QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities

Matrix Games Forums

Forums Register Login Photo Gallery Member List Search Calendars FAQ

My Profile Inbox Address Book My Subscription My Forums Log Out

QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

Users viewing this topic: none

Printable Version

All Forums >> [Coming Soon] >> Distant Worlds 2 >> QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/20/2022 4:25:22 AM

StormingKiwi

Posts: 63
Joined: 2/11/2021
Status: offline

Something I'd like to see in DW2 is a number for how many entities the military strength is divided by.

E.g. is it a single ship with a strength of 100, or a group of 8 escorts?

Post #: 1

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 12:24:05 AM

StormingKiwi

Posts: 63
Joined: 2/11/2021
Status: offline

This matters because, in theory, both groups of ships have the same military strength.

In practice, quantity is better than quality, so more ships will overcome a single ship even if that single ship has greater military strength than the fleet combined, to a point. This makes the military strength convey misleading information to the player at best.

An example of this can be seen in this video of TortugaPower's, where a fleet of strength ~580 with 27 ships easily defeats a single base with strength 850.

(in reply to StormingKiwi)

Post #: 2

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 1:28:39 AM

Galaxy227

Posts: 142
Joined: 12/1/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: StormingKiwi

In practice, quantity is better than quality, so more ships will overcome a single ship even if that single ship has greater military strength than the fleet combined, to a point.

This is absolutely not true. I think you are forgetting how complex ship design is in Distant Worlds, and how so many different factors about each particular design (weapons, shields, sensors, range, speed, etc.) can contribute to the outcome of an engagement. Hell, in DW2, even galactic terrain can alter the course of engagements (most notably nebula).

To elaborate, I am fascinated by ship design in Distant Worlds, and spent a great deal of time creating various warships catered towards specific use-cases in DW:U. There are absolutely instances where X ship can beat Y, but not Z. Yet Z cannot beat Y, even though it can destroy X, and X is capable of beating Y.

Point being, ships are very complex, and there are too many factors contributing to the outcome of engagements for you to generalize combat as "quantity is better than quality," where "more ships will overcome a single ship even if that single ship has greater military strength than the fleet combined."

That is not at all how it works.

(in reply to StormingKiwi)

Post #: 3

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 2:07:01 AM

StormingKiwi

Posts: 63
Joined: 2/11/2021
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Galaxy227

This is absolutely not true. I think you are forgetting how complex ship design is in Distant Worlds, and how so many different factors about each particular design (weapons, shields, sensors, range, speed, etc.) can contribute to the outcome of an engagement. Hell, in DW2, even galactic terrain can alter the course of engagements (most notably nebula).

To elaborate, I am fascinated by ship design in Distant Worlds, and spent a great deal of time creating various warships catered towards specific use-cases in DW:U. There are absolutely instances where X ship can beat Y, but not Z. Yet Z cannot beat Y, even though it can destroy X, and X is capable of beating Y.

Point being, ships are very complex, and there are too many factors contributing to the outcome of engagements for you to generalize combat as "quantity is better than quality," where "more ships will overcome a single ship even if that single ship has greater military strength than the fleet combined."

That is not at all how it works.

I too am absolutely fascinated by ship design and fleet engagements, nor am I forgetting how complex ship design is in Distant Worlds.

However, I have a video of actual gameplay providing a concrete example to support what I have written, and the principles are well supported by a century of OR.

Unless you're going to provide evidence supporting your point of view, that is a good generalisation of how this works.

Further, this is a tangent to the actual point I am making, which is that the estimate of military strength conveys misleading information to the player.

(in reply to Galaxy227)

Post #: 4

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 3:49:55 AM

Galaxy227

Posts: 142
Joined: 12/1/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: StormingKiwi

However, I have a video of actual gameplay providing a concrete example to support what I have written

My initial argument was against the statement of yours which describes "...quantity [being] better than quality."

I will not agree quantity is objectively superior to quality. There is a time and a place for both. Any player of Distant Worlds, or observer of warfare in general, should understand this concept. If you need "evidence," I can fire up DW:U and create a single ship capable of destroying a hundred others at once. Your statement is not a rule Distant Worlds strictly follows, and a single five-minute engagement in a preview build will not make it so.

