DWMagus wrote:I'm concerned that any ideas put forth here will only become incredibly tedious once you have a fleet at your disposal. Without simplicity of some sort or automation, there is just going to be too much to do from ship to ship.

You're not wrong. Gazz raised the idea of ships having roles in the Ship Roles (UI) thread and I proposed an expansion to that idea in which nodes corresponding to roles have a "behaviour" sub-node, which allow you to specify the general behaviour of particular ship roles or the behaviour of their individual subsystems. You could incorporate the power distribution/power management ideas being discussed here as specifiable behaviours for roles. That way, you only have to set the power management behaviour of a particular role of ship, and any ships in your fleet with that role will behave in accordance with it unless you directly override it.

ThymineC wrote:You're not wrong. Gazz raised the idea of ships having roles in the Ship Roles (UI) thread and I proposed an expansion to that idea in which nodes corresponding to roles have a "behaviour" sub-node, which allow you to specify the general behaviour of particular ship roles or the behaviour of their individual subsystems. You could incorporate the power distribution/power management ideas being discussed here as specifiable behaviours for roles. That way, you only have to set the power management behaviour of a particular role of ship, and any ships in your fleet with that role will behave in accordance with it unless you directly override it.

And to only play devil's advocate, how would this work if you didn't have identical ships? I can see it working for that, but if I'm a smaller fleet with say, 10 ships, then it's also safe to say that each ship could be unique enough that they may not have the same number of hardpoints, types of weapons, etc. This would make having an overall generalized power distribution a pain.

If a ship has more thrusters, then you can cut more power from them to provide to weapons. If another ship has more guns, then you can cut some of that power in order to balance.

I get what you're saying and I liked the ideas put forth in that thread, but when it comes to specific mechanics (i.e. power distribution) when you have enough uniqueness, then it becomes an issue--unless of course there's a solution to that I missed.

DWMagus wrote:And to only play devil's advocate, how would this work if you didn't have identical ships?

As Gazz says, roles will be specific to ship classes. If you had a class of ship Vega Fighter Mk II and you wanted to base an interceptor role off of it, you'd create a roll Interceptor(Vega Fighter Mk II). A role node would inherit all the sub-nodes of the class it's based off along with a few additions, "behaviour" being one of them. This ensures that any behaviour specified in the role node will be perfectly handled by any ship assigned to that particular role.

ThymineC wrote:As Gazz says, roles will be specific to ship classes. If you had a class of ship Vega Fighter Mk II and you wanted to base an interceptor role off of it, you'd create a roll Interceptor(Vega Fighter Mk II). A role node would inherit all the sub-nodes of the class it's based off along with a few additions, "behaviour" being one of them. This ensures that any behaviour specified in the role node will be perfectly handled by any ship assigned to that particular role.

But then this introduces just as much micromanagement.

Since we will have a ship builder, I could still have a Vega Fighter MKII, Vega Fighter MKIII, and Vega Fighter MKIV all at once (hey, playing around and trying to find the right combination is tough!) and I assign them all the interceptor role. So now I have three distinct roles; Interceptor(Vega Fighter MKII), Interceptor(Vega Fighter MKIII), and Interceptor(Vega Fighter MKIV). We would be back to where we started.

Now, this may seem like splitting hairs, but realistically, here's what I can see a player having; Building up a fleet, you may have two separate missile cruisers of different designs; one for powerful warheads for anti-caps and one of weaker warheads for anti-fighter. Couple that with an all-rounder cap ship that can do a little bit of both. You don't have the money for production and you might have gone to different systems so you could have 3-4 different fighter ships as well. Small fleet, but perfectly reasonable.

But it still comes down to the same thing; how can you generalize when each ship can be specific enough that generalizing doesn't work? Once you have a big enough fleet you can mass-produce cookie-cutters, I understand, but until then, or if you choose not to, you're still micromanaging.

DWMagus wrote:I'm concerned that any ideas put forth here will only become incredibly tedious once you have a fleet at your disposal. Without simplicity of some sort or automation, there is just going to be too much to do from ship to ship.

So you're against power management entirely? Because the system used now would be just as tedious with a fleet of ships...

CutterJohn wrote:

DWMagus wrote:I'm concerned that any ideas put forth here will only become incredibly tedious once you have a fleet at your disposal. Without simplicity of some sort or automation, there is just going to be too much to do from ship to ship.

So you're against power management entirely? Because the system used now would be just as tedious with a fleet of ships...

Who would even care that deeply about power management that they'd want to micro each and every ship in their fleet? That is the tedious aspect. There's a point where hunger for realism becomes boring and unfun. This has reached that point.

Kvallning wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:

DWMagus wrote:I'm concerned that any ideas put forth here will only become incredibly tedious once you have a fleet at your disposal. Without simplicity of some sort or automation, there is just going to be too much to do from ship to ship.

So you're against power management entirely? Because the system used now would be just as tedious with a fleet of ships...

Who would even care that deeply about power management that they'd want to micro each and every ship in their fleet? That is the tedious aspect. There's a point where hunger for realism becomes boring and unfun. This has reached that point.

I honestly assumed the AI piloting each ship would be in charge of managing it's power distribution.

There's a firm difference between flying a ship and playing admiral. You have subordinates, might want to just let them get on with the job. No-one likes a boss who looks over their shoulder too often.

I, personall, never thought of fleet-wide energy management. I can ask my AI pilots to know how to utilise their ships and manage their energy accordingly.
The only energy the player had to fiddle around would be his own, with the exception of "hardcoded" orders as silent running and get battle ready.

CutterJohn wrote:So you're against power management entirely? Because the system used now would be just as tedious with a fleet of ships...

Not at all. I want power management.

