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Author Topic: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses  (Read 60738 times)

Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #105 on: August 21, 2018, 10:58:18 AM »

Mmmaybe - I think that can get a bit iffy since it might trivialize the costs in some cases, making bombardments too good a choice.

Instead of efficiency, a special ship/hullmod could influence how long the target is disrupted by the bombardment.

Yeah, I'd thought about that, too. Hmm - it might be interesting for a tactical bombardment, actually - I was thinking that it's fairly useless for a saturation one, since that colony is most likely (fuel) hosed anyway, but knocking out military infrastructure for longer could be useful.


I fully agree with this. There is a very flat hierarchy of how involved the presentation of things is, while the import hierarchy of these things is far less flat. Just a single big (screen filling?) picture would help a lot to differentiate special events from common ones and make them stand out. Or, even simpler, a big dialog box with really big font.

Establishing a colony takes place on a different screen than the standard "text + picture with choices below" dialog - it happens from the survey screen, and once a colony is established, it takes you to the colony screen, which is visually more interesting, rather than kicking you out to the interaction dialog. I'm definitely cognizant of the need to make it feel more special!


But not all actions are instant? "Transverse Jump" takes time to be used as far as I remember.

That's a bit different, it's a "gameplay action" in the campaign, so whatever chargeup time it takes and so on is driven by what makes that work out right. Dialog interactions are *not* "gameplay actions" in the same sense, that is, the reasons for doing them are not action-y. You're also not in the same UI context when you initiate dialog actions, i.e. you can't even clearly see what's around you. That's not an ideal situation to make a decision about whether you have just enough time to do <thing> or not.

I mean, there is gray area here, and it's not all cut and dry, but I hope this distinction makes sense.

But it's not the same way with comm sniffers, right? While in reality two cases are very similar: you are doing something illegal with some object and nearby fleets can stop you. So why raids come as instant action with cooldown and installing sniffers is a "having things take time" action?

Ah - yeah, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, comm sniffer installation is also instant now. The trouble with doing it that way is part of the reason I've switched to doing it the other way across the board.
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Wyvern

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #106 on: August 21, 2018, 11:04:42 AM »

And the only reason I haven't gone and tried to mod that up is because the engine doesn't actually allow hull mods to adjust ammo regeneration rates.  (I mean, you could probably do something with checking ammo counts every frame and manually adjusting them, but that would be a pain and a half to implement relative to a simple "+20% ammo regen rate" built into the engine.)

Ahh, I'm not sure how you'd do that per-ship. It makes sense as a per-weapon stat, but weapons don't have mutable stats in the same way.
I don't see how it makes any less sense than a per-ship modifier that adjusts weapon ammunition counts?  I mean, being able to do per-weapon adjustments would be -neat-, but it's, 1, not how anything else works so I don't really expect it, and 2, wouldn't really be modding-friendly.

What I mean by "not modding friendly" is - suppose you have a hull mod "automated belt feed" that increases reload rate of chainfire-type weapons, i.e., machine guns, assault chaingun, maybe HAG and storm needler.  Well that's fine and all, until some mod adds a new machine gun variant that your hull mod doesn't know about.  Technically you could fix that by adding identifying tags to all of the game's weapons, but that starts to get into 'solution looking for a problem' territory.  Much easier to just use the same 'mutable stat on ship' approach that everything else goes with.

...Even if you'd need a lot of mutable stats; minimum of three, for missile/energy/ballistic ammo regen rate, but then I start thinking about how I might want to use such stats, and maybe I'd want to be able to change ammo regen chunk size (now we're at six mutable stats), and maybe I'd want to be able to differentiate off beam weapons the same way damage modifiers work (eight mutable stats), and maybe I'd want my capital ship ammo-regen hull mod to boost small weapons much more than large ones, and suddenly I'm looking at twenty-four mutable stats which seems silly and error-prone.

...Okay, so I've kinda talked myself around to "I can see why Alex hasn't just done this, given that the base game doesn't use it and it'd just be for modding support".  Oh well.  Carry on, then.
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Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #107 on: August 21, 2018, 11:09:14 AM »

...Even if you'd need a lot of mutable stats; minimum of three, for missile/energy/ballistic ammo regen rate, but then I start thinking about how I might want to use such stats, and maybe I'd want to be able to change ammo regen chunk size (now we're at six mutable stats), and maybe I'd want to be able to differentiate off beam weapons the same way damage modifiers work (eight mutable stats), and maybe I'd want my capital ship ammo-regen hull mod to boost small weapons much more than large ones, and suddenly I'm looking at twenty-four mutable stats which seems silly and error-prone.

