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Unread 3 Dec 2006, 14:05   #1
Wandows
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'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Now i know this is an issue that is playing since forever, but it really started to annoy me this round. I think it is save to say that most ppl find the current combat engine lacking in certain areas. This thread atm will only cover the distribution of damage to the targets (as i believe there have been enough threads about Zik stealing and several other issues with the engine).

I believe most DC's have experienced this problem one way or another, the flakking of 'expensive' ships by cheap same class ships from another race. An example being Xan FI or CO ships being used by Zikonians in FC's.

A simple example of a fleet attacking with 9000 Phantoms and 1000 Cutlass would probably not worry anyone, as its easy to stop. I'm taking EMP as example on defence here to make my point a bit clear (and not get distracted by dealt damage to the attacker from kill ships, but those have the same problem). A quick shipstats check learns us that you need 1500 Beetles to stop 9000 Phantoms and 794 Beetles to stop 1000 Cutlass. So any capable fleet command would send 2500 Beetles and trust his pilot-crew to be able to deal with the problem efficiently.

But if we have to believe the PA combat engine, atleast half of our pilots must be complete idiots for wasting fire on ships that have already been dealt with. The battle would result in this, a loss of 685 Beetles for the defender. While stat wise we would have assumed the call covered, in "reality" it isn't. 90% of the defending Beetles (2250) fire on the phantoms, leading to 1750 Beetles "wasting" their shots on space, while the other 10% (250) obviously isn't enough to stop the Cutlass. Doubling the amount of Beetles only increases the wasted firepower, 4500 Beetles fire on the Phantoms, meaning 3000 Beetles are wasting their time now, while only 500 try to deal with the problem that is left and fail.

Could we please get a more intelligent and efficient combat engine. I know the above example is just a small one, but with the current game it is extremely annoying to see huge amount of resources wasted on nothing. This especially counts for FC's where the attacker(s) simply sacrifice his/their cheap, high quantity, flak to gain ships (even with a large amount of defence present). Likewise, certain attacks are extremely easy to cover (read, make expensive enough to for a recall) just by having a nice amount of cheap flak availabe (an example being the Beetle example above, but then with the defenders and attackers swapping side).
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Unread 3 Dec 2006, 15:10   #2
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

So, you would rather fire distributed in terms of value? thus you'd have a more even fire? Tbh, that might just lead to problems in the other direction though; cheap ships being more numerous arent completely stunned/killed/stolen thus getting though?

What i think you're asking for and is a more complex solution coding wise, is to ensure that all ships who can fire do fire at targets that are not already stunned. iirc, pre-PAX combat engine did this, where each ship effectively lined up to be shot, and then once it had been destroyed/stunned it would move onto the next one. Sadly, i cant remember exactly how it was done, but the problem with that situation was the sudden impact of "overkill"; eg, WF had guns with a power of 2, but Interceptors only had armour of 3, each WF would need to take 2 shots at each Int to kill it, thus the Int had effective armour of 4 against WF.

I'm sure there is an obvious solution around this though, i'm just too tired to work it out right now.

nn all .
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Last edited by Ultimate Newbie; 9 Dec 2006 at 15:33. Reason: Incorrect WF/Int numbers. Thx for the reminder.
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Unread 3 Dec 2006, 15:33   #3
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

I thought the point of the differences in prices was that it was easier to flak.
There's three basic ways to allocate damage where there's more than one ship type present in combat:
by relative number of the different ships (which is what it is currently)
by relative value, and by relative armour.

Which would be preferable?
If someone's willing to explain a system that's related to what Sov suggested above, I'm willing to attempt to code it. :-)
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Unread 3 Dec 2006, 23:17   #4
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

You are correct Sov! I meant it to work like the old rounds, instead of firing on already stunned / killed / stolen ships, make it fire on the ones that are still alive. The initial distribution by numbers present is fine, but the 'wasted' shots should be fixed to actually be used in combat.

Im not 100% sure how that worked though, as its a while ago. But i think it can be treated along the lines of a shooting ship pool that holds all guns / damage firing. That gets distributed over the target class, by ship numbers present. If there is more damage dealt to a certain ship then needed to kill/stun it all, the excess damage is reused on the ships of the target class that are still alive (again distributed by amount ships present of the unkilled/stunned ships) untill either all ships on the target class are stunned/killed or untill all guns have fired. Would be something along the line of: guns_left = (guns_firing_on_target_ship - (min(guns_firing_on_target_ship, guns_needed_to_kill_all_target_ships))) and as long as guns_left is not 0, or the target class isn't completely stunned/killed/stolen, redistribute the guns (guns ofcourse can also be the normal kill/steal damage).
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Unread 3 Dec 2006, 23:53   #5
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

it is kinda silly as 1+1=3 with this stuff making ziks damn hard to stop or teamups
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Unread 4 Dec 2006, 12:03   #6
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

In the old days, there was also T1, T2 and T3, which gave the none used ships in T1 a chance to fire a fdifferent class in T2 and also T3.
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Unread 4 Dec 2006, 18:13   #7
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie
WF had guns with a power of 3, but Interceptors only had armour of 2, each WF would need to take 2 shots at each Int to kill it, thus the Int had effective armour of 4 against WF.
You got the armour and damage the wrong way round.
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Unread 4 Dec 2006, 20:01   #8
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

So noone of you look on emp resistance on ships when you calc these things or?
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 02:40   #9
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Red-, if you had any idea about the way the combat engine works, you'd know what i'm talking about here. This thread is about how EMP guns or damage is being distributed amongst target ships, not about how effective any of the values used in the stats are. EMP resistance has got nothing to do with it, its merely used as example. The current combat engine gives a false insight on the stats as the actual damage being dealt doesn't represent the actualt total damage that could be dealt when ships of different costs (and thus different quantity) are present in the target class.
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 09:37   #10
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

ah yeah i've been meaning to ask this to be sorted forever too, thanks for bringing it up wandows! good call
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 09:39   #11
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

I do wonder, Wandows: Did it ever occur to you that the better DC's in this game do not cover people from roidloss but just make roids expensive enough? That is in most scenarios still possible.

However, I tend to agree with the point made about zikonian being the only race able to draw any advantage out of this behaviour. I'd personally rather see it usable by all - or nobody.

