Ship Experience / Crew Experience

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#16 Post by Krikkitone »

If Empire Experience grows based on ship experience, then you are Effectively transferring Ship Experience to the Empire.

(unless you are saying that Ship experience should be permanent... which I think is a bad Idea.. ship experience should decay as well as empire experience)

Part of the reason for this Idea is to avoid too much of the individual ship... If your EMPIRE engages in a lot of battle you will get more experience for your Empire... The ships that actually engaged in the combats will have the majority of it, but they will all go to your Imperial average eventually. (unless you have an 'Experience' maintenance policy where ship Experience is kept at the same level from the Imperial supply (even if it is above the average))

This is because micromanaging 'veteran' troops can be fun, but also annoying... so the player should have the option... send all their best trained recruits to the elite ships OR spread their best trained recruits around, and bring back experienced veterans to teach them [ie bring all ships to the same experience level]

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#17 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,
Krikkitone wrote:If Empire Experience grows based on ship experience, then you are Effectively transferring Ship Experience to the Empire.

(unless you are saying that Ship experience should be permanent... which I think is a bad Idea.. ship experience should decay as well as empire experience)

This is because micromanaging 'veteran' troops can be fun, but also annoying... so the player should have the option... send all their best trained recruits to the elite ships OR spread their best trained recruits around, and bring back experienced veterans to teach them [ie bring all ships to the same experience level]
Yes, i agree, ship experience should alway regress towards the norm at some rate. (the rate determined by policy) both up and down, so lower ships rise, higher ships lower. A high level ship which is unused decreases in level, while ships haven't not seen battle rise.

For me there are two things, one the experience of ships over time, which should regress to the mean. And the a sort of empire resources which the user can choose to funnel into one ship, all ships, some project, subclass of ships, new leaders, etc. This second experience would not decay and would accumulate slower. But it can be bought or spent on from to ships. (at low efficiency) as well as being used for projects.

*since it would be rare that you would use your empires experience, in any way, say one punctual use of it every 10 or so turns. it would not need to be included in the main UI.*

Best wishes from Robbie

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#18 Post by Krikkitone »

I still think that experience should decay overall, but I also think it should be generated by things other than combat. This gives your "empire" an experience level that is based on the militarism of your population (and your policies, ie increase "experience production" by your population with an economic penalty, etc.)

Now you would need to balance actual Combat Experience with "naturally population" Experience. Combat Experience should be worth more.

But in my general Idea, if you haven't had a war for some time, that experience (whether in the empire pool or in ships) would decay down to a level supported by "naturally population" experience. Which would be more for a bigger empire, but then a bigger empire would need more ships, so the average experience level/ship would be about the same.

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AudioBottle
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#19 Post by AudioBottle »

Krikkitone wrote:I still think that experience should decay overall, but I also think it should be generated by things other than combat. This gives your "empire" an experience level that is based on the militarism of your population (and your policies, ie increase "experience production" by your population with an economic penalty, etc.)
This would bring up the question of what would happen when you use up all of your exp. Would it start to go into negative exp? The decay would definitely promote the use of exp as to not let any go to waste.
Krikkitone wrote: But in my general Idea, if you haven't had a war for some time, that experience (whether in the empire pool or in ships) would decay down to a level supported by "naturally population" experience. Which would be more for a bigger empire, but then a bigger empire would need more ships, so the average experience level/ship would be about the same.
With this idea of empire exp it seems that there should be many ways of gaining exp. Other ways of gaining exp? Perhaps exploration (new galaxies discovered), successful espionage, population milestones, specific building accomplishments....
Robbie.Price wrote: For me there are two things, one the experience of ships over time, which should regress to the mean. And the a sort of empire resources which the user can choose to funnel into one ship, all ships, some project, subclass of ships, new leaders, etc. This second experience would not decay and would accumulate slower. But it can be bought or spent on from to ships. (at low efficiency) as well as being used for projects.
I'm with Robbie on this. I don't think the decay is a good idea. Rather I think that exp should be hard to gain or gained in small amounts.
º¤o AudioBottle

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#20 Post by Krikkitone »

AudioBottle wrote:
Krikkitone wrote:I still think that experience should decay overall, but I also think it should be generated by things other than combat. This gives your "empire" an experience level that is based on the militarism of your population (and your policies, ie increase "experience production" by your population with an economic penalty, etc.)
This would bring up the question of what would happen when you use up all of your exp. Would it start to go into negative exp? The decay would definitely promote the use of exp as to not let any go to waste.
Decay would be proportional to exp,
so if you had 1000 exp you might lose 50/turn
if you had 1 exp you would lose 0.05/turn
so it would never go negative

Also that wouldn't particularly promote using it, since any "use" of experience would also decay (ie require maintenance... if you had a very experienced ship the experience of that ship would also decay, a "Leader" that you bought would need new experience, ie replacements to keep that 'leadership tradition' functioning, or to 'keep them fresh' and stop them from forgetting how to do the great things they can do.)


