Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Talk among developers, and propose and discuss general development planning/tackling/etc... feature in this forum.
travists
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Well, one could also rather then outright skill have a feature for each, or most, positions. I do think assigning positions is ideal, but it is not a deal breaker for me.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by TBeholder »

travists wrote:
  • life support: atmosphere type
  • Fuel tanks
Well, yeah.
travists wrote:
  • Ship's magazine: because pulling into port every time you need to reload is a pain.
So true.
But ship magazines proper and reloading conveyors (internal built-in equipment) are for large warships.
For small ships, a more likely solution is reloading by bots ("pick this box in hold, unwrap and plug its contents into slot of a gun out there, marked side forward" thing). Hmm, we'll also need to handle differently internal / external mounts.
travists wrote:
  • Replicator
Not in VS-verse with nanoplague and all.
But workshops and bots that repair all that equipment must be able to produce some of it (consuming materials and working much slower than proper facilities would, of course).

As to repair and balance - it doesn't need to be very fast at the lowest levels, just fast enough that it mattered at all. Also, we have functionality/maxfunctionality difference, so a better AI or a good engineer could affect probability and/or portion of the broken stuff salvaged.
Also, VS could support routine servicing and maintenance (e.g. as Frontier - First Encounters does). It should be adjusted per upgrade anyway, so if and when not needed it would be easy to turn off in ruleset. With repair it may look like "okay, this thing kinda holds together and works for now, but you'd better have someone look at it when you can".
And since in VS high-end PAI is much the same as a good engineer who happened to be a cyborg, there can be justified thresholds for the quality.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by Hicks »

travists wrote:[*]Fuel tanks
i've added them, just need to finalise the number of upgrades and stats
TBeholder wrote:
Hicks wrote: and fuel tanks
That, yes.
So far its just a small, medium and large fuel tank, 1, 10 and 100 tons repectively, you get better effciency from the large tanks.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

TBeholder wrote:
travists wrote:
  • life support: atmosphere type
  • Fuel tanks
Well, yeah.
travists wrote:
  • Ship's magazine: because pulling into port every time you need to reload is a pain.
So true.
But ship magazines proper and reloading conveyors (internal built-in equipment) are for large warships.
For small ships, a more likely solution is reloading by bots ("pick this box in hold, unwrap and plug its contents into slot of a gun out there, marked side forward" thing). Hmm, we'll also need to handle differently internal / external mounts.
Sounds good to me.
travists wrote:
  • Replicator
Not in VS-verse with nanoplague and all.
But workshops and bots that repair all that equipment must be able to produce some of it (consuming materials and working much slower than proper facilities would, of course).
Here I was hoping to avoid confusion. "replicator" = food synthesizer it takes raw amino acids, other food precursors and assembles them into something resembling food of different types. Repair parts are a different matter.
As to repair and balance - it doesn't need to be very fast at the lowest levels, just fast enough that it mattered at all. Also, we have functionality/maxfunctionality difference, so a better AI or a good engineer could affect probability and/or portion of the broken stuff salvaged.
Also, VS could support routine servicing and maintenance (e.g. as Frontier - First Encounters does). It should be adjusted per upgrade anyway, so if and when not needed it would be easy to turn off in ruleset. With repair it may look like "okay, this thing kinda holds together and works for now, but you'd better have someone look at it when you can".
And since in VS high-end PAI is much the same as a good engineer who happened to be a cyborg, there can be justified thresholds for the quality.
Main diffrence being a good engineer may also be a fair cook and can be reassigned if needed, a PAI is just an engineer.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

TBeholder wrote:
travists wrote:
  • Replicator
Not in VS-verse with nanoplague and all.
But workshops and bots that repair all that equipment must be able to produce some of it (consuming materials and working much slower than proper facilities would, of course).
A thought struck me on this. Today's 3D printers are closing in on what most would call a replicator quite quickly. Some are even developing the ability to make electronic components. Saw the other day one that was color and could make things with moving parts!

