Combat Discussion

[Misfire]

Ok, going to put up a preview build. Still a lot to be done, but hopefully putting it out there we can get some input on what the priorities should be. Will get posted as soon as I work out the details of where to put it with Iceman. Please keep in mind that this is a "pre-alpha" build. Things not working and crashes may be common.

Some general notes:
Ports 13000 and 13001 need to be available. They are used for tcp communication between Supremacy and Unity. I plan to make these assignable in a config file but haven't gotten around to it yet. Let me know if this is an issue for anyone.
Currently the max number of civs allowed in a battle is 5 (if more, they won't be spawned). Need to do more work on start locations before allowing more.
Combat engine currently only works in single player mode.
Cloak is not yet functional.
The first time the combat window is shown, you may briefly see the made with Unity splash logo.
For attack patterns, only charge, hold and ram work. Circle is on hold for now, flank and evade haven't been implemented yet. The Move position command order is not yet implemented and may not be.
AI will attack (if conditions are right). The only attack pattern it currently uses is hold position.
Minor ships have no ship models, they are drawn with a default model (don't remember which, I just grabbed one).
Retreating from the battle does not trigger a retreat in Supremacy.
Weapon damage hasn't been balanced to any meaningful degree. Just using Supremacy values, scaled to be in the ballpark for tick-based battle.
I'm not sure if morale implications are working. Diplomacy effects are, but it's just a placeholder value.

There may be performance issues on large battles. I can run pretty large battles without issues when I run the combat engine standalone,
but when running within Supremacy, anything above 40 vs 40 gets real slow. My rig may be to blame for that though (I'm using a glorified tablet that slows itself down when it gets too hot. Interested to hear how it runs on "real" computers. I haven't done anything to optimize performance yet.

General navigation notes:
Click and hold left mouse button & drag -> move camera
Mouse wheel -> zoom in/out, holding shift increases zoom speed
Right click friendly ship -> set that ship/fleet command order via popup
Right click hostile ship -> set currently selected fleet/ship to attack, set attack pattern via popup.
W,A,S,D buttons -> move camera
Ship view mode button -> moves camera to selected ship. Will stay attached until camera is moved.
Overview button -> moves camera to overhead position.
When zoomed out, an insignia will show for each fleet. Left clicking the insignia selects that fleet.
Clicking a ship on the fleet ship list panel will set the currently selected ship. I still need to re-implement a different selection border for the currently selected ship on the UI.
Clicking an insignia while you are being prompted to select a target will zoom to that fleet (then select a ship)
Pressing escape while being prompted to select a target cancels the attack order.

If you want to test different battle scenarios, there is a tool I created for this. Pressing CTL+F while on the galaxy screen will bring up a dialog that allows you to add ships to the game (only empires). I never intended this to be part of the final game, so haven't spent much time making it nice. Also note, I never implemented the delete button. I wouldn't use this during a game you are actually trying to play through, there may be other consequences of adding ships in this manner.

[Misfire]

Some known issues:
There isn't yet any intelligence to fleet courses. An example is if you order a fleet to hold position, then order the fleet behind it to charge, it will try to plow through the fleet in front of it, causing general mayhem. I currently have friendly collision damage disabled.
The way each fleet works, one ship is the lead ship which sets sets its course based on orders. The rest of the ships in the fleet maintain position relative to the lead ship. The follower script is a little buggy though.
If you order a ship to break from the fleet, then later have it re-join, it will slingshot back to the group. It's because it is using the follower logic I mentioned above.
Torpedo targeting needs intelligence, currently doesn't take into account moving ships.
Ships won't fire if friendly fire results. Need intelligence for repositioning ships for better firing position.
Graphic effects pretty simplistic, haven't spent much time on them yet.
There are focus issues if you tab in/out while the combat is in progress. It will usually gain it back after 10 seconds or so. Until resolved, I'd try to avoid it.
I've done very little testing on 3+ players, so there may be issues there.
There isn't yet any intelligence on ships setting a retreat course. It is possible for retreating ships to ram into others in the way. I haven't had this happen, but it can.
Double clicking a fleet insignia is supposed to zoom to that fleet. It doesn't work, but triple clicking it does.
Battles don't always conclude in the 5 turns.
With the current ship speeds and damage, ram isn't very useful. Ships will usually be destroyed before they reach their target. There are some issues when the targeted fleet to ram is destroyed. I may just have it automatically set the order to hold.
Shields/hull bars aren't perfect, they don't start going down right away.
There is still a serialization issue that can pop up, though rarely, that can lock up the game. It's going to take some time to track down.
When using the CTL-F tool to add ships, I've noticed that sometimes when a fleet is partially destroyed, but some ships survive, the next turn all the ships are back in the fleet. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of the tool causing odd behavior, or if it will happen in cases of game-created ships. Haven't taken the time to test that.
Fleet insignias overlap UI on camera pan.
UI scales with resolution, rather than allowing additional screen space.

