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Author Topic: Big battles should be changed  (Read 8224 times)

ThePinkPanzer

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Big battles should be changed
« on: December 04, 2012, 12:39:41 PM »

I love fighting in the game, but I absolutely despise doing it with many ships. The reason is it is simply bland.

Regular fights are fun cause you can get right to it and easily maneuver and engage, but with the nodes and everything all that is severely limited. You want to use your massive fleet? Nope, get the nodes. You want to try and surround them? Nope, get the nodes. Even when you try to get the nodes, their entire fleet goes to them and you end up just finishing the battle there. By the time you can get reinforcements, the enemy is retreating.

It all just feels limiting when you can't use your superior numbers or skill and instead you have to try and bum rush the nodes to prevent them from getting there first. If there was a mode that simply disabled the node rush, than by god would I love it.

I am not saying the feature should be removed, but it needs a serious revamp.
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Reshy

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2012, 05:07:07 PM »

The problem with big battles is the fact that ships do not keep in formation, they all cluster due to trying to take the shortest route without taking into consideration their allies position until there's a risk of crashing.  The nodes aren't as much of a problem as formations which bottleneck how many ships can effectively fight at once.
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ThePinkPanzer

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2012, 08:52:27 PM »

But with nodes you need to split your fleet in half to be effective, which ends with either half of your fleet failing horribly due to *** AI and dying or by the time you actually get reinforcements in everyone is retreating. It is no fun either when the big epic battle is small because they had to split the fleet and they couldn't afford to put many ships in.
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Gothars

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2012, 09:07:45 PM »

I don't see much of a suggestion here. What system would make big battles better?


I like the objectives, they give value to fighters and open up some strategy elements. For example you don't have to rush, you can also circumvent the enemy with faster ships and only take easy objectives.

More battlefield variety would be great, but I have hopes they will get some attention when the travel system gets it's overhaul, dynamical generation and such.
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2012, 12:45:46 AM »

Would be nice if there was a "huge battle" similar to the small battle where your whole fleet is pre deployed.
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Mattk50

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2012, 01:57:53 AM »

Would be nice if there was a "huge battle" similar to the small battle where your whole fleet is pre deployed.

if both fleets are attacking this would be cool
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ThePinkPanzer

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2012, 03:25:34 AM »

I don't see much of a suggestion here. What system would make big battles better?


I like the objectives, they give value to fighters and open up some strategy elements. For example you don't have to rush, you can also circumvent the enemy with faster ships and only take easy objectives.

More battlefield variety would be great, but I have hopes they will get some attention when the travel system gets it's overhaul, dynamical generation and such.

They don't give you much strategy though, it is just "bum rush the objectives" and then you end up killing the entire fleet there and then the battle ends without you even getting a chance to really use your nice big fleet.
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rex

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2012, 06:36:55 AM »

I think larger maps with more clustered nodes might be kinda nice. It would give more territorial feel to the game.   With the current balanced layouts, particularly the 5 node one, it really does kinda force you to rush the middle comm node. Now, give me a cluster of nodes in the south east, with the AI having a group in the north west, with a good bit of distance between them, and I would have a lot more reason to leave forces back to protect it, or keep deploy points set aside so I can release a second wave if my base area gets threatened.

Even unbalanced, node distributions would make things interesting. Leading to a sort of uphill fight, against the equivalent of an enemy with the high ground. Maybe make this sort of thing favor the defender which would make steam rolling the AI later in the game a little more difficult.

Hazards other than nebulae would be nice too.  Black holes, active stars, very dense asteroid fields that would be dangerous for capital ships and cruisers, whatever. They'd make the combat fields a lot less flat, and create things choke points.

Chapter 11 of The Art of War talks about various type of battlefields and how they require different strategies. Maybe look something like that, and figure out analogues for space combat.