Regardless, you are correct in saying "this is a tangent to the actual point I am making." In an effort to remain on-topic, I spent some time thinking about the current state of strength in DW2. Closer inspection of Tortuga's battle has led me to believe the value of strength in DW2 is so inaccurate, it's practically useless. Furthermore, your original point is equally as useless of a solution, as defining the quantity of entities within a given value of strength will not fix the inherent inaccuracies nested within said value. Simply put, telling the player 800 strength is one ship or seven ships doesn't change the fact 800 was an inaccurate measure of strength to begin with.

You tell me you want evidence.

quote:

ORIGINAL: StormingKiwi

Unless you're going to provide evidence supporting your point of view, [my point] is a good generalization...

To elaborate, let us simply look into the evidence you provided.

The engagement linked in Tortuga's video suggests strength in DW2 is a poor indicator of an entity's prowess in combat.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Tortuga had two fleets, the 1st & 2nd Defense Force, of twelve and fifteen ships respectively. Combined, these two fleets totaled to eight frigates and nineteen escorts. Both Tortuga's frigates and escorts have 228 shields and 0 armor, but differ in their damage per second. Each frigate deals 2.9 damage per second, whereas each escort deals 1.8 damage per second.

Let us find the combined hitpoints and damage of Tortuga's two fleets (which DW2 projects at a strength of 568).

228 * 27
= 6,156 hitpoints

2.9 * 8
= 23.2
1.8 * 19
= 34.2
23.2 + 34.2
= 57.4 damage per second

Let us list the hitpoints and damage of the Pirate Base (which DW2 projects at a strength of 850).

= 1,384 hitpoints

= 9.8 damage per second

With the numbers above, it should be clear as day Tortuga's two fleets are significantly stronger than the Pirate Base. So why does DW2 suggest the Pirate base has more strength? Because the value of strength is broken.

I suggest strength should be a combination of only hitpoints and damage. You might ask, why only hitpoints and damage if I previously argued "ships are very complex?" The answer lies in what followed the aforementioned quote: "there are too many factors contributing to the outcome of engagements for you to generalize combat" into a single value of strength. The rest of combat is far too unpredictable; for instance, the range of weapons or speed of ships will always be too situational to reliably define. If we want a single, simple value like strength to quantify an entity's combat prowess, we must use concrete values like hitpoints and damage. This way, the player will always get a reliable, ball-park estimate of the strength of any given ship, fleet, or base.

My suggestion fixes strength, creating a predictable value to estimate the power of entities. This value paints a more realistic picture of an entity's prowess in combat than whatever DW2's strength is currently providing.

TL;DR: The problem with strength has nothing to do with the number of entities, but rather how strength is calculated. It is currently highly inaccurate, and needs to be more predictable.

< Message edited by Galaxy227 -- 2/21/2022 4:07:40 AM >

(in reply to StormingKiwi)

Post #: 5

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 6:13:39 AM

devoncop

Posts: 1304
Joined: 7/17/2006
Status: offline

As someone who never played DW1 beyond a few hours the above discussion is really useful.

Thank you .

_____________________________

"I do not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it"

(in reply to Galaxy227)

Post #: 6

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 7:15:50 AM

StormingKiwi

Posts: 63
Joined: 2/11/2021
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Galaxy227

TL;DR: The problem with strength has nothing to do with the number of entities, but rather how strength is calculated. It is currently highly inaccurate, and needs to be more predictable.

I agree based on your presentation that the military strength per ship number is inaccurate as DW2 currently calculates it, and I too would like to see it more accurate. However, accuracy on an individual (per ship) basis is meaningless if it is still predicting outcomes incorrectly on a group (per fleet) basis.

Now, I wrote my post with the view that Distant Worlds 2 is a game where combat primarily occurs between groups of ships/bases rather than as duels between only one of each.

This brings us to the laws of concentration. Focus fire exists in the complexity of the simulation.

