Formations, Strategies, Etc. -- The ***** List

[Grandpa Kim]

Okay, the title says it all. You're going to see a lot of yelling and screaming here and I might even hurt some feelings... In fact, lets start with that.

To you modders: Its great that you want to improve the game by modding, but how about we get the unmodded game fixed first. Had your energies been devoted to this, by your own modding but mostly by contacting Aaron and pointing out the flaws, I wouldn't be writing this. I am predominently a gamer, not a modder and new to PBW to boot, where I discovered most of these flaws. So, I have not worked at improving the game myself. Be assured, Aaron will get a copy of this post and another thread to come, as well as a more personalized letter directly to him.

Now that everyones blood's up, lets get the the meat of my disenchantment. (Note: virtually all that follows applies only to simultaneous games with strategic combat.)

Formations! Formations are just barely moddable, and just barely work. I almost wonder why they were put in the program at all. Maybe because they are just barely better than no formation at all.

First of all, if you want to play PBW, forget modding at all! You must use the default formations AS IS, either in the stock game or the mod you are playing. Whatever is on the PBW server is what you must use. PBW would NOT be willing to take everyone's custom formations and stick them ALL into formations.txt so we can all be happy. The size of that file would go beyond all reason and no doubt there would be duplications of formation names to add to the confusion. Now, if Aaron had set it up so your custom formations go into the .plr file then all would be well (better at least) but he didn't, so for multi-player, formations are but a footnote.

Now don't get all excited if the mod you're playing has lots of cool stuff in formations.txt. As you will soon see, it still won't work.

"So, Kim", you ask, "modding formations.txt would work great for solo play." Not so fast big boy. Yes it does work better, but... Well take my own experience:

I wanted to use and/or mod a formation to suit my style. I found one I liked, and made some changes to the shape to suit me and hallelujah! it worked. Then I wanted to put certain ship types in certain positions and so I modded that and hallelujah! it worked.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!! Wrong answer! Go to the back of the line. It decidedly DID NOT work!
The program insisted on placing any old ship in any old slot, completely ignoring my wishes. True, I did use some custom ship types, but many were also the default types. IE. carriers, troop transports, boarding ships. Not one, of even these standard types, was placed correctly... and NO! I will not accept the excuse that by adding new ship types I confused the poor program. These are simple &%^#@* text files. The program need only play a little matching game to get it right. Hell, I could write a simple program to do just that in Atari Basic in about 5 minutes! (Correction. The "leader" ship is always placed correctly.)

So, though you can get the shape you want, you cannot place ships where you want them. Just take all your great ideas and experience in this department and throw them out the window.

The Strategies Screen. I would say "don't get me started" but I'm gonna bull ahead anyway. (Note, all of my ships and units "break formation".)

Lets start with everyone's favorite: the "ram" order. Is there anything about this order that works right-- or perhaps I should say, as expected? Other than to say it sometimes does work, I can't think of a darned thing. My best guess is there is a Category unbeknownst to most of us that I will call "troop morale". It includes factors like chance of success, chance of cowardice, chance of a "cowboy" captain or admiral, etc. I would accept this possible programming feature except for one thing: I have NOT heard WORD ONE about morale in any official documentation, on these forums, or on the PBW forums, so I do not believe it! I think this is just a buggy order as are several others.

Again, my own experiences.

Situation one:
Mine layer with primary order "Don't get hurt", secondary order "Ram". As expected the lone mine layer (Cruiser size IIRC) fled to a corner and the batch of armed escorts chased it. Soon the minelayer was receiving fire but continued trying to escape by shuttling back and forth over three or four squares. Hmm, so I guess it thought it could still escape since it could still move around. Okay, barely acceptable.
Damaged but not dead, it survived and moved one more sector and was again attacked by the same squadron. This time, the escorts had it pinned in the corner, unable to move at all. It just sat there quivering while the escorts finally ripped it to shreds. My Lord! At what point is "Don't get hurt" unviable? Unable to move, or avoid enemy fire it should have resorted to the ram order! Or is the strength of the primary order so high it cedes power to the secondary very reluctantly? If you answered "yes" to this second question, you get the big BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!! Wrong answer! Back of the line for you too. (See situation three below.)

Situation two:

Large fleet containing several Kamikaze ships vs. much smaller fleets over several battles. The smaller fleets contained everything from destroyers to base ships. The Kamikaze ships were all cruisers with primary order "ram", secondary "point blank" (they all had point defense weapons, so the point blank order seemed reasonable at the time).
NOT ONCE did a Kamikaze ship do its duty. Many were shot down, many milled around the enemy at close quarters while others remained at a moderate to long range (5 to 10 squares). Disgusted, I eventually retrofitted them to another type.

