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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: Allow mid-battle reinforcements to enter from sides to break up stalemates/blobs  (Read 2664 times)

intrinsic_parity

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If you could lose a capital ship and still come out significantly ahead from a bounty, then winning without loses would be absurdly profitable. Combat isn't built around the notion that players can't lose ships, it's built around the notion that the player should minimize loses to maximize profits. I don't see what's wrong with that, you get rewarded for making better decisions. I think it's important to make sure that you don't have to play in un-fun ways to avoid loses. The player can always choose to take easier or harder fights if they want more or less of a challenge.

What I really don't like is when the AI kills itself in ways that don't reflect the decisions you've made. The AI should do as well as it can in light of your decisions, it shouldn't do poorly in spite of your decisions. The AI should know basic game mechanics like spawn areas. My concern is that the things the player has to do to prevent the AI from killing itself in stupid ways due to weird flanks will not be fun. If the AI is adjusted to better deal with these situations, I think the OP's suggestion could work.
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Morrokain

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If you could lose a capital ship and still come out significantly ahead from a bounty, then winning without loses would be absurdly profitable. Combat isn't built around the notion that players can't lose ships, it's built around the notion that the player should minimize loses to maximize profits. I don't see what's wrong with that, you get rewarded for making better decisions. I think it's important to make sure that you don't have to play in un-fun ways to avoid loses. The player can always choose to take easier or harder fights if they want more or less of a challenge.

Agreed. I'm assuming the unfun way you are speaking of is the ship losses outside of the player's tactical decisions? Correct me if that is not the case.

Overall, I think the solution to bounties is more about bounty mechanics and scale. Losing a capital is fine if the scale of your campaign situation allows it through monthly income. If you must defeat four other capitals in the bounty, however, and losing one negates your profits then you won't likely take the mission in the first place unless you have equal or more capitals in your fleet, you have built your fleet around such a bounty and have extensive knowledge of combat balance, or you have some other element/strategy that allows you to know you won't lose a capital in this situation. Alternatively, you could have some other kind of campaign incentive to take the mission and take a net credit loss in the process.

FWIW I'm not saying that your concerns regarding the spawn location knowledge that AI ships would need is wrong or wouldn't be a nice addition. It's more that I would prioritize less need for keeping ships alive in combat using existing mechanics like the ship recovery system since that is more realistic from an AI edge-case perspective or simply inexperienced play or bad luck with positioning or other RNG components. Making the AI feel perfect in every situation is a very difficult thing to do.

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What I really don't like is when the AI kills itself in ways that don't reflect the decisions you've made. The AI should do as well as it can in light of your decisions, it shouldn't do poorly in spite of your decisions. The AI should know basic game mechanics like spawn areas. My concern is that the things the player has to do to prevent the AI from killing itself in stupid ways due to weird flanks will not be fun. If the AI is adjusted to better deal with these situations, I think the OP's suggestion could work.

I think this is partially true and I also think that anyone would agree that when you make a decision as the player and the AI seems to not respond well it doesn't feel good. However, I also think that flanking frigates aren't necessarily a recipe for that feeling. To be fair, it does promote more situational awareness from a tactics perspective. What I like about the idea is that it gives a concrete use for smaller ships in the late game in a way that tactically makes sense to me. Adjustments such as you suggest might also be a requirement and that would increase the amount of effort it would require, but I don't think it's a bad idea as whole.

As to the impact it would have on combat? It might make early advantages in the beginning of a battle less likely to snowball. I think that scenario could also result in battles taking too long to conclude but considering the fleet size/number changes this concern is less likely to be the case in the next update.
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Megas

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If you could lose a capital ship and still come out significantly ahead from a bounty, then winning without loses would be absurdly profitable. Combat isn't built around the notion that players can't lose ships, it's built around the notion that the player should minimize loses to maximize profits. I don't see what's wrong with that, you get rewarded for making better decisions. I think it's important to make sure that you don't have to play in un-fun ways to avoid loses. The player can always choose to take easier or harder fights if they want more or less of a challenge.
The penalty of losing a single major ship exceeds the bounty, except maybe small fights at the sub-150k bounty levels.  Victory must be flawless, or maybe one or two minor ships lost (like a frigate in a 200k+ bounty).  Otherwise, the bounty is likely a net loss.

