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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: Expanded Battles  (Read 107417 times)

Cyan Leader

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #30 on: October 02, 2015, 04:01:42 PM »

Wow, this is an amazing addition and it will completely change how decisions are made in the early game and when assaulting fleets nearby faction planets and all. I was and well still am a bit skeptical on all the other changes from this patch, mainly everything related to the transponders or what not, but this makes me hyped without a shadow of doubt.

Hope you can get to those "long term late-game plans" you mentioned, the game really needs something there.

Well, on the bright side, that'd make those issues easier to spot and fix. I'm cautiously optimistic about the new and improved ship AI, though :)

Oh? I guess this goes in hand with the officers feature too, right? I saw some portraits belonging to third party fleets in those screenshots, are NPC fleets finally using officers? IIRC you mentioned they weren't using it yet back in that blog post.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #31 on: October 02, 2015, 04:04:36 PM »

I've mentioned it in a suggestion many moons ago, but the way I would handle campaign time passing for player battles would be to have it pass between when they choose their option (battle, retreat, etc.) and when the battle, escape battle, etc. actually begin.

You click battle, a day or two goes by, giving nearby fleets a chance to join, then the battle happens instantly campaign-time-wise.
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Adraius

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #32 on: October 02, 2015, 04:04:39 PM »

If both fleets are hostile to the player, will the player be prevented from engaging until the fight is broken up?
^ Good question about third party joiners above - can we swoop in and kill everyone?  Similarly, will there be repercussions for destroying allied forces in battle?  We don't want to see people fighting alongside their "allies", then ruthlessly backstabbing them without consequence.

(also, please let this give us a rep boost when we assist a faction!)

I see great advantages in this for people running carrier/fighter heavy fleets, and more generally for people willing to deploy a bunch of low-logistical-profile ships and hug the beacons well behind the front lines.

Last thing: do AI fleets consider the strength of nearby fleets when deciding to initiate combat?  If so, several small fleets could gang up on large ones.  They probably shouldn't consider the player fleet, though - sometimes the player will be just passing through and not willing to lend a hand.  Also, I could see players 'joining battle with allies', only to let them deploy first and get horribly murdered before deploying in force. =P
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 04:07:49 PM by Adraius »
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ArkAngel

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #33 on: October 02, 2015, 04:08:06 PM »

I think my favorite thing, is that on an escort mission, You now have ample opportunity to protect the fleet in combat.
I do have a small concern though. What's stopping pirate fleets from over-estimating and attacking a small trade fleet, and then having several hegemony patrols crush it merclessly?
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LazyWizard

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #34 on: October 02, 2015, 04:21:38 PM »

For situations like the above maybe there could be a "scramble fleet" option at the start of combat that costs a ton of CR/autodeploys everything but allows us to fight just the original fleet, no allies or enemy support.

Hmm, maybe. On the other hand, this is a "get out of jail for (not) free" card, where there's already an option to do that where you just play out the escape. This feels like yeah, it'd add a choice, but it's a muddy choice because the two options feel similar.

Hmm, retreat is "I can't win this, so I have to escape with as much of my fleet as I can", whereas I would see scrambling as "I can only win against the foe I'm currently facing, and am willing to fight them at a disadvantage to do so before their allies arrive". Retreating would be best for fast fleets, scrambling for powerful ones. Right now a slow fleet is dead if they have to run from an opponent they can't defeat, and that will become more common once fleets can gang up on you. This would give them an option that allows survival.

If scrambling your fleet also blocks retreat for your side (lore-wise it could be explained as attempting to punch through the enemy fleet before their allies arrive, so you're effectively surrounded once battle starts), the two options become even more distinct.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 04:26:47 PM by LazyWizard »
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Psiyon

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #35 on: October 02, 2015, 04:31:13 PM »

This looks really awesome.

I'm going to be that guy and ask: What happens if I start shooting at allied ships in combat? Will they turn hostile to your fleet, or will they take it like a champ, just like ships from the player's fleet?
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Gothars

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #36 on: October 02, 2015, 05:06:13 PM »

Awesome. Awesome!

Will enemy fleets retreat independently, so that it makes sense to concentrate your efforts against one enemy first until they retreat? Can you even distinguish enemy forces?


Can my fighters use allied carriers and vise versa?

What about objective bonuses, are they shared or is there internal competition?

Can I issue escort orders on allied ships?


