It's possible your set of formations will be used in a new MP game I'm about to take part in so perhaps I will be able to test them (I have no other way as I can't play against AIs anymore unless it's for about 30 turns of pure testing - it's just too dull for me). I haven't seen them, yet, so I have a question: how tightly spaced are untested formations?
BTW, the Arrowhead isn't so bad as you describe - it can even be a right choice depending on circumstances. I've just looked with apprehension into the mirror and, really, I don't seem to be a goose... hmm... no, definitely not... I think. Back to top
It's possible your set of formations will be used in a new MP game I'm about to take part in so perhaps I will be able to test them (I have no other way as I can't play against AIs anymore unless it's for about 30 turns of pure testing - it's just too dull for me). I haven't seen them, yet, so I have a question: how tightly spaced are untested formations?
BTW, the Arrowhead isn't so bad as you describe - it can even be a right choice depending on circumstances. I've just looked with apprehension into the mirror and, really, I don't seem to be a goose... hmm... no, definitely not... I think.
None of the untested are tighter than 6 or looser than 14 or so. If you look at the listings, the "Square size" is one of the first elements near the top, and easy to find.
You're free to like arrowhead. I don't see much advantage at all to a formation that says "here, kill our leader", as a general rule. But if you like it, you should enjoy the Breaking W.
Now I'm not perfect, and I do recall having made mistakes. If there's some redeeming feature I'm not seeing with the suicidal formation, you're welcome to explain.
That's an awful lot of formations to scroll through, so I hope the players understand up front and don't get resentful. Back to top
Dvoongar, nobody is perfect. I don't know why but it looks like you unnecessarily take personally when I don't agree with you. I've been under impression that you had been in need of discussion. Sorry, if I was mistaken.
There is not much to be explained: there are many situations in-game when you would like your leader not to charge at enemies but instead just try to run from them away fighting back. This is when the Arrowhead MIGHT be the right choice depending on circumstances.
If I may suggest an improvement: instead of having nothing, tight, and loose in the names of formations perhaps you would consider giving there an additional precise info about how tight it is eg. Bull (10x10), Tomahawk (6x6), Cluster (6x7), Gap Trap (11x8) etc. to be seen in-game. Back to top
...None of the untested are tighter than 6 or looser than 14 or so.
Why is 6 the minimum tightness?
Is this a fixed limit of the game?
Except for fleet mixes of long/close range, surely tighter is better as it allows for better mutual PD support SEV Visual Mods:
Black UI Reduced Size Shipsets Back to top
That's not necessarily true as tighter also means that eg. an opponent's fighter swarm has less space to cross from one of your ships to another so your task force might be destroyed faster.
Dvoongar, I changed your file, slightly - I hope you don't mind if I share it here. It seems to me that it's easier to assign them in-game, now. Back to top
...None of the untested are tighter than 6 or looser than 14 or so.
Why is 6 the minimum tightness?
Is this a fixed limit of the game?
Except for fleet mixes of long/close range, surely tighter is better as it allows for better mutual PD support
I'm guessing 1 would be the minimum the game allows. Five is the tightest I've used after my very earliest experiments, and it almost seems too tight for ships larger than DD's. Once you gain even a little PD range over the first guns, you don't need things quite that tight. I almost went with 7 for tight forms.
I suppose you could try some ultra-tight stuff. The ships'll get in each other's way a lot, and you'll basically end up with a mob that doesn't break up. You'd have your mutual support, and it might work somewhat tactically. I think you'd lose speed & maneuverability, and I know following the action becomes almost impossible with all ships stacked up in the same space. The group would also be easy to flank and surround, but the immediate support might compensate.
In short, it could be ugly yet fairly effective in many situations. I don't think you'd gain much over the 5 or 6 spaced forms, if anything, but you're welcome to tinker around. Just open the file with a text editor and change the square sizes. I'd be curious to learn what you discover.
