Ship Experience / Crew Experience

[Robbie.Price]

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.

Yup, pretty much, i neglected the possibility of preforming multiple attack - retreat - revanish - reattack runs in my original planning. . . Mainly because in order to pull it off you need to either: A be a LOT faster then your opponent, to run out of their detection range, in less then a full game turn (in which case there are other valid strategies you could use), or your having parts of your fleet pull mid-battle retreats . . . . which strikes me as militarily unsound since whatever force you leave behind is going to get it's hulls handed too them on a stream of enemy fire. Since opening shots are just as powerful as mid-fight shots your better off keeping in the dogfight rather then dividing yourself so they can conquer you.

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...

Good point, but i didn't want the user to be cut out of the battle to the extent which they would be if execution plans where un-changeable. (we could give a small list of possible execution plans to choose from, and allow very modest adaption of one of them . . .)
This point could do with some more thinking on my part. . .

The AI should of course be always as strong as the AI intelligence settings. But if we instill some form of Limitation on the human that same limitation would be placed on the AI, in so far as possible.

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.

The craft in question would appear to be controlled by the opposing party, the first investigation weather this was true or not would not change that status. ship will not shoot intentionally on their own crafts till they are proven to be enemies, so both users and AI will be faced with the same difficulty of both detecting, then proving the 'enemy' status of an 'enemy' vessel.

the implementation is unclear, i admit, but it's an Idea for now...

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.

I would instead focus on how much more powerful the new crafts are, any experience is good, it's just a question of how much better the new ship is.

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.

[/quote][/quote]

Again i would not quite agree. . . even the smallest ships for me(or at least i would have the ...) have late game value, and thus the experience levels on them is also important.

In general:
The decay system definitely is simpler. I'll grant it that. I just find it too simple, and unnecessarily so. The amount of micromanagement risk in my proposed system is minimal, non zero perhaps . . . but minimal, IMHO I would prefer that minimal risk to a system which is as simple, and somewhat counter-intuitive as i see the decay system as being, but that's me.

Best wishes all
Robbie Price

[MikkoM]

Here is my suggestion:

* Individual ships gain experience in battles. This experience slightly improves their battle performance. This experience is NOT moveable.

* To simulate the effects that wars have on the entire military machine of an empire, the empire gains experience after a certain amount of damage has been caused to enemies. This experience rises very slowly and affects the starting experience level of new ships.

* To give the player a target to which really relate to, fleets can have (leaders) admirals. These admirals give bonuses to the entire fleet and also gain experience from battles. When an admiral has gained enough experience his/her/its bonuses rise. (He/she/it levels up?)

* There is no experience decay.

Reasons:

In this system the player doesn`t have to worry about micromanaging experience around in his/her empire. Ships earn their experience in battles and keep it until they are destroyed/scrapped. The experience that the whole empire gains functions as a reward from waged wars. The empire`s overall knowledge about warfare, gathered during those wars, is passed to the next generation of ships. However this starting experience is never very high, because even with experienced teachers the new ships are still with out their "own" battle experience.

To avoid the micromanagement of experienced ships during battles, the improvements that experience gives to the ships are only minor. This means that if there are two ships of the same design, but one of them is an experienced veteran and the other is without experience, the veteran ship has only a small advantage. This is why the experience that a ship gains is more like a medal of honour that is given to it. When the player sees a ship with some sort of a symbol of experience he/she knows that this particular ship has fared well in battles and as a reward for that is slightly better than a ship with out the experience.

My suggestion also already has leaders in it, even though they are only scheduled to be discussed/added in stage 0.8. However I believe that my suggestion isn`t complete enough without them and so I will try to present some sort of an incomplete idea about them here.

Fleet leaders/admirals are the thing that the player really moves around and also possibly relates to. These admirals function much like the leaders in MOO 2 and give various bonuses to the fleets to which they are assigned to. They can also increase these bonuses after they have gathered enough battle experience. And possibly even decrease them if they do poorly in battles or suffer from a random event etc. These admirals also offer the player/AI one more important target either to defend or to destroy. And it is probably also easier to have one really important ship in a fleet, the admiral’s ship, than to micromanage dozens of ships that have large performance bonuses, because of their experience.

