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[xenoargh]

Sooooo... I just wanted to mod in better scaling for Faction fleets.

I've been messing around and I have built a fleet that blows away anything the Factions spawn with ease.  In fact, it was so easy that I took a look at why... and that's when things got a little weird.  It appears they're limited to a quite-small range, with a minor buff for Market Size, and there's zero scaling based on the player's power. 

So, that's why, after getting to the point where I can successfully chain-battle 500K Bounties, I find zero challenge in harassing the Factions that are issuing same, which seems a little weird. 

I mean, you'd expect Tritachyon to whip out a fleet of 20 Paragons and 200 other assorted things to take me out at this point in my run if I ever show up in their territory, but no, they're lucky if they field just one, with a smallish handful of weak troops that my fleet steamrolls without really noticing they're in a fight.  Not that I mind, exactly; even in Vanilla, un-modded, I broke the million-credit ceiling really fast and, given how this works now, that would mean I could just crush Factions left and right if the game lets me do that in the next version.

I figured if I just attacked their fleets enough, something big would pop, but no, it's never big enough to bother with, I don't get enough Commission to break even, with a post-apocalyptic endgame fleet.

Perhaps to future-proof this:

1.  In each Faction's file, give min-max values for the fleet points available to spawn PATROL_SMALL, PATROL_MEDIUM, PATROL_HEAVY, so that each Faction can get tuned (for example, we'd expect Hegemony to have bigger fleets than, say, the Independents, but right now it's entirely dependent on the Market Size).

Long, rambling version with coder-stuff:

Spoiler

Then people don't have to, say, rewrite CoreLifeCyclePlugin, etc. to implement a change to this.  When I saw that I'd essentially have to write from SectorGen up (again) because of the class dependencies, etc... well.

On that note, why isn't stuff like this (dynamic events that effect the overworld) in a separated, concise EveryFramePlugin format, where it operates independently from SectorGen (which, imo, should only be used to initialize the gameworld, period)? 

Now that fleets essentially exist temporarily if they're in the player's view... this seems like a non-insane idea.

It seems like modularity here, for the dynamic stuff, would be a good idea.  I'm not just talking about modding it, either, although that'd certainly be beneficial; we could see dozens of behavior mods that alter, say, the Pirate fleets that come out of <faction> when <condition> etc., and they wouldn't all need to overwrite SectorGen; they could just be Plugin behavior mods, all running simultaneously to create complex mechanics.

Sorry if this got long and rambling and I know you have a lot of more-important stuff to do right now.

[close]

2.  Put in a float value in settings that allows tuning of the above to scale with player's power level.  0 would be "no increase", values over 0 would be a multiplier, times the player's level, that gets added to the "patrols" of the Factions.  So, for example, a value of 4 applied to a level-40 character would give the generated fleets 160 more points when generated by FleetFactoryV2.  Maybe there's three scalars, so that PATROL_SMALL doesn't get too huge.

3.  It's pretty obvious, after looking under the hood, that this is one of the reasons why, when I reach a certain point, the game seems to flatten out into zero-challenge.  But the other thing that's happening is that economic activity is directly affected; the trade fleets are also not scaling up.  So there's no endgame piracy that makes any sense, either. 

Not that piracy makes sense, largely because the loot's not worth it.  I get more from taking Bounties than I'll ever get sacking Atlases, which doesn't make any sense to me and I hope it gets fixed at some point so that being a pirate / privateer is at least reasonably lucrative.

4.  I know that having something equivalent to Mount and Blade's Lords, where they got instant armies for free, is a little unattractive as a motif (I thought it and a few underhanded things that were stuck into the Mount and Blade economy to keep players tamed at the high end were just plain lazy game design).  But there really should be some event that gets triggered where you'll be hunted down by something that can possibly kill you.  I feel like Escape Velocity got this largely right, by making attacking the factions in earnest cause you to have a huge fight you were probably going to lose.

[Igncom1]

I personally despise things that scale to the players power.

