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736

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 12, 2020, 08:30:52 PM »

Re: Weapons being billed as "will not shoot at fighters:

I'm sure you'll come up with more nuanced version but for me, if one rule was followed, I'd be very happy with such a tag.

*Any weapon that costs >300 flux/shot won't shoot at fighters.*

To be explicit: Mjolnir, Guass Cannon, Heavy Blaster, Plasma Cannon, Hypervelocity Driver, Hellbore, AM Blaster, Mining Blaster. (Heavy Mauler is about there, too, along with the Mk. IX. I'm not sure how you would look at high-flux beams like Ion Beam, HI Laser or, Tachyon Lance, but the Phase Lance is fine.) Outside of the Mjolnir, every other weapon is a high-damage, relatively slow-firing projectile that has little probability of hitting a particular fighter and would almost always be a Pyhrric victory even if it did.

My only concern is the number of weapons I listed: 1 Small, 2-4 Medium, 4-7 Large. Large Weapons have the easiest excuse not to target small/fast-moving targets but that does leave a lot of Large Weapons not firing at fighters, even if it does make gameplay sense.

I don't think heavy blasters projectiles are that slow.  I actually rely on auto-fire heavy blasters turrets on my SO Aurora builds to help swat fighters quickly.  I don't aim them, but I do back up at with plasma burn on, and fighters tend to fly straight at the Aurora, making them easy targets for the auto-fire turrets.

Similarly, if the fighters are as thick as flies, I want the AI Plasma Cannons firing since they have pass through and will hit multiple targets.   Hypervelocity drivers shots are fast and long range enough that I see them picking off bombers on attack runs or returning all the time.  Hellbore is probably slow enough you wouldn't want to risk a high deflection shot, but against a bombing run coming straight in, its fine.  Also, wasn't pass-through recently added to it as well?

And if a ship has sufficient flux dissipation to cover firing the weapon, why is it a bad idea to fire it?  An SO Aurora can be flux neutral firing 3 heavy blasters.  Why wouldn't you want to fire them in that case?  It doesn't harm your ship in any way when your shields are up - since that dissipation is going to waste anyways. I don't want my ship sitting there using only 1/10th of its soft flux dissipation firing PD weapons only while surrounded by fighters.

If the fighters are moving in a straight line towards or away, like bombers on an attack run against a capital ship, firing big guns can be a good idea with decent odds of hitting.

Certainly on most vanilla variants, flux dissipation doesn't equal or exceed flux generation, but on player designed ships, it can.  At which point such rules start to be detrimental rather than advantageous.

To be honest, if there was a section to weapons setup in addition to groupings that let a player customize target priority and willingness to fire in something like a matrix (i.e. 1,2,3,4 and never, split along missiles, fighters,ships for each weapon, like how we setup weapon groups) that would be really cool.  Although perhaps that is too much fiddling for vanilla.

In theory, is such a thing possible for a mod?  Not sure how well they can hook into the UI like that.  Given we already have a hull mod that makes PD weapons prioritize missiles over fighters, as well as make all small weapons prioritize missiles, I'm guessing it'd be possible under the hood, but making an easy to use interface is the hard part.

Then players who want to have plasma cannons fire at missiles with max priority, could.  And the players who never want plasma cannons to shoot at missiles or fighters could as well.  I mean, as a player, I'm using Plasma cannons all the time to shoot down reapers or atropos on my Odyssey.

737

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 12, 2020, 06:14:10 PM »

Don't know if doing this specifically is the best plan, but: If the hypothetical weapons that didn't autofire at fighters clearly said so on their stats card, that would make the behavior clearly-not-a-bug.

That's... a very good point. Yeah! I like this a lot, coming from sort of an in-fiction reason why it doesn't/can't do that, rather than being a purely an attempt to adjust the AI. So it stops being an AI thing and becomes an explicitly billed feature of the weapon.

I also wonder, is there design space for anti-massed fighter/missile spam weapons?  I mean, I only recently discovered the proximity charge launcher as being effective, and there's also flak, but it just doesn't stack the same way as fighters do.  You can't currently combine all the PD of the fleet in one place to handle a spike in fighters, but fighters can stack to focus all their fire power on one ship.  And due to flux mechanics, spike damage is much more powerful than sustained damage.

Remember, the player controlled spam fighter fleet is far more dangerous than the AI spam fighter fleet, since a player can call coordinated bombing runs which any individual ship can't survive.  They can pull back to a way point, gather strength, and then go again and take out another ship.

