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Author Topic: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad  (Read 28842 times)

enkkus

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In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« on: June 24, 2016, 07:33:21 PM »

Ever since a few updates ago the game now has a battle timer for every vessel, not just those below a certain size, which upon expiring rapidly starts to mess up the vessel in question with lower combat readiness, malfunctions and eventual inoperability. I strongly believe this is a bad gameplay mechanic which doesn't even fix the thing it was meant to fix.

If you survey a random group of people about things that they dislike in video games, 'having a time limit' will appear only a few ranks below 'escort missions.' People don't like having an arbitrary limit placed on their fun. It's a highly boring mechanic which often appears to the player to be a shortcut method of achieving some design goal. For example, in Star Sector, it's obviously intended primarily to prevent players from kiting large AI forces.

Perhaps Alex is thinking that players should be prevented from employing an alternate style of gameplay which is likely to be boring to them. I don't agree with this for the reason above, but let's assume for a second that it's true. The timer is ineffective as a fix for this style of gameplay. The player can still kite giant forces to death, they just have to swap out ships periodically, use hullmods which prolong the timer, and otherwise partake in a dull game of circumventing the fix through means which make the boring playstyle significantly more boring than if it had just been left alone.

Perhaps Alex is thinking that even if you put aside the failure of effect on kiting gameplay, the CR timer is still an interesting strategic gameplay element. If so I think he's mistaken. Beating an enemy fleet by draining its CR timers feels like a cheap and anticlimactic exploitation of a game mechanic, not a high-flying victory. There is a reason why in sci-fi movies they always have the good guys explode the enemy fleet while it's at full capacity and has a fighting chance... that's just what's compelling.

Given these things I think any sort of time limit mechanic is wrong for Star Sector battles. Let players kite themselves into a stupor against the AI, as they're free to do in basically every other game of any similarity to this. Mount & Blade doesn't have your character collapse from muscle exhaustion as a way to prevent this kind of thing.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2016, 07:35:25 PM by enkkus »
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Megas

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2016, 08:02:16 PM »

Hate to admit it, but peak performance helps prevent smaller ships from kiting death fleets of 100+ ships single-handedly.

I really loathed CR when it first debuted in 0.6.  Now, after introduction of unlimited ammo and merging multiple enemy fleets into one, I tolerate CR.

My two gripes with CR is deployment costs:
* They are generally too stiff, especially for high-tech ships, unless the ship has Combat aptitude 10 and elite crew (for 100% CR max).
* High-tech ships cost too much CR to deploy, and aside from frigates and maybe Medusa, they are no better (and possibly worse) than low-tech ships.

High deployment costs for high-tech ships might have made sense when limited ammo for ballistics were a thing.  Now that ballistics have unlimited ammo, high-tech ships should have cheaper deployment costs, longer peak performance, or both.  Unlimited ammo used to be a high-tech ship advantage, which let them stay as long as it took to win fights.  Now, all they have is whatever special properties their hull gives.  For some (e.g., Hyperion), they are great.  For others (e.g., Aurora, Omen), they are a joke.
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enkkus

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2016, 08:15:46 PM »

Hate to admit it, but peak performance helps prevent smaller ships from kiting death fleets of 100+ ships single-handedly.

It really doesn't. You just have to cycle through replacements now.
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Alex

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2016, 08:24:49 PM »

Hi there - first off, welcome to the forum and thank you for your feedback :)

The player can still kite giant forces to death, they just have to swap out ships periodically, use hullmods which prolong the timer, and otherwise partake in a dull game of circumventing the fix through means which make the boring playstyle significantly more boring than if it had just been left alone.

Chain-deploying flagships is a thing, yes, but I think some changes in the next release will nudge it towards deploying a bunch of ships together at the same time being a better option, or at least as good of one.

But, even if you do chain-deploy, the mechanic still works in that you're paying more to do this - i.e. you can't just kill an arbitrarily sized fleet with a single Tempest or Hyperion - and you're encouraged to play more aggressively while doing it, since it ends up costing less if you do it faster.

Perhaps Alex is thinking that even if you put aside the failure of effect on kiting gameplay, the CR timer is still an interesting strategic gameplay element. If so I think he's mistaken.

