Adjust the build skirt of naval factories

@sprouto said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

Rather than blaming the factory for the issue - you might wish to simply consider the scaling of naval units. There is a LOT of room to decrease the size, especially of the largest units - and I can say, having done this years ago in LOUD, ships rarely have issues leaving the yard now.

I wouldn't be too sure about this being so clean of a fix considering it will mean a need to rebalance all the navy units to compensate for their additional nimbleness. RIP cybran t2 navy.

It also takes a lot away from the navy fantasy, the units are supposed to be big and hulking like real warships. Making them smaller would imo take away a lot of fun that is associated with fielding this behemoths at t3 stage.

@arma473 said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

is there a way to make it possible for engineers to build the factories from farther away?

can you expand the build skirt equally in all directions so that no faction gets an advantage for cliff-building?

I'm afraid that would remove the capability for engineers to assist the factory all together.

The engineers have a similar occupation as that of the build skirt, it won't overlap with it. If the structure is in the center then they won't be able to reach it. The factory would need to be at the edge.

And to join in the discussion - this is a clear noob trap that makes the game feel broken. Not attending it (leaving the situation as is) means the game remains broken or remains feeling broken for the majority of players, including those fighting AI.

@e33144211332424 said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

I wouldn't be too sure about this being so clean of a fix considering it will mean a need to rebalance all the navy units to compensate for their additional nimbleness. RIP cybran t2 navy.

It would have no impact whatsoever on 'nimbleness'. Performance characteristics would remain unchanged - turn rates et al. Cybran ships don't have any mobility performance benefits over other factions - certainly not related to footprint size - and not in the unit blueprints either.

As for the fantasy ? That's entirely in one's own mind. LOUD has reduced almost all naval units, except the smallest, by upto 30%, and not one comment ever mentioned a suspension of disbelief - but, while I'm sure that's an issue for some - it's not a tangible issue.

This would alter balance quite a bit as ships would miss each other a lot more as well as eg. Allowing for more dense BS formations.

@sprouto said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

@e33144211332424 said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

I wouldn't be too sure about this being so clean of a fix considering it will mean a need to rebalance all the navy units to compensate for their additional nimbleness. RIP cybran t2 navy.

It would have no impact whatsoever on 'nimbleness'. Performance characteristics would remain unchanged - turn rates et al. Cybran ships don't have any mobility performance benefits over other factions - certainly not related to footprint size - and not in the unit blueprints either.

As for the fantasy ? That's entirely in one's own mind. LOUD has reduced almost all naval units, except the smallest, by upto 30%, and not one comment ever mentioned a suspension of disbelief - but, while I'm sure that's an issue for some - it's not a tangible issue.

Smaller hitbox 100% affects how good unit is at dodging enemy shots. 30% reduction in size for a ship of Battleship or Carrier class is absolutely massive. If you are semi competent you can already dodge 50% of enemy shots at ease. With smaller hitbox it's gonna get even easier to do so.

The turn rates, speed, acceleration doesn't have to change at all. Smaller hitbox makes the unit better by simply making it harder to hit and thus more nimble. Even more when it comes to the shootouts at the range of 110-150 units that navy fights take place at.

The chance to hit is not determined by the size of the hitbox - but by the accuracy and tolerance values on the firing weapon. Again, the faction has zero to do with this - which I note you're not bringing up any more.

The only chance to 'dodge' comes from the ability to move out of that targeting solution - something that's more relative to the velocity of the projectile, and not the marginal velocity of the target - hitbox size can have a very tiny impact on that, provided the projectile is slow, and the ship moves very quickly (such as the UEF Cooper) - but that's about the only place that's going to be an issue.

In the real world, yes - the size of the vessel might have an impact on the ability to be targeted - but not in SCFA. I should point out that the hitbox - and the footprint - are two completely distinct and different things. Many of the ships have footprints much larger than the hitbox. This is abundantly true of most T2, and almost all the T3 units.

@sprouto
"The chance to hit is not determined by the size of the hitbox - but by the accuracy and tolerance values on the firing weapon. Again, the faction has zero to do with this - which I note you're not bringing up any more."

Please play a little bit more of competitive games before you take out your dev attitude for everyone to see. If you think I didn't already take weapon platforms and weaponry into consideration you are mistaken. Smaller hitbox makes stuff harder to hit, period. Unless you aren't simulating shit, but this game fortunately does it and it makes it so not even half of the shots fired in t2-t3 navy fights ever hits their target due to micro.

And no, factions have a lot to do with it considering how micro intensive t2 navy can be. And yes, cybran is gonna get fucked without any lube in the t2 stage if the models and hitboxes get smaller. It's gonna be rape in the daylight while everyone else is just happily clapping along to the rhytm of the butcheeks getting smashed. Those ships can't hit a barn even if it were placed in front of them.

So no, I'm not dropping it. I was just expecting the very least of knowledge about how t2 navy works.

"The only chance to 'dodge' comes from the ability to move out of that targeting solution - something that's more relative to the velocity of the projectile, and not the marginal velocity of the target - hitbox size can have a very tiny impact on that, provided the projectile is slow, and the ship moves very quickly (such as the UEF Cooper) - but that's about the only place that's going to be an issue."

