I love the update so far, it's a joy to play....eventually...after you get past the initial learning curve of the new CR system and having myself spanked by other pirates...anyway
* When the enemy fleet is fleeing and have the CR to fight back, some or all of the combat ships (non-transport vessels) should probably fly backwards so their guns/armour are pointing towards you/enemy. Otherwise it makes it too simple to shoot out their engines, strand them, and finish them off.
* New sound effects are good, but as mentioned previously - MORE BASS!
* The CR depletion in combat can be annoying in strung out engagements. I'm see what you're trying to 'model' and penalise by having it deplete after a few minutes on frigates in particular, and it seems more like a penalty system for having a long battle. I re-read your blog on CR to understand it again, but I'm not sure the modelling is satisfactory, at least for me.
I would meet you half way on the fighters with maybe the CR affecting their engines. A real life analogy is that fighter craft engines in the likes of the Su-27, or could have been the MiG 29...anyway, basically they'd be good for *one* flight then require an engine overhaul. However this was a function of having a large amount of power generation in a small amount of space. As the energy production per cubic meter goes down the maintenance per flight hour goes down. Something like the AC-130 requires 2 hours of maintenance per hour flown, all the way up to the gas turbine engines on sea faring vessels that go for many months before requiring maintenance or an overhaul.
Perhaps a different model to effect 'stamina' in combat is to have hull and armour damage affect CR. This way your ships capabilities are derived from your initial CR, minus the damage you take during combat. So if your ship engages in combat and is damaged THEN penalties to engines, weapons and missiles apply. At the moment if you take damage to your weapons or engines, they may go offline for a short time but they come back and do so with no penalty.
I'm not sure the of the exact formula, but let's start with CR = InitialCR% - (Hull% x 0.5) - (Armour% x 0.5).
- Next have EMP weapons take a fixed % from CR (from your blog), though need some more definition on EMP dmg to %CR reduction
-flux overloads make a % CR penalty as well
- Engine damage/flameouts make a CR % penalty
With this way of modelling CR players are penalised when they use bad strategies and play styles that gets their fleet damaged, and rewards you when you do better.
As for playing with a small frigate vs an arbitrary sized fleet as in the youtube video, I'll address that in the next 2 points.
* Missiles need to go faster, much faster. If you noticed in that video of the player kiting, he often had scores of missiles after him but never really hit. I'm still disappointed in the implementation of missiles, and I often forgo using them. If I have a choice between installing missiles vs Flux capacity/Armour/Speed/Shield mods for OP - I'll choose the mods. All too often missiles are shot down or bump into the shield unless their engine seeking, and the most effective way to use a torpedo is to ram the enemy ship and fire them point blank.
If in the example youtube video that guy was being hit with the missiles all the time he wouldn't have lasted one minute. I'd suggest a minimum missile speed of 1000, with greater acceleration/turning rates. At the moment if I see missiles coming towards me I often view them more of an annoyance than a threat.
Missiles are fairly limited with a small chance of hitting unless in enormous quantities. These things should scream through space, and as soon as you see those red crosses, warning klaxons need to go off with flashing around the screen. An incoming missile should make you feel fear, not sigh with annoyance.
Perhaps the further away missiles are when launched, the more time they get to speed up, by the time they reach you or the enemy ship they’re going at 6,000-10,000 SU’s if fired from half way across the map. The greater the velocity the less chance you or the enemy has to react, and less chance of PD weapons intercepting them.
By giving LR missiles a far better speed and range you can have carriers and missile ships stay away from the main battle front, but still make a difference in combat. Of course for carriers and missile ships to engage distant subjects you’ll still need fighter craft and other vessels to spot enemies that are beyond visual range.
To help with modelling missiles as more of a threat, the velocity of the missile could affect a % chance of bypassing the shield or doing more damage to the shield.
I’ve already tried playing with the missiles speed values in 0.54a and found combat to be faster, though I did note that they hit an in game maximum projectile speed of may be 2,000 or 3,000 SU’s
Edit: Ah ok, just found your formula for max speed.
* CR Penalties also apply to the shield, if you have a low CR from lack of supplies, combat etc. Then
a) The shield can intermittently collapse and be offline for a period
b) The shield starts letting through projectiles as a % that is proportional or some formula that relates to the CR and hull/armour
It’s hard to say what exact formula to use, but it’s certainly something to play with in option B. If you used something like option B and had it directly proportional to the CR%, then even the best ship starting at 80% CR would let through 1 in 5 projectiles. It could be crazy but it would certainly speed up combat if shields were fallible.