Lanchester's Square Law predicts that where combat is an all-against-all brawl, as is the case in Distant Worlds, the group's military strength is proportional to the square of the number in the group and only linearly to the strength of each individual member.

Even if the military strength value was an accurate number per ship, it would fall apart when groups are concerned because of the ability that ships have to 'gang up' and focus fire. Hence why the reporting needs to reveal the overall strength of the fleet and how many ships are in the fleet.

(in reply to Galaxy227)

Post #: 7

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 8:01:40 AM

Jorgen_CAB

Posts: 336
Joined: 3/17/2010
Status: offline

It is practically impossoble to decide the actual strength of ships... I'm pretty sure that strength is more or less a ships DPS value.

It does not take into account range, fall of damage, ship speed and manoeuvre rating, shields, armour, hull etc...

A missile ship will be considerably weaker than a Maxos Blaster ship for example, in practice it can be allot stronger depending on other factors.

All of these factors can greatly contribute to the ships actual strength in practical terms.

In my opinion this is not an issue in and of itself.

In my opinion the original idea with the OP of listing both strength and number would give a slightly better idea of a fleets actual strength. I don't think the strength number is broken, if just reflect your fleets overall offensive firepower, but this is not everything that is important, the rest you will have to experience.

It worked the same in DW1 so there is no big surprise there. I don't like the strength numbers at all, we should not even know that. The game should only tell us what we actually know. Such as there is a base and its size, how man escort, frigates etc a fleet has. We should not have the strength numbers at all, at least not unless we know what weapons the ships are carrying. The numbers are highly misleading anyway.

< Message edited by Jorgen_CAB -- 2/21/2022 8:03:52 AM >

(in reply to StormingKiwi)

Post #: 8

RE: QOL - Military Strength for Groups of Entities - 2/21/2022 9:50:21 AM

Spidey

Posts: 411
Joined: 12/8/2013
Status: offline

There appears to be a number of somewhat related issues to converse about in this topic.

The first issue is essentially what "strength" means. It is not at present an accurate number, nor do I think it is meant to be. It is a very rough indicator that gives a very ballpark idea of whether you're dealing with a housecat or a sabretooth tiger. That is really all it does. As I recall from DWU, it was really just the basic weapon damage from each weapon in the group. It tells the player something but that something is by no means an actual metric for performance. It's just a very rough indicator.

The second issue is that adding the number of entities in the group really doesn't improve the level of information. If anything it makes it worse, as now a ramshackle back-of-the-envelope number suddenly looks like something more meaningful than it really is. Consider the situation with two dreadnaughts and 20 escorts. The 20 escorts have a combined strength of 1200. Add the last two ships and the strength jumps to 3200. What do we learn through a simple average? Not a thing, really.

The third issue is how one could even begin to offer a single number as a remotely reasonable indicator of ship strength without having it turn into meaningless nonsense. What determines the strength of a ship in a particular engagement? Alpha strike vs effective dps? Engagement range and damage profile of the weapon vs evasion ability of the target? Weapon type vs target's defenses? Accuracy? Rate of fire vs number of targets? Damage type vs target's damage mitigation and recovery? And now that the game is in 3d, there's also engagement angles to consider. How many weapons can even be brought to bear? And an often overlooked detail in DW ship design, does the ship actually have reactor power to keep firing all weapons while at sprint speed? Does it have fuel to keep the reactor power up?

I humbly submit that there is no single number that can convey all this information and that even trying to construct one would be a serious mistake.

The fourt issue is the many vs one discussion. I have zero clue what the OR conclusions past and present would suggest. Some references on that might be helpful if OR is to be part of the conversation. But I did play DWU quite a lot and in that particular model of reality, the answer was not a simple binary. In the most general case, if the many ships lack sustained dps to overcome the self-repair and shield recharge of the big single target then the single target wins. If the single target has a low rate of fire and massively overkills each individual member of the swarm then a lot of the strength is wasted and then the swarm has an advantage. If the swarm have weapons that bypass shields then the swarm might be able to overwhelm the single target and deal crippling damage before it can handle the swarm.

(in reply to Jorgen_CAB)

Post #: 9