Should score be based on firepower?

raynor · #1 February 6th, 2001, 10:27 AM

Consider this:

If you build tons and tons of empty bases and ships, your score climbs very rapidly, and it is easy to convince the AI that they should surrender to you because you are so much more powerful. Of course, you aren't. But what does the AI know?

On the other hand, if you build tons and tons of fighters and other units, you can soon amass enough firepower to rule the entire galaxy. But since units have only a minimal (if any) effect on your score, you are never perceived as a threat. By the time, you *are* perceived as a threat, you are so powerful, the AI doesn't stand a chance.

What a crazy, crazy game!

How many of you think that units should have a greater impact on the score?

Maybe the calculation of the score should be based on firepower instead of on the mass of ships and bases. For example, the ship/base/unit component of the score could be calculated as the ratio of offensive firepower divided by the amount of damage which all of the bases/ships/fighters can take. I suppose to be completely accurate, this firepower estimate would have to include various to-hit modifiers based on Combat Sensors, ECM, Stealth Armor, ship/fighter size, etc.

But in general, don't you think that the score would be much, much more accurate if it were based on offensive capability divided by defensive capability instead of just the number/mass of ships and bases?

Daynarr · #2 February 6th, 2001, 01:54 PM

I think that the scoring should be based on the active maintenance total without race modifiers applied. That will make building empty hulls and mothballing ships useless since the mothballed ships don't count for maintenance and empty hulls won't have much of maintenance.

raynor · #3 February 6th, 2001, 07:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:
I think that the scoring should be based on the active maintenance total without race modifiers applied. That will make building empty hulls and mothballing ships useless since the mothballed ships don't count for maintenance and empty hulls won't have much of maintenance.

Given that you can unmothball a ship and deploy it the next turn, I would oppose any scoring system which doesn't consider mothballed ships.

But what about my suggestion to increase the effect of units on the score?

Nyx · #4 February 6th, 2001, 07:47 PM

Personally, I feel that alliances also should count, especially if the diplomacy gets tweaked enough to work more stably than it currently does. And I don't think it should be military scoring only, tech, resources, shipyard capacity, trade and so on are very much a part of a nation's power. If there were no non-military routes to victory, sure, firepower and ships alone would count for the score. But as long as this is an empire building game as much as a military one, empire building needs to be rewarded.

On the mothballing issue, yes you "can" unmothball ships... if you have enough resources to do so. Most people mothball because they're running low on resources or are tight. I've played against people who had three or four times as many ships mothballed as they could afford to return to service, had they started unmothballing, thier income would have gone negative. Those ships ought not have counted for much on thier score. Now they could, and did, unmothball a few at a time and go and get them killed in battle freeing up economic space to unmothball a few more, and so forth, making unmothballing cheaper and faster than building equivalent fleets, so even in a case like this they should be getting something as the ships were indeed working to protect thier territory. But they oughtn't get full value for the ships.

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rdouglass · #5 February 6th, 2001, 07:48 PM

Score? What score???? I just take it ALL.

No seriously, I kinda like the idea of score being more a function of maintenance costs which should be a more accurate representation of your firepower. The flaw with that is you'll have to assign some value for units which of course have no maint cost.

However, IMO the best way to score in human vs. human should be the number of systems controlled / owned. If you are the only empire present you get 1 point. If you've colonized that system 1 point. Otherwise, no points. The only difficulty that I can see is to account for uncolonized / unoccupied territory behind enemy lines - that could be a tough one to figure.

I think scoring should be based on territory primarily 'cause I see this game as a conquest type of game instead of a "get along with your neighbor" kinda' game - I think most do. IRL the "score" is kinda' figured on your real estate holdings isn't it!?

raynor · #6 February 6th, 2001, 08:38 PM

If you are going to base the score on real estate controlled, do you think it would be better to add up the total number of facilities on all planets and use that number instead of just the number of systems and or planets?

