Spidey
Posts: 411
Joined: 12/8/2013
Status: offline
|
This is getting tedious. I write an essay, you ignore it. If we are to have this discussion then I'm going to have to insist that you actually take the time to read what I write and refrain from ignoring half of it because you don't understand it. I'm going to try one more time, and I'm afraid it's going to be a very long read. I've tried to mark very thoroughly what I'm commenting on in the given sections, in order to avoid any kind of confusion.
quote:
You agree that firepower alone is not the best way to figure out if a vessel is bigger or smaller than themselves. Somehow you have missed everything but the use of the word "perfectly". I don't care if a ship is bigger or smaller, I only care about how the firepower rating is used for determining AI decisions in combat and diplomacy[1]. You say the formula is a lot more complex. Then you suggest situations where the formula should be more complicated. It really isn't more complex and is relatively easy to understand. A sqrt of the multiple of 2 sums isn't that much more complicated than a sum. Not that it matters as the game automatically calculates the firepower rating. It's certainly a lot less complex than just about every other formula used in this game.[2]
Is it the right blend between simplicity and accuracy? I think it is. But I ask the forum to judge and discuss.[3]. But you just come here to attack the use of the word "perfectly" which refers to "it works perfectly as an abstract way to use the abstract values of offense and defence as a way to compare the abstract strength of ships", yet you continue to carry on that the formula itself isn't perfect to predict the outcome of certain situations, which is something I never claimed it does.[4]
As for you ship A and ship B circumstance, (I am presuming ship A is the 40/40 ships and ship B is the 70/10 ship even though you confusingly mention the 70/10 ship first), quite rightly would the 70/10 ship should regard itself as weaker, because it is weaker.[5] You refer to the ship as beserker (whatever that means), but if you designed that ship, you would simply set it to the same setting for weaker as stronger. If it is an AI ship, the AI designed ship is an AI controlled ship, you are attributing a design role to the AI ship that it doesn't have.[6]
So you say I am using a strawman. Unfortunately that an example you have used. I didn't set it up. You did. To accuse someone of a strawman, when it is your idea that was deconstructed! And then you talk about your emotions. Ok...[7]
You say it isn't sensible to try to assume there is a metric strength that can be used to compare ships. Unfortunately, the game goes right ahead and does that anyways whether you think it is sensible or not. It was you who brought it up it the first place, only that now that looking at it logically, it only serves to strengthen my arguments as opposed to yours, you try to say that such comparisons are pointless. It's amazing. It is as if you don't realise that in the game firepower is something that is used for that purpose. [8]
Is the current firepower easy and simple to understand? Yes. Is it inaccurate? Yes, you say so yourself. Your solution? Pretend it doesn't exist in your arguments, or presumably to not improve it at all. [9]
Does the proposed firepower rating require a pocket calculator to work out? The current one needs quite some time to use mental arithmetic to work out. One you get more than a few wapons you will need a calculator or pen and paper to work out expediently. Not that it matters as 1) You seem to be under the impression that the point of the firepower rating is to design ships with as high a firepower rating as possible. It is not. 2) The game works out the firepower rating automatically, it is a set number that changes in the design screen automatically. You don't need to work it out yourself anyhow.[10]
It is dishonest to say the current system is if yes, then x, if no then y. Then to say that my proposed system is to have ships acting with "same swagger that it uses when punching holes in civilian ships" and "soiling thier decks at the sight". I have not proposed any changes to the AI at all, except how they calculate their firepower rating.[11]
As for your example right at the end, quite rightly that a ship with shielding is more threatening than a ship without as your own disproved example of 40/40 vs 70/10 has shown.
And quite rightly should pirate ships keep away from constructor ships that can not only survive the pirate ships but destroy them. Preumably, you prefer pirate ships to suicidely attack your constructor ships, but if mine were capable of destroying pirate ships, I would prefer they would be more likely to recognise this and warp away and attack targets they can actually hurt.[12]
[1] No, I haven't missed that part but "bigger" and "smaller" corresponds fairly well with "stronger" and "weaker", which are the terms actually used on the design screen. I'm entirely aware of what you're trying to accomplish. And that's why I've been spending ridiculous amounts of time and text explaining to you that your way of modelling things isn't necessarily better just because it adds one single factor to the formula. You, however, are having a tremendously hard time understanding why more isn't always better.
