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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)  (Read 9726 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2016, 02:39:22 AM »

@gunnyfreak

1) You use some interesting definitions here ("The fight is over when one side dominate the map"). Do you propose some timer/point based victory for vanguard/flanking battles?

2) Distinction of light/medium/heavy ships? Simply by class? By Burn?

3) Also, how do you propose to handle Player Character as resource? Can it be reassigned each phase? Same question about officers.

4) If CR works like it does now, draining per phase, then player has strong incentive to minimize amount of phases, by giving up  extra ones (vanguard, flanks, encirclement, delay) just for CR reasons. Going for proper phase sequence may cost too many supplies to be viable, even if it makes resulting battle(s) much easier.
For example, encircling ships have to be able to do at least 3 fights (flank, encircle, pursuit) to be usable or be brought in surplus to allow partial deployments.
And in scenario where you fight several phases, then lose and have to retreat, you are pretty much doomed by CR. In current engagement system this results in *just* double CR cost and is already often unaffordable until lategame.

The other option is to pay CR costs only once after whole engagement (overtime in phases can stack). But it seems to encourage cheesy behavior (kill some stuff, retreat, repeat).



« Last Edit: December 14, 2016, 02:43:24 AM by TaLaR »
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PCCL

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2016, 05:44:10 AM »

@gunnyfreak

1) You use some interesting definitions here ("The fight is over when one side dominate the map"). Do you propose some timer/point based victory for vanguard/flanking battles?
Yeah, the idea would be there are some objectives and holding them all for x time wins you the game

2) Distinction of light/medium/heavy ships? Simply by class? By Burn?
did NOT think this one through, I'll freely admit. By class, by burn, by combat speed... Whatever seems to make sense

3) Also, how do you propose to handle Player Character as resource? Can it be reassigned each phase? Same question about officers.
Let's see, officers are stuck to their ship, but I feel like the player would shuttle around between battles just as a matter of convenience and to keep the game playable

4) If CR works like it does now, draining per phase, then player has strong incentive to minimize amount of phases, by giving up  extra ones (vanguard, flanks, encirclement, delay) just for CR reasons. Going for proper phase sequence may cost too many supplies to be viable, even if it makes resulting battle(s) much easier.
For example, encircling ships have to be able to do at least 3 fights (flank, encircle, pursuit) to be usable or be brought in surplus to allow partial deployments.
And in scenario where you fight several phases, then lose and have to retreat, you are pretty much doomed by CR. In current engagement system this results in *just* double CR cost and is already often unaffordable until lategame.
Ah, yes. The original post was made pre CR (shows how old it is). That said though, a CR/deployment overhaul will be in order if something like this goes through. This is more of a balancing issue though, I think. We just need to strike the right balance of battle difficulty, supply consumption, and phase benefits to make it worthwhile

The other option is to pay CR costs only once after whole engagement (overtime in phases can stack). But it seems to encourage cheesy behavior (kill some stuff, retreat, repeat).




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TaLaR

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2016, 06:55:21 AM »

1) You use some interesting definitions here ("The fight is over when one side dominate the map"). Do you propose some timer/point based victory for vanguard/flanking battles?
Yeah, the idea would be there are some objectives and holding them all for x time wins you the game

This gives Player incentive to stall instead of winning by objectives, to win by annihilating enemy instead (of course, if player is in position to do so). Otherwise makes sense: winning vanguard battles by sitting in the corner would feel weird too.

3) Also, how do you propose to handle Player Character as resource? Can it be reassigned each phase? Same question about officers.
Let's see, officers are stuck to their ship, but I feel like the player would shuttle around between battles just as a matter of convenience and to keep the game playable

Having re-assignable officers is just my pet peeve, they already kind of do not work in multistage battles. Extra ships w/o officers are only good as surplus for player, cannon fodder or non-combat.

4) If CR works like it does now, draining per phase, then player has strong incentive to minimize amount of phases, by giving up  extra ones (vanguard, flanks, encirclement, delay) just for CR reasons. Going for proper phase sequence may cost too many supplies to be viable, even if it makes resulting battle(s) much easier.
For example, encircling ships have to be able to do at least 3 fights (flank, encircle, pursuit) to be usable or be brought in surplus to allow partial deployments.
And in scenario where you fight several phases, then lose and have to retreat, you are pretty much doomed by CR. In current engagement system this results in *just* double CR cost and is already often unaffordable until lategame.
Ah, yes. The original post was made pre CR (shows how old it is). That said though, a CR/deployment overhaul will be in order if something like this goes through. This is more of a balancing issue though, I think. We just need to strike the right balance of battle difficulty, supply consumption, and phase benefits to make it worthwhile

The other option is to pay CR costs only once after whole engagement (overtime in phases can stack). But it seems to encourage cheesy behavior (kill some stuff, retreat, repeat).

But these are exactly kind of details that determine if this approach results in good gameplay or not. For example, clip-based weapons seemed good as proposal, but were utterly unplayable in practice since they were incompatible with simplistic autofire AI (at least this is one of reasons).
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Megas

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #18 on: December 14, 2016, 07:21:51 AM »

When enemy fleets had Timid officers in ships I wanted to eliminate but had no chance of catching, I would stall (on an objective) until they run out of CR and lose engines because deploying more and faster ships to catch Timid speeders meant I pay higher supply costs, and the enemy would simply deploy more ships to maintain its overwhelming numbers advantage.  Basically, playing stupid and getting punished just to alleviate boredom that an AI can never feel.

