Blogs - Theta.Sigma

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Oh, Empire at War - I love it so... But it is like that one friend that, though you love her (I'm thinking one of my actual friends here), you know full well that she is, well, really really dumb. I write... verbosely, but I'll eventually get to the point - my new post-exams project, 'Rhodes', and some spoilers about what I've already been tinkering with and what I intend for it.

Star Wars: Empire at War and her expansion never pretended to be some sort of 'Star Wars: Total War', and it is certainly enjoyable as it sits comfortably in its casual gaming format, but it is most definitely that dumb friend in the pack - the strategy game that brings us so close to a beautiful fusion of galactic-level strategy and battle-level tactics (and, of course, in that most popular of fictional galaxies - that of Star Wars), and yet is so predictable, simplistic and badly made on so many levels. The horrific Rock-Paper-Scissors and 'me got bigger fleet than you' combat left much to be desired with both reference to Star Wars canon and battlefield simulation.

The flaws are too numerous to list in an article but include: AI with an IQ similar to that of the average lichen and a grasp of tactics so poor it makes the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Battle of Balaklava look like a stroke of genius; massive turbolasers that barely scratch a fighter whilst tiny blasters down them; tiny battlefields and weapons so comparable in range that all battles are a mush; the slowest missiles known to man, Bothan and Wookiee - the problems that one finds go on, and (believe it or not) this blog is not a bitch about the many flaws in what is nevertheless a good game.

So what is the point of this? Well, how can we get to improving some of these aspects instead of sitting around whining? There are dozens of admirable mods around, all doing their own thing, but what I'm concerned with is making the game more dynamic; closer to some imaginary reality with its own intricacies, instead of a simplified point-and-click-and-sit-back game. This applies to the galactic map and tactical maps equally, but today I'm talking about space tactical combat. Because I want to. And I can. And so Rhodes was born.

First then, what is lacking with regards to space tactical combat? Well, it feels a bit like just watching something play itself (and badly, moreover) - if you know you have a bigger or overall superior fleet, you know that victory is pretty much guaranteed. Other than controlling reinforcements, micro-management might as well not exist; you can choose how best to deploy your bombers or focus firepower, but in the end the outcome will depend little upon this.

There is so much to do to transform naval warfare in the game - but first let's put this all into perspective. Many mods want to enhance the original game and content to new and enhanced levels of gameplay; there's no point going down that route with my one-man project.

No, Rhodes is something of a concept-car of a 'mod' - my main goal isn't to produce a game for people to play, nor to enhance the existing game, but to take the engine and make a new fictional universe in it - one based on observations of human history and some basic science, but importantly designed so that the content will allow a greater simulation of war from top to bottom; galactic to tactical. I don't claim to be a great author of stories, nor an artificer of a new style of starship design, but the key things Rhodes is intended to be based upon are that it is both something that need not be constrained to any particular fictional universe's quirks, continuity errors and retcons and fictional science, and from that allow me to utilise the game engine to best effect. I want to make something that is believable - whilst Star Wars may be popular because of the entrancing struggle between good and evil, the attraction of things such as Stargate and Homeworld is how they are believable; how they can immerse the viewer/player into a reality which they could see happening, without having to have far-fetched explanations for how things work. I mean, come on... Why did the Rebels attack Endor from the side the Death Star superlaser was facing? Jeez... Even if it was inoperational, you'd think they'd take the tactically sounder option of eliminating all risk of Emperor Palpatine FIRIN' HIZ LAZOR.

At risk of sounding hipster, there are no obvious 'good guys' or 'bad guys' in Rhodes' universe; no evil Galactic Empire under the control of a vicious Sith Lord or valiant Rebellion fighting together in unity to free everyone from tyrannical oppression. Have you ever seen that in reality? Even the Second World War wasn't that clear cut. Hitler was a rotter, no doubt, but Stalin (on the side of the Allies) murdered even more civilians than Hitler, and the British Empire (as much as I love it) , standing strong against the Blitz and the might of the Nazi war machine was, after all, an Empire built by conquest and cunning diplomacy! No, instead you get to be allowed to make of your faction what you will. Naturally, there will be some differences between their government styles, military organisation, technology et cetera, but nothing so ridiculously contrived like one faction that relies solely on fighters whilst the other fields huge amounts of battleships (*cough cough Empire vs Rebels*). As far as I'm concerned - and hopefully I'll be able to implement this well in-game - if you want to take the Lorenzian Triumvirate out of peaceful mercantile democracy and turn her into a slave-trading galactic superpower that's your call. Obi-Wan isn't here to criticise your decision to turn on democracy, and Vader's penchant for crushing of rebels is far away in another universe if you wish to negotiate with the rebel uprising of some of your border colonies. Deal with it and do what you want.

