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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: Blog Posts  (Read 337541 times)

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #75 on: November 07, 2011, 06:50:05 AM »

Aww, come on guys, quit messing with me :)

On a somewhat-related note, though, I can confirm a blog update in the very near future.
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Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #76 on: November 09, 2011, 02:53:12 PM »

New blog post is up: Automatically Resolving Battles.
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stonehand

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #77 on: November 09, 2011, 06:29:46 PM »

first sry if my post sounded like i was saying that a post was comming i didnt mean it to.

 2nd great november post i like the idea of the 2nd offcer giving his thoughts on a battle but i don't think the staff exp should be any different then if you did the battle but its a very small thing.
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Flare

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #78 on: November 09, 2011, 07:24:42 PM »

I too think that the players past histories could matter, I think a way to get past the obstacle of letting the player auto-resolve everything without letting them win every battle when auto resolving. Their past histories just need to be balanced with the size and threat posed by the two fleets. If player performance was just one facet of auto-resolve with the cardinal power of both fleets taken into account player history could be made not to matter if the battle poses enough points to overthrow it. It'll handle the way you say the game will resolve as you've planned it now, but it will still avoid the problem of small skirmishes taking out a top of the line battleship or carrier.

On the flip side to the player using auto-resolve for every battle, if there's a chance that the player will lose a ship to auto-resolve in a fight that they can clearly win without loss or harm, they won't use auto-resolve especially if the fleet itself is full of ships that are hard to replace or expensive, or if there's a ship in the fleet that mustn't come under fire or harm. I can only speak for myself though, I have not touched auto-resolve since a spearman took out a tank in a civ 3 campaign.

There could be a level where auto-resolve just says, the sides are so disproportionate that there's basically no chance the small fleet is going to win or inflict any sort of grievous harm to the big one. There could be a cut off point where this happens, this could be done either with player histories, or simply with the quantifiable factors of the fleets themselves.



Or, maybe there could be something in between auto-resolve and actually fighting manually. It would not of course handle as quickly as pressing a single button and finishing the fight as auto-resolves does, but it would still be much faster than fighting an insignificant battle. If there is an all important ship in the fleet, expensive, or ships that are utterly integral to the mission the fleet is on it might be easier to let the player have a hand in it, albeit not as in-depth as a manual battle, than trying to balance auto-resolve (which I think you'll still end up doing after the game comes out if the track record on  auto-resolve calculations done in the past are anything to go by). If you let the player handle some aspect of auto-resolve in which they can look towards the more valuable assets of their fleet, I can see auto-resolve being much less of a programming nightmare.

Perhaps letting the player handle who goes first or the overall general movements of the fleet and let the commanders/AI hammer out the details of how the fight plays out tactically in high speed. Above all, your system still poses the threat that a carrier or a battleship goes down to forces that shouldn't be able to accomplish such an act, but if the player had some hand in the battle we would be better able to handle these sorts of problems while at the same time not be bogged down by many insignificant battles by perhaps sending in the disposable parts of our fleets into the line of fire first or moving the fleets in such a way that minimizes danger to one side of the fleet and maximizes it somewhere else. For example in my SotS late-end games, once I position my fleet in a certain way, the battle is more or less over given a moderately defended planet. I would usually be happy with the AI speeding things up and taking over at this point since the important ships are out of the way, and the ships shooting and getting shot at are ultimately disposable on the grand campaign they're on.

I personally think this would allow a more flexible system that can adapt, given the marginal input of the player. This would make it easier for modders if the auto-resolves scripts are hard-coded.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 07:29:20 PM by Flare »
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Quote from: Thana
Quote from: Alex

The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #79 on: November 09, 2011, 07:56:53 PM »

I just don't think taking past player performance into account is going to work out well. It's hard to measure (what if you're good at specific things, such as fights vs fighter-heavy fleets? what if you're bad at piloting, but your strategic decisions make you do well in large battles?).

You're also creating an environment which punishes experimentation. Say you want to try out a new loadout - but you know that if it doesn't work well, you'll be punished for it in auto-resolve from here on out, until you erase that somehow (presumably, by "grinding" some wins to level it back up). That's powerful disincentive. Never mind that you'd need to have some visibility into the inner workings of that - i.e., what the system thinks of you.

It seems very complicated, and rife with potential problems. To be honest, I don't see much of an upside - if it's done well, congratulations, we've got a game that can play itself very well!

Besides, lore-wise, you're delegating - so it wouldn't make sense for it to - and it does make sense for your subordinates to get bonus experience from it. That should help offset any potential minor losses you might avoid if you were being really careful and played it through yourself.

Quote
On the flip side to the player using auto-resolve for every battle, if there's a chance that the player will lose a ship to auto-resolve in a fight that they can clearly win without loss or harm
...

Above all, your system still poses the threat that a carrier or a battleship goes down to forces that shouldn't be able to accomplish such an act

A major goal of this system is that, in fact, this does not happen. As an example, a Wasp wing vs a Talon wing results in a 100% win rate for the Wasps. Against two Talon wings, it's a 99.99% win rate (i.e., 1 in 10,000 wins for the Talons).

A battleship is significantly more difficult to take down where large amounts of strike weapons, other large ships, or simply massive amounts of ships aren't involved.

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If you let the player handle some aspect of auto-resolve in which they can look towards the more valuable assets of their fleet, I can see auto-resolve being much less of a programming nightmare.