[Bunshichi Tawara]

I think you make some rather good points. when you hit end game almost all fleets and enemies will run from you and just ghost you. only 1 or 2 aggressive personalities would maybe kamikaze you but that is about it. I think it would be cool if the AI actually properly used the market as well. I think the faction military market should be flushed out more with stock and the AI should have to buy ships from it using their governments budget to fund a campaign against enemy fleets and planets. This would open more dynamics for the game as well as give the player a challenge of actually gaining good vessels as the local faction military would most likely already be fleeting them. So this would force players to be somewhat risky and buy black market ships or decommissioned ships and restore them to proper quality. This would also add to another note that i think all ships should have a decommissioned variant, even some Tri-Tachyon ones. Aside from the paragon and Odyssey ships who has never even seen a rusted paint job yet.

[Modest]

Power of factions' fleets scaling to player's power? Umm... No thanks. I hate this kind of gimmicks. It really sounds bad.

However having faction send fleet dedicated to hunting down and eliminating player (when player becomes too big of nuisance) would be nice thing - and THAT fleet should scale with player's power. Other than that I really find it awfull idea.

(ah! But of course making such mechanic possibility for purpose of modding community would be fantastic thing for them I guess...)

[MajorTheRed]

From a gameplay experience point of view, I understand your point. Alex has put in place 3 instance of scaling :
-Bounties
-Factions patrol
-Derelicts
However, all of them are solely scaledto the player which is silly and atmosphère breaking (probe talking with each other to reinforce them? Ragnar Complex reinforcing its patrol against a little warmonger (the player) but unable to do it against Tri-Tachyon raid?). Still, I understand the need to integrate this kind of mechanic.

I think you are too much far within end game which is not supported by the current game. But I really like the design philosophy you explain in your post.

In the end, I think this post, and the many so we have saw in the last weeks (months), highlight the fact there is many players with many still of play. Probably Alex should at a certain moment integrate more crunchy starting options to help mitigate that (something more like MOO, Endless Space or other 4X games). Options would include scaling factors, size, starting conditions for the players, and even weird options like armor multiplicator, 0-OP missiles and IA alternatives...

[zaimoni]

"Options are evil"

I hate to think of the playtest time incurred.  (The player-hunting fleets work well enough in Nexerillin.)

[xenoargh]

I understand people's reluctance to have something in this game that scales with the player like Skyrim or for that matter, Mount and Blade's endless Lord armies. 

The problem here is that there's a pretty obvious tipping-point on player power; it's roughly at "4 Cruisers and 6 Destroyers". 

I can wreck any of the Patrols at that power level, pretty much, if the Captains are leveled.  I cannot, however, take down the Bounties; to get there, usually I have to add at least one capital ship (which I usually give to a subordinate so that I can fly something a little faster and alpha-driven).

So either:

1.  We need to further-cap player power, again (which I already find kind of lame- I'd rather that I can just go on forever, if I can afford it).  I'm not in favor of using the nerf-bat here.

2.  We need to put some drain in place that's so major that players just can't get there (Outposts look like they'll contribute, but I doubt if they'll deter me from building a fleet the Factions can't fight).

3.  The Factions are beefed up, so that, even in the end-game, their Defense Fleets are a credible threat to a leveled player.  Any Market of size 5 or higher should be able to deploy a fleet large enough to be seriously dangerous, and a size 7-8 Market should be able to deploy fleets that all but the highest-level players with massive fleets can't take down; we're talking 100+ ships here.

4.  Maybe there's a Mercenary mechanic, where a Faction can spend its cash pool to buy up a big fleet comprising ships of all the Factions when it wants.  Given that we've heard practically nothing about how empire-management and AI will work in the next build, it's speculative, but I'm hoping to see a more robust strategic-level AI and behaviors as the game matures.


I'm aware that Nexerelin largely has dealt with this problem already, and I had to deal with it in Vacuum, too (admittedly, not as well or polished as the current Nexerelin builds). 

I like Nexerelin's approach, where eventually the Factions send fleets to collect a bounty on you; that adds flavor.


@Igncom1:  I find your comment pretty amusing, given that your playthrough videos show you're obviously playing with Nexerelin, which does precisely what I'm talking about here and does some leveled scaling behind the scenes.  BTW, that last battle was pretty amusing; next time, give your ships direct orders; just using Defend is sub-optimal when you need to break a Destroyer / Frigate swarm

[Megas]

We already have bounties scaling by level, and the current iteration stinks.  I do not want everyone else scaling like that too.  Sure, it makes sense if they send stronger enemies for a while after you slaughter some of their patrols, or if they got more resources and can afford to build more high-end stuff.  Not if you simply leveled up or got a lot of cash.

