Problem is the game is balanced around you not instantly having lvl 100. I don't want it to be easy and i don't want my ships to magically have stronger guns, faster bullets and faster engines than 90% of the AI ships in the game, but i also don't want my bullets to be magically slower than a random other ship i run into.
Rather all ships and weapons just have their stats set, with no skill ***. AI commanders should only improve through their AI, maybe as they level up giving them less errors per minute, and you pick whether to increase aggression, defensiveness, etc each level up.
The trees should be tracked independently so you aren't forced to give up one tree for another. You could get combat xp based on how much you fight while in control of a ship, logistics from commanding or doing *** with the fleet, science from fighting remnants and surveying ruins, and production from trading, salvaging, and managing colonies.
the skill system is a pile of hot steamy garbage that pollutes the rest of the game. No rerolling, optimal choices, and gating gameplay with skills… combat skills that make the game easy in the short term, but that you should ignore in the long term if you plan to scale up your operation, plus a hard cap instead of a soft cap in a system that is already way less flexible than mount and blade. Instead of encouraging player knowledge of the different ships capabilities, you have the same ships with wildly different capabilities depending on the random skills you or npcs have, and finding the best way to cheese everything though abuse of those skills. Instead of the freedom to decide "im bored of this profession, it's time to do something else in my 40 hour playthough" you're told "nah restart if you don't want those skills anymore and want to try something else", it's lazy game design to try to draw out your playtime. Spaceship games with flexible fleet compositions should always be skillpoint free or have respecs.
The game was better before they added that ***. Why do devs always have to ruin their game with pointless garbage.
The game really needs an "Era" system where the main factions fight eachother for a while and then after consolidate start expanding to the random generated planet systems, colonizing also needs to be waaay more expensive, you can set up a money machine very early and get 300k+ per month with no risk at all. Honestly I won`t be doing more runs with my own faction anymore it makes the game too easy
Why is this game so… boring? I was excited at the idea of colonies and AI ships not always conforming to two-three loadouts but the colony management is flash game tier and you're still going to see the same few ships again, and again and again. The diplomacy is non existent, the ai still can't take over a system from what I've seen and there's absolutely no life to the world. No comm chatter, no nothing. Just the same few snippets that pop up every now and then (((muh diggle reference Xd))). But the broken ***? Dear God. Trade in your own colony and pay tariffs, take resources from said colonies and pay 50x their value come end of month. Have said colonies absolutely decked out in every way possible and their fleets still use ramshackle *** instead of those supposedly hard earned unlocked ships. The hell?
The one thing that has a ring of truth is that we end up seeing the same ships over and over. In particular the high tech ship set is only used by one faction and they have never been aggressive towards me, so I've never fought any of their ships.
Problem is the game is balanced around you not instantly having lvl 100. I don't want it to be easy and i don't want my ships to magically have stronger guns, faster bullets and faster engines than 90% of the AI ships in the game, but i also don't want my bullets to be magically slower than a random other ship i run into.I would recommend this person to learn how to mod. Then maybe he could finally design alpha level AI we need for what he suggests.
Rather all ships and weapons just have their stats set, with no skill ***. AI commanders should only improve through their AI, maybe as they level up giving them less errors per minute, and you pick whether to increase aggression, defensiveness, etc each level up.
The trees should be tracked independently so you aren't forced to give up one tree for another. You could get combat xp based on how much you fight while in control of a ship, logistics from commanding or doing *** with the fleet, science from fighting remnants and surveying ruins, and production from trading, salvaging, and managing colonies.This wounds good in theory, until you think about it for 4 seconds. So let us assume this system is in place. You still have to choose a skill in - say, logistics tree. But wait, if you choose a single skill then you are "forced to give up" one skill for another. So how detailed do we have to go for this. Skyrim-like skill system where individual skill tree is leveled by use? Or some sort of super hard core JRPG style skill system where every action(combat/logistics), item(weapon mastery), skill(passives I guess) and subset of skill(every sword swing variant).
the skill system is a pile of hot steamy garbage that pollutes the rest of the game. No rerolling, optimal choices, and gating gameplay with skills… combat skills that make the game easy in the short term, but that you should ignore in the long term if you plan to scale up your operation, plus a hard cap instead of a soft cap in a system that is already way less flexible than mount and blade. Instead of encouraging player knowledge of the different ships capabilities, you have the same ships with wildly different capabilities depending on the random skills you or npcs have, and finding the best way to cheese everything though abuse of those skills. Instead of the freedom to decide "im bored of this profession, it's time to do something else in my 40 hour playthough" you're told "nah restart if you don't want those skills anymore and want to try something else", it's lazy game design to try to draw out your playtime. Spaceship games with flexible fleet compositions should always be skillpoint free or have respecs.This is somewhat true, although some people will argue otherwise.(presumably really hardcore original D2 and Path of Exile players)
The game was better before they added that ***. Why do devs always have to ruin their game with pointless garbage.
The game really needs an "Era" system where the main factions fight eachother for a while and then after consolidate start expanding to the random generated planet systems, colonizing also needs to be waaay more expensive, you can set up a money machine very early and get 300k+ per month with no risk at all. Honestly I won`t be doing more runs with my own faction anymore it makes the game too easy
Why is this game so… boring? I was excited at the idea of colonies and AI ships not always conforming to two-three loadouts but the colony management is flash game tier and you're still going to see the same few ships again, and again and again. The diplomacy is non existent, the ai still can't take over a system from what I've seen and there's absolutely no life to the world. No comm chatter, no nothing. Just the same few snippets that pop up every now and then (((muh diggle reference Xd))). But the broken ***? Dear God. Trade in your own colony and pay tariffs, take resources from said colonies and pay 50x their value come end of month. Have said colonies absolutely decked out in every way possible and their fleets still use ramshackle *** instead of those supposedly hard earned unlocked ships. The hell?
