306 replies to this topic

[anakinskysolo]

I don't believe I've exhausted all the possibilities for getting tech and heroes into multiplayer GC yet. Curious what the interest level would be if I could get it to work.

Id be extremely interested in this

I would definitely be interested. Although the AI has improved a lot in comparison to 1.1, it still has much to learn. I would love to play GC against humans.

[Stormhawk]

I would be very happy to see multiplayer GC as well. Although, I think this would require a map with heavily reduced pirate forces, as all battles against neutrals have to be autoresolved, and autoresolve means disproportionately high losses.

Edited by Stormhawk, 09 April 2012 - 03:16 AM.

[Kitkun]

Well, sorry I'm late to the party, but I'm still a ways off from getting my video card replaced so still can't play. Anywho, just wanted to mention a few things.

First: Judging by the XMLs, space damage does scale. Just in the opposite way. Everything fires the same power weapons, but bigger ships take less damage. Shoot an Executor with a turbolaser, and it'll take fully half the damage as an X-Wing getting hit by that same turbolaser.

Second: I think the ISD is being underestimated. It's got a pretty hefty upgrade in shields and a bit stronger hull than the Venator, and there's no comparison in onboard firepower as it's main battery is as capable, but also mounts an enormously powerful secondary battery instead of a few point defense. The Venator has an absurd complement, but you pay through the nose for it and they take a long time to launch. Not to mention losing a Venator is extremely painful.

Third: You can't compare a Strike Mk. VI to an Imperial I. Take a look at the ISD IV: It boasts about triple the shields and armor, much heavier main and secondary batteries, has powerful tertiary and point defense batteries that the Strike doesn't even attempt, and a stronger complement. And though the Strike has better top speed, the ISD actually has better acceleration. It also retains a similar relationship to the fully upgraded venator as the ISD I did with the VSD I. VSD IV has much better complement than the ISD IV, but takes forever to deploy them and is much weaker in direct combat.

And a somewhat related note: Crew of 47,000 is laughably stupid. It's a big ship, but not that big when you have the enormous reactor, massive engines, loads of armor and guns, and all that equipment. People take a lot of space, even when packed in. You gotta carry food and water, be able to distribute it, have medical supplies, etc.

Edited by Kitkun, 13 April 2012 - 05:05 PM.

[johnchm.10]

for the crew part, theres probably between 2 and 6 shift groups (going by earth standard 24 hour days) meaning that a good portion of the crew isnt necessarily on duty. enlisted guys probably have communal living quarters, call it 2 to 10 per room, depending on rank and station, with similar situations for low to mid ranking officers. the hull doesnt have to be necessarily thick, but could just be dense and damage resistant. for the engineering spaces, i imagine that the schematics weve seen in the incredible cross sections book may be a little off. the guns are typically mounted externally on the hull in self contained turrets, with only utility conduits and bracing structures, so thats not as big of an issue. as for the equipment, i can easily see the ground vehicles being at least partially disassembled, similarly to the prefab base. secondary to that, there are only optimal stats given. not every Destroyer is going to have all its fighters as an example. and that 5 years of supplies, well, not to be nitpicky but it doesnt expressly say what kind of supplies.
as an aside, the modern Nimitz-class Supercarriers can carry over 5000 crew, and that ship is only 333 meters long. thats including an Air Wing of almost a hundred aircraft.

[Phoenix Rising]

I want to discuss how having more crew would be advantageous to the performance of a ship. Here are two examples:

Acclamator I-class Assault Ship - 700 crew
Acclamator II-class Star Frigate - 20141 crew

Super Transport XI Bulk Cruiser - 100 crew
Super Transport VIII (60% of the above) Escort Carrier - 3845 crew

Obviously crew should affect damage control, but what besides? Why does a warship require 25x more crew to operate, and what benefit might that provide?

[P.O._210877]

More crew, if properly coordinated ans adequately supervised, can have a HUGE impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of a ship's departments. A ship's operations are directly linked to the number of people assigned to a project (most of the time), and to the synergy of all the departments working together. And lets not forget that we're talking about warships, I believe that doing your job in battle isn't quite the same as when on a pleasure cruise. So, with the need to operate at optimal capacity, and the rigours of combat, it is better to have more crewmen doing a precise job; than a skeleton or reduced crew running around trying to man all the stations all at once. Plus, as was mentioned before, multiple work-shifts, support personnel, space for the supplies, rec-rooms and common eras, dormitories, armories, additional systems (military necessity), etc.

Edited by P.O._210877, 13 April 2012 - 10:56 PM.

[johnchm.10]

realistically, a ship can be operated by far fewer crew then what it might have. for every station, you will have between 2 and 6 crews, each one on shifts. during general quarters, the off duty men will be on damage control assignments, although a few gunners may rejoin their station if the situation calls for it

god my typing is slow

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 13 April 2012 - 11:21 PM.

