Poll: What should be done with special forces?

[TechSY730]

Does posting at the same time as you count as double posting?

Anyways, I edited my previous post after your last one somehow.

I think we just put ourselves in a "race condition".

But yes:

EDIT: Wait, are you saying that as long as it uses fleet ships (or possibly any ship type that can easily be found in threat and/or waves), special forces will be redundant, no matter what special behavior or mechanics they happen to use?

As long as the Special Forces mechanic involves ships spawning in AI controlled space and don't give them something unique, yes, special forces will always be redundant as the Threat I lose in my attacks on AI systems will always overshadow it.

D.

Ah, that's a much better way of saying what I was trying to say.
OK. While I would argue making them smarter, spawn smarter, and giving them new behaviors for defense and offense would be "something unique" enough to make it not redundant, it is a tricky call.

As I mentioned, I wouldn't consider it the end of the world if the current special forces was scrapped entirely and a brand new mechanic/behavior/whatever rose up to to take its place.

Though in any case, I would like to see some effort being put into new defensive behaviors for the AI, but that is a different issue that might intersect with this one, depending on what happens.

[Diazo]

Hmmm.

Actually, what about everytime a the system a Special Forces Guard Post is in, the ships that are assigned to the Special Force Guard Post get released onto threat automatically?

Rather then seeing the fact that Special Forces and Threat are so similar as a problem, use it to it's advantage.

The reason I say this is right now Threat is only generated in response to player actions, and the majority of threat would still come from that and be generated where the Player is operating with his fleet.

However, a little bit of threat generated off on the far side of the galaxy which you are currently ignoring could be a nasty surprise when it hits your lightly defended border world on the other side of your empire from where your current attentions are.

And because they ships are released as threat, they don't waste themselves uselessly attacking a chokepoint system because they would use the firepower calculation to see if they should attack or not.

Just the fact that this little bit of threat is coming from an unexpected direction could make things interesting (or could not).

Ultimately not really a solution, but this could be done without having to code a new mechanic into the game.

D.

[Draco18s]

Actually, what about everytime a the system a Special Forces Guard Post is in, the ships that are assigned to the Special Force Guard Post get released onto threat automatically?

No, as it would be too small to notice, still get overshadowed by player action threat, and still resolve to "meaningless."

[Hearteater]

SF threat and normal threat can be meaningful if SF reinforcements are different than normal reinforcements.  Specifically, if SF ships get replaced faster than normal ships, SF threat can still be meaningful despite being a lower relative value.

[Diazo]

Actually, what about everytime a the system a Special Forces Guard Post is in, the ships that are assigned to the Special Force Guard Post get released onto threat automatically?

No, as it would be too small to notice, still get overshadowed by player action threat, and still resolve to "meaningless."

I'm not sure.

Right now threat comes from player actions with their fleet.

If you have your fleet on the left side of the map and 100 threat pops into your system on the right side of the map where you have minimal defenses and your ships are 4+ hops away, is that meaningless?

It's not a real solution but it is something that (I think) could be patched in quickly, as opposed to the other solutions I support which require coding in new mechanics.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Quick question: assuming it was applied in a reasonably efficient fashion (i.e. not marching into your chipper shredder one at a time), how many minutes do you think it should take an initial galaxy's worth of special forces guard posts to produce 1 cap of ships (so, 98 fighters on normal caps; less if it's Zelecs, more if it's autocannons)?

[Draco18s]

Right now threat comes from player actions with their fleet.

If you have your fleet on the left side of the map and 100 threat pops into your system on the right side of the map where you have minimal defenses and your ships are 4+ hops away, is that meaningless?

Threat already doesn't approach in the direction from which it was created, unless it had no other path.

[TechSY730]

Right now threat comes from player actions with their fleet.

If you have your fleet on the left side of the map and 100 threat pops into your system on the right side of the map where you have minimal defenses and your ships are 4+ hops away, is that meaningless?

Threat already doesn't approach in the direction from which it was created, unless it had no other path.

Actually, from what I understand, threat just randomly chooses a border planet to try to go to, and then uses whatever path happens to be the best for it using the standard path finding algorithm used for ships. (Or at least it is supposed to)

[Draco18s]

Actually, from what I understand, threat just randomly chooses a border planet to try to go to, and then uses whatever path happens to be the best for it using the standard path finding algorithm used for ships. (Or at least it is supposed to)

And if they're on one side and the border planet is on the other...

