Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

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Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#1 Post by Oberlus »

I read this:
MatGB wrote:The 'comsat' hull is a workaround that creates several problems within the game, but no one has come up with a better solution for what it's actually for. Excluding it from certain techs is certainly acceptable, but if you remove reinforced hull I'd also want to make it not blown up by mines: we need an in system transport vehicle, which is what the hull is, but it doesn't need to be this implementation.
Bold are mine.

What is a comsat (my own conception, within FO): it is a very cheap piece of machinery in orbit of a system, with very limited manoeuvrability (can't travel on its own from system to system).

Uses of Comsats in FO that I know of:

1. As cheap cannon fodder when defending a system against more powerful fleets. This is very efficient against any kind of weapons/figthers, very cost effective and thus is seen by some as an exploit (correct me if I'm wrong here).
2. To trigger the planetary defenses to combat incoming enemy fleets. This is a legit purpose but achieved through a weird mechanic/workaround (IMO).

Please add any other that I might have missed.

What is that "in system transport vehicle" that MatGB mentions (and what is the relation to the in-game comsat)?
I think I'm missing something here.

Without knowing what, I was going to suggest some (independent) changes:

a) Change colony base (comsat) hull cost from "1" to "5.0 * [[FLEET_UPKEEP_MULTIPLICATOR]] * [[SHIP_HULL_COST_MULTIPLIER]]" (i.e. half of basic small hull's cost).
This allows for a more balanced efficiency of the cannon fodder tactic while it does not affect too much the costs of colony/outpost bases. And makes unnecessary to treat different the comsat hull (it was suggested in the linked thread to not apply the reinforced hull bonus to comsats because that predates flak cannons).
Optionally, ass another base hull with external slot instead of internal, so that you can add armour or weapons to the planetary defenses (with the associated PP costs, obviously) and create really tough system defenses.

b) Make the defense-focus also set the system into combat mode (so you wouldn't need a comsat to trigger combat of passing fleets). This would add some value to the defense-focus and reduce some posible micromanagement (once you have defense regeneration, you can effectively block a system every turn without having to micromanage comsats getting out every turn).
Alternatively, iff you would like to see gone for good the "need" to build comsats on every system, make that every system with positive defense strength triggers combat with incoming/passing detected enemy fleets. Just assume that the defense system that you get with the corresponding techs includes stuff in orbit to detect and shot down stuff.

c) Add three new defense techs that gives planets the ability to launch fighters (all numbers are temptative):
First tech depends on figthers tech and first defense tech and gives 6 figthers to each planet (like giving the planet 2 hangars and 3 launch bays), second increases to 18 fighters (6 hangars and 9 launch bays), and third tech increases to a total of 36 fighters (12 hangars and 18 launch bays). And maybe a fourth tech one for 60 fighters (20 hangars, 30 launch bays)? Optionally, each of the second to third/fourth techs can be unlocked by the corresponding level of figthers (laser/plasma/FR). Optionally, this could be tied to PP cost by requiring a figther factory building in the supply group (like the industrial center building).
Fighters lost in combat are replaced with the same rate as a ship (or doubled? or dependant on the defense regeneration tech level?).
If a there is a nice way to show the corresponding fighter meters in the GUI, this will help planetary defenses to counter swarm fleets (because, you know, currently each planet has one single big shot per combat turn).
Optionally/alternatively, another planetary flak defense tech (or just make the regular defense tech to include this effect too) could give the planet a number of flak shots equal to its defense strength (so for defense 45 you get one big shot of 45 dmg and 45 shots of 1 dmg), and I assume these would be able to target enemy figthers. This would need no extra meter to be shown and cover the same need, to balance planetary defenses against figthers/swarm fleets.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#2 Post by dbenage-cx »

Oberlus wrote:What is that "in system transport vehicle" that MatGB mentions (and what is the relation to the in-game comsat)?
Outposting, colonizing, or invading other planets in-system.
If those take on some different mechanic, the colony base hull could be removed.