Edit: Oh, and of course it delivers another reason for not playing cath.
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 09:43   #12
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

I happen to think this is a feature, not a bug. It adds a strategic element to fleet composition.
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 10:44   #13
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

In some ways yes, for example working out the best fleet composition to get through for the smallest amount of resources in terms of flaking etc, but for example Cath Co armour is at least double Xan Co armour, leading to huge flaking effects and making it very hard to stop Cath ships when attacking with Xan ships. It's good and can be used very tactically, but is perhaps a bit extreme in some cases.

Another option to moderate the effects would obviously be to make the race armours (and costs) more comparible, especially on the classes where combos are possible.

Allocating by armour would (I think, I'm in a hurry and have to leave in a sec and so haven't really thought it through [as usual?!]) allow a slightly weakened version to operate depending on costs.

Alternatively, if we wanted to get more complicated, we could add some sort of "race armour modifier" that altered the targetting of ships depending on the races.

Say with the Xan and Cath Co example, the weighting of Xans is 1 and Cath is 2. Then the ships firing are modified by this amount, so instead of (say) 15 ships firing at Xan and 150 firing at Cath, 100 fire at xan and 200 fire at cath because they're relatively harder to kill.
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 11:27   #14
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster
In some ways yes, for example working out the best fleet composition to get through for the smallest amount of resources in terms of flaking etc, but for example Cath Co armour is at least double Xan Co armour, leading to huge flaking effects and making it very hard to stop Cath ships when attacking with Xan ships. It's good and can be used very tactically, but is perhaps a bit extreme in some cases.

Another option to moderate the effects would obviously be to make the race armours (and costs) more comparible, especially on the classes where combos are possible.

Allocating by armour would (I think, I'm in a hurry and have to leave in a sec and so haven't really thought it through [as usual?!]) allow a slightly weakened version to operate depending on costs.

Alternatively, if we wanted to get more complicated, we could add some sort of "race armour modifier" that altered the targetting of ships depending on the races.

Say with the Xan and Cath Co example, the weighting of Xans is 1 and Cath is 2. Then the ships firing are modified by this amount, so instead of (say) 15 ships firing at Xan and 150 firing at Cath, 100 fire at xan and 200 fire at cath because they're relatively harder to kill.
That's retarded and a typical PAteam 'patch' solution. There are much better ways of changing this problem into something more useful. Check our PM or stat devel channel logs for some of my ideas on the subject.
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Unread 5 Dec 2006, 13:38   #15
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
I do wonder, Wandows: Did it ever occur to you that the better DC's in this game do not cover people from roidloss but just make roids expensive enough? That is in most scenarios still possible.
Ofcourse i know that, which is also one of the problems as Cathaar EMP attacks are quite easy to make expensive that way by having cheap ships flak the ships you want to target them with, a good example being a combination of Phantoms and Cutlass.

And idd Zik is the race having the advantage, because teamups will never be a problem since its unlikely 1 attacker will sacrifice all his ships to allow another attacker to cap roids. And it gives them a huge advantage in fleetcatches, which can be extremely hard to cover as with a combat engine like this alot of damage (or emp guns) will be wasted on the already dead/stunned cheap ships while the steal ships survive and steal all losses or more back. And that is a problem i'd like to see fixed, i have no problem at all with ships being targetted by amount present (i.e. the ship with the highest quantity gets most shots fired at it).
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 01:13   #16
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Zikz stealships fire last - Hence they are targeted last.

Phantoms fire first - hende they are targeted first.

I dont see it as a problem - Some have natural advantages, but they also pay a price for them - Like the Phantoms firing first and beeing dirt cheap, but actually having next to no armor and beeing targeted first.

Its all fair in my book.

And on a side note using xan ships to flak on a FC is not allways a good idear - If you want to steal most value you wanna go as pure steal/emp as possible as they have the highest armor/resistance.
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 01:41   #17
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Red-
Zikz stealships fire last - Hence they are targeted last.

Phantoms fire first - hende they are targeted first.

I dont see it as a problem - Some have natural advantages, but they also pay a price for them - Like the Phantoms firing first and beeing dirt cheap, but actually having next to no armor and beeing targeted first.

Its all fair in my book.

And on a side note using xan ships to flak on a FC is not allways a good idear - If you want to steal most value you wanna go as pure steal/emp as possible as they have the highest armor/resistance.
well fuzzy logic isnt my thing really but if i have 10 rocks i dont throw 8 of them on 5 weak dudes and 3 on the rest of the stronger guys
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 03:30   #18
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Red-
Zikz stealships fire last - Hence they are targeted last.

Phantoms fire first - hende they are targeted first.
Err. That's not how it works at all.
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 14:58   #19
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Lightbulb Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster
I thought the point of the differences in prices was that it was easier to flak.
There's three basic ways to allocate damage where there's more than one ship type present in combat:
by relative number of the different ships (which is what it is currently)
by relative value, and by relative armour.

Which would be preferable?
If someone's willing to explain a system that's related to what Sov suggested above, I'm willing to attempt to code it. :-)
Of the three I vote value.
Simply because a ship's value comes from its cost, and the costs are generally a better representation of 'danger'

The following explanation is understandably very confusing and complex -- Appocomaster SHOULD be able to follow it, and if he's interested he knows how to contact me/introduce it.

For the rest of you :

It deals damage to the ships based on their value, but if the damage dealt is greater than the armour available to reduce by, the excess damage is moved to a new variable named 'unused' and this 'unused' potential is used on the next ship etc... going down through every intiative, updating throughout!

-tuxed0



Through a coding perspective:
(in this example all 3 ships are imaginary, all are the same class and target the same target (themselves))

=sum(cumulative armour of ships attacking)
e.g. 1000 ship2(5arm-1dmg-init2)
9000 ship1(2arm-2dmg-init3)
(9000*2 + 1000*5) = 23,000

=sum(cumulative armour of ships defending)
e.g. 1000 ship1(2arm-1dmg-init2)
2000 ship3(3arm-3dmg-init1)
(1000*2 + 2000*3) = 8,000

=sum(individual armour of ships attacking)
e.g. 9000 ship1(2arm-1dmg-init2) = 9000*2 = 18,000
1000 ship2(5arm-2dmg-init3) = 1000*5 = 5,000


=sum(individual armour of ships defending)
e.g. 1000 ship1(2arm-1dmg-init2) = 1000*2 = 2,000
2000 ship3(3arm-6dmg-init1) = 2000*3 = 6,000

(giving...)


