Planetarion Forums

frostbeule · 3 Apr 2006, 19:05

this idea just came to my mind:
you can somewhere train fleetcommanders. Like in reality the fleet commander gets some lessons that take some ticks. Every fleet needs a fleet commander to launch. he is commanding the fleet by his experiance. the more experianced the commander is, the better the fleets fight (as they fight with better tactics). The commander gets for every battle he fights some experiance.
If a certain amount of the fleet (in % either shipcount or valuewise) dies, the fleet commander is so ashamed of this battle that he commits suicide (which means you have to train a new fleet commander before you can launch the fleet again).
You can max have 4 Fleetcommanders.
When you launch a fleet you can select the fleetcommander. if you have one fleetcommander at the base-fleet when an attacker lands means the base fights better, but the base-fleet can fight without a fleetcommander, too.

This would maybe make battles more interesting (Battles to get some more experianced fleetcommanders; if you have a well-trained Commander you can beat a huge fleet with only a few ships). The FAscan would show the commanders experiance.

It would also make you think several times about suiciding.

Now comment please

P.S.: I have no idea how this could be coded tbh, but i think there can be find ways if this is wanted.

Ptraci · 3 Apr 2006, 19:31

would certainly be different

could be interesting to see how it works, but I'm not sure about your fleet commanders suiciding, maybe just becoming so ashamed they stopped working for a few days?

frostbeule · 3 Apr 2006, 19:32

i maybe need to clarify that if you train a new fleet commander he has no experiance and needs to gain it by having some battles (and this could make you thinking about suiciding your fleet)

frostbeule · 3 Apr 2006, 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ptraci

would certainly be different

could be interesting to see how it works, but I'm not sure about your fleet commanders suiciding, maybe just becoming so ashamed they stopped working for a few days?

If you go through the history several military commanders did suicide when they lost their honour (which ment to them also loosing their army). Sometimes also because they didnt want to get caught by the enemy and getting killed/arrested by them. I was thinking about that when i said they suicide.

Clogg · 3 Apr 2006, 19:53

I like the idea, without the hari kiri part, but then again, a captian is supposed to go down with his ship. The big problem though will be implementing this, since I doubt the current battle thingy can handle this.

frostbeule · 3 Apr 2006, 20:10

maybe with some formulae like actual-shipdamage = fleet-commander-experiance*x*damage-in-stats

furball · 3 Apr 2006, 20:29

Anything that affects the potency of ships in battle is generally a bad idea. It leads to uncertainty when planning an attack - we already have disturbance in scans to cover this.

frostbeule · 3 Apr 2006, 21:09

now look at some battles that happend during the past 3000 years.
you will find some battles where one side was certain to win by numbers (in PA firepower/ship numbers) but lost because the other side had a commander who had brilliant tactics and was very experianced

why should something like this be impossible in PA?

Paisley · 3 Apr 2006, 23:45

sounds good on paper but could be bad in practise

Kjeldoran · 4 Apr 2006, 09:18

It's not a bad idea, though I believe the influence that a commander has on a battle should be really small. Something like the current formula * 1,01 (as in the lvl of this commander is 1). This way, when 1k fkeet would've died, with a commander of lvl 1 you'd have 0.01 less casualties ... hence 10 less kills.

Good part about this is that pple would be able to name their commanders and give some more personality to their commanders. Also, in the end you might have a topX of commanders and see which commander has been the most succesfull one, which commander stayed alive the longest ... basicly all kind of fun statistics on your commander which in the end have no influence on the overall rankings.

frostbeule · 4 Apr 2006, 15:53

now a bit more precise:
you can build a structure called "Military academy". once it is finished, you can train fleet-commanders in it. one takes the same time as one construction takes. You can max have 4 fleet-commanders and cant train one more if you have 4.
in the fleets page you select which commander takes which fleet.
a fleet without commander cant launch, only the base-fleet is able to fight without a commander.(so defending yourself is always possible)
if 90% of the fleet sent dies in a combat, the fleet-commander dies/commits suicide.
The fleet commander gets experiance for every combat he is commanding.
Example:Commander experiance for one combat = ((value of hostile ships fighting) / (value of friendly ships that are fighting))*z
where hostile means not on your side and friendly of your side. (and not hostile/friendly to the planet)

influence the commander has in one Combat is:
x*(commander experiance)*(damage in stats) = ship damage
y*(commander experiance)*(Armour in stats) = ship Armour

x,y and z still need to be found so that it is fair - if you look at the advantages i see you can maybe help me finding them.

now i sum up again the advantages i see with this:
makes you think twice if you suicide your fleet (you cant launch one fleet for some ticks as your commander just died and you need to train a new commander first - who is unexperianced)
helps in a way agains bashing (the fleet commander should get like 0 experiance for it)
you wont have benefits if your target runs the ships as it would them be (0/(your value))*x - thats mostly 0 if nothing strange is chosen for x (like sin, cos, e^(0/yourvalue) etc).
you could have a ranking of the commanders by experiance - thanks for the idea Kj
it adds a new element to the combat which isnt in the stats => new tactics

furball · 4 Apr 2006, 15:58

Again I'll make the point that anything that varies the values in the shipstats is 'A BAD IDEA'.

