[aipz]

I don't mean to cut them down to just one Battlecrab with escorts
Simply they should have less ships for balance, that's all...

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Azrael15
Plus, what happens if you have the Vorlons taking on the Shadows? They wouldn't fight each other will small fleets...

In my current design one side has fewer ships in a battle if it has far more ships than the other side. The Vorlons and Shadows both being FO races will both have fewer ships. Being evenly matched neither would have it's battle group sizes reduced at the start.

I'm sticking with my theory that the FO races should have less ships though. I'm basing that on Lorien said about there being few first ones. It also helps balance a little bit. I say a little bit because I don't think it matters how many Brakiri Aviokis you throw at a Vorlon Cruiser, they're going to get minced.

[aipz]

I'm sticking with my theory that the FO races should have less ships though. I'm basing that on Lorien said about there being few first ones. It also helps balance a little bit. I say a little bit because I don't think it matters how many Brakiri Aviokis you throw at a Vorlon Cruiser, they're going to get minced.

You got a point here IP!
Avioki's will get minced no matter what...

[IPAndrews]

Anyone got any good ideas for some nice mathematical equations to calculate the number of ships, servicemen, and civilians lost by a race after a day of combat? Your inputs are a race has X, Y, Z ships, servicemen, and civilians at the start of the day.

[aipz]

it should be varied...
I mean each day a little number of civilians can die (destroyed freighters, accidents etc.), but during a destruction of a space station or a planetary assault the losses could reach thousands of lives...

The losses of serviceman also should vary depending the size of battles fought...

EDIT found something

Calculation model
there is a link on the fourth page with an xls file...

[aipz]

Is it ok, although it's more suitable for ground troops?

[IPAndrews]

Spot the typo, win a "Champion nitpicker!" badge

[SPOO]

ATJ-J = ALT-J  ?

[aipz]

Did the Leiceshire model help a bit?

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by aipz
Is it ok

I'm sure it's very good. A bit complicated for me to hack into FRED though unfortunately. In the end I settled upon a simple loss model as follows.

Ships are killed based on the number of ships in the opposing force * strength of ships in the attacking force / strength of ships in the defending force.

Pilots are lost based on the number of ships lost * some value (500 at the moment).

Civilians are lost based on how far into your territory the enemy has progressed. Some civilians are always lost each turn.

The momentum of the campaign changes based on how many ship kills you make compared to the enemy.

Territory changes based on campaign momentum.

I'll allow the player to influence the campaign by causing losses to his side or the enemy based on the outcome of his missions. How much influence I have yet to decide? Should a player who keeps winning missions be allowed to make the Raiders win against the Vorlons?

[aipz]

I he's winning missions why not...
After all this is Babylonian History X....
Of course this shouldn't happen too quickly

EDIT: the influence scale should be based on the mission type, like
small skirmish little/ almost no influence
large battle   much influence

[-Norbert-]

Is the number of pilots per ship fixed, or can you do different numbers depending of the race.
Both the Vorlons and Shadows have only one person in a ship, where the younger races have a lot of people in the big ships.

And from what I heard the Vorlons most likely don't have any pilots in their fighters.

[IPAndrews]

That's a good point. I'll have to make it race dependent. The pilot stats are just for show anyway. They don't influence the campaign any.

[Fabbro]

Originally posted by IPAndrews

Should a player who keeps winning missions be allowed to make the Raiders win against the Vorlons?

I think they should be able but it should also be damn near impossible. Are you calculating ship numbers/regeneration on how much terretory that race has? because then the raiders for instance would start off with very little but could build up a huge army.

[Cavane]

Originally posted by Fabbro


I think they should be able but it should also be damn near impossible. Are you calculating ship numbers/regeneration on how much terretory that race has? because then the raiders for instance would start off with very little but could build up a huge army.

I disagree.  In TBP you take on the role of a single pilot, and a single pilot, no matter how skilled would not be able to shift the tide of a war THAT much.  Not to mention the fact that it's asanine to think that this pilot would be flying at every battle in the war so as to carry the entire war effort on his back.  I think it would be neat if it were like the current Earth-Minbari War campaign.  You feel swept along, only able to do the best you can.

[Col. Fishguts]

IMO, it should be technically possible, it's a dynamic campaign after all.

But the chances of winning will be zilch anyway ....have you ever attacked a Vorlon transport in a fighter ? (let alone in a crappy Zephyr)

[Fabbro]

But if you first took out the leageu of non aligned worlds (which would be possible if extreamly hard) and then work your way up from there gaining more terroroy and therfore more people and ships you should eventually be able to beat the vorlons. Of course if you went straight for the vorlons then the whole earth menbari war thing would probably be true. Also I think a neat feature would be if you conqored a certain race you could use their fighter (and asign them to your wingmen) The amount of their fighters available and the speed in which they are rebuilt should be calculated on the size of the said race's terrotory before being conqored.

O and I hope that once a war gets started we will see some massive battles with like 20 or so cap ships on each side because that would be cool although I dont think it would be a good idea for most battles to be like this because it limits the players ability to affect the conflict greatly but it would be cool once in a while to see a huge fleet of narns go up against centauri.

[aipz]

The pilot we're playing should affect the course of the war a bit... for example if you survive 10 missions and complete them all the war effort can slightly cahnge  for your race's advantage... If you fail and get blown up it doesn't really matter, does it?!

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Fabbro
But if you first took out the leageu of non aligned worlds (which would be possible if extreamly hard) and then work your way up from there gaining more terroroy and therfore more people and ships you should eventually be able to beat the vorlons.

You won't be able to do anything like that. You get to pick one race, and fight one other race. That's it. End of. It's hard enough making FS do that simple thing without complicating it with multiple races and territories. I should also point out that territory is represented by a simple slider bar. Like in the screen above. If it moves to the left you're losing territory. All the way to the left and your homeworld is above to get invaded. Same for the enemy if it moves right.

Originally posted by Fabbro
I think a neat feature would be if you conqored a certain race you could use their fighter

I can think of lots of nice features but in a programming language where you don't have arrays or for loops or pointers, and worst of all the amount of instructions you're allowed to use is relatively small, that limits what can be achieved.

O and I hope that once a war gets started we will see some massive battles with like 20 or so cap ships on each side[/B]

I would like to see that too. That's what TBP is supposed to be all about. I'll push the engine as far as it'll let me in those respects for the "Mother of all Battles" mission.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by aipz
If you fail and get blown up it doesn't really matter, does it?!

Actually you can't get blown up and continue the campaign. Since when you die you only get the option to restart the mission. Game engine limitation. You can of course, run away