Then by initiative...
Init 1
=sum(cumulative damage dealt by attackers)
Attackers init 1 = None

=sum(cumulative damage dealt by defenders)
e.g. Defenders init 1 = Yes (ship3)
2000 x ship3 (6dmg)=2000*6= 12,000

=sum(value attacking per ship at this initiative remaining)
e.g. 9000 ship1(value=2) || 1000 ship2(value=4)
(9000*2 + 1000*4) = 22,000

=sum(value defending per ship at this initiative remaining)
e.g. 1000 ship1(value=2) || 2000 ship3(value=6)
(1000*2 + 2000*6) = 14,000

=percentage per ship of value attacking/defending
Attack:
ship1=18,000/22,000=82%
ship2=4,000/22,000=18%
Defence:
ship1=2,000/14,000=14%
ship3=12,000/14,000=86%

=armor loss = (%age of value this init * defender damage dealt this init)
e.g. No defender is hit

=armor loss if statements= (%age of value this init * defender damage dealt this init)
unused = 0

9,000 x ship1 = 82% || 82% of 12,000 = 9,840 damage dealt
9,000 x ship1 = 9,000 armour
=if damage dealt > armour available
difference = 9,840 - 9,000 = 840 (true)
=true -- if(difference>0) (840) add to 'unused'
e.g. unused = 0 + 840 = 840
ship1=0

=false -- (individual ship1 armour - damage dealt)/ship1 armour stat


1,000 x ship2 = 18% || 18% of 12,000 = 2,160 damage dealt + unused
= 2,160 + 840 = 3,000 damage dealt
unused = unused - 840 (just redistributed) = 0
1,000 x ship2 = 5,000 armour
=if damage dealt > armour available
difference = 3,000 - 5,000 = -2000 (false)
=true -- if(difference>0) (0) add to 'unused'
=false -- (individualship1 armour - damage dealt)/ship1 armour stats
e.g. (5000 - 3000) = 2000
2000 / 5 = 400 remain

Ship Renumerations:
Attack:
Was & Now:
Was: 9,000 ship1 ||| Now: 0
Was: 1,000 ship2 ||| Now: 400

Defence:
Was & Now:
Was: 1,000 ship1 ||| Now: 1,000
Was: 2,000 ship3 ||| Now: 2,000



(continuing per initiative with newest values referred to...)

- tuxed0
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 15:26   #20
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Why will wasting coding time on changing this make Planetarion a better game? Will it improve the play experience for everyone, most people, some, any people?
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 16:23   #21
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jester
Why will wasting coding time on changing this make Planetarion a better game? Will it improve the play experience for everyone, most people, some, any people?
It will help everyone because the combat engine will make more sense.

...

Logic dictates that you need 1500 Beetles to stop 9000 Phantoms.
Logic dictates that you need 794 Beetles to stop 1000 Cutlass.

Therefore;

Logic dictates that you need 2294 Beetles to stop the above fleet
Not 7937 (as the current system suggests).


It makes sense to veterans.
It makes sense to noobs.
It's simple and easy and has zero draw-backs.

Applying this would be very worthwhile.
-tux

(p.s. yay my 100th post in just under 5 years lol )
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 16:41   #22
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
It will help everyone because the combat engine will make more sense.

...

Logic dictates that you need 1500 Beetles to stop 9000 Phantoms.
Logic dictates that you need 794 Beetles to stop 1000 Cutlass.

Therefore;

Logic dictates that you need 2294 Beetles to stop the above fleet
Not 7937 (as the current system suggests).


It makes sense to veterans.
It makes sense to noobs.
It's simple and easy and has zero draw-backs.

Applying this would be very worthwhile.
What the ****?

What logic?

Make more sense to whom?

I'm a veteran, it doesn't make sense to me. Hell, lots of things that make games don't necessarily make sense. Please explain to me why it will make combat more interesting. If you can bring some examples to the table that would be extremely helpful.
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Unread 6 Dec 2006, 23:09   #23
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

The problem i initially stated is imo reason enough. Certain ship combinations get way to powerfull in the current game, a great example being Zik fleetcatches that contain numerous Xan FI. They can cause shitload of firepower to be wasted on nothing but air, making it nearly impossible to stop unless you throw in a huge amount of resources (which obviously far from all alliances have access too). I'm not saying target distribution has to be this straight forward to match the stats that are portrayed, but i have seen calcs where up to 50% of the firepower present was shooting space and that is just shit. It makes Cathaar, a already weak defensive, race even weaker (and to some degree this also counts for other races) and a already reasonably strong steal race even stronger.

I have no problem with the current target distribution, initiative setting, armour or damage settings, emp stats, no problem at all. My concern is that huge price differences in ships of the same class (and the quantity difference that is caused by that) lead to a very unbalanced play field which is to easily dominated by the stronger race (in this case Zik). And since i like the fact you have price differences in ships, i would like to see the combat engine fixed in a way where not 50% or more of the firepower is wasted on space while there are still enemy ships that pose a threat. This affects both defence and offence in a way that is far to damaging.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 04:44   #24
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wandows
The problem i initially stated is imo reason enough. Certain ship combinations get way to powerfull in the current game, a great example being Zik fleetcatches that contain numerous Xan FI. They can cause shitload of firepower to be wasted on nothing but air, making it nearly impossible to stop unless you throw in a huge amount of resources (which obviously far from all alliances have access too). I'm not saying target distribution has to be this straight forward to match the stats that are portrayed, but i have seen calcs where up to 50% of the firepower present was shooting space and that is just shit. It makes Cathaar, a already weak defensive, race even weaker (and to some degree this also counts for other races) and a already reasonably strong steal race even stronger.

I have no problem with the current target distribution, initiative setting, armour or damage settings, emp stats, no problem at all. My concern is that huge price differences in ships of the same class (and the quantity difference that is caused by that) lead to a very unbalanced play field which is to easily dominated by the stronger race (in this case Zik). And since i like the fact you have price differences in ships, i would like to see the combat engine fixed in a way where not 50% or more of the firepower is wasted on space while there are still enemy ships that pose a threat. This affects both defence and offence in a way that is far to damaging.
Thank you. The point made in the second paragraph is very salient. The problem is not the combat engine, but the pricing of the different ships. I think tux and Appocomaster are wasting their time trying to look for a combat engine solution to it.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 06:49   #25
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

just send the right ships.
if a zik is launching a fi-attack with a huge ammount of phantoms try sending some k harpies...
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 09:37   #26
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jester
What the ****?

