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Author Topic: A couple issues with the current build.  (Read 5825 times)

kazi

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A couple issues with the current build.
« on: November 29, 2012, 07:07:45 PM »

This isn't really a bug report, just a few things that were probably design oversights and that I think should be addressed in future builds. Wasn't really sure which forum to put it under.

-When you lose a ship, you somehow get to keep all of it's cargo, people, and fuel. While this might seem useful at first to the player, it causes a couple problems. Example: I had a bad autoresolve experience in iron mode and lost virtually my entire fleet except for one Vigilance. Unfortunately, I still had all of my supplies and the accident risk instantly went to extreme. I had an 'major accident' occur literally 10 seconds after the battle ended and lost my last ship. To avoid this in the future, the player should lose all crew, cargo, and fuel upon losing a ship (to the point where the remaining ships can hold everything without an accident).

-The time acceleration key needs to be toggle-able (caps lock anyone?). Even with the travel speed perks, I find myself holding the key down virtually all the time I am flying around lol... I'm probably not the only one with this problem.

Otherwise, great game!
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heskey30

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2012, 07:15:27 PM »

For the first one, I think it is just something to get used to. How will the game decide what is put on what ship? Personally I don't want to lose a squad of marines and a tachyon lance every time a hound explodes. Next time just pay attention and dump what you don't want after a battle

As for the caps lock idea, I like it.
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Axiege

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2012, 07:25:36 PM »

This seems like it belongs more in the Suggestions thread. A nice fix for this would be to give ships individual inventory, although without major changes to the interface it would make inventory management and selling/buying inventory annoying.

BillyRueben

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2012, 08:21:54 PM »

At the moment, players can choose what they want to scrap out of their inventory if they are over their cargo/fuel/personnel capacity. Having the game do it for you would probably lead to some less than favorable results. And each ship having their own inventory would be a micromanagement nightmare for little to no gameplay value.
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kazi

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2012, 01:25:45 PM »

Perhaps if something occurs and you go really far over the cargo limit, a screen would popup and warn you to ditch some stuff or there'd be an accident. The issue I had was that the accident happened so fast that I didn't even realize what was going on before it happened.
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Hyph_K31

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2012, 01:41:43 PM »

With regards to the caps lock, that is already supported. it is literally just a case of mapping it in the controls. But i would say this is something that should be default.
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Faiter119

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2012, 02:07:18 PM »

With regards to the caps lock, that is already supported. it is literally just a case of mapping it in the controls. But i would say this is something that should be default.

Im pretty sure that only works with a Mac.
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Doom101

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #7 on: November 30, 2012, 06:15:42 PM »

Perhaps if something occurs and you go really far over the cargo limit, a screen would popup and warn you to ditch some stuff or there'd be an accident. The issue I had was that the accident happened so fast that I didn't even realize what was going on before it happened.

perhaps a new level of accident risk above extreme IE imminent or something. it can only happen when you leave a paused screen and would ordinarily resume the game. and it alerts you to the fact that if you unpause your actions will have instantly caused an accident and gives you two options, resume the game normally despite the warning, OR go back to your inventory ( or if your docked with a station go back to the concourse)

obviously if you resume the game you instantly get an accident hence the level being Imminent.
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xenoargh

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #8 on: November 30, 2012, 07:53:35 PM »

Quote
When you lose a ship, you somehow get to keep all of it's cargo, people, and fuel. While this might seem useful at first to the player, it causes a couple problems. Example: I had a bad autoresolve experience in iron mode and lost virtually my entire fleet except for one Vigilance. Unfortunately, I still had all of my supplies and the accident risk instantly went to extreme. I had an 'major accident' occur literally 10 seconds after the battle ended and lost my last ship. To avoid this in the future, the player should lose all crew, cargo, and fuel upon losing a ship (to the point where the remaining ships can hold everything without an accident).
I'm in agreement with this 100%.  There's nothing wrong with the encumbrance system per se, but how hitting the limit is handled really should get revisited at some point.

It's realistic; those ships holding cargo are dead, you delegated where that cargo was stored and it's not under your direct control what's gone, and frankly, it's just part of war, just like losing credits if you lose your entire fleet.

