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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Once More, with Feeling  (Read 31564 times)

Voyager I

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #60 on: October 07, 2018, 02:52:53 PM »

Would scaling the rep penalty to planet population make sense? A few thousand dead is some ruffled feathers (and TBH, numerically equivalent to blowing up a large fleet), a million dead is a major diplomatic incident, hundreds of millions dead becomes casus belli. It means that if you do build up the population of your pet colony to the 10^8 level, then when it gets bombarded you may console yourself in the fact that Diktat fleets are getting ganked by Hegemony and Luddic patrols across the sector.
That got me thinking.  Huge endgame fleets have a few thousand crew.  You can smash few such fleets in a huge extended battle, and those not involved in the fighting do not care.  You bombard a puny colony with no more people than all personnel in a large fleet and everyone who is not their enemy will blacklist you, but not if the AI factions do it?  (What hypocrites!)  In particular, why would all of the Independents care enough to blacklist if I bomb someone who is not them?  (I guess you could be considered Independent, and they do not want to be lumped in, but you cease to be Independent after you establish a colony.)

I know, right!  Some big-shot general kills thousands and thousands of soldiers in a campaign and it's totally fine, but you slaughter a few hundred civilians in one Vietnamese village and suddenly schoolchildren have homework assignments about what a monster you are.  It's all ***, man.


(Funnily enough, this also ties into the "so why is it only a crime against humanity when I do it - look at how many atrocities get committed by the United States or Russia or China in any given decade, and then observe that the rest of the world is very much still engaged with them)
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Megas

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #61 on: October 07, 2018, 03:03:35 PM »

One thing that would make me less worried about bombardments is if the AI could not do total/ wipe out bombardments. IE They can hurt select industries but they can't just "glass the upstart's world because he had the balls to muscle in on our industry"
From the August blog, there are raids (smash-and-grab), tactical bombing (hits military infrastructure), and saturation bombing (targets everything, considered an atrocity).
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #62 on: October 07, 2018, 04:21:54 PM »

Just looking at the bombardment reputation penalties, I personally don't see a problem with the asymmetry.  There are plenty other parts of the game which have NPC/player asymmetry.  I mean, its not fair the Hegemony starts with hundreds of ships, while you start with a frigate at the beginning of the game.

Look at this way, if any time an NPC faction starts attacking you, all the other NPC factions start hating that particular faction, its going to make your game really easy, since its always going to be the Player + all but one NPC factions versus 1 faction.  I don't think that is the intent.

Presumably, if the player could just waltz in and bomb every hegemony planet with their super fleet, the Hegemony would be down and out quickly, as in some sense there is no timer on the player's choice to bomb planets.  I'm guessing by giving serious repercussions to the player for it, they have to be really sure and ready for those repercussions (preemptive diplomacy perhaps?), before they go on that massive bombing campaign.

As far as in game logic, I'm sorta surprised if you found a colony outside the jurisdiction of all the major factions (i.e. you're not working for any one of them) you don't immediately drop to pirate status with all of them.  You've essentially become a new upstart faction which none of them logically should want to put up with.  None of the base game factions are what I'd call particularly nice.  They put up with you as an independent trader/explorer/bounty hunter because you're effectively making them richer every time you trade or buy something from them.  This is why buying legal goods off the black market upsets them - they're not getting their cut, so why should they put up with you?

In the case of an independent colony, now there's all this trade they are not getting their cut from, and you're not protected by the current balance of power between factions.
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Cik

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #63 on: October 07, 2018, 05:18:43 PM »

and you are a techbase that could rise to challenge them, or throw in your lot with another faction that's working against their interests.

if you read the lore about umbra, it's clear that though they are in the "pirate" faction they aren't even pirates really, they are actually just syndicalists but because they are a very freeport who is outside the jurisdiction and control of the central powers they are considered kill on sight.

that isn't necessarily what you will be (and indeed, if you found a colony far enough out it may be that the vast majority of the sector won't even know that it exists) but make yourself a nuisance to somebody and it seems to me that you could very easily end up on one or more blackops kill lists just for being a thing that they have no influence over. you are an ant, and unless you are being very useful to somebody at the moment nobody's going to shed a ton of tears over it.

that's my opinion i guess.

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Megas

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #64 on: October 07, 2018, 06:30:28 PM »

It is more like, player builds his faction strong enough take out a major faction or seven if push comes to shove.  Player minds his own business.  Faction Troll launches a preemptive sat bomb strike and atrocity against player.  Player could very well repel it, but for some reason does not.  Player is hurt but survives.  Nobody cares.  Player rebuilds enough then launches likewise retribution against Faction Troll, and succeeds.  Now everyone that was not angry at faction Troll is angry at player, even though player has the power to hang in with the big boys, or better yet, kill 'em all.  Basically, MAD policy failure.

Quote
that isn't necessarily what you will be (and indeed, if you found a colony far enough out it may be that the vast majority of the sector won't even know that it exists) but make yourself a nuisance to somebody and it seems to me that you could very easily end up on one or more blackops kill lists just for being a thing that they have no influence over. you are an ant, and unless you are being very useful to somebody at the moment nobody's going to shed a ton of tears over it.
I would imagine nuisance would be something like player acting pirate and farming the faction somehow, not player making a few more space bucks in legitimate trade and the faction will nonchalantly launch a planet killer because they are only making five billion instead of six billion.

They can use attacks that are not atrocity.  If they use atrocity options because they abuse the rules and know nobody else cares if they do it but the player cannot likewise retaliate without starting a world war (that the player could very well win), meaning that AI treats all of the AI factions as effectively one super faction, then that is clear "the computer is a cheater" and "gang up on the human" nonsense.
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Histidine

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #65 on: October 07, 2018, 07:07:36 PM »

I agree with Megas on the fact that any handwave which relies on the player being small fry, stops working in an obvious way when the player is no longer small fry.

