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Author Topic: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing  (Read 1200 times)

Helldiver

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Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« on: May 22, 2021, 04:51:06 PM »

A few died occasionally from module explosions, being forced too close by the press of their fellows behind them

Why do AI ships even push each other into stations in the first place? There is no good reason for that. It's as if AI ships try to shoot the station at point blank even when they have long range main guns, and will push anything between them and the station into the station itself. It mainly happens if the station is high on flux, as if the "attack vulnerable enemies about to overload" behaviour went haywire when dealing with stations regardless of officer type.
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Alex

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2021, 05:27:39 PM »

There's a reason - they need to be ultra-aggressive to have any chance of being a threat; any kind of protracted engagement, a top-end station wins out with even minimal support. Possibly the calculus for this has changed now that stations don't get officers by default, but e.g. an enemy fleet attacking a player station with an Alpha Core still needs to have the individual ships be rather less than concerned about individual survival. But that's all a conversation for a different board.
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Helldiver

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2021, 06:48:10 PM »

There's a reason - they need to be ultra-aggressive to have any chance of being a threat; any kind of protracted engagement, a top-end station wins out with even minimal support. Possibly the calculus for this has changed now that stations don't get officers by default, but e.g. an enemy fleet attacking a player station with an Alpha Core still needs to have the individual ships be rather less than concerned about individual survival. But that's all a conversation for a different board.

But they keep pushing into the station even when already well in weapon range. That's how they end up pushing others ahead against the station as if they weren't there. Worse, it prevents the ships in between from moving which often prevents the pushing ships from shooting. This has to be a bug. Until station flux is high they act normally (they stay in weapon range and all try to attack), it's only when flux is high that they act crazy and sabotage themselves by starting the bumrush when they could already shoot just fine.
It's like they're trying to keep in range of an overloaded ship so it doesn't run away, but it's a station that doesn't move hence the issue.
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Locklave

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2021, 08:07:49 AM »

I feel like some kind of formation element would be required to prevent the problem, but I not sure how it would factor for captain personalities/weapon ranges and skill impact on all of it.

They'd need to be able to break formation and return to it if they needed to back off from damage and other ships in the formation would have to react to said movement for example. I think that it would be crazy complex. Like a real life naval battle, but even those have dumb mistakes despite having trained co-ordination.

I was hoping it was a hitbox detection issue, which would be more readily solvable.
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Alex

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2021, 08:56:38 AM »

Yeah, it's mostly just a combination of "don't back off because it's a station", plus aggressive officers and low weapon range on the ships - *and* a lot of these ships in play at the same time. Removing some of the factors helps - for example, I'm not seeing anything like that level of clustering by deploying a bunch of Steady (unofficered) Tempests, for example.

(Still strange that I'm not seeing nearly the same amount of bumping on my end, though! I mean, the difference between "maybe 2-3 minor collisions between ships during a fight" and "lost 4 ships to it" is... kind of a lot.)
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Wyvern

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2021, 10:00:45 AM »

I've seen this on occasion; usually it's at its worst with a combination of frigates and larger ships, where the frigate will blithely fly in front of a cruiser... and the cruiser will then crush it against the station.

(I'd also really like it if the AI had a better understanding of "I can safely vent (or at least drop shields for a bit) because, while I'm in range of the station's guns, there's another ship between me and the station". This is something the player can do fairly easily; duck back, hide behind an ally (or a hulk of a dead ship, or in some cases even an active-but-not-super-threatening enemy), and vent - but that the AI can't do at all even if the player deliberately moves to shield them. ...Though, hm. I guess this could also be a good use-case for this new ability that we'll presumably get access to next patch.)
« Last Edit: May 23, 2021, 10:03:09 AM by Wyvern »
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Alex

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2021, 10:06:33 AM »

(Yeah - that could get interesting, though, if the other ship is then just like "well, see ya!" Also, missiles - a lot of the time what prevents venting isn't line of sight but just the presence of dangerous-enough guided missile launchers in range. And figuring out whether there's enough PD/bodies in the way of that launcher... that's tough. Re: the ability - definitely don't want it to be "babysit venting etc on all ships" design-wise, so the way it functions just precludes that. Honestly, the specifics of how it works should be pretty hard to guess just based on that gif.)
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Locklave

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2021, 04:48:29 PM »

...plus aggressive officers and low weapon range on the ships...

