Implementing
the Killocats
This
document discusses how the special properties of the Kilrathi - as they are
described in the Wing Commander games, the Wing Commander books and the Wing Commander
movie – can be implemented into the Killocat race for Version 4 of VGA Planets.
Special emphasis has been placed on those properties that will require changes
in the host and/or player interface program of VGA Planets version 4.
In this
text the term “Kilrathi” refers to the original race in the Wing Commander
universe and the term “Killocats” to the race
Designing the Killocats
When
designing the special properties for the Killocats, I tried to keep the
following principles in mind:
- to model the race closely after
the properties of the Kilrathi as they are described in the Wing Commander
games, books and the movie, so that a player will recognized them and will
enjoy to play the race
- to make the race unique and
different from all other existing Version 4 races, so that the addition of
one or several Killocat races to a game add to the strategic and tactical
options of all players
- not to require changes to the
data structure describing fighters and other objects and as little changes
as possible to the data structure of ships
- not to require any additional new
windows in the player interface program to command the Killocats.
The Implementation of Fighters
in General
Fighters
play a paramount role in Wing Commander – both for the human side and for the
Kilrathi. Their relative firepower is much larger than the firepower of the
fighters typically used in VGA Planets: a handful of fighters, well even a
single well piloted fighter alone can destroy several much larger capital
ships. There are two ways to represent this in VGA Planets:
a) We could
convert the Kilrathi fighters into very small (high speed, low range) ships and
allow the carriers to transport a reasonable number (let’s say 20 to 30) of
these ships in their hulls around. Such small “fighter-ships” could be equipped
with the necessary on-board ship devices to perform the special missions that
the Kilrathi would use their fighters for like scouting, mine dropping or mine
sweeping. However the disadvantage would be that such fighters are incompatible
with the fighters of all other races (the Killocats would not have any “normal
V4 fighters” at all in this scenario), would be more difficult to command as
wings and would use far more object slots.
b) We could
down scale the Kilrathi fighters into a less powerful version that can be used
in numbers compatible with the other fighters in the game. Naturally such
fighters that are part of a strategy game are less similar to the fighters that
can be found in a fighter combat simulation like Wing Commander, but they do
allow a Killocat race that can be commanded better with the current game
interface and in a more consistent way to the operation of the other races.
I have
tried to find a good way to use the second approach for the race design.
Specialized Fighters
In the
games and in the books the Kilrathi have several different types of fighters that
fulfill different roles. They have agile hunter fighters armed with beams and
missiles that fight well against other fighters and less maneuverable bomber
fighters armed additionally with anti ship missiles (called “torpedoes”) that
perform well against capital ships but poorly against fighters. The torpedoes
work so well against capital ships, because a special Kilrathi invention allows
them to pass through all shields and hit the armor and ship hull directly
(typically it takes only one torpedo hit to destroy a small capital ship and
two to three torpedo hits to destroy a large capital ship). The torpedoes are
of little use against fighters because they need about 30 seconds to lock onto
their target (during this time span they have to decode the frequencies used by
the shields, so that they can pass through them).
The
Kilrathi have also a cloaking fighter that cannot be detected while being
cloaked. This fighter has to decloak briefly in combat to fire its weapons, but
it is nevertheless hard to hit, since it recloaks immediately after firing.
In order to
implement this variety between the different fighter types, Tim Wisseman has
suggested and agreed to declare the Killocat fighters as special and to add
additional code for them into the host program.
The
Killocat fighter type 1 will be the hunter fighter. This fighter can fire its
missile only against other fighters, but not against capital ships or ground
targets. Therefore it will fight well against fighters and only marginally
against capital ships (only with its beam weapons).
The
Killocat fighter type 2 will be the bomber fighter. This fighter can fire its
missiles only against capital ships (and ground targets), but not against other
fighters. The missiles will be special torpedoes and will be able to arc
through all shields and to hit the ship armor (or the ship systems, if the
armor is gone) directly. Therefore the Killocat bomber fighter will fight
poorly against fighters, but well against large targets.
The
Killocat fighter type 3 will be the cloaking fighter. It will have a very high
evasive value (which might be reduced, if a Tachyon Emitter is close by) that
will make it very hard to be hit in combat. Fighter wings that contain only
this fighter type will also be considered as being cloaked – in the same way as
the Bird fighter wings are cloaked (although the idea for the cloaked Killocat
fighter type was developed much earlier than the idea for the cloaked Bird
fighter wings).
