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Author Topic: Combat Readiness  (Read 108320 times)

Gothars

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #105 on: February 21, 2013, 03:44:54 PM »

My guess is someone has mentioned this at some point and so there's probably been a discussion about it, but what about allowing non-combat ships onto your fleet that do not count against your fleet limit. That would let players add tankers or maybe repair ships or other non-combat ships to a fleet that would never be put into combat (no weapons). If this was possible it makes sense to me that ships that are in a low CR state would actually become non-combat ships until such a time as their CR increases enough to allow them to be deployed. Non-combat ships in a losing fleet are either boarded or scuttled at the end of combat.

The way I see it it is exactly the interesting thing about non-combat ships is that they compete with combat ships about FP. That way you have to decide if you want a high-power low-endurance fleet without support or the opposite.


Lastly, I have to agree with many of the other guys that have been posting about frigate usefulness once you have amassed enough for a cruiser and a cap ship. I do like having 2 frigates around for capturing nodes early in combat so I can field more ships, but beyond that I mostly use them to kill fighters.

Specifically for those jobs frigates should be even better with the speed boost they'll get.
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MindsEye

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #106 on: February 21, 2013, 05:35:20 PM »

I like the idea of it but I dislike the fact that frigs will be the only ones who are affected during combat.I think all ships should have the same treatment even if it is at a slower rate.Also I like the idea of combat affecting cr more then just time itself.
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Dimuyen

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #107 on: February 21, 2013, 07:54:28 PM »

The way I see it it is exactly the interesting thing about non-combat ships is that they compete with combat ships about FP. That way you have to decide if you want a high-power low-endurance fleet without support or the opposite.

I get what you're saying, but the reality is that it's a combat based game, so unless there's something really cool about them (which there isn't right now), I for one would never put them on my fleets..especially if I have to rotate some of the combat ships every other fight.
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PCCL

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #108 on: February 21, 2013, 08:00:36 PM »

well, it IS combat based right now, but I feel that's because combat is worked on first rather than anything else.

Economy and logistics, as alex said, will be a major part of the game as well
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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #109 on: February 22, 2013, 09:18:20 AM »

IMO the most 'elegant' way to implement the frigate fix would be to add an extra stat like 'Peak Readiness Time' (endurance?) to ships. That way there's a unified way to have ships like the Medusa or Aurora be less able to tank out battles, and also allows for slower 'escort' frigates and destroyers to exist, without saying things like "X suffers from readiness degredation" on some ships that suffer it and not others (if the default is frigates do, bigger ships don't). Then cruisers and above can have 5-10 minute times, making them more clearly the best choice for long fights. It also gives a clear mechanical stat to differentiate the high & low-tech ship types. Conveniently it'd also prevent things like taking on entire system defence fleets with tricked-out ships of any type- as long as there's a steady supply of reinforcements, you get worn down. Perhaps only cap-ships could be exempted, if anything?

That said symmetry for symmetry's sake is not always great, if it's only really frigates the mechanic is needed for expanding it to ships where it'll be largely irrelevant might not help.
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #110 on: February 22, 2013, 11:29:13 AM »

Right, keeping it simple. Hope it works out. Did you try kiting in a 0% CR frigate already, is it (more or less) impossible? I could imagine that a frigate with 15% worse stats and occasional engine problems is still capable of kiting with the right tactic (gliding a lot), especially if the fastest enemies and missiles have been taken care of at the beginning. And, you know, the last thing we'd want is to have kiting as a still effective, but now even more tedious tactic.

Just tried it some more. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher, but the Hyperion could still probably pull it off if it uses the teleporter as the primary means of movement. The Tempest might be able to do it, too, if it relies solely on the drone rather than risking direct attacks. The obvious thing here seems to disable system use at very low CR levels (say, 0%), so I'll try that.

Pure gliding and shooting might work to some degree, but I think one's luck would run out before the armor and hitpoints of an Onslaught, and you'd be hard pressed to flank anything or sustain enough damage to get through shields.