The one thing that has a ring of truth is that we end up seeing the same ships over and over. In particular the high tech ship set is only used by one faction and they have never been aggressive towards me, so I've never fought any of their ships.
- Some skills are too good. Hands up anyone not maxing: loadout design/navigation/fleet logistics/electronic warfare/coordinated maneouvers/officer management/fighter doctrine
- Some skills are too good. Hands up anyone not maxing: loadout design/navigation/fleet logistics/electronic warfare/coordinated maneouvers/officer management/fighter doctrine
There is no need to max electronic warfare. Level 3 is only good for seal-clubbing, proper enemy fleets are likely to have it too (though this skills seems less common for enemies in 0.9).
Sounds like the internet, ie a bunch of people with very strong opinions
You should get better at combat by... getting better at combat. It's not abstracted, it's a thing the player does and should get better at with time. Skills make missiles go 30% faster? Lol.In general skills are supposed to simulate your character getting better at things you cannot get better. If Starsector was to base its skill system off this, probably majority (if not all) of combat skills would have to go.
Skills/XP people expect from other RPGs. it's a cheap way to drag out playtime and impart rewards. But they only make sense in abstracted games like tabletop RPGs. And even in nethack you only improved the skill for a weapon by actually using that weapon.
You should get better at combat by... getting better at combat. It's not abstracted, it's a thing the player does and should get better at with time. Skills make missiles go 30% faster? Lol.In general skills are supposed to simulate your character getting better at things you cannot get better. If Starsector was to base its skill system off this, probably majority (if not all) of combat skills would have to go.
Skills/XP people expect from other RPGs. it's a cheap way to drag out playtime and impart rewards. But they only make sense in abstracted games like tabletop RPGs. And even in nethack you only improved the skill for a weapon by actually using that weapon.
@nomadic_leader
And you'd be mostly fighting against bumbling fools. Current AI is nowhere near perfect, I do not want less.
I don't like the idea of getting rid of combat skills. Then you also have to get rid of officer combat skills (or risk optimal play being let officers control the fun/strong ships), so then there is no point at all to officers unless you also implement the suggested officer AI boost. But then I only see 3 scenarios: 1) officers are oppressively difficult to play against 2) normal ships are very boring to fight 3) the difference between officers and normal ships is not enough to justify using officers. Honestly, I like the sense of progression of your ship getting stronger (my head cannon is that you are making custom improvements to you ship that can't be bought based on your improving engineering knowledge). As long as the game provide progressively more difficult enemies to mirror your own increase in strength (which remnants/faction warfare seem to be starting to do reasonable well) I see no problem with the system.
Problem is the game is balanced around you not instantly having lvl 100. I don't want it to be easy and i don't want my ships to magically have stronger guns, faster bullets and faster engines than 90% of the AI ships in the game, but i also don't want my bullets to be magically slower than a random other ship i run into.Just a random noob complain when he lose most of the fight not knowing what to do and decided to blame on skill system.
Rather all ships and weapons just have their stats set, with no skill ***. AI commanders should only improve through their AI, maybe as they level up giving them less errors per minute, and you pick whether to increase aggression, defensiveness, etc each level up.
The trees should be tracked independently so you aren't forced to give up one tree for another. You could get combat xp based on how much you fight while in control of a ship, logistics from commanding or doing *** with the fleet, science from fighting remnants and surveying ruins, and production from trading, salvaging, and managing colonies.It's a design dilemma, restrictions can be challenge and fun for some while others just want literally everything and cheese enemy with all the magic powers. Really just not a serious problem since it's more of a preference than flaw.
the skill system is a pile of hot steamy garbage that pollutes the rest of the game. No rerolling, optimal choices, and gating gameplay with skills… combat skills that make the game easy in the short term, but that you should ignore in the long term if you plan to scale up your operation, plus a hard cap instead of a soft cap in a system that is already way less flexible than mount and blade. Instead of encouraging player knowledge of the different ships capabilities, you have the same ships with wildly different capabilities depending on the random skills you or npcs have, and finding the best way to cheese everything though abuse of those skills. Instead of the freedom to decide "im bored of this profession, it's time to do something else in my 40 hour playthough" you're told "nah restart if you don't want those skills anymore and want to try something else", it's lazy game design to try to draw out your playtime. Spaceship games with flexible fleet compositions should always be skillpoint free or have respecs.
The game was better before they added that ***. Why do devs always have to ruin their game with pointless garbage.
The game really needs an "Era" system where the main factions fight eachother for a while and then after consolidate start expanding to the random generated planet systems, colonizing also needs to be waaay more expensive, you can set up a money machine very early and get 300k+ per month with no risk at all. Honestly I won`t be doing more runs with my own faction anymore it makes the game too easy0.9.1a awaits. This is the very first version with colony and things just needs more testing and feedback. Keep in mind this game is still in "alpha", not even "beta". It's now quite obvious there are a few design flaws causing those who know how to exploit earn millions every month and I believe Alex will fix this in later versions.
Why is this game so… boring? I was excited at the idea of colonies and AI ships not always conforming to two-three loadouts but the colony management is flash game tier and you're still going to see the same few ships again, and again and again. The diplomacy is non existent, the ai still can't take over a system from what I've seen and there's absolutely no life to the world. No comm chatter, no nothing. Just the same few snippets that pop up every now and then (((muh diggle reference Xd))). But the broken ***? Dear God. Trade in your own colony and pay tariffs, take resources from said colonies and pay 50x their value come end of month. Have said colonies absolutely decked out in every way possible and their fleets still use ramshackle *** instead of those supposedly hard earned unlocked ships. The hell?#mods
The game providing progressively harder enemies is also a bit cheesy. They should always be out there, you just wouldn't be able to take them on.Whether or not they are available at the beginning is irrelevant as long as you are not forced to fight them. The point was that there are always appropriately difficult enemies for you to fight as you become stronger. Progression only becomes a problem if difficulty does not scale appropriately leading to boredom or frustration.
