DWMagus wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:Needs to be something more robust than that. You might have dozens of ships. Having to attend to them each individually would get tedious, especially considering combat losses means its not a 'set it and forget it' type of action.

I think this issue is more indicative of the entire game in general, not the system specifically. We're constantly seeing how we need a way to abstract pretty much ANYTHING from a single ship to multiple so that we don't land in micromanagement hell.

Right. Imo, the fact that you play the game as one ship, or as a fleet, is a major issue and I'd suggest against such disparate playstyles were it not The Plan.

It greatly complicates finding an appropriate complexity for the game. Mechanics I would suggest as suitable for a single ship are much different for a small number of ships, which are much different than for a large number of ships. If the individual ship interaction is too complex, large numbers of ships become a nightmare to handle. Balance it to support large numbers of ships, and flying around in one is far too simplistic.

Thus, ultimately, gameplay complexity is going to have to be a compromise that works best with neither too many, nor too few, ships, and a lot more work is going to need to be done to ensure large numbers of ships are manageable and flying solo still interesting.

CutterJohn wrote:

DWMagus wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:Needs to be something more robust than that. You might have dozens of ships. Having to attend to them each individually would get tedious, especially considering combat losses means its not a 'set it and forget it' type of action.

I think this issue is more indicative of the entire game in general, not the system specifically. We're constantly seeing how we need a way to abstract pretty much ANYTHING from a single ship to multiple so that we don't land in micromanagement hell.

Right. Imo, the fact that you play the game as one ship, or as a fleet, is a major issue and I'd suggest against such disparate playstyles were it not The Plan.

It greatly complicates finding an appropriate complexity for the game. Mechanics I would suggest as suitable for a single ship are much different for a small number of ships, which are much different than for a large number of ships. If the individual ship interaction is too complex, large numbers of ships become a nightmare to handle. Balance it to support large numbers of ships, and flying around in one is far too simplistic.

Not really; you just do what's done in real life - you delegate. If I'm running a small business, I might be directly involved in finances, production oversight, marketing, etc. If I'm the CEO of a larger business, I might only be directly involved in managing other people, each of whom are only directly involved in controlling one aspect of the business. The same logic applies with Limit Theory.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

BFett wrote:If the pipeline for any single trade ship is defined by the form of "From Space Station A headed to Star Ship B" then I think it would be easier to manage. Obviously both underlined names can be changed to create any number of different pipelines between two vessels.

The process could be as simple as selecting the trade ship, clicking a pipeline button, then with two drop down lists the player is given which locations the trade ship will trade between. The items to be traded from one ship to another would also have to be defined on this screen.

that would bring up the whole issue again with managing every freighter individually, with my concepts pipelines and the freighters who serve them are independent from each other.
so you set up your transport routes and then assign freighters to it

Here's a better explanation as to what exactly I'm thinking.

First, select a station or a colony that the ship is parked at. This brings up a list of all the ships parked at the location.
Second, select a ship from the list. This brings up a window with types of orders the ship can receive including Orbit, Transport, and Pipeline.
Third, select one of the above orders. (Transport is one way delivery, Pipeline is a user defined number of runs or infinite)
Fourth, select the location where the ship needs to go. (For pipelines the ship goes from its parked location to the user defined destination)
Fifth, click launch.

I don't see how this setup is an issue. It works very well for Alien Legacy. The only time you would have to manage this is if the AI isn't smart enough to stop trading after a location runs out of the traded item.

ThymineC wrote:Not really; you just do what's done in real life - you delegate. If I'm running a small business, I might be directly involved in finances, production oversight, marketing, etc. If I'm the CEO of a larger business, I might only be directly involved in managing other people, each of whom are only directly involved in controlling one aspect of the business. The same logic applies with Limit Theory.

The problem isn't delegation. It's more along the lines of "I've set up something a specific way, how do I make sure I can apply that to all these other pieces so that I don't have to manually set each one up the same way?"

Say I have a factory that can process materials A and B. I process B but not A because of my specialties. Thus, when I set up more mining rigs, I want B to go to the factory, while A goes to the market. We can't just say "Use the player's resources first" and the like otherwise we'd be having to re-set things.

However, Gazz's explanation seems the best so far, I'm still a little sketpical until I see it in action.

Gazz wrote: [...]
An entire wing of fighters would be handled / commanded as one object and have health / supply values.
If the creation of such a wing is deliberate, fleet organisation can be as simple or as complex as the player desires.

Also, if a fleet has a TOE (building plan...), you could grab a bunch of fighters and bigger ships and assign them to "the fleet".
According to the TOE they would fill empty slots (losses), bringing the fleet back up to strength, and any excess ships would end up in an automatically generated "reinforcements" container at the fleet's top level.
That way the don't "mess up" your organisation but it may have to be an optional mechanic.

BFett wrote: Here's a better explanation as to what exactly I'm thinking.

