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: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate  (Read 5422 times)

Sy

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1225
    • View Profile
Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« on: April 12, 2018, 06:16:01 PM »

i'm kinda scratching my head right now.. i was doing some simulator testing of a carrier flagship in my current campaign, and felt that, while replacement rate sits all the way down at 30%, fighters took a lot longer to replace than they should -- even with that low rate in mind.


so i did some testing. this was done in my vanilla 0.8.1a-RC8 install, zero mods enabled. i tested with a Heron, in simulator from mission refit screen.

while at 30% replacement rate, a single Broadsword took ~105 seconds (+/- 3 seconds or so) to replace. as in, from the moment that the 1st Broadsword launched after its entire wing had been wiped out, until the time the 2nd Broadsword was launched. base replacement time of a Broadsword is 10 seconds...

the other two wings were Gladius and Khopesh, which both share 10 seconds base replacement rate, also both destroyed. i didn't measure their timings, but they seemed to at least roughly line up with the Broadwords'. i tested both having set fighters to Engage for the full duration, and having them set to Regroup, didn't make a difference. i also tested the same setup with 95-100% replacement rate, and the time it took for one Broadsword to be replaced was the expected ~10 seconds there.


so it looks like fighter replacement time actually goes down to 10%, even though it's displayed as sitting at 30%. o.o

the reason i'm scratching my head is that this seems like a pretty major bug -- if it really is a bug and i'm not just missing something here ^^ -- and i'm having a hard time believing nobody noticed until now, if it isn't something that only happens under rather specific circumstances. i did a quick search here for other threads that might have reported this, but didn't find anything.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23947
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2018, 07:15:54 PM »

... yeah, this is a head-scratcher, as far as only being noticed now. Looked into it; turns out the fighter replacement rate was getting applied twice, so it was still capped to .3, but .3 * .3 = 0.09, and there you go.

Thank you for bringing it to my attention! The fun part is I 100% remember testing it at one point and it working correctly; must've inadvertently broken it at some point after that.

The other fun part is I'm really going to have to nerf fighters, aren't I. Because this is quite a buff.
Logged

Sy

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1225
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2018, 07:39:52 PM »

The other fun part is I'm really going to have to nerf fighters, aren't I. Because this is quite a buff.
haha, yeah, i was thinking so as well.

although, even though this is much less of an issue as it was before the revamp, fighters are still at their strongest when they can build up numbers and force that overwhelms enemies to the point where each individual fighter is less likely to get shot down, and snowballing as a result. fixing this bug would make it easier to build up that overwhelming force again once it does get thinned out, but i think its impact on the dangerousness of the actual 'deathballs' would still not be huge.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23947
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2018, 08:06:08 PM »

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Might be able to have the rate go down when fewer losses have been sustained, though; I'd imagine even fighter deathballs suffer *some* losses, just not enough to currently make the rate go down.
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2786
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2018, 09:13:39 PM »

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Might be able to have the rate go down when fewer losses have been sustained, though; I'd imagine even fighter deathballs suffer *some* losses, just not enough to currently make the rate go down.

Dropping replenishment rate of Talon-only (or other cheap ones, I assume) carrier requires to pretty much spawn-kill fighters. Anything short of that doesn't have significant impact. And that's vs skill-less carrier, with fighter skills it would be likely impossible.
Logged

Dark.Revenant

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2806
    • View Profile
    • Sc2Mafia
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #5 on: April 12, 2018, 09:31:43 PM »

We’ve noticed that more expensive fighters tend to take a long time to refit, which makes them arguably sidegrades despite costing more.  It might be worth doing a once-over of the refit time balance anyway.
Logged

Harmful Mechanic

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1340
  • On break.
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #6 on: April 12, 2018, 09:37:18 PM »

Yeah, I think increasing replacement times across the board, but narrowing the range of replacement times between expensive and cheap fighters, would be the way to go.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23947
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #7 on: April 12, 2018, 09:46:34 PM »

Yeah, I'll definitely take a look.
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #8 on: April 12, 2018, 10:46:04 PM »

Quote
I think increasing replacement times across the board, but narrowing the range of replacement times between expensive and cheap fighters, would be the way to go.
Agreed; that's one of the things I've tested over here.  The issue's a mite bit complex, though.  If replacement rates are too high, the low-end fighters are completely unsustainable due to combat losses; a thin stream of Talons is useless, but a "deathball" is useful.  Take care with this stat.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7153
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #9 on: April 12, 2018, 10:58:37 PM »

Also, has anyone else noticed that sometimes when bomber wings go in to rearm, they don't come out again for a minute or more, and then they all come out at once?

I have trouble reproducing it, but I swear sometimes when 1 member of the wing is dead, the other two will come back to rearm and be stuck behind it in the rebuild "queue" (is that even how it works?). Then the whole wing is launched at once. Maybe the two do the proper rearm after the full rebuild?
Logged

Tartiflette

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3529
  • MagicLab discord: https://discord.gg/EVQZaD3naU
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2018, 12:35:31 AM »

On the other hand, if a slow wing of bombers take time to come back to rearm, the new wave can launch before they docked since the refit timer starts from the moment they turn back...
Logged
 

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12107
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #11 on: April 13, 2018, 05:01:00 AM »

When I use fighters, I do whatever I can to keep replacement rate up.  This means...
* Expanded Deck Crew hullmod (this is as important for carriers as ITU is for weapon users, i.e., mandatory hullmod)
* Recall fighters when rate gets much below 80%.
* Avoid bombers for some ships.  (Because they take too long to get back and kill rate.)
* Avoid fighters with long replacement times unless you really need it.

P.S.  I try not to let rate get down to 30%, because I noticed that fighters replaced too slowly to be effective.  But I did not realize this was actually 9% or 10%.  All I knew was that it was bad enough that I almost never let my replacement rate get down that low.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2018, 05:32:40 AM by Megas »
Logged

arwan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 668
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #12 on: April 13, 2018, 07:18:49 AM »

Yeah, I think increasing replacement times across the board, but narrowing the range of replacement times between expensive and cheap fighters, would be the way to go.

i was mulling over ideas on how to go about "fixing" fighters with regards to replacement times. and while i came up with a few ideas, one of which i could swear was done in the past but cant explicitly remember. i think this is probably the best and most straight forward way to fix the now buff they got.
Logged
Alex
You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23947
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #13 on: April 13, 2018, 09:08:48 AM »

Also, has anyone else noticed that sometimes when bomber wings go in to rearm, they don't come out again for a minute or more, and then they all come out at once?

I have trouble reproducing it, but I swear sometimes when 1 member of the wing is dead, the other two will come back to rearm and be stuck behind it in the rebuild "queue" (is that even how it works?). Then the whole wing is launched at once. Maybe the two do the proper rearm after the full rebuild?

Hmm, that's weird. "Fast" replacements from returned bombers should trigger if the in-progress replacement has more than a couple of seconds left; looking at the code, I'm not seeing anything obvious that might go wrong with that. Of possible note is that fighter replacement stops ticking when the ship is overloaded or venting. I'll keep an eye out, though.

On the other hand, if a slow wing of bombers take time to come back to rearm, the new wave can launch before they docked since the refit timer starts from the moment they turn back...

That's 100% intentional.
Logged

Sy

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1225
    • View Profile
Re: Fighter replacement time at low Replacement Rate
« Reply #14 on: April 13, 2018, 11:37:22 AM »

i agree with replacement rate rebalance across the board sounding like a good idea.

in the meantime, we can edit "minFighterReplacementRate" in settings.json to prevent it from dropping quite as low as effectively 9%.

Logged
Pages: [1] 2