[P.O._210877]

But it's in a GFFA, lets not forget that, who knows how many men are required to operate those stations, and how many of them (stations) are there ? We all have a tendency to search for real world logic in Star Wars, that's part of the fun. But if we could rationalize all those things that do not fit in our comprehension and assign them real world meaning; then we can cross the fiction in science-fiction. And, lets not forget that we're talking about EXTREMELY ADVANCED ships. We can not begin to understand the technical know how that it takes to field a ship capable of hyperspace travel, scorching a world from orbit, maintaining it's structural integrity when faced whit so much destructive power...

It's fun alright, but we have to work with the available info, not against it.

Edited by P.O._210877, 13 April 2012 - 11:19 PM.

[Phoenix Rising]

Right, that's why I started with pairs of fairly identical designs where one is a transport/freighter and the other a warship. In the case of the Acclamator I, that's still a shielded cruiser with a decent armament. Are these systems working significantly worse than advertised due to lack of crew? I could see disallowing civilian ships from using battle abilities that require precise coordination.

[Kitkun]

Also talking about a universe with fully functional AI and powerful super-computers. Even the Falcon has three. Am taking those supply and cross-section things at face value though.

Most of the things that crew are for shouldn't, and/or can't be simulated, I think. Damage control of course, and the abilities thing is a good idea, too. Can't really think of anything else that'd make sense and be possible to do.

Edited by Kitkun, 14 April 2012 - 05:23 AM.

[johnchm.10]

doesnt matter how advanced the ships are. they need a lot of men to fix any problems and preform maintenance on a lot of the systems.
i go to a maritime school, and every summer we go out on our Training Ship for 90 days, and for 45 days, were working our asses off (there are enough students they need to break it into two halves). the amount of day to day maintenance and work that goes into keeping a ship running can be exhausting. painting, welding, duct work, cleaning of sewage straining systems (fun job that one, trust me), scrubbing boiler control burners, etc. i know that not all of those apply, im just trying to make a point

Edited by johnchm.10, 14 April 2012 - 04:15 AM.

[Kitkun]

Droids. They can do the menial tasks well enough, and are a lot easier on the logistics, too.

[P.O._210877]

I could see disallowing civilian ships from using battle abilities that require precise coordination.

That's a good starting point, I believe. But really a fully trained crew on a warship affects ALL the important aspects of said ship. Better power management, better weapon handling, better navigation (not in hyperspace of course), better support for complement crafts... Now the question is how to balance all that in game, personally I would consider the generic stats for a ship to represent a full crew of trained personnel. From there I foresee at least two major questions.

1. For which faction does the crew work for.
2. What is the quality of the crew's training .

The former will separate the Imperial Academy graduates from the underworld "trained" pirates and the "I've got nothing left to loose now that my life is ruined, so I'll learn how to fight, rebels.

The later addresses the level of competency of different "units" within the faction. Something tells me that what it takes to be posted on the Executor isn't the same as what it takes to be posted on a "generic" Dreadnought. (Promotion by Sith Lord purges and political appointments not withstanding of course...)

Droids. They can do the menial tasks well enough, and are a lot easier on the logistics, too.

That's a good way to rationalize the numbers right there!

Edited by P.O._210877, 14 April 2012 - 05:25 AM.

[Phoenix Rising]

It's difficult to make assumptions on crew quality. An Imperial ISD crew in 9 BBY is much different historically than one in 9 ABY. I'm not really thrilled with the idea of coming up with different stats for each faction-variant either.

[Kitkun]

1. For which faction does the crew work for.
2. What is the quality of the crew's training .

The problem is that there's no real way to change those in-game or even reflect any variance short of having 10 or 20 variants of every variant already in the game.

That's a good way to rationalize the numbers right there!

Hmm... If ship crew numbers included droids? Odd, but would certainly make some of the out of whack numbers a lot more reasonable.

[johnchm.10]

good point on the droids
jakmezak, that seems like it might work. only thing then is to decide what a "generic defense fleet" consists of.

[smashedsaturn]

Sorry to get off the crew numbers discussion.... but maybe you should consider for 1.3 having some of the generic defence fleets combined into a single unit using the Space_Escort_Unit_Types feature in the xml. The reason being that it would probably take a huge load off the AI in galactic since it sees only one unit, especially seeing as the ships aren't going anywhere anyways. Could perhaps use that idea to cut down on the lag in some other places too. Say combine a few SD's and escorts into small task force groups.

can you explain this further?

[P.O._210877]

The problem is that there's no real way to change those in-game or even reflect any variance short of having 10 or 20 variants of every variant already in the game.

That, of course, is the drawback. But I don't see another way to "realistically" account for crews.

What PR suggested is a good idea, but what we need is a mechanic that would be able to simulate the good old axiom : "The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts".
Or in the reverse case, the parts are hampering the good of the whole. Alas, that would be some kind of "veterancy" system. The actual galactic bonus system is probably the easiest way of handling that.

You know I am having an idea , you could always use the generic_hero line to create different kinds of crews instead of commanders or maybe create a "veterancy" system... I don't know if it is feasible or not but since commanders give bonuses of the kind we're talking about, it would seem to be a good place to start...

[Phoenix Rising]

I know it's possible to create generic fleets, but we're not going to do so. I don't believe it would significantly improve the lag.