Arcen Games
General Category => The Last Federation => Topic started by: Lancefighter on April 19, 2014, 08:40:45 pm
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Preface - This is gonna be a pretty big chatlog from irc. ill try to highlight some of the relevant stuff in bold or something.
[20:03:35] <Lumby> so, am I the only one here who thinks the combat in TLF is bad
[20:03:40] <Lumby> like, not 'mediocre'
[20:03:59] <Lumby> but 'the game would be improved if it were removed entirely, and the other systems revised to account for its removal'
[20:04:16] <Echo> No, I agree. It's kinda bad
[20:04:31] <Echo> Not bad enough that it couldn't be fixed
[20:04:34] <Echo> But bad
[20:05:26] <~Lancefighter> is it that bad now
[20:05:32] <Lumby> I feel like it's complex, but there's no real depth to it - the optimal tactic never really changes from 'kite while using the weapon the game tells you to', and dong anything else is stupid because one loss = game over
[20:05:32] <Echo> Yeah
[20:05:42] <Echo> This exactly
[20:06:07] <~Lancefighter> would you say that is because the enemies are always vastly superior to you in raw firepower
[20:06:18] <Echo> As I learned repeatedly last night as well, pretty much evry fire mode is useless and hsitty
[20:06:25] <~Lancefighter> rofl
[20:07:09] <Echo> The enemies being strong is part of it, but I'd also say there's a huge lack of things to do. Like Lumby says, just pick strong weapon and kite around until you win, which usually takes damn forever unless you feel like microing your guns
[20:07:27] <Lumby> If they're superior in raw firepower, it's generally because they outnumber you by like hundreds to one
[20:07:52] <Lumby> to the point where it's too visually busy - it's a pain keeping track of enemy shots, enemy ships, neutral ships, and the trajectories for all these things
[20:08:06] <Echo> That too
[20:08:20] <Echo> Which is also why the fire mods are all utterly useless
[20:08:53] <Echo> In auto fire, you shoot too many things to be effective. In target mode, you have to sit there clicking every single tiny dot or you won't shoot anything, which makes big battles too hard, etc
[20:09:32] <~Lancefighter> target mode should default to auto-fire if the target is not available
[20:09:46] <~Lancefighter> (and auto-fire uses a similar logic to ai-wars smart target finding thing)
[20:10:03] <Echo> Yes, and auto fire is crap because there's no way to prioritize targets, so when there's like, 100 fighters buzzing around I spend a whole turn taking precisely one shot at everything.
[20:10:27] <Echo> If I can even hit anything because ships fly faster than projectiles.
[20:11:14] <~Lancefighter> ah right
[20:11:46] <Echo> It would be nice if I could drag select an area, or auto pick all enemies of a certain type or something.
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(this issue fixed with re install easily. ALso wonderfully off topic)
[20:12:39] <~Lancefighter> https://www.dropbox.com/s/kr8rbfmqljbn6zd/Screenshot%202014-04-19%2020.12.26.png
[20:12:39] <~Lancefighter> hm
[20:13:28] <Echo> Oh, do you have issues with his games in Windows 8?
[20:13:38] <~Lancefighter> oh no, i was just too lazy to get screenshot to work in fullscreen
[20:13:51] <~Lancefighter> (i cant get hte game borderless windowed no matter what i try, but thats unity's problem)
[20:14:19] <Echo> I don't know if it's Windowblinds or what, but none of his games like working. As in, I have to run them in window mode to even be able to click anything, and even then it's janky.
[20:14:50] <~Lancefighter> sounds like a unity thing? do you know of any other unity games that work without issue?
[20:15:16] <Echo> It's only his games I've noticed so far, but I don't know if I've run anything from unity since I switched to 8.
[20:15:21] <Shiro-Ichida> Ugh I thought the Andors were supposed to be peaceful!
[20:16:21] <Echo> But yeah, I've barely played any of it, but the combat frustrates me and isn't fun so far. I'll have to actually log into the forums for once :P
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[20:16:38] <Shiro-Ichida> but I never have any trouble with swarms of fighters
[20:16:52] <Shiro-Ichida> I just spam scatter cannon to clear screen -> kill shields -> beam to hull
[20:17:12] <Shiro-Ichida> IDK, combat seems fine for me EXCEPT for when enemies are literally faster than your bullets
[20:17:23] <Shiro-Ichida> That gets kinda...dumb.
[20:16:30] <Shiro-Ichida> Huh combat would probably suck if I didn't just spam tons of scatter cannon
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(slightly changed line order to maintain continuity - Issue posted on mantis already)
[20:16:27] <~Lancefighter> rofl so super minor problem from the start
[20:16:31] <~Lancefighter> racal ship choices are terrible
[20:17:37] <Shiro-Ichida> How are the ship choices terrible?
[20:17:49] <~Lancefighter> sec
[20:18:01] <Echo> Some of them are just completely worthless
[20:18:04] <~Lancefighter> where does arcen put screenshots..
[20:18:28] <Shiro-Ichida> Which ones? The carrier?
[20:18:42] <~Lancefighter> https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbliius58fdzwaj/Screenshot_2014_04_19_20_17_18.png
[20:18:46] <~Lancefighter> https://www.dropbox.com/s/x799dwsyf1lya6f/Screenshot_2014_04_19_20_17_41.png
[20:18:49] <Echo> I don't remember. I went through a few of htem last night and only didn't get wrecked with a few
[20:19:04] <~Lancefighter> take a look at the description for each of those
[20:19:07] <~Lancefighter> and let me know if it seems right
[20:19:32] <Shiro-Ichida> uh
[20:19:37] <Shiro-Ichida> That does not seem right.
[20:19:39] <Echo> Is it just me or are their HPs identical
[20:19:42] <~Lancefighter> rofl
[20:19:44] <~Lancefighter> yeah
[20:20:02] <Shiro-Ichida> Well, that's rather comical.
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Back to regularly scheduled combat discussion!
[20:20:52] <Shiro-Ichida> What got you wrecked?
[20:20:58] <Shiro-Ichida> Actually what difficulty are you playing at?
[20:21:05] <Echo> Normal
[20:21:25] <Shiro-Ichida> Combat seems pretty much trivial for me, except when you get the AFA guys and WTF there are like TWENTY OF THEM and they're stronger than the navy ships o.O
[20:21:35] <Echo> And anything that didn't have high volume shots because all the swarming crap you can't do anything about with some ships
[20:21:57] <Shiro-Ichida> Hmm. Did you power to engines and run away?
[20:22:16] <Shiro-Ichida> You have to dodge tons of fire or you just die horribly.
[20:22:18] <Echo> Most of the time I just go full power to shields and engines and just sit on the science stations and don't bother fighting because the enemy flagships you either can't hit, or they have such stupidly high HP you can't dent them
[20:22:59] <Shiro-Ichida> Okay, that's...weird. Are you using the right weapons?
[20:23:03] <~Lancefighter> uh do you guys mind if i paste some of this chatlog onto forums
[20:23:05] <Shiro-Ichida> I can usually kill a flagship in 3 rounds
[20:23:11] <Shiro-Ichida> Not at all.
[20:23:18] <Echo> Go for it
[20:23:41] <Echo> yeah, my first game the first fight took 20 minutes because the enemy flagships were too fast
[20:23:44] <~Lancefighter> thanks
[20:23:57] <Echo> And their fighters were soaking all my guns so I had to sit there in manual fire mode microing all my targets
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tl:dr
Okay so after all of that wonderful pasting, there seems to be osme basic conclusions - Combat feels very.. One dimensional. People are basically saying that at some point you just point your ship in the opposite direction of the enemy and use whatever gun your tooltips say to use, while using 'focus fire' on a specific target. Other concerns include visual noise being literally everywhere, and that the controls you are giving to your ship dont really matter particularly much.
And a little bit of discussion about not liking the current system of perma-death. People in irc seem to like the idea that you get ejected into space with an escape pod and have to rebuild your ship or something, with some sort of full ship loss, but not game-ending. (full ship+all cargo+maybe some credits+ surge in anti-federation ideas seems to be a well liked proposal)
Not really super formatted or anything, just kinda wanted to post this as a base of discussion here
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One more thing I came up with, because I like it.
[19:38] <Lumby> thinking on it, having to choose between begging, borrowing, or stealing a new ship might actually be a pretty interesting choice
[19:40] <Lumby> Beg for a new ship, which requires that the race you're making wibbly eyes at actually like you enough to oblige. Borrow a ship to get it NOW, but now you have to do stuff for the race who loaned it to you before you can keep it. Steal a ship at first chance, but you're just swiping the first one that looks good, so you don't have control over which you get
[19:40] <Lumby> ( the idea of a hydral making wibbly eyes at someone amuses me )
...Okay, I mainly posted this to give everyone that mental image.
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...Okay, I mainly posted this to give everyone that mental image.
Thanks for that. Now everytime I'll look at my Hydral, I'll end up seeing something like that (http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll11/x2emilyx/hydra.jpg). :P
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I agree with this. combat was entertaining for the first hour or so. Then it felt like a chore.
I hestiate playing a second game, because I don't want to do more combat.
Combat seems to have no replay value. Either you win or lose. Either X tactic works, or it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be much variety.
The AFA being more of a challenge then actual navies is true as well, and very disconnecting.
The Autotargetting logic fails for dealing with swarms badly. I have to use lances compensate.
I almost wish there was an option where there is no tactical combat...which starts a rabbit hole that would cause many more problems so I'll stop now.
Anyway, combat desperately has to have more variety. After one play through I've had more then enough.
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In my opinion, it makes sense for the player to fight at a distance, and the game should just balance around that.
Perhaps the enemies should probably only "chase" you until you are within 3/4 weapon range or so instead of chasing you to point blank.
Since enemy projectile speed is somewhat slower for balance, perhaps they should be increased a bit (but not by too much) and the rate of fire should be increased and the shots should be spread out more in an attempt to account for movement.