Oh - one thing I'd anticipate would be leader exposure. The ships won't always maintain constant speed, and if you have a square of 1 or even 3, it's likely the leader would come poking out sometimes. Back to top
Dvoongar, nobody is perfect. I don't know why but it looks like you unnecessarily take personally when I don't agree with you. I've been under impression that you had been in need of discussion. Sorry, if I was mistaken.
Naw - I try not to make things look that way. I do look forward to discussing things. Of course I can't just back down and say "Okay I was mistaken" until I see some rhyme or reason. I'm all for finding merits in any formation - I just don't see much in some of them.
Ender wrote:
There is not much to be explained: there are many situations in-game when you would like your leader not to charge at enemies but instead just try to run from them away fighting back. This is when the Arrowhead MIGHT be the right choice depending on circumstances.
Yes, I've employed it myself as a fleeing formation.
Quote:
If I may suggest an improvement: instead of having nothing, tight, and loose in the names of formations perhaps you would consider giving there an additional precise info about how tight it is eg. Bull (10x10), Tomahawk (6x6), Cluster (6x7), Gap Trap (11x8) etc. to be seen in-game.
Hmm - not a bad idea. It won't fit in the descriptions, but right there in the name it might go. I found out there's a character limit on descriptions. I still need to get unlazy and finish adding capacity #'s to a few.
First, I better see what you've done with my file Back to top
...None of the untested are tighter than 6 or looser than 14 or so.
Why is 6 the minimum tightness?
Is this a fixed limit of the game?
Except for fleet mixes of long/close range, surely tighter is better as it allows for better mutual PD support
I'm guessing 1 would be the minimum the game allows. Five is the tightest I've used after my very earliest experiments, and it almost seems too tight for ships larger than DD's. Once you gain even a little PD range over the first guns, you don't need things quite that tight. I almost went with 7 for tight forms.
I suppose you could try some ultra-tight stuff. The ships'll get in each other's way a lot, and you'll basically end up with a mob that doesn't break up. You'd have your mutual support, and it might work somewhat tactically. I think you'd lose speed & maneuverability, and I know following the action becomes almost impossible with all ships stacked up in the same space. The group would also be easy to flank and surround, but the immediate support might compensate.
In short, it could be ugly yet fairly effective in many situations. I don't think you'd gain much over the 5 or 6 spaced forms, if anything, but you're welcome to tinker around. Just open the file with a text editor and change the square sizes. I'd be curious to learn what you discover.
Oh - one thing I'd anticipate would be leader exposure. The ships won't always maintain constant speed, and if you have a square of 1 or even 3, it's likely the leader would come poking out sometimes.
The pd overlap makes planetary assualts easier as EVERYONE has the ability to protect everyone. Back to top
That's not necessarily true as tighter also means that eg. an opponent's fighter swarm has less space to cross from one of your ships to another so your task force might be destroyed faster.
Dvoongar, I changed your file, slightly - I hope you don't mind if I share it here. It seems to me that it's easier to assign them in-game, now.
I like it!
Players may be wondering how come the additional information isn't included for the first group of formations. These names cannot be tampered with, for compatibility purposes. If the names don't match exactly what the AI is looking for, the AI cannot use them. They're all 10 x 10.
I see you fixed some of the capacity counts too. Wish I had eyes for that kind of work. Nice going.
- And this is better than I realized. With caps in the names, they'll be right there in front of you when you go to organize a TF. Back to top
The pd overlap makes planetary assualts easier as EVERYONE has the ability to protect everyone.
That has been my experience as well.
With homogenous fleets, of mixes of missile boats and PD ships I find the tighter the formation the better.
It does look very ugly though when they stack up in combat.
One question - Is the stacking up effect only visual, or does it affect range also?
It's not supposed to alter the range, and usually it doesn't. When a ship is above a planet, we do see missiles taking time to climb/descend vertically. Although it doesn't take very long, it's obviously not instantaneous. This seems necessary in order to give PD a chance to fire.
When things are tight, it appears to me that the ships jostle rather than freely and smoothly moving through one another. They behave like solid objects. I'll try to remember to monitor for changes in speed during the process. I've assumed they take place, but it's best to verify.
