Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » Split Fleet issues
| Split Fleet issues |
Thu, 30 October 2003 17:02  |
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 LEit |
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
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Split fleet issues are a major pain, both in the game, and for the programmers.
First a brief explanation:
You've targeted an enemy fleet, and they split of some of the fleet and they travel to different locations. If you've only got one fleet targeting the enemy fleet, it's pretty obvious, chase the biggest chunk you can, although defining which is the biggest chunk is not always obvious.
If you've got multiple fleets chasing the enemy fleet, then things get interesting.
First I'm going to assume that you don't want the parts of your fleet to all chase the same enemy fleet, if you wanted that, you could have them follow each other (grouping fleets would be a nice addition, but isn't necessary for this)
Unlike Stars! I'm not going to consider other people's fleets that are also chasing the enemy fleet, this seems to lead to abuses, errors, and only rarely is it what you want.
So far I've got an algorithm that says track each part of the fleet as it splits (it can go through several iterations as some one merges ships and splits them up).
The biggest chasing fleet (probably in terms of combat rating) gets to pick first, it will go after the biggest part of the orginial fleet based on combat orders (so if you're going after bombers, it'll ignore everything else - Stars! seems to do this already).
The complications:
Do you treat anything from the same location as a fleet you are following? Do you count cargo if your chasing freighters or Any? Waypoint 2+ targets make things very complex (ie. you have a fleet gating to a world, and then targeting an incoming fleet. You also have a fleet just targeting it in space. The fleet splits. Now what?) Keeping track of everything as each player goes through all splits and merges is a major pain.
- LEitReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Fri, 31 October 2003 05:43  |
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| mazda |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 655
Registered: April 2003
Location: Reading, UK | |
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People will want the code to target the same ships they would have targetted had they known how the ships were splitting. This human decision will also have some input from the direction taken by the ships.
As such I would think it impossible to get the code to evaluate the split fleets in any fashion remotely like how a player would.
Say you target a fleet that splits exactly 60/40 for all ship types in the ship.
The 60 part head away from you and the target whilst the 40 part heads for the target.
What you would most likely want to happen is for all your fleet to target the smaller 40 fleet as it's actions are much more dangerous (I say "all" because it is simpler than waffling on about the relative sizes of the opposing fleets).
I don't see how you could do this.
Perhaps give priority to targets you can catch.
I don't think that really helps in this case.
Your opponent could still move the 60 fleet away, but to a position where you could catch it and still leave the 40 fleet unmolested.
Whatever you come up with I think there will always have to be a proviso about players not abusing the rules.
This is because in the game one player has to evaluate a threat and decide how to deal with it before the split action occurs.
I think I've suggested this before, but my only real suggestion is to disallow splitting of fleets in open space.
Perhaps allow fleets that are not moving to split.
Probably allow fleets in space to merge.
Even then this gives an advantage to the player intending misdirection.
He has all his ships travelling together but split into small chunks.
His opponent splits his fleet similarly and targets each chunk.
The first player then merges his fleets and gets all the benefits of stacking.
[Updated on: Fri, 31 October 2003 05:47] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: another idea |
Fri, 31 October 2003 05:50 |
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| mazda |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 655
Registered: April 2003
Location: Reading, UK | |
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(cut this out of above as I can't see the above working, but this might)
Another suggestion is for each ship in the "defending" fleet to target one ship in the target class of the "attacking" fleet.
If the target splits then each ship follows it target.
You would then have to automatically re-merge ships before any battle.
I guess this may get very messy if both fleets targetted each other. But perhaps less messy for a computer to handle than a player.
Also have an issue when there are more attacking ships than defending. Some of them wouldn't be targetted.
However I don't see any massive holes in this suggestion yet.
I guess I am saying that in terms of battles and what the player sees and moves around you still report fleets.
But the server deals with the ships as separate ships.
Each ship has a fleet attribute.
Different ships in the same fleet can have different targets (as calculated by the server) but if the player wants to change the targets he can only change it at the fleet level affecting every ship. (this does beg the question of how you report a fleet that has more than one target).
M
[Updated on: Fri, 31 October 2003 06:00]
I am the God of hell fire, and I bring you
... Brian PithersReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Mon, 24 November 2003 11:45 |
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| mlaub |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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First thing to change, IMO, is the ability to target separate ship classes within the specified enemy fleet. Maybe this can be accomplished via a drop down list, of the ships you can see.
- bombers
- miners
- freighters
- different warship classes
-etc
Obviously, a scanner check should be used to see if cloaked ships are involved in the calculations...
This would probably solve *most* of the SFD problems, as the main legit reasons to split you fleet is to
-Sweep via chaff
-Sweep via cruisers
-Send off expeditionary forces
-Attack multiple targets
Just eliminating the sweeper ships as a target for your pursuing ships allows for some rules to take over most remaining issues, I think.
However, setting another data point, of quantity or weight perhaps, would allow further refinement of targets.
So, in other words, take your main fleet and split it up into sub groups (special function button?). Target a enemy fleet with these subgroups, and from a drop down select target ships, and a weight or # limit. If said enemy fleet splits, and the unit, plus weight or # limit are in the correct range, continue split from main group and pursue. If requirements are not met, merge with main group <before movement>, thus using the main group orders.
Utilizing this or something similar, may be effective means of SFD control, while allowing a bit of guess work on both sides. That would make it yet another bit of strategy, but also allow for better defense of hard targets against an enemy fleet split.