As I've said in the other thread, I think it just makes sense for the player to fight towards the edge of their weapon reach and I don't think the game should try to fight that because that would just create more problems. Instead that should be assumed to be the "normal" mode of combat and the combat should be balanced around it.
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The combat in this game really isn't that fun; I really wish I could just play without the combat entirely. The really fun simulation aspect just feels dragged down by the fights.
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A few things:
Firstly, kiting is NOT the only effective means to fight battles. It seems to be the one that the game tends to push many players towards, which is a problem for the devs to solve, but it's far from the only viable method.
I personally do not have the undying patience necessary to kite anything, being that I have no patience whatsoever, so I dont.... and I play exclusively on Misery difficulty. I tend to charge at things, as I do in most games. It's still completely viable. As a rule, I never lose a battle even with an approach like that. As a rule, I also dont get hit by enemy shots much. Except the interceptor's yellow bullets, as they're weak even on Misery.
If kiting is too dull, save before your battles, and take some time to experiment with different approaches. But also give the devs time to work on balance.
That being said, the combat is not meant to be a super-deep strategic experience. It's meant to be fast paced, with you trying to dodge as much enemy fire as possible, while knowing what enemies to target and when, and what abilities/weapons to use and when to use them for maximum effect. Dont give the enemy swarms too much chance to grow, attack them quickly. And if the swarm DOES get too big for you to handle, dont forget you can withdrawal.
I also noticed the bit in there about it being tedious to deal with smaller ships, but they can be cleared quickly in groups if you have the spreadshot. High power to weapons, and then either targeting ships that are at the center of a group/swarm, or firing at a target point behind the group instead of at a target ship, can allow you to flatten many small ships on a single turn. Enemy ships that are not interceptors tend to stick together in squadrons, so the target-point method can be very effective at attacking specific groups as a whole. I dont recall which ships start with the spreadshot; I know not all of them do. Frankly, I think they all SHOULD, but that's just me. I might stick that suggestion into Mantis, because it's seriously an important weapon that works with the "fast paced" idea. It can be picked up via the black market if you do not start with it.
There are ways to use the more direct weapons in a more efficient way like that, but those tactics are difficult to explain. Experiment with them though.
One way or another though, if you're kiting everything, your attacks will be at their least effective against the enemy force as a group. You're also giving them ever more time to spawn; take out those flagships quickly, and the swarm cannot grow as fast. Simply running from them gives them the chance to fart out ever more ships.
And autofire is a situational thing, not really meant to be used often in most cases. But that option too is much more effective with the spreadshot instead of the other weapons. ALL fire modes are useful though. All of them. If you learn how to best use them. Again though.... kiting reduces them.
Experiment with abilities as well; they are there for a reason, and they can make you much more effective if used right. Again though, they're usually pretty bad when kiting alot. The burst effect all abilities cause also makes it much easier to safely engage enemies at a close range. They also tend to recharge some of your shield, as when you use one, your power is temporariy all dumped into shield recharge, and then put back to where it was after that turn is over.
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Unfortunately, Misery, we aren't all you. My experience with suicidal charges is that they tended to be just that - suicidal - so I'm not going to bother with them, if the reward I've already gotten for experimenting is a game over screen, and I've already found what is apparently the optimal tactic.
And, if the combat isn't meant to be deep... why have it in the game at all? It clashes heavily with the (much more interesting) solar map gameplay. I already have numerous other games that I can load up for fast-paced action - Diablo 3, Strike Vector, Ikaruga... hell, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is both more fast-paced and deeper. The political dealings and careful manipulations on the solar map are what interested in me in TLF, not the combat which is both unpleasant to get through and, frankly, hoses my suspension of disbelief. (The super-prototype ship didn't come with super-prototype escape pods, or a super-prototype remote control so that my character can get involved in combat without personally risking his own neck and the entire fate of the solar system on not making any mistakes?)
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I do find myself wishing combat would at least be quicker. I actually felt it was in a pretty good place during the alpha at one point, but release version has speedy flagships outrunning many of my shots and it makes things frustratingly long sometimes. Especially if I have to do more than one battle in a row to clear out attacking armadas on a planet.
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I do find myself wishing combat would at least be quicker.
In one of the release notes, it was said 50 turns rarely occurred. I would heartily disagree. The only missions that were short were the tech missions and probe missions. Straight up combat takes forever.
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While on the matter of combat concerns, I completely disregard allies. They still do jack squat in attack enemies, and all the enemies run right at me, so in effect they are worthless.
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Some of the battles are just painful. They turn into a Bullet Hell minigame where you have to dodge the enormous amounts of ordnance flying around in the air because each of them does half of your shield's value in damage, and there's no way you can regen enough to take more than one of them every few turns if you back off from the fight to devote maximum energy to the shields.
I mean, I like how useful engines are. "I'm taking too much damage, I need to be somewhere else." But when I have to pay very careful attention to shot trajectories so I can fly in between the shells, it's not fun anymore. I can't get anywhere near the things that are spamming those uber-shots, and unlike me the enemy flagships seem to be able to spit out smaller craft as much as they want so whittling them down doesn't work either.
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Unfortunately, Misery, we aren't all you. My experience with suicidal charges is that they tended to be just that - suicidal - so I'm not going to bother with them, if the reward I've already gotten for experimenting is a game over screen, and I've already found what is apparently the optimal tactic.
And, if the combat isn't meant to be deep... why have it in the game at all? It clashes heavily with the (much more interesting) solar map gameplay. I already have numerous other games that I can load up for fast-paced action - Diablo 3, Strike Vector, Ikaruga... hell, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is both more fast-paced and deeper. The political dealings and careful manipulations on the solar map are what interested in me in TLF, not the combat which is both unpleasant to get through and, frankly, hoses my suspension of disbelief. (The super-prototype ship didn't come with super-prototype escape pods, or a super-prototype remote control so that my character can get involved in combat without personally risking his own neck and the entire fate of the solar system on not making any mistakes?)
Haha, I dont mean that everyone should directly charge at the enemy all the time no matter what; that's just what I do. I meant it as pointing out that even a tactic like that IS viable.... and so are lots of other methods that dont involve crashing into the enemy flagships. As long as you're saving before battle, in case something goes wrong, it's very much worth experimenting with. Try all sorts of things. Kiting is boring... combat is much more interesting when you're not doing that.
Also, on the note of enemy flagships kiting you, I did put up a detailed mantis report on that, as I kept seeing that complaint over and over. It's likely to get fixed quick, I think. I dont run into it on Misery, but apparently it's *very* annoying.
I *think* the faster flagships were put in to make it so that YOU could not always kite THEM, particularly in assassin battles, but I could be wrong. That's the reasoning I remember though. Of course, it doesnt work so well with the "cowardly enemy runs away" thing...
I do still think though that some sort of "auto combat", like what Chris had come up with awhile ago (like skipping combat in the Total War games) should definitely be implemented. Plenty of players really enjoy the combat, but it sure as heck aint for everyone.
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I don't understand the fire mode complaint. Autofire (with suitable weapon) to dispatch small ships, target single ship for flagships and occasionally when you need to prioritize individual small targets (usually turrets, Monitors and Lancers), that's all I ever really needed to do. (This is on Harder.) Of course, Spreadshot does help tons...
On kiting vs. closing: best anti-flagship weapon (Disruptor) needs you to get into close range; ditto if you want to maximize single target Spreadshot damage. High-risk, high-reward. It'd be perfect if only you didn't have to worry about being insta-killed by suddenly spawning Lancers or Monitors.
EDIT: But yes, more UI options for targeting would be nice.
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Ok, I just has a bit of an "epiphany" and I'm going to go out on a limb to be really daft for a bit, so please tolerate me for a moment. ;D
Scratch what I said earlier, I think there might be an even easier short-term fix that won't require as much finicky balancing as I just got reminded what "Misery" difficulty does and why Misery perhaps doesn't see the same problems.
-Increase the speed of enemy shots on "Normal" by 30%:
This probably sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. If I recall correctly, "Misery" difficulty has shot speed increased by 60% and the person who plays it most can still evade most incoming fire without kiting and hasn't blown an aneurysm yet (correct me if I'm wrong). That means that this tweak is already out there and has effectively already been tested and determined to not "break" combat.
As such, this tweak should make out-speeding the shots much less viable without requiring that much fixing after the fact.
-Increase weapons range of "slow" flagships and turrets to beyond the player's weapons range:
These guys are much less agile, carry more armament, and use completely different weapons from you. I think it would make sense for these guys to be able to shoot farther than you can. Also right now turrets aren't very effective at doing anything due to their short range, and again it make sense for dedicated immobile weapons to be able to shoot farther than their mobile counterparts.
The flagships that can fly faster than you probably should NOT get this for obvious reasons.
-Have enemy flagships only pursue until the player is within of weapon range.
It doesn't make sense for the player to fight at point blank, so maybe the enemy shouldn't try to do this either. Instead they should only pursue until they can fire effectively. With their increased range, this should put them at the distance the player would want to fight at anyway and they won't encourage the player to make a run for it because then the player's weapons would become ineffective before the enemies would.
This will NOT solve all the problems with combat of course, but in the short-term this will accomplish four major results for people on both sides of the fence.
Theoretically this will:
A. Hopefully "hard-kill" the player's kiting behavior by making it so that retreating will mean sacrificing the ability to do damage, and making it so the enemy won't encourage kiting behavior via relentless pursuit.
B. Reduce "battlefield clutter" due to higher projectile speeds causing projectiles to leave the immediate field of play much quicker than before, mean fewer actively dangerous projectiles in flight at any given moment. (This would also hopefully compensate for increase in difficulty due to faster shots)
C. Keep the ratio of enemy DPS and player DPS the same as it is now, as the maximum DPS a given number of enemy ships can do to the player stays about the same (only shot speed is affected, not rate-of-fire or damage). This means that combat difficulty only makes a minimal leap, "kiting exploit" aside.
