Ship Experience / Crew Experience

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#31 Post by Krikkitone »

utilae wrote:
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.
Well there None of the ships are any different. I want to have some type of a balance between
A-"all ships are the same interchangable parts" and
B-"ships are characters on your RPG team"

That's why I think that
1. Ships should get more experience for battles they are in (B factor)
2. That experience should be shared (A factor)
3. Experience should be gainable from your population (A factor)
4. That experience should decay, the only other way to lose experience is Death.

I would actually Not have experience "level up" I would say that a ship that has 568 exp points should be slightly different in stats than one with 567 or 569 exp points... now there might be changes in description for UI purposes (ships with 0-100 exp points are "green" ships with 10,000+ points are 'strike force elites') but a green 50 would be worse than a green 51 (slightly).

Now with "Leaders" that adds an RPG factor... Them I could see 'leveling up'. [If we decide to include them]

Also, Experience Decay would be Directly combated by the population input. If your experience goes out to the ships from the Imperial pile to combat that decay, then your ship with 100,000 exp will stay at 100,000 exp (As long as your empire can produce enough exp/turn to make up for the loss/turn)


I think the real debate is how closely to follow effect A or B
Utilae's proposal is closest to A
and
RP's proposal (for MME) is probably closest to B that we will have in an Empire game.

Now I think that an 'economy like' effort Should be something you use for getting well trained troops (This is a 4x and not an RPG). Combat helps a Whole lot, but it should be possible to have a totally peace ful empire with a small elite military... not only well equipped, but 'well trained'.

I would say that "Military Leaders", if we have them. would have initial and ongoing costs of Exp (and level up in combat). "Civilian Leaders", if we have them, would have initial and ongoing costs of Money (and level up based on the size of the economy they are overseeing).

But Even if we have Military Leaders, they should Not be the dominant use of experience, because Leaders are necessarily 'managy' it should be possible to not hire Any leaders and just let your experience give generic bonuses to your fleet.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#32 Post by AudioBottle »

I think that the decay/shared exp would take away from the variety of game types that could be played. I don't believe that the game will always be centered around war and we should keep in mind that experience from war might not always be abundant enough to base the entire system around. For example, if one had an economic power and was dominating the playing field, the game would start to lose its balance if there were decay involved. This economic power could still have a large military at its borders, but the game could revolve around espionage and economic manipulation. Then, taking realism into account, there would still be military training/drills/practice that would keep these units up to par, perhaps not gaining any real exp, but still maintaining what they have.
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utilae
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#33 Post by utilae »

Krikkitone wrote: I would actually Not have experience "level up" I would say that a ship that has 568 exp points should be slightly different in stats than one with 567 or 569 exp points... now there might be changes in description for UI purposes (ships with 0-100 exp points are "green" ships with 10,000+ points are 'strike force elites') but a green 50 would be worse than a green 51 (slightly).
I was thinking of it more like:
a to b experience = rank 1 for all ships
b to c experience = rank 2 for all ships
c to d experience = rank 3 for all ships
d to e experience = rank 4 for all ships
etc

The basic achievement with this system is that the total average experience of all crew in the empire is represented on the battlefield.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#34 Post by Krikkitone »

AudioBottle wrote:I think that the decay/shared exp would take away from the variety of game types that could be played. I don't believe that the game will always be centered around war and we should keep in mind that experience from war might not always be abundant enough to base the entire system around. Then, taking realism into account, there would still be military training/drills/practice that would keep these units up to par, perhaps not gaining any real exp, but still maintaining what they have.
That is EXACTLY why I have decay

I think the key point is if threre are 2 empires with the EXACT same policies+ strategies + race picks + economies for the past 1000 turns but
Empire A has Never had a war
Empire B had a massive war 1000 turns ago

The "Experience" available to both should (by now) be the same.

Empire B would have MUCH more experience than Empire A right after the war, but it would slowly decline to Empire A's values. IF they had the same policies/races/etc.

So if Both Empires A+B are rabidly Militaristic, and the only reason they haven't had a war is because of the delicate balance of power for the past 1000 turns they will both have Very high Experience levels. Perhaps B might have lost as much experience from the war (in terms of elite ships destroyed) as it gained.

On the other hand if that terrible war convinced both of them that the best thing was to pursue a peaceful economy, then they might have incredibly low levels of experience (barely above 0), especially if their race picks were also low experience.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#35 Post by AudioBottle »

The problem here is that we have different concepts of experience.

