| Author |
Game Mechanics Question and Answer Thread |
Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
|  Posted: 2012-03-26 17:40
I've been seeing a lot of incorrect information on the forum about game mechanics. I've decided to correct this by opening up this thread so people will better understand the underlying aspects of the game.
Basically, ask how any game mechanic works and I will do my best to explain it. This can be anything small like "How does point jumping work?" to large things like "How do planets process their economic information?"
I'll go through the thread periodically and edit this main post with the question and answer.
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| How does point jumping work? |
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Assume two ships of the same size, both are 10 gu in radius. The ships are 1000 gu apart (that is, the center of the ships are 1000 gu apart). Ship 1 is traveling at 7 gu/s, ship 2 is stationary
The calculation is as follows:
Jump Distance = Distance - ((ship1's radius + ship2's radius) * 2) - (Ship1's current speed * 30)
= 1000 - ((10 + 10) * 2) - (7 * 30)
= 1000 - (40) - (210)
= 750
Ship 1 will travel 750gu and exit 250gu from ship 2
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| How does ship capturing work? I'm guessing there's a whole lot of random chance involved but do things like inf type or quality have any effect on how likely a ship is to be captured? I've seen several different bits of info, much of which was conflicting. |
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Ship Capturing is a bit tricky so let me explain in detail. Every ship hull has a hardcoded percentage of being captured per unit. A Scout is 11%, which is one of the highest numbers, while a station is 1%. The other ship hulls fit between these numbers.
So, let's assume you're in a Cruiser and you get droped by 4 infantry. These infantry are fresh off a planet (Hardended but at max trainable experience: 30%).
Now, if you have any infantry on board your ship, these groups of infantry would battle it out. If theirs any remaining enemy infantry left, they proceed to the capture phase.
The capture phase happens after 60 seconds have passed with no combat onboard your ship. Let's assume our 4 infantry from earlier at 30% for sake of consistency have reached this time and they now roll from 0 to 100 to get a number. Let's say the rolls are
Infantry1: 90
Infantry2: 35
Infantry3: 5
Infantry4: 67
Now, these rolls are then subtracted by (experience * 10), or in our case (.3 * 10 = 3). So the rolls are now:
Inf1: 87
Inf2: 32
Inf3: 2
Inf4: 64
Finally, these numbers are then added by (100 * the enhancement modifier for capture defense). However, since their are no enhancements that do this yet, we'll ignore this step.
So, now we have our rolls! The game then checks to see if this roll is less then the capture number for the ship, which for a Cruiser is 3%.
The first infantry fails to capture the ship. It damages a random subsystem and dies. The second infantry fails to capture the ship. It damages a random subsystem and dies. The third infantry captures the ship! It stays alive and so does the 4th infantry who never had a chance anyway.
This is how it works for regular infantry. For infantry that are specialized in ship captures (right now only the pirate's have a unique weapon that does this) the game rolls twice for them and picks the lower number. They also destroy two subsystems instead of one if they fail to capture
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| How low does your signature have to be to be undectable at say;
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as long as your signature is below or equal to zero your ship is undetectable on the IFF (meaning you will not appear as a targetable diamong on the tactical display). As long as you keep your signature below this number you will be fine.
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how does the follow autopilot guide the ship to its target?
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Ships move to within 50 GU for follow (1000gu for shadow) of its target and attempt to match velocity and heading to the best of its ability.
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how does ship system repairing work now?
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Ships repair whatever gadget is first in the repair queue (on the UI, whatever gadget is the left most gadget in the repair list). It will continue to repair that gadget until it is fully healed and then move onto the next gadget.
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how does combat between two groups of infantry (32 vs 32) take place on a planet? and what role does the PD% of the planet play in this?
