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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: Raiding for Fun and Profit  (Read 33977 times)

Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #150 on: December 30, 2019, 09:08:07 AM »


It sounds rn like you're having marine XP be a global fleet-wide statistic?
Is it the same for crew XP too?

There's no crew XP, so no? :)
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SafariJohn

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #151 on: January 08, 2020, 04:28:08 PM »

Had a fun idea: show the effect of Ground Support Packages as unmovable guns in the Available Forces section of the Raid Objectives screen. Could use that new ship equipment icon with a red outline or something.

Hmm, could highlight the effects of Planetary Operations in a similar way - give some of the marine units a green outline.

Yeah, I know, that stuff is already calculated into the raid effectiveness rating... :-\
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Squigzilla

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #152 on: January 09, 2020, 07:01:55 AM »

This looks like a very interesting change to marine mechanics, I look forward to seeing its final form.

Regarding the heavy armaments discussion, I never interpreted those as weapons that would even be useful in a raid. If my goal was to breach a facility full of volatile fuel refining equipment try and recover the synchotron core, I'd leave the tanks and battle mechs at home. They make a little more sense for disruption missions, but even then they seem like a liability for the lightning raids conducted by a player fleet. I'm fine with heavy armaments not factoring into raid effectiveness at all.

Heavy armaments ship seem invaluable for something like a planetary invasion. If that gets added to the game, heavy armaments could have a use there. Maybe something like how heavy machinery currently works for surveying and exploration. You'd need X many heavy armaments to mount an invasion for a colony of a given size and defense strength (some of which are consumed). If you have insufficient armaments, the failure chance and marine losses would go up. Or maybe you could choose to use heavy armaments for a safer attack but increase the collateral damage in your newly acquired colony.

Sorry if I've gone off topic a bit, but HA seem like they could have a military use beyond raiding.
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Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #153 on: January 09, 2020, 09:00:56 AM »

(I'll just say, roughly on the same page here! But will have to see where it goes etc etc.)
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Morrokain

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #154 on: January 09, 2020, 03:47:15 PM »

Heavy armaments ship seem invaluable for something like a planetary invasion. If that gets added to the game, heavy armaments could have a use there. Maybe something like how heavy machinery currently works for surveying and exploration. You'd need X many heavy armaments to mount an invasion for a colony of a given size and defense strength (some of which are consumed). If you have insufficient armaments, the failure chance and marine losses would go up. Or maybe you could choose to use heavy armaments for a safer attack but increase the collateral damage in your newly acquired colony.

Sorry if I've gone off topic a bit, but HA seem like they could have a military use beyond raiding.

I hadn't considered that, but its makes sense and solves the concern of it being solely useful as a trading mission commodity. Assuming it works out, I like this a lot. It provides a next step layer to campaign progression and a discernible difference in cost between invasions and the raiding mechanic.
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Satirical

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #155 on: January 10, 2020, 08:02:35 AM »

maybe allow heavy armaments like 20% chance randomly to save a marine life but gets consumed in the process, but in order to activate this bonus u need to spend 30 or 100 depending on raid size in “preparation”

so maybe if u has 300 marines and 200 heavy armaments u spend 40 for the survival bonus and consume 43 saving 43 marines life allowing u to use heavy armaments for more marine exp but u ended up having to spend 83 so in bigger raids youre more likely to use the investment in heavy arms?
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Aeson

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #156 on: January 10, 2020, 09:55:44 AM »

If you do eventually decide to bring back crew experience, one thing you might consider doing is having high crew experience boost Peak Performance Time. It'd probably be a useful-enough bonus to be worthwhile but not so important as to make low crew experience crippling, and it'd affect combat performance in sufficiently-long battles without essentially being an alternate Combat Readiness stat or creating the supply-side issues of directly modifying maximum combat readiness.
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Rasip

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #157 on: January 13, 2020, 08:14:36 AM »

Can hijacking a warship/loaded cargo ship be added as a raid goal?
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Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #158 on: January 13, 2020, 08:19:17 AM »

If you do eventually decide to bring back crew experience, one thing you might consider doing is having high crew experience boost Peak Performance Time. It'd probably be a useful-enough bonus to be worthwhile but not so important as to make low crew experience crippling, and it'd affect combat performance in sufficiently-long battles without essentially being an alternate Combat Readiness stat or creating the supply-side issues of directly modifying maximum combat readiness.

