Comments on Round 10 latest

[Ultimate Newbie]

I was reading spinner’s leaked article on the changes for R10 (can be found here: http://main.planetarion.com/portal/news.php?id=213 ) when I read this:

Keep in mind, there are NO SPECIAL SHIPS THAT STEAL ASTEROIDS, every ship can steal (in theory that is), but the actual outcome and number of asteroids stolen will be decided by many factors, some not yet finished. The actual formula for this might never be released, so we recommend the "try and see" approach when the time comes.

Now, I initially thought: heh cool – we can steal roids with a BA fleet without the Mantis \o/ etc. But then I thought: what’s stopping people just sending Fighters as ETA 6 Kill AND Roid fleets? As all ships can capture roids, this means that the race(s) with the best Fighters will be victorious – strongly suggesting Xandathrii (as we know them now heh), although Cathaar’s Beetles would be very, very effective in a FI only universe…

I know Spinner said that there are some specific conditions that must be met for roid cap formula – but that isn’t really the point if all classes of ship can steal. Fighters are so cheap that you can afford plenty of them (thus reducing the effectiveness of saying that you need x number of FI to capture a roid), and being able to give objectives to your fleet means that this artificial reduction in capability can be minimised - eg, a 100% Beetle fleet with Objective 1: “Roid” and O2: “Roid” would still be efficient enough to stun a large number of FI, whilst still capturing a lot of roids…

What I'm left wondering is; is this really progress for the game? Reducing Planetarion to an ETA 5 (in universe, ETA 4 for Cluster/para!!) rush for roids with fighters? Is it just me, or does anyone else like the various Pod classes, meaning that you can dodge past large amounts of fleetscore without having an impossible, 6 classes of pods to defend against? Does anyone appreciate how much more strategy these pod classes have added to the game? Compare to R4 – Phoenix, Pods and Spiders – now there’s skill! :\

Furthermore, the statement:

There is also no longer an "initiative" stat, all ships fire simultaneously. So if you are attacked, rest assured that your ships will fire at least once before they go (-:

Means that you’ve completely ****ed up all EMP units – as they are no longer able to stun enemy units before they can fire. It’s like EMPing a ship that already fired, which is a complete waste of time, and more importantly lethal for your weak EMP shippies.

I think the concept of initiatives is an excellent one – although modification could come in the form of multiple ships firing at the same init level, if the goal was to reduce the number of Initiative levels… EG: all Xandathrii Frigates firing at the same time etc.

In addition, this part of Spinner’s rant:

Another new thing , is what we call Fleet Experience, where your fleets will "learn" as they get used in combat, and might excel in some "priorities" and not in others.

I think that the implementation of this should prove very interesting. Assuming that we still have 3 fleets, and we can move ships in and out of these fleets at will, how will the experience be tracked? Eg, if I had my Spiders and Beetles in Fleet 3 (as I do right now in the game), when they are used to defend against Xandathrii fleets, will that combat experience go to those individual ships, the fleet slot, the type of ship (eg, Spider), or to the class of ship (eg, Fighter)?

If it is the first, then tracking the individual experience of every unit in the game is an obvious nightmare. If the experience goes to the fleetslot, then what happens if I included 1000 Tarantulas right out of production in there – as they are in the fleet, do they get special bonuses even though they have never left orbit? What happens if all units are removed from a fleet? If the experience goes to the class, then units that may not fire in combat may still get combat experience even though they were only getting shot at – this is understandable to an extent, but why would they get better if they haven’t fired? (eg, Vsh FI and Pulsars sent into combat when only Vsh fire). Finally, if the experience goes to the type of ship, then what happens to new units? Eg my 500 Spids might have r0x0red a Xandathrii attacker, but does the next batch of 50 Spids get that experience?

