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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 Readyness isn't fun..  (Read 151263 times)

Magician

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #15 on: September 16, 2013, 08:10:05 AM »

 The point is that CR should not limit variety of strategies to play with. It ONLY should limit how good is certain strategy in different situations. But we don't have any variety of situations, and instead of bringing different playstyles, making players to invent strategy for different situations, new system only limits us to limited number of viable playstyles. You want to try something different? No. It's not effective.
 What I am afraid of is that this will persist through whole alpha to release date. I already saw such gamedev decisions with bigger titles and I am not sure that history won't repeat itself.

 In v.0.54 you were able to try anything and the only judge was battlefield. I want to clear one thing on this matter. Is it possible to imagine game completely striped of supplies, inventory, traveling in space between planets, buying ships etc.? Yes. And I am sure that many players will be still satisfied with such gameplay.
 Now try to imagine game completely striped of combat. It's hard to imagine, for game to have at least some meaning you will have to come up at least some sort of combat dialogue, or game will become another Microsoft flight sim.
 What it shows is that in Starsector gameplay centered around combat. Everything else exists only to support combat and make it more fun to play. And things get less fun when such sytems as CR is taking focus from combat, things become less fun when the main role in game is played by some abstract number. In other words combat means less in current game and CR determines too many things, its too important number. And while being important it brings zero fun, while cutting off good portion of fun from other parts of this game.

In my opinion this system isn't even needed to balance and smooth things out. There are other ways. But if this system was implemented, well there is 1% chance that it will be removed or changed significantly. I only hope that in final game there will be easy ways to mod these things, if they will stay the same, because Starsector is still great game and I'd love to play it when its finished.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #16 on: September 16, 2013, 08:13:20 AM »

Also, why would a capital ship not have a significant escort?

I see Independant solo Conquests and Auroras quite often just minding their own business, not running home for supplies or anything, just on their patrols.

At the moment, I just fly a Conquest and two Wolves.
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Thaago

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2013, 08:15:29 AM »

I love the cr mechanic. Finally there is a reason to make smart deployment decisions! And to actually have frigates! And CR is intricately tied into the new multi-battle engagements, which I think is the best thing to happen to combat since combat has come out. Sure there are a few problems with it, but those are going to be ironed out.


Two tips for people having trouble managing supplies/cash/CR:
1) Sell your marines. They have outrageous upkeep.
2) If you won't be getting into another fight before returning to station, take ALL the supplies from a battle. Even if your logistics rating goes to 0, you probably won't have an accident and you'll be hauling home an extra 10k supplies in cash easy.
3) Go to the station with your loot then use the repair option. No waiting and it saves you money.

It took me 3 fights to get a destroyer, then another 5 to be sitting on 100k in cash. In the last version it would take me 3 times as long if I didn't get a lucky capture.

game no longer fun, now it survival + grinding, i personally can't understand why capital ship lose 30%CR per combat ever without taking any damage.

really, WTF???

3 damn frigates attacking capital ship one at time will win, ever without doing ANY DAMAGE.

Thats odd! Isn't the point of the "Stand Down" option after a fight to restore most of the CR if there wasn't any damage? Maybe that mechanic isn't working, because I thought the whole point of that was to avoid the situation you are describing.

That said - I'm very glad that skirmishers are effective. Teaches the capital ship to bring a few escorts... Being able to fatigue/demoralize/skirmish the enemy has been a vaild tactic for thousands of years, from ancient times to present day. History is rife with vastly weaker, mobile forces harassing larger forces to death.

...

Also, why would a capital ship not have a significant escort?

Cruisers and destroyers often operate alone. Even battleships and battle cruisers would be tasked to solo missions like raiding. More to the point, given the inspirations for the game, first-rate ships of the line were often deployed to station alone.