One correction. I really meant that the firepower would replace the component of the score which is currently based on just ship/base count. I don't know why y'all can't read my mind.

Really, the point I want folks to think about is how much more powerful your empire is in reality vs. what the score indicates when you have tons and tons of units which aren't affecting the score.

Regarding mothballing... certainly *most* folks mothball stuff when they are running low on resources. But sometimes, I'll mothball ships just so I can get 100k to 150k extra resources coming in to rebuild my reserves before retrofitting a bunch of ships. Another tactic to use is to build so many ships that you can afford to maintain ALL your ships but do no construction of new facilities or new ships. Or, you can mothball one-third to one half your fleet *AND* build facilities on various planets. Then, when you go to war, you just put all those queues on hold, unmothball your ships and go to war. Alternatively, you could only unmothball the ships closest to whichever front you are fighting on at one time.

Daynarr · #7 February 6th, 2001, 10:50 PM

Well, the trouble with score that takes mothballed ships into account is not only in multiplayer but in single player too. First, AI will consider its surrender based on your score - you can make a HUGE fleet of mothballed ships and then ask all AI's to surrender to you one after another, and with each surrender you will be even more powerful and get the rest of them to surrender more easily. This way you could almost win the game without having any real combat with enemy. I don't know about you but I think that tactic should be prevented somehow.

In multiplayer the situation is much brighter since both players are on even ground. However, the game there looks more like slaughterhouse with couple of butchers (humans) trying to kill as many sheep's (AI's) as fast as possible. Now that may not be a unbalancing factor and the game will still be won by a better player, but I don't think that AI was designed with that (sheep) role in mind.

Simply cutting (at least to 1/10th of the score) or eliminating the scoring for mothballed ships and eliminating the empty hull tactic (by counting their components into score) would improve AI value and make games more interesting. It is just my opinion though.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 06 February 2001).]

Tomgs · #8 February 7th, 2001, 01:54 AM

Even without mothballing the tactic would work fast if you build bases (50% maintaince) and took a maintaince boost at start up. You would be able to build up bases and a few scout ships and still require the AI to surrender very fast. This tactic is very boring but it would work. Even without mothballing I very rarely have to slow down or stop building ships because of lack of minerals. The only time that happens is when I build a lot of stellar manipulation ships or bases all at once. That is much later in the game than you are talking about.

You can also adjust the score that the AI's accept surrender on if you think they surrender too easily. I do think that if exploited it is too easy but if you have a fleet occupying their homeworld and all their ships are destroyed, unless they are xenophobes, they should consider surrendering. I do think however if you have "glassed" one or more of their worlds they should fight on a lot longer unless they are an extremely pacificist race. Right now the different races aren't that much different in the way they react (without mods) except the Xenophobes do take a lot longer to surrender.

I guess what I am saying is yes mothballing can be an exploit but it makes the game too easy and so you will become bored easily and so will not do it very often. If you enjoy taking a lot of the risk out of it I say go ahead and do it till you get bored and then do it a different way. For multiplayer this could hurt your opponent if it is abused but it really isn't much faster if you can build ships nonstop in the beginning anyway so I don't see any great harm.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 07 February 2001).]

Nitram Draw · #9 February 7th, 2001, 02:22 AM

I think scoring should be divided into two parts. One part that the AI looks at to determine its actions and another part that includes everything.
Since the AI's actions toward other races seems to depend on the score, the military might,ships bases etc., should weigh more heavily when they decide how to act.
In determining a victor by score the overall strength of the empire should be considered, with more weight given to resources, research etc. This will encourage other types of winning strategies as opposed to just crushing everyone in sight. But I suspect most people play with total victory as the goal, so the score may not matter for victory.

Daynarr · #10 February 7th, 2001, 11:13 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Tomgs:
Even without mothballing the tactic would work fast if you build bases (50% maintaince) and took a maintaince boost at start up. You would be able to build up bases and a few scout ships and still require the AI to surrender very fast. This tactic is very boring but it would work.

