Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

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Dilvish
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#91 Post by Dilvish »

marcOSX wrote:1/ Is it as intended that my scattered asteroids hulls equipped with multispectral shields are immune to damage in outer space? Say I have a full ennemy fleet (chato) in one outer space nod (no star). I run into them with a single ship (scattered asteroids + multispectral). Then I block them, and turn after turn I hit them and they cannot hit me.
Multispectral shield should only give it's stealth boost with particular stars:

Code: Select all

activation = Star type = [Red Orange Yellow White Blue]
and the scattered asteroid hull should only give its stealth boost if asteroids are present

Code: Select all

            activation = ContainedBy And [
                System 
                Contains Planet type = Asteroids
            ]
So I don't think that stealth is the issue there (and even if stealth was at play you would only get one free attack per turn, the the enemy would counterattack the other 2 rounds per turn). I think that the issue is simply that your enemy didn't have strong enough weapons to penetrate the multispectral shield rating of 15, which is not at all dependent on star type.
2/Where can I find detailed information about what does the multispectral shield ? The tooltip and pedia are nice, but what I infer from them is that multispectral does not work in neutron star systems. Not a word about "no stars" places. I looked the game wiki, but again did not find the information. Is it the correct wiki? Is the information somewhere in outer cyberspace?
The pedia description does not explicitly mention "no star" systems because it does not need to; it says (at least in English) that the stealth effect only works when in stars [of certain types]. If/when you want to review all the exact details of a part or hull, there are two things you can do: (1) turn on "autogenerate effect descriptions" in Options->UI towards the bottom, this will give a description for all effects of the hull/part/building regardless of what is covered in the primary pedia description, and (2) look in the content script files themselves, default/ship_parts.txt and default/ship_hulls.txt
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marcOSX
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#92 Post by marcOSX »

Dilvish wrote: So I don't think that stealth is the issue there (and even if stealth was at play you would only get one free attack per turn, the the enemy would counterattack the other 2 rounds per turn). I think that the issue is simply that your enemy didn't have strong enough weapons to penetrate the multispectral shield rating of 15, which is not at all dependent on star type.
I am talking right now of a fleet with more than 5 warships with an offense over 50. With other shields, it seems that damage = offense - shield. What I see right now is that those ships do absolutely no damage to my ship. It is indicated (in outer space) that my ship has 20 shield. Each enemy ship should do to me at least 30 damage per attack, with 3 attacks per round, am I right? And my ship is as new at the end of the round. So it's look like a bug. I precise this is only happenning without stars present. When there is a star I see a boost but my ship receive damage.
Dilvish wrote: If/when you want to review all the exact details of a part or hull, there are two things you can do: (1) turn on "autogenerate effect descriptions" in Options->UI towards the bottom, this will give a description for all effects of the hull/part/building regardless of what is covered in the primary pedia description, and (2) look in the content script files themselves, default/ship_parts.txt and default/ship_hulls.txt
Thank you very much I did not know that option. Take a look back. I edited my post with more comments ;-) While the turn is calculated on my 8 yers old faithful macbook.

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Dilvish
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#93 Post by Dilvish »

marcOSX wrote:Take a look back. I edited my post with more comments
unless you are making a small clearly marked addition that's really just addressed to future readers, as opposed to people who have already responded to the post, editing an old post is not a great approach -- you want me to re-read it and sort out what you said before from whatever new thing you say?
Dilvish wrote: So I don't think that stealth is the issue there (and even if stealth was at play you would only get one free attack per turn, the the enemy would counterattack the other 2 rounds per turn). I think that the issue is simply that your enemy didn't have strong enough weapons to penetrate the multispectral shield rating of 15, which is not at all dependent on star type.
I am talking right now of a fleet with more than 5 warships with an offense over 50.
Total damage or per-shot damage? It is the latter than matters. If you want further comment please post screenshots showing the relevant information.
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MatGB
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#94 Post by MatGB »

I had never noticed the auto-generated effects option, that might be interesting for testing purposes. But I'm not sure effectgroup 2 for the MSS is going to be clear for anyone, let alone a relatively new player ;-) I dislike the wording in the English pedia for the MSS effect, it's a bit clunky, I'll try to make it a bit clearer at some point soon.

