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 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8

Author Topic: Bring frigates back to the late game.  (Read 26740 times)

Solinarius

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
  • Wind. Fire. All that kind of thing!
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #75 on: November 04, 2018, 12:33:16 AM »

The one idea of fully recovering destroyed frigates is very intriguing. I think it fits, especially if the plan is to curb the beginning of a campaign for new players and to be nicer to frigates, in general.

An idea to funnel the use of frigates was pitched in the Discord. What if frigates could be deployed from the flanks, as in pursuits? What if in order to do this, you need to capture objectives?
« Last Edit: November 04, 2018, 12:36:52 AM by Solinarius »
Logged

Blaine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #76 on: November 04, 2018, 01:11:18 AM »

What if frigates could be deployed from the flanks, as in pursuits? What if in order to do this, you need to capture objectives?

To do what, be destroyed from a slightly different direction?

Okay, maybe that was a bit cheeky. I actually do like a lot of the creative logistical suggestions people are making.

Here's something that just occurred to me: Perhaps once player fleets reach a "medium" size, they could gain a special fleet slot that behaves much like a fighter slot in a carrier; the frigate placed within would behave almost exactly like an LPC. A "large" fleet would receive a second frigate slot.

If destroyed, they're always recovered, and there is no substantial cost to the player, but they cannot be redeployed again during that battle; if ordered to retreat (for 0 CP) and they survive, they can rapidly repair and be redeployed after a short delay.
Logged

Gothars

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4403
  • Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity.
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #77 on: November 04, 2018, 02:34:55 AM »

What if frigates could be deployed from the flanks, as in pursuits? What if in order to do this, you need to capture objectives?

To do what, be destroyed from a slightly different direction?

Okay, maybe that was a bit cheeky. I actually do like a lot of the creative logistical suggestions people are making.

Here's something that just occurred to me: Perhaps once player fleets reach a "medium" size, they could gain a special fleet slot that behaves much like a fighter slot in a carrier; the frigate placed within would behave almost exactly like an LPC. A "large" fleet would receive a second frigate slot.

If destroyed, they're always recovered, and there is no substantial cost to the player, but they cannot be redeployed again during that battle; if ordered to retreat (for 0 CP) and they survive, they can rapidly repair and be redeployed after a short delay.

I like the general idea, I'd just set it up a bit differently: Allow cruisers and above to equip a "escort tether" hullmod. That would grant them a slot in which a frigate could be put, erasing it from the normal fleet menu. That frigate then deploys automatically with the capital ship (without costing DP) and is on permanent escort duty. It is also automatically (i.e. for free) repaired and maintained by its mothership in between combat.
Logged
The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #78 on: November 04, 2018, 02:38:05 AM »

I like the general idea, I'd just set it up a bit differently: Allow cruisers and above to equip a "escort tether" hullmod. That would grant them a slot in which a frigate could be put, erasing it from the normal fleet menu. That frigate then deploys automatically with the capital ship (without costing DP) and is on permanent escort duty. It is also automatically (i.e. for free) repaired and maintained by its mothership in between combat.

Wouldn't that cause frigates to be rebalanced for this new role (as in heavily nerfed), killing any semblance of viability on their own?
Logged

Blaine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #79 on: November 04, 2018, 02:49:06 AM »

Well, it would also tie the frigates down and prevent them from rushing objectives, although in the current vanilla late game those captures are usually quite temporary, since enemy fleets routinely field 10-12 destroyers and who knows how many frigates.

Besides: You can already deploy a frigate to escort every single ship in your fleet, as long as you alter your max fleet size in the game files. For better or worse, max fleet size can be set to whatever a player wants, so using deployment cost as a way to keep those tethered frigates balanced probably isn't an option, since that's a soft limitation.