It lets you do more interesting things in terms of game design. For example, Safety Overrides and the new phase mechanics (which I think are super fun!) are only possible because of the peak performance timer. If you don't put that in, then the design has to be a lot more conservative.

I very much don't like just leaving kiting as being the optimal strategy, since it'll drive players to do that, and ultimately kiting every fleet to death is very time-consuming. I wish M&B had some mechanics in place to discourage this! I certainly wouldn't mind a horse dropping under you, forcing you to fight on foot or find a new horse after a certain point. That'd be pretty neat, actually. (And now, this is making me want to play M&B again...)

Beating an enemy fleet by draining its CR timers feels like a cheap and anticlimactic exploitation of a game mechanic, not a high-flying victory.

That's not generally what happens, though. It ends up functioning more as a limiter to cool things the player gets, which can now be made more cool/powerful because the limit exists.
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DirePenguin

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2016, 09:17:09 PM »

I've had several fights that the CR timer was the only way I could win.  One fast frigate or phase ship could stay alive, and my only option is to retreat or attempt to chase him until his ship starts to break down.

I think there needs to be something to help resolve these things, though it does seem a bit ridiculous to think that your ship is suddenly falling apart despite working perfectly five minutes ago.
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Alex

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2016, 09:22:54 PM »

I've had several fights that the CR timer was the only way I could win.  One fast frigate or phase ship could stay alive, and my only option is to retreat or attempt to chase him until his ship starts to break down.

That's why I said "generally" :D Enemy phase ships are the main exception, but they run out rather quickly due to being in fast-time. This generally means you don't need to wait them out unless it's the only ship you're facing - i.e. it'll usually be run down by the time you deal with its allies.

I think there needs to be something to help resolve these things, though it does seem a bit ridiculous to think that your ship is suddenly falling apart despite working perfectly five minutes ago.

In terms of making it make sense in-fiction, battles take a lot longer than they do in real player time, i.e. a one-minute battle might be an hour or some such. Otherwise, yeah, I see what you're saying in the not-sense-making department. (That brings up campaign time not passing while you're in battle, but, well, it's a game. *waves hands vigorously*)
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2016, 10:44:26 PM »

The player can still kite giant forces to death, they just have to swap out ships periodically, use hullmods which prolong the timer, and otherwise partake in a dull game of circumventing the fix through means which make the boring playstyle significantly more boring than if it had just been left alone.

Chain-deploying flagships is a thing, yes, but I think some changes in the next release will nudge it towards deploying a bunch of ships together at the same time being a better option, or at least as good of one.

But, even if you do chain-deploy, the mechanic still works in that you're paying more to do this - i.e. you can't just kill an arbitrarily sized fleet with a single Tempest or Hyperion - and you're encouraged to play more aggressively while doing it, since it ends up costing less if you do it faster.

So wait, We're going to get punished for chain deploying and we'll have to deploy more ships? The main reason WHY we chain/ deploy one or two ships is because of CR, it costs resources to deploy and to keep the dumb***, ADD addled AI from wreaking our ships, be it damage or full blown destruction. MAINLY because the AI only really works for large engagements due to it not focusing on KILLING the enemy outright which allows them to both stay at full firepower while also most likely draining my PPT... AND unlike us, the AI doesn't give a **** about resources so CR really doesn't matter to them and they can "deploy all" all day long, once again screwing over the player because of the PPT, especially newbies.
"But Industry will fix that" I can already hear someone saying. It won't as alot of the "required" chain/ hero flagshiping happens at the early game when you are out numbered and outgunned. And even if you start off with the ability to rebuild your lost ships, it STILL will cost you money and/or resources and time.
"That's because of OP SKILLS!" lolNOPE. Hell those "OP skills" are the only thing that HELPS new/ early game players thanks to never losing EXP and levels after they get bent over and ganged up on by a pirate armada just because a scout spotted them and allowed the armada to join. Meanwhile your "allies" will most likely ignore you when you need them the most and pushing their way into the battles that you don't want them in.