Thanks for your answers :)

The "supporting" fleets don't actually move from where they are, they just need to be within a certain (relatively short) range to join in.

Mh, if that range isn't visible it might lead to situations were you thought your target fleet was out of range. And then get frustrated when you  find yourself unexpectedly in an unwinnable fight.
An indicator which fleets are in range of a set target might help. Or the delayed entry thing.


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TheDTYP

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #37 on: October 02, 2015, 05:20:29 PM »

This. Is going. To be. So. Fun.

So... I'd imagine there is some kind of rep hit if you decide to retreat from battle while your allies are engaged? I wouldn't imagine they'd like you helping out just to duck out and let them get demolished.

And what's the situation with friendly fire? My allies wouldn't turn and start shooting at me if one of my stray bullets hit one of their ships... would they...?

And one more thing, someone above said something about escort missions. Are there now more missions than just the procurement contract now or nah?
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 05:30:52 PM by TheDTYP »
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Alex

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #38 on: October 02, 2015, 05:44:26 PM »

It seems oddly assymetrical that NPC fleets can't join in progress while the player can. Maybe it could be done without needing to pass time in campaign (which is obviously an enourmous can of worms)? Have fleets that are far away but still close enough to interact arrive with a delay, maybe some fleets delay engaging until a later point in the battle (see if it's going their way before commiting). I think it would make things more interesting and intuitive, and it seems a lot more doable than running the campaign in the background.
I'm happy with the current conceit to keeping the cans o' worms manageable, but I'd also like to see this if possible.

Also, rounds of a full day sound rather imprecise when battles are supposed to take "a couple of days or so" - any chance they could be updated every half-day?

Yeah, I (probably not unexpectedly) considered doing something like this. Didn't go for it just due to the complexity it adds.

I do see the potential for some nice dramatic moments here, though - can you take out that merchant convoy before the Hegemony patrol shows up? But then, just trying to think through how that would work, it gets weird. Would the merchant actually engage you if, say, the patrol wouldn't show for 3 minutes? The "right" move would be to engage and then deploy nothing until 3 minutes elapse, so some mechanics would need to be in place to prevent that. What if the merchant decides to disengage instead, where would reinforcing ships come from? Probably the top border, but that's not a handled case right now. There's more stuff like that that I'm not thinking through right now; as much as it seems interesting I think it also gets really, really messy in trying to connect up to all the different ways battles can end.


Sorry if this was asked/answered and I glazed over it in excitement, presumably the relations of the player and the factions have a part in who the player can join, I assume this will also positively effect the relations of the faction we team up with?

Yep, with the gain depending on how much of a help you were - i.e. helping a patrol stomp a single Hound isn't going to give you much reputation.

If both fleets are hostile to the player, will the player be prevented from engaging until the fight is broken up?

Right.



I am so hyped for this. Will we be able to see the orders our allies have issued? I assume we benefit from them holding nav buoys etc., but it'd be nice to know which ones they're going for.

You don't see their orders - it'd be hard to make that look right when you can give the same orders, or different orders on the same objective. But you can tell where they're going based on, well, where they're going. It's pretty clear right from the start.

I also guess we can only repair/rearm fighters on our own carriers?

Correct! (Man, all the fun edge cases of having allies.)


Also, what happens if the side with the most FP changes over the course of a battle- say, you arrive late and the original Hegemony trade fleet gets its teeth kicked in but your ships are still in fighting condition. Do you seize control of the engagement and have the option to continue (because you know you can outfly the remaining enemy despite their FP advantage), or will the Hegemony AI decide to retreat and force you to come along?

If you join a battle, your allies will make the decisions as long as they exist. If all your allies are destroyed, then it goes back to you making decisions (all the fun edge cases!). It's like, if the allies only have freighters left, *they* want to get away, and they don't know for certain what you'll do.


Hope you can get to those "long term late-game plans" you mentioned, the game really needs something there.

Same, it definitely does. After 0.7a (and the hotfix) dev should be much more focused on that. Just need all (or, at least, most) of the building blocks in place, and they're getting there.


Oh? I guess this goes in hand with the officers feature too, right? I saw some portraits belonging to third party fleets in those screenshots, are NPC fleets finally using officers? IIRC you mentioned they weren't using it yet back in that blog post.

Yeah, NPC fleets have officers now! Quantity and quality varies by faction, with larger fleets generally having more and higher level officers.


