Refleeting is still way too long

[Draco18s]

Yet another idea - see if the game can be set to go faster than +10 speed.

Won't help.  +10 is "run as fast as you can, no time to wait."  +11 wouldn't actually be any faster.

[Toranth]

Yet another idea - see if the game can be set to go faster than +10 speed.

Won't help.  +10 is "run as fast as you can, no time to wait."  +11 wouldn't actually be any faster.

I was thinking more of adjusting the simulation a bit.  For example, blocking player input, reducing graphical display significantly, not simulating individual units but just groups, or stuff like that.

Although I still want someone to explain to me why +10-game-speed and +10-game-speed-with-mouse-moving are so different.

[Diazo]

More of a workaround then a fix for having to refleet, true. But I'm still of the opinion that if you have lost your entire mobile fleet you've screwed up, badly, and the AI should be in a position to hurt you badly or even win the game.

I know you and I have wildly different play styles - I focus very heavily on fixed defenses.  I build fortresses on my HW early, and first first hack/capture targets are almost always the Core Turret Controllers.  So when I fleetwipe, I don't care: my fixed defenses will keep me safe from anything but a CPA.  However, a fleetwipe means my offensive is stalled, and I have nothing to do until I've rebuilt.  And that means Netfilx time.

And that's the other issue that comes up in trying to balance this.

I certainly have fixed defenses but due to playing Realistic maps they don't have a chance on their own so my mobile fleet is a significant part of my defense.

If I've got no fleet around, that next wave (let alone a CPA) in the late-game has a decent chance of punching out a system or two.

So I'm more careful on the offense and take pains to make sure I don't lose my entire fleet.

Therefore losses can rebuilt while I carry further attacks out, I never have to hang around waiting for a rebuild in the game as it is.

If we make it easier to rebuild, I'm going to essentially never have less then my max fleet available.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm super-busy (TM), but a few thoughts:

- Making repair cheaper wouldn't be a bad thing, but I don't think addresses the root issue here.  Sure, if you avoid a fleet wipe (as is implied in having anything left to repair), then refleeting costs can be substantially lessened.  The assumption here is that fleet wipes are a fact of life for a significant number of playstyle/scenario combinations.

- Making refleet times themselves shorter isn't the primary goal; as others have noted if those were reduced to zero (a trivial thing to accomplish: 100% resource refund on death) the game would just become massively easier as the player's max defensive capability would never really decrease for a substantial period of time.  So unless the AI had some kind of overwhelming sledgehammer (that certainly does happen in some scenarios) it would never get through.  I don't think addressing the refleet-time issue is worth that kind of degeneration.
-- That said, having command stations give a modest resource cap increase, and FS cities give a substantial cap increase, would be worth trying.

- Rather, the primary goal is giving that refleet time a fun purpose.  I tried champions, that only worked out for some people (I certainly intend to revisit various aspects of champs in the future, but that's a bigger problem to solve than this). 
-- Reclaimable scrap would be a step in the right direction, I think, as it would give the player something to do that is directly related to shortening refleet time.  But it probably wouldn't be a large enough step in the right direction.
-- Having the AI say "the player just wrapped his fleet around a tree, time for a wave" or whatever would certainly help, but I strongly suspect that many players would not like that feature.  It could be a lazy/non-lazy thing (or separate from that), but I'm not sure that's the way to go yet. 
-- A similar deal where both you and the AI can reclaim and the AI uses its reclaimed stuff ("Ooh, shiny!") to send extra attacks would be more reasonable all-around, perhaps, as the player's getting a buff (extra resources from successful defense, etc) at the same time.

Anyway, gotta run, just wanted to explain where my thinking was at the moment.

[Faulty Logic]

I don't think refleeting times are a problem. If I lose the really expensive parts of my mobile fleet, I've made a serious mistake, or it's homeworld assault time.

Careful direction of engiIIIs/mobile space docks/cloaked transports to evacuate/repair your expensive stuff can usually prevent a refleet from being necessary.

But I can see how a defense-focused strategy could have non-fun periods during fleetwipe.

I don't like the idea of fighting the AI for scrap. You've just lost your fleet, you can't get the scrap (assuming you lose it in AI territory).

I propose (possibly as the Shark-C plot) that when you lose, say, more two economies (4 million total materials), the AI sends an attack, but if you defeat the attack, you are rewarded with resources. It would scale by the amount you lose, and fund about half to two thirds your refleet. But only if you survive.

I think the best way would be a special ship that gives resources when you kill it.

So if you fleetwiped when you cannot afford to (when your fleet is also your defense) the AI kills you, like it should. But if you have a really strong chokepoint, the time between your sorties is substantially lessened, though you can still be overwhelmed by the response if you're not careful.


Also, the OP mentioned there isn't a cheat for this?
Try "activate the omega" and "engies" until your refleet times disappear.

[chemical_art]

I like the idea of somethin.g to recoup costs after a wipe, but the challenge of scrap is that it encourages defensive killing Zones even more and a true wipe cannot be recovered from.

[TechSY730]

Yet another idea - see if the game can be set to go faster than +10 speed.

Won't help.  +10 is "run as fast as you can, no time to wait."  +11 wouldn't actually be any faster.

I was thinking more of adjusting the simulation a bit.  For example, blocking player input, reducing graphical display significantly, not simulating individual units but just groups, or stuff like that.