[Iceman]

Ok, going to put up a preview build. Still a lot to be done, but hopefully putting it out there we can get some input on what the priorities should be. Will get posted as soon as I work out the details of where to put it with Iceman. Please keep in mind that this is a "pre-alpha" build. Things not working and crashes may be common.

Ok, we have a test build ready!
The "Supremacy" side is not the latest patch/version, it's from a week or so ago.
I'm just going to clean things up a bit (the Resources folder) and then Danijel will make the build available in the Supremacy site he built some time ago - but which hasn't gone live yet. I'll let you guys know when it's up for grabs.

I've only briefly tested it, but it is looking good!

[Silverbreaker]

Astonishing! Thank you guys very much! Finally BotF goes to the next level!

[Iceman]

See? Good things come to those who wait

My feedback so far:
- interaction is a bit slow (drsgging the map, etc)
- sometimes the Turn button is not active, couldn't figure out the reason yet

(the combat engine takes a few seconds to load after you hit Engage, but that's to be expected)

[Misfire]

See? Good things come to those who wait

My feedback so far:
- interaction is a bit slow (drsgging the map, etc)
- sometimes the Turn button is not active, couldn't figure out the reason yet

(the combat engine takes a few seconds to load after you hit Engage, but that's to be expected)

The only time the turn button shouldn't be active is if a turn is in progress. If it's staying that way, there may have been an exception thrown on the Unity side. Unity logs should be at c:\users\yourusername\appdata\locallow\nr7\CE\playerlog.log

C: will be whatever hard drive your OS is in. Appdata is a hidden folder by default. I need to find a way to change the log storage location. The log will have a bunch of Unity events, also a bunch of things I still had in there for debugging. I usually just search it for "exception" or "null" when looking for issues.

EDIT: The turn button will also be disabled if you are currently being prompted to select a target (after changing order to attack).

[Misfire]

(the combat engine takes a few seconds to load after you hit Engage, but that's to be expected)

Yea, it is kind of a weird one that I haven't spent time tracking down yet. It actually is running already during that time. The camera starts close to the player ships and pans out to the overhead view. Most of the time the camera pan is already completed by the time the window actually shows.

[Iceman]

Just remembered one other thing. In a battle with a couple of colony ships and a destroyer, the colony ships were in front of the destroyer (which was in the back).
Something to improve later.

[Iceman]

I'm uploading the build right now. Then it's just a matter of Danijel setting things up, and it should be available soon. We'll post the link here when it's ready.

[Iceman]

BTW, savegames of the non-CE branch will not load in this build.

Cloak is not yet functional.

I just had the game hang when starting a battle with a cloaked Suliban ship. I don't know if it was related to cloak or being a minor civ.
I have a savegame if you want.

edit:
just had the same thing happen with a romulan cloaked scout, so it's definitely cloak.
It started the CE but took a long time, and didn't load (is still loading?) ships.

[Misfire]

Can you find that log file I mentioned above in the app data folder?

[Misfire]

Savegame would probably be fine too otherwise.

[Iceman]

Minor ships have no ship models, they are drawn with a default model (don't remember which, I just grabbed one).

It's the romulan colony ship. You could use the pirate_ship model instead, as it is a generic one - and not yet being used.

The only time the turn button shouldn't be active is if a turn is in progress.

It might have been waiting for me to select an enemy ship or something.


Smallish, pedantic detail.
The Hull bar in the Orders panel is a bit longer than the other bars.

[Misfire]

Yes, those bars have a few issues. They also don't start going down until around 90%

You could use the pirate_ship model instead, as it is a generic one - and not yet being used.

Will do.

[Iceman]

Misfire is fixing some of this stuff, so we will have a "new" build soon. Sorry for the delay, guys.
We *will* upload the build. A better one.