Furthermore, and imo most importantly, How will defenders/attackers know how much experience your units have? How will YOU know? How much of an effect will there be? Do they come up in Military or Sector scans? Would they come up in Unit scans too? Or will there be a dedicated ‘Experience scan’? Will there be scans in R10? If there is too much of an effect, then the above questions of measurement become very important, and if there is little effect, then it raises the question of why in hell is it there? The method of scanning would depend on how you measure the experience.

So in conclusion: What’s going on over there, Spinner?


PS: I petition the 3 classes of ships to be named ‘Frigate’, ‘Destroyer’ and ‘Cruiser’ – as these are the most represented descriptions of warships in the world today, and perhaps more importantly I’d hate to have to live in a 1 man Fighter for months until I was killed… (Though FI, DE, BA isn’t bad)

PSS: in an effort to continue my rant, I'm curious to know how, with so few classes, ships will be more useful than others. Eg atm each ship has 2 or 3 Targets – thus with three classes can be covered with only one type of unit. This is very bad news if you are trying to dodge fire, isn’t it? I remember Spinner saying that he would be reducing the number of units – so lets say each race has 9 ships (from 12), and each ship has 2 targets (no random fire). You’d have a number of ships having the same target classes, meaning that you only need to build 2 ships to have the most efficient ships to target ALL of the units in the game. Atm you’d need about 4 – which is a significant difference.

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS: Also, by removing PDS, you’ve both helped and hindered Cathaar (EMP) players. Helped by removing the only things that they cant stun (and thus removing a very major deterrent for them attacking), and also hindered them by not being able to kill an attacker anywhere nearly as efficiently – Cathaar kill ships (with exception to Guardian firing on FR, and Widowmaker firing on FI perhaps), Cathaar kill units are kill units in name only. This means that they will be very cheap targets. Or was this deliberate?


Thankyou for your time,
UN

[ArchsteR]

/me agrees for the most part
I'm sure they'll take a look at some of these issues such as the fleet experience. That whole roid stealing thing has got me thrown though.....dunno how that will work.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie
Now, I initially thought: heh cool – we can steal roids with a BA fleet without the Mantis \o/ etc. But then I thought: what’s stopping people just sending Fighters as ETA 6 Kill AND Roid fleets? As all ships can capture roids, this means that the race(s) with the best Fighters will be victorious – strongly suggesting Xandathrii (as we know them now heh), although Cathaar’s Beetles would be very, very effective in a FI only universe…

I imagine the cap % on an all 'small' fleet will suck compared to what a 'large' fleet can take.

eg, a 100% Beetle fleet with Objective 1: “Roid” and O2: “Roid” would still be efficient enough to stun a large number of FI, whilst still capturing a lot of roids…

How can you say that without knowing the stats? R10 beetles may suck at roiding...or they may rock to make up for the fact that they can't kill. Maybe this will be what makes up for the loss if the init advantage?

Means that you’ve completely ****ed up all EMP units – as they are no longer able to stun enemy units before they can fire. It’s like EMPing a ship that already fired, which is a complete waste of time, and more importantly lethal for your weak EMP shippies.

See above, there may be other compensations and who knows, EMP ships may not be so weak next round.

Furthermore, and imo most importantly, How will defenders/attackers know how much experience your units have?

At a guess I'd say you won't. Hence the alleged impossibility of an accurate calc for R10.

PSS: in an effort to continue my rant, I'm curious to know how, with so few classes, ships will be more useful than others. Eg atm each ship has 2 or 3 Targets – thus with three classes can be covered with only one type of unit. This is very bad news if you are trying to dodge fire, isn’t it? I remember Spinner saying that he would be reducing the number of units – so lets say each race has 9 ships (from 12), and each ship has 2 targets (no random fire). You’d have a number of ships having the same target classes, meaning that you only need to build 2 ships to have the most efficient ships to target ALL of the units in the game. Atm you’d need about 4 – which is a significant difference.

3 mission specialities. You'd need 6 ship types to excel in all of them which is probably too many. People will be forced to compromise or specialise

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie
Now, I initially thought: heh cool – we can steal roids with a BA fleet without the Mantis \o/ etc. But then I thought: what’s stopping people just sending Fighters as ETA 6 Kill AND Roid fleets?