...Okay, so I've kinda talked myself around to "I can see why Alex hasn't just done this, given that the base game doesn't use it and it'd just be for modding support".  Oh well.  Carry on, then.

:D
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Wyvern

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #108 on: August 21, 2018, 11:37:37 AM »

Honestly, that just makes a per-weapon solution sound better.  Being able to have a hull mod just look over the available weapons, make choices based on whatever traits it cares about, and then modify the weapon directly...  Might be a theoretically-cleaner solution than the current pile of per-ship mutable stats.  On the other hand, the pile of per-ship mutable stats is here, and working, and that counts for a lot more than some hypothetical 'how clean is this design'.
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Cik

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #109 on: August 21, 2018, 01:01:56 PM »

so i guess fluff questions:

1. how do you get the fuel down to the target(s)
 1a: wouldn't canisters of AM just burn up?
 2a: wouldn't free AM particles just annihilate in the upper atmosphere producing either negligible or genocidal effects?
 1c: if you put them in some sort of canister, how would you hit the target instead of another city half a continent away (assuming drop from orbit)
 1d: if you put some sort of PGM kit on them, isn't that now an "antimatter bomb"? and not actually fuel at all?
 1e: if you want to scrape the ground and deliver them in the vietnam fashion, aren't you kind of vulnerable to getting shot, and sandwiched between 20 different threat vectors?
 1f: isn't this pretty indiscriminate and murderous? where is the space geneva convention?
 1g: if this isn't indiscriminate and murderous, how are you going to actually destroy anything of note?
 1h: in fact what are we even attacking? the colony? the defenses?

2. why not just systematize this a little more and develop a raiding system that takes into account the primary factors in consideration such as:

attack method
defenses
enemy orbital stations/fleets
eavy gunz

this doesn't even sound that complicated to me, personally. all you need is:

a relatively abstract "defense level" of the planet
a way to gather all the enemy fleets together
a deployment dialogue

phase A: you choose to raid planet. it asks you two things:
what ships do you want to deploy and:
do you want to deploy them to the battle, or to attack the defenses.

battle begins, is resolved- your fleet takes CR "damage" and spends fuel relative to the defense level of the planet. (in addition to the CR / damage sustained in the fight itself)

phase B: planet's defenses are degraded in proportion to to the occupied medium/large mounts deployed to attack the defenses directly

repeat until either:

you are destroyed
you withdraw
the defending fleet(s) are destroyed and
the planet's defenses are reduced to some fraction (totally? who knows) of their operating state.

then loot is calculated, looted, raid over.

for bonus points implement several raid types with escalating "bubbles" (IE, how much crap the enemy gets to throw at you) and rewards, with optionally some sort of exterminatus bombing type. could also be hooked in many ways into the market effects and statuses but that's mostly optional.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2018, 01:06:03 PM by Cik »
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #110 on: August 21, 2018, 01:21:53 PM »

But not all actions are instant? "Transverse Jump" takes time to be used as far as I remember.
It used to be instant but was changed when it was shown to be an easy escape button.  Killer fleet ready to catch you in a system?  Transverse Jump to escape immediately.  Now with windup, it cannot be used as an immediate escape against something you do not want to fight.

Personally, I had no problem with it being instant because spending three skill points on a non-combat skill (in a game that is all about combat) is a very high price.
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Gothars

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #111 on: August 21, 2018, 02:39:09 PM »



I'm definitely cognizant of the need to make it feel more special!

*thumbsup.gif*

so i guess fluff questions:

1. how do you get the fuel down to the target(s)
 1a: wouldn't canisters of AM just burn up?
 2a: wouldn't free AM particles just annihilate in the upper atmosphere producing either negligible or genocidal effects?
 1c: if you put them in some sort of canister, how would you hit the target instead of another city half a continent away (assuming drop from orbit)
 1d: if you put some sort of PGM kit on them, isn't that now an "antimatter bomb"? and not actually fuel at all?
 1e: if you want to scrape the ground and deliver them in the vietnam fashion, aren't you kind of vulnerable to getting shot, and sandwiched between 20 different threat vectors?
 1f: isn't this pretty indiscriminate and murderous? where is the space geneva convention?
 1g: if this isn't indiscriminate and murderous, how are you going to actually destroy anything of note?
 1h: in fact what are we even attacking? the colony? the defenses?

