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Author Topic: Combat Readyness isn't fun..  (Read 151213 times)

Silver Silence

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #90 on: September 17, 2013, 04:33:51 PM »

I had a similar encounter just now. My Paragon is barely holding together, dipping between 0CR and ~20%. Attacked the pirate plunder fleet because they'd have a buttload of supplies, got battered a bit from the massive outnumbering but otherwise killed enough combat ships to force a retreat. Send out salvage teams. Remaining active Tarsusseseses (what's the plural for those things?) didn't want to fly away, I wanted to disengage and that translated into "I want to abandon all the supplies I just sent out salvage crews for and fly away empty handed". Wait, wat? Hey, guise? Erm... We forgot the supplies, guise. Guise. *shrugs* Okay, fine, everyone's going hungry for a week, then.
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Gothars

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #91 on: September 17, 2013, 04:43:26 PM »

Tarsusseseses (what's the plural for those things?)


*wooosh*

              Tarsi!

                        *wooosh*
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Silver Silence

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #92 on: September 17, 2013, 04:47:14 PM »

Tarsi or Tarsii seemed the logical way (Pegasus, Pegasi), but I just wanted to double check.
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Thaago

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #93 on: September 17, 2013, 05:14:10 PM »

Right now, Leadership is the Constitution stat of Starsector.  You cannot ignore it for very long - you must have some to pilot a battleship with more than a skeleton crew without going over Logistics, and you need freighters to carry the supplies you salvage after each battle.  And since CR forces you to rotate ships if you want to fight much, you need a backup ship.  This is a change from previous versions where Leadership was useful, but not required.  Now, it is required, because 20 Logistics is not enough.

Yeah... and building on that, it's not a *fun* thing to spend points in, unlike combat or tech which unlock various shinies. I'm ok with that as a temporary state of affairs, but definitely something I'd like to address in the future.

Glassing worlds?  Can we wipe out factions off the sector in the finished game?  I would love it if an endgame goal (out of several possible) is destroy all factions via combat.

:-X

I would love for leadership to unlock shinies for fighters. A level 10 ability could be making commands to fighters cost 0 command points - advanced fighter tactics or something. It breaks the rules and allows for some craaazy maneuvers.
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Sordid

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #94 on: September 17, 2013, 05:17:29 PM »

@Sordid:
Well... the same sort of thing happens when a ship goes from 1 hitpoint to 0 and explodes, or 1 point over its flux capacity and overloads.

If you're looking for lore justifications, I think you could probably come up with quite a few. One possible explanation: let's say the power conduits are only rated for a certain number of charge up/down cycles, and re-powering up the weapon system at that point would simply blow everything out.


That said, the situation you described is quite an unpleasant surprise for the player. Changed it so that a beaten fleet won't attempt to re-engage if the only reserves it has are civilian ships. Previously, it would not attempt to reengage if it had no reserves - even if some of the deployed-then-retreated ships were still combat ready. Basically, the goal here is to prevent the player from losing a battle due to CR where it feels like they won. IMO, if there are military-grade, combat-ready reserves, then tough luck - but if the enemy was all in a headlong flight, or only had civilian ships in reserve, then they should just keep on running.

Thanks for pointing this out, btw!

Fantastic! :)

If I may make a suggestion, put that lore explanation into the game in some flavor text or something. Just so it's there for nitpickers like me.

Also, I think I can foresee a problem with your solution. What if the enemy has something like a Hound or a Lasher? Having to run away from a couple of freighters in my battleship was really bad, having to run away from a lone frigate wouldn't be much better. Again, it would be nice to at least have some in-game justification for why I have to leave without any of the loot. Maybe put something like "the remaining enemy ships maneuver to prevent you from conducting salvage operations" into the battle log or something along those lines to make it clear. Just an idea.

