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Author Topic: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?  (Read 5900 times)

itBeABruhMoment

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2022, 12:28:12 PM »

Lack of aggressive personalities can be mitigated by liberal use of Full Assault and fighter cover.

It depends on the ship, ask yourself if 20% less dp accounts for missing out on skills and a favourable personality

Lack of aggressive / favourable personality can be mitigated with doctrine setting. All your unofficered ships behave the same way (default is Steady) so just change the slider towards Aggressive or even Reckless.

What slider? If you're referring to the one in the faction doctrine screen it does not change the ai of unofficered ships. I tested this with the command:
runcode List<FleetMemberAPI> members = Global.getSector().getPlayerFleet().getMembersWithFightersCopy();
        FleetMemberAPI member = (FleetMemberAPI) members.get(14);
        Console.showMessage(member.getCaptain().getPersonalityAPI().getId());
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Megas

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #16 on: January 21, 2022, 12:53:24 PM »

@ Vanshilar:  Not really a threadjack if it exposes hidden benefits of Support Doctrine.  I would not mind jacking up vespene gas story point gain to feed my colonies.

So if I have my eight officers, but not assign them to anything, they still count toward my fleet rating even though they sit on the sidelines?  So if I dive into Support Doctrine, then I ought to fire every last one of my officers if I do not mind sticking with Support Doctrine (and not reassign skills) for a while.

I originally considered Support Doctrine just to put more ships on the field and not deal with officer training.

Quote
* Other ships count as 1/4 of their DP if they have no weapons (including no fighters). Hullmods don't matter. But if they have any weapons (including built-in), they'll count for the full DP. This means that Shepherds (which have a built-in fighter) will count as full DP, unless you put converted fighter bay on it, and no weapons, at which point it'll count for 1/4 of its DP.
So if I get a Doom, and let it use only Mine Strike as its only attack (and put Phase Anchor on it to prevent death and d-mod accumulation), then it does not count toward the full DP toward story points?  If so, that is nice.
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SCC

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2022, 01:17:06 PM »

What slider? If you're referring to the one in the faction doctrine screen it does not change the ai of unofficered ships. I tested this with the command:
runcode List<FleetMemberAPI> members = Global.getSector().getPlayerFleet().getMembersWithFightersCopy();
        FleetMemberAPI member = (FleetMemberAPI) members.get(14);
        Console.showMessage(member.getCaptain().getPersonalityAPI().getId());
That should perhaps warrant a bug report.

Null Ganymede

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2022, 04:06:36 PM »

Unfortunately I'm running into a problem where the total fleet points ("fleet pts" in ship_data.csv) are so small that nearby [REDACTED] fleets refuse to assist
You know you're on to something when you run into problems like this! Nice job.
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itBeABruhMoment

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2022, 04:37:55 PM »

What slider? If you're referring to the one in the faction doctrine screen it does not change the ai of unofficered ships. I tested this with the command:
runcode List<FleetMemberAPI> members = Global.getSector().getPlayerFleet().getMembersWithFightersCopy();
        FleetMemberAPI member = (FleetMemberAPI) members.get(14);
        Console.showMessage(member.getCaptain().getPersonalityAPI().getId());
That should perhaps warrant a bug report.
Is it a bug though? Isn't the doctrine screen aggression slider only supposed to affect officers from play faction npc fleets?
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DaShiv

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2022, 11:01:01 PM »

Unfortunately I'm running into a problem where the total fleet points ("fleet pts" in ship_data.csv) are so small that nearby [REDACTED] fleets refuse to assist, making it difficult to do multi-fleet testing for the full +500% XP bonus. Sigh. I know this is purely a fleet point issue since if I change the fleet points of the Monitor from 5 to say 15 and make no other changes, or if I change the fleet points of the Ziggurat from 40 to say 400 and make no other changes, then the other fleet will join just fine. (Doing so does not affect the XP bonus, since this is fleet points, not deployment points i.e. DP.) Not sure how the "nearby fleet assist or not" code works, so I don't know if frigate fleet points is reduced or something making this fleet considered too "small", even though my regular fleet of say Odysseys/Apogees for example can attract multiple fleets just fine.

I've been running into this same problem for a long time now - it's weird that I can't fight 2k+ battles against Remnants even though I could get mega-battles against human factions (especially with Nex invasions), and the problem is even worse in 0.951 since running d-mods with Derelict Operations lowers the fleet FP for assistance thresholds even more. I wish there's a modder who could make an "always assist" mod that negates these fleet restrictions for the playerfleet, assuming one hasn't been made already.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #21 on: January 22, 2022, 12:06:52 AM »

Is it a bug though? Isn't the doctrine screen aggression slider only supposed to affect officers from play faction npc fleets?

Yes it is supposed to.  Quickest quote I could find from Alex on the topic (bold is my emphasis):

Numbers, loadouts (and especially weapon ranges relative to enemy ships; if one side is generally heavily outranged, it won't do well), officer personalities/skills, the fleet doctrines (the aggressiveness setting affects unofficered ships), and of course the orders given all affect this.

