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Author Topic: Starfarer 0.54a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 365139 times)

Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #315 on: October 23, 2012, 07:39:55 PM »

Spoiler
Two scenarios spring to mind in which I'd want an avoid order.

A) A big, slow target and multiple smaller target are on the field. I want my ships to avoid the big one and kill the small ones to gang up on the big at the end.

B) A enemy is fleeing and one of my ships is in pursuit. I put avoid on the enemy to make my ship stay in combat.

In both cases a global avoid command would be better than "avoid if smaller". In A) One of my ships might match the big target, engage it, and delay the destruction of the small stuff. In B) my pursuing ship is probably not smaller anyway.


 Hmm...How about "avoid if you are not vastly superior"? That would have the intended outcome in case A) and B). And it would eschew strange issues where a battleships tries to avoid a destroyer.

I'm not sure how aware ships of are of their allies, but if they could notice when they are "vastly superior" as a group scenario A) might even play out without the need to revoke the avoid order at the end.

[close]

Thanks for breaking those down - I wasn't thinking of B) at all, but that's a really good point.

"Vastly superior" is problematic for the AI to establish. How many frigates do you need before you're "vastly superior" to a Paragon? Seems like the kind of call best left to the player - it's hard for me to imagine getting it right often enough, especially when the penalty for getting it wrong is about as bad as it gets - dead ships.

B) could actually be mostly resolved with an AI tweak - don't chase a retreating ship if you're both out of weapon range by some margin and also slower.

A combination of "avoid if <not bigger | smaller | something else along those lines>" and the above AI tweak might be a good place to start. That, combined with direct-assignment to the avoid task acting like engage/strike, should give the right amount of tactical flexibility. I think. Going to give it a try and see how it works out - no promises, as usual :) I can see giving it a try and ditching the idea altogether for one reason or another.


@xenoargh:
Pardon the short-ish answer, but I'm about to go to bed here :)

1: A distant possibility.
2: Probably not - how they work is not "final" in my mind, so I don't see making them more moddable before firming that up.
3: See #1.
4: The usual "nothing in vanilla uses it, so it'd probably be extremely buggy, and would lack UI support to tell the player what's going on". Which isn't a definite "no", it's just a "it'd take significantly more effort".

Overall, I just haven't had a chance to do a "moddability pass" during this cycle. I may yet get the opportunity (this usually happens when I'm waiting for some art or sound assets, but the functionality is already done), but it doesn't appear too likely. We'll see, though.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #316 on: October 23, 2012, 08:07:38 PM »

Well, thought I'd ask; a lot of stuff I'd like to do requires 3 and 4, as my mod's mainly about playing around with combat mechanics in odd ways.  1's useful for a lot of stuff, 2's a big deal, no sense rushing it, 3 and 4 are pretty important if mods are ever going to go beyond window dressing Vanilla, especially 3 :)
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Gothars

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #317 on: October 23, 2012, 08:16:18 PM »

Good morning!
I'm sure you know, but just because I want to make sure to never see a Talon wing chasing another Talon wing pointlessly across the map:

don't chase a retreating ship if you're both out of weapon range by some margin and also slower or of equal speed

Accepting everything else, hope avoid makes it, looking forward to the update :)
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Psycho Society

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #318 on: October 23, 2012, 09:47:18 PM »

Love the aggressive AI. Love everything about the update. Excited to hear what Stian's got lined up for us.
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Thaago

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #319 on: October 23, 2012, 10:11:10 PM »

Quote
...
Control/Capture: Automatically updated to call in comparable forces to match what the enemy has in the area.
...

Oh wow! That is going to cut down on my micro significantly, and hopefully stop the AI from feeding itself piece by piece into death-swarms. Nice!

I am very much in favor of a Universal avoid command. Its simple and cases that might also lead to significant micro (e.g. when the player wants say all ships destroyer and up to still engage via direct orders) are pretty well handled by the control groups. A "scouts avoid" that just makes fighters and frigates (not bombers?) avoid the target would take care of the fast ships attacking (and being killed by) capital ships but wouldn't be able to handle Gothar's point A, so I don't think it would be good.

