Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

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

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Fleet size disenagge limit  (Read 12763 times)

Rap1d

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 49
    • View Profile
Fleet size disenagge limit
« on: November 13, 2017, 03:21:53 AM »

When you reach a certain point in fleet size, after getting in contact with an enemy fleet you get the message that your fleet is too large to disengage properly and you have to fight. What exactly is the limit? I tried searching for it, but can't find the numbers. Is it purely based of the number of ships, or are things like supply cost and ordnance points considered? I wanted to make a fast and nimble fleet with just frigates and destroyers but I got stuck with the message anyway...
Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2017, 03:30:24 AM »

IIRC it triggers if you wouldn't be able to deploy all your ships in the battle (due to hitting the deployment cost limit).
Logged

John_A_Tallon

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 8
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2017, 04:30:51 AM »

You can change it in \Starsector\starsector-core\data\config\settings.json

Code
	# the smaller of these two values is used
"maxDisengageSize":150, # maximum number of supplies-to-recover cost before a fleet can't participate in a disengage-style battle
"maxDisengageFraction":0.4, # maximum number of supplies-to-recover before a fleet can't disengage, as fraction of current battlesize.
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2017, 01:27:49 PM »

I find it interesting that after playing this game for 3+ years, I didn't know the mechanic behind this. In and of itself, that's not a big deal but if someone like me (who frequents the forums, dives into config files, plays *a lot*) doesn't know these things, how the heck is a new player going to?

This isn't the only mechanic like this. There's questions about the refit screen, mothballing, armor (which I wrote a guide on and learned a ton about in the process), etc.

I don't think this is intentional but information being hidden or buried is helping turn the learning curve from steep into Mt. Improbable.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2017, 01:54:05 PM »

The refit screen is a fair point, definitely. Mothballing, 90% of it is already explained in the tooltip - just added a bit about it reducing CR to zero, since that was missing.

For the "no retreat for a certain fleet size" mechanic in question... to me, it's one of those that doesn't really matter 99% of the time. It's certainly not something that's part of the early learning curve - if you've managed to get a big enough fleet for it to come into play, you're doing well enough that you're past the early difficulty. And when it does come up, it pretty much resolves itself - you're forced to fight, you lose some ships, and then you can retreat. I'm not sure a detailed explanation is particularly beneficial here.

(Edit: I should say, I very much appreciate things like this being pointed out.)
« Last Edit: November 13, 2017, 02:20:55 PM by Alex »
Logged

Rap1d

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 49
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2017, 02:33:20 PM »

Quote
I'm not sure a detailed explanation is particularly beneficial here.


I would find it very beneficial. I wanted to keep the fleet small enough to be able to escape any unwanted battle, but as strong as possible within those bounds. I'm playing on ironman, and running into a giant fleet on accident, like when it jumps out from a jump point right in front of me and I'm not paying enough attention, or when I'm going on sustained burn and the limited handling just doesn't let me not bump into it, it can be pretty catastrophic.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2017, 07:46:08 PM »

A question, if you don't mind - are you playing with a smaller battlesize? Just curious how you're running into this limit with a small fleet.
Logged

Rap1d

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 49
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2017, 02:53:16 AM »

I haven't modified it myself in any way, nor am I playing with any mod that modifies that IIRC. But as I said, I had no idea what a "small fleet" entails. All my cargo vessels were fast frigates, Hermes, Dram and Cerberus ships, I was using a Hammerhead as my flagship, and I wanted as many Drover carriers as I could fit in, one for each officer, since they are the fastest carrier. I just slowly expanded my fleet with nothing but these small fast ships, and I noticed that I lost the ability to disengage. I can't know when was the exact point this happened, but I'm pretty sure it was when I still had only 6 officers, So I didn't have like 10 Drovers yet.

Then I had no idea how to downsize, so I wrote here. Like what was I going to do, remove one carrier or frigate and try to run into a fleet that would fight me? That just seems unnecessarily tedious. If I want to "beat the game" on ironman, I thought that obviously the best strategy is to use a small nimble fleet to gather enough money to get a fleet of sufficient strength all at once, to reach a point where you don't want to run away from any fight - all at once.

Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2017, 06:30:10 AM »

As an aside, the handling of the disengage restriction has annoyed me greatly on one occasion.

Spoiler
Misplanned mission in Askonia led to a run-in with multiple large Sindrian fleets, with a combined force much larger than my own. Can't disengage and have no chance of winning. I decide to try fighting them to thin them out a bit.

Fight an engagement round. Kill many ships, lose some. Still can't disengage.

Fight another round, with what's left of my beaten-up and CR-degraded force. Lose more ships. Still can't disengage.

At this point, if the game had a surrender option I would have taken it. As it was, deploying ships just to get them killed so I could finally just leave felt too asinine for me to put up with, so I just savescummed.
[close]
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2017, 09:07:58 AM »

Thanks for the added info!

