Prerelease 1.005E now available.

[Quitch]

Ability to set rally points in remote star systems?

[x4000]

Keith,

Your analysis is dead on.  As for the else-if line that you are referring to, there are basically two reasons for its existence:

1. It predates the HealthAfterShots code, which is part of the new code from this latest prerelease.

2. I knew it was there, and somewhat redundant, because I figured it would continue to make for a more regimented-looking pattern of firing (like a real battle), rather than a firehose-style spray of shots that go from ship to ship.

However, I've been thinking about how this relates especially to large numbers of ships ganging up on a few smaller ships (and especially with groups of vampires or cutlasses), and I think that the benefits might well outweigh that slight con.  I'm going to try it this way with my alpha group tonight and see how it works; I'll post another prerelease link in a few minutes so that you can check it out, too.  Then we'll see if we want to keep the change, or go back.  But I suspect you're right, for a few reasons it might be a keeper.

[x4000]

Ability to set rally points in remote star systems?

I think it was Keith who also asked about that.  The planets are all intended to be unique -- if you want to build ships on the front lines, that means you need a mobile builder, some protective counter-sniper turrets or whatever, and a space dock right there.

The general effect I am going for, which I explained in more detail in another thread here, was basically along the lines of having multiple islands in a terrestrial RTS (the difference being that instead of transports, you have the wormholes, which are easier to use).

If it was too easy to auto-route ships from safe back-end factories to the front lines, there'd never be any reason to establish a beachhead in enemy territory (beyond knowledge stealing, I guess).  I'm pretty fond of that mechanic, but let me know what you think.

[keith.lamothe]

The beach-head mechanic is definitely cool, I'd rather have that than cross-system rally points.  One possibility is only allowing cross-system rally points to systems you own but I don't know that there's really much gain from that.

And I tend to really dislike the RTS tendency to have two massive fleets meeting only to have them each focus-fire on a string of enemy ships one at a time... but unless you introduce some mechanic to make focus-fire non-optimal (like a hit reduces the next hit within 1 sec by 10% or something) there would always be the fact that a player micro-managing focus fire could cut down received damage by 30-60% or so in a lot of cases.  I really don't like having to micro just for that (microing to kill specific ship types or strategic targets is fine), and that would also be a human advantage over the AI if the AI had no focus fire behavior.

Thanks,
Keith

[x4000]

The beach-head mechanic is definitely cool, I'd rather have that than cross-system rally points.  One possibility is only allowing cross-system rally points to systems you own but I don't know that there's really much gain from that.

Okay, thanks for registering your opinion with that -- I'm of the same mind.  I think that if you could do cross-system rally points in some cases but not all, that would introduce more confusion than anything else.

And I tend to really dislike the RTS tendency to have two massive fleets meeting only to have them each focus-fire on a string of enemy ships one at a time... but unless you introduce some mechanic to make focus-fire non-optimal (like a hit reduces the next hit within 1 sec by 10% or something) there would always be the fact that a player micro-managing focus fire could cut down received damage by 30-60% or so in a lot of cases.  I really don't like having to micro just for that (microing to kill specific ship types or strategic targets is fine), and that would also be a human advantage over the AI if the AI had no focus fire behavior.

Okay, so that's another good point in favor of doing concentrated fire.  By the way, the AI target selection process (the "thinking AI" if you will) is a bit different than the auto-targeting logic that I posted here.  The LINQ code for a lot of that is in the second article in my AI series.  As you might infer from that, it tends to do more concentration of fire like a human player would.  So this would just kind of bring the auto-firing up to that standard, I suppose.

[x4000]

Okay, 1.005F is out, with that one specific tweak to the AI logic, plus three other unrelated things I managed to get in there:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=66.0

[netWilk]

And I tend to really dislike the RTS tendency to have two massive fleets meeting only to have them each focus-fire on a string of enemy ships one at a time... but unless you introduce some mechanic to make focus-fire non-optimal (like a hit reduces the next hit within 1 sec by 10% or something) there would always be the fact that a player micro-managing focus fire could cut down received damage by 30-60% or so in a lot of cases.  I really don't like having to micro just for that (microing to kill specific ship types or strategic targets is fine), and that would also be a human advantage over the AI if the AI had no focus fire behavior.

Okay, so that's another good point in favor of doing concentrated fire.  By the way, the AI target selection process (the "thinking AI" if you will) is a bit different than the auto-targeting logic that I posted here.  The LINQ code for a lot of that is in the second article in my AI series.  As you might infer from that, it tends to do more concentration of fire like a human player would.  So this would just kind of bring the auto-firing up to that standard, I suppose.

Arguably, overkill is the penalty for concentrating fire fire-hose style.  Computer simulation entities have a very easy time to figure out if enough shots were fired at a target to kill it, but would "real" space ships have that capability?

[x4000]

Arguably, overkill is the penalty for concentrating fire fire-hose style.  Computer simulation entities have a very easy time to figure out if enough shots were fired at a target to kill it, but would "real" space ships have that capability?

This is a very excellent point.  I guess if they had sophisticated computer tracking systems or what have you, they could know that sort of thing.  I think it boils down to what is most fun to play, so that's why I went with the improvements to the targeting.  Makes the players feel more powerful, etc, and microing is already futile with so many ships in the game, anyway.

At any rate -- welcome to the forums!  Good first post.