I'd say:

a) no, they are designed not to
b) no, they are designed not to 
c) by calculating a trajectory
d) that is not necessary
e) that is not necessary
f) yeah, factions hate you for it
g) n/a
h) either the whole colony or an industry of your choice




why not just systematize this a little more

The idea is to not make this into a big, enclosed game-system but to keep it small, so it can easily interact with other small game-systems. That way there's a much better chance of interesting interactions between these systems. For example, I just entered a trinary systems with a pulsar, which immediately blew me into not one, but consecutively into two red giants. I love moments like these.

Spoiler

[close]



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The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

Cik

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #112 on: August 21, 2018, 03:46:43 PM »

it doesn't need to be big, and it doesn't need to be enclosed either. making it slightly more complicated is fine if it actually makes the system make any sense.

FYI i don't think you can drop something from orbit and expect a hit unless we are talking MT+ yield in which case this is more of a genocide weapon than a raiding weapon.

but i don't think alex will change it anyway unfortunately. if it shows up in a design document it's probably beyond recall. i just offer alternatives because i like the game and want to see it be made better.

maybe in like a patch or two it will be better.  :-\



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Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #113 on: August 21, 2018, 04:11:09 PM »

so i guess fluff questions:

I think in general, when one is thinking about how things work in-universe, whether it's for a game or for any other work of fiction, one can think of ways it works that make the goings-on make sense, or not make sense. Whichever one you pick, you'll certainly be successful, since there's an almost unlimited number of ways in which you could fill in details that aren't explicitly specified by the work in question.

Personally, I find that my experience of games, books, etc, is better if I try to make things make sense, instead of the opposite. You're of course free to do what makes you happy :)

Either way, this isn't a productive argument to have. I could obviously come up with reasons why all of these things work, you could obviously come up with counter-reasons based on some other details, and this could be repeated infinitely.


Honestly, that just makes a per-weapon solution sound better.  Being able to have a hull mod just look over the available weapons, make choices based on whatever traits it cares about, and then modify the weapon directly...  Might be a theoretically-cleaner solution than the current pile of per-ship mutable stats.  On the other hand, the pile of per-ship mutable stats is here, and working, and that counts for a lot more than some hypothetical 'how clean is this design'.

Hmm - I think if you're doing that, then a bit of code to track the time and set the ammo to whatever is necessary would probably be relatively minor compared to the rest of the work...
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Wyvern

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #114 on: August 21, 2018, 04:28:57 PM »

Honestly, that just makes a per-weapon solution sound better.  Being able to have a hull mod just look over the available weapons, make choices based on whatever traits it cares about, and then modify the weapon directly...  Might be a theoretically-cleaner solution than the current pile of per-ship mutable stats.  On the other hand, the pile of per-ship mutable stats is here, and working, and that counts for a lot more than some hypothetical 'how clean is this design'.

Hmm - I think if you're doing that, then a bit of code to track the time and set the ammo to whatever is necessary would probably be relatively minor compared to the rest of the work...
The difference is where the work is.  From the perspective of a modder, setting per-weapon modifiers (assuming such a thing was supported) would be trivial; loop over weapons, add an "if beam weapon, then" or "if small non-missile, then", or whatever, and then adjust weapon damage, or range, or add PD tags, or whatever else.  From the perspective of you, the game developer?  Oh, yes, getting to the point where that could be done would be way more work than tracking time and setting ammunition counts, no question.  My above-quoted comment was more of a wishful what-if than any suggestion that such a thing should actually be done; as noted, the current pile of per-ship mutable stats is in, and it works, and if it doesn't necessarily scale well when trying to add new traits that could be adjusted, well, that's not really a vanilla problem.
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Deshara

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #115 on: August 21, 2018, 08:24:40 PM »

