Overcoming Screens...

[Flagritz]

Hi

 

Further to the thread started on the 'Official: Turns Are In Thread, ' I have a few ideas on how we could overcome the dependancy on screens?

 

Obviously I don't know how hard it would be to implement but I have 3 very similar themed ideas All centred round giving the player the chance to have more control on what he targets. All 3 ideas give you the chance to adapt your fleet tactics based on what your opponent does and encourages the big ship tactic.

 

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1) When you set-up your fleet and select your Rule of engagement you also set the Target preference. You can set it to Large Displacement or Small Displacement.

When in battle say (Im making the figures up here) 25% of your fire power would be directed towards ships which match your preferred dispalcement whole the rest would be like before based on deployment location

 

e.g. I set my fleet to Target ships with a large displacement, I have a FC of 12, 9 shots hit what's in the first row as before, while 3 of my shots would target the 3 largest ships in the fleet.

 

If my enemy starts to spread his firepower into the smaller ships I set my target preference to small, ignore his big ships and focus on the small ships.

 

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2) When you set-up your fleet and select your rule of engagement you also select your preferred deployment location to target. Like above maybe 25% of your firepower would be directed towards the deployment location you specified while the rest would act in order.

 

e.g. Im fighting a enemy who has big ships in row 4, I select row 4 as my preferred location for next engagement, 25% of my firepower will focus against that deployment location.

 

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3) When you set-up your fleet and set-up your rule of engagement you also specified a preferred tonnage displacement you wish to target e.g.

 

My enemy has a fleet which has:

10 - 2 million ton screens

3 - 550K warships

2 - 500K Carriers

4 - 480K Shielders

10,000 - 1K Screens

 

I set my preferred tonnage to 500K, Again I have 12 FC, 9 FC hits the 1K screens in the front, the other 3 hits go for the ships that match my preferred tonnage the best.

So round 1 the 2 carriers and 1 of the 480K screens

round 2 the other 480K screens (they are closest to my preferred size)

round 3 the 550 warships

round 4 - against the 1000 screens as they are 499K different to my preferred tonnage compared ot the 2 Million ton screens which are 1,500K out.

 

Alternatively I set my preferred tonnage to 1,200K.

first round the 550 warships are targeted

second round the carriers

third round the shields

fourth round the big 2 million screens

fifth round all against the screens.

 

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Any soultion that doesnt allow you to adapt to your enemys tactics is going to fail, the above 3 ideas just help refine the targeting process so that you get to direct what your firing at (after all you can chose where you place your ships why not what they try and fire at?). Deployment lcoation still plays a big part as the majortiy of fire will go against those in front, however all 3 ideas give the ability to 'aim' at what you want, hoefully your commanders can tell the big blobs from the small blobs or range they want to fire at...

 

anyway these are just ideas,

 

later

 

Miltiades :]

[kukri65]

How about assigning each 1000 tons of ship a "slot". The chance of hitting any "slot" is the same, modified by deploy location. So, if you've got 10,000,000 tons of screens and 40,000,000 tons of real ships you would have a raw chance of 80% to hit the real ships. Oh, and round nearest (or down) on ships that have tonnage not exactly divisable by 1000 (preventing the 1,001 ton screen from taking up two slots.)

 

 

 

Hi

 

Further to the thread started on the 'Official: Turns Are In Thread, ' I have a few ideas on how we could overcome the dependancy on screens?

 

Obviously I don't know how hard it would be to implement but I have 3 very similar themed ideas All centred round giving the player the chance to have more control on what he targets. All 3 ideas give you the chance to adapt your fleet tactics based on what your opponent does and encourages the big ship tactic.

 

------------------------------

 

1) When you set-up your fleet and select your Rule of engagement you also set the Target preference. You can set it to Large Displacement or Small Displacement.

When in battle say (Im making the figures up here) 25% of your fire power would be directed towards ships which match your preferred dispalcement whole the rest would be like before based on deployment location

 

e.g. I set my fleet to Target ships with a large displacement, I have a FC of 12, 9 shots hit what's in the first row as before, while 3 of my shots would target the 3 largest ships in the fleet.

 

If my enemy starts to spread his firepower into the smaller ships I set my target preference to small, ignore his big ships and focus on the small ships.

 

------------------------------

 

2) When you set-up your fleet and select your rule of engagement you also select your preferred deployment location to target. Like above maybe 25% of your firepower would be directed towards the deployment location you specified while the rest would act in order.

 

e.g. Im fighting a enemy who has big ships in row 4, I select row 4 as my preferred location for next engagement, 25% of my firepower will focus against that deployment location.

 

------------------------------

 

3) When you set-up your fleet and set-up your rule of engagement you also specified a preferred tonnage displacement you wish to target e.g.