At the moment I am not convinced that there is a need for an experience decay system. Since with new technology ships will more than likely become obsolete on a regular basis and the empire experience can probably be balanced so that it rises slowly enough. Also the entire system would probably be easier to implement if there is no decay.

And as a result of all this there is hopefully an acceptable, but a simple suggestion for space combat experience. However there are probably some things that I haven`t considered in this model.

[Krikkitone]

Well looking at all the possible variables to experience

Possible ways to gain experience
1. do 'well' in a battle
2. generated by empire 'peacefully' [military training, innate ability of your race, etc.]

Possible ways to lose experience
1. ship destroyed
2. ship upgraded*
3. ship scrapped* (when it can no longer be upgraded)
4. experience 'spent' on mission/leader
5. decay

location/distribution of experience (exclusive possibilities)
1. ship by ship immovable*
2. ship by ship but distributable (automatically)
3. imperial, (equally shared among all ships at all times)

Benefits of experience
1. better ship performance generically
2. Missions
3. Leaders (better ship performance in some special way)


Now for a my simple (ideal) [most complex] system I'd go
1+2
1+5 [+4]
3 (2)
1 [+2+3]


either
1. ship by ship immovable*
2. ship by ship but distributable (automatically)

or
4. experience 'spent' on mission/leader
and
3. Leaders (better ship performance in some special way)

would be necessary for differences in experience

I think #2 might be the best.... BUT

#4+3 would be really good for 'separating' flagships... as long as the 'leaders' were just a way to Concentrate eperience they might be a good addition to a system where all ships have the same experience level.

* the problem I have with all of these ideas for experience is that they are tied to tightly too individual ships and so require miromanaging + less of a galactic empire feel. I might not mind Leaders, as long as they were optional, as a way of allowing you to 'focus' on individual ships.

I agree with robbie that as the size of your fleet grows, your average experience level should go down... but the size of your fleet will probably be about constant for large periods, and your average experience should continue to go down (but at a certain point the 'peaceful' input would counter that)

As for Experience loss<=fight value of the upgrade... Actual fight value (v. some # we use for the AI) is going to be hard to determine, as it will depnd on the enemy. many upgrades may involve just changing the type of weapons you have... if you want more LR ships is it an upgrade to change a sR->LR or is it a scrap and rebuild.

[Tsenzouken]

1. As amusing as it was in Moo, per-ship experience is just silly in any game involving an empire. If you were a space pirate, sure, but with a galactic military machine, not so much.

2. As well as being a bad idea in terms of gameplay, gaining XP only as the result of damage done or won battles is unrealistic. People learn more from their mistakes than they do their successes. Or at least they learn more from working hard than they do from having it easy. In terms of game balance, rewarding warlike players by making them more powerful when they win seems fine until you realize that defenders will be learning about the tactics used against them unless they're utterly wiped out.

Ways to gain training/readiness/MME:
-- Taking part in any battle. (Measures would need to be taken to preclude abuse but allow rewards for raiding. Pitched battle is not the only way to be in combat.)
-- Produce it on planets via buildings
--Produce it via training exercises (production, would work as a bonus '401k' style, matching up to the points already produced to a certain % but not directly adding.)

Ways of losing it:
-- Decay (primarily Imperial)
-- Casualties (fleet and Imperial)
-- Altering fleets (fleet only)

Experience distribution:
--Imperial (slowly decays over time)
--Per fleet (decays to 1/2way mark over time, meaning that as the fleet gains experience it will tend to retain some measure of that xp) This is represented by a single admiral leading the fleet, XP can be spent from the pool to turn sufficiently advanced fleet admirals into leaders.

Benefits
-- Small boosts to all around performance (empire)
-- Small boosts to types of performance based on admiral (fleet)
-- Leader abilities

There is no way at all to manipulate experience other than by spending it or retiring an admiral, returning 33% of his stored experience but removing him or her from the game entirely. Since you improve admirals exclusively by spending xp (no auto-gain) there is no exploitability to this.

