I’m not arguing against slow cruisers, though my current designs are REALLY slow (it takes 5 minutes for the fight to start on bigger maps).
I just want to point out that there is currently almost no reason, tactically speaking, to add speed to cruisers. Even if faster engines were available I probably wouldn’t use them. It seems like a game balance issue that needs looked into more deeply than “just add more speed”.
I would go so far as to say engines are a big detriment to a lot of cruisers with the way the game is set up now since there is no easy way to tell your ship to avoid enemies. A cruiser with long range weapons and fast movement will quickly get too close to be effective. Having a minimum distance command is critical to speed having any meaning to cruisers what so ever. Having a higher return on the investment in advanced cruiser engines would be helpful. As it is engines are clearly barely worth it in cruisers. On a second note, I’d like to see thrusters added in that increase a ships maneuverability (by decreasing turn radius). Speed should be an important factor for cruisers in determining how they fight with other cruisers but that can’t happen until ships are able to do anything other than simply lumber directly at each other until they explode.
This is one of my pet peeves about this game. Why should we have to tell our ships this? Especially given that when you are right on top of the enemy ship and they go boom, you could lose half of your systems. Pyrrhic victory indeed. I feel like I need to baby my ships with twenty different commands to get them to be half rational. I don’t like to program when I am not at work where people force me to do it. =)
Anyway, that was off topic, sorry.
I hate pointing this out, but the above gripes would be fixed if we could manually control our ships during the battle.
I don’t want to manually control my ships. Less control, not more. More autonomy, like a real fleet.
Agreed. It’s a simulation strategy, not a real-time strategy. In order for the simulation to work, it needs to be smarter; it doesn’t need more manual control. The ships should be smart enough to know to stay out of range of enemy weapons and to get (and stay) in range for their own weapons.
Apparently I was misunderstood, my fault.
The above gripes would be fixed by being able to manually control our ships <- read also “but we shouldnt have to”.
But can anyone name me a tactical space combat game that has an AI bright enough to (for example) deliberately choose to flank with faster ships while the big guns stand off? Sins of a Solar doesnt, Sword of the Stars doesnt, Nexus doesnt, Conquest doesnt… the point Im trying to make is, are we expecting too much from our AI here?
I don’t know of any that does, but I don’t think it’s difficult to accomplish. The logic would be:
Not trying to be caustic here, but if it wasnt difficult how come the games I mentioned, with larger budgets and larger dev teams, didnt manage it? Besides, I dont think ships in this game have facings in the way you describe, otherwise turret arcs would’ve been a doddle.
As a developer myself, there are often things that aren’t tried because they might be difficult (risk) or they might not be worth the investment (investement cost vs. return). I’m not saying it will be easy – in fact, it might be easy 80% of the time and devilishly difficult 20% of the time – but I do have some ideas how it could be coded. Just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t be (that’s a lot of negatives :P).
I’m pretty sure ships do have a facing direction, since they can only fly in the direction they are facing (a limitation which may be problematic for ships trying to back off to maintain range).
PS: I’d love to be able to try out new AI possibilities. I don’t see an interface for this exposed at the moment, but would it be difficult to do? I’d happily devote some time to developing AI if I can get the tools to do so.
Ok, but another thing to consider is this: once our ships have the ability to perform these manouvers (either by way of order sliders or clever AI), are we not moving away from Gratuitous and more towards Tactical?
I dont presume for a moment to know what Cliff was aiming for precisely, but the name for me suggests more of the blowing stuff up and less of the thinking about ways to do so. Gratuitous for me suggests slapping as many lasers on a ship as I can and throwing it at ships likewise kitted out. We start making people think about if their ships are going to be able to flank or not, that says Tactical to me.
Im not against any of that, just playing devils advocate.
I agree with James on this. I’d be willing to work on a set of decision trees to describe what I mean. (put my money where my mouth is more or less)
That said, my vision of how the AI should work is just that, it’s not necessarily what Cliff wants. Maybe he wants the programming of the fleets to be an integral part of the game. Some people do seem to enjoy it. it just seems to me to be an impediment to the gratuitous aspect of the game. In my ideal world I build some ships, plan a fleet for them (not necessarily in that order) and then slam them down with a few basic directions, knowing that my captains would know what to do with their machines. Let the Zapping and blasting commence!
To be sure the game is already moving in that direction given the save-able orders. I just find that the orders and programming them feels far too much like work to me. I may be in the minority, and that would be fine. I can grin and bear it if necessary.
You make a good point and I agree. I’d rather not see that happen. I would like to see an environment where it’s simple and straight forward and we don’t have to plan a series of actions in excruciating detail to have our fleets work. In my ideal world I can plop down my ships in the deploy screen and that is their set formation that they will only deviate from if they need to (i.e. are being charged at or their shields are down or some other good reason). Fleets should naturally stick together. Close assault ships should naturally close and crush, and supporting ships should naturally support.
That’s a good point. As a programmer, I like programming things, but I don’t know if other players would.
One thing to keep in mind is that a simulation game like this is all about hard choices and numbers. It will by no means be a casual game – to do well, players will have to think long and hard, experimenting with different options. This sounds like the kind of player that wouldn’t mind (and might prefer) more advanced behavior controls.