Explanation to please everyone:
Spoiler
The reason the Diktat gets away with saturation bombardment of the player, but the player gets punished for retaliation in kind, is because officially it wasn't the Diktat at all, it was the pirates. That's the point of using them as deniable proxies.
Other factions still get mad if the player were to bombard the official offender (the pirates), because, well, it is an atrocity (except for small military-like bases, I'd imagine most of the people on a "pirate" world are going to be ordinary civilians ruled over by pirate lords).
Whether or not the factions get angry with the pirates for their crime doesn't matter, because pirates are already hostile to everyone anyway.

Now the only thing needed to close the asymmetry is for the player to also have the option of hiring the pirates to deniably killmurder a whole lot of people. The cost of doing so (you'd have to cover the fuel requirement for the bombardment and other expenses, for one thing) and the risk of the pirates failing to complete their mission should work as a balancing factor vs. doing the bombardment yourself.

(Of course, as Midnight Kitsune mentioned: this all becomes moot if the NPCs just use the raid or tactical bombardment options and not saturation bombardment, because the player doing the same thing only makes one faction hostile at most)
[close]
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #66 on: October 08, 2018, 04:26:29 AM »

Now the only thing needed to close the asymmetry

There is no need to do this in the first place. Or, in better words, this shouldn't be the driving force behind the design. All the ideas suggested here related to diplomacy are very good in order to give the player more options in the late game and all (also great for roleplaying), but they should be added in the future if they turn out to be fun options that solve an specific problem, not because the AI can do something that the player can't.

That's my view anyway, I don't think parity is necessary for good game design unless it's a multiplayer game.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2018, 04:28:04 AM by Cyan Leader »
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SCC

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #67 on: October 08, 2018, 05:05:03 AM »

I just remembered bits about ships and stuff. At the beginning (or maybe longer), the player has to import SH&W (hmm) from other factions. Does it have some modifier, making it less efficient to import them from other factions, or is there some other mechanic to steer the player towards getting his own manufacturing? It's less important, but thematically similar, so does this apply to military hardware as well?
I think this can apply to outlawed commodities as well. Do normal ports get an export/import penalty and open ones don't? I think the final question I'd also like to know is if there are (or will be in future) different penalties for shortages of different resources. It would be nice if there was some choice, whether to deal with shortage of one resources, or the other.

Megas

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #68 on: October 08, 2018, 05:44:34 AM »

Anyone see the latest picture with the Diktat fleet with at least 120 ships?  Stuff like that is part of the reason why I am interested in soloing the simulator (or chain-flagship if soloing or conventional fleet are impossible), especially if I cannot possibly match numbers with such an enemy fleet due to fleet cap.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #69 on: October 08, 2018, 07:30:13 AM »

You should be able to match it with defense fleets of your own faction, though I wonder how much control the player will have over them, if any.
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Megas

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #70 on: October 08, 2018, 09:03:56 AM »

I would like to control such a huge fleet if I can support it, and the AI is allowed to.  (That was one of my complaints about 0.7 era, player can only have 25 ships while AI endgame fleets routinely had 35 to 40 ships, and fighters were counted as ships for fleet slots back then.)

If fleets as expected to get that big (of about a hundred ships), we need a higher maximum battle map size limit.  No way 500 is enough for more than a trickle.  Not to mention a higher fleet cap.

If players are expected to fight simulator-sized battles in the game, he will need to bring Atlases to loot the wreckage.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2018, 09:05:48 AM by Megas »
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Cik

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #71 on: October 08, 2018, 09:16:11 AM »

why even have a fleet cap lmao just remove it

thanks
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SafariJohn

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #72 on: October 08, 2018, 09:30:00 AM »

Obviously the Diktat super-fleet was a bug.
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Alex

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #73 on: October 08, 2018, 09:40:35 AM »

There is no need to do this in the first place. Or, in better words, this shouldn't be the driving force behind the design. All the ideas suggested here related to diplomacy are very good in order to give the player more options in the late game and all (also great for roleplaying), but they should be added in the future if they turn out to be fun options that solve an specific problem, not because the AI can do something that the player can't.

That's my view anyway, I don't think parity is necessary for good game design unless it's a multiplayer game.

Yeah, that's how I'm looking at it as well. Definitely some interesting ideas here, though.


I just remembered bits about ships and stuff. At the beginning (or maybe longer), the player has to import SH&W (hmm) from other factions. Does it have some modifier, making it less efficient to import them from other factions, or is there some other mechanic to steer the player towards getting his own manufacturing? It's less important, but thematically similar, so does this apply to military hardware as well?

You need heavy industry to put blueprints into production and to receive any production quality bonuses. So unless you like Ventures with plenty of d-mods as your capital ships...

Do normal ports get an export/import penalty and open ones don't? I think the final question I'd also like to know is if there are (or will be in future) different penalties for shortages of different resources. It would be nice if there was some choice, whether to deal with shortage of one resources, or the other.

Free ports actually profit from exports of stuff that's illegal, i.e. drugs and organs.


Obviously the Diktat super-fleet was a bug.

Yep. Sorry that wasn't clear from the tweet, I thought it was :)
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Megas

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Re: Once More, with Feeling
« Reply #74 on: October 08, 2018, 10:35:12 AM »

Obviously the Diktat super-fleet was a bug.
I would hope so, but I would not put it past Alex to add that intentionally (or liked the bug enough to promote it as an ascended glitch) as a "take that" to hardcore players, despite previous comments regarding ship availability.
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