First, select a station or a colony that the ship is parked at. This brings up a list of all the ships parked at the location.
Second, select a ship from the list. This brings up a window with types of orders the ship can receive including Orbit, Transport, and Pipeline.
Third, select one of the above orders. (Transport is one way delivery, Pipeline is a user defined number of runs or infinite)
Fourth, select the location where the ship needs to go. (For pipelines the ship goes from its parked location to the user defined destination)
Fifth, click launch.

I don't see how this setup is an issue. It works very well for Alien Legacy. The only time you would have to manage this is if the AI isn't smart enough to stop trading after a location runs out of the traded item.

Freighters and pipelines are COMPLETELY independent objects, like, you never touch a freighter when defining them.

You design them in a special menu and assign freighters as you see fit.

Also, as you describe it you seem to think that they are simple 1 to 1 connections with a defined lifespan, they're not.
They are connections between multiple inventories, and the freighters are just some mean to execute the transfers inside the pipeline structure. Pipelines do not care about if and which freighters are assigned to it.
It just uses them. And if one gets lost the pipeline is not affected except the loss of transport capacity

You solve the complexity of supplying individual fighters in a large fleet with an intermediary vessel attached to the fleet, a "supply ship" of sorts.

The ships without storage/manufacturing capacity could easily have a smart enough AI to think "I am out of missiles, I should return to base to resupply at the earliest optimal opportunity."

Thus if you change the configuration of a fleet, you don't need to worry about making sure you've assigned a supply pipeline to each one - you just supply the fleet and they'll work it out of their own accord.

This is, of course, how things work in the real world. You don't supply direct from factory to individual units, you go through a warehouse or depot or military base.

Remember, "The Real World" contains many problems of "excessive micromanagement" that we've managed to fix already. We can just copy them

McDuff wrote:You solve the complexity of supplying individual fighters in a large fleet with an intermediary vessel attached to the fleet, a "supply ship" of sorts.

I really like that idea!

To integrate this with Cornflakes' system, you would just assign a Supply ship role to a vessel, and then it would be treated as a node (in the sense that Cornflakes uses it in his suggestion), which you can then connect to other nodes using pipelines. Ships of this role would act kind of like mobile nodes, and you can assign transport vessels that could carry material between local depots and the supply vessels, or you can just assign a behaviour to these supply vessels to restock at depots when they pass close to them. You could then also direct other ships in the fleet to resupply themselves from supply vessels in the fleet.

Absolutely.

I think one of the key aspects of making a game like this work at both the "one lone fighter" and the "giant empire" level is scalability of things like this. And that's where a node-based system can really come into its own.

It also creates things like redundancy, and different strategic priorities. If you work out where there's a weak point in an opponent's supply chain, you can cripple them before you take on their massive fleet. You should, properly, have two or three supply ships (or make your massive battleship your "supply ship"), because otherwise that's the prime target in a battle.

Another use for this kind of dynamic allocation would be to assign a fleet to protect your supply/trade route. Obviously your freighters won't have much or anything in the way of weaponry, so they'll need escort ships if they're going through dangerous territory. You could make each freighter a mini fleet of 1 cargo ship with 3 fighters or something, or you could just have a stock of fighters at your dispatch point and get the AI to dynamically allocate 3 to protect the cargo ship every time it dispatched one.

ThymineC wrote:you can assign transport vessels that could carry material between local depots and the supply vessels, or you can just assign a behaviour to these supply vessels to restock at depots when they pass close to them. You could then also direct other ships in the fleet to resupply themselves from supply vessels in the fleet.

This is pretty much the idea behind tender units.

I like the idea; I'm just waiting to hear more about whether consumables such as fuel will be a Thing in LT.

ThymineC wrote:

McDuff wrote:You solve the complexity of supplying individual fighters in a large fleet with an intermediary vessel attached to the fleet, a "supply ship" of sorts.

I really like that idea!

To integrate this with Cornflakes' system, you would just assign a Supply ship role to a vessel, and then it would be treated as a node (in the sense that Cornflakes uses it in his suggestion), which you can then connect to other nodes using pipelines. Ships of this role would act kind of like mobile nodes, and you can assign transport vessels that could carry material between local depots and the supply vessels, or you can just assign a behaviour to these supply vessels to restock at depots when they pass close to them. You could then also direct other ships in the fleet to resupply themselves from supply vessels in the fleet.

Cornflakes_91 wrote: possible to set fleets (or more precise their fleet tenders) as imports for ammunitions.
"on the other side" of the node that represents the fleet tender can storage endpoints for the ammunitions be added, that any fleet member can order resupply from the tender.

i already thought of this

Hah OK. Easy to miss stuff when trying to read an entire thread I guess.

I guess the point is that pipelines are a pretty cool way to add both power and flexibility to a nodal system.

McDuff wrote:Hah OK. Easy to miss stuff when trying to read an entire thread I guess.

I'm a mod and I agree with this statement.... Unless you're Just Ice.

it was in the OP but... nevermind

Cornflakes_91 wrote:it was in the OP but... nevermind

To be fair, it was added later. Edited in.

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:it was in the OP but... nevermind

To be fair, it was added later. Edited in.

more than 2 days before the issue was brought up