Even if speed remains unimpaired, the super-dense ship stack would have disadvantages. Ender mentioned fighters; ramming drones would also have a much easier job colliding with multiple targets.
Large missile volleys would get a bit of a break also. When a volley is large enough that multiple ships are targeted, the spacing of ships allows a little time for PD to reload and fire again at missiles as they travel to more distant ships.
I shall also confess up front that the ugliness is an issue with me. I don't thing anyone desires to play a game consisting exclusively of stack vs. stack. If testing reveals the superdense stacks to be practically the ultimate, I would not be surprised to see players agree to restrict their employment.
Ship behaviour was different back when I initially tested my formations, and it was common for the mobs to form such stacks if they consisted of ships of the same speed. Scoop formation did manage to defeat them, although part of its success may have been due to the stacks breaking up. I would still recommend it as a starting formation for testing. Back to top
... the super-dense ship stack would have disadvantages. Ender mentioned fighters; ramming drones would also have a much easier job colliding with multiple targets.
Really? I would think that the drone would select its target and head towards it regardless of whether it is standing alone or has 20 other ships behind it, no?
More of a problem I would think would be that the drone picks the closest target on the edge of the formation, and half of the pickets on the other side are too far away to give PD coverage.
Quote:
Large missile volleys would get a bit of a break also. When a volley is large enough that multiple ships are targeted, the spacing of ships allows a little time for PD to reload and fire again at missiles as they travel to more distant ships.
You may be right here, but I think the fact that every ship with PD will be able to bear on a massive volley would outweigh the extra tenth of a second tracking time you would get with a looser spacing.
Quote:
I shall also confess up front that the ugliness is an issue with me. I don't thing anyone desires to play a game consisting exclusively of stack vs. stack.
This used to be an issue with me when I was playing mainly single player turn based games, but with simultaneous PBW the tactical experience is much less of an issue.
Besides, even putting the ships at minimum spacing I find that it doesn't usually end up in a huge stack. A few may pile up on corners if there is a lot of maneuvering, but rarely have I seen any major totempoles.
[/quote] SEV Visual Mods:
Black UI Reduced Size Shipsets Back to top
Here's a "NameGame" sample file. It'll work with Balance Mod straight out-of-the-box, but that's not really the objective. It's an example to show you how to make a file with the formations you like and get the AI to use them.
The whole trick is to rename your chosen formations with the names of formations the AI will use. The names must match exactly.
Of course you can include more formations, even the same ones again with proper names (just don't use exactly the same name twice - change it somehow.)
This is what I'm using in my current game. I'm not entirely pleased with the mix, and I plan to revise it for my next game. It should be fairly easy to figure out what I've done here, if you haven't already, and then you can make your own NameGame file.
... the super-dense ship stack would have disadvantages. Ender mentioned fighters; ramming drones would also have a much easier job colliding with multiple targets.
Really? I would think that the drone would select its target and head towards it regardless of whether it is standing alone or has 20 other ships behind it, no?
More of a problem I would think would be that the drone picks the closest target on the edge of the formation, and half of the pickets on the other side are too far away to give PD coverage.
There are trade-offs. What I'm talking about is when a pack of drones chases down a target and then selects a new target. With a loose formation, they have some distance to travel; with a stack, they're already there.
gurachn wrote:
Quote:
Large missile volleys would get a bit of a break also. When a volley is large enough that multiple ships are targeted, the spacing of ships allows a little time for PD to reload and fire again at missiles as they travel to more distant ships.
You may be right here, but I think the fact that every ship with PD will be able to bear on a massive volley would outweigh the extra tenth of a second tracking time you would get with a looser spacing.
It depends on how tight and how loose. If you're even spaced at 5 x 5 it's more than a tenth of a second.
A lot depends on the strats, of course, and PD overkill used to be a serious problem. I still take countermeasures habitually, so I don't know if it ever got fixed. I've seen a couple of things that make me suspect it did, but I'm no gambler.
gurachn wrote:
Quote:
I shall also confess up front that the ugliness is an issue with me. I don't thing anyone desires to play a game consisting exclusively of stack vs. stack.
