Shipyards: tie to logic & fleets

[MacThule]

Give us the ability to automate shipyards so that when certain conditions occur (i.e. material levels reached, enemy detected, or fleet or station taking damage) shipyard begins producing and completed ships automatically join a set fleet (i.e. give shipyards ability to have a set "rally point," in RTS terms) and immediately move to that fleet's location, adopt its current posture and it's last received order.

I've been so impressed with the results of tying shops into the logic system, I think shipyards need to be next in line for a logic enhancement (along with fixing some of the main shipyard bugs, of course). We should be able to automate shipyards to produce when sufficient supply exists and fleet those ships up automatically. This probably wouldn't be too hard.

Somewhat harder, but very complimentary would be linking fleets to the logic grid. It may require a fleet command block or some such to achieve (hopefully not). Then fleet command could be tied into logic circuits and run through a display. Also, if logic were able to respond to fleet status changes such as engaging an enemy, taking a certain percentage HP damage, or being eliminated, fleets could be automatically resupplied from primary shipyards.

With shipyards & fleets intelligently tied to logic, a leader could organize permanent, standing defense fleets at planets, stations, and other strategic points and change these on the fly. It could very much change the way stations are typically so vulnerable if an attack on a station triggered a command to a designated patrol fleet standing by to jump into the sector and defend that station.

It may also be the key to a bypass solution for fleets maintaining their orders while the fleet owner is offline if, when loaded, they check a logic system or fleet block to see what they should be doing and if their posture towards the player who caused them to load in should be aggressive, defensive, passive, evasive, completely idle, etc.

 

[jayman38]

Gee, being able to auto-generate fleets to attack enemies sounds like a troll's delight. It also sounds like a great way for a bigger faction to totally dominate a server. I'm concerned this is overpowered and problematic. I imagine this, if ever implemented, would go along with improved automated mining processes, allowing trolls to place fully automated "skynet" systems that auto-mine and auto-harrass entire servers.

On the other hand, I'm all about fleet logic.

 

[MacThule]

Every tool can be abused by trolls. Including forums. That a thing might be used by trolls doesn't mean it's not valuable to the game or we should say nix to these forums, and warheads, and cloak, etc, etc. I think this would be every faction's delight, not just trolls.

 

[godmars]

Gee, being able to auto-generate fleets to attack enemies sounds like a troll's delight.

this is basically what NPC factions will be doing

 

[Madman198237]

Every tool can be abused by trolls. Including forums. That a thing might be used by trolls doesn't mean it's not valuable to the game or we should say nix to these forums, and warheads, and cloak, etc, etc. I think this would be every faction's delight, not just trolls.

Especially to people like me, who plays with one other person and would love to have the capabilities of macro-managing this gives, instead of the present micro-managing.

 

[jayman38]

this is basically what NPC factions will be doing

From what I understand, NPC factions will be using the fleets generated by the community by the rules of the contest. What I read from the Original Post is that automated ship construction and fleet assignment would have no such limitation. If the server admins are given tools to limit the output of such automation, that would be good. However, without limitation tools, I'm imagining dial-a-titan auto-factories popping up around spawn and annihilating every player that joins the game.

 

[MacThule]

Ok, your concerns are valid, but I really don't want to derail a very good suggestion with yet another tangent about trolls and titans. If titans are the problem, then impose a decent mass limit. I've supported that for years. Too-massive ships and poor player behavior are not a potential side-effect of this suggestion, they are already an issue.

This suggestion would only make ship creation and fleet management faster and more streamlined - for EVERYONE.

Let's not refuse to improve gameplay for everyone and keep Starmade in the stone age because trolls exist and might abuse tools. Retaining byzantine manual labor methods of shipbuilding and fleet assembly as a sort of "red-tape" barrier to overbuilding by keeping it slow and sucky is basically harrassing players in itself. With good intent, granted, but truly. Think about it - if it's too much work for a troll to make fleets to harrass... it's the same for everyone else too. Hence our player numbers. So the solution can't be "keep shipbuilding and fleets hard to manage to prevent trolls." Let's streamline!

Spamming 50 titans would be no different than spamming 50,000 fighters. Either way the solution is a mass cap and fleet limits, as it always has been, NOT preventing the implementation of simplified fleet management and automated ship production. Otherwise there is nothing to stop them from manually doing exactly what you are worried about right now except that resources management, shipbuilding, and fleet assembly suck so bad that no one can be bothered.

Anyway... even automated shipyards still require resources and time to build ships, meaning players would actually be able to retaliate by pirating robot miners and supply lines. Other players would also be every bit as capable of setting up their own war empires and spamming attack waves at the offender while attempting to disrupt his economy. I think they call that "war."

 

[Madman198237]

If servers can be allowed to set a max mass or number of ships per fleet, it would greatly add to the game as it stands. If we then get these advancements, that allow the macro-managing of fleets, auto-resupply, and whatnot, we'll be set to make some intergalactic empires.

 

[jayman38]

Ok, your concerns are valid, but I really don't want to derail a very good suggestion with yet another tangent about trolls and titans. If titans are the problem, then impose a decent mass limit. I've supported that for years. Too-massive ships and poor player behavior are not a potential side-effect of this suggestion, they are already an issue.

...

Anyway... even automated shipyards still require resources and time to build ships, meaning players would actually be able to retaliate by pirating robot miners and supply lines. Other players would also be every bit as capable of setting up their own war empires and spamming attack waves at the offender while attempting to disrupt his economy. I think they call that "war."

That's what I'm looking for. Tools and rules and things to make it fun for everyone, such as taking time to autobuild (versus instant materialization), mass limits, that sort of thing. I always have a concern that Schine will implement a suggestion without preparing for the fun of everybody. Without enough thought, this could have been something that was a workaround to defeat reasonable tools like mass limits.

We can't put the burden on Schine to think of all the little things needed to make something work right for everyone.