v0.4 - What's Missing?

Past public reviews and discussions.
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tzlaine
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#31 Post by tzlaine »

Yes. This has been lacking for a long time. However, I think it is at least tenuously related to visibility in the combat map as well. In both cases, we have a lot of info (i.e. all the data for each enemy ship), and must decide how much to show to the user. In the case of combat, the info shown at full visibility will probably be greater, but in both cases there's a lot to be decided.

For instance, in combat, just knowing that someone is in system might be one detection level. For instance, a fully "cloaked" ship might not be visible at all. Another detection level might be "there's a vessel there, but you don't know what type", etc.

On the galaxy map, we have an analogous problem of how much to show. Possible detection levels might be:

1) "A fleet" (i.e. one or more ships of indeterminate type and owner).
2) "A of roughly size ~N" (i.e. 1-10 ships, 11-20 ships, 21-30 ships, etc.).
3) "A fleet of size exactly N" (i.e. 8 ships).
4) etc., -- more detail

I'd like for us to handle these two systems in parallel; I think they should resemble each other fairly closely.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#32 Post by Geoff the Medio »

A visibility and detection thread has been posted:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2324

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eleazar
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#33 Post by eleazar »

I noticed that the v.04 had been updated with the new content.
I think there are some unintended consequences in the wording of the Repair section.
Ship health current meters may or may not increase between game turns:
* Ships located at a shipyard are fully repaired (current health set to max health) at the start of each turn.
* Ships located within the fleet resupply network of their empire are slightly repaired by having their current health meter increased by some to-be-determined small amount each turn.
* Ships located outside their fleet resupply network do not repair between turns
.

Is there a difference between being in a system with a shipyard and being "located at a shipyard"?
I would hope not, because it seems micromanagy to have to make that distinction, and it might be hard to distinguish from the galaxy map.

Presumably being in a shipyard system shouldn't be enough to keep ships repaired each turn through a multi-turn battle. That would make shipyards exceedingly powerful.

I'm not sure if this was considered, the following bold seems to me the simplest solution:

* Ships located in a shipyard's system are fully repaired (current health set to max health) at the start of each turn, excluding turns in which the ships engaged in battle.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#34 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Updated.

Also added a note about the ambiguity of "start of a turn" with respect to when repair happens.

mZhura
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#35 Post by mZhura »

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
looks to me like there's missing logic. supply isn't a function of a ship, but of a supply source. so if supplies are limited, this must mean that source can provide limited number of supplies each turn for any number of ships, and the value for each individual ship calculated as "total"/"number of ships" but not greater than "ship capacity". there may occur surplus that can be transferred to other (bigger) ships.

so my correction in few words: A source can supply a limited number of supplies each turn which may be distributed between any number of ships.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#36 Post by Geoff the Medio »

mZhura wrote:so my correction in few words: A source can supply a limited number of supplies each turn which may be distributed between any number of ships.
No: The point is that each turn, a ship in range of a supply source can be given X supplies, where X is determined by the source, not the ship. It doesn't matter how many ships are being supplied; each gets X per turn. This makes figuring how much supply a ship will get much easier, and there's no need to worry about whether I should send limited total available supplies here or there since maybe another system could make up the difference, etc. which becomes a huge and problematic optimization problem that the player would inevitably want to control to manually optimize.

Aussie Mick
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#37 Post by Aussie Mick »

eleazar wrote:Geoff, I'd really like a chance to respond to this post about planetary resource distribution. I hadn't read it until today, but more to the point, i believe i see some issues with the implementation in the preliminary v.4 that will hinder it from meeting the general goals we shared for the concept of blockades and distribution.

If you don't want to unlock the thread, i can start a new one. At the moment, i'm preparing some visual aids to help explain.
There should be partially successful blockades. If the chance of detection of an empires ships is <100% but >0% some of the supplies get intercepted. So you send 10 food to your blockaded colony but half of them don't make it so you lose 5 food (and maybe it costs you something for the abstracted ships?).

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eleazar
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#38 Post by eleazar »

Aussie Mick wrote:There should be partially successful blockades. If the chance of detection of an empires ships is <100% but >0% some of the supplies get intercepted. So you send 10 food to your blockaded colony but half of them don't make it so you lose 5 food (and maybe it costs you something for the abstracted ships?).
We tried out that idea here:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1901

It wasn't worth the trouble, since it made optimal resource distribution a judgment call, or at least too complicated to easily predict. We want our automated systems like resource distribution to behave in simple, predictable ways. Deciding how many resources to waste on a partial blockage could to be a strategically important decision, not one to hand off to a dumb AI. That's off the top of my head. You can review the thread if you want more detail.

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Krikkitone
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Re: v0.4 - What's Missing?

#39 Post by Krikkitone »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
mZhura wrote:so my correction in few words: A source can supply a limited number of supplies each turn which may be distributed between any number of ships.
No: The point is that each turn, a ship in range of a supply source can be given X supplies, where X is determined by the source, not the ship. It doesn't matter how many ships are being supplied; each gets X per turn. This makes figuring how much supply a ship will get much easier, and there's no need to worry about whether I should send limited total available supplies here or there since maybe another system could make up the difference, etc. which becomes a huge and problematic optimization problem that the player would inevitably want to control to manually optimize.
If X is totally independent of the ship, then that gives an advantage to Smaller ships

ie 100 ships that consume 10 supply each are more easily supplied than 1 ship that consumes 1000 supply.

X would probably be better to be a factor of the ship.... so that a ship that had storage for ~1000 missiles (each worth 1 supply) would recieve 100 supply/turn, and one that had storage for 10 missiles would receive 1/turn.

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