Base Training
 

With the latest patch, you can no longer fleet with bases- to fix the resupply issue.

OK, but I think another can of worms just opened. Defensive bases are now taking AT LEAST a 20% penalty to both attack and defense. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif You can no longer fleet them, so they can't get the fleet defensive bonus! And if you're using them for WP defense, you can't ship train them unless you're pyhic. -40. Owww..

Now, how do we fix that? Aside from letting bases fleet..

Phoenix-D

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">1) No fleet bonus - I dunno how to fix this. Except to rationalize that the base isn't in fleet formation, so it should't acquire fleet experience. How does the base acquire any defence bonus -- "Now we don't have thrusters, so when the APB comes our way, everyone run to Sector G at once and we'll tilt the base out of the way"

2) No ship training at warp points - well, if the crew is undergoing intensive combat readyness training, maybe we can mimic that with a base only training component. Wasn't Elowan working on that? Or maybe some base only component - battle simulator holodeck or some such technobabble - that gives the base a bonus.

[ September 23, 2002, 23:14: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well... there is a flag in settings.txt that lets you fleet bases, but that isn't what you're looking for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hehe... That's good. But if you want to give bases that extra 20% to hit and 20% to be missed, why not just adjust the base bonuses on the base design itself?

Re: Base Training
 

Maybe they shouldn't have defensive bonuses anyway -- they just sit still in space like a big target, right? And don't their mounts give bonuses to hit already?

-Spoon

Re: Base Training
 

It seems that this Gives Psychic an extra bonus, so perhaps change it so that Bases don't get any experiance at all.

Re: Base Training
 

The simplest solution would be to remove the 'system wide training' abilities as Psychic only bonuses. That is, make all training facilities system wide. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Would that be considered a hit for the value of the Psychic trait?

A better sceheme for SE V would be to change the way experience works. I emailed MM with a new system a while ago but I dunno if he's working on SE V yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The current system is a bit crude. When you need to build larger ships you cannot carry over your experienced crews to the new ships, for example. Someone suggested in another thread that we should be able to 'transfer' crews to new ships when we scrap old ones. Keeping track of 'crews' is a bit difficult since a 'crew' is actually a composite of hundreds or possibly thousands of people/creatures. And the number of crew required for each given size/class of ship is going to be different, not to mention differences caused by changes of the equipment in use. An 'experienced' crew of a missile ship is not going to be nearly so competent if you transfer them to a carrier. How do you track the 'type' of training that the crew has? And anyway, the AI cannot use the current system effectively. How would it handle a more complex system?

I think that what is required is some sort of 'pool' of crew experience based on the number of ships in you have in service and how long they are in service. A sort of 'accumulated hours of operation' measurement, averaged over the number of ships you have. As this pool grows larger relative to fleet size, the default experience of your ships can increase because you can assume a better general level of training in your 'armed forces'. But ships getting destroyed in combat means dead crew, so you should also suffer losses from your pool due to losses of ships in combat. Ship and fleet training facilities will still have a use, but they should just add to the global 'experience pool' so that it will increase even if ships are not earning experience in actual combat, or recover faster from losses. This would be much more usable by the AI than the current system because you wouldn't have to park your ships in a special location for a certain amount of time.

Ships should still gain experience individually for success in combat, but then their new experience would be 'average in' to the general pool. Most individual ships would just rely on the empire-wide 'average' experience/training level. This would tend to 'even out' the differences between ships and make most of your fleet have a similar level of effectiveness. I suppose some people will not like this feature of the system. But isn't that how it works in real life? Do navies in our world generally have radically different levels of crew competence among their ships? Don't crew members actually get shuffled among ships quite a bit? You shouldn't take Star Trek for an accurate portrayal of military service. It's actually quite rare for one officer to stay with one ship for 5 years or more. If you still want to have 'elite' units than maybe you should be able to give some of your ships a special designation as 'elite' and pay extra maintenance costs for their extra training so they can be above the fleet average.

Yes, this would eliminate the usefullness of the 'reassign crew' intel project. But this type of system would be so much more realistic. It would effectively make trained crews a 'resource' that you would have to develop and manage, and could lose in a disastrous war. Managing the 'man power' (creature power?) of your armed forces in this way would be simpler (no parking ships over training facilities and checking to see when they're 'ready') than the current system, and yet more fun.

