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Author Topic: Combat Readyness isn't fun..  (Read 151236 times)

Magician

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #45 on: September 17, 2013, 06:21:21 AM »

It's simple. If artificial restriction enriches gameplay variety - it is fun and good. If it only limits gameplay variety to very few possible strategies - it's not fun at all.

Ammo restriction enriches gameplay with different playstyles - you either have super efficient weapon with limited usability, or you have mediocre weapon with unlimited ammo. You can choose either of options and each is VIABLE and good to use. And because they are different, in some situations you will have an edge by using certain option.

What we have now - we have only one type of weapon being effective at all in a whole game. Because artificial restriction created variety of options, choices, but there are no REAL choices to make. Every other choice except of one is not viable. Just imagine if we had only one ship at every station, only one in a whole game. In such case having credits, ship shop - it really is meaningless. Only because you are able to buy many different ships and they all have some value credits and different shops have meaning. It really doesn't matter why this happened - because CR is a raw and very questionable system to solve problems it is intended to solve, or because game is still in alpha and game content is missing. We have what we have. And something has to be done, because current gameplay will not satisfy all players in a long term.
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #46 on: September 17, 2013, 06:31:50 AM »

It's simple. If artificial restriction enriches gameplay variety - it is fun and good. If it only limits gameplay variety to very few possible strategies - it's not fun at all.

Ammo restriction enriches gameplay with different playstyles - you either have super efficient weapon with limited usability, or you have mediocre weapon with unlimited ammo. You can choose either of options and each is VIABLE and good to use. And because they are different, in some situations you will have an edge by using certain option.

What we have now - we have only one type of weapon being effective at all in a whole game. Because artificial restriction created variety of options, choices, but there are no REAL choices to make. Every other choice except of one is not viable.

Earlier in this thread, Alex asked:
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?
You didn't give an answer then. Would you like to now?
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Uomoz

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #47 on: September 17, 2013, 06:36:19 AM »

And something has to be done, because current gameplay will not satisfy all players in a long term.

For me that could be 0.54 compared to 0.6.
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rex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #48 on: September 17, 2013, 07:08:07 AM »

Alex, CR took away the option to play as an independent ship captain. You can't really solo. 1 man(and a nameless crew), 1 ship against insurmountable odds.

This is something a lot of people like. There's a whole genera based around it. It's the essence of the X-wing/TIE Fighter like space combat sim.

It's... not really an option anymore. It wasn't really my play style, but I can understand the loss.


I think it has a pretty simple solution. Have a skill that drastically reduces the CR cost of the piloted ship(also killing the frigate CR burn timer). Or just build in an exception for solo fleets, or fleets with under a given DP/Logistic cost. 'You're a great captain with mad logistical skills who motivates the heck out of his crew, you don't have to deal with CR issues nearly as much so long as you are in a frigate or destroyer'.

If it is automatic, it would make the early game a lot less stressful as well. Realize eventually you are going to have people playing this who don't already love the game, giving them a pass on dealing constantly with CR until they have more experience and a multiship fleet will probably help newbies get into the game.

Just a thought. 

Also, if it were logistics cost/DP based you'd have an excuse for it not to apply to the hyperion.
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Andy H.K.

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #49 on: September 17, 2013, 07:48:28 AM »

I don't know... it's probably my playstyle.... but CR isn't really even a concern for me...

(Or maybe it's my lack of skill.... if the fight last long enough that my frigates run out of time I'm usually losing  :( )

Alex, CR took away the option to play as an independent ship captain. You can't really solo. 1 man(and a nameless crew), 1 ship against insurmountable odds.

This is something a lot of people like. There's a whole genera based around it. It's the essence of the X-wing/TIE Fighter like space combat sim.

It's... not really an option anymore. It wasn't really my play style, but I can understand the loss.

I suppose in-fight CR degradation may take away frigate soloing.... But then that doesn't mean you can't solo in destroyer, cruiser, capital ships etc...

I think it has a pretty simple solution. Have a skill that drastically reduces the CR cost of the piloted ship(also killing the frigate CR burn timer). Or just build in an exception for solo fleets, or fleets with under a given DP/Logistic cost. 'You're a great captain with mad logistical skills who motivates the heck out of his crew, you don't have to deal with CR issues nearly as much so long as you are in a frigate or destroyer'.