I don't think I can be any clearer than this.

Kjeldoran · 4 Apr 2006, 16:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by furball

Again I'll make the point that anything that varies the values in the shipstats is 'A BAD IDEA'.

I don't think I can be any clearer than this.

It is according to you furball, not according to others. Using bold and capital letters doesn't mean more members agree with you

Also, you could so greatly minimize the effect that e.g. for every 1k ships destroyed, a good commander means you'll lose 5-10 ships less ... not a big deal really not a 'war winning' tactic either

frostbeule · 4 Apr 2006, 16:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by furball

Again I'll make the point that anything that varies the values in the shipstats is 'A BAD IDEA'.

I don't think I can be any clearer than this.

You could also add some good reasons
If you say that ppl are uncertain then - all i can say is that if you can predict everything and you are 100% certain of what will happen, then it is boring for some players.
Boredom = they quit

with having this new tactic feature added, it makes things more interesting again - i personally dislike the thought that the commanders influence is so big that it makes the difference between not landing and a maxcap in roids (to take the extrem)

Veedeejem! · 4 Apr 2006, 18:06

i like the idea, if the effect a commander has on a fleet is sort of predictable it should be ok.
Maybe you should also be able to specialise your commanders, one's better at defending, the other is a good attacker,...
should make the game more fun

furball · 4 Apr 2006, 19:13

I didn't elaborate earlier because I didn't want to write a wakey-like essay on the subject. However, you force my fingers.

Varying ship stats to any great degree is a bad idea. There are several reasons why.

Firstly, in large battles the presence of a powerful fleet commander will change the strength of that side excessively. When you're running things like fleetcatches, the presence of fleet commanders will provide considerable uncertainty. Variation in stats when all of the ships present target each other could easily be the difference between a successful fleet catch and a failed one.

Secondly, there's either going to be an undue influence on 'big' ships or 'small' ships, depending on how this idea is implemented. If you add 15 damage to the Syren's normal damage of 260, this won't make much difference to the damage dealt by a fleet of 200 Syrens (3000 damage = ~43 FR) but will make a LOT of difference to a fleet of 1000 Syrens (15000 damage = ~215 FR).

Comparatively, what about the small ships? Since damage and armour work in in integers (whole numbers), do we add 1 on, or what? The Phantom, dealing 4 damage, will probably be the main Xan ship this round. If we add just 1 damage, that increases its power by 25%. That's 25% more dead CO - and a fleet commander surely shouldn't be able to provide that level of influence.

Thirdly, the idea penalises Joe Noob, the player who crashes his fleet once a week. He'll lose his fleet commanders on those occasions whereas 'top' players won't lose their fleet commanders more than once a round. This creates greater difference between the casual PA players and the hardcore players. One of the great things about XP in Round 16 was that, for all its bad points, it acted as a leveller between average hardcore players and good casual players. Of course, the very good players still ended in the top 100 - because they were able to adapt to XP (see many of the 'names' in Ascendancy). If the game is altered by fleet commanders in a tangible manner then we won't have any leveller at all.

Perhaps frostbeule intends fleet commanders to have nothing like this kind of influence. But then, I ask, what's the point of introducing it at all? We still have to code and develop PAN - so if this isn't a useful part of the game then it's a bad thing, not a good thing, to add.

Appocomaster · 4 Apr 2006, 20:05

I can see both good and bad points to this idea.
I have to admit I'm thinking of it in terms of Shogun / Medieval Total War - I don't know if anyone else is.
Firstly, fleet scans should show the rank of your fleet commander, if nothing else.
Secondly, fleets should be able to be launched without a fleet commander - one of no rank is automatically assigned.
There should be a few levels - say
"Really Good" (known throughout the universe)
"Good" (not really good, but the next best thing)
"Not too bad" ("won" a few battles more than they've "lost")
"Neutral/Starting out" (either not taken part in combat or won / lost around the same amount)
"Whoopsie" ("lost" a few more battles than "won")
"Marv" (doesn't have a hope unless outnumbering the opposition 3 to 1)
"Appoco" (everyone refuses to get in a fleet with him. known throughout the universe as one of the worst fleet admirals around).

