Ship Experience / Crew Experience

[Krikkitone]

Except I would say KISS argues Against experience being 'stuck' to a ship.

playing empire games with experienced units encourages you to micromanage those units to get experience
It also encourages you to micromanage fleet upgrades to stop from losing that experience

On the otherhand if experience is sharable (ie empire wide sharing experience [high amount] or [low/minimal amount])
then you can upgrade your fleets as you want and not worry about experience being 'wasted' becaus it is stuck on a particular ship. (if you have minimum sharing of experience, then you are opting to micromanage individual units, but theres no reason an 'elite' and a bunch of 'greens' wouldn't be as good as a bunch of 'veterans')

[Geoff the Medio]

playing empire games with experienced units encourages you to micromanage those units to get experience
It also encourages you to micromanage fleet upgrades to stop from losing that experience

Agreed.

Additionally, having experience stuck to a particular unit encourages micromanagement during battles to avoid losing that unit.

As well, if there is an experience cap, after which units gain no more experience, one must micromanage even more to ensure that every battle or engagement gives the maximum possible experience to units that can benefit from it, rather than the units that are already maxed. This can lead to sitautions where you focus on the meta-game of promoting units, rather than the actual battle tactics and strategy, only to effectively abandon units when they are finally promoted.

[Tortanick]

Agreed, I remember frequently micromanaging units in wesnoth to ensure XP went around correctly, what would be rather stupid strategies became good ones due to the value of high level units.

Maybe we should just drop ship experiance all togeather? Once you no longer have attachments to individual ships there's not much left to reccomend it. And it might break balance if one empire gets too much experiance compaired to its rivals.

[Krikkitone]

I'd be OK with an Empire only experience (although I'd prefer otherwise).. but essentially my model with instant equal distribution as the only choice

I'd probably still have
Decay
Addition from successful battles
Subtraction based on units (on my side) killed
Addition from population/empire/policy, etc.

[Bigjoe5]

I don't think that ship specific experience is any more complicated than anything else being suggested. It's not difficult to get around the micromanagement problem. For example, if experience has an exponentially greater effect on ships of greater size, and specific numerical bonuses based on experience do not increase with technology level, (i.e. what used to be a good bonus for lasers vs. titanium is now almost useless for plasma cannons vs. xentronium) then the player is only worried about his biggest ships experience level, because as technology increases, the ship size needs to increase for the player to get any noticeable bonus. So players can identify with their flagships while their tiny ships are less important, as they should be. This adds no micromanagement to the system, as player hopefully want to keep their massive ships intact anyway.

[Yeeha]

I dont see how there can be such issue with fleets... You simply cant check every ship, if someone tryes to sustain and control xp getting of 50 ships well good luck to him, but theres no harm if player tryes to check that his 1 of few doomstars wouldnt get wiped, he will do it with or without xp like bigjoe said. And comparing to wesnoth is kind of wrong because unless someone suggested that elite ship should destroy 3-5 samekind of ships with average crew, i thought of xp like moo2 it gives advantage but that advantage doesnt make your ship somekind of antaran, it simply gives better odds of enemy getting hit and you not getting hit and maybe to stealth factor a bit. Elite fleet simply has little edge over usual ones main factor still is ship size, tech and design.And because effect isnt so BIG AND BAD theres no need to complicate it with all those rules.

[Krikkitone]

The micromanagement problem is more than just 'checking' the experience of your ships, its overall making what should be an empire game into an individual unit game.

In terms of distribution I can see 3 potentially kiss models

1. All experience is Imperial (ship bonuses are based on total imperial experience divided by # or tonnage of ships)
[needs decay and some peacetime input]

2. All experience is individual ship based and immovable
[needs some method of starting new ships at higher experience level for better cost]

3. Experience is ship based but moves automatically based on imperial settings (needs to be imperial setting to maintain KISS)
[needs decay and some peacetime input]


the [needs] ther is if there is going to be any experience difference between two empires at peace... which I think is good if you generalize it to 'combat proficiency' which has a much wider range than rpg type experience. (combat proficiency could represent racial bonuses, training technologies, levels of military recruitment and motivation due to policies...etc.)

