SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?

[Askan Nightbringer]

OK...back from my public holiday (go the Diggers!), but probabaly not for too long coz the office is half empty and therefore its been declared a boozy lunch at the pub day.

For my first hypothesis I'm going to state that strategy in SE in no way mimics strategy in real life. This is largely due to the fact the that SE is a computer game and has limits, reducing possible actions to just a handful, with known bounds on anything from technology to methods of warfare.

Now getting back to offensive/defensive bonuses and importance to any success.
First I'de like to state there are two forms of defeat in SE4.
1. An early sneak attack. Whether its backstabbing an ally (rare coz I rarely see alliances break), stealth armour and planetry napalm or swarming in on an unsuspecting empire coz the player believes everyone likes to trade colonisation tech before they fight. Nothing really matters in either of these cases, the defender dies (either quickly or they flop around like a dying fish for a while).

2. A more conventional defeat. These are usually broken into two battles. The first battle is where the invader busts through the defence of one side, usually the defender's older ships that have been sitting on a warp point. The second battle is where the defender does a mad scramble of all available ships and throws them into a Last ditch defence.

I've seen the second scenario replayed a dozen or so times. More often than not the battles are extremely lopsided, with one side been completely wiped and the other suffering few losses. The defender suffers a demoralising defeat, the invader an almost embarrasing victory. The ships can even appear similiar in technology.

There are really only 2 factors in these battle that lead to the defeat.
1. Ship placement. (My gripe with SE combat at the moment). Besides the case where one fleet come through the warp point (I know where that fleet ends up) I have no idea why SE places the ships where it does. I've seen battles where one side forms a neat little queue to the killing zone, when both sides are completely scattered over the map or in a recent battle between 70 attacking dreadnaught against me (50 battleships) and my ally (30 base ships) I ended up packed tightly in one corner, my ally in the opposite corner and the attacking dreadnaughts scattered around where I was, including some ships that were completely surrounded by my ships.

2. One side only hits 1 in 6 shots, the other side hits pretty much every time.

Although there is nothing you can do about 1 (or I think there is anyway), number 2 is all about your offensive/defensive bonuses.
Success in the game does NOT depend on technological advantage, its depends on an advantage in the correct technologies. You can concede a disadvatange in shields, ship size, weapons, construction, resource production as long as you are superior in offence/defence.


Well thats my scientific explanation of strategy in SE4. Obviously I think about it too much but I must say that about 1 in 10 turns I play are after coming back from the pub. So maybe Belisarius is right..its about 90% science and 10% art


Askan

[geoschmo]

quote:

---

Originally posted by askan:
Success in the game does NOT depend on technological advantage, its depends on an advantage in the correct technologies. You can concede a disadvatange in shields, ship size, weapons, construction, resource production as long as you are superior in offence/defence.

---

I am starting to see your point here. However I still feel that much of what you are calling science is actually art. It takes the knowledge and skill to know when to research these techs. To develop the plan, and to be able to adapt it to what your enemy is doing.

Something that just hit me like a ton of bricks in our recent game is that fact that the defensive bonuses for Steath Armor, Scattering Armor, and ECM all stack. I am not sure why I didn't already know that, but I was under the misunderstanding that you only got the highest defensive bonus of one of those three, not all three.

So you could say that you wiped me out because of the science of the armor defense bonuses, or the art of not knowing when to research them.

Geoschmo

[Skulky]

A few historical comments that i missed out on adding before when they were more relevant but anyway here goes.

The German's lost against the Russians, not because they couldn't fight or had bad military leadership, instead it was the fact that Hitler (one of the stupidest leaders of all time) tried to run the military campaign. His politics and insane generalship got in the way. If Rommel or any other halfway competent general had run the campaign on his timetable with his units he would have won. I played a simulation against a very smart opponent as the Germans and won, hands down, I took worse losses than the Germans initially but ended up winning cause the weather effects didn't hit me in the end.

Vietnam, same goes for Mog, if we (being hte US) had put our backs behind it we would have done a lot better, if the men on the ground had been told to kick their asses anyway they could the war woudl have been won, problem was that the "managment" was telling them where to fight and how hard, furthermore there was no general objective or strategy. I just read "the things they carried" great boook and the soldiers felt like all they did was walk around, shoot ppl burn villages and keep walking. In WW2 we had a job to do with straight foward lines, Vietnam needed definition and objectives.

Finally, in Somalia the men there took on something they couldn't handle with their current ROE (dont' kill ppl that arn't shooting you). If htey had went in and out by helicopter, or the trucks hadn't gotten lost, OR they had been authorized to kill anyone who wasn't american and brought in heavy artillery they woudl have won, the odds the fought against and still survived were amazing.

Finally, Finally, american's can't take causlties. When Stalin lost a million in a battle he gave htem all medals and their families grieved and the neighbors thought those who had died heros. Here we point the finger at the government for causing these losses. The biggest lesson i learned while playing, surprise surprise, Starcraft was that you're going to lose some people. Hell you're goign to lose a lot of ppl. Loses should be minimized but not to the extent of tactical consideration. I wouldn't want to die, but when this mentality forces paralysis it isn't acceptable.

[Gryphin]

Skulky,
I think you are agreeing with all of us.
It came down to the quality of the equpiment on both sides and the way they were deployed and used. To me that translates "Science and Art".

[Talenn]

geoschmo et al:

While you are quite correct that it does eventually come down to outthinking the enemy, I think he brings up a valid point.

