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Author Topic: unending galaxy  (Read 36287 times)

EsKa

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #30 on: March 26, 2015, 01:26:35 pm »

Hi people,

@Paul:

Thanks. In response to, err, let's call that the "border hugging" issue :)

Allowing to move them across sectors while in combat isn't very satisfactory, I already tried but you end up with cases where you'd be perpetually changing sector making the whole combat very weird, and even a bit nauseating. Seamless transition would indeed be better, but it's out of the equation now as you kinda guessed, it's far from easy, and more importantly, it is way too late to modify what's an integral part of the game code. In other words, it'd be a sure way to delay release by several months.

The best cost/efficiency ratio is to make sure that ships avoid getting stuck into walls even if it means getting shot a bit more often. I am working on that (amongst more complex flying patterns) :)

@Gabeux:

Oh, you got the event that transform the SPQR into an active faction :) It's a good one. More big events like that are planned for each faction. Regarding the AI Core, be happy they have been heavily nerfed since the alpha (as they had a tendency of taking half the map quickly). But to fight them, blindly attack/move can still be suicidal. Their whole point (except if you have overwhelming forces, ofc) is that you need to cripple them, use a specific army composition and try to retrieve / repair your damaged ships. Basically, it's hard mode :p

About the tantrum spirals. I have identified and fixed a few culprits, and now that police ships don't get bounty on their head it's a bit more under control. And yes, I will make sure that the actions of your civilians has no impact on the diplomatic relations anymore. I don't think i left a case where ships of the same faction could directly target each other, but I am sure the game will prove me wrong sooner or later.

That said, while I will limit the extent of the spirals I won't try to fully eliminate the behavior. Inter faction skirmishes, even in time of peace, do have some uses beside the "oh crap" moment, it makes the AI on AI diplomacy a bit more dynamic and without it, bounty hunters would get fairly bored.

What's obvious to me when i read all this, is that pilots should give you a reason why they are attacking / being attacked when asked to. It may take a bit of time to implement properly, but it may be worth it.

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- A way to configure Friend-or-Foe settings (X again) - Mostly unnecessary, though, but gives power to the players  8).

I think it's a false good idea. It makes some sense in X where you can't interact with factions so there's no way around it if you want to be hostile toward a faction. And even then, as someone who made the pirate faction "friend-able" this option made things unnecessarily more complex (the F/F had a tendency to reset pirates to foes showing my neutrals as red, go explain that to your user base, but i digress).

Here, adding global or local F/F settings would only intensify the problems. The "foe" part, not so much as it's pretty straightforward, but the "friend" part, oh boy. In instance, will your police attack a pirate you set as a friend but which is attacking your assets ? Will the military intervene against some "friend" who declared war on you in the meantime ? Must I change the F/F settings automatically, rendering them fairly useless ? There's no universal answer that will satisfy every player.

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A way to clear a ship's enemy list/target - Clearing a ship's orders don't clear their target list (I'm just assuming there's some sort of enemy list)
It doesn't really work that way, but it depends on the AI package (or lack thereof) running. Halt should work very well on ships under your direct control. Military and other combat centric AI will just check for the nearest object that comply with their rule set. Well it's a bit more complex than that, but that's the idea, halting them usually does little because, the next time they "think" they'll likely resume the combat. That said, yeah I'll use the Halt command to force them to idle for a while from now on.

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Maybe not counting Civilian Ships' actions as Player-Faction actions - It feels a bit awkward to be hated by a faction due to the actions of an AI Civilian

Done, also fixed a few case where the AI (in general) would break local laws by not knowing any better.

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Probably the next posts will be shorter since I'm taking a break after the AI Core incident.

No problem, your input has been invaluable.

While at it, 2, work in progress, screenshots of the current build (context help not yet written in the first screenshot, hence the big empty panel).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cheers,
SK.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2015, 03:24:18 pm by EsKa »
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Sinistar

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #31 on: March 26, 2015, 03:23:39 pm »

This seems very interesting. PTW for now.
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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #32 on: March 26, 2015, 04:07:17 pm »

So I'm not understanding something, I'm playing a trader and a battleship runs strait to me and opens fire without any warning or action of the local police, this is about a minute into the game.
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Gabeux

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #33 on: March 26, 2015, 05:33:18 pm »

@EsKa:

Ohh cool! I can tell you're hard at working pushing for the next version. Dat automation, tho.
And I agree with you on all fronts - I'm sure things will shape up nicely.

