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Author Topic: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)  (Read 28837 times)

woodsmoke

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #45 on: September 09, 2016, 10:06:01 AM »

Use a modified version of the "old" logistics pool to control boarding. (Also, bring back logistics :P)

Have each ship in a fleet contribute toward a pool of "points" or however you wish to describe it.
Every ship can contribute something, but some ships are naturally better suited to the task of docking and delivering angry shooty spacemans into other ships. These would be your shuttles, armoured transports, and other specialised vessels.
And whatever they contribute scales with thier current CR.

At the end of a battle you have won, all your ships have thier "pirate points" added up and modified by CR, which gives you your pool for this battle/instance.
Then all the disabled ships from the defeated fleet are presented to the player using the "deploy" dialog or something similar, with each ship costing a certain amount of points to recover - bigger ships and more intact ships = more points required.
The player can then pick as many ships to board as they like so long as they have the "points" left to do so. So you might choose to take a handful of frigates, or you might prefer to use all your resources to recover the cruiser you just put holes in.

This gives the player agency in what is currently a frustrating luck-bound endeavour while not overly skewing the difficulty/balance (as ships are generally not worth boarding unless you specifically want a particular one).
The only significant balance change would be that rare/desirable ships would become easier to acquire, which could in turn be balanced by making them exceedingly fragile and prone to outright destruction.
Also, this same mechanic could be flipped around and used against the player if they get beat down. This would have to be watered down though, in order not to be completely obnoxious.


I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I agree with Megas re: logistics as implemented in 0.6x probably not being a good fit, but like the old boarding mechanic, I think it was a case of sound idea, poor execution. I'm confident if Alex just tweaked the way it works a bit he could figure out a way to reimplement those mechanics that works better.

'Course, this is assuming all the new developments since then (thinking primarily of industry) don't change everything enough as to simply obviate the whole thing.
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Cik

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #46 on: September 10, 2016, 02:49:50 AM »

i liked logistics more than the fleet limit tbh

it was kind of the whole point of the leadership tree. i can see why it was removed but it was the only real benefit leadership gave unfortunately.
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Tartiflette

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #47 on: September 10, 2016, 03:18:33 AM »

I preferred the old fleet points system better. It was readily visible, easy to understand, easy to balance... I would gladly welcome it back.
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Megas

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #48 on: September 10, 2016, 06:21:37 AM »

i liked logistics more than the fleet limit tbh

it was kind of the whole point of the leadership tree. i can see why it was removed but it was the only real benefit leadership gave unfortunately.
Logistics made sense, but it made Fleet Logistics must-have.  20 Logistics to 100 Logistics was a gigantic leap of power.  Technology had some must-have skills too, namely the +OP skills and Navigation (which gave burn speed back then).  Combat was all-or-nothing.  If you did not max multiple skills, it was useless.  If you did, you gained an absurd amount of power.  (Compare enemy fleet commanders with Combat 9 instead of Combat 10, Combat 10 was much, much stronger than Combat 9, bigger than Combat 9 got over no Combat.)

I guess the numbers could be tweaked so that Fleet Logistics gave a small boost to a high base when maxed, instead of gigantic boost to a small base.

As someone who could not stand piloting unskilled ships, I always took Combat and Technology first.  I would get bored with glacially slow ships without those skills.  After I maxed those two attributes, then I would go for Leadership.  By then, if it was 0.6-0.62, I would need to fight Hegemony System Defense Fleets very soon to gain levels, and the only way to do it with so few Logistics was soloing or chain-flagships.  0.65 had commodity runs.

The exception was in 0.54, when skills first appeared and you could auto-resolve any and every fight.  Back then, the best XP grinder was the auto-resolve character.  Max Leadership (Fleet Logistics) and Technology (OP skills and Navigation), cram as many big ships as you can, and auto-resolve every fight, even Hegemony System Defense Fleets.  If you lost, no problem, reload the game; still much faster than actually fighting.  It was mind-numbingly boring and defeated the point of the game - fighting, but it was the fastest way to gain XP by far, short of cheating.  It was the only way to get 10-10-10 is a semi-reasonable time back then.  After that, then you can mess around with more skills and kill things manually.


Currently, the most useful Leadership skill is Advanced Tactics.  3 CP is not enough for every fight unless you solo fleets (even then, marking enemies with Avoid is very convenient).  The best benefit is Special Ops.  That helps make boarding more profitable than shopping, and you do not need to bring a liner and several hundred marines to board a battleship.  Getting Special Ops also means +5 CP, more than enough to do what I want.

I suppose Command Experience is okay for training an excess of elites to sell and speed up money grinding.

Of course, Leadership skills pale compared to Combat and Technology now.


I suppose Fleet Logistics could be changed to extend the hard cap, if the hard cap remained.  +1 ship per point above the baseline of 25 ships.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2016, 06:23:42 AM by Megas »
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TJJ

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #49 on: September 10, 2016, 06:30:28 AM »

Rather than being a character perk, fleet logistics could be a property of ships.