If its just hard to gain/gained in small amounts then it becomes something that increases with time, leading to different rules needed at the end of the game then at the beginning, or at least drastically different expectations.

In my method there would be an "equilibrium" level of experience based on how much fighting you are doing, how military your population is, etc. And your experience level would move toward equilibrium. In times of peace, experience would decrease to a certain level. In times of war it would increase (to a certain level based on the intensity of the war)

Experience shouldn't be a resource as much as a fact about your empire that is to be maintained.

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#21 Post by Robbie.Price »

I used the term regress towards the mean, rather then decay.

Which is to say that if you have one super high experience ship and 20 low experience ships, the 1 will loose experience and the 20 will gain. eventually, if you don't have any more wars all your ships would be at the same level. Now i don't think that general level should drop, (in becomes more diluted as you build more ships, so the level/unit drops if you keep building... but the total ship experience over all the empire remains the same until a ship dies, or unless you have policies which transfer empire experience to ships, or from ships to the empire 'to be used for other projects/goals').

The amount the race knows about space warfare doesn't decrease, it just gets moved about to different uses.
Krikkitone wrote: If its just hard to gain/gained in small amounts then it becomes something that increases with time, leading to different rules needed at the end of the game then at the beginning, or at least drastically different expectations.
The other option is have the amount of experience gained by a battle depend on how close the battle was in terms of starting conditions. If they are stronger then you, and you win, *say because we implement 'Swarms or an equivalent' <<viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&hilit=>> and you have tiny ships and they have gigantic ships so you kick their rear sides* then you get more experience then if you out gun an enemy 11 to 1.

This means that the way you play, and how well you predict your opponents, IE how good a military leader the user is reflects in how much experience their race has to invest. And once your really starting to roll over your enemies, you don't need the experience, because you're already winning, and you don't get any, because your so much stronger then the opponents.

To me having empire experience rise slowly could be a race pick. . . perhaps, but shouldn't be the norm, and having experience actually be 'lost' because your not in a war doesn't really make too much sense to me. Ok so people might die of old age or retire . . . but the leaders don't, and in my mind the reason you 'spend' experience on a leader is because the leader USED to be on the field(in a ship or in the pool of empire experience) and is now seperated from any given ship/the pool by promotion and his/her talents are now specifically in bodied in the extra abilities exposed by promotion.

Those are my two cents,

Best wishes all.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#22 Post by Krikkitone »

well I think it makes much more sense if
Leaders (if we have them), and ship, etc. need a continuous stream of experience or else they "die/retire"[leaders]/"lose experience"[ships]

I see the experience that an empire(and its ships) have as a more generic representation of the empire's 'military capability' in terms of leadership and capability [the non hardware part of military power]. (in the sense that more experience either gets you better quality for a given amount of quantity (determined by PP output))

I wouldn't see leaders as a major use of experience, the major use would be spreading around the fleet.

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#23 Post by Robbie.Price »

Krikkitone wrote:well I think it makes much more sense if
Leaders (if we have them), and ship, etc. need a continuous stream of experience or else they "die/retire"[leaders]/"lose experience"[ships]

I wouldn't see leaders as a major use of experience, the major use would be spreading around the fleet.

Krikkitone, I can understand why in reality in reality having experience drain makes sense. . . but what does it add to gameplay? I'm just curious what you see as being the motive force for adding a decaying experience. . .

Also I think we've got two different ideas of empire experience.

I've got Two differnt things, both called experience 'unfortunately, I'll have to think of a better second name...'

The first. Ship experience, as held on ships.

A ship has experience, it's simply a numerical representation of the ship or crew(more crew . . . so "Crew Experience"). . . which we use to give certain bonuses to base performance. In my vision, given enough time, and no battles, and no building of new ships , all crews would eventually regress to the same level. . . high level ships would drop, low level ships would rise, till they all are on the same page. For me the empire would have control over the rate at which this happens. Additionally for me, we don't need a system where this experience actually decreases a bit each turn; each new craft will start at ~0 crew experience, and each craft that dies will take it's crew experience with it. The net effect being that if you loose battles and loose ships, and build replacements your average crew experience will drop slowly on it's own, we don't need to force it to do so.

