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

Author Topic: Campaign Questions  (Read 3676 times)

Allectus

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Campaign Questions
« on: March 24, 2012, 07:48:26 AM »

So, I just bought the game, and am absolutely loving it (as an aside to Alex, I would suggest setting up a donate option like the SPAZ devs did, I would gladly pay more to see this effort completed), though I have a few questions:

What's the difference between Attack/Defend/Escape?  It seems like there is some interplay between the 3 options for both sides.  If one side escapes and the other defends -> no combat; if one side escapes and the other attacks -> combat.  I've also heard, but not checked myself, that attacking gives you fewer initial fleet points than defending (not sure where escaping lies on that spectrum).  There also seems to be differences in the retreat mechanic--if you attack you can retreat off of any edge, defending only lets you retreat off of your starting edge, while escaping only lets you retreat off of the opponents starting edge.

So, first of all, is all of the above correct?  If so it seems like a fairly robust system with one exception: if I were truly interested in running, whats to stop me from selecting defend/attack and then simply exiting off of my edge immediately?

Secondly, what determines the number of fleet points you'll have available without controlling any points?  I've noticed it does seem to vary.

Finally, my last major question revolves around capturing points.  From the missions I had gathered that capturing all the points would halt all enemy reinforcements.  I rather like that mechanic as it is a direct incentive for keeping and deploying some faster ships in the fleet as opposed to an all heavy fleet being strictly superior.  However, it seems that this mechanic doesnt hold in the campaign...  I had a very rude awakening when I spent half my fleet fighting a massively numerically superior fleet, while capturing all the points, only to wipe the wave and have two fresh battlecruisers dropped on me.  Is something else going on here or does that mechanic really not hold?  If it doesnt hold I'd really like to petition that it should, as otherwise there is virtually zero incentive (and very little hope) in attacking fleets larger than yours.  I know that there have already been discussions about the wonky difficulty curve, but although this would ostensibly make the game even easier once you acquire a fleet composition capable of capturing the points, I feel it vastly improves the game if only because it means I can actually do more than either save-scumming, or spending the entire game trouncing unchallenging inferior fleets only because I have no hope against superior fleets...
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Temstar

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2012, 08:41:26 AM »

In the previous 0.50a version cap all point does prevent enemy reinforcement, but it made the game crap because it became a race to field as many 200 speed interceptors as possible to cap out the enemy. It was removed in this version to stop fighters from having that kind of dominating impact in a battle.
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cp252

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2012, 08:52:38 AM »

The usefulness of cap points still makes them dominating though. I like how my Aurora can outrun fighters and missiles. Getting your entire fleet out and pushing the enemy back to the edge of the map is also very nice, as is killing all the small ships and letting the big ones escape so you can hunt them more easily later.
I want to know what the Attack, Defend and Escape options do though. As far as I can tell selecting Attack is always the best option, especially if you take personal command against a bigger fleet.
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harrumph

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2012, 08:00:59 PM »

It affects map size for sure (attack vs. attack being the smallest, defend vs. defend the largest—I think), and I think it might also affect the number of FP you get for your initial deployment?
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Alex

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2012, 08:10:04 PM »

Yep, it affects the map size - defend makes it bigger, while escape makes it wider.

Defend and Escape both have an associated fleet points bonus. It's a bit of rock-paper-scissors - you want Defend vs Attack or another Defend, but you need to Attack to ensure that an enemy Escape doesn't avoid the battle altogether.


So, I just bought the game, and am absolutely loving it  ...

Thank you, happy you're enjoying it :)


Finally, my last major question revolves around capturing points.  From the missions I had gathered that capturing all the points would halt all enemy reinforcements.

Does it still say that somewhere in the game? If it does, I'd love to know so I can eradicate it. But yeah, it was just too abusive of a mechanic - precisely because you could take on a much more powerful fleet, without ever having to face its larger ships. Sounded good on paper, but turned out rather gamey.

You can still take on more powerful fleets - it's just that now, you'll have to actually fight them, instead of cheesing it out.
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Allectus

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2012, 09:18:37 PM »

Finally, my last major question revolves around capturing points.  From the missions I had gathered that capturing all the points would halt all enemy reinforcements.

Does it still say that somewhere in the game? If it does, I'd love to know so I can eradicate it. But yeah, it was just too abusive of a mechanic - precisely because you could take on a much more powerful fleet, without ever having to face its larger ships. Sounded good on paper, but turned out rather gamey.

You can still take on more powerful fleets - it's just that now, you'll have to actually fight them, instead of cheesing it out.

It's in several of the mission descriptions--the tactical briefing for "Hornet's Nest" for example.  I also saw some mention of its use in the campaign in some of the youtube videos I've seen posted.

It's a shame you decided to take it out--it sounds (as you noted ;-) ) like an interesting mechanic  that should only really come into play if you really outmaneuver the opposition and at least holds the appearance of significantly increasing the tactical depth of the battles. It seems the gamebreaking nature of it could be addressed by just giving the defense of the last held point (or decaping another point) a much higher priority to the AI.  Being a dev you certainly know a hell of a lot more about the subject than I do, so I won't complain too loudly though vOv
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Plasmatic

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2012, 01:27:17 AM »

I like that it was removed personally, mostly because of the boarding and capturing mechanic for reserve or escaped ships..

Basically, if the mechanic was still here, all you needed to do was field enough interceptors to cap the points, kill what the enemy fielded and gratz, you just got the rest of his fleet for FREE... iirc, you don't even need marines at this point.

Now, you actually have to fight the fleet, or at least the majority of it..

As far as fleet points..

I've seen in the settings file that we can change the battlesize, if I set that to 300, would that mean 150 FP per side? or 300 per side (depending on map size?)
Or is it dynamic, as in, if you have 3 frigates and attack a fleet with 3 cruisers, and 5 frigates, they will have a larger pool of FP because they have the bigger fleet?
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"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"
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factotum

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2012, 04:05:43 AM »

It's a shame you decided to take it out--it sounds (as you noted ;-) ) like an interesting mechanic  that should only really come into play if you really outmaneuver the opposition and at least holds the appearance of significantly increasing the tactical depth of the battles.

Not really--it just reduced battles to "grab all the control points and mop up the ships the enemy managed to get into play before you did that". When that's pretty much the major tactic you use every battle, you're *reducing* the tactical depth, not increasing it!
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Cryten

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2012, 04:55:34 AM »

It does not seem to have been spelt out plainly enough so I will summerarise:

Attack vs Attack: Both forces start with lower amounts of Fleet Points, Normal Mission Layout.
Attack vs Defend: Defender has a Fleet Point Advantage, Large Maps are common.
Defend vs Defend: Both forces start with a sizeable Fleet Points, Normal Mission Layout.
Attack vs Escape: Attacker has a low Fleet point value, Escaper must run to the opposite edge of the map to disengage.
Defend vs Escape: Escaper succeeds in getting away.
Escape vs Escape: Both fleets disengage.

Sorry if this seems obvious but I wanted to make sure the OP had a fully clear answer since alot of the conversation had veered to the capture points side.
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Alex

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Re: Campaign Questions
« Reply #9 on: March 25, 2012, 08:47:22 AM »

It's in several of the mission descriptions--the tactical briefing for "Hornet's Nest" for example.  I also saw some mention of its use in the campaign in some of the youtube videos I've seen posted.

Ahh, thank you for pointing it out.

@Cryten: Thank you for breaking it down! One note: the total fleet points are governed by battleSize (and in the vanilla game, add up to 100), so Attack vs Attack and Defend vs Defend will be roughly the same, FP-wise.
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