Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game
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Author Topic: Combat Issues.  (Read 6474 times)
Scion
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« on: October 24, 2012, 11:10:59 AM »

I think i can rightly claim to be the most experienced player in terms of engaging in player to player combat at the moment.

There are a number of issues that probably need to be addressed.

1) The Expected outcome of Ship to Ship combat is to all intents and purposes 100% predictable. Once youve installed a few lasers, the outcome is totally dependent on the CDR level in your ship. One level higher than the opponent and your guaranteed the first shot, and unless your unlucky youll likely do enough damage to drive them from orbit, one CDR level lower than them and your a sitting duck, so the only realistic opportunity is to jump away before combat starts. You can potentially try to negate a first shot advantage by carrying a massive amount of armour, and dramatically increasing the number of crew in your ship, but this is easily countered by adding just 1 or 2 more high powered weapons.

2) The Expected outcome of Ship-to-Surface&Station Combat is totally random*, whoever gets lucky and gets the first shot is likely to win.  (* Unless the ship completely and totally out powers the opponent )

3) The Damage inflicted by Weapons can be highly upredictable. So although The Expected outcome is in your favour, if the combat is actually engaged, the outcome then is highly variable. Your warship with a battery of 6 lasers manned by trained marines may well get thrashed by a bunch of civilians with a single laser, because either they got lucky with their shot, or all of your shots went wild or were minor.

4) Damage actually inflicted by weapons is highly misleading, the wepon description gives one figure, but in combat they can actually inflict significantly more.

It may seem like these balance each other out, but they dont, in combination what they do is ensure that you are only ever going to engage in voluntary combat if you completly outclass the other person. In ship to ship, you will allways jump away, unless you both have a much higher CDR Level, and Your weapons totally outclass the opponent. If your CDR does outclass the other player or your weapons and armament are significantly stronger you may decide to risk combat to defend something, but it is very risky.

For ship to surface&station opperations, it means your ship/fleet needs to have a massive advantage over the target, or the outcome is a toss of the dice.  Your only going to ever engage places that had no chance.

5) The combat calculate timer is becoming an unreasonably long delay. Even with a reasonable small warship with what is a relatively low power level, the calculation time is well over 20 minutes, go up against a medium sized ship and its quickly out beyond 30 minutes. I expect we would see delays of several hours even with a reasonable weak large Warship. I understand that the delay is there to give the opponent time to react. But either they are online or they are not. If they are online then with the higher level ship drives they dont need hours of time to get a ship there to help defend, if they are offline then theyre unlikely to get the attack notice anyway.  A smart player will do some background research and identify when a player is likely to be online/offline, and simple time their attacks to suit.

6) In the game Currently Bigger is allways better. There is absolutely no advantage to having a smaller ship, Any one that plays long enough is going to end up flying around in a bunch of Titans, and simply adjust the crew levels to manipulate their current power level. Their modules are going to be the highest option that they can build/buy

7) Currently the ships configuration is fully displayed just by looking at the ship (the screen where there is the option to do an active scan) ... i can see exactly what level each module is in the ship / station / planet. From that i can easily determine the Expected Outcome of any battle. I could also theoretically determin if any of the modules are not fully staffed just by comparing the expected generated power against the actual power level displayed for the ship.... although ive never actually bothered i just assume all modules will be fully powered. Being able to easily determin the expected outcome of a battle means i can be a lot more discerning about which battles i chose to fight.

Some of these problems are more systemic than others. However i think addressing them would greatly improve the combat experience in the game.

Firstly I think something needs to be done about the first shot... for ship-to-ship it shouldnt be completly dependent on who has the highest CDR level. My suggestion would be to come up with a formula that gives each combatant a percentage chance to get the first shot off. at its simplest it could simple be bassed on CDR ratio, so if i have a ship with CDR 10 and the oponent has CDR 20 then they have a 67 % chance to get first shot ( and subsequently i have a 33% chance ) however if you read on i prefer a slightly more complex variation.  For Ship to Station and Planet Combat i dont think it should be completly random there should be a way for both participants to increase their chance of getting the first shot it.  However ive not come up with a simple solution within the current game mechanics (Perhapes others have a good simple solution here) My suggestion is to add an additional Module type called 'Target Control' that can be used to increase your chance to get in the first shot (amoungst other things) ... You can then add a Target Control modules to your ship / station / planet to improve you chances of first shot... I also think it would also be worthwhile including ship size into the formula to simulate smaller ships being harder to hit.

So your Chance to get first shot would be bassed on your Ships CDR (its ability to move around a lot) its size (smaller is harder to lock onto/bigger easier) and the level of its 'Target Control' module. (planets and stations dont have CDR, but could perhapes get a Target Control bonus to reflect it being easier to target something if your sitting still) At the end you still end up with a chance to get first shot... so it shouldnt be guaranteed But if your CDR and Target Control are significantly higher than the opponent then you have a good chance to get the first shot away. (Adding a TargetControl module could not only affect the first shot but also influence your weapons chance of actually hitting the target in addition to the weapons setting youve chosen.)

Secondly i think something needs to be done about the damage inflicted by the weapons, Currently the decision to actually carry through with an attack rests heavily on the Expected Outcome... but then what actually happens in the combat is seriously random in outcome. I think that if a weapon hits its target then its range of inflicted damage could be narrower, to reduce the randomness of the actual outcome somewhat. I still think there must be an element of luck, but it would be nice if it wasnt the overriding aspect. One way to do this would be to use the Target Control Module, CDR, Target Size & weapon setting to determine wether each wepon attack actually hit... but if it hits then its damage is in a narrower band.

