*** This is an ever evolving document with various ideas and nice to haves, not likely that everything in this document will end up in the final game nor is this an exhaustive list of ideas or inspirations

Inspirations:

Battletech, Xcom 2, Wasteland Series, Fallout, FTL, Codename Panzers, Shadowrun Dragonfall, Star Wars books and films, Battleship Chess, Battle Brothers, Total War Warhammer 2, Starsector, Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol, X-Wing Board Game, Gaslands, Star Traders: Frontiers, Winds of Trade, Tradewinds

Battletech — Directional facing, customizable weapon loadouts, pilot skills matter, armor faces, unit heat management, planet missions for money/resources, ship turn order, unit power scaling
Battleship Chess — ships with turrets, turret field of fire, series of battles, damage sticks
Xcom/XCom 2 — Cover, flanking, hit chance, Line of sight
Fallout Series — Action point systems, unit customization, weapons, some flavor (Super mutants)
Wasteland Series — Action point systems, unit customization, attributes and skills, weapons, perks, turrets and bots, leadership, some flavor
FTL — ability to board enemy ships and fight their crew
Codename Panzers — Battle with army that you started with but can modify in between, armor faces on tanks with core health
Shadowrun Series — drone control, hacking, simultaneous battle types that affect each other although I had the idea before playing these games
Battle Brothers — movement, ability, and attack fatigue; company missions, repair and healing between missions, resolve/morale, “Greenskins” (Orc/goblins)
StarWars books/movies — Especially opening scene of A New Hope, wanted spaceship combat with shield, armor and weapons where facing mattered, wanted ship disable and boarding, but wanted it turn based; some weapon categories and ideas
Starsector — fleet deployment, cargo and trade, some weapon ideas, ship power scaling, ship system modifiers?
Total War Warhammer — unit upkeep, multiple army map movement, army ambushing
Warship Gunner 2 for PS2 – loved the ship customization, may not get to this level of customization

SHIPS CREW :

Each ship will be run by a crew of sailors whose core characteristics and abilities will be split into ultimately 4 primary areas (Fleet, Soldier, Pilot, Ground)

**Fleet Abilities:

Each sailor will gain Fleet Experience from fleet engagements that can be applied to one of (4) categories:

Command — this gives a sailor the ability to lead a fleet and an individual ship. Higher command gives the ship higher initiative and allows for the captain to choose from more special abilities and the Command level of the Fleet Admiral sets how many fleet points the fleet has to work with (number and size of ships in the fleet). Gives galaxy map bonuses.
Engineering — this gives the sailor the ability to improve the ships heat output when charging shields, increase the overall core heat threshold and per turn heat reduction as well as enable certain special abilities for the commander such as (All power to shields, Full Burn, Coolant Dump, Fast Reset). Possible ability to repair critical damage.
Weapons — this gives the sailor the ability to make weapons more heat efficient, more accurate, and provide the commander with certain special abilities such as (Overwhelming fire, Target the Engines, Hard point targeting)
Systems — this gives the sailor better readings from scanners, better jamming with ECM, and less effective jamming from enemy ECM, better AMS

**Soldier Abilities:

When sailors engage in soldier engagements they gain Soldiering Experience which works differently from fleet experience. Soldiering experience causes them to level up a set of base attributes and skills.
*Base Attributes:

Brains — Simply put, how smart a soldier is. Higher brains gets higher XP per fight, more skill points on level up and is the cap on the technology skills.
Senses — How good the solider is as paying attention to what his eyes and ears are telling him. Increases range of passive perception outside line of sight, increases sight range, increases ranged weapon accuracy, increases evasion and increases critical chance.
Spirit — The fighting spirit of a soldier, their morale, as well as how charismatic they can be as a leader. Affects leadership buff range, max leadership level, max morale and morale recovery.
Core — A measure of a soldiers core muscles, lungs, and aerobic fitness. Affects the soldiers max fatigue, fatigue recovery, and max HP.
Limbs — How much control a soldier has over their arms and legs. Affects melee chance to hit, action points, movement speed, and evasion.
Hands — How coordinated a soldier is with their hands. Affects action points, ranged accuracy, throwing accuracy.
Build — How strong a soldier is overall. Affects max HP, carry weight, melee damage, fatigue cost of melee, throw distance and automatic weapon fire control.

