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)

Author Topic: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points  (Read 4357 times)

goduranus

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
    • View Profile
Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« on: March 10, 2015, 02:53:29 AM »

Just had a thought that the hulls and hull mods of a flagship should affect the command points or even deployment points available.

It's hard imagining a staff of 20 something people and their equipment cramming into a frigate without affecting the frigate's core functionality. Still harder to imagine the command staff acting effectively while the frigate dodges and weaves and shakes under enemy fire. While the same command staff would probably function more effectively on a bigger, more steady ship.

There should be some exceptions. Freighters that while spacious simply don't have the equipment necessary shouldn't provide the command bonus unless dedicated equipment were installed. A small dedicated command frigate/destroyer hull that while small is entirely taken up by command equipment would still be a effective command ship.

There could be hull mods that boost the CP/DP bonus as well, representing sacrificing a ship's core functionality to make room for more command equipment. The Astral in this case would come pre-equipped with this to represent a built-in flight-command center.

Also, I think any bonus the flagship brings should only be available if that ship is deployed on the field and piloted by the player.

Additionally, transferring command mid-battle should result in the loss of command points.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2015, 02:56:58 AM by goduranus »
Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2015, 05:38:32 AM »

Potential issue: this will screw over anyone who wants to pilot a small ship around while still having a decently sized allied fleet to work with. "Pick a slow, boring ship to fly, or don't have allies!"
We could just accept this as a cost, but I think it's a playstyle worth keeping.

Proposed solution: Separate the concepts of flagship and player-piloted ship. So you could say, fly around in a Hyperion while fleet commands are assumed to come from that Astral in the back. May be a bit disconcerting ("how does my player character exist in two places at once?") and hard to do the UI for, though.
Logged

TJJ

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1905
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2015, 07:12:31 AM »

"flagship" & "player piloted ship" are not synonymous in starsector.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2015, 08:22:56 AM »

The flagship for all of my 0.65 games is usually one among Wolf, Medusa, or Hyperion.  Big ships are too slow and eat too much to be worth using, except as cargo hauler; and for that job, there is no substitute for the Atlas.  Occasionally, I may dig an Onslaught or Paragon out of storage for a difficult bounty battle, especially if I do not have a Hyperion available; then I put it away in storage after the battle.

Frigate hordes (led by Hyperion) can do everything, except haul 20,000+ cargo and board ships without casualties.

Quote
"flagship" & "player piloted ship" are not synonymous in starsector.
True, I have put my flagship on autopilot before for various reasons.
Logged

goduranus

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2015, 11:05:49 AM »

well, you shouldn't be able to command from a small and maneuverable ship front line ship, just like you shouldn't have a small and maneuverable ship with 10 Plasma Cannons, no matter how fun that would be.

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2015, 11:29:11 AM »

It is as Histidine wrote: "Pick a slow, boring ship to fly, or don't have allies!"  It my case, it will be the latter.  Chain-flagships are the most efficient option by far.

If I boost Leadership, Fleet Logistics, and Advanced Tactics; I should be able to command my fleet better regardless of flagship used.  20 Logistics and 3 CP already hurt enough if I do not stick with few chain-flagships.

EDIT:  Also, ships of all types have no problem communicating to each other.  Communications can be anything, whether is it capturing points, finding enemies, or relying orders.  If ships could not communicate, they should not reveal what they see.  Weapons, on the other hand, need space to mount and (usually) flux to use.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2015, 12:26:23 PM by Megas »
Logged

Aeson

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 501
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2015, 12:59:05 PM »

well, you shouldn't be able to command from a small and maneuverable ship front line ship, just like you shouldn't have a small and maneuverable ship with 10 Plasma Cannons, no matter how fun that would be.
You should perhaps try to use examples which cover analogous situations. A small and maneuverable ship with 10 Plasma Cannons which is actually able to make use of those 10 Plasma Cannons has a significant advantage over anything currently in the game, except maybe the Hyperion. A small ship with command capacity equaling that of a large ship is neither advantaged nor disadvantaged; it's simply more fun for those of us who like piloting the little ships.

It's also not clear to me that the fleets in Starsector act as sufficiently well-coordinated units that the realism card really applies; by and large, ships seem to operate independently of one another, aware of what the other vessels in the fleet are doing only to the point of (mostly) avoiding collisions and friendly fire, but not really cooperating with one another, and you're very limited in your ability to issue orders to the fleet (and those orders are moreover somewhat loosely followed). This doesn't seem particularly indicative of a highly-trained command team with access to sophisticated command and control technology.

I also have a further objection on the grounds of fun. I like flying the little ships, I don't like flying the big ships, and I like bringing large fleets into battles. I don't support suggestions which penalize me for (trying to) having fun when there's no significant game balance issue in play (and for single-player games, I am of the opinion that game balance takes a backseat to fun anyways, unless it's a fairly egregious issue).

