Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Fleet size limit  (Read 7748 times)

Perq

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 28
    • View Profile
Fleet size limit
« on: February 03, 2020, 01:26:57 AM »

Hello,

I've read that next patch will contain a chance that will change "hard cap" of 30 ships to "soft cap" with big penalties to supply cost.
Long story short - I don't like this all that much.

Few reasons:
- The explanation behind it (in game) doesn't make much sense when you're attacked by multiple fleets at once
At occasions player can be attacked by multiple close-by fleets, especially pirates that are raiding a system. I've been fighting 60+ fleets before. When paired with new explanation why player can't have more ships, it is kinda... weird. Why can't I do the same as pirates - have other fleet follow me and join fights?
And of all factions, pirates are ones that are able to manage more ships?... :P I hope you get the point
- Fleet limit incentivises players to use bigger ships, as each is taking precious fleet slot
I've read somewhere that there are plans to add ways to incentivise players to use smaller ships. When paired with this, it doesn't seem to make much sense. Officers and fleet size both heavily funnel players into never using smaller ships, as opportunity cost and efficiency is just not there.

I personally would love to see more "big battles", but not with many ships at once, but simply using "reinforcements" system more, so that both player and enemies are sending in more ships in, or at some point coming to realization that they're not going to win and start retreating.
On that note, I think that salvage power is something that should be limited, because if player wins such big battle (which are already in game, as mentioned 60+ pirate fleets), players can not only salvage and use quite powerful ships (on occasions I was able to salvage 3+ usable capitals, while losing nothing in such battle), and those that aren't useful can be scuttled for tons of supplies and fuel. But that is some other bit. :P
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2020, 01:34:33 AM »

You hit 10 officer limit long before 30 ship total limit.
A ship with lvl 20 officer is worth about 2-3 times it's DP in officer-less fodder.
=> While I don't like 30 ship limit either, lifting it will only affect non-combat logistic ships and allow more player spares. You'd want same 11 ship combat deployment. To truly allow larger fleets, something needs to be done about officers too.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 01:36:56 AM by TaLaR »
Logged

Perq

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 28
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2020, 01:53:35 AM »

Officer power is other thing (adds a little bit too much, imo, especially when stacked with other bonuses), but you'd want to have more reinforcements if enemy fleet was 90+ ships. :P

Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2020, 02:02:18 AM »

Officer power is other thing (adds a little bit too much, imo, especially when stacked with other bonuses), but you'd want to have more reinforcements if enemy fleet was 90+ ships. :P

Nope, I'd just retreat when PPT runs out and do multi-round combat with same 10 officer ships. To get real mileage out of extra ships I'd need ability to reassign officers (between rounds or currently undeployed ships).
Logged

TJJ

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1905
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2020, 02:47:51 AM »

OP has a good point; the fleet limit, officer limit & officer cost all clearly encourage the 'bigger is better' doctrine.

Not only that, but the combat mechanics (force concentration), combat AI & ship loss/negative hull mods all favour the use of bigger ships over smaller ones.

This creates an inverse difficulty curve, and a lack of diversity in the player's fleet composition.
Logged

Perq

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 28
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2020, 03:45:23 AM »

The inverse difficulty curve especially is something many games with a lot of "moving parts" tend to go into (as I assume, not intentionally) - the highest high of optimization is more difficult to control and usually tends to get funneled down into few options.

This may not be the best example, but I noticed something like this in even well established, liked games like Witcher 3 - on higher difficulties the beginning of the game is indeed quite hard, but the more player is allowed to exploit the systems (skills and gear), the easier game gets.
Not that it matters in such game, as it is more focused on the story than mechanics min-maxing, but then one would ask - why have such things in the game, if it isn't the focus? Feeling of progression may be one, not sure.
Logged

Morbo513

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 317
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2020, 06:17:29 AM »

OP has a good point; the fleet limit, officer limit & officer cost all clearly encourage the 'bigger is better' doctrine.

Not only that, but the combat mechanics (force concentration), combat AI & ship loss/negative hull mods all favour the use of bigger ships over smaller ones.

This creates an inverse difficulty curve, and a lack of diversity in the player's fleet composition.
This summarises my thoughts on the whole issue. For all that they do better than ships of greater size, there's no strong incentive to keep frigates around when they contribute the same value towards the fleet cap, whether it's a hard or soft or semi-hard cap. Supplies/mo or deployment points are much fairer a way of determining the upper limit of force strength, allowing you to offset smaller ships' shorter CR and lesser staying power with numbers. If I have 30 frigates up against 30 cruisers, the frigates will most likely be simply outlasted - but if I have 90 frigates against those 30 crusiers, I can keep reinforcing as deployed ships deplete their CR, are destroyed or otherwise retreated. It means the player can make greater use of figates and destroyers to supplement the stronger ships in their fleet, because losing or retreating them matters less if you have another 10 to call in should the need arise. With both the current and planned systems, if you want 10 spare frigates on standby, you're having to sacrifice 10 slots each of which could be filled with a more powerful ship.