Yes, but if you use the maintenance as the base for the score you will also get only 50% of points for bases. That will eliminate that tactic.

quote:
Even without mothballing I very rarely have to slow down or stop building ships because of lack of minerals. The only time that happens is when I build a lot of stellar manipulation ships or bases all at once. That is much later in the game than you are talking about.

Well, the scoring system that I suggested won't change anything in there. The AI will be building a loads of ships too, now that the problem with AI construction queues has been found AI will be on more-less even ground with human in building area. Also, you can overproduce the ships in early game just by building a large number of Base Space Yards, which are very fast to build and low on maintenance. That would make it a issue in the early parts of game too (you just need to build a large number of BSY and then build and mothball ships, it can be done very fast).

quote:
You can also adjust the score that the AI's accept surrender on if you think they surrender too easily. I do think that if exploited it is too easy but if you have a fleet occupying their homeworld and all their ships are destroyed, unless they are xenophobes, they should consider surrendering. I do think however if you have "glassed" one or more of their worlds they should fight on a lot longer unless they are an extremely pacificist race. Right now the different races aren't that much different in the way they react (without mods) except the Xenophobes do take a lot longer to surrender.

Well, I have disabled surrender for Xenophobe Sergetti and Xi'Chung, but the non-xenophobe or non-honorable races should have an option open to surrender if there is no hope left. Of course, that can and should be addressed in more then one way (like improving AI diplomacy ability, giving huge political penalties for genocide of race - atrocities, etc.) but at the moment, AI only looks at scoring when he decides on diplomatic actions. The scoring at the moment has a huge impact on the game, surrendering been just the most obvious part, but AI looks at score for all of his actions toward another empire. Score influences things like trade, demands, threats, requests, etc. - basically all of the diplomacy. It has a huge effect on game and simply needs to be accurate.
IMO the scoring has to be a way to determine empires true power. And that power includes both economical and military power. However, if you have an empire that has 100 mothballed ships and can support only 10 of them, then empire's true military power is these 10 ships it can support. The fact is that you can unmothball ships faster then produce new ones but you still need to pay resources to unmothball ships. You can't just unmothball a number of ships, throw them into battle, lose them and then do it all over again - you need to gather resources necessary to unmothball ships first. So, if an empire doesn't have these resources all of its mothballed ships are going to just sit useless. The empire may have the resources to unmothball all of it's ships, but then again it may not - it makes a world of difference but this is not visible by the number of mothballed ships. An empire that has 100 mothballed ships that can unmothball them all and the one that has 100 mothballed ships and can't unmothball any of them, at the present scoring system would have the same score - and that IMO is not right. So, the scoring of mothballed ships doesn't accurately represent the true military power of an empire. The true military power IMO is just the amount of ships that empire has (active) and can support.
The scoring system I propose will have an effect that if you are not at war, you will probably mothball ships in order to save resources and that will reflect your overall scoring. Also, if you want yourself to be seen as a great power, you will have to have some active ships - just like in true life. Also, it will make you much less likely to become an MEE during peacetime, which is also realistic IMO - you won't be seen as a military threat if you are peaceful(it opens up a new tactic to mothball your ships in order to avoid MEE status). At peace time the economic power will have the biggest impact on scoring which is also right IMO. When the war breaks out, you will use your full military potential and that will also reflect in your score - which IS your true military power in that situation.
The maintenance simply reflects this very accurately and should be used as scoring base for military power.

quote:
I guess what I am saying is yes mothballing can be an exploit but it makes the game too easy and so you will become bored easily and so will not do it very often. If you enjoy taking a lot of the risk out of it I say go ahead and do it till you get bored and then do it a different way. For multiplayer this could hurt your opponent if it is abused but it really isn't much faster if you can build ships nonstop in the beginning anyway so I don't see any great harm.

Well, I don't use this because this really isn't interesting way to play game, but the fact that you don't want to (ab)use a flaw in the game, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be fixed.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 07 February 2001).]