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Author Topic: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 257869 times)

Sordid

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #375 on: October 24, 2014, 11:43:44 AM »

So I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.

This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.

I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.

The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 11:54:34 AM by Sordid »
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Gorn

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #376 on: October 24, 2014, 11:48:22 AM »

where is tri-tachyon main base?
and how to increase the reputation?
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #377 on: October 24, 2014, 12:10:05 PM »

Spoiler
So I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.

This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.

I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.

The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.
[close]

The AI tries to avoid over-deploying due to CR concerns, though it'll ramp up *very* quickly once it starts taking losses. For medium sized fleets, though, I suppose "very quickly" still isn't quick enough, if it basically needed the entire fleet to overwhelm you, and has now lost some of it before realizing it.

While this isn't intuitive at first glance, I think the behavior does make sense given the how the rules work (and given that the AI is playing by them).

where is tri-tachyon main base?
and how to increase the reputation?

Tibicena in the Magec system has the only Tri-Tachyon military base at the moment. Doing their bounties and trading with Tri-Tachyon are both good ways to improve your reputation with them.
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Sordid

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #378 on: October 24, 2014, 12:21:16 PM »

Spoiler
So I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.

This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.

I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.

The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.
[close]

The AI tries to avoid over-deploying due to CR concerns, though it'll ramp up *very* quickly once it starts taking losses. For medium sized fleets, though, I suppose "very quickly" still isn't quick enough, if it basically needed the entire fleet to overwhelm you, and has now lost some of it before realizing it.

While this isn't intuitive at first glance, I think the behavior does make sense given the how the rules work (and given that the AI is playing by them).

Well you say that, but the way the rules work is that you can't see what the other side is deploying. The AI can see what I'm deploying, so that means the AI is outright cheating, which aside from being a bad thing in and of itself also creates this weird dynamic where putting myself at even more of a disadvantage made the battle significantly easier. If anything, the AI should have no reason to think I'd deploy only one of my ships instead of both. I'm outnumbered and outgunned after all. The logical thing for me to do is to deploy everything I can to maximize my slim chances of victory. Deploying only one ship is a really counter-intuitive thing to do in that situation, and the result is equally strange. Surely putting myself at even more of a disadvantage should result in the battle being even more difficult.

This would all be solved by just making the AI not cheat. Then it would have to operate based on the above assumption that the weaker side will deploy everything precisely because it's weaker, and the exploit of deploying only one ship wouldn't work anymore.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #379 on: October 24, 2014, 12:30:31 PM »

Yes, the all-seeing AI cheats!  I cannot see what the AI deploys, neither should it.  For now, I take advantage of this by soloing everything with a single frigate or destroyer.

Once player gets Combat 10 and Technology 7, a single Wolf with a heavy blaster can solo almost any pirate fleet.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #380 on: October 24, 2014, 12:34:48 PM »

Spoiler
So I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.

This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.

I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.

The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.
[close]
I too ran into this with my AI Apogee! No matter what I gave him as weapons or orders, he would ALWAYS end up with 3K+ hull damage or flat out destroyed in "fair" fights!
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Sordid

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #381 on: October 24, 2014, 12:43:32 PM »

Spoiler
So I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.

This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.

I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.

The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.
[close]

I too ran into this with my AI Apogee! No matter what I gave him as weapons or orders, he would ALWAYS end up with 3K+ hull damage or flat out destroyed in "fair" fights!

Yeah, I'm really missing a command along the lines of "maintain formation, fire on enemy ships to raise their flux and make them back off but don't pursue, and whatever you do don't cross in front of me with your unshielded engines facing me while I'm firing everything".
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ahrenjb

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #382 on: October 24, 2014, 12:57:09 PM »

Yes, the all-seeing AI cheats!  I cannot see what the AI deploys, neither should it.  For now, I take advantage of this by soloing everything with a single frigate or destroyer.

Once player gets Combat 10 and Technology 7, a single Wolf with a heavy blaster can solo almost any pirate fleet.

