Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5

Author Topic: Navigation and Burn Speed  (Read 31668 times)

celestis

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 285
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #15 on: January 13, 2015, 07:48:43 AM »

I would so much want the difference of burn levels to be less, like it was suggested in the beginning of the thread!
Also, the ability to intercept other fleet, in my opinion, should not very much depend on burn level - it should depend on the normal combat speed instead.
And IMHO the augmented engines hullmod needs to be reworked: it is almost a must to have it on anything bigger than a frigate, which is kinda bad balance...
Logged

TaLaR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2794
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #16 on: January 13, 2015, 09:14:15 AM »

I think problem are travel times themselves, not burnspeeds - and it can be fixed by increasing max time compression from 200% to somewhere around 1000%.


Travel between systems shouldn't be too fast- after all, if it is, hyperspace interceptions, where pirates make a living, become almost impossible.

To little time to detect and intercept fleet if they move like lighting between systems.

Personally I'm a patient man so I never had trouble waiting for my fleet to reach it's destination. But then again, I always prioritize navigation and have ships with upgraded burn levels.

This can be handled in same way X series does it.
- time compression increase is gradual, not straight to max.
- max compression is configurable.

So you can either drop maximum to something you can handle or if you only need lower compression rarely (when there are enemy fleets around), switch it intermittently, without letting it reach max compression.
Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #17 on: January 13, 2015, 06:41:14 PM »

I like the OP's idea of scaling down the differences between ship levels, although I wouldn't make them quite that close together.
Also, the ability to intercept other fleet, in my opinion, should not very much depend on burn level - it should depend on the normal combat speed instead.
And IMHO the augmented engines hullmod needs to be reworked: it is almost a must to have it on anything bigger than a frigate, which is kinda bad balance...
Burn speed was introduced to remove the scenario where the pursuer is like 5 speed units faster than the pursuee and spends an ingame week sloooooooowly catching up to it. Now you can either catch the other guy in a timely fashion or not at all.

I agree that "use Augmented Engines if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable time" is annoying.
Logged

Evan_

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #18 on: January 16, 2015, 03:43:27 AM »

I also find the Augmented Engines mod pretty silly. As it's a non-combat upgrade, nothing stops the player to change it to something more useful just before battle. Provided that the fleet can catch it's target without it, one can just circle around until CR level stabilizes after the on the fly refitting.
Logged

sotanaht

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 297
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #19 on: March 26, 2015, 12:21:22 AM »

Reducing the difference between small and large ship burn speeds sounds like a very good idea. When my fleet is sufficiently large, I keep the fast-forward button held down almost all the time to counteract the painfully slow travel speed of capital ships. Frigates will still be faster than large ships and retain their ability to pick their battles, but slower ships will move between battles much more quickly.

The current system map speed scale, where frigates are two to three times faster than capital ships, doesn't make much sense to me. Frigates have excellent tactical speed, but I imagine their compact size leaves them with little room for interstellar travel drives. By contrast, slow capital ships would have powerful engines backed up by robust reactor cores that could accelerate to high burn levels outside of combat.

I've heard this sentiment echoed a lot, but I don't really understand it in practice.  I've run all-frigate fleets sure, but the difference between burn 11 (frigates without engine upgrade) and burn 6 (upgraded battleships) just doesn't really bother me in practice.  6 is fast enough to catch (or run from) most AI fleets, and at still over half speed it doesn't feel so painfully slow that I get board just waiting to travel from A to B, at least not enough more so that I would give up on larger ships.

If I'm hunting smugglers or just flying from station to station all across the sector, I might use smaller ships only, but that just makes sense.

As far as the engine upgrades go, I always want it on bigger ships both in and out of combat anyway.  The extra combat speed is essential to my ship designs which are almost always strike-oriented.  I want to catch up with the big ship, close to near melee range, and unleash hell.  Unstable injector costs the same, offers less speed, and adds a combat vulnerablilty, and its mutually exclusive with the engine upgrade.  I use it on some frigates though for the acceleration boost, which lets them dodge and weave insanely well.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2015, 12:25:30 AM by sotanaht »
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #20 on: March 26, 2015, 05:11:18 AM »

Turn the navigation skill around so most of the boosts go to larger ships.
And spread out the bonii more so there are less (preferably no) dead levels.

and/or

Just ditch non-combat engine mods entirely and even out the speed differences favouring the larger ships slightly.
You don't even need to change the burn ratings, just how much each level of burn is 'worth'. (Lower numbers being worth more - diminishing returns etc.)
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #21 on: March 26, 2015, 05:30:52 AM »

I remember there was either a Sins of a Solar Empire mod or a Homeworld 2 mod where big ships were faster than small ships. Small ships had better acceleration, and so were more mobile over tactical distances, but large ships had better long distance mobility. I don't recall their justification.

The problem with having something like that in Starsector is that it could screw up early game balance. On the other hand, most pirate fleets have frigates, and thus wouldn't be going faster than the player's frigate, and faction fleets would get a speed boost, allowing them to clear out more pirates. Though that might not be a good thing, either.
Logged

celestis

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 285
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #22 on: March 26, 2015, 08:29:58 AM »

I don't think that this will fit into the game, but the idea totally makes sense: big ships have much more space for equipment and enormous power supply to allow better FTL drive, which is definitely a complicated device. This is the reason fighters don't have FTL at all BTW.
Logged

Solinarius

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
  • Wind. Fire. All that kind of thing!
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #23 on: March 26, 2015, 01:08:07 PM »

I remember there was either a Sins of a Solar Empire mod or a Homeworld 2 mod where big ships were faster than small ships. Small ships had better acceleration, and so were more mobile over tactical distances, but large ships had better long distance mobility. I don't recall their justification.

