Just an annoying asside- Technically if we're using what we know of real space physics Swift... it isn't that the beam is instantanious across a huge distance, it is that detection of the beam being fired would be instantanious to its impact. Of course if you have FTL travel maybe you have a way to detect a shot is fired before impact and dodge it (assuming you're fighting light-minutes away from eachother).

Ah.. science... don't break it too much :D

Anyway - easier solution seems to be "charge up and refire times" - making this a game of rock paper scissor. Using a huge long charge time cannon on a small ship means several rounds of not being able to fire - plenty of time for some smaller ships to gang up and obliterate you. I am not generally a fan of those kinds of rps mechanics but it would be the easy solution you're looking for.

OK, a simpliest solution to fuel the discussion :)

- each weapon deals exactly 1 damage (regardless of caliber)

- a weapon does not do any damage if its caliber is lower than target's armour rating (so 60mm laser can not penetrate 61mm armour)

I was thinking of something along these lines, but better :)

If I shoot at a 61mm armor a 1000 times with a 60mm laser, it still won't penetrate the armor?

That's gonna suck.

A simple-ish method is to give every weapon a Penetration value, and a Damage value, every Ship has an armor value.

Ship.Facing.Armor -= Weapon.Pen;

if(Ship.Facing.Armor <= 0)

{

Ship.Health -= Damage;

Ship.Facing.Armor = 0;

}

This assumes ablative armor, and a that it's straight 1:1. You could have it that armor goes down by a small amount regardless of pen or not, more like:

if(Ship.Facing.Armor <= Weapon.Pen)

{

Ship.Health -= Damage;

}

Ship.Facing.Armor -= 1; //(or some other constant, or some fraction of the penetration, like Weapon.Pen / Ship.Facing.Armor)

EDIT: (And if you want to keep all damage as just 1 that's fine too, it still works, and you can have pen 0 weapons if you want, that don't reduce armor, etc)

If I shoot at a 61mm armor a 1000 times with a 60mm laser, it still won't penetrate the armor?

That's gonna suck.

It's also going to be realistic! Doesn't matter how many machine gun rounds you fire at a tank, you're only ever going to scratch the paintwork. But then realism isn't necessarily fun...

My own two pennies in general -- military technology favours miniaturisation, so ships basically get smaller as they get more advanced. Space strategy games always seem to get this the wrong way around! The only exception in modern navies are aircraft carriers, of course (for the obvious reason), and they never get anywhere near to actual combat.

It's also going to be realistic! Doesn't matter how many machine gun rounds you fire at a tank, you're only ever going to scratch the paintwork. But then realism isn't necessarily fun...

My own two pennies in general -- military technology favours miniaturisation, so ships basically get smaller as they get more advanced. Space strategy games always seem to get this the wrong way around! The only exception in modern navies are aircraft carriers, of course (for the obvious reason), and they never get anywhere near to actual combat.

Actually tanks arent perfectly armored (the typical tradeoff of design) and they still have weak points (like their top/rear where the armor is significantly lighter - usually there are some radiator openings )

Tanks have viewing ports that bullets can richochet down or their optics can be disabled (lowering the tanks efficiency to operate).

Other tanks have rubber road tires which can be eroded away (unlikely, but those arent impervious and sustained fire agiant the side of the tank which doesnt face the enemy)

So the spaceships (also with some relative weakpoints and various openings) hit by mass smaller gunfire may still get cumulative damage at a much lower effectiveness, but which still can impair the ships operation There may be a small probability that a lucky shot on a weak spot may cause catastrophic damage. Usually lighter units attempting this (requiring continuous firing) will be massively damaged/destroyed by the bigger hardened ships guns.

It's also going to be realistic! Doesn't matter how many machine gun rounds you fire at a tank, you're only ever going to scratch the paintwork. But then realism isn't necessarily fun...

My own two pennies in general -- military technology favours miniaturisation, so ships basically get smaller as they get more advanced. Space strategy games always seem to get this the wrong way around! The only exception in modern navies are aircraft carriers, of course (for the obvious reason), and they never get anywhere near to actual combat.

Actually tanks arent perfectly armored (the typical tradeoff of design) and they still have weak points (like their top/rear where the armor is significantly lighter - usually there are some radiator openings )

Well, yes, fair enough. It does depend on the tank. I know in Basra a British Challenger II got stuck in the mud for a day and was continuously pelted from all angles with everything from HMG fire to anti-armour missiles and it's only damage was a crack in the diver's periscope. It was back in action the next day. On the other hand, the American Abrams can be taken out with an HMG if it targets the radiator grille, as you mention.

So I guess given all that, you'd probably want your low calibre weapons to have zero chance to causing normal damage still, but a small chance of a critical.

Actually tanks arent perfectly armored (the typical tradeoff of design) and they still have weak points (like their top/rear where the armor is significantly lighter - usually there are some radiator openings )

I don't see any difference between "main" and "secondary" weapons: both classes are used to shoot other ships. More meaningful distinctions include:

• Weapons that can be mounted arbitrarily vs weapons that require a special position (e.g. gigantic particle accelerators along the middle of the hull of a large and elongated ship)
• Weapons that can be aimed autonomously (e.g. typical real-world artillery) vs weapons that require orienting the ship to aim (e.g. said particle accelerators, and launch tubes for missiles and torpedoes)
• Dumbfire vs aimed projectiles.

What's available in these different categories and effectiveness of different attack types depend on the needs of your game. For example, the first post shows a bias towards relatively low power and not very fancy weapons (only very large guns against very weak targets are capable of serious overkill, while humble weapons that don't pose a threat to well armored targets are common), accompanied by an expectation of weapons hitting almost always (no dodging or evasion) and, as a consequence, of battles of attrition being decided by imperviousness to damage. It would be appropriate for good armor to be very heavy and bad for maneuvering, to make heavy ships pay for it, but very effective against weak weapons, and for good energy weapons to require so much energy that they can only be used sparingly, with complications like charging times, turning off engines etc.

Even within these parameters, many possible styles of space combat are possible: fleets could routinely ambush each other from good cloaking, hyperspace etc. (making weapon ranges irrelevant), with mere seconds or minutes of engagement as the weaker party frantically escapes with FTL drives or the like, or battles could last for days as fleets chase each other at nearly the same speed, just out of weapon range, or fast ships with long-range weapons could surround and grind down an enemy without fear of retribution.

a game called "Rising force online" had a system I liked a lot. Basically everyone has a defense % bar that represents how well their armor's holding up this recovers slowly, even while being attacked. Large attacks deplete it quickly, and small attacks only take away 1%~ max. As the bar decreases, you'd see your damage going from 10's to 100's. This meant that large tanky players could hold off several low damaging players for ages, but when other high damage characters focused on them, those smaller players posed a much larger threat. I'd think that makes sense when applied to this scenario as well. 2 big ships would shoot each other, breaking each other's armor, and exposing a weakness for the small ships to unload on.