Author Topic: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?  (Read 8089 times)

Offline ZarahNeander

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Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« on: July 19, 2009, 04:51:02 pm »
The time between waves seems the same, the frequency of specops raids seems the same (though I'm not 100% sure, can anyone verify?), my ships however move at 2x speed. Makes it so much easier to bring some reserves to a hot-spot. Or to wield a mobile reaction force.

Also ships spend most of their time moving. The frequency of Ai reinforcements is likely constant. Means I reach the juicy system with an adv. fac. and a not so juicy ion at 4:30h instead 6:00h. Means I prolly face less resistance.

Just wondering

Offline Revenantus

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2009, 05:21:10 pm »
I'll start by saying that I prefer to play with the Combat Style set to Normal.

The time between waves seems the same, the frequency of specops raids seems the same (though I'm not 100% sure, can anyone verify?), my ships however move at 2x speed. Makes it so much easier to bring some reserves to a hot-spot. Or to wield a mobile reaction force.

It's true that AI raids occur at the same rate. This is my primary reason for preferring Normal mode because I feel Fast & Dangerous detracts from the value of effective ship positioning, an important aspect for me. Equally validly, many players prefer to focus more on other areas of gameplay and hence prefer Fast & Dangerous mode.

Also ships spend most of their time moving. The frequency of Ai reinforcements is likely constant. Means I reach the juicy system with an adv. fac. and a not so juicy ion at 4:30h instead 6:00h. Means I prolly face less resistance.

Since the AI does not reinforce systems until that system is aware of the player's presence, the time required to reach a system isn't hugely relevant in that regard, although, if there is a significant time delay between the player making the AI aware of their presence and launching an attack on the system, then yes it could potentially, depending on AI reinforcement choices, be an important factor.

If you do play with the AI progress timer on however you will have to scale it appropriately between the two Combat Styles to maintain an equivalent level of difficulty.

EDIT: I apologize, the AI does in fact reinforce at all of its planets, just preferentially at locations that you have made it aware of your presence. I think the AI Progress level and number of command posts dictates the maximum number of ships the AI can station at a given planet. I actually can't recall extremely long games ever resulting in significantly increased garrison sizes on AI worlds, but I could be wrong here.

A question for x4000;

Is there a maximum number of ships the AI will station at a planet? If so, what are the factors affecting this number? Also, from their initial starting garrison sizes, how long does it take AI worlds to maximize their defensive forces? Is it likely that by playing extremely aggressively the player would encounter significantly fewer AI ships?

I'm not sure I can ever recall attacking a planet that had a surprisingly small/large garrison size, perhaps I'm being too cautious.

« Last Edit: July 19, 2009, 07:32:07 pm by Revenantus »

Offline darke

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2009, 08:50:34 pm »
The time between waves seems the same, the frequency of specops raids seems the same (though I'm not 100% sure, can anyone verify?), my ships however move at 2x speed. Makes it so much easier to bring some reserves to a hot-spot. Or to wield a mobile reaction force.

Also ships spend most of their time moving. The frequency of Ai reinforcements is likely constant. Means I reach the juicy system with an adv. fac. and a not so juicy ion at 4:30h instead 6:00h. Means I prolly face less resistance.

Just wondering

Firstly, it's both 2x attack speed and movement speed, secondly it's all ships both yourself and the enemy. :) Thirdly it's doesn't effect your build speed either not just the enemy's (and "yes, it does not affect enemy build speed" to answer the question).

This means that even in a system with a dock to crank out ships, if your defense fails and a couple of bombers, or even a half dozen fighters get close to your command center it's gone (and I seem to be almost continually rebuilding harvesters :( ). I seem to more regularly have starship assaults since I use the schitzo AI (this also means I never have any idea of what they're going to hit me with either...), and if I don't have a sizable defense force of fighters it's an almost guaranteed kill of a non-home-planet command center, engineer, energy generators, and science labs if I have them on the planet. If they AI didn't have a vendetta against harvesters I'd probably have two of three planets in a row wiped out before I could take them down with the forces I tend to have garrisoning the usual planet.

