Ship/Fleet experience

[Asmala]

Good point. *Testing*

[Asmala]

Looks like the formula isn't very simple. I get different experiences depending whether the enemy is fleeted or not.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Asmala:
Slick, how you get experience to fleets? It seems that no matter what I do it's always 0%.

Aside from the obvious way of training them at a fleet training center, I have had fleets gain experience from general battles. It could be any or all of the following: killing ships, glassing planets, capturing ships, capturing planets. Based on casual observation, I would think that glassing planets and capturing ships/planets gives no experience but I can't prove it. I think it is unlikely that sweeping mines counts based on that minesweepers do not accrue "enemy tonnage destoyed kt" for sweeping mines. Not sure if experience is gained by destroying other units.

Fleet experience gained from battle is definitely obtained at a lower rate than ship experience, but I can say it is > 0%. In single player games, I usually train my ships/fleets to 20/20 before using them. As time goes on and more battles are fought and won, it is common to see particular ships in a fleet to go up in experience faster than others in the same fleet, usually the more advanced or larger hulls. I usually see the fleet leader (usually my most powerful warship) have the highest ship experience. Also the highest ship experience usually is higher than the fleet experience. Basically the non-combatant ships in the fleet rarely if ever get any experience (maybe from PDC??? or was that patched out???) I almost always have my fleets break formation, if that has a bearing on anything. As time goes on, the fleet will start to gain experience beyond the 20% as well. Usually the more powerful an individual ship is in the fleet, the faster it gains individual ship experience relative to the other ships in the fleet. Against the AI, I rarely shy away from a fleet vs. fleet battle. On those occasions that my fleet destroys a sizable enemy fleet, there normally is noticable increase in fleet experience. Based on casual observations, I would guess that fleet experience is solely increased based on the kt of enemy ships/bases destroyed (outside of training, of course).

I also believe that ship and fleet experience is capped at 50% since I have never seen a ship/fleet with a higher percentage.

If I was designing the calculation, I would just make fleet experience be the average of its individual ship experience. It seems logical to me that adding in a ship with 0% should lower the overall fleet experience since it would adversely affect the fleet's ability to coordinate an attack and operate together well. Conversely a highly trained ship would be beneficial to the fleet. However, I am sure that SE4 does not work that way.

Once I have a Fleet Training Center, I always create a lot of 1-ship fleets so that I can always fill them on short notice and basically get an instant 20% attack & defense bonus if I need to scrape a fleet together quickly. I make sure that I always have more 1-ship fleets fully trained and ready to go than ships to fill them for a full attack fleet. Although it is a cheap tactic, you can use an obsolete or mothballed ship as a placeholder - the mothballed ship will be 0-maintenance, and although it won't gain any experience, it will keep the fleet "active" and it will continue to be trained up to the max. Another cheap tactic is to create an escort with only B/CQ/LS (verrry cheap) as a placeholder and build it over your training center. Another cheap tactic is making a "fleet ferry" which is basically a small (usually frigate or destroyer hull) built for maximum speed. I use these "fleet ferries" to transfer these fully trained 1-ship fleets from my training centers to where they are needed on the front lines. This is a faster way to get a 20% bonus to ships on the front lines over having them retreat back to training centers.

Figuring out fleet experience is on my long list of things that I probably will never have enough time to test. The simulator is of no use either since it doesn't address experience at all. I probably know it well enough right now to have fun and be competetive anyway...

[edit: my fleets normally range from 20-40 ships so my casual observing is based on fleets around that size.]

Slick.

[ December 25, 2003, 22:53: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Fyron]

Fleets (and ships!) do store fractional experience amounts, for use when more is gained. Ships used to get experience for destroying seekers. It was less than 1% each, but it was so much that it was ridiculous. This was patched out many, many Versions ago.

Asmala, it wouldn't take that long for MM to get the formula out of the code... I think it is safe to assume that Aaron writes code in clear fashion.

[Asmala]

I made some extra testing and found out that the fleet experience is a bit random. I had a fleet of 30 warships and 72 unarmed escorts. Sometimes the fleet of warships get 1% of experience, sometimes 2%.

I didn't get any experience to fleets at first because I used too few ships. It requires about 50 ships to get 1% of experience.

I encounted a minor bug when I tested this. The bug concerns only turn based movement games. If two players have fleets with same index and other one uses the "remove all ships from fleet"-button both fleets disappear. The index is same if both fleets have the same default name, for example Alpha Fleet. It doesn't matter which the name actually is.

I've posted the bug and question about fleet experience to Aaron.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Asmala:
...

I didn't get any experience to fleets at first because I used too few ships. It requires about 50 ships to get 1% of experience.

...

About 50 ships where? Enemy ships destroyed? I'm sure it doesn't require 50 ships in your own fleet, because I've had smaller fleets gain experience.

PvK

[Will]

I think it's actually enemy ship tonnage being around 150*50, I remember getting experience from my fleets destroying an AI fleet of 15 baseships. It might also have something to do with whether the enemy ships are armed or not... picking off helpless transports and colony ships never seemed to gain any fleet experience.

[Asmala]

Originally posted by PvK:
About 50 ships where? Enemy ships destroyed? I'm sure it doesn't require 50 ships in your own fleet, because I've had smaller fleets gain experience.

About 50 ships in enemy fleet. I didn't notice any difference if I had 10 or 100 ships in my own fleet. Also I didn't notice any difference between escorts and baseships, but all of those ships had minimum components. Perhaps the fleet experience is dependent on damage inflicted, that would explain why my test fleets got so few experience.

[PvK]

Ok.

More data: I've just played a game where a fleet of four ships (3 battle destroyers and a repair destroyer) went from 20 to 21 experience after destroying 16-19 enemy ships, in about 10-13 different battles. Note that even after the first battle, it went from showing "Veteran (+20)" to "Elite (+20)", indicating that even in the first one-ship engagement, it gained some fractional experience, though not enough to go up a full +1.

PvK

[Paul1980au]

Well im thinking that perhaps a bigger kill is worth more in terms of % experience - but depending on the ships in the fleet 6 kills for a 6 ship fleet is 1% on 1% for each kill. Perhaps having (fleet experience) and then individual ship experience within the fleet is more useful - you can also get technology that allows experience to be interlinked within the fleet.

Id like to see some diversification or different experience type for specific ship types

Ship boarding experience
Defensive expereince
Attack experience

Doing this would add to the complexity of the game and is probably more an idea for SE5 if that is ever realised but gives some complexity and food for thought.

In terms of the experience formula i guess the game programmers have to keep some cards close to their chest.