TLF Auto-Resolve Coming Tomorrow

[Azurian]

It makes sense to have an Auto Resolve in a simulator, and helps make the learning curve less steep for a new player. If I was new to TLF I would play the first few battles in Auto Resolve and as I became more familiar dive into battles.

[Histidine]

Great post, Chris.

Here's a rather weird analogy I just came up with: I've often ordered restaurant dishes that came with cucumber slices. I like the dish (else I wouldn't have asked for it!) in general, but I can't stand cucumber (seriously, screw cucumber). If I had to eat it anyway, I'd enjoy lunch a lot less than I currently do. But by being able to not eat the cucumber, I can enjoy my food alot more, including vegetables I actually do like.

Does that make sense? 

Incidentally, Starsector developer Alex once wrote a blog post on auto-resolve that you might be interested in. A lot of it is game-specific, but you should read the opening where he talks about all the points an autoresolve system needs to cover. Actually, I'll just quote it here:

Picture this – you’ve built up just about the toughest merc outfit this side of the sector. Your officers are all hardened veterans. Your ships are outfitted with the best weapons and hull mods. Your skill is legendary, your reputation for prevailing against incredible odds unrivaled. Then, you encounter a small enemy convoy – they pose no threat, but the resources they carry would be a welcome addition to your cargo holds. With hardly a second thought, you order an attack – but really, does such a minor fleet action demand your personal attention? “I’ll let my second-in-command handle it,” you decide as you press the button to auto-resolve the “battle” not worthy of the name – it’s target practice, really. But a nasty surprise awaits – you’ve lost a top-line ship, and two elite officers are dead!

… and that’s the scenario we all want to avoid. Auto-resolve has great potential to frustrate the player, because it can obliterate their progress (in the form of resources, ships, and officers) – but worse, it can do this unfairly. The unfairness comes from breaking the player’s expectations of how the game world works. In our example, the player knows their fleet can mop up that convoy – but auto-resolve plays by a different set of rules, one the player hasn’t been exposed to before, one that isn’t clear. Even worse, the rules are hard to learn because they’re hidden. In the situation above, the player might assume that luck plays a big role – but it may well be that the officer skills weren’t valued as much as they should be, or the weapons you’ve equipped the ships with, or any combination of those and other factors. The player might give up on auto-resolve entirely – there’s no clear way to get better at it, and it’s not apparent whether improvement is even possible – and the player is punished for experimenting.

It’s still necessary though, because the alternative is having to fight every piddling battle yourself. Besides, battles that don’t involve the player need to get worked out somehow. So how can we address these underlying problems? Because I like lists, let’s make a list of things that aren’t fair to do to the player:

• ignoring any improvements they’ve made to their fleet – be it weapons, hull mods, officers, character skills, anything at all that has a bearing on combat
• ignoring the overall rules of combat the player knows – carriers increasing the effectiveness of fighters, bombers being effective vs large ships, point-defense weapons countering fighters, etc
• destroying any ships which would absolutely never, ever get a dent put in them if the actual battle was played out. A wing of Talon-class interceptors (ed. cheap interceptor with machine guns) should have no chance to take out a wing of Wasps (expensive high-tech laser interceptor), for example.

To sum it up, the auto-resolve system has to roughly simulate the way combat plays out, take all relevant ship & fleet stats into account, and be very careful that “adding a degree of randomness” doesn’t become “anything can happen”.

One thing we can’t take into account is the actual player’s skill at piloting (not their character’s skill, which can be). That’s ok – a battle where the outcome hinges on the player’s personal skill shouldn’t get auto-resolved to victory, anyway. More importantly, I think the player wouldn’t expect auto-resolve to do as well as they do with themselves at the helm.

Side note: Is withdraw still instantaneous? If so, you could probably make autoresolve available in permadeath mode (or actually, remove permadeath entirely), since you can just bail out instantly if you're in a hopeless situation anyway.

[Sounds]

OMG,OMG,OMG,OMG,OMG,OMG,OMG,OMG. Sorry hyperventilating. 

This is the one feature I so wanted to see. The combat has improved and I like it a lot more now than I did, but just yesterday I was avoiding doing the combat part to the point where progress was being happened. The result being I quit the game. This didn't bode too well for me wanting to play this long term.

On the way to the office this morning I kept wishing for this feature and sure enough you're now implementing it. A big yay from me. 

It seems that I like the game a lot, because it's rare for games to get into my thoughts on the way to work.

Chris the game for me now moves from third to number one favourite Arcen game. You've got a winner here, so thanks for making the game more fun. Gah feel like fanboy now. 

[Hyfrydle]

How will autoresolve work if missions have multiple objectives like the first mission?

