Patrols

[Deleted]

4000 years?? How is that possible?!

A changing quadrent is definetly a fun aspect of the game for me. As well as logical increased difficulty. I just feel that with the right skills you should be able to overcome the increased difficulty or at least prevent it from becoming impossibly difficult. For example, blockade may become more difficult but its still a very useful operation and with the right skills it never really becomes so hard that I cant blockade anymore. Not by a long shot. But with patrol...

So are you saying that if I'm not finding ships for patrol, its because I'm looking on the wrong planet? If I start patrolling other planets, will there be a significant difference?

[BlastGT1]

Ya dun kilt ever'un that needs killin'!

_______________________________

All I want for Christmas is my two Cadar torps.....

[slayernz]

Tactics skill of 9 stops you from finding anything ... invest in that and you'll have more luck. However, this late in the game (your capt is lvl 150), it might be a real challenge.

What game turn are you on (you can see this by looking at your score)

[Deleted]

Turn 81003

[slayernz]

LOL! At that turn, game's base level in Impossible is Level 405! That means the game is playing at more than 250 levels higher than you. I'm amazed you are still flying ... most captains would literally be splashed to the 18 winds

[martyparty]

He's hardcore

[Deleted]

Jan 16, 2013 19:24:46 GMT -5 slayernz said:

LOL! At that turn, game's base level in Impossible is Level 405! That means the game is playing at more than 250 levels higher than you. I'm amazed you are still flying ... most captains would literally be splashed to the 18 winds

Not exactly. I don't know about enemy AI, explorer difficulty or any other difficulties but in terms of enemy lv, its based solely on your lv and difficulty. Although the base level at that turn is 405, the highest level I've enountered so far is 280 something.

Also, although I don't invest in tactics, my stealth skill is pretty high, so my skills wouldn't limit me that much unless tactics played a rediculously higher role in patrol than stealth (which I doubt).

Anyways, back to the patrol request. When you're flying around in deep-space, you're trying to avoid encounters. When you're patrolling, you're actually trying to find encounters. So when your patrolling, you should get at least the same number of encounters as when you're flying around. And then skills would help you find them and further increase the chance of encounters. But if patrol, where you're looking for ships, tuns up much less ships than traveling, when you're avoiding ships, then what the heck is the point of patrol when you can just travel back and forth over a planet and get more ships that way?

[slayernz]

So Cory - question for you. How much of a role does Tactics play in patrols, surveillance, and blockades? Also, does holding records help you with these three activities.

It was my understanding that Tactics was the fundamental skill in at least Surveillance and Blockades - and because Patrol is one of these things that is a natural extension, it too would be governed by Tactics.

[Deleted]

Jan 17, 2013 16:30:07 GMT -5 slayernz said:

So Cory - question for you. How much of a role does Tactics play in patrols, surveillance, and blockades? Also, does holding records help you with these three activities.

It was my understanding that Tactics was the fundamental skill in at least Surveillance and Blockades - and because Patrol is one of these things that
is a natural extension, it too would be governed by Tactics.

Don't want to really get off topic too much from the patrol request thread that I started, but I can answer your question on that.

First, records help exploraton and harvest and that's it. Electronics do surveillane, weapons do blockades. Intimidate plays an equal or greater role in blockades,and definetly a greater role in pay extraction. Stealth plays an equal to or greater role in surveillance. Its also my understandment that stealth helps blockades, probably for encounters only though.

Now about patrol...

[Cory Trese]

Basically, discount rumors and conflicts (which can re-order the priority of the stats) ...

Blockade = Tactics, Solar Sail, Ship Speed, Warrior, Intimidate, Weapons, Military Officer
Spy = Tactics, Stealth, Engines, Ship Agile, Intimidate, Electronics, Spy Officer
Patrol = Tactics, Solar Sail, Wisdom, Ship Speed, Bodyguard Officer

They are all tests against a scaled "Game Level" which has been discussed on other threads.

Based on the Security Rating (or remoteness factor for Patrol) the "Game Level" is scaled by different Factors.

[Deleted]

Jan 19, 2013 12:54:30 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Basically, discount rumors and conflicts (which can re-order the priority of the stats) ...

Blockade = Tactics, Solar Sail, Ship Speed, Warrior, Intimidate, Weapons, Military Officer
Spy = Tactics, Stealth, Engines, Ship Agile, Intimidate, Electronics, Spy Officer
Patrol = Tactics, Solar Sail, Wisdom, Ship Speed, Bodyguard Officer

They are all tests against a scaled "Game Level" which has been discussed on other threads.

Based on the Security Rating (or remoteness factor for Patrol) the "Game Level" is scaled by different Factors.

Wait, hold on.

Intimidate plays a bigger role than tactics for blockade for the money obtained in blockade. So why is it at the end and not the beginning? Also, you said stealth helps for patrols, but you didn't list it as one of the factors. In any event, it seems tactics and wisdom are the driving factors in patrol, and patrolling without them I guess is like boarding without warrior and strength. That explains, as slayernz describes it, "why I don't get ANYTHING for patrol".

How does Warrior help blockade, how does intimidate help surveillance And how does Bodyguard help patrol? Health dice for surrender or for actual succes rate and money extraction/record production

[BlastGT1]

As I tell my children when they keep asking, it just does. Since you're so accomplished at Impossible (I'm nowhere close to trying it yet) you should try crazy stuff like using small ships, pissing everyone off and trying to survive, etc. Do something nuts just to challenge yourself. I don't think Cory's gonna just hand over the keys to the game as it were. Part of the fun is figuring things out with your own experimentation!

_______________________________

"Issue the standard Cadar greeting, Ensign."
"But sir, that's one of our allies!"
"I know that, Ensign. We're confirming that the treaty is still in effect!"

[Deleted]

Jan 19, 2013 16:33:10 GMT -5 BlastGT1 said:

As I tell my children when they keep asking, it just does. Since you're so accomplished at Impossible (I'm nowhere close to trying it yet) you should try crazy stuff like using small ships, pissing everyone off and trying to survive, etc. Do something nuts just to challenge yourself. I don't think Cory's gonna just hand over the keys to the game as it were. Part of the fun is figuring things out with your own experimentation!

That's not part of the fun for me, especially when its so easy to think its one way when its really the other. For example, everyone thought pilot changed range at all ranges and sealth dodged at all ranges, before I asked. The fun for me is having all the informtion I need and trying to build a good strategy from it.

And there's no way I'm going to intentionally do anything to make it harder for me. Trust me, its hard enough as is!

[Cory Trese]

"Intimidate plays a bigger role than tactics for blockade for the money"

This is called a balancing choice made by a game designer who's working towards allowing divergent play results and emergent strategy.

It makes sense that if you build a character that is strongly optimized to do one thing that this character's abilities to do other things suffer.

Just like Patrol, I suspect this character also has 1 Negotiation and is bad at trading and avoiding Reputation penalties. This is why people play ST over and over -- because it is diverse and complex.

[Deleted]

Wait. Negotiate helps for rep penalties? How? If I would've known that, I would have had more captains investing in negotitate. What about rep bonuses?

Also, does negotiate help for non-exchange prices?