Stardock: Is this a bug, or a very, very nasty "feature"?

from Sins Forums

I've been playing Trinity for a while now, and while fun, there's one big problem all of my ships seem to have. For instance, say I have a few torpedo cruisers attempting to take down an enemy starbase. If I realize it'd be better to retreat, and tell the torpoedo cruisers to turn around and exit the gravity well (150-180 degrees AWAY from the starbase), what do the torpedo cruisers do? They charge directly into the starbase while attempting to turn, possibly killing them! Or, if my fleet is engaged with another fleet, and there are enemy mines in the gravity well, I make sure to direct my fleet to stay AWAY from the mines, and to attack the enemy fleet only up to the start of the minefield. Suppose I then want my ships to turn around and retreat, or to engage an enemy capital ship that just warped in on the other side of the gravity well. So, after I direct my ships to turn around, what do they do? Do they turn around? No, they charge forward with thrusters on full, blowing half the fleet to smithereens on the mines! Only after that have they managed to turn 90 degrees or so... but they're both crippled and much farther from their destination than they originally were.

In short: If I have ships attacking something in the South, and I order my ships to go back North, where do the ships go? They accelerate South, perhaps moving a fourth of the way over the gravity well before actually turning back North. If it's a capital ship, I'm lucky if it manages to get to the destination without traversing half of the gravity well in the opposite direction.

This sort of movement behavior is VERY nasty, and has cost me (and likely many others) quite a lot of ships, including many capital ships. If I want my repair cruisers to retreat, that obviously does NOT mean they should first go on a sightseeing tour through the enemy heavy cruiser front lines, or into the enemy starbase. It's as if the ships' captains equate a retreat order with a suicide order, and try to see just how much fire they can possibly draw before actually turning around and retreating.

I can only hope that such horrendously stupid movement behavior is a bug which is going to be fixed in the next few months or year.

Just thinking off of the top of my head, I think a very simple solution would be for ships to rotate a bit in the desired direction before putting the ship's thrusters on full, maybe 45 degrees or so, so the ships don't go charging off in the opposite direction you told them to go. Ships already do this sort of thing if they only have to move a small amount backwards (less than half the length of a tactical square) - why not simply make this the default behavior regardless of destination range?

35,806 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

what they should do is make a *face this direction* command, and then if they make it queue-able you can have your ships face a direction then move where you want them without going forward when you don't want them to.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

The devs have said they did this physics set on purpose. Not sure why.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ryat, reply 2
The devs have said they did this physics set on purpose. Not sure why.

Are you serious? They did that on purpose? Surely you're joking. No one with an ounce of sense would want to sabotage the tactical mechanics of their own game. The devs aren't that stupid. They created a game this great, I refuse to believe that they would intentionally create something like this which obviously detracts from playability.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

while, i think a face command will work really well... the physics mechanics are a penelty to retreating, and it makes a player have to be more carefull about the fights they engage.  I dont consider it something that detracts from the game.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

What's so bad about retreating?  Saving forces so they can fight again another day has always been an important part of strategy.  Sins even includes a retreat button that makes ships run away, so I don't know why the developers would want to make it so hard to preserve forces when a battle is being lost.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

It's because it's faster.

 

Your radial turn rate is the same, whether you gain forward momentum or not.  As you make your 180, you pick up speed, ending the maneuver ahead of where your ship would have been with a stationary swivel.

 

It may be a stupid thing to do when there is a starbase, or mines in front of you, but it's a smart thing to do when forward movement doesn't get you smoked.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

The wide arcing turns are faster, but tactically idiotic in many combat scenarios.  In order to achieve a "proper" retreat you have to order the units to move to a location directly behind themselves.  This will cause them to turn on the spot rather than do an arcing turn.  Once facing the proper direction, you order them to retreat.  It's a little bit of micro, but it's doable.

The devs basically had to decide whether wide turns or tight turns were the default behavior, and players who wanted their units to behave otherwise would have to micro accordingly.  Wide turns were chosen as the default, so tight turns we have to do manually.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Pbhead, reply 4
while, i think a face command will work really well... the physics mechanics are a penelty to retreating, and it makes a player have to be more carefull about the fights they engage.  I dont consider it something that detracts from the game.

If the goal is to impede retreats, then it would make much more sense simply to increase the time needed to start a phase jump, rather than... this.

Quoting psychoak, reply 6
It's because it's faster.

Your radial turn rate is the same, whether you gain forward momentum or not.  As you make your 180, you pick up speed, ending the maneuver ahead of where your ship would have been with a stationary swivel.

It may be a stupid thing to do when there is a starbase, or mines in front of you, but it's a smart thing to do when forward movement doesn't get you smoked.

Quoting Darvin3, reply 7
The wide arcing turns are faster

By the time your ship has turned, say, 90 degrees, it has been accelerating AWAY from your destination for 4 to 7 seconds (significantly more if it's a capital, even more if it's not on Faster). If it had stayed stationary for the initial 2 seconds or so, then it would be closer to your destination at the end of 7 seconds, while also having picked up most of its speed.

The optimal angle at which it starts accelerating definitely isn't 180 degrees from the destination (as is done currently), but certainly isn't 0 or 90 either. The best angle would be somewhere in between, maybe 135 or 150 degrees.

Quoting Darvin3, reply 7
In order to achieve a "proper" retreat you have to order the units to move to a location directly behind themselves.  This will cause them to turn on the spot rather than do an arcing turn.  Once facing the proper direction, you order them to retreat.  It's a little bit of micro, but it's doable.

