Ships: Supply

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Supply

#136 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Regarding the meter values point above, perhaps my initial suggestion of 0, 1, 2, 3 meter values being the number of starlane jumps a source can supply is not a good plan. These numbers are rather small in comparison to most other meters, so will look awkward next to any other meter values. As well, if we want to have mostly integer meter bonuses, then there's no room for bonuses that give less than a full lane jump bonus.

If we instead use a system along the lines of...
< 5 = no supply
> 5, < 10 = supply at system
> 10, < 15 = supply on system away
> 15, < 20 = supply two systems away
etc.

or perhaps
< 10 = no supply
> 10, < 20 = supply at system
> 20, < 30 = supply on system away
> 30, < 40 = supply two systems away
etc.

Then meter values will be more reasonable.

The former leaves a bit more room within a 100 meter max range to have longer supply lines, which might be desirable. It also removes any weirdness about the number of lane jumps away not being equal to the multiple of 10 that might be notable with the latter (multiples of 5 aren't don't seem unusual when their 10's digit doesn't line up with the number of jumps).
Bigjoe5 wrote:Maximum % of resources to put towards ship supplies.
Which planets will contribute and which will not. (A simple toggle.)
Which ships to give priority to in case of a supply shortage. (Again, a simple toggle. The AI will give supplies to the ships closest to enemy territory as a secondary priority after the player determined top priority ships have been supplied.)
Setting a % of resources to send to supplies is a rather awkward mechanism. There's no clear connection between whether a single ship that needs supplies and the empire-wide % value.

Having to prioritize ships to get supply or toggle which planets produce supply are definitely not small decisions... They would require constant attention and micromangement from the player.

Apologies if you have, but I don't see any indication that you've reviewed the preceeding discussion or the contents of the design document. Are you replying to the initial thread post, or something discussed later, or just expressing musings on the subject? Your contributions would be more useful if you replied with more context.

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loonycyborg
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Re: Ships: Supply

#137 Post by loonycyborg »

Geoff the Medio in 0.4 Design Pad wrote: Each supply source will have a maximum amount of supplies it can give to each ship it has a route to supply. A source can supply any number of ships, but can only provide each individual ship with a limited number of supplies each turn.
IMHO total number of ships being supplied should be a factor somehow. Harassing supply lines should work much better against large armadas than against single ship fleets.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Supply

#138 Post by Geoff the Medio »

loonycyborg wrote:...number of ships being supplied should be a factor somehow.
If you can think of a way that doesn't involve keeping track of total amount of supplies being sent or produced, then maybe... Otherwise we'll have to prioritize distribution, which is too complicated.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#139 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Setting a % of resources to send to supplies is a rather awkward mechanism. There's no clear connection between whether a single ship that needs supplies and the empire-wide % value.
I can't tell what you're saying due to lack of proper English. Is it the "whether" or the "that" that should be left out? I suppose I have no choice but to answer both. Being able to tell whether or not a single ship needs supplies shouldn't have anything to do with this percentage meter. If a player is paying attention to his ships, he should know whether or not most of them are being resupplied and adjust the meter accordingly.

A player should notice a difference between the settings on this meter if it is too low to restock all his ships. If his missile ships suddenly have no missiles when he checks the data on them, he knows it's time to up the meter. This is the connection. It's not that hard for the average player to see the connection.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Having to prioritize ships to get supply or toggle which planets produce supply are definitely not small decisions... They would require constant attention and micromangement from the player.
OK, no offense, but I'm really starting to doubt if you're even thinking this through at all. Of course it's possible that you have thought about this even more than I and my opinions are incorrect, but anyway, this is how I see it: The ships that you want to prioritize aren't really going to change drastically through the course of the game. You'll just want your massive warships to stay stocked, so you push a button and they get stocked first. Since the AI will give supplies to the ships that are closest to enemy territory after the ones that are prioritized, most players won't even bother with this function at all.

Small=/=unimportant. Like ships, the large, well-rounded colonies are the ones that you will have devoted to making supplies and other undeveloped or specialized colonies would be focusing on what they're focusing on and not building supplies. Like ships, the colonies that you want to make supplies and the colonies that you don't want to make supplies aren't likely to change drastically during the course of the game. One decision/colony for pretty much the the entire game=/= to micromanagement.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Apologies if you have, but I don't see any indication that you've reviewed the preceeding discussion or the contents of the design document. Are you replying to the initial thread post, or something discussed later, or just expressing musings on the subject? Your contributions would be more useful if you replied with more context.
Basically, I am throwing my ideas into the thread in the hopes that they will be considered seriously. I chose not to quote anyone else in the thread because countering someone else's idea isn't really necessary to submit my own. I have, in fact, gone through this thread and the design document.
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loonycyborg
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Re: Ships: Supply

#140 Post by loonycyborg »

Geoff the Medio wrote:a way that doesn't involve keeping track of total amount of supplies being sent or produced
Supply meter should get penalties depending on number and supply requirements of the ships supplied.
Just to clarify: I meant total number of ships in the system being supplied, not in entire empire.
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spottboy
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Re: Ships: Supply

#141 Post by spottboy »

Fuel ships are like any other merchants. If a starlane is controlled by the player, fuel ships can be assumed to be available there. Thus, you can move anywhere within you empire so long as you control the star lanes.