 

My enemy has a fleet which has:

10 - 2 million ton screens

3 - 550K warships

2 - 500K Carriers

4 - 480K Shielders

10,000 - 1K Screens

 

I set my preferred tonnage to 500K, Again I have 12 FC, 9 FC hits the 1K screens in the front, the other 3 hits go for the ships that match my preferred tonnage the best.

So round 1 the 2 carriers and 1 of the 480K screens

round 2 the other 480K screens (they are closest to my preferred size)

round 3 the 550 warships

round 4 - against the 1000 screens as they are 499K different to my preferred tonnage compared ot the 2 Million ton screens which are 1,500K out.

 

Alternatively I set my preferred tonnage to 1,200K.

first round the 550 warships are targeted

second round the carriers

third round the shields

fourth round the big 2 million screens

fifth round all against the screens.

 

------------------------------

 

Any soultion that doesnt allow you to adapt to your enemys tactics is going to fail, the above 3 ideas just help refine the targeting process so that you get to direct what your firing at (after all you can chose where you place your ships why not what they try and fire at?). Deployment lcoation still plays a big part as the majortiy of fire will go against those in front, however all 3 ideas give the ability to 'aim' at what you want, hoefully your commanders can tell the big blobs from the small blobs or range they want to fire at...

 

anyway these are just ideas,

 

later

 

Miltiades :]

[Sakarissa]

I like the idea that naval leaders influence the size of the fleets. We would need a base max fleet size. Say 50 ships for this illustration. That's not too bad with upper level Fire Control ratings. Since each leader has a rating equal to their level (IE: level 1 thru 7) then we could make a formula based on this.

 

Base Max + (highest level leader)squared + (total of leader levels of leaders #2 thru #x).

 

Lets assume 50 ships for the Base Max and 3 leaders with levels 7, 4, & 3. This would give us:

 

50 + 7squared + (4 + 3)

50 + 49 + 7 = 106 fleet max for that particular fleet.

 

106 ships in a fleet isn't that bad. That would reduce the processing time of battles and we get our turns earlier.

 

Sakarissa

[TErnest]

I like the idea that naval leaders influence the size of the fleets. We would need a base max fleet size. Say 50 ships for this illustration. That's not too bad with upper level Fire Control ratings. Since each leader has a rating equal to their level (IE: level 1 thru 7) then we could make a formula based on this.

 

Base Max + (highest level leader)squared + (total of leader levels of leaders #2 thru #x).

 

Lets assume 50 ships for the Base Max and 3 leaders with levels 7, 4, & 3. This would give us:

 

50 + 7squared + (4 + 3)

50 + 49 + 7 = 106 fleet max for that particular fleet.

 

106 ships in a fleet isn't that bad. That would reduce the processing time of battles and we get our turns earlier.

 

Sakarissa

 

SN II had a system somewhat like this, where the number of ships involved in combat were limited. (Although the actual mechanics differed.) If memory serves, the maximum number of ships allowed was 150.

 

I have a fundamental problem, though with any system like this that limits the number of ships involved in a given combat. I LIKE a system where masses of small ships, or even a reasonable force of small screens as part of a larger fleet, has a place amoung the possible set of successful strategies. Now, one can reasonably argue that small screens have too much power as it currently stands. But even so, I prefer it to any system where building only the largest number of tons possible into a relatively small number of ships, is the only viable tactic. In my view, that is just too boring and one dimensional.

 

Personal choice, I know. Maybe even a minority opinion. But my feeling is that most space combat systems fall down on this particular point.

 

Now... a limit on the number of tons possible to command in a given fleet might make an interesting and versitile combat system. But it would do less to reduce the time required for processing.

 

TErnest

[Locklyn]

While I like some of the ideas I don't think that RTG will do any changes at this stage as any attempt to change a fundamental part of the design, whether it be weak/flawed or simply misunderstood will be met by cries of "foul" by those players that have invested a lot of tech in computers to get high fire control or those having built tens of thousands of screens. The Hellenic HW defense fleet has around 30-45000 screens if I remember correctly and I am sure he wouldn't like anything that suddenly cut the size of his allowed fleets.

 

Pete has hinted about that we haven't found the way to deal with screens yet and I surely hope that there is a techpath that leads there since having high space combat bonuses, elite ships and lots of legendary leaders presents doesn't seem to do the trick hopefully that grail once found will do. Personally I hate having 1500 shipyard slips on my homeworld spewing out ships when all that conmat could be used elsewhere.

 

Cheers

 

/Locklyn

[hobknob]

Five years into a game is not the time to completely revamp the combat system. Nor is it the time to try and add command and control limits to fleets.

 

The only option that won't have drastic results to the player community would be reprogramming the combat routine to run more efficiently or perhaps upgrading the game server.

 

Any other option that involves revisiting how space battles are fought, command limits, tonnage limits etc.. etc. are non starters and won't go anywhere without a restart of the game. Save those solutions for the next version of the game.

 

[General Miles Avatar]

Five years into a game is not the time to completely revamp the combat system. Nor is it the time to try and add command and control limits to fleets.

