Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

OK...back from my public holiday (go the Diggers!), but probabaly not for too long coz the office is half empty and therefore its been declared a boozy lunch at the pub day.

For my first hypothesis I'm going to state that strategy in SE in no way mimics strategy in real life. This is largely due to the fact the that SE is a computer game and has limits, reducing possible actions to just a handful, with known bounds on anything from technology to methods of warfare.

Now getting back to offensive/defensive bonuses and importance to any success.
First I'de like to state there are two forms of defeat in SE4.
1. An early sneak attack. Whether its backstabbing an ally (rare coz I rarely see alliances break), stealth armour and planetry napalm or swarming in on an unsuspecting empire coz the player believes everyone likes to trade colonisation tech before they fight. Nothing really matters in either of these cases, the defender dies (either quickly or they flop around like a dying fish for a while).

2. A more conventional defeat. These are usually broken into two battles. The first battle is where the invader busts through the defence of one side, usually the defender's older ships that have been sitting on a warp point. The second battle is where the defender does a mad scramble of all available ships and throws them into a Last ditch defence.

I've seen the second scenario replayed a dozen or so times. More often than not the battles are extremely lopsided, with one side been completely wiped and the other suffering few losses. The defender suffers a demoralising defeat, the invader an almost embarrasing victory. The ships can even appear similiar in technology.

There are really only 2 factors in these battle that lead to the defeat.
1. Ship placement. (My gripe with SE combat at the moment). Besides the case where one fleet come through the warp point (I know where that fleet ends up) I have no idea why SE places the ships where it does. I've seen battles where one side forms a neat little queue to the killing zone, when both sides are completely scattered over the map or in a recent battle between 70 attacking dreadnaught against me (50 battleships) and my ally (30 base ships) I ended up packed tightly in one corner, my ally in the opposite corner and the attacking dreadnaughts scattered around where I was, including some ships that were completely surrounded by my ships.

2. One side only hits 1 in 6 shots, the other side hits pretty much every time.

Although there is nothing you can do about 1 (or I think there is anyway), number 2 is all about your offensive/defensive bonuses.
Success in the game does NOT depend on technological advantage, its depends on an advantage in the correct technologies. You can concede a disadvatange in shields, ship size, weapons, construction, resource production as long as you are superior in offence/defence.


Well thats my scientific explanation of strategy in SE4. Obviously I think about it too much but I must say that about 1 in 10 turns I play are after coming back from the pub. So maybe Belisarius is right..its about 90% science and 10% art http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


Askan

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by askan:
Success in the game does NOT depend on technological advantage, its depends on an advantage in the correct technologies. You can concede a disadvatange in shields, ship size, weapons, construction, resource production as long as you are superior in offence/defence.
<hr></blockquote>

I am starting to see your point here. However I still feel that much of what you are calling science is actually art. It takes the knowledge and skill to know when to research these techs. To develop the plan, and to be able to adapt it to what your enemy is doing.

Something that just hit me like a ton of bricks in our recent game is that fact that the defensive bonuses for Steath Armor, Scattering Armor, and ECM all stack. I am not sure why I didn't already know that, but I was under the misunderstanding that you only got the highest defensive bonus of one of those three, not all three.

So you could say that you wiped me out because of the science of the armor defense bonuses, or the art of not knowing when to research them.

Geoschmo

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

A few historical comments that i missed out on adding before when they were more relevant but anyway here goes.

The German's lost against the Russians, not because they couldn't fight or had bad military leadership, instead it was the fact that Hitler (one of the stupidest leaders of all time) tried to run the military campaign. His politics and insane generalship got in the way. If Rommel or any other halfway competent general had run the campaign on his timetable with his units he would have won. I played a simulation against a very smart opponent as the Germans and won, hands down, I took worse losses than the Germans initially but ended up winning cause the weather effects didn't hit me in the end.

Vietnam, same goes for Mog, if we (being hte US) had put our backs behind it we would have done a lot better, if the men on the ground had been told to kick their asses anyway they could the war woudl have been won, problem was that the "managment" was telling them where to fight and how hard, furthermore there was no general objective or strategy. I just read "the things they carried" great boook and the soldiers felt like all they did was walk around, shoot ppl burn villages and keep walking. In WW2 we had a job to do with straight foward lines, Vietnam needed definition and objectives.

