EAW Game Design: Rewards, Enlarged Interactvity, Balanceing

[Cain]

I personally have a dream of challenging one day the EAW's game designers to a debate .

 

I think it will be a great fight of opinions if I also can have the PFF members in my team. I think EAW's designers have the experience of makeing RTS games but they lack some of the gamer's perspective. They also lack the moders perspective so I think we will be able to make a good show but not win becouse they invested more time in EAW than me. How cool a "Gamers vs. Game Designers Debate" will be ?! And how much media attention will we get for EAW ?! Alot ! but that's just me ...

 

Anyway here is some of my feedback ideas in the last hour from an EAW's costumer perspective:

 

Player Rewards

 

- In a space battle.

 

1. We know that we have ship subsystems. When you destroy an enemy ships some of his subsystems should remain floating around for you to ghater and reuse or sell. (*This can be foun in Nexus and was always a great satisfaction to scavange after stuff - KOTOR 1-2 had this stuff also and I've seen all the players very passionate in searching dead bodyes.

 

2. The ability to capture ships. HW 1-2 had it. In HW 1 it was unlimited and I arrived to finish the game commanding an "enemy" fleet - loll. In HW2 it was limited to a certain number of ships. EAW could also impose a limit of use for enemy ships becouse the player will not have spare parts for them. Ex: you capture in 3 battles 3 ISDs and you can only use one and scrap the two more damaged.

 

Also your captured ISD's subsystems once damaged will not be easly repaired and you will have to use rebel weapons on that slots basically rebalanceing the game.

 

If you want to keep your capture d ships running you will have to keep a steady supply of captured ships and materials.

 

So in the end the capture of ships will be more like a "ego satisfaction" then a real war strategy.

 

3. Traders and Supply Convois. Ok... who has never dremed of going behind enemy lines and disturbing his supplys and radeing his traders ?! I don't know the full EAW design so I can only say that attacking Supply convois and traders should affect more stuff than only money revenue. Ex: The enemy ships from the reciveing end will repair slower if you took out their supply convoy. buildings on a planet will be constructed slower ...etc. And you get subsystems or tehnologies or a repair bopnus to useit somewere sometime in the future ...etc.

 

 

Some Enlarged Interactvity

 

 

1. I really hope that the Rancor and some other beasts are the only interactivity elements on the land. I also want to see parts of the explodeing heavy units fly around and impacting with soldiers for ex.

 

I also want to see area bombs that will do a great falsh and a big boom afecting many ships in one area and makeing the oponent to think more about massing forces in one small place for increased firepower. (*play Nexus).

 

I want to see an explodeing ship do some damage to the ships to close by.

 

What we know about EAW's interactivity elements in space is that we will have asteriods areas to cut true and... and ... nothing else I think that we know about.

 

Real Human Movement Captures Also I think a "blue studio" will be required to do better soldier and character animations. And animatioons can be added at any moment in development. Someone should look at Code Name : Panzers animations. Its a RTS with similar scale like EAW but the animations look better than in an FPS. Why ?! Becouse they used blue studio technology and they captured quality motions for some movie scenes or soldiers action.

 

Balanceing I bet nobody of yopu has played Close Combat 3. There you could destroy a tank with one shot or fire 10 mshots for the same result. Why ?! it all depended on the fire range , hight location, , gun crew experience, cover of the attacking unit, weapon's caliber and the thank positioning and experience. WOW and it was super !

 

1. This system can also be added to EAW and reduce the general feeling of exagerated balance. SW players and even new commers don't expect to play a game that has been exageratly balanced. Of course that in the other case they will also scream that one faction is to strong .... but the unbalanced units can be "fixed" by a combat options balance system on the map and bu general tactical war balance. So everyone will be satisfyed.

 

.... Now I let the others to join in the disscution I've only opened the subject.