It might be a bit extreme, but maybe just have non-strike fighters and frigates automatically avoid all capital ships unless under a direct order or escorting another ship? Often times a frigate or fighter will route itself next to an enemy capital ship to get to a far away objective and get promptly get mauled.
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intothewildblueyonder

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #320 on: October 23, 2012, 10:18:45 PM »

A few thoughts on gothars retreating ship scenario

If a ship is chasing down a retreating ship it will need to be able to stop the ship before it flees combat and then enable its destruction. This isn't always obvious;

because of the limited 1)window of opportunity to 2)deal sufficient damage to a ship before it retreats, (or a retreating ship must not have health > dps*fire-time: where dps is amount of damage hitting  retreating ship from all sources )
lets look at  few scenarios
A ship may be faster than another ship but only catch up to it for an instant before it retreats
A ship could catch up to but not stop a retreating ship because it cannot enable this damage
      - either because it must slow down
     - it doesn't have the sufficient firepower to destroy the ship in this time frame
A ship could however force ship to slow/stop down (force shield raise, flux, own ship systems, engines, flank) and can create higher dps by adding more actual damage(itself (eg more weapons) or other ship (eg they can catch up))  or time

My point is that it will not be so simple to determine when a ship can know when it can disable a ship before it retreats (although it does a reasonable job at forcing ships to engage). Conversely how much of this knowledge should be given to the retreating ship (here's a weird scenario - because a ship know it cannot be caught and will therefore not be chased, will it stick around :P)

Hopefully this made some sense
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Morrokain

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #321 on: October 23, 2012, 10:19:29 PM »

Oh god, where have you been with that warning 10 years ago? I still friggin dream of playing Morrowind (you know, levitation spell) with Nightwishes walking in the air, and I don't even like band that much anymore.

Odd fact: listening to Nightwish right now. But yeah, I can't hear "Jamie's Got a Gun" w/o linking it with HoMM3 - and all I did was leave it on repeat a few times, oh, what is it, 10+ years ago now? The mind is a terrible thing.


A bit more on topic: hoping to update the notes in the near future :)



I listen to Nightwish sometimes when I play too! Alex and me have something in common! My life is complete!
Ok this is just bizzare. I actually have listened to and "discovered" Nightwish (had heard of it but never really listened to it) while modding this game... so its pretty much been the only thing I've been listening to while modding.

Bought Imaginaerum a week or so ago actually.

Haha too funny.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2012, 10:21:14 PM by Morrokain »
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Morrokain

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #322 on: October 23, 2012, 10:22:08 PM »

Oh and very excited for the UI and AI updates this coming patch!
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intothewildblueyonder

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #323 on: October 23, 2012, 10:30:04 PM »

Regarding the change in command capture
 
There is a certain advantage in having a single ship preventing/slowing the capture of a point without being able to capture it itself. This allow you to have a sort of space-denial doctrine, using a  small force to both entangle enemy ships in a pointless combat and slow there gain of an asset , with a small chance of actually taking the point. Will this be possible post patch (/can the harass order be applied to a capture point)
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arcibalde

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #324 on: October 24, 2012, 01:17:01 AM »

Quote
Engage: bombers and support fighters assigned to engage a target will behave as if on a strike assignment - i.e, make a concerted effort at an attack run without getting distracted.
Let say i have selected 2 fighters wing and 3 bombers (and let's say that fighters are faster then bombers) wing and give them orders to ENGAGE Enforcer. Will they stick together until bombers drop they payload on Enforcer or will fighters go ahead and engage it sooner then bombers. Will they come back together to carrier for bomber resupply and then go again together on Enforcer?
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Gothars

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #325 on: October 24, 2012, 03:49:43 AM »

chasing ships is complicated

It's even more complicated, because there could be enemy or friendly ships on the escape route that modify the possible outcome positive or negative. That's why I think in this case it's better to keep to simple rules that the player can comprehend and let him/her then make the difficult decisions. Besides, only damaging a fleeing ship is sometimes good enough, too.


There is a certain advantage in having a single ship preventing/slowing the capture of a point without being able to capture it itself. This allow you to have a sort of space-denial doctrine, using a  small force to both entangle enemy ships in a pointless combat and slow there gain of an asset , with a small chance of actually taking the point. Will this be possible post patch (/can the harass order be applied to a capture point)

To my understanding you can just manually assign a single ship that you selected and others will not interfere.

It might be a bit extreme, but maybe just have non-strike fighters and frigates automatically avoid all capital ships unless under a direct order or escorting another ship? Often times a frigate or fighter will route itself next to an enemy capital ship to get to a far away objective and get promptly get mauled.

