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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 33988 times)

TheDTYP

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #15 on: November 27, 2019, 05:41:06 PM »

"Kidnap VIP"

Oh man, I'm hyped. There is SO much potential in this system, I'm very eager to see it tapped.
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Plantissue

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #16 on: November 27, 2019, 05:46:44 PM »

My thoughts. I don't raid as part of my normal gameplay. Tried it a few times just to try it out. Don't view the upkeep as worth it for profit unless I am "roleplaying" on a commission. Being able to raid for ship equipment, especially fighter LPCs seem pretty cool. There's something funny about being able to raid mines for recreational drugs. Extremely dangerous. Just as well defended as a military base apparently. More well defended than fuel or supplies! Also raiding for harvested organs. Yikes!

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.

Assigned forces for the rare items is an elegant fix. I don't raid for those items, but I can see taking away RNG in this case is beneficial.

There isn't really a pressing reason to disrupt industries at the moment, except to disrupt military preparations. Even if you can disrupt Kazeron or Chicomoztoc production, I think you can only get a maximum of an extra 35k for those months.

Something strange happens when I click on a picture, if I don't open the picture on a new tab. It appears, but I have to scroll through a lot of blank space to get to the bottom where it has appeared.

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Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #17 on: November 27, 2019, 05:50:23 PM »

As always I really like the way you handle the game systems.  Not just identifying problems and solutions but really thinking through a lot of the "would this be interesting" questions that I feel many designers miss (content over quality sort of issue).

Not much else to say other than this might finally make me raid planets on purpose (as right now it's just if i happen to have marines for some reason and I'm attacking them anyways).  I really like how this system will lend itself to expanding it's use as you can target specific objectives.  May not be a main game thing, but I can think of lots of ways you could have mods take advantage of this to create more gameplay/choices for those of us who want a little more depth out of the system.

Ahh, thank you!

Also, I'd just like to say that the player in these pictures has remarkable taste, raiding for drugs and lobsters.

I'm glad someone noticed :)


"Kidnap VIP"

Oh man, I'm hyped. There is SO much potential in this system, I'm very eager to see it tapped.

Honestly, likewise!


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.

Right, yeah - similar thoughts on this.

There isn't really a pressing reason to disrupt industries at the moment, except to disrupt military preparations. Even if you can disrupt Kazeron or Chicomoztoc production, I think you can only get a maximum of an extra 35k for those months.

Hmm, I'll keep that in mind. I think also you can disrupt a spaceport and then come back eventually to sell stuff at a premium, but I'm not sure how viable that is.

Something strange happens when I click on a picture, if I don't open the picture on a new tab. It appears, but I have to scroll through a lot of blank space to get to the bottom where it has appeared.

What browser are you using? I just tried it in Chrome and Firefox and it seems to work for me.
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MajorTheRed

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #18 on: November 27, 2019, 06:08:08 PM »

Always great to see blog post showing what's inside the head of the dev! Thanks for taking time to share!

Game-wise, what do you call early-game? Let's say you raid for that blueprint or this nanoforge, what are you going to do with it without colony? By the time I get a colony in the current version (which is kinda the middle-game), I've already make many salvage runs, get a bunch of blueprint and no longer need to make small-scale raid. Do you have in mind to develop other ways to play than colony-oriented?

Another point, for the moment, most of commodities (organics, ore, food, base metal) are worth less the fuel needed to go to right place to sell them. Do you plan to make commodities more "interesting" to salvage/raid in the future?
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #19 on: November 27, 2019, 06:13:01 PM »

This is going to be super fun to write missions around. Especially since it's going to work really well with all my custom commodities.

I have to ask: can we make a hullmod increase marine survival rates? Something like: 'Medical Facilities: this ship has dedicated facilities for taking care of battle casualties. Increases fleet-level crew survival rates in battle and marine survival rates from raids by 3/4/5/6%, depending on hull size.'

It would be great to bring along a hospital ship or a medevac shuttle and have that actually provide a bonus to marine survival. Got a Mercury or a Hermes or a Kite (O) on hand? Make it into a med shuttle! Got a Gemini, or a Taurus, or an Apogee with some extra OP? Make it a hospital ship! And hey, we could always use another civilian auxiliary ship, and it would be nice to see as a built-in on something.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #20 on: November 27, 2019, 06:19:34 PM »

Very hyped for kidnap VIP/steal package missions!
Any plans for Heavy Armaments consumption to boost Marine effectiveness?
More ships or even strikecraft with Ground Support Package?