First of all, there's no guarantee that ETA differences are remaining the same, or even at all. In R1 for example, all ships had the same ETA. I wouldn't be surprised to see that again.

You might still be able to do travel time upgrades, but all ships would have the same base ETA.

As all ships can capture roids, this means that the race(s) with the best Fighters will be victorious – strongly suggesting Xandathrii (as we know them now heh), although Cathaar’s Beetles would be very, very effective in a FI only universe…

I know Spinner said that there are some specific conditions that must be met for roid cap formula – but that isn’t really the point if all classes of ship can steal. Fighters are so cheap that you can afford plenty of them (thus reducing the effectiveness of saying that you need x number of FI to capture a roid), and being able to give objectives to your fleet means that this artificial reduction in capability can be minimised - eg, a 100% Beetle fleet with Objective 1: “Roid” and O2: “Roid” would still be efficient enough to stun a large number of FI, whilst still capturing a lot of roids…

I'm assuming that roid capture will become a function of fleet score, or some such aggregate number, rather than simply the number of ships. A large small-ship fleet may not be able to cap any more roids than a small large-ship fleet.

What I'm left wondering is; is this really progress for the game? Reducing Planetarion to an ETA 5 (in universe, ETA 4 for Cluster/para!!) rush for roids with fighters? Is it just me, or does anyone else like the various Pod classes, meaning that you can dodge past large amounts of fleetscore without having an impossible, 6 classes of pods to defend against? Does anyone appreciate how much more strategy these pod classes have added to the game? Compare to R4 – Phoenix, Pods and Spiders – now there’s skill! :\

Pod classes were an interesting twist, but after a round people had pretty much plumbed their depths. Time to move on.

Means that you’ve completely ****ed up all EMP units – as they are no longer able to stun enemy units before they can fire. It’s like EMPing a ship that already fired, which is a complete waste of time, and more importantly lethal for your weak EMP shippies.

Yeah, well, I think we can pretty much conclude that without initiative EMP, as we know it, will be gone from R10. I'd say Cathaar are toast too.

I think the concept of initiatives is an excellent one – although modification could come in the form of multiple ships firing at the same init level, if the goal was to reduce the number of Initiative levels… EG: all Xandathrii Frigates firing at the same time etc.

Actually, I think initiative has often been overrated. In lopsided battles--which are generally the norm--initiative doesn't really effect the outcome. I don't think it'll be missed much.

I think that the implementation of this should prove very interesting. Assuming that we still have 3 fleets, and we can move ships in and out of these fleets at will, how will the experience be tracked? Eg, if I had my Spiders and Beetles in Fleet 3 (as I do right now in the game), when they are used to defend against Xandathrii fleets, will that combat experience go to those individual ships, the fleet slot, the type of ship (eg, Spider), or to the class of ship (eg, Fighter)?

If it is the first, then tracking the individual experience of every unit in the game is an obvious nightmare. If the experience goes to the fleetslot, then what happens if I included 1000 Tarantulas right out of production in there – as they are in the fleet, do they get special bonuses even though they have never left orbit? What happens if all units are removed from a fleet? If the experience goes to the class, then units that may not fire in combat may still get combat experience even though they were only getting shot at – this is understandable to an extent, but why would they get better if they haven’t fired? (eg, Vsh FI and Pulsars sent into combat when only Vsh fire). Finally, if the experience goes to the type of ship, then what happens to new units? Eg my 500 Spids might have r0x0red a Xandathrii attacker, but does the next batch of 50 Spids get that experience?

It wouldn't be too hard to keep an "average" ship experience for each fleet (or overall if there's only one fleet). If/when ships are transferred between fleets then you can use weighted averages to adjust experience.