* Another completely different line to go down is to have a separate CR for:
- Ammunition based weapons as a function of % of magazine fired in combat, modelling barrel wear and ammunition reload; CR drop applies after combat.
-Energy weapons as a function of % of pre-determined rounds fired before barrel wear lowers CR *during* combat. The intention is for energy weapons to be able to continue firing after you run out of conventional ‘ammunition’ based weapons.
- missile loading: based upon function of missiles from magazine fired, CR reduction occurs after combat. The intention is the same as in the blog.
- missile system: Based upon armour/hull/direct impact/overloads. Models damage to the launch system. CR penalties include mis-targeting (possibly hitting your own ships), launching from the ship but missile engines not firing, and finally the missile exploding whilst on the launch system (% chance at 0% CR)
- engines integrity: CR based upon 2 functions
a) Time using engines *above* a pre-determined thrust to weight ratio (a function of SU speed to weight ratio and acceleration to weight ratio we’ll call TWR). Weighted at 50% for most ships, weighted at 64% for frigates (or higher).
b) direct-hit-flameouts, hull damage. Weighted at 50% for most ships
The intention of the above model in part A is so that slower and avg. speed ships for their class/weight take little or no penalty for simply driving flying combat, but faster ships for their class/weight take a penalty to model additional wear and tear on the engines and reduce fast frigates kiting forever.
Using your engines above the ‘optimal’ TWR redline consumes engine CR points, the higher value above the optimal CR value for the class/weight the faster it is used. A fast frigate for example may be able to maintain maximum thrust for 2-3 minutes before engine integrity CR penalties reduce their speed below normal TWR values.
What this also potentially means is that ships of any class can be ‘fast’ for its weight/class but they will receive the penalty. There could large battle cruisers that can now engage fleeing vessels by getting catching up or getting ahead of them just once or twice before engine CR haults them. ATM it’s only frigates or fighters that are able to catch up.
This would also mean that ships frequently using their ‘burn’/after burner drive enough times would start to reduce their engine CR as well.
Part B has been mentioned in previous posts.
Engine malfunction and speed penalties as normal. Engine CR also helps determine auto-resolve if your ship escapes and you ‘lose’ the combat round
- shield: function of armour/hull integrity, engine CR and power systems CR. CR penalties can apply as stated previously
And possibly
- Power systems: Affects Flux capacity Max & Flux dissipation Max as well as %chance of overload. A function of energy weapons CR%, engine CR% and % of time spent above 80% of Flux capacity Max.
In the UI you can show a total CR% for a given ship, but clicking on the ‘?’ shows the CR % that make up the total. Fleet logistics would still work and would still consume supplies to recover total CR, but those supplies are being divided amongst the different systems as needed
I believe the overall intention of CR is maintained with this system:
On one extreme end agro players with a fast fleet that continually spam their fast ships will eventually need to wait for maintenance (CR recovery),and will need to spend much more on said CR recovery.
Players that frequently use bad tactics and allow their ships to be damaged while using copious amount of ammunition will also spend a much longer time waiting for CR recovery.
Players that use good strategies and balance playing styles receive small to average CR penalties BUT they may not destroy as many enemies as an agro player so will not be rewarded with as much loot.
On the opposite end players that try to use lots of very slow, heavily armoured and armed ships trying to minimise CR usage won’t be as able to engage AI enemies unless they use faster attack ships to slow the enemy down.
You could probably plot the efficiency for a given fleet size in terms of return on loot as negative parabola, with aggressiveness on the x-axis and loot return on the y-axis – fast/aggressive players going past peak efficiency (saturation point) get less loot return due to CR penalties of wear and tear.
Hm, anyway I think that may be another way of modelling CR so that it’s proportional to usage and that the penalties are appropriate to the tactics and strategies of the player rather than being an arbitrary number per deployment. In the current state of the CR formula a capital ship can enter combat, tot around for a few minutes and may not even fire it’s ammunition based weapons – yet it costs a whopping 40 to 50 CR points to do nothing but burn a little fuel and may be fire a couple of LR missiles? The current modelling just doesn’t seem to reasonably equate to fair usage and gameplay.
You’ve probably already considered such a complex CR system already, and I have to admit it would be more difficult and time consuming to implement and beyond your original intended scope of game complexity. What’s mentioned above is probably a month or two of coding, tweaking and testing but I believe it will help balance the game out and make it more dynamic and allow more tactics and strategies.