Some toggle for planets would be appreciated, especially if they were to default to aggressive (else your stealth outpost is no longer so stealthy).

I'd like to try out some implementation of the fighters from planets suggestion.
For a first draft I'd opt for no later fighter branch requirements (and maybe not even the first, that tech could be regulated to ship based fighters).
As ships resupply fighters fully from supply connection, so should planets.
For out of supply, possibly (RP+PP)*0.25 to start with?
(These are all just starting suggestions, especially if they conflict with your ideas)

For multiple shots from planets portion, think something along this line is a long standing desire.
I'd scale the number of shots down considerably however (45 shots seems a bit much).
Maybe base the number of shots on defense tech level and current infrastructure meter (lower=less shots, so a planet normally at 5 dmg/5 shots might go to 2 dmg/1 shot)

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

What about making comsats mostly useless by excluding unarmed ships from combat if any armed ships are present? I anticipate a few issues... like being able to send one cheap armed ship each turn to protect any unarmed ships in the system from ever being attacked. So, the rule would probably need to apply in each combat round, rather than each combat overall. That is, unarmed ships would never be targeted in any combat round when armed ships, of any empire, are present, but they could be in subsequent rounds after any armed ships are destroyed. Exactly how those rules would work if there are more than two empires present would require some thought and iteration, though.

Alternatively, perhaps this target prioritization would be a feature of targeting computer parts. As various people have requested, there is desire to be able to prioritize targeting to ships or fighters in general, or dependent on what sort of weapon is firing. My medium-term plan was to make such target prioritization dependent on adding parts to a ship, with eventual ability to override these (or just control it) using admiral / leader units in the system. An early-unlocked targeting computer could be used to tell ships to not attack unarmed enemy ships unless there are no armed targets available.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#4 Post by Oberlus »