Both sides
of the Wing Commander universe have fighters that can fly faster than capital
ships and can operate for a limited time independently away from their bases or
carriers. However most fighters lack a hyper jump engine (the experimental
Excalibur is an exception) and the necessary long term life support modules for
really long travels.
Since there
is (at least for me) still some confusion about the speed or combat quickness
value of fighters, I explain here what I want to achieve with my settings for
the fighter values. All Killocat fighters should be able to fly 300 lys per turn, which is faster than any non-gravitonic
accelerated ship. They should be able to maintain this speed for 2.5 turns
without the need to refuel. Therefore their total independent travel range
should be 750 lys. Their combat quickness on the other
hand does not need to be so exceptional, a good value similar to that of the
better fighters of the classic fighter races would be sufficient, probably
something in the area of 125. If the current usage of the fighter values does
not allow such a setting (if the speed value is used only as combat quickness),
I would like to ask Tim Wisseman to declare the Killocat fighter travel range
as special and add the necessary code.
Special Fighter Missions
The
Kilrathi (and also the human side) in the Wing Commander games perform a lot of
tasks with their fighters like scouting, mine sweeping, mine laying.
In VGA Planets such tasks would normally be conducted by capital ships. But in
order to achieve a sufficiently close resemblance between the original Kilrathi
and the Killocats and also in order to create some unique race abilities, it is
necessary to find an equivalent for these fighter missions. It is not necessary
that the fighters (in a technical sense) actually perform these tasks
themselves, as long as it looks, feels and plays in
this way (see the Killocat race guide for more information about the purposes
of the special fighter missions).
Since
fighters in Version 4 cannot carry devices nor ship sized ord (to lay mines), I
think it is better to carry out the special missions of the Killocat fighter
wings actually with the carriers that carry the wings and not the wings
themselves. So technically the special Killocat fighter missions become special
Killocat carrier missions, because the presence of a Killocat fighter wing on a
Killocat carrier will – under certain conditions – give a device or some
special ability to the carrier.
- Wide area
reconnaissance:
the carrier gets a scanner with a (well working) range of 500lys that does
not produce any sensor noise (condition: a wing with at least 250 type 1
fighters docked).
- Long range mine
sweeping: the
carrier gets a mine sweeper array and is placed temporarily at the chosen mine
sweeping destination to perform the mine sweep (condition: a wing with at
least 250 type 1 fighters docked).
- Long range
barbitic mine dropping: the carrier gets a barbitic mine dropper and is placed
temporarily at the chosen mine dropping destination to perform the mine
drop (condition: a wing with at least 250 type 2 fighters docked).
- Long range laser
mine dropping:
the carrier gets a laser mine dropper and is placed temporarily at the
chosen mine dropping destination to perform the mine drop (condition: a
wing with at least 250 type 2 fighters docked).
- Long range
probing: the
carrier gets a tachyon emitter (with a reduced range of only 50 lys) and is placed temporarily at the chosen probing
destination to perform the probing. Additionally the ship receives also
all the information from all planets in an area of 50 lys
around the target destination as if the ship was in orbit of all of these
planets (condition: a wing with at least 250 type 3 fighters docked).
- Long range combat drop: the carrier gets a special long range
transporter that can beam the troops down to a planet’s surface even
though the ship is not in orbit of the planet (condition: a wing with at
least 250 type 3 fighters docked).
Implementation into the Player
Interface
Here is a proposal how to implement the controls of the
Killocat “fighter missions” into the player interface. The “fighter bays”
controls of the “cargo” section (in the ship window) seem to be the natural
place to command fighter wings that are docked to a carrier. In the same way as
the two red buttons “Launch” and “Launch and Command” are only displayed, if a
fighter wing in one or several fighter bays is selected, we could display here
two additional red buttons for two special fighter missions, if the necessary
conditions are met. As the following screenshot shows, there is enough space on
the right side of the two existing buttons to implement the two new buttons.
The easiest
way to show that a wing has been commanded to perform a special mission would
be to change the color of the button. Since the Wide Area Reconnaissance does
not require a target or any other input, a single mouse click on the button
would be sufficient to activate this special mission. We could write something
like “Wide Area Scan” on the button to indicate that the reconnaissance is
taking place all around the carrier. Note that the two new red buttons work
slightly different than the existing two, because the wing stays docked with
the carrier and is not removed immediately from the ship like for the “launch”
and “launch and command” buttons.