Player already needs to limit his power (by leaving several fleet slots empty) if he wants to recover a lot of ships from battle.

So this would force players to be somewhat risky and buy black market ships or decommissioned ships and restore them to proper quality.

I would just kill them and take their ships, save-scumming until the one I want drops.

However, I prefer to build my own ships and weapons, and I hope my outposts can do that.  I do not want my character to be paperboy for major faction or vulture for the whole game.

[jupjupy]

While this topic is here, I'm not quite sure why there is a player fleet size cap in the first place. What is the logic of capping the maximum number of ships a player can have at any one time? I mean, enemy fleets get gigantic (and, by the way, should get bigger, but obviously cant go too big right now because the player is stuck at like 30 ships), and we're capped?

I feel like it would have made more sense to go the unlimited route and just remove the player cap, but make the end game enemies significantly stronger themselves. It should feel like a real armada of ships that the player has to slam his face into, just, not with scaling involved, I think.

[Igncom1]

@Igncom1:  I find your comment pretty amusing, given that your playthrough videos show you're obviously playing with Nexerelin, which does precisely what I'm talking about here and does some leveled scaling behind the scenes.  BTW, that last battle was pretty amusing; next time, give your ships direct orders; just using Defend is sub-optimal when you need to break a Destroyer / Frigate swarm

I'm not playing with Nexerelin.

And i'm a defensive player, without commanding a ship directly I need to mitigate the ability for the AI to run off and die. Having my ships stick together is one of the few ways to prevent your fleet from being spit up and destroyed. Victory by attrition rather then death by 'divide and conquer.' Besides, that was the last episode of the campaign so I wanted to go out with a bang.

As it stands in the game, the reason as to why the gameplay changes so abruptly with a couple cruisers/carriers is because of how terrible every other ship type is at actual battle. Most frigates/destroyers don't have the fire power or the flux capacity to survive a proper fighter swarm or a direct attack by enemy cruisers.

The AI is largely incapable of fielding frigates and even destroyers properly which make up the majority of defence fleets. Compared to players who know how the AI acts they are going to be packing at least a couple of Moras (Or equivalent) with powerful fighter/bomber wings before they feel like they can actually compete, at which point generic defence fleets filled with shield-less frigates are going to be beyond fodder for proper gunships and carriers to murder.

If you have seen my videos, then Luddic Path fleets are a prime example where even much much more numerious and powerful fleets can be utterly annihilated by even a few carriers and gunships.

So I don't think scaling is the answer, at least not towards the player. And factions sending hunter-killer fleets against the player, I feel, is a different topic.

Defence fleet strength should scale based on what's happening and what they have. Better economies should yield better quality fleets. Bigger wars and rampant piracy should lead to larger patrols, even out to the smaller colonies. Currently the game does kinda do this by reacting to patrol fleets being killed by dumping out a larger fleet in response, which you might have seen if you stick around an enemy colony after annihilating a defence fleet.

But that's the key, annihilating it, as otherwise you will have the scattered remnants of a fleet following you around and preventing a new and larger fleet from spawning.

Scaling in skyrim is *** because as the player get's stronger, the draugr/everything else gets stronger for no apparent reason other then that you levelled. If defence fleets get bigger simply because I pulled my battleship out of port for a bounty mission, then that's a load of crap. But if fleets get stronger because I have been destroying their supply lines, and get weaker if I leave them alone for long periods then that's fine and even fun.

The game should react to my, and the other NPCs, actions but never my 'strength' or 'power level.'

[intrinsic_parity]

I would say defense fleets should be scaled based on the market and not the player primarily. Maybe if the player is attacking fleets near a market, they might send out some fleets to deal with the player, but the size of the fleets should not scale with the player. Big markets send out big fleets.

[xenoargh]

I'm OK with scaling it based on Markets; I just think it needs to be far larger than it is now. 

I'm currently crushing Skathi (albeit in a modded game where the Bounty I get makes this worth the trouble, so long as I don't take serious losses) and they're not able to push out fleets large enough to be more than speed-bumps.  Unfortunately, Tritachyon doesn't have much that's bigger than that right now.  I'm thinking about breaking SectorGen and setting up the Sector so that it's all based on EZ Faction stuff, other than Corvus, so that I can at least see a few Population 6-9 Markets where there might be something worth doing.

