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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#16
Katorone wrote:As far as I understand it, the task centred interface will make logistics peanuts.

There are two ways to go about this.
More micro management: You create a separate contract for each type of material you want to stock in the carrier, how many personnel it needs, and which type of vessels. You decide on the price of each of these materials. If you wanted, you could make sure only equipment you build yourself gets delivered.
Screw micro management: You give the captain a job to do and a budget. He'll operate within this budget and will organise the carrier according to his objective. (Making use of the same AI that NPC carriers would use.)
In my opinion. Contracts are not going to be the best way to handle it. It is not just "deliver 2 Europa class fighters, two uber-lazorz, and some modules, It is more "Safely equip and deliver two Europa class fighters into Wing Delta at planned supply time and position" There are a LOT of factors to consider there besides a simple supply order.

Letting AI manage everything including vessel loadout would be a stopgap I guessss.... However, That would frak up my plans for my fleet. (My battlecarriers will mostly be carrying bombers while they are covered with interceptors from light to medium carriers further back)
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#17
AbhChallenger wrote:"Safely equip and deliver two Europa class fighters into Wing Delta at planned supply time and position" There are a LOT of factors to consider there besides a simple supply order.
There certainly are, starting with: "What's a Europa-class fighter?"

In other words, for there to be ships in the world of Limit Theory, there will have to be some NPCs who design ships. And among them, there will be some who are good at designing ships that meet specific tactical and strategic purposes.

Well... if that's the case, why can't human players -- once they're wealthy enough -- hire those NPCs? "Brad, I want you to design for me a class of ships that optimize speed and maneuverability. Janet, when Bob has created his designs, I want you to oversee the construction of ships of that class using the funding available in the Transylvania faction account. Magenta, as soon as ships begin coming off of Janet's production line, I want you to oversee their transfer to the Von Scott system." And so on.

I suspect that until we can afford to hire NPCs who can do those things, we'll have to do them ourselves. That might not be too bad as long as the cost to build big ships is much higher than the cost to hire skilled NPCs -- you probably won't have to micromanage many ships for very long until you can afford to bring on some NPCs to handle those tasks for you.

All speculation, of course.
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#18
Well there are some things I want to manage. For instance the Europa fighter would have been researched by me first before the process even started. This is because I want the specs to be exactly the way I want for the role I plan for them. That is not the problem. The problem is the half full carrier I have in my fleet I want to rearm but I don't have time to go through a thousand windows to make it happen and I would rather an NPC be paid to get it done.

Again I know I am asking for something that is quite complicated. However, In my opinion it is key to having a decent carrier experience.
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#19
AbhChallenger wrote:The problem is the half full carrier I have in my fleet I want to rearm but I don't have time to go through a thousand windows to make it happen and I would rather an NPC be paid to get it done. Again I know I am asking for something that is quite complicated. However, In my opinion it is key to having a decent carrier experience.
I think I'm agreeing with you. I'm not sure how we play a game containing big fleets of relatively complex ships without being given some way to automate repairing and reloading them.

Maybe for each ship (or ship class?) whose maintenance we want to automate, we have to load it up with stores the first time. Then we can turn to our NPC ops boss and say, "Whenever this [kind of] ship comes back here, make it look just like it does right now."
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#20
Micromanagement / logistics / supplies are not a new topic 'round here. =)

Supplies and fuel
Again
And again
Some mention of the carrier issue here
Scaling construction methods
Drone carriers (which really is just semantics)

Why are these all my posts? Because I have an opinion! You want your own, form one. =P

And yes, there's a re-occurring theme in those. As you advance your capabilities, lower tech / smaller craft can be built automatically while the ships you "construct" are the big ones that are your focus at that point of advancement.
At the start of the game a fighter would be the ship size you "construct" and fiddle with.
The effort required to maintain / reinforce / supply your fleet does not scales with the numeric size of the fleet. That would be the exact problem the X games have.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#23
laziness.... I swear there should be a thread with links to every idea that has been thoroughly discussed

As to a logistics manager, sounds good, but I don't see why it should be treated as any other kind of worker. I can easily see opening up the logistics window and seeing all the options for moving this or that around, buying this or selling that, how quickly it can be done and what the operating expenses will be.

I am highly against the idea of officer slots (Gazz how could you?) and much more in favor of logistics workers, whose logistical skill level allows for faster movement of goods, more purchase/sell/move triggers and the more logistics "points" you have across all your ships, the more effective any given logistics worker becomes. No arbitrary limits, but Cylurian logistics bots may offer you 7 trigger slots per worker and cost 60 credits per action, while Ponyland logistics Ponies may give you only 3 trigger slots per worker but cost only 10 credits per action. You then have to make a tradeoff for how many logistics workers you want on any ship... of course if you are a handsome rogue with one ship, you might want to skip the logistics people altogether and get your gunner and engineer and medic to rotate a side job of making sure they have enough food and toilet paper and ammo, though they may only give you one trigger slot and cost 100 credits per action because this isn't their main job and they are pretty bad at it.
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Re: Future LTSL Request: Carrier Logistics Manager

#30
I am not too too much of a fan of the idea of stats of such an NPC as opposed to just flat out high cost. Few players are going to actually NEED to pick the cheaper worker because this is likely to be a "it works or it don't" type of deal.

Again. The idea of this being an expensive NPC to use is to #1 Move this type of automation into the endgame where the player has multiple craft that need supply as opposed to a small player carrier to do small actions with. #2 Assure the player has credits going into the campaign (Player has to interact with other NPCs instead of just being an island) #3 Act as a limited but real credit sink.

Thanks for the links folks. It looks like a similar problem could be said of other areas of X or other space games where you manage large of anything. I completely agree that Scale ≠ Player workload. And should scale the operating costs instead.

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