Although I suppose you might call it an unadvertised feature.  I don't think there's even a tip describing it.

Doing a quick test in the simulator of a campaign game does show behavior differences for me in unofficered ships when changing the doctrine setting between cautious and reckless for me.  Cautious Legion (XIV) only fire missiles and send fighters while trying to stay way.  Reckless Legion (XIV) closes to fire front medium ballistic mounts along with missiles.  Real fights take a bit more effort to generate a repeatable and focused test scenario.
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Vanshilar

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #22 on: January 22, 2022, 12:18:24 AM »

@ Vanshilar:  Not really a threadjack if it exposes hidden benefits of Support Doctrine.  I would not mind jacking up vespene gas story point gain to feed my colonies.

Yeah just that it moves the thread a bit from "How to Make Support Doctrine Useful" to "How to Maximize your XP Gain". Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

So if I have my eight officers, but not assign them to anything, they still count toward my fleet rating even though they sit on the sidelines?

Correct. Even if they're just on your roster but not assigned to any ship, they still count in terms of your XP bonus (i.e. decreasing it). Yeah, stuff like this makes me wish there were a way to put officers on "shore leave" on one of your colonies or something, or some other way to store them when you don't want to use them yet.

So if I get a Doom, and let it use only Mine Strike as its only attack (and put Phase Anchor on it to prevent death and d-mod accumulation), then it does not count toward the full DP toward story points?  If so, that is nice.

Yup, it would only count as 1/4 of its DP. This also applies to Zig. However, note that they're still counting the full amount in terms of what you can deploy, so although they only count as 1/4 for your XP bonus, they're basically a much less effective ship taking up the space of a full ship in terms of deployment. I presume Alex did this so that if you're taking ships back from exploration (such as Legion XIV), you won't lose as much of an XP bonus if they're not equipped to fight (since they'll only count 1/4 of their DP toward your fleet total), rather than as a way to usefully construct your fighting fleet. But ships that do interesting things with their shipsystems, as opposed to their weapons (I'm thinking Afflictor for example), could use this to your advantage if you don't mind that they won't actually do damage in combat.

You know you're on to something when you run into problems like this! Nice job.

First world problems... :(

I've been running into this same problem for a long time now - it's weird that I can't fight 2k+ battles against Remnants even though I could get mega-battles against human factions (especially with Nex invasions), and the problem is even worse in 0.951 since running d-mods with Derelict Operations lowers the fleet FP for assistance thresholds even more. I wish there's a modder who could make an "always assist" mod that negates these fleet restrictions for the playerfleet, assuming one hasn't been made already.

Well I'm not sure if Derelict Operations lowers the fleet FP for assistance (or for XP); Support Doctrine lowers the DP for deployment but doesn't lower your fleet rating for XP bonus nor assistance. But yeah, it's based purely on the "fleet pts" column in ship_data.csv, so if you have a unique ship that only you have (i.e. Zig), then you can just set that ship's fleet pts to be a high value (such as 400) to make sure other fleets will assist. Or, you can stick say a Kite in your fleet or something and do the same thing...just be aware that the column is used for stuff like fleets auto-resolving combat so this may make random fleets which just happen to have Kites in them suddenly demolishing other fleets. Not sure if any faction fleets will spawn Kites naturally...maybe pirates.

Actually...you can make a skin for this. For example, assuming no fleets will naturally create a Kite (S) (so you don't have to worry about auto-resolve screwing up other fleet battles that you're not involved with), you can take the kite_original.skin and replace the "fleetPoints":2 with 1000 or whatever. You can also add "suppliesToRecover":0 and "suppliesPerMonth":0 if you have it purely to force other fleets to assist and don't want to screw up your fleet's deployment points and stuff. So that Kite (S) would basically serve as the "Great Attractor", there simply to make other fleets join in against your fleet.
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Megas

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #23 on: January 22, 2022, 06:09:58 AM »

@ Vanshilar:  So far, I have a Doom (piloted by non-officered AI) in my fleet that only has two Heavy Blasters and two autocannons, relying on mines for its primary attack.  It has Phase Anchor to avoid death.  Its job is crash test dummy to draw fire away from less expendable ships (which is everyone else that is not a Vanguard).  It mines as much as it can, and if it dies, it does not actually die but removes itself from battle conveniently without eating more d-mods.  It has been effective at its job.  I ought to see if it still works without weapons.

I have an obsession with avoiding d-mods on my ships.  They must be pristine.
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SCC

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #24 on: January 22, 2022, 08:31:41 AM »

Is it a bug though? Isn't the doctrine screen aggression slider only supposed to affect officers from play faction npc fleets?
It's supposed to affect your faction at large and unofficered ships in your fleet as well.
- In battle, some friendly AI ships just run into enemy fire and get quickly destroyed, forcing me to use my ship has a shield.