@Igncom1: 

This got long and kind of spoiler-y. 

Spoiler

Destroyers can work quite nicely in late-game, actually, but you really need to structure your builds around exploiting the weak spots and counter the enemy builds. 

For example, in the battle you fought, I watched your fleet ineffectually scraping shields as the enemy circled around; it was a bit mind-boggling to see the fight play out. 

Four Destroyers, focused on that wall, properly kitted out (Light Needlers or Railguns; might as well abuse the Vanilla weapons that are OP) would've taken them apart and opened up the fight for your heavies to become efficient again.  I feel like you depended entirely too much on your fighters (that you weren't focusing) and your Conquests (which are just slightly better than Odysseys but are still very weak, inefficient Capitals- you could've bought 2 Falcons, or 2 Enforcers and a Shepherd tag-along, both of which provide more speed and reliable firepower, for the same costs).

They can't be expected to hold against a fighter swarm, alone, no, but in groups, if built correctly, they're totally fine.  Quit basing your builds on what the Vanilla stuff uses and think really creatively about how to get more efficiency out of your ships.

For example: the current Hammerhead looks like it's built for forward firepower.  But what it has going for it is that it's fast enough (finally) to get into / out of trouble.  It still has pretty inadequate stats but it's not totally terrible.  So, instead of putting missiles and Mediums in those front slots, put two Railguns only (the AI uses Railguns better than Light needlers); put LAG's onto the front two Lights and put Vulcans on the rear ones.

Now you have a Hammerhead that you can put just enough Hull Mods onto that it can do pretty decently as a survivable brawler.  It can have ITU and maxed Dissipation, among other things.  It's no Enforcer or Medusa, despite getting a much-needed buff in the last build; it really needs about 100 more Dissipation so that it can use its weapon loads a little more generously or afford one more gun.  But it can solo a couple of Frigates without breaking a sweat, take down Enforcers that don't have range advantages or get lucky with Sabots, and, if it can catch one, it can kill the stock Medusa variants.  And two of them will kill most Cruisers, albeit with a little damage.

In my last Vanilla run, I used mainly Enforcers even in endgame, because they can focus-kill efficiently and harass well, while protecting themselves from fighters quite well.  Their job was to kill anything smaller than a Cruiser or kill Cruisers when focused, which they can largely get done due to Burn Drive mitigating their speed problems.  They can carry enough anti-fighter weapons to largely neutralize fighters or at least make them inefficient for costs (i.e., if your enemy deploys a Cruiser-cost ship but gets less-than-Cruiser firepower out of it while you can still do damage, you're winning), if they're kept bunched up.

Chief things there are that every Captain absolutely must have Gunnery Implants, Defensive Systems and Power Grid Modulation, to allow them to have reasonable range, given that you'll almost never have the range advantage due to the ECM rules, and lose Hard Flux at a reasonable rate; if they didn't roll those, they got let go. 

It's helpful if they get Ordnance Expertise and Target Analysis and Combat Endurance as well, but these aren't mandatory.  Try that out sometime. 

It was never cost-effective to focus-kill Capitals with them in late game; that was a job for Cruisers with a Capital in support, simply because of range disparities (they'd do it, if the average Capital didn't out-range them by huge margins).  They were fine otherwise; a Cruiser just melts when three Enforcers hit it with Kinetic and HE follow-ups (usually, in the current Vanilla balance, LAG's, because both the Mortar and Heavy Mortar are so poorly balanced for OP costs).

I flew a Medusa to Flux-lock Cruisers with, usually; it has enough alpha if you have Light Needlers that you can lock your targets pretty easily in late game when you have the OPs to keep those guns rolling.  I usually had the Medusa with no PD, no missiles, and just enough direct-fire to take down the occasional fighters; it couldn't survive a swarm but I usually kept in the shadow of a Cruiser I had set up for exactly that job (it did nothing else well, but it sure killed fighters); fighter swarms that focused on me were a net benefit to the fleet.  Bear in mind that, if you're focusing your fleet, rather than letting it mill around, just hitting a target once is going to penalize it on speed until it drops shields or Vents, allowing you to draw it out of the pack and kill it while the rest of the pack scoots away.  This is an efficient way to kill things; bring escorts, pull, kill, repeat.

