What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

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wobbly
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What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#1 Post by wobbly »

Pretty much the tittle. This leads to a situation where I pre-split the fleet into individual ships, just in case I want to give them individual orders in the middle of starlane transit.

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Oberlus
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#2 Post by Oberlus »

I don't know if there are implementation quirks that give some reason to not let fleet splitting on the fly, but I'd also like to be able to split them.
Never thought of that micromanagement movement to work around the restriction: keep all ships separated. Now I'm more interested on being able to split on the fly.

Wobbly, would you open a feature request on github? I could do it too if you prefer. Although maybe we wait for some dev commenting on this (it might have been discarded before).

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Splitting isn't especially problematic, but if you could split, you'd also want to transfer between fleets and merge fleets. Doing those is problematic because it requires the fleets to be at the same location. If they aren't in a system, the only way to test whether they are at the same location is the X and Y position values, which are floating point numbers. It's generally quirky and unreliable to test floats for equality, and I don't want to get into picking some small distance that counts as "the same location" for purposes of such tests, as it could lead to other quirks and issues.

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LienRag
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#4 Post by LienRag »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:49 am Splitting isn't especially problematic, but if you could split, you'd also want to transfer between fleets and merge fleets. Doing those is problematic because it requires the fleets to be at the same location.
Thanks for the explanation, but since merging and transferring do not have the same strategic impact than splitting (I mean, every time one would want to merge and transfer to achieve a specific objective, the same objective can be achieved by splitting more), I don't think it's a problem to allow only splitting and not merging/transferring - especially if there's a way to convey this rule to the player.

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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#5 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Fri Aug 28, 2020 10:40 pm
Geoff the Medio wrote: Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:49 am Splitting isn't especially problematic, but if you could split, you'd also want to transfer between fleets and merge fleets. Doing those is problematic because it requires the fleets to be at the same location.
Thanks for the explanation, but since merging and transferring do not have the same strategic impact than splitting (I mean, every time one would want to merge and transfer to achieve a specific objective, the same objective can be achieved by splitting more), I don't think it's a problem to allow only splitting and not merging/transferring - especially if there's a way to convey this rule to the player.
I agree with this. I think this is preferable to having to split your fleets in advance. Splitting has two advantages currently: on one hand full choice of orders vs restricted choice and on the other hand keeping your enemies from knowing how you intend to move or are actually are able to move. As there is no downside to splitting fleets this leads to micromanagement.
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LienRag
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#6 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:16 pm Splitting has two advantages currently: on one hand full choice of orders vs restricted choice and on the other hand keeping your enemies from knowing how you intend to move or are actually are able to move. As there is no downside to splitting fleets this leads to micromanagement.
Other games have a limited number of fleets (that is, the number can be upgraded by techs and so on, but for a given value at a given time, once the number of fleets is reached it's not possible anymore to launch a new fleet).

I'm not sure that this mechanism would work well in FreeOrion, but would having instead each fleet cost a small amount of Influence be a way to reduce micromanagement ? Or would it to the contrary incite players to spend their time merging fleets to save influence and splitting them again when the need to arises ?

Or maybe we could have creating a new fleet costing one Influence Point once and for all ?
The cost would be imputed at the end of the turn so mistakes would not impact the game (i.e, if a player splits a fleet by mistake and remerges it before the end of the turn, it doesn't cost Influence - ditto when producing a diverse batch of units the same turn, if the player merges them all in one fleet it only costs one IP).

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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#7 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:54 pm Other games have a limited number of fleets (that is, the number can be upgraded by techs and so on, but for a given value at a given time, once the number of fleets is reached it's not possible anymore to launch a new fleet).
Or like MoO2, fleets about that number incur in expenses.
I'm not sure that this mechanism would work well in FreeOrion, but would having instead each fleet cost a small amount of Influence be a way to reduce micromanagement ? Or would it to the contrary incite players to spend their time merging fleets to save influence and splitting them again when the need to arises ?
PRobably the latter, but not necessarily bad micromanagement.
Or maybe we could have creating a new fleet costing one Influence Point once and for all ?
The cost would be imputed at the end of the turn so mistakes would not impact the game (i.e, if a player splits a fleet by mistake and remerges it before the end of the turn, it doesn't cost Influence - ditto when producing a diverse batch of units the same turn, if the player merges them all in one fleet it only costs one IP).
This one could encourage keeping all your ships separated permanently.

wobbly
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#8 Post by wobbly »

I think putting a price on multiple fleets is just reducing the amount of interesting tactical finesse currently possible.

I'd rather just be able to split on the fly and then merge them all again when they are all in the same system.

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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Sun Aug 30, 2020 10:27 am I think putting a price on multiple fleets is just reducing the amount of interesting tactical finesse currently possible.

I'd rather just be able to split on the fly and then merge them all again when they are all in the same system.
+1

as oberlus already said: could you please open a feature request/issue for this?
Oberlus wrote: Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:00 am
LienRag wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:54 pm I'm not sure that this mechanism would work well in FreeOrion, but would having instead each fleet cost a small amount of Influence be a way to reduce micromanagement ? Or would it to the contrary incite players to spend their time merging fleets to save influence and splitting them again when the need to arises ?
PRobably the latter, but not necessarily bad micromanagement.
Organising your fleet in probable-splitting-units vs minimal-number-of-fleets is an uninteresting management chore. Definitly the "bad" type of micromanagement.

As long as there is no difference in combat how your fleets are organised reorganising fleet should not cost anything. I do not see that coming.
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LienRag
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#10 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:00 am
LienRag wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:54 pm
Or maybe we could have creating a new fleet costing one Influence Point once and for all ?
The cost would be imputed at the end of the turn so mistakes would not impact the game (i.e, if a player splits a fleet by mistake and remerges it before the end of the turn, it doesn't cost Influence - ditto when producing a diverse batch of units the same turn, if the player merges them all in one fleet it only costs one IP).
This one could encourage keeping all your ships separated permanently.
Oops, I didn't think of that...
But is that true ? It will encourage to keep all fleet as separate units indeed, but not all ships separated as any ship in a fleet would stay in the fleet for as long as it doesn't have a reason to leave.

But Ophiuchus is right, that may be a worse remedy than the illness, as far as micro-management is concerned.

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stpa
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Re: What's the logic behind not being able to split fleets in the middle of a starlane?

#11 Post by stpa »

agreed that joining on the fly is not needed. splitting on the fly would be nice. maybe add some inexpensive new tech as prequisite? and maybe only within scanning range (to make sure to split only the fleet and not the ships themselves)?

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