How do you think large-scale battles will work on Dual Universe?

[SonEasterZombie]

Now I know that we know VERY little about how weapons and pvp mechanics will work in the finished game, but that doesn't mean we can't make educated guesses about how battles will play out in the abstract. Here's my current idea about how things may work.

 

My main idea revolves around the concept that there will likely be many "stages", or areas where a specific type of combat or ship is needed, in any battle. In a planetary battle, there would be 3 categories and 6 stages, outlined below: 
 

Category One: Space

 

Stage One: Open/Deep space - Open space is (arbitrarily, at the moment) defined as being at least 5 times further away from a target planet as that planets diameter. On Earth for example, "Open Space" would be defined as being 40,000 miles (65,000 km) away from the planets surface or further. Open space would likely serve as a staging point for large invasions, as well as the location of the largest space-only battles. The key feature of Open Space is the difficulty or impossibility of ground or orbital defenses to assist in any conflict.

 

Stage Two: High, Mid, and Low orbit - While the specifics about orbital mechanics in the game are still unknown (to me at least), they still have a large influence on how orbital fights would play out. If the system works similar to space engineers, where at a certain distance gravity no longer matters, then Orbit may be where the vast majority of large fights take place, as it would be easy to target an enemy, and fuel wouldn't be as much of a concern. If the system works more like Kerbal Space Program, with simulated orbital mechanics at any distance until you reach the influence of another body, then the largest ships would likely stray away from orbit, or at least they would not play a primary combat role. Due to the existence of antigrav generators, Orbit will likely play a smaller role than expected because you can bring very large ships much closer to the planets surface with antigrav.

 

Category Two: Atmosphere

 

Stage Three: High Atmosphere/ Antigrav generator area - This is the area where Antigrav generators play the largest role, and where ground-based defenses would likely become a serious threat. In addition, this is where fully-atmospheric fighters can be deployed by both sides, for cheap firepower. On the offensive side, High Atmosphere would likely contain large dropships and motherships, which release either smaller dropships, Atmospheric fighters, or Drop-pods. On the defensive side, High Atmosphere would be the most crucial point of defense. If an enemy can make it into High Atmosphere, they can reach the ground, where they can start doing serious damage to cities and infrastructure.

 

Stage Four: Low Atmosphere - This is the area where Antigrav generators are either highly impractical or impossible. Ships in low atmosphere will be mostly smaller-atmosphere only fighters and corvettes that can only get high enough in the air to be picked up by an Antigrav mothership. In addition to those ships, dropships will land soldiers and ground-based vehicles like Hovertanks in areas where they are needed. In an offensive situation, it will be the fighters job to ensure a safe landing spot for the dropships, and on the defensive side it will be to prevent it.

 

Category Three: Ground

 

Stage Five: Open Ground - This is where the larger land-based vehicles will dominate, and air support from High-atmosphere is still feasible. Open Ground will likely serve mostly as a movement stage, where ground-based vehicles are moving from one important place to another.

 

Stage Six: Relative Close Quarters - This is where the larger land-based vehicles will become impractical, like in urban areas and forests. From the perspective of a soldier this is still open-ground combat, but relative to the massive size of spaceships and the larger land vehicles, it is close quarters combat. RCQC (relative close quarters combat) will be the most important part of the occupation of a city. Securing this stage for a long period of time usually means victory, as long as the other stages are incapable of resupplying their fuel or numbers. 

 

 

Let me know if you have any ideas for how large-scale battles will play out on dual universe, or if you have anything to add or criticize about my "stages of battle" concept

[Yuu]

It's a nice categorization.

 

About what it may look like in really, I thing there is some really important game mechanisms that we must consider : blueprints, resurrection nodes, voxel based damaged, necessity to have player to control key-components...

 

For large/long scales battles, I think there would be specialized ship, equipped with resurrection nodes and a s**t-ton amount of ressources and components, so defeated allies can repop, build back their ship from blueprints (at least for fighters), and go back to the front line.

 

And I think, they will be a lot of boarding : kill the crew, you got one free ship. 

I imagine :

• Small transport ship created to breach into big one
• Hacking or use enemy's resurrection nodes
• Fire focused on areas of ships containing crew members
• ...

Disabling opponent will also be important, so that they can't come back in the battle : 

• Engine destruction
• "Jails" system
• Movement limitation
• ...

[SonEasterZombie]

3 hours ago, Yuuyake said:

And I think, they will be a lot of boarding : kill the crew, you got one free ship. 

I imagine :

• Small transport ship created to breach into big one
• Hacking or use enemy's resurrection nodes
• Fire focused on areas of ships containing crew members
• ...

Disabling opponent will also be important, so that they can't come back in the battle : 

• Engine destruction
• "Jails" system
• Movement limitation
• ...

I actually completely forgot about boarding! I do think that boarding will be incredibly impractical on most active working ships, as it is easy to avoid boarding ships by maneuvering so that they can't access your entrance (assuming they can't just attach to your ship and dig in). On larger ships this would be significantly easier if you can make it to the ship without getting blown up, but those larger ships would tend to have much larger crews. 

 

As for the building ships on the fly option, I think that might have its place, but I also feel that in large-scale space battles a single player will be a lot more useful operating one of the massive guns of a capital voidcraft than flying around in their own tiny little spaceship. Perhaps your idea for a "factory ship" of sorts that respawns players and creates smaller ships would be more suited as a support vessel for the advanced stages of large scale invasions, because any ships it could make would likely not have much of an impact on a fleet-on-fleet space battle.

 

I also completely forgot about the idea of mobile resurrection nodes, though I actually thought they functioned more like territory units. Assuming they can be mobilized though, that opens up a LOT of possibilities. If resurrection nodes are extremely heavy and expensive, it will encourage every fleet to be made up of a Super-Capital ship comprising of around 60-80% of the value or firepower of the fleet, and then smaller support vessels to prevent boarding and assist in combat. This Super Capital would be the docking location of all ships that weren't completely specialized for ship-on-ship combat, and would house factories to produce smaller ships, as well as enough pre-built ships that most of the crew could depart to take part in smaller-scale fights, rather than having to fire from the ship itself. If the resurrection nodes are lightweight and not prohibitively expensive, then you would likely see a fleet divided into several Capital ships build for different purposes, each with their own resurrection node.

[Yuu]

On 5/1/2019 at 8:00 PM, SonEasterZombie said:

as it is easy to avoid boarding ships by maneuvering

If I understood well, damages will be voxels based. If so you can breach a hull...

 

On 5/1/2019 at 8:00 PM, SonEasterZombie said:

single player will be a lot more useful operating one of the massive guns of a capital voidcraft than flying around in their own tiny little spaceship

Here again, they were speaking about balancing mechanism where small targets will be harder to touch or more resistant against big weapons. If the damage is voxel based, fighters may be a critical way of harassing weaks points off really big ships.

 

On 5/1/2019 at 8:00 PM, SonEasterZombie said:

mobile resurrection nodes, though I actually thought they functioned more like territory units

I'm not so sure myself about that one... It's a guess based on the fact that they take into accounts the nomadic players.

[blazemonger]

I kind of expect fleet/multi construct battles to work much like they do  in ATLAS. Big exception would be there's no NPCs to hire and have man stations.

[CoreVamore]

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