Combat officers would be pointless, but there could be other officers like salvage officers, sensor officers, engineers, etc. There are credible things an officer could improve, like fighter turnaround time or sensor profile. 30% faster missiles is not one of them, despite whatever stupid handwave you can come up with.How is an officer affecting other stats any different than combat stats? It's all 'stupid hand waves' because it's a fictitious game. 30% faster fighter replacement, 30% bigger sensor profile instead of 30% faster missiles... Those are all just abstractions with numbers assigned to represent ideas.
How are the 3 scenarios you outline different from the 3 scenarios that can play out with officers as they are now?Because giving an officered ship better stats always allows for player skill to beat AI because AI is imperfect, but making the AI better can eliminate counter play because AI can play theoretically perfectly and be unbeatable. It's like giving a chess program an extra pawn vs making the chess program better. A good chess player can beat a mediocre chess program down a pawn, but a good chess player will almost never beat a full strength chess engine because the engine will never make a mistake.
...real progression like money or learn-by-doing can't also provide. But the difference is the XP/skills can't be reversed so its a cheesy way to force players to start another game and spend more time playing, and it's a cheesy way to encourage grinding hourly rewards. So it offers nothing better, and only drawbacks. It belongs in mediocre AAA games, not indie.'learn by doing' is not progression. Then once you get good at the game, there is no more replay-ability. You can't 'get bad' when you start a new campaign and have the experience again. It's literally the respec problem you are complaining about except it doesn't even get reset when you start a new game. XP/skills can also be changed to be re-specable, that's a design decision not something inherent to the system. Making things respec-able reduces the significance of the decisions so it actually does have a major drawback. It is much more interesting to have to choose between long term benefits and short term rather than just taking the short term and then switching to the long term when appropriate.
Because giving an officered ship better stats always allows for player skill to beat AI because AI is imperfect, but making the AI better can eliminate counter play because AI can play theoretically perfectly and be unbeatable. It's like giving a chess program an extra pawn vs making the chess program better. A good chess player can beat a mediocre chess program down a pawn, but a good chess player will almost never beat a full strength chess engine because the engine will never make a mistake.
'learn by doing' is not progression. Then once you get good at the game, there is no more replay-ability.
1 point in Nav are more or less mandatory, going above that is an immediate waste of points.
[..] Just look at all the threads. Terrifying. [..]
I noticed that too, there was the excitement phase with mostly positive posts and then a 'complaint' phase with mostly negative threads, it will probably soon settle to a neutral state again, it's interesting.I can tell you that if the game was just bad, nobody would bother with posting here. You don't want the good things to change, but the bad ones, right?
He's a good sport and listens to a lot of suggestions, but with the sheer amount of complaints (It's too easy! It's too hard!) I hope he plugs his ears half the time and just does his thing.
Btw, he is not forced listen or even read all the suggestions. The forum is here just to discuss, when I write something I don't assume it will be considered or even read, I contribute because I like to partecipate in the discussion.
I can tell you that if the game was just bad, nobody would bother with posting here. You don't want the good things to change, but the bad ones, right?
I suggested this many times:
You could easily remove all combat skills (piloted ship bonuses, but not only) from the player skills and use officers in place of those. The player will only have fleet wide, general bonuses; optimally not related to combat. The ship you 'drive' should have an officer like all other ships, that officer will give your ship the combat skill.
And maybe replay-ability isn't such a good goal? You're just artificially dragging out the life of a game by crippling the player at the start of each playthrough and then using pavlovian bells to encourage them to grind. Better to lengthen the game by having an immersive universe with a lot of emergent gameplay for players to discover by destabilizing markets and so on.What are you grinding? Bounties? You would have to do that to get money anyway. Unless you consider the games combat to be grinding in general, the skill system does not promote grinding at all. You get xp for doing the things you would do anyway.
It would be more accurate to say the game is providing no progression. A player with experience in the game genre and some intuition might never experience any progression because they are already good at the game, a player who struggles to understand the core game mechanics might never get better at the game and also experience no progression. The game is not providing you anything, you are progressing independently from the game, which is fine, but claiming that the game is providing you progression is false. Getting better at your job is not the same as getting promoted. You are suggesting eliminating promotions and letting the satisfaction of being good at your job be the reward.Quote'learn by doing' is not progression. Then once you get good at the game, there is no more replay-ability.
It is literally progression.
As I said anyway- there is still room for skills/officers for abstracted skills like salvage.Combat is an abstraction. The whole game is an abstraction. Nothing about the combat is even close to how an actual spacecraft works, it's all arbitrarily made up to be fun and vaguely reminiscent of naval warfare. It make no more sense that a ship captain would arbitrarily make his ship 'faster' than that he would arbitrarily make it 'better at salvaging'. These are all arbitrary bonuses made up to provide the player a sense of becoming more powerful, with no bearing on how this sort of thing would actually work 'in the real world', whatever that means.
I suggested this many times:You're not the only person who's made that suggestion. (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12176.0)
You could easily remove all combat skills (piloted ship bonuses, but not only) from the player skills and use officers in place of those. The player will only have fleet wide, general bonuses; optimally not related to combat. The ship you 'drive' should have an officer like all other ships, that officer will give your ship the combat skill.
I feel like carriers are the least interesting ships to fly anyway. It mostly involves staying far away and switching targets and engage mode. Maybe that's just my personal experience, but I usually avoid flying carriers anyway.They would be better if they are not so OP-starved if I use anything better than Talons for fighters. Most of my carriers only have minimal PD. (Mora has minor assault weapons since it is too slow to flee from things.) Astral has almost no weapons to speak of after fitting high-end bombers on it. Drover is completely unarmed. (Not sure if it works as well as it did in 0.8.)
