Let's keep updating, GDD n°4 - Battle Overview

I'm going to repeat myself but at the end of this post you'll find section summarizing the state of the Early Access version.

Rationale

The battle has a few base components inherited from Endless Space. The first and foremost is an epic, cool-looking cinematic battle. Having a cinematic battle is followed by a number of gameplay trade-offs. This means the entire battle from the ground up has been designed with the idea of strategic planning in mind as opposed to in-battle moment-to-moment tactics.

Image 1: Concept image of what we imagined battles looking like.

Coming from Endless Space, there are of course some lessons we’ve carried on. One of those lessons are the idea of how scale and context of battles are very important. This means that the ships will follow a completely different scale from Endless Space. Going between each ship size will feature an around 3 times increase in size. This means several hundred fighters could fit inside a large ship! Not that we will be able to put that many fighters in any one battle considering the graphical upgrade.

Importantly, the cinematic battles will also feature dynamic length – allowing us to shorten small scale battles and give proper time to large scale battles. The gameplay of battles is featured in what we’ve called the "Three layers of planning". But before that, let’s have a look at the battle.

THE BATTLE

Before the battle occurs, players make various planning choices that are explained in the next section – these planning choices include where the battle takes place and what kind of fleets are engaging as well as reinforcement strategies and more. These layers of planning are there for several gameplay reasons, but are also there to increase the variety and fidelity of the cinematics. The ‘Battle Arena’ will define the visual arena you see, the "Ship Design" will have visual weapon modules that turn and fire and the ‘Battle Plays’ define the movement of ships. All of this should lead to a lot of variety in the cinematic experience of the battle.

This focus on decisions taken before and just up to the battle as opposed to decisions in the battle changes the dynamic significantly. Ships can now take damage on specific parts of the ship, specific modules can take damage and be destroyed during the battle, which means that the maneuvering present in "Battle Plays" (explained in the "Three Layers of Planning" section) will have a large impact on the battle outcome and the arena affecting the efficiency of modules and ships will also have a large overarching effect on battles.

The battle is split into 5 phases. A cinematic arrival phase, three battle phases and finally a cinematic resolution phase. The cinematic part of the battle is, besides looking awesome, meant to highlight what parts of the planning had an effect on the outcome of the battle.

To this end a couple of systems are in place. The Battle Director, as it has formally been named, will be in charge of analyzing the battle and figuring out what is worth showing to the player. It will evaluate all of the events that can occur during a battle and select what you see, attempting to show you the most awesome battle possible. The Free Camera View is also there to allow the player to experience the battle from their own desired perspective and finally a Tactical View exists to give the player an overview of what is happening in terms of fleet movements.

Finally the battle report will give you all the information you would need to understand the outcome. The battle report will:

• Visually show the battlefield 
  • Show Fleet movements
  • Show important key movements
    
    
• Give information on ships 
  • Show the sections and modules damaged in the battle
  • Show each ships relation to the "Battle Play"

Also, this time around – Heroes will appear on the battlefield and fight side by side with the fleet! Upon the battle beginning, all that there is left for the player is to sit back and enjoy the epic battle!

Image 2: Early in-game screenshot of a battle

THREE LEVELS OF PLANNING

An initial goal of the battle system in Endless Space 2 is that there should be no difference between using the auto-battle compared to manual battle. To retain the strategic gameplay of battles, the battle is split into 3 layers of strategic planning, which defines the outcome of battles. These are Ship Design, Battle Arenas and Battle Plays.

Ship Design

Ship Design is heavily expanded from Endless Space and even Endless Legend. It will receive its own GDD – so this will only serve as a short summary.

Similar to Endless Space, the game will feature 3 different ships sizes (Small, Medium and Large), which will require Command Points to field in your fleets. Fighters and bombers will also be featured as a type of module.

Each faction will have 5 combat ship hulls – 2 small, 2 medium and 1 large that will correspond to 4 roles (Attacker, Defender, Support and Carrier) and each faction will also have a civilian and an exploration ship hull. Ships corresponding to their roles and faction have a "Slot Layout". Slots are positions on the ship where modules are placed. Note that the position and angle of modules are relevant to whether or not they are used at any given time in the battle – a weapon module can only fire if it has a target within its range and its arc of fire.

Damage calculation also will not occur in phases as it did in Endless Space. Damage calculations are more fluidly considering each salvo of shots angle and defenses. Each shield and hull will have different stats to deal with different types and ranges of weapons – and the destruction of a ship occurs when its core has been destroyed.

This system along with a focus on weapon variations – such as rockets usually being good at one thing, say hull damage - can with a later technology allow a player to equip EMP rockets instead that are good at another thing, say disabling modules and/or shields. Using this system of creating ship designs and smartly combining those into fleets with the other layers of planning allow the players to gain an advantage of the battlefield.

