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Author Topic: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.  (Read 4594 times)

Linnis

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Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« on: January 23, 2014, 07:37:04 AM »

I never been an critic of CR or supplies, but lately I been having second thoughts.

Game play wise, supplies and CR make sense and works as system together pretty well. But, the more I play the game, the more it dont make sense and feels wrong. Then slowly, I start to understand why so many people complain about CR, from a different perspective.

We all know the intricacies, whats possible and not, of CR and supplies so I will not explain everything fully.
What feels wrong, is that after a tough battle, that even if you prepared and are well stocked for. If you happen to lose, you will quickly deplete most of your supplies simply on regaining CR, even if you turned off repair.
Then, if your fleet mostly consists of combat ships, you will basically start having major accidents before you can lug yourself back to the spaceport.
Also, say, I want to travel a long distance with no freighters, its possible well supplied, but when you are touched once, you will drain most of your supplies reserved for travel, on regaining CR. Then you have to again lug yourself back to a spaceport for supplies.
Then, when yo have a large fleet, what is starting seem to matter alot is comparing the battle effectiveness of certain ships with its crew requirements, and calculating that on to your logistics and your supply capability. A large crew count can have a major impact on passive supplies cost, while small crew count ships, have large CR costs so battles cost more supplies. OK, this still makes sense.
But when you put all these factors together, is where it starts to go wrong. Supplies has been simplified from: food, parts, and ammunition. This gives simplicity to not having to micromanage everything, cuz after all, SS is about combat.
But when we play, half of my time is on combat, a quarter of my time is on loading out and buying ships. The last quarter of my time is looking at supplies, cr, crew count, and cr recovery costs of my ships, while travelling or on stations.
With The introduction of CR on top of the current system of crew count, cr,
"hunger" and deployment  efficiency, one resource for it all "supplies" instead of simplifying things, actually create an artificial obstacle: "that if one thing went wrong" "everything goes wrong"







------------
What I am saying is we need a few more features added ontop of the current CR system and change a few things.

Here are some Ideas, think about them... Details ofc is all up to Alex and co.

1. Crew no longer costs supplies to maintain. But rely on wages AND OR morale.
Ok, you may say waaaat? But lets face the facts here, spaceships if built, that have people on them, in all fiction or reality (ISS) are quite sustainable for humans. Basically, water gets recycled, and food (nutrient paste or other substitutes) can serve the crew for a VERY long time. And maybe what, in the future, we develop various bacteria and fungus that are easily cultivatable and dont require much space to sustain human development in an environment (food is also recyclable). If any of you have read decent sifi space books, when people start living in space, there would be almost no reason to live ON a planet, except to escape all the space radiation causing cancer and infertility.(but what are sifi shields for?)

 But these are battleships not space habitats you say, and what I think alex is thinking also.
So an Enforcer might not have bacterial/fungal colonies for food, But I bet you it would contain enough food to lasts for months for its crew, or its just a bad design and no human would want to serve on one. Either we can go in to this, or we can just say players wont float in space doing nothing for literally hours so we can rule out food problem.
So what do crew need?

There are two options.
Morale - If morale hits epic low, crews might dessert taking ships with them. Morale can be gained by winning battles, or simply docking at stations (giving crew time off, or decent food), or add in luxry items that can be "consumed"

And other option mentioned but might not make as much sense since crew costs money to buy.
Wages - Crews costs money, and not paying crews every cycle causes them to not do battle (not counting as crews basically) and things like this.

The effects of this are since CR will always be more important than repair in 90% of the cases. Running out of "supplies" are okay, you will just fight with less and less CR untill you get more supplies. And veteran players might actually see AI or player ships malfunction.

2. Split Logistics, in to Leadership points and real logistics
Because honestly, with officers and stuff, one guy should not be worrying about the logistics of every ship in his fleet. Is not like if you dont personally remember to say give food to frigate A, people in frigate A will starve.
Also simply because a guy is a good leader, dont make a ship able to travel with 2x the cargo at less risk. Crew member who man the ship does.

Leadership points i will mention last.


3. Accidents happen with over logistics or Leadership points.
But tone down the severity of accidents than previous versions.