Alternatively, allow the deployment of non-combat ready ships. Battleship just sits there incapable of doing anything, Lasher comes, empties its ammo into it, at which point IIRC the AI is programmed to turn tail and run. Victory achieved. ;)
« Last Edit: September 17, 2013, 05:25:20 PM by Sordid »
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xenoargh

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #95 on: September 17, 2013, 06:04:03 PM »

Quote
I had a similar encounter just now. My Paragon is barely holding together, dipping between 0CR and ~20%. Attacked the pirate plunder fleet because they'd have a buttload of supplies, got battered a bit from the massive outnumbering but otherwise killed enough combat ships to force a retreat. Send out salvage teams. Remaining active Tarsusseseses (what's the plural for those things?) didn't want to fly away, I wanted to disengage and that translated into "I want to abandon all the supplies I just sent out salvage crews for and fly away empty handed". Wait, wat? Hey, guise? Erm... We forgot the supplies, guise. Guise. *shrugs* Okay, fine, everyone's going hungry for a week, then.
There's something that's definitely wonky in that sequence; I've had issues with trying not getting the option to get the loot, even when I disengage and enemies heavier than Frigates have been taken out.  IDK what's up with that one, but I'd have to say that it's a bug.  I'm guessing Alex is already polishing that logic though :)
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PCCL

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #96 on: September 17, 2013, 06:08:59 PM »

hmm... yeah

I think if you sent out salvage crew and ran away, you should keep all the supplies you gained from that battle

No point ditching everything from your own cargo bay

maybe a "look through the salvage" screen between battles in which you sent out salvage crews would be nice
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #97 on: September 17, 2013, 06:31:09 PM »

If you disengage, you get no loot - you don't ultimately hold the field and can't conduct salvage operations. The crews that are out get recalled as your fleet withdraws. Might not hurt to have some text mentioning this to make it more clear what's going on, conceptually.

If I may make a suggestion, put that lore explanation into the game in some flavor text or something. Just so it's there for nitpickers like me.

Hmm. On the one hand, that sounds good. On the other, I don't like getting too specific with certain things - it's just inviting "hey, this doesn't make sense because X", where if you leave it vague, there's more room for the player's imagination to make things make sense. Personally, as a player, I like it when games do the latter.

Also, I think I can foresee a problem with your solution. What if the enemy has something like a Hound or a Lasher? Having to run away from a couple of freighters in my battleship was really bad, having to run away from a lone frigate wouldn't be much better. Again, it would be nice to at least have some in-game justification for why I have to leave without any of the loot. Maybe put something like "the remaining enemy ships maneuver to prevent you from conducting salvage operations" into the battle log or something along those lines to make it clear. Just an idea.

I don't think's a problem, per se. That's just you losing the battle, because at some point the game has to stop cutting you breaks :) I think a ready, in-reserve combat ship is a good point for that.
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xenoargh

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #98 on: September 17, 2013, 08:18:24 PM »

Quote
If you disengage, you get no loot - you don't ultimately hold the field and can't conduct salvage operations. The crews that are out get recalled as your fleet withdraws. Might not hurt to have some text mentioning this to make it more clear what's going on, conceptually.
Just to be 100% clear: I've hit the "salvage team" option before, which should end combat and take me to the loot screen... and I've been put into loops with the enemy fleet's remaining forces where the only way to break out is to select Pursue or Leave.  I really don't think it should work like that- if I've selected "salvage", I'm de-facto declaring disengagement, so the loop should either:

1.  Lead to the remaining enemy attacking me, in which case I should get the salvage from that fight as well as what I have now, and a text blurb about them returning to battle or something.

2.  They run away and the fight's over, period.

The options to Pursue, Harry or Engage should not come back after we've hit Salvage, nor should we lose the Salvage unless the enemy fleet comes back and we run away, imo :)
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #99 on: September 17, 2013, 08:34:52 PM »

That's not how it works. If you pick the "send out salvage teams" option after an engagement, it just means you've sent the teams out to secure the wrecks, while your fleet prepares for another fight, if necessary. Whether you get to actually get stuff off the wrecks depends entirely on whether you win the overall encounter or are forced to disengage.

The "loops" bit is a separate issue, I think (now fixed).
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xenoargh

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #100 on: September 17, 2013, 08:49:45 PM »

I'm fine if they want to come back and fight again, so long as it doesn't mean I've just killed an Onslaught and a dozen freighters and have just lost all that loot because a couple of Hounds wanted to continue the slaughter :)

I think the issue here is that if there's any loot at all... I'd expect that we can always return to those dead ships, since we know where they are, and that we can always finish what we started, so long as we're not defeated. 