How well would this Crew Hullmods suggestion work as a crew veterency equivalent? Made a change to the suggestion today: Crew hullmods do not do anything while fleet is crew understrength.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17181.msg271063
« Last Edit: November 27, 2019, 07:02:31 PM by SonnaBanana »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #21 on: November 27, 2019, 06:26:05 PM »

An idea for crew experience. Maybe attaching it to an existing mechanic would make it easier to implement? The game already has stat bonuses for increased CR so just either increase the amount of those bonuses for better crew or reduce the CR threshold where you start getting the bonuses. Directly increasing the bonuses seems easiest to communicate to the player.
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ciago92

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #22 on: November 27, 2019, 06:45:25 PM »

Maybe I overlooked this, but how do marine losses impact the pooled experience? is it just percent survived * pooled experience?
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Alex

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #23 on: November 27, 2019, 07:18:15 PM »

Game-wise, what do you call early-game? Let's say you raid for that blueprint or this nanoforge, what are you going to do with it without colony? By the time I get a colony in the current version (which is kinda the middle-game), I've already make many salvage runs, get a bunch of blueprint and no longer need to make small-scale raid. Do you have in mind to develop other ways to play than colony-oriented?

I mean, if it's worth 300k or some such, you could sell it! As far as "early game", it's pretty vague, but a very rough definition might be before you have a cruiser or a colony (if you were going for one asap and not holding off).

Edit: to clarify, what I really mean by it in the context of raids is that it could be one of the first things you start spending the credits you've earned on, as opposed to more combat ships.

Another point, for the moment, most of commodities (organics, ore, food, base metal) are worth less the fuel needed to go to right place to sell them. Do you plan to make commodities more "interesting" to salvage/raid in the future?

One of the things I mentioned here - trade is adjusted so these are easier to sell for a profit. I.E. the "excess" and "deficit" numbers, in cargo units, are generally higher, especially for the cheaper bulk goods.

I also actually added some salvage specials where you get a *lot* of bulk stuff - say, over 10,000 Ore, or some such. Given that it's possible to sell it, encountering this kind of thing means it might be worth it to play around it - get some real freight capacity temporarily, put the pods in a stable orbit, that sort of thing.

I have to ask: can we make a hullmod increase marine survival rates? Something like: 'Medical Facilities: this ship has dedicated facilities for taking care of battle casualties. Increases fleet-level crew survival rates in battle and marine survival rates from raids by 3/4/5/6%, depending on hull size.'

It should be doable - the stat is a dynamic fleet stat, so you'd probably need to do somethin similar to how the salvage gantry hullmod works, with an additional step of a script (or a listener, rather) collating this data and updating the stat in its ColonyInteractionListener.reportPlayerOpenedMarket() method.


Any plans for Heavy Armaments consumption to boost Marine effectiveness?

Thought about it; didn't get anywhere satisfying; it all (that is, whatever I was able to come up with) seemed to just be stuff with a mathematically-correct solution. Still mulling it over on the backburner.

More ships or even strikecraft with Ground Support Package?

Maybe!

How well would this Crew Hullmods suggestion work as a crew veterency equivalent? Made a change to the suggestion today: Crew hullmods do not do anything while fleet is crew understrength.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17181.msg271063

Honestly, using hullmods for that sort of thing in the base game feels kind of sloppy to me.


An idea for crew experience. Maybe attaching it to an existing mechanic would make it easier to implement? The game already has stat bonuses for increased CR so just either increase the amount of those bonuses for better crew or reduce the CR threshold where you start getting the bonuses. Directly increasing the bonuses seems easiest to communicate to the player.

Ah, that's actually a really good idea, as far as the effect! I like that a lot. Still unsure about it due to the second reason, i.e. crew losses are not a thing that's as well regulated/balanced around as marine losses, but will definitely keep this in mind. As far as the effect, I think that's pretty much perfect.


Maybe I overlooked this, but how do marine losses impact the pooled experience? is it just percent survived * pooled experience?

I didn't mention it, but, yeah, that's exactly how it works. Which means marine losses *don't* impact the experience level.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2019, 07:45:28 PM by Alex »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #24 on: November 27, 2019, 07:23:21 PM »


There isn't really a pressing reason to disrupt industries at the moment, except to disrupt military preparations. Even if you can disrupt Kazeron or Chicomoztoc production, I think you can only get a maximum of an extra 35k for those months.


What if disruptions were to cost less marines than raiding? Throw on longer disruption time or increased chances of success (than raiding) on top of it and you now have a reason to disrupt instead of raid.
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Morrokain

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #25 on: November 27, 2019, 07:56:18 PM »

I'm very excited about the increased focus on marines and the new raiding dynamics. This system feels like it hits the sweet spot between simple design that is extensible and yet has a large impact to multiple features of the game in a positive way. Marines feel like they have a real place now rather than being there to mostly just be there. Great work!


