Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

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Vezzra
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#46 Post by Vezzra »

Ophiuchus wrote: Tue Jul 14, 2020 3:49 pmAnd you can kill 1000 ships with a single mass driver.
You could in theory kill 1000 heavily armored Titans with a single mass driver, as long as those Titans are unarmed. Sorry, no, that doesn't sound right, not at all.

Magnate
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#47 Post by Magnate »

Oooh have we increased hull costs? What's the default now?

I like the idea of unarmed ships being ignored in bout 1. That sounds difficult to test without recompiling though :-(

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Oberlus
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#48 Post by Oberlus »

Magnate wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 7:40 am Oooh have we increased hull costs?
No, default costs and their rations are the same for now.

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EricF
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#49 Post by EricF »

Vezzra wrote: Tue Jul 14, 2020 8:23 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue Jul 14, 2020 3:49 pmAnd you can kill 1000 ships with a single mass driver.
You could in theory kill 1000 heavily armored Titans with a single mass driver, as long as those Titans are unarmed. Sorry, no, that doesn't sound right, not at all.
It really wouldn't matter what happened to them if unarmed ships never participated in combat because nobody would build them because they would have no use. So destroy them, have them all retreat whatever. (Unless you are going to introduce Ramming lol)
And yes it is conceivable that a single mass driver armed ship could defeat 1000 unarmed Titans. It would just be a matter of time.

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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#50 Post by Ophiuchus »

Magnate wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 7:40 am I like the idea of unarmed ships being ignored in bout 1. That sounds difficult to test without recompiling though :-(
No, ignoring unarmed ships in bout 1 is completely possible using FOCS. No need to recompile. But when considering stealth or fighters - ignoring unarmed ships in the first bout a vessel attacks is much harder.

And both variants are hard to communicate.
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LienRag
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#51 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 4:44 am
Magnate wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 7:40 am I like the idea of unarmed ships being ignored in bout 1. That sounds difficult to test without recompiling though :-(
No, ignoring unarmed ships in bout 1 is completely possible using FOCS. No need to recompile. But when considering stealth or fighters - ignoring unarmed ships in the first bout a vessel attacks is much harder.

And both variants are hard to communicate.
Ignoring unarmed ships if there are armed ships in bout 1 could be a compromise I guess ?
Is it hard to implement ?

Completely ignoring unarmed ship is not necessarily a good thing, being able to sacrifice a fleet to wreak havoc in the enemy troops/colony ships is a valid option that should stay.

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EricF
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#52 Post by EricF »

The simplest solution to the Chaff strategy is just to destroy all unarmed ships at the end of combat.
However if you want to keep the Chaff strategy it should be like every other mechanism in the game.
There should be a way to defeat it. You could have a Decoy Module that you put in a ship that
makes it appear to be a warship. It could be seen through with the proper scanning level.

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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#53 Post by Ophiuchus »

EricF wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:10 am The simplest solution to the Chaff strategy is just to destroy all unarmed ships at the end of combat.
However if you want to keep the Chaff strategy it should be like every other mechanism in the game.
There should be a way to defeat it. You could have a Decoy Module that you put in a ship that
makes it appear to be a warship. It could be seen through with the proper scanning level.
That sounds contradictory. You remove the unarmed chaff strategy (mass driver chaff still possible) and than add a specialized part in order to make it possible again (uses a slot, must be way cheaper than mass driver, maybe needs some research investment). Maybe we should really add the battle ram part (or thermal lance or whatever) for marking a ship as military if unarmed chaff is so cognitively difficult to accept (1-damage weapon, max-once-per-ship, internal part, 3PP?; with 4bout ranges make it close-range and 3 damage). Technically both make chaff a bit more expensive and less hard to swallow.

I like the stealth/detection part of your suggested decoy part though. Maybe we could introduce different kinds of enabling chaff as a way forward (mini-weapon, decoy-weapon, ...??your suggestions??). The weapon decoy ship part could show as "mass driver" to the enemy until found out (and have a "part-stealth" rating of one level better than your ship stealth parts). If we also hide current max/structure stronger than part type the decoy part could instead provide some structure. Would that be interesting?

Whatever the basics are - Mass Driver chaff (or Flak or Interceptor chaff) is valid as soon as a ship hull with a 20-PP part has a good armour/cost ratio (i.e. in cheap ships with many external slots) - i am sure this works on plasma level, probably even from the start.
Last edited by Ophiuchus on Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#54 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:40 am Ignoring unarmed ships if there are armed ships in bout 1 could be a compromise I guess ?
Is it hard to implement ?
No, it is easy. There is a free value ref "CombatBout" you can use in the combatTarget conditions of the weapon parts.
So you can query like

Code: Select all

And [
   CombatBout > 1
   <<put-normal-targeting-conditions-here>> 
]
And for fighters maybe CombatBout > 2

You wanna try?
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Look, ma... four combat bouts!

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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#55 Post by Magnate »

I do want to try this, when I eventually get my MP server running. Much as I like the discussion about tweaking the cost of parts or doing interesting new things with stealth to make chaff not impossible but not ubiquitous, I really like the simplicity of simply ignoring unarmed ships in bout 1. It wouldn't stop chaff completely, but it would significantly reduce its value, especially for defending planets.

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Vezzra
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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#56 Post by Vezzra »

EricF wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 4:02 amIt really wouldn't matter what happened to them if unarmed ships never participated in combat because nobody would build them because they would have no use.
I don't understand what you mean - of course unarmed ships are useful, and people build them. They might have no use in combat, but that doesn't mean they can't end up on a battlefield, and should have a chance to retreat if their side is defeated but the enemy hasn't enough firepower to shoot them all down quickly enough.
So destroy them, have them all retreat whatever.
FO's combat system currently has no retreat mechanic for defeated forces, this would have to be implemented first. It's something I think is worth considering, e.g. like Stellaris does.
And yes it is conceivable that a single mass driver armed ship could defeat 1000 unarmed Titans. It would just be a matter of time.
So much time that it's actually not conceivable. That's more or less on the same level as claiming it's conceivable that one could level a mountain using nothing but a shovel - it's only a matter of time. :roll:

If the single mass driver had to shoot down the 1000 Titans in actual combat, it wouldn't be able to do more than a few scratches to one of them before the player owning those Titans can withdraw them (actually, it would take thousands of turns to accomplish that). I see absolutely no reason to deny the owner of those Titans the chance to withdraw their ships to save them from destruction.

After all, that's the reason why we only have a limited number of combat bouts per game turn, so larger scale battles can last several turns, allowing players to react to the way the battle goes - bring in reinforcements, or, like in this case, trying to withdraw ships to cut their losses.

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Re: Freeorion is being ruined for me and there is a simple fix

#57 Post by Oberlus »

Simplest way to tackle chaff OP issue is making armor less inexpensive compared to weapons, so that one can't build 50 structure in chaff ships for the cost of a 15 damage-per-bout ship.

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