GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journal #21 - What to do about Space Bugs in Battle
GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journal #21 - Pretty vs. mechanically satisfying space battles
Forget realistic space battles. In a real space battle, the ships would be incredibly far apart and only missile weapons that are flying at relativistic speeds would matter. So putting that aside, let’s talk about the challenge of making space battles look pretty.
The Mechanics
We want kinetic weapons (guns), direct energy weapons (beam weapons) and payload weapons (missiles) to have very different ranges.
Missiles have a long range and a long cooldown.
Direct energy weapons are much shorter and a medium cooldown. Half the time of missiles.
And kinetic weapons have a very short range but a very short cooldown.
Space bugs
And of course, we want pretty decent scale differences between the ships.
Meanwhile, the marketing and artists want to see really cool looking ships battling it out.
Putting aside the camera controls we need to improve on, it doesn’t change the fact that there is a dichotomy between visually pleasing battles and ones that are strategically sophisticated.
So what say you? How do you think this should be approached?
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Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Dev Journals