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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: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics  (Read 4631 times)

Brainwright

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #15 on: July 22, 2021, 07:17:02 PM »

At the same time, while AI does a better job than what can be observed in pretty much any other somewhat similar game,

Disagree. Friendly AI in Starsector is the most frustrating I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with in any naval game.

Nah, it's the same AI, but there are certain structural advantages that make the NPC AI outperform the PC AI.  First, the AI doesn't perform well against overwhelming numbers, and the NPC will always have more ships than the PC.  Secondly, the NPC has a lot of tweeks to make sure you can't grind down their combat readiness, which means they are always grinding down your CR at a frightening rate.  It may be annoying that the NPC fleets group up on contact, but if they came at you one at a time, you'd be down to critical in short order.  Also?  The NPC fleet doesn't need to win.  So it can delay a fight until the player is desperate.

With regards to Combat Readiness, its actually the inverse to prevent a solo ship from being able to kite and slowly wear down a much larger fleet. If the time limit didn't exist it would be possible to take a fast ship like, say a Medusa, and use it to slowly work down the enemy fleet one ship at a time indefinitely. If you summon overwhelming force against an enemy and quickly crush them you can even get a reduction to the CR used for deployment for the ships involved.

I play this small fleet against big fleet just out of habit, and this is simply not necessary.  Try to bring a small fleet against a big fleet, and unless it is pirate junk, the big fleet will simply fall back and fold any ships you pressure back into the formation while fresh ships beat you back.

You're never going to balance pirate junk against any competent player, so patching this, "exploit," creates more problems.
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Ericus

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #16 on: July 22, 2021, 09:59:45 PM »

I'm with the other people, the game is not complex enough or its complexity is not an issue.
The lack of transparency and available data is an issue though.
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lz14

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #17 on: July 23, 2021, 03:40:45 PM »


It's insanely complicated. An attack with a 100 damage explosive weapon could deal 120 or 250 damage to armor depending on circumstances and there's no way for a human to calculate that number given how many factors there are. You just have to shoot and find out every time, since the factors change every time.


First that's pretty realistic. in real life some famous ships were destroyed by a single hit, where some took hundreds and still didn't sink.

Secondly it's not that important. So your opponent has a hull of 8800, your one shot damage is 375, does it matter what are the exact numbers?  you are not going to calculate anyway, just a rough idea is fine.

Also, a second issue: Anti-fun game mechanics. The biggest two are combat readiness and deployment points. Both are added to solve the problem that large fleets would easily crush small fleets. But there is already a solution: A large fleet is likely slower than a small fleet, and has to waste fuel on emergency burns to catch up, and they get very little payout for defeating a small fleet, so its not worth it anyway. Why make it even less worth it by making ships require supplies to recover CR and limiting the number of ships in play at once?

In addition, deployment points are unfun for even matchups between large fleets because if two massive fleets fight, having giant 30 vs 30 war is more fun than a 7 vs 7 battle while the remaining 23 ships wait for their allies to be destroyed so they can join the battle.

Again, first it's realistic. In real combat you might have 1 out of 4 boilers broken so your ship can't run as fast anymore.

And again secondly I don't think it's that significant. Your view can only see about 7 ships anyway. Who cares if there are 23 other ships fighting off screen. Let's say the game allows 100 onslaught vs 100. How much can you actually see ?  Is it that important for you knowing there are 90 onslaughts fighting off screen?
« Last Edit: July 23, 2021, 05:11:51 PM by lz14 »
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Phenir

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #18 on: July 24, 2021, 04:16:31 PM »

With regards to Combat Readiness, its actually the inverse to prevent a solo ship from being able to kite and slowly wear down a much larger fleet. If the time limit didn't exist it would be possible to take a fast ship like, say a Medusa, and use it to slowly work down the enemy fleet one ship at a time indefinitely. If you summon overwhelming force against an enemy and quickly crush them you can even get a reduction to the CR used for deployment for the ships involved.

I play this small fleet against big fleet just out of habit, and this is simply not necessary.  Try to bring a small fleet against a big fleet, and unless it is pirate junk, the big fleet will simply fall back and fold any ships you pressure back into the formation while fresh ships beat you back.