I'd obviously favor 1 or 3 because all management is doable on the imperial scale, there is no need to worry about individual ships... because they never (in the case of 1) or rarely (in the case of 3) matter more than their tonnage would allow. Although with 3 you Could specifically decide to worry about individual ships.

I am starting to think that 'Leaders' might be the better way of doing that.

I could see style #1, plus the ability to 'buy' a leader that would attach on to an individual ship with the imperial experience. So the 'default' would be no micromanagement, but if you wanted to buy Leaders, and 'RPG' with your favorite Doomstars you could... at a cost to your overall fleet, but a benefit to that ship (for a net neutro to the total fleet)

[Robbie.Price]

Goodmorning all,

I generally agree infact with BigJoe, the easiest of systems it to have a static experience ship by ship with no levels and minimal to modest effects covering most of the relevant attributes of combat ships . . . in so far as you do not limit the max levels it's really simple to balance such that micromanaging becomes pointless. Just make sure that one level two ship + 1 level 0 ship has the same combat strength as two level 1 ships(IE 50/50 wins for AI vrs AI fights). [note this is NOT one level two being equal to two level 0's; when ship counts are constant, and total levels are equal, distribution should be tuned to be mostly, but not completely, negligible}]

That being said i think it is TOO simple, and it fails to account for non combat ships, and non combat roles.

playing empire games with experienced units encourages you to micromanage those units to get experience
It also encourages you to micromanage fleet upgrades to stop from losing that experience

Agreed.

here I would disagree, as long as the number of levels to be lost is low enough that the combat efficiency overall still rises by an upgrade there is little push to micromanage. Upgrading /refitting should not be a trade off being 'strength now/ strength potential' but be a genuine upgrade. As long as your always stronger after then before, then upgrading is always the better option, if you can afford it, therefore no pressure to micromanage.

Additionally, having experience stuck to a particular unit encourages micromanagement during battles to avoid losing that unit.

That is a good reason to avoid experience being force-ably tied irremovably from a each ship. And that is a large part reason i have suggested experience being transferable between ships in my model.

I would have experience transferABLE, as apposed to being absolutely necessarily uniform across an empire. There is strategic value in being allowed to have a flagship, and being able to target your opponents flagships. I can see one sides of a battle coming in with a flagship, and the other side deciding it's 'goal/mission' for that battle is to destroy that one ship, it would even be a selectable mission in the pre-battle mission selection screen.

I'd probably still have
Decay
Addition from successful battles
Subtraction based on units (on my side) killed
Addition from population/empire/policy, etc.

I would clarify that 'successful battles' means successful missions, expecailly for MME type things, how many enemies you destroy is not the point, it's weather the mission is completed successfully or not. That mission May involve the destruction of opponents, but if carnage isn't the goal, then carnage shouldn't give much experience.

the other two i would keep in some way or other, but Decay, still confuses the daylights out of me. Can you explain to me in in terms I'll understand why this is needed, what it does. I want to see where your coming from but i simply can't wrap my brains around why you think this is beneficially, and why it would be better to invoke an fixed forced decay. I would be very appreciative if you could make this clear to me, because i see that it's important to you, but i don't see why, and maybe if i did, i might agree with you.

@ bigjoe,
re : "(i.e. what used to be a good bonus for lasers vs. titanium is now almost useless for plasma cannons vs. xentronium)", and related;

The system your proposing here is Highly susceptible to micromanagement, as you said if your only caring about the highest level ships. . . your micromanaging to make sure they stay highest, and gain most, while risking least. . . that may be too close to the micromanagement side of things for FO's comfort.

Also re keeping massive ships intact, I'm hoping for a system where all ship sizes are equally important in the endgame, that is to say, given equal investments of turns and Production:

tiny ships should mop the floor with huge ships,
and medium ships should mop the floor with small ships (and large with medium). (making a 4 or 5 way rock paper scissors game out of sizes, thus they all are important.)

1. All experience is Imperial (ship bonuses are based on total imperial experience divided by # or tonnage of ships)
[needs decay and some peacetime input]

2. All experience is individual ship based and immovable
[needs some method of starting new ships at higher experience level for better cost]

3. Experience is ship based but moves automatically based on imperial settings (needs to be imperial setting to maintain KISS)
[needs decay and some peacetime input]

1: I would not overly support this, it leaves no wiggle room for strategy, at least in my eyes. May as well have a system with no expierience for anybody.