Finally, in Somalia the men there took on something they couldn't handle with their current ROE (dont' kill ppl that arn't shooting you). If htey had went in and out by helicopter, or the trucks hadn't gotten lost, OR they had been authorized to kill anyone who wasn't american and brought in heavy artillery they woudl have won, the odds the fought against and still survived were amazing.

Finally, Finally, american's can't take causlties. When Stalin lost a million in a battle he gave htem all medals and their families grieved and the neighbors thought those who had died heros. Here we point the finger at the government for causing these losses. The biggest lesson i learned while playing, surprise surprise, Starcraft was that you're going to lose some people. Hell you're goign to lose a lot of ppl. Loses should be minimized but not to the extent of tactical consideration. I wouldn't want to die, but when this mentality forces paralysis it isn't acceptable.

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Skulky,
I think you are agreeing with all of us.
It came down to the quality of the equpiment on both sides and the way they were deployed and used. To me that translates "Science and Art".

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

geoschmo et al:

While you are quite correct that it does eventually come down to outthinking the enemy, I think he brings up a valid point.

If you know what the 'best' weapons and ship archetypes are, why bother to have a tremendously rich tech tree of items that are clearly inferior to the 'tried and true' method? I think most people are convinced that Missiles are utterly useless past the initial stages of the game. Same goes for half of the weapons in the 'standard' tech set...they just arent worth it compared to some of the other weapons.

So, in essence you have plenty of choices, but if you want to compete, you really dont. It comes down to strategic maneuver, yes, but why include the rest if it isnt anything but window dressing?

I went through once long ago (v1.21 or so) and modded the heck out of the game to try and rebalance a lot of things in the game. I was quite pleased by the results, but I had to spend entirely too much time tweaking the AIs to accomodate my changes and I eventually lost interest after the patches kept adding to the workload. Now, I just play the 'standard' techset simply to avoid having to constantly update my date for patches.

But after a few games recently, I'm inclined to agree with askan in that there is really a fairly easily found 'formula' to success. Personally, I think future patches should be devoted to tweaking the existing gameplay so as to make many of the option already present in the game seem more palatable. One thing I've noticed about SE4 is that there are rarely any 'Guns or Butter' decisions in the tech tree. Most of the econ techs arent worth it vis a vis the military ones. The only real decision is which military techs to research and even that is limited by the somewhat unbalanced state of the various weapons.

At any rate, I think that askan's point is very valid and would like to see those points addressed at some point in the future if balance tweaks are still possible in the 'real' set.

Thanx,
Talenn

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Talenn,

I don't think Askan has even tried to make the point that there is only one best weapon. In fact he has as much as stated it really doesn't matter what weapon you choose, that combat is driven by the various attack and defense bonuses.

While I can see Askan's point has some merit, I can't agree with yours at all. You can do a spreadsheet and calculate which weapon has the highest damage to weight ratios if you want. But I disagree that that takes any element of choice from the game. There are enough differences among weapons in cost and amount of research requiqired to allow for plenty of variety.

Askan's point is about the fact that regardless of weponry if you want to succeed the races that get have the offensive and deefensive bonuses will have the early advantage, and those that get to the ecm, Cbt sensors, and stealth and scattering armor first will have the most sucess. That's an argument I can't really disagree with, but I don't think it's one that forces people into one choice in weaponry.

The fact is, and I think Askan would agree with this, that given a similer base starting point of these combat modifyng techs, there are numerous other decisions in ships design and strategy taht all have their various tradeoffs.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. Many people have complained about the lack of weapon balance in this game. Many have dedicated to "fixing" the problem. And as of yet I have not seen any mods that are any better than the stock game in that respect. If someone want's to show me one, I'd be happy to play it.

Geoschmo

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> So, in essence you have plenty of choices, but if you want to compete, you really dont. It comes down to strategic maneuver, yes, but why include the rest if it isnt anything but window dressing? <hr></blockquote>Because not everybody considers competition to be the sole reason for playing.

For people who prefer approaching the game as art, the "window dressing" provides a huge palette to work with. The scientists will probably defeat the artists when they go head-to-head, but the artists are less likely to get bored with using the same tactics all the time.

IMO, science "versus" art is a false dichotomy; science and art are ends of a spectrum, not an either/or choice.