Or retreating costs CR and if you are at 0 CR then you can still retreat

Yes, that looks more elegant/refined.

If retreat stops costing a command point, all of a sudden that really ups the burden on the player to watch every single ship for the optimal time to order a retreat. If it still costs a point, the optimal thing to do is likely to be batching those orders up, so it demands less attention and less constant status-checking.


Add me to the "ooh shiny" crowd  ;D

Various disjointed thoughts
Some ideas involving freighters/tankers have already been bounced around. Mine: how about "tender" functionality for these ships (perhaps with hullmods)? Such ships would keep the CR level of a fleet up, by (for instance) reducing CR losses during long voyages, and speeding up its recovery following combat.
If crew from other ships could help out with CR, it might give potential use to ships like the Valkyrie which I might've not used otherwise (except for as a giant marine transport for boarding).
Maintenance ships could also be great, increasing the rate at which CR comes back.

Right, definitely thinking along these lines here. Freighters would automatically do that to an extent by simply allowing the fleet to carry enough supplies...


This concept was so awesome it made me de-lurk, and go through the account process. I'm a bit worried I got the "average number of ears" question wrong though.

Welcome :)

With this blog post goes my occasional lurking on the comments sections ( goodbye blog comments and hello forums! )

But anyways, will CR regeneration be affected by overall crew level or by the amount of crew (with the higher crew levels being more effective at maintaining the ship )? And will crew from other ships be able to help out?

Welcome to you as well!

It might be. Since the crew level already affects the maximum, I'm not sure it's necessary. It may be too much balance-wise to have it also affect the recovery rate, and it might be making things too complex. Will have to see, but initially, likely no.


IMO the most 'elegant' way to implement the frigate fix would be to add an extra stat like 'Peak Readiness Time' (endurance?) to ships. That way there's a unified way to have ships like the Medusa or Aurora be less able to tank out battles, and also allows for slower 'escort' frigates and destroyers to exist, without saying things like "X suffers from readiness degredation" on some ships that suffer it and not others (if the default is frigates do, bigger ships don't). Then cruisers and above can have 5-10 minute times, making them more clearly the best choice for long fights. It also gives a clear mechanical stat to differentiate the high & low-tech ship types. Conveniently it'd also prevent things like taking on entire system defence fleets with tricked-out ships of any type- as long as there's a steady supply of reinforcements, you get worn down. Perhaps only cap-ships could be exempted, if anything?

That said symmetry for symmetry's sake is not always great, if it's only really frigates the mechanic is needed for expanding it to ships where it'll be largely irrelevant might not help.

Pretty much agree with everything. Especially the part about "symmetry for symmetry's sake" :)

There *is* a stat exctly like that, btw. As a nod to symmetry, not ALL frigates degrade during combat (the Brawler doesn't), and not all destroyers don't (the Buffalo Mk. II does). But, only having capital ships be exempt from this is a really interesting idea. Definitely something I'll keep in mind while seeing how this plays out.


well, it IS combat based right now, but I feel that's because combat is worked on first rather than anything else.

Economy and logistics, as alex said, will be a major part of the game as well

Right, yes. Right now there are quite a few ships that are less than useful. Tankers and crew transports don't have much of a role. Freighters do have one but it's still not quite enough to really justify their existence quite yet.
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Upgradecap

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #111 on: February 22, 2013, 11:51:23 AM »



Or retreating costs CR and if you are at 0 CR then you can still retreat

Yes, that looks more elegant/refined.

If retreat stops costing a command point, all of a sudden that really ups the burden on the player to watch every single ship for the optimal time to order a retreat. If it still costs a point, the optimal thing to do is likely to be batching those orders up, so it demands less attention and less constant status-checking.



I feel that this wouldn't apply to me at all, since i never retreat. Ever. I rather let my ships die instead of retreat (Because retreating is seen as a failure), and if you need to retreat major portions of your fleet, you've already failed.

