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 ... 5 6 [7] 8 9 ... 12

Author Topic: Raiding for Fun and Profit  (Read 33968 times)

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #90 on: November 30, 2019, 10:27:27 AM »

I also don't personally believe you can lore/description hand-wave everything away for simplicity's sake in all cases as far as mechanics are concerned.

I'll just say, I generally agree, though not in this case, in particular because it's so abstracted, the handwaving feels entirely unstrained to me. But, right, agree to disagree, fair enough!


Hmm... well I'm not sure what problem you're referring to, but I don't think it would hurt if crew and marines sold for zero credits. It doesn't make sense that you would get paid when you cancel their contracts / terminate them, and I can't remember the last time I sold crew, marines, fuel, or supplies. Those things invariably go in storage.

What I meant was if you have 100 elite marines, and want to ship 1000 marines somewhere to sell their contracts, you'll 1) buy 1000 marines and have 1100 "regular" marines with a bit of XP, then 2) sell 1000 marines and 3) be left with 100 regular marines with a bit of XP. The only way to avoid this currently is to put your marines into storage first.

Would buying inexperienced marines ever decrease your combat ability? Like if you have 100 max level marines and you buy some unleveled marines, would the loss in average experience cost you more than the increase in number give?

No, you'd always get increased ground strength from getting more marines, equal to the 0-XP strength of that number of marines.


Another question: does experience consider all the marines you own including storage, or just the marines in your current fleet. Basically, could you put your experienced marines in storage so that you could trade inexperienced marines without reducing the experience of the other marines. I suppose you could also train the inexperienced marines without diluting the experienced ones, but that seems like it would be less effective than just using all your marines.

You can put them in storage/cryopods and their XP is tracked separately.


For a little more detail on that, there was a short suggestion thread with ideas for more events on stations (including needing marines) and another for planets with the decivilized condition needing marines to scavenge ruins. The only "problem" that this solves is adding more variety/uniqueness while exploring, rather than any existing impediment to smooth gameplay. I think that that type of thing might end up being popular with modders to add, so I would just suggest making the raid dialog as controllable as possible (custom columns?) for non-raids (no vanilla objectives allowed) to allow for things like the above exploration enhancements, Nexerelin's invasions, and Varya's haunted derelicts.

Right, yeah! What I'm getting at there is a suggestion like that without the reasoning behind it, I don't really know what to do with, if that makes sense.


It doesn't really explain why stored crew need to be free. If you're in a situation where you need 10k crew on tap to satisfy a jumbo fleet, you also have the resources to pay for their upkeep, or at least to have a massive hiring complex on a major world. There is no particular need to box them up for free. Marines are in a similar situation. If you're in a position where 2k marines need to be readily available, you can also afford the kind of upkeep or military complex on your worlds that keep them readily accessible on reserve. Big fleets have big problems, so they need big solutions after all.

That's actually a really good point; made a note to have salaries be paid for crew/marines in storage. Not in cryopods, though! But that has different costs.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2019, 10:35:44 AM by Alex »
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #91 on: November 30, 2019, 11:04:33 AM »

Would buying inexperienced marines ever decrease your combat ability? Like if you have 100 max level marines and you buy some unleveled marines, would the loss in average experience cost you more than the increase in number give?
No, you'd always get increased ground strength from getting more marines, equal to the 0-XP strength of that number of marines.

It seems to me like going from 100 elite marines to 120 veteran marines (if the experience redistribution of adding 20 inexperienced marines caused a de-rank) could result in worse performance (either raid effectiveness or casualties) if the change from elite-->veteran mattered more in the calculations than the increase from 100-->120. Maybe I just am misunderstanding how the calculations work, but that seems like it would happen, especially if there were significant changes in multipliers between experience levels. Or is the multiplier based on the actual experience number and not based on the 'class' (veteran, elite, green)?
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #92 on: November 30, 2019, 11:16:04 AM »

Or is the multiplier based on the actual experience number and not based on the 'class' (veteran, elite, green)?

Yep, precisely to avoid boundary condition weirdness.
Logged

Gothars

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4403
  • Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity.
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #93 on: November 30, 2019, 03:21:19 PM »


Sounds great, I'd love more detail in the raiding mechanic.

Quick thought regarding crew level: say uplevled crew is able to do the work of multiple normal crew, so you'd need fewer of them. Now reduce the crew carrying capacity of all combat ship to just above their crew requirement.

Effects
- real use for transport ships, since without, any losses mean your ships are undercrewed
- elite crew however frees you from the need to use transport ships
- some  hullmods might reduce crew capacity under crew requirement and thus almost require elite crew (or support ships)
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.