D. Better satisfy people who don't want to spend so much time in combat by making combat generally SHORTER.
"Wait a sec" you might ask. "How the hell would this accomplish the last result?". I'll try to explain why I believe so.
By changing the optimal combat distance in this manner to one where everyone has a clear shot more of the time, weapons on both side will be provided with a more "target-rich environment" for a greater fraction of the total time you spend in combat. This means that weapons on both sides will be able to take advantage of their maximum DPS more of the time, including the player's. Drops in overall DPS on both sides due to distance will be reduced, and as such the death of one of the sides should theoretically occur in a shorter amount of time.
Also because kiting would no longer offer as much benefit, situations where the player has to "return to the blob" after killing a bunch of enemies, and therefore time in which neither side is dealing damage, would be drastically reduced. Combat blobs would theoretically stay together more of the time, and this reduces the "travel time" that may occur on either side.
So in summary I believe (and I could be wrong) that this would result in:
-Less kiting!
-Less clutter!
-Minimal change in difficulty!
-Shorter battles with fewer turns!
WHEW!
That said, admittedly a lot of this is "theory" and may have some or a lot of holes in it, but in the interest of trying to throw any possible solutions on the table for this I really thought I should plop this in here anyway.
Any Thoughts? Any Comments? Any "F*ck No! You're Totally Bonkers!"?
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I should probably name a couple of things that DID annoy me:
1) AFA/Assassin missions. Objective is kill all enemies, not just flagships. Hypersonic Pods (and to a lesser extent, Interceptors). >:(
2) Shield/hull ratio seems to be too high for late game enemies; Disruptor or at least Energy Blaster feel mandatory as a result.
EDIT: Hmm, the Mark level defence techs actually grow hull faster than shield, at least according to the text. Still, I'm getting Model Xs with 3.7 million shields and just 100k hull...
3) Lancer/Monitor instagib. FFFFFUUUUU
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I like your ideas. I almost always play with combat speed on 2x. I like the idea of not having the enemy just dive bomb you like they are now. The only thing I can see a problem with is regards to the speed of the projectiles.
Right now many of the AI ships rely on creating a wall of fire you either need to shield for or dodge around. If you speed them up you would need to either increase the fire rate and lower individual shot damage to keep the same DPS, thus making even more visual spam. Or changing the entire fighting mechanics to actually have the ai be able to be a threat. This would have to be something along the lines of the all those ai ships actually aiming at your ship making it even more difficult to dodge. Not really sure how to deal with the issue.
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Professor Paul, those are all very good ideas actually, at least by my book anyway. In particular the increased attack range is very important. But it needs to be a good bit higher than the player's max range at full weapon power, and that might be a bit difficult to fully balance. It IS possible to get half of the battlefield all firing at you at once. Though I suspect the effect will be MUCH less intense than anything I'm used to.
As for turrets, they can be kinda wonky to balance. Their range is short even on Misery.... with a couple of exceptions that have seriously monstous range, totally outdoing anything else in the game by far. The turrets are likely to be the difficult bit to balance properly. The gravity lance ones though should NOT gain much at all though, as you cannot dodge a lance weapon no matter what.
Write that stuff up as a Mantis ticket, if you would. This is just the sort of thing that could make the combat that much more intersting overall, regardless of difficulty level.
-Increase the speed of enemy shots on "Normal" by 30%:
This probably sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. If I recall correctly, "Misery" difficulty has shot speed increased by 60% and the person who plays it most can still evade most incoming fire without kiting and hasn't blown an aneurysm yet (correct me if I'm wrong). That means that this tweak is already out there and has effectively already been tested and determined to not "break" combat.
As such, this tweak should make out-speeding the shots much less viable without requiring that much fixing after the fact.
Aye, no blown fuses here yet.
Would you believe I actually think it could be a bit harder in some ways?
Though making it harder is likely a bad idea, from the point of view of others that may give this a go. Hard to say.
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Right now many of the AI ships rely on creating a wall of fire you either need to shield for or dodge around. If you speed them up you would need to either increase the fire rate and lower individual shot damage to keep the same DPS, thus making even more visual spam. Or changing the entire fighting mechanics to actually have the ai be able to be a threat. This would have to be something along the lines of the all those ai ships actually aiming at your ship making it even more difficult to dodge. Not really sure how to deal with the issue.
Professor Paul, those are all very good ideas actually, at least by my book anyway. In particular the increased attack range is very important. But it needs to be a good bit higher than the player's max range at full weapon power, and that might be a bit difficult to fully balance. It IS possible to get half of the battlefield all firing at you at once. Though I suspect the effect will be MUCH less intense than anything I'm used to.
See, the nice thing I see here is that the latter concern sort of solves the former concern. :D
Yes the projectiles won't be on the battlefield quite as long as before, but at the same time the increase in weapons range and the new ideal position for the player to do damage mean that more guns on the battlefield have the player as a viable target.
That's part of the beauty of this. With the exception of the change in pursuit behavior, the other changes I've suggested have already been tested in some way, at least as much as they can be without implementing them all together.
Hard and Misery difficulty have already demonstrated that an increase in projectile speed does not break combat.
As for having more weapons within effective range at once, a lot of us already willingly do combat under those conditions. I do combat that way, Misery does combat that way, and if the videos are anything to go by even Chris does combat that way, and I'm sure some more people here do.
Arguably a lot of us are already doing combat under the conditions these changes would enforce, so we know it's not totally screwed up. The fact that those of us who do tend to enjoy the combat more reinforces that.
The only change in the set that hasn't been directly or indirectly tried already would be the change to pursuit behavior, because that's the only thing that hasn't already been done in the game before, but that's really up to Chris and Keith to decide the difficulty of.
Also I agree that the Gravity Lance should NOT get a range increase, those things are pure evil in a can.
Mantis:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14284
So there's the ticket if you want to comment and/or support that.
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I think I've managed to pin down the single biggest thing I hate about the combat:
Smuggling missions are lovably awful. There's way too much shit to deal with, and if you don't spend a billion years pecking away at the defenses, then you're going to die as soon as you try to get close to the beacon.
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Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?
You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in. Mix and match cloak/afterburner/coasting with abilities/deploying chaff to keep you alive - you just need to touch the thing and you're done.
Also, I really, really, really wish there was either an autoresolve or a "COME AT ME BRO" button, because killing a 100-ship fleet in increments of 5 at a time is horrifyingly dull. It's too easy to be fun, and you have to do it like twenty times. Over and over again.
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No, I think it's "smuggling people from pirate stations to change who controls the planets".
I tried one on normal, it's... bad.
Your "smuggled people" just dies in a few rounds. You on the other hand have to protect them but there is no realistic way to do so.
About combat, kiting is the only realistic way to fight, everything else will end with you being one-shot by stuff after a few decades. And, as there is no way to gain tech apart from stealing them, it's getting worse as the game goes. The only enemy I found which represent a threat to this strategy is some kind of sniper thingy which has high damage, high speed shots... except that when there are a dozen of them it turns into a quick hydra shred game. It seems to the the suggestion above to make enemy shots more like this. I think it's far from a good idea as the only thing that will do is worsen long range combat with short range still being undoable. Not that I have better solutions at hand... but looking at other bullet hell games might help.
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Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.
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Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.
Completely agree. High weapon power should be "concentrated" while low weapon power weak but high range. I think we can increase the number of power levels if needed to make the max have very low range but be super powerful.
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Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?
You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.
There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.
Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.
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Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.
I'm not really against this much at all, but at the same time I'm not too keen on this being done just yet.
My current issue with this is that it's an attempt change the existing player behavior, and as such seems liable to lead to a lot of other balance problems that would have to be resolved along with it.
You could very well end up with the scenario where most players end up not closing anyway then complaining about the lack of damage leading to longer fights, especially if there are a lot of ships and the total enemy DPS is high.
In the short term I would rather the game be balance around the behavior that's already there and not try to fight it just yet.
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Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?
You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.
There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.
Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.
Okay, so I got this mission. It said I was supposed to shoot down ships so that technology would end up on their planet, and if I killed them all then I could take some for myself.
Yet, when I start it, there are no flagships, and all I have to do is get to a drop zone. Is there supposed to be one, or did the wrong text get displayed?
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Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.
This would make getting kited by speedy flagships even more frustrating. Right now my projectiles barely hit them or they fizz out before they connect. I WANT to get close, but the game won't let me.
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Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?
You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.
There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.
Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.
Okay, so I got this mission. It said I was supposed to shoot down ships so that technology would end up on their planet, and if I killed them all then I could take some for myself.
Yet, when I start it, there are no flagships, and all I have to do is get to a drop zone. Is there supposed to be one, or did the wrong text get displayed?
Are you sure you clicked on the QUEST text in the top? Because that's the only way to get to this mission... if you see a drop-zone it's the normal space faring mission with huge influence penalties, the quest one gives you huge influence bonus and no penalties.
I am now playing on 1 below Normal and the combat is FAR easier. Still a bit odd balance that's for sure.
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Ok, I just has a bit of an "epiphany" and I'm going to go out on a limb to be really daft for a bit, so please tolerate me for a moment. ;D
Scratch what I said earlier, I think there might be an even easier short-term fix that won't require as much finicky balancing as I just got reminded what "Misery" difficulty does and why Misery perhaps doesn't see the same problems.
-Increase the speed of enemy shots on "Normal" by 30%:
This probably sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. If I recall correctly, "Misery" difficulty has shot speed increased by 60% and the person who plays it most can still evade most incoming fire without kiting and hasn't blown an aneurysm yet (correct me if I'm wrong). That means that this tweak is already out there and has effectively already been tested and determined to not "break" combat.
As such, this tweak should make out-speeding the shots much less viable without requiring that much fixing after the fact.