For shields, the effect is per weapon fired, so if an enemy ship has weapon strength 15 and you have multi-spectral shields, they'll all do 0 damage. That's working as currently intended, but I'm not happy with the shield strength balance, they'll likely all be going down a bit (with a price reduction to match) at some point soon(ish).

(agree also about editing posts, on a PHPbb setup, it basically doesn't get seen by anyone that's looked already, it's virtually always better for a new post unless it's almost immediately after you posted, I'll go through it though because I'm fresh to the thread).
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MatGB
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#95 Post by MatGB »

marcOSX wrote: 3/ I also have a question about the transformer. It seems it is not working on gas giants, tho I was able to build one there... May I suggest an update to the tooltip? Again in which wiki could I find details about this great building? So far I only use it really as a stargade quicker to build.
All the effects that a Transformer can mimic require a focus setting, which requires a population, so they can't be used if built on gas giants. I keep meaning to change them to require a population in order to be built, but I tend to build them alongside a colony building so I'm not sure that's the best approach now, improved information is always good though, "can only be used on populated worlds" should be enough, probably worht excluding gas giants, we're unlikely to introduce gas giant dwellers anytime soon (balance).
4/Trying to use the krill spawner (those pink guys let me a ruin undefended, second I have seen so far. Thanks). Not easy matter to infiltrate enemy empire deep enough to disrupt him and not my invading force... The idea is fun definitely !
Geoff introduced it as a proof-of-concept part, definitely fun, of virtually no strategic use. I can imagine a turtling player finding it more useful though, sending out disruption fleets instead of invasion fleets.
5/Which makes me think about something: Do we have a table somewhere with the different hulls and their effects (most notably sealth, speed, shields as I noted some boost shields). As I understand this is a changing matter maybe I can hack a php script to dive in the latest python script and present the information for players...
No full summary exists, I had the start of one here on GoogleDocs but I'm not sure it's up to date (I used it when I was rebalancing all the hull costs last year, the colours are things I either reduced or increased). If someone were to make one, especially if it dynamically updated from the repo text file, that'd be pretty cool (and useful).
6/ Is it normal at turn 296 that I had no notice of the experimentors? Galaxy is 2000 systems, shape unknown yet but seems kind of eliptical, with 16 empires. There should not be any problem of space for those guys to fit. Maybe the spawned just too far for me to get notice? In some earlier games it seems to me that the AI is dealing quite badly with those guys and let their monsters hack their planets...
Their appearance turn is decided partially by galaxy size

Code: Select all

EXPERIMENTOR_SPAWN_START_TURN
''' ( [[EXPERIMENTOR_SPAWN_CALC_A]] * ((Max(1, 3 - GalaxyPlanetDensity))^0.5) * ((Max(1, GalaxySize / 200))^0.4))'''
So for a 2000 star galaxy you're looking at a fairly late start, I've never played a game that big (my laptop would fall over) so I can't even guess what it would be.
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Dilvish
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#96 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote:but I'm not happy with the shield strength balance, they'll likely all be going down a bit (with a price reduction to match) at some point soon(ish).
I am also inclined to think that the current Bad/Good/Great Weapons should be softened a bit-- it's a bit too harsh on Gysache and I don't think it's a good dynamic that there is such a high premium for Mu-ursh/Eaxaw. I would think that maybe something more like Good/Bad weapons being +/- 1 point per tier, and Great weapons being +2 points per tier, is probably worth trying out.
Geoff introduced it as a proof-of-concept part, definitely fun, of virtually no strategic use. I can imagine a turtling player finding it more useful though, sending out disruption fleets instead of invasion fleets.
Perhaps we should let the part give a giant boost to stealth if it is an unarmed ship; I think that would make it actually worthwhile and fun.
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marcOSX
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#97 Post by marcOSX »

Dilvish wrote:Perhaps we should let the part give a giant boost to stealth if it is an unarmed ship; I think that would make it actually worthwhile and fun.
I love this idea!

About Multispectral shielding exploit, likely bug

Sorry not to have been clear enough in my previous post.