Morrokain

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2143
  • Megalith Dreadnought - Archean Order
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #94 on: November 30, 2019, 04:49:12 PM »


Quick thought regarding crew level: say uplevled crew is able to do the work of multiple normal crew, so you'd need fewer of them. Now reduce the crew carrying capacity of all combat ship to just above their crew requirement.

I like this. I was trying to think of ways crew experience could have a campaign effect like marines rather than a combat effect which seems too complicated and causes power creep. This is simple enough and I like the effects it would have on campaign strategy.
Logged

SonnaBanana

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 867
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #95 on: November 30, 2019, 09:31:20 PM »

Logistical Hullmod - Auxiliary Ground Support Module
Increases the effective strength of planetary raids by 25/50/75/100, up to the total number of marines in the fleet.

Yes, it only reaches the performance of a normal GSP only when mounted on a capital.
Logged
I'm not going to check but you should feel bad :( - Alex

dgibso29

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 18
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #96 on: December 01, 2019, 07:45:12 AM »

Hey Alex! Excellent blog as always. I'm really liking this new system, as well as the tangential improvements to trading -- I always want to play as a (relatively) straight-laced trader & occasional salvager, rather than trader/bounty hunter/salvage/explorer/etc. However, I always have difficulty making enough of a profit to fulfill the ever-growing & linked need to increase cargo capacity & escort capability, as well as having some sort of cushion for when things invariably go wrong. It sounds like the changes you've made there are going to help with that!

Anyway, I've read the blog & this thread in full, but I still found these two statements contradictory:

Hmm... well I'm not sure what problem you're referring to, but I don't think it would hurt if crew and marines sold for zero credits. It doesn't make sense that you would get paid when you cancel their contracts / terminate them, and I can't remember the last time I sold crew, marines, fuel, or supplies. Those things invariably go in storage.

What I meant was if you have 100 elite marines, and want to ship 1000 marines somewhere to sell their contracts, you'll 1) buy 1000 marines and have 1100 "regular" marines with a bit of XP, then 2) sell 1000 marines and 3) be left with 100 regular marines with a bit of XP. The only way to avoid this currently is to put your marines into storage first.
If you're selling experienced marines to a planets pool of marines, does the planets marine exp level increase too?

Nope! Marine XP is really presented as - mainly - being a factor of a well-established command structure, procedures, familiarity with your style of command, etc - rather than being an intrinsic property of the marines.
(Bolded emphasis is my own in both places)

The two bolded statements feel contradictory. If the elite-level XP of the 100 marines in the former statement is not intrinsic to the marines, how does putting said 100 marines in storage preserve their XP?

Also, if Marine XP is more about well-established command structure, et al, then I would expect it to be much lower after adding 1k additional marines, but then bounce back to the original level when removing the 1k. In other words, it makes sense that your experience commanding 100 marines would be much less valuable when suddenly commanding 1100 -- but you wouldn't suddenly be worse at commanding 100 marines once you've dropped off the 1k than you were prior to gaining them.

To boil this down to specific questions, assuming the following is true:
  • Marine XP is not intrinsic to marines themselves  AND
  • Marine XP is ("Mainly" -- That may be the key to why my post is actually all wrong!) a factor of a well-established command structure, procedures & familiarity with your style of command
Then:
  • Is 'Marine XP' the appropriate name? It feels more like a 'Marine Command Ability/Capacity;' that is to say, a fleet-side representation of lessons learned from previous combat.
  • Why would marines losses effect Marine XP? Losing some marines in combat wouldn't impact your overall ability to command marines.
  • Why would transferring marines to storage would suddenly rob your fleet of its establish command structure & procedures? And, further, why would transferring them back at suddenly restore the same?
 

I hope these questions make sense & I haven't overlooked their answers.

Separately, a suggestion: A Marine Commander/Officer 'slot' that is filled by a character:
  • The 'Marine Commander' is already mentioned in the raiding screen. This gives them a face & a name, which seems consistent with having fleet commanders, station masters, et al.
  • This Officer's traits & abilities would impact the raid effectiveness. Traits could modify overall effectiveness (ie brave, cowardly, bloodthirsty, etc), or effectiveness of specific operations/targets (Farmer -- Better at raiding farms, but perhaps worse at raiding industry; Looter -- better at raiding than disrupting, increased loot but slightly higher losses raiding?; etc).
  • The Officer could also effect Marine XP, perhaps providing a flat bonus, or a higher retention of XP when losses occur. The specifics here are very much determined by the correct interpretation of what Marine XP is & how it works.
  • Potentially a use for story points? Promote a promising marine NCO after a successful raid, where the current Marine XP could potentially influence their initial traits & abilities? Etc.
  • It's an interesting choice, especially early game: Do you use one of your Officers for this post, rather than another ship commander?

