Ships: Supply

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loonycyborg
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#106 Post by loonycyborg »

Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:The objection about having to wait and watch for ships to replenish to adequate levels is valid, but if one can replenish instantly by travelling right to a source, isn't this enough? You wouldn't be able to replenish instantly when far from the source, but you wouldn't have to wait long periods of time while watching supply levels grow either, as you could just fly to a source to be instantly refilled.
That doesn't really solve the problem, you just give players a choice between the micromanagement of worrying about every ships supplies and the micromanagement of constantly ferrying ships home for more supplies. (of course the player should be able to send ships home, but he shouldn't have too).
This is not micromanagement but tradeoff between returning ships home, waiting for ships being resupplied, and pressing the attack while undersupplied. Without this tradeoff the whole supply system is useless.
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utilae
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#107 Post by utilae »

Sounds like micromanagement to me.

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eleazar
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#108 Post by eleazar »

marhawkman wrote:
utilae wrote:Sounds like micromanagement to me.
Not if the game manages it for you.

I think I could write a pseudo AI that'd do a decent job without you needing to worry about any micro.
Any game mechanics that are so complex that most players would want to avoid and have an AI manage for them will be rejected. Really, you've been around this project long enough to know that.

A major founding principle of this project is to avoid the Moo3 situation, in which various AIs play much of the game for you. If it's not fun enough for the player to care about it, why put it in the game?

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Geoff the Medio
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#109 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:...replenish instantly by travelling right to a source [so] you wouldn't have to wait long periods of time while watching supply levels grow...
That doesn't really solve the problem, you just give players a choice between the micromanagement of worrying about every ships supplies and the micromanagement of constantly ferrying ships home for more supplies.
Why is having to move a fleet to a supply source system too much micromanagement, but having to move to a system that is within N starlane jumps of a supply source not too much micromangement? In either case, you've got to move your fleet to a system where it can be resupplied after using up its supplies.

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MikkoM
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#110 Post by MikkoM »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
So it might be good to give a blocked fleet some sort of a change to either defend itself or support a block break through attempt.
I think you're making some different assumptions than I am about how difficult it would be to block all supply to a large fleet. Consider that the blocker would have to get enough separate fleets behind moving, powerful enemy fleet to block all possible supply routes to it, and keep these paths all blocked for several turns. To me, it seems that if someone is able to do this, they deserve to be able to weaken the large enemy fleet they've blocked...
This might be true as it is a little difficult to really visualise how the supply system would work with starlanes and different fleets moving around.

Now I was not of course saying that it shouldn`t be possible to weaken enemy fleets by supply blocks, and so gain easy victories. My point was that this kind of strategy shouldn`t be too easy to use, as otherwise nearly all battles would just turn out to be about supply blocking. However if it isn`t that easy to completely block supplies to a large fleet, maybe there is no need to allow supply sending through blockades.
Geoff the Medio wrote: I'd start with any colony being able to produce unlimited supplies for ships, but ships having a limit on how fast then can replenish their stores. If we need to limit how much supply a particular colony can produce, that can be added later.
This idea and the idea about ship supplies being free of any sort of charge are in my opinion a bit odd. Since there already is a nice industrial system in FO, why wouldn`t we use it? Couldn`t we combine the supply sharing inside the empire to the fleets supply sending and so create some sort of a web, which would then supply the fleets? I have been considering possible ways of doing this, but before or if I post any ideas about these webs I should probably read through the Redistribution & Blockades: a simple solution thread.

Also as you can probably see from the chapter above, I don`t consider the idea of linking supply costs to PP a very big problem, as it would only seem natural to do so. Then there is of course the question of, why should the supplies cost anything at all? One good reason might be that this way wars would be more expensive to the empires as they would have to pay the ship maintenance costs, supply costs and also try to build more ships to replace those that have been lost in the battles. (This is of course assuming that the maintenance costs stay always at the same level, since if they vary between peace and war times then they already, in a way, include the supply costs.) And if wars are more expensive, it might discourage players and maybe even the AI to declare and wage wars on multiple fronts, which could lower the amount of wars during games.

Another good reason might be that as we think of Earth for example it can and already has produced wast amounts of supplies to big military machines. So it could possibly be quite believable that a large space empire that controls multiple planets wouldn`t have to use too many of its PPs to produce the supplies needed by maybe a couple of hundred ships. Now this would of course mean that there wouldn`t be any major changes in your economy, since supply costs would be at empire level quite small. However they should of course be big enough to have some sort of an impact on your empire during war times, and perhaps if only a single planet or a star system would be forced to supply major fleets, the supply costs might take a significant portion of their PP, and by so doing limit or prevent any other building projects in these systems.

Of course if some sort of a supply cost system would be implemented it could cause problems like: should the supply costs be automatically charged from your empire`s/system`s PP or should there be some sort of a menu where you could adjust the amount of PPs going to fleet supplies, so you could reduce the amount of supplies your fleet receives, but at the same time free PP for other tasks?

