General Ideas About Range

from GalCiv3 Forums

In GalCiv range is determined by distance from a planet or starbase.   There is no need, however, for the planets/starbases to be in range of each other.  For example, in principle if a planet was on one end of an immense galaxy, and a starbase at the other end, with no planets or starbases in between, a ship with no range extenders could still travel from one to another!  

So to begin with, as a minimum, one might suggest that a ship should always have to be in range of a base/planet.  Then it could not "hop" through deep space to another site, which I find very counter intuitive.    (I am ignoring stargates and similar, which are not in the game yet.)

But I would like to suggest a deeper change.   At this point I should say this may have been discussed earlier, but my cursory search through the forums didn't show it - if someone can supply a link, that would work.

Namely range normally means a distance that one can travel.    Currently, one can travel around virtually for the entire game without stopping at a base/planet.   That seems most odd.   My initial suggestion might be that ships, which now have a move counter that is decremented each turn as they move, have a second counter that decrements "travel time".    Even if a ship is motionless in space it is still using power, etc.   So decrement the travel time counter each turn (not each move).   Thus ships could not go on indefinite sentry duty in deep space.   Perhaps motionless ships would decrement this counter less often, but whatever.  Movement of a fleet would be subject to the lowest range ship in the fleet.

Of course this adds micro to the game, in addition to some more programming.   Perhaps some of this could be addressed by assigning ships or fleets a mission.   

And there is the question of ships being damaged in a fight.   Which leads to the question, what happens when the travel time goes to zero?  (Ships run out of gas...or whatever.) Or does the game not allow a ship to go beyond the point of no return to any base.

I am bringing this up to see what other players think, so have at me.   Is this a detail not worth bothering about?   Should there just be some small tweaks as I suggest at first?


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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yes, it is counterintuitive in space games that a motionless ship consumes no supply.  But supply and range are game abstractions to eliminate vast amounts of micro.  For game-play purposes, any reasonable abstraction is tolerable, and we'll adapt intelligently to abuse its abusable parts :grin:

  • SE*: Supply is a per-ship quantity.  Engines have moderate supply capacity.  Supply components have large capacity.  Solar panels generate small amounts of supply per turn per sun in the system.  Supply gets consumed by engines per hex of movement, and by weapons per shot.  A ship that runs out of supply is reduced to 1 hex per turn (normal speeds are 10-18), and obviously no more weapons.  Micro: In SE{3,4}, you must physically move onto a planet with Resupply Center to resupply.  Nicer: In SE5, resupply is abstracted as an implied fleet of worker ants in any friendly system, so you can simply return to any hex therein, sit there, and it'll automatically resupply all your ships that need it (but at some moderate rate, enough for 2/3 of a ship per turn).  Abuse: A motionless ship (e.g. blockading an enemy planet by sitting on it) consumes no supply.  You can lurk on patrol indefinitely for free.
  • Avalon Hill Third Reich (and similar strategic-level boardgames): Supply is a per-unit quantity-less Boolean state.  You are either in supply, or not.  You are in supply if you can trace a clear line of hexes not through enemy ZOCs to a supply hex, which for game purposes is deemed to be any city hex, or (in east Russia) the edge of the board.  (In GC3 terms, this would probably be: to any friendly ZOC.)  You are also in supply for 1 turn for free if you're armor and you just did a breakthrough attack the previous turn.  Ergo, grand tactics emerge (in the steppes of Russia) where you maneuver not to fight his strength, but to cut his lines with your interlocking ZOCs, to put entire clumps of his units out of supply.  (They do get one turn to counterattack and try to punch through your lines.)  This is actually historically accurate, and makes for very rich and interesting game play.
    • Qix (coin-op arcade game) implicitly uses a similar idea.  Your spark tries to steal rectangular areas by carving them out, while the Qix in the center kills you if he touches your line while it's not yet closed.  I always think of that when I successfully cut somebody's bottleneck and put his entire salient out of supply.
    • Sean O'Connor's Slay is a delightful skittles-class game that features similar engulfing tactics.  Peasants can take free hexes (like Q-bert, stepping on it claims it), but not huts, other peasants, nor anything in their ZOCs (adjacent hexes).  Combine 2 peasants to promote to spearman, who costs 6 upkeep but can squash peasant/hut (so do this only if you have, or will take, a small plot of 6+ hexes), but not spearmen ZOCs.  Spearmen combine to knights, who squash spearmen but not other knights.  The AI is clever, but not deep enough: it'll always send its clump of 3-5 knights on a deep penetration foray with weak flanks, and you can cut it off with a wall of 20+ interlocking peasants behind its strong front, which tombstones them all next turn.  Cute and charming, but also a fairly brilliant way to give you a feel for mobile tactics on open plains.  Some knockoffs exist, e.g. EtiumSoft's Castle Wars (which makes this a legit genre worth imitating, which is pretty high praise).

