Reticulan Labs

On 29 Dez., 00:56, KlingonKommand <P... RemoveThis @nurk.fnord> wrote:
> The Ret Med Lab device code was in Host, but unused until we used the
> device in the IMT London hull about 2 years ago. At this point

Off topic, but as you mentioned the IMT: Is there any deeper reason in
the Bizmuth' generator value?

Gabor
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On Dec 29, 1:02 pm, KlingonKommand <P....DeleteThis@nurk.fnord> wrote:
> GFM GToeroe writes
>
> >Off topic, but as you mentioned the IMT: Is there any deeper reason in
> >the Bizmuth' generator value?
>
> As I recall... we wanted it to be able to fire continuously until its
> missiles were used up (it has no beams). It's very expensive and all it
> has are those missiles, so we wanted them to be effective. I may have
> misunderstood the statistics; I thought you needed this high a generator
> level for the missiles to fire continuously. I have since read you only
> need a power of 10. However I kept it at 100 through successive
> iterations of the racepack, because I consider the combat code -
> particularly the Wing code - to be so buggy that I wanted a safety
> margin to be sure.
>
> Of course this may make less sense with the new combat code.
>
> In general the IMT fighters are meant to be like this:
>
> Type 1 - Dirac Drone - cheap rubbish, useful mainly as a shield for the
> more expensive types.
>
> Type 2 - SSS - good versus other wings (but not ships)
>
> Type 3 - Bismuth Zepplin - good versus ships (but not Wings). Also the
> only ones useful versus bases. Consequently very expensive, as IMT
> should not primarily be a fighter race.
>
> The idea was that the type 3 SHOULD be good, but would require a shield
> of types 1 or 2 or they would be easy meat versus other wings.
>
> However, the type 3 seem pretty good versus wings too. I tried tweaking
> the fighter stats many times - I think the racepack is now on iteration
> 8 - but never got the balance quite as was intended. Which is one reason
> I say the Wing combat code is buggy: even with Scytale's advice,
> changing the statistics never seemed to affect performance in the way
> I'd expected.
>
> By the way, one tip I recall from Scytale is: combat speed is important.
> If a fighter is *too fast* it is less effective. You want it to stay in
> combat range long enough to fire all its shots. If it is too fast it
> zooms past enemies - exposing itself to PD fire etc - without delivering
> its maximum payload. I tried *reducing* the speed of one fighter type in
> one racepack iteration, and he was right, it became much more effective.
> I don't know if you're aware of that, so I mention it here to help with
> the new combat algorithms.
> --
> Paul Honigmann

yes ive noticed this as well when simulating fighters versus multiple
ships.
fighters with high speed seem to zoom themselves into the line of fire
of multiple ships pd systems as they zoom accross the vcr. whereas
slower units wont be as exposed to as many ships as they dont zoom
past those other ships. however its not much diferent if the entire
enemy fleet is in range with thier PD systems. but the odds generally
go with the slower fighters. Com wings(high speed fighters) often will
cruise past half the vcr before firing its second salvo. thus half the
enemy ships in the vcr have taken shots at the wing. just because a
fighter wing has a speed of 100 doesnt mean it has to move at the
speed during the whole VCR. it should only increase its speed when it
approaches its next salvo firing tick or to evade pd fire while
waiting for its next fire tick. simply moving at 100 because thats its
speed, handicaps the fighters capable of manuevering at those
speeds.the high speed of fighters should represent a form of pd range
evasive. not a pd range interaction. fighters should try to avoid PD
systems using thier speed of mobility. but not to the point of being
completly invulnerable..they should howver be forced to be exposed to
PD each time they fire. they should however not be allowed to fire
anything including missiles outside the range of ships pd systems.if
they want to fire thier weapons they have to expose themselves to the
pd systems of at least the target ship.

Proto

Proto
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GFM GToeroe writes
>Off topic, but as you mentioned the IMT: Is there any deeper reason in
>the Bizmuth' generator value?

As I recall... we wanted it to be able to fire continuously until its
missiles were used up (it has no beams). It's very expensive and all it
has are those missiles, so we wanted them to be effective. I may have
misunderstood the statistics; I thought you needed this high a generator
level for the missiles to fire continuously. I have since read you only
need a power of 10. However I kept it at 100 through successive
iterations of the racepack, because I consider the combat code -
particularly the Wing code - to be so buggy that I wanted a safety
margin to be sure.

Of course this may make less sense with the new combat code.

In general the IMT fighters are meant to be like this:

Type 1 - Dirac Drone - cheap rubbish, useful mainly as a shield for the
more expensive types.

Type 2 - SSS - good versus other wings (but not ships)

Type 3 - Bismuth Zepplin - good versus ships (but not Wings). Also the
only ones useful versus bases. Consequently very expensive, as IMT
should not primarily be a fighter race.

The idea was that the type 3 SHOULD be good, but would require a shield
of types 1 or 2 or they would be easy meat versus other wings.