*SOLDIER SKILLS

TECHNOLOGY SKILLS —
-Hacking – Speed to open doors locked with electronic locks, get data from terminals, disable automated turrets and drones.
-Drone Piloting – How many action points the drones you control have, how many drones can be controlled at once, how accurate they are at shooting, how resistant they are to being hacked.
-Mechanics – How skilled you are with mechanical devices, ability to repair drones and turrets, ability to mechanically sabotage a ships systems.
GENERAL SKILLS —
-First Aid – Ability to care for wounds in combat as well as utilize field medpaks properly. Gives a boost to ship out of combat medical recovery rate. (Just a Scratch, All Better)
-Field Surgeon – Ability to stabilize and revive downed teammates in combat. Gives a boost to ship out of combat medical recovery rate. (Stay with Me, Ship Medic, Knowing is Half the Battle)
-Leadership – Ability to lead troops in battle. Gives a passive boost to friendly morale and unlocks morale bonuses and debuffs to enemies (Rally, Demoralize, Show ’em How It’s Done)
-Breaking And Entering – Ability to bash open doors, as opposed to hacking the locks. Capped by Build. (Battering Ram, Weak Point)
COMBAT SKILLS —
-Martial Arts – Ability to take down opponents with no weapon other than your body. (Stunning Strike, Crippling Strike, Disarm, Subdue)
-Blunt Weapons – From sticks to maces and hammers, a little leverage helps you hit harder. (Opportune Strike, Stunning Blow, Parry, Sweep the Leg, Brutal Blows)
-Bladed Weapons – If it has an edge, you can make a point with it. Knives, Swords, Axes, etc (Stabbed ’em, Opportune Strike, Dis Arm, Parry, Savage Swings)
-Handguns – Ability to hit opponents with projectile weapons that can be held easily in one hand. (Quick Draw, Double Tap, Baba Yega)
-Automatic Fire – Ability to control standard sized ranged weapons during burst and automatic fire. This includes machine pistols, assault rifles and SMGs. (Point Fire, Covering Fire, Full Control)
-Marksmanship – Ability to obtain high single shot accuracy from standard sized ranged weapons. This includes crossbows, sniper rifles, shotguns. (Make It Count, Eagle Eye, In the Zone, No Scope)
-Heavy Weapons – Ability to utilize heavy weapons effectively including flamethrowers, grenade launchers, machine guns. (Covering Fire, Full Suppression, Demolishing Barrage)
-Throwing Weapons – Sometimes you just need to throw it at them. Knives, grenades, stars, hatchets, bolas, vacuum cleaners. (Long Arm, Curve Ball, Hail of Blades)

DERIVED STATS* – formulas subject to change

These are the ultimate numbers that are checked in battle and are derived from Attributes and Skills
Hit Points — derived from level, race, core and build= (level * race hp) + (level * core) + (level * build/2)
Action Points — derived from hands, limbs, and build (maybe derived from every stat, or at least most stats)= base action points + (hands / 2) + ( limbs / 3) + (build / 10)?
Combat Initiative — derived from level, spirit and limbs= level + (spirit / 3) + (limbs / 3)
Movement Speed — derived from limb and build= base movement + limb/2 + build/5
Max Fatigue — derived from level, race and core= race base fatigue + (level * race fatigue growth) + (level * core fatigue)
Fatigue Recovery — derived from level, race, and core= race base fatigue recovery + (level * race fatigue recovery growth) + (level * core fatigue recovery)
Melee Chance to hit — derived from Limbs and Melee skill= base melee chance + limb modifier + equipped weapon / martial arts skill modifier
Ranged Chance to hit — derived from hands, senses, and weapon skills= base ranged chance to hit + senses modifier + hands modifier
Throw Chance to hit — derived from hands, senses, and throwing skill= base weapon chance to hit + senses modifier + throwing skill modifier
Morale — derived from level, race and spirit= base race morale + (level * race morale growth) + spirit morale bonus
Morale recovery — derives from level, race and spirit= base race morale recovery + (level * race morale recovery growth) + spirit morale recovery bonus
Sight range — derived from race and senses= race sight range + senses bonus
Passive senses range — derived from race and senses= race passive perception range + senses bonus
Skill points per level — derived from Brains= Brains/2?
Leadership buff range — derived from spirit= per spirit level leadership range
Carry Weight — derived from race and build= race base max carry weight + build level bonus
Max Throw Distance — derived from build= base throw distance + build
Evasion — derived from limb= per limb level evasion + per senses level evasion

IMPORTANCE OF MORALE AND FATIGUE

A soldier without confidence may as well be a cardboard cutout. Low morale lowers a soldiers accuracy, crit chance, action points and ability to use perks/abilities. Morale is raised by successful attacks, enemies falling and certain abilities. Morale is lowered by suffering damage, friendly units falling and enemy abilities.
Fatigue is important to manage as well. Moving and attacking costs fatigue. Some special abilities and attacks cost high amounts of fatigue. Getting hit by certain attacks does fatigue damage as well.