-Increase weapons range of "slow" flagships and turrets to beyond the player's weapons range:
These guys are much less agile, carry more armament, and use completely different weapons from you. I think it would make sense for these guys to be able to shoot farther than you can. Also right now turrets aren't very effective at doing anything due to their short range, and again it make sense for dedicated immobile weapons to be able to shoot farther than their mobile counterparts.
The flagships that can fly faster than you probably should NOT get this for obvious reasons.
-Have enemy flagships only pursue until the player is within of weapon range.
It doesn't make sense for the player to fight at point blank, so maybe the enemy shouldn't try to do this either. Instead they should only pursue until they can fire effectively. With their increased range, this should put them at the distance the player would want to fight at anyway and they won't encourage the player to make a run for it because then the player's weapons would become ineffective before the enemies would.
This will NOT solve all the problems with combat of course, but in the short-term this will accomplish four major results for people on both sides of the fence.
Theoretically this will:
A. Hopefully "hard-kill" the player's kiting behavior by making it so that retreating will mean sacrificing the ability to do damage, and making it so the enemy won't encourage kiting behavior via relentless pursuit.
B. Reduce "battlefield clutter" due to higher projectile speeds causing projectiles to leave the immediate field of play much quicker than before, mean fewer actively dangerous projectiles in flight at any given moment. (This would also hopefully compensate for increase in difficulty due to faster shots)
C. Keep the ratio of enemy DPS and player DPS the same as it is now, as the maximum DPS a given number of enemy ships can do to the player stays about the same (only shot speed is affected, not rate-of-fire or damage). This means that combat difficulty only makes a minimal leap, "kiting exploit" aside.
D. Better satisfy people who don't want to spend so much time in combat by making combat generally SHORTER.
"Wait a sec" you might ask. "How the hell would this accomplish the last result?". I'll try to explain why I believe so.
By changing the optimal combat distance in this manner to one where everyone has a clear shot more of the time, weapons on both side will be provided with a more "target-rich environment" for a greater fraction of the total time you spend in combat. This means that weapons on both sides will be able to take advantage of their maximum DPS more of the time, including the player's. Drops in overall DPS on both sides due to distance will be reduced, and as such the death of one of the sides should theoretically occur in a shorter amount of time.
Also because kiting would no longer offer as much benefit, situations where the player has to "return to the blob" after killing a bunch of enemies, and therefore time in which neither side is dealing damage, would be drastically reduced. Combat blobs would theoretically stay together more of the time, and this reduces the "travel time" that may occur on either side.
So in summary I believe (and I could be wrong) that this would result in:
-Less kiting!
-Less clutter!
-Minimal change in difficulty!
-Shorter battles with fewer turns!
WHEW!
That said, admittedly a lot of this is "theory" and may have some or a lot of holes in it, but in the interest of trying to throw any possible solutions on the table for this I really thought I should plop this in here anyway.
Any Thoughts? Any Comments? Any "F*ck No! You're Totally Bonkers!"?
Sounds reasonable and worth a try to me - even more so since most of the stuff proposed seems to be doing its job on the higher difficulties...
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Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.
This sounds like an suggestion which will increase the problem instead of solving it. As power level and difficulty goes up your kiting distance will have to go up and therefore combat length will be even longer than before, and kiting even more necessary.
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Imo the combat currently suffers from a clear case of "Bullet Hell" ;P And this is a HUGE problem when a single hit can take down a shield from 100% to 10% as is very possible in late game. And unlike the races, our own ship does not increase in power nor CAN it increase in power in the same speed as other races. We have no way to let research happen "in the background" just for us. And so any focus on research is going to involve us not doing anything and thus constantly losing even more power advantages.
I don't know whether Arcen would consider a complete redo of combat though. The combat right now is really imo the worst thing about the game. I am honestly intrigued by the simulation, and I would probably love this game way more if we could somehow build up our own "proxy" empire. Ie, we don't just start with a ship from 1 race, but an entire colony worth of 1 race. That we can expand, build up, and do things with. Also it would allow us to field support fleets and do research. It would allow us to subvert the original race and have a use for prisoners.
I know x4000 said that this turn based gameplay was what he had in mind from the start. But fact is, that the combat has nearly 0 tactical elements. And this is partially because the enemies are stupid and partially because when the player faces 30+ cap ships, and as thus nearly 100 enemies, this becomes a SHMUP more than a tactical strategy game.
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Alternatively, give us a proper equipment system for our flag-ship with loot like Bionic Dues and allow us to recruit crew and elites (npc characters). Crew and Elites could level up over time, and do research on the flagships own research bay. Basically, lots of things could be done to make combat something that has a reason. (Currently, I honestly do not do missions with combat anymore after a certain level of AI growth)
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Hmm... I wonder if those of us finding it easy are the ones making it a point of picking up every tech that boosts combat stats as soon as it comes out (using the five finger discount coupon if necessary)?
Keith/Chris, how do combat stat multipliers work? In particular, do two 1.5x bonuses make a 2x or a 2.25x?
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In the game I played through Friday, I noticed that combat started to get kinda scary as soon as you let up on picking up the UNI-upgrades, and got better again once you did.
Never really found things too bad as long as I was up to the same Mark levels as anyone else, barring AFA death squads.
Also, Scattershot makes little things trivial even on auto-fire and the Energy Blaster made even assassin shields trivial. Still take a few rounds, but not terribly many. I never really use any other weapons, since Scattershot seems to do acceptably even against armored things.
Played on Normal, if that makes a difference, I suppose.
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IMO the Combat works fine for me atm.
I can kiting and also can go in to take a flagship quickly out of the game, so i think this is just a part u have to pratice a bit.
The Problems afaik are more in the missiondesign, the most missions played equal course u have always fight vs a overwhelming Enemy fleet.
Perhaps there should be some Missions where u fight vs much more lesser but much stronger enemys. ( A duell vs a spacemonster, or a new alien prototype)
Or Missions where u not only have some Allys, but u can give them some Orders (when u fight for the federation a.e.) this would made this much more interesting.
The Smuggling mission could be more Interesting when they are "Holes" in the defence that u have to find.
Also i thing there should be more options to customize the ship, and to upgrade and evolve the ship better in the lategame (secret Weapons only for u, sepecial shields with bullet/energy/gravity Resistence a.s.o.)
right now the game is realy young, so we should give the devs a chance to made this good game even better^^
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There are actually those "lesser but stronger" enemy type missions. Assassins and the Burlust Warlords.
Throwing that one out there.
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Those missions are also really easy because of the way kiting works. They would have to wildly outrange you for kiting not to work, since your shots don't have your velocity added to them (therefore their range) when you fire them. Therefore if you move five ship lengths a turn, and they're chasing you at a distance of ten ship lengths (your maximum range), they'll need a maximum range of at least fifteen ship lengths to be able to shoot you.
Even if kiting weren't possible, the missions would still be easier because you're not having to dodge dozens of projectiles, half of which are able to completely wreck your shields with one hit.
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Well, wasn't saying they weren't somewhat simple, just saying they existed.
Warlords really need some sort of fast projectile...
Tucking velocity into projectiles could be useful, although it gives me daydreams of complex impact-velocity/direction damage bonuses that won't happen.
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Tucking velocity into projectiles could be useful, although it gives me daydreams of complex impact-velocity/direction damage bonuses that won't happen.
Mmm... T'was a similar thingy in Mount & Blade, which was a small indie game. Can't be really hard to implement it.
Through I admit it'll take one heck of an update to fit it in the game.
But the thing that annoys me is that space battles don't look like realistic space battles. Bullets coming out of nowhere, ships shooting 5 bullets at once. It's danmaku all right. It's not a simulator all right.
Just replace the ship with a girl in a frilly dress and a silly hat, and you've got Touhou.
Hey, I just got one neat idea for a new mod.
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Eh...adding ship velocity to projectiles and factoring projectile velocity into damage is pretty easy. Even I can do it ???
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I don't think it's as much a matter of how difficult it would be to put in as much as it would likely create a need to rebalanced a lot of stuff right away.
Unless Chris and Keith give a big yes to it immediately I think it would have to be something for much later on.
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That was my general thinking.
Not that it'd be hard to implement (maybe), but that it'd probably change a lot of stuff...a lot.
Probably change player behavior though, which is a possible plus?
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Probably change player behavior though, which is a possible plus?
In the long-term term, yes. In the short-term, no.
I mean I'm definitely in support of adding ship velocity to projectiles eventually, but as mentioned that it changes player behavior and touches so many things balance-wise that I don't think it can be seen as a good immediate "fix" unless Chris and Keith come out and say they're really confident in it.
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Might as well throw in my 2 bits as well. I have to say, I don't really like the combat much. It's far too shallow compared to the depth of the rest of the game. It feels like I'm being forced to go paddle around the kiddy pool every few minutes when all I want to do is explore the nearby ocean. The outcome is pretty much binary. You win and get to continue playing the fun part, or lose and thus end the entire game. (A few variables aside that can allow you to get extra goodies out of it, or withdraw which effectively does nothing and makes the whole exercise moot)
I'm not feeling the risk vs. reward is properly balanced here. I don't know where the solution lies, maybe losing doesn't need to mean a game over (or really a reload which, if as assumption that the player is going to save scum is factored in as part of balancing, I would argue that balance is off), but instead you escape but have to waste some months repairing your ship before you can do anything else. And when I get a game over screen in TLF, that feels like it's time to quit. I don't feel like reloading and trying again, and I don't feel like starting a whole new game, I feel like doing something else. The game shouldn't be so actively encouraging people to stop playing it. A prominent option to reload the last autosave before combat on the game over screen would be a bandaid fix, but really mistakes just shouldn't be so fatal.
