OFFICIAL: Combat Discussion

[Idle_Scholar]

But TD's have CM's which are supposed to be better anti-fighter

[Deathwatch]

True, which would make the TDs more of an anti fighter ship with the XJWING being a little bit more all-round. Both would be fast and strong enough to avoid getting demolished in short order. (like Skyblazer's EWINGs or, almost, my BWINGs)

[Turgidson]

The "interesting" fact is that in 3D, the TD doesn't have a small section (depending on the angle, the panels can prove quite large and blocking), and the XJ doesn't have such a big one... but in 2D, things are quite different esp. with the XJ's "nose".

[Idle_Scholar]

The problem at the minute is that TD's seem to be insanely hard to hit. I sent in 23 TUFTR's against about 30 TD's. Now sure the TUFTR's are badly outclassed, but looking at the report it's a bit ridiculous.

 

Over the course of the engagement the TUFTR's fired 58 times, but only hitting 4. That's about 7%. The TD's meanwhile fired 161 times and hit 125. That's about 77%.

 

Now of course the TD's should win, but at a 7% hit rate you'd actually need 11 times the number of TD's in TUFTR's just to start with the same number of hits, excluding the fact that TD's carry heavier weapons and armour so the TUFTR force needs to be hitting at twice or three times the rate of the TD's.

 

Now the TD is about twice as fast as the TUFTR, but only has 15* more rotation (about 30%).

 

For what little it's worth my years of X-wing and Freespace dogfighting experience has shown that first, one on one maneuverability is much more important than speed and second, even if you can always beat an enemy one to one you can't stop his mate shooting you while you're distracted. In lieu of actually simulating the mechanics of a dogfight there probably needs to be a smoothing mechanism so that there isn't a 70% gap in hit rates. A small gap certainly but not the gaping maw we currently have.

[skyblazer]

I just sent in a mix fighter force of E-Wings(160), Claws(70 something), and TIE/I's(72) and all that might have killed about 20 TD's at best :S

[Deathwatch]

The were rather spread out at the time and the cap ships were firing at them. If they all then target 1 or 2 enemy fighters but the enemy fighters target a lot of different ones, it could be messy.

 

Regardless, we did take a log of fighter losses the moment they showed up.

[skyblazer]

The were rather spread out at the time and the cap ships were firing at them. If they all then target 1 or 2 enemy fighters but the enemy fighters target a lot of different ones, it could be messy.

 

Regardless, we did take a log of fighter losses the moment they showed up.

 

The results?

[Deathwatch]

Best to ask Kobra, he is the one with the TD swarm

[Stevefin_warlords]

it has been a quite day in 50100,50100. not one battle has been raged :-[

[Kobra_warlords]

Even we need to sleep every once in a while ;P

 

But you did miss one battle - I sent to freighters to the sector with orders to scavenge some supplies and jump back. For some reason they got stuck in the middle of nowhere (while I was out watching the F1 and the soccer championship) and Galatea promptly blew them up.

 

Anyway it's not really so much fun to fight 2 vs 4 all the time, even if the latter half of those 4 always seem to arrive late. As soon as they do, there's just no point in staying.

[markb50k]

I got a request to change the game around a little bit, where reinforcements arent immediately available.

 

I will look at putting that in, and also start to implement some of the production piece.

 

I can probably put the slow-reinforcement in pretty easily.  Any suggestions on the rate of points I set it at?

[Kobra_warlords]

I got a request to change the game around a little bit, where reinforcements arent immediately available.

 

I will look at putting that in, and also start to implement some of the production piece.

 

I can probably put the slow-reinforcement in pretty easily.  Any suggestions on the rate of points I set it at?

 

 

Are you sure it's a good idea at this stage?

 

If the priority is still ironing out the wrinkles in the combat system, shouldn't we just keep throwing stuff at it?

 

On the other hand, slowing the reinforcements will make the timezone gap less of a problem, as a player who is awake won't be able to simply replace his losses in real-time and crush a sleeping opponent regardless of his defensive setup.

[markb50k]

well my reasoning is that I need to 'reward' the players who are taking an active interest in the game.  If that means, giving a more realistic setting for the battlefield, then I would have no problem doing it.

 

Yes, we are still trying to get the wrinkles out, but I want peoples interest to stay high.

[Deathwatch]

It appears a decent CLAW vs TD fight is about to break loose in the centre so that should show something.