Kvallning wrote:Who would even care that deeply about power management that they'd want to micro each and every ship in their fleet? That is the tedious aspect. There's a point where hunger for realism becomes boring and unfun. This has reached that point.

I don't care that deeply but I do want the feature. I just don't want to have to micro it.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:I, personally, never thought of fleet-wide energy management. I can ask my AI pilots to know how to utilise their ships and manage their energy accordingly.
The only energy the player had to fiddle around would be his own, with the exception of "hardcoded" orders as silent running and get battle ready.

This idea works to an extent unless you have vastly different ships under your control, and most likely will be the final implementation.

The whole reason why I'm even playing devil's advocate here is because many other ideas have been chucked because they don't scale well to fleet-wide maintenance. All I'm saying is that any idea put forth should not be a burden to the player outside of a small niche of the game play. A player shouldn't have to micro power management on a fleet-wide scale. If I had to, I'd be pretty irked, and I know I wouldn't be the only one.

DWMagus wrote: I'd be pretty irked, and I know I wouldn't be the only one.

I would scream bloody murder. =P

DWMagus wrote:The whole reason why I'm even playing devil's advocate here is because many other ideas have been chucked because they don't scale well to fleet-wide maintenance. All I'm saying is that any idea put forth should not be a burden to the player outside of a small niche of the game play. A player shouldn't have to micro power management on a fleet-wide scale. If I had to, I'd be pretty irked, and I know I wouldn't be the only one.

But there is no micromanagement. It can be just as 'Set it and forget it' as the current system. The only difference is it treats power as a real entity, so that it isn't magically disappearing.

It would probably be even less micromanagement, since with simple rules, their behavior will automatically change depending on how much power they have. If you've ordered a ship to use 50% throttle to conserve power for shields and weapons, but there is also a simple rule that you can use 100% engine throttle(Which tbh could simply be a default setting because why wouldn't you want them to do so) when the ships battery is full, then you don't even have to order them to switch configuration to go faster when there are no enemies around.

CutterJohn wrote: It would probably be even less micromanagement, since with simple rules, their behavior will automatically change depending on how much power they have. If you've ordered a ship to use 50% throttle to conserve power for shields and weapons, but there is also a simple rule that you can use 100% engine throttle(Which tbh could simply be a default setting because why wouldn't you want them to do so) when the ships battery is full, then you don't even have to order them to switch configuration to go faster when there are no enemies around.

Well... the AI should move the energy around on its own nevertheless, to engage cruise drive, for example.

Besides: what happens when you power down everything, really everything?
Does the energy vanish magically too?
Why not make a little peace by assuming that the reactor power up or down with the needs of energy?
That would solve your point of criticism about magically vanishing energy, which does bother me very much.

Also, the system with that energy needs time to be routed around is afaik very much a given because of gameplay.
That system is very much contrary to your system that relies, as i understand, on instant routing of energy.

In addition: you cannot simply switch around hundrets of megawatts in split-second timeframes, at least from on to off, your swithing box would be grilled by exact this amount of power. If you ask why read about magnetic field energy in inductors.

And i rant so much against the idea because im glad that some game finally goes away with that horrible battery system and because i dont want my engines, shields or weapons randomly to cut out because i activated my sensors.

Its nothing personal, no hard feelings ^^

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Why not make a little peace by assuming that the reactor power up or down with the needs of energy?

That would solve your point of criticism about magically vanishing energy, which does bother me very much.

Nah, thats not the type of vanishing energy I'm talking about. I'm talking about how, in the current system, if you 'divert all power to engines' but then reduce the throttle, that power is not available for use elsewhere. If you divert all power to weapons, but the weapons are not shooting, that power isn't available for your engines. Etc, etc.

That annoys me greatly, and I do not find it fun or useful.

I also simply appreciate the idea of your ship actually generating power, and your equipment actually using that power. With the current system its all rather arbitrary. I mean, imagine if you could generate missiles out of thin air in the same fashion.. It just wouldn't feel right.


Ultimately, I dislike the power distribution model currently used because I simply don't understand what purpose it serves. If I have my hand on the throttle, I am already controlling how much power the engine gets. I do not need another key to tell the ship to send my engines more or less power. The entire purpose of the throttle is to determine how much power the engine gets.

Power distribution should only come into effect when I am demanding more power than my ship is capable of producing. That is when a system is needed to decide which system gets what.

You think in a different way than me about the power distribution.

The power settings is the reservation of energy for the system, not the actual power currently sent there. If you pay for a hotel suite and not go there still nobody else will get that room because its reserved for you, even if you dont need it.

But its there and yours when you need it.

Its the same with the energy allocation.
The engine maybe does not need the energy at the moment, but its there when it needs it.

The actual used power of the engine is still the throttle, thats true. But the throttle or trigger should not affect other systems because they are only using their "rented" energy, not more.

Your system in contrast is like the hotel is giving your room to someone else because "you are not using it".
How you'd like it if your hotel is giving away your rented room just because someone else has asked for it?
I dont like it.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:Your system in contrast is like the hotel is giving your room to someone else because "you are not using it".
How you'd like it if your hotel is giving away your rented room just because someone else has asked for it?
I dont like it.

No, its like not having reservations at all, and whoever shows up gets a room.

How would you like calling up for a reservation, only to be told that no rooms are available(despite nobody being there) because everyone reserved a room on the off chance they'd need one.

I'm not against reservations. I simply think I should not be forced to use it if I prefer not to.

My system allows for reservations, and no reservations. The current system does not.

If you want to limit the load of any particular system to a lower arbitrary maximum, you can. Thats fine. The system still supports that.

You set the max throttle to 75%, the max shield recharge to 50%, and the max laser recharge to 50%. Presto, you can run all systems indefinitely. It functions identically to the way the power distribution currently works, while still allowing me the freedom to handle it myself.