However, the type 3 seem pretty good versus wings too. I tried tweaking
the fighter stats many times - I think the racepack is now on iteration
8 - but never got the balance quite as was intended. Which is one reason
I say the Wing combat code is buggy: even with Scytale's advice,
changing the statistics never seemed to affect performance in the way
I'd expected.

By the way, one tip I recall from Scytale is: combat speed is important.
If a fighter is *too fast* it is less effective. You want it to stay in
combat range long enough to fire all its shots. If it is too fast it
zooms past enemies - exposing itself to PD fire etc - without delivering
its maximum payload. I tried *reducing* the speed of one fighter type in
one racepack iteration, and he was right, it became much more effective.
I don't know if you're aware of that, so I mention it here to help with
the new combat algorithms.
--
Paul Honigmann
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On Dec 28, 3:56 pm, KlingonKommand <P... DeleteThis @nurk.fnord> wrote:
> The Ret Med Lab device code was in Host, but unused until we used the
> device in the IMT London hull about 2 years ago. At this point
> playtesting showed there were some bugs in the code which we relayed to
> Tim, for example
>
> - the ship could convert more natives than it had hold capacity for,
> stripping a planet of 100,000's of natives in 3 turns and ending up with
> a cargo which exceeded its hold capacity

Yes, I see the problem with this device overloading the cargo. I'll
have to chance that around a little.

Magik
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Er... I thought it *had* been fixed. I don't recall seeing it again. As
I said, there were about 3 successive patches to that area of code. I
did extensive testing on the device and fed back info to Tim. It could
be that there is no overflow check on the cargo hold, but a hard limit
coded into how many natives it can convert? But, I ain't tested it for a
long time so I guess there *could* be a bug there.

Paul Honigmann

Magik <rickglover.RemoveThis@paulhastings.com> writes
>On Dec 28, 3:56 pm, KlingonKommand <P....RemoveThis@nurk.fnord> wrote:
>> The Ret Med Lab device code was in Host, but unused until we used the
>> device in the IMT London hull about 2 years ago. At this point
>> playtesting showed there were some bugs in the code which we relayed to
>> Tim, for example
>>
>> - the ship could convert more natives than it had hold capacity for,
>> stripping a planet of 100,000's of natives in 3 turns and ending up with
>> a cargo which exceeded its hold capacity
>
>Yes, I see the problem with this device overloading the cargo. I'll
>have to chance that around a little.
>
>Magik

--
Paul Honigmann
http://www.furfur.demon.co.uk/

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On 30 Dez., 21:02, Sebastian <Sebast....DeleteThis@nospam.nospam> wrote:

> The other way round with the attack bonus and the evasive bonus here. I
> would go on low accuracy missiles with a high attack bonus. Also the ord
> load is a little bit too much I would go towards 20 missiles. A missile

The current version of the new code gives sqr(fighter ord
payload)*count as "micro ord" to the wing and a missile shot uses 10
micro ord. I made good experiences with this.

So you would need 2.24 fighters to fire one missile.

If one wants now a fighter to be able to fire N missiles one needs

fighter ord payload=(10N)^2

Gabor
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> Type 2 - SSS - good versus other wings (but not ships)

Then kill the attack bonus. currently wing vs wing shots ignores the
attack bonus (the attack-evasive-modifier for fighter vs fighter is (200
- target-evasive)/100)). If you put in attack bonus it will helps only
versus ships.

You can even drop the beam power and it still would be useful versus
fighters but less useful versus ships.

I would also lower the accuracy because it is use both for wing and ship
combat. The accuracy is doubled anyway for wing vs wing combat. So a
accuracy value at about 60% will still have good changes to hit even
other fighters even with high evasive, but worse chances to hit ships.
Remember that the wings range modifier can only go down to 0.8.

proposition:

Attack bonus 0:
Beam accuracy: 60%
generator: 25
beam power: 20
Range: 150

> Type 3 - Bismuth Zepplin - good versus ships (but not Wings). Also the
> only ones useful versus bases. Consequently very expensive, as IMT
> should not primarily be a fighter race.

The other way round with the attack bonus and the evasive bonus here. I
would go on low accuracy missiles with a high attack bonus. Also the ord
load is a little bit too much I would go towards 20 missiles. A missile
with power 100 has an comparable danger potential than a LTLA shot. So
if you now enable the Bizmuth to have a similar damage potential for
only 250MC (LTLA costs 7600MC, not mention the LW tech, ships costs and
of cause the minerals) you got an monster. It should cost about 10 000MC
per fighter. Fortunately there's currently some code in that prevents
the fighters from spending their batteries in only a few ticks so you
cannot create such a every tick fire monster, but I don't know weather
it will stay in future. So if you really want to have a every tick fire
monster give it a *BIG* penalty.

Also a fighter with armor 40 and Exposed systems of only 1 is not
something that needs to be shielded to stay alive. I would change it to
armor 5 and Exposed systems 2

proposition:

missile accuracy: 30
attack bonus: 300
ord: 20

Sebastian
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Sebastian, thanks for the suggestions on IMT fighter stats. I'm
archiving them for the next time we iterate the racepack. I believe one
of my colleagues is tweaking the graphics so this may be soon.

Paul Honigmann
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