Fun combat was back when you had reason to keep your flux high, when missiles were not grouped into the two categories of slow and useless and overloading ***. Fun combat was when the ballistics had ammo counters but were specialized weapons with a load of heft and purpose behind every shot. And it was definitely fun not having some arbitrary *** time limit on your engagements while artificially slowing down every ship. Crutch ship mods that you're given but the AI apparently never uses don't help either, having 20-40% range, 50-60% armor on him and such.
As for the 2012 claim I made it because I've apparently kept a Starfarer 0.53.1a release in backup and for the sake of curiosity tried it out. Know what a shocker it was to play with the original bomber AI that can move across a large map, deliver and fly back to safety?
It's jarring that the economy flip-flops and can't decide if it's exponential or not. Production doesn't stack on the basis that 10^3 fuel is completely irrelevant to 10^7, but market value and shortages always treat it like a linear scale.
QuoteFun combat was back when you had reason to keep your flux high, when missiles were not grouped into the two categories of slow and useless and overloading ***. Fun combat was when the ballistics had ammo counters but were specialized weapons with a load of heft and purpose behind every shot. And it was definitely fun not having some arbitrary *** time limit on your engagements while artificially slowing down every ship. Crutch ship mods that you're given but the AI apparently never uses don't help either, having 20-40% range, 50-60% armor on him and such.
As for the 2012 claim I made it because I've apparently kept a Starfarer 0.53.1a release in backup and for the sake of curiosity tried it out. Know what a shocker it was to play with the original bomber AI that can move across a large map, deliver and fly back to safety?
I cannot help but partially agree.
All weapons having ammo gave logistics a greater impact and made every shot count, and also made combat limits that made sense - ships retreat when they need to re-supply and repair, not after some magical combat readiness number tells them so..which falls so fast that the crew and ship are done after 5 minutes of combat...
QuoteIt's jarring that the economy flip-flops and can't decide if it's exponential or not. Production doesn't stack on the basis that 10^3 fuel is completely irrelevant to 10^7, but market value and shortages always treat it like a linear scale.
Back in the 0.6x era, I had skilled Medusa shield-tank skilled Onslaughts and the like until they ran out of ammo, then I move in for the kill when all (Elite) Onslaught had left were railguns that were not as powerful. Skilled Onslaught with Mjolnirs and HVDs was overwhelming, until it ran out of ammo. I will not fight that with all of its weapons (too hard), just dodge and stuff until the ammo is gone.
But also, running out of ammo should be a thing, and the AI should start playing more defensively and stick closer to the edges when ammo starts running low. This is also why having backup energy weapons is a good thing.
Again, logical pros and cons.
You played smart and won.
Ships SHOULD carry enough ammo for a protracted engagement. Guns with 10 rounds should not be a thing (unless its' some super-special gun with limited use, like a torpedo).As long as ammo is limited and peak performance was not, nothing could stop something like Medusa or other agile-but-outgunned ship from darting-in, dodge or shield tank anything the AI throws at it, back out, vent, repeat until AI runs out of ammo. More ammo just means it takes longer before the inevitable conclusion occurs. Ship with limited ammo is between a rock-and-a-hard place with no good options beyond enemy committing pilot error.
Ships SHOULD carry enough ammo for a protracted engagement. Guns with 10 rounds should not be a thing (unless its' some super-special gun with limited use, like a torpedo).
But also, running out of ammo should be a thing, and the AI should start playing more defensively and stick closer to the edges when ammo starts running low. This is also why having backup energy weapons is a good thing.
*In Mount and Blade, it was possible to level up skills in archery and horse riding to get a fairly speedy, tanky horse while wearing good armor yourself . In battle you had a spot that carried all your inventory and could store thousands of arrows there even if you only could carry 30 + back shield. Since the enemy AI archery was poor against a horse riding target they weren't likely to hit you and you could easily run circles around the enemy army alone pelting them with arrows until they all died leaving the group only to reload at your luggage site.
it was easy and boring.
And it wasn't just AI being stupid. Low-tech generally can't pursue high-tech effectively and win by having the high-tech overcommit to attack while under fire. No commitment is over-commitment if low-tech does not fire back (high tech can just keep ~0 flux and fire at flux regen rate). And if low-tech does fire back you retreat and vent until low-tech has no ammo left.
QuoteShips SHOULD carry enough ammo for a protracted engagement. Guns with 10 rounds should not be a thing (unless its' some super-special gun with limited use, like a torpedo).As long as ammo is limited and peak performance was not, nothing could stop something like Medusa or other agile-but-outgunned ship from darting-in, dodge or shield tank anything the AI throws at it, back out, vent, repeat until AI runs out of ammo. More ammo just means it takes longer before the inevitable conclusion occurs. Ship with limited ammo is between a rock-and-a-hard place with no good options beyond enemy committing pilot error.
With unskilled ships, even Medusa can win over Enforcer just by shield tanking until Enforcer runs out of ammo. I did that once.
Player might conserve, but the AI sure would not.
Ammo counts either matter or they don't.
If they do trying to run the opponent out will be an option and that simply isn't fun.
QuotePlayer might conserve, but the AI sure would not.
That's an AI issue, is it not?
Can agree that ammo being removed was for a good reason. Low tech was never meant to be able to compete mobility wise with high-tech because high-techs thing was being quick and doing hit-and-runs. With mobility as their strength its too easy for them to simply dart in and out venting as needed until the enemy runs out of ammo and then killing defenseless opponents similar to crushing a ship at 0% CR but longer because they're not suffering malfunctions or losing shields. It would make high-tech ships very strong and "optimal" strategy take forever and drag out engagements.
I'm not saying that the CR system is perfect, but its good at preventing Mount and Blade horse archery style* cheese which would just be infinite kiting and sniping in a fast ship.