If cooper is the only issue and all the other ships always get hit then tell me why is it that in proper microed t3 fight half the battleship shoots get's dodged all the time with just a little bit micro? Now tell me what will happen if they get even lower hitbox? They will have even easier time dodging the shoots. Won't they?

"In the real world, yes - the size of the vessel might have an impact on the ability to be targeted - but not in SCFA."

It's not about being able to be targeted, it's about abusing said targeting with micro and dodging the shots. Which already happens a lot. Vessels being smaller 100% make it even easier to abuse as it's easier to dodge the AoE of the enemy salvos.

" I should point out that the hitbox - and the footprint - are two completely distinct and different things. Many of the ships have footprints much larger than the hitbox. This is abundantly true of most T2, and almost all the T3 units."

Well, could have started out with this. That the footprint being smaller doesn't make any difference for the unit hitbox or size at all. You said "Decrease the size" which implies making the hitbox smaller, thus changing the balance of the game.

Please take the discussion about bigger or smaller boats to another topic .

The point is that it is a possible (proven) solution to the problem we should be discussing instead: poor pathing of naval units because the factories can be (easily) packed too dense. That it is not the ideal solution is clear, so what is?

What if we'd introduce a second naval factory: one that is horizontally mirrored* from the other, but outside of that completely identical. It would allow you to still cliff build / assist and everything when we'd increase the skirt size, you'll just need to pick the correct factory.

Again, not ideal - but another possible solution

edit @FemtoZetta not without introducing a 2nd unit

Is it possible to have factories turn (180° not 90°) towards the middle of the map? It always felt to me like that's all that's needed so they don't get stuck between factory and land.

I also don't really see this as such a big of a problem. The game doesn't encourage such a tight factory placement, if you drag a line they are automatically spaced out nicely and don't cause any problems. Having factories in a tight grid like that is just unrealistic and bad sim city. It's like surrounding your land HQ with t1 pgens 50 engies and wondering why your harbs get stuck. Also much bigger issue is imo t3 ships getting suck because of stationary aa / tmd near the factories. Such a skirt change would also impact gameplay on navy maps with not a lit of space for facs like eg. Flooded Tabula rasa

I think fixing the roll-off points would go a long way to improving the behaviour of naval facs, i remember once playing around with rally points for ages trying to get the ships to leave cleanly when they finish building.

In-game, I don't see players build a block of naval yards like in the linked images, it is usually a dragged line and then maybe another dragged in front a few squares away which poses few issues for the frigates built, grids are reserved for air only.

Having different faction placement potential is not going to work - you will get players always picking a specific faction for different spots on Setons for example.

About the AI - is it possible to have the larger-skirt version blueprint available in-game for just the AI to build ?

Allow naval facs to be rotated somehow

@black_wriggler said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

I think fixing the roll-off points would go a long way to improving the behaviour of naval facs, i remember once playing around with rally points for ages trying to get the ships to leave cleanly when they finish building.

This involves giving them more space - we've tackled this with pull request. One of the change is to increase the distance of the roll off point based on the size of the unit.

Footprint size of battleship

Old roll off point, too close to the factory where the unit doesn't fit (see previous image for footprint size) so the unit has to find an alternative roll off point location

New roll off point, further away from the factory based on the size of the unit

This fixes the 'weird' roll off that especially battleships had, but again - it assumes there is actually space on the sides of the factory and we currently do not guarantee that. In practice this will still be weird behavior for the majority of players and all the AIs.

And I'd like to mention that this is a big problem, you are just used to it. If this game would launch now* with such poor roll off points then we'd all be so frustrated that we'd drop it after a week. And why wouldn't we, if battleships get stuck that easily . Note that some change is required, as otherwise new players and AIs will always make this mistake. And that destroys the immersion of the game - which, again: that is a problem.

We could also only apply a vertical stretch, but not a horizontal stretch.

That allows them to be cliff buildable in the majority of cases as we have right now, but still encourages people to space them out more.

While I'd favour the naval factory skirt size changes to resolve this over other options such as changing ship sizes, if people value needing cliff-building to the same extent as now so much that it means a frustrating bug for new players won't be fixed, then I'd presume a possible alternative option in addition to this could be to increase the build radius of engineers slightly. E.g. increase by 1 for T1 engi, 2 for T2, and 3 for T3, which I'd expect would give scope for increasing the skirt size slightly without preventing cliff-building in many cases. Obviously there would be wider balance implications of such a change though.

From my recollection of the first time I ran into the issue when playing FAF it made it a really frustrating negative experience, and the main reason it's not been a bigger issue for me is because I've assumed it was similar to the 'Engi bumping' pathfinding problems where it's not possible to fix the issue and so something I'd just have to live with if I play FAF.

Thank you for tackling this issue.

I agree with your proposed solution of adding rotated copies of the naval factory, but something should be done to avoid cluttering the build menu-just like others, I always found it weird how depending on whether you are on the right or left side of the map you'd have more or less problems (ships having to go around the factory itself).

You don't get this issue with ground or air factories as units are built in the middle of them, but any change here would most likely impact balance.

Is it possible to draw two rectangles around naval factory, when placing it. One corresponding to space needed to t2 ships being able to pass, and second corresponding to t3 ships being able to pass? Something like fire radius when placing pd's? So it would be much easyer to see, how much place is needed for eventual upgrade or passage later.