You're never going to balance pirate junk against any competent player, so patching this, "exploit," creates more problems.
The problem here is you're using a fleet against another fleet. The example given was ONE ship versus a fleet. It works because the AI doesn't deploy as much as possible, it deploys as much as it thinks it needs to deal with whatever you deployed. This means with a fast ship like a phase ship or some frigates or even a capital like the Odyssey, you can outmaneuver the enemy to force 1v1s. You can still do this but now, because of CR, you need multiple of the same ship or you need to tactical retreat or both.
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Warlord-616x

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #19 on: July 24, 2021, 06:01:41 PM »

i dont mind complexity, i in fact enjoy it, but even after all this time there is a lot that i dont know.  the recent tool tips have been helpful tho.
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HuskyDawg

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #20 on: August 02, 2021, 09:37:49 PM »

The complexity and game mechanics are actually what I find the most fascinating bout this game, and I think it's safe to assume most SS players do. Any chance the problem being not the game but you?
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Zakaluka

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #21 on: August 03, 2021, 03:15:30 PM »

feedback is dumb and it doesn't matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_pyZWPxiVg
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Locklave

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2021, 02:52:02 AM »

I'm confused as to why a person would try to calculate these numbers actively in an actual battle. More complexity, then as an example, anti armor is good vs high armored ships is just tedious.

Fleet combat already has enough micro without hyper maximizing which specific ships are fighting which.
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Shirobine

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #23 on: August 06, 2021, 06:35:26 AM »

I think the combat gameplay and it's mechanics serves it role nicely, the only hindrance is when the AI acts stupid, but what game doesn't have incompetent A.I. You'd need to tie the behavior with the environment akin to what FEAR did and that just adds predictability.

The only thing that sucks about the game is the survey lottery system. There's nothing worse in this game than going to a constellation to look for the planet bingo (Class V habitation planet (With no transplutonics), Gas giants and barren or rocky) and missing that one planet you need to make full use of those items we get for that area. It doesn't help there are a lot of stars with no planets in them making exploration even more tedious then it already is what with all the traveling you'll be doing, which makes up a majority of what you do regardless of your playstyle, going from point A to B. Honestly if hyperspace was full of those nebula storms it would help make the traveling a bit more bearable instead of tab out gameplay. Time is money, time is of real life importance, time is what leads to the late game mechanics, burn speed is everything.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2021, 06:41:09 AM by Shirobine »
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FenMuir

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Re: My complaints about overcomplexity and anti-fun game mechanics
« Reply #24 on: August 06, 2021, 10:32:35 AM »

1) You can safely ignore the bonuses from perks in terms of gameplay. The game is completely fine without the bonuses. You really don't need to know that you do Y damage with perks and X damage without them. This is overthinking it and making the game less enjoyable for you.

2) You shouldn't be using explosive damage for anything except PD. It is terrible against everything save hull. Its only saving grace is that you can basically operate at or near maximum firepower all the time while keeping shields up. However, using a mix of anti-shield and anti-armor will just be more effective overall. So I'm not telling you that you're doing it wrong, but a 5 thumper + vulcan cannons enforcer probably isn't going to work as well as an enforcer with, well, pretty much anything else.

3) In terms of ships being faster/slower, this more boils down to class. Smaller class ships can almost always outpace and out maneuver larger class ships. If you care about speed, play phase ships. They can chase down everything due to how P-Space works. You can also just use massed carriers since strike craft are super-fast.

4) Passive fleetwide buffs are important if you're going for a large fleet of ships. 27 combat ships + 3 utility ships will benefit greatly from the fleet buffs. You flying around with a single combat ship with 3 or more utility ships probably won't benefit all that much from those passives.

5) Combat Readiness exists to penalize people for using overwhelming numbers for no real reason. It also exists to penalize you for running around with a fleet of battleships. Imagine flying around with 27 Dooms. You're invincible. Those cost a lot of supplies to keep going. Same thing with battleships. Want 27 Paragons? You got it! Hope you can afford it!

6) If you're flying around in a mega-ultra-death fleet of slow battleships, no one is going to pick a fight with you save faction detachments, and they're probably just going to dogpile you with every fleet in the system. Smaller fleets can and will just avoid you. So...get some marines and go raiding. Take on space stations. Force them to fight you or else. Also, if you're pirate hunting, the pirates tend to hang out near the outer jump point. Enjoy!

7) Imagine if every single frigate pirate fleet decided to pick a fight with your mega-ultra-death fleet. What a pain that would be. Billy with a hound looks at your fleet of 27 paragons and says, "Na bruh, I got this!" It is much better this way.

8) You can have your 30v30 paragon fleet v paragon fleet battle if you want. You probably need to install a mod that allows you to have infinite deployment points. The deployment point system partially exists to counter lag since the engine the game runs on is incredibly archaic by today's standards. Game's good, but the engine is old. Old engines have somewhat extreme limitations.

Your criticisms are fine; however, what your criticizing exists for a reason. There are mods that "correct" these areas of criticism. Go install them and have fun.
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