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Author Topic: Combat Readyness isn't fun..  (Read 151218 times)

Zanthras

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #210 on: September 23, 2013, 09:36:33 PM »

As a new person to the game(just bought it over the weekend, and then lost my weekend to it) I have to say I really liked the CR system.

As I built my fleet up I always kept a good mix of ships, for that eternal question, do I *need* my heavy hitters for this fight? Can I do it with less? It made for lots of good fights.

The major problem I have was that learning cliff. Cant make money without fighting, and early on fights were hard. Once the game is more complete I understand that will be fixed, so I wont complain just wait and enjoy.

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WK

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #211 on: September 23, 2013, 09:47:00 PM »

However I would be more happy by adding some restrictions to harry. I thought maybe adding a temporal decrease to the maximun burn, something like if you chose to harry, the enemy gets its CR reduced but you get your max burn reduced by 1 for a day, if you can still catch the fleeing fleet and chose to harry again, the enmy CR gets reduced again and you get the harry penalties added on top of what you had, so max burn gets reduced by 2 on a 2 day coldown. This way you can only harry the enemy fleet as long as your fleet can catch it. I originally thought to just reset the timer, however that way you could just easily wait the time and then catch it and repeat.

The restrictions are only part of the solution/problem. Having a longer delay and speed penalty after harry means that you will not be able to catch the harried fleet again before the CR penalty caused by the harrying has mostly worn off. With the AI chickening out so much this would increase the tedium of hunting even relatively large fleets or make harry utterly useless. Therefore, this route does not actually fix harrying.

To those who hate CR I'd like to say: Give it time. You are currently playing alpha-version, not even a beta, and things like proper tutorials and the actual gameplay are still some where in the (hopefully not so) distant future. This patch was the introduction of the CR mechanic that was a big change, and it understandably still has some balance issues. Between now and beta-version it might not actually be a bad idea to have an easy-mode with CR-related "costs" halved so new people can get their feet wet safely.

What comes to usability of huge battleships, you can already see some e.g. pirate fleets with the task of defending something, usually a planet. At the current state, there isn't anything worth capturing on the planet, but later there most likely will be. Therefore the battleships will have their role in defending the really important locations and assaulting the same. When you want to go out there pirating and harassing traders, smaller and faster ships (yes, even frigates) are better equipped for the job.
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #212 on: September 23, 2013, 10:03:02 PM »

Gameplay hint to whomever it may concern: If you're flying around with capital ships, maybe you shouldn't be chasing every rink-a-dink pirate raider fleet that you see. Pirate Carrier Groups and Hegemony Patrols still stand and fight against my near-solo Odyssey with 6 wings of fighters on board, so it's not like there's any shortage of worthwhile opponents.

Every one likes to see progression in game. From small ship to big fleet of battleships, from week guns to super powerful doomsday weapons. And in the end killing something you could not kill was ultimate reward. Right now CR limits player from using all his(her) fleet in battle and in the end player dosen see a progression. All he(she) see is a handful of frigates fighting all game. Plus burn system makes it impossible to play with big endgame ships, cos they so slow and you cant get in to combat.
(emphasis mine)

Go fight the SDF/Security Detachment/Garrison Fleet? They're effectively an endgame challenge, strong enough to merit committing your full strength, they won't run from capital fleets even if they could, and between the three factions there'll be no shortage of such fights.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2013, 10:07:11 PM by Histidine »
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PCCL

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #213 on: September 23, 2013, 10:44:40 PM »

agreed, to those who are flying lone caps and want to chase down small ships, I have to say space doesn't work that way. You can't ride around in a huge battlecruiser and go frigate hunting. The wet navies of old didn't hunt patrol boats with battleships, nor deploy battleships alone without logistic support and/or escort for that matter.

lone caps are one of the worst fleet comps, imo. All the vulnerability of a low strength (compared to a fully escorted cap) fleet with none of the mobility smaller (like cruiser based) fleets. Not sure why one would go for one other than rule of cool
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #214 on: September 23, 2013, 11:02:07 PM »

Not sure why one would go for one other than rule of cool
Well, rule of cool is probably a reasonably good reason in itself. Moreover, Death Star solo "fleets" have precedent in lots of space opera, so it'd be nice if the game supported the playstyle to an extent.

Of course, the player doing such a thing should be prepared to accept the penalties that come with it (just as people running frigate swarms can't take on capital fleets, CR or no CR), or take the necessary steps to mitigate them.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2013, 11:05:26 PM by Histidine »
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PCCL

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #215 on: September 23, 2013, 11:05:34 PM »

ya, I guess. And the penalties in this case, unfortunately, is the gobbling of supplies and inability to chase down frigate fleets.
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Sproginator

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #216 on: September 24, 2013, 12:25:03 AM »

While I don't go trying to take down small rubbish fleets, even carrier groups run.....
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #217 on: September 24, 2013, 12:42:36 AM »

While I don't go trying to take down small rubbish fleets, even carrier groups run.....
Unless the carrier group is significantly understrength due to ship losses or low CR, that sounds like a bug.

I tried it with one Odyssey and one Atlas against two different carrier groups (each with one Venture, one Condor, one Tarsus plus some other stuff), and while they didn't actively chase me (instead doing whatever they happened to want to do at the time), if I started an encounter with them, they came straight at me ("the fleet's maneuvers make it clear they're looking for a fight"). Is that what you're using?