We could rank the top and bottom admirals.
I agree that it's going to be difficult to give them too much effect (though if you remember R10, we did have a priority of War on engineering, as well as other priorities). I do think that a bit more variety in combat would break up the monotony a bit though. despite how much people complain that they don't like not knowing things, it makes it a bit more exciting if you're not quite sure if you're going to come out dead and alive. Afterwards, if you pull off a miracle attack you feel on cloud 9, and if not you generally go to the pub for the next 5 days.

I know that having an affect on stats would make it dangerous, but ...
[this is really bad, I'm mentally working out how to add it into the combat engine already, you'd only really need one new column in the fleet table]... if it's only say... +/-1% for those who've "won"/"lost" more than they've "lost"/"won", +/-3% for better, +/-5%, all integered after total damage has been done.

e.g., 1% bonus, 100 phantoms (4 dmg), they do int(4*100*1.01) = 404 dmg.

I think that 1 3 and 5 are a bit low, but there we go :-)
One of the major questions is to discuss how the levels would be worked out

Clogg · 5 Apr 2006, 16:32

Why not add an RPG affect to it at the same time. Give the possibility to hire or recruit a fleetcommander. The better his skills are the more expensive he is. Make a limit number of these commanders with all different skills (and ace attacker, ace defender etc, so you can use a different commander in the best situation for that commander).

Now because there are only a few different types of commanders, with all fixed skills, you can anticipate what the effect of the commander will be, this should be on the galstatus aswell, for example Waterloo fleet 150 eta 9 Ter under command of Adm. Wellington. So the one under attack can search for the effect of a adm Wellington and take that effect into the equation.

furball · 5 Apr 2006, 23:10

To quote JBG in another thread, that would be insanely sickening.

If the fleet commander's ability is based on x resources spent then it gives a big advantage to those with a high number of roids. This means that a player with a high roid count early on in the round would be able to generate exponential growth by continually buying the newer and better fleet commanders and so more successful in roiding, and thus able to buy even better fleet commanders, etc etc.

Nadar · 6 Apr 2006, 00:18

May God forbid.

Makhil · 7 Apr 2006, 04:04

so next question is : do you add a covert op to bribe/subvert enemy commanders ?

big_tweek · 7 Apr 2006, 09:32

I must say I kind of liked the Idea

It would be cool if commanders could have special skills, nothing to drastic, but maybe like make some ships have special abilities, when tied to a certain commander.

like giving the terran fighter the ability to steal with one type of commander
Or
giving the terran fighter ability to use EMP, to shoot first in battle, with another commander.

I think this wood be kind of cool, so that there are a few more possibilities when engaging in combat.

Maybe the commanders experience points could determine the stats of the special abilities...etc etc..

Kjeldoran · 7 Apr 2006, 09:46

Maybe use fleetcommanders as hero's like they do in most RTS games lately. Make it able to improve your commander (researching skills) and gaining research points according to the experience they get during battle.

furball · 7 Apr 2006, 10:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by big_tweek

I must say I kind of liked the Idea

It would be cool if commanders could have special skills, nothing to drastic, but maybe like make some ships have special abilities, when tied to a certain commander.

<snip - mixing race abilities>

I think this wood be kind of cool, so that there are a few more possibilities when engaging in combat.

Maybe the commanders experience points could determine the stats of the special abilities...etc etc..

Sorry but no. Giving a specific ship new abilities would cause havoc for defenders because you wouldn't see it coming. Furthermore, giving stealing to other races has already been shown to almost unworkable in practice due to the effect of this irritating thing called "luck".

furball · 7 Apr 2006, 10:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kjeldoran

Maybe use fleetcommanders as hero's like they do in most RTS games lately. Make it able to improve your commander (researching skills) and gaining research points according to the experience they get during battle.

I quite like this, I'll try to run with it....

How about in return for achieving certain levels of XP, you can assign additional points to your engineers so that, for example, on Priority 1 you can mine with a 20% bonus (not 15%), 20% faster research (not 15%), 50% construction time instead of 55%, etc.

This slightly misses the point as far as fleet commanders go, but I think it's a nice idea.

big_tweek · 7 Apr 2006, 11:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by furball

Sorry but no. Giving a specific ship new abilities would cause havoc for defenders because you wouldn't see it coming. Furthermore, giving stealing to other races has already been shown to almost unworkable in practice due to the effect of this irritating thing called "luck".

