Experiences from Starsector (Solution to gigantism and binary fights)

[Calhoun]

Let's do that then. Big ships can't hit little ships, so big ship DPS = 0%. that's why they suck.

Simple, but effective. I like it. Is there a specific mass cutoff? so if ship =>= 5k then dps = 0?

 

[apelsinsaft]

Errr... yes? How is that a problem? It's only logical that the winning side (who invested more and deserved the victory) is able to lose less than the losing side, otherwise this'd be a pyrrhic victory.

As I (and other people) said earlier, your model is not accurate enough for you to draw conclusions.
Even if I assume you model this accurately, then fleet A lose 5 ships while fleet B lose (at least) somewhere between 1 and 2 ships (but which costs twice as more as A's ships!). Basically, A loses 5 units of value and B loses 2~4 units of value. Sure it isn't completely fair, but hey, it wasn't a fair fight, and B's losses aren't completely negligible either.
That seems like a perfectly normal and desirable result to me, again, how is that a problem?

By having Fleet A and B fight in that theoretical example, fleet B survives with 69% theoretical HP remaining, rather than 50%. In reality, obviously this value would vary greatly but it would still trend to be higher than 50%.
Do the same experiment with Fleet A fighting Fleet C, which is precisely three times as strong as Fleet A, and you see an even more extreme disproportion where Fleet C might survive with something like 80% theoretical HP remaining instead of 66%.

I was arguing that one of the reasons why people feel inclined to turtle is because if they were caught out in a situation where they get curbstomped, they wouldn't be able to deal lasting damage proportional to their own strength and the winner would snowball a victory.

Remember, the distinction here is not HOW the other fleet wins; this doesn't really matter, its THAT they win which matters.

Furthermore, how do you tell which fleet is which?.

Lets for the purpose of discussion assume that Fleet A is always the loser and Fleet B is always the winner. So if a fleet wins because it has small nimble ships that can outrange the bigger opponent, the small ship fleet is Fleet B.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Wait, gigantism was already solved? Other than the power scaling cap, what makes big ships weaker?

There's the powergen cap, then the diminishing returns on thrusters so yea big ships WILL be slower because they simply don't get as much thrust per block as the small ones while the power consumed per thruster block remains the same;
Then there's the matter of auxiliary power to try counteract the powergen cap, which basicly places huge-ass chunks inside your ship that explode when hit;
Also, the turn ratios mean a small ship easily outturns (and due to better thrust values, probably outruns) a big one, so spinal mounted weapons on big ships are pretty much useless unless you are up against another big ship or use swarmers which will always decimate your own fleet first - you have to place most of your firepower on turrets, which means you can be disarmed as soon as your shields drop below 50%, they don't even have to drop your shields entirely to strip you of most of your firepower;
The removal of docked power and shield injectors pretty much removed workarounds for these drawbacks. Also, big ships take more system damage due to how the HP system was designed. It can be viewed in the line "System damage penalty" in buildmode on the stat screen;
Powergen cap pretty much means that above 10-12K mass per ship, 2 smaller ships are more power efficient than one larger. Three 10K mass ships will wreck a 30K mass simply because they will 1. outmaneuver the bigger one so it has to rely on turrets while the smaller ships can utilize their main guns, and 2. because the small ones are more power efficient, gun efficient and thruster efficient, giving you more bang for your block (pun intended).

 

[Olxinos]

apelsinsaft You mostly repeated what you previously said, so I reiterate how is that

it would still trend to be higher than 50%.

a problem?

If it's supposed to solve this problem [edit: by that I of course mean, if you think that by solving that, you'll solve this problem]

I was arguing that one of the reasons why people feel inclined to turtle is because if they were caught out in a situation where they get curbstomped, they wouldn't be able to deal lasting damage proportional to their own strength and the winner would snowball a victory.

I really doubt you'll encourage people to fight more if you make fights less interesting for those who started them and no more interesting for those who avoided them. If you allow me an analogy, it's like visiting the victims of a robbery and telling them "Rejoice, I've solved your problem! I broke all the stuff the robber stole from you so he got nothing out of it!" and expecting that people will rob more and like being robbed if you keep doing that.
Seriously, there's already little to no reward for winning a fight in this game, decreasing the victors' gains will just make this worse. If you want to encourage people to fight, give those fights either intrisic or extrinsic value, not the other way around.

 

[Raisinbat]

Simple, but effective. I like it. Is there a specific mass cutoff? so if ship =>= 5k then dps = 0?

Since you can switch mass distribution, not for maneuvering. A 100k mass ship can reach 2.0 thrust-to-mass, but it has to sacrifice more shield and dps to do that than a 10k mass ship, since a lot of the ship needs to be power systems to keep it up, compared to smaller ships that can do 20% gun 20% engine 20% shield 20% armor 20% power and support, a 100k mass ship can do 10% gun 10% shield 10% armor 20% thrust 50% power and support, problem is that means half the big ships mass goes toward maintain combat effectiveness giving the smaller ships twice the relative dps and HP.