If you know what the 'best' weapons and ship archetypes are, why bother to have a tremendously rich tech tree of items that are clearly inferior to the 'tried and true' method? I think most people are convinced that Missiles are utterly useless past the initial stages of the game. Same goes for half of the weapons in the 'standard' tech set...they just arent worth it compared to some of the other weapons.

So, in essence you have plenty of choices, but if you want to compete, you really dont. It comes down to strategic maneuver, yes, but why include the rest if it isnt anything but window dressing?

I went through once long ago (v1.21 or so) and modded the heck out of the game to try and rebalance a lot of things in the game. I was quite pleased by the results, but I had to spend entirely too much time tweaking the AIs to accomodate my changes and I eventually lost interest after the patches kept adding to the workload. Now, I just play the 'standard' techset simply to avoid having to constantly update my date for patches.

But after a few games recently, I'm inclined to agree with askan in that there is really a fairly easily found 'formula' to success. Personally, I think future patches should be devoted to tweaking the existing gameplay so as to make many of the option already present in the game seem more palatable. One thing I've noticed about SE4 is that there are rarely any 'Guns or Butter' decisions in the tech tree. Most of the econ techs arent worth it vis a vis the military ones. The only real decision is which military techs to research and even that is limited by the somewhat unbalanced state of the various weapons.

At any rate, I think that askan's point is very valid and would like to see those points addressed at some point in the future if balance tweaks are still possible in the 'real' set.

Thanx,
Talenn

[geoschmo]

Talenn,

I don't think Askan has even tried to make the point that there is only one best weapon. In fact he has as much as stated it really doesn't matter what weapon you choose, that combat is driven by the various attack and defense bonuses.

While I can see Askan's point has some merit, I can't agree with yours at all. You can do a spreadsheet and calculate which weapon has the highest damage to weight ratios if you want. But I disagree that that takes any element of choice from the game. There are enough differences among weapons in cost and amount of research requiqired to allow for plenty of variety.

Askan's point is about the fact that regardless of weponry if you want to succeed the races that get have the offensive and deefensive bonuses will have the early advantage, and those that get to the ecm, Cbt sensors, and stealth and scattering armor first will have the most sucess. That's an argument I can't really disagree with, but I don't think it's one that forces people into one choice in weaponry.

The fact is, and I think Askan would agree with this, that given a similer base starting point of these combat modifyng techs, there are numerous other decisions in ships design and strategy taht all have their various tradeoffs.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. Many people have complained about the lack of weapon balance in this game. Many have dedicated to "fixing" the problem. And as of yet I have not seen any mods that are any better than the stock game in that respect. If someone want's to show me one, I'd be happy to play it.

Geoschmo

[capnq]

quote:

---

So, in essence you have plenty of choices, but if you want to compete, you really dont. It comes down to strategic maneuver, yes, but why include the rest if it isnt anything but window dressing?

---

Because not everybody considers competition to be the sole reason for playing.

For people who prefer approaching the game as art, the "window dressing" provides a huge palette to work with. The scientists will probably defeat the artists when they go head-to-head, but the artists are less likely to get bored with using the same tactics all the time.

IMO, science "versus" art is a false dichotomy; science and art are ends of a spectrum, not an either/or choice.

[Phoenix-D]

"Many have dedicated to "fixing" the problem. And as of yet I have not seen any mods that are any better than the stock game in that respect"

Mostly because when they (I ) start, they find out that A. things are a little better balanced than they thought and B. it's *hard* getting things balanced right.

Look at the APB. On a pure damage/kt scale, this thing is a monster- 2.3 damage/kt. However..it also costs almost 2 million research points to fully research, on medium tech cost. Something like the Meson BLaster, which does 'only' 1.75 damage/kt and is a bit shorter ranged, costs less than a quarter. In other words, you can have Meson VIs much, much sooner than someone can have APB XIIs. Mesons also have no damage dropoff.

The Wave Motion Gun. Costs less than the APB to research (true!) though you only get it at the very end of the research chain. Damage/kt rating of 2; damage/kt/turn rating of a less than stellar .67. However, you *can* run out of range with it while it's recharging, it does full damage along it's entire range, and it gets a 30% bonus to hit!

Quantum torpedo. Damage/kt: 2.5 1.25 per turn. Again, cheaper than the APB, if only because it has two less levels to research.

Missiles are a special case; they and fighters are weak because PD is so effective, not because they're weak in and of themselves. You can't saturate an enemies defenses when your weapons are twice as big AND fire three times slower.

Economy is very important BTW. Research center upgrades will get you that tech faster, miner upgrades (and computers) will put more ships in space. It's worthless to have the most high tech ship in the game if the enemy can field so many of his slightly lower tech ships he overwhelms and destroys you.

Phoenix-D

[Skulky]

my first question for Phoenix is "what do you do with all those extra worlds dedicated to research when you know it all?" I can't figure out any good quick solution. Also if you have a ton of spaceyards that is the fastest way to victory, even if they produce slower you can get them in greater amounts than planets so they make up for it in spades.

[Loser]

Rather than two ends of the same specturm, would not Art and Science (say it like you feel seomthinG: "_SCIENCE!_") be two separate axis. Within the area defined by these axis are all the activities imaninable.

Possibly there are other axis, to define every possible action.... Like 'wack' there really ought to be a scale of 'wack'.