I've mentioned it in a suggestion many moons ago, but the way I would handle campaign time passing for player battles would be to have it pass between when they choose their option (battle, retreat, etc.) and when the battle, escape battle, etc. actually begin.

You click battle, a day or two goes by, giving nearby fleets a chance to join, then the battle happens instantly campaign-time-wise.

Yeah, thought about that. "A day or two" is 10-20 seconds, which imo is far too long in terms of game flow. Could fast forward it but there's a limit to how much the engine can do that. Plus it just gets a lot messier in terms of implementation; think the current customs inspection "flow" which (rightly) has generated some, ah, complaints. And which is quite a pain code-wise.



^ Good question about third party joiners above - can we swoop in and kill everyone?  Similarly, will there be repercussions for destroying allied forces in battle?  We don't want to see people fighting alongside their "allies", then ruthlessly backstabbing them without consequence.

You can't join unless you're hostile to only one side and/or friendly to to only one side.


(also, please let this give us a rep boost when we assist a faction!)

Right, it does that.

Last thing: do AI fleets consider the strength of nearby fleets when deciding to initiate combat?  If so, several small fleets could gang up on large ones.  They probably shouldn't consider the player fleet, though - sometimes the player will be just passing through and not willing to lend a hand.  Also, I could see players 'joining battle with allies', only to let them deploy first and get horribly murdered before deploying in force. =P

They do consider nearby allied strength, yes.


I do have a small concern though. What's stopping pirate fleets from over-estimating and attacking a small trade fleet, and then having several hegemony patrols crush it merclessly?

Nobody said being a pirate is a safe occupation :)

Hmm, retreat is "I can't win this, so I have to escape with as much of my fleet as I can", whereas I would see scrambling as "I can only win against the foe I'm currently facing, and am willing to fight them at a disadvantage to do so before their allies arrive". Retreating would be best for fast fleets, scrambling for powerful ones. Right now a slow fleet is dead if they have to run from an opponent they can't defeat, and that will become more common once fleets can gang up on you. This would give them an option that allows survival.

If scrambling your fleet also blocks retreat for your side (lore-wise it could be explained as attempting to punch through the enemy fleet before their allies arrive, so you're effectively surrounded once battle starts), the two options become even more distinct.

Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. I like the "can't retreat" bit, also. But it does also mean that you have a way of ignoring all that business about nearby fleets being able to support each other, for a price - but "price" tends to mean less in the later game. All in all, I think I'd like to see how a base version of this plays out before adding more onto it.


I'm going to be that guy and ask: What happens if I start shooting at allied ships in combat? Will they turn hostile to your fleet, or will they take it like a champ, just like ships from the player's fleet?
And what's the situation with friendly fire? My allies wouldn't turn and start shooting at me if one of my stray bullets hit one of their ships... would they...?


Right now, nothing. Of note: salvage and bounty split is based on fleet sizes pre combat, so at least that's not a reason to shove anti-matter blasters up a firendly ship's tailpipe.


Will enemy fleets retreat independently, so that it makes sense to concentrate your efforts against one enemy first until they retreat? Can you even distinguish enemy forces?

They don't, and you can't.

Can my fighters use allied carriers and vise versa?

Can't.

What about objective bonuses, are they shared or is there internal competition?

Can I issue escort orders on allied ships?

*checks* Apparently, yes :)

Mh, if that range isn't visible it might lead to situations were you thought your target fleet was out of range. And then get frustrated when you  find yourself unexpectedly in an unwinnable fight.
An indicator which fleets are in range of a set target might help. Or the delayed entry thing.

Hmm, yeah. Maybe just something that briefly shows the range when you click on the target - it's never going to be a sure thing whether someone will join or not, as whether they're just in or out of range could change last second, but some way of showing that range might be a good thing. You do, of course, have the option to try to disengage in these circumstances, and in some sense it's a punishment for cutting things too close, but, right.


So... I'd imagine there is some kind of rep hit if you decide to retreat from battle while your allies are engaged? I wouldn't imagine they'd like you helping out just to duck out and let them get demolished.

There's no penalty right now. Aside from losing CR and not getting any salvage. I still need to work through the case where you engage, allies join in, and then you leave first, though.


And one more thing, someone above said something about escort missions. Are there now more missions than just the procurement contract now or nah?