SE* always had the neat (and tolerable) emergent game mechanism that your scouts make sorties to about 1/2 their range, then come home.  (By then, you probably have some ship techs worth upgrading, so they want to come back to a Spaceyard planet anyways.)  It also creates a useful niche for the supply tanker ship class, which is just a transport filled with supply components.  They play the same role as GC3 starbases to range-extend your weenies, except they're mobile.  That's a kind of micro (for rendezvous problems), which I guess would suck once you had more than 5 or so of them to hassle you every turn.  (In fact, I think I quit my last game of SE5 right around that threshold.)

I don't know a good mechanism that is both realistic and fun to play.  For now, I'll be content if the AI just learns to exploit GC3's range weirdness the same way I do.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


In GalCiv range is determined by distance from a planet or starbase.   There is no need, however, for the planets/starbases to be in range of each other.  For example, in principle if a planet was on one end of an immense galaxy, and a starbase at the other end, with no planets or starbases in between, a ship with no range extenders could still travel from one to another!  

So to begin with, as a minimum, one might suggest that a ship should always have to be in range of a base/planet.  Then it could not "hop" through deep space to another site, which I find very counter intuitive.    (I am ignoring stargates and similar, which are not in the game yet.)

But I would like to suggest a deeper change.   At this point I should say this may have been discussed earlier, but my cursory search through the forums didn't show it - if someone can supply a link, that would work.

Namely range normally means a distance that one can travel.    Currently, one can travel around virtually for the entire game without stopping at a base/planet.   That seems most odd.   My initial suggestion might be that ships, which now have a move counter that is decremented each turn as they move, have a second counter that decrements "travel time".    Even if a ship is motionless in space it is still using power, etc.   So decrement the travel time counter each turn (not each move).   Thus ships could not go on indefinite sentry duty in deep space.   Perhaps motionless ships would decrement this counter less often, but whatever.  Movement of a fleet would be subject to the lowest range ship in the fleet.

Of course this adds micro to the game, in addition to some more programming.   Perhaps some of this could be addressed by assigning ships or fleets a mission.   

And there is the question of ships being damaged in a fight.   Which leads to the question, what happens when the travel time goes to zero?  (Ships run out of gas...or whatever.) Or does the game not allow a ship to go beyond the point of no return to any base.

I am bringing this up to see what other players think, so have at me.   Is this a detail not worth bothering about?   Should there just be some small tweaks as I suggest at first?



End of quote

 

I think this might  just be splitting hairs a bit.  The ISS has been crewed (mostly non-stop I believe ) since nov2000 without the iss ever returning to earth to resupply.  We also do not set crew duty roster schedules.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Tetrasodium, reply 2


/snip/
 



 

I think this might  just be splitting hairs a bit.  The ISS has been crewed (mostly non-stop I believe ) since nov2000 without the iss ever returning to earth to resupply.  We also do not set crew duty roster schedules.

End of Tetrasodium's quote

One of the "rationalizations" I have worked on is that ships in range are resupplied by abstracted support vessels (the ISS has had plenty of that, I believe, for support as well as crew rotation).   But that doesn't work when you are clearly outside of the range of anything your technology possesses, en route across the "twilight zone" to another supply node.   And I don't think fixing that would bury us in micro.   

Trying for  a more realistic range mechanism, on the other hand, does present a challenge, I agree.   I might add that putting realistic supply requirements into any strategy game is problematic.   I can't remember one in which it worked without killing the fun.  I remember before computers strategy games were played with counters on hex maps... and the only workable supply rule I remember was requiring a continuous non-enemy controlled path from a supply center to a unit.  I admit that was a bit wonky too.  But at least there was a real impact when units were out of supply.    

But I was wondering if people had any ideas about it, is all.