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Suggestions / Some potential autoresolve improvements
« on: April 02, 2012, 01:57:28 PM »
If you want to skip straight to the suggestions, go to the next section.
I've been playing the campaign mode and built up a huge armada over >1k fleet points, to counter any opposition and experiment with various fittings. Also, due to a bug I recently discovered and exploited, my ships are all manned by elite crews. When I play manually (to win, and not just experiment), nothing escapes and I never lose a single ship (individual fighters excluded). At most, I lose a couple crew from fighter losses. When I autoresolve, I sometimes lose ships, usually lose at least one entire fighter wing, and several enemy ships always manage to escape. Sure, it doesn't affect me in the long run, but my quest for perfection compels me to always manually resolve fights.
To fully understand where I'm coming from, here's typically what I do for every encounter: Deploy 2 Paragons with 4x Tachyon Lances each and either 5 broadswords, 4 Xyphos, or 3 Thunders, depending on what I feel like. The fighters then capture all the objectives while the tachyon lances from the paragons shred all the enemy fighters, frigates, and destroyers to bits. As I gain more fleet points, I send in even more Paragons w/ 4x Tachyon Lances. Alternatively, I send in... the 22 FP carrier and a bunch of Xyphos, Broadswords, and/or Thunders. If the enemy sends in a cruiser or capital ship, I usually order my fighters to retreat so they aren't obliterated by PD and let my Paragons deal with it. This strategy works every time, and at most I lose a couple fighters, which get repaired.
And with that out of the way, my suggestions:
The biggest difference I can see between how your simulation plays out and how it works out in practice is 'the skirmish phase'. For me, the Skirmish phase ends with all the enemy frigates and fighters dead due to Tachyon Lances and fighter superiority, with me in control of all objectives, and my forces minimally damaged; however, your simulation doesn't model damage during this period. Also, allowing ships to 'strike back' completely ignores the range advantage certain weapons like MIRVs, Pilum LRMs, and Tachyon Lances (as extreme examples) provide. Not entirely sure how you would model that, but perhaps preventing 'close support' or 'fire support' from triggering 'strike back' would be ideal. Alternatively, you could model a battlefield as a chess-like grid, and have ships move around on that in the simulation, which would allow you to model range and ship speed at the cost of complexity (and with that, I just envisioned MOO2's combat used as a simulator for this game. Probably impractical, but might be fun to watch).
As near as I can tell, it seems that the entire fleets of both sides are 'deployed' in the autoresolve simulation. If it isn't this way already, perhaps deploying only a certain # of fleet points worth of ships at a time would be best, like in the manual engagements. The side with more ships and the side that wins the skirmish phase would have more FP, like in the manual engagements. If a ship is destroyed, the victim's side could be allowed to deploy another ship on their next attack turn if they have sufficient FP to do so. If they run out of deployed ships, you could make the remaining ships surrender, also like in the manual engagements.
Lastly, here's a feature I feel could benefit the autoresolve functionality: priorities. When you put your second-in-command in charge, before proceeding to battle you give him a list of objectives you'd like him to follow. For example, you could manage how much risk you're willing to take with your assets- 'Minimize losses' would make ships try to retreat when damaged to a certain point and bring in a fresh ship if possible, or deploy ships less optimal for doing damage, but more likely to survive with minimal damage; 'Destroy at all costs' would do as it says on the tin; and 'Balanced Approach' would be a mix, possibly modified by officers' traits and preferences. You could also give generic orders like 'Focus on Freighters/Carriers/etc.' You could even allow the player to decide the initial deployment for the engagement, since that could have a huge impact on the outcome.
Hope you find my thoughts and ideas useful.
I've been playing the campaign mode and built up a huge armada over >1k fleet points, to counter any opposition and experiment with various fittings. Also, due to a bug I recently discovered and exploited, my ships are all manned by elite crews. When I play manually (to win, and not just experiment), nothing escapes and I never lose a single ship (individual fighters excluded). At most, I lose a couple crew from fighter losses. When I autoresolve, I sometimes lose ships, usually lose at least one entire fighter wing, and several enemy ships always manage to escape. Sure, it doesn't affect me in the long run, but my quest for perfection compels me to always manually resolve fights.
To fully understand where I'm coming from, here's typically what I do for every encounter: Deploy 2 Paragons with 4x Tachyon Lances each and either 5 broadswords, 4 Xyphos, or 3 Thunders, depending on what I feel like. The fighters then capture all the objectives while the tachyon lances from the paragons shred all the enemy fighters, frigates, and destroyers to bits. As I gain more fleet points, I send in even more Paragons w/ 4x Tachyon Lances. Alternatively, I send in... the 22 FP carrier and a bunch of Xyphos, Broadswords, and/or Thunders. If the enemy sends in a cruiser or capital ship, I usually order my fighters to retreat so they aren't obliterated by PD and let my Paragons deal with it. This strategy works every time, and at most I lose a couple fighters, which get repaired.
And with that out of the way, my suggestions:
The biggest difference I can see between how your simulation plays out and how it works out in practice is 'the skirmish phase'. For me, the Skirmish phase ends with all the enemy frigates and fighters dead due to Tachyon Lances and fighter superiority, with me in control of all objectives, and my forces minimally damaged; however, your simulation doesn't model damage during this period. Also, allowing ships to 'strike back' completely ignores the range advantage certain weapons like MIRVs, Pilum LRMs, and Tachyon Lances (as extreme examples) provide. Not entirely sure how you would model that, but perhaps preventing 'close support' or 'fire support' from triggering 'strike back' would be ideal. Alternatively, you could model a battlefield as a chess-like grid, and have ships move around on that in the simulation, which would allow you to model range and ship speed at the cost of complexity (and with that, I just envisioned MOO2's combat used as a simulator for this game. Probably impractical, but might be fun to watch).
As near as I can tell, it seems that the entire fleets of both sides are 'deployed' in the autoresolve simulation. If it isn't this way already, perhaps deploying only a certain # of fleet points worth of ships at a time would be best, like in the manual engagements. The side with more ships and the side that wins the skirmish phase would have more FP, like in the manual engagements. If a ship is destroyed, the victim's side could be allowed to deploy another ship on their next attack turn if they have sufficient FP to do so. If they run out of deployed ships, you could make the remaining ships surrender, also like in the manual engagements.
Lastly, here's a feature I feel could benefit the autoresolve functionality: priorities. When you put your second-in-command in charge, before proceeding to battle you give him a list of objectives you'd like him to follow. For example, you could manage how much risk you're willing to take with your assets- 'Minimize losses' would make ships try to retreat when damaged to a certain point and bring in a fresh ship if possible, or deploy ships less optimal for doing damage, but more likely to survive with minimal damage; 'Destroy at all costs' would do as it says on the tin; and 'Balanced Approach' would be a mix, possibly modified by officers' traits and preferences. You could also give generic orders like 'Focus on Freighters/Carriers/etc.' You could even allow the player to decide the initial deployment for the engagement, since that could have a huge impact on the outcome.
Hope you find my thoughts and ideas useful.