Turn A:

Location : deep space (no star)
Fleet 1 : an enemy fleet with many ships doing EACH over 50 damage
Fleet 2 : My scattered asteroids ship with multi spectral shielding (indicating 20 shields)

Turn A+1
Fleet 1 received damage from my ship
Fleet 2 did not receive any damage

I will try to post a screenshot but I don't have this situation right now (I will have it soon). I repeat I had the same situation where the AI had the MS shielding in a previous game, again in a deep space node. I was unable to damage their ships even with > 100 damage per ship.

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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#98 Post by MatGB »

Dilvish wrote:
MatGB wrote:but I'm not happy with the shield strength balance, they'll likely all be going down a bit (with a price reduction to match) at some point soon(ish).
I am also inclined to think that the current Bad/Good/Great Weapons should be softened a bit-- it's a bit too harsh on Gysache and I don't think it's a good dynamic that there is such a high premium for Mu-ursh/Eaxaw. I would think that maybe something more like Good/Bad weapons being +/- 1 point per tier, and Great weapons being +2 points per tier, is probably worth trying out.
Heh, I'm glad you proposed this, saves me doing it. What I'm thinking is Good/Bad becomes a bonus per tier equivalent to one refinement level, so it's +/-1 for Mass Drivers, +/-2 for lasers, etc. Might need a cap, not sure what to do with Great or Ultimate.

I also want to make the shield strength start at tier 1 weapons, so Defence Grid stops Mass Driver 1 but 2+ gets through, Deflector Shield stops laser1 but Laser2+ gets partially through, etc. Not sure how Multi Spectral fits into that, probably as it is now somewhere between Plasma and Black but not 15.
Geoff introduced it as a proof-of-concept part, definitely fun, of virtually no strategic use. I can imagine a turtling player finding it more useful though, sending out disruption fleets instead of invasion fleets.
Perhaps we should let the part give a giant boost to stealth if it is an unarmed ship; I think that would make it actually worthwhile and fun.
Ooh, good plan.
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Dilvish
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#99 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote:What I'm thinking is Good/Bad becomes a bonus per tier equivalent to one refinement level, so it's +/-1 for Mass Drivers, +/-2 for lasers, etc. Might need a cap,
Ya, that sounds good for Good/Bad. I don't think a cap is necessary for those, that's still just +/- 4 for Death Rays, not nearly as much difference as now.
not sure what to do with Great or Ultimate.
One reasonable possibility would be if, like now, Great gave twice the bonus as Good, and perhaps letting Ultimate give 3 times the bonus of Good. But Great maybe doesn't need to be that high -- double Good would be at (+2 / +4 / +6 / +8), and perhaps simply having Great being Good +1 or Good +2 would be enough, so (+2 / +3 / +4 / +5) or (+3 / +4 / +5 / +6)
I also want to make the shield strength start at tier 1 weapons, so Defence Grid stops Mass Driver 1 but 2+ gets through, Deflector Shield stops laser1 but Laser2+ gets partially through, etc.
Seems like a pretty decent idea to try (with some cost adjustments I presume)-- so the current 4/7/12/20 main shield line would go to 3/5/9/15, and Multispec could go from the current 15 to somewhere in the 10-12 range. I think I would prefer to see it at 10, so that regular Laser 4 could at least chip away at it, it already gives a free first shot from the stealth bonus (until the late game at least).
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#100 Post by marcOSX »

Helllo,

I finally got the opportunity to show you with a simple case what I think is a bug. Here are two snapshots at one turn difference. After a full turn of combat in DEEP SPACE my ship equipped with MS shield had not suffered any damage, while the enemy had. His attack should have damaged my ship but no.

This kind of things did happened a lot, sometimes with a full fleet with even stronger ships, that I could stop and handle with one ship alone.