(Also, if the Atlas is slowing you down too much, that's probably because it's hugely overkill for the purpose. Either add a couple of tugs/Unstable Injector/Navigation level 5, or ditch it and get some destroyer-sized freighters or Hounds. Or just don't use freighters at all and accept the couple of days of 0% LR for hauling the loot to nearby stations, although this has complications of its own.)
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Sproginator

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #218 on: September 24, 2013, 04:48:06 AM »

But surely a capital vessel SHOULD be self sufficient, it's just silly otherwise
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liq3

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #219 on: September 24, 2013, 04:57:31 AM »

But surely a capital vessel SHOULD be self sufficient, it's just silly otherwise
They are for the most part. The Onslaught has enough cargo space to deploy 5 times, the Conquest, Odyssey and Astral 4 times and Paragon 2 times. Realistically after that many deployments they won't have enough supplies to get back to full CR (due to base drain), and there's no way they could repair themselves from heavy damage. You'd need lots freighters (or a single Atlas) to have enough supplies to repair heavy damage. Otherwise you have to go back to a station, which makes sense.
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Sproginator

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #220 on: September 24, 2013, 05:01:09 AM »

Yeah, but bleeding through supplies at a rate of 50/day is a bit much.


Supply drain should be completely halfed, and then we can see how well that works out
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Debido

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #221 on: September 24, 2013, 05:17:35 AM »

While I don't go trying to take down small rubbish fleets, even carrier groups run.....
(Also, if the Atlas is slowing you down too much, that's probably because it's hugely overkill for the purpose. Either add a couple of tugs/Unstable Injector/Navigation level 5, or ditch it and get some destroyer-sized freighters or Hounds. Or just don't use freighters at all and accept the couple of days of 0% LR for hauling the loot to nearby stations, although this has complications of its own.)

If you're taking on planetary defense fleets or large supply fleets, the Atlas is absoloutly necessary. In fact I often have 2 of them to be able to transport all the loot, I then need 4 tugs + 10 nav to remain competitive in terms of burn speed. Using these guys I can reap about 500,000 to 1,000,000 credits per hour.

Anyway if the game is to be more 'interesting', I'd look at implementing Fleet formations http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6847.0 which affects more on the combat gameplay, not to mention the many suggestions of radar and electronic warfare are numerous in previous threads including one of my own.

The implementation of some sort of 'stamina' constraint is necessary for any game, but the current implementation doesn't really make for decisions that are genuinely interesting. It has only slowed me down a bit, and forced me to change my fleet composition to ships that aren't as CR dependant. I'm not saying I 'hate' CR, I just disagree with it's current implementation regardless of future addition of industry.

After looking through the ship_data.csv the one conclusion I can come to is that CR is direct penalty for ships that are more effective in combat. It's like CR is a means to constrain ships that are 'better' to make them on par with 'cheap and lesser ships'. So although there are different tiers of ships, the ship tiers are made meaningless by CR. It's kind of like 'you can use a hammer all day for a few nickels, or you can use a nailgun for $50 for an hour...before it overheats and you need to put it in the corner...and then pick up your hammer anyway to just finish the job.

Looking throughout the CSV and codex, technology becomes an excuse to increase CR. It seems as if the intention is to make all hulls in some way 'equal' so that someone with a large 'cheap and cheerful' fleet can take on a 'expensive and effective' fleet. The expensive fleet may win round 1, but the cheaper fleet then wins round 2,3,4 etc. because it has the stamina to finish the fight.

This then prompts the question if players want ship tiers that actually means a 'better' ship really is 'better' in every way as ATM CR also levels the playing field.
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #222 on: September 24, 2013, 05:30:28 AM »

Yeah, but bleeding through supplies at a rate of 50/day is a bit much.

Supply drain should be completely halfed, and then we can see how well that works out
My spreadsheet says no single ship uses up 50 supplies/day unless it just got beaten up in a fight (counting the crew, undamaged Paragon uses just under half that during its CR recovery phase).

I think the supply drain rate in itself is fine, what I'd change are CR deployment costs (which in turn effectively translates to supply/credit deployment costs) and supply price.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2013, 05:33:11 AM by Histidine »
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Sproginator

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #223 on: September 24, 2013, 05:47:10 AM »

I swear,

My supply rate went to like 47 per day,

Low CR and 75%hp
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Fireball14

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Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..
« Reply #224 on: September 24, 2013, 05:50:05 AM »

This then prompts the question if players want ship tiers that actually means a 'better' ship really is 'better' in every way as ATM CR also levels the playing field.
Exactly my point! There are no progression in game for now, players just keep building up fleets from cheap ships, and dont use anything else.
I tend to agree that this game really need some sort of stamina, but it needs to be as penalty for losing a battle, not just constant burn of supply. I think slowing down repair rates at least by 50%(with same -50% supply usage for repair), removing CR, and making hull points restore at rate like armor dose(not instant after battle).
 
With this kind of approach players will wanna have better ships, cos they get a lot less hull and armor damage, but if ships keep on fighting for a long time they will eventually have no hull points at start of battle and will  have to move back to station for repairs(cos it takes a long time to repair in space with -50% repair speed).
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