Firepower vs. Hull-Strength

Summary:

A linear relationship

Firepower vs. Hull-Strength

Phenoca 1250006473|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

A ship has 100% firepower when it is undamaged.

A ship has 0% firepower when it is destroyed.

What if percent firepower equalled percent hull-strength?

Some car-racing games use this to necessitate Pit-Stops, but in Fragmented Galaxy, I feel that a linear firepower vs. hull-strength relationship would make the combat-AI much simpler :)

Assumption: Targetting is done with the assumption that damage-per-second equals the power at a certain distance. Short-range weapons have highest power at distance zero, and the power quickly falls-off to an asymptote at power=0. Long-range ships still have high power at further distances, and some weapons deal the most damage (i.e. their power peaks) at long distance. This means that we assume that projectiles do not 'travel'. Dodging ammunition is a statistical modifier, and can be shown in the client-side GUI. But for damage-calculations, the assumption is that ammunition takes no time to 'travel' towards enemy ships. Any exceptions (e.g. missiles and mines) will have to be treated as friendly ships with zero range. The ship-design app should include the power vs. distance graph for each weaponry component.

A DPS ship with the AI set to "hit highest firepower enemies" (should this be considered a tactic?) would hit the enemy with the highest power at a player-determined distance (see Targeting Modifier). However, a more advanced tactic would be to hit the enemy ship that will lose the most firepower while taking damage. To do this, we assume that enemy firepower is directly proportional to (current ship hull / total ship hull). Then we look at all available targets. The targetting-AI would compare:
- friendly weapon-power at current distance between ships (how much damage can be dealt)
- hull-strength of enemy
- firepower of enemy (weighted to a player-specified range, e.g. range 0)
- class of enemy ships (weighted by players to give priority to certain targets)
- priorities of enemy ships (need advanced technology to determine this)
The above determines which ship is fired-upon. However, the movement-orders for your ship also take into-account pathfinding - how easy it is to intercept the enemy - and do not look at your power at the current distance.

Problem: Without any anti-shields weaponry, the DPS category can be countered with a low-hull-strength + high-firepower ship that also has strong shields. This ship would optimally be used in the "tanking" category, and could be beaten with crowd-control (to disrupt formation, or hit clustered ships), or some anti-shields weaponry.

Re: Firepower vs. Hull-Strength

Craig Macomber 1250014046|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

A ship has 100% firepower when it is undamaged.

A ship has 0% firepower when it is destroyed.

What if percent firepower equalled percent hull-strength?

Ah, this topic. I helped someone do equations for a different space based combat stratagy game (iPhone turn based strategy to be specific). We though it through a lot and basically came to your idea there, with a slight change. If firepower does down to truly 0, a close fight goes on for ever. Firepower should decay to slightly more than 0 (ex, Firepower=portion of hull-strength*.9 + 0.1). Thats a basic approach. We were planning to allow module damage, and thus weapons could be damaged, but if that is not done, or until it is done, a simple equation like this will suffice.

Assumption: Targetting is done with the assumption that damage-per-second equals the power at a certain distance. Short-range weapons have highest power at distance zero, and the power quickly falls-off to an asymptote at power=0. Long-range ships still have high power at further distances, and some weapons deal the most damage (i.e. their power peaks) at long distance. This means that we assume that projectiles do not 'travel'. Dodging ammunition is a statistical modifier, and can be shown in the client-side GUI. But for damage-calculations, the assumption is that ammunition takes no time to 'travel' towards enemy ships. Any exceptions (e.g. missiles and mines) will have to be treated as friendly ships with zero range. The ship-design app should include the power vs. distance graph for each weaponry component.

I don't see any issues with that. Seems pretty well put too. Why don't you paste that on one of the design doc pages somewhere?
Well, one note: Missiles with guns on them are friendly ships, but with non-zero range :) (usually you will put a defensive module on a missile, but, guns can shoot anti missile missiles right?).

I'll respond to the second half of your post separately.

Re: Firepower vs. Hull-Strength

Craig Macomber 1250019138|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Think the second half of your post shares a lot with your post on tactics. It is simply an issue of evaluating a priority for attacking each ship, and letting the formation and ship AIs work together to be the most effective. I say simply because that is basically all the AI system is designed to do, and is how it handles every decision. Getting it right could take some work, but once the AI system works, I see targeting as one of the easier issues as you can easily come up with equations to rate the benefits of attacking each target using the factors you presented. Movement is the hard problem, and thus that is where the strategy and player priority adjustments go. Thus, we aren't supposed to be able to find an optimum solution. That's the player's job!