Battle Arenas

The Battle Arenas are generated from galaxy parameters. This means if you have a system with an anomaly, say "Aurora Wave" – that anomaly will likely be featured in the battle arena with an effect on battles in that system. The goal of this system is to generate different predictable battle arenas. Players can choose to place their fleets and battle in systems they feel they have an advantage. Players may even be able to modify the arena using system improvements or special ship modules.

The Battle Arena is generated from:

• Galaxy Nodes: 
  • Anomalies
  • Planets
  • Sun Type
• Player Interventions:
  • Special modules
  • System improvements
• Temporary or aggregated events: 
  • An anomaly appears in a system for X turns.
  • ‘Ship Graveyard’ appears from repeated battles in the same node.

These "arena hazards" can have global effects on the battle or can be localized in the battle arena. Flying through an anomaly could disable shields – or the sun type could simply emit a type of radiation weakening the targeting system of missiles!

Battle Plays

Finally, upon two players engaging in a battle, the final layer of planning occurs: the "Battle Play".  Each battle play contains trajectories for one, two or three flotillas along with a buff (ex: more attack power or accuracy, some HP healed after the fight, additional critical chances etc...) . The plays you choose impacts the trajectory of your ships which will define the range they'll be fighting at in each phase and the range is what defines the efficiency of your weapons.

The Endless Space 2 model will only choose one "Battle Play" at the start, but this model will be expanded to include fleet movements as well as card effects.

Image 3: Concept image for "Play Loading Screen"

At the start of a battle the player will be presented with a number of choices:

• Pick a "Battle Play".
• Choose Reinforcement Pattern

The Battle Play contains a number of effects that help define under which conditions it would be useful (To add some prediction capability) – such as a long range-based play or a defensive play.

When a player has a certain number of ships, they will be distributed into Flotillas, smaller fleets that are specific to the current battle. These flotillas can have contextual buffs or restrictions (such as only large ships), based on the chosen play. These flotillas will follow the path defined by the play, and this will be where battle manoeuvres are chosen and this is where interaction with localized arena hazards will occur. Note that these arena hazards can have positive effects as well as negative effects.

The last large choice to make is reinforcements. Reinforcements will be an additional pool of CP that can be added to the battle. The choice involves how soon – in which phase this additional flotilla will arrive at. This choice of when they arrive will be a trade-off between having a battle penalty for being unprepared to having a battle buff for coming in late with additional information and preparation.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Ship Design

• Fighters and Bombers are not part of the Early Access version
• EMP/disabling weapons are not part of the Early Access version

Battle Arenas

• While battle arenas in the Early Access version feature planet and star types, anomalies and system improvements are not part off the visual of the Battle Arenas and don't have any gameplay impact yet.

Battle Plays

• Players don't have to manually assign ships to the different flotillas, the assignation is automatically done by the system
• Reinforcements are not in the Early Access version. It's a feature that we aren't really sure about.

Hmmmm from this I read that what you ultimately want is a system that will generate some cool looking battles for the player to enjoy. 

I do not think this is a bad idea per se, it would be nice to have a nice epic space battle to watch after having played 50 turns of military build up and stalemate.  But considering how vital a part combat is to a space empire game, it is vital that it also matters. Even more so it is vital that there is something to engage the player, to make the player care. 

From what I read you both want anomalies etc. to be in battles because  

A: They will look awesome, and provide variation of visuals

B: They will provide strategic options. IE it will actually matter where you defend against a superior force while you wait for reinforcement fleets. 

If only A.. then I will just say it is just going to bring your game bad reviews. Nobody would care about this for more than a few plays... then it just becomes bland and repetitive.

If B (and A :D ).. hmmm freaking awesome! And it would definitely help make the game genre defining! 

Even if we are only talking about stat bonuses it would still add something to the game, something for the player to think and care about fleet placement... having certain systems be critical choke points, because they are a star lane nexus etc. 

About reinforcements... 

This needs to be there.... currently one of the more annoying things in the game is having to autoresolve 5000 combats when you have many ships in a system. Since the battles are so small it takes forever... it is not fun, and you definitely do not want to watch cinematics for every single one! 

That should be reason enough to make the system able to take in several fleets in one go and resolve all of it. 

Weapon types /Phases 

I can understand why you need to keep the game simple in this regard.... but currently it is just oversimplified. There is way too much rock paper scissor. Of course I will await and see what sort of special weapons and features you bring in to offset this. But I am worried that this will be the Achilles heel of your entire combat system. 

There are a lot of good suggestions in the thread that was linked earlier by mezmorki. Key among them is that it should be possible to designate what a given flotilla should use (long medium or close). In general it should be possible to outplay the enemy strategically so the choices of setup should matter. 

Overall I think this post has me a bit more optimistic about what to expect... but at the same time a bit worried. Combat was the worst part of ES 1 and I really hope you are just going to take the good things, and build on it! (I want to be able to have it matter when I fight near a black hole!... ps ... I want black holes in the game!)