This used to be an issue with me when I was playing mainly single player turn based games, but with simultaneous PBW the tactical experience is much less of an issue.
Besides, even putting the ships at minimum spacing I find that it doesn't usually end up in a huge stack. A few may pile up on corners if there is a lot of maneuvering, but rarely have I seen any major totempoles.
Oh we're definitely on different wavelengths. I absolutely have to see what's going on in any battle of any size. That's most of the game for me. That's how I know if my designs, strats, & formations are working. Summaries won't tell you if one side had a bad set-up or was overmatched by some particular weapon.
I'm curious what spacings you're testing. 1 x 1 or something? And what are you testing against? My basic test (back when I was testing) was to take equal numbers of the same ship against each other and slug it out. Back to top
...Oh we're definitely on different wavelengths. I absolutely have to see what's going on in any battle of any size. That's most of the game for me. That's how I know if my designs, strats, & formations are working. Summaries won't tell you if one side had a bad set-up or was overmatched by some particular weapon..
Not so different I think.
I also enjoy watching the battles, and have spent considerable time customizing the combat interface, and my shipset to that effect. Thats true even for my PBW games, because as say, only by watching the actual battle can you get a true feel for the results.
I guess I just have a greater tolerance for seeing my ships fighting in the verticle, and frankly I would rather see them win stacked up, then stay flat and get creamed.
A bit factor also may be that I have my settings tweaked to allow me to zoom out farther, and rarely dealt with fleets larger than 20.
Perhaps with larger fleets I would find it more annoying
Zwo_Dvoongar wrote:
...I'm curious what spacings you're testing. 1 x 1 or something? And what are you testing against? My basic test (back when I was testing) was to take equal numbers of the same ship against each other and slug it out.
...Oh we're definitely on different wavelengths. I absolutely have to see what's going on in any battle of any size. That's most of the game for me. That's how I know if my designs, strats, & formations are working. Summaries won't tell you if one side had a bad set-up or was overmatched by some particular weapon..
Not so different I think.
I also enjoy watching the battles, and have spent considerable time customizing the combat interface, and my shipset to that effect. Thats true even for my PBW games, because as say, only by watching the actual battle can you get a true feel for the results.
I guess I just have a greater tolerance for seeing my ships fighting in the verticle, and frankly I would rather see them win stacked up, then stay flat and get creamed.
A bit factor also may be that I have my settings tweaked to allow me to zoom out farther, and rarely dealt with fleets larger than 20.
Perhaps with larger fleets I would find it more annoying
Zwo_Dvoongar wrote:
...I'm curious what spacings you're testing. 1 x 1 or something? And what are you testing against? My basic test (back when I was testing) was to take equal numbers of the same ship against each other and slug it out.
I have been using 3x3, and test as you say with identical force matches.
Please feel free to report any results either in this thread or via PM. If 3 x 3 is consistently defeating moderately tight Scoop, Angle, Curl, or Flying V using ships with mixed PD, I am certainly concerned.
Also, please be alert for any speed difference. Does one group arrive at the midpoint sooner? Whether the clustering slows things down under the present patch is something it'd be good to know. Either way it turns out, it'd be nice to know.
You tempt me to abandon my present game and take up testing again. Back to top
I've been getting increasingly frustrated with fleet management lately. The reason is that I just can't be bothered to micro my formations with the vast amounts of ships that I have available. What I usually do is put what feels like 20 ships into the the core of a flying v, rinse, lather and repeat. I only spam one offensive and one pd design at a time, so I don't see how i lose out on anything.
With custom formations, the solution I came up with is what I called the Lazy V. It's basically a big fat V made up of 78 core ships with asymmetric spacing (5 horizontal, 8 vertical iirc).
It eliminates the micro of selecting pickets and escorts and counting how many there are in each group (why, oh, why?) since I'll fill the whole task force with homogeneous ships anyway.
It eliminates the micro of setting up unnecessary task forces, since one full lazy v is enough for most missions.