Yes. And there's no easy fix, or reasonable expectation of Alex doing so. Limited ammo in the hands of a game AI is always exploitable by a human player. *Always.*
Both maintenance and output scale with population, but in my experience on high hazard worlds (>200%) maintenance raises faster than profits, which is annoying. Stability also influences income.Yeah, this is what I'm seeing as well. Confused me real good the first few times I saw the income jump into the red for 'no reason'.
There isn't a single mechanic that player cannot exploit to some level, somehow. That is a non-argument, we might as well remove all mechanics.
Ammochat:
Ammunition limits are not a fun mechanic that just creates micromanagement for sake of it.
Gameplay > 'Realism'
So we're throwing out any consideration of degree? I don't accept this statement.
Setting aside the fact that many *players* wouldnt enjoy it
AI Ammo management *can* be a thing in turn based games with no twitch component. In a game where the AI can't even use finite, supplemental missile weapons effectively against *itself*, how could it possibly be expected to intelligently manage ammo against a player? No, this is just a recipe for weapons you would never put in the hands of your own fleet AI, while hoping that the opposing fleet was using them.
Fuel and supplies are also micromanagment.Fuel and supplies are not in combat. And neither play an active role in combat that must be managed.
You don't have a monopoly on what is fun and isn't, neither do you have a monopoly on what makes good and bad gameplay.Right back at you, friend.
And AI is currently pardoned from even relatively simpler task of managing them out of combat, without plans for AI to ever have to do that.Fuel and supplies are also micromanagment.Fuel and supplies are not in combat. And neither play an active role in combat that must be managed.
No, I'm saying it's not really an issue when the fix is easy - .
Fuel and supplies are also micromanagment.
"Programing X is hard" is a fallacy for 2 reasons:
1) it's not true
2) Even if it was it wouldn't matter. Making a game is hard. Programing a 3d engine is hard. Painting a good picture is hard, writing a good song is hard.
Plenty of games pul it off just fine. Being a twich games has no bearing .
And you do realize you're basically proposing to make all missiles infinite too?
Ammo limit isn't micro for the sake of it. It's micro because it affects gameplay and makes sense, given that that IS what a ship captain would have to take into account.As it is, ammunition should be limited for absolutely everything or for nothing. I mean, every ship has at least some manufacturing capability, so the only important thing is how much supplies can fit in it. Currently, missiles fit the role of limited use weapons, but there's no actual reason ships shouldn't be able to reload them if they can reload anything else, there's no inherent difference between a missile and a projectile with a warhead besides the fact that one burns through the propulsion immediately and the second in flight.
Granted, it would be more involved if you had different ammo types, but that's a separate matter entirely.
Ammo counts either matter or they don't.
If they do trying to run the opponent out will be an option and that simply isn't fun.
If you only want instant gratification, perhaps.
AI acting smart and pulling out damaged ships or ships low on amo makes sense. It isn't "fun" to you because you want to blow them up? I consider it very much fun.
Logistics is the name of the game, ammo is something any single warship and admiral has to think off, but here, in a warship combat game, ammo is a non-issue. Meanwhile we get a wonky colony managment system instead.
No, I'm saying it's not really an issue when the fix is easy - have the AI retreat when low on ammo. Problem solved, player cannot exploit as easily. And it's easy to program too, check ammo for main weapons and if it's below X%, start pulling out towards the safest border and then retreat.
Why not just make every ship use supplies in combat, proportionally to their flux generation, for the ultimate resource management experience?
I miss the short period when ballistic weapons had clips and reloading. That way you had shortages of munitions without crippling every non-high tech ship.
I miss the short period when ballistic weapons had clips and reloading. That way you had shortages of munitions without crippling every non-high tech ship.
Some weapons, like autopulse lasers still act that way, and I vastly prefer it as a way of adding an ammo management aspect to a weapon. It allows for tactical striking and and a soft limit on sustained firepower, while still being effectively usable by the AI.
I am *all* for this. They're fun weapons to shoot and maneuver with, without being overly punitive, and misses still have consequences.
You should develop games. You seem to know all sorts of easy fixes for problems developers have wrestled with for decades.
True story. Too bad the AI doesnt have to fire fuel and supplies at a moving target.
Game AIs are great at micromanaging spreadsheets. Better than human. They are not great at predicting the almost infinite number of paths an opponent can travel from any fixed point with 360 degree of movement. Not on consumer grade hardware anyway.
Define "plenty". Because pretty much every shooter I've ever played features players sometimes having to carefully monitor their ammo while their opponents can shoot all day.
It's a limitation designed to create a challenge for a *human* player, which is fine when the game is completely human vs AI. This game though, I have to rely on the AI on my side as well, and I dont want them running out of ammo in the middle of a fight and running away to leave me fighting the enemy alone. The fact you think this would in any way make for a better game is baffling.
No, I just have realistic expectations for the AI. They can be useful with spray and pray missile types, forcing the opposing fleet to at least react to them. But they'll never be able to act as decisively with them as a human player. This is fine because missles are usually supplemental support weapons. But I need to be able to rely on the AI using their main weapons consistently, and doing damage. The AI cannot be expected to learn how to strike as opportunistically as a player can with finite ammo.
Ammo limit isn't micro for the sake of it. It's micro because it affects gameplay and makes sense, given that that IS what a ship captain would have to take into account.
Some weapons, like autopulse lasers still act that way, and I vastly prefer it as a way of adding an ammo management aspect to a weapon. It allows for tactical striking and and a soft limit on sustained firepower, while still being effectively usable by the AI.While autopulse works similar, it's a different situation, since it's basically always short on ammunition and not only in prolonged engagements.
I am *all* for this. They're fun weapons to shoot and maneuver with, without being overly punitive, and misses still have consequences.
Not rewarding tedious, low risk behavior is a pretty universal game design guideline(and for good reason).
