Removing Manual Target System

posted on July 31st, 2012, 10:34 am

according to "Unnatural Selection" (Tng) it is canon

Although, if friendly fire would be removed, the Romulans loose their very important ability to kill their Talon Refit, if the engines are damaged

Additionally it wouldn't solve anything, to stick with the current 3 examples
-the Descent just has to fly a little bit ahead to become damaged first
-the Singularity Refit just have to wait a short time in front of a starbase, or a turrets, if the fleet is somewhere else, if it decloak again, it will still have the lowest percentage, beacause shields not regenerate under cloak
-the sangs just have to wait with their decloak until the cube become damaged a little bit, what is really unnecessary, because the cube become targeted first anyway as the high defensive ship it is

As I see it at the moment, it looks like their is the try to combine two gameplays to one game

The first, the very standard gameplay, is still existing, once someone wants to play the game as good as possible the other player has to do the same (some serious games), if he don't want to loose, in this case, as soon as the ships stop moving, the players are forced to negate the autotarget system, because it has some major disadvantages (not targeting the most offensive vessels first), not only that it challanges the current efforts for the new Defensive Profiles, it even disables you from doing other things at the same time, for example having two battles at two places, because manuel target is still an ability and not doing it, let your computer with possible malware on board target for you, let your fleet suffering greatly by not doing the optimal not automatic micro

The second, that was tried now to include, was the gameplay that happens when the fleets are on the move, this version favours exotic ships, because they can survive while higher defensife ships tank for them, the problem with this is, what happens if it stops, they will fall fast

Currently we have about 20 actually working strategys for the early gameplay, perhaps a few more could be nice too, but a lot more would cause headache, because no one could remind of all the possible relations that following from a lot more possible early game Options

I like the way it currently works, there are only limited options in the beginning, and the options for the other player are limited to, so adding all this grants the ability to do a flawless game at least for a few minutes, it will not last until infinity, somewhere your brain ends

If the defensive profil should ramain in Fleetops, the manual target has to be removed, what would make it like chess, but i think i wouldn't play this, without removing, the manual targeting just removing every advantage the new system might give

An other option is to release the tie between attack and movement orders, as i have seen this freeze the first times, i thought it would be only a bug anyway

Think i have said everything to this topic what could be said, and I'm sorry if i perhaps have undermined the work from a half year by now, better late than never

posted on July 31st, 2012, 10:49 am

nobody is talking about stopping you from shooting your own ships. the aim is to make it so that shooting your own ships is usually a stupid idea (like in canon) and won't give you benefits in battle.

even if we assume the SoA bop blew up another bop, it certainly didn't help them, it was a bum move.

if you wanna sit around damaging/killing your own ships then the game shouldn't stop you, it can't stop you decomissioning all your constructors and then decomming your bases too.

posted on July 31st, 2012, 11:06 am

yep, exactly. we don't want to stop you from killing yourself, we just want to make sure its not a smart move just like sending your constructors into a Borg base. At the moment, all looks well that the profiles work out the way we hoped. Yet, as always, we are of course open to suggestions and changes in the future.

Btw, its not as extreme as it might sound. Defensive ships deal some damage and offensive ships don't fall apart when a torpedo flies by. Compared to many other RTS games, ships in Fleet Ops are still more durable. There are no one-shots, even withing reasonable fleet sizes.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 12:13 pm

To solve the problem of shooting your own ships in order to make them a first priority target, auto targeting could only get a lock on a specific ship if the overall health is below e.g. 90 %. As long as no ship is below that line, all ships (defensive first etc.) will be fired on randomly with each shot. As soon as one drops under the 90 % line every star ship captain sees it as a good target and fires at this ship.

So if you want to create a first priority target on your own you had to damage it a lot and often it would not be worth the risk. But sometimes it may, which could make it a valid strategy.

On the other hand, retreating and destroying enemy ships would be very hard if the enemy ships are all at full health. However, if you just had a battle, this scenario it more unlikely. Even if it happens, the player could still turn around for one fire order, damage one or two ships and then retreat again while auto-firing on those damaged ships.

Well, just an idea. I do not know whether the price is too high or this could be a suitable solution.

