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Author Topic: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.  (Read 4038 times)

Zarcon

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Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« on: December 28, 2011, 10:13:46 AM »

This is a very small idea, but as I was messing around with modifying some ships and variants, I began to wonder if the ships I was creating were anything close to balanced.  (Sometimes I got carried away with creating AWESOMENESS!, ha ha )   ;D

So that got me pondering if maybe there would be a way to have a formula, or mini program that would generate the appropriate Fleet Points that a particular variant or ship hull should possess, because most if not all of the various items which make up the value and effectiveness of an individual ship are based on datapoints, like total flux, hitpoints, armor rating, various weapon mounts available on the hull, the available ordinance points, etc. 

This is clearly not very vital, because people can just eyeball it balance wise, and do a pretty good job, but as a long range concept, I think it would be rather nice, to help modders keep their ships roughly in line with the base/original ships provided with the game. 

Anyways, ignore this currently, but maybe think about it down the road a bit.  :)
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Darrow

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2011, 06:27:34 PM »

So basicly you're saying that a ship shouldnt be able to just put on like 10 ULTRA CANNONS and thats it ?


Like a system that stops you from making overly powerful ships.

I see what you mean, i think you can also incorporate research into something iunno... make it so it enables more points of some bs
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Alex

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #2 on: December 28, 2011, 07:02:17 PM »

This is a very small idea, but as I was messing around with modifying some ships and variants, I began to wonder if the ships I was creating were anything close to balanced.  (Sometimes I got carried away with creating AWESOMENESS!, ha ha )   ;D

So that got me pondering if maybe there would be a way to have a formula, or mini program that would generate the appropriate Fleet Points that a particular variant or ship hull should possess, because most if not all of the various items which make up the value and effectiveness of an individual ship are based on datapoints, like total flux, hitpoints, armor rating, various weapon mounts available on the hull, the available ordinance points, etc. 

This is clearly not very vital, because people can just eyeball it balance wise, and do a pretty good job, but as a long range concept, I think it would be rather nice, to help modders keep their ships roughly in line with the base/original ships provided with the game. 

Anyways, ignore this currently, but maybe think about it down the road a bit.  :)

Hmm. I have some code in place that tries to figure out the overall power of a ship, for various AI purposes, but it's pretty inexact. Let me give you an example of the difficulties - how would you weigh speed in such a computation? Fifty points of speed wouldn't matter *that* much for a Tempest, but more than triple the speed of an Onslaught. And hitpoints or armor... how much those mean depends on the ship's firepower. If you don't have any weapon mounts, having a ton of armor and hull doesn't mean much. Likewise, having a huge amount of weapons means less if you don't have the flux capacity to use them - or the armor/shields to last in combat.

It seems like the overall "strength" of a ship, given the implications of the above, is a weighted product of its speed, firepower, and durability. Which is roughly how auto-resolve figures it out - but then, fleet points don't actually reflect a ship's combat power. They also take into account the ship's out-of-combat usefulness (cargo, fuel capacity, etc). You could probably incorporate those into the formula somehow, though it's sounding like more and more of a nightmare to get to work out just right.

Further, if you've got ships whose fleet point values exactly reflect their quality, there's not much room for improving your fleet with "better" ships - since you'd always wind up with proportionally fewer of them. My thinking is that better ships need to cost a bit more, but not quite enough to fully account for how much better they are, if that makes any sense. That creates additional difficulties for a potential formula...
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ollobrains

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2011, 10:36:49 PM »

speed makes something harder to hit, can be off set with tracking modules computers that predict movement could be incorparated into a formula ?
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2011, 11:16:53 PM »

I always thought fleet points were arbitrary values used to depict a ship's logistical cost; i.e. it is fixed on a per-hull basis, except perhaps for special things like electronics warfare modules, drones, and fighter bays.
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Thana

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2011, 11:24:28 PM »

speed makes something harder to hit, can be off set with tracking modules computers that predict movement could be incorparated into a formula ?

I don't think you grasped Alex's point in his post - it wasn't that he doesn't know how one would go about writing a combat value appreciation system, it's that it would be incredibly hard to balance so that it would both accurately reflect vessels' combat power and work well with other sub-systems of the game.
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Zarcon

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #6 on: December 29, 2011, 07:50:43 AM »

Hmm. I have some code in place that tries to figure out the overall power of a ship, for various AI purposes, but it's pretty inexact. Let me give you an example of the difficulties - how would you weigh speed in such a computation? Fifty points of speed wouldn't matter *that* much for a Tempest, but more than triple the speed of an Onslaught. And hitpoints or armor... how much those mean depends on the ship's firepower. If you don't have any weapon mounts, having a ton of armor and hull doesn't mean much. Likewise, having a huge amount of weapons means less if you don't have the flux capacity to use them - or the armor/shields to last in combat.

It seems like the overall "strength" of a ship, given the implications of the above, is a weighted product of its speed, firepower, and durability. Which is roughly how auto-resolve figures it out - but then, fleet points don't actually reflect a ship's combat power. They also take into account the ship's out-of-combat usefulness (cargo, fuel capacity, etc). You could probably incorporate those into the formula somehow, though it's sounding like more and more of a nightmare to get to work out just right.

Further, if you've got ships whose fleet point values exactly reflect their quality, there's not much room for improving your fleet with "better" ships - since you'd always wind up with proportionally fewer of them. My thinking is that better ships need to cost a bit more, but not quite enough to fully account for how much better they are, if that makes any sense. That creates additional difficulties for a potential formula...

Very good points.  :)  Hmm, welp thx for considering it, the one part of what you mentioned that I totally didn't think about at all was the progression concept.  How on earth is a formula going to take tech/campaign progression via new ship hulls into consideration?  Hmm, oh well.  :)  Eyeballing it is underrated anyway, builds character!   ;D
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There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Alex

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #7 on: December 29, 2011, 08:34:33 AM »

I always thought fleet points were arbitrary values used to depict a ship's logistical cost; i.e. it is fixed on a per-hull basis, except perhaps for special things like electronics warfare modules, drones, and fighter bays.

That's the in-fiction explanation, but it also makes sense to have these values be based on the "quality" of a hull. And yeah, they're fixed per-hull, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

Eyeballing it is underrated anyway, builds character!   ;D

Heheh. Actually, I think eyeballing is underrated. If one is intimately familiar with a game, there's an intuition factor that no formula is going to capture.

But there's no substitute for lots and lots of playtesting, in either case.
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ollobrains

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Re: Small idea about auto Fleet point generator for new ships.
« Reply #8 on: December 30, 2011, 04:19:25 AM »

starpoint gemini might provide alex with some generalistic ideas on how to add elements to the game.  Ill wait for 0.5 whenver that is and then start more ideas for ya from there
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