The issue isn't whether or not frigates escorting cruisers is balanced (since they can already do that), but rather that it's annoying when they're so easily destroyed and you constantly have to replace or restore them. A couple of limited "un-destroyable frigate" slots would help to alleviate this, and frigates need not necessarily be nerfed, since the slots would after all be very limited.
Logged

Mr. Nobody

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 236
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #80 on: November 04, 2018, 03:16:54 AM »

Dunno if it has already been said but maybe officers could be put to lead a squadron of some sort?
You put the officer on a frigate or other ship, that ship gets 100% of the officer bonuses
Then you can "attach" more frigates to that frigate and while they get an inferior bonus from the officer, they all behave as one cohesive unit (probably the hardest part coding wise).
Maybe the officer level (or another skill) could be used to determine how many frigates you can attach?
Logged
On the left half of the Bell curve

Phearlock

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 52
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #81 on: November 04, 2018, 09:40:41 PM »

I'll just chip in and agree that with the opinion that: Any out-of-combat logistical changes will be exceedingly unlikely to change the desirability of frigates in combat. If you want frigates to be more desirable to use and replace in combat, they need some bonus rather than simply being cheaper outside of combat.
Logged

Hiruma Kai

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 878
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #82 on: November 05, 2018, 08:57:37 AM »

I like the general idea, I'd just set it up a bit differently: Allow cruisers and above to equip a "escort tether" hullmod. That would grant them a slot in which a frigate could be put, erasing it from the normal fleet menu. That frigate then deploys automatically with the capital ship (without costing DP) and is on permanent escort duty. It is also automatically (i.e. for free) repaired and maintained by its mothership in between combat.

[/quote]

I feel that is better handled by heavier fighter LPCs.  Fighters are already coded as tethered escorts on permanent escort duty.  As it is right now, I feel a LPC frigate would run into weird coding issues.  Like crew/cargo losses.  Is it fully automated now and doesn't cost any crew?  In terms of deployment, not all frigates are equal.  Would there be a DP cost (or an OP cost) difference when you use a Shepard vs a Hyperion in this slot?  Can the player take direct control over this escort frigate (negating the effective escort requirement) or is it more like a fighter?

I'll just chip in and agree that with the opinion that: Any out-of-combat logistical changes will be exceedingly unlikely to change the desirability of frigates in combat. If you want frigates to be more desirable to use and replace in combat, they need some bonus rather than simply being cheaper outside of combat.

I think there's only so many knobs you can turn in combat.  Any fundamental changes to frigates affects the entire game, not just end game fights involving battleships.

I see it this way, the knobs you have to turn are:

1) Offense (How quickly you send the enemy HP to zero)
2) Defense (How you keep your HP above zero)
3) And stuff that affects the other two indirectly, such as Movement and CR

Frigates already have their movement knob turned higher than other ship classes, so that is not much help (and the higher you turn that, the more twitch reflex reliant the game becomes - also you start running into AI perfectly dodging all your shots if you tune it really high).

So lets talk a look at defense.  In order to have a noticeable effect, we will have to turn knobs 1 and 2 by factors of 100%, not by 10%.  We already have that kind of variation (i.e. 10-50%) within the frigate class, and I think people are still complaining about the entire class of ships.  Doesn't matter how you get that 100% more durability (base flux, armor, hit point stats, some kind of 50% evasion, a global 50% damage resistance, etc), as in the end its all trying to just make them more durable.

If a Battleship destroys a frigate in say, 4 seconds, no one is going to notice a 0.4 second difference.  They might notice a 4 second difference (i.e. 8 second total) though.  However, that would throw off the early game a lot, increasing frigate vs frigate fight times by a factor of 2 (or more than 2, given the way shields and flux work when you back off).  In turn would also require a CR increase, probably a factor of 2-ish.  Would people be happy with factors of 2 or more change in the early game combat time?

Note that kind of durability is on par with destroyers.   It also means, two frigates should handily beat a destroyer (approximately equal damage output, higher speed, and twice the toughness).  Unless you also change destroyer defensive stats.

Each class of ship is roughly a factor of 2 in durability higher than the previous.  i.e. a Medusa has twice the shield capacity of a wolf, the Aurora has twice the capacity of a Medusa, and a Paragon has twice the capacity of an Aurora.  Hitpoints scale roughly that way as well, but armor interacts non-linearly.  So a typical frigate is like 1/16th of a battleship.  Changing that dynamic without also changing other ships along that chain I think will have unintended consequences. 