Assaults and stuff tend to be much more deadly, thus you loose a lot more ships since you rarely have time to micro them. Wormhole assaults on a decently sized world are particularly lethal. When you hit the tipping point where your forces are small enough to be killed faster by the enemy then you can kill them, it tends to be blink-and-they're-gone so you also rarely have enough time to react to save anyone.

The consequence of both is that you're spending more time whacking up defenses, balancing your forces, and setting speed+1 to crank out a more ships. And you're generally trying to go for a significantly larger force when you make an assault since you know you're going to loose more.

Also: Lighting Turrets == Ow, ow ow, ow ow. (Recently lost the better part of 800 ships of various tech levels to an entrance wormhole guarded by 6 of these and a small force of ships). Sniper Turrets == irritating; Sniper Ships == don't expect to keep anything the AI thinks is irritating on an assault alive. This includes engineers, though thankfully they don't think science labs or colony ships are generally interesting.

As far as timing goes, I've played almost exclusively with Fast & Dangerous and between all the above my game times are within the expected length for the number of planets.

It's true that AI raids occur at the same rate. This is my primary reason for preferring Normal mode because I feel Fast & Dangerous detracts from the value of effective ship positioning, an important aspect for me. Equally validly, many players prefer to focus more on other areas of gameplay and hence prefer Fast & Dangerous mode.

That would be me. :) It does make your ship positioning within a planet less important, but as far as how you've setup your defensive forces between planets it makes more strategic. Since you can't just expect to have a half dozen docks on each exposed planet and crank out appropriate defense, if your defense on the world doesn't cut it you need to have enough defense on a nearby world to be able to toss some across without bringing that world's defense to low. Also having a world with close wormholes that is one hop away from your front line worlds is a god-send, since you can just have a backup force sitting near the central point of them, and if any of the front line worlds have too much of a problem you can have a quick defense to at least the command center area of that world easily enough.

Again, Normal mode will have the same issue, but it's quite a bit more pronounced on Fast & Dangerous. :)

Also ships spend most of their time moving. The frequency of Ai reinforcements is likely constant. Means I reach the juicy system with an adv. fac. and a not so juicy ion at 4:30h instead 6:00h. Means I prolly face less resistance.

Since the AI does not reinforce systems until that system is aware of the player's presence, the time required to reach a system isn't hugely relevant in that regard, although, if there is a significant time delay between the player making the AI aware of their presence and launching an attack on the system, then yes it could potentially, depending on AI reinforcement choices, be an important factor.

If you do play with the AI progress timer on however you will have to scale it appropriately between the two Combat Styles to maintain an equivalent level of difficulty.

I find it amusing that I crank up the AI progress timer to stop me from turtling (and slowing the game down), whereas you're suggesting cranking it up *to* slow the game down. :)

EDIT: I apologize, the AI does in fact reinforce at all of its planets, just preferentially at locations that you have made it aware of your presence. I think the AI Progress level and number of command posts dictates the maximum number of ships the AI can station at a given planet. I actually can't recall extremely long games ever resulting in significantly increased garrison sizes on AI worlds, but I could be wrong here.

A question for x4000;

Is there a maximum number of ships the AI will station at a planet? If so, what are the factors affecting this number? Also, from their initial starting garrison sizes, how long does it take AI worlds to maximize their defensive forces? Is it likely that by playing extremely aggressively the player would encounter significantly fewer AI ships?

I'm not sure I can ever recall attacking a planet that had a surprisingly small/large garrison size, perhaps I'm being too cautious.

No, there doesn't appear to be any garrison limits. See a few of my other posts where I'm complaining about Tech IV worlds with 1000+ IV units on it, and Tech III worlds with over 3500+ III units on it. :)

From memory of what Mr X has said previously, he populates the worlds, then if the game is getting too many ships in it he starts converting groups of lower-level ships into higher level ships of equivalent hurtyness.

Offline Revenantus

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2009, 09:27:55 pm »
This means that even in a system with a dock to crank out ships, if your defense fails and a couple of bombers, or even a half dozen fighters get close to your command center it's gone (and I seem to be almost continually rebuilding harvesters :( ). I seem to more regularly have starship assaults since I use the schitzo AI (this also means I never have any idea of what they're going to hit me with either...), and if I don't have a sizable defense force of fighters it's an almost guaranteed kill of a non-home-planet command center, engineer, energy generators, and science labs if I have them on the planet. If they AI didn't have a vendetta against harvesters I'd probably have two of three planets in a row wiped out before I could take them down with the forces I tend to have garrisoning the usual planet.