Also along that lines, in order for the game to be a game, it can’t just be about throwing ships at each other and watching them go boom. There needs to be some element of challenge and planning, which is where things like ship builds and orders come in.
On the other hand, you still want it to be gratuitous and too much programming will make it boring. I can completely understand the desire to spend only 5-10 minutes putting everything together and then watching things go boom. 
Maybe what we need are more general behaviors, something that has been suggested by others elsewhere. Some of the existing orders are similar to this, but we could do better. Make an aggressive behavior, where the ship runs in at full speed and attacks everything it sees. Make another that’s passive, waiting for the enemy to come to it, perhaps so it can be trapped. Make another cautious, swooping in on damage units, giving them a few shots, and running away before they can counterattack. These sorts of behavior would be easier for the player to choose from. The downside would be less control for us number-crunching freaks and more work for Cliffski to make them reasonably autonomous.
There’s also the option of doing both. Make a set of basic behaviors that players can choose from, then add a button to create your own behaviors in more detail. This would keep both kinds of players happy, but mean that much more work for Cliffski.
This.
As a new player (first day), I’ve already written off engines on cruisers. As in, no engines. I make a tightly packed blob of cruisers in one corner, set a couple fighter squadrons to escort the outer ships, and maybe spend my last bits of change on some (also stationary) anti-fighter frigates. This setup has handled all the ‘Hard’ missions without batting an eye, and I’ll be trying it on Expert in a day or two.
Something tells me that circling the wagons and settling into a siege mentality probably isn’t the way this game is intended to play.
I was just thinking this. To whatever extent it’s possible, improving the default ship AI while simultaneously allowing for a high degree of player control would be a great goal.
I think that the problem may be that the engines are ‘speed’ rather than ‘acceleration’
The physics of GSB is more like “Gratuitous Ship Battles” since all the ships move at a pace that is Enginepower/Mass with no acceleration or intertia.
In regards to the post asking for more player control during the battle:
That would be a different game. If the core game play, as it is given on the website, is to be maintained, then we don’t want direct control over the ships. The game is completely focused on the design vs design aspect of space warfare. Personally, I wouldn’t even mind getting a skip combat button, so that I could go directly to the results. Watching the combat and seeing whether you win or lose are the cuddly fluff added to the core game play. See ‘Cut Scene’. It says straight out that reflexes will have no bearing on game play. That the only factor in winning will be in pre-battle choices. If this game tries to appeal to everyone, it will suck. Flat out. It will be a mess of unnecessary compromises that won’t work. It will not only do that, but it will require a completely new multi-player interface. There are a number of space simulators that have light design and heavy player interfaces. If that is what you want, use them. Homeworld 1 and 2 comes to mind as epic examples of this. (To date, including all of the wing commander games and tie fighter, my favorite space games of the player based variety.) If what you want is to design a fleet from the bottom up, adding all of the parts and using the list of possible behaviors to try to give you fleet the best chance of winning, play this game. This is a game based on math. It is a game made for the min/maxer. It is not a real-time, decision-making game. There are a ton of them out there, and as far as I know, this is the only one of its kind that exists.
In regards to people saying that tactics means it is not gratuitous:
Gratuitous in this context means ‘for no other purpose’. As in, you are not following a story line. You are only fighting for the sake of fighting. This by no means means you can’t have tactics. It just means that the tactics are only going to be used for the sake of fighting a space battle. It will further no other goal. Hence, gratuitous as in ‘gratuitous violence’. Something that exists for its own sake and for no other reason. The name is not ‘Mindless Space Battles’.
A skip combat button would make the game pointless, surely? Creating a list of stats, then comparing it to another list of stats so that a victor is determined is not gratuitous, nor is it space battles. If you want to fight 2 spreadsheets against each other, then Id suggest this isnt the right game either.
I suggest Gratuitous Space Battles = Blowing Stuff Up In Space, not Gratuitous Space Battles = Spreadsheet Jockeys Comparing Numbers.
Complexity has to be in context. The complexity of Orders/Rules has to fit with the idea that essentially all were doing is building ships to blow each other up in interesting ways. A bit of tactical gameplay will enhance that, sure, as will the ships individually being smarter. But elaborate pre-battle order systems just dont fit, to my mind.
In the much longer and larger battles, I find myself growing bored. Especially once it gets to the point where I have definitely won or lost. At least in the lost position I can quit. In the win position, especially where those last two cruisers are blundering around trying to kill my decoy squad of fighters, a button to skip the last five minutes of forgone conclusion chase would be nice. This is where the desire for this button derives from.
Other point. I like to win, but I like to win in different ways. The more complex the game, the more possible builds and factors that can be arraigned means the more new and neat ways that I can win.
Also, an issue that games like this have is that eventually a certain build begins to dominate. Then, eventually again, everyone starts using this build. Then the game has all the appeal of a week dead carcass. A game of ‘Look I Have BIG Guns’ will hold my attention for all of five minutes, especially if that is all there is to the game.
As diverse as this game appears on initial glance, you can already see a trend in builds going up. I think any reduction in complexity at this point is bad, and I truly think that a move towards not increasing complexity is bad in the long run.