A workshop.....
If the advanced repair units "sometimes even invent stuff" what would aboard human with a workshop do? Player owned factories is a feature request; a ship's workshop making components may be a dry run for such...

It's late and I'm afraid I'm starting to ramble.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by klauss »

Yes, it would be interesting to have a "production chain" of sorts, it would open up economic options, like deployment of automated factories and such.

Of course, careful consideration has to be given to the various costs, or economic loopholes would result in serious exploits.

But, certainly, a properly manned workshop could turn raw materials into useful items, perhaps even hard to find ones. Say you have a very hard mineral usually used in armor construction, but cannot find anywhere a base that sells prefabbed armor. You could make your workshop build it.

I can see a simple incarnation of this feature as an interface that lets you pick from viable items (given the ships manifest), associated costs (both materials and workmanship), and time-delayed fabrication.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Sounds like a solid implementation to me. The time delay should be further delayed if their real job (assuming your engineer is tinkering in the workshop) has need of attention. The cost to you from a workshop is materials or materials + wage if you have someone permanently assigned there. An "exploit" is unavoidable, and even desirable, as it leads to furthering the impression of markup. Thing is, it takes money to make money; without the layout to have high end materials, workshops/factories, and skilled workers all you can make is cheep stuff. There is even a possibility of a new class of upgrades or two: inferior and rigged neither as good or as costly as the professional counterpart.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by klauss »

travists wrote:An "exploit" is unavoidable, and even desirable, as it leads to furthering the impression of markup.
They should be explicitly designed and allowed exploits, though, not accidental ones. Accidental exploits are very dangerous to game balance.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Basically I can see manufacturing upgrades, eventually anything, for sale as a valid path. Ultimately, the economy could make use of this by each base type having different "raw materials" and using the workshop code to make the inventory.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by TBeholder »

travists wrote:Here I was hoping to avoid confusion. "replicator" = food synthesizer it takes raw amino acids, other food precursors and assembles them into something resembling food of different types. Repair parts are a different matter.
Can't remember synthetic food in goods... Anyway, it's nanomechanics, at least borderline.
Not that things like hydroponics won't do much the same. Energy + fertilizer + water -> algae/plant food + lifesupport function (air recycling).
travists wrote:
And since in VS high-end PAI is much the same as a good engineer who happened to be a cyborg, there can be justified thresholds for the quality.
Main diffrence being a good engineer may also be a fair cook and can be reassigned if needed, a PAI is just an engineer.
My point is, VS has a setting-justified threshold where requirements are big enough to push PAI from "equipment" category to "employee". And "true AI" are truly expensive.
klauss wrote: But, certainly, a properly manned workshop could turn raw materials into useful items, perhaps even hard to find ones. Say you have a very hard mineral usually used in armor construction, but cannot find anywhere a base that sells prefabbed armor. You could make your workshop build it.
Things like smelter/refinery may require more specialized equipment to make tons of product faster than a ship can go find it and return. On the other eyestalk, an armorer bot has requirements different from a bot rewiring damaged equipment. So it's more a question of how much autonomy the ship owner can afford and is willing to buy and maintain: basic equipment repair, a few spare heets of armor material and extra-heavy duty tailor for it, or everything needed to start with tractoring in some iron-nickel asteroids. :)
More generally, yeah, a basic workshop repairing spaceship components obviously shouldn't have much troubles with basic industrial goods fitting inside, like distillators or even mining bots. Not as efficient as a factory line, but it's another matter. Conversely (double-pun is unintended), AM storage units could be turned into Reaper or missile warheads and iron-nickel asteroids are also good for casting simple iron-nickel based slugs.
travists wrote:The time delay should be further delayed if their real job (assuming your engineer is tinkering in the workshop) has need of attention.
Bots can do most of it on their own. But yeah, production resource hogging (to repair something in the workshop at full power you'd have to free it, freezing production of anything else) should happen.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

How about AM mines? Drop a load of AM storage pods and watch the impacting ship go boom!

edit: multi-use cargo could be so much fun.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by TBeholder »

travists wrote:How about AM mines? Drop a load of AM storage pods and watch the impacting ship go boom!
Oh, right, also Industrially_Manufactured_Goods/Power_Utilities needs to be split into manufactured empty devices and packed fuel (diesel fuel and probably ethanol also go there) categories.
Other than that, it's about cargo and upgrades having some sort of onDeath functions (weapons and huge caps can be fairly dangerous this way).
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by marX »

Sorry if its offtopic, BUT....
Why stop there with the Wingmen ?
It would be fantastic if the player can start a faction of his own with a certain ideology and lead it to dominate the universe !
Also, it should be possible to eliminate the opposing ones to make it interesting !!