The second type of experience is more I'll call the 'military machine experience', or just MME. The military machine as a whole also learns something from each battle, just less, so the MME would increase a bit with battles. MME unlike Crew Experience for me represents the empires talent pool, admirals, generals, everything above 'captain of a starship'. These are the people who keep track of the greater picture. and can be used for specific projects(which removes them from the pool of talent, when specific roles are given out, some of those abstract admirals and generals take those jobs and are no longer available to move freely). This MME can be transfered to a ship, but since the person has already been promoted from captain clearly this would never be efficient; also from a ship, since you can promote a captain off the bridge, but this is also highly inefficient. (game play reasons for both to keep micromanagement to a min, excuse, too ship the people are too experienced to be fully utilized on a starship now and for the other way the person didn't earn the promotion they are being given it politically so they are not good at doing 'pool work'/ 'military machine work').

Generally speaking the two are otherwise un-interchangeable. MME is used to build certain projects, perhaps, or higher leaders, since leaders are specific people who have specific roles they no longer are in the 'pool'. You could have projects, or settings which puts some of your MME into each new built ship, or have MME be used for special spy missions, and the like . . . but since MME is generally not linked to crew experience,for me, I would shy away from consuming it for any form of automated crew buffing, and even avoid using it for maintenance.

I also don't see why this type of experience would benefit from decaying in game play terms. Although I am open to reasons why to include it.

That how I'm seeing experience, How is your vision differnt?

Best wishes,

Robbie Price.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#24 Post by Krikkitone »

As for Ship Exp v. MMExp

The way I see it

having something to simulate Training... so new ships start with more experience
and something to simulate learning from battle... so the MME learns from ship battles

would be easiest if the two are intrchangable (in a limited sense) that they are the same 'stuff' just in different places with limits as to how fast they move.


One could keep no decay and just let

Experience in = Battles
Experience out = Ships/leaders lost with Experience
[this includes experience "tied up" in leaders]

So that any war can raise or lower your experience, but as soon as the war stops your experience stays constant

But I would add
Experience in = Battles + Racial characteristics
Experience out = Ships lost + Decay

So that for an empire that had No war whatever, there would be a "peacetime" level of experience. War would probably raise the amount of experience.



Advantages of the parts of that system
1. Natural interchange of Imperial + ship experience...
allows a less micromanagy way than "build a Leader and assign him to a ship" all you would need to do is get maximum distribution of Imperial experience out to the ships. and they would all have high levels [assigning a Leader would be more of a way to concentrate experience in a particular ship]

It would also make sense as to how the Military Machine gets that experience, it is travelling back from the ships.

2. Decay and Racial input
Allows a "peacetime" level of experience that can be dependent on race picks, governments, etc.
It would also mean a recent war is better for experience than an ancient one

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#25 Post by Robbie.Price »

Krikkitone wrote:As for Ship Exp v. MMExp
.
.
.
Experience in = Battles
Experience out = Ships/leaders lost with Experience
[this includes experience "tied up" in leaders]

So that any war can raise or lower your experience, but as soon as the war stops your experience stays constant
So far we are in nearly perfect agreement.
The only difference i can see being that I would have ship experience flow 'with a user set rate' in between ships. But never to and from the MME and ships without the user directly instructing such an action. Also for experience out, would be experience 'spent' on missions, goals, leaders . . .
Krikkitone wrote: But I would add
Experience in = Battles + Racial characteristics
Experience out = Ships lost + Decay

So that for an empire that had No war whatever, there would be a "peacetime" level of experience. War would probably raise the amount of experience.
Yes, I see where your coming from here on the Racial Characteristics. There needs to be some way for empires to build up some level of MME experience without wars, or users will be forced to declare wars just to unlock activities which require MME. Having this gain rate modifiable by race states is a good idea. I had not thought of that, and i fully support that part of your idea.
Krikkitone wrote: Advantages of the parts of that system
1. Natural interchange of Imperial + ship experience...
allows a less micromanagy way than "build a Leader and assign him to a ship" all you would need to do is get maximum distribution of Imperial experience out to the ships. and they would all have high levels [assigning a Leader would be more of a way to concentrate experience in a particular ship]
If we keep to MOO standards for leaders (which we don't have to of course), leaders unlock bonuses for ships or planets which are otherwise un-obtainable. *All planets in the system where this leader is stationed can not rebel completely, they can strike and riot, but never undergo an uprising, All ships in this fleet move at +1 velocity in (space/combat) / repair at twice the rate they otherwise would* These bonuses wold typically not look anything like what you could gain via leveling up alone. . . Which is why for me i would want to keep the exchanging of MME and Crew experience to a minimum since they represent differnt 'types' of improvement. . . . To me, in short, adding a leader to a ship would, in most cases, fundamentally change the roll of the ship on the galaxy map, and in combat; whereas just leveling up makes the ship preform better at doing what it was doing before.