What logic?

Make more sense to whom?

I'm a veteran, it doesn't make sense to me. Hell, lots of things that make games don't necessarily make sense. Please explain to me why it will make combat more interesting. If you can bring some examples to the table that would be extremely helpful.
I sense Jester likes playing Zik? ;-P

I don't get how anyone could be so arrogant as to find fault in my above statement, but as a patient person (I'm in HR so we do things right) here goes another explanation that's probably on your level of understanding...

If I went for a cheap night out and I needed £15.00 to cover drinks and £7.94 for entry to the club I would expect to spend in the region of £25.
Not much more.
I might even bring £40 just in case the cost didn't include taxes or if I wanted to be safe knowing i had some change if I needed it.

If I went to the club, had my drinks and was charged £79.37 I would be severely pissed off.

Use your God damn logic Jester and stop being an ass.

...

Wandows - I agree the current combat engine does need fixing.

-tux
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 10:01   #27
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Baffled. Comparing war with going out drinking. Priceless.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 10:08   #28
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
I don't get how anyone could be so arrogant as to find fault in my above statement



Quote:
but as a patient person (I'm in HR so we do things right) here goes another explanation that's probably on your level of understanding...

If I went for a cheap night out and I needed £15.00 to cover drinks and £7.94 for entry to the club I would expect to spend in the region of £25.
Not much more.
I might even bring £40 just in case the cost didn't include taxes or if I wanted to be safe knowing i had some change if I needed it.

If I went to the club, had my drinks and was charged £79.37 I would be severely pissed off.

Use your God damn logic Jester and stop being an ass.
You have entirely failed to explain why PA combat should be like going to a club. You are right that, if PA combat is supposed to work like the pricing of a night out, then it is certainly wrong atm. But that is not necessarily true and you have done nothing to explain why it is. Your suggestion is logical only if certain assumptions are made, and you do not justify them.

As Jester said, what gameplay benefit does your suggestion offer? How will combat be made more fun by it? You didn't answer the question and you again assume that 'logic' provides the whole answer.

Too often, suggestions are made on this forum which go into great detail about how the mechanics of the game could be changed, but make no effort to explain what the effect of these changes would be. Not just the obvious consequence of increasing firepower efficiency, but the broader consequences for the game as a whole. Which races would benefit most? How would those benefits be balanced? Would the suggestion create new anomalies, or make other changes to the combat system necessary?
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 14:16   #29
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
Baffled. Comparing war with going out drinking. Priceless.
...
Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
here goes another explanation that's probably on your level of understanding...
I used that example to try and show how, logically, if you need X for something, you would expect to give X to accomplish it. I'm obviously not comparing going to a club with PA, it was an example to illustrate a point. And I'm sure you knew that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ComradeRob
As Jester said, what gameplay benefit does your suggestion offer? How will combat be made more fun by it? You didn't answer the question and you again assume that 'logic' provides the whole answer.
I'm exhausted... The whole point of statistics and numbers (especially in maths) is that there is an answer which makes sense. This suggestion makes sense - and this is a numbers game -- not a war game. It's just numbers and text.

If you want to compare this text based game to war, and if you want to consider imaginary pilots shooting on 'dead space' as them 'missing' - then by all means please reintroduce an accuracy element to the game so that it is obviously intentional and not just a way to avoid answering the question : "why does it not make sense". Personally I prefer the damage and armour as they look now, it's lot simpler to understand at-a-glance than the wpspd/agility/guns/accuracy things of the past.

And for the record, there is obviously no reason why (or even how) this would/could make the game any more fun, and for Jester to suggest that being a good reason behind this particular change is fundamentally flawed. THIS change is about the poor distribution of damage in combat, especially the way that combat is 'fought', not about how it will affect the game's levels of fun.

And what changes will this make to the game?
Armour per cost and damage per costs will reflect (to a 100% degree of accuracy) how good a ship is offensively and defensively because they'll do exactly what the stats say.
Armour would mean 'how much damage do you need to deal for this ship to be stolen/frozen/killed.' Damage would be EXACTLY what the Damage field says 'how much armour will this particular ship 'take off' from a ship in this specific class'.


I'm tired of arguing with you guys about this as I'm sure you know why the suggestion makes sense -- if one of you could explain to me how combat and damage distribution currently makes sense -- and the answer 'this is how it is' won't convince me otherwise -- I would really like that.
Thanks -- tux
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 15:14   #30
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
I'm tired of arguing with you guys about this as I'm sure you know why the suggestion makes sense -- if one of you could explain to me how combat and damage distribution currently makes sense -- and the answer 'this is how it is' won't convince me otherwise -- I would really like that.
Thanks -- tux
It makes sense to you because you say that the percentage based firing we have now does not make sense. Actually both systems make sense, even from a mathematical point of view, it's just a different base we're working with (one works with amount of resources, other with amount of ships present). It really boils down to "what did the designer have in mind?" and "how is it perceived by the players?"
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 15:37   #31
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
...
I'm exhausted... The whole point of statistics and numbers (especially in maths) is that there is an answer which makes sense. This suggestion makes sense - and this is a numbers game -- not a war game. It's just numbers and text.
No, it's a war game. Nobody wants to play 'sim accountant' and the game is much worse for the fact that some people seem to think that this is how it should be played.

Quote:
If you want to compare this text based game to war, and if you want to consider imaginary pilots shooting on 'dead space' as them 'missing' - then by all means please reintroduce an accuracy element to the game so that it is obviously intentional and not just a way to avoid answering the question : "why does it not make sense". Personally I prefer the damage and armour as they look now, it's lot simpler to understand at-a-glance than the wpspd/agility/guns/accuracy things of the past.
I would quite happily reintroduce the WpSp/Agi ratings into the game. This is a matter of personal preference though; there is no objectively 'better' approach.

Quote:
And for the record, there is obviously no reason why (or even how) this would/could make the game any more fun, and for Jester to suggest that being a good reason behind this particular change is fundamentally flawed. THIS change is about the poor distribution of damage in combat, especially the way that combat is 'fought', not about how it will affect the game's levels of fun.
No... Reason... This... Game... Fun... Games are supposed to be fun; it is, generally, the sole reason that people play them. Fun is the primary overriding concern in game design. If you can't justify your ideas in terms of how it affects the enjoyment players get from the game, then you are making a very poor case for your ideas.

