Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 11:27:45 AM

Title: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 11:27:45 AM
So i went into a battle and found I could only field 100 points worth of ships, while the enemy fielded easily between 300-400 points of ships.

Why am I restricted to  two and four  vessels while the enemy can literally fill the map with ships? This problem has persisted with or without mods to boot.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Igncom1 on December 01, 2020, 11:34:43 AM
What your fleet deployment number set at in settings?
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 11:37:56 AM
It was set at the default 300, but it doesn't explain why I could deploy 100 points of ships and the enemy deploy 5000.

Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Igncom1 on December 01, 2020, 11:40:43 AM
They can't deploy 5000 unless a mod has changed it.

I'm guessing your fleet is outnumbered on the map screen? If the enemy fleet has more deployment points then yours they get a greater share of the total deployment point pool then you. But also note some ships like luddic path and pirate ships are cheaper then other types of ship, which lets them deploy more of them in battle because they are generally inferior in quality.

Who are you fighting?
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Goumindong on December 01, 2020, 11:42:58 AM
Deployment is scaled based on the relative fleet sizes. Up to 50%. So if the base is 300 (150 each) and you’re heavily outnumbered they can deploy up to 200 while you will be limited to 100. This is a cap though, you cannot be outnumbered more than 2 to 1 on the combat map unless you fail to deploy your max
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: SCC on December 01, 2020, 12:05:11 PM
Are you fighting with a station on your side?
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: IonDragonX on December 01, 2020, 12:09:12 PM
Goumindong is correct. Plus, the enemy regains deployment points as you destroy their fleet.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Alex on December 01, 2020, 12:16:26 PM
Deployment is scaled based on the relative fleet sizes. Up to 50%. So if the base is 300 (150 each) and you’re heavily outnumbered they can deploy up to 200 while you will be limited to 100. This is a cap though, you cannot be outnumbered more than 2 to 1 on the combat map unless you fail to deploy your max

Minor correction: it'd be 120 to 180.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 12:30:47 PM
Deployment is scaled based on the relative fleet sizes. Up to 50%. So if the base is 300 (150 each) and you’re heavily outnumbered they can deploy up to 200 while you will be limited to 100. This is a cap though, you cannot be outnumbered more than 2 to 1 on the combat map unless you fail to deploy your max

This is stupid. Why is there some magic barrier keeping the rest of my ships from entering the battle?  Especially when -I- am going to -THEM- for the fight!! THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.


Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Igncom1 on December 01, 2020, 12:53:32 PM
I think it's a performance thing really.

That and a reason to not just play with 30 capital ships.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 12:55:03 PM
So the argument is "Don't use your money, don't build big, don't keep those cool ships that you found drifting, ONLY PLAY WITH TINY STUFF BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU WON'T GET TO USE THEM!"

Sounds like this part of the game was designed for a Cuban dictator.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: intrinsic_parity on December 01, 2020, 12:56:38 PM
What battle size do you play on? You can increase battle size in the settings quite a bit, and more in the config file if you really want to.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Zelnik on December 01, 2020, 12:58:12 PM
I was playing at 300, didn't even know the setting was there. Hopefully now it won't be as bad.
 
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: Scorpixel on December 01, 2020, 02:06:08 PM
Deployment is scaled based on the relative fleet sizes. Up to 50%. So if the base is 300 (150 each) and you’re heavily outnumbered they can deploy up to 200 while you will be limited to 100. This is a cap though, you cannot be outnumbered more than 2 to 1 on the combat map unless you fail to deploy your max

This is stupid. Why is there some magic barrier keeping the rest of my ships from entering the battle?  Especially when -I- am going to -THEM- for the fight!! THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.
Turn the "problem" around:
Why is there some magic barrier keeping the rest of their ships from entering battle? Especially when the player is going to -THEM- for the fight!! THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.

Three reasons:
-Battles aren't fair, it's not everyone waiting for their turn in a line to fight another ship like in Pokémon.
-Balance, the battlefield isn't that large, and some ship doctrines would greatly benefit from covering a larger part of it, extending the battle line and reducing flanking opportunities. It also limit the dominance of high DP vessels, as it would be a no brainer to have full capital as long as ship limit based on number is a thing.
-Performance, battle size can be changed so that bigger fleets can clash in greater shares of their forces at the same time

If you get to deploy two more ships, the enemy gets three, AND it is technically unfair to the biggest of the two when greatly outnumbering the enemy, as there is a limit to deployment (dis)advantage, as explained above.
Would you complain if you were to engage a pitiful enemy fleet and got to send more ships than them?
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: SCC on December 01, 2020, 02:48:48 PM
The main reasons for battlesize are performance (even if you can run 50 vs 50 ship battles, not everyone else can) and the scale (at some point, the battle gets so huge that your personal impact is minimal. Great for some, less so for others), as far as I know. I think SS could get away with a bigger default battlesize, since players are more likely to notice low FPS in battles and check out options to remedy that, than think that they might be able to deploy more ships if they change game settings.
Title: Re: Massive problems with fleet deployment
Post by: xenoargh on December 01, 2020, 03:42:49 PM
SS chokes a single CPU's core trying 50 vs. 50 fights.

This is largely why I wrote Rebal; I, like the OP, wanted huge fights to be common.  There were a variety of things holding it back; everything from chunks of dead ships sitting around eating collision-check math to lots of weapons that (unnecessarily) check for friendly-fire problems to a variety of graphics internals that can probably be optimized or replaced with cheaper alternatives, but can't be changed from the outside.  SS is inherently CPU-heavy by design, basically, to make it as rich and graphically pretty as possible, but it all costs something.

Back when Vacuum was still a thing, I also made it possible to have giant enemy fleets; I haven't gotten around to doing anything about that for Rebal, because how that works changed a lot between versions, and I'm waiting for SS's economic internals to become stable. 

In the meantime... you can crank Battle Size to 10000 via a straightforward text-edit tweak to settings.json, allowing all sides to deploy everything they've got.  Be warned; you'll be a bit disappointed about how much things can scale on one CPU core.