Krikkitone wrote: 2. Decay and Racial input
Allows a "peacetime" level of experience that can be dependent on race picks, governments, etc.
It would also mean a recent war is better for experience than an ancient one
I can understand why this might be wanted, I even am slightly drawn to it myself, since it does make sense in a way, for crew experience. If none of your ships are ever fighting, they eventually get less good at it. for the MME, I don't see this as being as intuitive. Since MME itself is related to specialization in given tasks, *whatever task you end up using it for, the previously undefined person had a passion for that and became extremely good at it.* As such, I don't see MME as ever decaying, since if you love something enough you never really retire from it.

The only real reason I still resist the slow decaying of crew experience is because I don't see it as needed. . . consider if your not at war, you still probably building ships, or at least researching war techs, so you'll eventually have to build new ships if ever you go into war. The act of building new ships makes it so your average crew experience level drops, until you fight and win some battles. Either way, functionally, if you are not in a war your average crew experience will drop before you enter your next war.

I just can't help feeling that if we have crew experience decay over time, even if you don't build or lose ships users will feel they need to be in a constant state of war just to keep their ships running at reasonable levels. *A state I would like to avoid myself.*

Any those are my penny-ful thoughts.

Best wishes
Robbie Price

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#26 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I think that having 2 seperate things is more complicated than having two piles of the same thing

So in my model
Ship->Empire
a portion would go continuously, and whenever a ship was "decommisioned" all of its experience would go into the Empire pile

Empire->Ship
a portion would go continuously and whenever a ship was built, a certain amount of Imperial Experience would go in the Empire Pile

Ships would get new experience through battles
Empire would get new experience through population (recruits)

Both would lose experience through decay
Ships would lose experience when destroyed in battle

Leaders would be like a special "pile" of experience that would allow special abilities, but they would also 'decay'


The reason I include decay is because it encompasses the entire range of "crew, admirals, leaders" whatever they are dying of old age, retiring to civilian life, forgetting what they knew, or just getting obsolete (Caesar would not be as good a general today as he was in the BC, at least until he got up to speed on modern warfare) (the exact explanation of what mechanism is there depends on the species, an immortal one might retire+forget more often, a short lived one stay more up to date easily, etc. but all have the same rate of decay... unless they have a specific "low decay" race pick.)

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#27 Post by MentokTheMindtaker »

My Problem with the empire experience pool idea is that it forcibly adds economylike effort(after all it's a new resource) to an issue which is about tactical combat.
The reason I include decay is because it encompasses the entire range of "crew, admirals, leaders" whatever they are dying of old age, retiring to civilian life, forgetting what they knew, or just getting obsolete (Caesar would not be as good a general today as he was in the BC, at least until he got up to speed on modern warfare) (the exact explanation of what mechanism is there depends on the species, an immortal one might retire+forget more often, a short lived one stay more up to date easily, etc. but all have the same rate of decay... unless they have a specific "low decay" race pick.)
That's a reality based argument. I dont see what it does accomplish thats worth the effort.

I would like to see a simpler solution, like droping the concept of ship experience all together or use a hero system like warcraftIII. Only special units gather experience and level, this would minimize the micromanagement because you only have few of them. The heros could be the leaders/officers themselves. Leveling would mean that they get better in the bonuses they already give. And they would just keep their earned experience when reassigned to a new ship/fleet.
"I was just summoned, by the spheres!! OOoooh!" --- Mentok, the Mindtaker

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#28 Post by Krikkitone »

Sorry about the reality argument got pulled in by the idea that MME "wouldn't forget because they enjoy it", the real reason for decal is that it sets up an equilibrium experience. I really don't like the feel of experience where it is something that continues to build up throughout the game. Whether it is on Leaders, or ships or empires. The idea that you "get soft" whether as a ship, a "Leader" or an entire Fleet should be included.

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#29 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,
Krikkitone wrote:Sorry about the reality argument got pulled in by the idea that MME "wouldn't forget because they enjoy it",


Let's not get overly zealous over realism, realism is ok, As long as it isn't used to trump fun, or intuitive. Both Decaying and non decaying experiences are realistic, if you look at them in their own way. so we can leave that aside.