I'd be interested in seeing what happens to cause that! Always on the lookout for AI adjustments.

A couple of ways this could be happening legitimately:
1) A reckless or aggressive officer on that ship
2) Doctrine aggressiveness set to 3 or more, and the ship does not have an officer, meaning they use the doctrine aggressiveness setting instead of an officer's personality
3) Full Assault! or Eliminate orders given


As far as the endgame, yeah, just in general that's the area where I think the game needs the most work, both in terms of content and fine-tuning the mechanics. The colony release really just started to touch on what that looks like.
[/quote]

itBeABruhMoment

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #25 on: January 22, 2022, 01:55:26 PM »

Is it a bug though? Isn't the doctrine screen aggression slider only supposed to affect officers from play faction npc fleets?
It's supposed to affect your faction at large and unofficered ships in your fleet as well.
- In battle, some friendly AI ships just run into enemy fire and get quickly destroyed, forcing me to use my ship has a shield.

I'd be interested in seeing what happens to cause that! Always on the lookout for AI adjustments.

A couple of ways this could be happening legitimately:
1) A reckless or aggressive officer on that ship
2) Doctrine aggressiveness set to 3 or more, and the ship does not have an officer, meaning they use the doctrine aggressiveness setting instead of an officer's personality
3) Full Assault! or Eliminate orders given


As far as the endgame, yeah, just in general that's the area where I think the game needs the most work, both in terms of content and fine-tuning the mechanics. The colony release really just started to touch on what that looks like.
Welp, time for a bug report
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Vanshilar

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2022, 02:57:25 AM »

Hmm looking through the ships with the "CIVILIAN" tag, one that jumped out at me was the Mercury. Only 2 DP, yet has 3 small universals. So that's possibly 3 small missiles that you get for 2 DP, which becomes only 0.5 DP for XP purposes, since ships with that tag always count as 1/4 of their DP for XP purposes.

Now it's obviously a back line ship, but maybe if you have say 10 Mercuries in the back line firing Salamanders or something, or lobbing AMSRM every so often or something, that's equivalent to 20 DP (i.e. a Gryphon) but firing 30 Salamanders and only costing 5 DP in terms of XP. That would complement your ~10 or so main fighting ships pretty well.

Its DP still counts as 2 even with Support Doctrine, so you don't get the DP discount for it. So you might choose to skip Support Doctrine entirely for it (since Best of the Best is good), depending on how important those skills (Helmsmanship, Damage Control, Combat Endurance) are to the Mercury. For survivability (to keep them in the back), you might set your fleet doctrine to be cautious or timid so that they apply to Mercuries, yet make sure that the officers on your fighting ships are aggressive/reckless to have them on the front lines.
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Amoebka

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #27 on: January 27, 2022, 03:38:55 AM »

As someone who has tried early game Mercury spam extensively, it's not really worth it. The civilian tag affects ship AI, forcing it to act timid regardless of orders/doctrine, and it seems to be more conservative with missiles than usual, too (perhaps simply because it's rarely in range to use them). Your own player levels contribute so much to the XP formula, saving 1.5 DP ( Mercury over kite(A) ) isn't really relevant.

If ship limit wasn't a thing, maybe spamming Mercuries would be better. With 30 slots, there are better support missile boats.
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Megas

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #28 on: January 27, 2022, 05:56:46 AM »

As someone who has tried early game Mercury spam extensively, it's not really worth it. The civilian tag affects ship AI, forcing it to act timid regardless of orders/doctrine, and it seems to be more conservative with missiles than usual, too (perhaps simply because it's rarely in range to use them). Your own player levels contribute so much to the XP formula, saving 1.5 DP ( Mercury over kite(A) ) isn't really relevant.
I just tried unarmed Afflictor-P for the system, but it would not Amp enemies unless I ordered it to escort an allied ship.  So, I put a tactical laser on Afflictor-P just so it can Amp enemies on its own.  So much for that idea to cheese civilian status for gain.
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Locklave

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Re: Anyone tried this wild idea with Support Doctrine?
« Reply #29 on: January 28, 2022, 01:36:44 AM »

I am mulling over not using officers at all and use Support Doctrine to uplift every ship in the fleet, aside from flagship.  The idea is I do not want to manage a bunch of officers (pay their upkeep, level them up, and pick their skills) and squeeze more ships within the 160 DP budget.

While officers are good, I find leveling them a pain, and I thought "why not just dump them all?" I suppose I can train eight of them then sideline them in case I reassign skills and need them later without Support Doctrine.

One problem with that I've found is you are forced to waste a skill point on fighters in the leadership tree, since the leader skills become void you need 4 in the first branch. Since I'd rather not use fighters.

The Exp difference is pretty noticeable and I was wondering why I was leveling so damn fast this play. Exp demands going up while I was at the same time stacking more leaders making the gain rate slower, I had no clue it had such a big impact.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 02:06:38 AM by Locklave »
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