FLEETS AND SHIPS

A fleet contains one or more ships. In the ultimate game, a fleet will be able to move around the galactic map and perform one of the following actions based on its location and the capabilities of the ships in its fleet on the owning players turn.
-Mine Asteroids — Generates valuable metals from the asteroids. Requires at least one ship in the fleet to have a mining laser. Must be in an asteroid field.
-Trade Goods — Buy and sell goods in the local market. Must be adjacent to a space station.
-Perform Planetside/Station Mission — Send some soldiers to take care of a problem for a local party and get compensated. Must be adjacent to a space station.
-Accept Task — Add a mission from a station to your fleet mission queue. Must be adjacent to the station to accept.
-Turn in Bounty/Quest — Receive payment or reward for successfully completing a task. Must be adjacent to the station the fleet picked up the mission from.
-Attack Fleet — Attack adjacent fleet. Must be adjacent to an opposing fleet, if victorious your fleet will occupy the square that was attacked.
-Split Fleet — Organize some of the ships from this fleet into their own Fleet. Must have more than 1 ship in this fleet.
-Perform Repairs — Spend some fleet action points to repair damage to ships in this fleet.
-Salvage Hull — Perform repairs on a discovered hull floating in space. Must be in a space with a salvageable hull and enough resources to perform the salvage.
-Scavenge Battlefield — Get ship grade metal, electronic parts, possibly full turret modules, and full ship modules from previously destroyed ships or hulls. Must be in a space with ship debris.
-Go Dark — Shut down all primary ship systems in the fleet to hide from passive scanners. Reduces movement drastically.
-Perform Active Scan — Scan nearby sectors for hidden fleets, drifting hulls, and battlefield debris. Scan range and results depends on ships in the fleet.
-Initiate Dimensional Jump — Move fleet to another planet system via FTL (can take multiple turns)
– Transfer Crew — Move crew between ships in the fleet (free action)
– Manage Crew — Manage the skills and loadout of crew members

SHIP TO SHIP COMBAT

One of the primary components of this game is the turn based ship to ship combat.
A typical turn:

Each ship will act in order based on its initiative.
A ship gets movement, rotate, and attack actions each turn if it has a full Operational crew.
Partially crewed ships will get 2 of 3 actions and skeleton crewed ships get 1 of 3.
Ships with only 1 crew member that have a skeleton crew number higher than 1, will still be able to move or rotate but only at speed 1, and probably try to design it so they could attack with 1 weapon.
Additional ship abilities are available depending on the crew in the Command, Engineering, Systems, and Weapons slots

Core Stress and Overload:

Each ship is powered by an energy core. Performing attacks, charging shields, moving, and certain special abilities cause stress on the Core. At a certain threshold, this begins to damage the ship. Once it reaches its maximum stress, the ship completely shuts down, shields drop to 0 on all faces, and the Core has to be vented and restarted. This takes an entire round of combat, leaving the ship vulnerable. It is best to avoid a core overload.

Shields, Armor, and HP:

Each ship has 4 faces. Each face has a shield and armor plating. The hull of the ship has a single HP value. A face can only be hit from an opponent on that side of the ship. And all of the shield and armor health on a face has to be removed before the HP of the ship can be damaged from that direction. Once the HP is reduced to 0, the ship is destroyed. A destroyed ship has a chance to be either a salvageable hull, a field of salvageable debris, or a complete destruction.
Shields can be recharged during the battle. Each ship has a number of shield generators that can each charge 1 shield face once per turn. If a shield is dropped to 0, it collapses and must take a turn before it can be charged again. Charging shields puts some stress on the ships core.
Armor can only be repaired between battles with the exception of certain special abilities or systems.