But what if the defending fleet could gather effectively an entire fleet's worth of PD in one spot?  I do know you've modified the Paladin to have an AoE component, which will be interesting to see, given it can shoot over allied ships to hit fighters on the other side.

If you do get enough AoE damage in one place that can last long enough, it is possible to bring down a swarm of sparks.  I remember doing something like that against a 12 Drover spark swarm in the simulator using an Onslaught XIV with hand picked Officer (Advanced Countermeasures, Armor Skills, Damage skills, Flux skill) + armor/flak focus on the ship itself.  With the magnified armor, it survived the first pass swarm and took out enough fighters along the way with its purely flak loadout, it eventually became immune to the uncoordinated return flights, and just slowly burn drived down each Drover.

So is there a place for a missile or maybe high tech energy weapon that chains between enemy fighters/missiles within a certain distance from each other like lightning, hitting each target only once, but then jumping to all targets within range of that target, and so on until all possible targets are exhausted?  A couple of these and sufficient density of fighters suddenly makes the damage spread to the entire swarm.  Below a certain density, it only hits a few and then runs out of range.  And against single wings, well, it only hits a single wing.  And against a ship, assuming its not bumping another ship, you get a single hit.  So now, you've got an anti-fighter weapon which fired from different directions on the swarm, hits all of them.  Potentially concentrating fire from multiple ships.

If there were some dedicated PD variant files that used such a weapon, and they showed up enough, they would give over concentrations of fighters some pause, at least in some engagements.

Not sure how easy or hard to script such a weapon, although it'd be a bit like ion damage jumping, but between fighters/ships instead of just on the ship.

^ In regards to player piloting balance vs player admiral balance: (Bit of a tiny derail but I think it's relevant to the balance discussion)

Not a derail at all.  The thread is a balance discussion, which includes AI and fighters, along with the Condor itself.

If you were using half bomber, half thunder Condors and had way more wins than I did, then I either unknowingly had other changes in my files I don't remember, or my Condors had one hell of a bad luck. I'll run some battles tomorrow and if they stay abysmal like that, then I'll have to reinstall my Starsector and check if that changes anything.

So I'm thinking you have had the Condors get unlucky, and I got the Condors to be lucky.

Fresh install, ran another 8 simulation.  Results are 2 wins, 6 losses (8 total matches) for the Condors (broadsword/perdition x3, thunder x3).

If I tally up all matches run, yours and mine, I get 7 wins, 1 tie, and 20 losses (out of 28 matches).  So if the Condors have a true underlying 25% chance to win, getting 1 win in 12 trials has about (12 * 0.25*0.75^11 = 12.6% or so).  Not likely, but not crazy unlikely.  Call my test 4 wins,4 losses (70*0.25^4*0.75^4= 8.6%).  Again, unlikely, but not crazily so.

In any case, I don't think the Condors are doing as well as the Drovers with this setup now that we've got 28 samples.

738

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 12, 2020, 02:08:51 PM »

If you keep the map open and the game unpaused, you can see what admiral AI is doing. As I mentioned earlier, first it gives escort orders on cruisers, then dismisses those orders and orders assault on the objective, then dismisses that and only retreats individual ships. I don't think it's possible to give invisible orders, but I'm not so sure of it now.
The biggest benefit for me was that it acted sort of like the player, so I did not have to make any input myself.

Oh you're right.  Looking mid-game doesn't help, but clearly right at the beginning there are some escort orders.

My mods list when doing this is: Fleet Tester 1.0
LazyLib 2.4
MagicLib 0.27
ZZ GraphicsLib 1.4.1

I'll do a reinstall as well and see if it my results change signficantly.  It'd be bad if I've got an unintentional edits somewhere that is affecting results.

739

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 12, 2020, 12:45:43 PM »

I'm not sure how to tell what the admiral AI is doing.  At the beginning of the AI Battles mod or Fleet tester with the updated jar, there are some initial orders to claim nav/sensor bouys.  That shows up on the map layer.  Then the only other orders I see on the map layer are retreat orders.  The local ship AI is clearly assigning itself to escort though (I've seen drovers follow other ships that are retreating to the edge of the map, then once they retreat, head back to the fight).  And generally in the initial clash, most of the bombers go after the same ship, but then again, that might just have been the first ship seen, or they all had the same selection criteria at the beginning of the fight, so it tends to make them select a single target.

And all I can say is random AI is random.  Well, and steady AI is really, really good at staying alive, with the side effect of not going for the kill in a lot of situations.  Which to be fair, if you're actually playing the game, generally what you want out of your standard AI.  The fact that these fights are going to CR, frigates and destroyers are hitting 0% with several different composition means things can't be too far out of balance.

