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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: Combat Readiness  (Read 108349 times)

Killian

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #30 on: February 19, 2013, 02:43:30 PM »

And don't even get me started on the different types of HE ammo or the logistics involved in safeguarding antimatter rounds.

"Dammit Jones, I wanted HEAP ammo! This is HEAT!"
"Sorrysirwon'thappenagainsir!"


 ::)

This sounds like a pretty neat mechanic. This makes me wonder if CR could also be used to model crew fatigue... or more accurately, swapping a 'fresh' crew in could restore some CR. You could have reserve crew transports along to keep fresh crew in the fight; the ship would take a CR hit during the changeover, but then recover to a more acceptable level once the new crew were settled in.

By the sounds of things, CR probably won't be a big issue for fast-moving, hard-hitting raiders and pirate fleets (who ultimately don't give a rat's ass about notions of 'combat readiness', and are more concerned with raiding civilian ships than slugging it out with local security forces) but any wannabe-warlords or pirate kings will have to have their act together lest their warfleets suddenly start having issues in the middle of battle.
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Nick XR

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #31 on: February 19, 2013, 02:45:29 PM »

Interesting ideas. I really like the prior mentioned idea of "maintenance" carrier or something, perhaps we could do that with some of these freighters so there is actually some incentive to use freighters in combat?

In general though I don't think the CR degrading on frigates is a good idea, here's my rationale:
* Only a few of the frigates are "over powered" yet this change impacts all of them
* Presently, based on statistics I'm making up on the spot, I would say that advanced fighters are more effective than 90% of the frigates out there and only cost at most 2x as much while being more powerful, faster, and durable due to the fact they can resupply/repair at carriers in the middle of combat, insta reapir and the end of combat.  And the TCO for fighters is less since they die so much less in combat with a proper carrier where as frigates seemingly always get killed when AI piloted (sure it takes supplies, but supplies are dirt cheap and readily available)
So the CR change serves to only make frigates even less useful when compared to fighter craft.

Maybe what needs to happen is for fighters to be less effective?  But honestly if that happens people will just use frigates and ditch carriers & fighters.  So at some level the problem is that Frigates and Fighters compete for the same job and with these changes I'll be more clear that the optimal strategy is to use fighters, not frigates.  

I do think there are two real problems:
* A few frigates are wildly OP
* Fighters and Frigates try and do the same job, no other two ship categories really do this


To resolve the above problems I propose:
* In regards to the OP frigates, take a scalpel to the offenders, not a sledge hammer on all
* Rethink how fighters operate, the ability to self heal in combat and insta-heal at the end of combat makes me feel like they should be more like missiles and less like tiny frigates

Sproginator

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #32 on: February 19, 2013, 02:55:47 PM »

Can we get mining drones now then? >:)
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #33 on: February 19, 2013, 03:06:58 PM »

* Only a few of the frigates are "over powered" yet this change impacts all of them

These are just the worst offenders. With the right skills/hullmods, you could probably do this with most of them with varying degrees of success, depending on the specific enemy fleet composition.

The worst offenders are also fun, and this provides an opportunity to nudge other frigates in that direction. To continue with your analogy, I'd look at this is taking a scalpel to all rather than a sledgehammer to the worst offenders :)

As far as fighters, that's interesting. I'm still considering what to do with them, but the general consensus on the forum seems to be that they're underpowered, rather than over.
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Cycerin

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #34 on: February 19, 2013, 03:41:56 PM »

What skill aptitude class will CR-affecting skills, if any, wind up in?
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Gothars

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #35 on: February 19, 2013, 03:44:17 PM »

Again, "next blog post" :)

Alright, I will shut up and see what else you've got up your sleeve ;)


You'll have to purchase at least 10 separate times of autocannon rounds and painstakingly match them to the right weapons in a QTE. Each failure will auto-deduct 10% CR and will require faster responses in the next attempt.

And don't even get me started on the different types of HE ammo or the logistics involved in safeguarding antimatter rounds.

