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Author Topic: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight  (Read 5359 times)

XpanD

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Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« on: February 22, 2012, 08:19:05 AM »

Hi all,

I came across another potential issue with the game earlier, although I am not sure if it is intended or not. It didn't seem like it to me, hence me making this topic.

It is currently possible for players to grind battles, gaining pretty much infinite amounts of experience, loot, ships and credits. This is done by moving over a planet or space station where the fleets for a certain faction spawn, and then attacking everything that spawns there. The best example of this seems to be the pirate planet - new fleets spawn there very often, and with a large enough fleet of your own combined with the automatic battle option it becomes an insane source of income and new ships.

Maybe a fix for this could be spawning new fleets randomly in a fairly wide radius around the mother planet, and not in range of any existing hostile fleet?

As with the other thread I made, here are the mods that I am currently using, just in case:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=161.msg8766#msg8766
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=162.0
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Sordid

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2012, 08:42:02 AM »

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. IMO new fleets shouldn't spawn unless they're sufficiently strong to take the player on in a fight. If the player lurks by a spawn point too long, an exceptionally strong fleet could spawn (i.e. the besieged force attempting to break the blockade), discouraging such camping.

I also believe the automatic battle option should be removed, or at least limited to engagement with vastly weaker enemies where the result is a forgone conclusion. It makes it far too easy to savescum. Save, autoresolve battle, load, autoresolve battle, load, autoresolve battle, oh look, I got a new cruiser, how lucky.
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icepick37

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2012, 09:18:55 AM »

Well this obviously won't be the real behavior in the end. This is just placeholder stuff.

What automatic battle stuff? You mean the autoresolve?
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XpanD

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2012, 09:32:00 AM »

Yep, that.
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Alex

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2012, 09:32:48 AM »

It is currently possible for players to grind battles, gaining pretty much infinite amounts of experience, loot, ships and credits. This is done by moving over a planet or space station where the fleets for a certain faction spawn, and then attacking everything that spawns there. The best example of this seems to be the pirate planet - new fleets spawn there very often, and with a large enough fleet of your own combined with the automatic battle option it becomes an insane source of income and new ships.

Maybe a fix for this could be spawning new fleets randomly in a fairly wide radius around the mother planet, and not in range of any existing hostile fleet?

Right, yeah. This isn't "good", but really, so many of the campaign mechanics are just placeholder at the moment, so I'm not sure that doing any fine-grained balancing would be a good use of time.

As to auto-resolve - if you want to save-scum, go for it. It's a single-player game. I would like to add an "iron" mode, though, where you can only save on exiting the game (and can't not save), for those that want a tougher challenge.
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icepick37

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2012, 09:34:13 AM »

Ah, yeah it's easy to save scum with it, but it's not any different than save scumming normally. You just save time.
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Sordid

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2012, 09:58:33 AM »

Ah, yeah it's easy to save scum with it, but it's not any different than save scumming normally. You just save time.

Well yeah, but you could use that same argument to justify editing your savegame, for example. You'd get that ship eventually anyway, you're just saving time, right? Playing the game is the whole point, IMO a menu option that gives you the same reward as if you'd actually directed the battle yourself but doesn't require you to actually do anything really devalues the whole experience.
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icepick37

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2012, 10:25:01 AM »

I agree with your argument on the save scumming.

But I don't think it inherently devalues the experience. It's a player choice and one that is meaningful. If you don't WANT to play every battle why should you be forced to? It's an elegant solution to allow people to focus on the area of the game that interests them most. (obviously this my own opinion of the matter, though, and I do see where you are coming from)


Maybe in that hardcore "no quicksave" mode there's also no autoresolve.  :)
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Sordid

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Re: Possible experience/money/ship/loot grinding oversight
« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2012, 10:29:08 AM »

Well perhaps rewarding the player for fighting the battle would be appropriate? There's going to be an experience system eventually, right? So if you fight, you get delicious experience. If you don't, you get bugger all.  :D
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