If another player's ship (that you aren't allied with, but this comes later) is in that star lane, the star lane is contested. Trade is assumed to have ceased across that star lane, and the lane is treated as being outside your empire. Each ship has a limit of how far they can move outside your empire, but they can always return to your own space. So if an early scout can explore up to three star lanes away from a colonized planet, it can return those three starlanes. Ships that attempt to go beyond this limit can either 1) be blocked by the game, 2) be able to go up to twice as far, but then get stuck, or 3) disappear immediately due to the loss of communication with their home planet. Lost ships would be controlled by the computer as either a wreck (waiting to be found, perhaps?), a pirate (waiting to find you, perhaps?), or if they showed up in enemy territory they could be captured, granting a one-time bonus to research (a small one) or the possession of the ship. Wrecks could also provide a bonus depending on how long they were out there or be put back into service by the finding party.

Honestly, I know nothing about how hard this idea would be to code and balance, but this is a forum for ideas, right?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Supply

#142 Post by Geoff the Medio »

loonycyborg wrote:Supply meter should get penalties depending on number and supply requirements of the ships supplied.
Just to clarify: I meant total number of ships in the system being supplied, not in entire empire.
A supply meter is a property of the source of supplies, not what is being supplied. It doesn't make sense to adjust this meter depending on how grouped up ships are in various other systems that are within supplyable range...

Or, if you mean just an "effective supply meter" adjustment for the single source-sink pair based on number of other ships in the same sink system, as long as this doesn't interact with what happens in any other system, it could be done...

But, is it a good idea? It will make determining how much supply a fleet can get a lot more complicated for players.

What's the suggested upside? You say you want to make it harder to supply / easier to block supply to big concentrated fleets than spread out ones... But why would this be better?

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Re: Ships: Supply

#143 Post by loonycyborg »

Geoff the Medio wrote: you mean just an "effective supply meter" adjustment for the single source-sink pair based on number of other ships in the same sink system?
Correct.
make it harder to supply / easier to block supply to big concentrated fleets than spread out ones... But why would this be better?
Big fleets have obvious combat advantage, yet are affected by supply shortage to exact same degree as small fleets. Supply penalties can counterbalance big fleets' advantage in combat thus making the tactic of using small fleets distributed among many systems viable. Also, supply penalties can give small, remote empires a fighting chance against large, powerful empires since the latter won't be able to send an overwhelming fleet. I want supply line disruption to be devastating for large fleet, like in battle of Stalingrad.
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marhawkman
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Re: Ships: Supply

#144 Post by marhawkman »

This does seem interesting. It seems like a good way to make fleet deployment more strategical.

It does however seem to make it easy to force a stale mate.
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eleazar
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Re: Ships: Supply

#145 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Regarding the meter values point above, perhaps my initial suggestion of 0, 1, 2, 3 meter values being the number of starlane jumps a source can supply is not a good plan. These numbers are rather small in comparison to most other meters, so will look awkward next to any other meter values. As well, if we want to have mostly integer meter bonuses, then there's no room for bonuses that give less than a full lane jump bonus.
I'd stick with your first idea.
I consider meter values that are immediately understandable more desirable than making the meter "match" other meters or allowing whole integer&partial-jump bonuses. I don't care much how the computer keeps track, but the player should never have to go through the pointless translations of "supply meter:15" = "supply up to 1 jump away." "15" means nothing to him in this context.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#146 Post by marhawkman »

to remedy this problem you could draw the meter to have several sections and/or have the meter change colors to indicate it's status.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Supply

#147 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:I consider meter values that are immediately understandable more desirable than making the meter "match" other meters or allowing whole integer&partial-jump bonuses. I don't care much how the computer keeps track, but the player should never have to go through the pointless translations of "supply meter:15" = "supply up to 1 jump away." "15" means nothing to him in this context.
What about the steps of 10 option then?

If we want to have a supply-at-system before supplying one system away state, then we'll need to offset meter values from steps away regardless of the scaling. For example, if we have:

meter = 0 -> no supply
meter = 1 -> supply at system
meter = 2 -> supply one system away
etc.

Then the numbers don't match the jumps away. If we multiply all those numbers by 10, we'd have:

meter = 0 -> no supply
meter = 10 -> supply at system
meter = 20 -> supply one system away
etc.

Is that any worse?
Bigjoe5 wrote:Basically, I am throwing my ideas into the thread in the hopes that they will be considered seriously. I chose not to quote anyone else in the thread because countering someone else's idea isn't really necessary to submit my own. I have, in fact, gone through this thread and the design document.
You don't need to "counter" someone else's idea to give your suggestion some context. From your posts, I can't figure out what overall plan you're suggesting or how it would fit with other suggestions or what other suggestions it would replace.