A fleet designed around Flux-locking and PD and keeping weapon flux less than total Dissipation, rather than missiles or HE, is hugely efficient, in terms of K:D ratios (because with Hard Flux drain, it doesn't die), and usually gets the job done before CR is a serious problem. 

The only missiles I ever use, in serious play, are Salamanders, because they suck up so much Flux when enemy PD fires at them. 

I don't think the missile-boat you put in is worth using ATM, because the only thing that made it cool at all (missiles forever) was nerfed away in this build.  I get that unlimited Reaper / Sabot spam was hugely abusable, but meh, it was only a timing issue with the mechanic; it should've had a really long timer and a warmup period so that players couldn't just use it to alpha their troubles away as was shown in the video that got it nerfed.  Oh well.

I did approve of the Locusts, which I think are horribly under-rated by vets right now (they are, bar none, the best fighter-killers in Vanilla, and they are also better Flux-drains when PD engages than even Annihilator Pods).  I just wish there were more ships that could mount them that were sensible; the only serious use I see right now is the Apogee and Astral, and the Apogee's no longer battle-worthy after the nerf-bat pushed them back too far into the "interesting, but useless" category (I didn't think they were especially broken or OP before they got nerfed, though; they just had a job they could do where they were sufficiently efficient, finally, unlike most of the Cruisers).


I agree with Megas that this approach isn't quite as effective as the fighter-swarm method using the Astral to focus-fire things to death in the current Vanilla balance, but it's certainly more fun for me to play out.

[close]

[Igncom1]

Quit basing your builds on what the Vanilla stuff uses and think really creatively about how to get more efficiency out of your ships.

I play for fun more then efficiency. So playing with a PL commission meant using mid tech kinda stuff. That and using HE's is more essential then ever if you want to kill heavily armoured targets in any reasonable amount of time. I'm no pro, I don't even know how to manually pilot a ship.

For example, in the battle you fought, I watched your fleet ineffectually scraping shields as the enemy circled around; it was a bit mind-boggling to see the fight play out.

That's the standard AI. The fleet does as it does and for 90% of the battles I fight it fights them just like that everytime. Numbers, missiles and fighters all jam the AI to uselessness which is why fighter superiority is so strong right now.

[Megas]

I did approve of the Locusts, which I think are horribly under-rated by vets right now (they are, bar none, the best fighter-killers in Vanilla, and they are also better Flux-drains when PD engages than even Annihilator Pods).

Locusts when they first came out were nothing special.  Just a bigger Swarmer launcher.  MIRVs were probably more useful then.  But today, Locusts have become what Swarmers used to be - destroyer of unarmored ships.

I like Locusts because they are cheap, hard to fully defend against, can kill almost anything, and they have lots of ammo.  If they were only good against fighters, I would consider it a waste - just get better things like Hardened Shields or max capacitors on Conquest... or get another ship that can use tons of flak.  However, a single burst from two Locusts (on a Conquest) will destroy frigates and some destroyers outright.  Even cruisers and capitals take a ton of damage if the whole burst strikes hull.  Locusts is an all-purpose weapon, perhaps a more effective and/or reliable finisher than other missiles, and the Locusts can have lots of ammo, something no other missile weapon that is not a regenerator has.  Locusts is one of the few missile weapons worth using.

Unfortunately, the only ship I would consider using Locusts on is Conquest.  Grpyhon is far too weak to use, Apogee cannot force fights (and is of no use), and I would be stupid to do anything to reduce fighter power on an Astral (by taking OP away from fighters for missiles).  Conquest with Hardened Shields and/or max capacitors is on the cusp of fast battleship, and can match other battleships.  Unfortunately for me, I prefer either a carrier or quad lance Paragon as my flagship for most late-game fights.

[Linnis]

The problem is not because AI has not big enough fleets, it is that they do not have good composition.

Large fleet battles revolves around fighters and long range shootouts where frigates and destroyers are only good in an support role. Meaning they either can endure and wipe out fighters in short order or has long range weaponry to support fighters in destroying cruiser and larger sized targets.

ATM the AI fleets just have random variants splayed all over their fleets where 3/4 of the ships are useless and a lot of frigates will kill one or two fighters before taken out.

Simply have larger fleets spawn with less ratio of frigates and destroyers and more frequency of fighters and cruisers.