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

"Many have dedicated to "fixing" the problem. And as of yet I have not seen any mods that are any better than the stock game in that respect"

Mostly because when they (I http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) start, they find out that A. things are a little better balanced than they thought and B. it's *hard* getting things balanced right.

Look at the APB. On a pure damage/kt scale, this thing is a monster- 2.3 damage/kt. However..it also costs almost 2 million research points to fully research, on medium tech cost. Something like the Meson BLaster, which does 'only' 1.75 damage/kt and is a bit shorter ranged, costs less than a quarter. In other words, you can have Meson VIs much, much sooner than someone can have APB XIIs. Mesons also have no damage dropoff.

The Wave Motion Gun. Costs less than the APB to research (true!) though you only get it at the very end of the research chain. Damage/kt rating of 2; damage/kt/turn rating of a less than stellar .67. However, you *can* run out of range with it while it's recharging, it does full damage along it's entire range, and it gets a 30% bonus to hit!

Quantum torpedo. Damage/kt: 2.5 1.25 per turn. Again, cheaper than the APB, if only because it has two less levels to research.

Missiles are a special case; they and fighters are weak because PD is so effective, not because they're weak in and of themselves. You can't saturate an enemies defenses when your weapons are twice as big AND fire three times slower.

Economy is very important BTW. Research center upgrades will get you that tech faster, miner upgrades (and computers) will put more ships in space. It's worthless to have the most high tech ship in the game if the enemy can field so many of his slightly lower tech ships he overwhelms and destroys you.

Phoenix-D

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

my first question for Phoenix is "what do you do with all those extra worlds dedicated to research when you know it all?" I can't figure out any good quick solution. Also if you have a ton of spaceyards that is the fastest way to victory, even if they produce slower you can get them in greater amounts than planets so they make up for it in spades.

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Rather than two ends of the same specturm, would not Art and Science (say it like you feel seomthinG: "_SCIENCE!_") be two separate axis. Within the area defined by these axis are all the activities imaninable.

Possibly there are other axis, to define every possible action.... Like 'wack' there really ought to be a scale of 'wack'.

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

"my first question for Phoenix is "what do you do with all those extra worlds dedicated to research when you know it all?" I"

Scrap the research buildings and make something else. The speed advantage you gain in research is worth it.

EDIT: and I wasn't talking about *building* the ships per se. I was talking about having enough cash to build and maintain them.

Phoenix-D

[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]</p>

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

geoschmo et al:

Well, perhaps my wording was somewhat imprecise. You are correct that the weapons are somewhat varied in terms of research/kt/damage payoff, but from the games I've seen and played in, the players seem more or less pigeonholed into many decisions if they want to be competitive with other humans who are following the 'prefered' (for lack of a better term) strategies.

What I drew from Askan's post and from my own experience is that its mostly about Combat To-hit and Defensive bonus and Direct Fire weapons. Missiles dont even rate on the scale for the reason list below by Phoenix-D. The other weapons more or less depend on the stage of the game you are at and the amount of time you have to research rather than any real 'feel' of the weapons. By that, I would like to have seen more 'flavor' differences. For example, Torps that are monsterously damaging, but inaccurate. Some beams that could be extremely accurate, but low damage. Missiles could vary dramatically as well. Point defenses could have trade offs between range and accuracy.

I'm aware that some of these interactions are already present in the game, but generally not simultaneously. You have to focus down one path to optimize and that path will be the best one you can choose at that time. What I would have prefered is a selection of weapons down one path that would have strengths and weaknesses in relation to each other without the 'artificial' need to base it solely on tech level and damage/kt/turn.

Its hard to explain, I suppose, but I'd like to see more weapon be necessary for a variety of opponents. The little 'scraper' weapons might be useless vs a heavily armored/shielded rock, but could actually hit the fast little ships while the huge capital ship weapons could penetrate the toughest defense, but cant engage the small fries. In effect, you would need a combined arms approach.

In the current SE4, I dont see that. Usually you just stuff your hulls with most of the best weapon you know and be done with it. There is no trade-off in the weapons at that point. There is only a 'best' which is generally equally good vs all comers.

To me at least, a large portion of the tech tree seems unnecessary to be successful (at least on Medium sized maps...on large maps a lot changes, but its a VERY long process to play MP games on the larger maps). Most of our games center on developing beam weapons out the wazoo and going with the support of those weapons. No one goes down any of the interesting side paths as they simply dont provide enough return compared to players who 'go for the kill'.