A "true" soft-cap on fleet size also makes scrapballs a much more viable play-style - this is where fighting by attrition makes the most sense, but with the 30-ship limit (and the planned """soft""" cap) you have to treat those ships the same as any other.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 06:26:18 AM by Morbo513 »
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2020, 09:21:46 AM »

Careful what you wish for.  It could be like pre-0.7a, where you can have up to about 40 frigates (assuming max Leadership and maybe exceeding safe limits) or two or three capitals, or something between the two extremes.  Then we need overpowered Combat skills back to let our small "fleets" fight back against superior numbers, especially if fleet size is heavily dependent on Leadership.

Without fleet cap, it could be like 0.9a where pirate fleets sent sixty to one hundred small ships up to cruisers instead of ten Atlas 2s and twenty cruisers... per endgame fleet.

Fleet cap sort of stinks, but it is better for big ships now than before 0.7a when player could only drag about three of them and nothing else (smaller).
Logged

Grievous69

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2975
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2020, 09:29:41 AM »

I feel like we'll go to that way of playing again since so many people whine about capital ships. Do you guys also complain that pistols are weak in shooters? Or that lvl 1 magic spells are weak in rpgs? Having a swarm of frigates would be the most annoying thing since they just fly in and out of enemy ranges. I can't wait to get past early game in my playthroughs. It's always the vocal minorities bitching about something, then the dev tries to change something and then the game goes in a totally wrong way, I've seen this too many times. Knee jerk reactions, you gotta love them.
Logged
Please don't take me too seriously.

shoi

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 650
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2020, 10:17:57 AM »

Why don't just make it so different ship size take up different # of slots

it makes no sense for 1 frigate = 1 capital in taking up fleet space, soft cap should just give harsher and harsher penalty for each big ship you add

edit: oh, guess thats how it was before and it didnt work? Doesn't make sense to me, a small fleet of captials should have trouble against a giant fleet of frigates when their entire weakness is limited mobility, this current system just encourages stacking as many big ships as possible
« Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 10:22:36 AM by shoi »
Logged

bobucles

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 532
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2020, 10:24:20 AM »

The difficult thing about frigate spam is with the ship builder. It's very good for individual ship customization, but working through a large number of tiny ships will add up to be quite a burden.

I wonder if fleet slots should have size restrictions in the same way that weapons do. For example a fleet limit may comprise of 5 capitals, 5 cruisers, 10 destroyers and 10 frigates (or smaller). In that way you are guaranteed a nice selection of ships and options to choose from, without leaning too heavily on the jumbo or mini scale. If it was a soft cap then going over the limit could incur special penalties such as reduced burn, massively increased sensor profile or wasteful fuel consumption.

A different type of fleet limit may assign broad stroke point costs based on ship size. For example it may be Capital-4, Cruiser-3, Destroyer-2 and Frigate-1. In the 5/5/10/10 example above the fleet is limited to 100 points. Of course, such a system would place extra value on the biggest/meanest ships of their respective classes. So paragons would automatically be better slot filler than an Atlas, and tempest/omens would have high value over a cerebus. That kind of already happens so it doesn't really add or subtract anything there.

An issue with limiting fleets strictly on deployment cost is that tiny cheap ships add up in numbers very quickly. Dropping one paragon will allow 30 extra kites in a fleet, which might match in cost but be the biggest nightmare ever. The very generic point costs would make one paragon worth 4 kites of fleet space, or two sunders, or something like that. The difference between a 3 capital fleet or a dozen annoying ships is probably closer to the types of battle layouts that players could accept.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 10:28:21 AM by bobucles »
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2020, 10:30:35 AM »

0.6.5a was the golden age for frigates (for fighting and not hauling food).  Frigates were cheap to use, repaired quickly, Navigation gave big bonuses to frigates (frigates could zip around near burn 20 while anything else was burn 10 to 12 at best, before Sustained Burn was in).  Forty of them carved through just about any enemy fleet.
Logged

Morbo513

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 317
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2020, 07:19:20 PM »

The difficult thing about frigate spam is with the ship builder. It's very good for individual ship customization, but working through a large number of tiny ships will add up to be quite a burden.

Autofit is the answer to that - If I'm making scrapball fleets I wouldn't be worrying too much about how well their loadouts synergise beyond my strongest ships, the idea is "take crappy ship, slap guns on, crush enemy with weight of numbers and pure aggression because you don't care so much about losses". But that said, my fleets are usually almost entirely comprised of frigates and I get plenty enjoyment out of customising each and every one.
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7173
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2020, 12:47:43 PM »

The ambush topic has been split off into its own thread.
Logged

SCC

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4112
    • View Profile
Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2020, 02:02:06 AM »

Autofit is capable enough of replicating variants. If you have all the required weapons, you can mass autofit ships without a hitch.
Pages: [1] 2