Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

I was thinking of updating the FAQ, but the newest Posts seems to be contradictory so I don't know what to write.
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=005518
How IS fleet experiance really calculated, is it tonnage killed? Does fleet size matters?

All input welcome.

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Only Aaron Hall (or someone that has already asked him and remembers) would be able to answer that question. It is a relatively obtuse formula. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Should I write:
"5.7.10 Fleet experiance is earned by an relatively obtuse formula" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

(edit spellcheck)

[ December 01, 2002, 09:53: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

A good battle can give as much as +1%, but often it seems to be less than 1%, but greater than 0, and it adds up. Having more than one fleet in a combat either divides the gain, or negates it completely.

Note that if you have a fleet (or ship) with less than the experience to gain a whole point, and then you train that ship up to the max for your training facilities, it will still have it's fractional experience. I.e., a ship with 0.3 experience seems to be trainable up to 20.3 with a facility limted to 20 experience. At least, that's how it seems, by looking at the descriptions, because inexperienced but trained ships and fleets show as "Veteran +20", while those that have seen some action will train up to "Elite +20".

Not that it makes much difference.

PvK

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

I created a fleet of 5 cruisers armed with WMGs and pitted it against several enemy cruisers with no weapons (to make sure I didn't lose my fleet with experience http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ). It took 41 ships killed to get fleet experience up to 1%. Every ship had at least 4% ship experience.

I took a fleet of one frigate armed with a WMG. It took 40 of the same cruisers to get to fleet experience 1% (ship experience 40%).

I took a fleet of 19 of the above frigates armed with WMG. It took 47 of the same cruisers to get to fleet experience 1% (ship experience ranged from 0% to 4%).

Note that it took several battles to get the above results.

A battle between the 19 fleet (reconstituted with 0% fleet experience) and a group of 80 cruisers generated 2% fleet experience (combat turns extended to 999).

A battle between the 1 fleet (with 0% fleet experience) and 80 cruisers generated an integer overflow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

In other words, the answer is that fleet experience does not rely on tonnage, damage, fleet count, ship experience, or any other rational explanation. Rather, it is a random function triggered by unexplained cosmic phenomena. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have always suspected this... nice to have it confirmed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

I'm 100% sure that to get experience, the ship must have direct fire weapons. Ships with seekers doesn't get experience.
Also, killing fighters and seekers, can generate experience.

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Originally it didn't work, and ships using only seekers did not gain experience. For a while in the late pre-Gold patches you DID get experience for destroying the enemy with seekers. Which was nice. But it broke and hasn't been fixed again since. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

It would be nice to have this back but it might be a lot of hassle to track what ship fired what seekers. I'd rather see experienced awarded for combat experience in general rather than the accident of the final kill anyway. Maybe 1 percent experience for every 100 turns in combat or something like that. Of course, this too can be a settable ratio in the text config files. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Correct. DF weaps are the only way to get ship and fleet experience. PDC firing on seekers and drones is included in this. In fact, fleet experience may be higher than average ship experience when facing missile-heavy enemies.

This experience stuff is weird. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

How do you get race experience, and what does it do? Does it have any effect at all?

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">From the Frequently Asked Questions For Newbies: <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Establishing new colonies is one thing that earns racial experience points; I'm not sure what else does. The only thing racial experience seems to affect is the description of your race's Age.

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Drones also give a lot less than 1 ship experience per kill, but they do seem to give some. I don't think shooting down seekers gives very much experience, if any.

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

Race experience is earned for all sorts of things, as I recall. Colonization, building things, fighting, etc. It's mainly supposed to give an indication to human opponents of how long their opponent has been playing using the same empire, assuming the player keep using the same .EMP file in multiple games.

Originally, it was intended to give a small bonus to this or that, as well, but I don't think it does currently. It would be sort of interesting, but a bit unfair since players with deranged priorities could auto-run their EMP files through thousands of turns just to get a bonus...

PvK

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I wouldn't call myself deranged, but I made a mod to get to god-like age for the Vorlon empire file I used in several PBW games. You get ship tonnage / 10 experience for each ship you build. Make a 50,000 kT ship size, and you can get any experience level you want with only 100 or so turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

According to the history.txt file experience gained for destroying fighters is at a lower rate than that for ships. Perhaps ssekers are included in that. If so it could make it very difficult to figure out how much experience is gained from X number of ships being destroyed.

Geoschmo

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

"I don't think shooting down seekers gives very much experience, if any."
I set a fleet up to run out of supplies shortly into a battle against a bunch of missile boats. Main weapons wouldn't fire, but PDC did. They started with 0% exp, and the fleet had 50% legendary when the battle ended. No ship had more than 10% exp, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To my eyes, it looks like the ratio is about 40 cruisers per point of fleet experience, regardless of fleet size. There's obviously some variability, perhaps based on number of battles required (rounding errors per battle?). All of which explains a lot.

It's also possible, (based on someone else's post about gaining 50 points of fleet experience for killing only seekers) that it's N kills per point, N (maybe) being different for each type of kill (seeker, fighter, satellite, drone, ship, base). I have no idea if glassing planets or destroying weapon platforms grants experience to either fleets or ships.

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Which Version of the game was this? Sounds like a potential cheat of annoying importance.

PvK

Re: Fleet experiance, how is it earned.
 

It was Gold v1.78. I modded combat turns to run to 255; this was on full tech start (for ease of testing). IIRC, it was something like 20 mostly-PDC LCs against ~35-40 missile CRs.