I am not a programmer, but I don't see much of an issue with adding this into the event calculations. Seems to be simple procedural coding, but, then, what do I know... 
-Matt
[Updated on: Mon, 24 November 2003 11:45]
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Thu, 22 January 2004 18:40 |
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| LEit |
| Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
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"Split on chase" is an interesting idea.
How do you know if his ship needs 4 or 3 of yours to kill? The host program doesn't know if you know the design or not, that will be saved locally in the history file. And even if the program knows the design, how does it know what can beat what, and what ships are expendable (chaff vs sweepers), or how much damage is acceptable (80% damage might be fine near your bases, but deep in enemy space, you'd rather a few got away, and the damage was minimized)?
There problem is fairly easy for the player to make, but the host program can't ask them during the turn processing. Defining how a program will do it is much harder, and that's why it's a nasty problem.
- LEitReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Fri, 23 January 2004 06:22 |
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| mazda |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 655
Registered: April 2003
Location: Reading, UK | |
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| mlaub wrote on Mon, 24 November 2003 16:45 |
So, in other words, take your main fleet and split it up into sub groups (special function button?). Target a enemy fleet with these subgroups, and from a drop down select target ships, and a weight or # limit. If said enemy fleet splits, and the unit, plus weight or # limit are in the correct range, continue split from main group and pursue. If requirements are not met, merge with main group <before movement>, thus using the main group orders.
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Yes.
To me the pertinent part is that the defender can target separate parts of the enemy fleet without suffering the effects of having to split his fleet.
I don't quite see how pre-nominating the chunks and chunk sizes helps.
Can you give an example of what sub groups you would create to target 40 enemy BB's if you had 50 equivalent BB's ?
Cheers,
M
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Fri, 23 January 2004 12:39 |
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| LEit |
| Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
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You can see it, but unless you are a WM, you might not know the designs. And even if you know the designs, how does the computer know that your design A can beat their design Z?
The rating is only based on offense, it doesn't count defense at all, so, a nice BB has a big rating, where a standard AMP nubian has a smaller one. The AMP can stomp the BB...
Also, a missile ship can kill a beamer (usually), but if you add chaff, the missile ship is toast. But two beamers might be able to kill that missile ship without chaff, but with heavy damage and or a loss of a ship. Which might or might not be acceptable to the player.
- LEitReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Mon, 10 May 2004 07:24 |
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I don't find it viable. My general take on split fleet issues has always been looking at the problem from a 'reality' approach. i.e. Here I am, captain of a group of 6 raiders. We are being chased so I send the order out to the other 5 ship captains 'head for home on different tracks - you're on you own'. Great, next turn, all ships have warped out in different directions just like I ordered.
Now, here I am the commodore of the 34 cruiser strong chasing battle group. It is only after the turn file is submitted and I get the next years' scan data that I see that the fleet I was chasing has split. In 'reality' I would see them shooting off at different warp speeds and split my forces to chase them individually if I wanted to. The 'turn' is actually a snapshot of a moment in time, not a dynamically updated dispaly as in 'reality'. Hence, the problem.
So, what we need is are rule sets that we can apply to fleets that determine to the battle engine what we would want to do in the event that the target has split. i.e. 1) nothing, 2)split attacker into subgroups equal to the new targets, targeting each one. 3)split into x subgroups target priority highest mass to lowest. etc.
Since 'hopefully' we will have eliminated the 512 fleet limit this shouldn't be too much of a peroblem and allows for some degree of control to counter the split fleet dodge.
Ptolemy
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Split Fleet issues |
Mon, 10 May 2004 14:00 |
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| mlaub |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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[quote title=LEit wrote on Mon, 10 May 2004 10:00]| Quote: |
We are not going to raise the number of fleets. I'm sure it's in Stars! because of file storage limits, however, it is a big factor of balance. The fleet limit also is one of the things that hurts larger empires, without being entirly crippling, which is a good thing.
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The 512 fleet limit is a poor balance feature, at best. It is more of a hindrance to game play, than anything else. It is one of the major reasons that you can't skip turns in a huge game, in the end game. This is especially true for -f's and HE's. For -f's, its your resource density, and for a HE it is lack of gates. This means that you will be riding the 512 limit, turn by turn, with a competitive sized empire. Essentially, you could reduce the amount of MM for many players by boosting it to 2048 or higher. Enough, at least, to automate and walkaway for a few turns.
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Imagine someone chaff sweeping 10 of your fields every turn. Or an SD with 500 mine layers cluttering space (of course if you lift the fleet limit, you lift the mine field limit). Or a JOAT splattering space with chaff to catch cloaked ships.
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This is a knee jerk "The sky will fall!", reaction to chaff sweeping. The simple truth is that very few players chaff sweep, period. Let alone 10 per turn! Add in the fact that it costs you resources, minerals, and you still need enough ships to take out a SB, and this becomes a moot point.
Minefield limits are really annoying, also. Especially if you decide to be a loner, and are winning. It's not just SD's either. I hit that limit with most races, but especially IS and HE.
The JOAT "shotgun" is something that can be countered, but it is a big pain, and would be worse with a higher limit. However, besides me, Kang is the only player I have *ever* run into that verged on the annoying, using this trick.
Doubtful this is going to change your mind about it, but I felt obligated to point out most of your arguments against upping the limit are false, IMO.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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