The official military topic

Tenebrarum wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Look at the top-left menu. The screen isn't the best quality, but it's the best I could find..

http://blog.warzone2100.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/interview-betawidget-bild-2.png

Not sure how it would work, but if we can, coolio.

Tell me what options you want to have and I'l make you a mockup menu.

I certainly want formations, movement behaviours and fire range (for ranged units).

sounds great, cant wait to see the mockup

Commander Keen wrote:

Tell me what options you want to have and I'l make you a mockup menu.

I certainly want formations, movement behaviours and fire range (for ranged units).

Levels Aggresion are a must, as are mixing arts into combat (War-Dancers, Battle Songs, etc.) My Caelumnen Concept race (Haven't posted this yet) are easily traumatized by combat and so sing to get over this. Just one singing in combat is rather comical, but an entire army singing as they fight can be quite terrifying.

There needs to be a way to get soldiers to recognize the effect of gravity on their projectiles, so that archers can shoot far/use rain of death, while hand-gunners will know just to fire straight, though that may be bound to the object.

Obviously Positions (Standing, Crouched, Prone) are important. How they act is also key (Ex. On horseback, toss your single javlin, then move into melee.)

Is that overmuch or undermuch?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Levels Aggresion are a must, as are mixing arts into combat (War-Dancers, Battle Songs, etc.) My Caelumnen Concept race (Haven't posted this yet) are easily traumatized by combat and so sing to get over this. Just one singing in combat is rather comical, but an entire army singing as they fight can be quite terrifying.

Is it enough to set this for each unit type when squad types are created?

Tenebrarum wrote:

There needs to be a way to get soldiers to recognize the effect of gravity on their projectiles, so that archers can shoot far/use rain of death, while hand-gunners will know just to fire straight, though that may be bound to the object.

That would be handled automatically for any unit with required training. (ie. in squad with rank > 1).

Tenebrarum wrote:

Obviously Positions (Standing, Crouched, Prone) are important.

Yes, but this requires some more thought. Creatures might not be able to crouch or go prone at all, and might have entirely different poses at all.

Tenebrarum wrote:

How they act is also key (Ex. On horseback, toss your single javlin, then move into melee.)

Again, would it be enough to set this for each unit type when squad types are created?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Is that overmuch or undermuch?

Feel free to suggest more, these are all important settings.

those things should be either toggled by group by group you or accounted for in a menu and then they become a pre-set behaviour. I think the second one is easier

Commander Keen wrote:

Is it enough to set this for each unit type when squad types are created?

I'm not sure what you mean. Explain? *Blush*

eumesmo wrote:

those things should be either toggled by group by group you or accounted for in a menu and then they become a pre-set behaviour. I think the second one is easier

True for some, but some things need to be togglable on battlefield to enable efficient tactics.

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I'm not sure what you mean. Explain? *Blush*

I kind of expected this, so I already prepared a link:

http://thrivegame.wikidot.com/squads - look at the Squad creation paragraph.

Perfectly good. I assume this functions as a squad minieditor?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Perfectly good. I assume this functions as a squad minieditor?

Yes.

After you create a new squad, you should be able to give it a nickname (like 'sharpshooter team' or 'pikemen') and then save it, adding a new option when you want to build a new unit to contruct the weapons and train the men required for that squad. Then instead of having to construct 10 warriors and 1 medic and then put them together in the squad editor again and again, you could just have a previously saved preset available when you want to deploy a unit.
Sry if that was a bit confusing and long

Names can, of course, be assigned to squads.

Also, the current concept allows for squad templates as you said. It's located at our wiki (http://thrivegame.wikidot.com/squads). The OP is not updated so far.

Kewl . Though does anyone know how squad mechanics and large-scale battles will fit in with organism mode? The way AI behaves in stratedgy games is very different from the AI in a fighting game.

Well, I doubt you have ever played Operation Flashpoint or Arma/Arma 2, but if you have, then that's pretty much how it will look.

In other words, unless you are the lowest or highest rank in the entire nation, you will always receive orders from your superiors and give orders to your inferiors.

Commander Keen wrote:

Well, I doubt you have ever played Operation Flashpoint or Arma/Arma 2, but if you have, then that's pretty much how it will look.

In other words, unless you are the lowest or highest rank in the entire nation, you will always receive orders from your superiors and give orders to your inferiors.

Thanks for explaining that

Tenebrarum wrote:

I have been thinking about suggesting a little mechanic that would allow different plans for your units to follow, giving you basic control of the situation but freeing up micromanagement so you can, say, go into Org Mode during a big epic battle.

Ex.: Before a battle, you notice your enemy army has strong flanks but a week center. You pause, take a squad of heavy cavalry, and tell them to charge through the middle, then run back once the line has been broken and scattered. You tell your infantry to march steadily forward after this, and your cavalry to mop up afterwards.

With the current system, chronology fails to enter into the equation. I know I use pretty arbitrary terms there, but feh. The player will think of something.