Ah, but thats a false analogy: ships of the line were significantly faster than smaller fighting craft in the age of sail. Anything dumb enough to harass a ship of the line was run down and destroyed or captured. Nowadays we think big=slow (and the game balance is a heck of a lot better that way, think of cruisers being uniformly faster than frigates...) but that wasn't the case then. Its more like an aircraft carrier or battleship being harassed by waves of torpedo armed speedboats.
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rex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #18 on: September 16, 2013, 08:25:08 AM »

The CR system totally cuts into my cheesy spammy fun.  I can't just steamroll System Defence Fleets anymore.

Now I have to think tactically even about fights I can win easily.

Boooo....

I don't want to have to think.  Make with the pew pews, scratch the CR system.


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ValkyriaL

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2013, 08:37:00 AM »

This is a game where you have to use your brain, don't like it, find another game that doesn't require thinking.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2013, 09:18:48 AM by ValkyriaL »
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Joush

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #20 on: September 16, 2013, 08:40:17 AM »

I love the cr mechanic. Finally there is a reason to make smart deployment decisions! And to actually have frigates! And CR is intricately tied into the new multi-battle engagements, which I think is the best thing to happen to combat since combat has come out. Sure there are a few problems with it, but those are going to be ironed out.


Two tips for people having trouble managing supplies/cash/CR:
1) Sell your marines. They have outrageous upkeep.
2) If you won't be getting into another fight before returning to station, take ALL the supplies from a battle. Even if your logistics rating goes to 0, you probably won't have an accident and you'll be hauling home an extra 10k supplies in cash easy.
3) Go to the station with your loot then use the repair option. No waiting and it saves you money.

It took me 3 fights to get a destroyer, then another 5 to be sitting on 100k in cash. In the last version it would take me 3 times as long if I didn't get a lucky capture.

game no longer fun, now it survival + grinding, i personally can't understand why capital ship lose 30%CR per combat ever without taking any damage.

really, WTF???

3 damn frigates attacking capital ship one at time will win, ever without doing ANY DAMAGE.

Thats odd! Isn't the point of the "Stand Down" option after a fight to restore most of the CR if there wasn't any damage? Maybe that mechanic isn't working, because I thought the whole point of that was to avoid the situation you are describing.

That said - I'm very glad that skirmishers are effective. Teaches the capital ship to bring a few escorts... Being able to fatigue/demoralize/skirmish the enemy has been a vaild tactic for thousands of years, from ancient times to present day. History is rife with vastly weaker, mobile forces harassing larger forces to death.

...

Also, why would a capital ship not have a significant escort?

Cruisers and destroyers often operate alone. Even battleships and battle cruisers would be tasked to solo missions like raiding. More to the point, given the inspirations for the game, first-rate ships of the line were often deployed to station alone.

Ah, but thats a false analogy: ships of the line were significantly faster than smaller fighting craft in the age of sail. Anything dumb enough to harass a ship of the line was run down and destroyed or captured. Nowadays we think big=slow (and the game balance is a heck of a lot better that way, think of cruisers being uniformly faster than frigates...) but that wasn't the case then. Its more like an aircraft carrier or battleship being harassed by waves of torpedo armed speedboats.

Under some sailing conditions a first rate could move more quickly then a smaller ship, owing to it's great size and stability allowing it to carry more canvas. It could still be outmaneuvered by lighter craft, however, and in many weather conditions and points of sail outrun in a straight line.

Those speedboats would need to be able to present a threat, in combat, to the ship in question. The ships that burn up a fleet's CR have no such requirement in .6, and can be trash that could be wiped out by the dozen. The added complications and difficulty aren't a serious problem, I don't need advice as to how to make the game easier or exploit the CR system for easy profit.

The CR system totally cuts into my cheesy spammy fun.  I can't just steamroll System Defence Fleets anymore.

Now I have to think tactically even about fights I can win easily.

Boooo....

I don't want to have to think.  Make with the pew pews, scratch the CR system.




Wonderful tone, very mature. Not at all asinine.

i won't even reply with a solid comment to that one.

this is a game where you have to use your brain, don't like it, find another game that doesn't require thinking.

Well you aren't using your brain to post here. You must be saving it for the game. I assume you don't make a solid post, like several other people have to refute my point, because it would take far too much away from your ability to play. Godspeed and good luck, space cowboy.

