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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#93
You guys. :lol:

Sure, I meant (the inaccurately named is this what you were waiting for?) RTS mode at the "fast" end of the repair slider. The fun of that mode is flinging big fleets around, so why would you want to impose logistical restrictions that get in the way of that fun by slowing down the fleet-flingage? I'd make the lower end "0" as well.

Upper end? Make it 24 hours, and let players tweak that to their heart's content by editing the option values, assuming that level of control is still planed.

Unless these are dumb assumptions, which case, hey, :squirrel: !
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#94
Flatfingers wrote:You guys. :lol:

Sure, I meant (the inaccurately named is this what you were waiting for?) RTS mode
Oooooh you know it was!
at the "fast" end of the repair slider. The fun of that mode is flinging big fleets around, so why would you want to impose logistical restrictions that get in the way of that fun by slowing down the fleet-flingage? I'd make the lower end "0" as well.

Upper end? Make it 24 hours, and let players tweak that to their heart's content by editing the option values, assuming that level of control is still planed.

Unless these are dumb assumptions, which case, hey, :squirrel: !
Sounds good to me
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#96
Talvieno wrote:Agree with Flat. Personally I would really hate to have to sit there while my ship gets fixed. :P
I would hate it too. But if I owned several ships that were in the same system and I had the ability to jump to and control those ships, then the wait wouldn't be as painful.

If LT was like EVE then I could see the issue of wait times. In EVE the player is restricted to one ship and can only interact with things near the player. I would hope that LT fixes this problem by allowing jumping from ship to ship. If this isn't the case, I think we may need to start another thread and explore the concept of repair times and ship destruction.
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#97
I'd keep the repair times for ship sizes that are commom for lone wolf/single ship players are low enough that the job is done after typical staying-docked times.
Like 2-3 minutes for everything up to gunboat/corvette size.

Anything larger is likely already capable of having 1-2 parasites itself and/or requires so much capital that its not practical to get such a large ship without having some more ships.

Aka its either always too short to bother a player significantly or they have enough other assets to take one of these and can continue having fun.
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#98
The generic case is to impose an economic cost on error. In other words, losing a ship (partially or entirely) imposes some kind of economic penalty that reduces the player's ability to win.

"Repair" imposes an economic penalty of time.

"Rebuild/replace" imposes an economic penalty of monetary cost.

The more either of those trends toward zero, the more you have an arcade-like play experience. As you increase the time and cost sliders, you get a more simulationist play experience.

Both can be fun.

I like sliders.
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#99
Flatfingers wrote:The generic case is to impose an economic cost on error. In other words, losing a ship (partially or entirely) imposes some kind of economic penalty that reduces the player's ability to win.

"Repair" imposes an economic penalty of time.
I think this is worth quibbling over: should repair also include a monetary cost?
"Rebuild/replace" imposes an economic penalty of monetary cost.

The more either of those trends toward zero, the more you have an arcade-like play experience. As you increase the time and cost sliders, you get a more simulationist play experience.

Both can be fun.

I like sliders.
The trouble with sliders, Flat, is that they're a good enough solution that no one can really, truly argue with them. And everyone loves a good argument!
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#100
Scytale wrote:
Flatfingers wrote:The generic case is to impose an economic cost on error. In other words, losing a ship (partially or entirely) imposes some kind of economic penalty that reduces the player's ability to win.

"Repair" imposes an economic penalty of time.
I think this is worth quibbling over: should repair also include a monetary cost?
Why not both. Have a slider, that you pick when asking for repair.
At the zero mark, you get a (very highly exponential) repair cost, but the repair is instant.
At the 0.5 mark you get 100% cost, 100% time.
At the 1.0 mark, you get 0% cos, but the time is very highly exponential.

Eg:
0.00: $100,000, but it'll be done now.
0.25: $2500, but it'll take a day.
0.50: $500, but it'll take three days.
0.75: $100, but it'll take ten days.
1.00: $0, but it'll take a month.

This lets the player choose where they fall, if they need something now, or if they need it done on the cheap.
Includes time assumed to be scavenging for parts, and re-purposing detritus and broken bits.
In the end, it'll all get your ship repaired, but you lose either more time, or more money.
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#101
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I'd rather not have that method of payment. I want an upfront estimate, with the time it will take to complete the repairs and the price the repairs will have. Throwing more money at a problem does not solve a problem faster after a certain point. In the same way a car repair shop isn't going to want to be so behind on repairs that they can't accept new customers. Nor are they going to take a discounted rate for a job that will last a long period of time.

However, when it comes to cheap fast repairs compared to getting something done right, I would be more lenient with the idea.
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#102
BFett wrote:Image
I'd rather not have that method of payment. I want an upfront estimate, with the time it will take to complete the repairs and the price the repairs will have. Throwing more money at a problem does not solve a problem faster after a certain point. In the same way a car repair shop isn't going to want to be so behind on repairs that they can't accept new customers. Nor are they going to take a discounted rate for a job that will last a long period of time.

However, when it comes to cheap fast repairs compared to getting something done right, I would be more lenient with the idea.

This is why it's exponential growth in cost/time.
Imagine a large slightly parabolic U, put Cost on one side and time on the other.
Ships would surely have a crew, likely of more than one. In this case the handwavium is that the crew can take the time and repair the ship, or you can pay a repair yard to do it.