Any plans for Heavy Armaments consumption to boost Marine effectiveness?

Thought about it; didn't get anywhere satisfying; it all (that is, whatever I was able to come up with) seemed to just be stuff with a mathematically-correct solution. Still mulling it over on the backburner.

Quick thought you've probably already considered and rejected:  ;)

What about allowing Heavy Armaments to be a required component of the raid for more difficult raid targets? The conversion rate could simply be a 1 per 5 units of marines kind of thing so a player would have a general idea of what they would need when planning a more difficult raid. It doesn't compete with Marines but instead complements them and acts as another way to distinguish late game raids from early game raids.

Then just make Heavy Armaments twice as rare as marines and adjust the mission payouts of missions requiring that commodity to match their cost/rarity.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #26 on: November 27, 2019, 08:03:09 PM »

1 per 5 is too much, 1 per 30 at least.
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Sundog

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #27 on: November 27, 2019, 08:15:24 PM »

More precise commodity raiding will change the meaning of "procurement contract" by quite a bit! Love it  ;D

Also, thanks for custom objectives! Recently I was considering the best way to implement a mission that would involve rescuing an NPC from a market. This seems like a perfect fit.

I'm surprised by ranked marines, especially without a similar system for crew. It seems to me like ranked marines would involve nearly as much trouble as ranked crew, only with less payoff (since CR concerns are far more ubiquitous than raiding). I think ranks for both or neither would make sense, but if only one of the two is ranked it will just make people wonder why the other doesn't have a similar system.
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One of the things I wanted to achieve with this is to make marines feel less like a commodity and to encourage the player to care about them – at least a bit! – and to minimize casualties.
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It’s just very much not something I want to add “just because”.
Wouldn't a rank system accomplish the same thing for crew that it does for marines? There are some differences imparted by the systems they interact with, but generally the same goals would be accomplished in both cases, right?

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If it did that, you’d end up spending a ton of supplies every time the crew CR bonus increases (since all of your ships would be below maximum CR at that point)
Actual CR could simply be adjusted by the change in CR limit when this happens, no? I can't think of any problems that would cause.

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Fleet battles, on the other hand… offhand, I’m not even sure what the expected crew losses might be in a big fight. It would also vary a lot depending on the kinds of ships you’re using
I can see how different fleet compositions leading to different crew competencies might bother some people, but would it really deviate from how things work now? There are already plenty of mechanical differences between types of fleets, and I think that's for the best as long as the playing field is fairly even overall.

It might not be the impression I'm giving off here, but I'm really not that interested in the idea of crew having a ranking system. I know there are good reasons for them not to. I just find it oddly inefficient that one fairly insignificant commodity (marines) would have a unique system that doesn't carry over to the other, far more significant commodity that would benefit from the system just as much, if not more.
[close]

Is there any way to un-dilute this experience? If, say, I wanted to purchase and transport 1000 regular marines from point A to point B, is there a way to do this without permanently weakening the marines already in my fleet, aside from leaving them in storage first?

There isn't, no - aside from, as you say, leaving them in storage. Did think about this, but couldn't think of any reasonable way to do it, in terms of "how complicated it would be" vs "how much of an issue this is likely to be".
I can definitely foresee times when I would want my best marines for a stealth raid (due to personnel space being very limited for stealthy fleets), or when I'd want to avoid losing my best marines in a raid I know will be a blood bath.
Perhaps, when in storage or for sale, marines could be separated into stacks for separate ranks? For example, storing 100 marines might result in 50 vets and 50 elite, if the original stack was halfway between the two. Withdrawing marines would still result in a lossy conversion, but at least it would give us a degree of control beyond using different storage locations for marines of different experience levels.
Alternately, maybe it's time to do away with treating people like chattel to be bought, sold, and stored? Simply disallowing the storage of people-commodities could make the whole dilemma moot.

theplayerx4734

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #28 on: November 27, 2019, 08:23:34 PM »

I think having crew experience affect mostly non combat stats such as logistics would be a good way for it to return. Such as having elite crew reduces crew lost in battle X% or elite crew repair X% of damage after battle could be interesting.
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Morrokain

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Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #29 on: November 27, 2019, 08:55:37 PM »

1 per 5 is too much, 1 per 30 at least.

Oh yeah definitely. I came up with that number in 2 seconds as an example. I more just meant it should be an easy conversion from raid to raid in order to not seem arbitrary (similar to how the new measurement of marine costs will be due to a reduction/removal of RNG). 
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