I'll check the new version out once released, so I'll hold out further issue lookout and spamming 'til then  :P
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EsKa

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #34 on: March 27, 2015, 12:05:47 am »

So I'm not understanding something, I'm playing a trader and a battleship runs strait to me and opens fire without any warning or action of the local police, this is about a minute into the game.

Have you entered AI Core (pink) or SPQR (yellow) territory ? AI Core is, well, hostile to all forms of life. And the SPQR won't allow any foreign people into their territory until a specific event is triggered. If not, you probably shot something by accident.

Sirus

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #35 on: March 27, 2015, 12:23:10 am »

Interesting. I'll have to check this out later.
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etgfrog

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #36 on: March 27, 2015, 01:07:42 am »

So I'm not understanding something, I'm playing a trader and a battleship runs strait to me and opens fire without any warning or action of the local police, this is about a minute into the game.

Have you entered AI Core (pink) or SPQR (yellow) territory ? AI Core is, well, hostile to all forms of life. And the SPQR won't allow any foreign people into their territory until a specific event is triggered. If not, you probably shot something by accident.
No, it was in the middle of federation space and showed up as dark grey on the sector map, if it was color coded correct then it was a pirate, since it had a unique name to its ship I'm guess it was a pirate boss or something along those lines.
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ThtblovesDF

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #37 on: March 27, 2015, 10:47:08 am »

Just straight up crashes on lauch for me. Using Basic (Demo) 0.9 only once, now it works.
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EsKa

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #38 on: March 27, 2015, 12:26:34 pm »

@etgfrog: Yes, in that case it's likely a pirate ship (granted you were moving goods). They can go away, for a price, if you talk with them. But I get the drift, some kind of warning, or menacing threat beforehand seems kinda necessary.

@ThtblovesDF: Weird, I have yet to receive any bug report for a loading issue. If you had a previous version of the game installed, it's probably why. If not, I have no idea, but i will double check the loading process.

ThtblovesDF

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #39 on: March 27, 2015, 01:13:51 pm »

Was a fairly weak PC, just click around in the loading screen and it'll go straight to "not reacting", after crashing and restarting it and ignoring the freeze it quickly solved itself.
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Zazmio

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #40 on: March 27, 2015, 05:49:34 pm »

I downloaded this and played for around 5 hours last night.  This game has some potential.

I spent the first couple of hours mining crystal until I could afford a battleship, then went around trying to collect bounties.

I only have 5 hours of experience in this game, so I'm probably not understanding some things; but it seems to me that the money that you get from mining is way better than anything else; it's also safer and a lot more tedious.

Bounty hunting is way more dangerous and for less profit.  Trying to get a specific bounty is a crapshoot; half the time, you show up in the sector that ship is supposedly in and it's not there.  If it's there, it's very risky to collect the bounty since when you shoot at it, the ship's faction puts a bounty on you which causes all the warships in the faction to start attacking you.

The money from trading seems very poor compared to mining; most factories only have a small amount of their product for sale (sometimes none), so manually trading involves flying around and clicking on lots of factories in order to get a decent amount of products in your cargohold.  You could just mine a couple of rocks of crystal and make 3 times the money in less time, it seems to me.

I haven't messed with automated trading ships yet, though; perhaps trading isn't really meant to be done manually in this game.

The economy is kind of strange in this game.  I've noticed that factories seem to sell their product always at the same price; and the factories that need that product always pay less than what you paid for them.  For example, energy cells always cost 11 each from a solar farm, but factories that need energy cells will only pay 9 each.  This means the only ways to make money trading are to either do trading missions or sell the stuff to a trading station, which tends to pay more for stuff.

I don't understand the point of trading stations; they're convenient for the player, certainly, but I don't get how they make money, since they apparently lose money buying stuff at higher prices.

As for ship combat:  I've had some fun flying around shooting things.  It seems to me that small ships like fighters and frigates are just about worthless, in this game.  Fighters seem way to easy to hit, and die from a couple of hits of my battleship's flak cannon spam.  It seems to me that buying them is just throwing your money away, they're so weak.  Maybe I'm missing something?

As I said, I only have 5 hours playing, so maybe I just don't understand some things yet.  It seems like there is some potential here, though.
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Paul

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #41 on: March 27, 2015, 07:47:20 pm »

Yeah the trading is pretty wonky. Very exploitable too. Price at trade stations seems to depend solely upon the current inventory, so if you find a trade station with no inventory you can sell stuff for a ton. Then buy it back cheap. Then sell it again. Etc.

