Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5

Author Topic: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)  (Read 3193 times)

gG_pilot

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 225
    • View Profile
Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« on: January 16, 2023, 09:08:17 AM »

Player of the game has a task to build and run most powerful fleet in the  Sector. Therefore task of the player is, use any l (edit a save,, or use a game changing mod  is not legal)   game supported activities  to achieve that (piracy  or deception is of course part  of game).
 
Here is a problematic skill which creates poison gameplay loop. e.i. when player is using all  game  play options to  achieve goal,  he found himself in the poison loop.

Leadership  line  of skills  offer  "Support doctrine" which (also) says >> every non-piloted ship gets  Combat Endurance

It  means,  every ship with a pilot (  which dont  have Combat endurance) has 15% lower CR  then rest of your fleet.  This situation leads  to fallowing gameplay loop:

Remove all  your pilots from all  ships.
Let ships recover CR due to Support  doctrine +15%
Right before your fleet meet an enemy press pause, study  your opponent fleet and   remember all the ships.
Press fleet, button.
Assign your pilots to the ships you want to use in the upcoming battle, according to their and yours poweer/skills/DP. (Player have to  memorise all those those numbers.)
Go back to space interface start combat
Due to CR slow  degradation, all your piloted  ships lose about 1% CR before  you initiate combat
Due to about 14% CR  bonus to all your piloted ships, now you get extra bonuses to :
dmg done;dmg resisted; maneeverability;fighter refit time;autofire  accuracy 

It is significant boost of whole fleet so player should do it.
Then, right after the battle you remove all your pilots from all ships
Now loop starts again

All this is made by design and available to player  to rise up power of the fleet. It is poison.


Possible solutions:
A. make "Call Reinforce" screen a sort of command deck, where  player can attach pilot to ship on this screen. e.i. all ships who are in reserve can attach/deattach pilot then send to battle.  This solution  is the best,  and also solves often issue when player forgot swap pilot to  other ship  who has higher CR ready for combat. It also can  support  interesting gameplay when one pilot use  several ships in one combat.  Go in,  fight  (get  shot or retreat) then pilot appears  again in  the  Call Reinforce screen. It  is a similar, when  player  changes several ships in one battle, so hired pilots also could do that, but only when their original ships goes out of combat.
B. remove  the Combat Endurance skill from Support  doctrine (stupid, but it  solves the poison gameplay loop)
C. replace  the  Combat Endurance skill by other skill, Field Modulation for  example.
D. change Support doctrine so it says "All ships get Combat endurance" (pilot AND pilot-less) in case it  is too strong then optionally "All military ships get Combat endurance" (pilot AND pilot-less)

Thanks
« Last Edit: January 16, 2023, 09:17:43 AM by gG_pilot »
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2023, 09:32:03 AM »

I'm not a huge min/maxer so I'm not tempted by this. I don't think the extra 4% bonus going from 70 to 84% (or 85% to 99% since you probably already have Crew Training) is worth the hassle. Or to put it another way, if that extra 4% from extra CR determines the outcome of a battle, you were already pretty evenly matched and it could have gone either way, anyway. Also, you're spending Supplies to get them to the increased CR so it's not entirely "free." Combat Endurance has other benefits beyond just the CR increase which the officers using this exploit wouldn't benefit from. So, yes, it's technically a CR exploit to gain the bonuses from having greater CR but it's not tricking the game into believing the officers you subbed in actually have Combat Endurance.

You could technically already do this by putting an officer with Combat Endurance on a ship and then switching it before a battle so that the un-officered ship now has increased CR. Perhaps it's backwards but I'd argue the un-officered ship needs more help than the officered one. All that said, this was worth pointing out. I don't think Support Doctrine needs changed though.
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2023, 11:40:02 AM »

4-5% on both damage done and damage received is a pretty large boost in terms of winning the flux war.

On a related note, I know some people who had an officer in their flagship to give CR and missile ammo, and then they would swap their character in at the start of battle and keep those bonuses without having the the skills which is a closely related cheese strat. I agree with OP that it's an annoying feature of the game.

I feel like the most effective fix would be somehow restricting officer swapping, like making it take time to gain the benefits of skills after swapping in, or making it impossible to swap officers unless you are in port or something.