When this would most matter (mid and mid-late game with large fleets, starbases, and maybe minefields), it's too difficult, due to usually controlling 50 or 100 or more frigates. Given the game's update rate, microing them all is simply impossible. At least, that's how it is on my computer.

I'd be great if there could be an option "Accelerate at what angle from destination", even maybe with the default 180, but so that players could still prevent their fleets from rushing headlong into minefields and starbases.

 

 

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Just did some experiments. I practiced using a Sova and telling it to turn around and go outside the gravity well:

3 times, I MM'd it to first turn around 45 degrees before accelerating, and 3 times, I just ordered it to move to the target point. Each time, it was quicker when it turned around partway before accelerating, averaging about 10 seconds faster, with very little variance. (I timed it from when the first order was given to when it passed outside of the inner gravity well, to avoid complications from slowing down. To avoid initial positioning imprecision, each run was loaded from the same saved game. Timing was checked using the credit income rate.)

10 seconds faster. When entire fleets can do 400+ dps, that is a whole lot of time.

Accelerating first (wide turn) does not make the ship exit the gravity well faster. If you don't believe it, run your own tests: they'll show you the same thing. It's best for a ship to wait until it's rotated 20-50 degrees before accelerating.

The speed gain from narrow turn / MM here was 10 seconds, though of course this would be less in the case of faster frigates.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Yes, it is.  You're cheating, micromanaging it's turn to do a combination swivel and banking turn.

 

The proper comparison is between the two extremes, which are the only way ships have ever turned in Sins, all in place, or all in motion.  In which case, when it makes that nice wide turn and suicides on you, it's because it was faster than turning in place.

 

What you're asking for is smarter AI, that can do the math on how far it needs to turn in place.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting psychoak, reply 10
Yes, it is.  You're cheating, micromanaging it's turn to do a combination swivel and banking turn.

"Cheating"? Huh? I don't get it. By making the ship turn a few degrees before putting thrusters to full I'm attempting to model how ships should turn and move. I'm not trying to model how any of them currently move.
 

Quoting psychoak, reply 10
The proper comparison is between the two extremes, which are the only way ships have ever turned in Sins, all in place, or all in motion.  In which case, when it makes that nice wide turn and suicides on you, it's because it was faster than turning in place.

So this horrible bug / feature has always been how ships have moved? Unfortunate.

It's faster to accelerate sometime before the turn is completed than to wait until the ship is completely rotated - I'm not disputing that. I'm saying that it would be significantly better (faster) than either extreme if ships by default waited until they were 30 to 50 degrees into the turn before turning their thrusters on to the max.

Quoting psychoak, reply 10
What you're asking for is smarter AI, that can do the math on how far it needs to turn in place.

While that would be nice and (probably) potentially doable without taking too much development time, that's more than necessary. A coded angle at which to start firing full thrusters is all I want. (any angle besides 180). If it was hard-coded at 145 or 150 or 160 or 135 degrees I'd be happy.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

I don't think it's cheating personally.  The movement is something we're discussing with Ironclad to hopefully address/improve in Rebellion.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 12
I don't think it's cheating personally.  The movement is something we're discussing with Ironclad to hopefully address/improve in Rebellion.

I agree and think it is great it is up for discussion.

I would have to agree with the OP. This is not a navy game. Ships in space should be able to easily turn on a dime.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 12
I don't think it's cheating personally.  The movement is something we're discussing with Ironclad to hopefully address/improve in Rebellion.

As long as it's something which is acknowledged to be a possible problem, I'm happy. :)

Quoting myfist0, reply 13
I would have to agree with the OP. This is not a navy game. Ships in space should be able to easily turn on a dime.

The ships are clearly capable of waiting to engage their full thrusters, as they do when moving only short distances backwards, but for some reason refuse to do that normally, causing both increased casualties and a longer travel time. There's no need to change the physics of the game, only the movement behavior.

I'm not arguing that "Ships in space should be able to easily turn on a dime" - I'm perfectly happy with heavier ships taking like 10 seconds or more to turn around. The problem is that all ships engage their full thrusters even when they're pointed 180 degrees from their destination, causing (as I just said) them to take more damage, and to take longer to reach their destination.

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

Here is an easy idea.  Make advanced thrusters for the races and allow them to purchase an upgrade that allows their ships to have a facing command.  In this way you can allow for an even tighter set of maneuvers, while still retaining the early game movement penalties.  In the late game things get more intense, and having to deal with a player that can move very precisely would be another addition to the micro in large battles.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting sareth01, reply 15
Here is an easy idea.  Make advanced thrusters for the races and allow them to purchase an upgrade that allows their ships to have a facing command.  In this way you can allow for an even tighter set of maneuvers, while still retaining the early game movement penalties.  In the late game things get more intense, and having to deal with a player that can move very precisely would be another addition to the micro in large battles.

The ships clearly already have the ability to simply "face" a target without moving at all. It's what they do when at phase lanes. The problem is that the ships' captains are too stupid to do that in almost all other situations, even if their destination is 180 degrees behind them, and go charging off in full speed in the opposite direction while attempting to turn.

I think another research category would be unnecessary. It'd also be less work for the developers if they simply made ships by default face within 135 degrees before engaging thrusters (with no research involved). I don't like the idea of having to research an upgrade to have your ships' captains not maneuver stupidly - the "upgrade" would not be to technology, but to intelligence of captains (from extremely stupid to reasonably competent).