Although it does makes me wonder if we're testing things the right way.  As it is right now, fleet composition in terms PPT is arguably more important than base ship effectiveness.  A few more cruisers and a few less destroyers and you'll have a significant advantage at the end.  The other thing is, the game isn't intended to be balanced AI vs AI.  Its intended to be player vs AI, and provide a fun and interesting challenge.  A player thrown into the mix will make fights go much shorter, at which point PPT doesn't matter as much.

It also begs the question, of which player's balance?  Someone just piloting their ship and ignoring the AI is going to have different performance from one that switches to the map layer and issues appropriate orders mid-battle.  Keeping your carriers together and having them send a bomber wave at a target you know is going to be high flux in 10-20 seconds, is going to see different effectiveness.  We also know at some point there's a transition where you have so many fighters on your side, the AI can't handle it optimally.

So anyways, I did a bunch of broadsword/peridition +2x thunder setups.  Both Condor and Drover.

I'm including in the spoiler tags the setup files I'm using for the condor fights, just in case someone can spot a mistake.  The Venture_Pulse is just a Venture_Balanced with a Pulse Laser instead of mining blaster.   I did make a mistake on the first 2 Drover fights, and gave them 3x broadsword/peridition and 3x Thunders.  Anyways, I include this because I've got fairly different results from SCC.

Condor fights:
8 matches, 4 wins for the Condors, 3 losses, 1 tie (literally every ship was at 0% CR and retreating off the field - although Conquest did retreat while Onslaught had been destroyed...)

Drover fights
6 Drovers (3 Broad/Perdition, 3 Thunder)
1 win, 1 loss
5 Drovers (3 Broad/Perdition, 2 Thunder)
5 wins, 3 loss. 
Note: The 5 wins were all in a row, and the 3 losses were all in a row at the end - so it was looking like 5/5 at the beginning of testing and I was very confused about why drovers with thunders were so much better than broadsword/dagger).

I have been running some of these matches 2 at a time (two instances of starsector running) to speed up testing, but I don't think that should matter?

Anyways, thunders are better than I had traditionally given them credit for, at least in a AI vs AI setup.  I'm not seeing statistically significant differences between 5 Drover fleets and 6 Condor fleets, at least with this limited testing.  Again, it really is vagary of the AI.   I mean, I've seen the Onslaught destroy the Omen during the first few moments of enemy contact, when they wanted to go in opposite directions and the omen crashed into the Onslaught with its shields down.  Sometimes a destroyer will zoom ahead, flux up, and then the bombers come in.  Some times, the bombers slit their attention on two different ships at the beginning of the fight, running up flux, but not securing a kill.

I'm tempted to switch over to a new scenerio, with superior enemy forces, and seeing how long the carrier fleet lasts.  Probably something like a reckless SO Luddic fleet 180 DP versus 120 DP.  And then see how long the fleet lasts and how much they kill.  That I'm willing to bet is going to show case the Drover's advantages.

player0_fleet.csv

Spoiler

#personality: The captain's personality. Can be "timid", "cautious", "steady", "aggressive", "reckless".
#flagship: boolean to set the flagship of the fleet
#DO NOT RENAME THIS FILE, DO NOT CHANGE THE TOP LINE.
1,conquest_Elite,steady,false
2,eagle_Assault,steady,false
3,venture_Pulse,steady,false
4,enforcer_Elite,steady,false
5,enforcer_Elite,steady,false
6,hammerhead_Balanced,steady,false
7,centurion_Assault,steady,false
8,centurion_Assault,steady,false
9,wolf_Assault,steady,false
10,wolf_Assault,steady,false
#11,drover_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
#12,drover_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
#13,drover_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
#14,drover_Thunder_Harpoon,steady,false
#15,drover_Thunder_Harpoon,steady,false
11,condor_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
12,condor_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
13,condor_Broad_Perd_Harpoon,steady,false
14,condor_Thunder_Harpoon,steady,false
15,condor_Thunder_Harpoon,steady,false
16,condor_Thunder_Harpoon,steady,false

