Patrols

[Deleted]

I've noticed as time goes on, the chance of finding a ship for patrol decreases. Patrol when you sart the game and you'll get lots of encounters. Patrol at year 1000 and you'll get nothing. Can this be changed, or can sealth/tactics play a greater role in finding ships for patrol so by investing in stealth and/or tactics the chance of finding a ship for patrol will increase/not decrease?

[slayernz]

Don't forget that as the game progresses, so to does the game difficulty. Playing on, say, Crazy, the base game difficulty is only level 4 at turn 1,000. By turn 2,000, it is level 9. By turn 4,000, it is 19. By turn 10,000 it is 47.

Formula for calculating turn difficulty is as follows:
INT ( Turn / (200+5xDifficulty Level) )

As Cory's mentioned in other posts, the difficulty level is a bit backwards.
Impossible = 0
Insane = 1
...
Basic = 7


Enemy captains use this base level as part of the way it calculates skills. Obviously a level 47 captain will have higher stealth than a level 9 captain. Stealth may trump tactics when it comes to not wanting to be seen

[martyparty]

Jan 14, 2013 16:30:30 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Enemy captains use this base level as part of the way it calculates skills. Obviously a level 47 captain will have higher stealth than a level 9 captain. Stealth may trump tactics when it comes to not wanting to be seen

That could be why you can't find the alien, cause they're stealthy. And they can't find you, because you're stealthy too. Hence, no encounter!

[slayernz]

Aliens are known to use large quantities of body paint to disguise themselves as asteroids.

[Deleted]

But the role that time plays to the role that tactics/stealth plays for finding ships for patrol is unbalanced. Even with a high investment in stealth, by 1000 finding ships are praticly impossible. The role that tactics/stealth plays in patrol ship finding should increase, and/or the role that time plays in patrol ship finding should decrease, prehaps even be diminished. Its not fun trying to find a merchant during trade wars or trying to find an alien over a deep-space planet when no matter how you invest your XP it's alwayes going to be 1 in 1000.

[slayernz]

Space is pretty darned vast, and if you decreased the potency of Stealth, sure you'd find more things during patrols and blockades, etc, BUT conversely, enemy ships/aliens will find you more often too. Pretty soon, you'd find that even flying 4 AU would result in a dozen encounters.

Finding that balance between being able to locate things, and being able to hide is always going to be a challenge.

Perhaps as an enhancement to the game, the more that you do an action in one spot (eg Patrol or Blockade), the more likely you are of finding something (eg +1% per turn, modified by Tactics skill, and capped at some %). If you move, you lose all of that built up detection bonus.

[Deleted]

Jan 15, 2013 0:09:02 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Space is pretty darned vast, and if you decreased the potency of Stealth, sure you'd find more things during patrols and blockades, etc, BUT conversely, enemy ships/aliens will find you more often too. Pretty soon, you'd find that even flying 4 AU would result in a dozen encounters.

Finding that balance between being able to locate things, and being able to hide is always going to be a challenge.

Perhaps as an enhancement to the game, the more that you do an action in one spot (eg Patrol or Blockade), the more likely you are of finding something (eg +1% per turn, modified by Tactics skill, and capped at some %). If you move, you lose all of that built up detection bonus.

Interesting idea. Although maybe within 10 turns after moving, so you can restock with water-fuel and return.

I agree there should be a balance. But when you have to patrol an utban area 100 times to get a ship, that's not balanced at all. I sure don't travel 100 turns without getting an encounter.

And I don't want t decrease the potency of stealth. I want to increase it for finding ships for patrol (as well as tactics). I mean, stealth is worth twice as much as pilot, so it should play a bg role in many operations.

[slayernz]

If you don't mind me asking, what's your skills and captain level? I'd be curious to see how you've distributed your XP.

[Deleted]

Level: 130 (impossible)
Year: 1353

Tactics: 9
Intimidate: 12
Stealth: 93
Pilot: 158
Warrior: 279

Not the highest stealth, but not so low that I shouldn't get one ship when patrolling a planet for 35 times, or not one alien when patrolling an indy dead planet 1000 times.

[martyparty]

Jan 15, 2013 0:30:53 GMT -5 @starfixer said:

I agree there should be a balance. But when you have to patrol an utban area 100 times to get a ship, that's not balanced at all. I sure don't travel 100 turns without getting an encounter.

Why not move back and forth between the dead world and an adjacent square? Uses more fuel, but if you get the encounter you're looking for then it's worth it.

I also like that suggestion of increasing the odds when you keep doing one thing for consecutive turns.