2: This would probably be the simplest to code, and balance, but could become a Micromanagement nightmare, if not handled correctly.

3: This is a very reasonable system if you really want something simple, and direct. But it doesn't need forced decay, having the upgrading of ships cost some of their total experience, and given the continuous creation of new ships experience will naturally keep itself to reasonable levels across the empire. I would be happy for a demonstration of why this is not the case, and why forced decay is necessary beyond the natural decay of new ships . . . but as i said above, I simply can not fathom it at all, I'm totally flumixed as to why you think this is needed.


One thing that none of the proposed systems handles well is non combat ships, and non combat rolls .

I still would prefer my two experiences model: one reduced ship experience with highly limited effects on battle, then a second which is directly tied to the missions/leaders/structures and non combat roles.

if i were pressed to put forth a Kiss model i would ditch combat proficiency (ship experience and the getting better by fighting) entirely, and stick with the completely 'special operatives' model of experience, my MME expierience.

Empires have a resource, 'Special operative experience'/'military machine experience' (MME).
It rises over time to some min level if not used, and previously under that amount.
Most non direct combat missions/more complex require 'some' of this to be planned and launched.
Completing a mission successfully, or mostly successfully, wins you bonus MME
If you risk more MME then the minimum you have the ships directly involved with the more complex parts of the mission are better equipped to complete the mission, thus more likely to succeed . . . but you gain less bonus MME for succeeding.
MME is kept from exploding by being regularly consumed by missions(including perhaps spy missions), and by the purchase of leader, by the building of certain military related projects, and so forth; Thus MME would not need to decay.

the additional dimension of ship by ship expierience is just to add depth. . . it does not directly correlate to the MME aspect.

That's too much from me already, probably should have broken this up into 2 or more posts, but i didn't

best wishes all, sorry for rambling,

Robbie Price

[Krikkitone]

If there was only 'upgrade losses' of experience then I think that encourages micromanagement of the loss rate. (especially when it is ship by ship.... upgrade the ship now so it can survive to get more experience, or upgrade it later.)

I think you should only be managing the 'gain rate' (for peaceful conditions) [in war you are managing the loss by not getting your ships blown up]
by making 'constant decay' the only thing that loses experience besides ships being destroyed, you avoid micromanaging your upgrade process. (if we have any)

finally, I know the realism idea is frowned on, but that general decay feels a lot more like an empire level process (which involves all of society, how the military is handled and so forth) than the ship to ship level thing (ie the Enterprise is upgraded so we lose captain Kirk)

[Bigjoe5]

Goodmorning all,

I generally agree infact with BigJoe....

That being said i think it is TOO simple, and it fails to account for non combat ships, and non combat roles.

IMO, "non-combat roles" are primarily based on actions of the player himself controlling specific special non-combat units. There is no need to attach an experience level on to something the player has direct control over. A (hypothetical) spy shuttle should drop of a spy. That's what it's for. That's what it does, regardless of experience. The specific tactics used to get close enough to the planet to drop off the spy is up to the player. Specific "combat-related" advantages will affect this mission directly by increasing stealth, evasion, etc.. Non-combat ships get a sufficient advantage from their own "combat-related" experience bonus and the experience bonus of the ships around them.

@ bigjoe,
re : "(i.e. what used to be a good bonus for lasers vs. titanium is now almost useless for plasma cannons vs. xentronium)", and related;

The system your proposing here is Highly susceptible to micromanagement, as you said if your only caring about the highest level ships. . . your micromanaging to make sure they stay highest, and gain most, while risking least. . . that may be too close to the micromanagement side of things for FO's comfort.

Not highest level per se, but largest. You could have the highest level frigate in the galaxy, but I'm not going to micromanage to keep it intact, because the first-level bonus of my doomstar is so much better.

Also re keeping massive ships intact, I'm hoping for a system where all ship sizes are equally important in the endgame, that is to say, given equal investments of turns and Production:

tiny ships should mop the floor with huge ships,
and medium ships should mop the floor with small ships (and large with medium). (making a 4 or 5 way rock paper scissors game out of sizes, thus they all are important.)

