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Author Topic: Command points as no. of concurrent orders instead of no. of one-time orders  (Read 9047 times)

nomadic_leader

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lorewise, large battles last for several days. i don't think it makes sense for even the largest capital ship to require hours (or anything more than a couple minutes, at most) to get orders from the commanding officer down to the individual gunners. :P

Lorewise, the current CP system makes zero sense. :) These lorewise things are mutable and can be changed if need be.

And the campaign clock doesn't tick at all during the player's battles, so the "battles take days" doesn't hold much water with me, until the campaign clock actually keeps ticking-- though it should, since it's a good way to discourage kiting instead of the confusing peak performance timer activation conditions.

That said, I am not a navy ship expert and I was just putting it out there as a possible alternative. The first idea of just a limited amount of contemporaneous orders is a lot simpler and makes more sense maybe. Though it takes time to calculate new targeting vectors, acceleration curves, sight guns, etc. I really do think there is some underlying logic to military operations that makes receiving tonnes of rapid, contradictory orders kind of impossible organizationally.

The reason we have limited CP in the first place is to keep the player focused on the action instead of updating orders on the tactical map every couple of seconds. It's a micromanagement reduction mechanism.

I've heard this, though there is sense to it. Another one people recite sometimes is "trade isn't meant to be remunerative." I think it's good to question these things occasionally. Maybe if someone really likes to micromanage and spend their XP to get more CP at one time, we should let them?

But yes people do play RTSs in stupid ways: They pause every 2 seconds and issue fussy orders to every unit, etc. After my stand against ship hoarding in the other thread I hardly want to see this behavior. So you're  right with a combo approach. Unlimited CP before battle begins to make groupings and assign ship behaviors, then CP limited to respond to developing threats.

If we just allow a limited number of orders active at one time based on how much leadership skill you have, it's still possible for people to pause every 2 seconds and change those orders. that's the benefit of some kind of 'recharge' time between which you couldn't issue new orders either globally or just for a particular ship.

I also kind of like the dominions 4 model where you assign each unit a behavior before battle begins: like "attack large enemies", "attack nearest", "defend this other unit" or whatever. Maybe something could be learned from that too. Right now SS orders are totally "target focused" meaning you can't assign a lot of behaviors until you actually see the enemy ships on the map. So we can't really plan battles ahead of time, and yet we aren't allowed to micromanage. Perhaps making orders more focused on a wide range of friendly ship behaviors would be better and allow more robust pre-battle planning, so that there'd be less desire to micromanage during battle.


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Pax_Empyrean

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With that in mind, this suggestion still reduces the micromanagement workload, but doesn't go as far toward eliminating it as the present system does.

Correct, and that's why I don't think it would be a good idea. You would be inclined to constantly check if your current orders are optimal. Unfortunately, I believe this

You could have a small number of reusable CP, but giving orders when those are already in effect would cost a point.

would have the same effect.
Eh, kind of. The difference is that with a low limit on reusable CP, they'd encourage using a broad brush, tactically speaking, which is less prone to micromanaging.

If a temporary, unlimited pool of CP were available at the start of combat, the system would be more than fine as is.

Good start, and why not go further? Make a high amount of CP available in regular intervals, but unspent CP decay. So you would give orders in bursts, and not care about them in the meantime at all.

Timed CP availability is an interesting idea, with all sorts of goodies you could apply to it through the Leadership tree. More frequent CP deliveries, less decay, etc. Since the idea is to keep players from feeling compelled to check the map to issue new orders, we've got some options for how to go about that. Having CP available at timed intervals, like you suggested, would work.

Another possibility would be just having a cooldown after issuing orders before you can issue more of them.

Alternately, have limited CP at the start, and after a unit completes its orders you get that CP back. That way you can still have your ships doing stuff, but there's no point in staring at the tactical map. When you get a CP back, you give another order, and that's it until they're done with that one. Any extra CP you had at the start would basically just amount to the number of orders that you can cancel/interrupt before they are completed.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2016, 02:49:09 PM by Pax_Empyrean »
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Dias Flac

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I'm more of the mind if having more freedom to command units in the field.


Keep command points though and remove the cost of giving orders.  Use those command points to issue temporary buffs.

They would cost command points and burn up a bit of CR.  You could have some stuff like...

"Full speed ahead!"- increase max speed by 25% for 10 seconds
"Hold strong!"- increase shield damage absorbtion by 25% for 10 seconds
"Prepare to fire!" - increase range/damage of your weapons by 25% for 10 seconds

As far as the skill tree goes for CPs you could scale down the CR loss by 5% per level or something like that.  You can tie certain buffs to various skill levels and so on.  That's what I'd do. 

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Pax_Empyrean

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I'm more of the mind if having more freedom to command units in the field.


Keep command points though and remove the cost of giving orders.  Use those command points to issue temporary buffs.

They would cost command points and burn up a bit of CR.  You could have some stuff like...

"Full speed ahead!"- increase max speed by 25% for 10 seconds
"Hold strong!"- increase shield damage absorbtion by 25% for 10 seconds
"Prepare to fire!" - increase range/damage of your weapons by 25% for 10 seconds

As far as the skill tree goes for CPs you could scale down the CR loss by 5% per level or something like that.  You can tie certain buffs to various skill levels and so on.  That's what I'd do.

All of these things would encourage players to constantly check the map to issue orders. That's the exact thing that the CP system is trying to discourage in the first place. Short term buffs would make it even worse, since you'd need very precise timing to get anything out of them.
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Dias Flac

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I'm more of the mind if having more freedom to command units in the field.


Keep command points though and remove the cost of giving orders.  Use those command points to issue temporary buffs.

They would cost command points and burn up a bit of CR.  You could have some stuff like...

"Full speed ahead!"- increase max speed by 25% for 10 seconds
"Hold strong!"- increase shield damage absorbtion by 25% for 10 seconds
"Prepare to fire!" - increase range/damage of your weapons by 25% for 10 seconds

As far as the skill tree goes for CPs you could scale down the CR loss by 5% per level or something like that.  You can tie certain buffs to various skill levels and so on.  That's what I'd do.

All of these things would encourage players to constantly check the map to issue orders. That's the exact thing that the CP system is trying to discourage in the first place. Short term buffs would make it even worse, since you'd need very precise timing to get anything out of them.

I don't have an issue with pausing to check the map to issue orders or buffs. Having went through a few posts I did notice that theme though. Is there a particular reason the devs don't like utilizing the tactical map?

As far as short term buffs go a lot of ships have short term buff mechanics whether it's increased firing rate, speed boosts, and so on.
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Megas

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If I have ships on the map, I frequently toggle the map to check my ships' health.  While I am there, I give more orders if necessary.
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