Hmm, right - does really drop off in usefulness for large ships, though.

Can hijacking a warship/loaded cargo ship be added as a raid goal?

It could be :)

(Welcome to the forum, btw!)
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ogredpowell

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #159 on: January 15, 2020, 05:00:35 PM »


Raids being able to abduct people, capture ships, etc- this system sounds awesome w tons of potential.


Any thought about adding marine use for non-core world issues? made a suggestion earlier.  Might be fun to have a use for marines in the frontier!

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17656.0
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Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #160 on: January 15, 2020, 05:30:07 PM »

Hey - yeah, I saw it earlier :) Was actually adding *some* of this kind of thing - though not exactly like that - already but more on a one-off basis; not really sure about making marines required for general-purpose scavenging. Well, will see; it's something I'm keeping in mind, though.
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Rasip

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #161 on: January 15, 2020, 06:03:41 PM »

General purpose might be a bit much, but investigating derelicts and scavenging ruins would be very reasonable uses for marines in addition to raiding.

Not having marines causing the loss of crew when surveying imicidal biospheres would be pretty cool too.
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IonDragonX

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #162 on: January 17, 2020, 09:04:10 AM »

Marine veterancy seems fine as a mechanic in a way crew experience isn't. Marines raid as a whole and cannot be subdivided in the way that you would expect crews on ships to be. I suppose any crew veterancy mechanic will have to be the same as marine mechanic.

If I may suggest; Crew veterancy could be fleet-wide instead of ship-specific by shifting it to the Command Points mechanic. The theory is that the Admiral increases the Command Point maximum as they design greater or more sophisticated gambits. The experienced crews reduce the timer to recover command points as they can efficiently carry out orders and start to anticipate orders.

Another suggestion; Colonists as a commodity could be implemented. They would take up berthing but they have no payroll nor do they count toward skeleton crew. They could suffer casualties from hull damage and ship malfunctions but not fighter losses. They would be consumed first when you start a colony, keeping your crew veterancy safe.
This would allow a new mission type: "Get these colonists to planet X so they can start a new life." They might already have a faction or be independent. A penalty is implied if they suffer casualties on the way. You could counter-offer to share supply & heavy machine expenses with them if they promise to join your faction. If they agree, the resulting colony could have faction spies or traitors from the start.

Edit: Another suggestion; Fighter wings piloted by humans gain experience in combat? Modifiable names? (Red Squadron / Gold Squadron)
« Last Edit: January 17, 2020, 01:25:14 PM by IonDragonX »
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Plantissue

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #163 on: January 17, 2020, 11:09:03 AM »

Crew veterency increasing Command Points or its recovery rate is an interesting idea. Outstandingly good idea in fact! Different to marines, but elegant and keeping in flavour. Perhaps you should try posting that in the suggestions thread and see what others think.  https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0

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Kjima

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #164 on: February 05, 2020, 10:40:55 PM »

I have some points I'd like to share:

 - The title of the blog post says that raiding should be fun, how do you make it more fun? By having the players interact with it directly and making the player feel their choices/skill influenced on the outcome of the raid intead of just pushing a memorized sequence of buttons and praying for rng. Starsector has an incredible combat system that could easily translate to an atmospheric setting by having some surface related backgrounds, cities, deserts, oceans, etc. Having the option to just push buttons and succeed is good, but If I could take a ship to the planet and aid my marines, thus increasing the effectiveness of my raid while blowing stuff up, I would take the second option everytime. This is a quote from the Kite description "This compact space/aircraft is streamlined for efficient atmospheric flight...", why can't I just take some down there and aid my boys?
 
 - Another topic on raiding is how to make it engaging for the early game, my solution would be limiting atmospheric flight to Frigates and Destroyers. These are the only ships available on the early game and if done correctly could turn raiding an alternative early game playstyle. And as a bonus players can have their shiny purpose build craft for raiding. This brings a question, why would you not bring a something bigger like a Onslaught to a raid instead? My logic is simple, trying to use a ship purposedly engineered for space combat, that was probably built on an orbital works for costs and what-not, thus never saw ground before would like trying to use a battleship on a river. I can totally see a Hammerhead wrecking havoc on an atmosphere setting but something like a Paragon, only if it's falling on the planet as a giant hunk of metal.

 - The mission could behave and escalate pretty much like the battlestation ones, the higher tier of ground defenses higher number of defendants and strength of the not-battlestation-defense-structure
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