I wanted to jot down what I was thinking for the Strategic aspect of the game and this seems to be the perfect place for it. Anytime I mention "Race Leader" it should be read as Race Leader in Multiplayer or Player in Single Player.
First: The Strategic aspect of the game should in no way be the primary focus of SFC4. The primary focus should be the Tactical, Ship-to-Ship combat. But in the Strategic layer of the game is what makes the Tactical game mean something. A battle over empty space with nothing around is not a battle that has to be won or lost. If you happen to destroy an enemy ship, great, you've taken out a ship, but you haven't done anything to boost your empire's situation (or damage your opponents) If you let yourself get destroyed over said empty space, well that's what would get a Captain sacked. (should he have survived the battle) On the other hand, a battle near or in a planetary system, it does matter whether or not the battle is won or lost, the outcome either opens the system for invasion, or goes towards securing it. In these cases, a Captain sacrificing their ship in order to win the battle, may very well get the Captain a Medal, even if the next ship received is a "downgrade" over the last one.
The strategic aspect of the game provides a way to quantify and represent these situations, but it should never take up too much of a player's time, unless that player WANTS to do it.
Shiplist: Since everything SFB related is off-limits anyways, it provides us, as the community, the ability to create our own shiplists to fill the various roles that would need to be filled in the Tactical (and strategic) aspect of the game. We can take the base hulls that we have, and fill them out. (obviously we're going to be relying on modeling talent for races that don't already have a plethora of ships available, such as the Romulans, Gorn, Tholians, etc.) Then after we design the ships, we have to decide where they would fall in the production queue, a thoroughbred cruiser might be a nice ship to build during peace-time, but in a wartime setting all the miscellaneous (read non-combat) equipment is an unnecessary expenditure of time and capital. Meanwhile a pure combat vessel, would find itself out of place in scientific and exploration missions that would dominate it's peacetime duties and be likewise a waste of time and capital.
Resources: Any strategic game is about the acquisition of resources, and the spending of said resources. The spending and acquisition of the resources should be as automated as possible, the only input the player(s) should have is discovering new resources, protecting resource sources, protecting the convoys carrying the resources from the sources to the refining centers, and then the priority of using the resources to produce stuff. The Protecting aspect is something that every Captain has a responsibility of. Escorting convoys and protecting the mining and manufacturing facilities is a job for the Captains. At the same time locating new resources is also a job for the Captains. The Race Leaders are the only ones that should have the ability to spend the resources on building ships/bases/colonies.
Production: I have had a slight change of thought on how the Production abilities should work. Initially I was thinking that No one should have any control over the production queues, it should be completely automated and the Race Leaders only have the ability to change what priority the shipyards take, whether its a focus on wartime designs or a focus on peacetime designs. I still think that automation is the best method, but instead of it being completely automated a small percentage of construction (say 10%) can be selected by the Race Leader themselves. This gives the empires some small control over their production abilities, and allows them to say, yes I want to focus on Wartime constructions, but I still want to build a few thoroughbred cruisers so that my fleet is not completely useless in the exploration aspect, or as a reward for some people who may just prefer the non-war designs. Or you can flip it around and stay on the Peacetime building aspect, but still build a few war designs so that you're not completely off-guard when a war breaks out, but still get the benefits of building a peacetime fleet.
"Peace" designs vs. War Designs:
In general a War Design is geared entirely for war, it has little or no secondary systems to "absorb" hits without losing combat effectiveness, every internal hit hits something vital, these ship are generally more fragile because every hit hurts in combat. War Designs sensors are limited in range and power and geared more towards targeting, tracking, and ECM/ECCM, there may be some ability to detect and track hidden objects, but only at close ranges. War designs also have less availability of auxiliary power because more of the power is needed to power all the power-hungry combat systems.