I have hundreds of hours in X3 and thousands in From the Depths, should matter a lot in a tedium-tolerance *** measuring contest :)
That restricts AI ship choices even more, anything using ballistics must be good in holding the line(so player doesn't cut them off and bumrush when ammo is out).
Let's assume there is a perfect AI that handles ammo well and recognizes being pushed, why is a different hard timer that only affects ballistics better?
Why not just make every ship use supplies in combat, proportionally to their flux generation, for the ultimate resource management experience?
A bit too complex and also comes back to the AI: it's already hard to make decent decisions on an isolated strategic level.
Making that tie into tactical decisions is a nightmare, you might get an initial metric on how much a win is worth in any given battle
but really hard to avoid cutting off too early in winnable situations/committing too much in bad ones.
Two cases I can think of where the "retreat when on low ammo" approach fails, without trivial workarounds that were obvious to me:
1) High-tech convoy is caught by larger low-tech fleet. Could just retreat, but this exposes the civilian ships to danger.
HT combat ship plays "run enemy out of ammo". Low-tech ships all retreat. Convoy walks away with impunity as enemy has retreated.
2) High-tech vs. low tech 3v3. HT fleet runs an LT ship out of ammo, it retreats. HT fleet runs another LT ship out of ammo, it retreats. HT fleet swarms over last LT enemy and destroys it with impunity.
You could work around this by making the whole fleet retreat if average fleet ammo drops below X% or such, but how much fiddling are you going to do to get behavior that looks sensible, across the huge number of combinations of per-ship ammo levels possible? (And what works in one scenario may well be wholly broken in another).
What?Waiting for low tech ships to run out of ammo, duh
What exactly is being rewarded here?
Because it makes sense?Realism shouldn't be taken into consideration when designing gameplay, unless realism is the point. If a realistic thing works, put it in. If it doesn't, too bad for reality.
Eh? Combat doesn't last that long. Supplies are clothes, food, nuts and bolts, spare wires, toilet paper and other stuff. So things necessary to keep the ship and crew running long-term.No, supplies are everything required to keep a ship running and firing. It's stuff for crew and life support, it's replacement parts, autofactory chips, "raw materials" for weapons or pre-made munitions, oils and coolants, spare fuel for reactors, many other things I forgot about. When a ships runs out of supplies, it starts failing apart. Metal, while it could be used for repairs (I personally don't have an issue with that), is the least complicated thing required for ships to continue operations.
Now what could be used (after battle and for repairs) is metal - after all, you cannot replace melted/blown off armor with nothing.
Because it makes sense?Realism shouldn't be taken into consideration when designing gameplay, unless realism is the point. If a realistic thing works, put it in. If it doesn't, too bad for reality.
True story. Too bad the AI doesnt have to fire fuel and supplies at a moving target.
Game AIs are great at micromanaging spreadsheets. Better than human. They are not great at predicting the almost infinite number of paths an opponent can travel from any fixed point with 360 degree of movement. Not on consumer grade hardware anyway.
It doesn't have to. This isn't rocket science, it's a game. Tracking ammo is basic math. I have X total ammo. Ha my ammo for my bg guns fallen below acceptable level? Yes? Then run.
If you want to talk about complex AI, starsector ship combat really isn't the place.
Define "plenty". Because pretty much every shooter I've ever played features players sometimes having to carefully monitor their ammo while their opponents can shoot all day.
That's a case of dev lazyness, not some impossible hurdle.
It's a limitation designed to create a challenge for a *human* player, which is fine when the game is completely human vs AI. This game though, I have to rely on the AI on my side as well, and I dont want them running out of ammo in the middle of a fight and running away to leave me fighting the enemy alone. The fact you think this would in any way make for a better game is baffling.
Challenge? If anyone plays by the same rules, the challenge is there.
Running away? Why not grab ammo from an enemy corpse? Why not switch to a secondary? Why not ask for a mag?
And yes, it would make for a better game because you could do the same to the enemy.
No, I just have realistic expectations for the AI. They can be useful with spray and pray missile types, forcing the opposing fleet to at least react to them. But they'll never be able to act as decisively with them as a human player. This is fine because missles are usually supplemental support weapons. But I need to be able to rely on the AI using their main weapons consistently, and doing damage. The AI cannot be expected to learn how to strike as opportunistically as a player can with finite ammo.
Guns would have enough ammo that you don't need to *** every single shell. And again, the AI will never be as good as the player at anything. It just has to be good enough.
CR is too abstracted; unfun and unintuitive. An overreaction to a few savant players like Megas obsessively kiting an onslaught with a tempest then posting a lot (thanks for CR, Megas ;) ).
The issue isn't with an AI being able to determine whether its got any ammo left, it's being able to use that ammo efficiently enough that the ship doesn't become useless at some point during the combat. The amount of limited ammo that might prove to be any kind of limiting factor for a human player would be crippling to the AI.
CR doesn't make sense unless you've read a lot of blog posts and forced yourself to think so.
IMO it makes sense and is a very good abstraction of the situations you see in movies/shows("I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!").
Do think the timer and the degradation are a bit too punitive, especially on smaller things.
But if you make timers less punitive, then it basically doesn't matter and there may as not well be CR in combat. So you also are on our side. :)
And sometimes in battle, a better smaller ship kiting a bigger older one is a legitimate outcome. Oh no, a B2 Spirit Destroyed a WWII vintage battleship, we have to introduce a really complicated mechanic to prevent this! Because only one kind of combat is allowed (battle of jutland every time for the win)
CR is basically just a way to give small ships/energy-ships ammo limits in a really confusing way. The way the timers sometimes decrement, sometimes don't, depending on what ships are nearby is a total facepalm. Consider the solutions made in my earlier post about how to remedy the kiting problem if it is a problem.