[Darkmark]

Player Rewards

 

1) It adds realism to the game, and would be a very useful ability for the rebels. I wouldn't have thought imperials would need it so much, but you are right about the passion it can evoke in a gamer to avoid as many casualties as they can. When combined with ship naming* it becomes all the more rewarding.

 

2) Capturing of vessels. The community seeems to be calling out for it since day one. With so many other games that have managed something in the way of this it it seems to be something they really want. I will point out, the focus of this is on space battles. Capturing of ground units (excluding heroes) doesn't seem so quite a hot matter for debate.

 

It's a competative thing primarily that drives it. The average gamer wants to do it to show their opponent how powerful they are. It can be argued that it's also to do with having a greater variety of units on the one side, but either way, it is something very few would protest about should they see it in the final game.

 

3) I wouldn't complain if I saw this intergrated. It makes sense completely. Even if it was as simple as a speed boost to production depending on how many supply lanes you have. This way by disrupting the trade you disrupt their whole system of construction. This isn't quite the same as you propose Cain, but it does result in a similar outcome and would be easier to intergrate.

 

4*) The one you didn't mention. Ship naming. People want to feel as close to the battle as possible, and this truely helps. It's the same reason games like the Sims are popular, because people really like control. It is capable of enhancing the game so much with so little an element to the game. Consider your points 1 and 2 for example, think how much more you will feel for the ship and crew in that salvage situation, think how much you will be affected should it be captured by the enemy and how much you effort you will put in attempting to take it back.

 

Some Enlarged Interactvity

 

1) I agree with you when you say ships should explode and cause area of effect dmg in the surrounding areas. This is what would happen in real life after all. It's what would have happened in the Star Wars films. Likewise units placed near a very damaged vessel under attack and about to explode should run for cover (unless assigned to a hold ground stance or the like). The more interactivity leading to realism the better, so long as it doesn't negatively affect gameplay.

 

Real Human Movement Captures

 

1) I realise this is the best way of getting realistic movement, but setting up something like this would take a good deal of time and end up costing quite a bit I should imagine. If it gets done great, but if it doesn't I won't hold it against them.

 

Balanceing

 

1) Balancing will always be an issue because there will always be someone who believes it can be balanced another way or balanced better. Without palying the game you speak of Cain, it's difficult to know exactly what you wish to see EAW balance similar to, but so long as one unit is never able to act effectively against ALL the enemy units the enemy should always have a counter tactic they can fall back to.

 

However I see that balance with EAW will probably be a little complicated to understand, because you are able to assign differing systems to the same base model, so it becomes more about balancing weapons/defenses than with the ships themselves.

 

 

 

I think EAW's designers have the experience of makeing RTS games but they lack some of the gamer's perspective

 

Just as we lack the experience of what it takes to make a sucessful RTS. It's a balance, so as long as the designers take into account what the gamers say and want, as well as using their own experience then they get the best of both worlds. It would be cool to have a "Gamers vs. Game Designers Debate" just because of this difference in perspective between the two groups. I don't see it happening, but trust me, it's not just you...

[Swiftdraw]

Those are all nice and everything, but methinks a Gamer and Game designer debate wouldn't go well... Remember that not all gamers think things out, I'm sure we'll get "The *enter unit name here* is so gay, can you make it not gay?", "OMG!!! YOU ROCKS!!!", or the reverse of that "OMG!!! YOU SUXX!!!" Then all the hardcore starwars fanboys will get real nitpicky and point out little "un-realistic" characteristics of some units or get into some debate amongst themselves over how "real" the EU universe is and whether any of those units should be in game. The there are the jedi fanboys... "there isn't enough jedis in game, you should be able to train jedis" and so on and so forth.

 

Lets face it, to someone, somewhere the game is going to be un-balanced. Whether it be the fact that the Empire should be able to crush the rebels with no problem yet can't or that the rebel units can't slug it out with imp units on a equal footing and win. Remember the Mon Cal vs ISD thread, or the "should the rebs have their fighters?" thread on the lucas arts forum? You can't keep people from complaining about these things.