That's the overall view, but getting down to the gritty details, combat just feels like a confusing mess right now. This is partly because I'm still getting used to the game. But that's going to be a problem that every single player is going to have to deal with, and we don't want bad first impressions turning people away. There are a plethora of little problems here that all add up to an experience I find it hard to enjoy. Most obvious is the screen clutter. Shots everywhere, tiny ships everywhere. Lots of little things, and no way to prioritize what's important and what's not without mousing over hundreds of dots and reading tooltips. Is that little pointy cylinder a highly dangerous missile that's going to punch through half my health? Or is it just a piddly fighter that my guns will probably destroy without me even noticing its existence? There's almost no at-a-glance way to read the battlefield. An enemy that's on full health and an enemy that's almost dead don't seem to have any visual difference (sans shield graphics), so I've got to mouse over them and look at health/shield totals that may both be 6 digit numbers. Not that all of this isn't doable, it's just not really helping to make fun happen.
When you do die, there's no after action report or combat log. No one stops to tell you the license number of the truck that hit you. You might have been flying along through apparently empty space trying to get away from the bullet hell, like I was just earlier today, and blow up. Why? I don't know! I can never know! Sometimes I die with full shields. I guess there are weapons that punch through and ignore shields? OK, but how do I know? How do I prioritize what to run from? Like everyone else has mentioned, the best tactic seems to be constantly running from things and slowly kiting everything to death. Effective but very dull.
Usually games that have multiple levels of high strategy and up close combat have options for auto-resolving battles. (Total War, Mount & Blade, Endless Space, Divinity: Dragon Commander, etc. etc.) There are usually many randomness problems with this, but that aside for now, I find myself wishing that TLF had a way to do this. With the current mechanics, it wouldn't really make sense, of course. Since your combat outcome is a binary 'achieve your goal' vs. 'lose the entire game' it wouldn't really make sense to have an RNG decide that. But that just sort of spotlights the problem.
I should also mention that I've been playing so far on Easy, just trying to find my footing. And yet I have had several fledgeling games fail due to inexplicable deaths in combat. I don't think I'm especially terrible at games (although that's always possible) but I'm also not sure what I'm doing wrong to get instagibbed, again, due to the game ironically providing me with so much information on the one hand that I can't sift through it (through mouseover details and a busy bullet hell playing field) while not providing me any information about what killed me when I do die.
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The only shots I ever noticed ignoring shields did seem to be rather glowy and red, also slow, so simple enough to avoid.
Then again, I actually play bullet hells all the time, so perhaps I'm just more predisposed towards picking out things amongst an enormous blob of colorful death.
The screens do tend to get covered in a lot of stuff, though. I like it, but I can see where it'd be a problem for some people.
What I don't generally see are horribly lethal things unless I've dipped behind on upgrades, or am fighting bosses/assassins/deathlance-turrets/that-kind-of-stuff.
And from that thought, comes an idea.
What if shots were color-coded by the amount of damage they would do to you? Maybe by %health damage, so you could assess high-threats easily and ignore the littler stuff.
"Oh, blob of blue does nothing, who cares. But hooooly crap there's a lot of red-death missiles coming from that edge."
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Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?
You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.
There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.
Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.
Okay, so I got this mission. It said I was supposed to shoot down ships so that technology would end up on their planet, and if I killed them all then I could take some for myself.
Yet, when I start it, there are no flagships, and all I have to do is get to a drop zone. Is there supposed to be one, or did the wrong text get displayed?
Are you sure you clicked on the QUEST text in the top? Because that's the only way to get to this mission... if you see a drop-zone it's the normal space faring mission with huge influence penalties, the quest one gives you huge influence bonus and no penalties.
I am now playing on 1 below Normal and the combat is FAR easier. Still a bit odd balance that's for sure.
Hmm, okay. I tried to do it by going to the planet and starting a mission like I normally do. I wondered why everyone got super mad about it.
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The binary win/lose of combat is something I dislike quite a lot. I don't think it's fitting in grand strategy games (and I think at it's core, that's what TLF federation wants to be, a grand strategy game). Losing a battle in a grand strategy game should be a set back, not a game over screen. You can lose a skirmish/battle in AI-War, Total War, Crusader Kings 2, Mount and Blade, pretty much any 4X game, etc... and it doesn't mean you can't turn things around. Hell, sometimes a loss here means you set yourself up for a win somewhere more important "lose the battle, win the war" so to speak.
Now, that doesn't mean that perma-death from loss can't work in a game. FTL: Faster Than Light is a very good example of a game where that is core to the design. Why does it work there and not here? Well, simple, because all "wins" in a game like FTL are not equal. How you win each battle is extremely important, and a Pyrrhic victory is something you will feel through the course of the game. You don't lose in a single battle, you lose over many battles, the last one just happened to be a killing blow.
In FTL? What does it matter how you win. You either win or you don't. Taking many turns moves the simulation clock a bit more forward, but that effect is not very significant, and the 50 turn "enrage timer" (which I think was a bad idea, but that's another story) normalizes how long battles can take to an extent anyway. You dominate the other side? Barely scrape by? No difference, a win is a win, just don't lose or you'll get the game over screen.
I like games where losing is fun, but the kind of losing I want to be doing in FTL is having the situation spiral out of control at the macro level. A loss where a anti-federation ends up dominating the system (if that is even a loss condition, I'm not sure) reflects a loss from many strategic decisions over the course of the game setting things down the wrong path. A loss from getting your ship blown up isn't nearly as "satisfying" or story-building. It's basically, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and what was going on in the solar system doesn't even matter.
The whole combat thing in this game just feels so orthogonal to the game. I don't really care what goes on in a specific battle that much, I just want it to be over with so I can get back to my plotting and politicking. When it's easy, it's a boring waste of time. When it's difficult, it's a frustrating waste of time.
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I find most unsettling thing about the "binary" win/lose nature of a lot of missions is that I'm not sure how much more "not-binary" they can be made short of merging the missions.
The number of ships you run into when attacking an outpost's or planet's defender is drawn from the ships they actually have. If you kill a number of enemy flagships and then withdraw without completing the attack, they still lose those ships, those ships don't magically come back to life. That goes for friendlies too.
You can actually whittle a force down by going in, killing a few, withdrawing in a repeated hit-and-run over and over again.
I'm actually somewhat surprised nobody has called that out as an exploit yet!
It's not just killing enemy ships either, you can do convoy raids and get partial good without completing the missions. Just fly through and swipe a few good out of the convoy ships and withdraw. Technically you didn't finish the mission you still got your goods.
Tech stealing missions are sort of binary by nature, you either get the tech or you don't. That said, in a lot of them you still get a bunch of ambient opportunity targets that were put in specifically to try to avoid that. If they get destroyed in the process and they do affect the strategy-layer game.
I mean, I can understand wanting to make missions less "win/lose" but I'm not sure what more can be done about it that isn't already being done.
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I find most unsettling thing about the "binary" win/lose nature of a lot of missions is that I'm not sure how much more "not-binary" they can be made short of merging the missions.
The number of ships you run into when attacking an outpost's or planet's defender is drawn from the ships they actually have. If you kill a number of enemy flagships and then withdraw without completing the mission, they still lose those ships, those ships don't magically come back to life. That goes for friendlies too.
You can actually whittle a force down by going in, killing a few, withdrawing in a repeated hit-and-run over and over again.
I'm actually somewhat surprised nobody has called that out as an exploit yet!
It's not just killing enemy ships either, you can do convoy raids and get partial good without completing the missions. Just fly through and swipe a few good out of the convoy ships and withdraw. Technically you didn't finish the mission you still got your goods.
Tech stealing missions are sort of binary by nature, you either get the tech or you don't. That said, in a lot of them you still get a bunch of ambient opportunity targets that were put in specifically to try to avoid that. If they get destroyed in the process and they do affect the strategy-layer game.
I mean, I can understand wanting to make missions less "win/lose" but I'm not sure what more can be done about it that isn't already being done.
This is the kind of information that someone shouldn't have to read a forum post to find out. I had no idea that the combat scenarios represented anything outside of a random number of ships and a goal of 'kill X ships' or 'go sit on this spot for X seconds'. Interesting information, to be sure, but this is the kind of thing you want to be blasting the player with in game. Ideally with a hand holding tutorial that says 'in this battle your goal is not to kill everything but to steal this tech' or kidnap some pilots or whatever, and then withdraw.
(Side note, why is it that my ship seems to have the ability to instantly jump-to-lightspeed out of battle when I've finished excitingly sitting on a station getting shot at for 10 seconds, yet that option turns into 'don't get hit for 5 turns' if I want to leave otherwise?)
That aside, while you have convinced me that the 'win' column isn't quite so binary, the much deeper and more aggravating problem is that losses are more black and white. You can lose by successfully withdrawing without completing any of your goals, in which case the combat round is essentially a mulligan. This doesn't seem to have any effect outside of wasting a few minutes of time (in a game that regularly sees you sitting through months or years of fast-forward, that is not even worth considering). If it is doing something else, the game isn't telling me about it (which goes back to my first point). Or you can lose by being blown up, in which case the game is simply over.
And we're left with the big risk-reward ratio problem. I'm risking absolutely everything, and in-game my reward is probably something minor in the overall progress. Some tech, or a few influence points. But in metagame terms, my reward is being allowed to continue to play the game. Which is the real world reason we're doing it. Because the game forces you into the combat, and if we could detour around it, most of us happily would.
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Are some people really trying to kill everything in combat mode. Sometimes thats just impossible and
you have to withdraw. The game wants you to withdraw from certain fights otherwise its game over.
If you dont get a gameover screen people always fight to the death and thats not what this game is about
i think. You can accomplish some goals in combat then withdraw and risk losing some influence for being
a coward.
I like the combat in this game. It could use some tweaks and some variety but it makes the solar map
stuff much more intresting. Killing some flagships and steal some techs then watching the solarmap to see how its playing out is a lot of fun.
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That aside, while you have convinced me that the 'win' column isn't quite so binary, the much deeper and more aggravating problem is that losses are more black and white. You can lose by successfully withdrawing without completing any of your goals, in which case the combat round is essentially a mulligan. This doesn't seem to have any effect outside of wasting a few minutes of time (in a game that regularly sees you sitting through months or years of fast-forward, that is not even worth considering). If it is doing something else, the game isn't telling me about it (which goes back to my first point). Or you can lose by being blown up, in which case the game is simply over.