So, what I'm proposing is..

1. For all factions, military ships spawns from Shipyards and the Merchant ships from Merchant (or whatever name) Shipyards according to the 'budget' allocations.
No more random spawning !!

2. Money is made from taxes on traders, direct selling, bounties.....stuff like that

3. Each unit like Starfortress, Commerce centre etc have a price tag which must be paid to spawn it (again according to the budget allocations)

4. Ability to eliminate a faction from system to system by destroying all the stuff like Commerce centre, Star fortess, shipyards...except the planets (which should be indestructible imo)

5. Ability to bribe other factions units (the likes of Star fortress, Shipyards etc)

6. Colonizing ships with nukes which first exterminates opposing factions from the planets and then lands there with the equipments to start new (for planets and asteroids)

7....



What do you guys say ?
Sorry about my English :oops:
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

I believe that currently the player is a faction of one as far as the data goes. It therefore stands to reason as you graduate to fleet operations, all those ships flying under your banner would be part of your faction. Owning bases has also been tossed about, and it seems that one of the biggest obstacles is how to handle it game play wise. Interesting points...
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by TBeholder »

marX wrote:Sorry if its offtopic, BUT....
Why stop there with the Wingmen ?
It would be fantastic if the player can start a faction of his own
User organizations is a great feature to consider for MMO. Mercenary companies, mafias, local governments, and so on. With adjustable rank/access rights systems. :)
For singleplayer / simple multiplayer it's a bit too much.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

I have also felt for some time that some inter-faction organizations like how the guilds worked in Privateer are needed, but that is a topic all on it's own. Let's hear some more voices, but I think the ground work needs to be laid; if multilayer ever gets to the MMO point such a concept is well worth the effort.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by klauss »

Ya, I would like the feature.
But how does it work, gameplay-wise, is the question.

Do my hard-earned ships fly around under AI? Do they defend themselves as AI does? Do I loose them when attacked and destroyed?

IE: how much control do we want to have on player-fleet operations, is variable. When my faction is small and I have to pay ~500k to buy one ship, I don't want clumsy AIs loosing it for me. When my faction is huge, I don't want, I can't control them all.

So it's not trivial to find a way to balance both modes of operation.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

And that brings us back to crew! :mrgreen:
klauss wrote: Do my hard-earned ships fly around under AI?
As I see it, only if assigned a pilot. Otherwise they just sit where parked.
Do they defend themselves as AI does?
better than not defending themselves at all.
Do I loose them when attacked and destroyed?
If they are destroyed, yes.
If the ship carrying them is destroyed it depends:
Do they have a pilot assigned?
Was there time to launch?
Did you luck out and have one/several survive like cargo containers sometimes do?
If your ship is destroyed, but it was not carrying others, no.
IE: how much control do we want to have on player-fleet operations, is variable. When my faction is small and I have to pay ~500k to buy one ship, I don't want clumsy AIs loosing it for me. When my faction is huge, I don't want, I can't control them all.

So it's not trivial to find a way to balance both modes of operation.
A reasonable interface for controlling a fleet can be a bit of a task. In fact, once you have more than two or three cap-ships each with a fighter complement your whole game play changes as you spend most of your time reading reports and making assignments. (Ah, the glorious life of an admiral! Hard to wait, huh?)
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by marX »

IMO, the AI is not that bad !
So, I'm OK with AI flying my ships but I should have the option to set the tone of behaviour (Agressive - shoot to kill anyone with even -1 in the relationship, Neutral - shoot me and I would shoot you back, Passive - shoot me but I wont shoot back etc..)