Good God I must digress - this blog entry is meant to be about the Naval Warfare aspect of all of this! So what am I planning? Well I couldn't just list everything if I wanted to; but I have a few examples which I've already done some work on to flash around. From looking at actual naval and aerial combat, we can learn some things, and port them roughly and liberally into the uninhibited 3-dimensional battlezone of space; and then on top of that we can add the 'flavour' of the fictional universe, as it were. So, what can be done with the basics of the way combat functions, before we start to go into horrific goal equations and behaviour scripting? Here are a few things:

• Dynamic battlespaces - This involves both larger, freer maps and, crucially, a whole different space unit setup - not just with longer range but with a much greater span of ranges for weapons, and a truly dynamic combat zone, where instead of everything being mushed up and dying one-by-one until one faction has nothing left, the deployment of assets actually affects the outcome and their performance in battle. Any commander who lets enemy bombers reach his carrier is either a fool or has been fairly outfought; we'll get onto why later. Battleships and fighters shouldn't bundle up together into a mindless fray; else you'd simply make one class of ship to do everything.
• Realistic Naval niches - This is heavily reliant on the previous point, since long range anti-capital missiles are not usually best employed in close combat, and so a commander must be able to control the deployment of his fleet. A simple way of considering this with regards to the vanilla situation: your battleships, destroyers and cruisers have numerous heavy, long-range guns for pounding enemy capital ships to pulp from a distance, whilst your bombers have short-range, armour-piercing munitions that can 'sink' a vessel very quickly if they manage to score a hit. So why the hell would you send your beautiful, expensive, crew-intensive, heavy-hitting battleship into close combat with an enemy fleet where both their capital ships and bombers can hit her effortlessly? Screen her with escorts and fighters whilst she happily fires her main cannons at the enemy; let her blast the enemy's escorts out of the sky, allowing your bombers to sweep through their perimeter in the moment of weakness and ram a torpedo or two into the hull of the enemy command ship at such close range their CIWS can't react in time! Expect to see more role-specialised weaponry deployed on appropriate vessels - from cluster missiles for dealing with starfighters and gunboats, to heavy calibre kinetic cannons for blasting slugs through enemy armour.
• Actual Naval principles - This doesn't mean turning the game into some horrifically complex realistic simulation, but taking the idea and importing it into the gameplay. Whether this is eliminating the enemy's radar/sensors so they're firing blind, re-balancing missiles and torpedoes so that it will take just a few anti-capital missiles to breach the hull and down the vessel if they reach their target or fitting CIWS (Close In Weapons Systems - 'point defences' to most game-fans) to your capital ships as a last ditch defence, it's important. My 'Super Hyper Juggernaut Frigate Smasher' Battleship may not be designed to engage starfighter attacks, but no naval designer would think to leave her defenceless against them! I've taken some XML concept work on projectiles and superimposed them onto the vanilla game - in this example nothing has been changed from vanilla except I've re-coded concussion missiles to be destructible entities that can be shot down like any ship in the game, and re-equipped the Crusader gunship with a set of CIWS point defence turrets, whose job it is to *attempt* to shoot these missiles down before they reach their target - with normal projectiles; no special abilities involved. I have to say - seeing that spray of bullets trying to knock the missile from the sky (and seeing a few missiles knocked out) is rather satisfying - video coming soon of autocannons spraying to down missiles.

A few pictures; firstly a few of the aforementioned crusaders being used as test-beds for CIWS; I'll put a video up soon to properly illustrate, but essentially what is nice to see (which is hard in a still, I know) is the arcing fire tracking missiles; unfortunately barely viewable here since I superimposed this onto vanilla graphics. This screen of autocannon bullets is somewhat primitive, but a heavily relied-upon method of defence in Rhodes; in varying forms providing the first barrier as a screen on the border of your lines, and as the CIWS last-ditch against incoming torpedoes. Expect decoys and anti-missile missiles, too:

Secondly, just a random bit of eye-candy; an incomplete model awaiting texturing and fine detail; more notable for her design: yes, bombers don't need wings to fly in space, but then, this vessel is expected to be able to launch from and operate in-atmosphere as well. Not to mention the advantages to such a design; ample external space for munition mounting (wing pylons) and relatively small profile.