Edit: Damn problem with this would be: Often defensive ships with lesser defensive value would be locked on first.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 12:19 pm

Well as I said, at the moment its not a smart move to shoot your own ships. You can always get a far greater benefit by good fleet positioning. But we will do further testing and react to your feedback after the release to see how it evolves. Your idea with only accounting damage for units with less than 90% total health sound like a good idea

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 12:35 pm

i like that idea a lot as well, the enemy tactical officer isn't gonna care about a few % here and there, there'll have to be some good damage before he reports the ship as a juicy target to his captain.

maybe the % could be a bit lower than 90, like 85 or 80, because i'd much rather sacrifice 10% of my descent's shields if it guarantees the enemy will autotarget the descent first. 90% shields on a descent is still very hard to kill for a long time.

i'm especially thinking of early game first warpin. a descent with a handful of monsoons, vs early game opposition. they'll struggle to kill the monsoons if auto target constantly wants to attack a 90% shielded descent (which they don't stand much chance of killing). on the run every time they give an attack order on a monsoon, their entire fleet stops, giving that expensive descent extra time to waddle away to a base.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 1:09 pm

I meant 90 % of shields and hull, since a highly hull-damaged ship with full shields would be a worthy target as well. So if the shield-hull-ratio is 50-50, it would 80 % shields and 100 % hull left. Or 90 % shields and 90 % hull left. If that is possible to implement.

Whether in the end 90 % or 80 % is best must be tried. I am happy you find the idea interesting enough to talk about

What just came into my mind: Maybe there could be a chance that (defensive) ships with higher defensive values are fired upon just a bit more. That way the small defensive ships would not always be the first ones to fall under the 90 % line and to be locked on - and destroyed. However the new ship system should make things easier and more transparent, so this might make it too complex. Maybe it is not even a problem that small defensive ships tend to get killed first.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 2:24 pm

i see, doing it as 90% of hitpoints (hull HPs + shield HPs) would work. and shouldn't need consideration about shield:hull HP ratios.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 4:00 pm

There are very few situations where you'd want to damage your own vessel: on paper the idea looks somewhat viable, but in game it's just not going to happen.

Since ships target the closest priority vessel first as it enters weapons range, unless you bother to position your Descent in front, your Monsoons (which are faster!) will be the first to be targeted. Since their total % drops faster than the Descent, you'd have to usually severely damage your Descent to get any bonuses out of this. Since it's just a matter of positioning, it's smarter to just position your Descent in the front in the first place . There's absolutely no reason to damage it yourself, and usually the only thing you accomplish by doing that is hastening your own demise.

Only very rarely will the Descent-damaging + Monsoon positioning workout such that you get your lovely Descent fired on first in theory : basically only when you have a very tight clump of ships, with your opponent shooting randomly (i.e. running or chasing) so that the Descent is both really close to the front lines, and already heavily damaged. The tech tree position and speed of the Descent is not conducive to either of those items in most situations.

The only time I see this strategy being at all useful in real game situations is absorbing the "next" shot. What this means is that after you get done targeting a non-Defensive unit (assuming you want to do so: with Torpedo armed stuff, that's usually not the case) most players are not quick enough to judge when they have enough weapons firing at the unit to kill it and thus switch to another target prematurely. Consequently, the volley right after killing the non-Defensive unit is "wasted" on a Defensive unit, which could be the Descent in this situation. But again, in actual gameplay situations, you are talking about large battles, with many types of weapons involved, and many ranges. It might be better if your Monsoons or Calypso's tank, rather than the Descent. That puts us again back at fleet positioning being the easiest and most efficient way to achieve your goals.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 4:52 pm

Since ships target the closest priority vessel first as it enters weapons range, unless you bother to position your Descent in front, your Monsoons (which are faster!) will be the first to be targeted. Since their total % drops faster than the Descent, you'd have to usually severely damage your Descent to get any bonuses out of this. Since it's just a matter of positioning, it's smarter to just position your Descent in the front in the first place . There's absolutely no reason to damage it yourself, and usually the only thing you accomplish by doing that is hastening your own demise.

decloaking enemies have all your fleet in range simultaneously on decloak if they decloak on top of you. i agree positioning your descent well is a good thing too, but it doesn't conflict with the method i was describing against cloakers.

also you can force the monsoons to travel at the same speed as the descent to avoid stringing out (which is rarely a good thing)

a scenario: 4 monsoons and a descent (first warpin) vs assorted enemy ships around that game time, standard battle, fighting properly, not running to escape.