If it is automatic, it would make the early game a lot less stressful as well. Realize eventually you are going to have people playing this who don't already love the game, giving them a pass on dealing constantly with CR until they have more experience and a multiship fleet will probably help newbies get into the game.

Just a thought. 

Also, if it were logistics cost/DP based you'd have an excuse for it not to apply to the hyperion.

I think this is more like godmodeing  :-\ not exactly a brilliant idea to me
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Magician

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #50 on: September 17, 2013, 07:50:56 AM »

Uomoz: I too didn't like some aspects of v.0.54, but I hope there will be new updates where both sides of players will be satisfied.

Histidine: I appologize for missing answer by Alex. Will try to answer now.
About freighter example. There should be some game goal to use freighter fleet. Using it as a combat ship obviously is a bad idea. But even without quests, trading and other things - freighters still have value as a mean to sustain big fleet for a long time or bring back big catch. But it is not so good example overall because we don't have trading or any other system which utilizes freighters very well.

How I see this whole thing. CR certainly is capable of limiting such ships as Hyperion from being overused, or stops from using capitals against 2 fighter wings. Aside from how balanced CR tuning is now, instead of giving you an options when you can find different strategies to be CR effective equally (and so you will find that using Hyperion is beneficial, and also using lasher is beneficial, and also using Dominator is beneficial, but with slight accents on different situations), what I find is that I have few effective ways to play. And I have all other ways to play, but I will never try them except only for the sake of testing. I don't feel being rewarded for using this system, I don't feel being given new options to choose from. Instead I feel that I have to play only few efficient ways. For example Hyperion - I rarely used them earlier, because they cost alot and outside of small scale battles they are not that good as equally pricey ships. Now with CR penalties I don't even know if I should ever bother with such ships with great penalties.
In short I see how CR limited what should be limited (but I am still insisting that it needs alot of balancing), but I don't see how it expanded my gameplay experience. I don't believe that we will have many CR efficient ways to play.
If earlier we had no limits to use excessive force, we at the same time had no limits to try other strategies, tons of them. But with CR you are not only limiting strategies which you intended to limit, you limit alot of other strategies. There is no point in new stat if it makes your pool of viable choices smaller. It gives more factors to consider, but at the same time makes field of your options smaller. And the worst thing is that we don't have big variety if encounters. There are no any challenging situation with meaningfull reward to use specialized fleet of Hyperions, for example. (A little fantasy from me. If we had some special encounter where nebulas a ten times strong and ten times numerous, using Hyperion would be beneficial regardless of how questionable its use in other situation. Or encounter where cruisers and capitals can't be deployed. Or encounter where shield systems are down. And because we have no variety of encounters, with CR introduced we have even less strategies to use.)
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JH1

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #51 on: September 17, 2013, 08:01:09 AM »

I'm not sure if this has been suggested, but you could have a pool of CR that you can distribute to your ships. A percentage slider for automatic CR refill. That regenerating portion could be enough to fully charge a single ship if you fly solo.
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Thaago

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #52 on: September 17, 2013, 08:23:21 AM »

I think the issue people are having is that they are thinking of CR as a new feature. CR is not a feature. CR is a core mechanic. In my understanding features add content to a game with new things to do, rewards, etc. Core mechanics add a framework that features rest on top of. Core mechanics provide the rules (and often challenges) which the features then work in. And like all rules, they are in essence restrictions. A good mechanic should enabled other features and expand the gameplay experience:
Spoiler

CR expanded the gameplay experience by enabling strategic choices for multistage battles. It ties logistics and campaign level decisions into combat situations - while we don't have much campaign level content at the moment, CR allows it to interact with combat. It enables a new balancing factor between high and low tech ships (whether or not that factor has good values is another argument). It enables the new fighter mechanics. It enables the concepts of working behind enemy lines (no bases to restore at) and a home-system advantage.

 
[close]

All this said, CR isn't perfect yet. The solo ship playstyle got whacked a little hard. But then again there is already a skill (well, the combat aptitude) that lowers the CR cost of deploying your ship. If after more playtesting single ship combat is still too whacked by CR, just up the percentage that skill gives. Sure there are things that needed to be adjusted with CR, but I think a lot of the complaints are overblown.
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Megas

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #53 on: September 17, 2013, 08:27:58 AM »

I agree with the OP 100% (that CR is not fun).  Two big problems with CR:
* You are forced to play musical flagships.  You MUST transfer command after EVERY battle, especially if your favorite flagship loses a big chunk of CR% (even with max Combat).  A few ships can go so fast (e.g., Hound with speed boost, teleporting Hyperion) that the shuttle pod cannot keep up.
* Frigate stamina - either you are strong enough that it does not matter, or you are not and it cripples your ships.