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Combat between two infantry works like this:
1) The infantry moves to attack range of its target. All infantry have a range of zero right now, meaning they need to be on top of each other to attack. Once an infantry is in range, every infantry update they attack their target damage is done by the following:
A random number between .25 and 1 is selected. That number is multiplied by the units raw attack. Then the units experience (A number between zero and 1) is also multiplied by the units raw attack. These two numbers are now combined and the unit deals damage to its target. it then gains experience (the same amount, no matter how much damage it deals)
damage = (rand(.25,1) * attack) + (experience * attack)
For example, a heavy infantry fresh off training from a planet has an experience value of .3 (5% above Veteran). Heavy infantry have a health of 800 and an attack damage of 150. The damage this heavy inf will do is
damage = ((rand:25,1) * 150) + (.3 * 150)= 82.5 ~ 232.5
An elite Heavy infantry (.9 or higher) would do something like this
damage = ((rand:0.25,1) * 150) + (.9 * 150) = 172.5 ~ 322.5
As you can see, more experienced units would do more damage on average
If the unit has a bonus to shipcapturing is on a ship, the damage is multiplied by 1.25 (a 25% increase). Only the pirates currently have a unit that does this. As far as I'm aware, Planet Defense does not affect planetary combat at all.
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my manual target is named 10.5.8.9 . what does this mean?
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It means that target is at coordinates (10.5, 8.9) on the two dimensonal battle plane.
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how does starport resource trade take place?
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Planets spawn a transport (up to a certain number). All transports look for a buy/sell planet. A "buy" planet is one where the "resource Demand" is the lowest in its trade range, and a "sell" planet is the opposite. It then will take resources from the buy planet and give it to the sell planet.
Resource demand is calculated by the following:
demand = Planet's base demand + (structure count * structure demand) + (population * population demand) + (shipyard demand if any)
demand in then scaled by the number of resources the planet has. If the planet is at maximum resources, the demand is scaled to zero. If it is at half resources, the demand is cut in half.
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how does a planet revolt? how can we stop revolt?
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Every 5 minutes, a planetary event can occur. Seven events can occur, with one of them being a Revolution. Let's assume we have a planet with "okay" morale (.6 on a scale of 0 to 1. High is considered .95 or higher) and we have hit the random event to have a revolution
First the game checks to see if we have a revolution happening already. If we do, we'll discuss that later. Let's assume we don't. A roll is made between zero and 99. The chance of revolution is
(morale * 100) + 40 < rand(0, 99) (including both zero and 99, so 100 numbers) That means that at "okay" morale, you would never have a chance of a revolution, because (.6 * 100) + 40 is > 99 at all times. Only when you have "low" morale (.59 morale or less) are you at risk for a revolution!
Now, let's assume you have a revolution on your hands and you get another revolution event! The game then does the following: Make another roll. Is that roll higher then (morale * 100) + 50? If it is, then it checks the allegiance level. If the allegiance is at zero or less, the planet revolts. If it's higher then zero, it reduces the allegiance a level and sets the allegiancexp to zero.
If the roll wasn't higher then 25, the planet drops out of revolution state.
So, the best way to stop a revolt is to keep a happy planet!
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im shooting an assault dreadnought's exposed hull with 7 heavy EMP cannons. what
are the chances that i disable it's jump drive?
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Every time EMP damage is done to the hull, a random sub system is picked. This device takes damage based off the distance from the hit. Because this is totally random, and the damage being done is based off its randomness, this is very hard to answer. However, you'll be doing damage to subsystems at that point and that is going to start crippling other parts of the ship very quickly
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my Assault dreadnought has various heavily damaged subsystems. how does this reduce
their functionality?
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Every device acts a bit differently, but basically it's "efficiency" is reduced by the inverse of how much damage you have: ie a drive damaged at 25% works at 75% efficiency. A beam weapon at 25% recharges 25% slower. ECM/ECCM has reduced strength, etc.
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how do destroyers have 83.6 stock engine energy capacity (instead of 80), cruisers
123.2 and dreadnoughts 164.8? why not 80, 120 and 160 respectively?
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A destroy has a base energy of 19.6. IE drives add 26 energy each and UGTO/K'luth
reactors add 15 (ICC adds only 12) So the only way you can have 83.6 energy in a destroyer is if the destroyer has two IE engines and one ICC reactor which is:
Max Energy = 19.6 + 26 + 26 + 12 = 83.6
Why is it not flat numbers? Something I plan to work on soon, theirs a lot of "ugly" numbers behind the scenes that I want to change
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What are the weight of ship, armor, etc? What is the technical relation amongst mass, velocity, thrust and energy?