Ok, children, let's review: You can disagree with someone without all sorts of personal attacks.
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Gothars

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #21 on: September 16, 2013, 08:47:50 AM »

@ rex, ValkyriaL:
The OP's opinion is absolutely legitimate and that you don't agree with it gives you no right to insult his intelligence. I don't want to see that again.

@ Joush:
Do not rise to provocation, at the end it doesn't matter anymore who started.
(On a sidenote, it would be better to crop quotes to a non-obstructive level)


.. and it's keeping .6a from being fun.

It's too heavily abstracted and there is nothing that interacts well with it. As it works now, it functions mostly to force players to rest, burning supplies, between fights, while supplies have become the primary expense and a constant drain.

I have lot's of fun with his version, there are many other new things besides CR. But I tend to agree that the whole logistic system, seen for itself, is not a very "fun" mechanic. I don't know if pure logistics even can be. It already results in some cool mechanics though, like the "will it be enough to deploy this much"-gamble before a combat or, well, everything Thaago said. But other than that, it is indeed a scaffold, ready to connect many not yet existing mechanics with each other.

Well, it's an alpha game, an I'm OK with that not every step along the  way is a straight one directly towards more fun.
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Thaago

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #22 on: September 16, 2013, 08:51:46 AM »

...
Ok, children, let's review: You can disagree with someone without all sorts of personal attacks.

I'm sorry if you feel that others are being immature - I think everyone is just running high on emotions from the new release. That said... I'm just going to point out that most of your above post was personal attacks. If you feel someones post doesn't contribute, just don't respond to it. :)

In regards to the sailing vessels: you are correct about the maneuverability - and smaller ships could indeed sail closer to the wind in many cases, forcing the bigger ships to tack and lose ground. In my mind I was thinking about open water pursuit (where large swells gives the advantage to bigger ships) or harbor blockading, where smaller ships had a chance but were often too restricted in their movements to effectively maneuver.

I think speedboats are a threat to aircraft carriers - very much so in ambush situations, and even in straight combat. Modern torpedoes have a very long range, modern speedboats are hard to detect, and there could be significant numbers of them. In terms of physically doing damage, the USS Cole bombing was done by a small craft, and PT boats were quite successful in WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_boat#Service
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #23 on: September 16, 2013, 08:52:31 AM »

Having no way to interact with CR save to hold down the shift key and sigh?
You interact with it by deploying as many ships as you need, no more and no less. You interact with it by buying and using different ships for different situations.

Quote
Bad game design. There are currently no skills, hull mods or ship special abilities that relate to it
The Combat aptitude reduces the CR needed to deploy your flagship. The Leadership aptitude and Fleet Logistics skills indirectly interact with it, by increasing the fleet size you can handle without incurring CR penalties. This doesn't fit into the listed categories, but better crew also allow a ship to have more CR. So yes, a few existing gameplay elements already relate to CR, and more can be added as the game develops.
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rex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #24 on: September 16, 2013, 08:59:12 AM »

I actually agree with him a fair bit. The tone of the game has changed massively, and while I'm enjoying learning what is pretty much a totally new game, I am having less 'fun' and spending a lot more time being frustrated.



I'm glad the AI doesn't seem to fully understand how CR works. While pirate fleets used to take foolish risks challenging vastly superior forces, leading to demolishing multiple fleets in a few in game days. With CR as it is now, there would be a serious risk of grinding down to ~0 cr across your fleet anytime you went near the hidden base.

They don't seem to press the attack. Which is nice of them. Lots of battles with smallish fleets is now very dangerous, but less common.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2013, 09:02:33 AM by rex »
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #25 on: September 16, 2013, 09:10:26 AM »

Think they missed completely that the comment was directed at your comment, I should have quoted :I (or written it out differently)

But anyway, i really like the CR feature, it makes sense if nothing else, since deploying ships over and over would break them and their crew from not getting any maintenance/rest, stuff breaking down because it constantly runs at max power, and the fact that i can leave ships out is even better due to having low CR, being badly damaged or being civilian craft, and i'm currently swimming in supplies i can't even carry, barely played 15 minutes and i already have 100.000 credits just by selling supplies i don't even know what to do with.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2013, 09:19:33 AM by ValkyriaL »
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #26 on: September 16, 2013, 10:53:31 AM »