I for one don't think that experience should only be gained through combat. There should be other factors besides war that can be involved in an empire advancing itself through wise decisions, and in doing so gaining exp that will give additional benefits. On the other hand SHIP EXPERIENCE should be gained by either a special training program (purchased? built?) or through combat encounters.

I think we need to define what this general experience is going to be used for and how it is specifically going to be gained as this has not been defined well enough yet for us to be designing specifics around it (nor do we know if we are going to incorporate it at all). I propose we split this thread into a general empire exp discussion and then continue the ship exp discussion once that comes to some sort of conclusion.
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Robbie.Price
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#36 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmornign all,

I can't seam to find the resulting split topics,

but to quickly reply (I've been away for 2 weeks or so and hot been able to keep current with the debate here, my apologies for my lateness)

AS for two otherwise identical races, one having recently had a war, and the other having had a war but some 50 turns back.

Assuming both races are still developing tech, and both are building ships(/ will have to build ships to engage in a new war). The desired outcome (Old war empire has less experiences then new war empire) would be inherent to the system.

Assuming both wars were equal magnitude, and both empires had after the war the same number of ships with the same experience and the same empire experience (unlikely but a god model).

To be in a new war both empires will need Some # of top of the line ships. The New war empire will have to build a small number of ships and probably upgrade a modest number. Where as the Old war empire will have either already build new ships or will have to do so now. All one needs to add is a caviate that upgrading/refitting a ship reduces it's experience. The old war empire experience, build on old tech, will be diluted in the process of building a new fleet, where as the new war empire will have less ships to upgrade(or upgrade as much)/build since the new empires ships are already up to date, and experienced.

As for the MME, the old war will have spent it, or saved it as it sees fit, but if they didn't spend it, they didn't profit from it, and if they did then it's gone. Either way it's unimportant that it's not actually decaying forcefully.

Invoking a forced decay is confusing, I would hope, (if we were to include experience at all) that we could find a more elegant solution to the desire to have old wars be less useful then recent wars.

Best wishes all
Robbie Price

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Krikkitone
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#37 Post by Krikkitone »

As for a forced decay being confusing... I think that depends on how much Experience is viewed as a resource similar to food/minerals, etc. Ie you buy things with it and that totally consumes it.

I view Experience as something like population/resource meter levels rather a resource (ie its increae/decrease is something you are minimally involved with)
You Only lose it through ships dyingin battle and decay, you never "spend it" you just move it around.
"Leaders" would be an "exception" to the general plan for experience rather than the baseline.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#38 Post by Robbie.Price »

Krikkitone wrote:As for a forced decay being confusing... I think that depends on how much Experience is viewed as a resource similar to food/minerals, etc. Ie you buy things with it and that totally consumes it.

I view Experience as something like population/resource meter levels rather a resource (ie its increae/decrease is something you are minimally involved with)
You Only lose it through ships dyingin battle and decay, you never "spend it" you just move it around.
"Leaders" would be an "exception" to the general plan for experience rather than the baseline.
Regarding experience as a meter, I would accept this, in stead of ship by ship crew experience. Given enough time without building a ship this would happen anyway. The only difference being that the effect is instantaneous as apposed to gradual,(and thereby controllable[for better or for worse]). But instead of having any forced decay I would have the act of building and upgrading ships reduce the meter, and have it otherwise remain constant. (Larger/higher technology) ships reduce the meter more then (lower tech/size) ships, and Upgrading a ship would reduce the meter less then building a new ship of the same class.

IE.

New ship would bring experience meter down 5 points,
Upgrading a nearly equal ship would reduce it only 1, upgrading a real junker would cost 4. (arbitrary numbers)

For experience as a resource, i would have my separate thing MME, Which is only partially convertible into and from crew experience. I would keep it as a resource to be used for Leaders, special combat/spy missions, special buildings. . . the possibilities are as always limited only by our imagination.

MME is of course less simple, but i (for one) would find it more fun. Instead of just having ships battle we're thinking of having limited goals(destroy/cripple that shipyard, for example) if my memory serves me. I would like to be able to have an extra resource like MME which i can 'risk' or 'spend' to increase my chances at given combat missions to succeed.

For example, when choosing to go into battle, one choose the overall mission ('Capture the enemy flag ship and return it intact for our scientists', 'Deliver a Spy to the planet -during a mock raid-', etc.) Then be able to choose how important this mission is, not only by the number of ships i send, but also by selecting how much of my MME I'm contributing. (some of this would be 'Spent' [depositing the spy; some of the raid troops will be lost, plus the spy his/her/its self], whilst some would only be risked[Higher ranking officials over viewing the battle personally, ships lost would 'cost' MME]).