That said, even if I knew what you were proposing overall, I'd still need to know why you think your suggestions are better than other ones. This isn't a brainstorming thread to just post any idea that comes to you; it's a design thread where we're trying to decide what option to use. That means we need to have reasons use idea and context about how their intended to be used. (spottboy should take note of this as well...)

So unless you can explain why your proposal is better than the recently-discussed system, it's not useful to propose it in this thread.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#148 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I consider meter values that are immediately understandable more desirable than making the meter "match" other meters or allowing whole integer&partial-jump bonuses. I don't care much how the computer keeps track, but the player should never have to go through the pointless translations of "supply meter:15" = "supply up to 1 jump away." "15" means nothing to him in this context.
What about the steps of 10 option then?

If we want to have a supply-at-system before supplying one system away state, then we'll need to offset meter values from steps away regardless of the scaling. For example, if we have:

meter = 0 -> no supply
meter = 1 -> supply at system
meter = 2 -> supply one system away
etc.

Then the numbers don't match the jumps away. If we multiply all those numbers by 10, we'd have:

meter = 0 -> no supply
meter = 10 -> supply at system
meter = 20 -> supply one system away
etc.

Is that any worse?
OK, it doesn't measure jumps, but i think think it's simpler with each increase of "1" adding a range of "1" starlane jump. I don't know exactly how to phrase it best. Something like "...indicates the number of system-jumps distant that can be supplied, with counting starting at the supplying system." That's phrased awkwardly, but i think the idea that basic idea that "counting starts at the supplying system" is still easier for the player to deal than using the same counting with an additional "0" on the end.

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Re: Ships: Supply

#149 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Geoff the Medio wrote: You don't need to "counter" someone else's idea to give your suggestion some context. From your posts, I can't figure out what overall plan you're suggesting or how it would fit with other suggestions or what other suggestions it would replace.
The context is the topic. Obviously my ideas have to do with Ships: Supply. The overall plan I'm suggesting is in my post. I admit that I didn't really state much of a reason to use my ideas, but that too should be self-explanatory: it's not complicated enough to promote micromanagement, but not simple enough to be unrealistic. It's easy for the player to control and understand, which is more or less the goal of this project.
Geoff the Medio wrote:That said, even if I knew what you were proposing overall, I'd still need to know why you think your suggestions are better than other ones. This isn't a brainstorming thread to just post any idea that comes to you; it's a design thread where we're trying to decide what option to use. That means we need to have reasons use idea and context about how their intended to be used. (spottboy should take note of this as well...)

So unless you can explain why your proposal is better than the recently-discussed system, it's not useful to propose it in this thread.
So now you're saying that I do, in fact, need to counter someone else's idea to submit my own?

I'll see if I can make my post a little bit more contextual next time, but what's really not useful in a design thread is people simply saying that other people's posts aren't useful and not giving a reason why their ideas aren't good.
Last edited by Bigjoe5 on Sat Sep 01, 2007 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Supply

#150 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Bigjoe5 wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:From your posts, I can't figure out what overall plan you're suggesting or how it would fit with other suggestions or what other suggestions it would replace.
The context is the topic.
"The topic" is insufficient. The context that is missing relates to the recent discussion in the thread. Your first post starts out about how supply ships shouldn't be player controlled, but nobody was talking about there being discerete player-controlled supply ships, so it's not clear what the point of the comment was... If you mentioned something about the recent discussion and said you agreed with it because it doesn't involve the sort player control you don't like, then that'd be fine. Or you could quoute something from the original post in that started the thread so it's clear you're not referring to any of the recent discussion.
All planets will put forward an equal % of their resources to supplying that fleet.
It's not clear what this means exactly, but there have been suggestions to have supply cost production points or money, but these have been argued against previously in the thread. Does your system not have the problems that were discussed earlier?
A special building can be built that increases the amount of supplies that come from that planet, thus lowering the % of resources used by all colonies to supply ships.
Resources are (basically) pooled empire-wide, so what is the use of localizing the cost of supplies to a planet that would have put its resources into a shared pool anyway?
Ships can only be supplied if they are within a certain number of star lanes from the nearest colony.
This is an undeveloped restatement of an aspect of the system that's been discussed in detail for the preceeding few pages of this thread. Are you agreeing with that aspect, or restating it as a novel idea? Either way, more useful would be comments or refinement suggestions for the proposed details of how that would work.

If you like certain aspects of where the current discussion is going, but not others, then it would be useful to state this explicitly, so others can tell what you're agreeing with and what you're suggesting be done instead.

If this were page 1 of this thread, then your suggestions in their current form would have been more useful. But on page 9 or 10, you've got to acknowledge what's already been said, particularly if you're repeating already-discussed suggestions (whether they've been agreed with or criticized) or suggesting a general idea that's currently being discussed in detail.

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