Heh, I also build harvesters in order to distract the AI from more valuable targets - seems a bit off doesn't it? :P. I too always play with the schizophrenic modifier as it makes things far more interesting. The question of how the combat style influences defense is actually contentious in that while you may have less time to construct new ships, making bolstering your defense forces more difficult, while in F&D mode your fleets can move towards wormholes more quickly, thereby significantly increasing the area in which a fleet can defend against the timed incoming AI waves.

Assaults and stuff tend to be much more deadly, thus you loose a lot more ships since you rarely have time to micro them. Wormhole assaults on a decently sized world are particularly lethal. When you hit the tipping point where your forces are small enough to be killed faster by the enemy then you can kill them, it tends to be blink-and-they're-gone so you also rarely have enough time to react to save anyone.

Assaults tend to be more deadly to structures because they don't fight back and their health does not scale with the increased damage, however, it does not inherently affect ship-to-ship combat as in theory everything should sustain damage 2x as fast, and the overall outcome should be the same. The fact that you loses more ships is indicative of the increased difficulty of tactical management because of the increased speed. Obviously you feel differently, but I prefer to play at the speed that allows me finer control.

The consequence of both is that you're spending more time whacking up defenses, balancing your forces, and setting speed+1 to crank out a more ships. And you're generally trying to go for a significantly larger force when you make an assault since you know you're going to loose more.

I don't agree with this. As outlined above, I don't see the reason for losing significantly more ships, or having to build significantly more turrets, beyond the chance of losing more due to difficulties in management which can be mitigated by pausing the game and issuing orders anyway.

Also: Lighting Turrets == Ow, ow ow, ow ow. (Recently lost the better part of 800 ships of various tech levels to an entrance wormhole guarded by 6 of these and a small force of ships). Sniper Turrets == irritating; Sniper Ships == don't expect to keep anything the AI thinks is irritating on an assault alive. This includes engineers, though thankfully they don't think science labs or colony ships are generally interesting.

True, lightning turrets are terrifying. I often require lightning missiles to establish a beach head on well fortified AI planets.

That would be me. :) It does make your ship positioning within a planet less important, but as far as how you've setup your defensive forces between planets it makes more strategic. Since you can't just expect to have a half dozen docks on each exposed planet and crank out appropriate defense, if your defense on the world doesn't cut it you need to have enough defense on a nearby world to be able to toss some across without bringing that world's defense to low. Also having a world with close wormholes that is one hop away from your front line worlds is a god-send, since you can just have a backup force sitting near the central point of them, and if any of the front line worlds have too much of a problem you can have a quick defense to at least the command center area of that world easily enough.

Again, Normal mode will have the same issue, but it's quite a bit more pronounced on Fast & Dangerous. :)

As you state, this is contentious as F&D has both benefits and dangers in this regard.

Also ships spend most of their time moving. The frequency of Ai reinforcements is likely constant. Means I reach the juicy system with an adv. fac. and a not so juicy ion at 4:30h instead 6:00h. Means I prolly face less resistance.

Since the AI does not reinforce systems until that system is aware of the player's presence, the time required to reach a system isn't hugely relevant in that regard, although, if there is a significant time delay between the player making the AI aware of their presence and launching an attack on the system, then yes it could potentially, depending on AI reinforcement choices, be an important factor.

If you do play with the AI progress timer on however you will have to scale it appropriately between the two Combat Styles to maintain an equivalent level of difficulty.

I find it amusing that I crank up the AI progress timer to stop me from turtling (and slowing the game down), whereas you're suggesting cranking it up *to* slow the game down. :)

I apologize, I'll clarify what I meant. I agree that a higher timer discourages turtling - I always play with one. Though, do you not agree that a slightly higher timer could be required on F&D vs Normal to result in equivalent difficulty? Given that ships are still constructed at the same rate, perhaps not. I might experiment with this.