[close]

player1_fleet.csv

Spoiler

#personality: The captain's personality. Can be "timid", "cautious", "steady", "aggressive", "reckless".
#flagship: boolean to set the flagship of the fleet
#DO NOT RENAME THIS FILE, DO NOT CHANGE THE TOP LINE.
1,onslaught_Standard,steady,false
2,eagle_Balanced,steady,false
3,falcon_Attack,steady,false
4,heron_Strike,steady,false
5,mora_Strike,steady,false
6,condor_Support,steady,false
7,drover_Starting,steady,false
8,medusa_Attack,steady,false
9,sunder_CS,steady,false
10,shrike_p_Attack,steady,false
11,shrike_p_Attack,steady,false
12,tempest_Attack,steady,false
13,omen_PD,steady,false
14,lasher_Assault,steady,false
15,wolf_Strike,steady,false

[close]

drover_Thunder_Harpoon.variant

Spoiler

{
    "displayName": "Strike",
    "fluxCapacitors": 3,
    "fluxVents": 0,
    "goalVariant": true,
    "hullId": "condor",
    "hullMods": ["expanded_deck_crew"],
    "permaMods": [],
    "variantId": "condor_Thunder_Harpoon",
    "weaponGroups": [
        {
            "autofire": true,
            "mode": "LINKED",
            "weapons": {
                "WS 001": "vulcan",
                "WS 002": "vulcan"
            }
        },
        {
            "autofire": false,
            "mode": "LINKED",
            "weapons": {"WS 003": "harpoonpod"}
        }
    ],
    "wings": [
        "thunder_wing",
        "thunder_wing"
    ]
}

[close]

condor_Broad_Perd_Harpoon.variant

Spoiler

{
    "displayName": "Strike",
    "fluxCapacitors": 0,
    "fluxVents": 0,
    "goalVariant": true,
    "hullId": "condor",
    "hullMods": ["expanded_deck_crew"],
    "permaMods": [],
    "variantId": "condor_Broad_Perd_Harpoon",
    "weaponGroups": [
        {
            "autofire": true,
            "mode": "LINKED",
            "weapons": {"WS 001": "vulcan"}
        },
        {
            "autofire": false,
            "mode": "LINKED",
            "weapons": {"WS 003": "harpoonpod"}
        }
    ],
    "wings": [
        "broadsword_wing",
        "perdition_wing"
    ]
}

[close]

740

General Discussion / Re: What 'weapon recoil' does in this game??

« on: July 12, 2020, 12:21:20 PM »

Some weapons, but not all, have a cone of fire.  When you shoot them, the shot can end up anywhere within that cone, randomly.  The longer you fire in rapid succession, the larger the cone of fire becomes, and the more spread out your shots become.  This is the recoil.  If you stop firing for a few moments, the cone will shrink back down to its original size.

741

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 11, 2020, 02:33:19 PM »

So I've got the fleet tester mod with admiral AI setup, and running and its basically producing the same results as the AI Battles mod (which was a tournament mod).

This is again using SCC's suggested line up.

Anyways, so before with AI Battles mod: 3 wins out of 5 matches for Condors
With Fleet Tester + Admiral AI .jar: 3 wins out of 5 matches for Condors

This again is with 60 DP of "Broadsword/Dagger/Reaper/2x Vulcan/Expanded Deck Crew/rest into caps" Condor, to match up against the Drover setup.

So overall, 6/10, which at this sample size is pretty indistinguishable from the Drover victory odds using Broadswords and Daggers as well.

So I submit fighter selection has a far greater effect than, say filling the medium missile slot on a Condor.  Also, PPT actually plays a huge part in these fights.  Generally the destroyers are at 0% CR by the end, and any cruisers are in critical malfunction territory at the end.

Although, there was one perfect win for the Condors, no losses and only 3 retreats.  Such is the randomness of AI.

So next up is the Thunder x2/Broadsword + Peridition Drover tests to confirm its more an issue of fighter selection rather than base ship.

742

General Discussion / Re: Question about fleet size

« on: July 11, 2020, 12:16:16 PM »

Quick question though : surveying planets to choose where to settle, i didn't know that some colony gave you chips you can sell to factions... does this mean that the faction will try to settle there (if i sell them the info ?)

Thanks again everyone !

Unless you're playing a mod that changes things, the vanilla factions don't expand, and even in the mods where they do expand, I don't believe the survey data chips matter.  Pretty sure they stack in inventory, which means they're all identical and can't have planetary data associated with them because you can't tell which planet which chip came from in a stack.

They're purely there for you to sell for credits with no other effect on the game.

743

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 11, 2020, 10:58:54 AM »

So, using  the Battle AI mod, and the same fleet loadout as SCC, except using 6x Condor with broadsword/dagger/2x Vulcan/1x Reaper/Expanded Deck Crew/1 capacitor

I have the following statistic: 3 wins out of 5 matches for the Condors

However, SCC and Tartiflette have kindly shared the admiral AI .jar for the fleet tester mod on discord, so I've downloaded that and will do the same test with that mod, and see what things look like.