I think it greatly enhances the experience if bad planning and bad luck happen; in the real world, we don't get control over outcomes when dealing with complex events, and this is one of those areas where a game-design issue can be solved best by simply treating it like the real world.

As a kinder, gentler alternative, it could be made so that after a battle where you've lost ships but are victorious, some (but not all) of the cargo is "floating around" and can be picked up.  Then you might get that Tachyon Lance back, but you have the conscious choice and plenty of warning that you're going over your storage limits. 

That said, the current system is both unintuitive and unrealistic; you get to keep all your loot, but that loot can immediately (and randomly) do far more damage than losing your stuff can.   I had one early fight where I lost a cargo ship, had only a Lasher left and 200 cargo, immediately had an accident that took the Lasher out and destroyed my fleet, putting me back to square one.  That's a lot more un-fun than losing some juicy loot, which is something that I expect after years of playing RPGs- that's a major setback, akin to having a level reset in a roguelike due to random chance. 
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Alex

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #9 on: November 30, 2012, 08:16:52 PM »

I don't think randomly losing cargo is good because you could end up with a situation where you lose something very valuable because of losing a frigate you considered "expendable". Yeah, you delegated where the cargo goes, but you wouldn't have delegated *that*. In going for this "realistic" loss, you end up doing something that's also not "realistic" - and is detrimental to the player.

The alternative is to have some kind of system for assigning cargo to ships (something I'd rather avoid altogether). Or to have some rather hard-to-intuit rule about only losing cargo when your losses exceed a certain amount, or some such. I'm not saying it couldn't be made to work, though.

On the other hand, you have the current system. Conceptually, it still represents recovering cargo crates after the battle. It's also quite safe for the player once they realize how it works - which is probably going to take about one accident.


As a kinder, gentler alternative, it could be made so that after a battle where you've lost ships but are victorious, some (but not all) of the cargo is "floating around" and can be picked up.  Then you might get that Tachyon Lance back, but you have the conscious choice and plenty of warning that you're going over your storage limits. 

Hmm. I can see that working (though the "not all" part could be troublesome, for aforementioned reasons). I don't think it's much different from the way it works now, though. In the current case, the cost of learning is a single accident. Under this system, you might not realize you lost something important until a while afterwards. Depending on how the UI was handled. But then, the UI could be handled differently in this case, too.

But, again, I can see that working - as long as you physically can't just randomly lose something critical. Could be nice in conjunction with something like lootable post-battle debris floating about, if that ends up being a feature (which it may, or may not).
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K-64

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #10 on: November 30, 2012, 08:31:35 PM »

Is it at all possible to have a system that divides the supplies between ships in a default manner, but also allowing players to fine-tune the cargo delegation if they so choose? Just so that the choice is there, but not doing so doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get screwed over
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xenoargh

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #11 on: November 30, 2012, 09:16:54 PM »

Maybe the best short-term solution is an audio cue.  Visual cues get missed a lot when we're eager to get out of the battle and back to playing, but an "ahooga" if you hit the Loot screen and are over cap might do wonders here.  

Long term?  I'd really prefer hard caps that forced me to get rid of stuff before moving on, as an alternative to random loss (although me, personally, I'd rather see random loss) and a Torchlight-like system where excess stuff can be sent off to be sold without me having to gallivant around the solar system.

I do think it's important that losing ships can lose us cargo, though, and tbh, I really feel like if you've got something so valuable you're afraid to lose it that way, you should strap it to a hull or put it into storage.  I know that this would take the pain of loss too high for people just playing Vanilla right now, where you may not ever find that 6th Tachyon Lance you needed for your Heg-Kill fleet combo, etc., but in the future, when there are many worlds and resources aren't really a cap, I think it matters little, unless you introduce the concept of special items ala Diablo...
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Gothars

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Re: A couple issues with the current build.
« Reply #12 on: December 01, 2012, 04:02:59 AM »

Why not only subject easy to replace things to automatic losses? You could limit it to supplies, fuel and and later trade goods.
Like your supplies coincidentally always contain the exact thing you need at the moment, your lost ships could also coincidentally never contain your valuable stuff.

But more important, we need proper warning mechanisms. I will open a new topic for that.
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