I have an argument for making an action take time that doesn't hinge on realism; the first time you decide you're powerful enough to take on the whole sector at once, you pull up to a planet, order a general bombardment, the dialogue screen drops away and as the cool-up timer ticks and your fleet slowly orbits the planet, the planet is visibly raked from one side to the other with explosions, then a half-second of nothing -- just long enough to make the player feel disappointed ("that was it?") -- and then suddenly explosions scattered everywhere, like rain drops, and after another half second it begins to build -- hard -- spiking in intensity until the soundtrack cuts away to gentle screeching woodwinds (i cant remember what game does this, im sure it was either Plague Inc or Defcom but I cant find the track) that leave the player certain that, if they just listen hard enough, they can hear screams, and then another split second of reprieve from the explosions (as the planet's terrestrial defenses are completely defeated), and then, the crescendo; the planet is blanketed with a brief conflagration of explosions; devestation so thorough that from your vantage point in space, a single portion of the planet cannot be seen that isn't being blasted, and then nothing for a few seconds to let the (first time) player sink in what they just did, and why, once the dialogue screen pops back up to give a feedback report, nearly every major faction in the sector is now at war with you and how much you deserve it.

you can't do that with a dialogue screen. If general bombardment is going to function as a hard-mode button where most of the known universe declares war on you at the same time and there's no going back, I want it to be haunting. I want everyone to know why they deserve to be destroyed for what they did
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Gothars

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #116 on: August 22, 2018, 12:50:25 AM »

Oh my, I'd love to see the bobardment on the actual planet. That brings up fond memorys of Homeworld. If it's explosions on the surface, that could also be done after the dialog, though.
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Embolism

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #117 on: August 22, 2018, 01:55:15 AM »

While we're on the subject of Homeworld, while I don't expect StarSector bombardment to come in the form of spilling raw antimatter into the atmosphere as some here seem to imagine (for one that could completely rule out tactical bombardments), the idea does seem reminiscent of Homeworld's Atmospheric Deprivation Weapons, no?

And seriously, matter-antimatter is probably the easiest material to make a bomb in sci-fi, I don't understand why people struggle with this concept. See: photon torpedoes, or just StarSector's very own Reaper... it's the primary constituent of the most powerful weapon in the Sector, how hard is it to imagine making bombs out of it? Theoretically it would seem a lot easier than fission or fusion-based bombs (that have to achieve some sort of criticality) as you just need to make sure whatever keeps the antimatter from reacting with normal matter is destabilised on a trigger.

And look at this:



Not hard to imagine a Prometheus-class in its place, no?
« Last Edit: August 22, 2018, 01:57:37 AM by Embolism »
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Cik

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #118 on: August 22, 2018, 04:43:55 AM »

in order to do a tactical bombardment you'd need guidance, at which point it's not fuel it's a guided weapon and should probably be it's own item.

it's an effective weapon 1. if you can hit the target and 2. if you can hit the target without vaporizing large swathes of the civilian infrastructure you theoretically want to preserve (at least if you aren't using it as a genocide weapon)

the question is not "would dumping the fuel from a prometheus not be a nice weapon"? it is "how would the prometheus avoid getting shot?" (and also a bunch of other questions like how would you get your CEP down from half a continent to something useful)

there are a lot of planets in the sector that are probably defended. ye olde zeppeline strategies probably aren't going to work unless you can throw your munitions from halfway around ye olde sune.

but i mean that's another flaw of the raiding system, it doesn't handle defenses at all (save fleets)

imho it fails as a system that could represent something plausible in terms of verisimilitude and it also fails as a generator of interesting fleet vs fleet scenarios (something the game has desperately needed since .50 imo) as it will just be the same ol same ol "smash two fleets together until one wins" thing without any additional considerations, except you might have to bring a dram to win (which is something you probably do already anyway)

but anyway alex has made up his mind. it's not worth my hashing out a replacement system that won't be used.
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #119 on: August 22, 2018, 05:10:55 AM »

It seems tankers will become the Umgah drone.  All tankers need now is a ship system that zips it backwards.

Quote
imho it fails as a system that could represent something plausible in terms of verisimilitude and it also fails as a generator of interesting fleet vs fleet scenarios (something the game has desperately needed since .50 imo) as it will just be the same ol same ol "smash two fleets together until one wins" thing without any additional considerations, except you might have to bring a dram to win (which is something you probably do already anyway)
I always bring multiple tankers with my fleet because there is no way to reach fringe systems and back without them.  Fuel capacities of everything that is not a tanker are way too low.  I dislike this forced tanker dependence to do anything useful.  Even freighters are merely a good idea, not required.
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