That said, supplies are a bigger problem.  CR does not mean as much when you must always salvage just to profit, then head back to base to eat a third or half of your loot to fix your ships and store the leftovers... after *every* fight.  Before 0.6a, I could fight about four or five battles before resting, and can use any combination of combat ships I wanted, and not need freighters unless I felt greedy.  Now, thanks to CR and supply hunger, I must go back to base to rest after every fight, and I need a freighter to haul the loot I get from one fight.
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rex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #54 on: September 17, 2013, 08:37:07 AM »

Isn't a pursuit an extremely common situation where frigates are especially useful given their speed and flanking ability?



@Andy H.K., Ok. That's view. It would not need to be 0 CR, it's a thing that could of course be balanced, but some advantage for using a single small ship would help early in the game and allow it to be a viable option. Now, you take a serious hit in a follow up engagement, and can not deploy at all in a third.  Basically I'm just talking about toning that back a little. This would would well with all the piloted ship only combat skills, allow for a sort for a not currently available style of play, and add flexibility to the early game.

It's not really a style of play I have a huge amount of interest in. I'm a size queen when it comes to fleet size.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #55 on: September 17, 2013, 08:41:48 AM »

Tip: Don't haul the loot.

A Vulcan Cannon is what, 2-300 credits and takes 5 space, yes? 5 Supplies is the same space and is worth 600. Take the supplies and only take the loot if you need it to outfit your ships.
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Megas

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #56 on: September 17, 2013, 08:49:55 AM »

Quote
Isn't a pursuit an extremely common situation where frigates are especially useful given their speed and flanking ability?
That is another problem.  As your fleet gets stronger, you pursue more and fight fewer standup battles.  You need frigates to catch up and kill your fleeing chunks of XP and supplies.  Eventually, you need frigates for everything that does not involve hauling loot.  For that job, you need one or two Atlas and several Oxen.

Quote
Take the supplies and only take the loot if you need it to outfit your ships.
I can still get more loot than I can carry even if I ignore junk weapons.  The supplies alone can sometimes be more than I can take unless I have freighters handy, and I need them all to fix all of my ships two or three times, assuming I do not sell supplies for cash.
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Alfalfa

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #57 on: September 17, 2013, 08:53:55 AM »

I think the whole logistics system is very well done and quite elegant.  It both increases the use of non-combat support ships and enables you to keep more of them in your fleet without crippling your combat ability.  It also essentially creates a whole strategic layer to balance mechanics/ships/etc. off of.

I still think CR degredation in combat, as a result of combat, would be fun.  When I was first figuring out how to manage my logistics I went into many battles with low CR, and I'd see my engines failing and my weapons powering down and I'd think, 'Wouldn't this be cool if this came about due to a long, protracted battle which had left huge gaps in my armour and severe damage to my hull rather than simply me not knowing what the hell I'm doing?'  Ammo use; hard flux dissipation; engine, weapon, armour or hull damage; all of these could deplete CR.  You could even make EMP weapons do extra CR damage, enabling saboteur strategies.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #58 on: September 17, 2013, 08:55:55 AM »

Thanks to the way logistics work, I've happily collected enough supplies to peak beyond twice my cargo without issue. All it does is use more supplies. So long as you have supplies and don't try to carry 10x your logistical capabilities, you should be fine. Don't be afraid to go overboard. My current fleet only consists a Conquest and a pair of Medusae. Hardly a logistical juggernaut, but I can ravage the Pirate Plunder Fleet and take all the supplies and weaponry from the fight without issue, then add insult to injury and dump the stuff I don't need at the Pirate base.
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K-64

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #59 on: September 17, 2013, 08:56:35 AM »

Alex, CR took away the option to play as an independent ship captain. You can't really solo. 1 man(and a nameless crew), 1 ship against insurmountable odds.

Except for the fact you can? I've been doing fine with just a single ship in my fleet, and have been for a while. Hell, I could actually be doing better than previously due to the whole harrying/pursuing stuff.
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