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Author Topic: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships  (Read 12025 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #45 on: April 10, 2018, 10:03:18 AM »

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.

But they are not 'otherwise stronger', if they can't do anything about that Paragon. Paragon is not that hard to kill in the open for large enough frigate/DE swarm. If enemy fleet can't do so, they are objectively weaker and deserve to lose.
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Megas

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #46 on: April 10, 2018, 10:14:48 AM »

The reason Paragon is safe at the walls is 1) it cannot be surrounded and 2) the enemy avoids the wall to some extent.  Sometimes, the enemies will retreat into fog-of-war, while other times, they will crowd around a safe distance away to be shot at like fish in a barrel.  In the open, Paragon will die from a dozen ships surrounding it before long.  This is why a player-controlled solo Paragon needs to run to the wall as soon as possible as soon as it burns into battle against an overwhelming fleet.
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xenoargh

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #47 on: April 10, 2018, 10:38:24 AM »

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.
I agree with all of that.  I think one of the biggest problems with CR as a system is that, while it fixed some serious problems- notably, using endless kite to defeat infinite enemies- it also took a lot of Fun out.

I’ve addressed a lot of that in my current build of Rebal; the best answer was largely to mitigate the kiting itself, by letting higher-tier ships have dominant range bands; this means you can have superb small ships but you’re simply not going to defeat large fleets solo in them solo, unless you’re both very lucky and skilled.   CR’s still in, mind you, but it’s rarely decisive, unless you’re fighting 45-minute epics against Thar Be Dragons fleets.

I wouldn’t mind revisiting CR mechanics as proposed, though.  The issue has always been dancing at the edges and playing endless keep-away; the best way to prevent that is to give players strong incentives to stay in the battlespace.  

I don’t think the Paragon-holding scenario’s likely; just keep the battle-circle in the 10-20K SU range.  Points should definitely change hands a lot; ever since ECM largely nuked the benefits, though, the only points I consider important are Navigation for the speed buff.  I can’t emphasize enough that making the points largely inconsequential has largely been detrimental to gameplay; I mainly cap points to sucker the AI, honestly.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2018, 11:04:36 AM by xenoargh »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #48 on: April 16, 2018, 09:00:28 AM »

I've been thinking a bit about that center control stuff I posted and I'd like to offer a refined version.

There should be 1 to 3 objectives, depending on the size of the battle, each with a 1000 to 1500 capture radius. They should be slow to capture and quick to neutralize.

I said before that even a single frigate should be able to contest an objective, but on second thought I think the bar should be a little higher. The minimum required to contest should be an equivalent number of ships to the biggest enemy ship in the capture radius. So if the largest ship is a cruiser, the opposition requires 4 frigates, 2 destroyers, 1 cruiser, 1 capital, or some combination thereof to neutralize the objective.

The two goals of these center objectives are to keep ships away from the edges and to spread the fight out, so it needs to be important to contest them, but not an overwhelming advantage to hold part of them. Holding all of them should give you a big advantage, though.

I suggest the objectives provide a benefit to both teams. Say -30% damage taken and a flat +30 speed, divided evenly between the objectives (so 30, 15-15, or 10-10-10). While an objective is neutral it gives half of each bonus to both sides. When captured, the loser gets the entire speed boost for that objective while the winner gets the entire damage reduction AND a boost to flux venting (or an overall dissipation bonus).

The speed boost makes it easier to contest the objectives or to run away. The damage reduction effectively makes the fight more lethal for the losing team. I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong, the winner's flux boost effectively counters out the loser's speed boost.

As Alex initially proposed, holding all the objectives should decrease Peak Time on the entire enemy fleet.


I think these changes would also achieve another useful thing: clear feedback to the player on how well (or poorly) the battle is going before it becomes a death spiral.
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xenoargh

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #49 on: August 01, 2018, 07:31:27 PM »

I realize this is a huge necro, but:

Quote
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.

...so, I built something like this.  It'll be in the next version of the AI, if I don't port it out to another sub-mod.

Basic rules:

1.  In Missions and the Campaign Missions, in non-Escape scenarios, incoming ships spawn on two edges of the battle-space, which is now a circular area, instead of a rectangle.

2.  When spawning in, the ships use their Travel Drives.

3.  Attempting to leave the area when not under Retreat orders triggers the ship turning towards the center of the battlefield and turning on the Travel Drive until back within the area.