Quote:
Armour per cost and damage per costs will reflect (to a 100% degree of accuracy) how good a ship is offensively and defensively because they'll do exactly what the stats say.
Armour would mean 'how much damage do you need to deal for this ship to be stolen/frozen/killed.' Damage would be EXACTLY what the Damage field says 'how much armour will this particular ship 'take off' from a ship in this specific class'.
This is one interpretation of the stats. It's not how they actually work. Again, I just can't see what the problem you're trying to fix is. You are seemingly upset by the fact that the game engine doesn't work as you think it should, and you call this 'illogical' and say that it doesn't 'make sense', despite the fact that it is clearly logical and makes perfect sense when one understands how the combat engine works. Now, maybe there is a case for changing how the combat engine works, but you have to provide an explanation for the benefits of such a change. Your alternative is no more logical or sensible than the current system, certainly not self-evidently so.

Quote:
I'm tired of arguing with you guys about this as I'm sure you know why the suggestion makes sense -- if one of you could explain to me how combat and damage distribution currently makes sense -- and the answer 'this is how it is' won't convince me otherwise -- I would really like that.
Thanks -- tux
dictionary.com provides the following definition of 'make sense':
make sense, to be reasonable or comprehensible: His attitude doesn't make sense.

What about the current system is not reasonable or comprehensible? This thread contains a couple of explanations of how it works. That ships fire based on the number of enemy ships present is quite easy to grasp.

By all means, attack the current system because you think it's unfair, because you think it gives advantages to certain players in certain situations, because it unbalances the game, because it encourages dependency on battle calcs, because it is unrealistic or because it results in too few losses in combat; don't attack it on the spurious grounds that it doesn't 'make sense'.

I do understand exactly what you are suggesting and, yes, it would be very slightly simpler (but no more sensible!) than the current system. I still don't see why this is necessarily a good thing.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 15:42   #32
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

A quick note on WPSP and Agility - most strategy veterans loved these because they introduced another degree of intricacy to the stats. However, it made PA harder for new players to get to grips with, and this must be a priority with the limited number of new players that we have coming to Planetarion.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 18:58   #33
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

My opinion, if anyone's interested in it: battle engine works just fine.
Xan ships good as flak? I just been told few days ago xan ships are not good to def, that I should remove them from some hard loaded bcalc(Jer^^). Some say they're great as flak, I say check all stats. You only show a bcalc of beetles against phantoms, did you try spirits against phantoms? Try it, and then change phantoms to harpies, take your time and return with an answer. Is the zik race the only one to gain out of this? No, but smart ziks will win every time, they'll have phantoms in their fleets against beetles, will remove the phantoms and put harpies when fighting against another zik of terr, and so on, it can be extended to every ship/race. There is no best ship as well as there is no worst ship. Stats are great, best ones PA has the last few rounds. Just check top100 planet distribution on races, you'll notice i'm right.
Bottom line, there is no such thing as bad battle engine, only bad players.
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 22:16   #34
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by rain
My opinion, if anyone's interested in it: battle engine works just fine.
Xan ships good as flak? I just been told few days ago xan ships are not good to def, that I should remove them from some hard loaded bcalc(Jer^^). Some say they're great as flak, I say check all stats. You only show a bcalc of beetles against phantoms, did you try spirits against phantoms? Try it, and then change phantoms to harpies, take your time and return with an answer. Is the zik race the only one to gain out of this? No, but smart ziks will win every time, they'll have phantoms in their fleets against beetles, will remove the phantoms and put harpies when fighting against another zik of terr, and so on, it can be extended to every ship/race. There is no best ship as well as there is no worst ship. Stats are great, best ones PA has the last few rounds. Just check top100 planet distribution on races, you'll notice i'm right.
Bottom line, there is no such thing as bad battle engine, only bad players.
nah 3k phantoms and 3k cutlass is better than 6k cutlass vs beetles so its 1+1=3 here /me think it sucks
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Unread 7 Dec 2006, 23:45   #35
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by robban1
nah 3k phantoms and 3k cutlass is better than 6k cutlass vs beetles so its 1+1=3 here /me think it sucks
http://bcalc.lch-hq.org/?id=340210054608151165531214
http://bcalc.lch-hq.org/?id=187597654884031165531310
I fail to see how 3k phatoms and 3k cutlasses are better than 6k cutlasses
maybe my math is wrong, but i think 1+1=2
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Unread 8 Dec 2006, 00:12   #36
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Hmm i fail to see why everyone here seems to have such a hard time grasping the original problem i tried to explain here. 90% of the post go about how the ship targetting works, we all know how it works. The targetting is all fine, the stats are all 'fine'. What the problem is as i've said several times now, is that with the current battle engine leaves large loopholes in the stats to 'abuse' (or the stats leave a large loophole in the battle engine to abuse, whichever you prefer).

I seriously don't see why its so hard to understand this problem, although everyone derailing the initial topic by posting about related issues that ain't the real problem isn't helping probably. Zik is basicly the only race having advantage from this, while Cathaar get an extra penalty thanks to it. Forgive me if i'm being wrong, but i would expect ships stats to resamble the values i can expect to happen in combat. If 1000 Beetles have 6000 guns, i expect those 6000 guns to be used to stun the enemy ships and i do not expect 3000 of those guns to be wasted on space and do nothing. That most of my guns are initially being used to target the ship that has the highest quantity is fine, but i do expect that once those are stopped the remaining firepower is used on the other ships still present in the enemy fleet.

I simply use Beetles for cathaar as example as Cathaar is the race who is hit double by this 'feature'. They are an easier target for Zik (in the used FI/CO examples here) once they got their hands on some cheap flak, because alot of firepower is going to waste on space. At the same time it becomes harder for them to attack as their main target in this round has alot of cheap phantoms, resulting in only a handfull of Cutlass needed to force a pull. Even when according to the stats enough Beetles have been sent to stun all target ships completely. But thanks to the current engine, even after all Phantoms have been blocked, shots are still being fired at the Phantoms (obviously not helpin at all) while the Cutlass remain largely untargetted and get a free shot at the Beetles. And that is what i like to see changed so that the combat engine atleast to some reasonable degree does what it should according to the stats.
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Unread 8 Dec 2006, 00:42   #37
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

The combat engine does what it should already. I know this is 'just' semantics, but it's wrong to say that the combat engine behaves 'incorrectly'. As I said before, you can argue that it should work differently, but you can't say that it does not work as intended.