Player needs to be relatively overpowered to win without losses.  (And player cannot be too overpowered or else the enemy fleet starts running and may need EB to catch.)  By endgame, their fleets are, in theory, just as strong or stronger than yours.  A combat min-maxed playership can abuse tricks and make it easier to win without losses.  Then your wingmen need ships they can use and not do stupid things.

I only fight named bounties when there is little doubt of flawless victory.  If I my fleet is evenly matched, and I expect to lose a bunch of ships (or even one of my biggest ships) as a result, then fighting the bounty seems dumb.

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If you must defeat four other capitals in the bounty, however, and losing one negates your profits then you won't likely take the mission in the first place ...
Exactly.  However, it does not matter how many capitals I have if losing one of them means no profit.

Right now, there is no campaign incentive to kill named bounties aside from money if player can reliably pull off the flawless victory.  If anything, chasing bounties takes time away from doing more important things like saving the core worlds from zombie pirates.
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Helldiver

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If you could lose a capital ship and still come out significantly ahead from a bounty, then winning without loses would be absurdly profitable. Combat isn't built around the notion that players can't lose ships, it's built around the notion that the player should minimize loses to maximize profits. I don't see what's wrong with that, you get rewarded for making better decisions. I think it's important to make sure that you don't have to play in un-fun ways to avoid loses. The player can always choose to take easier or harder fights if they want more or less of a challenge.
The penalty of losing a single major ship exceeds the bounty, except maybe small fights at the sub-150k bounty levels.  Victory must be flawless, or maybe one or two minor ships lost (like a frigate in a 200k+ bounty).  Otherwise, the bounty is likely a net loss.

Player needs to be relatively overpowered to win without losses.  (And player cannot be too overpowered or else the enemy fleet starts running and may need EB to catch.)  By endgame, their fleets are, in theory, just as strong or stronger than yours.  A combat min-maxed playership can abuse tricks and make it easier to win without losses.  Then your wingmen need ships they can use and not do stupid things.

I only fight named bounties when there is little doubt of flawless victory.  If I my fleet is evenly matched, and I expect to lose a bunch of ships (or even one of my biggest ships) as a result, then fighting the bounty seems dumb.

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If you must defeat four other capitals in the bounty, however, and losing one negates your profits then you won't likely take the mission in the first place ...
Exactly.  However, it does not matter how many capitals I have if losing one of them means no profit.

Right now, there is no campaign incentive to kill named bounties aside from money if player can reliably pull off the flawless victory.  If anything, chasing bounties takes time away from doing more important things like saving the core worlds from zombie pirates.

That has all to do with the combat and mission economy/profitability (and AI fleet comps which Alex said are changing). If that needs to be discussed (I think it should), it'd be best to make a thread for it as this thread is about adding spawn/reinforcement entry points.
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Sly

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I like this idea. I'd argue that the Player's or AI's inability to respond could be cushioned significantly by warning them with an alert sound and marker in advance of the reinforcements arriving. In the case of the AI, projecting the 'threat' of a reinforcing ship before it even appears on screen. It's not as if a ship burning hard into a hot zone wouldn't be detected well before it reached weapons range.

I'd agree that deploying cruisers or capitals as reinforcements on enemy flanks is too powerful, but you need destroyer-level firepower to even begin to threaten backpedaling Capitals. Frigates would just be a joke against pre-collapse designs.

I'd also agree that "enveloping" the enemy fleet like this would also require you to have a size advantage. I'd also recommend that an arbitrary amount of time pass before reinforcements are available to deploy. In this way, perhaps the enemy could be encouraged to retreat early if losing badly and the timer is nearing zero (shortening a battle significantly and saving you supplies), or planet/station defending fleet would fight on despite time elapsed and odds. I imagine Independents and Pirates would weigh retreating much higher than Diktat or Pather ships. Naturally, Players would decide for themselves on the timing of a retreat, if at all.

Perhaps Phase Ships could have a shorter reinforcing time to account of their namesake? There would still be warning, just less.

An interesting skill to pick up in the coming version might be to have a small grace period after a reinforcing ship arrives in which it has a "safety overrides" effect for several seconds even with shields and weapons armed.
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