Weapons, Fields of Fire, and Attacking:

Most ships (besides some civilian models) have 1 or more weapon hardpoints. These hardpoints offer various fields of fire for turrets that are installed on them. There are 8 fields of fire representing overlapping 90 degree arcs around the ship, along each of the directions a ship can face. Front, Front Right, Right, Rear Right, Rear, Rear Left, Left, and Front Left. A turret can only attack targets inside its field of fire and inside its range. (Possibly adding some Fixed firing weapons as well).Whenever an attack is performed, the target is selected, the attack rolls determine if there was a hit, and the appropriate face of the target is selected to be damaged based on the attackers position relative to the target and the targets facing. Core stress is then applied to the attacker based on the weapons fired.

Turrets:

Turrets are the most common way of mounting weapon system on board ships. It is way easier to turn a turret than a whole ship. Each ships load out is customizable based on the number and size of the hardpoints on its hull. There are 2 sizes of hardpoints and corresponding turrets, Standard and Large. Standard weapons tend to have much lighter damage and are more numerous on smaller ships while Large weapons are what give the larger capital ships their firepower.
Turrets can be one of the following types:

Laser – basic energy beam weapon, good range, medium damage
Blaster/Pulse – fast firing energy pulse weapon, short range, low damage per shot, but multiple shots per attack. Good for missile and fighter defense.
Ion – an energy disruption beam, medium range, good damage against shields. Meant for disabling enemy ships. Most of its damage once it gets past shields converts to Core stress on the target.
Ballistic – fires good old fashioned projectiles, albeit at incredible speeds. Range and damage depend on the caliber of the cannon but all have a limited by ammo capacity.
Flak Cannon – fires exploding projectiles at short range. Good against fighters and missiles. Limited ammo.
Missile – fires homing missiles with very high accuracy. Medium range, great damage, damage does not bleed thru layers of defense very well. Severely limited by ammo capacity. Their accuracy can be disrupted by electronic counter measures and missiles can be destroyed by weapons set to missile defense mode.
Rockets – the unguided brother of missiles, rockets make up for the lack of guidance in volume. Medium range, good damage, can be fired in a spread and higher ammo capacity than missiles. Can be destroyed by missile defense weapons.
Turbo Lasers – Superior range and damage, turbo lasers are the core heavy weapon of most larger ships. But when it comes down to it, just a much more powerful and long range version of a Laser. Also high core heat when fired.
Torpedoes – A special kind of weapon, torpedoes are nearly fighter sized propelled explosives that can pierce thru shields and dig into armor before exploding with a high chance to do critical damage. Very expensive and hard to hit smaller silhouettes with. They can be destroyed with anti-fighter/AMS weapons. Torpedoes launched by torpedo bomber craft point blank cannot be destroyed by AMS, but the torpedo bomber craft themselves can be destroyed before launching. Not automatically replaced, must be purchased. Unguided and guided versions. Guided have higher base accuracy but susceptible to ECM. Unguided lower base accuracy but cannot be affected by ECM.

— Crew Positions— ?

Each Ship has crew positions that need to be filled in order to operate effectively. It also has a crew cost per seat. Larger ships have a cost of 1 crew per seat meaning if you want the ship to be fully crewed you will need a body in each seat while smaller ships like a Corvette have a crew cost of 0.2 so a single crew member could operate it effectively. The special abilities, initiative and accuracy of the ship depend on who is in the crew seats.
+Captain — The commander on this ship. Controls the ship’s initiative in combat, the ship with the captain with the highest Command experience is the fleet flagship and determines how many ships can be in the fleet. Determines some ship special abilities in combat.+First Liutenant — the Captain’s right hand. Is first in line to replace the Captain should he become incapacitated. Can increase the ship’s initiative with high enough command skill. If his skill is higher than the Captain, there is actually a penalty.+ Gunnery Officer — The officer in charge of aiming and firing the ships weaponry. Sets the ships accuracy and special abilities regarding weapons.+Chief Engineer — The officer in charge of the ships Core, Engines, and Shields. Determines some ship special abilities regarding shields, engines, and core management. Determines chance to repair critical damage.+Ship Medic — The head medical officer on the ship. Determines the soldier out of combat heal rate.+Electronics Officer — Officer in charge of ship scanners and electronic counter measures if available. Relies on Senses attribute and ships Scanning capability. Determines scan effectiveness on star map and sensor readings of other ships in battle.
—-Silhouette—-The larger a ship, the easier it is to hit. Battleships, Dreadnaughts and Fleet carriers tend to be a guaranteed hit with most weapons due to their large silhouette. Smaller ships like corvettes and frigates would be very hard to hit with larger weapons and small weapons still might have trouble without an experienced weapons officer.

