Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

The metagame

cliffski

Gratuitous Space Battles right now is probably best thought of as a very complex, expanded and pretty versions of the space battle segments of a 4X game.

In other words, these are just battles, fought out between similar fleets with similar objectives, in the same way. It’s kind of like chess. In chess, the map never changes, the pieces are set in stone.

It takes a loooong time to perfectly design and balance the ‘sandbox’ that allows games like this to remain fun over a long period, nd its definitely my aim to get to that point. Howver, I’d also like to introduce a lot more variety and options to keep things interesting. I can always describe more ideas than I have time to implement but here are a few:

1) More unlocks, and modules in general. Although I sympathise with those people who dislike the whole unlock concept, I think there is some good middle ground. People who are very good at the game have lots of spare honor, and as long as there is nothing too game-brekaing, I think some extra, expensive modules might be a good idea

2) Scenario variety. Right now the ‘terrain’ options are quite limited. They aren’t really major in terms of changing tactics (25% range reduction isn’t really earth-shattering), and there are many more possibilities. Maybe a nebula where plasma weapons just do not work? or one where radiation levels mean that no fighters can survive?

3) Modding. There has been little in the way of formal mod support so far. I have some very primitive tools, instructions and general information on how to do stuff like add ship hulls. I should write this up and make it available.

That’s what I’m currently thinking of, and hope to add to the game. So if you think the missions are a bit samey and the ship design options too limited, this will change. If people have similar suggestions, please throw them out there. I love hearing peoples ideas.

23 thoughts on The metagame

  2. (Full disclosure: I haven’t played GSB, as I’ve been waiting for the early adopters to act as my ablative bugtesters.)

    An alternate “terrain” that leaps to mind would be in orbit around a gravity source, which would have a completely different play style, depending on how orbital mechanics are implemented.

    In orbit around a sun, with sunlight and radiation flux intense enough to kill unshielded ships and missiles.

    In orbit around a black hole where tidal forces rip apart anything larger than a fighter.

    In orbit around an inhabited planet, where the rules of engagement forbid any weapons that might kill people on the planet below, and where orbital debris occasionally smack ships in orbit.

    Etc, etc.

  3. Looks like the game was updated to version 1.10 today. Great work on the updates Cliff.

    Some thoughts:

    1) Unlocks are great for the SP game, but I don’t thinks so for MP. IMHO there should never be any unlockable modules that are simply superior to locked ones. Each module should be balanced. Ex. there should not be a Shield Generator IV that you can unlock that is in every way better than Shield Generator I. Sure Shield Generator IV should offer better protection than Shield Generator I, but this should come at the expense of a much higher… expense and much higher power reqs and higher weight, etc. If this isn’t the case, it nullifies the point of having so many modules, and it also makes MP less interesting , because everyone will just use the top-end unlockable stuff, and forget about the earlier stuff.

    2) For sure, sounds good . My two cents: I love random elements in game, so what about throwing one into in the map? For ex., a map in an asteroid belt — once per game a big asteroid flies through the map, wrecking ships in it’s [randomized] path. ‘nother idea: You can go super old-school (or ancient school as the case me be) like SpaceWar! and have an object in the middle of the map that affects gravity and introduces possible strategies, such as the object collects missiles (from a gravity well) or something.

    3) This game would be a wonderful game to mod with. If people could upload there races and hull designs… oh man it would be great.

    My random idea of the day:

    I think starship speed doesn’t play enough importance ATM. As far as I can tell, there is hardly any disadvantage of ignoring engines, or not giving your ship fast engines. You can just wait for the enemy to come to you. I’m not sure if it is factored in already, but perhaps you should subtract damage done by beam weapons against the speed of the larger craft ; the faster the ship, the greater the beam defense. I.e a speed of 2.0 equates to a %20 reduction to beam damage.

    Or even a cooler and more fun idea on the same page: A Super-Death Ray weapon. ( — No , no hear me out.) The Super-Death Ray beam takes 2 or 3 minutes to charge. When it fires, it completely wrecks ships. It also takes a great deal of power to charge. This weapon is cool because a:) it would just be tons of fun, ; but more importantly b:) it acts as a counter strategy to people (like myself!) who have turtle slow ships (because you’d have to be able to shoot the Super-Death Ray ship down in 2 mins or less, or you’d get fried.)

  4. Oh sry bbot I didn’t read your comment first. Ya I was thinking pretty much the same thing, in regards to an planetoid or other object right in the middle of the map. I think it would be too much work for Cliff to have gravity affecting everything, but maybe just missiles.

