I love Fleet Ops so much... (Major bug found in 3.15)

posted on January 26th, 2011, 1:56 am

"3.15 is probably the most balanced one so far"
-somebody said this a few weeks ago, don't remember who exactly.

As some of you have heard already, it seems that Optec's script that calculates the damage for weapons bugged out when they made 3.15, resulting in almost all passive abilities in the game to be applied twice.

This means, for example, a Vorcha being shot by short-range ships takes only 25% damage instead of 50%.

Many rank 1 ships remain untouched, or have smaller problems than their ranked versions.  The Ambassador, for example, works as intended until it gets 1 silver bar or more, at which point it becomes almost 100% immune to certain long range ships.

In addition, generix frigate refits deal full damage to medium and large targets, including stations.  They are supposed to use pulse rules, which means 20-40% reduction against medium and large.  When this is fixed they will no longer be able to buldoze bases like they do now 

If anything, learning this has greatly encouraged me about the future of Fleet Ops.  If we can play a bugged-out version of the game with extreme counters and still have a good time and feel like it was fair, the devs have done an excellent job indeed in balancing the overall mechanics.

I know lately I've been feeling like the counters were too hard, and picking the wrong ship was too deadly a mistake, but now I can sit back and be content that our razor-edge system of ship counters is going to soften a bit in the near future.

[Tok`ra]

posted on January 26th, 2011, 2:23 pm

Last edited by Tok`ra on January 26th, 2011, 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As I've been very critical of balance issues, let me be the first to respond.

Simply put, no matter how poorly balanced and buggy a mod is, within reason, it'll still seem professionally done and bug free compared to vanilla.

And for total conversion mods, flops is near the top of the pack despite (prehaps in spite of) the small issues it has.

To be honest I think the BIGGEST issue is the cost/speed modifiers in rts_cfg

float HARD_AI_COST_HANDICAP = 0.1;
float HARD_AI_SPEED_HANDICAP = 0.6;

float MEDIUM_AI_COST_HANDICAP = 0.2;
float MEDIUM_AI_SPEED_HANDICAP = 0.7;

float EASY_AI_COST_HANDICAP = 0.75;
float EASY_AI_SPEED_HANDICAP = 0.8;

that is what the relevent section in the vanilla flops file reads.

That means that the AI pays 10% of cost on hard (merciless) 20% of cost on medium (hard) and 75% on easy.

The other problem is the way SOME members of the community react when issues such as this are raised, spaming the threads (even if it's simply a thread stating someone is attempting a mod of flops to better balance the issue).

That said, I seem to recall some flops team members having posted saying that yeah SP does need work.

I think the biggest thing is the AI, but the AI sucks (not flops issue, but A2 issue in general, and the flops AI sucks much less than vanilla) but simply making the AI a spammer doesnt really fix anything.


So yeah, some stats may have gotten borked, some issues may exist, but like Tryptic said we play despite the flaws (rather than in spite of them, as with pre-mod A2)

posted on January 28th, 2011, 8:41 am

Ra damn dude, I don't like it either, and Dominion vs the other AI is just  5 to 1.. They are way out of line...  Anyways BUGS..  I just had a Fed AI (hard; if it matters) build a Antares yard on top of my long existing Borg resource node. 

Sorry I didn't look this up before posting, but yea I'm a little inebriated and tired.. :p

Psi-

posted on January 28th, 2011, 4:43 pm

Ra damn dude, I don't like it either, and Dominion vs the other AI is just  5 to 1.. They are way out of line...   Anyways BUGS..   I just had a Fed AI (hard; if it matters) build a Antares yard on top of my long existing Borg resource node.   

Sorry I didn't look this up before posting, but yea I'm a little inebriated and tired.. :p

Psi-

Indeed lol. But in certain instances, Romulans and Klingons will outspam dominion. Ive been testing, and concluded that dominion is the most dangerous AI at the moment, because it keeps expanding to new resource spots, then using the fact that their miners double as constructors to build a complete new base at the expansion. And they spam both buildings and units at a massive rate.