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Boo... The psycic training facility was what made psycic cool. (The allegence subverter is what makes it easy) It was so great when I captured a planet that had them -- I didn't even know they had that facility. And once it was mine--

Ensign: "Message from the emperor, Captain Neo, we are to report to system Quertarsis"

Neo: "Get under way"

Helm "Exiting warp point now, sir"

Enire Crew: Woah

Admiral M: "How do you feel, Neo?"

Neo: "I know Kung-Fu"

Modeling the crew's experience in the way you described would make the game richer, but a whole lot more micromanagement might not be what people want -- re: a recent thread on fatigue and shore leave.

Edit: Well it's not really micromanagement -- but a scout lost in a black hole system, or a minesweeper that's one sweeper short affecting your top of the line battleship http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif I dunno these things are out of your control kinda.

[ September 24, 2002, 03:58: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is exactly what I have done in the Devnull Mod. Mostly to give all AI the ability to train their fleets like humans can. To balance this out against the psychic advantage 'normal' training facilities will only raise the experience by +1% per turn, while psychics can still train at +3%.

Rollo

Re: Base Training
 

Why not just keep the system as it is, with a simple addition ?

The way things are shown in Star Trek etc are the way we like things most. Not an anonymus piece of military hardware with exchangeable crew, but "a lucky few, a band of brothers", fighting far from home for their race. And if you want reality: If you keep your ships on duty (as I do in SE4), you will really not get much opportunity to exchange crew. ("Captain, a new and competent ensign has warped in from the homeworld. I just wished they could transfer energy and supplies just as easy, for THAT we have to go back to starbase ...")

Why not allow the upgrade to another size of ships instead, and keep your crew ?

Yes, a missile boat has some other jobs when compared to a transport. But it also has some very similar jobs, like piloting a spacecraft, or bringing a crosshair in the right position.
Just make it so that you loose 10% of the experience (you had 30%, now you have 27%) when you upgrade. The real difference between ships is in engineering imho, and that would even apply if you upgrade a missile ship to another missile ship design (if it is not different, why have another design ?).

If you upgrade to another size of ship, just have another modifier: you go up one size, you loose 33% of the experience (lot of "green" crew to fill the gaps), so you had 30%, and now you have 20%. You go down one size, you win (because you can pick the best) 33% experience: you had 30%, now you have 40%. (For all who try to abuse this, by switching back and forth, you loose experience that way.)

I think that would make an easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to program sollution.

Oppinions anybody ?

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMHO this was discussed before.
Would be nice but i doubt we'll see a system like that before SEV.

Re: Base Training
 

It seems that the resupplly thing was actually a feature... why did they take it out then?

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Say you have a fleet of 100 ships that is 80 sectors away from the nearest resupply depot and running low on supplies. You could build one small space station with only the bare minumum of components, and then magically resupply all of your ships in deep space. It was rather unrealistic to be able to do this. And keep in mind that this was possible long before spending millions of research points to get quantum reactors.

[ September 25, 2002, 08:24: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Base Training
 

[quote]Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

Quote:

Say you have a fleet of 100 ships that is 80 sectors away from the nearest resupply depot and running low on supplies. You could build one small space station with only the bare minumum of components, and then magically resupply all of your ships in deep space. It was rather unrealistic to be able to do this. And keep in mind that this was possible long before spending millions of research points to get quantum reactors.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, that's an exploit of the games's mechanics. My reasoning was that the base is continually resupplied by the "invisible trader network, by space tourists, etc"

So here's another work around. You can only build a base in orbit of a planet you control. You can fleet with it to resupply, but the deep space station isn't possible.

I very rarely build asteroid mining bases or warp point defence bases. But maybe you wanna say that you can build bases anywhere in a system you have planets.

I realize, now you can't have that fighter base in the nebula, which I did try once or twice. So maybe you can build a base anywhere, it just has normal supply storage, that is continually resupplied by the civilian trader network, at a rate dependant on distance to your planets.