I understand about mixing races could be a bad thing. But ignoring it completly would be kind of silly.

Here's an example for ya.

Let's say I'm terran, and am going to attack some dude, a cathaar dude:

I have (ships)
1000 cerberus (de, roids)
1000 pegasus (de, fighter)
1000 barghest (de, cruiser)

he has
1000 spider (fi, destroyer)
1000 roach Cr, destroyer)

(Please ignore the different armour and damage stats of the ships. In this example 1 ships kills another, or freezes)

the 2000 cathaar ships will freeze 2000 of the terran ships before they get a chance to shoot.

I think it would be kind of cool if you add a fleet commander that enables maybe between 10-20 % of the terran destroyers (not destroyer pods of course) to emmit EMP waves, causing them to shoot at the same time as the cathaar fleet.

1 fleet can only have one fleet commander at a time, and while the fleet commander can change the abbility of a certain ship type (only a percentage of a certain ship type)

I have 2000 destroyers that don't take roids
If I buy a fleetcommander that enables EMP on destroyers.
level 1. 5%
level 2. 10%
level 3. 15%
level 4. 20%
(or maybe even a higher percentage)

It will cost more to train a fleet commander that enable EMP on destroyers than fighters for example.

My commander is level 2, making 10% of all my destroyer EMP emmitting.
it will turn 200 of my destroyers into emp emitting ships.
100 cerburus with emp.
100 pegasus with emp.

My 200 ships with emp would freeze 200 of the cathaar ships...
In this example that I am using now, it would have no effect on the battle, but in a real battle with stats, lots of possibilities can open up.

(ship stats would need some talking over)

The defender can see that the attacker has a certain commander that initiates the special abililty (level, what ship type etc etc) either on the incoming screen or have a fleet scan that can show....

I'm out of time for now, just took five minutes off from work, but I think that would be cool.
The changes wouldn't cause chaos, but it would cause a little more variation in the battles.
an extra strategy part....

There are a few problems I have noticed, like what about defending fleets with 3 commanders at the base :P

what if there are multiple attackers

But I believe it would be kind of cool too try out something like this....

Clogg · 7 Apr 2006, 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kjeldoran

Maybe use fleetcommanders as hero's like they do in most RTS games lately. Make it able to improve your commander (researching skills) and gaining research points according to the experience they get during battle.

Yes that's exactly what I meant, but in the games I play (battle for Middle Earth) you have to buy them, when they died etc.

And to overcome Furballs doubts, you can make the costs income dependable. Since buying a commander seems much more fair the random generating them in battles (as is the case in Call to power, some civ clone).

Gate · 8 Apr 2006, 09:34

I don't like the idea of fleet commanders affecting battles more than a tiny bit (maybe 1-2%?). Even if they are visible on scans, what if you can't get a scan? It's just like war priority in r10/10.5, which pretty much sucked as it meant that a target planet might be causing 15% extra damage, and you couldn't possibly tell. Which meant attacks were less common, unless you could guarantee you were going to overpower the target planet (perhaps by bashing a significantly smaller planet, or by teaming up with another planet to hit a target your own value).

What I do like the idea of is a fleet commander 'ranking'. Even if they have very little or no effect on the game (preferably no effect). You can assign fleet commanders to fleets, and give them a name. They then appear on the universe ranking, and the fc's 'score' goes up as they capture roids, steal ships, kill ships or EMP ships, get launched around the univerrse, successfully defend etc.

Would be an interesting little side show.

Kjeldoran · 10 Apr 2006, 08:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gate

What I do like the idea of is a fleet commander 'ranking'. Even if they have very little or no effect on the game (preferably no effect). You can assign fleet commanders to fleets, and give them a name. They then appear on the universe ranking, and the fc's 'score' goes up as they capture roids, steal ships, kill ships or EMP ships, get launched around the univerrse, successfully defend etc.

Would be an interesting little side show.

If you did read my suggestion, I clearly stated that the influence of the commander on a battle should be like 1% max (so like 10 ships on 1k). Nobody will cry about losing 1010 ships instead of 1000.
Make it so that you can level (research skills) on your battlecommander which for instance makes it harder to kill the commander (he'll only die if e.g. 60% of the fleet is destroyed, or 60% of a specific fleetclass is destroyed - meaning you literally need to assign your commander to a fleet class, telling him he has to fly a fighter or a battleship

).

And ofcourse build a ranking system for this, one that means nothing but we're playing a game focussed on statistics and numbers so ...