In short it adds another degree of strategic freedom, a little extra depth, at little cost (in my eyes).


Best wishes all,

Robbie Price.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#39 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I think that having crew experience and MME experience seperate is entirely unnecessary, they are gathered in a similar way (from battles or 'population') and do a similar thing (improve the military situation) I can see some of those "other" uses of experience. But by and large, they are more done through the use of highly experienced troops.

I wasn't suggesting a single meter. Just like population isn't a single meter, but population is distributed across planets, so experience would be distributed across ships and would move towards a certain level (although with population it would be more important).

Its true that both of our models have some form of decay (at least of crew experience) I think mine would allow greater flexibility, in the fact that the experience redistributes when a ship is upgraded/decomissioned.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#40 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,

I wouldn't suggest a single meter either, I would accept a single meter, vis-a-vie something like. . .
utilae wrote: I was thinking of it more like:
a to b experience = rank 1 for all ships
b to c experience = rank 2 for all ships
c to d experience = rank 3 for all ships
d to e experience = rank 4 for all ships
etc
My original, and prefered system is much closer to your,
Krikkitone wrote: Its true that both of our models have some form of decay (at least of crew experience) I think mine would allow greater flexibility, in the fact that the experience redistributes when a ship is upgraded/decomissioned.
In that both of our systems have both have flexible shifting of experience, to a greater or lesser extent, from one ship to another. In my system like yours, experience re-redistributes over time. . . i think the only real game play difference between your model and mine, (if I've understood you, correct me if I'm wrong) is that you wouldn't have MME, you would have Crew experience decay (at some race specific, tech specific rate) over time for ships which are not upgraded, nor engage in battle, and that you would have some way in which buildings, money, planets produce some form of 'experience recourses' which then get distributed to ships, so that they never decay down to 0. (new level = old level + experience from planets - decay +/- experience sent from/to other ships).

I on the other hand remove decay and planets from the system, so (new level = old level +/- experience sent from/to other ships -upgrade cost(if upgrading)), and all ships start at 0, or near 0.
Krikkitone wrote: I can see some of those "other" uses of experience. But by and large, they are more done through the use of highly experienced troops.
This is in effect true. One could use your system and archive . . .most of what my system hopes to, if you allowed some level of Micromanaging experience. One could, before battle, got through your ships and remove experience from ships which will not be fighting, and move it to ships which will. One could additionally set up the user interface to do this automatically, and have it when you choose to promote a leader(or any other of the many possible uses of experience i suggested) that it removes experience uniformly from all ships(or some subset).

I think the key difference between how I'm seeing MME, and you are, is I'm not seeing MME as Highly experienced troops, but more Highly specialized troops. In any army you have teams which excel at given tasks, but are more or less normal at others. Maybe they are covert opps, or strike opps, or communications specialists. . . whatever they are this group is typically decentralized. They don't go on every battle, they aren't associated with a given ship for years on end, they get called in from where ever, to do 'a job'. It is this delocalized task forces I'm hoping to weakly simulate.

Ships have crews, those crews have experience at making ships go places, and blowing stuff up from time to time. But some of those people become good at doing 'other' stuff as well, It is the 'other stuff' which MME is. The collection of known specialists capable of being called in for 'special jobs', or promotable to 'Leaders' where their 'other ability' is defined and permanently set, making them manageable unit of ability which can be allocated more permanently.

I hope that makes the distinction more clear as to why i want MME, since it is (IMHO) qualitatively differnt then crew experience.

Best wishes,
Robbie Price

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#41 Post by Krikkitone »

Robbie.Price wrote:
In that both of our systems have both have flexible shifting of experience, to a greater or lesser extent, from one ship to another. In my system like yours, experience re-redistributes over time. . . i think the only real game play difference between your model and mine, (if I've understood you, correct me if I'm wrong) is that you wouldn't have MME, you would have Crew experience decay (at some race specific, tech specific rate) over time for ships which are not upgraded, nor engage in battle, and that you would have some way in which buildings, money, planets produce some form of 'experience recourses' which then get distributed to ships, so that they never decay down to 0. (new level = old level + experience from planets - decay +/- experience sent from/to other ships).