This wouldn't have made much sense with the previous system, but I feel a designated officer slot for Marine commander would mesh nicely with the new one, while also staying consistent with having assignable characters. It could also be very interesting for AI planets/stations to have a Marine/Garrison commander whose traits affect the defense in various ways -- or who could potentially be bribed to increase your chances. That may be a step too far due to the complexities of how it would affect raid effectiveness calculations, and the player's understanding of them.

Writing this also brought to mind the idea of a fleet-wide CAG (Commander, Air Group) to impart maluses & bonuses upon your strikecraft (and carriers?). I'm not sure there's as much viability to that idea in the current system, though a separate 'pilots' crew type would certainly make it relevant. Personally, that concept & a Pilot XP of some sort to compliment it would be very interesting, both in terms of RP & in terms of actual gameplay decisions: now you actually care about your pilots & choices to minimize their losses matter beyond "Do I have enough generic crew lying around to shove into cockpits?" However, this is also outside of this thread's purview, so I'll leave it there.

Anyway, thank you as always! Apologies for any errors I may have made in my arguments here.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2019, 07:47:34 AM by dgibso29 »
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #97 on: December 01, 2019, 07:55:47 AM »

Quick thought regarding crew level: say uplevled crew is able to do the work of multiple normal crew, so you'd need fewer of them.

Didn't the various levels/types of crew get removed from previous versions due to adding a ton of unescessary complexity (and exploitable behaviour)?
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #98 on: December 01, 2019, 09:23:53 AM »

If crews (and marines) in storage are paid salaries, then it seems the best place to store crew would be Colony Resources so that taking them back out later when needed is free (like other Colony Resources you deposit), while avoiding upkeep.

Current raids can usually just be spammed after a tactical bombardment to obtain the exact same results plus blueprints/resources and without the negative effects of a saturation bombardment, this also makes me feel like once you can raid something, you're basically beating a dead horse that is your target faction already.

I don't think it'll be as much of a concern given the increasing marine losses, but perhaps it might make sense to reduce/not stack the stability penalties from continued raids.
In my case, since I do not want to decivilize the planet I want to raid, the main thing preventing me from raiding the planet repeatedly to the ground is their stability.  I raid a planet once or twice, then move on until stability recovers (because I do not want to risk decivilizing the planet if it loses more stability from events beyond my control).  If stability was not lost from successive raids, I would raid the planet to the ground.
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #99 on: December 01, 2019, 09:44:07 AM »

Didn't the various levels/types of crew get removed from previous versions due to adding a ton of unescessary complexity (and exploitable behaviour)?

They were removed because they were adding lots of backend complexity for little benefit.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #100 on: December 01, 2019, 10:08:15 AM »

Quick thought regarding crew level: say uplevled crew is able to do the work of multiple normal crew, so you'd need fewer of them. Now reduce the crew carrying capacity of all combat ship to just above their crew requirement.

Effects
- real use for transport ships, since without, any losses mean your ships are undercrewed
- elite crew however frees you from the need to use transport ships
- some hullmods might reduce crew capacity under crew requirement and thus almost require elite crew (or support ships)

Hmm. This feels like it'd get messy - all of a sudden "how much crew a ship needs" is variable and if e.g. you get more crew, how do you even estimate how many losses you can absorb? It'd be "some amount more than the extra crew you have" (due to XP gained -> crew providing more utility) but how much more would be hard to gauge. Plus it feels like it'd be confusing.

The effects also don't feel that great - the first two mean that the early game gets harder and more complicated. Like, "you have to get a transport ASAP now" and "I didn't know that, why is my CR in the dumpster all of a sudden" don't seem like a thing we'd want to spring on new players, you know? I guess that could be mitigated by always starting with a transport ship, buuut... just the fact that "mitigating its effects" is a thing that has to be considered right off the bat isn't a good sign.


Didn't the various levels/types of crew get removed from previous versions due to adding a ton of unescessary complexity (and exploitable behaviour)?

Yep! This would be a bit more manageable because it's not dealing with several types of crew at the same time, but counting each crew member as more than one in some highly specific circumstances. Would still be significantly more complicated, though. Still feels like one of the better decisions I've made, every time I do something crew-related it's like a sigh of relief.

... oh, wait. Would this idea also mean that, say salvaging, colonizing, etc would also require less crew based on XP? *backs away slowly, thumbs off the safety on the flamethrower*

That's actually another point against crew XP in general; colonzing would take a chunk out of it since you'd have to replace that crew, so it's just weirdness... yeah, at this point I think I'm pretty settled on that it shouldn't be a thing. It only works out for marines because they're so specialized, and even then there's a few potential rough edges.