But of course, the game is never going to be finished if the actual developer redos all these now core mechanics. We're just hashing it out here for the amusement of doing so.
Eh? Combat doesn't last that long. Supplies are clothes, food, nuts and bolts, spare wires, toilet paper and other stuff. So things necessary to keep the ship and crew running long-term.No, supplies are everything required to keep a ship running and firing. It's stuff for crew and life support, it's replacement parts, autofactory chips, "raw materials" for weapons or pre-made munitions, oils and coolants, spare fuel for reactors, many other things I forgot about. When a ships runs out of supplies, it starts failing apart. Metal, while it could be used for repairs (I personally don't have an issue with that), is the least complicated thing required for ships to continue operations.
Now what could be used (after battle and for repairs) is metal - after all, you cannot replace melted/blown off armor with nothing.
since ammo is handled and stored separately from general supplies.How so? I have never seen "ammunition" commodity, nor I had to use it to restore my ships to combat ready state.
It doesn't have to. This isn't rocket science, it's a game. Tracking ammo is basic math. I have X total ammo. Ha my ammo for my bg guns fallen below acceptable level? Yes? Then run.
If you want to talk about complex AI, starsector ship combat really isn't the place.
Again, you dont seem to grasp the apples and oranges you're arguing with here. Comparing numbers in columns is not the same thing as being able to shoot efficiently in a real time combat scenario. The issue isn't with an AI being able to determine whether its got any ammo left, it's being able to use that ammo efficiently enough that the ship doesn't become useless at some point during the combat. The amount of limited ammo that might prove to be any kind of limiting factor for a human player would be crippling to the AI.
Wanting ammo limits enforced on yourself for a sense of challenge is understandable, but enforcing those same limits on AI ships creates more problems than it solves.
Which game are we talking about again? None of those things apply to SS, and in the case of a single player shooter it's because any human is going to rapidly learn the firing patterns of an ai enemy and run out the clock on their limited ammo. Enemies are given unlimited ammo because they wouldn't pose much of a challenge otherwise. Because the path to creating an ai foe that can really anticipate a players movement and provide an actual challenge on equal footing is probably impossible on current consumer gaming hardware, but definitely far longer and difficult than solving the problem another way. And since development costs time and money, they exercise their human ability to make smart use of finite resources.
As I said in my original post, "good enough" in this instance, is simply not good enough. You're arguing for ships and weapons than no player would choose to give to the ai if there was an alternative. It doesnt matter if ballistic weapons were much more powerful in return. It would be a terrible decision to give them to the AI you're relying on.
And if the ammo limits arent going to be meaningful, what would be the point?
Look, you're pretty much arguing with the entire thread on this from what I can see. So this appears to be a waste of time. Anyone who so convinced that AI is limited because developers are simply too lazy, isn't likely to be persuaded by anyone here no matter how reasonable their argument.
So you're trying to frame this as me attacking the SS devs now? So classy.
There are many reasons why AI can be limited. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Define "plenty". Because pretty much every shooter I've ever played features players sometimes having to carefully monitor their ammo while their opponents can shoot all day.
That's a case of dev lazyness, not some impossible hurdle.
If you want to talk about complex AI, starsector ship combat really isn't the place.
It's a foolish generalization, and smacks of someone who's never made a game talking out of their weight class. If you'd like to show me a real time twitch combat game that you've made where both a human and and AI opponent have 6 bullets a piece, and that doesn't end up being a nearly insurmountable advantage to the player, I'll happily withdraw my statement. Remember, your conversation with me is specifically about the practical limitations of game AI in a real time combat game, not broader discussion about the merits of CR.
As far as you attacking the SS developer personally, I'm not aware of you having done so. I did disagree with you when you when you ragged on the game for not having complex AI
If only a single point I make sinks in, let it be this: Any ammo limit that is meaningful to the player, would be crippling to the AI, and any ammo limit that the AI can comfortably use without becoming useless, would be meaningless to a human player.
I played SS when it had ammo limits on Low tech ship weapons. It's why I used high tech ships. I enjoy having low tech ships available to play now as an option that isn't strictly inferior.
Also how to deal with the case where some weapons have run out but others haven't, you probably want to retreat fi your pd runs or ammo out against fighters but you wouldn't care vs normal ships etc...
Having ships retreat automatically is going to be complex because the map is large and takes time to travers
I'm almost certain they don't retreat on low CR, I'm not 100% sure about low hull but I don't remember seeing that happen. Hull is very different from ammo because you will almost always want an AI ship to retreat on low hull since it is one shot away from dying, which is not the case for ammo. It also would happen much less frequently so its less of a cp drain. CR is also the same since ships are literally useless on low CR. With low ammo, a ship may be entirely functional, or virtually useless, and that is entirely situational and very complicated to determine.Having ships retreat automatically is going to be complex because the map is large and takes time to travers
??? But ships already retreat automatically when their CR / Hull strength gets really low.
And if your Onslaught pulls out, so what? You do have reserves? If not, retreat and re-engage.You may have reserves, but it will take a minute+ for the onslaught to retreat and your reserves to arrive if you are on the far side of the map. I that case you will be down 40 dp for a whole minute, and you might lose the entire fight before those reserves arrive. If the battle was even when your onslaught was present, then it will be heavily skewed against you without 40 dp for a significant amount of time. If you are on your own side of the map however, the time it takes for reinforcements to arrive may be small enough that you do want the onslaught to retreat. Now you have to consider the size of the ship in question and its relative importance to the fleet, the location of all the ships in the fleet, and the number of ships currently low on ammo that may need to retreat soon and their relative locations. And compare all that to enemy positions and relative strengths. That's incredibly complicated for an AI to consider.