Time for fleets to start leveling somewhat with the player? I think something like this will probably happen when officers are in, and you might end up facing a fleet with 10/10 Combat and Tech, which would certainly be tough!
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #383 on: October 24, 2014, 01:02:07 PM »

Well you say that, but the way the rules work is that you can't see what the other side is deploying. The AI can see what I'm deploying, so that means the AI is outright cheating, which aside from being a bad thing in and of itself also creates this weird dynamic where putting myself at even more of a disadvantage made the battle significantly easier. If anything, the AI should have no reason to think I'd deploy only one of my ships instead of both. I'm outnumbered and outgunned after all. The logical thing for me to do is to deploy everything I can to maximize my slim chances of victory. Deploying only one ship is a really counter-intuitive thing to do in that situation, and the result is equally strange. Surely putting myself at even more of a disadvantage should result in the battle being even more difficult.

This would all be solved by just making the AI not cheat. Then it would have to operate based on the above assumption that the weaker side will deploy everything precisely because it's weaker, and the exploit of deploying only one ship wouldn't work anymore.

Oh yeah, forgot about that part of it. I suppose it's technically cheating, but if it didn't do that, the optimal thing to do would probably be to send out a single small ship as a scout, run away with it (not retreat, just run away/not engage), and deploy "for real" based on what it saw. To avoid that (boring and complicated) mess, it knows what you've deployed, but doesn't take advantage of it in any way aside from basing how much to deploy itself.

Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.

While I generally agree that the AI shouldn't cheat as a matter of course, I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. Cheating by, say, increasing weapon range or damage artificially would be a bad thing. This? Not so much; it's not doing this to manage difficulty, but to smooth out the flow of the game. Even if it didn't do this, the same scenario you describe would play out (deploying a single ship making the fight easier by forcing the AI to deploy less), it'd just be more awkward with a scouting phase.
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Ghoti

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #384 on: October 24, 2014, 01:32:48 PM »

Quote
Removed XP gain from losing your own ships

I am very sad to see this go. This game has very little in the way of narrative, but the experience gain from the combat losses served to be turning points for my characters, and gave me an incentive to not just say "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."

Now combats gonna go back to "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."

sad to see that go.
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Sordid

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #385 on: October 24, 2014, 02:21:40 PM »

Oh yeah, forgot about that part of it. I suppose it's technically cheating, but if it didn't do that, the optimal thing to do would probably be to send out a single small ship as a scout, run away with it (not retreat, just run away/not engage), and deploy "for real" based on what it saw. To avoid that (boring and complicated) mess, it knows what you've deployed, but doesn't take advantage of it in any way aside from basing how much to deploy itself.

Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.

While I generally agree that the AI shouldn't cheat as a matter of course, I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. Cheating by, say, increasing weapon range or damage artificially would be a bad thing. This? Not so much; it's not doing this to manage difficulty, but to smooth out the flow of the game. Even if it didn't do this, the same scenario you describe would play out (deploying a single ship making the fight easier by forcing the AI to deploy less), it'd just be more awkward with a scouting phase.

Yeah, I had a feeling addressing this exploit would just create more exploits. Still, if the AI did start using the single ship scouting method you described, the player's response to that would probably be to bring up one ship, wait for it to be scouted, then bring up the rest when the scout ship leaves, which would effectively make the AI just as blind as if it wasn't cheating or scouting.

I've been thinking about this some more and I'm not really sure how to address this exploit, at least not if the solution involves making the AI cheat less. Any ideas I come up with involve radically overhauling the core systems of the game (i.e. how deploying works, fight phases, CR, all that sort of thing). So I think you should simply make the AI cheat more. Don't just look at the type and number of ships the player deploys but also at their actual strength. The AI would then look at my one destroyer and go "okay, it's just one ship, but it's commanded by a high-level captain and upgraded to ridiculous levels, we gotta deploy tons of stuff to take it down". On reflection, that's really where this exploit comes from. The AI sees one destroyer and deploys accordingly, but it doesn't take into account that it's a heavily upgraded destroyer that can disable any other destroyer in like five seconds and go toe-to-toe with cruisers.