In my mind, several things need to happen or I feel as if sales won't be good thanks to the brutal early game
-AI needs to focus on killing the enemy before moving on to another ship unless another ally ship is targeting it and can take over
-AI enemies need to at least ACT like they need to worry about resources, mainly by not deploying the entire fleet to kill off a few newbie frigs
-The battle joining needs to be less hidden from the player and less OP on the enemy side while giving more control to the player by allowing them to ask for help while also allowing them to deny help just like the AI can


Perhaps Alex is thinking that even if you put aside the failure of effect on kiting gameplay, the CR timer is still an interesting strategic gameplay element. If so I think he's mistaken.
It lets you do more interesting things in terms of game design. For example, Safety Overrides and the new phase mechanics (which I think are super fun!) are only possible because of the peak performance timer. If you don't put that in, then the design has to be a lot more conservative.

I very much don't like just leaving kiting as being the optimal strategy, since it'll drive players to do that, and ultimately kiting every fleet to death is very time-consuming. I wish M&B had some mechanics in place to discourage this! I certainly wouldn't mind a horse dropping under you, forcing you to fight on foot or find a new horse after a certain point. That'd be pretty neat, actually. (And now, this is making me want to play M&B again...)
You don't like kiting and yet you say that the best way to fight the phase ships is to wait their timers out. And yes, while they DO burn out faster, it is usually either A) boring B) frustrating or C) deadly Basically you are saying that people have to play the way YOU want them to play and not anyway that you feel is "boring or OP"
« Last Edit: June 24, 2016, 10:48:19 PM by Midnight Kitsune »
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Tartiflette

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #7 on: June 24, 2016, 10:55:36 PM »

   Maybe one solution to explore to make the phase ships a little less annoying to fight would be to make their phase upkeep cost rise as their CR goes down. That way their normal state would be in normal space, phasing only to do a maneuver or avoid shots, rather than their "normal" state and popping out of phase only to fire their weapons. In term of UI you could have the same green/red indicator as the shield upkeep in the info card, and you could see it in refit when playing with the CR slider.

   Of course that means yet another tweak of the AI...

   I mean, if we look from a in-lore design stand point, a lone phase ship isn't supposed to win a battle. It is supposed to get in, kill that high value target to their fleet an edge, then get out letting the normal ships take the brunt of the assault. If a fleet is mostly defeated fleet that only has one of two phase ships left, they should retreat and use them to cover a disengagement rather to fight on and if they survive, get mothballed when they would be needed most.

   But yeah, on the topic of this thread some form of time limitation is needed, and CR fit this role. but maybe it feels like an arbitrary limitation in part because it is so abstract. In most planes games you have a fuel gauge and nobody ever complained about it (although it is usually much more lenient). Some strategy games have a morale gauge, almost all games with guns have ammo, strategy games can bring reinforcements, all these mechanics are there to break stalemates or too much harassing... It is actually the space games that for some reason mostly lack those very obvious constraints because of the magic physics of "energy shots with limited range" and "shields".

   I still kinda wish there was no peak timer though, and just a slow decay that would accelerate with damage to the hull. That way damaging somewhat a large ship with an early bomber strike and letting it "sink" could be a viable strategy, and a ship at 1 HP wouldn't be as efficient as a pristine one. But I understand how it would be a step to far toward micro management with the current order system. Unless we get some sort of standing order system: ship A, prioritize attacking light ships and retreat at 40% CR left, ship B, focus on big target and retreat if your hull is below 50%.
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Gorgonson

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #8 on: June 25, 2016, 02:52:39 AM »

  Maybe one solution to explore to make the phase ships a little less annoying to fight would be to make their phase upkeep cost rise as their CR goes down. That way their normal state would be in normal space, phasing only to do a maneuver or avoid shots, rather than their "normal" state and popping out of phase only to fire their weapons.

I'd endorse this.  Unless your loadout is designed for the situation, a phase ship can avoid almost all incoming damage indefinitely.  If you wait out the CR of the phase ship, it usually just retreats, leading to disappointing pursuits or taxing re-engagements.  If the cooldown before re-phasing scaled with the current flux level, it could work to alleviate the frustration of fighting a ship that spends more time phased than un-phased.