4.  When the ship has Retreat orders, it swiftly turns and then engages the Travel Drive, leaving rapidly.

The resulting combat dynamics are actually quite good.  This system:

A.  Prevents using corner-cheese / edge-cheese tactics entirely.
B.  Actively punishes players attempting to ride the battlefield boundaries, and prevents dumb AI-vs-AI chase scenarios (you know, that boring stuff where they chase each other down the walls).
C.  Makes the initial deployment a lot more chaotic and interesting (I'll probably do some tweaking on this to make it feel a bit more like a formation flying in, with Frigates out front, etc., as I refine this).
D.  Makes the rush to objectives much more random, instead of a giant predictable blob.
E.  Makes scenarios where the enemy gets multiple waves much less favorable to players who've pushed up the battlefield- you cannot squish the next wave against the walls any more and the position of incoming forces is less predictable.  And enemy forces no longer kill themselves running into the wreckage of dead ships nearly as often.

In short, it worked as proposed; the prototype's still rough, but it already feels better.  I think it solves a lot of the problems we talk about with this area of the game design.
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TaLaR

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #50 on: August 01, 2018, 07:49:59 PM »

4.  When the ship has Retreat orders, it swiftly turns and then engages the Travel Drive, leaving rapidly.

Isn't this intentionally suicidal? Any sufficiently fast ship (relative to present enemies) should move normally to a position far enough that it can't be caught during Travel Drive warmup, and and only then initiate a Retreat.
I mean, sure just going straight to warmup is ok for a Paragon, since it's not going to outrun anyone. But a frigate doing the same? Pointless suicide.
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xenoargh

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #51 on: August 01, 2018, 08:02:23 PM »

That's a good point.  I may make Travel Drive make ships invulnerable while active or make ships that have engaged their Travel Drive while Retreating invulnerable to cover that specific case.  

Usually, this hasn't proven suicidal, though; by the time the AI's issuing Retreat orders, most of its fleet elements are dead and the remnants are being chased around anyhow.  It's usually better than the current case, where the AI's not using Travel Drive until it's almost off the battlefield anyhow, which usually gets it killed by fighters or faster chasers, which is a totally boring time-waster.
« Last Edit: August 01, 2018, 08:05:19 PM by xenoargh »
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xenoargh

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #52 on: August 01, 2018, 09:40:01 PM »

OK, I've gotten most of the kinks out.

1.  Ships can't magically turn on Travel Drive to escape if they're stunned or their engines are out. 
2.  Once they're on, the ship's essentially invulnerable, preventing the problem TaLaR pointed out.
3.  I've tested "wall-bounce" scenarios to make sure they aren't super-abusable. To the best of my knowledge, it's a disadvantage to bounce, because while you get a brief invulnerability period, you lose control and can't do damage.
4.  Ship distributions have been adjusted to make it so that you're unlikely to see ships get damaged due to collisions.  It's certainly better than it is now in Vanilla when there are a lot of things floating around.
5.  I really like how the battle's over when it's over and both the AI and player can "remove a card" (i.e., a ship that needs to be taken off the field) without much hassle.  While I don't care for re-engagement play in general (largely because resetting the CR clocks and missile ammo is downright abusive vs. the AI) this at least means the AI isn't getting every ship it bothers to Retreat killed, like it usually does, making "rematch" battles a little better.
6.  This massively improves the feel of lengthy wave-fights (i.e., multiple waves of AI vs. your god-fleet).  If you've reached that point in the game and you're playing in a mode that allows for battles that big, this hugely improves the feel.
7.  It really improved the feeling of sameness in every big fight, where the enemy blob is always in the same place, doing the same stuff, arriving about the same time.   

Among other things, it diffuses the fighter / frigate blobs so that that fight feels a little more random, and the arrival of the heavies might put them into flanks, instead of predictably up the center over and over again.  The player still has time to maneuver and place the fleet elements to pick the time and place to some degree, but it's much less predictable-feeling, which is nice; while blowing away hordes of pixelated starships is always fun, it's extra fun when the AI might just get lucky and turn your flank, rather than conveniently ramming itself into your fighter blob and then into your heavies.