Presumably, the effect of this would be to make Cathaar ships much more powerful and to make stealing more difficult for Ziks. Would this change be so great that it would require other changes to counter-balance it?
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Unread 8 Dec 2006, 01:40   #38
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wandows
Hmm i fail to see why everyone here seems to have such a hard time grasping the original problem i tried to explain here. 90% of the post go about how the ship targetting works, we all know how it works. The targetting is all fine, the stats are all 'fine'. What the problem is as i've said several times now, is that with the current battle engine leaves large loopholes in the stats to 'abuse' (or the stats leave a large loophole in the battle engine to abuse, whichever you prefer).

I seriously don't see why its so hard to understand this problem, although everyone derailing the initial topic by posting about related issues that ain't the real problem isn't helping probably. Zik is basicly the only race having advantage from this, while Cathaar get an extra penalty thanks to it. Forgive me if i'm being wrong, but i would expect ships stats to resamble the values i can expect to happen in combat. If 1000 Beetles have 6000 guns, i expect those 6000 guns to be used to stun the enemy ships and i do not expect 3000 of those guns to be wasted on space and do nothing. That most of my guns are initially being used to target the ship that has the highest quantity is fine, but i do expect that once those are stopped the remaining firepower is used on the other ships still present in the enemy fleet.

I simply use Beetles for cathaar as example as Cathaar is the race who is hit double by this 'feature'. They are an easier target for Zik (in the used FI/CO examples here) once they got their hands on some cheap flak, because alot of firepower is going to waste on space. At the same time it becomes harder for them to attack as their main target in this round has alot of cheap phantoms, resulting in only a handfull of Cutlass needed to force a pull. Even when according to the stats enough Beetles have been sent to stun all target ships completely. But thanks to the current engine, even after all Phantoms have been blocked, still shot are being fired at the Phantoms (obviously not helpin at all) while the Cutlass remain largely untargetted and get a free shot at the Beetles. And that is what i like to see changed so that the combat engine atleast to some reasonable degree does what it should according to the stats.
Do you see a top packed with zik planets? Maybe zik race is advantaged, is that advantage making zik the best race or it's just helping it to match those other races?
You're sticking with the fact beetle has 6 guns. Well, except cath ships, all other races ships have only 1 gun, though they're able to damage more than one ship with that single gun. Don't take it word by word, no one intended to give zik an advantage(if there is one). You want your beetles not to miss a single shot. Fine. But I want my cutlasses and thieves to get same treatment.
http://game.planetarion.com/show_news.pl?id=10331
Why didn't I steal all terr fi/co in there? I know I sent enough cutlasses and thieves. Damn terrans, they're the only ones advantaged in here. Scenario: Big battle. All races in. Terran ships although fireing late, they seem somehow to survive, get their turn to target and kill a lot of zik ships. After that I don't even cap them all, although I know x cutlasses steal y phoenixes and I know I've sent way more than x cutlasses in there. OMG, not fair, not fair, change battle engine please!
There are a lot of battle scenarios. Try to see it from different angles. It might help. No one wanted to fck up cath this round. When round started I personally saw cath as 2nd best race after terr this round, and i'm not sure it isn't so. Cath race has a lot of advantages other races don't have. 1st initiative, biggest damage, great start due to reasearch bonus. Not to mention cath bs this round. Do you know how many battles would be affected if bettle engine would've been changed to way you ask? Can you tell for sure that the zik 'advantage' being canceled won't turn top100 into a top with 70-80 cath planets. That zik race wont be screwed and along with that 1k's PA players round? Take a look in the past, last rounds ship stats. Now take a look at this round's top10. No ziks. Be thankful. You say we're talking about stats and and ships targeting. But that's directly connected to battle engine. Everything is. It's a very fragile equilibrium that must be kept between all race advantages/disadvantages, ship stats, battle engine. Every change can be fatal. Be thankful.
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Unread 8 Dec 2006, 04:58   #39
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

As a sidepoint, and I'd agree with the view that the enjoyment derived from the change should be the primary deciding factor from a game development perspective, the current system is perfectly coherent. All your beetle pilots arrive to the battle and they each have to pick a target, as they all fire at the same time it's not a case of ships being fired upon after they're frozen. Something that adds a mild degree of complication to the game is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Unread 8 Dec 2006, 16:39   #40
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Well in that sense, i didn't enjoy seeing my planet get roided time after time by waves of Zik FI who barely get passed my EMP, but thanks to them having some cheap Xan FI flak and the current targetting system they could just about take maxcap from me. And as a player i would enjoy these unfair & unbalanced (dis)advantages to be out of the game. As its extremely frustrating to see waves of incoming just line up who on their own can barely maxcap you (and stat wise shouldn't be able to, but battle engine wise are). I know changing the combat engine to reduce or remove the amount of shots wasted on space won't stop this, but it will atleast make Cathaar a better race to play instead of it only being an ok race when you have a top planet with it. And it will most likely help to balance out races with the stats as it leaves less chance for exceptions that can damage a race alot more than is good for the game.

As for your example rain, it hardly shows the issue i'm talking about. I've done my fair share of DC'ing this round, among those several FC's, and for an alliance like mine stopping Ziks who have Xan FI is extremely expensive resource wise and almost impossible on (large) FC's. Sure we can usually send Harpies, but Harpies do not stop the Cutlass from firing on the ships they are catching. They usually end up 'overkilling' the Xan FI and then still leave enough Cutlass alive to regain all the losses, hence we need to send every type (initiative) of anti-FI to spread the damage as good as possible and then just hope it is enough to force a pull. On normal roidruns this is hardly a problem, but with more and more Ziks hunting for FC's (and several alliances even having shared Zik chans to coordinate those attacks regardless of the attacking alliance) this is a huge problem, specially for the less fortunate ppl who ain't in a 'top' alliance with more resources available to them.
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Unread 9 Dec 2006, 15:32   #41
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Making ships of different races but of the same class cost pretty much the same would more or less solve the problem, as pointed out above (by Jester iirc). That way, value and numbers become more equal, and thus the 'problem' (the disparity between the quantity of the ships and their value) is eliminated.

The problem with that though is you miss out on some of the old ways to make races different to eachother - eg, swarms of Xan FI or small fleets of "really big" terran battleships being scary in their own ways. It means reducing variety to solve this problem, and thus it may or may not be worth doing.