Some other examples would be the 'Engine' techs. Every three levels you get something and the other changes are bare window dressing. My tech set added 'efficiency' at each level that wasnt giving a new movement bonus...ie, flavor.

Another example would be weapon mounts. In the base set, there is no good reason not to use the largest mount possible. That leads to less decision making and more 'pigeon holing'. I'd like to see a geometric increase in the cost (not size, as that changes the equation) or else 'to hit' penalties to make the ships have definate role rather than simply being better.

I guess that is my main 'complaint'...there is very little opportunity cost to most techs. They are simply better than the lower cost ones. IMO, increased tech should provide greatly increased options. But I dont see that here as often as I'd like. Generally, I keep the same 'decision cycle' and just the numbers change...eq, instead of a gun that does 30 out to range 5, it now does 35 and next level it will do 40 out to 6 and so on.

Hopefully that has explained my opinion a bit better than the previous attempt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

capnq:

Well, when I play singleplayer and just want to relax and 'role play' my race a bit, I tend to research the more esoteric techs too, but this post seemed to concern art or science in a competitive game. Everything changes when you are playing against people who dont fall for the same tricks time and again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

My old mod (pre-gold) had many of those kinds of tweaks and choices in there, but they totally screwed up the AI. Given that my group cant often get enough people to play that we can totally dispense with the AIs, the requirement is that they can at least provide interesting opposition in the game.

I'd love to go back and work on a mod that totally cuts the AI lose, but with the number of times I'd actually be able to use it, I just dont think it would be worth all of the time and effort.

I really liked the Devnullmod as it coincided with many of my own mods (in fact, I even got a small mention in the readme. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). Perhaps now that the new Version is out, I'll give it another go, but the quality of the AI is generally not up to the TDM level for singleplayer play. Most of the folks I play with want to learn one mod and stick with it in multi and single player so that is why we had reverted back to the standard tech set.

Another change that I'd like to see again are real trade-offs in ship sizes. Larger ships should get expensive far more quickly. The way it is now, the larger ship classes are marginally more expensive due to all ships having the same general requirements...Bridge, LS, Crew, and ~6 Engines. The 'hull' cost is only equal to its size, and when a ship is totalling at 5700 minerals, the difference between a DS at 300 and a CA at 500 is miniscule. SE3 did a good job of showing the differences because of the Engine requirements on the larger vessels. Also, since they were build by component rather than cost, a larger ship took a LOT more time to build. In SE4 standard, a DS might take 3 turns and CA only 5. Thats just not enough incentive to build DS's once CAs or anything else are available. In my original mod, cost (and therefore build time and upkeep) was a huge factor in the larger hulls, but unfortunately changing a million AI construction files to 'understand' that was too much of a hassle for something I consider a pastime and a hobby. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyways, I'll probably get bit by the 'modding bug' again here in the near future. If I make any significant changes, I'll post 'em up here again for folks to see and piddle with.

Thanx,
Talenn

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

I think with the size of the user base on PBW, there may be enough of a demand for a "Human only" mod. I could be wrong, but I present as evidence that the "No-AI" mod is one of the most frequently used mods for PBW games.

Of course that is a far cry from the general use that a good single player mod like TDM gets, but I think it might be worth giving it a go.

I am getting a little off topic of this thread though so I think I will start a new discussion.

Geo

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Talenn, have you looked at my Proportions mod yet? One of the main points (besides slowing down development of colonies and research) is to provide large numbers of valid design trade-offs. Small ships remain viable. Fighters and troops become almost necessary. Trade-offs appear between fast ships and long-range ships, firepower versus protection, quality versus economy, and so on.

I have adjusted the weapons and abilities around to make more variety of effective design. I had started a massive overhaul of the weapons and technologies, but these had to be cut from the original mod design for time reasons before the Gold deadline - just the manual work of re-doing the weapon entires was what took the most time, but eventually I might get around to it.

I too decided the AI had to come second. I actually have managed to get it to mostly work, but it takes way less time to set up interesting game changes that it does to tweak the AI to use them.

PvK

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

"No one goes down any of the interesting side paths as they simply dont provide enough return compared to players who 'go for the kill'."