BTW, is it possible to enable the 'tax' system in Vegastrike SVN ?
The income should be based on the tax collected from ships and cargoes sold/transiting through the system controlled by the faction !
Is it possible ? :?:

That would be a important first step towards......
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by charlieg »

If you had guys with portraits and flying styles (so you get that AI "tuning" by virtue of picking a guy with an appropriate flying style) and flight experience/history, that would be awesome.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Agreed, personality of crew (especially pilots and turret gunners) is important. Varied skill levels and attack probabilities would be helpful in general as they can be applied semi-randomly across the board to provide a more natural game play experience. I.E. not everybody flies the same. Any objections to adding "mental stability" to personality traits? something that determines if they are likely to go nuts and start shooting anybody and anything?
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by klauss »

No objections.
Except maybe phrase it differently, sounds like "probability of becoming crazy" ;-)
PS: Oh... you did mean that! :-o

Well, if anyone cares to contribute a state-machine-like AI module, I wouldn't mind turning VS in a space-based close combat ;) (I really liked its psychological side). I could handle that with a state machine as AI, not so with the current AI.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Far from finished with the outline and not sure how to code it, but am I on the right track here?
  • What are my orders?
    • Protect a target
      • Has this order been superseded [influenced by altruism for distress calls]?
        • Yes = recheck orders
        • No = continue
      • Can I keep going? [Damage, dedication, courage, & aggressiveness]
        • Yes = continue
        • No
          • Should I wait, return to port or send a distress call? [Damage, courage, & intelligence]
            • Wait: rest for some cycles and check again
            • R2P: Head for nearest friendly dock for repairs
            • DC: send message to friendly units, wingmen, and/or local flight group members requesting assistance
      • Will I follow orders [reliability]?
        • Yes = continue
        • No
          • Should I land or steal this ship? [Reliability]
            • Land: land at nearest friendly base
            • Steal: head for nearest jump point remove ship, contents and crewman from player’s inventory
      • Am I close enough?
          • Hostiles, currently engaged. [Intelligence, courage, & aggressiveness]
            • Yes: keep fighting –combat sub brain
            • No: return to escorted craft
          • Hostile, not engaged [courage & intelligence]
            • Yes: continue
            • No: return to escorted craft
          • Safe [intelligence & reliability]
            • Yes
              • Should I scout ahead? [Intelligence & courage]
                • Yes: Head to destination
                • No: continue
              • No: return to escorted craft
    • Attack a Target
    • Fly to a Point
    • Attack any Target

I'll do a flow chart when It's closer to done unless the outline is not particularly readable.

***edit: Changing to an actual outline. Saw how to do in in klauss' post!
***Edit: Done! (I think)
Last edited by travists on Wed Dec 21, 2011 12:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by klauss »

A state machine is more:
  • Do whatever I'm doing.
    • Attacked?
      • Defend thyself (p=0.9)
      • Or not (p=0.1)
    • Meet a pirate
      • Attack him (p=how much I like him + how aggressive I am)
      • Ignore (p=rest)
    • Were ordered to attack
      • Comply (p=1.0 - fear + aggressiveness)
      • Ignore and Fear += 1 (p=rest/2)
      • Flee (p=rest/2)
    • Got hit
      • Fear += 1
So, kinda what you say, but not so programmatic. It's mostly, the state defines what I do, and there can be more than one state machine. State machines can sync on events, it's complex, but very useful.

See this
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Re: Musings on Permanent Wingmen and Ship Crew

Post by travists »

Ok then.... Perhaps I'll leave it to others then. However a list of "personality traits" that can be used as quantitative probabilities would be helpful, I would think.
  • Intelligence: general modifier , do they do what makes sense?
  • Aggressiveness: How likely they are to initiate or continue an attack
  • Courage: likelihood of sticking it out despite poor odds.
  • Reliability: can you really count on them?
  • altruism: will they help out without orders? Maybe break off when safe to rescue a helpless bunny?
Maybe others?
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