This is sort of the same problem where I can understand what the issue might be but I'm not sure what is desired as a solution.
I mean, as stated earlier, there are things you do in missions like destroying flagships or certain structures that are already counted as happening on the solar map whether you succeed in your mission or not.
If you fail the mission but manage to kill some things, destroy some important structures, take some loot, or maybe swipe up some ejected pilots, then you did get something out of it. Just because you lost doesn't take that away.
If nothing like that happened, then I'm not sure what should happen to address the issue. Should the game give you a few credits a as a magical consolation prize? I don't think that would make much sense.
I guess there's the scenario where you go into combat, go through a bunch of turns, did nothing then you withdraw, but in that case it makes sense that you get nothing out of it.
I'm not really sure what you might want the game to do to resolve this.
Are some people really trying to kill everything in combat mode. Sometimes thats just impossible and
you have to withdraw.
Apparently some people do always fight to the death.
I'm getting the impression maybe there should be a big flashing warning light when you get down to half health that says "Sir, you're in big trouble right now! Maybe you should run if you don't want to die!".
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This is the kind of information that someone shouldn't have to read a forum post to find out. I had no idea that the combat scenarios represented anything outside of a random number of ships and a goal of 'kill X ships' or 'go sit on this spot for X seconds'. Interesting information, to be sure, but this is the kind of thing you want to be blasting the player with in game. Ideally with a hand holding tutorial that says 'in this battle your goal is not to kill everything but to steal this tech' or kidnap some pilots or whatever, and then withdraw.
(Side note, why is it that my ship seems to have the ability to instantly jump-to-lightspeed out of battle when I've finished excitingly sitting on a station getting shot at for 10 seconds, yet that option turns into 'don't get hit for 5 turns' if I want to leave otherwise?)
I'm fairly certain that information IS given to you in the game - a popup box says as much during one of your first combat missions I believe.
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The number of ships you run into when attacking an outpost's or planet's defender is drawn from the ships they actually have. If you kill a number of enemy flagships and then withdraw without completing the attack, they still lose those ships, those ships don't magically come back to life. That goes for friendlies too.
You can actually whittle a force down by going in, killing a few, withdrawing in a repeated hit-and-run over and over again.
I'm actually somewhat surprised nobody has called that out as an exploit yet!
It isn't exploit for a number of reasons.
First of all, withdrawing from combat (for me) takes an extra 5 months on the solar map. Most of my battles are less then 2 months. So the extra withdraw time more then doubles the time the total mission takes.
Secondly, as pointed out elsewhere, races can pump out ships ridiculously fast. Even without the extra time from withdrawing, you *barely* make a dent in mid game to the total ship counts, and some races like acutians you can't make a dent at any stage of the game. If you withdraw, you never will whittle them down (at least in my game)
For these reasons, it is still best to just complete the mission and get out. You wage tactical warfare, not strategic (attrition) warfare aside from the very early game.
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What is the problem with game over when you lose a battle? You can always reload the last auto-save can't you? Why are people complaining?
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What is the problem with game over when you lose a battle? You can always reload the last auto-save can't you? Why are people complaining?
Because in most games of this type losing a tactical battles means "lost resources" not "game-over".
I suppose it would be more appropriate if a lost battle caused a player to lose like 5 solar years or something. That lost time would certainly bite but not guarantee game over.
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What is the problem with game over when you lose a battle? You can always reload the last auto-save can't you? Why are people complaining?
In most strategy games, there is no Game Over when you lose battle once, but lose a resource or time.
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What is the problem with game over when you lose a battle? You can always reload the last auto-save can't you? Why are people complaining?
Because having to save scum as part of an intended design philosophy is bad design? If the expected behavior is for the player to screw up, reload, screw up, reload, screw up, reload then what is the point of even having a failure state at all? If failure was a minor setback, like wasted repair time or loss of some credits or whatever, people would take the hit and keep on playing. But since failure literally means the end of everything, of course people are going to save scum. But they shouldn't have to. If reloading the last save is a foregone conclusion, the player shouldn't be put in that state. (Not with all games obviously, don't anyone come at me with comparisons to doom 3. This isn't an arcade shooter quarter-muncher but it's using the mechanics of one, for no reason that I can fathom.)
As mentioned earlier, a loss in an expansive game like this should be the culmination of a series of minor mistakes over the long term, not 'oops that was one of those instagib missiles, welp there goes my century long plan for interplanetary peace.'
It's like if Civ IV required you to play frogger every 5 minutes, and if you failed the game instantly ended.
I'm fairly certain that information IS given to you in the game - a popup box says as much during one of your first combat missions I believe.
Not that I've seen, and not that I saw just now from going back and poking around the message log. It's entirely possible that I'm missing it still though.
If nothing like that happened, then I'm not sure what should happen to address the issue. Should the game give you a few credits a as a magical consolation prize? I don't think that would make much sense.
I guess there's the scenario where you go into combat, go through a bunch of turns, did nothing then you withdraw, but in that case it makes sense that you get nothing out of it.
I'm not really sure what you might want the game to do to resolve this.
I still don't think we're quite talking on the same subject. I'm not referring to combat wherein you get something and then withdraw, or even where you get nothing and then withdraw. Those I would still put on the spectrum of 'success', because the failure state is so dramatically different as to need its own category. Everything else you can do in a battle results in some scenario in which the game continues. Losing, as in actually losing, as in your ship blowing up, does not. It ends the entire game. Everything else is a success because you get to keep playing. I don't want a consolation prize for playing badly but managing to withdraw. I want losing to have a point, which it doesn't currently, because it takes you out of the game entirely. Gaining tech and running has an in-game value. Getting nothing and running still has an in-game value (a bad one, but it still exists in the same category as a win). Getting a game over screen, by definition, does not have an in-game value because you have been taken out of the game. It doesn't have a meaning. It's not comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing apples and trigonometry. They're completely different concepts.
Maybe I should just give up trying to make this point, as I'm not sure if it's really making sense to anyone, but it really bugs me.
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The problem here is that you're playing a specific individual.
Most games that I've played in recent memory, where you are a specific individual, if you die...well, that's it.
Welcome to the Game Over screen.
Batman is trying to wrangle control of Gotham, but if he dies, his story is still over. If your ship explodes, it's not like these people are just gonna say "Oh, here's another ship for you to maybe kill us with. Ta!"
The game-ending is a consequence of the particular method of player agency.
The Civ5 example doesn't work because you're not playing as a specific individual, but an entire nation. That is not so here.
Perhaps there should be something else available to avoid the dreaded game over, but if you die...well you should still die. Maybe if you get close enough Withdrawal can be accelerated?
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Bob, what you are saying makes a lot of sense to me, and the frogger analogy resonates with me.
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We could do a triple hull system similar to Monster Hunter or fighting games.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Green is your ships external armor and if it doesnt go Orange or Red you keep all your Credits. you can regenerate to Max Green.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Orange is Warning and secondary armor. If your hull gets to Orange you lose 33% of your Credits in "repair costs". Can only regenerate to Max Orange
.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Red is Critical, and if your hull gets to red you lose 66% of Credits in Repair Costs. Can only regenerate to Max Red.
If you lose all Red Hull, its Game Over.
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The number of ships you run into when attacking an outpost's or planet's defender is drawn from the ships they actually have. If you kill a number of enemy flagships and then withdraw without completing the attack, they still lose those ships, those ships don't magically come back to life. That goes for friendlies too.
You can actually whittle a force down by going in, killing a few, withdrawing in a repeated hit-and-run over and over again.
I'm actually somewhat surprised nobody has called that out as an exploit yet!
It isn't exploit for a number of reasons.
First of all, withdrawing from combat (for me) takes an extra 5 months on the solar map. Most of my battles are less then 2 months. So the extra withdraw time more then doubles the time the total mission takes.
Secondly, as pointed out elsewhere, races can pump out ships ridiculously fast. Even without the extra time from withdrawing, you *barely* make a dent in mid game to the total ship counts, and some races like acutians you can't make a dent at any stage of the game. If you withdraw, you never will whittle them down (at least in my game)
For these reasons, it is still best to just complete the mission and get out. You wage tactical warfare, not strategic (attrition) warfare aside from the very early game.
I actually would say it is an exploit. There are times when the race in question simply isn't getting ships out all that fast, and battles take up little time on the solar map.
I've already had this one happen a couple of times. It's not too hard to do.
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Imo the combat currently suffers from a clear case of "Bullet Hell" ;P And this is a HUGE problem when a single hit can take down a shield from 100% to 10% as is very possible in late game. And unlike the races, our own ship does not increase in power nor CAN it increase in power in the same speed as other races. We have no way to let research happen "in the background" just for us. And so any focus on research is going to involve us not doing anything and thus constantly losing even more power advantages.
I don't know whether Arcen would consider a complete redo of combat though. The combat right now is really imo the worst thing about the game. I am honestly intrigued by the simulation, and I would probably love this game way more if we could somehow build up our own "proxy" empire. Ie, we don't just start with a ship from 1 race, but an entire colony worth of 1 race. That we can expand, build up, and do things with. Also it would allow us to field support fleets and do research. It would allow us to subvert the original race and have a use for prisoners.
I know x4000 said that this turn based gameplay was what he had in mind from the start. But fact is, that the combat has nearly 0 tactical elements. And this is partially because the enemies are stupid and partially because when the player faces 30+ cap ships, and as thus nearly 100 enemies, this becomes a SHMUP more than a tactical strategy game.
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Alternatively, give us a proper equipment system for our flag-ship with loot like Bionic Dues and allow us to recruit crew and elites (npc characters). Crew and Elites could level up over time, and do research on the flagships own research bay. Basically, lots of things could be done to make combat something that has a reason. (Currently, I honestly do not do missions with combat anymore after a certain level of AI growth)
Your ship can power up over the course of the game. There is an entire category of techs designed to ONLY do this. If you get too far behind as the game goes on, then yeah, you're in trouble. It's a major mechanic, actually, but one that wasn't added until late in the development cycle. You NEED these techs. Grab them over the course of the game, and you can keep up with your enemies.