Not sure how prices work at factories and such. I noticed the same thing you did in that the sellers seem to want higher prices than the buyers, but I'm not sure if that's specifically a broken system or if they work the same as the trade stations and it's that the producers never get enough stock to make their price drop while the buyers have a bit of stock left from other ships selling to them.

The trading system is still in need of work though for sure. Like the luxury goods don't seem to have a use yet, I had an automated trader ship park in a station and buy a full hold of human ale using all of my money, then just sit there with it forever because I guess it couldn't find demand for it. Had to manually fly it to a trade station and sell it at a significant loss due to the station also having a big stock of it.

Auto trader ships still make money though, so I'm assuming they are finding places with good enough stock to buy cheap and then finding a place with low stock to sell high.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 07:56:31 pm by Paul »
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EsKa

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #42 on: March 28, 2015, 12:31:16 pm »

Hey

Thanks both for the input, as usual I will skip to the important bits. If i don't comment a particular point, its likely because i agree and don't have a lot to add.

On getting money. Depends if you automate or not. With automated ships, traders (which tend to get the best deal available in a given solar system) are king. With 1 trader, after half an hour or so you'll get enough to buy 10 more which in turn are enough to fund your first stations, start an empire, build a fleet, whatever. Miners offer a slower income but also a more secure one (you don't risk loosing goods you actually bought to pirates).

As a player-ship, mining, yes, is easier as you don't have the tools to find the best deals available (yet).

Regarding trading in general. Well, last beta (3) was supposed to take care of it's exploitable nature, and partially did. But I was dragged into other important changes, so the trading update is still ongoing. As a matter of fact, trade stations won't allow to buy and sell the same item (you can either buy or sell, not both), apart for some special loot and ship equipments from now on. And pricing will be based on production facilities available around the trade station. It's mostly done but still need further testing.

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Bounty hunting is way more dangerous and for less profit.  Trying to get a specific bounty is a crapshoot; half the time, you show up in the sector that ship is supposedly in and it's not there.  If it's there, it's very risky to collect the bounty since when you shoot at it, the ship's faction puts a bounty on you which causes all the warships in the faction to start attacking you. [...]

Ships don't wait for you and live their own life. The indicated location is where it was when the mission was added, actual position (of the currently selected mission) is marked on the gal map by a red reticule on the sector. And in the current (in-house, yet to be released) version, double clicking the mission centers the map on said sector. That said, yes, they can hang out in legit sectors where they don't have a bounty (which are faction specific) and yes the security forces will protect them there. As I said, they do move, so you may want to wait for a better opportunity.

About the bounty values. Yes it is too low, it was implemented before I had any idea of your average raider's lifespan. Truth to be told, pirate captains aside, they don't live long enough for their bounty to raise to decent levels. It may improve once I review the fleeing mechanisms, though. In any case, I basically agree about pricing. I will increase values for each illegal action and factor the ship they're flying into the equations.

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[...]Factories vs Trade station[...]

Factories use default prices (set in game's data) when someone comes at their door with something to sell, yes. However, their dock traders should buy at whatever (lowest) price is available in the area. Note, that factions won't "pay themselves" when moving goods between their own docks, so we're only talking about inter-species trading here, otherwise, granted a faction has enough low tier factories to produce their high tier ones, it's 100% benefits for them aside from initial building costs.

Now, trade stations. Yeah they are a bit weird, especially as the trade system isn't 100% completed as explained before.

Goods that aren't used to produce higher trading wares, alongside surplus of other resources (if any) will be moved toward the trade stations (here again for free if we stay in the same faction). Buying and selling prices are only determined based on stocks at the moment (as said, it's gonna change, but it's fairly irrelevant here anyway). Goods, in the long run will be exchanged between trade stations, so traders can make a buck, with the added effect of moving goods toward zones where they are needed.

Additionally, to avoid the system getting clogged by too much production of high end goods, stations will (slowly and only once a given stock threshold is crossed) "sell" some of their stock periodically to the colonies. This is why they don't fill up completely in the late game.

That said, I don't know for sure if trade stations always make money. There's probably some conditions where a TS built in a location where its faction won't produce a lot of high end goods and that will be exploited as a resource dump by 3rd parties. That said, the AI tend to build them only in fairly big sectors where they can get a constant stream of free goods to sell. I wanted to do some tests, but as it's not yet finished, I postponed that for beta 4.

