Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Serenitis]

It might be worth considering reducing the range at which enemy fleets can join battles against you a little.

They can already join battles from further away than the player and it is really easy to get yourself dogpiled to death, espeically if you aren't aware of this particular feature. (Possible newbie trap?)
It's even possible to bite off more than you can chew without intending to, even if you do know about it.

[borgrel]

Its true that as a newbie i got a nasty shock the first time I got battle ganked.

That said, the "with allies" tag in the pre-combat screen makes it easily understandable and noticable.

If anything the gui needs some indicator of range for combat joining.
Bit honestly I'm ok with how it is, no game shows u all the info all the time. And this just adds spice.
To battle gank or not to battle gank is just one of those little things u have to gamble on.

[Midnight Kitsune]

I agree as it always seems that the enemy has a MUCH bigger range to join PLUS they it seems like my allies can and most likely WILL choose to NOT join even if I meet the relationship level requirements...

[Gothars]

I don't mind the range, but the UI not indicating it is a problem. Especially in Iron Mode, when fleeing is not a (good) option.

[Serenitis]

The biggest problem is that when pirates outnumber you, they ALWAYS force a battle (as you'd expect).
Ordinarily this isn't a huge issue. But when you have upwards of three times your fleet mass bearing down on you from three directions you ARE going to get wiped and there is nothing you can do about it, which while thematically consistent makes for horribly fustrating gameplay.
All because that fleet over there heading in the opposite direction a map square away is somehow connected to the one right in front of you.

The UI is fine. It displays which allies are supporting whom quite clearly.
It's just the magic one-sided fleet teleportation which creates these little traps you have no idea exist until you're in one.
Maybe if 'freindly' fleets had the ability (and inclination) to join you in such a fashion it would not be quite so bad. But then there's the whole loot penalty thing with shared battles.

This is (yet another) one of those weird game elements that makes the early game so horribly difficult, and yet is almost irrelevant late on.

[Histidine]

Aside from adjusting join range, new enemy fleets should probably stop joining once the existing fleets already outnumber you sufficiently, unless they really hate you for some reason.

Also, you know how when the player joins a battle already in progress the other fleets involved are already close to the center of the map and possibly shooting at each other? If faraway enemy fleets joining a battle against the player similarly had a delay before they showed up, that would give valuable time to make a getaway or else try and defeat the enemy in detail.

[Gothars]

The UI is fine.
It's just the magic one-sided fleet teleportation which creates these little traps you have no idea exist until you're in one.

And wouldn't you say that is an UI problem?
If e.g. hovering the cursor over a fleet would draw a join- range circle and mark all (visible) potentially assisting fleets, there would be no surprises.
Or rather, the surprises left would be part of the game design because surprise-assisting fleets indeed sucesfully hid from your sensors.

If faraway enemy fleets joining a battle against the player similarly had a delay before they showed up, that would give valuable time to make a getaway or else try and defeat the enemy in detail.

I'd like that, for now. But I hope that Alex is planning a more complex implementation of timing in battle, with options like rading only a part of a fleet until the rest arrives after some time.

[borgrel]

when i get into a massively overpowed fight i normally deploy a hardened subsystem wolf with long range weaponry and try to kill the fastest frigates (that chase me) while circling the outside of the map so the big ships stay in the middle-ish

then when its peak time (+a bit) is out i either deploy to fight (and all enemy frigates are then below 40% CR) or deploy my 2nd hardened wolf and repeat, u can pick up a lot of kills with the 10mins of deployment on the 2nd wolf because all the frigates have no engines and no shields

then deploy the rest of the fleet and swap ships again, by then all destroyers have low CR toooo.
and mop up a fleet 3x ur size easy peasy

[Megas]

Aside from adjusting join range, new enemy fleets should probably stop joining once the existing fleets already outnumber you sufficiently, unless they really hate you for some reason.

"They really hate you", given that it only takes a few fights early on with a given faction to send relations down to Vengeful, and Vengeful is supposed to be the "They want you dead - now!" level.