[skyblazer]

thats nearly 300 claw's coming at those TD's. Hope its enough this time lol

 

Added: Its offical 296 Claw craft vs 120 TIE Defenders can't win even if those TD's were holding still with their tales in the air asking to be shot! Honestly what the hell does it take to kill those things?

 

Added2: You need to add in a break off command to attacking units so if their target jumps to say 120km away they don't stay locked on like is the current case with my kwings who think its a good idea to chase after those carracks :S

 

Added3: 296 Claw Craft dead, 24 TIE Defenders Destroyed. K Wings still in the fight taking the pounding like they should with only 1 lost earlyer. Can dog fighting Kwing's win this fight? Only time will tell.

Edited June 10, 2008 by skyblazer

[Stevefin_warlords]

296 claws lost

even Tie/D's should not be able to survive a swarm like that

[Deathwatch]

The KWINGs did a nice job actually, they did put the hurt on my MNFRG. But, it won't be enough

 

As for "breaking" range, the defend command offers something like that with the defense radius.

[skyblazer]

lol

 

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x163/skyblazermk1/kwingmeetewing.png?t=1213081432

[Deathwatch]

LOL

 

I'm undecided about the fuel thing at the moment btw. It looks like my TDs (if they're alive atm...) were slowly running out of it.

[skyblazer]

Well I have to say the K wings are truely a great bomber having survived for so many turns longer than my 296 Claw's did and have scored more kills on top of that. And on top of this you can't spam K-wings like u can TD's either since u need a carrier vessel for them and they take up 4 slots. I started out with 27 K-wings and i'm down to 19 after something like 6 turns out in the storm of fighters and now Kysoto a-wings have arrived fully loaded with missiles to boot as well.

 

Good fight guys it was a good test of the K-wing now just wait to see it with missiles loaded

[Deathwatch]

The _did_ fire their PTs at my MNFRG, so they do work quite well. I guess the PTs do make the difference.

 

Saying that, KWINGS are really expensive, if they died quickly, it'd be a waste.

[Kobra_warlords]

well my reasoning is that I need to 'reward' the players who are taking an active interest in the game.  If that means, giving a more realistic setting for the battlefield, then I would have no problem doing it.

 

Yes, we are still trying to get the wrinkles out, but I want peoples interest to stay high.

 

I agree that a reward system for the more successful players can be beneficial, but are you sure that cutting down playtime for those who are doing less well will not have the opposite effect?

 

As an example, when I come home from work in the evening, I'd like to send my fleet into battle - not find out that it was destroyed by someone in a different time zone and I have to wait until tomorrow to get a new one (sending a half-fleet is a waste). Now so far DW and I have managed to get some extended play time, as we both had some holidays, and we've been quite successful in combat, but now that we're back at work we're having difficulty in keeping up. The last thing we want is to spend our relatively limited play time waiting for our credit line to reset...

 

Happy to see KWINGS doing their job btw!

[markb50k]

one thing I am looking at:  I really ratcheted down damage to make ships last longer, BUT that applies to warheads too.  Which is a big disadvantage since warheads are a limited supply, so I think I will raise the damage of warheads so that they are not totally worthless at their current state.

 

Thanks for the analysis on the fighters, I'm taking all of this down so I can see if there is something we can do about the TDs superiority.  No matter what I do, of course, they are still going to be good, but I want to make fighters that are supposed to be near-equal or equals fare better.

[markb50k]

Oh BTW, fighters running at full burn, i.e. no jumps, no wait time, will be able to go 200 cycles (20 turns) without needing fuel.  That is NOT severely limiting, IMO.

[Kobra_warlords]

200? Isn't that supposed to be represent over 3 minutes of in-game time? I wouldn't want to be the engineer who built them

 

Jokes aside, it looks like a reasonable number for continuous play. However, assuming 45min turns, that's just 15 hours of real-life time - shorter than many people's sleep+work time. That means that, if we send the fighters out before going to sleep (or if they suddenly pick up a target halfway across the galaxy and decide to engage it), they'll be empty and useless by the time we return to the game. Painful, unless there's some way of automating the fighters' resupply process (detect "low fuel" status, disengage, return to assigned/nearest carrier, dock, resupply, launch, resume previous orders).

 

Other than that, I would suggest a variable expenditure based on top speed and perhaps maneuverability and/or shields. Since these seem to be the most 'undercosted' features of fighters (and the reason TDs are so vastly superior to all other fighters), it would make sense to limit their use in this way.