NOTES:

-This only happens in DEEP SPACE. Same encounter on a normal system would result in damage to both fleet.
-This only happens with ships equipped with multispectral shield. Any other shield does not do the trick.
-In this case it my fleet is the one equipped with MS shield and "immune". I had cases where the AI was the immune one in deep space
-I had also the case of both me and AI meeting in deep space with MS shields-equipped ships. In this case none receive damage, but enemy ships are blocked while I can escape combat.
-At that moment, even if no star is in the system, the MS shielded ships are indicating 20 shield, but in reality are just immune.
Attachments
I go for an attack to the deep space node east.
I go for an attack to the deep space node east.
Turn301.jpg (118.77 KiB) Viewed 860 times
One turn later: My ship did not receive any damage as if invulnerable in deep space...
One turn later: My ship did not receive any damage as if invulnerable in deep space...
Turn302.jpg (144.86 KiB) Viewed 860 times

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Dilvish
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#101 Post by Dilvish »

marcOSX wrote:I finally got the opportunity to show you with a simple case what I think is a bug. Here are two snapshots at one turn difference. After a full turn of combat in DEEP SPACE my ship equipped with MS shield had not suffered any damage, while the enemy had. His attack should have damaged my ship but no. ...
That screenshot suggests to me that everything is working fine.
Dilvish wrote:Total damage or per-shot damage? It is the latter than matters.
I asked you this a few posts up, but you seem to have overlooked it or are ignoring it. It appears to me that this is the crux of the matter. Please post screenshots of the design information both for your ship shown in the above screenshot and for the enemy ship. It looks quite likely to me that your enemy's ship has three Plasma 4's, each rated at 18 points and unable to penetrate your rating 20 Black Shield.

-This only happens in DEEP SPACE. Same encounter on a normal system would result in damage to both fleet.
-This only happens with ships equipped with multispectral shield. Any other shield does not do the trick.
-In this case it my fleet is the one equipped with MS shield and "immune". I had cases where the AI was the immune one in deep space
-I had also the case of both me and AI meeting in deep space with MS shields-equipped ships. In this case none receive damage, but enemy ships are blocked while I can escape combat.
-At that moment, even if no star is in the system, the MS shielded ships are indicating 20 shield, but in reality are just immune.
I expect that Deep Space has very little to do with what you are talking about. Also, do you have a Black Shield and a MS shield on the same ship? You seems to be getting Black Shield shield values and MS shield stealth bonuses. I also see that you are using Exobot pilots for your combat crews-- be advised they do poor damage.
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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#102 Post by Scara »

Ahh, I just see I misunderstood the shield math. Thinking that the complete damage a ship does goes to the shield calculation not the damage of each mounted weapon (as it might make sense)... in this case the shields might really be a bit overpowered!
The described effect only happening on empty nods is strange...

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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#103 Post by Vezzra »

marcOSX wrote:Fleet 1 : an enemy fleet with many ships doing EACH over 50 damage
Fleet 2 : My scattered asteroids ship with multi spectral shielding (indicating 20 shields)
Dilvish already pointed it out, I just want to emphasize on what seems to be the basic misunderstanding here: the shield strength of your ship is not deducted from the total damage rating of the enemy ship, but from the damage rating of each single weapon part. So, if the enemy ship has (to stay with Dilvish' guess) three weapons that do 18 damage each (which would give a total damage rating of 54), they won't be able to penetrate your shields. A ship with two weapons, each having a damage rating of 25 would be able to deal 10 damage (2 x (25 weapon damage - 20 shield strength)) each combat round.

EDIT: Ah, you already figured it out. Good :)

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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#104 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:
MatGB wrote:I also want to make the shield strength start at tier 1 weapons, so Defence Grid stops Mass Driver 1 but 2+ gets through, Deflector Shield stops laser1 but Laser2+ gets partially through, etc.
Seems like a pretty decent idea to try (with some cost adjustments I presume)-- so the current 4/7/12/20 main shield line would go to 3/5/9/15, and Multispec could go from the current 15 to somewhere in the 10-12 range. I think I would prefer to see it at 10, so that regular Laser 4 could at least chip away at it, it already gives a free first shot from the stealth bonus (until the late game at least).
Yep, that sound like decent numbers to me. We should definitely give that a try.

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Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed

#105 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:Also, do you have a Black Shield and a MS shield on the same ship? You seems to be getting Black Shield shield values and MS shield stealth bonuses.
The Scattered Asteroid Hull gives a shield bonus of 5 to itself and each own ship in the system. Hence the total shield strength of 20 in this case.

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