It would stop hundred ship death fleets, which is a double-edged sword.  Player will be less likely to be overwhelmed with sheer numbers, but player cannot crush everyone with a single ship with only one deployment.  (I try to get as many ships to fight as possible to minimize deployments and CR costs.)

Currently, an optimized Onslaught or Paragon can easily kill more than a hundred ships.  I think the most fleets I fought at once was seven or eight for the aforementioned hundred ship death fleet, and my battleship crushed them.  AI probably needs to send everything they have to have a chance, although if they did that, my response would probably be to bring more battleships and chain them.

[Serenitis]

And wouldn't you say that is an UI problem?
If e.g. hovering the cursor over a fleet would draw a join- range circle and mark all (visible) potentially assisting fleets, there would be no surprises.
Or rather, the surprises left would be part of the game design because surprise-assisting fleets indeed sucesfully hid from your sensors.

Half/half. Good for attack. Useless for defence.
Knowing the quantity of bricks about to fall on you before you poke something would be pretty good.
But, that does nothing to help you about being tagged by a small fleet which somehow allows the much larger one way over there (eg; the opposite side of a planet) to suddenly be close enough to attack you from three directions.

Hiding stuff is not really a problem. Being stomped on by a force you are (successfully) evading because the game teleports them right on top of you is.
It wouldn't be awful (potentially tedious, maybe) if you could escape from that kind of thing, but unless you run a fleet of nothing but tricked out stunt frigates all this does is force the player to savescum.

[Megas]

Hiding stuff is not really a problem. Being stomped on by a force you are (successfully) evading because the game teleports them right on top of you is.
It wouldn't be awful (potentially tedious, maybe) if you could escape from that kind of thing, but unless you run a fleet of nothing but tricked out stunt frigates all this does is force the player to savescum.

That... is what I do.  Use frigates until late enough in the game that a bigger ship can solo just about anything, and if the player messes up so badly to ruin the game, fixing it is a reload away.  It seems the game, as it is, expects you run in frigates until you are strong enough to kill everyone.

[Alex]

If e.g. hovering the cursor over a fleet would draw a join- range circle and mark all (visible) potentially assisting fleets, there would be no surprises.
Or rather, the surprises left would be part of the game design because surprise-assisting fleets indeed sucesfully hid from your sensors.

Good idea, made a note. Even just showing "Potentially supported by" in the tooltip, with fleet names only, might be good enough.

[Gothars]

Even just showing "Potentially supported by" in the tooltip, with fleet names only, might be good enough.

Mh, maybe. Although, you usually make the decision for combat a few seconds before physical contact, and in that time fleet movement may change who's joining in. The circle would give you an continually updating prediction. A tooltip could maybe emulate that with join-likelihood tiers. Otherwise players might run into "but a second ago it was supposedly only the picket, why am fighting an armada now?"-frustrations.

A second advantage is that it shows you how much join-relevant area is not well covered by your sensors, and thus how high the risk for hidden assistance to your enemy is.

And making join range visible might even open it up to modification by skills or abilities.

[Alex]

Hmm, yeah. Showing both is probably ideal, was just thinking that "just tooltip" would be an quick and easy fix that's just about good enough. One issue w/ showing the range etc is that the tooltip can be pretty large and would cover some of that area, and since range would only shown when the tooltip is shown, that's a bit clunky UI-wise.

Might also be mistaken for a "sensor range" of an enemy fleet, even though there's no such thing. Visually I think it might be more clear if it was lines connecting the potentially-joining fleets, or something like that, even if that doesn't show quite the same thing as a circle indicator.

[Sy]

rather than using circles, like for sensor range, you could just connect fleets in reinforcement range with lines. fleets that are close to reinforcement range but not quite there can have broken lines to show how far they're off. the lines can be colored for fleets in range to reinforce your own, hostile fleets in range to reinforce each other, and possibly non-hostile fleets in range of each other as well.

i don't have a fitting screenshot, so the ranges here are out of whack, but just to show what i mean:


i think the only thing this doesn't show is how far two connected fleets are from not being able to reinforce each other.

connecting every fleet with every other fleet in range might be too much in busy areas, but it could be limited either just to your own fleet as well as the closest hostile one, or shown only on mouse-over.