Ship and fleet experience
 

I asked MM about fleet experience and got an answer. I asked a clarification to the answer and then I got a second message. Is it my English or why even now I can't understand how the experience is got. I don't want to bug Aaron more if these message are clear enough for somebody so help is appreciated.

First message:
When a ship destroys an enemy ship it receives a single experience point for the kill. Each 5 experience points increase the experience of the ship by one level. If the ship is in a fleet, then all ships in the fleet get 0.1 experience when any of the ships in the fleet achieve a kill.

Second message:
For every kill a ship gets, the fleet it is in gets 0.1 experience for the kill (every ship in the fleet gets 0.1 experience added to it). Each individual ship gets +1% experience for each kill it makes. There is currently a bug in the game where ships are not getting experience for kills via seeker hits. The patch now in progress will fix that problem.

I understood this would be how it works, but it's not correct (except for the first):
Ship experience:
+1% for each kill the ship makes
+0.1% for each kill made by a ship in the same fleet
Fleet experience
+0.1% for each kill made by a ship in the fleet

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I don't think what Aaron told you is correct at all for ship experience. Maybe that is how he wanted it to work, but it is not how it works. It is indeed one XP per kill, not per 5 kills. I have no idea about fleet experience though.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

So now, who is coding this sh...y game ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ January 19, 2004, 20:18: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I think he probably just didn't explain it very clearly. I think what this means is:

+1 ship experience per kill the ship makes.
+0.1 fleet experience per kill the fleet makes.

The stuff he wrote about 5 experience points to go up an experience level is probably referring to the word used to describe the experience level (e.g. Novice, Veteran, Elite, etc.)

The stuff he wrote about ships getting experience for kills their fleet makes is a (confusing) way of explaining the effect of fleet experience. I think it just means the fleet gains experience, and the effect of fleet experience is added to the effect of ship experience. Not that the ship experience actually goes up when some other ship in the fleet makes a kill.

Of course, it's also possible Aaron is mistaken about how it actually works in the current patch.

Now, to test the assertion that fleet experience goes up by +0.1 per ship the fleet kills...

PvK

[ January 19, 2004, 21:07: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Hrm... that could be it too. Happy testing!

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Looks like nobody is able to understand how the experience system works. I'll make more tests and then I'll bug Aaron again.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I think PvK's interpretation of what Aaron said is the most accurate one...

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Not 'nobody' then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I'm sure it's not +0.1 fleet experience per kill, because it requires a way more ships than 10 to get 1% of fleet experience.

However I think a ship gets ships experiece also if the fleet its in makes a kill. If you fight a big battle with unexperienced ships, you'll notice the sum of every ship's experience is more than number of enemy ships.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

oleg always remember the person who really knows a game is the player....

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I'm pretty sure that .1 experience per kill for a fleet is wrong.

In a solo game I am playing, I sent out a ship with 6 experience to capture planets. Having captured about 20 planets, killed several satellites, swept many mines and destroyed MAYBE 10 ships (and probably only 5), it now has experience of 9!

I was surprised when it went to 7, so I started paying attention. Two turns later it went to 8!! having captured a couple planets and destroying 1 ship.

There is more to fleet experience than destroying ships, but darned if I can get a handle on it.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

You don't get any experience destroying planets/capturing them. However, I am not sure if you get any XP's destroying fighters/satellites (which often are on planets).

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think I've ever noticed ship experience go up except when the ship caused the death of another ship.

I think Aaron probably doesn't remember the whole system for fleet experience, and/or there is a bug.

PvK

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have noticed my "capture planet" fleets do gain experience, however they do kill a fair amount of ships and bases in the process so the experience gain is probably due to that.

On the same note as the quote, does anyone know if destroying units give experience? I was thinking that maybe all those satellites and weapon platforms might be contributing to experience. From my personal experience, it doesn't look like units give experience, or if they do, it is at a much reduced rate. I don't think that sweeping mines does, but not sure about the others. What about destroying populations or facilities?

Slick.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

People used to build PD ships and let them build up to Elite experience by killing lots of fighters, then retrofit them to direct fire attack ships. Therefore I would say that PD fire (ie shooting fighters and/or sats and/or seekers) earns XP.

Also, I'm fairly sure succesful boarding/ allegiance conVersion scores XP.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've made testing and I'm no more sure about this.

However there's two things now I'm sure. Each ship gets +1% experience for every kill (nothing new) and fleet doesn't get 0.1% experience for each kill. In my recent test a fleet of four ships killed 100 ships and fleet experience raised only +2%!

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I seem to recall that being patched out, actually.

[ January 20, 2004, 17:08: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

PD (or unit-killing) experience was at least patched way way down. However I think maybe there may be a small fraction given for destroying units of some kinds. You might have to use non-PD weapons, and it's certainly not 1:1, and might be limited to certain types of units. I seem to remember getting some very limited experience though when fighting someone use practically all drones and no ships.

