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[xenoargh]

Yeah; there is no perfect solution for that; stopping stuff from ever leaving the bounds, period, is fairly attractive, but it breaks the immersion; on the other hand, right now AI ships end up way outside the bounds sometimes, which is annoying.

[dmaiski]

just add something to the pathing calculation that encourages the ships to move towards the center of the map

when they are selectin wich way to turn, just weigh the calculation so that the farther from the center or command points they are the more likley they are to head that way, it doesnt need to be massive, just a tiny bonus

that or wait till alex makes it posible to set the battle map size and deployment locations

[xenoargh]

You can already set the battle map size and deployments, actually; it's one of the things I've been playing around with

[xenoargh]

OK, I think that the Admiral AI works. 

In fact, it's a little scary; I think players are going to have some "fun" trying to beat high-end enemy fleets.  I just took a midgame character with 80 DPs and maxed Tech (Combat isn't maxed yet, but it's getting there) up against an Assault Fleet and got pwnd... consistently.  Granted, the fleet's not opti-maxed for Capital killing, but... ouch.

I still need to write up a system for Escape scenarios, though, and probably something special-ish for Station Assaults.

[dmaiski]

remember to add that ai for player fleets too

cause if the ai gets monster commmand level inteligence for their ships and the player still has the command point system, the ai will win in many situations just because beter micro

[xenoargh]

Yeah, that's an issue, for certain, although right now the AI isn't "smart", it's just functional.  I think a lot of it is that with leveled Admirals, things got way, way harder on the high end, which is good.

I wrote up a limiter that keeps ships from going way outside the bounds, and it appears to work without destroying stuff.  I still need to write the Escape AI, since that's a little different from regular fights, and I need to make a proper graphic for the Devastator and write up all the descriptions that are now missing after the Great Reorganization, and finish the Transporter Ray... I may release with none of that done, I think it's about ready to see how the gameplay is shaping up for everybody...

[xenoargh]

Hrmm.  Beat a Station Assault. Even with the stations in, it's still too easy. 

I think the big issue there is what happens when you get rolling, capture-wise.  Was slamming through with a couple of Conquerors with shield-busters and Neutrons, with enough carrier backup to keep 3 Wings of Boarding Shuttles and a smattering of other little stuff going.  No light support, just mega-heavies and fast movers. 

About 10 minutes in, I have a smallish army (like, -130+ DPs) of captures working for me.  Granted, this was largely due to some other changes I made, which I think people will like; I finally figured out a good way to make "scenery objects" and "wrecks"... but my code scattered a bunch of Tritach ships all over the battlefield, so I had some free Odysseys, amongst other things.

And of course, this was a fight against the Indies, who still aren't terribly scary.

But I think the issue here is straightforward; the Transporter Ray needs to be a working thing and Boarding Shuttles need a significant nerf.  Having free in-battle captures that don't ever require Marines just won't cut it; I think it's imperative that players have to do that.  Even having Boarding Shuttles run out (eventually) isn't doing it.

So what I think I'll do is this; ships captured by Boarding Shuttles will get crippled, CR-wise, and be put on Retreat.  That will greatly nerf their effect on the battlefield.

The other issue that's apparent is money.  Got a high-end fleet?  It doesn't feel like you ever pay for it.  There's a tipping point where if you capture enough capital ships, you're looking at a cool million for a battle and with enough super-heavies, you can do it without losses.  Supplies are irrelevant; even with thousands of crew, you're looking at a drain of "only" 20-30 day, which just doesn't matter at all.  So I think I need to put crew pay back in, like the Exerelin builds where paying for a planet-crushing fleet was a large part of the game.  I could do it via Supply drains, but I just don't like that very much; too much potential for fun-wreaking situations.

Lastly, I think that I need something boss-fight for people to do.  Station assaults will be quite a bit harder if Boarding Shuttles can't just give you an army, but I think that even more challenge is required.  We'll see if I still feel that way after taking on Tritach / Hegemony / Pirates, but I suspect it's all the same; when players reach levels where they've maxed out Tech, most of Combat, and have Making Do... it's all downhill and I want people to have to try a lot harder.

[dmaiski]

The other issue that's apparent is money.  Got a high-end fleet?  It doesn't feel like you ever pay for it.  There's a tipping point where if you capture enough capital ships, you're looking at a cool million for a battle and with enough super-heavies, you can do it without losses.  Supplies are irrelevant; even with thousands of crew, you're looking at a drain of "only" 20-30 day, which just doesn't matter at all.  So I think I need to put crew pay back in, like the Exerelin builds where paying for a planet-crushing fleet was a large part of the game.  I could do it via Supply drains, but I just don't like that very much; too much potential for fun-wreaking situations.

actualy I would apreciate this, I have often had fleets with 10k storage space running around almost entirely empty in your mod, just cause i dont need supplies that much, just dont go overboard and end up at uzmoz's level of supply drain, where you cant even consider going out of the system you are in because supply drain will kill you...

[xenoargh]

Yeah, that's really hard to balance.

I hear you about the empty space, but I eventually want to integrate with Alex's Events system so I kind of want to wait on that. 

Checked out putting auto-Retreat on captured ships; that definitely balanced that issue out. 

[xenoargh]

I'm much happier with the Capture system overall; still working a few details out.  Got rid of some junky stuff I had in the Boarding Shuttle code; now there's no "instant capture" going on behind the scenes; the ship you've just boarded is the ship you've got, warts and all.  That really raises up the

The Station Assault battles are still a bit too easy for my tastes; I'm kind of leaning towards having some new Station type that is a big nasty alpha-strike but is pretty weak otherwise.  Jean / Marlene are both nasty in their own special ways and the AI puts up a good fight.  I think that's going to have to wait for the next build, though.

Want to get the graphic done for the Devourer before I call this "ready enough", along with writing out descriptions and writing out the wage code; there are lots of small details still missing but it's starting to feel semi-balanced and playable, finally

[xenoargh]

OK, Devourer got a graphic, there is now are not one but two Fighter-only buff trees that carrier-heavy players can take. 

The only really big thing left is finalizing the Transporter Ray and balancing out one of the new features and writing out descriptions.  I think that I'll balance the feature roughly, write out the descriptions (mainly copy-pasta work, as it's mainly about Vanilla assets whose internal names have changed) and call this ready.

[xenoargh]

Set up Boss Runs for station battles, just to give them a bit more oomph.

Oh, and this might make it:

[xenoargh]

Boss-fight system is working; Boarding Shuttles cost 2 Marines per attempt (may raise this later, but it's feeling all right atm).  This greatly slows down the instant-army effects in big fights and forces players to conserve their Marines.

I think I'm going to concentrate on doing the last of the write-ups for new descriptions and then it's finally time to get this out.

[Ishman]

You may not have noticed, you deleted the end of one of your sentences earlier. "Got rid of some junky stuff I had in the Boarding Shuttle code; now there's no "instant capture" going on behind the scenes; the ship you've just boarded is the ship you've got, warts and all.  That really raises up the"

[Tecrys]

Really looking forward to the new capture mechanics since I am hoping that looking at your code will fix Dabido and my issues with our ressurection hullmod which is based on your boarding shuttle code.

We're still having huge issues with the FleetEncounterContext to an extend that we might implement our won FleetEncounterContext extending the vanilla one.

Great job with the Boss stuff, looking forward to testing it!