[Deleted]

Jan 15, 2013 0:45:34 GMT -5 martyparty said:

Jan 15, 2013 0:30:53 GMT -5 @starfixer said:

I agree there should be a balance. But when you have to patrol an utban area 100 times to get a ship, that's not balanced at all. I sure don't travel 100 turns without getting an encounter.

Why not move back and forth between the dead world and an adjacent square? Uses more fuel, but if you get the encounter you're looking for then it's worth it.

I also like that suggestion of increasing the odds when you keep doing one thing for consecutive turns.

As a matter of fact, going back and forth over a planet causes MANY moe encounters then patroling it. Now this shouldn't happen because for deep-space travel you aren't looking for ships and for patrol you are. It should be the opposite.Another example how the patrol/travel system is currently unbalanced.

Suggestions for patrol:
- Increase the role of stealth in finding ships for patrol (by A LOT)
- increase the role in tactics in finding ships for patrol (by A LOT)
- decrease the role in turn/lv/time for patrol difficulty/decrease patrol diffiulty rate for turn/lv/time (by A LOT)
- Have a maximum patrol difficulty and once the game is as tha difficuly patrolling doesn't get any harder (the rate is somewhat logrithmic like red space fuel-consumption)
- Have an officer help for finding ships during patrol, especially merchants/smugglers (templar, tradesman, new officer) (by A LOT)
- Increase alien vet dead planet patrol bonus
- Increase the role of electronics in finding ships for patrol (by A LOT)
- Increase the role of omni-stealth in finding ships for patrol (and not just merchants/smugglers but aliens over dead planets as well)
- Have the bonus of omni-stealth be based on stealth skill (like leviathan system but with stealth playing a greater role in the bonus than warrior for leviathan system)
- Make a new upgrade specificly designed not only to find ships for patrol but to prevent finding ships for patrolbecoming difficult (the upgrade increases patrol and makes a 'maximum difficulty' for patrol ship finding)
- Increase the role of sails/engines in patrol ship finding
- Increase the role of pilot in patrol ship finding
- Have explorer skill play a big role in patrol ship finding over wild, feral and dead planets (with tactics being for urban planets but playing a much biger role than currently)
- Have the chance of finding a ship for patrol increase when patroling the same place multiple times. Such a bonus gets higher and higher when patrolling over and over again, and is lost if a certain amount of turns pass withou patroling the specific area again
- Have the patrol operation cause records to be produced (at least for certain professions)
- Give the pirate and/or certain other professions the ability to prevent patrol difficulty from increasing (at least by a lot)
- Give the pirate and/or certain other professions a patrol operation bonus

[Cory Trese]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Sorry that you find the current system "unbalanced"

We are always working to improve the game.

[Deleted]

If you have more encounters traveling in deep-space trying to avoid ships than patrolling sectors trying to find ships, and if it takes 70 patrols to find one any ship at an urban planet, than in my opinion its unbalanced. It also isn't really fun anymore. I hope that the patrol operation system is revised in some way some time in the future so its easier to find ships for patrol even at a later date (1000 AU for example) which would make patrol more fun and reliable.

[Cory Trese]

Jan 15, 2013 22:47:53 GMT -5 @starfixer said:

If you have more encounters traveling in deep-space trying to avoid ships than patrolling sectors trying to find ships, and if it takes 70 patrols to find one any ship at an urban planet, than in my opinion its unbalanced. It also isn't really fun anymore. I hope that the patrol operation system is revised in some way some time in the future so its easier to find ships for patrol even at a later date (1000 AU for example) which would make patrol more fun and reliable.

I understand your point of view and respect your input.

We're really focused on the game balance during the first 50 Levels of play and the first 500 years of game time.

The game engine's simulator and auto-balancing sheets run the first 26,556 turns and that's what we use.

While you're clearly very skilled and your character has reached an incredible level and number of turns this is not the average player's character on Impossible.

I played through 4000 years on Impossible in 2012 and the Quadrant changes. There are less ships in some places, more in others. Exploration becomes very difficult. Conflicts cascade differently and the Faction power scales tip wildly back and forth in unpredictable ways. Space travel becomes very difficult and dangerous. Massive capital ships respond to Blockades more often than Fighters.

Your are against this drastically changing Quadrant but I know that there are many people who look at this as one of the fun aspects of the game.

Balance, challenge, motivations of the people who e-mail (and post on the forum) ... there are many things to consider.

[slayernz]

Not to mention that your eyesight tends to go after the first 3,000 odd years, and you often can't figure out how to use that new fandangled technology that those whippersnappers use to launch them tor-pee-dows. Back in your day, weapons were fired by carrying them 17AU in the snow, and throwing them out the back of your state of the art Model T.