Edit: I only watched 2 of the battles, but I think the daggers are much better at securing small kills, compared to the periditoins. Especially in the first exchange.  The last fight I watched the medusa came in fast, got fluxed up, then 9 dagger atropos took it out after it had burned its teleport charges.  This happened in like the first 15-20 seconds of contact.  And as I discovered with my incorrect fleet testing, even a 1 frigate difference at the beginning can snowball significantly.

Edit 2: Another thought.  When I'm playing in the campaign, my default 2 fighter slot carrier are using either broadsword/daggers or longbow/daggers (or x2 Longbows on the Odyssey).  My 3 slot carriers will have broadsword/longbow/dagger.  I might switch up for a station attack, but those are my go to general setups when I don't know what I might be engaging.  Do thunders really bring that much to a fight compared to bombers (especially daggers).

744

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 11, 2020, 09:16:23 AM »

But why? Why wouldn't better carriers leverage the capability to use better fighters than others? We might have different priorities and I can change variants to what you consider better, but I won't run suboptimal variants just to make all carriers use the same fighters. Though Condors with reapers are probably a better choice against the fleet that I tested against (which I'll fix later).

I'd argue Condors can run Broadsword/Daggers, just the same as drovers, and still have anti-fighter guns for when the lone drover sends its fighter back in response.  Generally, my thinking is if a carrier isn't intended to be near the front line, anything not spent on fighters or anti-fighter defense (the only thing that can really reach you), is not an effective use of OP.  If for most of the fight the Condor isn't in range to use the Harpoons, they're dead weight.  I personally think the extra 3 OP spent on Daggers is worth it, especially with fast frigates and destroyers in the mix.  Certainly the mirror matches seem to indicate Condors didn't suffer by using Broadsword/Daggers compared to Condors.

In the mean time, I definitely think there is some kind of AI difference going on, that or allowing retreats is pulling fighters off the board faster than no retreats.  Testing so far with AI Battles version 6.4 gives the following:

Condors with Broadswords/Drovers: 3 for 3 victories.
Condors with Broadsword/Peridition (3) and Thunder x2 (3): 2 for 3 victories (although these are literally going to 0% Cr for everyone but the capitals, and the one loss literally only had the Onslaught on the field at the end).

I'll take a look on Discord to see if I can find Fleet tester with admiral AI.  Alternatively, I'll download the latest fleet tester and see how its results compare to yours.  I definitely want to understand why my results are hinting at a different outcome.

Edit: Just double checking my configuration, I realized I had left the wolf out of the enemy fleet, which means I'm not comparing apples to apples.  I'll need to rerun the tests with the appropriate enemy force.

745

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 11, 2020, 07:42:35 AM »

I tested using of Fleet Tester that included player-side admiral AI, so test results might be different than yours. However, the upside is that the testing is completely divorced from any skill in playing Starsector I have (except for making loadouts). It also meant that some ships were retreated off the battlefield, at discretion of admiral AI.

Thanks very much for the information.  I don't suppose you know if the Admiral AI you are using the same one used in the AI battles mods?  I used it assuming it'd been setup with at least some form of fleet AI for both sides.  Alternatively, I'd be interesting to know which mod to grab that has said Admiral AI.

Definitely interesting data points.  Where all individual ships set to steady AI?

Although I'm wondering how much its affected by fighter selection versus base ship.  I'd like to try this fleet setup, but with all 4 carrier types using the same ratios and types of fighters, to help eliminate other variations beyond the base ship.  Sounds like the flanking ability of the enemy fleet was superior compared to the player fleet seeing it had Medusa, 2x Shrike, Wolf, Tempest, Lasher, Omen.  Fast ships on the carrier side seems to be 2x Centurions and 2x Wolves, plus presumably the fighters.  In my tests, the flankers tended to get paired off since it was much more a mirror match.

So far I've run 1 match with the AI battles mod, using your setup, except using just broadsword/dagger/reaper/vulcan x2/expanded crew deck condors instead of Broadsword/Peridition or Thunder wings.  So far, 1 for 1 victory for the condors. I'm going to do a few more of those (to see if the Condors just got lucky), as well as Condor with broadsword/peridition + 2x Thunders and see how it does for baseline comparison with identical testing mod.  Might reveal AI is doing a better job of ordering coordinated fighter strikes or something.  And then I'd like to see how the Drovers do with Broad/Peridition + 2x Thunder.