Now you wouldnt really want infinite cost + instant, or Infinite time + free options, you would want to cap that slider, maybe at 0.9 and 0.1, or maybe 0.8 and 0.2
But either way it gives a player options to fit within their budget.

A ship that doesnt make much money, you dont mind having out of action for ages.
A ship that rakes in cash, you want it back ASAP.

But this gives the player a little control over the matter of repairs.
Investing in repair stations, automated maintenance systems, and (possibly) specialist crew, will then become more desirable, as these would reduce the cost/time investment to return the ship to 100%, without simply making them artificial linear incremental things.
(Linear incrementalism is bad in most cases, cause it's boring as fuck)
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WebGL Spaceships and Trails
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console.log(`What's all ${this} ${Date.now()}`);
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#104
Flatfingers wrote:Opinion: you certainly could impose costs of both time and money for repair.

However, my feeling is that time is such a valuable commodity that it isn't necessary to also stick players with a financial penalty, or at least not one that's really significant.

One or the other is enough IMO to cause players to consider tactics other than zerging.
well, without repair costs the antidote to zerging caused repair delays is more zerging... as you can just add more ships to step in for the ones in repair.

with repair costs less, better managed and equipped ships would be preferred.

with repair costs its also preferrable to remove old ships which are damaged beyond some treshhold in favour of buying new, better ships and scrapping the old ones.
which reduces the amount of snowballing and makes room for other aspects, such as recycling scrap ships, being a dealer for second hand ships, or interesting scrapyard areas.

Silverware wrote: Why not both. Have a slider, that you pick when asking for repair.
At the zero mark, you get a (very highly exponential) repair cost, but the repair is instant.
At the 0.5 mark you get 100% cost, 100% time.
At the 1.0 mark, you get 0% cos, but the time is very highly exponential.

Eg:
0.00: $100,000, but it'll be done now.
0.25: $2500, but it'll take a day.
0.50: $500, but it'll take three days.
0.75: $100, but it'll take ten days.
1.00: $0, but it'll take a month.

This lets the player choose where they fall, if they need something now, or if they need it done on the cheap.
Includes time assumed to be scavenging for parts, and re-purposing detritus and broken bits.
In the end, it'll all get your ship repaired, but you lose either more time, or more money.

the basic idea of trading speed vs cost i can agree with, but not with the magnitude of the variability.
you can maybe halve the base repair time with a fast job.
at least for the mechanics behind it.

you can do a fast and wasteful job or a slow efficient job.
or you can allocate less repair capacities to the job and it costs you less resources per time unit but with the same efficiency as with just allocating more capacities.
maybe the efficiency is directly a function of the amount of repair capacities allocated :think:
the size of the job defines an "ideal" amount of workforce to do the job, and anything above that gets diminishing returns in terms of speed and material efficiency.
(modified by some variable on the repair systems)
so doing multiple repair jobs at once over multiple ships would be more efficient material and time wise and repair yards dont just throw all their resources at jobs sequentially.
you can rush a repair job with an oversized (compared to the ship to repair) repair yard, but get lower efficiency out of it.

maybe the ideal work allocation also varies with the size of the damage in addition to the size of the ship? :think:
it theres just a dent or two in your shuttle theres not much point to throw the whole yard at it.


this all of course also applies to the NPC repair yards and their service costs are then modified by market forces, them charging you more for hogging all their capacities
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Re: Some thoughts about damage and repair

#105
Well, what is the usual repair time say, for a car:
* 2 weeks to get a spot in the workshop's schedule
* some hours where the auto is waiting for the mechanic to be available
* 1 hour in the shop to do the job
* few hours until it is released (cleaning/papers).

If you pay enough, you can perhaps shortcut most of the waiting time, going from 2+ weeks to 1 hour. If spare parts are needed beyond what is stored locally, perhaps 1 day. So it is a time shortening of 90% easily. Then it becomes more difficult to compress time.
Even with your dedicated workshop, you have the same structure - as people are the most expensive asset, there is always a waiting queue. No queue = more salary to pay for people "on hold" = more cost again. More spare-parts locally = more storage = more cost again.

So a reduction of >>90% of the time for a cost of 2-5x seems realistic in a first approximation... although with a dedicated workshop, it could be that the cost factor is not on a per repair basis, but as a flat recurring cost factor on your maintenance budget.
Then the power of exponential will make sure that it never goes to zero ;)

Time as a normal customer: 2 weeks Cost 1
Time accelerated: 1 day (-90%), cost 5 (enough to shortcut administrative queue)
Time very accelerated: 2 hours 24 min (-99%), cost 25 (cost of a large spare part storage and on hold personal)
Time extremely accelerated: 14.4 min (-99.9%) cost 125 (extremely automated workshop, many person working together)
Crazy acceleration: 1.44 min (-99.99%) Cost 625 not very realistic anymore, but nanobot workshop?
Getting ridiculous: 8.64s (-99.999%) Cost 3125, ok no handwaving excuse available, but gamebreaking? even...
Fully ridiculous: 0.864s (-99.9999%) Cost 15625 is not game-breaking, but expensive :?

(all this is based on my experience of repairing my spaceship, so may be different in your galaxy)

Edit: added further example of accelerations
Last edited by CSE on Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
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