EDIT: I apologize, the AI does in fact reinforce at all of its planets, just preferentially at locations that you have made it aware of your presence. I think the AI Progress level and number of command posts dictates the maximum number of ships the AI can station at a given planet. I actually can't recall extremely long games ever resulting in significantly increased garrison sizes on AI worlds, but I could be wrong here.

A question for x4000;

Is there a maximum number of ships the AI will station at a planet? If so, what are the factors affecting this number? Also, from their initial starting garrison sizes, how long does it take AI worlds to maximize their defensive forces? Is it likely that by playing extremely aggressively the player would encounter significantly fewer AI ships?

I'm not sure I can ever recall attacking a planet that had a surprisingly small/large garrison size, perhaps I'm being too cautious.

No, there doesn't appear to be any garrison limits. See a few of my other posts where I'm complaining about Tech IV worlds with 1000+ IV units on it, and Tech III worlds with over 3500+ III units on it. :)

From memory of what Mr X has said previously, he populates the worlds, then if the game is getting too many ships in it he starts converting groups of lower-level ships into higher level ships of equivalent hurtyness.

Finding 3.5k ships in a single system happens, true. Although, I feel like I always find a number of enemy ships appropriate to the AI Progress Level and Tech Level of the planet in question. This may be entirely because of the standard rate of reinforcement is highly consistent throughout the game. Maybe I'll load a save with a planet with a huge AI garrison and leave it for a while, to see if the number increases indefinitely.

Offline darke

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2009, 11:20:47 pm »
Heh, I also build harvesters in order to distract the AI from more valuable targets - seems a bit off doesn't it? :P. I too always play with the schizophrenic modifier as it makes things far more interesting. The question of how the combat style influences defense is actually contentious in that while you may have less time to construct new ships, making bolstering your defense forces more difficult, while in F&D mode your fleets can move towards wormholes more quickly, thereby significantly increasing the area in which a fleet can defend against the timed incoming AI waves.

Harvesters: Yeah. I think anything other then fighter-class ships (and special ships that are similar, like microfighters and so on) should pretty much ignore harvesters. Yes, targeting them it is a good way to decrease the revenue for a player and to increase annoyance, but there are much more effective uses of it's time. :)

Assaults and stuff tend to be much more deadly, thus you loose a lot more ships since you rarely have time to micro them. Wormhole assaults on a decently sized world are particularly lethal. When you hit the tipping point where your forces are small enough to be killed faster by the enemy then you can kill them, it tends to be blink-and-they're-gone so you also rarely have enough time to react to save anyone.

Assaults tend to be more deadly to structures because they don't fight back and their health does not scale with the increased damage, however, it does not inherently affect ship-to-ship combat as in theory everything should sustain damage 2x as fast, and the overall outcome should be the same. The fact that you loses more ships is indicative of the increased difficulty of tactical management because of the increased speed. Obviously you feel differently, but I prefer to play at the speed that allows me finer control.

You're not taking into account the result of the force multiplier of extra ships. Random example:

Making up some numbers, we'll assume a batch of ships can take out 10% of the other team's ships per second at normal difficulty. With a statistically even 100 ships against 100 ships it's a coin toss as to whom wins. So let's take PlayerA with 200 to and PlayerB with 100.

First attack: PlayerA (200) does 20 ships damage (10%) to PlayerB (100), who does 10 ship damage (10%) to PlayerA.
Second attack: PlayerA (190) does 19 ships damage to PlayerB (80) which does 8 damage to PlayerA.
Third attack: PlayerA (182) does 18 ships damage to PlayerB (61) which does 6 damage to PlayerA.

You don't need me to continue to notice that PlayerB has gone into the standard death spiral. :) Let's see how it works with *double damage*.

First attack: PlayerA (200) does 40 ships damage (20%) to PlayerB (100), who does 20 ship damage (20%) to PlayerA.
Second attack: PlayerA (180) does 36 ships damage to PlayerB (60) which does 12 damage to PlayerA.
Third attack: PlayerA (168) does 32 ships damage to PlayerB (24) which does 4 damage to PlayerA.