Situation three:

Task force from that same large fleet. Approx. 9 ships including a dreadnaught repair ship, completely unarmed, with orders "Don't get hurt" and "ram". (Yes, the same orders as the minesweeper in situation one!) This task force encounters a lone base ship.
As expected my fleet and the lone base ship approached each other. Surprisingly, so did the repair ship. I thought the program had stupidly sent it to the opposite corner, but no, it seemed to stalk the big opponent. Soon the damn thing rams the base ship! Lucky for me the line ships had hopelessly disabled it and the repair ship was able to finish it off. Damage to the repair ship was considerable but luck prevailed and the task force was able to rejoin the main fleet without delay.

Now, why did these two identically ordered ships in sit. one and sit. three do entirely different things? And how, despite radically different reactions, did they both manage to miss doing the correct thing? Needless to say I was/am beginning to think I'm wasting my time on the strategies screen.

Now for the biggie.

Situation four:

I won't say this cost me the game, but I will say it turned a spirited conflict between two large empires into a rout of my empire.
At Last I have found the fabled sphereworld and right under my nose it was, hidden in an obscuring storm. Bringing in my fleet of 20 plus ships including the key storm destroying ship, I set all the ship designs included in the fleet to "Do not fire on... planets, bases, bases (no weapons), satellites and mines. In fact the fleet was using one of these adjusted orders iself (short range, which about 25% of the ships in the fleet were using). Yes, I intended to blockade the planet and accept its surrender and the riches thereon, and yes, I knew my ships may take some fire as they went chasing after hypothetical transports or colony ships. But did they do that? Careful now, don't risk the BZZT!
Of course they did no such thing! The entire fleet went after the planet, the satelites and the two bases with a vengeance! Didn't cost me too much (maybe two ships) and I did cut the pop. in half. The real cost was depleted supplies so that when my big opponent attacked shortly thereafter, I had nothing left and was mopped up with ease. (My first quantum reactor ships were just coming Online then.)
Now, I don't know about you but "Do not fire on..." is pretty crystal clear. Kinda black and white. No room for interpretation. Rather "binary" don't you think? So WHY THE HELL was this too complex for a computer program? And don't tell me other parts of the firing order take priority over it! If the "don't fire on types" order isn't FIRST priority it is utterly USELESS!

These four scenarios are not exhaustive. There are several minor items that I quickly got used to but are decidedly unexpected.

You may ask if I'm sure about all this. Legitimate question. Lets just say I am as certain as is humanly possible that I made no errors. Doesn't mean errors aren't possible which may have caused these strange results, but you will have to go a loooooong way to convince me. I am morally certain that the strategies work poorly at best and once again I say, if some sort of morale or cowboy factor is included, I have heard zilch about it so I find it unacceptable at this time.

Lets go on to some miscellaneous items.

Here's a cute one, and not really a bug at all. I call it the "First Player Disadvantage". In any simul game, player no. l moves first. To be sure this can often be an advantage, but try chasing down a fleet moving the same speed as yours. Your fleet moves onto his fleet... and his fleet IMMEDIATELY moves away with NO BATTLE resulting. So, your fleet then moves onto his fleet and his fleet again immediately moves away. You can keep this up for a thousand years and never catch the bugger. Fortunately there are so many other variables that the situation rarely Lasts very long. I don't know what can be done about this or even if anything should be done about it. Just one of those quirks of the digital world.

Most everyone knows about colony modules vs. mine warheads I. Let me point out another. Massive mounted Wave Motion guns vs. mine warheads III. There may be more. I haven't checked. A bug that should be fixed. Very unbalancing and unbelievably unrealistic.

"Combat occurs every five days." I first heard about this on these forums and took it for gospel. I have not heard it from Malfador or Shrapnel. As it turns out, this is a fallacy. My example: My small fleet moved to an undefended enemy planet, arriving on day 17. It also attacked on day 17, when I expected it to attack on day 20. On day 18, a larger enemy fleet arrives and attacks my fleet on day 18. I expected it to wait till day 22 or perhaps day 20, but it attacked immediately as did my fleet the day before. In fact, my expectation was that no action at all would take place till day 20 with the hope that I would cream the planet before the enemy fleet creamed me. Perhaps it is that if both fleets were intact after that battle, the next confrontation would not take place for another 5 days but only if both fleets remained in that sector... Maybe...

I have seen too many examples of opposing ships/fleets sitting in the same sector for a turn or two and not fight at all beyond the initial battle. Sometimes they will fight two or three times in a turn, where one would expect 6 battles every turn. So, though there may be some truth to the five day rule, it is a long way from the bald statement "Combat occurs every five days". Examine your own simul games and you will soon see there are more holes in this "rule" than in Clyde Barrow's body.

There should be an easy way to group fighters. I once had a group of some 500 fighters all armed with rocket pods. In that configuration, they were able to do 25000 points of damage but only to one target! Talk about overkill! By the time I had them reduced to smaller Groups, the game was over. The same applies to joining together small Groups into larger Groups. It should be as easy as building fleets.

Well, I think I've stirred up enough sh** for one day. And I'm sure I'll get lambasted for this bit of nastiness. Go ahead, do your worst. I do believe I'm ready to defend my views.

(Please check out my thread "The Strategies Screen-- a Wish List")