I on the other hand remove decay and planets from the system, so (new level = old level +/- experience sent from/to other ships -upgrade cost(if upgrading)), and all ships start at 0, or near 0.
Yes basically right.
I prefer the decay+peacetime production because upgrades depends on tech rates and other things, wheras Decay is fixed, and peacetime production allows race/government effects.

As for "Special Experience" I'd keep that limited to Leaders. a "flag" of high experience value that can move from ship to ship

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#42 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,

My system also allows government race effects, determining how quickly crew experience regresses towards the mean. but the effects would be slightly differnt.

If we (FO) choose to include experience at all, I think the community at this point would have to decide which model it prefers. I believe both of our models have been sufficiently well explained.

I believe your method may be more difficult to code, if it were to be chosen, since it requires a turn by turn survey of all planets, and possibly the determination of weather or not a given ship is 'supliable' by a given planet, but I'm sure that would not be too difficult, we do similar things already.

If anybody else has some ideas of how to approach the experience question feel free to mention it, these two(three) models are not the only ways to solve this. The final solution, if any, remains several versions away >; - D

Best wishes all
Robbie Price

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Yeeha
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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#43 Post by Yeeha »

Lol you people want SO complex system for exp, reality aside i think decaying xp and empire xp is bad because:

1. First its complex

2. Having war usually means that u weaken yourself so gaining xp through combat should be main way to get xp and it shouldnt dissapear because otherwise avoiding war and camping become main style of game.

3. I think most people would find their pet fleet shrinking xp no matter how less xp dissapears very frustrating. Psychological thing.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#44 Post by Krikkitone »

Yeeha wrote:Lol you people want SO complex system for exp, reality aside i think decaying xp and empire xp is bad because:

1. First its complex

2. Having war usually means that u weaken yourself so gaining xp through combat should be main way to get xp and it shouldnt dissapear because otherwise avoiding war and camping become main style of game.

3. I think most people would find their pet fleet shrinking xp no matter how less xp dissapears very frustrating. Psychological thing.
As for the pet fleet, all you would have to do is set your policy to "maintain experience" and as long as you had enough empire xp then that ship would stay at its full level. And given that this is not an RPS, you should have some "peacetime" level of military ability.

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Re: Ship Experience / Crew Experience

#45 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmoring all;
Krikkitone wrote:
As for the pet fleet, all you would have to do is set your policy to "maintain experience" and as long as you had enough empire xp then that ship would stay at its full level. And given that this is not an RPS, you should have some "peacetime" level of military ability.
Krikkitone after reading the above, I realized I don't know how you plan to make your system work.

As i see it, the supply of experience almost by definition linear.

Something like x experience/(planet/population/other) + x per shipyard + x for some form of government setting(or perhaps all * X for government setting[which can't be tied to money, because that would make it so that FO has two ship upkeep costs, which seams unKISS, at least to me]). (or are you thinking of another system???)


For Decay, you only really have two choices, again as i see it.

Either Linear or, to some degree, Exponential.

meaning either.
1.All ships loose X experience,
2.For every level a ship has it looses X,
3.all ships loose x% a turn.


If the first, then as decay will not occur, or it will always occur(depending on ship to planet/other ratio). So i don't think that's what your going for.

The other two are both, to a greater or lesser extent Exponential, which means higher level ships will 'loose' Much more experience/turn then lower level ones, making much harder to keep your pet fleet.

Also are you expecting that the level of experience upkeep will be settable on a ship to ship, or fleet to fleet level???
such that the user can,has to, choose which ships are loosing experience?? Is that going to be have to be included in the UI on that detailed a level??


As i am 'currently (it has changed a little since i first envisioned experience)' seeing my system there would be no transfer of MME to and from Ships(permanently), thus no need for such a UI.


Re: Yeeha's comments,

I'm assuming only the first element
Yeeha wrote:1. First its complex
applies to the creation of the second experience type MME. The other two points are not , to me, as clearly applicable to my system.

I agree having two semi separate systems both with similar names is somewhat more complex then absolutely necessary, My hope is that by having these two distinct systems, which provide different functionality, the game can be given more depth (WRT the experience issue).

Unfun and Unnecessary complexity definitely should be avoided. . . I hope that the system as I've suggested is more then sufficiently additionally fun to justify the additional complexity.

also I'm a bit confused by point 2, If experience doesn't in any way decay, then Camping is ok. Having some form of decay discourages camping, at least that's how i see it.

how are you seeing this?

Best wishes.

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