Strategic combat has more bugs than my backyard! - Page 2

CW · #11 August 29th, 2001, 01:57 AM

Actually you can test WPs without building them. What's stopping you from choosing them in the "change cargo" screen? It works for me.

[This message has been edited by CW (edited 28 August 2001).]

CW · #12 August 29th, 2001, 02:13 AM

quote:
With strategic combat you don't get to be Sergant Rock storming the bunkers, or even General Patton leading from the front. You are General Eisenhower, or maybe even President Roosevelt

I've never seen them charging at 6 heavy WPs and 13 armed sats with 3 BCs armed with nothing but allegiance subverters and an APB when they were specifically told NOT to.

Seriously the problem has nothing to do with being able to fine-tune the battle to the extreme, it is the unpredictable behaviour in strategic combat that is causing me headaches. I hate seeing my ships ignore my orders, and I have seen them ignore both fleet and individual orders. Sometimes they even behave differently in different rounds of strategic combat in the simulator.

quote:
You are always trying to figure out the least number of troops and ships it will take to conquer the planet

First of all, that is what you are SUPPOSED to be thinking if you are fighting a war!

It is almost turn 50 in the game and I have more than enough forces to take on an AI homeworld. However I have discovered that sometimes having more ships only means you take more losses WITHOUT improving the results, thanks to the AI who loves to charge blindly at planets. I can never accept unnecessary losses.

As a side note, who says the troop ship would always stay away until the planetary defenses are down? I have already lost one for real when it charged at the planet while the escorting DNs ran for the corners. I have even seen that in the simulator multiple times. The odd thing is, as I have said, if you run the simulator again a second time they might behave totally differently!

CW · #13 August 29th, 2001, 02:14 AM

quote:
Originally posted by LemmyM:
the movement isn't always correctly calculated either, i was once testing a design, which had 6 orange engines (forgot the name, +1 bonus) and a solar sail III, that is 5 combat movement, on occasion after changing the weapons, i got 6 movement instead of 5.

That's because you chose populsion expert as your racial tech, all of your ships get an extra movement point.

Puke · #14 August 29th, 2001, 03:01 AM

quote:
Originally posted by CW:
First of all, that is what you are SUPPOSED to be thinking if you are fighting a war!

no its not. you are supposed to be thinking about how many to send in to gaurantee either victory or to cause an acceptable ammount of damage to the other side. You are supposed to ballance it against your resource and production schedules. If you try and cut things too close to the minimum necessary force, you will end up loosing your entire force and not gaining anything in return. thats generally considerd a 'bad' way to fight a war.

quote:
Originally posted by CW:
I have discovered that sometimes having more ships only means you take more losses WITHOUT improving the results, thanks to the AI who loves to charge blindly at planets. I can never accept unnecessary losses.

as long as your ships are effective combat ships, i cant understand why you are having a problem. if the extra ships you are adding to the task force have formidable offensive and defensive capacity, even if they blindly charge the planet, they will speed the rate at which planetary defenses are destroyed. this necessarily means that the enemy will be able to dish out less damage, because his guns will be Online for a shorter period of time.

if you are seeing some sort of different behavior, perhaps you need to examine your targeting priorities, default strategies, and 'break formation' orders.

quote:
Originally posted by CW:
As a side note, who says the troop ship would always stay away until the planetary defenses are down?

nobody. thats why you send faster, armed ships infront of the transport to draw fire and soak up damage.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

CW · #15 August 29th, 2001, 07:18 AM

quote:
no its not. you are supposed to be thinking about how many to send in to gaurantee either victory or to cause an acceptable ammount of damage to the other side. You are supposed to ballance it against your resource and production schedules. If you try and cut things too close to the minimum necessary force, you will end up loosing your entire force and not gaining anything in return. thats generally considerd a 'bad' way to fight a war.

You have missed the point completely. I'm always trying to figure out the minimum forces needed to GAURANTEE a successful operation, you need no more and no less. There is simply no point sending in 30 gunnery DNs to take out a planet defended by nothing more than a few fighters. That is why I'm complaining about the simulator, which is supposed to be a tool to help you with planning, not confuse you.

Take the latest result in my simulator run: If you send the 12 ships in Charlie Fleet to take on the Phong homeworld, you will be able to capture it and lose no more than 2 BCs; if you send in the extra 3 cruisers from Delta Fleet you will still capture the planet, lose that 2 BCs AND 2 cruisers.