I'm definitely against removing combat endurance from support doctrine though. I think it really benefits/incentivizes the use of frigates and destroyers due to the PPT bonus as well.
Logged

Hiruma Kai

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 878
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2023, 01:37:23 PM »


On a related note, I know some people who had an officer in their flagship to give CR and missile ammo, and then they would swap their character in at the start of battle and keep those bonuses without having the the skills which is a closely related cheese strat. I agree with OP that it's an annoying feature of the game.

Guilty as charged when soloing.  What else am I going to do with 8 officers who don't have ships.  I have no issues with using all options available in a personal challenge fight. :)

Even in more sensible fleet fights, I don't think that particular situation is too much of an issue, since you're essentially sacrificing an officer for more flagship power, since that officer can't go to a different ship when transferred mid-fight.

I feel like the most effective fix would be somehow restricting officer swapping, like making it take time to gain the benefits of skills after swapping in, or making it impossible to swap officers unless you are in port or something.

Wouldn't help from a late game true power optimization perspective since you can drop a temporary colony in nearly any system. 

The only way to avoid this option is to make CR drops instant when swapping officers/support doctrine benefits.  Doesn't automated ships do that right now?  I don't remember.

Although if you do go the instant CR drop route, I would suggest having it remember what the CR would have been if the Combat Endurance/Crew Training/Support Doctrine/Hull Restoration benefits had not just been changed, and if you swap back while paused, it goes back immediately as well, to avoid penalties for simply rearranging and making a mistake or testing with different officers in the simulator.

This situation leads  to fallowing gameplay loop:

Remove all  your pilots from all  ships.
Let ships recover CR due to Support  doctrine +15%
Right before your fleet meet an enemy press pause, study  your opponent fleet and   remember all the ships.
Press fleet, button.
Assign your pilots to the ships you want to use in the upcoming battle, according to their and yours poweer/skills/DP. (Player have to  memorise all those those numbers.)
Go back to space interface start combat
Due to CR slow  degradation, all your piloted  ships lose about 1% CR before  you initiate combat
Due to about 14% CR  bonus to all your piloted ships, now you get extra bonuses to :
dmg done;dmg resisted; maneeverability;fighter refit time;autofire  accuracy 

You could do that, but you have to present the fleet and the rest of the skill selection to really understand if this is actually stronger than simply using the skills as intended, or a different skill pick, like Best of the Best would be stronger.

Support Doctrine is best in the case where you have many ships, significantly over the officer limit.  Using Support Doctrine merely to get a +15% CR (as noted a 5% damage/speed/damage reduction buff) is on the weak side for a tier 5 skill point, without the free officer skills and DP reduction.  Hull Restoration can do something similar, but also with the fact you don't care about ship losses in combat, just overall victory or defeat.

Given it's trivial to hit the 240 DP limit with all officered ships when heavy on capitals, you'll generally be better off with Best of the Best and the extra story point hullmod if you've gone heavy capital/cruiser, and just grab officer training for level 6 officers who pick up Combat Endurance (which the elite version isn't bad on armor tanking capitals).  Or alternatively grabbing a different tier 5 like Hull restoration, or perhaps Automated Ships, rather than doubling down leadership.

A frigate/destroyer focused build is generally going to want Combat Endurance on the officered ships, because the +60 seconds PPT and -25% CR degredation rate is more valuable than many other skill picks even without the +15% CR, at least in hard late game fights which can take awhile, which makes this loop moot.

About the only place I could see this being optimal is for a player who doesn't captain their flagship, and has just the right mix of frigates and cruisers to still benefit from Support Doctrine fully on the frigates, and 9 cheap cruisers or so.  Anything else is likely better off with a different skill build or would just be running Combat Endurance anyways on their smaller ships.

In any case, you can already do something similar without Support Doctrine, just with one officer with Combat Endurance and some fully loaded logistics ships.  Go to planet in the system you are fighting at, create a colony, lure the fleet you want to fight to the colony, dock at
 colony, store all ships but one with officer with Combat Endurance.  Repair up to full CR instantly.  Swap to next ship, storing the now 100% CR one.  Repair up to full CR.  Repeat.  Pull out all your now 100% CR (degrading quickly) ships, leave the colony and engage the fleet.  Even stronger since you can spend the character skill point elsewhere.  Once done fighting in the system, abandon the colony.