I like this, it could be combined with a switch under "standing orders" for desperate times. Although I would not want to miss  a direct avoid command for this, and both would clash with Alex "no multiple flavors" policy. But only a bit. Mini-Clash. Micro-Clash. :-*
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Sunfire

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #326 on: October 24, 2012, 06:48:18 AM »

Hmm - let me give that a bit of thought. I'm not sure how useful that would be, since it seems like you only want certain ships to avoid certain other ships, and it gets to be a mess. I may give a global "avoid" order a try, though - or, perhaps, an "avoid it if you're smaller". What I don't want to end up with is multiple flavors of "avoid" orders. I also don't want to go down the road of multiple assignments on the same target, and some flavors of "avoid" may point in that direction.

Two scenarios spring to mind in which I'd want an avoid order.

A) A big, slow target and multiple smaller target are on the field. I want my ships to avoid the big one and kill the small ones to gang up on the big at the end.

B) A enemy is fleeing and one of my ships is in pursuit. I put avoid on the enemy to make my ship stay in combat.

In both cases a global avoid command would be better than "avoid if smaller". In A) One of my ships might match the big target, engage it, and delay the destruction of the small stuff. In B) my pursuing ship is probably not smaller anyway.


 Hmm...How about "avoid if you are not vastly superior"? That would have the intended outcome in case A) and B). And it would eschew strange issues where a battleships tries to avoid a destroyer.

I'm not sure how aware ships of are of their allies, but if they could notice when they are "vastly superior" as a group scenario A) might even play out without the need to revoke the avoid order at the end.



Also, if I am flying a capital or a cruiser and I want to go up against another of the same size, but I dont want my frigates getting involved, I would like to be able to place an avoid command. However, the strike command should override the avoid command for bombers only, not sure how that would work, but it would be sweet to be able to have all your ships but you avoid a large ship, and then have your bombers come swooping in to obliterate the large ship!
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Gaizokubanou

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #327 on: October 24, 2012, 06:49:07 AM »

Question on the new control/capture...

Say there are two nodes, A and B.  Me and the AI has roughly equivalent size fleet.

I order control/capture on A, assault on B.

AI orders assault on A, nothing on B (unlikely, I know, but for sake of this theorycraft bear with me please).

What will happen here?  Will my fleet AI split my forces evenly between A and B (basically treat large enemy concentration on A as an assault order)?  Or will it actually send more units to A, 'overriding' the assault order in order to match the AI's fleet on A?
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #328 on: October 24, 2012, 10:12:29 AM »

There is a certain advantage in having a single ship preventing/slowing the capture of a point without being able to capture it itself. This allow you to have a sort of space-denial doctrine, using a  small force to both entangle enemy ships in a pointless combat and slow there gain of an asset , with a small chance of actually taking the point. Will this be possible post patch (/can the harass order be applied to a capture point)

You can create a "Rally Task Force" there and assign whatever you like to it.

Let say i have selected 2 fighters wing and 3 bombers (and let's say that fighters are faster then bombers) wing and give them orders to ENGAGE Enforcer. Will they stick together until bombers drop they payload on Enforcer or will fighters go ahead and engage it sooner then bombers. Will they come back together to carrier for bomber resupply and then go again together on Enforcer?

No and no. If you want that, assign them to escort the bombers - that's what escort is for.

That reminds me, I need to take a look at how escort works when the target wings lands on a carrier. Ideally, escorts would keep hovering around the carrier, and then pick up where they left off when the wing takes off.

Say there are two nodes, A and B.  Me and the AI has roughly equivalent size fleet.

I order control/capture on A, assault on B.

AI orders assault on A, nothing on B (unlikely, I know, but for sake of this theorycraft bear with me please).

What will happen here?  Will my fleet AI split my forces evenly between A and B (basically treat large enemy concentration on A as an assault order)?  Or will it actually send more units to A, 'overriding' the assault order in order to match the AI's fleet on A?

It'll split your forces roughly evenly. If you want full flexibility, you can assign "Capture" to both. "Assault" is actually less universally useful now - oftentimes, a few capture/control assignments are enough to get the job done.
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arcibalde

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Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #329 on: October 24, 2012, 01:02:49 PM »

We can give escort commands to entire group or just to specific ship? So can i have group A and give it escort group B?
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