746

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 11, 2020, 05:50:18 AM »

So what I've learned from all of this is that fighter superiority is even more important that I thought originally. I knew that it's good to have a carrier or two in your fleet just to help with those pesky frigates or just pure distraction, but this, this is just wrong. I wonder how a fleet full of Converted Hangars would perform vs just the ''usual builds'' (I know it's not the thread for this, I'm just thinking out loud). So yeah long story short, fighters are too strong and AI is too dumb vs fighters.

Well, I wouldn't say it is superiority.  Its more like, concentration on target.

Here's some more data to throw out there.

I only did one run of each of the following so far.

60 DP gunship core + 6x Condor
Condor with Broadsword, Dagger, Reaper, 2x Vulcan, Expanded Deck crew, rest in caps

vs

60 DP gunship core + 3x Heron (Cruiser class carrier)
Broadsword, 2x Dagger, Expanded Deck crew, x3 PD Laser, x1 Flak, 20 Caps, 1 vent

Very clean Heron victory, lost Wolf, Lasher, but it did not go to time unlike nearly all the other fights.  Coordinated bombers were taking out ships in like 1 to 2 passes.
Heron also seems to have much better timing on using its ability.

In this case, the Condors have 6x Broadsword and 6x Daggers, but are losing to 3x Broadsword + 6x Daggers (admittedly with the ability to burst damage by x1.5).  But are very clearly taken out.  Also, unlike a Drover sending their fighters against a Condor, the Condor doesn't survive.  Condor can tank 3x Atropos at a time roughly indefinitely.  Not so much against 6x1.5=9.

I then tried to have the same ratio of broadsword to daggers on the condor side by using 2 different condor designs.
Condor with Broadsword x2, Salamander pod, vulcan x2, expanded deck crew, rest in caps (2 of these)
Condor with Broadsword, Dagger, reaper, vulcan x2, expanded deck crew, rest in caps (4 of these)

versus the above Heron fleet.

Heron still win, no losses this time.  Again a very quick fight.

Once a coordinated group of bombers is large enough, and can deal enough damage to overload a target in a single pass, you hit a transition point.  Things start dying quick.  Hammerheads, Condors and Frigates just can't deal well with the damage equivalent of 9 (or sometimes 18) 1000 damage HE missiles in a short period of time.  Especially if they're already in engaged.  The coordination (all of them hitting in a short period of time) really makes the difference.

So out of curiosity, I then decided to try the Herons against the Drovers.
Drover with Broadsword, Dagger, 2x Vulcan, 4x Harpoon, Expanded Deck crew, rest in caps

Heron won, 2x Wolf, 2x Lasher, 1x Hammerhead

But it was a long fight.  The frigates ran out of CR.  The superior shields and speed of the Drovers begin to tell in the case where the enemy is superior.  They survive longer by kiting.  It doesn't make them win, but it does in fact mean they survive longer when your side is losing.  Which can be extremely important for a player fleet, given a human pilot can be superior locally where they're flying, but have their fleet be inferior everywhere else. 

Which suggests we should also do some testing of something like 240 DP fleets against 120 DP fleets or the like.  Put the carriers on the losing side, and see how long they last, and how many kills they get.  That should show the Drover superiority.

In our previous testing, the speed and toughness of the Condor just needs to be high enough to survive a pair of fighter wings, as that's the only thing that can reach them.  Because the AI doesn't focus fire, as long as the Condor can survive that shield tanking, it'll survive indefinitely.  Since the offensive power of 5 Drovers is close to or slightly lower to that of 6 Condors (reserve deployment only really worth 1.5 on fighters/interceptors, and even then inefficiently on cooldown), we don't see a big advantage.  Mostly because we're not stressing that part of the ship stats.

Also other interesting AI tidbits.  The Herons in all cases were much closer to the front lines.  Being cruisers, they seemed to fear the other ships less.  Which meant shorter turn around times for fighters, and perhaps more importantly, they tanked some bomber waves, and then would pull back to vent.  Which meant the fleet had effectively more shield capacity to spread incoming damage across at the beginning of the fight.

It'd be interesting to see what happens with the drovers if we put railguns instead of vulcans on, and bump their aggressiveness up.  Potentially if you use them more like 2nd string brawlers + fighters, they might do better compared to Condors, as you bring their flux stats into play in the beginning, spreading damage out, and giving the other ships more breathing room.  Or they might fly in front of their allies and get blown up while blocking shots.  Would definitely need testing.