Brings me into an idea. We could include a "Wait" command for squads, and have it either accept a time value (wait 10 minutes before proceeding to other orders), or a squad and it's orders (basically, you click on a squad, a window pops up with all orders the clicked squad has, you will pick one of the orders and the squad with Wait command will wait until the clicked squad will finishes the command).

Commander Keen wrote:

Brings me into an idea. We could include a "Wait" command for squads, and have it either accept a time value (wait 10 minutes before proceeding to other orders), or a squad and it's orders (basically, you click on a squad, a window pops up with all orders the clicked squad has, you will pick one of the orders and the squad with Wait command will wait until the clicked squad will finishes the command).

Sounds good. However, before I forget, we MUST MUST MUST remember to allow orders marking out a path, rather than just doing a click = straight line movement and nothing more. Also, way-points on the map should be able to be mobile(AS in, way-point = enemy squad), so using the example I provided, my cavalry will still hit the weak point in the enemy line even if the entire army shifts a few feet.

I don't think our pathfinder would cope well with anything different than straight lines or linear curves, but this could be avoided by clicking multiple (lots of) waypoints. Also, being able to move waypoints after placing them is a good idea.

A thing I wanted to ask because I couldn't find anywhere if this as already been decided is how exactly will supplies work? For example, will we have a "National" reserve of supplies that is the same for the whole nation or will we have a supply reserve for each MC/SC/Squad?

(Maybe this deserves a new Topic, but I wanted to make shure before risking making one of those insta-lock topics).

Each SC/MC and squad has it's own supply level. SC/MC with manufacturing capacity can draw resources from your nation's pool and convert them to supplies. Those SCs/MCs will distribute supplies to other SCs/MCs, wich will distribute them to units.

The resources needed to make supplies will depened on average composition of your army. If you have 60% soldiers and 40% vehicles, the resources needed to make supplies will be 60% food and 40% fuel.

Raiding enemy SCs/MCs for resources will be possible, and useful mostly in Middle Ages-like times when lots of food supplies are needed.

When units run out of supplies, all engine-powered vehicles will be stuck in place, unable to move until they are resupplied (flying vehicles will be instantly lost). Other TOs and soldiers can move, but will randomly suffer "injuries" and losses over time. They will also have low morale and be generally less useful in combat.


This all needs to be added to the wiki. Thanks for noticing it, Admiral.

(Good you have posted in this topic. Posting new one would probably get it locked very soon)

Exactly what I wanted to hear, thank you.

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This all needs to be added to the wiki. Thanks for noticing it, Admiral.

Add it.

Right, hello.

The following is a response to a post in another topic I am swiftly moving to an appropriate thread. Well, I will already have been moving it now to you in the future already who perceive I have done in the past which is the present presently to me in my present past. I hope that clears things up.

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Commander Keen wrote:

Post Aware / Strategy mode, the formations system is already made. It's on the wiki, let me search a bit.. here, fourth and fifth paragraph.

Interesting. But it's a bit pre-space civ military specialist centred, it wouldn't work in space, so does a space version of pack behaviours & squads need to be worked out, too?
There's no option to choose how the target is going to be targeted (you could have as one mass, split in two and close them in, form a circle and attack from all sides, etc.). Or get a key assigned to the group.
They would be useful for enhanced tactics and swift action respectively.

Also:

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Once Military Training research is completed, units will be controlled ONLY in squads. If you want to order a single unit, you have to assign it to its own squad.

Why? How is this helpful?

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Every squad has its own "banner", which is just a simple image. Squads are accessed by clicking this banner.

Are these player made, or pre-made? And wouldn't a name be more helpful (reminding the player what the group is for), what's the benefit of an image?

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Each unit will need supplies. Without supplies the unit suffers a high loss of morale and unit injuries and deaths after some time.

Shouldn't natural resources allow less supplies to be needed? If there is a river with fruit-bearing trees nearby, it should seriously reduce the amount of supplies needed - food and water being a large portion of supplies, I assume, with ammunition being another, when the fighting begins. If two nations are assembling armies for a war, one has natural water supply and fruit trees or even livestock with them, the other is in a barren land, the latter will need more supplies more regularly, therefore giving a huge tactical advantage to the former.

The Uteen wrote:

Interesting. But it's a bit pre-space civ military specialist centred, it wouldn't work in space, so does a space version of pack behaviours & squads need to be worked out, too?

This could be solved either by having isometric or 3d camera in the formation editor and being able to move shapes vertically in the same way as orders in Strategy mode.

The Uteen wrote:

There's no option to choose how the target is going to be targeted (you could have as one mass, split in two and close them in, form a circle and attack from all sides, etc.). Or get a key assigned to the group.
They would be useful for enhanced tactics and swift action respectively.

Actually, we decided to have a right click settings window to change things like this, but never talked about what will actually be in the window.. oops.

There should be only simple settings, though, something like "stay at range", or "swarm". Complex maneuvres like splitting and such should be left to player, mostly because it would be very hard to make the computer react intelligently to all terrain conditions.

