Fleet Battle

FZD · Dec 3, 2022

Hmm, one thing that's bit unrealistic about these events tends to be that either there's a flag ship that once you destroy will end the match, rendering most tactics kinda moot since you can just do suicidal pressure against the flag ship, or that you need to annihilate the entire opposing force even though usually people wouldn't just hang around once the battle is lost.

So a proof of dominance from somewhere in between might be better. Like say you got to destroy the enemy flag and then demonstrate they're too weak to continue by bringing in a reclaimer and scrapping the flagship (or a portion of it). So if you were to just suicide against the flagship, you might actually end up weakening your own forces more than the enemy's, and subsequently wouldn't be able to protect the reclaimer while it's doing the scrapping.

To make such rule more feasible, the reclaimer wouldn't start off in the play area, you'd have it in reserve. And since it's possible both sides manage to destroy the opposing flags, but also be reckless with their reclaimers, the reclaimers should be the only ships you can respawn. OR maybe instead of respawning the Reclaimers, it becomes a draw if both sides lose both their flags and their reclaimers.

Just an idea.

FZD · Dec 5, 2022

I got an idea about picking a ship and normalizing the values against it to get a tighter point spread, we can test few different formulas and see what works best. Bit busy RN though.

I think we'd want to have pretty simplistic point spread, perhaps more like dividing ships into just 5 buckets or so (so ships that are 10 points, 20 points, 30 points, 40 points and 50 points). So that when we're picking the fleets it won't get too messy and ships are easier to find alternatives for based on what is actually available at event time.

Vavrik · Dec 5, 2022

Opiepal said:
Hey team,

I’m attempting to do some data mining for calculating points for the Fleet on Fleet scalable battles.

Looking a way to capture the data that I’m finding from DPSCalculator on the following website https://www.erkul.games/live/ships. Have not tried it from a PC as I’m I at work on my tablet. Usually it has no issues pulling from highlighting, but I’m thinking I’ll have the same issue when I get home to get on my PC.

Below is what I’m looking for at a minimum to create a table i can apply the Balancer formula to establish points to each ship/vehicle in the game. Balancer points are being experimented with currently.

View attachment 23893

With a PC, you have a few more options that a tablet doesn't have. Example, you can use copy and paste, but the text will show up with the right side butting into the left side because there's no delimiter between the values. It's implemented by css instead.

You can just copy and paste the text you want though, that works normally but feels like a full time job when you're doing it.

The other way, in Windows, is to export the page to a mhtml file. That basically removes all the protections and allows you to do more with the file. That takes a bit of getting used to because if you look at it in MS Edge, some things have a strange alignment But you can work with it on your own computer without using their website, and you can use text editors to find the data you want.

Shadow Reaper · Dec 5, 2022

Opiepal said:
Hey team,

I’m attempting to do some data mining for calculating points for the Fleet on Fleet scalable battles.

Looking a way to capture the data that I’m finding from DPSCalculator on the following website https://www.erkul.games/live/ships. Have not tried it from a PC as I’m I at work on my tablet. Usually it has no issues pulling from highlighting, but I’m thinking I’ll have the same issue when I get home to get on my PC.

Below is what I’m looking for at a minimum to create a table i can apply the Balancer formula to establish points to each ship/vehicle in the game. Balancer points are being experimented with currently.

View attachment 23893

I'm skeptical of the value of any sort of "objective" balancing formula. I understand why you'd want one, but the problem comes that although values like firepower, armor, shielding, speed, and maneuverability can be quantified, the actual value of any quantity is entirely situational. For example, while very high speed is necessary for a fighter to dominate in the interceptor role, most times fighters aren't in that role. Hence the rise of the "multi-role" fighter. Although the F18 Hornet is obviously on paper not the best fighter of any sort, it is widely held as the best fighter in the world because it is a true multi-role platform that can not only be leveraged in an insane number of tasks, it is very good at all of them. That means high marks in any one specific quality mean far less in general, than some simpler, non-combat qualities.

Another example: non-combat fighter qualities like the presence of a cabin and bunk, and the reduced deck footprint from folding wings, will actually matter more in most situations than the number of guns on a fighter. If you're flying many fighters off a ship with limited bunks, say an Odyssey; then having bunks aboard the actual fighters will enable you to field many more fighters. The presence of a bunk is not normally seen as a combat associated quality, but turns out it certainly is. If you're storing ships aboard carriers like the Polaris, Idris, etc., you don't need cabins and bunks in your fighters, but you greatly benefit by the reduced footprint afforded through folding wings. Hence in these two situations, the 325A and Arrow get top marks, despite they don't have the combat capabilities of a Gladius. The Arrow takes up about 1/3 the deck space of a Gladius, so theoretically you can field 3X as many Arrows as Gladius, and 3 Arrows certainly have greater value in combat.