they destroy a monsoon, and are still in range of your entire fleet, autotarget will then kick in. if all remaining ships are at 100% HPs then then a random ship is picked. if the descent is slightly damaged, it is picked, hence that first entire volley gets wasted. for romulans they can waste a lot of fire in one volley. as you say the "next shot" is autotargeted because most players won't be able to manually target it (I wouldn't bet on myself being able to with any reliability).

another scenario: multiple monsoons and a descent vs assorted fast enemy ships of roughly similar strength (ie it's not vastly one sided), you are running from them to your base/yard/turret forest, which is close enough that you don't expect your fleet to be wiped out either way.

put the descent slightly behind your fleet and run (keeping monsoons at descent speed), make sure it's slightly damaged. each time they finish off a monsoon autotarget will kick back in, but if they try use manual target, their entire fleet stops. a manual volley will damage a monsoon, probably enough so that they can rely on autotarget to finish the job when they get moving again, but again after they kill that monsoon, they'll have to stop their fleet again to start damaging another monsoon again. this can buy you a few precious seconds, maybe saving one ship from destruction. the gain isn't huge, but it's still a gain, the cost is that you have to keep your descent damaged, but the micro you put in for this is outside of battle.

a skilled enemy player will pick a small number of their ships and have them manually fire on a monsoon (taking away enough of its shields to make it the autotarget preference), letting the rest of the fleet continue, before instructing the mini fleet that manually fired to continue. but this will string out their fleet and has forced them to do more micro to get the exact same reward they'd have got if you didn't take away 5-10% of your descent's shields. the descent still doesn't die, if they felt confident going after a descent at 90% shields, they probably could take down a shiny undamaged descent too.

We're talking about modest gains, for extra effort in the form of micro, but your effort mainly takes place before battle. also modest gains are still gains, and the more balanced the game gets, the more each little bit of gain will count between 2 skilled players. the modest gains are given by damaging your own descent (or other big defensive ship, i'm hoping d'deridex will be def profile), which is the bit that sounds like it's silly.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 6:33 pm

Decloaking units only have the Descent all at the same range if all the attacking units are the same range and overlap with the Descent. Even if you did have units that were all the same range, now you have to account for different weapon types, range passives, abilities, etc. That of course also follows that a cloaker should not be decloaking in the middle of an enemy fleet most of the time anyway.

a scenario: 4 monsoons and a descent (first warpin) vs assorted enemy ships around that game time, standard battle, fighting properly, not running to escape.

This situation will most likely never occur. Warp in is at a different place in the technology tree; you'll have a lot more ships in your group, and if you're sitting still with a very slow Descent and a small group of Monsoons, you've done a lot of very wrong things. When you start talking about very corner case issues it loses perspective on the game. There are lots of technical tricks possible, but never feasible in real games.

put the descent slightly behind your fleet and run (keeping monsoons at descent speed), make sure it's slightly damaged

Why would you make the Descent damaged in this case? It's going to get auto-targeted either way by being behind.

a skilled enemy player will pick a small number of their ships and have them manually fire on a monsoon (taking away enough of its shields to make it the autotarget preference), letting the rest of the fleet continue, before instructing the mini fleet that manually fired to continue. but this will string out their fleet and has forced them to do more micro to get the exact same reward they'd have got if you didn't take away 5-10% of your descent's shields. the descent still doesn't die, if they felt confident going after a descent at 90% shields, they probably could take down a shiny undamaged descent too.

A skilled enemy player will usually keep their torpedo ships grouped separately of their beam and pulse armed ships if there are enough of them. You let your torpedo ships auto target, and tell the beam/pulse ships to kill distinct ships when at rest (not when moving). A Descent at 90% shields isn't enough to generate this effect either - a single volley of fire from 6 Intrepids results in 76% shields on a Monsoon -> you're going to have to incur a lot of damage to your Descent to get it to behave the way you want it to, not to mention having to position it correctly and hope that your opponent isn't positioning stuff correctly. This is a lot of theory crafting, but I'm afraid (or I suppose relieved) that managing this stuff just hasn't been feasible yet: you have to plan where your Descent is going to be, when you are going to retreat, take into consideration shield regeneration, how your ships are going to spread out, etc. It's too much to do in too little time - you're better off just positioning your ships correctly and micromanaging specials and units to get them out of the battle.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 7:49 pm

That of course also follows that a cloaker should not be decloaking in the middle of an enemy fleet most of the time anyway.