  In most planes games you have a fuel gauge and nobody ever complained about it (although it is usually much more lenient). Some strategy games have a morale gauge, almost all games with guns have ammo, strategy games can bring reinforcements, all these mechanics are there to break stalemates or too much harassing... It is actually the space games that for some reason mostly lack those very obvious constraints because of the magic physics of "energy shots with limited range" and "shields".

How would you feel about in-combat refuelling?  Imagine the current mechanic of transferring command via shuttle, and apply that to refuelling your ships.  You deploy a Dram, or other tanker vessel, which would refuel nearby allied ships in turn, depleting it's own fuel reserves as a result.  This would mix-up combat, meaning both players and AI need to systematically retreat to the tanker to refuel, almost making a king-of-the-hill metagame.
In addition, apart from emergency burn, fuel doesn't contribute anything to the game when the player isn't in hyperspace.  Giving fuel another purpose, and rebalancing consumption, could add another level of gameplay.
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Megas

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2016, 05:33:16 AM »

Quote
It won't as alot of the "required" chain/ hero flagshiping happens at the early game when you are out numbered and outgunned.
Even past early game, you will always be outgunned and outnumbered in the fights that matter.  You have a 25 ship limit, and you need to save some space for support ships and new arrivals (from shops or boarding).  Meanwhile, detachments can have up to about 40 combat ships, and can combine with others into 100+ ship death fleets (bigger than simulator), not to mention more officers than yours.  AI does not handle being outnumbered very well.  Soloing or chain-flagship fleets will be optimal.

Quote
You don't like kiting and yet you say that the best way to fight the phase ships is to wait their timers out. And yes, while they DO burn out faster, it is usually either A) boring B) frustrating or C) deadly Basically you are saying that people have to play the way YOU want them to play and not anyway that you feel is "boring or OP"
Phase frigates are worse to fight against than before.  Most ships cannot catch phase frigates, and Afflictor can counter anything that can counter it - quantum disruptor followed by two AM blaster ships equals "bye, bye frigate-sized counter".

Quote
I mean, if we look from a in-lore design stand point, a lone phase ship isn't supposed to win a battle. It is supposed to get in, kill that high value target to their fleet an edge, then get out letting the normal ships take the brunt of the assault. If a fleet is mostly defeated fleet that only has one of two phase ships left, they should retreat and use them to cover a disengagement rather to fight on and if they survive, get mothballed when they would be needed most.
This is where lore and gameplay conflict, and gameplay will always trump lore, at least for the player who wants to win.

When soloing fleets, why kill the high-value target only when you can kill everything with one ship?  This is why I do not consider Doom a capital ship.  A battleship (with max Combat and Technology) can solo the simulator.  Doom cannot even solo as much as a Dominator can.
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borgrel

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2016, 05:50:00 AM »

I like CR, it adds another way to win

And strategy is all about choosing the the most likely method of victory and manipulating events in the hope of achieving it.

If the only way to win a fight is to blow the crap out of everything it is not an RPG or a strategy game, its an arcade game. This is partially the reason why every RTS game have resources.

I wouldn't mind seeing other methods for achieving victory like sabotaging large fleets or bribing pirates etc.
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Megas

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #11 on: June 25, 2016, 06:03:45 AM »

Quote
-AI enemies need to at least ACT like they need to worry about resources, mainly by not deploying the entire fleet to kill off a few newbie frigs
The AI has the resources of a nation backing them, the player does not (at least until we get Industry).  What do they care if they waste resources?  (Yes, they should care.  Not disagreeing with that.)

If the only way to win a fight is to blow the crap out of everything it is not an RPG or a strategy game, its an arcade game.
Which is fine with me.  I got Starfarer because it felt like an arcade-like shooter and alternative to Transcendence and Star Control 2/Ur-Quan Masters, with fleet vs. fleet action (in theory) instead of one gunship against the AI.  In practice, Starsector since 0.7+ is best played as one vs. all in combat.  Only difference is my ship has many guns instead of a lone fixed gun plus special ability (usually a missile launcher).

