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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: Starfarer 0.51a (Released) - Live Patch Notes  (Read 236204 times)

Wyvern

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #45 on: March 01, 2012, 08:00:59 AM »

Well, the issue as I see it is that, at the moment, retreating does two different things, but they aren't in-game well distinguished.

1: it gets an injured ship out of combat (tactical retreat)
2: it gets the entire force (when appropriate) out of the battle (strategic retreat)

What I might suggest is to have those a bit more differentiated.  One way it could work:
A: If you are escaping, it works as normal.
B: If you aren't escaping, ships that retreat are returned to your pool of reinforcements.
  B1: If your enemy was defending or escaping, and you have no ships on the board, you are free to declare a strategic retreat - you can get away clean; no damage, no capture chance, etc.
  B2: If your enemy was attacking, and you have no ships on the board, bad things happen - ships take damage, lose crew, get captured, etc.  (Probably to a greater degree if you attacked than if you defended, though.

Combine that with, say, a FP bonus for defending or escaping, and suddenly you've got good reason to actually use all three options.  You attack if you don't want to let the enemy get away and are sure you can win.  You defend if it's a more even fight and you're willing to let the enemy escape if it means better odds in the battle - this option also means you can still retreat damaged ships off the near edges of the map.  And you escape if you, y'know, want to actually escape.
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #46 on: March 01, 2012, 08:37:20 AM »

That's more or less how it works now. When they retreat, escaping ships take no damage, defending ships take a little, attacking ships take more. There's also a fleet point bonus for defending and escaping. Matching up an "Escape" with an enemy "Defend" lets you avoid battle altogether. So, basically what you've outlined :)


Now i'm all for balancing but i'm curious how fast are the Medusa and Tempest now? Was the tempest nerf to make the Hyperion more favored for speed?

About 10-15% slower, or thereabouts. Still quite fast.
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outside

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #47 on: March 01, 2012, 09:38:13 AM »

I suppose the key difference in Wyvern's suggestion is that how the retreating ships fare would be based on the enemy's tactical choice rather than their own side's.
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Wyvern

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #48 on: March 01, 2012, 11:02:14 AM »

Hm.  I see it more as the key difference being that retreating ships return to the pool of reinforcements (except when escaping), to try and distinguish a tactical retreat from a strategic one.

Eh, we'll see how it works out next version.  Current version is obviously flawed - choosing to "escape" is basically never a good idea - but the taking damage thing being added next version may make escape an actual viable choice for when you want to get out of a battle.
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intothewildblueyonder

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #49 on: March 01, 2012, 01:04:18 PM »

I'm wondering if we can get  a few more fleet-wide commands (other than Search and Destroy full retreat) or behaviors to follow. E.g. be aggressive, defensive,  play-it-safe, and the like. Secondly will there ever be an option to tell your fleet to setup an ambush or to pincer, in other words will we be able to dictate a strategy or tactic to our fleet (beyond the basic level, and would it be possible to set up our own stratagems to be carried out).

Similarly will it ever be possible to set up task-groups of ships that will try and stick together each fight and will always attempt to do certain things as a group (just and drag-and-drop group)

These may help the game to shy away from micromanagement and instead add to the aura of being a commander of a fleet. 8)

Additionally, although these are somewhat possible to do in each mission, it would be convenient for the player
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blackfang

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #50 on: March 01, 2012, 02:25:49 PM »

YEAH, overall fleet doctrines would be epic. Like for instance your fleet has the wolf pack doctrine (just imagine its a doctrine) then all your ships upon entering combat will group up with other ships, for instance the wolf class would take a comrade or two and go on a hunt. They will hit and run while your larger ships are the ones soaking damage by turtling closer to the enemy. Basically the packs take the faster and more heavy hitting ships and put them in packs to attack and if the enemy starts noticing them they run away while the slower ships join the main fleet for the main fight.
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bubbadean

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #51 on: March 01, 2012, 02:55:51 PM »

I particularly like the idea of the player creating their own ship groupings.
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Ishman

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #52 on: March 01, 2012, 07:44:26 PM »

Love the inclusion of Fast Forwarding, though I'm hoping it won't be limited to just 2x speed (halving 4 minute travel times still means it takes 2 minutes to get from one station to another, but a 10x reduction makes it just 24 seconds long).

Beyond 2x, it gets very Benny Hill. With lots of quick-loading because you engaged something you couldn't react to in time. Never mind that it'll be a bit rough trying to simulate the whole sector at something greater than that :) This is very much a "for now" feature, because of how the current star system is. Depending on how the larger campaign shapes up, it could go away entirely (if warranted), or not - but it won't get faster. It could really mess up the feel of the game, if we're not careful. I'd rather add other means of quickly getting from place to place than ramp up the fast-forward button.


I think this is one of those times where you should blatantly steal mechanics from NAEV's time compression system: Specifically the bit where you get automatically dropped back to normal game time when you get aggroe'd by an enemy (In this case, a check for if something is within a screen of you, hostile and wants to engage, and faster).

Though I realize that starfarer's engine probably isn't capable of the optimizations that NAEV uses to get 14x and upwards game acceleration.
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theShadow

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #53 on: March 02, 2012, 09:06:24 AM »

I was thinking it would be acceptable to just have 2x game speed. one thing that would be interesting would be having it acticated by zooming all the way out.
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Rhyden

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #54 on: March 02, 2012, 09:14:57 AM »

   Wait, devMode is being disabled? :/
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #55 on: March 02, 2012, 09:21:42 AM »

   Wait, devMode is being disabled? :/

You can still enable it yourself. Mods can't do it for you, though - too much potential for ending up in devMode w/o knowing about it.
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Wriath

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #56 on: March 02, 2012, 09:27:26 AM »

That's probably a good idea, too easy to have it turned on for development testing in a mod and forget to change it back.

Blips

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #57 on: March 02, 2012, 11:01:16 AM »

Alex, what of the possibility of adding weapons (energy based most likely) designed specifically to kill ship crews. Then ships could be disabled but with minimum damage allowing a guaranteed boarding / capture.
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #58 on: March 02, 2012, 11:18:29 AM »

Sounds really overpowered, even if those weapons were fully neutralized by shields.
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blackfang

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Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes
« Reply #59 on: March 02, 2012, 11:28:18 AM »

Alex, what of the possibility of adding weapons (energy based most likely) designed specifically to kill ship crews. Then ships could be disabled but with minimum damage allowing a guaranteed boarding / capture.
Also, note that the crew doesn't need to be alive on the ship during the fight. Its after the fight it starts to matter. I once fought with my wolf class with barely the amount of crew and during the fight my ship got heavily damaged, after the fight i no longer got enough people to crew it. Basically think of it this way. As long as there is crew left in the ship they will fight to the last. Another thing you can think is andromeda, you know what they got there? Automatic weapons systems that kick in when there is not enough crew for it on the andromeda. Which throughout the entire series it is only fully crewed twice. Which is incredibly stupid all things considered but it was a relatively cheap way to do it so i guess thats what they went for. Also sometimes you do see more crew but you never get to know if they are actually aboard by a mistake but really it doesn't matter. What matters is that throughout the series there is rarely a moment when they need crew to fire their weapons.
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