Other than that, CR seems like a nice feature, although i'm slightly worried if it'll bring about an unneeded level of micro.
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Harabeck

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #112 on: February 22, 2013, 12:46:48 PM »

Do you have any plans to force support ships into the line of fire? As I understand the way things stand, there is never any reason to deploy them into a battle. Their downside purely comes from the FP they use up and the amount they slow the fleet down. Just thinking about the general setting, it seems like targeting support ships would be a pretty logical way to weaken a force over the long run. I'm imagining being able to set or fall into ambushes somehow and one side having to deal with the vulnerability of their tankers.
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naufrago

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #113 on: February 22, 2013, 02:33:26 PM »

Something I just thought of, how does CR interact with armor repair after battle? Will armor be fully repaired at the cost of a proportional amount of CR, will armor repair progress at the rate it does now, or will it be something in between?
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Jeff

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #114 on: February 22, 2013, 02:54:20 PM »

I'd like to see small fleets able to choose not to field freighters (and ships you just capped and want to sell or repair + refit) by way of the deploy menu rather than the annoying but effective method of maintaining crew just short of their minimum reqs, but give them a mechanic that makes deploying freighters something players would possibly want to do. Like people have suggested, give them a mechanic that is similar to the carrier, only for frigates (and maybe destroyers) that would restore some portion of their readiness. Maybe refreshing some of their CR, reloading a portion of ammo. Never enough to return them to 100%, but enough keep them fighting a little longer assuming they're not heavily damaged.

Also, as for the kiting thing, since what has a player stepping on the thrusters is all the starting/stopping that kiting requires, what about something that would act like fuel, but for combat, such that they could only kite for so long? Maybe before having to stop at a freighter. Or just tell people that if they really want to spend hours making the Hegemony SDF retreat one ship at a time then that's their loss. I mean, it really is more of a gimmick than the optimal way to play, since by just bringing larger ships you could actually destroy/capture that fleet, and also be able to bring home the loot.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2013, 03:04:20 PM by Jeff »
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Dreyven

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #115 on: February 22, 2013, 03:28:01 PM »


There *is* a stat exctly like that, btw. As a nod to symmetry, not ALL frigates degrade during combat (the Brawler doesn't), and not all destroyers don't (the Buffalo Mk. II does). But, only having capital ships be exempt from this is a really interesting idea. Definitely something I'll keep in mind while seeing how this plays out.


But what about the beatiful, the magnificent Omen?
It would break my heart to loose my missile/fighter shield in long battles
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Gaizokubanou

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #116 on: February 22, 2013, 06:04:12 PM »

Or retreating costs CR and if you are at 0 CR then you can still retreat

Yes, that looks more elegant/refined.

If retreat stops costing a command point, all of a sudden that really ups the burden on the player to watch every single ship for the optimal time to order a retreat. If it still costs a point, the optimal thing to do is likely to be batching those orders up, so it demands less attention and less constant status-checking.

Why not just put easy to read sign, like a life bar for CR for all of your ships on tactical map?  It's not like tactical map is anywhere near crowded.

Besides, bigger problem would be command point shortage anyways.  Command points are already so scarce yet so negligible in their positive effects (outside of most generic order of 'capture nav point A') that I am already encouraged to ignore command point system and to simply outfit AI ships to be more defensive so that they can just brute force their way out of the idiocy they sometime dwell in.

If frigates were to become this liability that require a command point per single frigate or else put my elite pilots in jeopardy, I imagine I for one would simply stop using frigates because it's already hard enough to justify frigates once cruisers come into play (outside of hyperion flagship).

Or take this approach... if players are suppose to order retreat to frigates/ships with low CR... shouldn't us players already be keeping an eye out for CR on all of our ships?  So where would this extra burden come from if retreat were to cost CR instead of command point?  You mentioned something about optimal order but I don't see how the optimal timing for retreat change because of the resource change since the cause/trigger for retreat remains identical (low CR).