 

I agree with the capturing and naming of ships. There is nothing better than to flaunt the fact you captured your opponents prized bttlewagon than to put a support fleet around it and send it in to destroy one of his bases/fleets. As cain said, this is more ego satisfaction than anything else. Rubbing salt in the wound as the saying goes. As for naming ships... I just want to. Yay.

 

Splash damage and wreckage fields are nice, but tend to slow down older systems. Your computer just has to put up with just that much more crap on screen and compute how much damage goes where. Salvaging wreckage for extra credits would be ok, but I'd prefer a streamlined system where at the end of the battle a screen pops up and says "You got "X" amount of credits from sales of the salvage" and maybe a new technology here and there. Things like that I find a little nitpicky and tend to take away from the core game-play than to add to it.

[Juggernaut1985]

I don't like Cain's attitude on this. He isn't a designer and what we'll get next year will be a very polished and moddable product.

[TSKNF]

Those are all nice and everything, but methinks a Gamer and Game designer debate wouldn't go well... Remember that not all gamers think things out, I'm sure we'll get "The *enter unit name here* is so gay, can you make it not gay?", "OMG!!! YOU ROCKS!!!", or the reverse of that "OMG!!! YOU SUXX!!!" Then all the hardcore starwars fanboys will get real nitpicky and point out little "un-realistic" characteristics of some units or get into some debate amongst themselves over how "real" the EU universe is and whether any of those units should be in game. The there are the jedi fanboys... "there isn't enough jedis in game, you should be able to train jedis" and so on and so forth.

 

Lets face it, to someone, somewhere the game is going to be un-balanced. Whether it be the fact that the Empire should be able to crush the rebels with no problem yet can't or that the rebel units can't slug it out with imp units on a equal footing and win. Remember the Mon Cal vs ISD thread, or the "should the rebs have their fighters?" thread on the lucas arts forum? You can't keep people from complaining about these things.

 

I agree with the capturing and naming of ships. There is nothing better than to flaunt the fact you captured your opponents prized bttlewagon than to put a support fleet around it and send it in to destroy one of his bases/fleets. As cain said, this is more ego satisfaction than anything else. Rubbing salt in the wound as the saying goes. As for naming ships... I just want to. Yay.

 

Splash damage and wreckage fields are nice, but tend to slow down older systems. Your computer just has to put up with just that much more crap on screen and compute how much damage goes where. Salvaging wreckage for extra credits would be ok, but I'd prefer a streamlined system where at the end of the battle a screen pops up and says "You got "X" amount of credits from sales of the salvage" and maybe a new technology here and there. Things like that I find a little nitpicky and tend to take away from the core game-play than to add to it.

I agree. Luckily these forums aren't as nooby as the lucasarts forums but unfortunantly even if we had the discussion here we'd find ourselves up to the necks with idiots.

 

I was coincidently thinking about salvage too. But rather than it automatically going to credits, how about you get a store of salvage and can then sell it or us it to repair units for free or use it to cheapen units? Certain ships would give more salvage, like SD's, and some ships could get a btetter deal on slavage, like assualt frigates.

[Darkmark]

You would obviously have to have the moderators keeping a very close eye on an 'Gamer and Game designer debate' discussion to prevent that kind of immature converstation. The best way would be by limiting the participants to those who have shown themselves capable of sensible and constructive posts, but it would seem very unfair on those not chosen. But like I said, it's so unlikely to happen there isn't much worry over with that.

 

You would want to be careful with salvaging. There isn't too much point turning it into effectively another resource. One of the major points of EAW was to try to get rid of the tediousness of resource collecting.

[Lord Sidious]

 

Balanceing I bet nobody of yopu has played Close Combat 3. There you could destroy a tank with one shot or fire 10 mshots for the same result. Why ?! it all depended on the fire range , hight location, , gun crew experience, cover of the attacking unit, weapon's caliber and the thank positioning and experience. WOW and it was super !