[2] I'm saying a perfect formula for evaluating whether the other ship is "stronger" is a lot more complex. Mind you, I just said a PERFECT formula is a lot more complex, assuming we care about accuracy. A basic formula that sacrifices accuracy (meaning the ability to correctly figure out if the other ship is stronger or weaker) can of course be a lot more simple. But the more basic you make your formula, the more you're going to find inaccurate predictions.
And I'm not suggesting situations where the formula "should" be anything. I'm not saying what the formula should be at all. You are. You're making loud and aggressive claims about what should be. Well, if you want to the model to change in some specific way then it's on you to show that your changed model is actually better, not just in very specific spots, but over the entire input range. That's the challenge faced by anyone trying to change the status quo.
[3] Precisely. You don't know that it's the right blend, you simply think it. You also don't know that what you're arriving at is in fact the right blend between offense and defense, you simply think it. You don't even know that you're representing offense and defense properly, you simply think it. The thing is, I don't care too much about what you think. What matters to me is your reasoning, your evidence, possibly even any proofs you may have worked out. Everything else is subjective fluff mixed with personal anecdotes, and while such might be entertaining or to some degree inspiring, it's really not worth all that much in this situation.
[4] After all this text, all this explaining, you think I came here to "just" attack your use of the word "perfectly"? You think I'm a linguistics geek who cares tremendously about semantics and the keeping the language pure? No, I actually came here to discuss your proposed formula. Strengths and weaknesses, assumptions, testing methods. Unfortunately you're quite unwilling to take things to that level. You want to shout at anyone who dares to question your genius but you don't want to be burdened by scientific rigour, do you?
As for me saying your formula cannot predict outcomes, I say that because if it cannot do that then how does it predict perfectly which ship is stronger? It doesn't, obviously. Just like the simple firepower rating doesn't. You're saying the firepower rating is too simplified and you're quite right that it is very simplified, even ridiculously simplified, but your formula is barely any better.
[5] I don't see how what I wrote was confusing at all. And no, as I've laboriously explained in exhaustive detail, if the ship with 70 firepower shoots at a ship with just 40 shield left then the ship with 40 shield left has no shield and 30 damage passes beyond to do whatever happens. If a ship with 40 firepower shoots at a ship with just 10 shield left then the ship with just 10 shield left has no shield and 30 damage passes beyond. 30 damage leaks through regardless. Those ships are therefore quite equal in that encounter during the first volley and the advantage goes to whichever ship strikes first. During the second volley, when neither ship has any shield left, the second ship is decidedly superior.
I'm guessing you haven't even thought about why your model is breaking down in this situation. 40/40 looks like balance but in game terms, it's just 40% of a single tier 1 shield while 40 firepower is 8 maxos blasters. The size total of combat components? 50. The alternative, a 70/10 ship, has just 10% left of a tier 1 shield and no less than 14 maxos blasters. The size total of combat components? 80. But according to you, this ship is weaker for having as many shield components and six more blasters than the "balanced" ship.
Granted, if you put another three tier 1 shields on the first ship then it's going to be a lot better, but that's not the scenario here. We're not talking about a 70/100 vs a 40/400. We're talking 70/10 vs 40/40.
[6] You don't know what a berserker is? I'd say Google is your friend, but if you were going to not be lazy about it, you'd have googled the term already. Berserkers were Norse warriors of the viking era who allegedly fought in a nearly trance-like fury. The original belief about them was that they fought without armor, caring only about carving up their enemies. They probably didn't, but the legend persists, making "berserker" a rather appropriate term for a ship that is all attack with very little defense.
As for the other part of the marked section, you're quite right that the AI doesn't currently use such ships and that I can work around it if it's my design. That's entirely besides the point, however. What matters is whether your formula get things right or not and in this case it didn't. It rates the ship with less guns and practically no defense left over the ship with more guns and practically no defense left.
