I have had several gamers ask me how the combat in FATES: Carpe Moerae works. Presently, it doesn't. The combat is not slated to be in the game until the Alpha 2 which is a long ways out still.
As far as attack and defense mechanics, the current plan -- which is subject to change -- is to implement a rock-paper-scissors damage model using four offensive types: beam, photonic (laser), missile, and kinetic and four defensive types: armor, shields, counter-weaponry, and velocity. The are three other additional mechanic statistics that will play into combat being: structure, CETU attack, and CETU defense. CETU attack and defense are special damage and defense types that trump all others. It is these damage types that give our "all-powerful" AI civilization in the center of the galaxy it's potency. More on CETU later though.
The combat mechanics will probably boil down to a summation of all allied attack types and allied defense types received by the server during a given second to determine the winner and loser of each second's battle with a black swan-style outcome randomization process. This means that all of the allied attacking ships that arrive in a specific thousand millisecond time period will be lumped together into one "attack" and will be pitted against all summed allied defensive stats. It is more-or-less an instantaneous determination based on overarching attack and defense stats.
The "black swan-style" event generator will occasionally (presently roughly one in one hundred thousand) create a loss multiplier on the units lost on each side creating extremely rare and highly unpredictable results, such as a very tiny fleet defeating a vast armada. Under most normal circumstances (the other 99,999 times) the battle will go more or less as expected, e.g. the armada crushing the tiny fleet. The statistical models dictating these events scale the intensity of the change with the probability, so a low intensity event will have a much higher probability than a high intensity event. The highest intensity event that we are presently considering is around a 10,000x loss multiplier. This will prevent people from creating reliable combat mechanic predictors and also make for some extremely epic tales of unbelievable victories (or losses).
There are a number of other mechanics that are presently planned that will significantly influence combat.
First are the fleet admirals. The fleet admirals will be automatically created when a new fleet is created with a set of randomly generated statistics taken from the statistic pool for admirals. The admirals will be transferable between various fleets if you want to boost a particular fleet's combat performance. The admirals will level up based on their actions in game. In other words, if your admiral is in charge of a large fleet of frigates, then his combat performance with frigates will improve, thereby increasing the overarching performance of any frigates in the fleet. The fleet admirals will likely peak at around +20% bonus to combat statistics for ships, so that a very experienced fleet admiral has the possibility of making the difference between victory and defeat. However, the fleet admirals will be able to be killed or captured. If captured, depending on their loyalty, they will either resist -- making them unusable to your enemy, break -- making them yield information about your empire to your enemy, or turn -- making them join your opponent's military forces. So there is a risk and reward consideration when sending experienced admirals into battle. The admirals have one final way of being removed, which is through assassination. Your spies can assassinate enemy admirals and vice versa. When a fleet admiral is assassinated, a new admiral will be automatically created to replace him with the basic statistics.
The second set of mechanics that will influence combat is the technologies. Ships with more advanced technologies will be more destructive and durable then lower technology ships. So a smaller fleet of higher technology ships will be capable of defeating a much larger fleet of weaker ships. The technologies on the ships will be fully customizable based on a space and energy limited system. Each ship will be capable of housing any number of any type of weaponry or defenses, making player designed ships very important in FATES: Carpe Moerae, especially when used in conjunction with fleet formations.
The third piece of the combat puzzle is the fleet formations. Fleet formations will dictate combat bonuses for the fleet as well as the loss structure. The idea behind fleet formations is that you give attack bonuses to the ship types designated as the rear guard and defense detriments to the ship types designated as the vanguard. Some of the attack fleet formations under consideration are: Fighter Screen, Frigate Line, and Capital Phalanx. So, if you are running a Fighter Screen in a fleet with both strike craft, capital and super-capital ships, your fighter craft will be dealing less damage and taking more, while your capital and super-capital will be dealing more damage and taking less. We have no solid numbers for these bonuses at the moment, but it will fall somewhere in the +/- 5-30% range. The fleet formations will be a combat specific event, such that every time you order your fleet to attack, you can order a different formation. We also plan on making a rock-paper-scissors type bonus/detriment multipliers between formations, such that the formation chosen for the attack or defense will influence the outcome significantly. This will do two things. First, it will allow more variability in the combat outcomes based on the formation that each player sends their fleets into battle in, and it will allow fleet and military intelligence to play a hugely significant role. For example, if your spies discover what formation an incoming attack fleet is in prior to the attack, you can have your ships waiting in the appropriate defensive fleet formation to counter their attack formation.
All in all, the combat will ideally be mostly fair -- excepting black-swan events -- given that your fleet's admiral, technology, and formation are appropriately arrayed and equipped.
There has been some talk about us trying to do a turn-based, two-dimensional, ship-based, combat system, similar to what the classic game Master of Orion II did, but the issue that I have not fully figured out how to work around is the time element. Being a Massive Multiplayer Online game, each player involved in combat may or may not be logged into the game when the attack occurs. We could delay the attack until both attackers are present, but this yields additional strategic issues related to holding battle outcomes and potential abuse of such a system. So, long story short, we will be pressing into alpha and probably beta using the instantaneously calculated battle outcomes until I can find a balanced and fair workaround for a more interactive combat scenario.
One final note. There will be planetary combat, both orbital and ground-based, but these two concepts will take more space than I want to spend this week. So, next week.
This gives you an idea of what we presently have planned for combat in FATES: Carpe Moerae, but these are very rough ideas and subject to change as we move into development of combat models.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
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