Don't engage in combat with passive hidden ships

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Ophiuchus
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Don't engage in combat with passive hidden ships

#1 Post by Ophiuchus »

Pasted from Give passive fast ships a chance to escape thread where it was off-topic:
Telos wrote:A related issue is that passive ships with heavy stealth will avoid combat if only one enemy is present in a system (that's good), but will join into three-way combat if two enemies are present in the system to initiate the combat (that's bad!).

I can see two easy solutions, each of which might also help with the OP's concerns.

First, the system that chooses which ships will participate in combat could exclude passive-stance ships whose stealth is high enough to avoid detection by anyone else who is present. This solution could also be extended to allow passive-stance ships, especially ones with higher speed than any (visible) aggressive enemies, to have a chance to avoid even being included in combat in the first place. This restriction on who enters into combat needn't violate any (IMHO misplaced) desire to have combat itself be largely deterministic.

Second, the system that "decloaks" cloaked ships after round 1 could be made to exempt ships that didn't fire weapons that round, instead allowing those ships to remain cloaked. This would keep passive unarmed scouts from stupidly joining into brawls between third parties. However, this wouldn't directly allow *armed* passive-stance ships to restrain themselves from joining into a nearby brawl. A simple solution would be to make the passive setting be a firm order to avoid combat, and to have armed ships refrain from firing, and hence from decloaking, in any battle where they have the option to remain undetected. Other more complicated solutions could allow various conditions and/or random chances to determine whether or not a ship that is stealthy/fast enough to steer clear will nevertheless join in. E.g., you might make passive-attitude ships steer clear except in the case where visible allies are present, in which case they will be obligated to join in. Or you might make "passive" ships opportunistically decide to ambush tempting soft targets, while steering clear of more dangerous threats. It could be interesting to have racial traits affect these decisions: disciplined races always follow orders exactly, cowardly races take any opportunity to flee, honor-bound races always defend their brethren, cunning races pick only those fights that they can win, aggressive races never back away from a fight. This sort of restriction on targeting eligibility could also be extended to allow for visible fast ships to keep themselves out of range of slow pursuers, or even for slower ships to evade being targetable as long as they have slower or more aggressive allies present to engage pursuers. This would also be a good step along the way toward a combat system that allows for long-range weapons, kiting, and the ability for ships to use speed to close in to where they can use shorter-ranged weapons.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

Ophiuchus
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Re: Don't engage in combat with passive hidden ships

#2 Post by Ophiuchus »

Telos wrote:A related issue is that passive ships with heavy stealth will avoid combat if only one enemy is present in a system (that's good), but will join into three-way combat if two enemies are present in the system to initiate the combat (that's bad!).
I would consider this a bug even. If so, could you open an issue on github and link this thread?.
Telos wrote:First, the system that chooses which ships will participate in combat could exclude passive-stance ships whose stealth is high enough to avoid detection by anyone else who is present. This solution could also be extended to allow passive-stance ships, especially ones with higher speed than any (visible) aggressive enemies, to have a chance to avoid even being included in combat in the first place. This restriction on who enters into combat needn't violate any (IMHO misplaced) desire to have combat itself be largely deterministic.
I like it :)
Telos wrote:Second, the system that "decloaks" cloaked ships after round 1 could be made to exempt ships that didn't fire weapons that round, instead allowing those ships to remain cloaked.
I thought that is already the case... hm
Telos wrote:...However, this wouldn't directly allow *armed* passive-stance ships to restrain themselves from joining into a nearby brawl. A simple solution would be to make the passive setting be a firm order to avoid combat, and to have armed ships refrain from firing, and hence from decloaking, in any battle where they have the option to remain undetected.
There is the issue that your ships could have different stealth. So if half of your passive warships get detected, the other half would just watch them being blown to pieces.
One could mitigate this if fleets would work like entities here, but it could still lead to unexpected results if some fleets are detected and some are not. I think I would be in favor of this neithertheless.
Telos wrote:Other more complicated solutions...
Sorry, too complicated for my brain right now.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

Telos
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Re: Don't engage in combat with passive hidden ships

#3 Post by Telos »

Ophiuchus wrote:
Telos wrote:Second, the system that "decloaks" cloaked ships after round 1 could be made to exempt ships that didn't fire weapons that round, instead allowing those ships to remain cloaked.
I thought that is already the case... hm
No, as far as I can tell, it's currently much more simple-minded than that, with stealth ships being rendered undetectable to relevant empires at the beginning of combat, and then all automatically being rendered detectable to everyone at the beginning of the second round, with no consideration being given to whether they are in passive stance or whether they had fired.
Ophiuchus wrote:There is the issue that your ships could have different stealth. So if half of your passive warships get detected, the other half would just watch them being blown to pieces.
One could mitigate this if fleets would work like entities here, but it could still lead to unexpected results if some fleets are detected and some are not. I think I would be in favor of this neithertheless.
Telos wrote:Other more complicated solutions...
Sorry, too complicated for my brain right now.
These more complicated solutions all had to do with the issue you mentioned, considering different options like always leaping to defend your detected allies, always strictly following orders to remain passive, or more cunningly judging whether or not leaping in would be a lost cause. I quite like the idea of making this a racially-determined thing, to help give each race its own flavor.

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