Why bother?

quote:
as long as your ships are effective combat ships, i cant understand why you are having a problem.

Neither do I. That's why this thread exists.

quote:
nobody. thats why you send faster, armed ships infront of the transport to draw fire and soak up damage.

Please read my original post again.

[This message has been edited by CW (edited 29 August 2001).]

CyC · #16 August 29th, 2001, 09:13 AM

I may of come in at the rear end of an all out brawl here but the point of the simulator in se4 is not to give you a guaranteed result from any fight.

In all fights their are random things that can happen, weapons are not guaranteed to hit everytime (unless you have the talisman) and you are not guaranteed to dodge that cruitial shot.

If everything about the fight was set in stone and we knew percisly that i need 3 craft to take out this other craft with exceptable losses of only 1 ship, than only mathmatitions would play it.

SE4 is about preparing for the unexpected allways having a backup plan just in case the unthinkable does happen, The simulator as far as I can tell is not dammaged it shows true randomness while still being able to show clearly how certain ships compare to other ships.

Do not base your results on 1 simulation base them on the average of around 10 - 20 simulations.

With out this randomness the game would be stagnant and have no life.

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CyC
L+++ GdX $!+ Fr+ C--- Sd T!- Sf++ Tcp++ A? M++ MpM RV Pw+ Fq++ Nd+++++ Rp++ G

CW · #17 August 29th, 2001, 12:00 PM

quote:
In all fights their are random things that can happen

Do you guys even read my Posts? I'm talking about the UNPREDICTABLE BEHAVIOUR that's driving me mad! It has got nothing to do with randomness! Just tonight my ships behaved TOTALLY differently in the simulator in strategic vs tactical mode, resulting in some totally abnormal results. The only thing that moves on the enemy's side is a ship that doesn't shoot back so the problem is with my own ships. When I ran the simulator in strategic mode (repeated 6 or 7 times) they performed ok, all the ships followed orders, headed for the planet and ignored the enemy ship. But when I switched to tactical mode all hell broke lose! The ships spreaded out, some headed to who-knows-where, one of the DN somehow chased after the enemy ship when it was ordered not to. What's even more amazing it fired ONLY its shield depleter at the ship! The ships that actually reached the planet shot at the sats first, when they were told to hit the planet and forget everything else. THEN the whole thing went crazy - I switched back strategic mode, but the ships started to behave exactly as they did in tactical! What if I want them to actually follow my orders again? Just quit the simulator and re-enter it, then everything's back to normal.

Doesn't it need fixing??? SHOULD I EXPECT THEM TO FOLLOW MY ORDERS OR NOT???

[This message has been edited by CW (edited 29 August 2001).]

geoschmo · #18 August 29th, 2001, 12:11 PM

You are right CW, the simulator does have some issues. My suggestion would be to document everything as completely as possible, and send an email to Se4@malfador.com. Including a .gam file.

My point, and I think Puke's point, although I am not trying to speak for him, was that although the simulator may be a bit buggy, actual in game strategic combat pretty much follows the rules, once you understand them.

I was responding more to the title of the thread and the comments related to that than I was your comments about the simulator problems.

Geoschmo

Puke · #19 August 29th, 2001, 12:12 PM

beats me man. i dont think anyone else has been seeing the same problems that you have, or else they would be jumping to your defense. Without actually seeing what you are doing, i cant really guess at what is going wrong, aside from my earlier comments.

The only problems I have with the simulator are those that I mentioned earlier. The only poor results that it gives me are based on its poopey handling of fleets, and the fact that I often do not know the stratagies and target priorities that enemy ships are using.

other than that, it seems to work fine. granted, some of those problems I mentioned really suck and need to be fixed, especially the fleet thing that you brought up as well, but the other problems that you are mentioning I honestly have not noticed. and its not for a lack of using the simulator.

CW · #20 August 29th, 2001, 12:38 PM

Maybe my language was a bit too strong, I apologise. Just discovered that my "auto-disbanding fleet" problem may be related to the simulator or ship building screen. When ever I finished with the sim I would discover that this fleet of 4 is disbanded, cancelling all orders I gave. Anyone know what's going on?