We shouldn't lose that loot unless we've lost the battle and have been forced to run away (presumably the enemy takes the loot then).  Right now, there are a lot of absurd situations that happen, where I've totally wiped the floor with my opponents but I get stuck and can't finish looting and lose the loot, which is irksome.
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Sordid

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #101 on: September 18, 2013, 06:50:01 AM »

IMO the logic that determines whether the enemy fights or flees should take into account more than just whether their remaining ships are civilian or military. I think the enemy should take into consideration whether they're actually physically able to destroy my ships with theirs. If I have a non-CR Onslaught and the enemy has a CR Hound, that's not really much of a win for them, is it? Okay, so they fly their itty bitty frigate to my dead-in-space battleship and empty their ammo reserves into it, accomplishing precisely nothing. And then what? Yeah, they have a CR ship and I don't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I lost. In this case it's more of a draw, which the game doesn't really know how to handle.
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TJJ

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #102 on: September 18, 2013, 07:15:20 AM »

So, let's say a lone onslaught comes up against 5 hounds.

The hound player decides to deploy just a single hound.
It dies.
Rinse & repeat.
Another hound dies.
3rd round, onslaught can't deploy so is forced to retreat.

Result: 2 dead hounds, and a CR depleted onslaught that'll cost far more than 2 hounds to resupply.

It seems to me that the CR system as it stands can be manipulated in every situation to accomplish this 'victory through attrition'.
The only reason it doesn't is that the AI's deployment strategy is suboptimal.
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ciago92

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #103 on: September 18, 2013, 07:20:08 AM »

So, let's say a lone onslaught comes up against 5 hounds.

The hound player decides to deploy just a single hound.
It dies.
Rinse & repeat.
Another hound dies.
3rd round, onslaught can't deploy so is forced to retreat.

Result: 2 dead hounds, and a CR depleted onslaught that'll cost far more than 2 hounds to resupply.

It seems to me that the CR system as it stands can be manipulated in every situation to accomplish this 'victory through attrition'.
The only reason it doesn't is that the AI's deployment strategy is suboptimal.

If you stand down after each engagement you shouldn't lose more than 5% cr I'd imagine, I can't quote you exact numbers but that is exactly why Alex put in the stand down option
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #104 on: September 18, 2013, 09:03:16 AM »

I'm fine if they want to come back and fight again, so long as it doesn't mean I've just killed an Onslaught and a dozen freighters and have just lost all that loot because a couple of Hounds wanted to continue the slaughter :)

I think the issue here is that if there's any loot at all... I'd expect that we can always return to those dead ships, since we know where they are, and that we can always finish what we started, so long as we're not defeated.  

We shouldn't lose that loot unless we've lost the battle and have been forced to run away (presumably the enemy takes the loot then).  Right now, there are a lot of absurd situations that happen, where I've totally wiped the floor with my opponents but I get stuck and can't finish looting and lose the loot, which is irksome.

We may be talking about different things, I'm not sure. If you "disengage" from the engagement, that's you losing and the enemy winning. You win if the enemy tries to disengage and you pursue/harry/let them go.


IMO the logic that determines whether the enemy fights or flees should take into account more than just whether their remaining ships are civilian or military. I think the enemy should take into consideration whether they're actually physically able to destroy my ships with theirs. If I have a non-CR Onslaught and the enemy has a CR Hound, that's not really much of a win for them, is it? Okay, so they fly their itty bitty frigate to my dead-in-space battleship and empty their ammo reserves into it, accomplishing precisely nothing. And then what? Yeah, they have a CR ship and I don't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I lost. In this case it's more of a draw, which the game doesn't really know how to handle.

On a lore level, if a Hound's captain *knows* that an Onslaught can't fire back, that's quite different that a normal battle. I'd imagine the Onslaught has to try to get away to preclude all sorts of fancy targeting options the Hound might get otherwise.


Also, a stock Hound (Assault Chaingun + Light MG) actually has considerably more than enough ammo to take out an Onslaught, provided it all goes into roughly the same spot in roughly the right order.

Edit: the latter is really a side point; I don't think getting into trying to calculate that out is a good idea. For one, energy weapons. For two, confusion. As is, if someone wants a fight and you're not ready for one, you lose - clean and simple. Whether they have enough firepower to take a bite out of you comes into play in the escape scenario.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2013, 09:15:24 AM by Alex »
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