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Geoff the Medio
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#111 Post by Geoff the Medio »

In case anyone missed it, see my post above. If I don't get any good reasons or explanations to do otherwise, I'll make some decisions myself.
MikkoM wrote:...why should the supplies cost anything at all? One good reason might be that this way wars would be more expensive...
If we need to make wars more expensive, there are various ways to do it, which may or may not be supplies related. We can pick one when the time comes, but details discussions of motivation for doing so are premature for now.

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#112 Post by marhawkman »

eleazar wrote:
marhawkman wrote:
utilae wrote:Sounds like micromanagement to me.
Not if the game manages it for you.

I think I could write a pseudo AI that'd do a decent job without you needing to worry about any micro.
Any game mechanics that are so complex that most players would want to avoid and have an AI manage for them will be rejected. Really, you've been around this project long enough to know that.

A major founding principle of this project is to avoid the Moo3 situation, in which various AIs play much of the game for you. If it's not fun enough for the player to care about it, why put it in the game?
that's Just it.... The AI isn't really Managing it. It's like how you have only so much resources to go around in your empire, you don't choose what gets what. The reason for an "AI" (really about 12 lines of code) is so the player doesn't need to pay any attention at all.

[Edited by Geoff the Medio to turn on BBCode]

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Re: Re:

#113 Post by Geoff the Medio »

marhawkman wrote:The AI isn't really Managing it. It's like how you have only so much resources to go around in your empire, you don't choose what gets what.
We will not use an AI that automatically orders ships back to resupply points for the player. Such a system would be playing the game for the player, and is not analagous to algorithmically distributing food to planets or PP to projects on a queue.

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#114 Post by marhawkman »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
marhawkman wrote:The AI isn't really Managing it. It's like how you have only so much resources to go around in your empire, you don't choose what gets what.
We will not use an AI that automatically orders ships back to resupply points for the player. Such a system would be playing the game for the player, and is not analagous to algorithmically distributing food to planets or PP to projects on a queue.
that's just it. the "ai" would be for no purpose other than distributing fuel/ammo so that all of your ships get some. thus avoiding annoying issues like not having enough fuel and the game automatically giving it to the ship that doesn't need it.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#115 Post by Geoff the Medio »

AI cannot know which ships a player will want supplied or fueled before others. So no.

[Edited by Geoff]

If we're going to limit production of supplies or fuel, we can limit the amount a source can send to each ship, not the total amount the source can produce. That is, each planet would have some limit on the number of supplies it can send to each ship.

The limit would likely depend on the planet's development level, so highly developed planets can send lots, and new, poorly developed planets can send little.

Each turn, all planets would attempt to send supplies to each ship. The ship would receive the most supplies that any one planet can send (multiple planets don't add up - just the best one sends supplies).

A planet would have no limit on how many supplies in total it can send, other than the max it can send to every ship.

With this system, there would be no need to weigh options and optimize distribution to figure out which planet should send supplies to which ship.

Can anyone find any problems with this distribution method?

It would mean that a single well-developed planet could supply an arbitrarily large fleet over it, though presumably we'd have this problem anyway with a very high limited total supply output for highly developed planets.

This does assume that rate of supply can vary (ie. not just just on = full instant supply, off = none), but there hasn't been any reply to my above questions about this, so I'm going to assume there aren't any justified objections.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#116 Post by marhawkman »

:???: I thought I did reply.....

I don't really have objections. Although I guess the amount of resupply will be a percentage of the ship's fuel.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#117 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I've updated the relevant section of the v0.4 Design Pad.

For the initial implementation, I think it's easiest to go with instant refueling whenever in range. I've put in some notes about how limited-rate resupply would work, however, and we'll add that functionality later if necessary for balance or basic gameplay reasons.

Any further comments?

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Re: Ships: Supply

#118 Post by loganis »

Hello all. The original homeworld had a good system.

You started out with a limited fuel supply on some ship types.
But you could research beyond that first improving range, then
no longer needing to refuel.

research could be a solution.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#119 Post by Geoff the Medio »

loganis wrote:You started out with a limited fuel supply on some ship types.
But you could research beyond that first improving range, then
no longer needing to refuel.
Thanks for commenting, however this thread isn't (or wasn't) about how ship range could change over the course of a game. (It's assumed that improved tech levels will have some influence on the range of ships, perhaps directly or perhaps through the details of the designs that improved tech allows, but this is point is fairly insignificant in the discussion.) Rather, the thread is about what it means practically to have fuel and/or a range limit on a ship, and other details how how supplies affect the use of ships and how supplies get to ships that need them.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#120 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I've updated the relevant section of the v0.4 Design Pad.

For the initial implementation, I think it's easiest to go with instant refueling whenever in range. I've put in some notes about how limited-rate resupply would work, however, and we'll add that functionality later if necessary for balance or basic gameplay reasons.

Any further comments?
I have concerns, but need a chunk of time to reread and ponder.

Also i still think we would be on better ground to settle this topic in concert with or after Planetary Redistribution. Even if the mechanisms aren't interrelated, they need to make sense together. It would be unintuitive if (for instance) planetary resupply was much less restrained than ship resupply. i.e. "those enemy ships block ammo from my military fleet, but can't hinder the entire civilian production of several large planets!"

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