  6. for scenario’s, maybe something with gravity?
    that ships are slowly pulled towards a nearby planet (at the player’s side, so the enemies aproach faster), or even a tiny black hole in the field

  7. Well can you at least add a cheat code to unlock everything for those of us who hate unlockables?

  8. I am not sure that gravity object is good, unless we have more control on where ships should go. I would require Cliff to code a fair bit of new AI and orders (how far an object is allowed to come close to an object).
    However I could see there some good opportunities for strategies and use of engines (to counter gravity if moving closer to gravity object).
    An other type of object with impact changing in proportion to distance could be a sun : it light could damage ships getting very close, add power to ships with solar panels,…

    But from the present state of the game, and knowing that cliff is alone we should take the best of the existing engine. The idea to have special effects on the whole map is probably best (no need to have heavily update the IA). So what could special effects be ?
    – Altered potential for a specific weapon (reduced or increased)
    – Altered effect of a weapon (plasma when fired explodes straight away, or creates ECM)
    – Energy leeched by nebula
    – ECM effect on ships with inadequate equipment
    – Countinuous damage (countered by shield or armor). Could be caused by small particles (inpact increased when moving very quick), or radiation (speed won’t change anything)…

    This would give opportunity to increase the range of modules. Or refine those already existing…

    Unlockable modules sounds fun, but yeah there is that MP issue.

  9. I would also like to see siege weapons (aka Super-Death Ray Beam) included.

    Create a new class of ship, say Jugernaught or Leviathan (something that sounds impressive). It still uses cruiser class weapons but on the hull you have one or two slots that are in the shape of an octagon. . . that is your siege weapon slot.

    Increase the size of the turret so you can see visually that the ship is packing heat. Keep the tracking values low so it can’t hit faster ships like fighters or frigates and add some extra animation effects for the gratuitous nature that is the game. (i.e. light particles gather at the muzzle of the turret before it fires :)

  10. I think you have it almost to the point of being releasable.

    Yes, everyone wants more stuff but that’s not always feasable especially for an indie developer so maybe you should leave stuff for add on packs and later versions.

    ****

    Aside from that the biggest thing that I, personally, would like to see is race specific scenarios.
    Unless I’ve missed it, you go through the same scenarios for all races?

    Unlocking specific scenario sets for each race would definitely add to the fun.
    Allow the player to play on them with other unlocked races to by all means but only unlock them once you’ve unlocked each race.

    Different scenario modifiers is nice to have too but not essential.

    ****

    More weapon and unlock variety is a nice to have but actually I would actually say increase the price of the current unlocks by a factor of 3 to 5.
    I’d unlocked almost everything before I even reached my second race.

    ****

    Darkstar’s death star siege weapon (above) sounds very cool but would require a lot of balancing at this stage so I would suggest you leave anything that breaks all the hard work you’ve done with balancing until post-release.

    ****

    @random, it’s currently pc-only but if it follows cliffski’s other releases he’ll be porting to mac once the game’s released

  11. [Excuse my English]
    Diversity in the mission’s “objective” would be nice to add interest to the single player.

    Some of the thing we see in “classical” str could probably work well in GSB.
    Escort mission, Mission requiring to resist to a really powerfull fleet for a set time, “boss fight” ( mission where you have to destroy a unique powerfull ship/station Death Star’s style )…

    If you add a few basic objective and mix them with special terrain it could open a lot of diversity opportunity.
    [/Excuse my English]

  13. Put in AI-controlled ships that try to pass by the enemies side and make the goal having the player try to protect the ship as it moves through.

    Have the AI controlled ship be the commander ship, while you are a lower general and are tasked with defeating the enemy, while keeping damage to the mothership to a minimum.

    Have a non moving enemy space station and give the player the goal to destroy it within a certain amount of time.

    How about location specific events directly on the map, e.g. a local asteroid belt that limits the effectiveness and speed of heavy ships, but fighters shine in there. Also capital ships shooting through the asteroid belt have a higher chance of missing.
    Or a local nebula that hinders small ship sensor systems and renders invisibility shields ineffective due to you being able to see the pushed away nebula front.

    Also if I finish on expert, the hard-difficulty should be completed for me too, right? I do not want to play each map 3 times, just to get all medals at the bottom. 1 or 2 times at normal/expert should be enough. :D

  14. There is one aspect of this game that is just a bit off at the moment. The metagame itself….

    GSB is incredible in design and execution, and cliff has summed it up, its an awesome segment of the space battle portion of a 4x space game. Now while I don´t think there should be an entire CAMPAING. I do believe it would be quite nice to see continuity of ships, experience ratings, maybe a flag ship type of thing. Maybe a small strategic portion where you have a random sector in a random world (to keep with the gratuitousness mind you) and simply exploit that small star system and take over another one (in a turn based mode for example).

    You would have RESOURCES in the area, and basically defend and attack using those resources (making lopsided, uneven and overall awesome battles possible).

    As the game is right now, there is always duality, equality, and similar circumstances. But wouldn´t it just be a kick in the balls to be able to defend against a HUGE onslaught of enemies, with say, nothing but fighters because in the system in question you have many pilots but not half as many resources as you would have needed to build a capital ship.