The second
possible special mission for the type 1 Hunters fighters is the minesweeping
which does require the entry of a target destination. I would suggest to choose
the target location – after clicking the second new large red button for the
mission – in the usual way by a mouse click in the main star map and to write
the target coordinates (and space permitting also the name of the a near-by
object or “open space”) onto the button. I have tried to make the new buttons
as wide as possible to allow more space for the inscription of the target’s
coordinates and name.
Note that
the target of the minesweeping does not have to be a minefield, the user may
direct the wing to any place (within the allowed distance), but the wing will
only sweep a minefield, if the wing encounters a minefield at the destination
of its mission or on the way to the destination.
If the
composition of the fighters in a wing allows other special fighter missions to be
flown of the carrier, the labels below the red buttons will change accordingly.
In the next screenshot you can see the red buttons that will be displayed, if a
wing contains a sufficiently large number of type 2 bomber fighters to allow
mine dropping missions.
We should
also handle the unlikely case that a wing is so large, that it contains enough
fighters of several types to allow several kinds of special missions. The
easiest solution would be that in this case only the missions for the first
fighter type that has enough fighters for its special mission in the wing,
would be able to fly its missions (example: a wing that contains 300 type 2
bomber fighters and 300 type 3 cloaking fighter would be able only to do mine
dropping, but not Search Patrols or Combat Drops).
The next
screen shot shows a wing that has been commanded to drop barbitic mines in open
space.
The
following picture shows a wing of type 2 bomber fighters that will drop laser
mines in the area where an enemy fighter wings has been detected.
If the wing
contains a sufficiently high number of type 3 cloaker fighters, the special
mission buttons for “Search Patrol” and “Combat Drop” will be shown.
The
following screenshot shows a wing that has been ordered to search a 50 lys radius area around a target point which is in open
space.
The
following picture shows a wing of type 3 cloaker fighters that will drop combat
troops on the planet that has been selected as target.
Fighter
Vulnerability
Since fighters
play such an important role for the Killocats – they are needed for all special
missions and contain most of the firepower of the Killocat fleet – it may be
very difficult, if not impossible to play against races that possess weapons
that can destroy easily all Killocat fighters.
I would
like to wait and see how well the Killocats will perform in the beta-testing
and race balancing. If they turn out to be too weak against the Stormers for
example who have access to Glory Devices and Nemesis torpedoes (two weapons
that both will destroy all fighters nearby when detonated), we may have to give
the Killocat fighters a limited immunity against Glory Devices and/or Nemesis
torpedoes. It may be also necessary to improve the Exotic technology “Nemesis shield”
for them (including also a Glory Device shield?). This would require additional
code in the host program.
Fighter Combat
The
games and the books report that the Kilrathi have good fighter pilots and that
they actually prefer the honorable combat between fighters (pilot against
pilot) over the impersonal combat between capital ships. Their fighter aces
(typically noble cats) fight even much better than their average pilots.
This could
be modeled by giving the Killocats highguards (which can be understood as their
nobility) excellent piloting values (if these values are going to be used at
all) or to apply significant combat bonuses to Killocat wings and fleets that
have highguards on board.
The
Kilrathi prefer honorable contests and dislike the "slaughtering" of
clearly inferior opponents. This preference for honorable combat could be
reflected by lowering their combat and pilot values or applying
Personal Combat
All
sources (mainly the books and the games, but also the movie) show that the
Kilrathi are predators and hunters by their very nature. They are well trained
in personal combat and have large muscular bodies with dangerous fangs and
claws. The movie shows also that the Kilrathi can board even fully crewed
(human) starbases.
Naturally
the ground combat values of the Killocats have to be good to reflect their
fighting abilities. To allow them to board enemy vessels they probably need
also a boarding laser. Nevertheless I did not want this to be too much of an
advantage to the Killocats (they should definitely not have the same ability to
capture enemy ships like the Stormers possess), therefore I have decided to
place the boarding laser only on a ship with relatively small guest quarters
(and the Killocat fleet is poorly suited to get close to strong enemies in any
case, since the Killocats lack ships that can fight well at short distances and
ships that can avoid such combat by cloaking).
