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[SCC]

@Cik
I've asked Alex once to allow frigates to slip through the defences and engage fleet reserves, but he brushed it off and I forgot why by now. I still hope there's going to be some more depth to the deployment system, you can't really harass equal or bigger fleets at the moment, and it might give combat freighters some use as well.

[Cik]

a general solution is needed probably based on some combination of burn, stealth/phase features, and fleet commander tactical proficiency.

don't get me wrong, getting a bunch of ships together and blowing *** up is a good time and all, but i'd really like to be able to play the game in a way that isn't simply "acquire large gunships, shoot the *** out of everything to death."

the lore, while secondary paints an interesting picture of increasing sophistication of fire & maneuver tactics, gambits and ruse de guerre etc. but all that's hardly represented in the game. even in the battle itself tactics are hardly represented, because it's essentially just a firebrick contest. whoever has the bigger firebrick wins.

edit: i complain mostly because i want the game to be more than a shoot 'em up. in many ways it already is, but perhaps some day it could theoretically be the "space commander fleet engagement simulator thing" of my dreams.

[Linnis]

Space shoot em up mode could really be just a series of missions with progression. Story and stuff via text and choices between fights.

[Eji1700]

a general solution is needed probably based on some combination of burn, stealth/phase features, and fleet commander tactical proficiency.

don't get me wrong, getting a bunch of ships together and blowing *** up is a good time and all, but i'd really like to be able to play the game in a way that isn't simply "acquire large gunships, shoot the *** out of everything to death."

the lore, while secondary paints an interesting picture of increasing sophistication of fire & maneuver tactics, gambits and ruse de guerre etc. but all that's hardly represented in the game. even in the battle itself tactics are hardly represented, because it's essentially just a firebrick contest. whoever has the bigger firebrick wins.

edit: i complain mostly because i want the game to be more than a shoot 'em up. in many ways it already is, but perhaps some day it could theoretically be the "space commander fleet engagement simulator thing" of my dreams.

To be fair I think the base combat system as is works very well.  The way shields/armor/flux interact does a good job of giving more than one viable strategy.  the limits on AI + control weaken crazy options, but I think the biggest problem is that since simple strats work so well you're not often incentivized or shown what else you can do.  Deploying frigates first to alpha strike down weaker targets or throwing out missile boats that'll harass and fire off before retreating for example vs the "Send in the biggest guns" stuff.

[TaLaR]

Deploying frigates first to alpha strike down weaker targets or throwing out missile boats that'll harass and fire off before retreating for example vs the "Send in the biggest guns" stuff.

Yeah, these do not really work as fleet tactics.

Clearing up enemy Capitals with chain-deployed Afflictors is very much viable, but do not expect AI to pull it off.
Same goes for effective massed missile usage, which basically boils down to Sabot/Squall spam with decisive follow-up - both are things AI is not too good at (too conservative with Sabots, too indecisive with finishing blow).

You want to keep your AI ships as simple to pilot as possible. For example, Hammerhead is perfect AI DE - there is almost nothing to fail about it's ship system usage, and it's overall just a brick of good stats with long ranged weapons. Point it at enemy and you are mostly done.
Compare that to Medusa, which needs to exploit phase skimmer to maximum effect to compete. Or TL Sunder which needs to plan HEF usage (simpler task, but AI is not quite up to it either).

[Goumindong]

Thinking about solutions again

Functionally all solutions which involve secondary fights and stuff seem too fiddly. Hard to understand and harder to strategize around. Designing the system so that it’s possible to fly around the enemy fleet and get to the squishy center while not being easy enough or exploitable enough that that is the ideal option is very difficult. And a few pushes in either direction could make the game feel not fun for the players.

A simpler solution is this

When a player/NPC attacks an enemy fleet they have the option of “forcing the battle”. Doing so makes the engagement happen at the support fleet instead of between the support fleet and the enemy fleet.

All enemy support ships are force deployed for zero DP and they are unable to run out of CR or retreat. The attacking force may only deploy ships faster than the slowest ship in the enemy fleet(equally slow does not cut it)

What this does is give a significant deployment advantage for defending fleets(which makes them harder to crack) and also makes combat freighters valuable (because the larger deployment value is even more valuable now!). If/when looting bugs are fixed it makes hit and run tactics interesting and valuable. You could force the battle and use fast ships to avoid enemy defenses while destroying the cargo ships. Then retreat and bring in a larger force to push the enemy off the wreckage field. Or simply making them eat the cost... but the point is hat you don’t get to do it without additional risk and you can’t cheese it by running them out of CR.