    Just my two cents.

    GREAT GAME!!!!!
    -Alex

  15. I couldn’t find anyplace else to submit this, but I’ve purchased and have beaten all the battles on expert, I’ve got mucho honor. So yes, more unlockable modules, and how about unlockable ship hulls, unlockable maps, etc., etc.

    Now, thoughts on UI changes:
    – how about a ‘delete’ function within ship design UI, to clean up old designs.
    – if you could figure out a way to make assigning ‘formations’ through orders easier…I often use frigates as support for cruisers. Right now to assign an order to one or more ships, the chain goes select ship(s) by left clicking, add order, formation, assign target, left click on target, ok. That’s a LOT of steps, and must be repeated for every separate formation.
    – Lasso selecting does not update to whatever ships you’re trying to work with. Only left-click selecting does this. When dragging a box around ships, and then trying to issue orders, the order status seems to still default to the last ships that were left-click selected.

  16. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    On the MetaGame : Someone probably mentioned this before, because it would fit so well with GSB.

    Great idea for a MP metagame: There is a giant space map, separated into hexes. Players can initiate these maps. We will call them ‘universes’.

    On each universe, players can join different player run factions. So I might start my own faction, and call it ‘The Freaky Xenons’. Players choose how many people can join there faction, or have no cap.

    To take a hex of the space map / universe, one faction/player fights the AI for a square. And of course, other factions will join in the game, and then there will be faction version faction warfare on the universe map.

    You can spruce things up a bit : some hexes have strategic resources that generate credits. Credits gained go to a faction pool that are used for reinforcements after battles.

    You could also incorporate map-specific stuff , like nebula, as ‘sectors’ / hexes of your space map.

    Not to toot my own horn or anything but I think this is a FANTASTIC idea for a future meta game. It wouldn’t be incredibly hard to program — it incorporates mostly stuff you already have Cliff — and would make for endearing, really cool way to play the game.

    Also: players can set the amount of possible battles per day. So more casual groups can set it at only 1 battle per day, more hardcore players 6 battles etc.

    GSB is really cool in the sense it is a throw-back to PBEM mail games.

    Well that’s my idea. I got it from watching this awesome documentary called Darkon last night, which was on LARP’ers . The meta-game for their role-playing battles goes in a similar way.

  17. i think you should add superwepons, very powerfull wepons but make them need 2 crew modules and 2 power modules just to meat one of the wepons so you get realy solow, vunerable powerfull ships.

  18. Those ideas all seem good to me- id love more unlockables (new wepons not just upgraded old types) i think it needs a bit more variety in fx- could you change the big blast effect of ships a bit for each race maybe? add a few more types of particles flying about etc

    Oh, related to the level mods- you mention the -20% range in a map- this seems to cause issues- you set ships max range by clicking the wepon range thingys, but they arnt reduced by that 20% on those maps.. unless you yourself remember the 20% and deduct it the ships hang back too far and cant even shoot realy- or at least that seems to happen. the wepons max range should be lowered to reflect the -20% of that map.

  19. Guy: Having to design a ship around a single weapon system might be kind of interesting, and simply having massive crew / power requirements would be a simple way to do that, so I’d piggyback on that suggestion.

    Personally though I wouldn’t want them to be significantly stronger than regular weapons, just different and interesting. Maybe a long-range shield disrupter beam, maybe an Area of Effect weapon.

    Modules I’d like to see, personally, would be more fighter and frigate things, modules that blur the lines between the ship classes (WITHOUT erasing said lines), and modules that do things nothing currently in the game does.

    I’d like to see more interesting options for fighters / frigates.. Perhaps cloaking modules with different behaviors / conditions than cruiser cloaking modules, like a frigate that’s stealthed so long as it hasn’t fired in 5 – 15 seconds, or a fighter that’s stealted until it’s close. Accuracy-boosters that help allies with other weapons not just missiles. Maybe tractor beams that slow, not stop, ships of their own class thus making it easier to hit said ships. Weapons that damage or disable specific modules– maybe fighters can have ion blasters that hurt the generators / weapon chargers on ships so long as they can hit the hull directly. Maybe frigates can have torpedoes that increase the mass of other ships and so make them less maneuverable.

    Maybe some kind of energy-absorbing phase generator where the more damage a frigate takes the harder it gets to damage, but also the less effective it is offensively– like maybe it gets time-phased so all its devices and weapons recharge slower and it moves slower the more the phasing comes into effect, but it’s almost a good tank (not as good as a cruiser but more options = good). More effective anti-missile / anti-fighter stuff on frigates would also be nice.