As you can see it's  all over red rover for the B-team. :)

This is what *really* hurts when you're sending your team through a wormhole, since your entire force doesn't arrive at once. If PlayerB is 100 ships defending a wormhole and if PlayerA has only got 50 (of their 200 force) coming through per attack at normal the first hit is going to take out only 10 ships (of 50) but with F&D the first hit is going to take out 20 ships (out of 50).

If I had time I could put together a spread sheet to work this all out, (no doubt X4k could tweak his balance analysis program to handle the case to see how different it all works), but there are a lot of situations in the game where this sort of thing happens. I'm sure there are situations where you loose less ships then normal (Ion Cannons are the prime example), but I'll almost certainly expect to loose a lot more on F&D just because of this. :)

(Hopefully this all makes sense; brain not quite engaged at the moment due to sleepyness. :) )

I find it amusing that I crank up the AI progress timer to stop me from turtling (and slowing the game down), whereas you're suggesting cranking it up *to* slow the game down. :)

I apologize, I'll clarify what I meant. I agree that a higher timer discourages turtling - I always play with one. Though, do you not agree that a slightly higher timer could be required on F&D vs Normal to result in equivalent difficulty? Given that ships are still constructed at the same rate, perhaps not. I might experiment with this.

I don't think it's required, I really don't think it makes much difference in the long run actually unless you've got a large value in there (such as at least 10 per 30 minutes), since taking down a special forces base causes +1 AI, or even using a lighting missile at the moment costs +2 AI. At the end of the game I'll easily have more points caused by either of these, then by the timer. Especially when going against the Special Forces Commander since after a certain point every system tends to have 7 or 8 SF bases in them...

No, there doesn't appear to be any garrison limits. See a few of my other posts where I'm complaining about Tech IV worlds with 1000+ IV units on it, and Tech III worlds with over 3500+ III units on it. :)

From memory of what Mr X has said previously, he populates the worlds, then if the game is getting too many ships in it he starts converting groups of lower-level ships into higher level ships of equivalent hurtyness.

Finding 3.5k ships in a single system happens, true. Although, I feel like I always find a number of enemy ships appropriate to the AI Progress Level and Tech Level of the planet in question. This may be entirely because of the standard rate of reinforcement is highly consistent throughout the game. Maybe I'll load a save with a planet with a huge AI garrison and leave it for a while, to see if the number increases indefinitely.

Seems to, to me. There also seems to be more of a pronounced effect with a system with a Special Forces base in it compared to a system without it.

Offline Revenantus

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2009, 12:10:31 am »
Let's continue the conflict between the first group of normal damage ships;

First attack: PlayerA (200) does 20 ships damage (10%) to PlayerB (100), who does 10 ship damage (10%) to PlayerA.
Second attack: PlayerA (190) does 19 ships damage to PlayerB (80) which does 8 damage to PlayerA.
Third attack: PlayerA (182) does 18 ships damage to PlayerB (61) which does 6 damage to PlayerA.

Fourth attack : Player A (175.9) Player B (42.8 )
Fifth attack : Player A (171.62) Player B (25.21)

(Use of non-integer numbers is a minor approximation in terms of damage output as damage obviously does not scale with a unit's health).

Notice the similarity between the remaining number of ships between normal battle after 4 iterations and the double damage battle after 2 iterations? The difference exists only because you are using a discrete method to model the number of ships.

Given that there are normally a large number of ships that all come into range at different times, and fire at difference rates, it is more appropriate to use a continuous model as follows;

Let t be the time after the start of the conflict, A be the number of player A's ships at time t, B be the number of player B's ships at time t, and k be a constant determining the amount of damage the ships in question inflict.

The situation can be modeled by the pair of simultaneous differential equations;

dA/dt = -kB (1)
dB/dt = -kA (2)

Multiply both sides of equation (1) by A, and both sides of equation (2) by B and subtract the two resulting equations from each other, this yields;

A(dA/dt)-B(dB/dt)=0

By the Chain Rule;

(1/2)(d(A^2)/dt)-(1/2)(d(B^2)/dt)=0

Integrating with respect to time;

A^2-B^2=c

Assuming at t=0, A=A_0 and B=B_0;

A^2-B^2=(A_0)^2-(B_0)^2

Note how the constant k does not feature in this equation and hence the total remaining ships after the conflict will not depend on whether the game is in Normal or F&D mode. This can be seen as follows;

When B=0 (They are all dead);

A=((A_0)^2-(B_0)^2)^(1/2)

In the case of your example A = 173.2.