[7] A strawman is whenever you take something that isn't actually what the opposition is arguing, beat the hell out of the argument the opposition isn't actually making, and then declare that you've managed to refute the opposition. Yes, I made the example and the example shows what I wanted it to show. The strawman isn't the example but rather your misrepresentation of what I'm showing with the example. Can you tell the difference?
And by the way, when I explicitly write that my example is unrealistic and you then give me crap about it being unrealistic despite the fact that I clearly intended for that to be the case, then yes, you are misconstruing the argument. That is a strawman and that is exactly what you did. Own up to it or be a chicken, that's your call.
[8] No, the game really doesn't do that. The game doesn't insist that a ship with 300 firepower is three times stronger than a ship with 100 firepower. It simply comes to the conclusion that 300 is higher than 100, therefore the 300 firepower ship is "stronger". Beyond that, the game suggests nothing about the properties of the firepower scale, and you can compare different ranks the same way you can compare "mostly agree" with "slightly agree". Which is to say, you really can't in anything but a qualitative sense.
What we were discussing, as it happens, was the arithmetic used to come to the conclusion that 300/300 should be exactly three times stronger than 100/100. I think your arithmetic in that situation is miserable at best, and so far you've failed completely to explain it, but it's not all that important because we're discussing something poorly defined. To clarify, we're talking about some metric of strength, but what exactly is that? What does it mean? What does it really mean that A is three times stronger than B? That's not even established so far.
[9] You don't know my solution because we haven't discussed it yet, so what exactly are you blabbering about? What could you possibly know about my solution to this problem? And why is my solution the least bit relevant in a discussion about your formula? I do have a much more elegant solution (at least I think it is) than just another oversimplified formula that makes very little sense, but so what if I didn't? What difference would it make? Would it make your formula less flawed if I didn't have a better idea?
[10] No, the current firepower rating doesn't require much time or putting numbers on a paper, because not only is it really only the amount of weapons times the damage of the weapons, but it's also displayed on both your ships and enemy ships. Therefore you know exactly how your design will respond to a different design. This makes it very easy for a player to spot if his settings are appropriate. The game does not currently show some weird power rating anywhere so if you want to know what your ship will do when running into that pirate ship then you'll have to punch the numbers into a pocket calculator.
What if we display your power rating as well? That way you'd have an easy time knowing what your ship will do when it runs into a pirate cruiser. Unfortunately it would also imply that a ships true power is actually measured by this number, and since the number only takes two factors into consideration, it would end up being rather misleading. What if the "weaker" ship has 30% dodge from ECM systems? Well, apparently this doesn't affect its power in any way whatsoever.
Firepower suffers the same problem but it's much simpler than a square root of a product of a partial representation of attack strength and a sum of numbers that partially represent defensive strength. Nobody in their right mind could possibly confuse firepower with anything other than what it is, a partial representation of attack strength.
[11] No, it's not dishonest to say that the current system is the equivalent of an if-branch. It is. And it remains the case even with your change, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. I just used a bit of dramatic flair to make an incredibly dry discussion a tiny bit more colorful. What I was getting at is that combat ships tend to have civilian ships massively outgunned, wouldn't you say? Consequently they've got more firepower and usually that means closing in to either point blank or all weapons. On the other hand, against enemies vastly stronger, it seems reasonable to not get into close range and get shredded by every gun on the target. Are those not the default settings?
[12]Yes, a ship with shield is more threatening than a shield without, but who has said otherwise? The problem is when we're getting into a discussion of how threatening x amount of shield is relative to y amount of firepower. No, pirate ships shouldn't run away from construction ships that have two maxos blasters and some shields because there's usually more pirates around than there are construction ships, which means the construction ship loses unless it's a one on one against an escort. By the way, the pirates do have warp drives so it's not like they'll get killed unless you put some serious firepoewr on your construction ships. But hey, let's just ignore that tiny little detail, right?
|
Printable Version
Firepower, why and how it can be changed - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread