Combat .. uhm.. Concerns? From irc

[Coppermantis]

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.

[Mick]

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.

[Professor Paul1290]

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.

[BobTheJanitor]

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.

[Kingpin23]

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.

[Professor Paul1290]

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!".

[PLivesey]

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.

[chemical_art]

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.

[zespri]

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?

[chemical_art]

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.

[Azurian]

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.

[BobTheJanitor]

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.

[DeBunny]

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?

[Mick]

Bob, what you are saying makes a lot of sense to me, and the frogger analogy resonates with me.

[Azurian]

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.