So modifications to the Support Doctrine skill won't actually fix the issue, if you think it's a problem.  As far as the Call Reinforce screen suggestion, all it does is make this particular swapping behavior easier, it's doesn't address the balance considerations.
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2023, 06:37:37 PM »

Suggestion: make Combat Endurance grant +15% to both max and current CR, rather than just boosting the max. Yes, this would mean that a ship with Combat Endurance would 'zero out' at 15% CR. If that would be a problem, make them also get the zero CR penalties (no system use, can't phase, etc) at 15% CR, and increase the decay rate reduction to keep the same timing to get from 100% to their new 'zero' point.

Edit: Alternatively, give them a bonus of "up to 15% current CR", and have that scale down based on what percentage of the ship's max CR it's currently at. That might 'feel' better than having ships 'zero out' at 15% CR, and provides essentially the same end result.

Then the effects of Combat Endurance would be entirely dependent on the current officer, and there would be no more incentive to swap to a ship with Combat Endurance.

For Missile Specialization - well, how about we take a page out of Missile Autoloader's book? Instead of just doubling missile ammunition, have the skill give the pilot a pool of reload points that will restore out-of-ammo missiles. Again, this removes the incentive to have a secondary officer with the skill who's only there for the player to swap command over once the battle starts. (Though you would want to make sure that this pool follows the player as they swap command if the player has it; don't want it to reset per hull and encourage chain-swapping-command.)

Poof, problems solved.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2023, 09:58:17 AM by Wyvern »
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Hiruma Kai

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 878
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2023, 08:21:37 PM »

For Missile Specialization - well, how about we take a page out of Missile Autoloader's book? Instead of just doubling missile ammunition, have the skill give the pilot a pool of reload points that will restore out-of-ammo missiles. Again, this removes the incentive to have a secondary officer with the skill who's only there for the player to swap command over once the battle starts. (Though you would want to make sure that this pool follows the player as they swap command if the player has it; don't want it to reset per hull and encourage chain-swapping-command.)

Poof, problems solved.

Well, unless you're bouncing back and forth between two different ships with the officers, letting the old officer show up for a bit to reload the missiles, and then bouncing back, ala Neural Link style but without the Neural link.  And if the reloads follow the officer, then you can get twice as many reloads on one ship by swapping back and forth?  Doesn't that make it worse, as you get triple (or quadruple) missiles on one ship?  Or again, do the missiles disappear out of the tubes after reloading? What if I link the missiles to the main guns, transfer out briefly and let the AI fire them, and then transfer back now that the target died from a fresh load of harpoons?

I mean, you can probably try to come up with some abuse proof method, but I'm not convinced it is worth the effort convolution necessary in regards to the player hopping between ships that are already in the middle of combat.

I don't think it really is an issue when you are soloing since you are actively handicapping yourself, and for the fleet case, you are sacrificing a full officer with 5 (or 6) skills to give the player flagship what amounts to two half skills.  It has an opportunity cost which seems fine to me, so it is not purely better.  It can be a reasonable trade if you happen to be a good pilot, or you are high DP cost ship heavy and already hit the 240 DP limit with only 8 ships.  Given the AI tends to do better when it has more allied ship bodies on the field, I again think it is not optimal way to do things.

This is separate question from campaign layer CR bonuses going up and down as you shuffle officers from ship to ship.  That mostly comes from the fact Alex doesn't want to be mean and charge players supplies for merely shuffling officers around or mis-clicking.
Logged

BaBosa

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 445
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2023, 10:01:39 PM »

Easier fix is to make it so CR above the max doesn’t give any benefit. Then you just get an extra minute of high CR time at the cost of supplies and annoyance.
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2023, 11:20:19 PM »

Well, unless you're bouncing back and forth between two different ships with the officers, letting the old officer show up for a bit to reload the missiles, and then bouncing back, ala Neural Link style but without the Neural link.  And if the reloads follow the officer, then you can get twice as many reloads on one ship by swapping back and forth?  Doesn't that make it worse, as you get triple (or quadruple) missiles on one ship?  Or again, do the missiles disappear out of the tubes after reloading? What if I link the missiles to the main guns, transfer out briefly and let the AI fire them, and then transfer back now that the target died from a fresh load of harpoons?
Hm, yeah, you'd need to track "these reloads were from an officer" and then take them away when the player swaps in. I don't think the other way would be a problem, though. If you swap in to reload some missiles for a ship - well, that's not really abusable.