747

General Discussion / Re: Just starting, issues with supplies

« on: July 10, 2020, 09:54:54 PM »

The only way your supply consumption can go up by mothballing ships is if you're over cargo, crew, or fuel capacity.  There's no hard cap on how much you can store, but if you're over how much your ships can carry normally, your supply consumption goes up drastically.

In the bottom left of the user interface, you'll see a white bar representing cargo space used, like 50/80.  The first number is how much cargo you have, the second is how much you can carry without penalty.  If you see red past the white, then you're carrying too much.  This also goes for crew and fuel.  I don't recommend throwing stuff away, but unmothballing stuff to get capacity up.

You can also hover your mouse over your supply consumption in the lower left and hit F1, to tell you what the sources of your supply consumption are.  Something like extra cargo capacity will likely show up with a number next to it.

Note, if you mothball ships that currently have non-zero CR, their CR will drop to zero, and you'll have to use supplies later to bring their CR back up, so that can also potentially cost you more credits in the long term.

If you recovered at least 2 ships, then one of the administrators on the planet (same one you talked to previously), should have added a storage area for free, that had supplies and weapons.  In addition, if your ships are not mothballed when you return and talk to him the first time after salvaging 2 ships, he should restore all your ships to 70% CR.  I believe Alex was going to try and fix this (correct me if I'm wrong), but currently, ensure none of your ships are mothballed before talking to the administrator.

So if you go to the planet, hit 3, and hit the storage button on the right, it should bring up an area you can take stuff from for free, and should include 50 supplies and a bunch of weapons.

However, if you're only at that point in the tutorial, and already at 0 supplies and credits, you might want to restart, and don't mothball anything.  I'd recommend buying max crew and maybe 50 supplies or so before heading out to salvage the ships - I think starting credits let you do that.  The extra crew you can hold with the ship they give you at that point is needed so your ships don't have lowered maximum CR.

748

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 10, 2020, 03:31:29 PM »

First group with early game fighters (Talons) and no carrier options:

• with Condor + Harpoon Pod + 2 Talon wings: around 2min40 and 100% win, unstable results
• with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 2 Talon wings: around 2min40 and 100% win, stable results
• with Hammerhead: around 3min20 and 100% win, unstable results
• no additional ship: around 4min00 and 100% win, stable results

And second group with more advanced fighters - Kopeshs and Daggers - mixed with Broadsword:

• with Condor + Pilum + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Kopesh wing : around 4min10 and casualties, unstable results
• with Condor + single Reaper + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Dagger wing : around 3min10 with 100% win, unstable results
• with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Kopesh wing : around 3min00 and 100% win, stable results
• with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Dagger wing : around 3min20 and 100% win, stable results

It might be due to my poor formating and so you may have missed it, but I'll note the Drover + 4 Harpoons + Broadsword + Dagger had a Wolf casualty on its first run, same as the Condor + Pilum + Broadsword + Khopesh did on its 2nd, so to be fair it should probably be listed there.

Having watch some of the fights (and left it to run in the background on others), whether the wolf dies or not is more due to the AI and the intial exchange than the fleet composition.  Just sometimes it misjudges badly.  I mean, the smallest fleet had no losses, while each of the carrier fleets lost 1 wolf once, and the bonus Hammerhead almost lost one.  Pretty sure at this concentration of force, a Wolf can simply race ahead, teleport in, fires it AM Blaster, and then simply eat too many missiles before it can back off enough.  Bad timing of firing a huge flux costing weapon. A PD wolf or other less flux intensive variant probably would have been fine.

I also would be extremely hesitant that 3 runs imply a particular stability in terms of speed of completion.  The sample size is too small, and depends on how the AI ended up dividing into smaller skirmishes.  The fastest run, at 1 min 50 seconds was a perfect storm of the Buffalo going pop in the very first exchange of missiles, like at 45 seconds in, at which point without the enemy destroyer, the other ships moved up confidently, and the talons chased down the fast frigates quickly.  They were all together which made it quick.  That could have happened with any of the fleet compositions, but the Condor fleet got lucky with that. 

However, in other fights, you've got a pair of shepherds facing off in the bottom right while everyone else is fighting in the upper left, and you've got like 30-45 seconds of travel time until a wolf finally gets over there to finish it.

Keep in mind, this also all without human intervention.  A human player can be much more aggressive (presumably piloting the Hammerhead), and possibly requesting coordinated fighter strikes or escort with command points, which will tend to make things faster and safer in this kind of setup.