Furthermore, and imo most importantly, How will defenders/attackers know how much experience your units have? How will YOU know? How much of an effect will there be? Do they come up in Military or Sector scans? Would they come up in Unit scans too? Or will there be a dedicated ‘Experience scan’? Will there be scans in R10? If there is too much of an effect, then the above questions of measurement become very important, and if there is little effect, then it raises the question of why in hell is it there? The method of scanning would depend on how you measure the experience.

Well, I think you've pretty much answered your own question. If experience is "hidden" then it cannot have so much impact that it seriously alters the outcome of battles. Conceptionally, it's probably not a big deal; but as a practical matter, for a player base that's used to bcalc-ing battles beforehand to 3 decimal places, it'll be quite an adjustment. Coupled with Spinner's reference to "hidden" components in the roid cap formula, I predict hundreds of posts on the forums by irate and confused players demanding to know why they didn't get roids or why they lost so many ships (not that anyone at HQ pays much attention to the forums, but it'll be annoying for the rest of us). A potentially more serious problem is that it'll make it very difficult to spot bugs in the combat engine if none of the players knows how it's supposed to work (not that HQ would fix them anyway, but still...).

[Entium]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie
Furthermore, and imo most importantly, How will defenders/attackers know how much experience your units have? How will YOU know? How much of an effect will there be? Do they come up in Military or Sector scans? Would they come up in Unit scans too? Or will there be a dedicated ‘Experience scan’? Will there be scans in R10? If there is too much of an effect, then the above questions of measurement become very important, and if there is little effect, then it raises the question of why in hell is it there? The method of scanning would depend on how you measure the experience.
[/b]

Just give more experienced ships different names or some kind of tag... problem solved for both, you, your enemy and the battlecalc.

[Makhil]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie


Means that you’ve completely ****ed up all EMP units – as they are no longer able to stun enemy units before they can fire. It’s like EMPing a ship that already fired, which is a complete waste of time, and more importantly lethal for your weak EMP shippies.

I think that though all the ships will fire at the same time, Cath ships will EMP the roiding capacity of the enemy fleet. ok the enemy will fire but he won't get any roid.

[Supernova9]

You're all trying to apply suggestions for round 10 stats to the stats and experiences of round 9 and before. As the creators have stated many times that it'll be completely different, what makes you think there'll even be Cath/Xan/Zik/Terran etc?

[at0mic.c0w]

Originally posted by Tactitus
Yeah, well, I think we can pretty much conclude that without initiative EMP, as we know it, will be gone from R10. I'd say Cathaar are toast too.

maybe it's gonna be closer to a "real time" battle where ships fire one by one and losses are deducted ship by ship - that's just one possibility.

i won't comment on r10 until i've seen the whole picture. but i'm quite sure that there will be a big fkup and ppl who will exploit every single bit of the system. after all: that's what we are here for...

[MrLobster]

Originally posted by Ultimate Newbie
Now, I initially thought: heh cool – we can steal roids with a BA fleet without the Mantis \o/ etc. But then I thought: what’s stopping people just sending Fighters as ETA 6 Kill AND Roid fleets? As all ships can capture roids, this means that the race(s) with the best Fighters will be victorious – strongly suggesting Xandathrii (as we know them now heh), although Cathaar’s Beetles would be very, very effective in a FI only universe…

if you had noticed the other part of the leak;-

Originally posted by Spinner
The "inner part of the combat" has been simplified a bit, to reduce the number of stats and simplify certain areas of combat. For instance, there is no longer 6 distinct classes of ships, only 3; "Small", "Medium" and "Large".
(names are subject to change)

there is no fighter! either small/medium/large ships will the classes. Still the problem will occur with the small ships, but that might not be the case, because who said that that round 9 ships will even make it in to r10.

Originally posted by Spinner
Another new thing , is what we call Fleet Experience, where your fleets will "learn" as they get used in combat, and might excel in some "priorities" and not in others.

i believe that this is going to be the most improbable thing to happen, the solution to the massive fleet tracking experience is this
1) Ships cost LOTS more i.e 1000 times the r9 ships (r9 spider = 1.000) (r10 Spider = 1.000.000) this reduces the load (ignore the figures for the spider, i know they are different in r9 stats).
2) each ship becomes an individual, with its own health and exp points, this is only possible because on the higher cost reducing quantitys. also this could keep its damage after the battle, so ships could need repair or face a quick death in the next battle.