Anyway, my point is, special-forces-as-threat is just threat.

[Diazo]

Quick question: assuming it was applied in a reasonably efficient fashion (i.e. not marching into your chipper shredder one at a time), how many minutes do you think it should take an initial galaxy's worth of special forces guard posts to produce 1 cap of ships (so, 98 fighters on normal caps; less if it's Zelecs, more if it's autocannons)?

Assuming we are talking about my suggestion, I was figuring leave everything as it is, just flag ships that spawn at a special forces post as threat as soon as they spawn so they start making their way towards player held worlds.

If I have to give a number for an 80 planet map? Erm, how many special forces posts seed on a standard 80 planet map even? My gut feeling is 100 ships per hour (normal caps). This is not supposed to be a primary attack of the AI, this is more the AI picketing wormholes leading to your empire and maybe attacking if they get the opportunity.

Actually, from what I understand, threat just randomly chooses a border planet to try to go to, and then uses whatever path happens to be the best for it using the standard path finding algorithm used for ships. (Or at least it is supposed to)

And if they're on one side and the border planet is on the other...

Anyway, my point is, special-forces-as-threat is just threat.

I agree that special-forces-as-threat is just threat, but all other threat in the game is player generated, usually by attacking an AI world. The point of this is to get threat coming at you from another direction. Yes, throwing up a bunch of turrets mean you can probably pretty much ignore it, but you can't ignore it totally like you do these days.

I do not think this is a good fix, I'd much prefer to see special forces get some mechanic that makes them unique.

What this is is a solution that can be implemented quickly without any new code required on Keith's part and it is much better then nothing, at least in my opinion.

D.

edit: I just realized how dependent this would be on map type. This would be quite noticeable on the more complex maps, but probably be effectively no change on the simpler maps. Hmmm.

[Hearteater]

Quick question: assuming it was applied in a reasonably efficient fashion (i.e. not marching into your chipper shredder one at a time), how many minutes do you think it should take an initial galaxy's worth of special forces guard posts to produce 1 cap of ships (so, 98 fighters on normal caps; less if it's Zelecs, more if it's autocannons)?

Quick rough thoughts off the top of my head:

With Capped SF ships (see here)
Fastest rate: 98 / (2 * (AIP * Diff / 100)) minutes ... when no SF left
Slowest rate: 98 / (AIP * Diff / 100) minutes ... when almost at SF cap
So at 10 AIP and 7 difficulty, 70 to 140 minutes.  At 50 AIP, 14 to 28 minutes.  Assuming there is a SF ship cap.  That rate isn't workable with unlimited SF ships.

With Unlimited SF ships
Rate: 15000 / (50 + AIP * Diff) / minutes
So at 10 AIP and 7 difficulty, 125 minutes.  At 50 AIP, 37.5 minutes.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting numbers, thanks.

I've got an idea that I think would deal with some other issues and not be too awful to implement; just having "want to do X to Y subsystem" stuff piling up way faster on my list lately than can really get through it while also making progress on the expansion content.  But better than no ideas

[TechSY730]

Interesting numbers, thanks.

I've got an idea that I think would deal with some other issues and not be too awful to implement; just having "want to do X to Y subsystem" stuff piling up way faster on my list lately than can really get through it while also making progress on the expansion content.  But better than no ideas

I think most of us understand that the bigger the change/new feature, on average, the more time it will take before a good point to start implementing it becomes feasible. Because of that, I think many of us would be fine with a "quick fix" until some higher priority stuff is finished first.

[Faulty Logic]

Added "launch mini-exo waves"
Added "let them bypass chokes somehow"

I don't think fleets of around 100 higher mark ships would be ignorable. If you happen to have a hard (not just warp-jammed) chokepoint, then the SF would just basically not attack, and try to make any player offensive actions difficult.

I wouldn't mind a bandaid for now but this thread is mainly trying to get the community version of ideal special forces.

Diazo, is there another specific option you would like me to add?
Keith, every time I add another option, I appear to remove the ability to change votes. Is there a workaround other than constantly nagging you to use your magic admin powers?

[keith.lamothe]

Keith, every time I add another option, I appear to remove the ability to change votes. Is there a workaround other than constantly nagging you to use your magic admin powers?

I think SMF is powered mainly by nagging

No idea, honestly.  I imagine I could fix the php script to expose that checkbox to users rather than assuming "unchecked", but keeping the installation "stock code" is probably pretty important to Chris.