 

.

 

EAW is much different than close combat 3. In EAW there is a mass combat, galaxy management and so, you are a grand admiral, not a field captain, or a commando, you have to oversee production and such, not wasting time with sniping or point shoots with missiles.

 

Apart from this, I totaly agree with Cain, it would be a nice discussion...

[Foshjedi2004]

I ahve a problem with what is being said upon this topic. I would love to have the ability to capture ships and troops however it is sadly unlikely that they will be present in the game.

[Little.B]

Balancing (I just want to add these few lines even if they are not fitting to 100% to the topic. Please forgive me )

 

In general: Balancing is the most important thing in a RTS. Why? Because an RTS only surives over years if it is constantly updated and kept balanced (or just tried to keep ) Just look at StarCraft or WarCraft 3. They are played today with th same (or even more) enthousiasm and only because these are great games which have been constantly updated. So please Petro care for this game and keep on publishing balancing fixes. No game will be balanced when it comes to the market and they will never really be, they just get close to. Even today in StarCraft there are some things which are considered to be unbalanced.

As a "good" example I want to pick out Dawn of War which is really a great game but I have forseen its downfall and now I'm seeing it and simply because the developer and publisher did not care for balancing the game in mulitplayer matches. Patches are rare (you could say unique) and do not consist of the necessary fixes to keep the game playable in leagues and tournaments. I'm working as an admin in the Electronic Sports League (Europes biggest gaming league) and I will surely overtake the administration of the EaW part. The community is really curious about the game and I hope (no, I know ) that you don't make the mistakes to favor making and expansion (and earning money) instead of improving the game and keep it playable (in the first months. Of course you should release an expansion lateron ). If nobody plays the game, nobody will buy the expansion except the very dedicated ones. I think THQ will notice that in a few weeks...

 

I dont want to (as we say in Germany) "Paint the devil on the wall" (I think the appropriate translation is " Don't meet trouble halfway") but please always keep in mind that a game can only survive over the years if the devs care for the needs of the community. I hope, no I'm sure you will. I just wanted to add this fact because I just don't want to see the "downfall" of a good game again. Never ever. Keep time and make it right. I know you will

[The Saint]

Capturing ships while a nice idea is wholly unrealistic unless you only implement it for small ships. Because unless an ISD is operating on a skeleton crew there is no way you can capture on. They've got the crew of large towns and what would end up happening is brutal ship to ship fighting that would rival the Okinawa campaign of WWII. And probably end up taking just as long. The Corvette Leia was on had a bare knuckle crew as well, those things can carry up to 100 passengers and it only had crew and a handful of security troops.

 

Even a Dreadnaught would be a pain in the ass to capture and wouldnt really be worth it in the end. What would make sense though is if there was an option of defections..if the war is going badly for one side then there should be defections..or if the Empire blows up a planet, then there should be a risk of some ships commanders and crews defecting out of the sheer evilness of the empire. Again not large ships but smaller warships like Carracks or Lancers or even Strike Cruisers. But you dont really see the capturing of warships unless the ship has a skeleton crew. And the Empire didnt encounter personnel problems until late in the war, and even then it was still nigh impossible to capture a larger warship.

[Stellar_Magic]

Balanceing I bet nobody of yopu has played Close Combat 3. There you could destroy a tank with one shot or fire 10 mshots for the same result. Why ?! it all depended on the fire range , hight location, , gun crew experience, cover of the attacking unit, weapon's caliber and the thank positioning and experience. WOW and it was super !

 

1. This system can also be added to EAW and reduce the general feeling of exagerated balance. SW players and even new commers don't expect to play a game that has been exageratly balanced. Of course that in the other case they will also scream that one faction is to strong .... but the unbalanced units can be "fixed" by a combat options balance system on the map and bu general tactical war balance. So everyone will be satisfyed.