Hmm. Thinking this through a bit, what about a "sacrifice X points of ships to get away" option, sort of like when you're picking ships for pursuit? That would have the advantage of letting you know exactly what you need to drop to be able to get away, and wouldn't belabor the process. Made a note.

Taking that one step further, I wonder if that wouldn't be a good general replacement for retreat-style battles on the player side. I'm not sure all that much would be actually lost by removing those, though I'd still like to keep the battle type where the player pursues the retreating enemy ships.

Any thoughts on this?
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2017, 09:39:58 AM »

These days, I auto-resolve pursuit because ships that are fast enough to catch many fleeing ships are weak enough to risk getting killed.  Also, it is hard to kill everyone if there are too many targets.  Thus, I auto-resolve nearly all pursuits and take the risk-free freebie kills.  Even better, if I auto-resolve, I can deploy ships that are otherwise unsuited for fighting (civilians or even sub-par combat hulls with junk weapons) instead of my best ships.  The few times I manually fight pursuit as the attacker is either I want no survivors (rare unless playing something like Nexerelin) or I want to save-scum and capture a rare ship or more rare equipment (like more tier 3 weapons or Remnant fighters).

Earlier in the game, when my fleet is smaller, occasionally it is more advantageous for my fleet to run and fight a battle as a pursuit because my big ships are closest to the enemy and their smaller ships may get deployed at the sides, which gives my heavy-hitters an advantage; just turn around and blow up their big ships or support ships before the enemy AI recovers.

As for sacrificing ships when retreating, I would not want that if I retreat because I want superior ship placement if I think the enemy will pursue.  However, it would be handy for those who do not want to bother with fighting and say "take my ships and leave me alone".

EDIT - Although if fleet is too big, player cannot retreat to fight, so just dumping excess ships can be a quick and dirty way of running.  It would be nice to know how close my current fleet is to the threshold before I get into a fight in the first place (when it is too late).  The OP's suggestion is sound.  After all, in earlier versions I have used small fleets (that do not exceed 40 or so points) to avoid objectives spawning in the first place.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 10:06:03 AM by Megas »
Logged

Midnight Kitsune

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2846
  • Your Friendly Forum Friend
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2017, 10:53:26 AM »

Thanks for the added info!

Hmm. Thinking this through a bit, what about a "sacrifice X points of ships to get away" option, sort of like when you're picking ships for pursuit? That would have the advantage of letting you know exactly what you need to drop to be able to get away, and wouldn't belabor the process. Made a note.

Taking that one step further, I wonder if that wouldn't be a good general replacement for retreat-style battles on the player side. I'm not sure all that much would be actually lost by removing those, though I'd still like to keep the battle type where the player pursues the retreating enemy ships.

Any thoughts on this?
Would this mean that the player would no longer have the ability to fight retreat battles if they want to?
Logged
Help out MesoTroniK, a modder in need

2021 is 2020 won
2022 is 2020 too

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2017, 10:59:12 AM »

Taking that one step further, I wonder if that wouldn't be a good general replacement for retreat-style battles on the player side. I'm not sure all that much would be actually lost by removing those, though I'd still like to keep the battle type where the player pursues the retreating enemy ships.
Would this mean that the player would no longer have the ability to fight retreat battles if they want to?

Yeah, that's what I meant by "replacement". Would get weird when the player only has one/a few ships, though.

I *think* retreat-style battles tend to fall into the "fake retreat, actually want to fight" and "won't take any losses" categories. There's also some middle ground where they can be interesting, and the game tries to avoid forcing you to play through "won't take any losses" situations (by allowing an immediate withdrawal), but I'm not sure how often retreat battles end up being interesting in practice, without being "fake retreat". I'd appreciate some feedback on that specifically!
Logged

Kanil

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 85
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #13 on: November 14, 2017, 12:19:32 PM »

I wouldn't miss fake retreats, but I'd be pretty annoyed if the game demanded I sacrifice a ship that I wouldn't actually lose, so hopefully the "won't take any losses" detector works correctly.

I can't really remember having any retreat battles that were especially interesting (I'm sure I've had a few, but not memorable ones), however my playstyle is extremely heavy on trial and error and savescumming, so I don't typically retreat to begin with.
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size disenagge limit
« Reply #14 on: November 14, 2017, 12:27:47 PM »

I generally save scum if I'm in a situation where I would generally lose a lot ships retreating, so I think the sacrifice ships option would cause me to save scum anyway. I think a 'bribe to escape' option would feel more palatable, even though it's kinda the same thing.

Also what about a 'rear guard' style battle where you leave some ships behind to fight, and they can't retreat for x minutes, but if they last that long, they can retreat and un-deployed ships escape unharmed.  If all ships are destroyed before time limit, you lose some additional ships but most of your fleet still escapes, you could also just end up back in another dialogue with the option to fight or retreat again if you fail. The only concern would be cheesing with a phase ship or something fast to run away and hide for the time without properly fighting. This maybe could be resolved with a small map so it's harder to run and hide? I think that could be a more fun way to resolve the situation.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2