And, yes, btw, what's make the surest way to make money is usually selling from factory to trade station. That said, once the trade model is finished, trade station on trade station trading will likely be more profitable.

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It seems to me that small ships like fighters and frigates are just about worthless, in this game.  Fighters seem way to easy to hit, and die from a couple of hits of my battleship's flak cannon spam.  It seems to me that buying them is just throwing your money away, they're so weak.  Maybe I'm missing something?

"Fighters are dirt cheap and more fragile than in many similar games. A couple hits from even low grade weapons will destroy them. Carriers can even replenish their hangar bays freely (as do military bases over time) at repair stations. They are agile, but lasers and area of effect weapons can make very short work of many of them in a couple seconds. Basically fighters are ammunition grade. " (wiki)

Even if some are much better than others (asterian and spqr especially alongside the ISA fighter you start with in the default scenario), in UG fighters are basically ammo. Usually, a carrier's worth of fighters (30 or so) can take on a battleship, or at least clear its shield and part if its hull (granted said battleship isn't a human one equipped with nuclear warheads). As escort ships, they do the simple job of giving enough time for their leader to jump away to safety whenever endangered. In large encounters they act as a distraction / shield while bigger ships close in.

Initially they were called drones, but it kinda forced everyone to fly in at least a frigate and it ended up being even more confusing. And I don't really see a downside in allowing the player to use/fly them directly.

Frigates are mostly okay, some models may need a slight armor/shield boost though. And no, they're not intended to sustain battleship firepower (nothing is atm apart from military bases). Once energy consumption is being balanced (1.0), It'll likely make more sense as larger ships won't be able to maintain full firepower all the time while smaller ones likely will.

Cheers,
SK.

jocan2003

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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #43 on: March 28, 2015, 12:49:15 pm »

Fighter in this game are basuicly drone from X: franchise, they are a bit more expensive as they do have better weapon and seem to be better at harassing than what drone could do in X game. In X game drone also had more survivability due to the 3dness of the game, harder to do evasive maneuver in 3d than 2d.
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Re: unending galaxy
« Reply #44 on: March 28, 2015, 01:00:07 pm »

Good to hear about trading getting reworked next update. I knew it was in the pipeline, was just commenting to the other poster on how it was currently :)

Right now fighters are certainly very effective if they can close the distance, but the way they currently rush their targets lets a player mow them down before they get in range. AI v AI works good since the big ship AI is just as limited as the fighters so they don't anticipate the fighters getting into range and start firing early, but against a player even sitting still you can just start firing and the little blob explodes long before they get to you.

Fighter AI might need a little work. Right now they all swarm right at you, and can all be taken out with a few shots from a capital ship due to the 2D nature of the game. If they fanned out first and then moved in and flew circles around your ship at their weapon range it might be better.

Another option might be to differentiate between weapon classes. Right now the big high DPS guns are just the best hands down. Equipping a capital ship with 8 Alphatech Heavy Plasma Launchers just decimates everything, fighter and capital ship alike. That gun should be great against capital ships, but other guns should be better against fighters.

It could be handled one of two ways. Making the projectiles behave differently (slower rate of fire, more punch per hit, but slower and easier to dodge projectiles), and giving the AI enough smarts to dodge the slower big guns (not an easy task, but would be interesting) or just doing it "behind the scenes" with a miss chance based on weapon type and ship class. The big guns might only hit fighters 10% of the time, so they would last more than a fraction of a second under fire. Guns designed for an anti-fighter role wouldn't have the penalty, but would have lower DPS. Better at killing fighters, less effective vs capital ships.

The game is certainly fun in its current state though, which is definitely a good thing.


Oh, and regarding bounties: Things that live long enough to collect big bounties can be quite lucrative, if a bit dangerous. I just fired up a game in the big galaxy as a pirate captain (Manowar is awesome, haha - little light on the defenses, but the speed is great for a flagship). After harassing the AI core for a while and selling their loot for money I noticed I was friendly with some non-pirate factions, so I checked for bounties. There was a swarm queen and guardian entourage that had apparently been very successful in harassing pretty much everyone, the top guardian had a 350k bounty and most of the others had bounties too. All total I got 2 million in bounties for taking out their group, although they very nearly killed me when I jumped in on top of them.
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