On the bright side, this is easy enough for anyone to test with a mod. Simplest thing to do is take the base spreadsheet and simply double the defensive numbers of all the frigates in the base game, see what happens, and come back and report.
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #83 on: November 05, 2018, 09:47:14 AM »

A frigate challenging larger ship in a durability match is going to lose deservedly. That's not how frigates win.

Defeating a larger ship usually involves one of:
- Get behind, where enemy has no shield/weapon coverage.
- Use up multiple your flux pools vs single enemy flux pool (by doing short vents close to enemy while also being able punish them if they try to vent on you in response).
- Or kill them by special abilities (phase cloak, Hyperion teleport).
There is only one exception where a frigate wins in straight up brawl vs some less efficient DE variants - LMG (SO) Lasher. Even it needs to get behind something like an optimized Hammerhead.

Anyway dodge chance is just a mechanic that rewards lousy play. I failed to dodge - I deserve to be hit. As simple as that. I don't want to win because I just got lucky. And want even less to be on the other side of such mechanic.
Logged

Blaine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #84 on: November 05, 2018, 10:23:08 AM »

The elephant in the room here is that CR and minuscule frigate peak performance times are what have created most of this situation to begin with.

It affects frigates disproportionately more than any other size class, as though they needed an additional disadvantage on top of having the overall least range, damage output, and defensive capability (phase frigates and the Hyperion are obvious exceptions). Far more powerful ships are barely affected by CR and peak performance, aside from having a bit more or less CR incremental bonus/malus. I hadn't played Starsector in almost three years until very recently, I'm playing on Normal, and I have yet to see a message that any of my capitals have exceeded their peak performance time. I've only seen it twice for any of my cruisers, during a 300:200 REDACTED battle, out of dozens and dozens of battles that I've fought since I began my latest campaign.

You guys can make big, elaborate lists of professional frigate strategies, but the reality is that most players are not Starsector board veterans with 5,000+ posts who've created 2-4 mods, and they simply are going to stop using frigates past the midgame because not everyone is a consummate expert at high-end frigate strategies. Your high-end expert strategies are irrelevant in this context, and I'm not saying that to be a butthead. I'm saying it to give you a reality check.

It may be that you, yourselves, want Starsector to be designed and balanced with people who are already experts at playing it in mind, but I question the wisdom of that approach.

And really, the opposite could as easily be true, logically speaking: Capital ships are big, massive, complicated, and unwieldy, they have tons of moving parts, they're loaded down with weapons, they have huge numbers of crew, etc. Perhaps THEIR peak operating times should be short, while frigates, being simple and lightweight, should have long peak operating times. This discussion has actually made me curious why it's not this way and what the logic is.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 10:40:11 AM by Blaine »
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #85 on: November 05, 2018, 10:36:42 AM »

It affects frigates disproportionately more than any other size class

As intended.
Frigates have speed advantage so if they decide to play waiting game, there is not much to stop them beside CR (and other frigates). Fighters are effectively very long range weapons, so they can't force fight if carrier can't keep up.

I have no problem with frigates having short operational time (at least on their own). I am against stuff that prevents them from being truly good even during that short time window (officer limit and slot limit at the very least).
Logged

Blaine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #86 on: November 05, 2018, 10:48:01 AM »

Frigates have speed advantage so if they decide to play waiting game, there is not much to stop them beside CR (and other frigates). Fighters are effectively very long range weapons, so they can't force fight if carrier can't keep up.

Speed is their ONLY in-combat advantage (again, special frigates excepted), already balanced by being offensively and defensively weak. They don't need another disadvantage.

What does waiting accomplish, exactly? If anything, it must be during the early game, which isn't terribly important since we all know the early game with a handful of small ships isn't the meat of Starsector.

Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that frigates have unlimited CR. They can now play the waiting game as much as they want to while I destroy the rest of their fleet, and then they'll be able to retreat and have the privilege of despawning at the nearest planet if my pursuers don't finish them off.

Sometimes I genuinely wonder if I'm playing the same game as the rest of you. What frigates do doesn't matter much in my endgame campaign unless they are player-piloted assassin phase ships (there's some value in using them as escorts, and limited value in using them to capture objectives, though I've found they'll very soon need backup when capturing), and that's what this thread is about: frigates in the endgame. Perhaps frigates' (and possibly also destroyers') peak performance time could increase with fleet size?