Ground Units
In the rare
planetary surface missions of the games, the Kilrathi have good atmospheric
fighters (about as dangerous as some of their space fighters) and also tanks.
The
planetary fighters and tanks are both modeled as ground units for the
Killocats, even though the fighter design was reduced in its capabilities to be
more similar to the ground units of other races. The third ground unit was
chosen to be an enhancement of the good personal Killocat fighting skills; it
has no direct equivalent in any of the Wing Commander sources, but seems to fit
well for the Kilrathi.
Planetary
Vulnerability against Orbital Attacks
On the
defensive, Kilrathi planetary targets tend to be relatively fragile against
attacks by enemy ships. In the game, a small group of cloaked enemy fighters
can reach the homeworld Kilrah and manage to destroy
the tectonic highly unstable planet with a relatively small weapon: the
fighter-carried Temblor Bomb.
To allow
for a higher vulnerability against attack from space, I have disallowed under
cities (as shelter against orbital bombardment) for the Killocats. I think that
hiding underground while enemies approach would not fit into their honor code
anyhow.
Leadership
Both
in the games and in the books the Kilrathi are described to have a feudal
system, where positions are achieved by competition and typically the
strongest, ablest and cleverest cats occupy the leading positions. Kilrathi of lower ranks are bound by an oath
and their honor to follow the orders of their leaders and would often prefer
death over disregarding their orders. However if a leader is weak and
unsuccessful in battle, he can be overthrown and replaced by a stronger
warrior.
For
the Killocats this should mean that the noble Killocats (represented by their
highguards) fight significantly better than normal Killocats. The rivalry
between clans and the threat to the continuation of the leadership in times of
defeat can be modeled by a relatively low leadership value (if I understand the
working of this value correctly) and the (normally) strict adherence to their
orders could be reflected at least somewhat by a high value for lawfulness. An
additional idea would be to subtract happiness points for lost battles and to
add happiness points for victories, but this would require also additional code
in the host program.
Economic Model
Only
some details about the Kilrathi economy are noted in the games and books. However
it is clear that their science and economy serve primarily military purposes
and are considered secondary. There also several instances showing that the
Kilrathi take slaves (sometimes the entire population of a planet) from other
races and force them to work. The Kilrathi seem to rely intensively on slave
labor, their prisoners work not only in their mines and camps, but they must
also build machines for the Kilrathis. The Kilrathis also recruit spies and
saboteurs from their slaves (for example they can force their prisoners to
conduct secret operations even after they have been released by creating long
term memory blocks in their minds through hallucination).
The
Kilrathis populate their worlds sparely. Typically they put on destroyed and
conquered worlds only some 10.000 Kilrathis where billions of the previous
owner race used to live.
There is
also a report of a major starvation on a Kilrathi world, when the Kilrathis
needed all their freighters to prepare a big assault against the humans and were
not able to ship food to this planet.
To
implement the military focus of the Killocats, it appears adequate to give them
some limitations or disadvantages in building civilian (economic or research)
buildings, while they should have some advantages in the area of military
construction. This is the reason why we gave them three special buildings that
allow a more efficient construction of their fighters.
The slavery
part can be modeled easily with Labor Camps and Mines as well as with the
special Killocat fighter factories. In order to avoid that an ally of the
Killocats can too easily offer his citizens voluntarily to work as slaves for
them, any race that has prisoners on Killocat installations should loose some happiness
points every turn. An additional measure in the host program might be that some
ship commanders of this ally (whose family members happen to be in a Killocat
slave camp) will start to hate the Killocats and may open fire on Killocat
ships even if they have orders not to do so. The usage of prisoners as spies or
saboteurs could be implemented by giving the Killocats a significant bonus to
their spying powers against races that have a citizens held as prisoners of the
Killocats. This requires additional coding in the host program.
However –
even after the implementation of these economic Kilrathi specialties – I still
had the feeling that the economy of the race was still a little bit too
generic. To make the Killocats more unique I came up with the following ideas:
The Killocats, like all cats, should reproduce fairly quickly by giving birth
to several kittens at the same time. However their territorial nature should
make it difficult for them to stand large populations (hence the low intensity
population of conquered worlds).