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Ship weights are individually set by the ship in resource, however generally speaking the mass of the ship hull is:
Scout: 5
Frigate: 6
Destroyer: 12
Cruiser: 16
Dread: 28
Assault Dread: 31
Station: Varies between 73 and 83
Only two gadgets add mass right now, Armor and Jump Disruptors. The formula for mass added is:
Armor: / 125000 (One arc of UGTO standard armor on a dread adds about .95 mass)
Jump Disruptors: 4 mass if active, 2 if not active
Now that we have our mass numbers, let’s talk about thrust. Thrust is set by hull type + gadgets that add thrust so here are the numbers:
Scout: .5
Frigate: .65
Destroyer: 4
Cruiser: .5
Dread: .5
Assault Dread: .5
Station: .5
Only engines add thrust right now (note: If damaged, they do add less thrust) and the numbers are:
AFE and AME: 6.84 + (level() * 0.28)
IE and PIE: 6.00 + (level() * 0.25)
PFE: 5.26 + (level() * 0.22)
Station AFE and AME: 48.2
Station IE and PIE: 42.5
Station PFE: 37.3
Right, so let’s get some dummy numbers up for our formula. Let’s take the UGTO EAD which has the following numbers:
Base Mass: 31
Mass added from Armor: .95 per armor, 9 armor total so 8.55 mass added
Total Mass: 39.55
Base Thrust: .5
Thrust added from engines: 7.75 per engine, 4 engines total so 31 thrust added
Total Thrust: 31.5
Acceleration is calculated by thrust divided by mass or 31.5 / 39.55 = .796 ish. That means the EAD will accelerate at about .8 gu/s
Ship turning is calculated by the ships base yaw divided by mass and then adding a tenth of max acceleration. An Assault Dread’s base turning is 3.14 so we get:
Turning speed = (3.14 / 39.55) + (.8 / 10) = .15 radians per second or about 8.5 degrees per second
After all these calculations, modifiers from ship enhancements are added
Velocity is calculated separately and is a combination of the base velocity of the ship hull + the velocity of the engines. There’s no need to show these numbers because basic math from looking at ships in game will tell you them.
Energy’s only relation to velocity/mass/thrust is that engines produce less energy linearly at higher speed (meaning if your engines are operating at 50% max speed they only produce 50% as much energy)
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how do the numbers in my prestige profile translate in actual prestige?
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Here are the stats and how much they affect prestige:
Ships Damage: 3x
Ships Captured: 15x
Planets Damaged: 1x
Planets Captured: 5x
Friendly Fire: -3x
Repair: 2.5x
Construction: 1x
Kamikaze: 5x
Self Destructs: -10x
Jumps: .1x
Planet Collisions: -1x
Resources Lost: -.005x
Scout: 1x
Bonus Prestige: 1x
Take the number in your stat, multiply it, that is how much prestige you are gaining or losing.
[ This Message was edited by: Fattierob on 2012-04-25 16:30 ]
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2012-03-26 17:41
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2012-03-26 19:05
How does ship capturing work? I'm guessing there's a whole lot of random chance involved but do things like inf type or quality have any effect on how likely a ship is to be captured? I've seen several different bits of info, much of which was conflicting.
_________________
Adapt or die.
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Flux Capacitor
Marshal
Joined: July 30, 2010
Posts: 305
From: the place
| Posted: 2012-03-27 10:16
Quote:
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Ship 1 will exit 750gu from ship 2
[ This Message was edited by: Fattierob on 2012-03-26 17:56 ]
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dont u mean 250 gu? nice to see the actual formula though i forgot to correct for ship radius:)
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[ML]RogueAvengerTTV
Marshal
Joined: September 11, 2010
Posts: 300
From: England
| Posted: 2012-03-27 14:13
===============[Signature]=====================
How low does your signature have to be to be undectable at say;
-750gu
-1000gu
-1250gu
-1500gu
-2000gu
-2500gu
-3000gu
-4000gu
-5000gu
just wondering as it would make stealth flybys and attacks more effective and worth while is say we know that at 2000gu our signature has to be less than 15.7 [random number out my head].