The point is that CR should not limit variety of strategies to play with. It ONLY should limit how good is certain strategy in different situations. But we don't have any variety of situations, and instead of bringing different playstyles, making players to invent strategy for different situations, new system only limits us to limited number of viable playstyles. You want to try something different? No. It's not effective.
What I am afraid of is that this will persist through whole alpha to release date. I already saw such gamedev decisions with bigger titles and I am not sure that history won't repeat itself.

This is a complicated question. First of all, I think what you're saying implies that all strategies should be good in some situation. I can't agree with that; for any set of mechanics, doing some things is just going to be a bad idea. Like, say, buidling a fleet around freighters as the primary combat ship. It might be fun, and you might make it work once or twice, but it's certifiably worse than using combat ships for the purpose.

What makes things fun, imo, is having to take different considerations into account while coming up with a combat-viable fleet. If the "only judge is the battlefield", as you say, that quickly leads to a few "this is best" setups, and that's that. If, on the other hand, you have external considerations, you get a lot more variety. A good example of this is the Hyperion. It's a really fun ship, and I didn't want to destroy its combat potential - which you'd pretty much have to, if combat balance was the only concern. But with the logistics profile it has, it can remain an amazingly good ship that's all the more special because you don't get to see it in every single battle.

So, ultimately, I think out-of-combat effectiveness considerations actually enhance both the variety of ships and strategies. Not being able to always use a combat-optimal approach is what makes it interesting, because the combat-optimal approach, by definition, can often lead to one-sided battles.

Further, I'm at a loss to come up with strategies that the CR system has taken away. Using overwhelming force in every situation? Well yeah, it did that, but it was meant to. Flying around with a solo capital ship? To a point, but you can stand down from combat to keep CR high, and pick up points in Combat to further reduce CR loss. It's certainly doable. Frigate swarm? Still viable, by all accounts. All-high-tech fleet? Also still viable, as long as you don't overdeploy - basically, the high tech ships are forced to pull their weight rather than overwhelm with speed, shield efficiency, and overall quality.

So, honest question: what options do you feel CR took away?

In v.0.54 you were able to try anything and the only judge was battlefield. I want to clear one thing on this matter. Is it possible to imagine game completely striped of supplies, inventory, traveling in space between planets, buying ships etc.? Yes. And I am sure that many players will be still satisfied with such gameplay.
Now try to imagine game completely striped of combat. It's hard to imagine, for game to have at least some meaning you will have to come up at least some sort of combat dialogue, or game will become another Microsoft flight sim.
What it shows is that in Starsector gameplay centered around combat. Everything else exists only to support combat and make it more fun to play. And things get less fun when such sytems as CR is taking focus from combat, things become less fun when the main role in game is played by some abstract number. In other words combat means less in current game and CR determines too many things, its too important number. And while being important it brings zero fun, while cutting off good portion of fun from other parts of this game.

I think what it means is that the campaign is still pretty bare-bones, so imagining it stand-alone is a much more difficult proposition :) I expect that by the time 1.0 rolls around, it won't be.
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icepick37

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #27 on: September 16, 2013, 10:57:26 AM »

CR is interesting. It probably won't be fun for everyone, but I think that lumping the whole thing into the "not fun" category isn't fair either. As a first pass it's going to have problems. But most of them are fixable.

It's intended to bridge the gap between combat (Which rocks) and the campaign (which let's be honest, doesn't really exist yet). And yes it was intended to slow the campaign down. It's providing atmosphere, and doing a reasonable job. Just because it isn't perfect yet isn't reason to scrap the whole thing.
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LostInTheWired

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #28 on: September 16, 2013, 11:05:43 AM »

-snip-

I have lot's of fun with his version, there are many other new things besides CR. But I tend to agree that the whole logistic system, seen for itself, is not a very "fun" mechanic. I don't know if pure logistics even can be.