Originally posted by Spinner
There is also no longer an "initiative" stat, all ships fire simultaneously. So if you are attacked, rest assured that your ships will fire at least once before they go (-:

ok there might not be a great deal made of initiatives, but i think EMP (if it exists in r10) might get the chance to block the ships first.

one last note: Will the ships and races be in r9, and any other round, be in r10, i believe that a whole new unit list is being produced and the races/units may be shortened.

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by MrLobster
ok there might not be a great deal made of initiatives, but i think EMP (if it exists in r10) might get the chance to block the ships first.

Either there is initiative or there isn't. Spinner said "rest assured that your ships will fire at least once" which, to me, says there's no initiative and, hence, no real point to EMP (as we know it).

Of course one could imagine a type of EMP that didn't freeze ships, but instead reduced their agility and/or weapon targeting speed (to borrow R2-R9.5 concepts) and/or some other effect which degrades the opponent's ships but doesn't otherwise leave them unable to fire; but at that point we're just arguing over the definition of EMP.

[das_experiment]

Any1 with some thoughts on the l8st annoncement?


About allies, and that they can only be 150 members etc.

[MrLobster]

Originally posted by Tactitus
Either there is initiative or there isn't. Spinner said "rest assured that your ships will fire at least once" which, to me, says there's no initiative and, hence, no real point to EMP (as we know it).

Of course one could imagine a type of EMP that didn't freeze ships, but instead reduced their agility and/or weapon targeting speed (to borrow R2-R9.5 concepts) and/or some other effect which degrades the opponent's ships but doesn't otherwise leave them unable to fire; but at that point we're just arguing over the definition of EMP.

well hyfe said this

Originally posted by Hyfe
(This is important to note...Attacker and defenders launch their torpedoes at the same time. Hence all units alive at the beginning of an iniative will get the chance to fire, regardless of what the opponents units of the same type does....

thats supposed to be for this round

full thread

[hyfe]

Originally posted by das_experiment
Any1 with some thoughts on the l8st annoncement?


About allies, and that they can only be 150 members etc.

OK; this ranks among the hardest words I've written on these forums:

I like it



.....not that it wouldn't need tweaking of course..

- first of all, there should be some sort of system for battlegroups/friends/etc. For example everybody could have one main alliance, where they get good defending etas/all other benefits.. and then there ought to be some secondary stuff, so people in the same bg could attack together (against same planet without ****ing things up) but not necessarily receive full(or not any) eta-bonuses towards anything..

- allowing planets to donate to an alliance fund might bring back old r3 legion extortion tactics though, and promote cheating in a much greater extenct than before. this is a bad thing imo

- the suggestion that they are going to have 'hidden' features is extremely bad too imo. One thing they have to understand is; in a game where people spend so much time as planetarion, we don't like surprises or bugs from the actual game-mechanics. There is enough going on already!

- As long as the traveltime differences are kept extremely moderate, this actually sounds like fun

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by MrLobster
well hyfe said this

Yes, he was describing how it currently works for each initiative step. Units with the same initiative fire concurrently, which is only a factor when the same type of ship is both attacking and defending (e.g., Beetles vs. Beetles or Vsharraks vs. Vsharraks). If all units had the same initiative then that would mean Beetles would fire at the same time as Vsharraks--which would reduce the utility of Beetles (and all EMP ships) to expensive flak.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally posted by MrLobster
there is no fighter! either small/medium/large ships will the classes. Still the problem will occur with the small ships, but that might not be the case, because who said that that round 9 ships will even make it in to r10.