Re: TL sunders... put HIL on your sunders

[Eji1700]

Deploying frigates first to alpha strike down weaker targets or throwing out missile boats that'll harass and fire off before retreating for example vs the "Send in the biggest guns" stuff.

Yeah, these do not really work as fleet tactics.

Clearing up enemy Capitals with chain-deployed Afflictors is very much viable, but do not expect AI to pull it off.
Same goes for effective massed missile usage, which basically boils down to Sabot/Squall spam with decisive follow-up - both are things AI is not too good at (too conservative with Sabots, too indecisive with finishing blow).

You want to keep your AI ships as simple to pilot as possible. For example, Hammerhead is perfect AI DE - there is almost nothing to fail about it's ship system usage, and it's overall just a brick of good stats with long ranged weapons. Point it at enemy and you are mostly done.
Compare that to Medusa, which needs to exploit phase skimmer to maximum effect to compete. Or TL Sunder which needs to plan HEF usage (simpler task, but AI is not quite up to it either).

Eh I pretty heavily disagree. 

Quick frigate spam is pretty easy.  They aren't going to take out any capitals, but if you've got a large and high quality frigate force (ideal of course being something like a tempest but hardly the only thing), you can deploy  a swarm of them at the start of a fight and have them chase around other frigates on the edge of a fight (you do need to command them carefully though).  After you've picked off enough targets you can call them back while sending in the bigger guns to mop up.


As for missiles, just load your AI missile boats with as many hyperions as they can hold and pair them with something that can pop shields (usually not worth it to give them sabots as well).  The moment the shields pop they'll focus fire and annihilate it, which works wonders when you want a strong alpha strike.  Only issue is that they're not great at picking the best targets, so it's ideal if you can clean up some frigates first (hence the earlier strat), or vs heavier fleets.

Although I agree both are a hell of a lot more effort than just loading up on hammerheads which do a good job of being a complete package.

Thinking about solutions again

Functionally all solutions which involve secondary fights and stuff seem too fiddly. Hard to understand and harder to strategize around. Designing the system so that it’s possible to fly around the enemy fleet and get to the squishy center while not being easy enough or exploitable enough that that is the ideal option is very difficult. And a few pushes in either direction could make the game feel not fun for the players.

A simpler solution is this

When a player/NPC attacks an enemy fleet they have the option of “forcing the battle”. Doing so makes the engagement happen at the support fleet instead of between the support fleet and the enemy fleet.

All enemy support ships are force deployed for zero DP and they are unable to run out of CR or retreat. The attacking force may only deploy ships faster than the slowest ship in the enemy fleet(equally slow does not cut it)

What this does is give a significant deployment advantage for defending fleets(which makes them harder to crack) and also makes combat freighters valuable (because the larger deployment value is even more valuable now!). If/when looting bugs are fixed it makes hit and run tactics interesting and valuable. You could force the battle and use fast ships to avoid enemy defenses while destroying the cargo ships. Then retreat and bring in a larger force to push the enemy off the wreckage field. Or simply making them eat the cost... but the point is hat you don’t get to do it without additional risk and you can’t cheese it by running them out of CR.



Re: TL sunders... put HIL on your sunders

I agree that elegant is probably better.  If need be it can be modified down the line by factors such as speed/size/skills/hull mods/whatever. 

The only problem here I see is how do you determine "attacks".  As a player i can just pause before engagement and click on the enemy fleet to make sure we're attacking each other vs them just running away, unless it's just the dialogue option to flee which is already rarely used (but could see more use if theres a way to figure this out).

[TaLaR]

Quick frigate spam is pretty easy.  They aren't going to take out any capitals, but if you've got a large and high quality frigate force (ideal of course being something like a tempest but hardly the only thing), you can deploy  a swarm of them at the start of a fight and have them chase around other frigates on the edge of a fight (you do need to command them carefully though).  After you've picked off enough targets you can call them back while sending in the bigger guns to mop up.

Are 10 frigates even worth calling spam? And you can't get more officers, while doing this much already prevents you from having larger ships with officers.
Without being at least able to reallocate officers in pre-deployment, I don't see a point.

Same officer considerations prevent any tactics other than single big deployment + optional reserve/forward (player piloted Afflictor/etc) from being viable.

[Megas]

Compare that to Medusa, which needs to exploit phase skimmer to maximum effect to compete. Or TL Sunder which needs to plan HEF usage (simpler task, but AI is not quite up to it either).