Indeed, they are all important. In certain quantities. A single huge ship is much more important than a single tiny ship, so the huge ships will be the ones the player is primarily concerned with regardless of experience.

One thing that none of the proposed systems handles well is non combat ships, and non combat rolls....

Again, these non-combat roles are taken by the player himself, unless you want to have some kind of AI that gets better with more MME (bad idea). I'm still quite confused about exactly what effect these non-combat bonuses would have on combat. How will ships involved in more complex roles of a mission be "better equipped to carry out their mission" in ways not covered by regular experience?

[Robbie.Price]

If there was only 'upgrade losses' of experience then I think that encourages micromanagement of the loss rate. (especially when it is ship by ship.... upgrade the ship now so it can survive to get more experience, or upgrade it later.)

I don't see the problem at all . . .

the choices are:

upgrade now(if i can afford it) for a stronger ship

Or not upgrade now, and hope my ship isn't destroyed before i have a chance to upgrade it.

As long as their is no benefit to not upgrading a ship (in terms of performance, there maybe a 'cost' in minerals or resources of course), there is no need to micromanage. Unless you just want big numbers, as long as it is strategically invalid there is no micromanagement problem, and it's easy enough to make it strategically invalid to not upgrade when you can obviously afford it.

IMO, "non-combat roles" are primarily based on actions of the player himself controlling specific special non-combat units. There is no need to attach an experience level on to something the player has direct control over. A (hypothetical) spy shuttle should drop of a spy. That's what it's for. That's what it does, regardless of experience. The specific tactics used to get close enough to the planet to drop off the spy is up to the player. Specific "combat-related" advantages will affect this mission directly by increasing stealth, evasion, etc.. Non-combat ships get a sufficient advantage from their own "combat-related" experience bonus and the experience bonus of the ships around them.

I wouldn't lump stealth in with combat bonuses, since stealth is used before combat begins. . . with the rare exception of those who can attack while stealthed.

If we have missions, and the AI has missions, we're going to have to write code to layout ships, plan routes, etc. . . higher non combat efficiency would yield 'better' opening suggested execution plans, you would be able to change them-of course, but they would start more sound.

the hypothetical spy dropping craft might be better stealthed, or be equipped to look like an enemy craft, perhaps have some stolen passcodes, so that even if detected it might be ignored the first time. . . not to mention just having a bonus to the possibility/effect of infiltration.

These things do not easily fit with the combat only model. and are they types of things i would hope we would be able to implement.

best wishes all

Robbie Price

[Krikkitone]

Well the bigger problem I have with the 'upgrade only' loss is that it makes the combat proficiency/experience too attatched to individual ships. I think it works far better for a empire game if your combat proficiency/experience is basically an imperial resource (that can get spread out among ships).

Also if it is ALWAYS strategically better to upgrade a ship then you aren't going to be losing significant amounts of experience in the process.

Also it creates a bigger problem for 'replacing' ships if you had a massively successful war with your missile cruisers... do you scrap them and lose all the experience they accumulated to get new beam destroyers... perhaps you check each one to see if its 'combat proficiency/experience' is worth the fact that it is out of date.


I think the definite advantage of a Decay system is that no management can be done on it. You solely manaage 'peaceful input' and battles. That avoids micromanaging, and works better on an empire level.

[Bigjoe5]

I wouldn't lump stealth in with combat bonuses, since stealth is used before combat begins. . . with the rare exception of those who can attack while stealthed.

By combat do you mean when ships are actually shooting at each other, or all parts of a battle where you are in the battle map and are controlling ships? Regardless, stealth still gives a bonus for combat comparable to a "first strike" bonus. It also allows ships an advantage in slipping out of "combat" only to reenter with a surprise attack.

If we have missions, and the AI has missions, we're going to have to write code to layout ships, plan routes, etc. . . higher non combat efficiency would yield 'better' opening suggested execution plans, you would be able to change them-of course, but they would start more sound.