By counting ammo separately. So main weapons and PD would be looked at separately. You main weapons ammo averages at 50%, but your PD ammo is down to 10%? Does the enemy have many carriers in the field? Do you have friendly ships that can protect you?So now the AI has to analyze the enemy fleet composition and load outs , and its own weapon load out as well as its current position relative to friendlies and to the map boundaries, to make an assumption of how effective it will be given its current ammo levels to ultimately determine if it should retreat or not. That's very complicated, and the AI will not make those decision well without tons of work and tons more tuning. The dev has much better things to work on.
You have control of your ships, remember? So you can simply order it to hold even if low on ammo.That costs CP, which is a limited resource, and if the AI is bad at making the decisions, it becomes micro management very quickly, which Alex has said he is trying to avoid as much as possible.
I'm almost certain they don't retreat on low CR, I'm not 100% sure about low hull but I don't remember seeing that happen.Having ships retreat automatically is going to be complex because the map is large and takes time to travers
??? But ships already retreat automatically when their CR / Hull strength gets really low.
So now the AI has to analyze the enemy fleet composition and load outs , and its own weapon load out as well as its current position relative to friendlies and to the map boundaries, to make an assumption of how effective it will be given its current ammo levels to ultimately determine if it should retreat or not. That's very complicated, and the AI will not make those decision well without tons of work and tons more tuning.
The dev has much better things to work on.
You have control of your ships, remember? So you can simply order it to hold even if low on ammo.That costs CP, which is a limited resource, and if the AI is bad at making the decisions, it becomes micro management very quickly, which Alex has said he is trying to avoid as much as possible.
Also, what about the UI concerns? Now the player needs to know the ammo level of every weapon type on every ship in his fleet in order to asses if the AI is properly managing ammo. How will that be displayed? How much time will the player have to spend looking through lists of numbers to figure out if his ships need to retreat? This is a UI nightmare.
QuoteThat costs CP, which is a limited resource, and if the AI is bad at making the decisions, it becomes micro management very quickly, which Alex has said he is trying to avoid as much as possible.
The entire concept of CP points is trash. All that high tech and spaceships, but simple communication and captains following your orders is a "resource".
You're making it sound like checking how many carriers the enemy has is difficult.
If you're low on PD ammo, check if friendly ships have enough and stick close.Yeah but how much is 'too low' and how much do friendlies need to have, and how close should you stick. All of those answers are super situational, and the answer may not be clear even with all the information.
Positioning is not an issue if ships keep tight formations, and there are 4 boundries one can (or should be able to) retreat.Ships regularly get split off/isolated in combat. You can't just assume positioning or the AI will fail when that assumption is not true. You have to design for every possible situation. 'Assume good positioning' is not a valid design decision.
That can be said about every feature one doesn't like.But it's almost exclusively said about features that provide very little benefit and require a vast amount of dev time to make moderately functional.
In older versions ammo was displayed right next to the weapons/bank. There were no issues.So I have to repeatedly open the map, and then target select every ship in my fleet to check their ammo levels? Great UI design, no issues.
Mostly I agree with you in this thread, and appreciate you digging up (nevermind where from) the discussions in the OP since they're more outside the box than you usually see on this forum.
However, I disagree on the CP point. The concept of CP is not trash; the implementation is sub-optimal.
One of the dumbest things about RTS games is that you can micromanage everything as the king/admiral, and give orders to a distant spaceship, soldier, zerg, or whatever like every second, as though you were dragging them around on an invisible leash, without any regard to communication difficulties, attentiveness, etc.
There is no way a spaceship crew can function if their admiral is changing and belaying his own orders every second ("go here... no, go here... no, go here"). Carrying out an order/objective on a big ship involves a long chain of command and tens/hundreds of people from the admiral to the captain to the mates to the NCOs down to the guys carrying ammo back and forth etc. It just isn't possible to rapidly and continually change orders that much and not confuse everyone in the ship.
Also, it's really boring and stupid from a gameplay perspective. When you give an order in real life, you say "go and do this" and you leave it to the subordinate as to the specifics because they are trained for what they do. In RTS games though, you've got to micromanage for best results, basically stepping into the unit/ships body to get it done, by clicking a million times. You're basically just flipping between shoddy 1st person control of a bunch of units, rather than actual commander level decisions.
So I like that the developer tries to address this issue with CP. However using it as a pooled resource is a little problematic. It would make more sense if each individual ship had a sort of timer on how fast you could give it new orders, with little ones being more responsive and big ones being less. Your own flagship's capacity to distribute orders throughout the fleet (number of communications officers, etc) could also still effect things as well.
There's fog of war so you actually don't always know how many carriers the enemy has, unless you want the AI to become omniscientIt already is, at least the enemy side. It knows what you deploy and it deploys accordingly. It also deploys only after you deploy (probably to prevent exploits). In other words, the AI cheats! We used to be able to see what they deployed too back in the Starfarer days, but not anymore.
It already is, at least the enemy side. It knows what you deploy and it deploys accordingly. It also deploys only after you deploy (probably to prevent exploits). In other words, the AI cheats! We used to be able to see what they deployed too back in the Starfarer days, but not anymore.Yeah, would be better if game showed what AI is going to deploy while player is selecting first deployment (updating as you select ships). Full knowledge both ways.
The CP doesn't address any of the issue you brought forth.
However, this is easily solved by implementing two very simple systems:
1) latency
2) order que
It's nonsense that the tactical map pauses the game when you bring it up, and that you can still give orders while paused, which destroys any sense of urgency and/or breaks the flow by forcing you to unpause it. I suggested these be changed, but the reaction on the forums was decidedly negative and people said it would be too difficult. Real time strategy that is not in real time. ???You're free to unpause it, just hit space.
It's nonsense that the tactical map pauses the game when you bring it up, and that you can still give orders while paused, which destroys any sense of urgency and/or breaks the flow by forcing you to unpause it. I suggested these be changed, but the reaction on the forums was decidedly negative and people said it would be too difficult. Real time strategy that is not in real time. ???