PvK

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

More confusion.

Just played my KOTH turn against Rollo. My totally unblooded baby fleet of 3 gun ships, 1 PD ship and a minesweeper against Rollo's 3 missile ships and a minelayer. Lost 2 gun ships and minesweeper to mines but the PD and one gunships were unharmed.

So:

GK fleet: 1 PD destroyer with 1 DUC and 9 PDC, 1 DUC destroyer with 5 DUC and 2 PDC
Rollo's force: 3 destroyers with 3 missile bays each, one minelayer unarmed

Three battles in this sector on the turn. Result: not a scratch to my force, all Rollo force destroyed.

Experience gained in this first ever battle for these ships:

Fleet 2%
PD ship 4%
DUC ship 2%

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

I not getting smarter, I'm getting dumber!

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Ok, I just setup a test game.

Fleet A ten ships, fleet B 13 ships. I had one ship in fleet A kill all 13 ships in Fleet B. Fleet A gained no Fleet experience, at least if it's got any it's not enough to get to 1%.

The ship in Fleet A that did all the killing got 13% ship experience. The rest of the ships in fleet A show 0% experience still.

Test #2, Ship A baseship with tons of PDC only. Fleet B, 10 missle ships, 2 missles each. Ship A does gain experience from shooting down the missles. As best as I can estimate it took 20 missles to gain 1%. That may not be exact, but it's close.

Geoschmo

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Just checked the result from the battle in "Above the law" (see thread).

My fleet of 39 ships killed 92 with the loss of 1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
Fleet experience rised from 20 to 21 % http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Now I'm really confused http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Watch the replay. I expect you'd see your surviving gunship put the killing blow on 4 ships, and the PD ship finish 2 ships. The fleet experience is interesting, suggesting that you're more likely to get experience with a low-experience fleet, or when your own fleet takes losses.

PvK

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Sorry PVK, there were only 4 ships in that fleet, so my best guess is the DUC ship killed 2, the PD ship killed 2 plus about 40 missiles. But where did the 2% fleet experience come from... especially in light of Primitive's post-- 39 kill 92 and get only 1%?

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Mystery resolved http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Bad news is it opens for a small exploit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Ask Aaron to fix it in the next patch or publish for everyone to use ?

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

You would have to be a pretty low person to resort to such obvious bug exploitation.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I vote for sending it to Aaron while keeping it secret. I guess that besides you noone knows this bug yet. so dont tell it to anyone, and dont exploit it yoursef http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Whom do you accuse here ?? Maerlin' post was perfectly fine.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

I have bugged Aaron (few times) and I got better answers.

Ship experience
+1% for every kill
small amount for seekers, fighters, drones and satellites
none for troops and weapon platforms

Fleet experience
for each kill made by a ship in a fleet, there is a 25% chance that the fleet gets 0.1% experience

I don't know whether fleets get experience for destroying units but I've asked it of Aaron. No reply yet.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well now, THIS explains a lot. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif No wonder we were getting different results every time we ran our tests. For once he sticks a random element in the game and then doesn't tell anyone about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm gonna guess no. One of my tests had a fleet with plenty of PDC facing several ships with missles. While the ships gained individual experience at a slow rate, the fleet gained none. Even with it being only a 1 in 4 chance of getting any experience, with the number of missles my fleet destroyed I would think I would have seen something.

[ January 26, 2004, 15:24: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

Looks like you're right Geo, Aaron said he believe only ships get experience from units.

Yeah that random indeed explains a lot. I made tests when I tried to figure out the fleet experience but I stopped when I got a different result with exactly same settings.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Noone has stated that they have exploited the bug, so noone was accused of anything. Anyone that decides to exploit the bug in a PBW game would be a pretty low person in my book. This, of course, is why you have the game host either explicitly allow or ban all of the known bug exploits.

[ January 26, 2004, 22:40: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Geo, I'm confused. Seems like you were testing for experience gain for shooting down missiles. I don't think missiles are units. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Slick.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Noone has stated that they have exploited the bug, so noone was accused of anything. Anyone that decides to exploit the bug in a PBW game would be a pretty low person in my book. This, of course, is why you have the game host either explicitly allow or ban all of the known bug exploits. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wow Fyron.
Are you saying that players cheat or can cheat in PBW, wow I was going to try it.
Age of Empires PBW has it so you can't cheat, why can't this be the same with se4?

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Missiles aren't units but you still get ship experience for shooting down them.

Re: Ship and fleet experience
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are correct, they aren't. But as Asmala points out ships get experience for destroying them. I think that once the missle is launched in combat, it's treated the same as a unit. I am just guessing on that though.

[ January 27, 2004, 14:45: Message edited by: geoschmo ]