Quiet_Man

Join Date 07/2010

+11

Nasty idea for fleet management

I'm a weired guy, so I have three wishes for my Sins games:

1. Have the AI build capital ships (lots, not just 2 or 3)

2. Have a higher Capital ship limit

3. Have smaller fleets

I know, I know, 2 and 3 seam not to fit (I told you I'm weired ). But read on and tell me what you think.

Item 1, when the AI has free fleet support it is adding small ships into build queues until they or its resources are used up. So it seldom has enough free fleet support to build capitals. Sadly the issue is even bigger when it has lots resources. It just puts more small ships into build queues. Solution: I copied the capitals, set required fleet support points to 0 and added a research that only the AI can do (see AI improvement discussion) which enables building of the new ships and also reduced the fleet support points overall when the research is done. Now the AI can build capitals until it has no more capital crew or resources.

Item 2, as the AI can now build Capitals I simply increase the Capital Crew support points.

Item 3, it sounds weired that I want more ships but smaller fleets. The point is that I like to enforce more intelligent use of fleets. Currently you can put all ships into a big fleet and if your enemy does the same you are even forced to do so to counter. In reality large fleets are difficult to handle and ships can get into each other way, limiting speed, time to react and firepower. I'm thinking of three ways to limit fleet size:

1. Add an ability that lowers the chance to hit at targeted ships, the more ships focus on a single target the lower the chance to hit. That way small fleets or single ships have a chance to doge larger fleets.

2. Add an ability that lowers speed (and maybe firepower) of surrounding ships by 1 or 2 percent. If you put too many ships together they will slow down more and become ineffective.

3. Combine 1 & 2, as I like to use the fifth ability slot I would need to combine both into one ability. Is it possible to have a single ability that adds different effects to own and enemy ships?

This would also add new options to Flagships which could counter the effect. So you would have one larger fleet and keep the other ships as backup or free for other operations.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

1. Have the AI build capital ships (lots, not just 2 or 3)

On the higher difficulties (Cruel and Vicious) I have often seen the AI build batches of 8-10-12 capital ships in the very late game.

3. Have smaller fleets

In my opinion, gameplay decisions for Sins should be made off of how to improve gameplay and playability, rather than realism. That said, large fleets already have a number of logistical disadvantages: they take forever to get into formation, they have a tendency to scatter all over the gravity well even when attempting to move or attack a single target, they get pummeled by enemy flak... late-game lag makes it hard to reliably give orders... etc.

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Quoting Wrath89,

reply 1

quoting post1. Have the AI build capital ships (lots, not just 2 or 3)

On the higher difficulties (Cruel and Vicious) I have often seen the AI build batches of 8-10-12 capital ships in the very late game.

3. Have smaller fleets

Item 3, it sounds weired that I want more ships but smaller fleets. The point is that I like to enforce more intelligent use of fleets. Currently you can put all ships into a big fleet and if your enemy does the same you are even forced to do so to counter. In reality large fleets are difficult to handle and ships can get into each other way, limiting speed, time to react and firepower. I'm thinking of three ways to limit fleet size:

In my opinion, gameplay decisions for Sins should be made off of how to improve gameplay and playability, rather than realism. That said, large fleets already have a number of logistical disadvantages: they take forever to get into formation, they have a tendency to scatter all over the gravity well even when attempting to move or attack a single target, they get pummeled by enemy flak... late-game lag makes it hard to reliably give orders... etc.

It is not really about being realistic, I just think about how to motivate new ways of playing the game. But you are right that sins already has it's problem with large fleets. Reducing their speed when in formation might even solve this issue?

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Quoting Quiet_Man,

reply 2

I don't play the higher difficulty levels as the AI is not actually playing on this levels. Instead a script is running spawning ships and other stuff. It gets research completed in bunches without even building research centers.

It is not really about being realistic, I just think about how to motivate new ways of playing the game. But you are right that sins already has it's problem with large fleets. Reducing their speed when in formation might even solve this issue?

The higher difficulty levels of AI have the exact same gameplay strategies as the lower difficulty levels, except that they get an income boost and a research boost. The exact same AI is playing, except with bonuses.

I personally never use actual "fleets", I just give different commands to individual ships; using fleets causes your ships to waste time moving around instead of firing.

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Quoting Wrath89,

reply 3

Depends what game you play? At diplomacy the developers added two "purple" (Cruel & Vicious) AI levels where the AI does not "play" the game anymore but follows scripted events.

if you record a game and watch the AI you can acutally see the difference most simply at research. On the lower (red) levels the AI will have a research queue and you can watch the progress just like the player. It can also research only according the available centers. In the two purple levels the queue is always empty. No research is shown but after some scripted time several research items simply change to completed.

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Quoting Quiet_Man,

reply 4

if you record a game and watch the AI you can acutally see the difference ...

you really use this technique well to get some great insight into game and player dynamics!

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Quoting Quiet_Man,

reply 4

Depends what game you play? At diplomacy the developers added two "purple" (Cruel & Vicious) AI levels where the AI does not "play" the game anymore but follows scripted events.

if you record a game and watch the AI you can acutally see the difference most simply at research. On the lower (red) levels the AI will have a research queue and you can watch the progress just like the player. It can also research only according the available centers. In the two purple levels the queue is always empty. No research is shown but after some scripted time several research items simply change to completed.

It's still the exact same AI playing; it just has bonuses, such as instantly completed research and a much higher income multiplier. But it's the same AI. Having bonuses does not mean that the AI is suddenly not counted as "playing".

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it might be for others an insignificant variance, but for me it is a difference to give the AI a bonus, like more income from the same extractor, or to completely disable game mechanics and give the AI resources (or research) without it even having the infrastructure (a player could destroy)

For me a major part of the fun comes from the environment (= planets) that influences the development of each player. If the AI play is independent from what planets it has, it breaks this aspect of the game.

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Sure, it is a difference, it's just that that doesn't mean that the AI is suddenly not playing.

And the AI does need to have the research structures in order to research/build things - the research structures just only need to be queued but not necessarily built (I'm pretty sure that's how it works).

Same AI, just more (very significant) advantages and bonuses.

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