All doubling k (playing on F&D mode) ultimately achieves is to end the battle in half the time, its effects on ship losses are negligible. A similar result holds even when the damage constants for the two different groups are different, as I will show if you wish. This model becomes increasingly accurate as fleet size increases.

There are actually a number of interesting strategic pieces of information that can be gleaned from the above equation, such as the fact that a force's fighting strength is proportional to the square of its size. This rule of thumb is taken into account by military strategists - After the Battle of Trafalgar, Lanchester used this model to demonstrate why Nelson's tactic of splitting the enemy's fleet into 2 was so effective.

Your argument regarding ships going through wormholes being more dangerous on F&D mode is similarly inaccurate.

Your model can be accurate, assuming two conditions are met (see 1 and 2 below), however, if you continue the conflict to the end you will still find relatively minor differences for changes in the damage rate;

1. All ships start within range of each other and start firing immediately.
2. All ships are the same type and fire at the same rate.

If I had time I could put together a spread sheet to work this all out, (no doubt X4k could tweak his balance analysis program to handle the case to see how different it all works), but there are a lot of situations in the game where this sort of thing happens. I'm sure there are situations where you loose less ships then normal (Ion Cannons are the prime example), but I'll almost certainly expect to loose a lot more on F&D just because of this.

If you do decide to create your spreadsheets, try a smaller and smaller time gap between each iteration - you should find that the value your spreadsheet outputs at the end of the conflict will approach a limit, which is the value for A I gave above.

I apologize if it's difficult to follow the derivation, it's tough to made it particularly legible using only ascii characters - x4000, can we have LaTeX support on this forum? :D

EDIT: I've just found a page with some more information on this subject if you're interested. The proof I gave above is a simplified version of Lanchester's Square Law.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 01:44:54 am by Revenantus »

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2009, 02:43:48 am »
I apologize if it's difficult to follow the derivation, it's tough to made it particularly legible using only ascii characters - x4000, can we have LaTeX support on this forum? :D

C'mon, he's a (really good) Windows dev... What are the odds he knows what LaTeX is?

(And, no, it's not something his wife wears... Unless he's lucky?)

Cheers!
« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 02:26:45 pm by Admiral »

Offline darke

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2009, 04:45:37 am »
#include <lots-of-math> (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Lanchester%20Systems%20and%20the%20Lanchester%20Laws%20of%20Combat)

Your argument regarding ships going through wormholes being more dangerous on F&D mode is similarly inaccurate.

Your model can be accurate, assuming two conditions are met (see 1 and 2 below), however, if you continue the conflict to the end you will still find relatively minor differences for changes in the damage rate;

1. All ships start within range of each other and start firing immediately.
2. All ships are the same type and fire at the same rate.

Ta. I forgot about that math (thought I was forgetting something), so I agree with you in the general sense for combat. Though I disagree with you for the worm hole case since both of these situations are valid.

1) because the ships travelling through the wormhole most certainly are in range (point blank) in this situation, and the way the combat appears to work for missiles, bombers and lasers (not quite sure about "shell" based, or electricity) is that everyone fires as soon as possible, the missiles/bombs travel a distance, then hit a certain period of time later (even at point blank I would assume there would be at least one "tick" between this, this is the way I would guess shell/electricity would work too).

2) for a statistically large number of ships things are going to even out. Which is why I often get bored late game world clearing (and end up doing silly things like whacking a command center on a world still filled with 500+ IV units... the chaos is fun!), because each mix of ships at a command point/wormhole in a world is statically averaged out to have a good mix of all units. So assuming you've got a good mix of all units (which I guess most people since that's the easiest way to build a force from the ship dock), you're going to on average have ships essentially "the same type, firing at the same rate". The only exception being things like starships which throw a spanner in the works, and which you tend to handle differently anyway (fighters! lots of them! :) ).