I don't think it really is an issue when you are soloing since you are actively handicapping yourself, and for the fleet case, you are sacrificing a full officer with 5 (or 6) skills to give the player flagship what amounts to two half skills.  It has an opportunity cost which seems fine to me, so it is not purely better.  It can be a reasonable trade if you happen to be a good pilot, or you are high DP cost ship heavy and already hit the 240 DP limit with only 8 ships.  Given the AI tends to do better when it has more allied ship bodies on the field, I again think it is not optimal way to do things.
The missiles one is more problematic here, I feel; for example, an XIV Legion with extra ammunition can make a significant difference in anti-station battles compared to not having that extra ammunition.

This is separate question from campaign layer CR bonuses going up and down as you shuffle officers from ship to ship.  That mostly comes from the fact Alex doesn't want to be mean and charge players supplies for merely shuffling officers around or mis-clicking.
Err... what? The current implementation charges you supplies for shuffling officers around; my suggested fix for Combat Endurance would in fact remove that annoyance.

Example: A recently recovered Hammerhead is at 40% CR (max 70%) with no officer. You assign an officer with Combat Endurance to it. It's now at 55% CR (max 85%); this change does not cost you supplies. If you then remove the officer, it goes back to 40% CR (max 70%).
« Last Edit: January 16, 2023, 11:24:46 PM by Wyvern »
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

BCS

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 279
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2023, 11:54:15 PM »

Wait, people are actually taking OP seriously?

It  means,  every ship with a pilot (  which dont  have Combat endurance) has 15% lower CR  then rest of your fleet.  This situation leads  to fallowing

This situation leads to you either not using officers at all(which is the entire point of Support Doctrine) or giving them Combat Endurance if you do(unless you are using BotB/Hull Restoration combo all your officers should have Combat Endurance anyway)

There are no problems here to fix.
Logged

Jackundor

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 242
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2023, 01:13:40 AM »

ok, this problem boils down to "min-maxing requires me to do annoying stuff"... so geniuenly... just dont?

like, you say
Player of the game has a task to build and run most powerful fleet in the  Sector.
to which i say "no, why would you think that?". Like, i don't go around and only use the most powerful ships and such.

there's nothing that makes you do this annoying step but you yourself. It's not like you don't stand a chance against your enemies if you don't do this. If it limits your enjoyment of the game than you can really just stop doing it.
Logged

prav

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 381
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2023, 05:33:57 AM »

Playing the game well, doing the most powerful thing, should not be unpleasant.
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2023, 05:47:40 AM »

The “most powerful thing” is quite open to interpretation and even then, this suggestion seems to be trying to change a capstone skill to solve an edge case. I’m still not convinced using this technique is optimal. It does have upside, I suppose, but again, you’re paying for it via extra supply use over “normal.”

Perhaps CR should instantly decay if you go into battle after a change in max CR. Maybe you even get a prompt that says as much.
Logged

smithney

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 276
  • Internetian pleb
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2023, 05:57:04 AM »

Playing the game well, doing the most powerful thing, should not be unpleasant.
But there's a difference between "playing well" and optimizing the fun out of the game. I don't think Support Doctrine's mechanics are as obvious as OP makes them seem to be, which means players would have to go out of their way to spoil their gameplay. Which is why I don't think they need changing.
Logged

Schwartz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1452
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #13 on: January 17, 2023, 05:58:51 AM »

Willingness to do this kind of thing is proportional to how unforgivingly hard the game actually is. Starsector is not hard. It is challenging when you pick the wrong battles or get caught in a situation you shouldn't have been caught in. Actually, as soon as you have some decent ships in your fleet, the game is quite easy and you're not liable to lose your ships even against bigger odds. Actually actually, the CR bonus for officers is still a great skill so my officered ships end up having that, too. By which point it becomes a non-issue.

So I've never done this exploit and I don't see it as a big problem for the player population either. It may be worthwhile to plug this, as long as it doesn't come with another weird and gamey explanation. Simply having ships limited to their current max CR rather than it "trickling down" would probably be fine. But really this is such an exotic (read: masochistic) exploit that I don't really see the need to go that hard.
Logged

Jackundor

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 242
    • View Profile
Re: Poison gameplay loop; (by design)
« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2023, 06:20:13 AM »

But there's a difference between "playing well" and optimizing the fun out of the game. I don't think Support Doctrine's mechanics are as obvious as OP makes them seem to be, which means players would have to go out of their way to spoil their gameplay. Which is why I don't think they need changing.
this tbh, it's not playing well at all, it cheesing to minmax and incentivises optimising for less fun
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5