Encouraging players to wait and outlast the enemy is not a good idea.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #19 on: December 14, 2016, 01:02:11 PM »

objectives don't do anything and taking them is mostly pointless. they used to do things back in the day, but the use of them has been eclipsed by built-in skills. combat flows too quickly for them to be of any use and most of the time diverting any significant forces to capture one is pointless as it's best to just blob into an overwhelming firebloc as quickly as possible and then shoot the hell out of the enemy's powerbloc.

space needs to be larger, more dynamic, more terrain types and the actual "objective" of the engagement needs to be variable. any sort of terrain control is basically pointless as long as the victory condition is always "destroy the enemy utterly."

They're useful in the early game before you have the skills to get massive speed increases (objective's going to be more important once that's gone) and when you only have an extremely small amount of command points.
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #20 on: December 14, 2016, 01:28:25 PM »

I made a similar post suggesting some kind of raiding function. I think the reason Alex doesn't want to implement something like this right now is because of its complexity and it being unrelated to current topics(Exploration, stations, etc.). I do think something like this, likely simplified, will be implemented eventually. Until then, it would be awesome to see it in a mod. Unfortunately, though I have the time right now, I do not have the skills to make a mod.
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Dauntless.

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #21 on: December 14, 2016, 03:37:12 PM »

Drifting off topic here, but I'll go on the record and argue that objectives being useless mid to late game is a problem with the current skill gain rate. In my personal mod, the level up exp function is 1000*x^3, which translates to about level 15 after 5 years of in game time. Between that and doubling enemy officer levels, enemy ships are actually a challenge for you 1v1, it's pretty nice
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Nighteyes

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #22 on: March 26, 2017, 05:08:04 AM »

you have encountered an enemy fleet, they are hostile and move to prevent you from escaping.

you chose to:
1. Hail them
2. Transfer to another flagship
3. crash mothball some of ur vessels
4. attempt to disengage
5. attempt an encircling manouvre
6. move in to engage

if u choose encircle u select some ships, they are UNAVAILABLE during ur standard engagement and will appear directly in front of the retreating vessels if u win the engagement

if u lose they will still appear behind the enemy forces, except since ur trying to run they have problems .......


That's pretty good, actually. Choose to gamble some of your fleet in the hopes that you will prevail to make the second phase easier.
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Megas

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #23 on: March 26, 2017, 08:53:14 AM »

Drifting off topic here, but I'll go on the record and argue that objectives being useless mid to late game is a problem with the current skill gain rate.
I need all of the skill points at the beginning of battle to send ships to capture points to replenish points I spent and to intercept the enemy since they will try to do the same.  By the time points get captured, I usually know by then how the battle will be decided and it is simply mop up if I will win or reload the game if I will lose.  If the enemy takes the points, and I cannot capture them, my fleet is overmatched and will likely lose (and game gets reloaded).  If I capture the points, my fleet will almost certainly win, and my job is to protect my AI ships from doing something stupid and avoid unnecessary casualties.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #24 on: March 27, 2017, 11:17:15 AM »

Late to this debate, but I like the OP's idea. but make the map concentric circles instead of squares, because squares have corners, which are problematic exploits. Freighters in the snoozing zone would automatically wake up and start depleting CR/supplies if enemy ordnance or ships approached them. This is why you should leave some escorts sleeping with them.

cf a post I made a while ago that is vaguely similar to this:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10591.msg181633#msg181633

Since warships already have overpowered civilian capacities (passengers, cargo, fuel storage) these would be nerfed to make civilian ships useful. The nature of the game would change to something I would like more, and which some people would like less.

Putting all this tactical complexity in the pre battle dialogs defeats the purpose, since then you're playing a simplified text adventure instead of a real time strategy game. And those dialogues are boring and confusing.

Retreating into the 'nowhere' zone is still a bit cheap even in your system. Honestly if things were to be redesigned from day 1, the campaign map should keep ticking at like 1/60th speed during combat, and retreating ships should become a separate fleet bubble on the campaign map that'd be vulnerable if your fight dragged on too long, and which you'd reunite with after the fight. In this system people could also leave their civilians as a separate fleet hidden in a nebula nearby, but then they couldn't use them to store plunder etc.

However the game hasn't been designed to sustain performance for all these ideas, and it's too late big changes, or SS will end up like one of those never-finished Orson Welles projects. This is the major conceptual problem of SS' piecemeal progression: Combat 1st without a clear conception of campaign, and now we have two separate games which are both fun, but the way they interact (stapled together with those painful dialog adventures and the IRS lovechild CR system) isn't all that smooth or fun. However perhaps more things to do in campaign will make this less noticeable in the future.

If not, there's always StarSector 2.
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Serenitis

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #25 on: March 30, 2017, 05:30:19 AM »

With respect to OP's zone layout and the performance limitations we are constrained by, why not abstract any attack on the held-back undeployed ships.

Say, if you were to get a number of ships up to the far edge of the enemy retreat zone they could be ordered to break off and attack the other ships, where they would "burn out" and leave the battle to go and do so.
Then once you have completed your battle, the outcome of the other ship's foray could be delivered by the AAR text.
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Megas

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #26 on: March 30, 2017, 05:35:53 AM »

Auto-resolve a second battle literally behind your back, should runner ships decide to burn past your battle ships?  I can see players howling as it was for boarding.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Flanking and single-engagement battles (encounter mechanics redesign)
« Reply #27 on: March 30, 2017, 06:17:13 AM »

I agree, no more auto resolve or abstracted things. It's already dissatisfying enough to have the text dialogue system tell me whether or not I outrun pirate fleets I'm trying to escape... why can't i just outrun them (or not) myself?
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