dbenage-cx wrote:Outposting, colonizing, or invading other planets in-system.
If those take on some different mechanic, the colony base hull could be removed.
Could this be done via "buildings" called something like "outposting launch", "colonizing launch" and "assault launch", in which a mission is send via rockets much like we do on Earth now? Those "buildings" would be similar to a terraforming or evacuation projects (the building is removed when finished), could add restrictions such as not allowing outposting launch in a system with no free planets... Is it possible already to set a planet as a target for a building when it is started? Or could it be done that once the building is finished the colonising/invasion options appear in the system like when outposts/colonisers/troopers are present?
dbenage-cx wrote:Some toggle for planets would be appreciated, especially if they were to default to aggressive (else your stealth outpost is no longer so stealthy).
Very much. Should I make a pull request on this?
dbenage-cx wrote:I'd like to try out some implementation of the fighters from planets suggestion.
For a first draft I'd opt for no later fighter branch requirements (and maybe not even the first, that tech could be regulated to ship based fighters).
As ships resupply fighters fully from supply connection, so should planets.
For out of supply, possibly (RP+PP)*0.25 to start with?
(These are all just starting suggestions, especially if they conflict with your ideas)
If you do the job, you can do whatever you want as you want, so don't worry about any conflict. BTW, any "idea" that I place in this forum immediatly becomes property of the FO project.
But I would not use RP in the formula. Looks to me like building/repairing fighters should depend on industry or even better on defense tech level and defense focus, the same that happens to the current defense meter (whose maximum depends on a tech line and the regeneration rate on another tech sub-line).
dbenage-cx wrote:For multiple shots from planets portion, think something along this line is a long standing desire.
I'd scale the number of shots down considerably however (45 shots seems a bit much).
Maybe base the number of shots on defense tech level and current infrastructure meter (lower=less shots, so a planet normally at 5 dmg/5 shots might go to 2 dmg/1 shot)
45 is the damage you get for a top tier planetary defense. I always think that planetary defenses are way underpowered in FO (comsat cannon fodder aside). If a few tiny ships can have so much damage on them, I think a massive ship that a planet could be should be able to harbor much more damage, and allow for more "pacifist" strategies in the game. So I don't think 45 figthers per planet in the late game is too much, enemies can come with 9 fighters per ship (plus weapons), every 5 ships make up for the whole strength of one planet (10 if defense-focused). Anyway, this is FO 0.4.*, use the numbers you like and it will be perfect to start playtesting and balancing.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#5 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote:What about making comsats mostly useless by excluding unarmed ships from combat if any armed ships are present?
Actually, it's an option. But I would prefer something that does not allow the player to do useless things. If empty colony base hulls (i.e. comsats) are going to be completely useless, then I would forbid the production of such "ships" better than changing combat system (which may be done anyway for other purposes, like the targeting computer priorisation you coment).
Geoff the Medio wrote:I anticipate a few issues... like being able to send one cheap armed ship each turn to protect any unarmed ships in the system from ever being attacked. So, the rule would probably need to apply in each combat round, rather than each combat overall. That is, unarmed ships would never be targeted in any combat round when armed ships, of any empire, are present, but they could be in subsequent rounds after any armed ships are destroyed. Exactly how those rules would work if there are more than two empires present would require some thought and iteration, though.
Make two lists of the objects involved in the combat, one for the armed and one for the unarmed. For each combat turn, if there are armed objects of more than one "team" (empire, monsters, natives, etc.) then perform the combat turn restricted to the objects in the armed list, otherwise perform the combat for the ships in both lists together. I think this should do the work without having to include any other consideration about number of empires.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Alternatively, perhaps this target prioritization would be a feature of targeting computer parts. As various people have requested, there is desire to be able to prioritize targeting to ships or fighters in general, or dependent on what sort of weapon is firing. My medium-term plan was to make such target prioritization dependent on adding parts to a ship, with eventual ability to override these (or just control it) using admiral / leader units in the system. An early-unlocked targeting computer could be used to tell ships to not attack unarmed enemy ships unless there are no armed targets available.
I like all this.
Caveat: I wouldn't remove all randomness of the targetting systems, that is, better targetting systems would improve the chance of hitting the preferred target but the best targeting system should not completely remove the chances of hitting other stuff, including unarmed vessels. Hmmm... think about cannon fodder camouflaged as armed ships. That's a plausible war strategy.


But what about just increasing the cost of the colony base hulls? (suggestion 'a'). Got no comments on this and it seems to me the KISSer solution for the comsat cannon fodder "exploit", but maybe it carries some issues?

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#6 Post by dbenage-cx »

Oberlus wrote:Could this be done via "buildings" called something like "outposting launch", "colonizing launch" and "assault launch"... Is it possible already to set a planet as a target for a building when it is started? Or could it be done that once the building is finished the colonising/invasion options appear in the system like when outposts/colonisers/troopers are present?
There is no current interface for selecting a target, though one is desired for at least Stargate. Similarly some control would need added for buildings.

To the second point: I suppose colony base hull could be set Unproducable, define a design for each troop/outpost/colony part, and then have the building spawn the ship before destroying itself.
If that works, it would retain the ability to intercept those ships by a hostile fleet, and eliminate comsats (still leaving aggressive state unhandled).
Oberlus wrote:
dbenage-cx wrote:Some toggle for planets would be appreciated, especially if they were to default to aggressive (else your stealth outpost is no longer so stealthy).
Very much. Should I make a pull request on this?
Personally prefer to look over a PR, but you may want to start a new discussion on any plans to handle it first (especially if there is no code to look over yet).
Oberlus wrote:
dbenage-cx wrote:I'd like to try out some implementation of the fighters from planets suggestion.
If you do the job, you can do whatever you want as you want, so don't worry about any conflict.
I meant I would love to test such changes, I did not mean to commandeer your ideas ;) (Few other things I want to handle first, but I might revisit if nothing pans out)
Geoff the Medio wrote:What about making comsats mostly useless by excluding unarmed ships from combat if any armed ships are present?
I sort of like the potential to kill off hostile troops and outposts, so even if done would prefer it limited to designs with no parts (Works both ways, AI seems to time ship production right when troops arrive). Also agree with Oberius' points here.
Oberius wrote:But what about just increasing the cost of the colony base hulls? (suggestion 'a').
I think this might suffer from some domino effect. A colony base is supposed to be X cheaper than a mobile colony ship.
If the cost of base hulls increases then the cost of all other hulls are likely to adjust at some point, then possibly PP output down the line to compensate, putting comsats back into very cheap territory.
Not to say there is no room for a minor increase, but prefer the option for comsats gone if they have no desired use.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