The high
growth rate has to be balanced by some other disadvantages, because otherwise
the race could become too strong (a high growth would boost their financial
income and their possibilities as strong ground warriors in the long run
considerably). I tried this by giving them a narrow farming range and denying
them any terraformers (and no agro domes either) so that only a relatively
small portion of all planets would allow them to grow food and by severely
limiting the number of cities that they can build on a planet (additional code
is required for this in the host and probably also in the player interface
program). If these measures are not sufficient, then we could also lower their
happiness, if the population of a planet growths over a certain limit. My
intention is to make it challenging to the player to manage the population
growth of the Killocats, so that the player is forced to expand aggressively
and to move the colonists out to the new colonies to avoid overpopulation problems.
I do not
consider the combination of “high growth rate – narrow farming rate – no
terraformers – limited construction of cities – overpopulation disadvantages”
as critical for the Killocat race. After all, only parts of these racial traits
can be found in the original sources of the Kilrathi. So if they do not work as
intended or turn out to be not very playable, we can leave them out and make
the Killocat economy just more ordinary and similar to the other races.
Spying Powers
All
sources (the games, books and the movie) report that the Kilrathi use also
other means but combat to seek victory in their wars. For example they employ
spies to investigate the enemy’s plans and they infiltrate the enemy with
agents to sabotage important installations and to assassinate key personal.
Sometimes these agents will be under special long term memory blocks created
through hallucination, so that the agents themselves are not aware about their
secret mission and are therefore very hard to detect, before they are told by
special signals to execute their programmed orders. The Kilrathi use also the
slave prisoners from other races in their labor camps and mines to recruit
spies or to force relatives to work as spies.
But the
Kilrathi employ also more subtle methods, like using diplomacy and pretending
to seek peace when they only want to delay the fighting to a point of time that
suits them better or to use propaganda to undermine the morale and the
willingness to fight of their enemies.
Most of
this behavior can be modeled easily for the Killocats by giving them a
sufficiently high spying value. However the special effect of prisoners in
labor camps and mines to increase the spying efficiency against the races held
captive would require additional code in the host program, so that prisoners
will increase the Killocat spy rating against these races significantly.
Special Ship
Devices
There
are several Kilrathi specialties described in the games and the games (and to a
lesser degree also in the movie) that can be represented by special ship
devices in VGA Planets.
- The Kilrathi have missiles with
biological warheads that can wipe out entire colonies. These missiles can
be fired from a long distance (actually the distance is often so large,
that defending fighters may be able to intercept incoming missiles and
destroy them, before they reach their destination planet – to make this
harder the missiles travel part of their journey cloaked and become
visible only occasionally when they have to reacquire their target). à The World Crusher Missile
seems to be the best equivalent for the Killocats: it is a missile, it can
be used over long ranges and it can destroy an entire ground base.
- The Kilrathi can lay mines (with
their fighters) that will affect enemy fighters and ships. à The Killocat shall have the
ability to lay barbitic and laser mines. If the special fighter missions
work as I hope, this will be well taken care of, otherwise we would need
to place a barbitic and a laser mine dropper on one of the Killocat ship
designs.
- The Kilrathi travel long
distances by hyperjumping through wormholes. They use special navigational
satellites to help to coordinate the wormhole-hyperjumps of their ships.
They will need to explore or to get the navigation information about
unknown wormholes before they can use them. à Travel through wormholes will
be possible in Version 4, but it seems to me at the moment that it will
not be very important and not very suitable for a planed movement in a
certain direction. The usage of jump gates seems to be more appropriate
for this purpose and the gathering of the code of a destination gate would
be comparable to the access to navigational data in the original. However
I am reluctant to add a jump gate builder device to the Killocat fleet,
since this might be too much of an advantage to them, since they already
have relatively fast ships. But if the balancing trials show that the
Killocats need more advantages, a jump gate builder could be added later.
Hyperjumping engines are definitely not an option for the agile Killocat
ships and would also not correspond to well to the original movement of
the Kilrathi.
- The Kilrathi have developed a
special device that can prevent other races from hyperjumping by cloaking
wormholes. à Since hyper-jumping with
hyper-jump engines will be much more frequent in Version 4 of VGA Planets
than traveling through wormholes, it seems appropriate to add a ship with
a Gravity Well Generator to the Killocat fleet. To simulate the original
Kilrathi behavior better, I would suggest declaring all Gravity Well
Generator in Killocat hands as special, so that they block not only
hyperjumping, but also all travel by non-Killocats through wormholes and
jump gates in their vicinity.