 

.... Now I let the others to join in the disscution I've only opened the subject.

 

Thank God that someone remembers close combat!!! Thats actually going to be one of the primary goals I'm going to have with my mod, making it more like that game.

[plokoon9619]

At the Battle of Endor rebs captured star destroyers. They could do it because the isds didnt have troops because why would they need them to defend the DS2, The crew was trained to fly the ship not fight. When the DS2 blew up with the Emporer, everyone was confused, without a leader they didnt know what to do. That explains it ISDs are stealable. Also the rebs built isds of their own when they found the plans.

[Ghostly_Substance]

I dont know if I have this right but i'll just spill it out.

 

Ship Naming:

Once its built you name it and you keep track of it manually. You might even record its success in your mind or on paper. You might take a screenshot of it and put it in battles you might know it would win just because its worth something instead of a ship thats just built for combat and seems plain. You have this "attachment" to it and treat it more wisely in combat or whatever your doing with them. If it gets destroyed or captured your going to get ticked off and take revenge or recapture it and so the other player/ai should be careful when attacking a named ships

 

Capturing:

The only way I think this would work if a bigger ship captures smaller ships and infiltrates the smaller ship with the crew onboard the big ship. When someone tries and captures your ship you find this annoying so your reaction would be to either leave it alone or attack the ship before the other ship is assimulated. Once assimulated your one less ship while the other team has one more. Its hard to leave this out but half people use this and the other half dont. If necessary I use them but I forget to use them.

 

Unit Experince:

After every combat the units gain in experince at a cost of losing its own life. If it gained more experince you would keep a better eye at which units gained more and only use them against weaker enemy units to gain more experince. You might send them to a planet where theres a secret project going on such as the Deathstar building project.

 

Player Behavior:

You cant stop those cry baby gamers who just cry about unbalanced units or faction powers or whatever. Someone somewhere will always cry about it and we just have to ignore that. As someone said no game will be perfectly balanced. Sometimes the bug has to be there since the program writer is so picky it wont allow it to be bug free.

Scenerio (True story)

Battlegrounds online with 2 other friends. I was "Trade Feds" and so was my friend and my other friend was Empire. had one AI oppenent. Friend#1 attacks and finishes AI off. Friend 2 just sits there doing nothing so I attack him with 1 fighter against a land turret and he threatens to leave if I dont stop attacking. Like what the hell. So he leaves and me and my friend laugh at his stupidity then we both leave after I get owned by him (damn droids).

Well nothing you can do about player behaviour. My point is that players are different. Most of the players I came across in games are just evil players just wanting points in their profiles while the rest play the game nicely

 

Trade Routes:

Would be nice to annoy the hell out of the enemy faction and attack convoys which might summon the pirates who might try to kill you off. Well if it atleasts damages the stream of supplies and resources then thats good.

[The Saint]

At the Battle of Endor rebs captured star destroyers. They could do it because the isds didnt have troops because why would they need them to defend the DS2, The crew was trained to fly the ship not fight. When the DS2 blew up with the Emporer, everyone was confused, without a leader they didnt know what to do. That explains it ISDs are stealable. Also the rebs built isds of their own when they found the plans.

 

Where are you getting your info from? At the Battle of Endor, most of the Death Squadron was destroyed in combat, those ships that werent made the jump to hyperspace in retreat to Coruscant, and those that stayed were so heavily damaged the Rebellion couldnt use them. Any Star Destroyers that did surrender did so not because they were captured in ship to ship fighting, they were captured because their crews were demoralized by the death of the Emperor, the destruction of the DS II, and the loss of the flagship Executor. That would be enough to have a crew of nearly 40k give up.

[Stellar_Magic]

Read X-wing Wedge's Gamble. Two Imperial Star Destroyers were captured at Endor. I think they surrendered after the battle (Probably cause they were in Endor's gravity well or something). I don't think they were ever boarded.

[DarthCycle]

An interesting topic.