Then again, I do love playing this game as more of a space shooter than a strategy, so maybe don't go overboard on the fix? ;)
« Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 02:25:19 PM by Sordid »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #386 on: October 24, 2014, 02:33:44 PM »

Quote
Removed XP gain from losing your own ships

I am very sad to see this go. This game has very little in the way of narrative, but the experience gain from the combat losses served to be turning points for my characters, and gave me an incentive to not just say "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."

Now combats gonna go back to "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."

sad to see that go.

Unfortunately, it was just very exploitable and led to weird ways of playing the game being very effective.

Yeah, I had a feeling addressing this exploit would just create more exploits. Still, if the AI did start using the single ship scouting method you described, the player's response to that would probably be to bring up one ship, wait for it to be scouted, then bring up the rest when the scout ship leaves, which would effectively make the AI just as blind as if it wasn't cheating or scouting.

Hmm. The counter to that sort of thing might be the AI deciding to retreat altogether (perhaps randomly, or if it only sees a lone frigate), leaving your larger force in need of a stand down. But that wouldn't be fun at all.


I've been thinking about this some more and I'm not really sure how to address this exploit, at least not if the solution involves making the AI cheat less. Any ideas I come up with involve radically overhauling the core systems of the game (i.e. how deploying works, fight phases, CR, all that sort of thing). So I think you should simply make the AI cheat more. Don't just look at the type and number of ships the player deploys but also at their actual strength. The AI would then look at my one destroyer and go "okay, it's just one ship, but it's commanded by a high-level captain and upgraded to ridiculous levels, we gotta deploy tons of stuff to take it down". On reflection, that's really where this exploit comes from. The AI sees one destroyer and deploys accordingly, but it doesn't take into account that it's a heavily upgraded destroyer that can disable any other destroyer in like five seconds and go toe-to-toe with cruisers.

Hmm, yeah. That makes sense.

Then again, I do love playing this game as more of a space shooter than a strategy, so maybe don't go overboard on the fix? ;)

:)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #387 on: October 24, 2014, 04:26:07 PM »

Quote
The AI would then look at my one destroyer and go "okay, it's just one ship, but it's commanded by a high-level captain and upgraded to ridiculous levels, we gotta deploy tons of stuff to take it down". On reflection, that's really where this exploit comes from. The AI sees one destroyer and deploys accordingly, but it doesn't take into account that it's a heavily upgraded destroyer that can disable any other destroyer in like five seconds and go toe-to-toe with cruisers.
With maximum Combat and Technology, a Medusa flagship can single-handedly take out any standard fleet in previous versions of the game.  Medusa was good enough to slaughter defense fleet equivalents of Gedune and IFed in Exerelin too.  AI needs to throw everything it has against a fully upgraded destroyer.  If frigates did not have peak performance, I suspect the lowly Wolf can solo fleets.

Quote
Then again, I do love playing this game as more of a space shooter than a strategy
Same here.  What interested me in Starfarer in the first place was the shmup action.
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TheHengeProphet

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #388 on: October 24, 2014, 04:35:05 PM »

Another possibility to help solve the deployment issue is to "roll" for brashness of the fleet commanders.  Some may send in a scout, while some may send in partial or full deployments.  This could add a good scope of randomness and personality to combat.
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Sordid

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Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #389 on: October 24, 2014, 06:40:23 PM »

Another possibility to help solve the deployment issue is to "roll" for brashness of the fleet commanders.  Some may send in a scout, while some may send in partial or full deployments.  This could add a good scope of randomness and personality to combat.

That sounds like an interesting idea. As Ahrenjb said, this will be less of a problem once AI fleets start making use of their own commanders and their skills. Perhaps this could be tied into that? Commanders with more combat aptitude would be more likely to correctly assess the situation, whereas inexperienced commanders would be prone to over- or underestimating the strength of their enemy and deploying an inappropriate number of ships as a result.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 06:43:32 PM by Sordid »
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