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[Thaago]

I also mainly ignore objectives. If my fleet works well as a deathball I usually pick one to assault. At present the bonuses are minor or do nothing, but the amount that they make my ships split up and behave badly is very high. Considering how powerful 'avoid', 'eliminate', and 'defend' are, I would rather save the CP than actually capture them.

[intrinsic_parity]

I usually just assault one objective at the beginning to keep my fleet grouped tightly, but I focus on other orders once I engage. I only consider objectives if I am receiving a significant de-buff from them, having reduced range or speed can hurt a lot.

[Alex]

Thank you all for the added info/feedback! Mulling some stuff over.

... but how about making an exception for these two?

A simple line like "due to <world reason>, this ship cannot reap the benefits of <insert name> beacon" under their hullmods would be enough. I think that's much less likely to cause problems and it'd alleviate the current balancing issue.

I'm sure I'm missing some so considering this method, what are the downsides? Are there any exploits or gameplay problems that you can think of?

It's really more of a spectrum with SO/phase ships on the far end of it and thus making a clear example. For example, the lower peak time of high tech ships is also part of their balance. That said it might work but ideally the solution would be cleaner.

The AI currently mass deploys, since it doesn't have to care about supplies.

I somewhat miss the old system where the AI deployed only a few ships to match yours ( problem was : to easy to solo ) -> but it gave me the feeling of AI had to care about resources, too

(It does not mass-deploy and does indeed work like the "old system", the one difference being that it does deploy more to start with, but definitely not everything it could.)

[SafariJohn]

Re: center control stuff

What if in the center of standard battles was always an objective, the "Control Region" or whatever, with a very large capture radius. While one side controls this objective their Peak Performance Time does not tick down. However, if any opposing ships are within the capture radius the objective quickly reverts to neutral.

I am probably wrong, but I don't think this would benefit short PPT ships significantly since, unless the battle is already very lopsided, the objective will usually be neutral.

If you want to encourage fleets to spread out then there could be 1-3 objectives, depending on how big the battle is, which all must be held to gain the benefit.

Perhaps, instead of totally stopping PPT ticking down, it could instead allow ships to ignore ships of the same size or smaller when determining whether their PPT should tick down.


A related idea I had is to limit how far big ships can stray from the center of the map. Then capitals can't camp the corners because they can't get to them. Something like this:

Spoiler

[close]

Eh, that one's probably too silly and/or hard.

[Alex]

... but I don't think this would benefit short PPT ships significantly since, unless the battle is already very lopsided, the objective will usually be neutral.

Hmm, interesting point. Still feels dangerous, though - something like say a large group of SO ships rushing the field, overtaking (and thus holding) the center, and then abusing that to pressure the enemy deployment zone with all of SO's advantages and unlimited peak time.

Eh, that one's probably too silly and/or hard.

(I mean, probably, but that's still some quality outside-the-box thinking! *thumbs up*)

[Thaago]

What if ships that are chased off the map, or go there deliberately, are automatically retreated? Possibly with an extra penalty to CR ("Routed"?) so that it doesn't become optimal to just wait by the edge, fight for a while, then back up/out when finally overcome. Making the ship need/automatically turn before burning would also make it suboptimal to do so.

This doesn't address the case of deploying ships in a corner, but would go a long way to stopping 'edge fighting', both as a boring optimal player strategy and as the infuriating/whackamole game of waiting against the AI.

[xenoargh]

I think the best answer is to simply make the battlefields a heck of a lot larger but have the two sides start roughly where they do now.  Then have the AI keep within a reasonable circular area that's only a bit bigger than the minimum needed to hit the Objectives.  Sure, players can abuse that a bit, especially with carriers, but there are probably ways to mitigate that, like giving the side that holds more of the center a bonus against CR degradation or something.

I've always been pretty dubious of the borders in general; I presume they're there for Reasons, largely to keep the battle-space from getting too vague, but their implementation has made them both a bane to the AI in general, and a haven to players.

[xenoargh]

Here's an idea.

1.  There should be capturable points that influence CR decay, and points that gradually reload Missiles.  This would hugely encourage players to not kite battlefield edges and use a fleet.

2.  Retreating should not reload Missiles, ever, but it should allow the ship to return to the battlefield later.  I.E., retreating a badly-damaged Cruiser just puts it back into the Deployable list; it doesn't take it off the playing field, for the player or the AI.

3.  Retreating or entering the battlespace should involve turning on the Travel Drive.  This means ultra-fast movement (think a blurring motion until it cuts off).  Travel Drives should take between 15 and 45 seconds to warm up; hitting Retreat on a ship means surviving for a while and then escaping rapidly if you survive that long.

4.  The battlespace should be essentially infinite, but the AI should not stray outside a zone encompassing the Objectives, unless Retreating, other than Fighters.

5.  Player ships taken out of this zone should be allowed to do so, but if the AI captures the points that drain CR, this won't work out.

6.  Ships that have reached zero CR outside the zone should be Disabled, further penalizing attempting to escape the AI.

7.  Because ships can be brought back into a battle, but Missiles won't be reloaded if the entire fleet Retreats, there aren't any good reasons to leave in the middle of a battle you can win, nor, with the other changes, any good reasons to loiter outside the AI zone.  Your own AI ships won't leave the zone, either.