dbenage-cx wrote:To the second point: I suppose colony base hull could be set Unproducable, define a design for each troop/outpost/colony part, and then have the building spawn the ship before destroying itself.
If that works, it would retain the ability to intercept those ships by a hostile fleet, and eliminate comsats (still leaving aggressive state unhandled).
Just a short note: since the new colonization mechanic is in place, there is not really a need for the in-system colony part, outpost suffices. I think the building would work great for colonisation.
But for troops it wont do so well as you cant say: I want to build 8 troop buildings now. But we could make a more expensive base hull with more slots for that purpose (e.g. cost 8 PP with 4 internal slots, 6 health) so it doesnt work so well as cannon fodder.
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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#8 Post by Geoff the Medio »

dbenage-cx wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:What about making comsats mostly useless by excluding unarmed ships from combat if any armed ships are present?
I sort of like the potential to kill off hostile troops and outposts, so even if done would prefer it limited to designs with no parts...
It would still be possible to destroy unarmed ships in combat. It would just destroyed armed ones first.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#9 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote:Just a short note: since the new colonization mechanic is in place, there is not really a need for the in-system colony part, outpost suffices. I think the building would work great for colonisation.
Not sure if I understood this. With Sly I need to use colony ships/bases to colonise conquered (outposted) GGs and also to colonise in-system GGs when there is another empire's planet in the system (because I can't build sly colony building in the outposted GG because of the supply lack).
Ophiuchus wrote:But for troops it wont do so well as you cant say: I want to build 8 troop buildings now. But we could make a more expensive base hull with more slots for that purpose (e.g. cost 8 PP with 4 internal slots, 6 health) so it doesnt work so well as cannon fodder.
I like more Geoff's suggestion on not allowing to shot unarmed ships, with the issue of not shooting down scouts... I would change Geoff's restriction to not shooting unpowered (engine-less, i.e. colony base hulls) until there are no more powered ships in the combat. Thus, if allows to build empty basic small hulls as cannon fodder that does participate in the combat from the start (that's reasonable, those ships can move to intercept enemy ships, and can be disguised as armed combat ships to attract enemy fire, and their cost makes them less, or non, exploitable, not like with comsats), but the cheap comsat exploit is solved without the need to change anything else on the game. Rather KISS and good outcome.

This coupled with the toggle for planet (or system) aggressiveness would be the best solution IMO.

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#10 Post by dbenage-cx »

Think I might favor unarmed and non-mobile, need to try it out against various monsters.

(rest of this post is related to replacing hull)

Wanted to see how replacement of colony hull might work with some other local changes, I've pushed a rough shot of such to this branch as a reference.

A noticeable change is species with CanColonize but not CanProduceShips, can now colonize/outpost/invade in-system.
That can probably be gated back in somehow, but felt like trying it out since allowing in system outposting, but not ship building was not previously possible.

Since the AI loves to build shipyards on Exobot planets, I went ahead and removed Exobots ability to build shipyards, they are still allowed colony/outpost bases via building.
I neglected to address this in the AI code, so it keeps trying to build a shipyard (it does handle the new buildings, with a few rare hiccups).