Imagining that kept me laughing for two minutes ;D



One thing nobody mentioned yet is the danger that CR introduces prolonged waiting periods. At the moment you can go from battle to battle as long as you don't mess up and have to repair. Will I have to run or hide after every medium battle now, so my CR can regenerate? How is that not a bad thing?
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Dastryx

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #36 on: February 19, 2013, 03:54:59 PM »

Iv been playing since .52a and just wanted say that I agree with the general consensus that these fighters are underpowered, some more than others with Gladius wings being in the first category.
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MasterGlink

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #37 on: February 19, 2013, 03:57:17 PM »

Sounds really good, and a good excuse to come back to the game for a bit and try different fleet compositions and ship loadouts. I want to test it out for myself or at least see more of it before making a judgement call whether I like it or not. It sounds good so far, but I'm not quite understanding how it works mechanically.

  • Does it apply both in and out of combat?
  • Is this something that would affect my performance in battle or is more related with my next engagements?
  • Short-term or long-term, maybe both?
  • Does it introduce more random events and situations (love these, but they are unpopular with a lot of folk)?
  • Does it encourage the RTS element more (To be honest, I haven't been able to use it much, piloting takes priority in current builds in my opinion)?
« Last Edit: February 19, 2013, 03:59:51 PM by MasterGlink »
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Wyvern

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #38 on: February 19, 2013, 04:03:46 PM »

I'm not so sure that fighters are underpowered... but I don't use them because they're annoying; they eat personnel and supplies, often in highly unpredictable quantities.  And, y'know, the game is immersive enough that I really don't like picking tactics that result in all-but-guaranteed crew losses.  Back when wasps were drones, I'd gleefully use several wings of them - the supply cost wasn't, on its own, that big a deal, and as long as I didn't auto-resolve fights, they were pretty durable.  Now?  I'd rather stick those crew into a nice high-tech frigate, where there's actually a chance they'll all survive a serious battle.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #39 on: February 19, 2013, 04:06:08 PM »

What skill aptitude class will CR-affecting skills, if any, wind up in?

Can't say just yet. Depends on how they go about it flavor-wise, could be any, really.

One thing nobody mentioned yet is the danger that CR introduces prolonged waiting periods. At the moment you can go from battle to battle as long as you don't mess up and have to repair. Will I have to run or hide after every medium battle now, so my CR can regenerate? How is that not a bad thing?

That's a good question, and I don't think it has a simple answer. I think it will work because of a combination of the following:

  • There will be time pressure to get things done (i.e., you could wait for optimal CR or you could go and save your outpost)
  • There's a maintenance cost to simply flying around, so it's not as "appealing" (in quotes because it's never actually appealing)
  • The pacing of encounters will be different, i.e. longer natural delays between fights
  • You'll be able to fight a few battles before CR became a pressing issue
  • There may be TOP SECRET emergency means to boost CR at a cost

The first one is the most important, though. As long as time has no meaning, any kind of delay is a pain; hence the insta-repair option at the current Oribtal Stations. But when time actually causes things to happen, managing those delays will become a strategic consideration. For example, supposing CR took a really long time to regenerate, you might set things up so that you could work in a trading run while it did. Or, if there's a pressing danger, you might decide that you have to go for it with low CR, and damn the torpedoes.

Managing what ships you actually deploy vs how much CR it costs/how long it takes to recover is part of it, too. If you don't pay attention to that, you would be likely to run into CR and supply problems.

  • Does it apply both in and out of combat?
  • Is this something that would affect my performance in battle or is more related with my next engagements?
  • Short-term or long-term, maybe both?
  • Does it introduce more random events and situations (love these, but they are unpopular with a lot of folk)?
  • Does it encourage the RTS element more (To be honest, I haven't been able to use it much, piloting takes priority in current builds in my opinion)?