I am of the opinion that when the AI battles for a human player against another human player, it should be as strong an AI as we can make it, not one that improves with experience and tries to be smarter in "choosing" a battle plan than the human would be. If you can change the execution plans, what's the point of having "suggested" execution plans at all? That'll just weigh the player down...

the hypothetical spy dropping craft might be better stealthed, or be equipped to look like an enemy craft, perhaps have some stolen passcodes, so that even if detected it might be ignored the first time. . . not to mention just having a bonus to the possibility/effect of infiltration.

Stolen passcodes...? As an in-game excuse for some more direct function I assume? And ignored by whom? Not by a human player, certainly. I would prefer if ship experience worked equally well against human and AI players.

Also if it is ALWAYS strategically better to upgrade a ship then you aren't going to be losing significant amounts of experience in the process.

I don't think it's ever necessary to lose significant amounts of experience.

Also it creates a bigger problem for 'replacing' ships if you had a massively successful war with your missile cruisers... do you scrap them and lose all the experience they accumulated to get new beam destroyers... perhaps you check each one to see if its 'combat proficiency/experience' is worth the fact that it is out of date.

Or, because everyones technology level is higher now, their experience is no longer very valuable. Furthermore, if you had a lot of missile cruisers, they probably weren't your largest ship type so their experience wasn't very valuable in the first place. With this knowledge, the player will choose whether or not to replace them based on the comparative value of a beam destroyer and a missile cruiser as well as the cost of the replacement. As experience gradually becomes unimportant for smaller ships, it fades out of the player's decision making process. There's no need for a decay in experience if experience itself becomes less valuable over time for a given ship.

I think the definite advantage of a Decay system is that no management can be done on it. You solely manage 'peaceful input' and battles. That avoids micromanaging, and works better on an empire level.

It's even better if we can let the player relate to his flagships while still avoiding micro.

[utilae]

I prefer an empire wide experience system:
* Crew Experience Meter - This meter determines the level of all ships, no matter what they have done, whether they are new, how many battles they have survived, etc.
* Ship Level - All ships are at the same level. This level is based on the Crew Experience Meter. A ships level is always set via an equal formula and is not increased or decreased.
* Experience Gain - Any experience gained in battle or some other way by a ship is given to the Crew Experience Meter and not the ship.
* Experience Loss - Experience does not get lost as a result of ships being destroyed. This is because experience does not refer soley to the individual, but to the system that develops that experience, the training, schools and activities of the race. Good experience does not just reflect the best warriors, but the best teachers as well.
* Decay - Over time, lack of investments in crew experience result in a decrease in the Crew Experience Meter.

[Robbie.Price]

Goodmorning all, (I'm going to cut this into three smaller posts, save your eyes)

Also if it is ALWAYS strategically better to upgrade a ship then you aren't going to be losing significant amounts of experience in the process.

Also it creates a bigger problem for 'replacing' ships if you had a massively successful war with your missile cruisers... do you scrap them and lose all the experience they accumulated to get new beam destroyers... perhaps you check each one to see if its 'combat proficiency/experience' is worth the fact that it is out of date.

I really don't follow you here. . .
1. The majority of drain on experience is the flow from high experience crafts to no experience 'fresh' crafts, not from upgrades. Upgrades only provide a manner to distinguish between 'old' war experience and 'recent' war experience.

Two armies both had wars, had to replace 40% of the fleet, before replacing both had an average level of 10. One had the war 65 turns ago, and was armed with shields mrk 1, lasers mrk1 and armor mrk 1. The other had the war 20 turns ago, and was at all mrk 3's.
Now both have tech mark 4's. Both finish upgrading / rebuilding.

The 'recent' empire will now have average levels of about 6, but the 'old' will have average levels of 4, on account of the larger 'gap' in technologies being upgraded from -> to.

But if both the old and new empires both had mrk 1(or three) tech at the time of their battle they would be equal. the experience is tech driven not time driven, but since tech increases with time, almost by definition...

2. Why would you ever scrap a ship . . . you choices are scrap the ship, use the money to build a new ship, with no experience, or upgrade the ship you have already and keep *some* of the experience [not loosing more experience then the 'fight value' of the upgrade, thus if you can unquestionably afford the upgrade it is the right thing to do, no micromanagement questions that way.]


best wishes from Robbie