Although I still want someone to explain to me why +10-game-speed and +10-game-speed-with-mouse-moving are so different.

For what its worth, when running the "ship battle matchup simulations" (accessible through the debug mode), the game runs at an even faster than +10 pace (I think it says in the top left says like +50 or +100 speed or something), and it accomplishes that by skipping huge swaths of redraws and sounds, just running the simulation. Something like that (but far less extreme of course) could work for a >+10 speed.


For the +10 w/ mouse moving thing going faster than "raw" +10, I suspect (and this is just wild speculation) that the "main loop" has some sort of call somewhere that "blocks" on some UI thing to be done. However, the "UI thread" (maintained by the runtime I guess) goes faster when the mouse moves because moving the mouse forces extra refreshes. This causes the UI thread to do the thing "main loop" is waiting on earlier, so the main loop can go on to the next iteration faster.

Maybe there is a way such that any such blocking calls to the UI can be made asynchronous somehow, assuming that something of this nature is indeed the problem. Some system will need to be put into place to make sure the UI doesn't get "too" "far behind" of course.

[Draco18s]

For what its worth, when running the "ship battle matchup simulations" (accessible through the debug mode), the game runs at an even faster than +10 pace (I think it says in the top left says like +50 or +100 speed or something), and it accomplishes that by skipping huge swaths of redraws and sounds, just running the simulation. Something like that (but far less extreme of course) could work for a >+10 speed.

It also doesn't have to run AI reinforcement logic, resource balance, networking code, etc. etc.  All it needs is the per-unit and per-squad AI loops and some simplified combat mechanics (you don't need to calculate the position of projectiles, they can't be dodged anyway, which is confirmed by the Protector Starship's tooltip).

[Bognor]

A partial fix for late-game refleets, for some folks, on maps with 80+ planets:

  cmd:allow duplicate nebula scenarios

Turns those empty nebulae into useful scenarios.  Does not require cheats to be enabled and does not count as a cheat.

[Draco18s]

A partial fix for late-game refleets, for some folks, on maps with 80+ planets, and champions

Some of us don't play with champions.

[Kahuna]

Yet another idea - see if the game can be set to go faster than +10 speed.

Won't help.  +10 is "run as fast as you can, no time to wait."  +11 wouldn't actually be any faster.

Well it's possible to set the game go faster +10 with Cheat Engine. Change the performance profile to  Extremely Low and in-game speed to -10 (not sure if -10 is necessary). Then use Cheat Engine to make the game go 9999 times faster or something like that.

Anyway.. imo refleeting takes too long in-game time not real time.

[keith.lamothe]

+10 isn't actually as-fast-as-it-can by definition, it's just "run 10 sim cycles before doing another render frame", where render frames are the ones where it will actually wait to do them until time has caught up with the frame rate.

So if the main thread is already saturaring its cpu core (generally it will do so in mid/late game) then the +X thing doesn't really help the wall-clock-time : game-time ratio.


As for fighting the AI for scrap, basically what I'm thinking is that generally you wouldn't be; you'd get whatever scrap the AI left in your territory, and the AI would get whatever you left in its territory.  You could probably steal back your stuff from a quick border raid that went bad, but if you fleet wiped on a core world, well, those toys are the AI's now.

Basically the idea would be to increase the "velocity" (or, more properly, "pace") by changing it from "build really big ball, throw it at enemy, and if it splats you have to spend a long time building another really big ball" to "build really big ball, throw it at enemy, and if it splats the enemy puts it (mostly) back together and throws it back; if it splats again you have (most of) your ball back".  The player retains overall pace control because you don't have to throw (or re-throw) the ball immediately if you don't want to.

Whether it's a good idea, naturally, is harder to say.

But yea, kind of like a Shark-C where fleet-wiping gives the AI something to hit back with.  But with a corresponding (though not identical) mechanic for the player side.  Because if it was AI-side only (i.e. a Shark-C) many players would understandably not want it on, and we're back to the refleeting issue for many of them.  Which is perhaps just how the cookie crumbles, but I'm not sure of that yet.

[Draco18s]

+10 isn't actually as-fast-as-it-can by definition, it's just "run 10 sim cycles before doing another render frame", where render frames are the ones where it will actually wait to do them until time has caught up with the frame rate.

Ah.  My mistake.

So if the main thread is already saturaring its cpu core (generally it will do so in mid/late game) then the +X thing doesn't really help the wall-clock-time : game-time ratio.

That, however, is true for me.  I think I can peak at about 300% game speed, regardless of +N value, so for my rig it was pretty much true.

[Tridus]

-- That said, having command stations give a modest resource cap increase, and FS cities give a substantial cap increase, would be worth trying.

I really like this idea, if you're saving up for something big it would help a lot. It'd also let resources pile up between attacks so that if you're moving slowly you're not wasting resources by having them hit the cap. (Mercenary docks can kind of fill that role now, but they're super expensive for the benefit.)

-- Having the AI say "the player just wrapped his fleet around a tree, time for a wave" or whatever would certainly help, but I strongly suspect that many players would not like that feature.  It could be a lazy/non-lazy thing (or separate from that), but I'm not sure that's the way to go yet. 

This would be a way to go if you were going to shorten refleeting times in general. As shortening it lowers the AI's window of attacking without as much mobile opposition, making the AI smarter about using that window would compensate.

[Volatar]

I really like your line of thinking Keith, and this may turn out to be the best anti-blob measure yet.