That's an interesting idea. I'm thinking about something similar - potentially letting you designate "priority" cargo that doesn't get destroyed when you lose ships. Still, I'd rather handle it by doing auto-resolve right, instead of slapping on a band-aid. I think what we've got now is a respectable start, and I'm fully prepared to keep tweaking it :)


Hmm. Auto-resolve could actually figure out when you have such overwhelming superiority that you don't *need* to use more vulnerable ships, and are still assured of victory. For example, if you've got an Onslaught and 3 Talon wings, there's not much point to deploying the fighters if you're up against a lone destroyer - it just exposes them to needless harm.

Actually, let me run that scenario right now, and see what happens! <runs scenario - Onslaught +3x Talon wings vs Hammerhead>

Needless to say, 100% win rate for the Onslaught side - but a few wings of Talons tend to get taken out. That's quite reasonable assuming they got deployed, but it's not so reasonable to deploy them. Then again, that's not a very realistic setup to begin with - that battle should never happen, unless it's the player's Hammerhead that's set up to deliver a rude surprise to the Onslaught. Under other circumstances, the Hammerhead should hightail it at the earliest opportunity.
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Thana

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #80 on: November 09, 2011, 10:48:58 PM »

Interesting to get a glimpse behind the scenes on this kind of feature. I wonder, how will your auto-resolver work with custom ships? I mean, not just the in-game hulls with custom loadouts, but modded-in completely new ships?

In any case, as always, an interesting and impressive blogpost. Maybe this is one of those rare games when I can use the auto-resolve option without suffering completely disproportionate losses and/or going @_@ at the results. :)
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Fishbreath

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #81 on: November 10, 2011, 06:01:01 AM »

Interesting post. I look forward to this next release, whenever it may come. By Christmas, maybe? *hopeful look*
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Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #82 on: November 10, 2011, 08:35:17 AM »

Interesting to get a glimpse behind the scenes on this kind of feature. I wonder, how will your auto-resolver work with custom ships? I mean, not just the in-game hulls with custom loadouts, but modded-in completely new ships?

Hmm, good question. If the ships are in the same vein as the standard ones, and if the weapons are balanced relative to their costs, it should work fine. On the other hand, if a mod does something very different, it'll likely fail in hilarious ways. Sounds like the parameters the auto-resolver uses to convert real ship stats into the turn-based ones should be exposed for modding at some point - though that kind of thing would only work for a total-conversion style mod.

Maybe this is one of those rare games when I can use the auto-resolve option without suffering completely disproportionate losses and/or going @_@ at the results. :)

I'm cautiously optimistic :)

Interesting post. I look forward to this next release, whenever it may come. By Christmas, maybe? *hopeful look*

*hopeful look*
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mendonca

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #83 on: November 10, 2011, 09:37:37 AM »

All sounds great. I never once used auto-resolve when my mercs were involved in Jagged Alliance 2, it was just too wacky.

My only problem is that you seem to have already thought of most things already.
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"I'm doing it, I'm making them purple! No one can stop me!"

Thana

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #84 on: November 10, 2011, 10:44:15 AM »

All sounds great. I never once used auto-resolve when my mercs were involved in Jagged Alliance 2, it was just too wacky.

My only problem is that you seem to have already thought of most things already.

I know. The Suggestions sub-forum is full of "hey, how about doing X?" questions that get replies in the form of "oh, we've been planning to implement that eventually for some time now, only we'll also do Y to make it even better!" In some ways, it makes throwing ideas around slightly frustrating, on the other hand... Well, let me put it like this:

/,,/
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Avan

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #85 on: November 10, 2011, 11:12:31 AM »

Looks like I will be using it only for curbstomps: I get a 100%, 100%, nearly 100%, 90% (or was it 80?) win:loss ration in those missions, at least of the latest version we have to play with ;) - granted, I Didn't play them 10,000 times over for that level of statistical accuracy :D

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #86 on: November 11, 2011, 09:12:46 AM »

... at least of the latest version we have to play with ;) ...

Yeah, the ships have been rebalanced a fair bit since then. As an example, all 4 of the Hammerhead's turrets are now small energy - instead of 2x medium ballistic + 2x medium energy.
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Thana

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #87 on: November 11, 2011, 12:54:41 PM »

Yeah, the ships have been rebalanced a fair bit since then. As an example, all 4 of the Hammerhead's turrets are now small energy - instead of 2x medium ballistic + 2x medium energy.

That sounds like a pretty big change!

Of course, I had noticed that the Hammerhead seemed like a pretty powerful destroyer before.
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Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #88 on: November 11, 2011, 01:59:29 PM »

The motivation for doing that is to make larger weapons a bit more special - and to keep small weapons relevant. The abundance of medium and large slots was marginalizing them, which became clear when I started putting together OP-balanced stock variants of  ships. "What goes in this small slot?" "Bah, who cares!".

Another example, the Falcon and the Eagle (the two midline cruisers) now have medium turrets instead of large. Large-sized weapons are almost entirely the domain of capital ships - though a few cruisers still sport a very limited amount of them, and the Sunder destroyer gets to keep its large energy hardpoint, too.

So the fact that the Onslaught has a number of large turrets and hardpoints actually means something now - it's not nearly matched by an Eagle in firepower, as it is in the currently-released build.


Overall, it's just more spread out and balanced. Looks better, too - medium turrets on the Hammerhead, and large ones on those cruisers got a bit too crowded for my taste.
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Thana

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #89 on: November 11, 2011, 09:36:22 PM »

Sounds good to me.
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