BOARDING:

Part of ship to ship combat is boarding an enemy ship and taking it for your own. Most military ships have at least 1 boarding craft that can send 1 or more sailors to fight for control of an enemy ship. However, these boarding ships cannot plow thru shields, so in order to perform the board action, the boarding craft must be adjacent to the defending ship and the shields of the defending ship must be down on the side the attacker is boarding from.
Once a boarding action is successful, a soldier combat begins on board the ship. This combat happens simultaneously with the fleet battle in a sense. For every 1 turn of the fleet battle, the soldier battle on the ship gets 3-5? turns. The soldier battle ends when one of these conditions is met:-There are no more units able to fight on the attacking team (Defender wins)-There are no more units able to fight on the defending team (Attacker wins)-The ship is destroyed (no one wins)-The fleet battle ends before either of the the other conditions are met (Defender wins)

—– Third Battle type ——-

In addition to fleet and soldier combat, I want to have small craft (fighters, bombers, etc) have dogfights like the Xwing tabletop, Ace Patrol, Aeronautica Imperialis and Steam Birds
Additional stats for crewmates who wish to spec into piloting:PILOT ABILITIES:Control – How skilled a crew member is at piloting a small craft. Higher skill unlocks advanced maneuvers, lowers the stress from difficult maneuvers and gives bonuses to evasion.Gunnery – How skilled a crew member is at hitting opossing ships with weapons. Higher skill unlocks special attacks and gives bonus to hit chance and critical hit chance.Composure – It takes nerves of steel to go careening through space at high speeds while being shot at. Higher skill gives higher starting morale and reduces morale penalties as well as the ability to focus on shooting or dodgingGuts – When pulling difficult maneuvers, a pilot might succumb to the G forces and strain of maneuvers if they don’t have sufficient guts. Higher abilities allow the pilot to suffer more stress before blacking out.–Derived stats:Morale: a pilot with low morale may break and try to flee. Lower morale will cause more strain from difficult maneuvers.Strain: How much physical and mental stress a pilot is under from high G maneuvers and enemy attacks. High strain lowers evasion effectiveness, attack accuracy, and available maneuvers.

BASIC GAME LOOP

Each ship sets its next maneuver. Each ship sets an Action to take from a list of available actions: Evade, Target, Awareness, Lock, Repair Ships then move simultaneously and attempt to shoot enemies that come into their field of fire. Shots are a contest of attackers accuracy and defenders evasion.

–Ships Stats:

Acceleration – how many throttle settings they can change up in 1 turn
Speed – highest throttle setting available
Braking thrusters – how many throttle settings down they can change in 1 turn
Agility – Maneuvering and evasion ability of the ship
Hull – how much damage a ship can take before being destroyed
Shields – how much damage shields can block
Weapons – weapons available for attack and their stats
Crew – how many crew can fit in the ship, including the pilot, some ships can have gunner positions giving extra attacks or copilot positions giving bonus actions such as being able to acquire a lock while evading

–Maneuvers–

Ships can select from maneuvers based on the ships base agility and the pilot skill.

Straight – fly the ship in a nice straight line
Drift – a slight deviation from the straight path
Bank – a gradual turn of 45 degrees
Turn – a 90 degree turn, at high speeds can cause stress on the crew
Side Slip – offsets the ship to the left or right by one ship size, direction stays the same, increases evasion slightly, requires experienced pilot
Rudder Skid – a bank with a 90 degree twist at the end, some stress, requires experienced pilot
J Hook – a turn with a 90 degree twist at the end for a full 180 from the original facing, high stress, requires veteran pilot
Illeman – straight with a 180 flip at the end, resets throttle to 1, highest stress maneuver, requires skilled pilot
Barrel Roll + (Straight, Drift, Bank, Turn) – a quick evasive maneuver to one side or the other then perform a maneuver. Greatly increases evasion but doesn’t allow for an action. Requires a high agility ship and an Ace pilot.

—- Fourth Battle Type —-

There is a lot of combat happening in space but eventually you may want to conquer a planet. In order to conquer planets the fourth battle type would be a ground battle. Ground battles would be fought in the Battle Tech / Rogue Tech style. Vehicles (From trucks with machine guns to hover tanks), Mechs (light, medium, heavy), VTOL (Helicopters, Quadcopters, Jet Hover)