For naming, the launch terminology for the buildings is a better fit, especially with the turn delay between building completion and ship creation.
Maybe "Interplanetary Colony Launch" or similar?
But for troops it wont do so well as you cant say: I want to build 8 troop buildings now.
I completely overlooked this point, but it was immediately obvious on first use.
Could also add supporting code for batch and repeat jobs of buildings, maybe limited to those with a specific tag.

There were previous discussions with mentions of projects, which I gathered had some slight differences to buildings.
I've not searched for how a project might differ, maybe these fit could an initial case if they might handle batch jobs and delayed effects cleaner.

The conditional effect in colony and troop buildings (switches design if requisites are met) should be changed to separate buildings.
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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#11 Post by Ophiuchus »

dbenage-cx wrote:
But for troops it wont do so well as you cant say: I want to build 8 troop buildings now.
I completely overlooked this point, but it was immediately obvious on first use.
Could also add supporting code for batch and repeat jobs of buildings, maybe limited to those with a specific tag.

There were previous discussions with mentions of projects, which I gathered had some slight differences to buildings.

I've not searched for how a project might differ, maybe these fit could an initial case if they might handle batch jobs and delayed effects cleaner.
Hm. When firing up the search for "projects -build -github" I couldnt find anything but references to the influence projects (going back to 2016). Somebody has some pointers?

But having the ability to specify a non standard project in the production queue with amount and repetition would help specifying the number of troops as well as the amount of PP to transfer into the stockpile ( imperial stockpile separators and connected UI issues ).

I plan to have a look at the production queue on the weekend to see if this is achievable.

For FOCS and troops:
* a switch to enable the amount/repetition UI for the building
** the building would have to have a capacity set by the amount/repetition UI

For FOCS and stockpile charging:
* a switch to enable the amount/repetition UI for the project
* nothing gets produced, instead effect is directly
** if that doesnt work, produce instead a building or special with the right capacity and add to the stockpile from there. This will work correctly only if there are no input limits.
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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#12 Post by Ophiuchus »

Ok, i digged a bit in the source code. Only thing I found in regards of non-building, non-ship projects is the BT_PROJECT enum. Nothing in the parsers i think. Who was working on this?

For the upgrade of the troops and colony parts I think we should throw the different part types away and do the capacity upgrade based on turn of research vs turn of construction. This would again minimize fiddling with ship designs.
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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#13 Post by dbenage-cx »

Ophiuchus wrote:do the capacity upgrade based on turn of research vs turn of construction
Not sure what you mean by this?

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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#14 Post by Dilvish »

There are a number of ideas being considered that could be worthwhile but which could also get fairly tricky to implement/handle (not to say that they couldn't ultimately be worthwhile).

While folks continue exploring those ideas, I'd propose that we take an easy step to deal with the main problem the OP cited, being comsat abuse, by taking at least part of that initially proposed measure-- I'd propose increasing the comsat base cost from 1 to 3 (instead of the above proposed 5). I think that would go a long way towards curbing any comsat abuse, but would still be close enough to current values for other applications (outpost bases & just barely close enough for trooper bases I think) that we wouldn't need to make a significant change to AI planning.
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Re: Comsat/planetary defenses re-design

#15 Post by Ophiuchus »

dbenage-cx wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:do the capacity upgrade based on turn of research vs turn of construction
Not sure what you mean by this?
If the advanced tech has been researched before the ship was built, apply a bonus to the part. So instead of the advanced troop pod something like this:

Code: Select all

EffectsGroup
            scope = And [
                        [[EMPIRE_OWNED_SHIP_WITH_PART]]
                        CreationTurn > TurnTechResearched empire = Owner name = "GRO_NANO_CYBERNET"
             ]
            accountinglabel = "GT_TROOP_POD_2_LABEL"
            effects = SetMaxCapacity partname = "GT_TROOP_POD" value = Value + 2
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