Another idea would be to let the AI have a flagship with appropriate buffs. Take it out, kill the fleet commander, and you get some tactical advantage(pretty easy to implement with a fleet wide hit to effective crew level). Fail to take it out and the AI gets to keep a big mean ship that can control a lot of space and do a lot of damage.
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Jazwana

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2012, 07:07:51 AM »

Part of the benefit in having a big fleet is you get more Fleet Points to when deploying pre-battle.  Maybe you feel that this advantage isn't as obvious?  This is a tricky "balance" issue because too much of a pre-battle bonus makes it impossible for the other side to come back.


Perhaps one way to address this is have the Fleet Point bonus for each buoy captured scale with the size of your fleet.  Thus, a 100 FP fleet may get 15 per nav buoy while a 50 FP fleet only gets 10. (Or 8..or whatever the right balance number is..)   The in-game logic here is:  A large fleet may be somewhat unwieldy to deploy (thus no particular large bonus pre-battle) but if things start going well it quickly brings its superior firepower to bear.   Perhaps it may require multiple buoys to be held for an additional FP bonus rather than getting it right from the 1st buoy captured.
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Jazwana

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2012, 07:13:01 AM »

As to the fleets clumping (auto-reinforcing a capture order to meet the enemy fleet at a particular node) there are two ways to address this.

1) Change AI Admiral behavior to have a range of options when deciding how to move it's fleet, i.e. 1 big fleet vs split fleet for multiple objectives.   Therefore the AI may often be attacking two nodes rather than one.

2) As a player, change how you order your fleet around.  Instead of just targeting nodes with capture orders and then sitting back to watch your fleet go, use boxing commands to move the fleet around.  I assume if you like playing with a large fleet you've spent a few points into the +1 command point skill.
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Vulcan

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2012, 07:09:20 PM »

Would be nice if there was a "huge battle" similar to the small battle where your whole fleet is pre deployed.

if both fleets are attacking this would be cool

Now there's a great idea... If both fleets are "committed to an all-out attack" every ship should be deployed.
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TJJ

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2012, 02:29:22 AM »

I think it's just an issue with the campaign engagement maps as they are implemented at the moment.
Many of the mission maps play out far better.

Though I agree the AI often fails to effectively rush the objectives, leading to them having an FP deficiency, causing their fewer fielded ships to be swarmed and the remainder to prematurely retreat.
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jimy

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #12 on: December 09, 2012, 11:52:26 AM »

Would be nice if there was a "huge battle" similar to the small battle where your whole fleet is pre deployed.

if both fleets are attacking this would be cool

Now there's a great idea... If both fleets are "committed to an all-out attack" every ship should be deployed.


I approve this.

Also I think those buyos shouldn't be the only way to deploy ships.
I always hated that even after I captured everything some of my cruisers couldn't enter the battlefield...
Maybe you should get 10 fleetpoints every 5 minutes and if you have all buyos captured 20.

Though this is a tricky one because it would decrease the advantage you get when you capture all buyos to decrease the enemy fleet size on the battlefield.
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ThePinkPanzer

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #13 on: December 09, 2012, 12:58:05 PM »

Would be nice if there was a "huge battle" similar to the small battle where your whole fleet is pre deployed.

if both fleets are attacking this would be cool

Now there's a great idea... If both fleets are "committed to an all-out attack" every ship should be deployed.


I approve this.

Also I think those buyos shouldn't be the only way to deploy ships.
I always hated that even after I captured everything some of my cruisers couldn't enter the battlefield...
Maybe you should get 10 fleetpoints every 5 minutes and if you have all buyos captured 20.

Though this is a tricky one because it would decrease the advantage you get when you capture all buyos to decrease the enemy fleet size on the battlefield.

Unless you are having a freaking massive battle (like a custom mission one) I doubt you will be fighting long enough for 10 fleetpoints every 5 minutes to matter all that much.
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jimy

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Re: Big battles should be changed
« Reply #14 on: December 10, 2012, 05:08:50 AM »

Yep, that's what I meant. It should only work in big battles but not in small skirmishes.
Though I don't think my values are perfect so they should be tweaked (a lot I guess. :D)
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