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Author Topic: Ambush Bickering  (Read 16934 times)

Lucky33

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Ambush Bickering
« on: February 04, 2020, 12:07:46 AM »

Well, there is a very effective, very historical and very annoying way to make light ships very usefull.

Ambush.

Make fleets of small ships capable of ambushing larger ones and combat starting with enemy fast ships deploying against player's logistic ones while the reinforcement deployment availability is being timer limited by the ship's speed (can deploy Tempest right from the start but Paragon... not so fast).

This is how you truly make everyone whine and amass huge armadas of picket frigates and destroyers.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2020, 12:45:01 PM by Thaago »
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Plantissue

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2020, 06:37:16 AM »

And how would "ambush" work? In real life smaller ships don't just ambush larger ships in the open sea as they will be spotted miles away from weapon range and are normally covered by other screening ships. In the modern age, it was mostly submarines and planes which attacked convoys and attacked them most successfully. In the age of sail, all major warships were their own logistic ships. In any case logistic ships travelling with an actual fleet would not be isolated and enter combat alone without the ships they would be travelling with.

This is a game where you can pick and choose which ships you can deploy normally. Force deploying the player's logistical ships to be vulnerably picked off like in a pursuit will prove to be very strange I'm sure. Wouldn't you just immediately retreat your logistic ships and then what happens? You aren't forced to deploy all your frigates either if you have any. So you'll be staring at empty space till the timer runs out.
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2020, 08:03:43 AM »

And how would "ambush" work?

combat starting with enemy fast ships deploying against player's logistic ones while the reinforcement deployment availability is being timer limited by the ship's speed (can deploy Tempest right from the start but Paragon... not so fast).

In real life smaller ships don't just ambush larger ships

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Szent_Istv%C3%A1n#Otranto_Raid

Force deploying the player's logistical ships to be vulnerably picked off like in a pursuit will prove to be very strange I'm sure.

The only strange thing here is the complete unawarenes of certain someone of the the pursuit mode.
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bobucles

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2020, 08:44:51 AM »

There are two major aspects to a very generic, typical type of ambush:
1) The enemy does not choose how they engage. In starsector terms they are forced to commit ships to the field in a disadvantageous way.
2) The ambusher does choose how they engage. For us it means a freedom to choose how to attack, and hopefully to withdraw safely.

The first mechanic doesn't really exist. A pursuit battle does force fragile ships on the field, but that is a case of the enemy choosing to retreat. They can always choose to stand their ground, in which case they have freedom over deployment. You can't really force what they commit.

The second mechanic somewhat exists in the form of the "free disengage". After destroying a large number of enemy ships, you're free to retreat in safety and do not suffer a pursuit battle. The downside is you lose salvage rights, which means lost loot and your ships get totally abandoned. More importantly, if the enemy fleet has every ship slower than your burn speed, they can not pursue. This is generally rare because most fleets have at least one fast ship like a pirate falcon.

Is there a way to introduce both mechanics in a way that's fun? It does sound like fun to zerg rush a fleet with a pile of frigates and run away. The reward mechanics don't really support it because you can't run without losing salvage rights. So quite a few things would need to be considered.

Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2020, 09:20:46 AM »

Ambusher is free to disengage while there is no strong enemy presence on the battlefield. After that he is fully commited into do or die situation (clean disengage rules are still apply).

Insteed of the normal postbattle loot there already is a debris field/derelict ship generation mechanic. You can see it while two ai fleets are fighting. So ambusher gets a chance to salvage that field. Defender (if not defeated outright) will get classic post-battle screen and chance to recover some loses from the debris field. In general, destroyed ships will have chance to become a derelict and will drop all of the cargo as debris. Disabled ones will stay in the fleet (if defender did manage to survive) and will drop some random part of the cargo as a debris.

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Plantissue

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2020, 12:19:26 PM »

And how would "ambush" work?

combat starting with enemy fast ships deploying against player's logistic ones while the reinforcement deployment availability is being timer limited by the ship's speed (can deploy Tempest right from the start but Paragon... not so fast).

In real life smaller ships don't just ambush larger ships in the open sea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Szent_Istv%C3%A1n#Otranto_Raid

Why selective qoute? Here's the full quote
In real life smaller ships don't just ambush larger ships in the open sea
When you have to selectively quote in support yourself, don't you feel like you have debased yourself?

Force deploying the player's logistical ships to be vulnerably picked off like in a pursuit will prove to be very strange I'm sure.

The only strange thing here is the complete unawarenes of certain someone of the the pursuit mode.
What are you even writing? Are you blind? I literally wrote pursuit as the point of comparison, it's right there in your quote and everyone can see it is there in my post.

Why don't you try to counter the criticism of the points raised instead of a wierd all out attack on someone? Why do you always act this way?

You don't seem to understand so I'll explain. In pursuit mode all your ships are forced deployed near the centre and you can't quickly retreat back through the edge that they would be normally be deployed from in a normal battle. Pursuit battles also only occur under a certain level of DP left in the fleet otherwise you are forced to battle it out or do sifficient damage to retreat without a pursuit battle. In a normal battle you would be able to retreat any ships you have mistakenly deployed at the start of the battle. In fact in a normal battle if you so wish it, you can retreat everything or not deploy anything at all and exist in this wierd null state where no combat occurs till you deploy something or properly retreat to cause another battle or pursuit.
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Goumindong

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2020, 01:16:04 PM »

Oh look, ambushes, another topic done to death.