Right now, you either never see accidents, or you dont care since your out of supplies anyways and are heading back asap. Either way, its not intresting atm. But doing the mentioned above might seem like a step backwards (it was changed from this)
But the reason why it was changed was so that it gave players an option to go above the limit, temporarily, as long as they have "supplies". Again, tacky.
Tune down the severity of the accidents and people flying around with 200% logistics can still get home without everything falling apart, going  perfectly fine, then suddenly EVERYTHING FALLS IN TO CHAOS VERY QUICKLY. Now, it will be some risk involved throughout the hole trip.
Also with the tuned down severity, going around with say, more ships then normal might seem like a good idea for players needing a large fleet to destroy a system defense fleet just once. For example, they dont need all the ships to be running 100%, since they are combat/tech in that case and they just need this one battle, so an accident happen and one of the ship is damaged and a few people die... ok NP.  (or say, a mining operation is hauling back 2x the goods it should safely carry)


4.  Over logistics dont reduce max CR.
This ties in with the two mentioned above. For one, this would make more sense as a crewed ship's cr should depend on the veterancy of its members not if the admiral is keeping an close eye on them all the time... Also, this allows for the above mentioned scenario.
With accidents punishing too much logistics, CR dont need to be effected.


5.  Leadership points.
Leadership points are simply how many ships the player (commander) can have in his fleet without in subordination.


So what is Logistics, Supplies, Combat Readiness, Leadership points and Crew in the end.
Logistics is what the maximum the crew and ships is capable of handling materials wise: crew, supplies, and fuel.
Supplies is Ship parts and Ammunition used for ship combat, and ships working extra time (over logistics on crew, fuel, and supplies)
Leadership points, how many officers can you command effectively.
Crew is people living in spaceships that can sustain their life, and only require morale to live on space rations or fungus, so they dont go crazy. They also effect the combat readiness of the ship they are flying.
----------------------------------










So all in all, this is quite of bit of changes, and they all tie in with each other.

But matter of fact is, this creates more complexity, that is easier to manage and understand.

Or so I believe anyways, people always think different.

Edit: added bold text lol
« Last Edit: January 23, 2014, 07:44:45 AM by Linnis »
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Linnis

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2014, 07:52:06 AM »


I did not put this in suggestions because its been suggested before, in parts.
But really this is the biggest flaw the game has presented to me, that no simple mod can fix.

So many things tie in together that to change it this way will be going backwards, that's the last thing we need.


A important story and campaign motivation and immersion is what is needed, not more tweaks. Like how starcontrol had non sense mechanics but was immersive with a good campaign to play in.

I am just using the way of suggestion to mention what makes fleet management so awkward, and what should be logical to this game. Oh wells.
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Alex

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2014, 09:56:52 AM »

Thanks for your feedback!

A quick question: are you basing this on vanilla, or on playing with a mod? I'm asking because if you're playing Uomoz's Sector, supplies work differently there, and what you're saying would (to me) make more sense in that context. In vanilla, supplies currently fall out of enemy ships like they're all pinatas, so getting attacked while traveling isn't exactly a problem as long as you win. And if you lose, well, that could spell trouble, but I'm ok with that.

I'm not a fan of the "keep going back to the station" dynamic, btw. I think it's just a consequence of how things work right now, and don't anticipate it sticking around in the same form. To some extent it makes sense that you'd want to sell your salvage after acquiring it, but that cycle is currently much too fast for my liking.

A important story and campaign motivation and immersion is what is needed, not more tweaks. Like how starcontrol had non sense mechanics but was immersive with a good campaign to play in.

Completely agree! Not that more tweaks won't be necessary at some point later on, but I think it makes sense to make them after the these things take shape.
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Obscure

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2014, 10:07:06 AM »

My biggest problem is the same as what Alex mentions.

I DO NOT like going back to base essentially after every engagement, either to unload the excessive amounts of cargo that threaten my CR and supply consumption rate, or to repair massive damage sustained from a particularly feisty pirate.

I would like to see a small increase in cargo capacity to all ships, or smaller cargo values to the items you collect.

something unrelated, (but possibly connected) would be the introduction of commodity items, which could be sold at the nearest base once collected, or traded from station to station.
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Histidine

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2014, 05:25:07 PM »

I'm curious: have the people complaining that CR recovery costs too many supplies actually done the math?

I haven't updated my spreadsheet for the new version yet, but in 0.6.1a, an Eagle that gets fielded in a battle and takes no damage will use 29.69 supplies to fully recover CR, including the amount used by the crew while waiting. The same Eagle can carry 8.42 times that many supplies in its own hold. I don't know how much CR taking hull damage costs, but I doubt it can more than triple this recovery cost.

Compare this to the supplies needed to repair the Eagle from zero hull and armor: 360, over an order of magnitude larger (and 44% more than the ship carries)

I'll say this again: if losing a battle makes you run out of supplies, blame repair costs (which were always there, though presumably increased in 0.6), not CR.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2014, 10:29:42 PM by Histidine »
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Steven Shi

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2014, 05:38:58 PM »

Or you can get a freighter or force yourself to take only the choicest salvage.

Alex has given us several option and there is suppose to be a trade off. If you run a small, lean assault oriented fleet, you pay for it for not able to hoard everything you blow up.

