Ship combat experience

[geoschmo]

I just ran a test game using 1.84 and had some combat and the victorious ship gained 1% experience.

[geoschmo]

Ok, I did a little more testing. The ship that fires the Last shot destroying another vessel gains 1% experience. However, I can't seem to get it to add any fleet experience. Perhaps that is broken and is what people are thinking about? I am sure I have seen fleets gain experience in strategic games, so perhaps the fleet experience is broken for tactical combat only.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Loser:
Does the quality of the AI affect how the Ministers handle things?

Sigh, well there is one BIG problem, IIRC. Even if all ships in the fleet (and the fleet itself) that I want to control have the ministers off -- if the resupply minister is on -- he still starts taking control of ship movement when the fleet is at the half supply level.

And the standard AI is a little too dedicated to drone research. But hey, that's what the government wants, who am I to argue?

[ October 16, 2003, 18:02: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Loser]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Sigh, well there is one BIG problem, IIRC. Even if all ships in the fleet (and the fleet itself) that I want to control have the ministers off -- if the resupply minister is on -- he still starts taking control of ship movement when the fleet is at the half supply level.

And the standard AI is a little too dedicated to drone research. But hey, that's what the government wants, who am I to argue?

I think I'd use the TDM AI which, if the Ministers follow the AI, should end up with a more sensible Research path. But still, I'll follow the government's orders even, I guess, when they tell me to pull my fleet back for refueling.

[mottlee]

Originally posted by SpaceBadger:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Karibu:
IIRC ships gain experience only in strategic combat, not tactical.

Argh. Well, that explains it - I almost always use tactical combat in single-player. I will have to check in the game that I have going with my son to see if my ships there have been getting experience (simultaneous turns, all combat is strategic).

Oh well, I have been thinking that I ought to use strategic combat more, just to get used to it for playing PBW, etc.

Thanks for the info.

SpaceBadger

---

That is the only way I do combat and I gain for the ship, have not paid that much att to fleets

[Mephisto]

I'm quite sure the fleet will get XPs too but it needs many more destroyed ships to get one point. In a recent battle between 376 enemy ships with round about 10.000 fighters and my 230 ships with round about 5.000 fighters my fleet jumped from 20% to 46%. No enemy survived, I had about 80 ships remaining. Go figure the XP per kill yourself.

[PvK]

Getting the killing shot with a direct-fire weapon generally gives +1 experience to a ship. This works in all modes of play.

Destroying drones and fighters, and I think even using seekers can give some experience too, but it's much less. The game does track experience at a finer grain than full visible percentage points, but for practical purposes, ship experience is just +1 per killing direct-fire shot.

Fleet experience is also tracked on partial percentage points. A good battle often gives up to about +1, but any battle gives some - it may take a few before you get a +1. I think battles with fewer opponents, and/or battles where you outnumber the opponents, may give less. Battles which involve planet capture seem to give a lot less too (or maybe it's just battles without enemy ships). I think fleet experience is also divided between all the friendly fleets in the battle.

And playing as a "captain" or "fleet commander" is pretty much my favorite way to play SE4 single-player. It's a lot of fun (and very challenging, unless your AI is best) to try to tip the scales as a single commander. However, the Resupply Minister IS a big pain in the aft thrusters! My best solution to that is to commandeer a supply ship. You might also want to disable mines in the game... or else be really careful about scouting ahead to avoid dying to mines - I was having a great game of Proportions as a captain when I led an expedition through a warp point and we were all wiped out by an AI minefield.

Oh, you may want to rename a fleet to "Captain X" (your character's name), and then use it to represent your character in the game, so you can track experience and transfer from ship to ship.

You also might want to run enough turns until the ships and situations involved are interesting.

I recommend using as slow a research rate as possible, though, since the pace of operations as a commander means your ship will tend to be out-of-date after every cruise or two, otherwise.

PvK