A combat engine solution, whereby if a ship has firepower, it will actually hit a target, will also solve the problem - at the cost of more coding time than the (relatively simple) equalisation of costs (damage, armour) in the ship stats. It does, however, leave the door open for the old 'variety' (is that an oxymoron?) between the races.

So, to me it seems that the 'solution' to this 'problem' depends on this one thing:
Do we exchange some limited amount of variety between races in order to correct the problem, or leave it as is?
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Unread 16 Dec 2006, 16:25   #42
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

I agree with Wandows on this one. Forget all this semantic bull**** about it being impossible for a properly functioning battle formula to be broken. The real deal is that it makes for some messed up and unfair battles. Wandows has pointed out that it makes attacking by higher-armor ships easier as long as they have cheap flack. Here's another problem: When defending, the races with weaker ships take a disproportionate amount of the losses from the attackers. Because I don't have 15 posts yet, the forum won't let me post links to bcalcs, but run these battles on your own favorites and see what pops out.

Defense:
Beetle 500
Spirit 1000

Attack:
Phantom 5000

Beetles cost about 2x spirits, so both the Cat and the Xan have sent equal value in defense to stop these phantoms. But because of the imbalance in ship-targeting, the Xan defender will lose almost 3x as much value in destroyed ships! Note that the Xan who loses everything will regain just as much as his Cat partner in salvage. Now even if no shots were "wasted," the Cat would still lose less value than the Xan. But if those shots were NOT wasted, we would at least be at something a bit closer to parity.

Note: This isn't an advantage for Cats at all. The advantages scale up as the ship armor increases.

Defense:
Beetle 500
Spirit 1000
Thief 200

Attack:
Phantom 7000

Xan loses everything, Cat loses over half, and Zik lose a quarter.

I know nothing about coding, but my suggestion for fixing this would be to just eliminate wasted shots all together. Calculate the number of attacking ships that it would take to kill all the ships of one particular type (just like it's calculated at the bottom of the LCH bcalc). Then use the same formula for ship targeting, but cap the number of ships that can fire at each ship type and have the extras roll over to the ship with the next highest armor. Rinse. Repeat.

This has been bugging me for some time, and I'd like to see something done about it.
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Unread 16 Dec 2006, 16:32   #43
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bugsby
Defense:
Beetle 500
Spirit 1000

Attack:
Phantom 5000

Beetles cost about 2x spirits, so both the Cat and the Xan have sent equal value in defense to stop these phantoms. But because of the imbalance in ship-targeting, the Xan defender will lose almost 3x as much value in destroyed ships! Note that the Xan who loses everything will regain just as much as his Cat partner in salvage. Now even if no shots were "wasted," the Cat would still lose less value than the Xan. But if those shots were NOT wasted, we would at least be at something a bit closer to parity.
Would the game be more interesting if the shots were evenly distributed by value? Why?

I think not. The way it is currently, 'stupid' Xans who send their Spirits in with an equal value of Beetles are punished. Therefore, Xans have to be smart about when and where they send their ships. DCs have to take these things into account. Sure it can be frustrating, but is that bad?

One of my criteria for game quality is that people get emotionally involved. If PAteam 'fix' this issue, will people be more or less attached to Planetarion? I think less, for obvious reasons.
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Unread 17 Dec 2006, 19:21   #44
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Blue Moon-
Of the three I vote value.
Simply because a ship's value comes from its cost, and the costs are generally a better representation of 'danger'

The following explanation is understandably very confusing and complex -- Appocomaster SHOULD be able to follow it, and if he's interested he knows how to contact me/introduce it.

For the rest of you :

It deals damage to the ships based on their value, but if the damage dealt is greater than the armour available to reduce by, the excess damage is moved to a new variable named 'unused' and this 'unused' potential is used on the next ship etc... going down through every intiative, updating throughout!

-tuxed0
It's not quite that easy, but it's doable .

It's also the way I think it should be. The ship value should be the criterium for dealing damage. Since, if a ship has high armor, why should it get more damage dealt? It has lower damage and/or higher init in exchange. The same way, a xan ship should get the same damage, even if it has less armor, because it fires earlier and/or does more manage.

But logically, as you said, there should be no damage wasted until all targets have been killed, that wouldn't make any sense. So any damage left should be distributed evenly to the remaining ships (also by value), until no damage or no ships are left. All in all, I agree 100% with your post.
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Unread 14 Jan 2007, 04:49   #45
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

As Wandows said, I see this come up most often in an XP whore situation. Most recently with Xan flak and either Zik or Cath Pods (depending on which ship class you want to moan about). When you can jack the Xan flak number up to something like 20-50k Xan FI or 5-10k Xan CO, you can relatively easily get massive amounts of XP (and hence score) for relatively small value loses.

The way it is coded now basically assumes that your pilots are idiots and have no idea how strong the enemies are. Since long before the first combat, all stats are known, it should be a safe bet that the overkill situations that result from the way the combat engine currently operates would not happen in any real life situation. The current way to dodge the problem is to have 2 different init ships that target the attacker, so you can have someone clean up the cath/zik ships.

I think the most elegant solution would be to cap the number of ships targeting a specific ship type based on how many it would take to kill them all. I can understand the confusion of battle/hey my pilots pick their own targets retort, so cap it at something above 100%, 110% perhaps. maybe 120%. The fact that in some of the examples above, it takes 3x the number of def ships or more, just seems excessive to the point of irrational.
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Unread 14 Jan 2007, 10:00   #46
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
Originally Posted by rasputini
The way it is coded now basically assumes that your pilots are idiots and have no idea how strong the enemies are.
Here's a little story about two pilots. Abe and Bob were both Spider pilots, under the great commander Carol.

Abe: Shit, that fleet is full of thieves, we'll get our ships stolen.
Bob: Shit right, we'd better target them thieves.
Carol: ****ING TARGET THOSE THIEVES IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE YOUR MOTHERS AGAIN YOU WORTHLESS SLOBS. I'LL PERSONALLY ASSRAPE EVERY ONE OF YOU THAT DOESN'T SPEND THE ENTIRE COMBAT TARGETING THIEVES WITH MY ENTIRE TARANTULA FLEET.
Abe: Huh, Carol is hot.
Bob: Totally.

After combat...