 

For us gamers, it's so easy to build a wish list of all the things we would like to see in a game. We just have to think about it a little, formulate it and voila, our job is done.

 

For the developpers, they have to make it happend. They have to go from brainstorm, design, concept, model, implement, debug, balance and ultimately release. So much more work. And each step takes time. Time cost money. Remember, the game is an investment in time and money, and in the end (at release time) the game has to sell. If not, the project is a failure. For the gamers because the game s*cks. For the developpers because they spend 2-3 years of their career time on a game that will be remembered as a failure (not good for their resume). For the producers, because they invested money and got nothing in return (or less than they had invested in the project).

 

I highly recommend reading the excellent feature on iterative development techniques at gamasutra http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050720/gold_01.shtml

 

They basically define the 3 kind of features a game has: core, required and desired. Each feature has to go through a QA (quality assurance) cycle of null, base, nominal and optimal. It's a nice read and makes you appreciate the hard work making a game really is.

[Guest JediIgor]

So in the end the capture of ships will be more like a "ego satisfaction" then a real war strategy.

Because I completely agree we should be able to capture ships, I'd like to mention that during the Age of Sail it was quite common for the weaker ships to be boarded and commandeered or scuttled if the damage was too great. You could see this in the movie "Master and Commander" .

 

I don't like Cain's attitude on this. He isn't a designer and what we'll get next year will be a very polished and moddable product.

 

Actually he's got a job at a game company in Romania last time I checked so just keep that in mind.

 

For us gamers, it's so easy to build a wish list of all the things we would like to see in a game. We just have to think about it a little, formulate it and voila, our job is done.

 

Sure, that's why at this point they should add some things that would be very easy to implement, which most suggestions in this thread are. Unless of course they never bothered to implement things like morale or experience, but then that would be their fault for not adding what is necessary in a tactical game IMHO.

 

Now suppose morale is in already. To add a "defect" option what you could do is check:

The morale level has dropped, it is below critical point? Is there an enemy interdictor preventing fleeing? If so, either surrender (low loyalty crew), or prepare to self-destruct (high loyalty crew).

[Cain]

I don't like Cain's attitude on this. He isn't a designer and what we'll get next year will be a very polished and moddable product.

 

"a very polished and moddable product".... I also think that, but I feel that the door in the EAW's game design is closeing soon .... so I wanted to make a final push. Usualy in the design of a game all the "maybe options" will no longer be "maybe" from one point in time. Anyway our main problem is that we have no clear clue about what's going on inside the EAW's game design at EAW but from Joe's words in the QA we know that they have alot of optional stuff that they could add or not add depending of their opinion if that stuff is good for the gamer or not ...etc.

 

I'm not a game designer yet but I'm an old moder so the difference betwen me and a profesional game designer is that I was createing-building tractors (*agricurtural machine) and they create Ferraris (sport's car). Still I don't see much of a difference. Always remember Lamborgini's stroy.

 

Actually he's got a job at a game company in Romania last time I checked so just keep that in mind.

 

I have two interviews in the final stages. One at Ubisoft for Game Designer and one at JAMDAT for "Assistent Project Manager" something like that. Probably next month I will be in the industry so my presence here will drop a little.

[Stellar_Magic]

Well, JI, if they release the source code we'll have a free hand... personally I think we should have two influential stats for starships... Morale and Loyalty.

 

Morale is how the crew of a ship feels about their own abilities and those of their enemies. High morale is the result of combat victories with little to no losses whereas low morale can be caused by a lack of combat experience, low loyalty, or defeats. When a ship's or troops morale drops low enough they may surrender.

 

Loyalty is how supportive the crew is of the cause they're serving. Loyalty can be affected by the observation of attrocities, morale, defeats, and the loss of the world where the vessel was constructed. Smaller vessels and support craft should be just as loyal as the planet where they were built at first, whereas command ships and ships of the line would probably be more loyal then the support craft. A ship can theoretically defect at any time but the chance of a vessel switching sides is directly dependent on its loyalty and morale. (Low Morale and Low Loyalty may cause an imminent defection.)

