Ship-to-ship combat

[Darkodin]

Naval combat would be totally *awesome* if it could be implemented correctly. It could however drastically expand the scope of the game beyond what is reasonable. Although, they could make a very specific scenario where naval combat takes place.

[Messier-31]

Naval combat would be totally *awesome* if it could be implemented correctly. It could however drastically expand the scope of the game beyond what is reasonable. Although, they could make a very specific scenario where naval combat takes place.

 

[Osvir]

If there are ship to ship battles in Eternity I envision it being somewhat "Heroes of Might & Magic"-esque because that's the most effective and simplistic way of doing it. Basically you have a tiny ship icon on the world map screen, and when you encounter an opponent ship you get into a generic "battle map". Not much variety to it, encounter wise it is almost always a different encounter, but the map itself is pretty generic (maybe some different props every now and then).

I imagine that something like this could work for Eternity, make 2-3 different ship maps/levels that you can experience/encounter similar to how HoMM deals with it. Add in some environmental effects for variety (night, day, storm, snow, rain etc.etc.). No Assassin's Creed 3 or 4 Ship combat, even if that would be lovely.

Best way to explain it: Boarding encounters; "board the enemy ship"-encounters.

Another method to do it in a simplistic way is Xenonauts. Their Air-to-Air combat interface and combat is somewhat tactical and implemented in a very simple manner. However, that can get very repetetive in a medieval Ship-to-Ship game I believe if they would occur often. Xenonauts has more material to work with (5-6 Alien UFO's, upgrade your own planes and get more planes etc. etc.). 

[rjshae]

A thought that occurs is to use an overland map similar to SoZ with a scaled down ship model controlled by the player. Encounters are represented on the map by other ship models--most are friendly--or giant sea creatures. As in SoZ, once an encounter occurs you're placed on the battle map and go directly to boarding combat.

 

For a future release, of course, blah blah blah...

[Osvir]

Another method to do it in a simplistic way is Xenonauts. Their Air-to-Air combat interface and combat is somewhat tactical and implemented in a very simple manner. However, that can get very repetetive in a medieval Ship-to-Ship game I believe if they would occur often. Xenonauts has more material to work with (5-6 Alien UFO's, upgrade your own planes and get more planes etc. etc.). 

Correction: The concept is a very simple one, but I doubt that it was "very" easy to implement in the Xenonauts engine (which, according to the devs, is a horrible engine).

 

It is also a tactical interface with RTwP and that RTwP feeling to it, so it isn't just "somewhat" tactical, it is tactical. What I meant to say was "somewhat difficult", it could get cranked up just a little bit on the hardest difficulty. But that might be something to appear post-release in mods (maybe).

[Lephys]

If there are ship to ship battles in Eternity I envision it being somewhat "Heroes of Might & Magic"-esque because that's the most effective and simplistic way of doing it. Basically you have a tiny ship icon on the world map screen, and when you encounter an opponent ship you get into a generic "battle map". Not much variety to it, encounter wise it is almost always a different encounter, but the map itself is pretty generic (maybe some different props every now and then).

 

I imagine that something like this could work for Eternity, make 2-3 different ship maps/levels that you can experience/encounter similar to how HoMM deals with it. Add in some environmental effects for variety (night, day, storm, snow, rain etc.etc.). No Assassin's Creed 3 or 4 Ship combat, even if that would be lovely.

 

Best way to explain it: Boarding encounters; "board the enemy ship"-encounters.

Yeah! It would be a perfect time to use the little illustration-style scripted events interface. Have some dynamically rolled factors and such decide the specifics of the ship encounter, then allow for some decisions/skill-checks to determine whether you fight on THEIR ship, or yours (who boarded whom), and/or other advantages/disadvantages, etc.