The 'side paths' in this case are mostly more weapons; aside from a few specialized weapons like the Null Space and Shield Depleter, there isn't any reason to go down these, true. My point was more that you don't have to pick any specific weapon to be effective. My weapons selection generally depends on what I feel like using OR what will help me most.

-if I expect conflict very early, DUC
-a little later, PPB
-a little later, torps or meson
-fairly late
-if I am isolated, I research APB or Wave Motion

Phoenix-D

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Talenn,

I agree that those kinds of choices would be nice to have, and would add even more flavor to the game. Adding those sounds as if it would be quite a daunting task. I know from experience that what you said about modding is correct. It's hard to do at all, even harder to do right, and then having to tweak things every time a new patch comes out... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

In the Devnull mod we did something very similer to engines, making the mid-steps more efficent. My goal as to extend those out even further, for example, Ion-Engines out to level 6 or higher, where each level had increasing levels of efficency, or cheaper cost. Ad then when you switched to a new engine tech you lost all that in favor of more speed, and had to research down that thread. Never got aroud to that, and I was thinking it would have been hell to teach the AI how to use them.

Actually I am thinking about doing a new mod, and just conceding the AI from the start. That was always the limiting factor when working on the Devnull mod. We spent 3 hours in AI tweaking (work) for every one hour of brainstroming and designing new components (fun). In the end some ideas had to be scrapped not because they didn't work, or were unbalancing, but just because we couldn't get the AI to use them correctly. And when it comes to patch updates, that is almost always the majority of the work, making changes because now the AI stopped using something.

But if you think about it, how good is the AI ever? Even the TDM AI can't beat me unless I give them big bonuses or handicap myself in some way. But on the other hand I lose a lot more PBW games than I win. Not to mention I play so many PBW games I don't even have time for solo games, unless I am mod testing AI. So why bother right?

Something I'm going to have to think about some more.

Geoschmo

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:
I think with the size of the user base on PBW, there may be enough of a demand for a "Human only" mod. I could be wrong, but I present as evidence that the "No-AI" mod is one of the most frequently used mods for PBW games.

Of course that is a far cry from the general use that a good single player mod like TDM gets, but I think it might be worth giving it a go.

I am getting a little off topic of this thread though so I think I will start a new discussion.

Geo<hr></blockquote>

I think a human only mod is an excellent idea. I was looking for your new discussion but couldn't find it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I build valuation models for a living and was speculating about using Present Values to analyse the tech tree. I could build a complex model using resource/research costs, current research/resource production and expected growth (and decline because of maintenance) of these parameters to work out say the present value of capital ship missiles 2 vs the present value of point defence 3.
Don't know if it would be useful but it would be way cool http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


Askan

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

Not to make light of this topic, but too me SEIV is neither a science or an art form. For me stratigy in SEIV is pure luck. Plain and simple, I role the dice everytime I process a turn. Will my race be conqured by a band of green pig people, will my ship make it through the warp point without getting obliterated on the other side? Stuff like that.

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Atrocities:
Not to make light of this topic, but too me SEIV is neither a science or an art form. For me stratigy in SEIV is pure luck. Plain and simple, I role the dice everytime I process a turn. Will my race be conqured by a band of green pig people, will my ship make it through the warp point without getting obliterated on the other side? Stuff like that.<hr></blockquote>

I strongly disagree. SEIV far from pure luck (otherwise I wouldnt be playing it!). SEIV is built on strategy. In strategy, you direct your forces to produce a favorable result from combat.

Probability is the "roll of the dice" you mention. The Science of Strategy is predicting the outcome of combat via probabilities. Calculating this involves math and while it can be tedious, it can be solved.

The Art of Strategy is plan or method by which you finesse the probabilities of combat to achieve that favorable result. The Art involves such things as trickery, feints, misdirection, essentially strategems. The Art is the human side of combat, where you win by out-thinking your opponent.

[ 01 May 2002: Message edited by: Hank ]</p>

Re: SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?
 

I support the Hank's words.

"Therefore I say: One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose. One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in danger in every battle." Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, chap 3
(Thanks Geo!)

For example, if you know your ships and the enemy ships, there is not any luck when you start a battle... but if you don't know the performance of your ships compared with the ships of your enemies, then, the result will be pure luck.

A good player always will try to reduce the random aspects of the game.