So, that would solve most of these problems.  I don't have any issue with the player sending a damaged ship out of the fight and entering a new one to fight.  The issue here is that corner-kiting, wall-hugging, abusing the Retreat system to reload Missiles or recover CR, etc., etc., are all boring and reward cheesing rather than fighting.  Merely making sure that a player who refuses to fight will lose their ship to CR degradation will keep players in the zone; if players can get Missile reloads by holding points, then Missile-heavy fleets are viable without resorting to an abuse of the game-mechanics.  And the Travel Drive and a large circular zone means no more "Oh, I just killed the first wave, and now the second wave magically enters the fight and crashes into my fleet that's chased them to the edge of the battlespace"- ships should arrive in groups, but groups scattered around a 90-degree arc of the zone, so that that artificial issue quits influencing gameplay.


I think it's still possible to test this stuff out, but meh, I have no idea whether my custom-battlefield code from Vacuum is still even vaguely serviceable, so it's probably not trivial to set up a test for these ideas.  I think this solves most of the current problems, though; it gets rid of the invisible-wall issues pretty much for good, makes enemy reinforcement waves arrive in unpredictable places, quits rewarding players for using Retreat All by magically reloading their weapons, etc., which are all things I think we can agree aren't great for gameplay.

[TaLaR]

7.  Because ships can be brought back into a battle, but Missiles won't be reloaded if the entire fleet Retreats, there aren't any good reasons to leave in the middle of a battle you can win, nor, with the other changes, any good reasons to loiter outside the AI zone.  Your own AI ships won't leave the zone, either.

I see a very good reason to retreat and fight multiple rounds under current system - doing so restores peak CR time. You can get much more total time by deploying ship several times (each worth standard CR percentage cost) than deploying it once and running CR percentage into the ground.

[xenoargh]

Right; between that and reloading Missiles, it's rather abusive.  I don't think either should be a thing we can do, personally.  I think if you Retreat All, you should get to try to Escape, not fight another round with the clocks reset and missiles reloaded.

[Megas]

If we could not refresh peak performance between rounds, then ships should start with a lot more of it and have CR decay more slowly.  It would also help if AI became brave as they used to be.  I get tired of their stalling Spathi dance (which is part of the reason my fleet is fighter heavy).

Part of the reason I do not use frigates and most destroyers in endgame fights is their peak performance is too short.  It is a pain leaving enough CR aside to retreat ships that are running out of gas individually instead of as a group.

That said, I could attempt retreat then re-engage in another encounter to refill peak performance and missiles... but then I would need to defend at least one tanker (probably a Phaeton or Prometheus) and lose all accumulated loot (and XP if not at level cap).  At least if I went bounty or Remnant hunting.  If simply grinding factions in core worlds, I would not need tanker, and if I avoided killing ships with rare weapons, then fleeing and re-engaging could be an option.

[SafariJohn]

... but I don't think this would benefit short PPT ships significantly since, unless the battle is already very lopsided, the objective will usually be neutral.

Hmm, interesting point. Still feels dangerous, though - something like say a large group of SO ships rushing the field, overtaking (and thus holding) the center, and then abusing that to pressure the enemy deployment zone with all of SO's advantages and unlimited peak time.

I think a bigger concern is a 2000+ range Paragon parking on the objective and scaring all the AI out of the capture area. The capture range would have to be very large to counter that. I wonder how many SO ships it would take to keep all enemy ships out of a 3000 radius area.

If that's not enough I'm sure multiple objectives would counter both of these. I believe neither the Paragon nor the SO swarm could lock down all the objectives unless, as aforementioned, the battle is already very lopsided.

[TaLaR]

I think a bigger concern is a 2000+ range Paragon parking on the objective and scaring all the AI out of the capture area. The capture range would have to be very large to counter that. I wonder how many SO ships it would take to keep all enemy ships out of a 3000 radius area.

Well, if they can't to anything about a Paragon parked in center of map with single objective (not edge-camping!), then Paragon deserves to win, obviously. Why would this need to be explicitly countered?

[Megas]

Or like in 0.5x, bring the rushers first to claim the objective, then bring in the Paragon (or other heavy hitter) to secure the objective.  I did something like this back then.  Use my Hyperion to capture a point on the enemy's side of the map while my AI Hyperion captures points on my side of the map.  Then, deploy the rest of my fleet while I had the advantage.

However, Paragon alone in the open will get slaughtered if there are enough enemies.  It can almost solo the simulator by kiting then hugging the walls.  Part of what makes Paragon nasty is it can pick off enemies one-by-one before it gets surrounded.  However, if there are still enough enemies after few of them die, Paragon will be next.  It needs to keep kiting (to delay when it gets surrounded) and sniping.

[SafariJohn]

I think a bigger concern is a 2000+ range Paragon parking on the objective and scaring all the AI out of the capture area. The capture range would have to be very large to counter that. I wonder how many SO ships it would take to keep all enemy ships out of a 3000 radius area.

Well, if they can't to anything about a Paragon parked in center of map with single objective (not edge-camping!), then Paragon deserves to win, obviously. Why would this need to be explicitly countered?

The Paragon is simply the most extreme (and easily tested) example. If a small number of elite ships can easily keep an otherwise stronger enemy fleet out of the center then that could be an I Win button.

I don't know if it would be a problem in practice, but it's something to watch out for and an extreme capture range is an easy counter.


Keep in mind: this center objective stuff is to penalize edge-camping; creating a new camp-to-win location, even if it's in the center, would be shooting ourselves in the foot.