"Peace" designs by contrast, are geared for more than just combat. They have a number of secondary systems that assist them in their science and exploration missions, systems that are pretty much just taking up space in combat situations, giving the Peace time designs the ability to absorb damage because these non-combat systems can be hit before "vital" combat systems. "Peace" designs have equipment that is deemed non-essential on War-designs that boost their sensor performance, allowing them to "see" farther, see more details, and detect hidden objects at much greater range, although they may have more trouble defeating enemy ECM.
Just because a race, such as the Klingons, don't really believe in peace, that doesn't mean that they are deficient in the "Peace" Design ships, it just means that there may be a few more combat systems on their "Peace-time" designs than say the Federation. At the same time, the Federation's Wartime designs may not be as lean and mean as the Klingon's Wartime designs. But the Klingons will still have the sensor boosting systems on their peace designs, they just may not be as plentiful as those on a Federation design.
Persistent Universe: I don't think a Persistent universe is a good idea. The universe needs to change based on the actions of the Captains. But there will come a point where one side will dominate the universe (either in actuality, or by inevitability), and then needs to be "reset". This reset allows for the leveling of the playing field, everyone starts back at the base level. This prevents one side or individual player from getting too powerful (equipment, officers) that is usually the downfall of most MMOs, and allows for new blood to come in and not feel like they are outmatched and will never be able to defeat the more experienced players unless by sheer force of luck.
Maps: One of the unique aspects of the D2 system was the ability for the game host to set up a different strategic map so that the players "aren't playing the same game over and over again." But the server (or player's computer in single player games) should store the tactical maps for future use so that a battle in the same system is the same layout. If someone build a defense platform in the system, it should be in the same position every time that system is loaded, until it's moved or destroyed.
Intelligence: Partially outside of the tactical game, and partially inside the game. Intelligence reports come in daily, and can be condensed into a simple packet that will probably take up most of the Race Leaders time in the Strategic Aspect. Ways to gather intelligence are through spies (completely uncontrolled by the players) Listening posts (uncontrolled as well, except for missions where the Listening post may be interdicted and require a Captain to go query the post manually, which opens the post to discovery and destruction if the Captain querying the post isn't careful to destroy or drive off the interdicting force before the query) And general surveillance sweeps by Captains. Peacetime and scout ships will provide better surveillance reports than wartime designs. These Intelligence reports can then be used to direct daily missions that the Captains can then carry out. I kind of envision a consolidated list, that the Race Leader can look at, and have a dropdown box that provides options like: Assign Mission: High Priority (which would place the mission in the daily report for the Captains to accept, or it could be assigned to a specific Captain if the leader so chooses) Assign Mission: Medium Priority (again places it in the mission queue, but doesn't provide as much of an extra reward for completing it as a High Priority mission would) Assign Mission: Low Priority (Puts it in the queue but places the lowest amount of extra reward for completing it) Assign Mission: No Priority (basically tells your Captains that you want the mission done, but you're not going to assign any extra rewards to it) Ignore. (doesn't assign a mission for it at all) If there's no missions available in the queue for the Captains, there's always the basic patrol options, or the Captains can take initiative on their own and perform basic (defensive) missions for just the standard rewards.
Missions: for the Captains to accept any offered missions, they have to be in range of the mission to be able to complete it that day, otherwise the mission will either not display or state that you are too far away to accept the mission. Sometimes the missions offered may say "Only Ship in the Quadrant". Telling you that if you don't perform the mission, no one will, because no one else is capable of accepting the mission, either because you are the only ship in range, or you are the only ship capable of performing the mission in range. (an example of that may be a Listening Post Query that requires a Cruiser, and you are the only Cruiser in range, even though there may be other players in range, just none that are piloting a Cruiser or better) There shouldn't be any in game penalty for not completing missions, although the Race Leader may decide that someone else needs to be assigned to your sector because you aren't performing the missions that's expected of you, and as a consequence you may be passed over for specific assignments.
Topic: Strategic game? (Read 3292 times)