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Author Topic: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview  (Read 4865 times)

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June 15, 2017, 12:52:11 PM

Offline Corey

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ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« on: June 15, 2017, 12:52:11 PM »
A quick look at another ability coming in Thrawn's Revenge: Imperial Civil War and Fall of the Republic, Microjumps.

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June 15, 2017, 01:38:20 PMReply #1

Offline taupin121

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2017, 01:38:20 PM »

Sounds great but maybe it's too fast to load, particulary comparing to the retreat ability or the vanilla retreat. Also it would be very powerful, so you may consider to not allow to make to short jumps. It's not clearly explained (?) in the EU but jumps can't be infinitely short.

Well like the retreat ability I had to see on which ships it is and try it before telling more.

June 15, 2017, 02:06:31 PMReply #2

Offline Corey

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2017, 02:06:31 PM »
Quote
It's not clearly explained (?) in the EU but jumps can't be infinitely short.

Keep in mind, we have to design around game mechanics, not just canon. We can't always even impose the same canon restrictions on functionality if we wanted to (especially when the times it shows up, precision jumps seem to be handled differently every single time). For example, fighter squadrons can't materialize new wingmen out of nowhere, but the "replenish wingmen" ability is a useful game mechanic in some squadrons, especially for heroes. Ackbar telling everyone to target something wouldn't actually cause more damage than just everyone being told to fire on it regularly, but Concentrate Firepower is still a useful ability to have in the context of a game.
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June 15, 2017, 03:48:54 PMReply #3

Offline Mr.Puerto

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2017, 03:48:54 PM »
Perfect for using Thrawn's Pincer!
“In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love.“


June 15, 2017, 06:39:33 PMReply #4

Offline thdhted

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2017, 06:39:33 PM »
While I doubt the AI would be able to use it, it might be nice for the AI to do a microjump away from battle, instead of the ship in question literally turning around and running away.
"When in war, men must die, they can't be managed to their deaths, they must be led."

June 16, 2017, 02:28:46 AMReply #5

Offline taupin121

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2017, 02:28:46 AM »

My point was not about realism but about gameplay. If your ship is facing a Destroyer head on (where a Destroyer deals the most damages), you just have to microjump behind him (where a Destroyer deals less damages) and so you can destroy easly big ships with small ones. For me that's another advantage for the Player over the AI, I just hope that did not make the game too easy.

June 16, 2017, 03:26:41 AMReply #6

Offline Corey

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2017, 03:26:41 AM »
I don't think it'll make it significantly easier, all things considered. You're giving up a lot of time where the ship can't otherwise move or fire, and then if you just try to jump behind, you have small ships entirely on their own. You'd have to start far away from the target ship, then jump in behind it and hope to do something before the enemy ship turns around, meaning you need to keep them otherwise engaged. It's situational. Yes, sometimes what you mention will work, but that's kind of the point. As it is, without other abilities, there's almost never any reason at all to use smaller ships. Considering cooldowns and everything, you're not just gonna be able to keep blinking around behind enemy ships, though. While stuff like microjumps and single-unit retreat do offer tools to the player, they're tools that have to be used properly, they're not just guaranteed benefits- if you start retreating or microjumping at the wrong time, you just wasted several seconds of that ships firepower and potentially lose a ship you may not have otherwise. That happened to me in my latest EotH LP episode with a Syndic. With microjumps, if you try the strategy of throwing units behind larger units but don't do it with enough support or micro it enough, you won't even have enough firepower to penetrate the shields and you'll just be making your ships easier to pick off.

More generally, anything we add to the game is almost always going to be used more efficiently by the player than the AI, from mechanics like this down to stuff that's as simple as different unit types or even weapon types that the player will know how to target better than the AI does, or the fact that pathfinding inherently favours players. Some features the AI can use, some they can't, some they'd never be able to use optimally, but it's not all a one-for-one thing. That's why strategy game AI difficult doesn't tend to be gated just by use of the mechanics themselves. If the game becomes to easy because of this stuff, we have other levers we can pull to make it harder.

Holistically, compared to 2.1, the economy is far more difficult for the player to manage, the AI properly builds and groups fleets instead of the trickle, and from the tactical level, among other things, SSD spam is no longer as guaranteed for the player, the defending forces don't just group under the shipyards facing backwards, and we're working on removing the same related behaviour with defense Platforms. We're also trying to figure out some algorithms to make the AI use corvettes and fighters/bombers better (something that, if it doesn't bog the game down too much, will be a huge advantage for the AI that the player can't have considering they can process more commands at once, unless the player makes copious use of the pause function). So, while trying to make sure the game isn't too easy or difficult is a concern, I wouldn't be too worried about the impact of any individual ability like this. Numbers can always be tuned, as well.
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June 16, 2017, 05:00:27 AMReply #7

Offline taupin121

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2017, 05:00:27 AM »

That's good to read that ! I am reassured that you have a complete overview of the ability and you don't add it because you can but because you know it will be worth it and balanced. I shouldn't have worried :laugh:

June 16, 2017, 05:07:25 AMReply #8

Offline Corey

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2017, 05:07:25 AM »
Yeah, if there's stuff that's not doing what we want it to and ends up just being interesting from a technical standpoint but not great for gameplay, we've never really had any problems cutting it. Just off of announced stuff alone, the migration system in Ascendancy was cut before release, and for ICW Pox had the full planet influence system which we released on its own for testing but ultimately didn't pan out. We also had a full population system in Ascendancy based on controlling planets (similar to EaW) which we cut. Some of it stays out (migration's never really come up again), some of it gets reworked and slotted in in better ways (the latter two are mechanics we wanna revisit in some form).
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June 20, 2017, 06:09:28 PMReply #9

Offline WarlordOfWildSpace

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Re: ICW/FotR: Microjump Preview
« Reply #9 on: June 20, 2017, 06:09:28 PM »
Loving all of these 2.2 updates!

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