Most of these techs are listed in the lower half of the tech listing.... There's ALOT of them. They start to unlock a few years into the game. The ones with the green "UNI" listed cannot be researched or used by any of the races, only by you.
Also, the battles become ALOT more tactical when you CANNOT kite things. Professor Paul wrote up a detailed set of very good suggestions that should be implemented which can remove entirely the ability to kite things as a whole, which I support, because while I do not kite things, I know full well just how dull and utterly mindless it is to do so.
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I actually would say it is an exploit. There are times when the race in question simply isn't getting ships out all that fast, and battles take up little time on the solar map.
I've already had this one happen a couple of times. It's not too hard to do.
Maybe for peaceful races you can shut them down, but by year 5 the acutians already can make more ships then you can possibly destroy, and down the road other races could as well due to ship production bonuses.
And I still don't see how it is an exploit if you withdraw from combat after whittling down ships. The game already gives an option to do just that, for the very reasons given. Even if it is a possible to completely, I don't see the problem in devoting most of player influence over time in shutting down relations and power for one race when many others are doing their own thing. It isn't "free" time, it is time spent not getting resources (aside from credits) or influence (and actually this method will quickly go to the point of no return for said race). And the result of it being shut down a race is overcome by a race you want it too...isn't that strategy?
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To be clear, I personally don't think it is an exploit, I was just surprised nobody had called it out as such as it seemed like the sort of thing that would have been brought up as one at some point. :P
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The problem here is that you're playing a specific individual.
Most games that I've played in recent memory, where you are a specific individual, if you die...well, that's it.
Welcome to the Game Over screen.
Batman is trying to wrangle control of Gotham, but if he dies, his story is still over. If your ship explodes, it's not like these people are just gonna say "Oh, here's another ship for you to maybe kill us with. Ta!"
The game-ending is a consequence of the particular method of player agency.
The Civ5 example doesn't work because you're not playing as a specific individual, but an entire nation. That is not so here.
Perhaps there should be something else available to avoid the dreaded game over, but if you die...well you should still die. Maybe if you get close enough Withdrawal can be accelerated?
See Drox Operative for a game wherein you play a single individual and dying doesn't result in a game over but just in a minor setback. Because gameplay trumps realism, and it makes more sense to a player that you continue going after failing a minor mission in a big strategy game, than it does to get a game over screen.
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Imo the combat currently suffers from a clear case of "Bullet Hell" ;P And this is a HUGE problem when a single hit can take down a shield from 100% to 10% as is very possible in late game. And unlike the races, our own ship does not increase in power nor CAN it increase in power in the same speed as other races. We have no way to let research happen "in the background" just for us. And so any focus on research is going to involve us not doing anything and thus constantly losing even more power advantages.
I don't know whether Arcen would consider a complete redo of combat though. The combat right now is really imo the worst thing about the game. I am honestly intrigued by the simulation, and I would probably love this game way more if we could somehow build up our own "proxy" empire. Ie, we don't just start with a ship from 1 race, but an entire colony worth of 1 race. That we can expand, build up, and do things with. Also it would allow us to field support fleets and do research. It would allow us to subvert the original race and have a use for prisoners.
I know x4000 said that this turn based gameplay was what he had in mind from the start. But fact is, that the combat has nearly 0 tactical elements. And this is partially because the enemies are stupid and partially because when the player faces 30+ cap ships, and as thus nearly 100 enemies, this becomes a SHMUP more than a tactical strategy game.
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Alternatively, give us a proper equipment system for our flag-ship with loot like Bionic Dues and allow us to recruit crew and elites (npc characters). Crew and Elites could level up over time, and do research on the flagships own research bay. Basically, lots of things could be done to make combat something that has a reason. (Currently, I honestly do not do missions with combat anymore after a certain level of AI growth)
Your ship can power up over the course of the game. There is an entire category of techs designed to ONLY do this. If you get too far behind as the game goes on, then yeah, you're in trouble. It's a major mechanic, actually, but one that wasn't added until late in the development cycle. You NEED these techs. Grab them over the course of the game, and you can keep up with your enemies.
Most of these techs are listed in the lower half of the tech listing.... There's ALOT of them. They start to unlock a few years into the game. The ones with the green "UNI" listed cannot be researched or used by any of the races, only by you.
Maybe I was just a quick player, but in my first winning game UNI technologies were not available.... like not a single one of em. But I also was not even aware of them... was way too busy subverting race relations to start a war with the 1 last race that really did not want to join my federation ;P
If it weren't for certain missions with huge credit bonus I'd avoid combat altogether. Maybe with kiting fixes the combat could become better... but I fear fixing kiting will just increase the amount of save scumming that's needed ;p
And yes, dieing in battle should not result in game-over, because.... see the sentence before this one.
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Because having to save scum as part of an intended design philosophy is bad design? If the expected behavior is for the player to screw up, reload, screw up, reload, screw up, reload then what is the point of even having a failure state at all? If failure was a minor setback, like wasted repair time or loss of some credits or whatever, people would take the hit and keep on playing. But since failure literally means the end of everything, of course people are going to save scum. But they shouldn't have to. If reloading the last save is a foregone conclusion, the player shouldn't be put in that state. (Not with all games obviously, don't anyone come at me with comparisons to doom 3. This isn't an arcade shooter quarter-muncher but it's using the mechanics of one, for no reason that I can fathom.)
I don't understand why you see save scumming as something undesirable. Would it be better for you if when you die you would be "returned to a checkpoint" which is essentialy gives the same result but does not hurt your feelings with "game over"?
Also it is not clear how doom and combat in tlf are different for the purpose of this conversation. In both cases you have a battle and in both cases you can end up loosing. What's wrong with trying that again? Or rewinding and trying another path/approach?
I, personally do NOT want a set back, major or minor if I happened to make subpar performance. I want a chance to try again. And that's exactly what the game lets me do.
I totally do not get the whole "permanent death" cult which is common among classic roguelike followers, but thankfully we are not talking about any of those games. We are talking about tlf. So we can skip this line of argument alltogether.
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I think the problem people see with dying in combat being something you need to reload from is that the game isn't about the combat, yet it's something you'll probably have to do a lot of during the game. Nobody's going to suggest that you need to ironman Half-Life 2, because it's a shooter: dying is expected, and reloading is the expected consequence. The Last Federation bills itself as a strategy game though, and that's the really interesting part of it. The combat is a nice change of pace, breaking up lengthy periods of manipulation nicely, but it's not the main draw. If withdrawal had no penalty beyond you not accomplishing your goal, and "death" had its consequence of you taking five months to repair your ship, I think that would be much more appropriate to the kind of game TLF seems to want to be.
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I actually would say it is an exploit. There are times when the race in question simply isn't getting ships out all that fast, and battles take up little time on the solar map.
I've already had this one happen a couple of times. It's not too hard to do.
Maybe for peaceful races you can shut them down, but by year 5 the acutians already can make more ships then you can possibly destroy, and down the road other races could as well due to ship production bonuses.
And I still don't see how it is an exploit if you withdraw from combat after whittling down ships. The game already gives an option to do just that, for the very reasons given. Even if it is a possible to completely, I don't see the problem in devoting most of player influence over time in shutting down relations and power for one race when many others are doing their own thing. It isn't "free" time, it is time spent not getting resources (aside from credits) or influence (and actually this method will quickly go to the point of no return for said race). And the result of it being shut down a race is overcome by a race you want it too...isn't that strategy?
Yeah, the Acutians can produce them fast.... but in my experience, not fast enough. I can still utterly wreck their military via this. And it's not ONLY that; a player using this concept can combine it with other things that can slow or weaken the race in question and their ability to produce units.
The reason it's an exploit is because it can be done in a way as to where it's so stupidly easy that you can do it in your sleep. Even if their military force is large in numbers, I can still defeat the ENTIRE THING by simply popping in, killing 3 or 4 ships out of the entire battke (AKA, no effort or difficulty involved), and rinse and repeat. A major military force being defeated by ONE guy managing to force small fights over and over so he can just smack a couple of them around and then leave, over and over again, also doesnt even make sense. This game being the sort that it is, "not making any sense whatsoever" is something it needs to avoid.
And that's IF it is a large battle. It's possible to get the AI locked into repeated fights where it's not you popping 2 or 3 ships out of a group, instead it's that 2 or 3 ships ARE the entire group. It gets even more easy.
Beyond that though, there's another bit involved, which is that it's also a form of grinding.... another thing this game needs to avoid. This is a grand strategy game, not bloody Disgaea. Strategy, tactics, and careful planning and thinking are supposed to be the ways to accomplish everything. Instead, something like this can be done at times, and it's like grinding in Disgaea, popping into the same maps VS the same jerks with the same low or non-existent difficulty, and just repeating it until your goal is complete. It's not a good thing for players to see, and it can definitely lower someone's opinions of the game (this ALWAYS happens for me in most cases, as I see the mere existence of grinding in most any game as a nasty design flaw).
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By the way, how to lose in this game if NOT in combat? I mean sooner or later everyone will kill everyone and the only thing that will remain is the federation. No? I have not played enough so I'm not sure how this works...
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By the way, how to lose in this game if NOT in combat? I mean sooner or later everyone will kill everyone and the only thing that will remain is the federation. No? I have not played enough so I'm not sure how this works...
The federation can actually lose to the AFA (Anti Federation Something) ;p But imo only if you severely neglect your federation members. Or you like, only have the weakest join. I don't know how the AFA could ever become a real threat though. Also races do create other alliances without you. But it seems to be a random thing (ie, who happens to trade with who, mainly)
What I saw is that negative events when not countered by you, lead to massive disadvantages for that race. Races not player friendly thus end up stacking negative effects, as they are not able to counter them themselves. That, and of course keeping your federation up-to-date with technologies.