Turn speed however big ships are categorically FUCKED; seems no matter how much thrust you pile on and set to rotational they just can't turn unless designed vertically, so even if its possible for big ships to keep pace with smaller ones, if you ever managed to get behind it, there's nothing it can do.

 

[Lecic]

By having Fleet A and B fight in that theoretical example, fleet B survives with 69% theoretical HP remaining, rather than 50%. In reality, obviously this value would vary greatly but it would still trend to be higher than 50%.

Ok, but where is the problem in this, assuming it's even true? If given a Fleet A where all the ships cost twice as much as the ships in Fleet B resulted in a victory for Fleet A where they only have 40% of theoretical HP remaining, why would anyone ever fly Fleet A? They just spent more than Fleet B, even though they """won.""" Everyone would just fly Fleet B and it would come down to whoever has better skill in tactics and maneuvering, in which case, why are we even bothering with custom ships? There are plenty of games out there already where two equal teams compete.

 

[sayerulz]

I don't usually agree with Lecic, but he's quite right this time. What we really need to solve gigantisim is better AI. Right now, a fleet of smaller ships would theoretically be more efficient, but it's such a nightmare to manage all of them, and the AI is so dumb, that people often just don't want the hassle, and so go with a less efficient but infinitely easier to manage titan.

 

[apelsinsaft]

apelsinsaftSeriously, there's already little to no reward for winning a fight in this game, decreasing the victors' gains will just make this worse. If you want to encourage people to fight, give those fights either intrisic or extrinsic value, not the other way around.

You're absolutely right. Implementing changes designed to even out the curve of investment vs combat power should come after creating the incentive to fight in the first place. This entire suggestion falls apart if there was no motivation to have any fights to begin with, gameplay wise.

apelsinsaft You mostly repeated what you previously said, so I reiterate how is that a problem?

Ok, but where is the problem in this, assuming it's even true?

I was arguing that if the math behind the equation gave you closer to 50% rather than always trending above 50%, it would even out the differences between the winner and the loser so that skill and strategy would have a larger role in a fight than resources spent. Looking at everyone's experiences about the inefficiency of large ships, i think i can conclude that resource investment per ship is largely a non factor contrary to what i initially thought, leaving the only other "mathematical" factor ship numbers per size.

I've looked over my post and i have to say i stand corrected about the viability of the theoretical example in another way, because typically, you would always try to make an escape before dying. Assuming that the fleets WILL fight to the death is indeed the cause behind the inflated relationship between combat power and forces left at the end of the fight. So, the only situation that the example would be close to representative of would be defending your home sector with all cards on the table, or suicidal "let's just throw our ships away before we abandon the server for good" fights where economic balance isn't a factor.

 

[Comradecolonel]

Also, big ships take more system damage due to how the HP system was designed. It can be viewed in the line "System damage penalty" in buildmode on the stat screen;

Thank you for mentioning this. You could do more resource per damage to a large ship than a smaller one. Not to mention that when two larger ships fight the battle is far more vicious and damaging over a given amount of time.

I really wish they would ditch this mechanic. Considering all the limiting factors on big ships already it seems pretty unnecessary to have an HP penalty. Hard limits in general just seem silly to me. I'd rather there would just be natural strengths and weaknesses.

Turn speed however big ships are categorically FUCKED; seems no matter how much thrust you pile on and set to rotational they just can't turn unless designed vertically, so even if its possible for big ships to keep pace with smaller ones, if you ever managed to get behind it, there's nothing it can do.

I do this to larger ships all the time. I'm a mobility guy so I like to move around. Moving into an opponents blind spot is incredibly effective. It's like watching and elephant try to kill a fly. No self respecting star captain would waste his time running in circles like that. It's why you would need to be in a fleet.

There are plenty of games out there already where two equal teams compete.

So many. It seems that some players want Starmade to be a perfectly balanced experience, which it isn't. It will never be.

What we really need to solve gigantisim is better AI. Right now, a fleet of smaller ships would theoretically be more efficient, but it's such a nightmare to manage all of them

Yea that would easily solve the issue. It would make one man factions a lot more viable. Can't really trust the AI to engage properly right now. They have no idea how to pilot a more nuanced ship. They can't even use passives which by it self gives them a disadvantage. Improved AI would solve a lot of issues in the game right now.

To the main point of the post, Starsector has great AI. It isn't flawless but you can customize ships in all kinds of crazy ways and the AI can use all the combinations. It is smart enough to know when to retreat/attack and how it should use its systems. If the AI was utterly mindless like it is in this game, then Starsector would literally be unplayable. I actually find it a little worrying that very little is spoken about the AI.

 

[Alphajim]

What I find even more worrying is that you want to add another limiting factor (the decay), worst than fuel in terms of time wasted for players who don't have many time to play or don't want it.
And for a virtual problem. Even me, who has never done any real PvP fight, I know that many manned ships will win against a single sitting duck one. There is so much threads talking about this.

Thanks for trying to find solutions, but that's not the good way and in this case there's no real problem. Decay is not a good idea at all in this game, at least not this way.