I'll probably package this up as a mini-mod when I finally get around to releasing stuff again; it's non-intrusive and I think it largely fixes the gameplay rough spots we've been observing for years now.  This doesn't totally deal with Running Away Rambo tactics or make the CR timer invalid as a game-design concept, but it does mitigate these issues somewhat, by making it much less attractive to solo with corner-cheese or a wall at one's back.
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TaLaR

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #53 on: August 02, 2018, 12:10:05 AM »

Shouldn't Retreat cost at least something?  I mean you can initiate it at almost any moment (like just before getting overloaded/flamed out) and immediately (as far as i understood) get invulnerability...

That sounds so ridiculously powerful, that failing to retreat at necessary moment would be qualified as AI-error under such system.
Or do you actually intend to make dropping to 0 CR (by multiple retreats) the only way to reliably take out a ship?
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Shrugger

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #54 on: August 02, 2018, 04:01:19 AM »

I feel like this is an over kill fix for an issue that already has a fix. Plus it feels very arbitrary and gamely

This.

Furthermore, we already have objectives on the map, and they really don't work all that well.

IMHO, expanding the existing objectives system is a good idea, but it should be done in a more tangible way - placing visible structures (unarmed stations, essentially) that give proximity-based bonuses; that would be my favourite. Fuel depots that slow peak performance decay, radar dishes that provide an ECM bonus and  something-something that gives the movespeed bonus.

Then give us more stations in-system and fewer in hyperspace, so it feels like it makes sense.

/idea.
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xenoargh

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #55 on: August 02, 2018, 08:08:49 AM »

@TaLaR:  Good points.

1.  Until the ship get the Travel Drive started, it's still vulnerable, so if it's forced to Vent or Overloads, it can't flee.

2.  I don't like winning via CR, period.  That's ideally solved by not having CR, but so long as it's possible to Rambo through endless kiting... it's a toughie.  I'm really not sure how big of a deal endless kiting is now, though, with Fighters having pretty close to infinite lives, etc. (unlike pre 0.72, where fighters had very finite lives).  Maybe fighters need infinite lives, period, to pretty much end that as a thing?

3.  I agree that this makes it an AI "error" if it doesn't Retreat.  The Admiral AI is pretty notoriously funky about when it does that.  I'll think about that.

On the /idea above:  yeah, I had something like that in the last version of Vacuum a couple of years ago- essentially, Stations that did <stuff> if the points were held.  Long story short, it was Fun and it worked, but I've never gotten around to porting that code forward to any of my new projects, because <reasons>.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2018, 08:18:29 AM by xenoargh »
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Megas

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #56 on: August 02, 2018, 10:11:38 AM »

If CR became infinite, then ballistics need their ammo back (and fighters become ships again).  With infinite CR, Hyperion playership, and others, can solo much more.

Winning by outlasting enemies is annoying, but I do not hesitant exploiting that if that is the best or only way to win.
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TaLaR

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Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships
« Reply #57 on: August 02, 2018, 12:05:41 PM »

1.  Until the ship get the Travel Drive started, it's still vulnerable, so if it's forced to Vent or Overloads, it can't flee.
During TD warmup: can a ship move (is inertia instantly nullified if no)? use weapons? use shields? use systems(like fortress shield...)? does warmup itself cost flux?
It's not really possible to "force" overload/vent in vanilla (would need weapons that directly add flux to target). As long a ship gives up on attack and only uses shield as much as flux reserves allow, it is guaranteed to avoid both. So in the end question is whether flux reserve + armor + hull last till TD activation.

2.
I consider CR ultimately good (though improvements to CR system are possible).
Without CR (fast, weak) <-> (slow, powerful) is a guaranteed stalemate as long as faster ship doesn't undertake actions that amount to suicide (approaching an opponent it has no chance against). Fighters are leashed to carriers, carriers themselves are relatively slow. Fighters just increase avoidance radius, like very long ranged weapons.

CR also shifts combat goal from "kill"(nibble slowly, preserve hp/armor at any time cost. Given speed advantage and time can kill most things) to "kill asap"(some hp/armor sacrifices are acceptable if they buy a lot of CR time. Kill quality is measured primarily in time spent and matters a lot. There is always upper limit to how much single ship can kill).
I think this puts higher value on player skill rather than just patience. And offers at least some guaranteed resolution when player is much slower, without contrived solutions like forcing AI to suicide.
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