Would you find a Holodeck style multiple choice space (or ground) combat program to be useful?

cuchulainn74

I'm thinking of embarking on a new Foundry project to provide a user-specified simple combat simulation for Space or Ground. All of the discussion of build effectiveness and the Season 13 balance pass have me thinking it would be nice to be able to call up a Holodeck style simulation. Driven by dialogue choices, the player could choose the enemy species, a range of enemy force sizes, and whether the enemies are simple combat or "true" combat. I've started searching for an existing Foundry offering like this, but haven't found one yet.

thay8472

You can do that with dialog triggers, I've seen a couple of missions but don't remember the mission names.

spiritborn

It could work, though I've not seen one, problem I see is that you're limited to 25 NPC groups per map, so unless each choice isn't a new map there's limits to the choices as there's way more then 25 possible variations there even if you excluse "friendly" and "neutral" NPCs (which you can't attack)

cuchulainn74

spiritborn wrote: »

It could work, though I've not seen one, problem I see is that you're limited to 25 NPC groups per map, so unless each choice isn't a new map there's limits to the choices as there's way more then 25 possible variations there even if you excluse "friendly" and "neutral" NPCs (which you can't attack)

Yeah, I expect to have to do some gymnastics, but before I start on the complicated details, I'm curious what folks think of the idea.

paxfederatica

Also, if you mix enemy mobs keep in mind that many enemy NPC factions will attack each other, which has the odd effect of the mission nerfing itself.

cuchulainn74

paxfederatica wrote: »

Also, if you mix enemy mobs keep in mind that many enemy NPC factions will attack each other, which has the odd effect of the mission nerfing itself.

Yeah, I was concerned about that, but the initial plan was not to mix mob types. At this point, the sheer number of mob types is almost pushing me toward doing something like a Quadrant based program. So, one for Alpha Quadrant mobs, one for Beta, etc. Then I can probably get enough mobs on the map (hidden) to make the holoprogram work. Still tinkering with possibilities right now, though. I wish there was a way to branch a mission to different maps based on something like a dialogue choice. But map transitions are too linear for that.

spiritborn

should be noted that mobs that are from the same quadrant might still attack each other, while mobs from another quadrant will not for example Cardassian and Starfleet mobs attack each other regardless of variants but dominion and cardassian mobs do not attack each other (IIRC). There's also some mob times that are "always hostile" who attack everything that isn't their own faction.

cuchulainn74

spiritborn wrote: »

should be noted that mobs that are from the same quadrant might still attack each other, while mobs from another quadrant will not for example Cardassian and Starfleet mobs attack each other regardless of variants but dominion and cardassian mobs do not attack each other (IIRC). There's also some mob times that are "always hostile" who attack everything that isn't their own faction.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to be confusing. I'm only grouping them by Quadrant as a means of getting sets of enemies that I can include on a particular map. I'm thinking along the lines of an "easy" options that's one NPC group of mostly frigates on standard combat mode. Then a "harder" mode that's 2 NPC groups of heavier ships on true combat mode, plus the frigates group. Only the ships of any one species would be made visible at a time by the dialogue, if necessary.