I disagree on this, many ambushes are started by decloaking close range, negating any speed advantages and removing all reaction times. if they thought they could fly up to you decloaked and kill you, then they can just decloak on you and kill you as well. they get the free volley of autotargeted fire as well.

This situation will most likely never occur. Warp in is at a different place in the technology tree; you'll have a lot more ships in your group, and if you're sitting still with a very slow Descent and a small group of Monsoons, you've done a lot of very wrong things. When you start talking about very corner case issues it loses perspective on the game. There are lots of technical tricks possible, but never feasible in real games.

I disagree, plenty of people rush for warpin, and get it when they have a small number of chassis 1 ships. whether or not this is the best strategy, it's a popular strategy. personally i'm not a fan of it, i think chassis 1 ships are great in numbers.

also who said sitting still with this fleet? you could be doing whatever you want when the battle occurs. you could have instigated it.

the scenarios have to be specific cases, otherwise they lose sallient facts that are easy to talk about, generalised battles have many many factors in them to account for, hence why i restricted my two scenarios. also i don't know for sure which ships will be defensive. but i assume that each race will have early game defensive ships and large defensive ships. the goal is only to force the enemy to waste some fire on the really hard to kill ships (like descent/big D), the sort of ship they would never want to shoot at until everything else is dead.

Why would you make the Descent damaged in this case? It's going to get auto-targeted either way by being behind.

A fleet of fast ships can keep up with your monsoons, keeping both your descent and monsoons in range at the same time. i'm not talking about leaving the descent on its own, it'll be tailgating the monsoons basically. the only reason for not putting it at the front is to make sure it's never out of range, so that it always valid for autotarget.

A skilled enemy player will usually keep their torpedo ships grouped separately of their beam and pulse armed ships if there are enough of them. You let your torpedo ships auto target, and tell the beam/pulse ships to kill distinct ships when at rest (not when moving). A Descent at 90% shields isn't enough to generate this effect either - a single volley of fire from 6 Intrepids results in 76% shields on a Monsoon -> you're going to have to incur a lot of damage to your Descent to get it to behave the way you want it to, not to mention having to position it correctly and hope that your opponent isn't positioning stuff correctly. This is a lot of theory crafting, but I'm afraid (or I suppose relieved) that managing this stuff just hasn't been feasible yet: you have to plan where your Descent is going to be, when you are going to retreat, take into consideration shield regeneration, how your ships are going to spread out, etc. It's too much to do in too little time - you're better off just positioning your ships correctly and micromanaging specials and units to get them out of the battle.

As the fleets get very large, many micro intensive tasks get harder to do, this included. that's just 1st world problems when you have a large fleet

i don't know for sure that this will work in an unreleased patch, i'm just going with what info i have, and i don't think it's a lot of effort to occasionally take a big ship down to 90% shields. even if it doesn't stay that way the entire game, the worst case scenario is that it regens all its health, which is no risk, it's like the old martingale betting schemes, you can't lose anything, but you can break even. and if you're lucky and it does serve as an autotarget sponge, then maybe you'll force the enemy to put in some extra effort to get the exact same thing they would've got if you'd done nothing and left your ship undamaged all along.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 9:27 pm

Then unfortunately it is an irrelevant discussion: in next version you cannot climb to Starfleet Command so fast or get out Monsoons at the same time. You can still Warp-In rush, but it is a completely stupid strategy and leaves you with nearly nothing of consequence.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 10:12 pm

Then unfortunately it is an irrelevant discussion: in next version you cannot climb to Starfleet Command so fast or get out Monsoons at the same time. You can still Warp-In rush, but it is a completely stupid strategy and leaves you with nearly nothing of consequence.

that actually sounds good . i'm looking forward to seeing how the feds will play with the new yard. warpins have had a troubled history, so much drama and butthurt, i can't wait to see the future of warpin.

i'm especially looking forward to seeing sabres be more useful (i like the design), currently the stuff you get in chassis 1 make sabres look a bit less shiny.

without any specific scenarios to talk about, i can only wait and see if the idea of damaging a big def profile ship to get it tanking for smaller def profile ships will work. personally i hope it isn't possible or gets tweaked out, shooting your own ship shouldn't be encouraged.

posted on August 4th, 2012, 10:46 am

aye, I'm all with you Myles If it should develop into a reasonable strategy, we will implement mechanics to prevent that.