Finally I would urge that the two sides do NOT need to be balanced at all. Depending upon situation, aggressors or defenders can be composed of a larger force. There are very few ways to emulate surprise, since any combat is going to happen when it is planned so the players can show up. You can obtain some surprise based upon what direction you attack from, but that's not much value. You're simply not going to simulate the value of surprise in any of these war games. Surprise is actually going to be about 100X as much value as you'll get in a simulation, especially given the low level of discipline gamers have compared to actual soldiers. So instead of looking to create balance, look to create an individually balanced match. That could include forces that are seriously different based upon any balancing formula. So really, no formula needed, IMHO. No one picks a fight without overwhelming force. The key to simulations that emulate real world conditions therefore requires a defending force that is smaller, but wielding some home court advantage. You might therefore seek to emulate this by giving them a large ship or ships that have to remain stationary and just use guns as defenses, and therefore their success will depend upon whether they can lure their prey into defensive gunfire. Great wargaming scenarios don't rely upon "balance" since real world combats are never balanced.

Vavrik · Dec 6, 2022

That's a kind of ideal training scenario. When I see videos of fleet battles in SC that have ships firing weapons for 30 or more seconds without stopping... part of me is ashamed, the other part laughs hilariously. Why are they wasting so much good ammo? But if the goal is a game of 3d Chess with spaceships, then I don't mind.

But you're right, we are going to need to do this right sooner than later, but no capital ship is currently in game so, there's that.

Shadow Reaper · Dec 6, 2022

What might be instructive is to choose a baseline defensive force and then have a series of attacking forces each with the same number of players, but with very different compositions. So then you hopefully get real world numbers concerning which is better, a wing of Hurricanes or twice as many Arrows. How useful are Harbingers? If you use them alone, you get the benefit of their range but as soon as you group them with light fighters you lose that so are they then a better choice than Gladiators? Only way to know for sure is many iterations on identical assaults. Gladiators are an oft discarded option that needs careful scrutiny.

Vavrik · Dec 6, 2022

Opiepal said:
It did work! Thanks... some sites work fine on the tablet, but not that one.

Good stuff, they certainly don't make it easy.

vahadar · Dec 7, 2022

What are your criteras for defining the "size" column?

Shadow Reaper · Dec 7, 2022

I would recommend you consider expanding your evaluations to include the Lancer MIS, both Talons, the Buccaneer (it would be interesting to see an all Drake "Pirate!" team), and all of the EMP carrying ships. EMP is due to reemerge as a thing in 3.18 with the rebalance of distortion and ballistic damages. Also, building teams that include the Mantis and Cutty Blue would be instructive to the highwaymen and other dastardly bushwackers and Vanduul hunters.

Looks like great work! I'm curious how you assigned points for speed and agility. Do you have a single formula that generates all these scores?

Edit: I just want to plug the Lancer MIS here for a moment. If you load it all with max damage IR missiles, it offers a single pilot 2 functions. First, it can fire 6 S3 missiles at one target, twice; and if that is a medium target with little maneuverability like the Ares, Vanguard, and Scorpios, odds are good it will injure it severely, or kill it if its shield has already taken hits. I don't think heavy fighters can dodge S3 missiles at present time. Please correct me if I'm wrong. That's a kill shot at 10 km. A single MIS is theoretically able to kill two heavy fighters and remove them completely, IF it can remain hidden and unharassed. That's a good trade, and I think a high probability given the MIS tiny signature. You really need to be pinging to find it.

Second use is to harass enemy fighters and force them to evade rather than do whatever they intended. If you fire a pair of S3 missiles at a fighter from 10 km, they'll take about 7s to close, and during that time the target will be distracted if not forced off task. A MIS can also do this 8 times in a battle. I have a personal bias that this could be extremely useful in battle given a screwed MIS pilot. If someone has good situational awareness of the battlefield and can sit quietly, plinking with pairs of Chaos missiles, I think they can really disrupt the field and contribute much more than most single pilots. Even if they don't get any kills, they could assist in many kills across the field. It's like smart artillery, and something that IMHO needs to be tested and explored carefully.

*On S3 missiles--they've always had a special place in that some fighters can carry them but most can't. Just FYI, at current time they have the same range as S2 missiles; 10 km. However, S4 missiles have a 20 km range and it seems very likely to me that when missiles get another pass, the S3 missiles will have their range bumped up to 15 km, which will make them, and the MIS; that much more interesting.

IMHO, missile doctrine needs to presume from the start that they can't hit small ships under normal circumstances. However, hitting a ship doesn't need to be the only goal. If you have good situational awareness and communications (an important goal for any team) a MIS rider should for instance be waiting for calls by any fighter pilot locked in a duel, and if the MIS jockey can fire on any dueling opponent, they can change the outcome of that duel. That is a perfectly utilitarian use of artillery, and one that can tip the odds away from an adversary. Light fighters can kill heavy fighters, unless they have a pair of S3 missiles flying up their butt. There's room to extend this doctrine into specific techniques. So for instance, a light fighter can evade incoming missiles by flying with the incoming "on their wing" or abeam in order to get outside the tracking cone of the missiles. If a heavy fighter pilot knows his light fighter pilot adversary has 2 Chaos missiles incoming, he might at the right time fire his own missiles. So far as I'm aware, there are no fighters that can evade missiles fired at it from two orthogonal positions. While theoretically a light fighter can evade missiles fired from two orthogonal positions at once by flying onto the third orthogonal axis, pilots can't SEE missiles flying in from these two positions so they wouldn't know which way to evade. That kind of teamwork can result in a kill. So good communications between a MIS rider and a Vanguard pilot can yield great results and keep the heavy fighters in the battle.

Fleet Battle

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