Abe: Damnit, that was ****ed up.
Bob: ****ing well right it was.
Abe: I couldn't even see the thieves, all those Spirits ****ed around with my targeting.
Bob: Yeah, and every time I got off a shot it hit some Spirit that was already EMPed. Those Thief pilots got skills.
Abe: Damn, man, I think Dave bit it, I can't see his Spider in the hanger anywhere.
Bob: That sucks, he was totally going to hook me up with some weed.
Carol: YOU ****ING WORTHLESS SLOBS, POST-COMBAT ANALYSIS SHOWS HALF YOUR ****ING SHOTS HIT SPIRITS AND HALF OF THOSE AGAIN WERE AGAINST SPIRITS WE'D ALREADY FROZEN. WHAT DID I TELL YOU GUYS ABOUT TARGETING THE ****ING THIEVES?
Bob: So hot.
Abe: Huh, yeah.

Quote:
it should be a safe bet that the overkill situations that result from the way the combat engine currently operates would not happen in any real life situation.
I'm quite sure you're right about space combat not happening any time soon. And I'm also sure you have no idea what would constitute any form of 'realism' in terms of space combat. Not because you're particularly dumb, but because any speculation to it would be just that, speculation.

I realize you disagree strongly with the way the PA combat engine presents combat, but I don't understand why you think yours is any better in terms of 'realism'. I don't understand why it's more realistic that pilots are perfect.
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Unread 15 Jan 2007, 04:04   #47
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

I'm glad that I'm not particularly dumb.

I'm not saying that pilots are geniuses. I'm just saying that if they are intelligent enough that if I have exactly enough beetles to freeze exactly as many FI as my enemy sent, that they freeze them. This implies that even in the mass chaos of 10s of thousands of enemies, that they are coordinated enough to fire only exactly as much as you need to neutralize every single enemy. You're saying that they can pull that magic off, but if there are some other kinds of ships, that all of a sudden they decide to bang their heads on the controls and fire blindly at someone that was already frozen or killed 2-3x already?

So I guess if only 1 kind of ship comes at me, my pilots are perfect, but if 2 kinds come, they are complete idiots.
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Unread 15 Jan 2007, 13:01   #48
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

Quote:
This implies that even in the mass chaos of 10s of thousands of enemies, that they are coordinated enough to fire only exactly as much as you need to neutralize every single enemy.
Where did this idea come from? Where, in any of the examples given in this thread, did anyone say anything about firing 'only exactly as much' as needed?

Assuming you have 5000 beetles, we can consider two examples:

Example 1, in which your beetles face 20000 phantoms. All 20000 are frozen.
Example 2, in which your beetles face 10000 phantoms and 1833 cutlass. 10000 phantoms are frozen, along with 975 cutlass.

Phantoms have an EMP resistance of 0 - any EMP shot that hits them will result in a freeze. 5000 beetles have 30000 guns, so 30000 shots fired results in 20000 phantoms being frozen in the first example. You will notice here that the 30000 shots fired includes 10000 'wasted' shots, which had no effect. This is not 'only exactly as much' as is required.

In the second example, ~84.5% of the firepower (some 25k guns) is directed at the phantoms, since the phantoms comprise 84.5% of the fleet. 25k guns is obviously sufficient to stun those phantoms. Again, we see wasted shots. The remaining 15.5% of the firepower (~4650 guns) fire on the cutlasses. But cutlasses have EMP resistance of 79, meaning that 79% of this firepower can be absorbed without effect. So the effective firepower is 21% of ~4650, around 975 or so.

We can imagine various scenarios of how such a battle might actually occur in space. You imagine a scenario in which (I assume) the battle occurs over a long time-span, and after each beetle engages an enemy it has time to engage several other enemies, always directing its firepower where it is most efficiently used. Jester's scenario is somewhat more chaotic; firepower is wasted when dealing with a varied opposing fleet.

I, personally, prefer the latter. If the practical application of this idea produces results which are too 'weird', I think that could be fixed by a tweak of the ship stats to reduce the variety between ships. That would be a simple solution which would not reduce tactical depth, but would reduce the worst effects of this.
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Unread 15 Jan 2007, 16:04   #49
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

It was not brought up before. It is merely as example as to why the way it is currently processing the battle is illogical. It's about damage distribution. You can simplify it to percentages all you want, but if I'm targeting a single type of ship, with exactly as many defenders as I need to stop them, then for each enemy ship, I target it EXACTLY as much as I need to freeze/kill it, then move on to the next ship. It doesn't matter how many enemies there are, if I have EXACTLY as many defenders as I need, I will stop EVERY attacker. This would imply some more complicated coordinated targeting, because there aren't any wasted shots. There isn't some percentage of people targeting the same ships such that some "slip through". They are ALL stopped. It implies that there is something or someone coordinating the battle that knows the armor (or emp resistance) of an enemy, and tells every pilot who to target, and either how many guns to target them with, or how much damage to focus on them. My problem is just that someone throwing a handful of ships of a different type into the mix makes all that perfect coordination go to crap. If whatever is coordinating my defense knows exactly what it takes to stop my incoming with 1 ship type, why does 2 make it so wonky?
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Unread 15 Jan 2007, 16:52   #50
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Re: 'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

But how many battles in any real combat situation involve no wasted shots?

Imagine two armies charging at each other across a battlefield, firing as they go. Will every shot hit an enemy? Will the bullets somehow avoid hitting people who have already been hit? It's highly unlikely.

To refer back to my above examples, example 1 would be a situation in which one side is armed with machineguns, and the other side has swords and is wearing no armour. The side with machineguns can simply keep on firing, knowing that they can unleash so much firepower that, eventually, all of the enemies will be dead. After all, they have no armour so if they're hit there's a good chance that they'll die.

But in the second example, while most of the enemy remain unarmoured, there is a small group of heavily-armed individuals with full body armour and assault rifles, who have a 79% chance of avoiding death for each shot fired at them. Do you imagine that the machinegunners can kill all of these enemies before they get a chance to fire, whilst also killing all of the unarmoured enemies?

Quote:
It implies that there is something or someone coordinating the battle that knows the armor (or emp resistance) of an enemy, and tells every pilot who to target, and either how many guns to target them with, or how much damage to focus on them.
No real war has ever been fought this way. You might think that this is how it should work, but that's no more logical than the current solution.

I don't doubt that there are many ways in which the combat engine could be improved, but this just doesn't seem like a compelling change. I can't see any reason why it is a good idea, other than that some people think it makes more sense, and the opinion on this matter is far from unanimous.
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