    For fighters, more specialist dog-fighting gear, specialist anti-cruiser gear (disrupter torpedo launchers that make the fighter slower but give them an effective anti-shield option in large numbers). The way I see it, a navy would experiment more with fighters because if it doesn’t work you lose a lot less money than if you make a weird experimental cruiser and it fails– or you might try out weird experimental technology on a fighter or frigate first, then scale it up later.

    Speaking of, what about fighter or frigate modules that have a /chance/ to cause damage or destruction of the fighter or frigate that’s using it? I don’t want to call them kamikaze modules, because that implies they’d be powerful enough to be worth the ship /definitely/ dying. I’d rather they be just a little better or cheaper than otherwise but come with a risk that balances it out.

    So anyway, my thought on the meta-gameyness. I’d love anything that allows for good, interesting tactical battles. Having to fight over space online for your favorite faction, just for the glory of it– losers shouldn’t have less points or less abilities, they’d just keep losing if they did and lots of players (jerks) would probably quit if they were losing then — might be worthwhile though I’m not sure if I’d have the time for it.

    Or you could keep it simpler with an offline metagame to string together battles. How about an option for ‘campaigns’ of several missions where you have to choose how to spend your resources throughout the whole campaign. The resources shouldn’t be a static number, you could increase them for getting a resounding victory / having lots of surviving ships.

    Maybe have objectives like just staying alive for an amount of time or taking down the enemy to a certain percentage. Have multiple objectives each mission so sometimes you can actually lose a mission but continue the campaign.

    Like for one mission if you’re able to survive for 5 minutes you can continue the campaign if you lose because your reserve forces were able to flee. Give it the feel of divergence, don’t MAKE us lose after the 5 minutes, let it be a choice — if we use a smaller fleet that can’t survive past 5 minutes, we saved resources and therefore have more to spend on the next mission, but if we made a very economical fleet that still won we’d have even more points. If we made an expensive fleet that won easily we’d have less points than if we’d just lasted 5 minutes and ran.

    That way you’d have some important decisions to make in the campaign, beyond the obvious ‘do as well as you can in the fights’ (which would still matter a lot).

    At the end of the campaign, give us lots of statistics, ‘achievements’, whatever you want to call them. Maybe different text for each faction based on a resounding A-rank victory or a close C-rank. It would be neat if we didn’t have to win all the missions in order to continue and finish the campaign (all games do that = boring), we just get a better score depending on how we do.

    There could be some procedural / randomness so that these campaigns can add to replayability. Since it’d keep spitting out ‘unique’ missions, they couldn’t be worth honor (not with the way the honor / unlock system works now) since then there’d be less reason to play the campaign. And yet it’s also more work to make it worthwhile some other way … Meh, game design is hard, I have to leave it to Cliffski to decide, obviously, I’m just throwing ideas out there and seeing what sticks.

  20. Oh another offline metagame idea.

    A campaign where you’re restricted to 5 – 10 pre-designed ships for the duration of the campaign. So, yeah you can mix and match, but you need a very balanced stable of ships to survive. This would be a great ship design challenge.

    Another spinoff on that, a campaign that asks us to win 3 random missions in a row with us using the same ships. We can change their formations and orders, and we start fresh each mission, but we can’t switch them. The ultimate ‘balanced fleet’ challenge!

  21. that last idea is great. A mini campaign (random) that forces the player to use the same ships for periods of time would OBLIGATE the player to use hefty amounts of tactics (honestly I just spam heavy plasma cruisers and have absolutly NO tactics placed ever and it works). I love the idea!

  23. I just picked up the game last night but my 2 month old decided not to let me play. However I’d like to suggest a “campaign” type feature which stays almost entirely within your current methods.

    Basically you start out with a bunch of available missions (attack or defense) on a normal “galactic map” but each one has some relatively low number of resources available for the battle (Whatever you use to limit ships in a particular scenario now, again, I haven’t played yet, but manpower and money seem to be what I’m seeing). As you complete missions, you bring surviving units up to the new “battle line” and gain the resources of that system. So as time goes on, battles become larger and more epic and your fleet grows in an organic kind of way with older or damaged units mixed with new units based on new ideas.

    It would have several positives:
    1) The actual frame game is relatively small and there is no technology tree/resource gathering required.
    2) The enemy fleets can vary over time forcing different strategies and meaning that from the beginning, you have to plan for your future needs and cannot just lump all of one kind of ship together and expect to win at the end (where a large portion of your fleet can/should be holdovers, or environmental changes making certain weapons systems useless would require adjustments to tactices)
    3) You could allow technology “capture” if you wanted meaning both sides start with different technologies allowed and as you win in systems, you capture enemy weapon/shields etc and can put them into your own ships at that point. Giving a rudimentary, but not research or money based technology system.
    4) It could be played by email vs an opponent if you wanted to. Since all rounds are started and then watched, it is easy to allow both sides to build their fleet, give their orders and then see the result, all by email.

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