I hope this made for some interesting, if less than exciting reading. I won't be starting any development real for a little while - I have two weeks of exams (13 exams; 31 hours) coming up... 'Be a Medical Student - live the dream, and dream of your life...'

An Introduction

In many games, what content is available to the player at a given time is determined by a 'tech[nology] level'; these levels being arbitary numbers (especially ranging from 1 to 5, 1 to 3 or 1 to a similar convenient integer) which, upon achieving a given level, 'unlocks' a set of units, buildings, weapons or other type of content that has been standardised to be at this level. Since I write primarily in relation to Lucasarts'/Petrogyph's Star Wars: Empire at War, and its expansion, Star Wars: Empire at War Forces of Corruption, I shall illustrate this with an example from these.

This is the space tech tree, as displayed in-game, for the Galactic Empire in Forces of Corruption. As we can see, at each discrete tech level, a set of new units are unlocked for the player. This is performed by a highly simplified mechanism, in which a player purchases a research option for 'advancing to the next tech level', which upon completion releases everything in that 'tech level'.

This is a mechanism that has always frustrated me, and I shall proceed to explain why in the following sections.

My dislike of the system at a glance

'Tech Levels' are a purely artificial system of managing technology and design. Admittedly, every tech system in a game is artificial, but to have pre-defined 'levels' within a game is an artificial system within an artificial system. Technology doesn't actually advance in blocks that come together and immediately supersede and render the predecessors obsolete, it occurs in reality and in sci-fi universes as a result of evolutionary advancements in design, not only yielding new designs, but also modifying existing ones and creating variation.

This artificial system is one of my pet hates for another reason - it is based on simplification. Game developers often make the false assumption that they need to simplify strategic reality and thus game complexity, believing this is necessary for marketing them to the 'casual gamer'. Of course, one cannot expect a game that is so complex that it is like trying to actually manage an empire or cause single-handedly, but this simplification for its own sake is vile, and often massively over-pursued. In the case of Empire at War, the developers opted for a system for the Galactic Empire to simply click a button for each tech level, unlocking everything above, with both a disrespect for trying to add any aspect of research gameplay into the game, as well as for the content of the tech 'levels' - though the inaccuracies in their content was itself a problem beyond the teching problem.

I am of the opinion that the research system in Empire at War is both far too artificial and far too simplified, and of course amending this problem could and will, in many modifications, not only make research far more plausible, but indeed to introduce research as a major part of the game, producing a deeper strategic simulation and a more challenging Galactic Conquest mode.

On the failures of an artificial system of 'levels'

The notion that technology advances in blocks or levels is entirely implausible. Tech 'levels' are constructs that group technology together for purposes other than representing technological prowess: in any experience of a proper strategy game or from reality, we must understand that technology very rarely progresses in sudden massive leaps that are discrete and produce a line of products; and even on the rare occasion that this occurs, a singular advance in technology does not yield immediate and multiple applications of it.

Technological advance as a rule-of-thumb occurs evolutionarily. Whether this is looking at the Star Destroyer line of ships and how different models are adapted to different roles and tactical considerations at the time of their conception, or smaller things like changes to efficacy of individual engine units or the rate of cooling of a turbolaser barrel (thereby affecting the time between shots) and how this compromises with the power output of a volley.

This is entirely unrepresented in the game. Admittedly, the Alliance to Restore the Republic has a very slightly better method of technological advance that involves 'stealing' technology from the Empire (even if said technology was never possessed by the Empire or indeed developed by Rebel engineers), but there is no concept of evolutionary technology, only sorted into the arbitary tech 'levels'. The only true use for tech levels can be as a relative scale - one's technology ought not depend on a numerical 'stage' which one strives to get to, but rather the tech 'level' at most should be a representation of your relative advances - level dependent on tech, as opposed to tech dependent on level. The artificial grouping of technology undermines the differing value of individual technology, as well as entirely removing any research strategy for the player and preventing a technology aspect of the game developing.