Would an increase to the range of all weapons across the charts allow more maneuver times and prevent the bunch ups? Also increase the systems that limit range by the same scale.

Maybe try testing something crazy like double the ranges of everything and see how it impacts ship performance. I realize things like weapon speed would be impacted.

Just a thought.
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Thaago

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2021, 05:11:47 PM »

I think that a multiplicative increase of weapon range across the board would be roughly equivalent to a reduction in sprite size and ship speed since the zoom needed to see firing arcs would be further out, though like you said weapon speed would play into it as well. So my guess would be slower paced battles with more misses from weapons, more like naval battles in sims than shoot-em-up style.
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Megas

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2021, 05:28:00 PM »

Would an increase to the range of all weapons across the charts allow more maneuver times and prevent the bunch ups? Also increase the systems that limit range by the same scale.

Maybe try testing something crazy like double the ranges of everything and see how it impacts ship performance. I realize things like weapon speed would be impacted.

Just a thought.
That would be fun.  Horribly short range is annoying.  It is about time guns acted like guns and not metal sticks for mecha to knock their blocks off like rock-em-sock-em-robots.

Like to see the return of tachyon lance that sniped at least halfway across the map.  That was fun!
« Last Edit: May 23, 2021, 05:30:38 PM by Megas »
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Locklave

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2021, 05:30:28 PM »

Weapons speed could be increased, missiles too actually. It would mean having to adjust all the interconnected scaling to prevent a slowdown. It would also stop a lot of this speedy ships strafing everything to death.

Fights would last longer for sure because there would be less dogpiles. Which would be an improvement.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2021, 05:33:58 PM by Locklave »
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Thaago

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2021, 05:33:09 PM »

Wouldn't there be more potential ganging up and that would speed things up somewhat? Like when I ran my frigate fleet the main thing slowing me down as that I could only get so many frigates around a target at a time before they started blocking each other, so for tough targets it could take a while (and allies could come to its rescue). If weapon ranges + speed are longer, then effectively sprites are smaller, so I could get a lot more frigates attacking a single target. Or am I thinking of something else?
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Locklave

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2021, 05:40:36 PM »

This is why I'm interested in what a tests results would get. I'd like to see how the AI reacts to the change. I also think it'd make big tanky ships better for pushing in since more ships could have firing solutions since they wouldn't be blocking each other as much.

Ya, it might make things faster. I can imagine both slowdowns and speedups like that in my brain.

Changing the scaling could open doors or be a giant mess that just doesn't work.
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Alex

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2021, 05:43:51 PM »

Yeah, longer ranges mean focus fire is easier. I mean, we can see this already with the longer-ranged weapons!

Another point that's maybe less obvious: if weapon ranges are longer, but *ship speed* remains the same, then flanking and similar maneuvers are more difficult, because you'd be doing them at a larger radius away from the target. Put that and easier focus fire together, and I don't think that leads in a positive direction.

Another way to put it - perhaps rather obviously - is that if weapon ranges are longer, especially multiplicatively (meaning, range band differences are increased relative to ship speed/movement abilities), ship movement matters less.

I feel like weapon ranges, by and large, are in a good spot, though. And it's something that took a long time to figure out the feel of.
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SCC

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Re: Discussion of: Station combat, ships crashing
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2021, 10:47:24 PM »

Another way to put it - perhaps rather obviously - is that if weapon ranges are longer, especially multiplicatively (meaning, range band differences are increased relative to ship speed/movement abilities), ship movement matters less.
And firing guns becomes more important. Kinda like low-tech. If it had any fancy guns, that is.
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