I think we're just going to be arguing this until His X-ness ends gets annoyed with us and either locks the thread or runs some tests himself though. :)

I apologize if it's difficult to follow the derivation, it's tough to made it particularly legible using only ascii characters - x4000, can we have LaTeX support on this forum? :D

EDIT: I've just found a page with some more information on this subject if you're interested. The proof I gave above is a simplified version of Lanchester's Square Law.

Thanks, that was helpful. :) Though I don't think we'll end up with LaTeX on the forum, I do recall there's a plugin for media wiki for this situation though so it could be possible to get that installed and work from there. :)

Offline ZarahNeander

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2009, 05:26:41 am »
Firstly, it's both 2x attack speed and movement speed, secondly it's all ships both yourself and the enemy. :) Thirdly it's doesn't effect your build speed either not just the enemy's

Thanks fo the clarification. Albeit that didn't escape me.

Though I'm a woman, I'm not blonde (dunno if that pun adds up for someone outside the european culture group)

*grin*---can't resist. I don't mean it *that* seriously.

Besides I'm not convinced. With my limited experince you're probalby right that wormhole assaults are more costly, but mobility is such a huge advantage.

Anyway...

Offline Revenantus

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2009, 12:45:22 pm »
I think we're just going to be arguing this until His X-ness ends gets annoyed with us and either locks the thread or runs some tests himself though. :)

Haha, I think I'm going to have to start referring to him as His X-ness now.

It could be really cool to have access to some sort of simulation editor in which we could set up arbitrary battles and record the results - we can learn a lot from the relative ship strength ratings but there are still lots of mixed ship-type battles that I'd be interested in observing.

Thanks, that was helpful.  Though I don't think we'll end up with LaTeX on the forum, I do recall there's a plugin for media wiki for this situation though so it could be possible to get that installed and work from there.

Having LaTeX support on the wiki could be handy, especially if there are any future discussions of game mechanics that employ more complex arguments. Since combat in an RTS is such an idealized situation, the Square Law is theoretically highly accurate. If I could get some empirical data to support it I might post a brief discussion about it on the wiki.

It's possible that something in the game mechanics results in the Square Law being invalid, so I'd want to be sure it at least works to some degree of accuracy before suggesting it to other players as a useful combat metric.

Given the huge variety of units in each battle, unless some effective method of quickly determining an appropriate damage constant for each fleet was implemented, it would be difficult to use anyway. Players might be better off relying on their intuitions.

Although, basic analyses such as, "The AI wave is now twice as big, therefore it must be 4 times as powerful", are still valid.

Besides I'm not convinced. With my limited experince you're probalby right that wormhole assaults are more costly, but mobility is such a huge advantage.

Combat aside, we can certainly say that there are both advantages and disadvantages to each game type. Deciding which is ultimately more 'difficult' will likely be impossible because each mode shifts the emphasis to slightly different player skills. I guess it's all down to preference.

« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 12:55:14 pm by Revenantus »

Offline Fiskbit

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2009, 08:04:26 pm »
I'm not sure if you guys noted this, but F&D mode doubles movement speed, reload speed, and damage, so in the same amount of time, a ship will do four times the amount of damage it previously did. Because movement is only doubled, this also means that moving ships defensively is more difficult because this more-or-less halves the speed of the ships as they're moving toward their target (ships die four times as fast and your defenses get their twice as fast). During beta, you were allowed to switch between normal and F&D modes anytime as many times as you liked, so when being attacked or scouting, I found that normal mode was superior, while when attacking or moving around ships, I'd use F&D mode. This didn't sit well with me and it wasn't what Chris had in mind, so that was changed. I'm pretty sure the in-game toggle is there now so that you can go to F&D mode from normal as you get better at AI War rather than having to wait until you start a new game for it.

But anyway, the imbalance in speed vs ship offense increase makes for some definite differences between the two modes. Personally, I play F&D because I can't stand the slow-as-molasses ships like cruisers in normal mode. :)
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Offline Revenantus

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2009, 11:54:35 pm »
I'm not sure if you guys noted this, but F&D mode doubles movement speed, reload speed, and damage

Oops, I'd completely missed the reload speed changes.

True, so moving defensive forces is more difficult. The shorter range ships will also take twice as much damage getting into position to attack longer range ships (half the time to travel the distance, 4 times damage), hence, in particular, sniper turrets become almost twice as powerful.