Basically, the strategic gameplay is way, way too easy. And Combat is only there for credits really.
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Escape pods are a concept in the game already, so it would make thematic sense. Time is pretty much your most precious resource, so I like the idea of losing months or years of game time while you escape from your new captors. It would also make sense to lose a significant amount of credit (perhaps all). If you were managing the situation well, then things maybe won't spiral too out of control and you can work back up. If things were already going to tell, you will find yourself in a situation that is much worse. I'd like that a lot more than just "crap I died, reload."
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Your ship uses its fancy Hydral tech to emergency teleport out of the area. No "why don't ya just shoot him?" upon being captured by the race you're -1000 influence with kind of foolishness (or having to explain where you got a new prototype flagship from).
To fix a related thematic inconsistency, withdraw on smuggling and capture tech/lab (and possibly other mission types) should be non-instantaneous (like it is if you manually choose to withdraw from the battle) if enemies are close to you, and make it instant in all other cases. This removes an inconsistency in withdraw behaviour, while not forcing the player to sit around for 5 turns when there's already no danger around.
(Then rebalance the smuggle spacefaring tech mission to account for the fact that you can't just tag the drop point for an instant win)
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We could do a triple hull system similar to Monster Hunter or fighting games.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Green is your ships external armor and if it doesnt go Orange or Red you keep all your Credits. you can regenerate to Max Green.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Orange is Warning and secondary armor. If your hull gets to Orange you lose 33% of your Credits in "repair costs". Can only regenerate to Max Orange
.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Red is Critical, and if your hull gets to red you lose 66% of Credits in Repair Costs. Can only regenerate to Max Red.
If you lose all Red Hull, its Game Over.
I totally agree. I'd love with the credit cost of repairing to add the simple fact that if you lose the ship, you lose all powerups you collected in hydra missions or bought in the black market and then you have to find another ship. This would be very simple and elegant. Maybe also a influence drop with all the macho races ("The wimp hydra got pulverized again") or something like that.
I'd love if the system had a Mount and blade flavour in losing battles. Losing the game and loading an old savegame is the most annoying thing I find in videogames. It really breaks the immersion. I hate that. If I'm dead I'm dead. If you want me to continue just find a way to give a reason for death being not permanent.
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We could do a triple hull system similar to Monster Hunter or fighting games.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Green is your ships external armor and if it doesnt go Orange or Red you keep all your Credits. you can regenerate to Max Green.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Orange is Warning and secondary armor. If your hull gets to Orange you lose 33% of your Credits in "repair costs". Can only regenerate to Max Orange
.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Red is Critical, and if your hull gets to red you lose 66% of Credits in Repair Costs. Can only regenerate to Max Red.
If you lose all Red Hull, its Game Over.
I totally agree. I'd love with the credit cost of repairing to add the simple fact that if you lose the ship, you lose all powerups you collected in hydra missions or bought in the black market and then you have to find another ship. This would be very simple and elegant. Maybe also a influence drop with all the macho races ("The wimp hydra got pulverized again") or something like that.
I'd love if the system had a Mount and blade flavour in losing battles. Losing the game and loading an old savegame is the most annoying thing I find in videogames. It really breaks the immersion. I hate that. If I'm dead I'm dead. If you want me to continue just find a way to give a reason for death being not permanent.
Especially loose quite a bit of influence with militaristic races. The taunting would be really nice.
I also like the idea of escaping in a squadron, emergency warping out of the battle.
If people want to play with only one health bar, there can be a game option to only have one hull like we do.
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By the way, how to lose in this game if NOT in combat? I mean sooner or later everyone will kill everyone and the only thing that will remain is the federation. No? I have not played enough so I'm not sure how this works...
The federation can actually lose to the AFA (Anti Federation Something) ;p But imo only if you severely neglect your federation members. Or you like, only have the weakest join. I don't know how the AFA could ever become a real threat though. Also races do create other alliances without you. But it seems to be a random thing (ie, who happens to trade with who, mainly)
What I saw is that negative events when not countered by you, lead to massive disadvantages for that race. Races not player friendly thus end up stacking negative effects, as they are not able to counter them themselves. That, and of course keeping your federation up-to-date with technologies.
Basically, the strategic gameplay is way, way too easy. And Combat is only there for credits really.
There does need to be some sort of "lose" condition in there... I dont think there is one right now, in the solar map section.
It's not so much that the strategic part is easy... alot of the strategy to accomplish things can be very deep. But when you cannot lose no matter what.... yeah, that's an issue.
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Oh, look, the lose condition! Every race is in an alliance against YOU!
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....how does it even get to that though? This is the first I've even heard of it, which to me still says that if there IS a lose condition, it's sorta trivial at this point. And I dont think the game ever makes mention of this, either. The idea that there's no way to lose seems prevalent.
But either way, the challenge level seems really off in some ways, with this. It almost feels like you'd have to TRY to lose, or at least that's the impression I get so far, particularly from player experiences that I've heard up to this point. This also just needs to be explained more.
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There should somehow be a win case when the afa wins. Like even if everyone hates you,they got together and formed exactly what you wanted, and lived happily ever after..
Of course it probably shouldnt be all afa victories, but tis a silly idea
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Just my 2 cents...
Reloading ist NOT losing.
It is WINNING (unless you play in Ironman mode). Why? Because the only option is to win. You can and probably will reload until you win the mission. There's nothing to lose ingame and this would be much more interesting, would be another layer.
I like the idea much better, that when you lose a battle, you lose much more time on the solar map, resources and any xtras you might gathered together. This is losing. It's the age old "you go to chail"-mechanic. It's not unheard of in games and it would be much better in line with the rest of the game i.e. solar map.
If I only lose some time in real life, what do I actually lose ingame? Nothing. Where's my risk. my decision to take this battle or not? There's none. I just reload.
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....how does it even get to that though? This is the first I've even heard of it, which to me still says that if there IS a lose condition, it's sorta trivial at this point. And I dont think the game ever makes mention of this, either. The idea that there's no way to lose seems prevalent.
But either way, the challenge level seems really off in some ways, with this. It almost feels like you'd have to TRY to lose, or at least that's the impression I get so far, particularly from player experiences that I've heard up to this point. This also just needs to be explained more.
I simply loaded this save http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15317.0.html and idled for a few minutes.
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I had a loss last night in which the Boarines took over the entire solar system. That may have been skewed a bit since they'd been building up ships for decades trying to take over planets thanks to the previously bugged planetary invasion rules, so I'm not sure how likely it is under normal growth conditions. But yeah, they built a fear empire and hunted down each federation member one at a time until they were all that was left. I still consider it a victory, in a way. Just because I backed the wrong horse doesn't mean that my goal of interplanetary unity wasn't achieved. Just that it was achieved by the wrong race.
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Since this seems to be the main thread about combat, I have what seems to be a bug, but I'm not sure...
Basically, my shots never hit enemy ships. The projectiles fade out of existence right before hitting an enemy ship without doing damage. I've tried manipulating my engine power and weapon power, but no matter how fast I am or how long range my shots are, they simply don't connect with enemies.
Anyone know why this might be happening?
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Since this seems to be the main thread about combat, I have what seems to be a bug, but I'm not sure...
Basically, my shots never hit enemy ships. The projectiles fade out of existence right before hitting an enemy ship without doing damage. I've tried manipulating my engine power and weapon power, but no matter how fast I am or how long range my shots are, they simply don't connect with enemies.
Anyone know why this might be happening?
Hmm, I"m not sure I've ever seen this....
What happens if you get in real close and attack? Preferrably while moving kinda slowly so you dont slide out of range. And is this with all weapons, or just one?
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Basically, my shots never hit enemy ships. The projectiles fade out of existence right before hitting an enemy ship without doing damage. I've tried manipulating my engine power and weapon power, but no matter how fast I am or how long range my shots are, they simply don't connect with enemies.
Anyone know why this might be happening?
They're kiting you: skidding just out of your weapon's maximum range. Due to union regulations, your weapon rounds only have to travel a set distance before it's quitting time, and you can only ask for a very limited amount of overtime by maxing out your weapon power.
What you need to do is turn around, and let them come back at you. Then you put all power to the engines, rush at them, then when the time is right (it will take some practice) you put full power to the weapons and just lay into them so close that the enemy captain can read your lips when you call him a jerk through your ship's window.
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Basically, my shots never hit enemy ships. The projectiles fade out of existence right before hitting an enemy ship without doing damage. I've tried manipulating my engine power and weapon power, but no matter how fast I am or how long range my shots are, they simply don't connect with enemies.
Anyone know why this might be happening?
They're kiting you: skidding just out of your weapon's maximum range. Due to union regulations, your weapon rounds only have to travel a set distance before it's quitting time, and you can only ask for a very limited amount of overtime by maxing out your weapon power.
What you need to do is turn around, and let them come back at you. Then you put all power to the engines, rush at them, then when the time is right (it will take some practice) you put full power to the weapons and just lay into them so close that the enemy captain can read your lips when you call him a jerk through your ship's window.
Huh, is kiting still happening somehow?
The damn Velociters (however that's spelled) got changed, so they're not deranged speedsters anymore, they're properly slow now.... and I cant think of anything else capable of kiting that isnt an interceptor or hypersonic pod, and of course chasing one of THOSE around is just silly.
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The most common culprits are the Velociter B-types, that spawn without the shields. They still move fast enough to keep my shots from landing on them if I'm on the chase, but they're not the only ones who have the ability to do this to me.
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If you move back from those which are faster than you, they charge you. Then, they die.
I never had a problem being kited in any game, because of this. Maybe this behaviour should be coded into the enemies... if they feel that they're being kited, they move out of range.
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I really wish there was Mines available, so you can trick them into following you and if you plan it right, they blow up in your mindfield.