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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 337584 times)

Flare

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #90 on: November 11, 2011, 10:41:56 PM »

Disparity in materiel is always good. Games with lots of high end entities with high end equipment running around tends to get old fast.

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?).

Indeed it is hard to measure, but there is an implicit problem when you claim that auto-resolve is going to behave like how battles are fought. It's often the case that it will not resolve in the way that battles are fought, or in the way that the player will resolve the battle if he or she fought it manually. Unless the program can use the ships in a similar meaningful way that the player uses them, it's not going to behave just as battles are fought. For example, take mount and blade for instance, I often use auto-resolve and while it does give me favorable results in most battles, there are some where there should be no loses at all for example a 500 man patry fighting a 3 person party.

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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.

I think this will only be true if battles are far and in-between large amounts of time. One measly battle, no matter how big, is still one battle in a huge collection of them. Unless the player deliberately keeps doing it, there's really going to be no significant mark on the overall player percentage. Besides, whether or not it encourages the player to fight his or her battles or experiment really depends on the skill of the player, for someone who is incredibly poor at the game or for someone who isn't very consistent, auto-resolve might prove to be so much more successful that they might never fight a manual battle themselves. If the player advantage quantifier for the calculator disintegrates over time, the player will have to fight manually to keep it, better yet, maybe it's a pool that the player can use to weigh in on insignificant battles to ensure a more one sided battle as if the player played it.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2011, 08:54:10 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?"

tinsoldier

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #91 on: November 14, 2011, 02:28:13 PM »


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.


Just curious as to why the Hammerhead doesn't hightail it at the earliest opportunity in the auto-resolve?
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Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #92 on: November 14, 2011, 03:30:55 PM »

It's often the case that it will not resolve in the way that battles are fought, or in the way that the player will resolve the battle if he or she fought it manually.

It's pretty much never going to resolve the same way as if the player played it manually. The idea is to avoid surprises, which isn't the same as playing it out "exactly as if the player was playing it". Plausible results are what I'm after. The UI will also make it abundantly clear that you're not participating in the battle, but delegating it to your second-in-command.


Just curious as to why the Hammerhead doesn't hightail it at the earliest opportunity in the auto-resolve?

It would, but that's not the job of the autoresolve, which takes over when the battle is already joined. That battle would never happen in the first place if the Hammerhead was able to get away successfully. If it couldn't do that, then it would be an "escape" type battle, with the Hammerhead trying to get past the enemy lines and retreat - at which it would likely be successful. Even in a head-on fight, the 100% win rate for the Onslaught side includes numerous cases where the Hammerhead took too much damage and retreated.
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tinsoldier

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #93 on: November 14, 2011, 06:35:39 PM »

It would, but that's not the job of the autoresolve, which takes over when the battle is already joined. That battle would never happen in the first place if the Hammerhead was able to get away successfully. If it couldn't do that, then it would be an "escape" type battle, with the Hammerhead trying to get past the enemy lines and retreat - at which it would likely be successful. Even in a head-on fight, the 100% win rate for the Onslaught side includes numerous cases where the Hammerhead took too much damage and retreated.

Sounds perfect then  :-*
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Zarcon

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #94 on: November 15, 2011, 02:08:46 PM »

It would, but that's not the job of the autoresolve, which takes over when the battle is already joined. That battle would never happen in the first place if the Hammerhead was able to get away successfully. If it couldn't do that, then it would be an "escape" type battle, with the Hammerhead trying to get past the enemy lines and retreat - at which it would likely be successful. Even in a head-on fight, the 100% win rate for the Onslaught side includes numerous cases where the Hammerhead took too much damage and retreated.

Sounds perfect then  :-*

I'm getting pretty excited about this auto-resolve thing, which I think says something about the high quality of the game overall, ha ha.  I'm pretty sure I've never been excited about auto-resolve functionality before this, and kudos on making the concept very logical and avoiding most surprises in the results, great stuff indeed.
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There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #95 on: November 15, 2011, 02:26:38 PM »

Heheh, thanks for your support!

To be fair, the jury is still out on how good it actually is - no amount of my testing is going to equal it getting some real usage. Hopefully it'll live up to expectations, if not, I'll tweak the hell out of it :)
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Wyvern

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #96 on: November 15, 2011, 03:39:54 PM »

Hm.  You know, I wonder - would it work out if the auto-resolver told you beforehand exactly what the results would be?  In some ways, that feels like cheating; in other ways, it feels like an ideal way to make sure the auto-resolver doesn't cheat the player...

Definitely looking forward to seeing how it works out, though; also looking forward to see how the full game influences tactics.  For example, if I'm not fighting a one-off battle, I may be much more inclined to make ships - especially small ships like fighters and frigates - retreat early on, before they have too much of a chance to get blown up by trying to kamikaze an Onslaught.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alchenar

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #97 on: November 15, 2011, 04:07:07 PM »

Heheh, thanks for your support!

To be fair, the jury is still out on how good it actually is - no amount of my testing is going to equal it getting some real usage. Hopefully it'll live up to expectations, if not, I'll tweak the hell out of it :)

Well there's only one way to find out!

Hint hint.
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Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #98 on: November 15, 2011, 05:17:16 PM »

Well there's only one way to find out!

Hint hint.

Working feverishly, sir :)

There's a *lot* to do but I'm really excited about how it's shaping up.
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Avan

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #99 on: November 16, 2011, 10:16:04 AM »

I presume there are a fair number of new weapons in now?

Zarcon

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #100 on: November 16, 2011, 11:39:29 AM »

I presume there are a fair number of new weapons in now?

The concept of fair, is a very interesting and complex conundrum.  ;)  lol
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There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #101 on: November 16, 2011, 01:17:35 PM »

Is 5 fair? I think 5 is pretty fair. Up to 60 or so total.
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Zarcon

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #102 on: November 16, 2011, 01:22:05 PM »

Is 5 fair? I think 5 is pretty fair. Up to 60 or so total.

There have been studies that suggest that 5 is the most fair number of all.  ;)

The only way to make it even more fair is to have even more 5's...say 2 or 3...or....  :)
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There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Avan

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #103 on: November 17, 2011, 11:12:19 PM »

How many of them are small/medium slot?  ;)

Alex

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Re: Blog Posts
« Reply #104 on: November 18, 2011, 07:38:53 AM »

All :)

The original reason for ships getting large slots when they really shouldn't have was that there weren't quite enough medium weapons to make medium slots interesting.
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