Each ship having either a positive, or negative logistics modifier. (indicating whether they're a command & control source, or sink)
The sum of your fleet's logistics would then be either negative (a large global debuff ), zero, or positive(a small global buff)

This might be the key to encouraging/forcing balanced & varied fleets.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2016, 06:33:58 AM by TJJ »
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #50 on: September 11, 2016, 08:09:22 PM »

My thought on how to do boarding:
Keep the current system, but remove the RNG element. Ships would have three statuses: Active, Disabled and Destroyed. You can board any and all ships that are disabled at the end of the fight. In order to disable a ship instead of destroying it, you would need to take it down with lower per shot damage non explosive weaponry. If you hit it with a Reaper class torpedo, it is probably going to be destroyed. Disabling something like an Onslaught should be a lot of work. If there is a ship that you really don't want the player to get by boarding, you can have it explode violently(Templar style) upon being disabled, perhaps through a hull mod(ship is rigged with explosives to prevent such tech from falling into enemy hands). Also, perhaps most/all disabled ships would become "D" variants, which could be restored through something to do with industry. I am not sure how viable this would be to be coded.

EDIT: Oh this is how its done now isn't it. I should probably have read the entire thread before posting. I'll leave this here as a reminder to myself not to do this again.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2016, 08:15:23 PM by Morgan Rue »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #51 on: September 11, 2016, 08:33:33 PM »

Gotta start having ideas somewhere :)

Welcome to the forums!
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Creepin

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #52 on: November 26, 2016, 10:33:14 AM »

but I'd be interested in hearing this without using the word "fun"
As someone who just wasted whole hour mind-numbingly, loathingly replaying for like 20 times the same combat I grew to hate to the core again and again because this combat is the only, unique source for me to get certain ship in the game (Salamander & Undine in my case) I find it incredibly difficult to define what's broken in current boarding mechanics without using a word "fun", or, rather, "absolutely not fun".
« Last Edit: November 26, 2016, 10:37:52 AM by Creepin »
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Cik

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #53 on: November 26, 2016, 11:04:39 AM »

why not just spawn the ship if you are going to obsessively save scum

both are cheating anyway
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Creepin

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #54 on: November 26, 2016, 11:08:18 AM »

why not just spawn the ship if you are going to obsessively save scum

both are cheating anyway
I believe you might need to check what is cheating. Hint: a legit part of the game is not.
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Cik

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #55 on: November 26, 2016, 11:10:26 AM »

spawning ships is a legitimate function of the game too, if it wasn't there wouldn't be any ships :^)

rejecting the game's RNG over and over until you get what you want even though it's a .0000001 chance is basically cheating,

cheating isn't wrong as long as the game is singleplayer and the boarding mechanics are legit awful so why not save the time and just spawn the ship anyway, there's no real difference.

if you want to feel better about it just deduct 100 marines or something and then spawn the ship ezpz
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Creepin

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #56 on: November 26, 2016, 11:18:58 AM »

rejecting the game's RNG over and over until you get what you want even though it's a .0000001 chance is basically cheating,
cheating isn't wrong as long as the game is singleplayer and the boarding mechanics are legit awful so why not save the time and just spawn the ship anyway, there's no real difference.
I see you point, let's just say that my code of honour says otherwise. Using functionality not in the game (hexedit) or not readily available to the player (dev console) is cheating, while using functionality available to the average player is not cheating no matter how many times you used it, 1, 10 or 100. Also, what about sense of achievement? I finally beat Salamander from the game after 30 attempts, and now I feel good, like "stuff you, game, see, I'm on the top, not you!". Would I feel it by spawning it from the console?

Hmm... after careful consideration, boarding mechanic is ok. It did gave me feeling of satisfaction after all, no? ::)
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Deshara

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #57 on: November 26, 2016, 12:38:53 PM »

A mechanic that encourages a player to interact with a game in an unfun way is, by definition, not a good mechanic
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Megas

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #58 on: November 26, 2016, 05:51:06 PM »

I consider save-scumming via reloading a previously saved game from a menu within the game a perfectly legitimate strategy, and not cheating.

Game is like war.  Do whatever (loophole abuse) it takes to win.  I have no qualms abusing exploits to win, such as soloing everything with one ship, corner camping with Onslaught (to eliminate its flanking weakness), or stalling until the AI runs out of CR minutes before my ship does.  I have absolutely no qualms replaying the same battle for a few hours to board that Hyperion, Onslaught XIV, or other disgustingly ultra-rare top-tier ship that I may never see again... although that is irritating and unfun... until I get that ship, then it is "Now I'm playing with power!".
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Why so many people want detailed boarding mechanics (my best guess)
« Reply #59 on: November 26, 2016, 07:37:25 PM »

Iron Mode: "This is the setting the game is intended to be played on, but since it's in alpha right now, use at your own risk."

I would say it is illegitimate unless used to avoid "unfair" outcomes. Though I would also say not iron mode is more fun for me because I get to do stupider things with it. Again, player discretion, single player game, etc.
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