The Uteen wrote:

Quote :

Once Military Training research is completed, units will be controlled ONLY in squads. If you want to order a single unit, you have to assign it to its own squad.

Why? How is this helpful?

Convenience. Squads have much better functionality than simple RTS units, and we want to keep the management as simple as possible; two unit group types wouldn't help it much.

The Uteen wrote:

Quote :

Every squad has its own "banner", which is just a simple image. Squads are accessed by clicking this banner.

Are these player made, or pre-made? And wouldn't a name be more helpful (reminding the player what the group is for), what's the benefit of an image?

I suppose we should have both. Either the player could select a premade image and color parts of it independently, or it could be some simple pixelart.

Humans understand images faster than text, because they always have to read it, whereas (small) images are recognized as a single symbol. We could show the name when moused over though, in case you want to know what enemy squads are or just simply forget banners of your own units.

Banners are more compact too, wich will be relatively important because battlefields will likely have
quite a few squads at once. As a bonus, it also adds to the immersion.

The Uteen wrote:

Quote :

Each unit will need supplies. Without supplies the unit suffers a high loss of morale and unit injuries and deaths after some time.

Shouldn't natural resources allow less supplies to be needed? If there is a river with fruit-bearing trees nearby, it should seriously reduce the amount of supplies needed - food and water being a large portion of supplies, I assume, with ammunition being another, when the fighting begins. If two nations are assembling armies for a war, one has natural water supply and fruit trees or even livestock with them, the other is in a barren land, the latter will need more supplies more regularly, therefore giving a huge tactical advantage to the former.

That's what I thought about as well after reading some books about ancient (Rome) warfare; almost everything they needed could made in the field, from food and clothes to weapons and parts of armor. Only enemy territory was plundered for resources, because the armies had huge requirements and mostly always took everything from the local people.

How it should translate to gameplay: Squads should be able to replenish their supplies when near resource gathering SCs/MCs at the cost of that SC/MC resource gain; the Centre don't necessarily has to be under their control. They could also take resources directly from the SC/MC as long as it is under their control.

That should allow besieging SCs completely to starve them, forcing them to surrender.

Commander Keen wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Interesting. But it's a bit pre-space civ military specialist centred, it wouldn't work in space, so does a space version of pack behaviours & squads need to be worked out, too?

This could be solved either by having isometric or 3d camera in the formation editor and being able to move shapes vertically in the same way as orders in Strategy mode.

Resource collection would work differently in space too - A biome-pod (well, more a huge rotating wheel with a biome inside) attached to a ship would allow it to send food and water, as well as clothing to nearby ships, but extracting the biome from the planet would use a lot of its natural resources; special miner ships would be sent out to an asteroid or planet to gather resources (slowly, colonies are more effective at extracting a planets resources) for building more ships (if a shipyard is available), which can be occupied by people taken from nearby crews (if a ship has a residential area it could generate people, who can be trained at an education section to become crew members after a period), and the resources can also be used to create ammunition for the ship's weapons and ammo for handheld weapons for ship-boarders (with an appropriate ship/ship section, or a function of the shipyard) and energy for the ships (would also need a section, or can also be done by the shipyard); solar panels attached to ships can also provide energy and solar sails can provide propulsion. If a section is not available, ships can be sent from a nearby planet if it is advanced enough to supply the required resources.
As you can see, a lot of the resource generation will require specifically designed ships/ship sections. (Well, I think all of it will) Making a fleet will require a lot of thinking beforehand, examining what can be supplied by colonies, how much energy is available for weaponry, how far the fleet can go before needing to resupply, etc.

Commander Keen wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

There's no option to choose how the target is going to be targeted (you could have as one mass, split in two and close them in, form a circle and attack from all sides, etc.). Or get a key assigned to the group.
They would be useful for enhanced tactics and swift action respectively.

Actually, we decided to have a right click settings window to change things like this, but never talked about what will actually be in the window.. oops.

There should be only simple settings, though, something like "stay at range", or "swarm". Complex maneuvres like splitting and such should be left to player, mostly because it would be very hard to make the computer react intelligently to all terrain conditions.

I think complex manoeuvres could be done using the formations mini-editor, actually. If the target can be dragged into the editor area, the units can be given a series of positions that they go through in the attack. the path can then be modified by manipulating bézier curves, in 3D it might be a bit more complicated, but doable.


Also, reading doesn't take that long. Lion has got negative points for the fact the finder's sidebar doesn't include folder icons anymore. This really isn't a problem assuming the user can read... I really don't care at all they removed them, icons didn't look great on there anyway...

Thanks for the explanations, though.

Uteen, while complex meanuvers made in the formation mini editor could work, we're reaching a point where complexity of gameplay is going to be an issue not only for the programmer but for the player. Things will be incredibly glitchy anyways, and messing with the AI any more than we have to will only pick at the scab.

Once we have a prototype, we can build of it if we want. But let's wait for that prototype.

Again, we should focus as much as we can on the immediete issues: Microbe stage and the finalization of Aware Concept. I understand that it's difficult to wait for roadkill and still be enthusiastic,but let's prioritize.