-snip-

Pure logistics can absolutely be great fun!  Just look at Cities In Motion or, if you're a weirdo like me, Euro Truck Sim.  XD

It just has to be designed correctly.  The problem is with the fact that Alex seems far too afraid of becoming too "micro managey".  What has to be kept in mind is probably the NUMBER ONE THING that will upset a player: lack of control.  It's why so many people hate table top rpgs (don't worry, I love them).  It's why there are jokes everywhere on the internet of a veteran samurai killing tanks (Civilization).  While realistic, lack of control will *** nearly anyone off.

The only problem with CR I've had is, very possibly, that it's far too abstract.  It may be far better to split things up.  I see people bringing CR being taking care of crew injuries, replacing damaged parts, ect.  It's my opinion that it should maybe be split into 3 parts.

Upkeep:  Very basic.  Base daily cost.  It's the cost of food, basic supplies, clothing, ect.  This is per ship.  Could also include per crew, but I'm not sure how easy that would be to really balance.  This is a baseline and shouldn't change.
Maintenance:  Subsystem damage, maintenance.  This should be our repair costs.  This should be what we use when going into combat.  Lighting up that tachyon lance is not easy if there's a pothole in the EM shielding!  This should be able to be suspended by the player.
Casualties/Medical:  This, I think, is the best addition.  As people have stated, they see CR, in part, as taking care of injured crew.  I agree with this assessment, and it makes sense that you can't just "suspend medical treatment" and everything is fine and dandy.  But, in this game, it always had the atmosphere of "unfriendly, unrelenting universe".  You can't suspend this.  BUT, you can cancel it, and lose a random, but high, percentage of the injured crew.  Not only is that insanely inhumane (which can be interesting in itself in an ethical exploration standpoint), seeing your injury numbers after combat gives a kind of beautiful depiction of the human cost of your conquest.

I really think this adds far more to the game and gives the player more control, while also not being too micro.  We're only talking a single fleet here.  Two dozen ships, if that.  If you're running low on supplies, this is not too much to think about and shouldn't be a problem very often, only if something has gone horribly wrong.  For example, you took on a large fleet and lost a major ship or two and were then chased and caught by another fleet, which you luckily beat.  The chase drained your supplies and the multiple combats in quick succession (as well as the low maintenance of the ships) have caused large amounts of crew injuries.  Do you halt maintenance on a few ships to keep you held over 'til port, but risk being outmatched on the long trip home, or do you stop treating the injuries and lose 80% of the casualties you sustained in battle, just so you don't have to risk losing more ships to retreats if you're caught on the way?  Or are you so low, you have to do both?  Are you ethically willing to do both?

I dunno.  I may be off base here, but I see some interesting passion in that.
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Yemala

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #29 on: September 16, 2013, 11:07:19 AM »

I agree that combat readyness is not at all fun.. but not really for supply consumption reasons.

Sure, I don't think the supply consumption (in the current state of the game) works, but I see the point of it for future versions. However, managing the supplies (buying them, selling excess, etc) is more finicky than it needs to be, and ships seem to hold EXTREMELY little compared to how much they consume - a long frigate (at least, some of them) can't get from the centre of the first starsystem to the tri-tech base under its own power without malfunction. I think the consumption rates and/or the cargo hold sizes need to be tweaked.

Also, fuel feels really redundant. Even when inter-sector travel has more of a point, it still feels like supplies will be the bottleneck, rather than fuel. I would almost suggest either amalgamating the two or making sublight travel also use fuel - your ships have huge fuel bays and very little cause to use them, while they absolutely chew through supplies. Some tweak there might be worthwhile.

But really, what bothers me about CR, is the in-combat degredation. The bonuses feel a bit contrived, as you have little control over them, and the penalties are just extreme - if your battle lasts more than a few minutes, everything will just start malfunctioning constantly. A combat readyness drop after battle based on length and damage taken is fine, but the in-combat degredation is incredibly unfun.

edit: I would also say that 'stand down' being unavailable for anything beyond a fairly trivial fight doesn't help things.
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