Not only that, Medusa might need rare weapons (railguns, needlers, energy weapons not named pulse laser) to brawl well.  Why risk hard-to-replace hardware on Medusa when I can get similar performance from loot and Open Market on Enforcer or Hammerhead?

Sunder is similar to Medusa that it needs rare weapons to do well.

[Cik]

i don't know if you should necessarily put a ton of worry into weapons being rare or unrare. we may eventually get the ability to manufacture weapons in which case, while it will probably be hard or extremely hard to find the blueprints, you might not be relegated to seeing them once or twice in a campaign.

personally i guess i'm not happy with how high tech stuff works out at all, energy weapons seem really flimsy to me. i've never been greatly impressed with them save maybe the really heavy ones.

[SCC]

i don't know if you should necessarily put a ton of worry into weapons being rare or unrare. we may eventually get the ability to manufacture weapons in which case, while it will probably be hard or extremely hard to find the blueprints, you might not be relegated to seeing them once or twice in a campaign.

Well, if we could manufacture those weapons, it would indeed not be an issue. We can't yet, so it is. In next version in early game we won't be able to make rare weapons either, so it will be valid in that situation as well.

[Megas]

Currently, rarity can hurt unless you cheat or grind for days like item farming in Diablo 2.  I only find enough Tachyon Lances to outfit one Paragon or Odyssey by endgame.  I find enough railguns and light needlers to outfit few flagships.

If railguns were more common, I would use them instead of Arbalests on ships like Hammerhead and Falcon.

Maybe it will be less of a problem in 0.9.

Energy assault weapons generally stink.  Too short-ranged and too flux inefficient.  In the early days, they had the advantage of unlimited ammo, until ballistics got unlimited ammo too.  When clips replaced limited ammo, energy lost the advantage of unlimited ammo but gained the advantage of superior sustained DPS.  Now energy weapons are just bad for assault, except for heavy blaster (for high dps) and tachyon lance (hitscan, shield-pierce, good burst damage), both of which are rare.

[Grievous69]

Don't forget energy weapons also lost extra dmg at high flux and then weren't rebalanced iirc.

On the topic, I don't see what's wrong with support ships. It's silly to assume every single ship has to be combat capable and be a threat to the enemy. It's neat having a ship that gives you some kind of a perk/boost on the campaign map instead of being a pure pew pew block of metal. Although I agree with tankers being a necessity, they should allow you to explore far reaches of sector and being able to go long without refueling. Not like this where you jump in hyperspace and spend all fuel in 20 seconds. Haulers imo are fine, combat ships have decent-ish cargo, you can take most of the important stuff even with only them.

[Cik]

support ships is a very general category. if we are talking strictly of "support ships" as things that aren't really supposed to have a place in battle, my complaint is mostly that they don't EVER take part in battle. while adding any kind of ability to attack them without first confronting every single gunship the enemy has first.

i hope at least that long-term we will get some sort of simulation of supply limitations (for the AI, anyway- we have lots of limitations already) ideally the finished game will have the ability to actually wage a more constructive (destructive?) war against various factions and actually debilitate / conquer them. a critical part of that will probably be raids / logistics attacks. ideally i'd like to have "endgame fleet" mean more than "has the biggest and heaviest ships available" i guess. personally i think it should be possible to take apart an enemy fleet without necessarily just lining up your gunline and shooting them to pieces at standoff ranges. a bunch of phase raiders are strategically extraordinarily lethal (in theory..)

but how this stuff should (ideally) work out just depends on how far alex wants to go with actually putting in actual war. i think personally if i had to choose a bunch of features for 1.0 top of my list would be:

real production (IE, empires do not just spawn infinite ships)
real logistics (IE, fleet outposts have a finite amount of supplies to supply their AOR and if those supplies are destroyed en route then you can actually weaken the fleets there)
convoys (IE, actually escorted transports that mean something if destroyed)
deployment rework (IE, the ability to deploy enemy ships and to have your ships deployed, the ability to shape the field and deploy things in different places depending on certain factors, the ability to somewhat control battlefield terrain, etc)
battle rework (making it more phase / terrain control based where you can't just "deploy gunline, select autofire, win" putting some strategy and terrain control into it besides just shooting everything to death with no strategy requirement)
sensors rework (more ambiguity in positions of enemy ships, especially at long ranges.. adding of "anti-sensor weapons" that produce false contacts or create uncertainty at medium / long ranges)

i expect that with all this included we can probably have 1.0 in about 10 years :^)

[SCC]

Don't forget energy weapons also lost extra dmg at high flux and then weren't rebalanced iirc.

They were. I think Plasma Cannon was changed the most, but others mostly just got a small damage boost.