Thoughts?

[Krikkitone]

Gaining experience for a lost battle, I guess should be an idea... although the experience gained should have something to do with the 'level of achievement and difficulty' of the battle... a 'close battle' should give more experience than a overmatched battle... although giving even the loser in a battle where they were way overmatched more experience would be interesting as a balance technique... the loser in a war would gain experience faster.

as for ship experience.... individual Ship experience seems a LOT better than "individual Fleet experience".

If we are going to cut ship experience, then ALL experience should be empire wide. and only through 'admirals'

[Tsenzouken]

Unless we're planning on adding an entire tactical fleet warfare simulator shell, per-ship manipulatable experience is a bad idea. If you really want to get precise, use multiple levels that are invisible to the user, or at least translated into real-worldish terms.

Variables
-- "SH" Ship Honors: Small number, takes a long time to increase, added to ship experience. Does not decay over time. (Is affected by refits, but not by minor battle damage.)
-- "IT" Imperial Training: The primary source for experience. Represents empire-wide military training and readiness.
-- "AB" Admiral Bonus: XP based on the Admiral's fleet. Accumulates slowly over time and decreases somewhat when the fleet is changed by whatever means.
-- "FR" Fleet Readiness: This isn't meant to be 'experience' per se, but rather the overall picture of how integrated they are, maintenance, training, etc. Increases slowly over time, and moderately after battles (but is adversely affected by damage etc) decreases over time if fleet is out of supply.


So, bonuses are based on: (SH + IT + AB)*(1+FR) or something like this.

The primary benefit would be that it is easy to manage while leaving room for customizable ship development. Examples:
Hive Minds have no admiral modifiers or ship xp, but because the drones are interchangeable they can receive bonuses to FR (faster recovery/gain) and IT (lesser cost).
Species with bio-ships/un-crewed ships/static crew could gain ship XP faster and might be able to benefit from Admiral (Fleet) xp, but be unaffected by empire XP and might be slow to recover FR.
Species diversity ftw!

Best part: player never needs to see it all in numbers. It can all be expressed very simply without them being visible.

as for ship experience.... individual Ship experience seems a LOT better than "individual Fleet experience".
If we are going to cut ship experience, then ALL experience should be empire wide. and only through 'admirals'

---> If there is only one type of xp, it should be empire. Two, empire and fleet. Three, empire, fleet THEN individual ship. Remember that as the focus narrows, so does the time scale involved. For an empire that's been around 3000 years to have a ship that's been gaining xp for 1500 of them is completely silly, unless there is a compelling species related reason for it.

[Krikkitone]

---> If there is only one type of xp, it should be empire. Two, empire and fleet. Three, empire, fleet THEN individual ship. Remember that as the focus narrows, so does the time scale involved. For an empire that's been around 3000 years to have a ship that's been gaining xp for 1500 of them is completely silly, unless there is a compelling species related reason for it.

Well I think
1. the Only Manipulation of experience should be at the empire level. (no matter how many 'pools/locations' of xp there are)
2. if xp moves between these pools its VERY reasonable to have a ship accumulating experience for 1500 years, that experience is constantly flowing to and from the empire pool and decaying and being added to by combat.
[although there probably won't be a 1500 turn old ship... and that is why it should only be one Type of experience just in several 'locations']

3. the reason that I would say no 'Fleet' experience is that I didn't think we were going with MOO3's 'no active ships only active fleets' and more with a MOO2 ish 'fleets are collections of ships' idea

so fleet experience would be a bad idea since the fleet is LESS stable than the ship.


Just to be clear I think ALL forms of experience 'battle honors/readiness/training/combat experience/recruitment' etc. should be modeled by only ONE value that goes up or down in certain cases that might affect those.