I considered doing the piranna test, but those bombs are so slow and this was a fairly agile enemy fleet, that I felt they wouldn't contribute based on previous experience, so didn't feel like taking 30 minutes to test.  Generally when I'm playing, even at the start of the game, if I see a higher end fighter longbow or dagger, I generally prioritize a purchase just to have a minimum of 2 decent fighters by the time I move into carriers.

Personally, I think in terms of comparisons, the larger 60 DP gunship + 60 DP carrier tests are more telling than the time to kill, as they're much more sensitive to a slight imbalance because they snowball.  That yes/no helps provide a definite signal - but unfortunately doesn't tell us how much, just that it is due to the snowball nature.  I'm pretty sure a human just giving orders, not even piloting, could shift victory either way very easily.

To throw one more data point on, I did a 120 DP gunship + 120 DP carrier fleet (so 240 DP total for each side), broadsword + dagger drovers vs condors just for kicks.  Long fight, but condor still pulled it out.  Lost an Eagle, hammerhead, Condor, 3x Wolf in process, but those 2 extra carriers definitely help as things scale up.

749

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 10, 2020, 10:10:14 AM »

So, switching to Talons had the Drovers perform much better.  Although, the Condors still won a fight, technically.  More like a draw to be honest.

Being able to fully leverage Reserve Deployment apparently matters.  One might argue put interceptors on Drovers, and bombers on Condors.  To be honest, both Drovers and Condors generally are able to stay out of the way with a wall of gunships in front, so the 40 vs 70 speed at the end of the day doesn't seem to matter much in these kinds of engagements.  Fighters are just so long range.

Condor
2x Talon, Harpoon pod, 2x Vulcan, Expanded Deck crew, rest in caps

Drover
2x Talon, 4x Harpoon, 2x Vulcan, Expanded Deck crew, rest in caps/vents

Drover victory, Lost Wolf, Lasher, Hammerhead.
Drover victory, lost 2x Wolf, 2x Lasher
Condor victory, lost 2x Wolf, 2x Lasher, 2x  Hammerhead, 6x Condor (i.e. Eagle was only ship on the field at the end, and at 0% CR)

750

General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor

« on: July 10, 2020, 09:17:31 AM »

So, I went ahead with 120 DP fleets, something that the Persean League might deploy.  The gunship core was the following:

1,1,eagle_Balanced,steady,false
2,1,hammerhead_Balanced,steady,false
3,1,hammerhead_Balanced,steady,false
4,1,wolf_Strike,steady,false
5,1,wolf_Strike,steady,false
6,1,lasher_PD,steady,false
7,1,lasher_PD,steady,false

Then on top of this, I started with the Broadsword/Dagger fighter selection.
Condor
Broadsword, Dagger, 2x Vulcan, Single Reaper (so fast missile racks does nothing), expanded deck crew, rest in caps

Drover
Broadsword, Dagger, 2x Vulcan, 4x Harpoons (so 12 total), expanded deck crew, rest in caps

5 Drover for one fleet, 6 Condors for the other.

The results were not what I was expecting.

Condors won all 3 fights. Although since I was using AI battles, it did switch to reckless AI after 500 seconds.  Also the second fight was a drawn out slug fest with only the Condor side Eagle with 25% CR left at the end as it crawled over to the last drover to finish it off.

Condor victory, lost 2x Wolf, Lasher
Condor victory, lost 2x Wolf, 2x Lasher, 3x Condor, 1x Hammerhead
Condor victory, lost 2x Wolf, 2x Lasher

Going to move onto talon setups to see if pure interceptors with a good number (i.e. 4 instead of 3 like broadswords) works towards leveraging reserve deployment better.  Apparently, those 3 extra daggers just put that little bit more pressure on the Eagle/Hammerheads.  More so than the 12 harpoons vs 1 reaper.

Although, there was one point where the Drover side Eagle was at high flux and low armor facing off against some Condors and a Hammerhead.  Hammerhead was backing off, Eagle was bearing down on the condor, and the lone reaper from the condor at not quite point blank overloaded the Eagle.  A wing of Daggers later, no more Eagle.  So the reapers were definitely used to good effect at least in one fight.

At another point, condor was getting shot at by all 12 harpoons from a drover, Hammerhead came in from behind and the side, helped the backpedaling Condor shoot down like 6, the Condor overloaded with 2 on shield, and finally ate 4 on hull, and proceeded to survive to the end of the fight on 1/3 health.  So I'm not really sure how to weigh the missile situation. Perhaps I should have put reapers on the Drovers?  On the other hand, harpoons were doing work in these fight elsewhere, both from hammerheads as well as drovers.


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