The justification may have been pseudo-realism. In my opinion, going with physics on this one makes for better and funner gameplay balance. In space, mass is all that matters (punny?). Practical propulsion methods would result in smaller ships having much greater acceleration but bigger ships can match their speed over time. Mass ends up being an equalizer for both parties. Though I haven't done it yet, I'm going to see what's it like for all ships to have the same top speed, with acceleration being tied to mass and engine grade in combat.

One thing that may make navigation more interesting could be gravitational slingshots, i.e., orbiting planets for speed boosts. I suppose that would require several other things to be reworked or newly implemented (momentum, AI awareness).
Logged

Aeson

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 501
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #24 on: March 26, 2015, 06:05:19 PM »

Quote
In my opinion, going with physics on this one makes for better and funner gameplay balance.
What do you mean by going with physics? There's arguments to be had for fast small ships and slow big ships, for rapidly-accelerating but low maximum speed small ships and slowly-accelerating but high maximum speed large ships, for quickly accelerating small ships and slowly accelerating big ships with the same maximum speed, and so on.

If large and small ships can turn fuel into kinetic energy with the same efficiency, then if a given mass fraction worth of fuel can accelerate a little ship from V1 to V2, that same mass fraction of fuel should be able to accelerate the large ship from V1 to V2, and the maximum practically attainable speed of the ships will be determined by how rapidly the ships can accelerate (determined by mass:thrust ratio and any limits imposed by structural strength, equipment acceleration tolerance, and crew/passenger acceleration tolerance), and for how long the ships can accelerate (determined by fuel supply and thermal constraints).

If there is a size dependency on the efficiency with which ships can turn fuel into kinetic energy, that will tend to push the higher maximum practical speed towards whichever end has the better conversion efficiency.

If we're not dealing with magical technology able to dispose of any amount of waste heat, then larger vessels should tend to have more thermal issues than smaller vessels; total heat generation should be roughly proportional to internal volume, whereas total heat dissipation should be roughly proportional to surface area. Big ships may not be able to have reactors as large relative to the ship as the small ships are, or may have to use relatively less powerful thrusters, or some such thing to keep the heating issues manageable. Or they'll need to have cooling systems which are in some way better than those of smaller vessels, which means that the cooling systems may well be relatively larger.

Due to structural stresses, large vessels may well need to dedicate a larger fraction of their volume to their structure than smaller vessels would even if the larger vessels have lower accelerations, reducing the space available for all other purposes, including fuel and propulsion. Structural limitations can also come into play against smaller vessels; there's a limit to just how small you can make the structural members if you're going to be handling a given amount of force.

There's also the potential for space issues, which might for example result in a small vessel trading a bit of fuel efficiency to keep the thrust of the drive engines at adequate levels for the desired performance.

Then there's the question of whether or not it's economical. Maybe you can make a big ship with the same fraction of its internal volume dedicated to structure as a smaller vessel, but you'd have to use a more expensive material in order to do so. Maybe you can make little reactors and thrusters as efficient at converting fuel to energy as the big reactors and thrusters are, but it costs an arm and a leg. Maybe you can make a cooling system that'll handle the waste heat of the big ship well enough to give it the power it needs to have the same performance as the little ship, but you can give up a little of the ship's performance and gain a great savings in cost.
Logged

Solinarius

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
  • Wind. Fire. All that kind of thing!
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #25 on: March 26, 2015, 11:50:08 PM »

Quote
In my opinion, going with physics on this one makes for better and funner gameplay balance.
What do you mean by going with physics? There's arguments to be had for fast small ships and slow big ships, for rapidly-accelerating but low maximum speed small ships and slowly-accelerating but high maximum speed large ships, for quickly accelerating small ships and slowly accelerating big ships with the same maximum speed, and so on.

I was definitely playing the efficiency card in regards to my understanding of propulsion in space. That mass and the force required for its propulsion are not 1:1 proportionate due to all the extenuating circumstances, even with Starsector technologies. Diminishing returns, so to speak.

Also, if spacecraft, regardless of size, all have a similar (if not exact) range of velocities, this suggests that investments in propulsion that allow for greater acceleration, as mass increases, do have diminishing returns.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 12:37:33 AM by Solinarius »
Logged

Ranakastrasz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 702
  • Prince Corwin of Amber
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #26 on: April 08, 2015, 09:31:41 AM »

As a side note, there is an option in config that sets the movement speed for each burn level. You can tweak that in quite a few ways. I personally set it to triple base speed and give half bonus per burn level.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 09:40:20 AM by Ranakastrasz »
Logged
I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #27 on: April 08, 2015, 11:18:29 AM »

I just had a thought about this:

What if Burn speeds were dependent on Fuel use, with very marginal changes based on Navigation?

So if you wanted to intercept somebody, you pushed up Fuel use, but if you were trying to save money on a profitable trading run, you kept at slower speeds?

This might make things more sensible.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #28 on: April 08, 2015, 11:33:57 AM »

Hmm... I'm not sure that would really change much, because its always in the best interest of a party about to be attacked to run if they think they are going to lose. So the player would still have to be faster than the opposition at max burn + fuel.
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Navigation and Burn Speed
« Reply #29 on: April 08, 2015, 11:58:33 AM »

But they'd have to burn the Fuel to do it, which costs money.  AI fleets would be able to do that calculation on the fly and make decisions accordingly; players could get a UI hint saying what Fuel they'd have to burn to catch an AI fleet, and make a rational decision.  And player fleets low on Fuel would have to make a decision about whether to push on and risk getting caught, or buy more Fuel to provide a safety net.

It'd also be one way to put in permanent cash draw-down, which the game in general really needs, and it'd clean up a lot of the game-design issues with Burn speeds becoming absolute speed-bumps, in terms of what can do what and why :)
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5