Anyway thanks for feedback!
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Degraine

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #117 on: February 22, 2013, 07:34:35 PM »

I assume this means there's going to be a new Leadership skill for improving CR regeneration. Or reducing the hit you take when deploying ships. Perhaps both!
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #118 on: February 22, 2013, 08:03:08 PM »

Do you have any plans to force support ships into the line of fire? As I understand the way things stand, there is never any reason to deploy them into a battle. Their downside purely comes from the FP they use up and the amount they slow the fleet down. Just thinking about the general setting, it seems like targeting support ships would be a pretty logical way to weaken a force over the long run. I'm imagining being able to set or fall into ambushes somehow and one side having to deal with the vulnerability of their tankers.

Yes. I'd like to see these ships in battle more, though not because of some in-combat benefit they might provide. I'm more or less settled on support ships having their benefits apply outside combat. The campaign needs more interesting mechanics, while combat is already chock-full of stuff.

Something I just thought of, how does CR interact with armor repair after battle? Will armor be fully repaired at the cost of a proportional amount of CR, will armor repair progress at the rate it does now, or will it be something in between?

It doesn't, those are separate.

Also, as for the kiting thing, since what has a player stepping on the thrusters is all the starting/stopping that kiting requires, what about something that would act like fuel, but for combat, such that they could only kite for so long?

Erm, you've basically just described CR, but called it fuel :) Yeah, not 100% identical, but...


Why not just put easy to read sign, like a life bar for CR for all of your ships on tactical map?  It's not like tactical map is anywhere near crowded.

Yeah, that's already there, right next to the life bar.

Besides, bigger problem would be command point shortage anyways.  Command points are already so scarce yet so negligible in their positive effects (outside of most generic order of 'capture nav point A') that I am already encouraged to ignore command point system and to simply outfit AI ships to be more defensive so that they can just brute force their way out of the idiocy they sometime dwell in.

If frigates were to become this liability that require a command point per single frigate or else put my elite pilots in jeopardy, I imagine I for one would simply stop using frigates because it's already hard enough to justify frigates once cruisers come into play (outside of hyperion flagship).

Or take this approach... if players are suppose to order retreat to frigates/ships with low CR... shouldn't us players already be keeping an eye out for CR on all of our ships?  So where would this extra burden come from if retreat were to cost CR instead of command point?  You mentioned something about optimal order but I don't see how the optimal timing for retreat change because of the resource change since the cause/trigger for retreat remains identical (low CR).

What I mean by "optimal" is "optimal play". If retreat orders are unlimited, then "optimal play" requires you to order retreats for damaged ships at precisely the right moments, and to do that, you'd have to constantly watch the map. If it requries a command point, though, you're going to batch up orders anyway, so when you decide to give some orders, you'll also look around for whatever makes sense to retreat, and do it then. So it's a mode of interaction that doesn't intrude on the piloting portion of the game as much.

I hope that makes sense. In the early versions of the game, you had completely unlimited orders... which made microing everything as much as possible "optimal". That just doesn't let you focus on the piloting nearly enough. Given how that worked out (or, rather, didn't), I'm extremely wary of allowing unlimited orders for anything.


As to whether frigates are "worth it", honestly, that's a side issue to this discussion. Making sure that they are would be a balance issue, whether it's from something they do in combat, or a way they behave in the campaign, or a combination of the two. There's nothing inherent to this mechanic that's going to make them worth it or not, and it's not like everything else about frigates is being held static - they're actually getting a speed buff to go along with this.

I could easily see frigates being stronger on the whole just because they regain CR out of combat faster.

I assume this means there's going to be a new Leadership skill for improving CR regeneration. Or reducing the hit you take when deploying ships. Perhaps both!

Probably at some point, but not initially. I'd like to get a good feel for how the basic mechanics of it work before mucking with skills that muck with it. Muck.
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Harabeck

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Re: Combat Readiness
« Reply #119 on: February 22, 2013, 08:08:45 PM »

Yes. I'd like to see these ships in battle more, though not because of some in-combat benefit they might provide. I'm more or less settled on support ships having their benefits apply outside combat. The campaign needs more interesting mechanics, while combat is already chock-full of stuff.

Yeah, I didn't mean make them useful in combat; just that they need to be vulnerable to attack at times.
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