatory domesticated organism to your unit like the attack dogs the spanish had in Age of Empires?

Aiosian_Doctor_Xenox wrote:

what if you wanted to attach a small, presumably predatory domesticated organism to your unit like the attack dogs the spanish had in Age of Empires?

Then you would have to simply drag and select units and some dogs, and then tell them to attack a target. Dogs don't have to be "attached" to the unit, unless you wanted your units to ride the dogs into battle.

I was thinking more attaching them by leashes, to make selecting them easier. Like just click one dog, and you have the whole group, and their handler.

In that case, you would have to order the units to leash the animals with rope, and then the animal itself would become no longer selectable until the leash is removed.

Ah, okay. That clears things up.

Though, I am curious about something asked a little bit ago; What if the domesticated animal was a large flying creature, how would that work/be used?

Ah, k. That clears things up.

However, I might be on the verge of a breakthrough with the armor equation. Possibly, but I'll have to test it with a few numbers first. .3.

Well, since we're on a topic such as alternate mounts, what about swimming creatures that could possibly be domesticated by a sapient species? That would no doubt be easier to code in than something flying, as far as my guess goes. Maybe this is too much or on the wrong thread, idk.

Swimming creatures would be fine, so long as they stay at the surface. If they went underwater, it would cause too many complications, such as with the 3D movement, the CPU having to figure out whether the rider can or cannot breathe underwater, the effect of water pressure on the rider, etc.

Again, that is something we would have to come back to once we have the base game, with this stage, available for playing and testing.

When you talked about all of these things, I didn't hear anything about unit moral. As countless wars have shown, the will of troops can decide the fate of a battle. How will moral affect the game and how wiill the player change it? By the way congrats on the promotion.

NickTheNick wrote:

Swimming creatures would be fine, so long as they stay at the surface.

That was my assumption on how it would work, since underwater sapience seems to be a no-go.

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Swimming creatures would be fine, so long as they stay at the surface.

That was my assumption on how it would work, since underwater sapience seems to be a no-go.

Yeah, the gaining sapience fully underwater is, but apparently you can colonize the seafloor, from what I've read.

Edit: The total weight of the armour will be the surface area of the parts covered multiplied by the density of the material used. The tag of the compound used to make the armour determines what protection it gives against the different damage types.

So; these are the formulas I've come up wit for armor.
Total weight of armor: Aw=Sc*Md
Freedom of movement: Fm=Uj+Aw
Total Protection: Ap=Mu*Sc

Ap= Armor protection
Aw= Armor weight
Fm= Free Movement modifier
Md= Material density
Mu= Material used in the armor
Sc= Surface covered
Uj= Uncovered joints

Actually underwater sapience is a go, however you wont be able to advance past stone age. At least thats what I have found out.

untrustedlife wrote:

Actually underwater sapience is a go, however you wont be able to advance past stone age. At least thats what I have found out.

Okay, cool.

untrustedlife wrote:

Actually underwater sapience is a go, however you wont be able to advance past stone age. At least thats what I have found out.

Yeah, that has for the most part always been the consensus. The issue people try to overcome is fire/metallurgy underwater.

Aiosian_Doctor_Xenox wrote:

Edit: The total weight of the armour will be the surface area of the parts covered multiplied by the density of the material used. The tag of the compound used to make the armour determines what protection it gives against the different damage types.

So; these are the formulas I've come up wit for armor.
Total weight of armor: Aw=Sc*Md
Freedom of movement: Fm=Uj+Aw
Total Protection: Ap=Mu*Sc

Ap= Armor protection
Aw= Armor weight
Fm= Free Movement modifier
Md= Material density
Mu= Material used in the armor
Sc= Surface covered
Uj= Uncovered joints

The freedom of movement situation is already covered by weight carried and weight capacity.

The first equation, however, looks quite good and is along the lines of what I was thinking of. However, I think tool effectiveness should tie into that, because some materials, such as gold, can be quite dense, but very bad for using as armour. I think the surface covered by the armour should translate more or less into the armour provided. However, what I'm wondering about now is all the different body parts of a unit. In the Aware Stage organisms receive attacks to different parts of their body, so an attack to a limb would do damage only to the limb and not the rest of the body. However, every strategy game I have every played that had battles on a large scale reduced individual units to a single health mesh, i.e. making the whole unit's body one target that would take the damage.

Having said that, I do think that this is one point at which Thrive does have the capability to take one step beyond these strategy games and have individual units have distinct health meshes, so that a shot to the head does damage to the head and a shot to the arm only to the arm. This would mean that armour on the head would only protect the head and armour on the arm only the arm.
 
However, these strategy games didn't just avoid doing this for a reason, and I have a feeling that having distinct health meshes will be a lot for a computer to process in big battles. Is that true? Will that be an issue if we pursue distinct health meshes?

Well, I think it was decided that the damage to limbs and the like would be randomized, so it would still have the same effects of the complex damage system like in the organism mode, but allow the computer to not be too stressed during large battles.

Plus, computers today can handle more than they used to, but they shouldn't be overestimated.

Randoming the damage to diferent parts could be done. Actually determining what part gets hit will be too costly. Finally, just having a single health bar isnt bad either.

However, with randoming the damage to diferent parts there are problems as well (which we might just ignore altogether)

The main problem is decidint what is the probability of each part geting hit. A simple way to do this would be so bigger parts are more likely to get hit. However, there are cases were that doesent work too well. Imagine a soldier with a gun, shooting from some kind of cover. It will probably have most of its body covered, only showing the parts that are essential. That is, the head, as it needs to see where it is shooting at, and the hand with the gun. That is of course unless the enemy soldier doesent go around the cover and shoot him from behind, in which case we have bigger parts more likely again.

As i said earlier, we could just ignore this things, but i believe it is something worth pointing out.

Finally, the weight formula should be Weight = Surface covered * Thickness of armour * Density of material This one doesent need any factors, the final weight comes out automatically.
As i introduced thickness, it should probably matter as well. I propose that the protection offered would be: Protection = Effectivness of material * Surface covered * Thickness of material
This last one probably needs a factor as well, as Protection is an unit we made up, we can factor it to always range from 0 (unarmored) to 15 (iron armour) to 10000 (tank) to whatever the biggest spaceship has (which is probably a lot) This is suposing vehicles use something similar for armour.

Note that the formula effectivelly uses the total volume to calculate protection.

Finally (again), what if armour, instead of making incoming atacks do less damage just added to the total hit-points? Or a mix of both, where it adds to the total hitpoints but it also decreases incoming damage