1. Both.
2. For non-frigates, it'll apply after the engagement. So if you start out at 50% CR and it costs 20% to deploy, you'll fight at 50% CR and then have it reduced to 30% after the fight.
3. Both :)
4. Malfunctions, as discussed earlier.
5. Probably not, except for needing to keep an eye on frigates so they don't stay out too long. Will have to add some UI support to make that easier.

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Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #40 on: February 19, 2013, 04:09:04 PM »

also I think the blog said something about costing supplies to field ships but isn't very clear about it. How does it work? Are FP a thing of the past? What about missions and things of that nature?

What I meant there is it'll cost CR, and CR costs supplies to recover. So it's indirect.

also how moddable will this system be?

EDIT: also how does this interact with the AI and AI spawned fleets?

About as moddable as anything else. The effects on ships are moddable, CR-related stats are in ship_data.csv, etc. AI ships and fleets use it, so they'll have to learn to deal with it. There'll probably be a few hiccups along the way :)
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sdmike1

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #41 on: February 19, 2013, 04:10:30 PM »

How would this affect a very week ship such as my little pet hound here?

I can see why you did this but i have to agree with Cycerin having an aptitude affect this would be rather nice :)

Chancellor Meatsteak

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #42 on: February 19, 2013, 04:34:46 PM »

Wouldn't really work across the board. The "effective but boring" strategy would then involve waiting out not only enemy LRMs, but also their ammo. So, ok, that wouldn't work vs high-tech ships, but low-tech ships would still be susceptible.

Perhaps I phrased by my post poorly, the loss of CR is caused by taking too much shield damage, not dealing it. If anything, this would make ammo less of a problem since enough damage would eventually make keeping the shields up too prohibitive for the target. Having a limited amount of practical shield use doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem either, since armor and hull are already limited and not useless. If it poses a problem for a certain ship you can just set the threshold for it really high, though I expect thresholds for most ships to already be quite high to begin with, only really being a concern for fast attack ships.

Since we are talking about ammo, how about being able to reload ballistic weapons at the cost of CR, to represent the crew scrambling to grab and load ammo crates out of the cargo hold?
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Nick XR

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #43 on: February 19, 2013, 04:42:27 PM »

As far as fighters, that's interesting. I'm still considering what to do with them, but the general consensus on the forum seems to be that they're underpowered, rather than over.

Really?  I don't spend much time on the forums, I just watch the updates.    My typical end-game fleet makeup is usually a carrier, ~4 advanced fighters (Xyphos is their name?  At work can't check.) then only Medusa destroyers and everything else bigger.  I find that AI piloted frigates die much more often then AI piloted advanced fighters to the point that I won't even use frigates, it's just throwing money away.  Sure a whole wing will die now and again but usually they are smart enough to run and get repairs before stuff is too bad.   At the very beginning of the game frigates are OK, but as soon as you start facing more than one destroyer the frigates become just a space wreck/save/reload waiting to happen.  Granted one could argue that all but the top tier fighters aren't any good, but I would argue that none of the frigates are any good when piloted by the AI (Glass cannons like the Hyperion are just throwing money away when piloted by the AI), and the money spent for the good frigates could buy other ships that are more durable and use fewer fleet points.

Maybe a lot of this will be solved by availability of stuff in the campaign but in general my strategy when playing Starsector so far is to not let the AI fly ships that it's probably going to get blown up on a regular basis.

YAZF

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #44 on: February 19, 2013, 04:58:05 PM »

I think these will be good changes and I'm looking forward to other way on how combat mechanics will combine with campaign mechanics. In particular I do hope there will be a way to interact with space stations a bit more. For instance I see enemy fleets "attacking" and "defending" stations all the time but they really just hover around them. I would LOVE for battles to actually take place at stations where there is a huge base floating in the middle of the combat field which could fight too. You could try to defend it or destroy an enemy station.  Maybe you could be trying to destroy the defending enemy fleet but not the station to take it over. Or maybe you could be just trying to destroy a specific part of the station and then run away. Aaahhhh I'm too excited to see where the campaign development will go. Keep it up alex!
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There should be a battlestation/star fortress fight in the main menu mission mode.  :)
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