It could very well be that I'm ignorant about what a frigate waiting game would accomplish, and I mean that sincerely, so fill me in if I'm way off base.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 10:53:08 AM by Blaine »
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #87 on: November 05, 2018, 11:13:19 AM »

Speed is their ONLY in-combat advantage (again, special frigates excepted), already balanced by being offensively and defensively weak. They don't need another disadvantage.

What does waiting accomplish, exactly? If anything, it must be during the early game, which isn't terribly important since we all know the early game with a handful of small ships isn't the meat of Starsector.

Of course, to win you don't just wait. You lurk just outside enemy reach and pounce at anything that sticks out. In no CR times single player controlled Tempest could slowly and methodically grind down Hegemony Defense Fleet (largest fleet at that time, 2-3 Onslaught + rest to match, if I remember right).

It's not like player had to get it that perfect. Retreating on high damage to swap for next frigate would also have worked. Or use Hyperion(s) - perfectly piloted, it is unkillable while CR lasts (and you still can retreat on damage, if you mistake too much).

No CR promotes this kind of 'kite everyone to death' playstyle as optimal.

Even waiting in its pure form is actually useful (with AI as is) - like my single AI frigate keeping enemy Capital permanently distracted somewhere far from main battle.

Giving endless CR to AI frigates basically mandates them being too stupid to properly use it. While AI is obviously not quite there, creating a roadblock to later improvements doesn't seem a good idea to me.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 11:23:02 AM by TaLaR »
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #88 on: November 05, 2018, 11:47:10 AM »

Of course, to win you don't just wait. You lurk just outside enemy reach and pounce at anything that sticks out. In no CR times single player controlled Tempest could slowly and methodically grind down Hegemony Defense Fleet (largest fleet at that time, 2-3 Onslaught + rest to match, if I remember right).
Classic Hegemony System Defense Fleets had three Onslaughts.

Even with CR, max skills Tempest and Afflictor could (barely) beat the fleet before malfunctions crippled them.  Of course, no CR made that even easier.

But back in the no CR days, you could auto-resolve every fight.  For late 0.5x, Player with max Leadership and Technology, and a big enough fleet, you can win any fight instantly instead of playing them out for several minutes.  Even save-scumming a few auto-resolves to optimize results was faster than fighting manually.
Logged

Blaine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« Reply #89 on: November 05, 2018, 12:38:15 PM »

No CR promotes this kind of 'kite everyone to death' playstyle as optimal.

It's not necessary (and rarely desirable) to try to cork every possible way for a very experienced player to exploit the gameā€”at least not a single-player, offline game. Advanced frigate kiting is only an issue for someone who knows the game backwards and forwards. Balancing the game around experts can harm the rest of it for people who are not experts, and I doubt I'm the first precocious newcomer to say so.

I've had the issue with no-CR frigates explained to me several times, yet in each case it's mentioned that it takes a long time to do. That's nearly the whole point of frigate-grade CR: It doesn't last as long as the amount of time required to pull off these min-maxed frigate kiting scenarios. I'd consider it far more optimal to finish the battle much faster with a normal fleet, not only in terms of less testing of my patience, but even in terms of use of resources and earning potential. If I can complete twice the bounties with a large fleet in the same amount of time, then tedious frigate kiting is in no way optimal.

Even if I concede that frigate kiting, if possible, is the optimal strategy from at least one point of view, why do it if it sucks the fun out of the game? I still use some ships that I consider to be sub-optimal, both for fun and to indirectly add a bit more challenge.

As for frigates waiting on the wings to pounce on and pick off vulnerable ships that are left exposed: That sounds fantastic to me, a very satisfying role for them to fill. You present it like it's a bad thing, but that would give them teeth, threat, and a real purpose, and add more dynamism to battles. Tell me where to sign, because I feel like a salesman just successfully sold me a new car.

Even waiting in its pure form is actually useful (with AI as is) - like my single AI frigate keeping enemy Capital permanently distracted somewhere far from main battle.

Well... yes, the AI's faults can be a significant issue. Finding ways to limit the player to indirectly help the AI is probably necessary, but there's a delicate balance to be maintained.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 12:54:36 PM by Blaine »
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8