Also, a comment: there's nothing currently in the game that says that John Smith's skills, as listed on John Smith's character sheet, actually represent John Smith's personal skills rather than an ability to find the right person for the job. Maybe John Smith isn't a fleet commander, but he's managed to convince Horatio Nelson to lead his fleet in battle. Maybe John Smith isn't a great pilot, but he's good friends with Manfred von Richthofen, and the Red Baron has agreed to fly Smith's personal ship in each battle while Horatio Nelson commands the fleet from the fleet's flagship rather than your personal flagship. Maybe John Smith isn't that good with technical skills, but he's managed to convince Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Nikola Tesla to head up the fleet's technical and engineering staff. Maybe John Smith isn't that good with finance and industry, but he's convinced his brother Adam and his college roomate Henry Ford to manage that side of the business for him. John Smith "has" all these skills, because he's managed to pull together a team of people who have all these skills, and he's managed to make them work together effectively. There's historical precedent for such arrangements, and regardless it's not like it's realistic for our avatar to be the ideal Renaissance man, with great technical skills, leadership skills, industrial and financial skills, piloting skills, etc which he can use simultaneously. Much of the Combat tree may simply represent how well your avatar chooses the crew of his personal flagship (at the very least, I'm clearly not personally involved in damage control at the same time that I'm manning the ship's helm, and I'm probably not also simultaneously crewing the guns or personally ensuring that the engines and power plant are running smoothly), much of the Leadership tree may represent how well your avatar chooses the command staff of his fleet, much of the Technology tree may represent how open your avatar is to the good ideas of his subordinates and how well he chooses those subordinates.
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2015, 02:09:24 PM »

It's also not clear to me that the fleets in Starsector act as sufficiently well-coordinated units that the realism card really applies; by and large, ships seem to operate independently of one another, aware of what the other vessels in the fleet are doing only to the point of (mostly) avoiding collisions and friendly fire, but not really cooperating with one another, and you're very limited in your ability to issue orders to the fleet (and those orders are moreover somewhat loosely followed). This doesn't seem particularly indicative of a highly-trained command team with access to sophisticated command and control technology.

I really wish the possibility were at least there. Hegemony fleets, for example, would become a lot scarier if they used advanced teamwork like a real military.

Although I can't even imagine the nightmare of coding that would require.

-last paragraph snip-

Hmm, I like that justification. Although it might get a bit strange if hirable officers had the same thing going on.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2015, 02:12:40 PM by HartLord »
Logged

goduranus

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2015, 12:33:13 AM »

Well, if the real world is anything to go by, the size of AWACS aircraft plus their electronics dish is an indication of how much room it takes to put a command staff and their equipment.

Also Kongo class destroyers are 600 tons heavier than Aleigh Burk class mostly because of the additional space added to support a command staff.

In Starsector terms I'm guessing a command suite should cost about 30 ordinance points.

The skills are personal skills of the player character, you can tell because only the ship the player is on gets bonus from Combat skills.

Aeson

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 501
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2015, 01:44:09 PM »

The skills are personal skills of the player character, you can tell because only the ship the player is on gets bonus from Combat skills.
This is a very questionable assertion. Look at what the Combat skills do for you. If you assume that these are all directly related to your avatar's personal skills, then somehow you're performing all the maintenance work on the guns at the same time that you're an expert in missile systems who modifies the missiles (and perhaps the missile launchers) carried by the ships to improve their performance, and you're also making modifications to the ship's systems to get better combat performance and protect them from combat damage, and then during combat you're a crack pilot/gunner/power grid manager who also happens to coordinate the fleet to the extent that the fleet is coordinated, all at the same time. It's much more reasonable if you take the Combat skills to represent a highly-trained and perhaps hand-picked crew; certainly I'm not personally controlling all the guns on my Onslaught flagship even if I am controlling a couple, but all the guns benefit from "my" target analysis skill even if most of the guns are not firing on the target that the guns I personally control are, and I as the fleet's commander am not that likely to have the time to personally go around performing maintenance on the flagship's guns and improving system protection and ease of access for repair and modifying the missiles to perform better and so on.

Well, if the real world is anything to go by, the size of AWACS aircraft plus their electronics dish is an indication of how much room it takes to put a command staff and their equipment.
And if the real world is anything to go by, then the heavy guns of Starsector are drastically underpowered in comparison to the light weapons. 120mm guns with only 8 times the damage of 12.7mm or smaller guns? The momentum ratio of the projectiles says 'not realistic.' Gameplay replies 'who cares.'

Gameplay takes precedence over reality, and I haven't seen a convincing argument for how gameplay would be improved by penalizing the fleet command capability of light ships, nor have I seen a convincing argument for why gameplay is currently being hurt by the lack of a penalty.
Logged

goduranus

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2015, 11:10:28 PM »

In any case it stands that there's no way to access your highly qualified staff on that command carrier if you're in a frigate in the heat of battle. So even if the fleet command could give orders in this case, the player's character would not be the one giving them.

Not saying that realism is a goal of any sort. Not giving appropriate bonus for a larger ship is complete utter unrealism. By the same argument you might give frigates the same armor, hull value, and fire power of an onslaught as well.

Protonus

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 444
  • AAAAAAAAAAAA
    • View Profile
Re: Flagships setups to affect Command/Deployment Points
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2015, 06:24:26 PM »

Or we could just have dedicated Command ships, regardless of class size, that provides logistics, command points and/or deployment points while being a large pain when it comes to Fuel and Supply requirements and humongous skeletal crew slots.
Logged

The cookies are a weird one, okay.