I was using example from R9 / 9.5 to demonstrate concept that will eventuate in R10. Just because the ship's names are Beetles and the ship's class might not be FI, does NOT mean that people will get rushed by low(er) ETA small units that still cap roids.

this goes for all those other people who have flamed me too ('lo Gayle )

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally posted by Tactitus
I'm assuming that roid capture will become a function of fleet score, or some such aggregate number, rather than simply the number of ships. A large small-ship fleet may not be able to cap any more roids than a small large-ship fleet.

It still is now... that doesnt mean that a low ETA fleet would be easier to defend against than a high ETA fleet - which is my point. Take a current example - Is an ETA 6 Xan fleet more difficult to defend against than a ETA 9 Cathaar CR fleet? i think it is, generally at the very least.

Yeah, well, I think we can pretty much conclude that without initiative EMP, as we know it, will be gone from R10. I'd say Cathaar are toast too.

Actually, I think initiative has often been overrated. In lopsided battles--which are generally the norm--initiative doesn't really effect the outcome. I don't think it'll be missed much.

I disgaree. Initiative can be a cause for lopsided battles. EG my Xandathrii GC, when attacked, gets a shedload more incoming simply because she is a Xan, as they have to minimise losses by a) forcing to run or b) killing as many Xan ships in tick 1 to make subsequent ticks cheaper. If she was a Terran, i'd seriously doubt that she would be overkilled anywhere near as much.

Nevertheless, when attacking you want early init ships so you dont take as much losses - when i was playing Zik in R7, i was dismayed by the ability of people with really poor ships/fleets to still inflict damage on me, simply because they fired first.

It wouldn't be too hard to keep an "average" ship experience for each fleet (or overall if there's only one fleet). If/when ships are transferred between fleets then you can use weighted averages to adjust experience.

(not that anyone at HQ pays much attention to the forums, but it'll be annoying for the rest of us). A potentially more serious problem is that it'll make it very difficult to spot bugs in the combat engine if none of the players knows how it's supposed to work (not that HQ would fix them anyway, but still...).

Cynnical bastard. Congrats

[Cochese]

There won't be EMP/Cloaking/Stealing characteristics for races; their differences will lie in other areas (scans, mining, covert ops, etc)

It's all "war", with three ship classes: Light/Medium/Heavy (tentative names)

[Gerbie]

Hmmz this doesn't sound good. If I wanted to play a game like that I would have played something else. I want to calc fleets. If attacking no longer requires skill in assembling your fleet you can just as well play St*rShpere.

[Supernova9]

Originally posted by Gerbie
Hmmz this doesn't sound good. If I wanted to play a game like that I would have played something else. I want to calc fleets. If attacking no longer requires skill in assembling your fleet you can just as well play St*rShpere.

No-one apart from the testing team really has enough information to make a judgement like this. Give it a bloody chance people.

[das_experiment]

Sounds like its going back to r2-r4 with a 'twist'

which is what many people has been wanting



im sure it will be good,

[Structural Integrity]

1) There will be no more Fighters... only light. medium and heavy ships
2) ETA will vary depending on physical location

I'm sure the PA-team will have this thought out.
For example, when sending a crapload of your Light ships and with O1 & O2 on roidcap then it's easy to fall victim to defence as these ships do jack**** against defending fleets.
Also, when bigger ships are more effective at capping roids even with another objective set then it's wise to rethink your strategy.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally posted by Structural Integrity
1) There will be no more Fighters... only light. medium and heavy ships
2) ETA will vary depending on physical location

I'm sure the PA-team will have this thought out.
For example, when sending a crapload of your Light ships and with O1 & O2 on roidcap then it's easy to fall victim to defence as these ships do jack**** against defending fleets.
Also, when bigger ships are more effective at capping roids even with another objective set then it's wise to rethink your strategy.

Unless - which is my point, so read clearly, the 'light' ships with a presumably less ETA than the more capping 'heavy' ships are alot more difficult to defend against - thus resulting in more roids via a greater proportion of captured roids.

cf Vulture and Mantis - which is easier to defend against?