(just like power generation, materials refining, shaping, and assembly of parts are all modeled by one "Industry" value)

[Tsenzouken]

Well I think
1. the Only Manipulation of experience should be at the empire level. (no matter how many 'pools/locations' of xp there are)
2. if xp moves between these pools its VERY reasonable to have a ship accumulating experience for 1500 years, that experience is constantly flowing to and from the empire pool and decaying and being added to by combat.
[although there probably won't be a 1500 turn old ship... and that is why it should only be one Type of experience just in several 'locations']

3. the reason that I would say no 'Fleet' experience is that I didn't think we were going with MOO3's 'no active ships only active fleets' and more with a MOO2 ish 'fleets are collections of ships' idea

so fleet experience would be a bad idea since the fleet is LESS stable than the ship.

1. Agreed, save for 'leader' xp or mission based spending of it, if MME is a resource.
2. In what I outlined there would be absolutely no xp movement whatsoever. None. Only change based on other factors. Limited 'ship xp' would more be intended to represent battle honors the name of the ship had collected, representing prestige/esprit de corps motivating crewmembers (from a terran standpoint)
3. Fleet xp has several arguments to support it.

First, it's how 'real-life' examples work--so makes more sense to the average human. Intuitiveness is good! Example: Who would you trust more to complete a task, a team you knew has practiced together or a randomized mishmash of people who had never worked together? It adds to immersion--a particular fleet might become infamous and annoy or terrorize your opponents.

Next, the gameplay argument (read: the MORE IMPORTANT argument) is that fleet-based experience encourages but does not mandate MoO3 style the creation of balanced fleets. The ability to change on-the-fly is great, but granting a small but ongoing bonus for NOT micromanaging your fleet composition by changing it constantly is a compelling argument from a game-design perspective. Nothing prevents you from changing it, but it subtly shifts player attention away from micro-oriented behavior by offering a small reward.

ust to be clear I think ALL forms of experience 'battle honors/readiness/training/combat experience/recruitment' etc. should be modeled by only ONE value that goes up or down in certain cases that might affect those.

My reply to this is that the military aspect of FO is clearly more complex (and thus deserving of more accurate or explicit modeling) than most, if not all of the other aspects. Tech level, ship design, strategy, tactics, etc. combine to form the backbone of 4x games: modeling of military machines.

While I agree in theory that most of it could be safely abstracted, so could many other things. Why bother with flavor for tech? It could be abstracted as well, but we keep certain things more complicated than they could be because it is part of what makes the game enjoyable. Each type of 'experience' has ups and downs. Gaining ship honors and fleet xp requires exposure of the vessel(s) to enemy contact, gaining empire-wide xp requires resources, and readiness requires some basic degree of planning to avoid being outmanuvered (rewarding those who exploit methods of cutting supply lines to defeat otherwise superior forces.)


Let it be noted: Of all these, I believe Imperial Experience level (via MME) is the only necessary refinement at this stage. The rest should be included in the conceptual framework but can be safely viewed as afterthoughts until later in the design process. (.7+ or even 1.0+)

[utilae]

Variables
-- "SH" Ship Honors: Small number, takes a long time to increase, added to ship experience. Does not decay over time. (Is affected by refits, but not by minor battle damage.)
-- "IT" Imperial Training: The primary source for experience. Represents empire-wide military training and readiness.
-- "AB" Admiral Bonus: XP based on the Admiral's fleet. Accumulates slowly over time and decreases somewhat when the fleet is changed by whatever means.
-- "FR" Fleet Readiness: This isn't meant to be 'experience' per se, but rather the overall picture of how integrated they are, maintenance, training, etc. Increases slowly over time, and moderately after battles (but is adversely affected by damage etc) decreases over time if fleet is out of supply.

Hmmm, you basically have four different types of experience. This would be incredibly complex. I guess you could also do this as a points system, eg case A (kills) - player gets 5 exp points, case b (end turn) - player gets 1 exp point. That way it is not four different types of experience, but four different ways of getting experience.

Best part: player never needs to see it all in numbers. It can all be expressed very simply without them being visible.