[Vader89]

I for one dont like things like morale or loyalty. I would rather focus on the strategy and tactiacal aspects of the game and not have to micromanage the fact that my ships may defect. Although its more realistic its also alot more to manage.

[Guest JediIgor]

I for one dont like things like morale or loyalty. I would rather focus on the strategy and tactiacal aspects of the game and not have to micromanage the fact that my ships may defect. Although its more realistic its also alot more to manage.

 

That's not micromanagement. It's just a layer of realism. Think of it as your ships defecting randomly, but with a way to check "why" they are defecting. Most of the time you wouldn't have to pay attention to morale anyways, especially if you played on "Easy" mode where you got free morale modifiers.

[Stellar_Magic]

That's not micromanagement. It's just a layer of realism. Think of it as your ships defecting randomly, but with a way to check "why" they are defecting. Most of the time you wouldn't have to pay attention to morale anyways, especially if you played on "Easy" mode where you got free morale modifiers.

 

No S***, of course you'd get some freebees on easy. I'd love to have the random ship defection, it would also be cool to have to try and protect those defecting vessels. Maybe you could set it up so that the other side got an intelligence report on a defection before hand so they wouldn't just get shot down trying to run for hyperspace.

 

Having troops and ships with morale effects just makes sense. I'd love jumping on an imp convoy and have the escorts panic and run, it'd just be fantastic, and relatively easy to set up.

 

Each event could have a simple morale value. Say a friendly ship blows up and the event has a range of increasing the morale of a nearby unit slightly (Think about an enraged crew) or lowering it significantly. Or each weapon shot has a morale effect (A much smaller range but similar) so that if a dumb Carrack gets jumped by a pair of moncals the ship will start to panic. If a craft panics and can jump to hyperspace it will flee. If it panics and is disabled or in a gravity well it surrenders...

 

Blowing up an enemy ship or firing their own weapons would naturally increase morale so that a seasoned unit that has seen combat would have a better morale value then some dumb convoy escort that has never fired their guns.

 

Time doing nothing but sitting their would eat away at morale and so on...

 

God, I want the sourcecode already! Let me at em!

[Ghostly_Substance]

morale, gotta love having that. If a ship defects it better get far from the enemy then and transmit a secret message to the other side so they dont get shot. I dont like it when troops or units in general flee and become usless or units having nerves of steal.

[Joshinator]

As for capturing ships - of which they said we couldn't, but could capture buildings, i have another post in the capital ship building thread, on a sort of compromise to the capturing of large capital ships. Always the argument is that the ship has too much crew, or something to that effect. My idea is the ability to capture an enemy shipyard. If there is something building there, for example a Star Destroyer. U have the opertunity to either sucttle it and get reinbursed for the credits, or finish the construction yourself. Once the ship is complete, the plans would be used, and no more could be constructed. It would keep captured ships rare, but prized vessels. Naturally u would have to also control the planet, and pay for the maintence of the ship.

 

Morale is a tricky thing. Trained captains and crews wouldn't panic per say, if engaged by a larger force. They would do there jobs, even if it ment there lives, because of there beliefs and or traning to that particular faction. There are circomstances of course, but i don't think it would be a good additon, at least to space combat.

[Vader89]

The only moral i would want in the game would be high morale = better performance, low moral = worse performance. But to have an entire capial ship defect means everysingle one of the crew has to want to defect as well. What is their motivation for defecting? Losing battles? Getting shot at? I just dont like the idea unless it was on a small scale like 1 in 100 chance of defection even if it's morale was at an all time low. Although it makes the game more realistic it also makes th game much more difficult with more micromanagement which is exactly what Petro is trying to scale down. Thats my 2 cents on the topic, even though id wager that it doesnt get put in the game.