That said, a good campaign can make the arcade-like experience even better.  Star Control 2 pulled it off wonderfully.  Hope Starsector can do the same later.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2016, 06:14:22 AM by Megas »
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Megas

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #12 on: June 25, 2016, 06:24:06 AM »

Quote
-AI needs to focus on killing the enemy before moving on to another ship unless another ally ship is targeting it and can take over
Better yet, both attack and kill that one target even faster!  Focus-firing to eliminate threats faster is optimal.  If I have spare OP, I order every ship in my fleet to focus-fire on one enemy at a time, at least when I deploy a fleet to fight (I rarely do now).  Not a fan of ships spreading themselves out to maintain parity of forces.  This is one reason why being outnumbered hurts and drives some players like me to solo everything with one ship.  (Another reason being deployment costs - why deploy a fleet when one ship can do for less cost.)

Hate to admit it, but peak performance helps prevent smaller ships from kiting death fleets of 100+ ships single-handedly.

It really doesn't. You just have to cycle through replacements now.
I mentioned single-handedly.  Chaining flagships is not single-handedly.  However, chaining flagships is more efficient than deploying your entire fleet.  I chain flagships when one ship is not enough.
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Sabaton

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #13 on: June 25, 2016, 07:07:15 AM »

Hate to admit it, but peak performance helps prevent smaller ships from kiting death fleets of 100+ ships single-handedly.

It really doesn't. You just have to cycle through replacements now.

And before CR you didn't even have to do that. Seems like an improvement to me.
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Alex

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Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad
« Reply #14 on: June 25, 2016, 08:03:29 AM »

So wait, We're going to get punished for chain deploying and we'll have to deploy more ships?

Didn't say that :)

It won't as alot of the "required" chain/ hero flagshiping happens at the early game when you are out numbered and outgunned.

Hmm. That totally doesn't match my experience. I'm not saying early game is easy - it requires some piloting skill, for sure - but for me the easiest way to progress through it has been to kit out the your ship decently and then add on frigates/destroyers with officers as money allows. I've done it *many* times and have never felt like I had to chain-deploy to win battles. Chain-deploying comes into play as an option when you've got a lot of skills maxed out and several high-quality ships to do this with.

Is it possible that you're basing your assessment on playing with mods, which may change the early game balance? That's the only thing that comes to mind. I'm not trying to discount your experience, but it just so completely doesn't match mine that I suspect something is different.


... those "OP skills" are the only thing that HELPS new/ early game players ...

This is true, but the flipside is that those same skills, when used by enemy officers, make the battlefield much much more dangerous for your allied ships, discouraging you from deploying them as it gets towards the later game. Skills heavily skew offense over defense, so that's just a natural consequence. Any mistake is more deadly, any failure to capitalize on a mistake is more glaring, etc.



-The battle joining needs to be less hidden from the player and less OP on the enemy side while giving more control to the player by allowing them to ask for help while also allowing them to deny help just like the AI can

There's a thread about this in suggestions; I've made a note to add something to the UI to help here.


Basically you are saying that people have to play the way YOU want them to play and not anyway that you feel is "boring or OP"

Nothing is black and white here, but that's basically "game design". It can be heavy-handed or not, it can work or not, but in essense the goal is making the game mechanics/UI/etc such that the players are encouraged to do things that are fun and not encouraged to do things that are boring. Obviously both of these are subjective evaluations. I don't think I'm too far off the mark in wanting to eliminate "kite for over an hour, literally" as being the optimal strategy when faced with a large fleet, though.




   Maybe one solution to explore to make the phase ships a little less annoying to fight would be to make their phase upkeep cost rise as their CR goes down. That way their normal state would be in normal space, phasing only to do a maneuver or avoid shots, rather than their "normal" state and popping out of phase only to fire their weapons. In term of UI you could have the same green/red indicator as the shield upkeep in the info card, and you could see it in refit when playing with the CR slider.

   Of course that means yet another tweak of the AI...

The issue with that is that "having enough flux to make a firing run" and "not having enough flux to do it" are pretty binary for phase ships. I mean the "run through target, turn around, and shoot it" thing they do. So once phase upkeep went up over that threshold, it'd make phase ships - suddently, and not gradually - change their behavior to "basically useless". Although, really, once their CR starts going down, it's already pretty late in the game in terms of how much time they've got left, so I'm not sure this is addressing the issue at the right time.
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