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2012-03-27 15:34
Quote:
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On 2012-03-27 10:16, The Maniac wrote:
Quote:
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Ship 1 will exit 750gu from ship 2
[ This Message was edited by: Fattierob on 2012-03-26 17:56 ]
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dont u mean 250 gu? nice to see the actual formula though i forgot to correct for ship radius:)
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Yes, I meant 250gu, thank you. I've updated the post with answers
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2012-03-27 16:04
Quote:
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[ This Message was edited by: Fattierob on 2012-03-27 15:33 ]
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It does work unless it was changed in the last couple patches. I remember someone explained to me a while back that each hull size has a set distance where it's always targetable no matter if it has negative signature or not, and I did some testing in beta and MV and sure enough the bigger the ship the greater the distance it's targetable at. The only value I remember for sure was Cruisers at 500 GU, and Scouts was somewhere around 100 GU.
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Adapt or die.
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Flux Capacitor
Marshal
Joined: July 30, 2010
Posts: 305
From: the place
| Posted: 2012-03-27 16:32
Quote:
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On 2012-03-26 17:40, Fattierob wrote:
Now, these rolls are then subtracted by (experience * 10), or in our case (.3 * 10 = 30). So the rolls are now:
Inf1: 60
Inf2: 5
Inf3: -25
Inf4: 37
[ This Message was edited by: The Maniac on 2012-03-27 16:33 ]
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u mean experience *100. 0,3 *100 = 30.
or lvl *10, lvl 3 * 10 =30
thx for the formula, i got another question about it but ill pm it i think...
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2012-03-27 16:47
I have more questions about the infantry.
ie. If you drop 10 infantry on a scout, do the excess instantly vanish?
This game really needs some indicator of what's going on with the troops, maybe some messages in the log of the success of failure of each troop?
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2012-03-27 16:50
Quote:
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On 2012-03-27 16:32, The Maniac wrote:
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u mean experience *100. 0,3 *100 = 30.
or lvl *10, lvl 3 * 10 =30
thx for the formula, i got another question about it but ill pm it i think...
[/quote]
I got my numbers mixed up, it's actually times ten not times a hundred. sorry.
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[ML]RogueAvengerTTV
Marshal
Joined: September 11, 2010
Posts: 300
From: England
| Posted: 2012-03-27 17:38
Quote:
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On 2012-03-27 16:47, Fluttershy wrote:
I have more questions about the infantry.
ie. If you drop 10 infantry on a scout, do the excess instantly vanish?
This game really needs some indicator of what's going on with the troops, maybe some messages in the log of the success of failure of each troop?
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Like this idea maybe something like
Infantry success engineering deck captured <--[text in dark green]
or
Infantry failure critcal systems damaged <--- [text in dark red]
then you could randomly change the engineering deck to commad deck, flight deck, armoury, ect just a thought
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Mylith
Grand Admiral
Faster than Light
Joined: July 19, 2011
Posts: 507
From: Hivarin, CD+36*15693
| Posted: 2012-03-27 18:09
Why does this happen?
I'm in a bomber frig, with a nice -2.2(always below 0) sig, and a AI parasite comes and ganks me. This has happened multiple times.
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2012-03-27 22:24
Quote:
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On 2012-03-27 18:09, Persistance wrote:
Why does this happen?
I'm in a bomber frig, with a nice -2.2(always below 0) sig, and a AI parasite comes and ganks me. This has happened multiple times.
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ECM on?
ECM seems to lower your sig but make you detectable. Dunno if this has been fixed yet.
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2012-03-27 22:32
Quote:
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On 2012-03-26 17:40, Fattierob wrote:
The calculation is as follows:
Jump Distance = Distance - ((ship1's radius + ship2's radius) * 2) - (Ship1's current speed * 30)
= 1000 - ((10 + 10) * 2) - (7 * 30)
= 1000 - (40) - (210)
= 750
Ship 1 will travel 750gu and exit 250gu from ship 2
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By publishing this, anyone and everyone can conjure up a DS jump calculator and have it beside him during the game.
PJ-ing is going to be rampant.
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2012-03-29 05:32
standard proc for being captured for the original ftl's was to shut down all engines and generators and evacuate energy stores by activating weapon systems.
When the ship caps, it has no energy, no charged weapons, and no means to generate energy, or charge weapons.
Is this a viable tactic? Is the ai smart enough to re start vital ship systems?
Never was used.
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