Firstly;
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:
I would like to see a simpler solution, like droping the concept of ship experience all together or use a hero system like warcraftIII. Only special units gather experience and level, this would minimize the micromanagement because you only have few of them. The heros could be the leaders/officers themselves. Leveling would mean that they get better in the bonuses they already give. And they would just keep their earned experience when reassigned to a new ship/fleet.
Regarding a hero system, we likely will have both, which is to say Ships themselves gain levels, improving their ship-ness, and heros improving their heroness. Leaders/heroes would gain levels on their own, and of course retain them. I believe.

Secondly;
Krikkitone wrote: the real reason for decal is that it sets up an equilibrium experience. I really don't like the feel of experience where it is something that continues to build up throughout the game. Whether it is on Leaders, or ships or empires. The idea that you "get soft" whether as a ship, a "Leader" or an entire Fleet should be included.
I agree that an equilibrium experience of a sort should be implemented, Having unendingly mounting experience reduces the value of experience itself. There we agree.

I would only hope that the equilibrium could be achieved by balancing of consumption and supply, rather then a *for gamers* unintuitive decay. I would wager that nothing, except perhaps magic, is as unrealistically intuitive to gamers then leveling up. When you really think about it nothing could be farther from the truth but we, as gamers, virtually all play by that rule book. A part of that rule book, weather it be realistic or not, is that experience doesn't decay. It's written in the unwritten rules of levels, you get a level, you keep it, at least until you die, or get attacked by something with a level draining special attack... This doesn't mean we CAN'T have experience decay with time, but if we include it, we're going to have to defend/explain why it's needed. Think about WOW, if they implemented an experience decay rule where characters lost 0.1% of there total experience each 24 hours there would be riots in the streets.

As long as new built ships are experience 0, and dieing ships take there experience with them, and players 'use' MME experience once every ~10 turns or so . . . then some form of semi-equilibrium will be established; both for Crews and MME. 'Forcing' an equilibrium hopefully would only been NEEDED for game play if balancing proved impossible.
At least that's how i see it.

Note: Approximately half the leaders will be planetary leaders, who will never see battle, and that's if we don't include Spy super unites who contribute nothing to battle, except perhaps being a payload to deliver to a planet, or onto an opposing ship. It's not hard to imagine as few as 2 out of 5 'leaders' ever taking any functional role in space combat(or gaining experience from space combat at least). This being said, those leader will probably gain levels too. . . by doing what they are trained to. . . and whatever system we come up with in the end will have to allow for these units. (and for me, having them require a MME maintainence cost is really clumsy . . . since to me MME is otherwise unassigned skills . . . you can't consume it only allocated it in such a way it can't be recovered.)


Anyway, them be my thoughts, look forward to hearing yours.

Best wishes,

Robbie Price

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utilae
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#30 Post by utilae »

Krikkitone wrote: Well I think that having 2 seperate things is more complicated than having two piles of the same thing

So in my model
Ship->Empire
a portion would go continuously, and whenever a ship was "decommisioned" all of its experience would go into the Empire pile

Empire->Ship
a portion would go continuously and whenever a ship was built, a certain amount of Imperial Experience would go in the Empire Pile

Ships would get new experience through battles
Empire would get new experience through population (recruits)

Both would lose experience through decay
Ships would lose experience when destroyed in battle

Leaders would be like a special "pile" of experience that would allow special abilities, but they would also 'decay'


The reason I include decay is because it encompasses the entire range of "crew, admirals, leaders" whatever they are dying of old age, retiring to civilian life, forgetting what they knew, or just getting obsolete (Caesar would not be as good a general today as he was in the BC, at least until he got up to speed on modern warfare) (the exact explanation of what mechanism is there depends on the species, an immortal one might retire+forget more often, a short lived one stay more up to date easily, etc. but all have the same rate of decay... unless they have a specific "low decay" race pick.)
I think a simpler version of the above is this (though a little different):

*There is an empire wide pool of crew experience and it is like a resource basically.
*All ships in battle collect experience, eg when they kill something. This goes to the empire wide pool of crew experience.
*When any ship dies, it takes away from the empire wide pool of crew experience, based on its size and experience level.
*All ships have the same experience level, which is always equal to the empire wide pool of crew experience.
*A ships experience level affects combat performance, eg increasing accuracy, damage, repair rates, etc. Training technologies may affect this, or allow focus.
*The empire wide pool of crew experience is depreciated slightly if there is no combat that turn, however technolgies may affect this, eg training.

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