In order to properly simulate technological advance and to enable the creation of a research aspect of the game, one must eliminate the beholden nature of actual technology to these external 'levels', and enable research, including what technology should be invested in and developed, in what order, to be controlled by the player. Not only would this bring research and funding into every player's considerations, it also would bring in new gameplay-style options - players would need to learn how to budget per department effectively, and make decisions on how they want their military to look to best fight, in their opinion, the enemy; whether this choice means a player opts to fund highly powerful laser-based weaponry development to increase the volley power of their vessels (or any small-scale areas such as shielding, armour, PDS, engines, et cetera) or look into entire vessel designs and lines branching from this is a matter for the player's discretion, and in no way bound by 'levels'. Indeed, this links heavily into the anti-simplification principles that I shall elaborate on next.

On the patronising and game-spoiling principle of simplification

Much of the reasoning behind the artificial 'levels' of technology imposed upon the game as criticised above are due to the principle of simplification. Why did they choose to impose such a binding and unrealistic system on the game? To make it simpler and straightforward for players to use. This is a patronising principle, and indeed some of the best games around are those that refuse to be simple and present things on a plate to their players. The Total War series, Galactic Civilisations and web-based games such as the forever excellent and mind-boggling Warring Factions are all testament to players appreciating both the challenge of an in-depth strategy game, the latter two examples showing excellent examples of the application of research systems that work on both a top-down level of budgeting as well as controlling what you are doing.

To properly implement a decent technological aspect to EaW can be quite hard - the game engine itself doesn't have in-built support for such things beyond the capacity to recognise tech 'levels' and the Rebel method of stealing technology with designated units. However, through combinations of event coding and lua, implementing research options on the build-bar is quite possible with a little work, and implementing a special tool-bar dedicated to research is also possible if one edits the GUI model.

Different modders who agree with my criticisms of the vanilla system and the notion of tech-levels here may go about improving it differently, both to fit their mods, personal preference and how they perceive technology advancement should occur. I can speak for myself, as a Co-Leader for Ultimate Empire at War and the Head Coder there - not only do we plan to have a fully implemented tech-tree approach, encompassing both unlocking new designs as well as improving attributes (we are limiting the depth of it a little to appeal to players across the strategic spectrum), but also recognising other realistic means of advancement. Certainly, the vanilla method for the Rebels of 'stealing' technology isn't a bad idea per se; it's vastly over-used but can play a role, but also methods such as purchasing technology from private contractors, reverse engineering ruins or other pieces of foreign technology and potentially even accidental discovery of unexpected technology whilst focusing on another piece are perfectly do-able and add all sorts of possibilities to the game, including locational and explorational predicates. Not only does the variety in focus, expenditure and timing make the player better in control of his faction, it also allows for more exciting gameplay - the player who spent most of his research effort on advanced shielding systems may overwhelm and surprise his enemy as they find to their surprise that their weapons are near-ineffective, but equally when the player realises his imbalanced research has both lead him to neglect the fact his enemy has researched a brand new range of shield-piercing munitions, and his own weapons are balefully mediocre.

A note on the implementation of proper research systems

Whilst such an ideal system as I elaborate (probably beyond what is necessary in my enthusiasm) is certainly possible and would help, along with enhanced economic mechanisms and military acquisition and combat mechanisms, to make EaW a far deeper, more challenging and strategic game, there are a handful of problems any modder needs to be aware of.

Firstly, whilst complexity is good, the recipient of the mod needs to be capable of understanding the basics of how to operate the system and how the system itself operates with relatively little searching around in game; aesthetic design can help make controls intuitive, and UEaW will have a player manual released with the game, since so much is newly made, so that is also a possibility. A research system, indeed any system may be complex and in-depth without being boggling to the player, indeed this is essential.

Secondly, how the AI deals with such a system can be extremely complicated. It's best for the serious modder who goes into a detailed research system to deal with modifying and synthesising new AI to go with it, and balancing the value of research item place-holders can be very important. Beware - putting in a research system whilst employing the existing AI will result in a very static and unimpressive enemy who may not even advance at all!

This concludes my first ever blog entry on Moddb - I hope someone reads this and finds it in some way enlightening!

LTCC