Thirdly the Combat timer needs to be modified, if the intention is to give the defender time to defend, and to give them a time bassed on investment, using the power level as a rough gauge of that, then that is fine, but it could be logarithmic instead of linear, especially if when corp combat comes in you were able to issue the attack notice to all corp members. With high power levels every man and his dog is going to be able to turn up and have a picnic while they wait for the battle to actually start.

Fourth, Currently Once the next level of armament has been reached the previous one becomes more or less obsoleet. It would be nice for instance if vipers were counted best by titanium armour, lasers were countered best by iridium armour, bu that iridium armour provides only limited protection against vipers... it would allow us much more scope for customisation of our ships, and the combat tactics that we use.

Finally I also think the Mark Level of modules should not be displayed when just looking at a ship, station or plant. You should have to carry out an active scan ( and wait the 60 minutes ) for that information. But even then the power level is going to give a lot away. (there is an opportuntity for another sort of survelance/espionage class of module here, scanners & scan blockers, but lets not get carried away) Although this is only really relevant if ship size was used to affect the game. (either in giving a dodge advantage in combat, or a fuel economy advantage in travel) it would allow crafty captains to make their smaller ships pack a surprise. And would make guessing an expected Outcome very difficult.


Some of these issues could be addressed relatively easily, others potentially require more fundamental changes. or expansion of the game. Im certain that others could help come up with at least a few simple quick fixes that could address at least some of these issues, while we wait for a (hopefully) more complete solution that further enriches the game play.

Note Im not looking for an 'I WIN' button here, rather a 'MORE FUN FOR ALL' dial.




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Bomale
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« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2012, 01:50:19 PM »

  17 Hello,

 Excellent work on the current situation in combat.
 This resort a lot of work to get a good balance between attacker AND defender.
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« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2012, 06:45:22 PM »

Great ideas, I'm sure we can implement a lot if not all of it, thank you.
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Sheb
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« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2012, 04:36:53 AM »

I like your CDR idea, but I would also make another suggestion: nerf all weapons. We can just have multiple rounds of fighting.
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« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2012, 06:21:51 AM »

@Sheb,

Yeah i sort of agree, however there is a 'game play' elegance to having the entire battle carried out in one User Interaction... If a battle was carried out in a series of steps/rounds then the online attacker gains a significant advantage in their ability to modify tactics depending on the ongoing battle. .. But simulating multiple rounds in a single battle would be interesting. ... although we sort of have a simplified version of that now with the laser shoots first, then marines, then civs... perhapes the extension could be that we continue to have ranged attacks until the ships somehow close range, by winning a CDR comparision roll perhapes, captains could also set a battle tactic in advance eg close fast,  stay ranged, etc similar to how we change weapons settings. However if your going to allow that sort of thing then ships might need to become significantly more robust compared to the damage weapons inflict, or not... heck you could even allow captains to set when their ship flee's (unless the crew overrule it by mutiney)... possibilities are endless.
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« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2012, 10:29:17 AM »

That and having weapons damage module or kill crew would make for interesting battles. And make the marines assault units even more useful.
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« Reply #6 on: October 30, 2012, 10:42:11 PM »

I completely and fully support Scion's thoughts here; excellent post! and everything you mention makes sense ( I have some different ideas how titanium counters vipers other than iridium counters lasers though) but on the vast majority of the subjects you raise, I completely agree. rockon
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« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2012, 09:04:26 AM »

Don't mean to revive an old thread.  But I wanna say some good ideas listed by people here. I especially would love multiple round battles and having tactics to try to stay ranged or closed in.  It would definately allow for people to plan for certain strategies. Someone could make a heavy armored boarding ship. Or a long range attacker. If Corp battles are added in, different set ups could work better. For instance in that situation it might be better to use ranged attacks and possibly a small more evasive ship. That is if they also make it so smaller ships are harder to hit. I could imagine some of the mean little ships some people might make and send along for the purpose of doing damage and dodging attacks while attempting to use their larger ships as tanks.

On the note of random damage.   Here is a recent attack report that left me thinking wtf.  Still was a good outcome though. Though I am still trying to figure out how my Marines got off as fast as they did before the ship emergency jumped. I would think in that situation they would get stuck on the ship. Maybe they put on life suits and jumped out when those resources were dumped. lol

Quote
Attacker opened fire!

Leviathan Vs. Starscream
Weapons assault
Leviathan maneuvers into fire range and attacks first.
Leviathan attacks with Laser Cannon MK I using standard mode.
The attack missed the target completely!

Leviathan maneuvers into fire range and attacks first.
Leviathan attacks with Viper Squadron MK I using standard formation.
The attack missed the target completely!

Boarding assault
Leviathan sending Marines Assault Unit MK I to find a boarding spot.
The boarding party found an area and sabotaged it, doing 3420 damage!
Target shield is down!
EMERGENCY JUMP!
Starscream has retreated from the battlefield due to heavy damage!
Leviathan captured a group of 3 enemy personnel during the fight.
Starscream lost some cargo while executing the emergency jump...
Leviathan searching for dumped cargo...
31 m3 Gold, 15 m3 Kolymite scooped into cargo bay.

Objective: Destroy 10% or more of the enemy while losing less % then the enemy.
 
Attacker victory!
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