 

The only option that won't have drastic results to the player community would be reprogramming the combat routine to run more efficiently or perhaps upgrading the game server.

 

Any other option that involves revisiting how space battles are fought, command limits, tonnage limits etc.. etc. are non starters and won't go anywhere without a restart of the game. Save those solutions for the next version of the game.

 

Although I like the idea of limited fleet size based on command and control Hobnob is right. Its much to late

in the game( no pun intended) to make any changes of this magnitude.

[Lord Uriel]

I disagree.

If Pete thinks a certain fix will reduce his work load (kinda seems like this is a side project sometimes), then why not? He'll lose some players? Look at the open letters they write to the players at times. Basically, they want us to be happy and play the game. However it's their game, not ours.

 

If they choose to make a change that makes their life easier and this causes some players to drop, then that is the player's choice. Keep in mind that players have dropped over the years due to some form of frustration or other and not a word from the GMs.

 

So if the large, uber alliances get annoyed over a change in how the game is played, so what? They'll drop, new players will join up and the game continues. Those that stay will eventually take out the dropped positions, and spend more money to run them. Rolling Thunder still makes money. If you believe this hasn't been thought out by the GM's you're mistaken.

 

Anyway, I have two very easy solutions.

 

Option #1. Change the strength of all bridge systems to something incredibly massive. So no matter what level of tech you have, you have an increased ability to shoot down screens. So Mk I Computer goes from 1,000 to 50,000, 100,000 or some other high end number.

 

Option #2. Create a new tech with a massive bridge strength and simply give it to all players at the same time as opposed to having them research it.

 

 

Now, I want each and every one of you to have great day.

 

 

I realize this will not solve the screen problem entirely, however it is a simple fix towards limiting them.

 

Lord Uriel

 

Oh, this is for the Diggers. I am annoyed with you.

[Locklyn]

Actually I think I finally figured out what Pete was talking about, and if that is correct then there is indeed tech in the game designed for this purpose, thank you Neevians for showing me the light in that battle. I will be testing it out soon myself with some other enemies. As usual with Pete, you sometimes need to think out of the box, especially the gamer box and you'll see what could be the answer to all our screen issues

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

 

Ps, this is for the Cylon Collective, I am NOT annoyed with you. Just get the hell out of my way! Ds

[Lord Uriel]

Actually I think I finally figured out what Pete was talking about, and if that is correct then there is indeed tech in the game designed for this purpose, thank you Neevians for showing me the light in that battle. I will be testing it out soon myself with some other enemies. As usual with Pete, you sometimes need to think out of the box, especially the gamer box and you'll see what could be the answer to all our screen issues

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

 

Ps, this is for the Cylon Collective, I am NOT annoyed with you. Just get the hell out of my way! Ds

 

 

So would it take five years of research to find, or is it something else? Is it the fabled ONE MASSIVE SHIP strategy?

[Locklyn]

No, not five years of research...as I said think outside the box and consider how things work...One massive ship? Nah, I have those, five of them actually and while they smash anything in their way they can only be in one place each at a time and move between my fronts a lot.

 

Cheers

/Lars

[hobknob]

Well, if I recall there were fleet limits in SN II and it was a real pain, 50 ships per fleet and only 50 fleets allowed or some such limit. The only way combat was really feasible was that you could move multiple fleets with the same order.

 

The current version of the combat system is the fix for the last one IMHO so going backwards would be... well... going backwards.

 

[Prospective]

Maybe it has to do with communication type ship components.

 

I seem to recall some game out there in the past (Starfire maybe?) that you had better chances to hit when your ships were datalinked together. Even though components like Laser Communication Gear have been assigned a 'bridge' strength rating perhaps their real strength isnt so much in the actual rating, but rather it lies in the inter-ship communications they facilitate. Perhaps having a single communication component on each ship design allows your commanders to utilize better overall tactics, and do less targetting of 'insignificant' ships and target the heavy hitters? Maybe the descriptions weren't just window dressing, but could actually mean something when it comes to combat?

 

Just speculation.

 

Any comments Pete? Are the ANZ's for 'communication' type devices window dressing or do they actually do something in the combat system?

 

If so, I can see all those Santa SRP's getting burned in the pursuit of communication type components.

 

Neeve Dynasty, you care to post your battle with Locklyn? Give us all some insight to work with?

[SargonKingOfSlith]

No, not five years of research...as I said think outside the box and consider how things work...One massive ship? Nah, I have those, five of them actually and while they smash anything in their way they can only be in one place each at a time and move between my fronts a lot.

 

Cheers

/Lars

 

Are you talking about a ship component that nobody knows about because of an odd mix of prerequisites?

 

Or are you talking about a ship component that everybody has, but we just ignore it or overlook its significance?

[Lord Uriel]

I have the feeling it might have something more to do with a broad horizen research base. Just a guess though.