The two bolded statements feel contradictory. If the elite-level XP of the 100 marines in the former statement is not intrinsic to the marines, how does putting said 100 marines in storage preserve their XP?

I think you're reading a bit (or way, way) too much into it :) Both are just factual statements - one says that the description of the current marine "rank" (or whatever you want to call it) leans on talking about their experience under your command, etc. The other describes a game mechanic.

Also, if Marine XP is more about well-established command structure, et al, then I would expect it to be much lower after adding 1k additional marines, but then bounce back to the original level when removing the 1k.

It's about said command structure within the marine ranks, and about their experienc in working with you as their commander, so it all more or less adds up.

Separately, a suggestion: A Marine Commander/Officer 'slot' that is filled by a character:

(See: my earlier response here about staff officers.)

Anyway, thank you as always! Apologies for any errors I may have made in my arguments here.

It's all good :)


In my case, since I do not want to decivilize the planet I want to raid, the main thing preventing me from raiding the planet repeatedly to the ground is their stability.  I raid a planet once or twice, then move on until stability recovers (because I do not want to risk decivilizing the planet if it loses more stability from events beyond my control).  If stability was not lost from successive raids, I would raid the planet to the ground.

Hmm. I feel like increasing casualties in the new system largely make that a bad option in any case - or, at least, a very costly one.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #101 on: December 01, 2019, 10:32:55 AM »

I was one of those rejoicing when crew levels were abolished.  No more green crewed ships (with 50% CR) breaking down after one fight early in the game, and most of all, no more crew Tetris.  Crew management with four types was almost a minigame, especially when trading excess elites for new green or standard crew to train.
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #102 on: December 01, 2019, 08:44:22 PM »

So... kind of a long-form answer to FooF's answer to me, which got lost in the meta-arguments above.

1.  I agree with most of your analysis there.
2.  Maybe the best Right Answer is to get rid of Crew (as we think of them now) altogether.

I thought about this a bit.  We're in a far-future setting; Serious AI is a thing.  So, why do we have WWII-esque crew scales? 

I mean, for a giant battleship, maybe you need one person per weapon system, a few people for engineering, etc., but you don't need giant bunches of people to do basic repairs, etc.; there are robots for that.

So... I know this is totally going off the Game Design deep-end here, but why not just make "crew" a few Officers?  Now the fluff matches the reality; instead of giant piles of non-humans who live / die, we'd have a collection of people we'd actually care about.  There'd be some new complexity, to be sure, but not that bad.  This would solve the "losses don't feel meaningful" part and the "crew leveling is just another boring minmax exercise" and mean that the fluff matched up well with the gameplay need.  Oh, and it'd mean that, with specific people assigned to a ship, they'd have a chance to die if the ship was lost; morale effects from losing a bunch of crew would be contextualized, etc.

I know that there's about zero chance of this being the way it's done, but that kind of sounds fun, honestly; I'd also love to see Officers get "attached" to "their ship" and get more bonuses from being familiar with it; these two things together would synergize and create Crews who felt like teams, not expendable commodities.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

SonnaBanana

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 867
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #103 on: December 01, 2019, 09:32:22 PM »

Forget crew types, get personnel average proficiency!
Average proficiency increases when you do things that get you XP. Or spend/gain credits at docks to increase/decrease.
Proficiency decreases when crew increases or decreases proportionally.

Gaining or losing one crew to a fleet of twenty crew causes a big change in proficiency while gaining or losing one crew to a fleet of three hundred crew causes a small change in proficiency.

Of course, and finally, get bonuses and maluses based on your proficiency rating!

EDIT AGAIN: The same system could also be used for marines.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2019, 09:38:50 PM by SonnaBanana »
Logged
I'm not going to check but you should feel bad :( - Alex

bobucles

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 532
    • View Profile
Re: Raiding for Fun and Profit
« Reply #104 on: December 02, 2019, 04:31:29 AM »

It seems to me that officers already do everything that crew XP could possibly dream of. It's a simpler, more effective system that lets players choose how their fleet develops, instead of providing boring generic bonuses. Of course it doesn't make too much sense how swapping to another flagship suddenly makes your crew aim better shoot better and have better maintained flight decks, but that's a small weirdness to pay for all the good things the officer system does.

There's no way a player can be expected to personally care about a thousand crew. For starters, the only way to describe them is as numbers on a page. It's hard to humanize numbers. On the other hand officers have names, personalities and stories that develop as they fight battles. If anything there should probably be fewer officers, a dozen really starts blurring into nameless mook territory. Instead, their effects should carry across multiple ships under their command. The player gets to identify with them more, and they can benefit both colossal and swarmy fleets, instead of being trapped inside capital vessels their whole life.
Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7] 8 9 ... 12