It eliminates the micro of juggling task force leaders to achieve equal speed.
Could you help me test its performance? And is there any chance you might add similar formations to your set? Back to top
I've been getting increasingly frustrated with fleet management lately. The reason is that I just can't be bothered to micro my formations with the vast amounts of ships that I have available. What I usually do is put what feels like 20 ships into the the core of a flying v, rinse, lather and repeat. I only spam one offensive and one pd design at a time, so I don't see how i lose out on anything.
With custom formations, the solution I came up with is what I called the Lazy V. It's basically a big fat V made up of 78 core ships with asymmetric spacing (5 horizontal, 8 vertical iirc).
It eliminates the micro of selecting pickets and escorts and counting how many there are in each group (why, oh, why?) since I'll fill the whole task force with homogeneous ships anyway.
The formation seems sound enough on paper; it should work for your purposes. Players who use specialized ships for different roles would have less use for it, of course. You could also get bitten if the distribution of PD ships turns out too spotty.
It's good to see someone take this much interest in formations. I think they can be a great asset.
I'm not sure, but I had the idea that excess ships get carried over into other categories. Extra core spill over and become escorts; extra escorts become pickets. Maybe someone's verified?
I don't see why anyone shouldn't make high capacity formations. It's really a matter of doing it.
I'd suggest reversing your vertical & horizontal numbers, flattening the formation so more ships get into range at about the same time.
Firzen_Zero wrote:
It eliminates the micro of setting up unnecessary task forces, since one full lazy v is enough for most missions.
It eliminates the micro of juggling task force leaders to achieve equal speed.
It'd cut down some on the extra formations when capacity is an issue. In order to assign different roles, one would still need separate task forces.
I don't see how the speed issues are resolved. I'm guessing your formation will hold together if all ships have uniform speed, but they won't do a good job maintaining the shape of the formation when the lead ship turns.
Firzen_Zero wrote:
Could you help me test its performance? And is there any chance you might add similar formations to your set?
I don't mind adding formations to the "library". Testing is another matter. Even promising new formations will have to wait in line, and it could be quite a long time. I don't do much serious head-to-head simulator testing any more - mostly just try stuff out in the game.
While I'm posting, I did figure out a use for very loose and vertical formations: good for boarding ships, so there's a chance they won't all engage the same target. Back to top
I'm not sure, but I had the idea that excess ships get carried over into other categories. Extra core spill over and become escorts; extra escorts become pickets. Maybe someone's verified?
I wasn't aware this might be the case. When testing in the simulator all excess core ships seem to form a box behind the tf leader.
Zwo_Dvoongar wrote:
I'd suggest reversing your vertical & horizontal numbers, flattening the formation so more ships get into range at about the same time.
Oops, that was a typo. It's correct in the formation file.
Zwo_Dvoongar wrote:
I don't see how the speed issues are resolved. I'm guessing your formation will hold together if all ships have uniform speed, but they won't do a good job maintaining the shape of the formation when the lead ship turns.
I'm not actually sure how to keep ships in formation. Having the tf leaders be slower than the rest doesn't seem to help much.
I've made a few more lazy formations and fixed a small error in lazy V. The file includes lazy V, lazy arrowhead (with the leader in the back), lazy wall and lazy pincer. All have between 70 and 80 core slots. Back to top
I expect to issue a new package soon, and it makes sense to put the popular forms at the top of the list.
Also how to organize? Tight, Med, Loose overall or by formation.
Tight Arrow
Tight V
Tight Barricade
Med Arrow
Med V
Med Barricade
etc
or
Tight Arrow
Med Arrow
Loose Arrow
Tight Barricade
Med Barricade
etc
And how tight do you like to go?
Players can always edit, but what's a forum for if we can't share ideas?
I'm thinking of reducing things a bit, going with only 2 of each form around 8 x 6 and say 12 x 9? It'd reduce clutter if nobody's using the looser stuff. Probably still throw in a handfull of extra loose forms for Boarding ships & non-combat types. Back to top
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