[wwwhhattt]

That was point 6, I think:

6. Any optional or side objectives -- civilian or military buildings to destroy, etc -- will be completely ignored during auto-resolve.  At first glance you might think this a major handicap, but actually not.  If you want to destroy some of those things, usually it doesn't take many turns to do so.  You can easily play a few turns manually, destroy the thing in question, and then auto-resolve the rest of the battle and have done with it.  Easy peasy.  This is a big part of the reason for the \"you can auto-resolve at any point in a battle.\"

[kosmoface]

Oh, autoresolve, I like.

Make absolutely sure to test how the autoresolve works when you're helping cleave through armadas defending or besieging a planet; that's when I'd be most likely to use it, as you usually have to do that at least six times in a row to have a real effect.

Okay, I'm not the only one who is Armada Grinding. Wondered to myself if I did anything wrong or if I'm the only one.

Oh and I like the combat btw and never liked autoresolve features, but this at least seems like a sensible one. Still, I would like to have a more elegant combat solution for "Armada Grinding" - for the people who don't want to autoresolve (which I am).

Sometimes you fight against 8, 15 or more (?) Flagships - I know I win anyway (can't speak for the late game though). I would like to mop them up faster and not only 4 at a time. With 15+ ships it's also a greater challenge. (Reading this to myself I maybe should play on a harder difficulty than "normal", heh.)

What does anybody else think about "Armada Grinding"? (I've scanned the forum, but didn't find anything particular about it.)

[Hyfrydle]

That was point 6, I think:

6. Any optional or side objectives -- civilian or military buildings to destroy, etc -- will be completely ignored during auto-resolve.  At first glance you might think this a major handicap, but actually not.  If you want to destroy some of those things, usually it doesn't take many turns to do so.  You can easily play a few turns manually, destroy the thing in question, and then auto-resolve the rest of the battle and have done with it.  Easy peasy.  This is a big part of the reason for the \"you can auto-resolve at any point in a battle.\"

I took this to mean buildings the player chooses to destroy. The options on the first combat missions affect the influence with the starter race quite a bit so a choice has to be made. How will auto resolve treat this mission?

[kasnavada]

Auto-resolve is a problem in most of the games I play, as the level implemented in the auto-resolve is purposely lower than what a player can accomplish. Because, if the other way around, there is no point, you know, playing the battle in the first place.

I think it will backfire greatly, as the goal that players are aiming for (less grind) will not be accomplished, since they will have to play anyway to win missions, as opposed to autoresolving losses.

I therefore have no clue why this is considered a good idea.

[chemical_art]

Auto-resolve is a problem in most of the games I play, as the level implemented in the auto-resolve is purposely lower than what a player can accomplish. Because, if the other way around, there is no point, you know, playing the battle in the first place.

I think it will backfire greatly, as the goal that players are aiming for (less grind) will not be accomplished, since they will have to play anyway to win missions, as opposed to autoresolving losses.

I therefore have no clue why this is considered a good idea.

I'm going to have to wait and see. My whole point of opposing autoresolve was that if ot is not the most efficient I won't use it, and if it is the most efficient why bother with combat.


This mode sounds least effective on large battles which does nothing ro really help those who don't like it for whatever reason.

[GC13]

What does anybody else think about "Armada Grinding"? (I've scanned the forum, but didn't find anything particular about it.)

I think that right now it's a painful necessity. Short of having the all-powerful Pacifiers in office in the Andor Parliament and having them Soothe Warlust on the race you don't like, there's not an awful lot you can do to affect wars that doesn't involve taking the field of battle yourself. Popping four-to-six armadas at a time, though, when there are dozens in orbit is silly on two levels, though: you have to do this a lot to have any effect, and it strikes me as odd that you're able to do this.

The patch should make holding off overwhelming attacks much harder, but the computer still has poor teamwork AI; if they were smart they'd send ships ahead to box you in so you can't blow past them and recharge your shields unmolested. I hope it doesn't get too much harder though: like I said, we don't have many ways to affect a war right now.

[chemical_art]

I'm a bit warmer to the idea of auto resolve by virtue of it being in the combat model, rather then risking splitting the community. That is a good thing.

[Draco18s]

I'm glad for autocombat.

Mostly because it takes the tedium out of completely one-sided fights.  For games where multiple units are involved I'd often set the units that I was just poor at controlling to the computer and handle the rest (because I was usually smarter than the computer).

For example, in Age of Wonders I loved doing tactical fights with evenly matched opponents because often I was better than auto-resolve.

BUT!  I still let the computer control all of my archers and other ranged units because it was absolutely awful to try and figure out where the best place to stand to have the shot avoid cover would be.  Because the game was in isometric...and there was no "undo move" option (so you couldn't test sight lines and go "crap, where they were was better").

[CaseyRichard]

That's... a really good point.  At the very least that needs to become more visible.

The enemy ships have accumulated enough sensor data to modulates the frequency of their energy weapons to match your shield harmonics. Or something.