Not at the moment.
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Uomoz

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #39 on: October 02, 2015, 05:44:57 PM »

For situations like the above maybe there could be a "scramble fleet" option at the start of combat that costs a ton of CR/autodeploys everything but allows us to fight just the original fleet, no allies or enemy support.

Hmm, maybe. On the other hand, this is a "get out of jail for (not) free" card, where there's already an option to do that where you just play out the escape. This feels like yeah, it'd add a choice, but it's a muddy choice because the two options feel similar.

Hmm, retreat is "I can't win this, so I have to escape with as much of my fleet as I can", whereas I would see scrambling as "I can only win against the foe I'm currently facing, and am willing to fight them at a disadvantage to do so before their allies arrive". Retreating would be best for fast fleets, scrambling for powerful ones. Right now a slow fleet is dead if they have to run from an opponent they can't defeat, and that will become more common once fleets can gang up on you. This would give them an option that allows survival.

If scrambling your fleet also blocks retreat for your side (lore-wise it could be explained as attempting to punch through the enemy fleet before their allies arrive, so you're effectively surrounded once battle starts), the two options become even more distinct.

On the other hand one can say that giving a big player-owned fleet an actual threat to think of in the late game is actually a good idea!
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StarSchulz

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #40 on: October 02, 2015, 06:49:13 PM »

is this the biggest update we have ever had?

10/10

Cyan Leader

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #41 on: October 02, 2015, 07:02:00 PM »

If both fleets are hostile to the player, will the player be prevented from engaging until the fight is broken up?

Right.

This is a bit disappointing, I was looking forward to three-way battles. A scenario in which both enemy fleets by themselves would be too much for you but if you sneak into their battle and try to pick them off one at a time while they are locked in battle with each other sounds very appealing to me.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 07:11:30 PM by Cyan Leader »
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Histidine

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #42 on: October 02, 2015, 07:02:56 PM »

Nuts 'n bolts questions:
- How do allies interact with the FP/logistics limit for ships in a single battle? Do they share a common cap?
- Say an NPC-NPC battle takes two days. Joining at 1.99 days is functionally the same as joining right at the start, I take it?

Unrelated thought: Officer portrait above the flux/CR bar on every ship looks like clutter, at least judging from the screenshot. They tell you there's an officer on board, but unless you remember which face is which officer it doesn't seem like they communicate more info than that (like the key "what combat skills will this ship have?")
Could ships instead get a "has officer" icon, with the portrait only on targeted ships and in places like the ship info card?
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 07:04:36 PM by Histidine »
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MShadowy

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #43 on: October 02, 2015, 07:08:51 PM »

This is a bit disappointing, I was looking forward to three-way battles. A scenario in which both enemy fleets by themselves would be too much for you but if you sneak into their battle and try to pick them off one at a time while they are locked in battle with each other sounds very appealing to me.

Unfortunately it might be prevented by practical concerns regarding the AI.  Modding experiments with adding additional sides resulted in some issues, though it's been long enough that about the only thing I recall was the side 3 ship, which if memory serves was hoped to be neutral, was instead hostile to everything.  This may no longer be the case given the modifications to the AI this change would have necessitated, but it may still be beyond what the game can handle.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Expanded Battles
« Reply #44 on: October 02, 2015, 07:12:12 PM »

This is a bit disappointing, I was looking forward to three-way battles. A scenario in which both enemy fleets by themselves would be too much for you but if you sneak into their battle and try to pick them off one at a time while they are locked in battle with each other sounds very appealing to me.

Unfortunately it might be prevented by practical concerns regarding the AI.  Modding experiments with adding additional sides resulted in some issues, though it's been long enough that about the only thing I recall was the side 3 ship, which if memory serves was hoped to be neutral, was instead hostile to everything.  This may no longer be the case given the modifications to the AI this change would have necessitated, but it may still be beyond what the game can handle.

It just occurred to me, since I'm assuming (and you confirmed) three-way battles would be a pain code-wise, what if we could choose to assist one of the hostile factions? As in after you click their battle you have a choice to [Assist X Faction]  [Assist Y Faction]
Then they'd be neutral to you in that battle I guess but turn hostile if you open fire to any of their ships. It'd make for a nice way to get some rep points with hostile factions since getting those are incredibly difficult and perhaps this might be a good new option. Of course we could also have some limitations, like not being able to assists fleets with the upper hand or having a hate level above "hostile" that would deny even actions like this.
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