But anyways, it used to be the borg that had unbeatable AIs. I think there will always be a stronger-than-the-others AI.

posted on January 28th, 2011, 4:53 pm

dominion spam the most cos their ships dont cost a lot of dil/tri, they cost mostly supply.

posted on January 28th, 2011, 11:11 pm

True enough Grayoak on the Di/Tri, but even when I cut off all of there expansions and leave them with only there primary moons, they still out produce me well over triple.  Either way, it is fun when you win, knowing that you just took out 700 ships.. :p

posted on January 28th, 2011, 11:14 pm

well they pay 10% on mericiless, so going after their economy isnt the way to fight them. going after their yards is. killing miners is purely for rankups.

[GaryOak]

posted on January 29th, 2011, 5:36 am

Last edited by GaryOak on January 29th, 2011, 6:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In a typical game, me and 3 merciless AI of my choice fight against 4 merciless dominion AIs. I ALWAYS make the same mistake of sort/of roleplaying myself into ´the elite fleet division that fights behind enemy lines and has about 10 times the others' k/d ratio' whilst I let my allies fight the front line battles.

9/10 times I just let myself go, only to discover after a while that I can no longer win the game.

Like

* Ill go rank up my ships by doing some covert ops, I cant spam as well as my allies anyway *
* Ill just keep ranking up until my allies start losing territory, thatll be about my cue as to enter the battle*
* Keeps ranking up *
* Oh hey wow the dominion  broke through lets see..Oh crap theyve got like 30 V-13 battleships closing in, Im gonna suffer losses against that! I shouldve - *
* Looks up in the map, sees about 400 more V-13 battleships*
* presses escape *

EDIT: I think im kinda going off topic here, so sorry :p

[Tok`ra]

posted on January 30th, 2011, 1:57 pm

Last edited by Tok`ra on January 30th, 2011, 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dominion spam the most cos their ships dont cost a lot of dil/tri, they cost mostly supply.

Indeed, the AI barley pays for anything.

Do fractions get rounded up or down due to difficulty setting modifiers ?

dom_destroyer.odf

base price in the .odf
210dil
67tri
28sup

Merciless
21dil
6.7tri
2.8

Hard
42
13.4
5.6

Easy
157.5
50.25
21

* Looks up in the map, sees about 400 more V-13 battleships*

Dom Battleship, merciless AI (used dom_battleshipY.odf for stats)
dom_battleshipY.odf

dilithiumcost = 566
tritancost = 162
supplycost = 59

AI's cost on merciless w/o any additonal cost options.
dilithiumcost = 56
tritancost = 16
supplycost = 5

On merciless AI 400 more of them would cost:

dilithiumcost = 22,400
tritancost = 6,400
supplycost = 2000
edit: may be off by a few hundred total, due to fractions involved in the modifers.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 10:28 am

Ra; Again we get it.... You spam almost as much as Dominion AI about how AI is .1 .2 .3.. We get it.. I'm sure the Devs get it.. Its not an Overnight fix...   

Tho I have to admit I play 6-7 AI player maps(+me); and the only way I win, is when the other AI beats the shit out of each other .

None the less its fun when you can win after killing 2k ships and/or a few half dozen or more Cubes. however the random "race" always places me as Feds, or Borg...  and 3rd..  Rom in some occasions.. :p  Is this completely random???    (I'm sure it is, but DAYUM!).

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 12:24 pm

well with only 5 races to choose from, and a 1/5 chance of each, simple applications of  a binomial distribution and the chi square distribution will reveal that patterns where we observe what looks like a preference, doesnt really have a significant preference.

I'd like to have enough time to sit and do 100 instant actions with 8 randoms each time and do the stats. I'm sure it is random.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 7:12 pm

ts not an Overnight fix...     

Actualy, it is. You open a single file, and change a few entries.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 7:16 pm

So do it yourself  .

  You've pointed out the things you don't like AND you've pointed out how to fix them.

  Not everyone shares your opinion that the AI modifiers are "
To be honest I think the BIGGEST issue is the cost/speed modifiers in rts_cfg".


  Fix it on your own game. 

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 8:08 pm

My thread got derailed 

...


Take your AI discussion elsewhere!

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 9:14 pm

Well sorry, Tryptic.  The problem you've brought up is now well known and (if I'm not mistaken), will be a simple fix for 3.1.6.  I had heard that it was just a simple miscalculation or something that had to do with Optec returning a lot of the labeling to Vanilla values for ease of modding for others .

  Thus it was supposedly very easy to fix.

  Better?

Now let's get back to slapping Tok'ra