The real problem is that apart from combat, there's nothing else to do in the game hence a lot of complaints about game mechanics that most likely wouldn't be an issue later on.

Alex, I really hope you aren't spending too much time implementing feedback to the current game; I'd rather you complete the game to beta stage so us supporters can experience and critic the game as a whole rather than doing it piece-meal. The whole fiasco with the CR lately is just face-palmingly silly given whatever 'perfect' solution people come up now is just as likely to be 'broken' once you tag on the other missing 50% of the game.

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Debido

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2014, 10:21:40 PM »

We'll I'm going to mainly wait patiently and watch how the other pieces fall into place. For every point you've made linnis, though valid, there is an equally valid reason to keep the current cr system until we see the larger system.

Introducing a morale system may be ok, but modelling the human psyche in an abstract way that is satisfactory would be difficult. And frankly they're soldiers on a ship so they'd best get the sand out of their camel toes and do what I say when I say without question  :D

Also wages doesn't directly put food in their mouths, supplying food to the navy is a logistical nightmare to say the least. Interestingly on today's us navy they don't let people use money, instead they use a token system to pay for things on large ships.

I think Napoleon's saying,  ‘An army marches on its stomach.’ Is quite apt a description to describe the relationship between supplies and maintaining any military force.

Anyway morale and wages don't quite make sense in the context of the game.

Splitting leadership points from logistics again and going to to pre0.6 gameplay is a valid way of moving forward with the game. But leadership points is just a meaningless artificial restriction on fleet size, but so is logistics to a point.

If logistics rating could only be increased through the procurement of specialised supply vessels, then you tie the fleet size to the players ability to gain credits and buy the special supply ships. This would make more  sense if you were trying to come up with a real world analogy.

You'd then be a bit screwed if your supply ships were destroyed when running away from the enemy, making them highly valuable. Players would then complain that it's too difficult to regrow your fleet after the destruction of their supply ships, and they'd be forced to dock their ship to get rid of ships and crew if they were unable to buy another supply ship. So although cool and kind of realistic it wouldn't be fun.


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Linnis

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #7 on: January 24, 2014, 05:40:07 AM »

Well, its not quite about the mechanics, like i said, they work fine atm. Just that it seems to go out of its way to not make sense; Its about the lore and feeling of managing your fleet.

Mostly the problem is with vanilla. But yeah, its defiantly not the most important issue.
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Debido

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #8 on: January 24, 2014, 07:42:27 AM »

Well how about leadership points are dictated by the number and quality of officers you have. Better officers contribute more to the leadership points pool. You have to then pay leaders wages baed upon their quality, and usually do so with monthly salaries in advance. Problems then arise I suppose if you have no money...and they abandon you if you don't pay them for a few months, possibly going mutiny on you and taking one of your ships with them.

Another aspect to increasing leadership points is having CCC or command, control and communications ships. The bigger the C3 ship's class, and more hi tech the more leadership points it contributes to the leadership points pool.

With supply ships constituting your  logistics capability, and officers/C3 ships constituting your leadership capability you can scale the size of your fleet up much further.

I think that it would make more sense as well, and would no longer be so abstract.

« Last Edit: January 24, 2014, 09:08:56 AM by Debido »
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2014, 03:49:27 PM »

Well how about leadership points are dictated by the number and quality of officers you have. Better officers contribute more to the leadership points pool. You have to then pay leaders wages baed upon their quality, and usually do so with monthly salaries in advance. Problems then arise I suppose if you have no money...and they abandon you if you don't pay them for a few months, possibly going mutiny on you and taking one of your ships with them.

Another aspect to increasing leadership points is having CCC or command, control and communications ships. The bigger the C3 ship's class, and more hi tech the more leadership points it contributes to the leadership points pool.

With supply ships constituting your  logistics capability, and officers/C3 ships constituting your leadership capability you can scale the size of your fleet up much further.

I think that it would make more sense as well, and would no longer be so abstract.

Sword of the Stars 1 used something very similar. Basically in order to deploy more than one ship at a time you had to use CNC ships, which are generally VERY weak. (Except the Flagship CNC which is the best ship in the game IMO) If you lost the ship, you had to deploy one ship at a time but were still able to deploy
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Jazwana

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Re: Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2014, 05:53:45 AM »

One suggestion (possibly made before) is to give a small Logistics Capability increase each level (regardless of skill point, but perhaps you could focus a level for larger gains).

As to the crushing penalties for going over LR, well...

“My logisticians are a humorless lot...they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.”
--
Alexander


“Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point. “
--
General Antoine Henri Jomini, Summary of the Art of War


“Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare.”
--
Guderian


“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless.”
-- General George S. Patton, USA


etc etc
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