It might hide the complexity, but the player will have no idea how experience works, eg in what ways does he get experience, etc. In order to get the best out of the experience system, the player needs to know how it works, and he can't do that if all the mechanics are so complex that they need to be hidden.

Let it be noted: Of all these, I believe Imperial Experience level (via MME) is the only necessary refinement at this stage. The rest should be included in the conceptual framework but can be safely viewed as afterthoughts until later in the design process. (.7+ or even 1.0+)

What is MME? I have not followed recent conversation.

[utilae]

Can I have some comments on what I said on page 5 please?

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.

[Tsenzouken]

Actually, it's only 3 ways of getting experience, and the mechanics are painfully simple. They only SEEM complicated because it's a comparatively sophisticated way of modeling it that allows for species differences.

XP gain for everyone is based on mission difficulty vs mission success. (Idea re: Robbie.Price, if he feels like elaborating--I'm leaving it vague intentionally because it's not my idea.)
-- Ships gain small amounts over time, losing it only when they are badly damaged or refit.
-- Fleets gain experience from being under the supervision of a fleet admiral, also a relatively modest number. The idea is that if you choose to spend the resources, you can have fleet leaders a-la MoO2. It's assumed that his successor inherits his abilities if you leave a fleet together for large amounts of time and somehow manage not to get it damaged.

Non-XP
-- Imperial XP isn't gained. It's the result of investing resources in a comprehensive program of training for your empire's military and must be maintained over time.
-- Readiness acts as a factor for the other three types, and is a function of fleet integration (time spent training) and whether the vessel is in or out of supply. Base readiness is a function of Imperial XP, so swapping ships out of a fleet has no effect on it. Base will always be relatively low, however, so it is best to leave tightly integrated fleets together.

The end result is that ship level is determined by all of them totaled, then factored by readiness.

The mechanics are simple. Do something = gain a little xp. Over time it adds up. If you don't provide resources to your military, your competency goes down. The reason the numbers are abstracted is to keep players from micromanaging. It's not necessary that they know that it gained them 13242.33446 xp, only that succeeding in a battle where the odds were against them gets them more than one where they utterly outclass their opponents. If we wanted tons of exact numbers, we wouldn't be using 1-100 meters for most everything. Non?

MME is a conceptual representation of the combined training/manpower/resources/experience present in an empire's war machine. The exact details are unclear, as it was not my idea in the first place.

[Tsenzouken]

Re: comments

* Crew Experience Meter - This is IT or Imperial Training level.
* Ship Level - This is (SH+AB+IT)*FR
* Experience Gain - This would be represented by most experience in a battle going to MME rather than ship honors or fleet xp, which is what I was getting at.
* Experience Loss - As MME goes down the military infrastructure decays, basically what you said. Damage really only hurts that ship or that fleet, not Imperial Training.
* Decay - Lack of MME and bad fleet readiness.

[Krikkitone]

ust to be clear I think ALL forms of experience 'battle honors/readiness/training/combat experience/recruitment' etc. should be modeled by only ONE value that goes up or down in certain cases that might affect those.

My reply to this is that the military aspect of FO is clearly more complex (and thus deserving of more accurate or explicit modeling) than most, if not all of the other aspects. Tech level, ship design, strategy, tactics, etc. combine to form the backbone of 4x games: modeling of military machines.

You seem to fail to realize how simple FO is already, the economic management consists of a total of 36 options for a planet... there are only 36 possible economic configurations a planet can have....

I agree that the military aspect is, unfortunately by necessity, the most complex, but even Having experience makes it far more complex than the economic model. You are going to be able to give commands to individual ships to attack other individual ships.... that's complicated enough for FO. Experience is an added complication already, it needs to be kept as simple as possible.

[Josh]

...even having experience makes it far more complex than the economic model... ...it needs to be kept as simple as possible.

Yes.

For Utilae; I do not prefer an empire wide experience system, it trivializes the earnings of individual ships and their captains.

[Tsenzouken]

If it's too simply we end up with SpaceRisk... Which iirc has already been done.