I will reiterate from all the other threads

"Ambushes" don't work because combat in star-sector is relatively symmetric, because it makes no sense, and because they're already in the game. In a general fleet formation everything is in the same area before a normal combat is joined. Combat ships move out ahead of the main fleet in order to join combat. So if you were to "ambush" an enemy it would just result in all their ships being in the combat... like a retreat action. As a result of this, ambushes are already in the game, when you engage an enemy fleet and its too small to want to engage you it retreats and you have access to all their squishies and combat ships at the same time. In a deployment where you have an advantage of being able to pre-flank with your frigates. You engage in an ambush by maneuvering on the strategic map in such a way as to catch an enemy fleet that wants to retreat.

The reason that this does not work is because of the "fleets are too big to retreat" logic. And the reason that we have "fleets are too big to retreat" logic is because of deployment point logic. Which is necessary because computers aren't infinite. Anyway the deployment logic goes like this "there needs to be a limit to battle size because computers die". And then from there we go "if there is a limit to the amount of ships you can deploy then there needs to be a limit to the size of fleets that can retreat. If there is not then a retreating fleets will overtop the deployment limit and gain an advantage on an attacking fleet. This will be annoying to the player when an enemy wants to retreat and abusable by the player when the enemy wants to attack them"

That is. Imagine a situation in which two 600 deployment point fleets meet each other when the game has a 300 DP limit to prevent computers from dying. If one of them says "yea i will retreat" and the other says "sure i will fight" then the retreating fleet will deploy 600 DP and the engaging fleet will deploy 150 DP. Even if half of each fleet is logistics ships the retreating fleet has a 2 to 1 deployment advantage by retreating. So if the player decides to fight they have 150 DP and if they decide to retreat they have 600 DP. If they player decides to fight they have 150 and the enemy has 150.

Similar things could happen if you, in a big fleet, caught a smaller fleet. It wants to retreat and so does. But because of this it deploys its entire compliment. Thus making the fight HARDER than choosing to fight a larger enemy fleet that would have decided to engage and so suffer from deployment limits. You have 600, they have 400. They retreat and field 200(400) DP of combat ships you field 150... If they had 600 DP instead they would choose to engage. And so your choices being equal (i want to fight this enemy) the 400 DP fleet is harder to fight than the 600 DP Fleet.

Thus we have our dilemma. Players don't think ambushes are in the game even when, functionally they are, they're just defeated by deployment limits logic. Because if they were not then the game breaks. Methods to get around this tend to run afoul of the same problems. They create an abusable system which makes little to no sense.

There is kind of a solution but i don't think a lot of people like it. Specifically its to not count logistics (or civilian ships[even if militarized]) with regards to the "fleet deployment retreat limiting logic". So a fleet of 10 combat ships and 10 logistics ships behaves the same in terms of retreat logic as a fleet of 10 combat ships and 0 logistics ships. This has the side benefit of making it make sense to arm your logistics ships. Because now you actually will have a slight advantage in a retreat action. It also extends the range of fleets for which you can effectively ambush and fixes some deployment logic with regard to be big civilian fleets (which will decide to retreat rather than to deploy a bunch of civilian ships then retreat as soon as one dies)

However it still does run afoul of deployment limitations and so could cause problems for slower computers.(though not as much because civilian ships, due to their lower combat ability should have less of an impact on performance)

edit: Other option would be to remove the "too big to retreat" logic but when you choose to retreat and are otherwise "too big to retreat" you must emergency mothball ships until you're under the deployment limit. This would preserve the fairness issue in retreat deployments. This could cause escaping fleets to dump cargo/fuel afterwards and keep the ships mothballed while a player could do that or just take the massive CR hit from dropping a bunch of ships to 0% CR
« Last Edit: February 04, 2020, 01:19:15 PM by Goumindong »
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2020, 04:57:30 PM »

Oh look, ambushes, another topic done to death.

Please, address my point and not some obscure topic.

"combat starting with enemy fast ships deploying against player's logistic ones while the reinforcement deployment availability is being timer limited by the ship's speed"
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2020, 05:43:12 PM »

In real life smaller ships don't just ambush larger ships in the open sea

They were attacked while steaming the part of the sea not enclosed between headlands or included in narrow straits: the main sea. It was called Adriatic by the way.

What are you even writing? Are you blind? I literally wrote pursuit as the point of comparison, it's right there in your quote and everyone can see it is there in my post.

"Wouldn't you just immediately retreat your logistic ships and then what happens?" - in a pursuit you have to cross the map for that to happen so your question is already answered. Hence you are clearly not aware of the nature of pursuite mode.

Why don't you try to counter the criticism of the points raised instead of a wierd all out attack on someone?

I answer criticism of what Im saying. Not some constructs that exists only in your head and have nothing to do with the point I've made.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #9 on: February 04, 2020, 07:21:41 PM »

Frigates should get an additional 30% speed boost during peak performance.
Destroyers should get an additional 10% speed boost during peak performance.
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2020, 07:35:40 PM »

You can have 45% boost from the skills alone.
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Morbo513

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2020, 08:28:21 PM »

The utility of lighter ships is already clear and profound enough without any additional mechanics. I feel this discussion of an ambush battle-type to expand it is beyond the purview of this discussion, and doesn't positively address any of the issues with fleet cap; please make a new thread for it.
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Goumindong

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2020, 09:22:56 PM »

Oh look, ambushes, another topic done to death.

Please, address my point and not some obscure topic.

"combat starting with enemy fast ships deploying against player's logistic ones while the reinforcement deployment availability is being timer limited by the ship's speed"
You arent the OP. You do not get to demand what or who i reply to.

However, since you asked...Why would you or an enemy not choose this option?
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2020, 10:03:23 PM »

However, since you asked...Why would you or an enemy not choose this option?

To ambush? Because other side has too powerful group of the fast ships or/and combat freighters.
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Lucky33

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Re: Re: Fleet size limit
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2020, 10:23:32 PM »

The utility of lighter ships is already clear and profound enough

And what would this be?
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