Zarah's mobility argument still stands in relation to the timed AI waves however.

Offline Konami

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2009, 12:54:13 pm »
Not sure how much I can add, however I was like Revenantus until recently and decided to give F&D a go. I think it's usually prudent to start with normal for the first couple of games though. I did notice that sometimes losses would be quite a bit worse when first entering an enemy world usually ships get a bit more shredded when first entering as already said.

Sending reinforcements sometimes worked better for me in normal (they usually get dragged more into defending now) but I've upped the difficulty and changed the ai's to different commanders (more keen on attacking) so imagine that's more to do with it. Funny enough though the more the ai attacks and generally more aggressive it is, seems to make me a lot more productive. Perhaps the fear of getting killed in less than 10mins is what's motivating me (luckily hasn't happened yet, sure it would if I go any higher with the difficulty). If they don't makes me less enthusiastic in terms of expanding as quickly. Not that I'm not in a rush to make my lines of defence stretched but I generally think the sooner I can add a new ship type the better. :D

I like both modes, I'm favouring F&D at the moment.  Agree with Fiskbit cruisers being that much faster is refreshing.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2009, 11:09:42 am by Konami »

Offline Admiral

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2009, 03:09:07 pm »
I've never played F&D and don't have any practical plan to do so. I have too many other games I want to play on Normal mode with different AIs, different universes and different starting technologies.

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Offline darke

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Re: Isn't 'fast && dangerous' unbalancing?
« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2009, 09:43:35 am »
Now for some Science!(tm) :)

Though the sacrifice of a hundred autocannon minipods I managed to get a scout starship into a Tech IV planet with 2880 ships (94V 2020IV 396III 135II 28I 207O). They sacrificed their lives in the name of Science!

The wormhole in has a force of 271 ships, a pretty reasonable collection of Tech IV fighters/cruisers/bombers, along with bullet proof fights, laser gatlings, raiders, anti-armour, MLRS turrets (I'm guessing mostly the III ships), Core turrets (probably mostly the V ships), Lightning turrets, tachyon turrets and mines. Pretty much as varied enough of a setup as you could get in an 8-planet start game.

My attack force consists of about 2000 ships. Pretty much every Tech II and Tech III ship of fighter/bomber/carrier/parasite/tachyon fighters, and most of the Tech IV ships, though probably only half the fighters and tachyon fighters of Tech IV. Plus all 5 light starships.

My Tech I force is of course defending the rest of my planets because unfortunately, whilst you get "8x the enemy", you don't get "8x the crap" to build. And given that most assault waves I'm facing would probably need all of my Tech I turrets at a single wormhole to defend, I kinda have to plug holes somehow. :)

So, the plan is: On F&D mode I rush in, work out how much got killed; load game switch to normal and then do the same thing. :) All nice and scientific and all! Ships of course all start perched nice and symmertrical on the wormhole.

F&D first assault: complete wipe out of my force.
Normal first assault: 1139 ships of mine remain.

Ok, so maybe we got lucky and unlucky on the random numbers. Take two!

F&D second assault: complete wipe out of my force, I never got more then 600 ships in the planet at one time, out of the 2000 I sent through the wormhole
Normal second assault: 1362 ships of mine remain, I got 1400 ships surviving simultaneously on the planet before they were whittled down to that.

Conclusion: F&D mode is OMGWTFBBQ for wormhole assaults, normal mode is for wimps who like slow carriers and can't take a real challenge. ;)

Granted to properly assault this wormhole on F&D I had to send two lightning missiles down to clear out the bottom since even with only half remaining, they still knocked my force down to under a third when I assault them. So the "test" situation is not how I would normally play F&D, however in Normal it's, well, a cakewalk actually. The trade off for loosing less then a third of my ships II and III ships, for the cost of +4 AI points really isn't worth it, since I've got enough space docks cranking out ships (and with 8 starting planets enough resource to keep cranking them out...) that I'd have them all replaced by the time I was ready to assault the next world.

I'll see what I can do to work out a reasonable set of repeatable test scenarios for normal attacking and such when on a world, and see if Normal is harder then F&D in that situation.