I realize this is all really too complicated for a simple patch. But I did like fleeting with bases around my planets. I never did the deep space exploit, that seemed too cheezy.

But I never buildt resupply depots. I mean really, and entire facililty spot lost just to refuel. Yeah, it's fair and logical, but I hated it. Maybe we could mod the spaceport or spaceyard to resupply.

A exploit I did was to never build one, and resupply by fleeting bases. Then, I'm glad to accept an AI military alliance. I know they're not going to gain any benefit. No colonizing my space. No parking an invasion fleet at my homeworld and declaring war. So now I just don't accept the military alliance.

Re: Base Training
 

I tend to use my base fleets to keep the area from being cluttered. Like when I have 20 or so BSY's orbiting my homeworld. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

(What would really be nice is some sort of built-in supply generation ability for bases along with some base-only components to increase it. Then make supplies transferrable like cargo.)

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, what would make a lot of exploits go away would be to make supply a transferable quantity like cargo. Oh well, for SE5, I guess.

Re: Base Training
 

<$.02>

Well, I too liked fleeting bases. As mentioned earlier, if you have 20+ orbiting a planet, the ship list gets kinda' cluttered. But on the other hand, I don't care much for the inherent infinite supply that bases get.

How about having to supply bases just like ships? Maybe give the base hull a certain amount of supply storage. As they don't move, they wouldn't use supplies unless firing weapons, etc. Then, unless they were at a Resupply Depot, you'd need to oufit 'em with Solar Collectors or QR's. If they had a QR, you'd fleet 'em for filling up just like you do now.

Then, you still could use them as a remote resupply station. Personally, I used to do that all the time - find a storm and build a base far from home. Use it as a waypoint and fleet 'em when they get there.

The only downfall to this is the micromanagement involved. You'd need 2 turs to fill the whole fleet 'cause you coul;dn't move all the ships in the fleet to the base's fleet. (You have to keep at least 1 ship in the fleet).

</$.02>

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See, I didn't mind the micromanagement involved. It was kinda a role playing thing. Before going to a battle, or a deep space exploration or colonization, ships would fleet with the base.

Passengers would depart, news would be shared, letters home would be offloaded, crew would enjoy the entertainment facilities, while the bridge crew would discuss latest tactics and gossip. It's a pretty typical episode of ST:NG or BAB5.

While this is happening, the engines are resupplied, missile batteries a reloaded, crates of depleted uranium slugs were stored.

New fleet members would arrive, like repair ships and resupply ships. Colony ships and cargo ships would break their old fleet and rejoin new ones. Maybe people would pick up a little training at the planets' training facilities.

I thought the delay was more fun than, "OK, supplies are low, gotta just move past that square there and they'll be full as it passes"

How does the planet bound resuppy base work, giant rail guns shooting supply crates up to passing ships. "Dammit Lieutenent, you gotta aim for the OPEN supply hatches"

[ September 25, 2002, 19:21: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is completely unnecessary. Just add the base to the ship fleet for a turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That could be seen as part of the difficulty of resupply in deep space w/a depot. The depots could have tons of shuttles to bring up supplies and such.

Anyone test a "resupply" component that acts like a depot?

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Doh! Couldn't see the tree because of the forest!! That is definitely the easier way.....

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Doh! Couldn't see the tree because of the forest!! That is definitely the easier way.....</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, that's what I usually did. But the other way, making the base a fleet and fleeting ships with it, is a way to transfer the Base's Fleet's experience(acquired via planet training facility) to the mobile fleet. I avoided doing that, seems like an exploit.

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's not really an exploit. It is a common practice. Although now, you have to do it with a ship, instead of being able to train fleets with a base in them.

Re: Base Training
 

Just look at it as if the Fleet Training represents an admiral, who can be assigned to various ships and bases.

The admiral retires when his fleet is disbanded.

If you swap out the base with 20 ships, the admiral just flew over in a shuttle to take command.

Re: Base Training
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'd have to agree that making training system-wide would have to be the simplest solution.

The thought of assigning crews based on the number of crew quarters onboard also seems interesting, and then making them transferrable like cargo, then again, it'd probably be too much micro-management...