Experience/leveling system thoughts

[dstar]

I've seen several people suggest an experience/leveling system for ships. Personally, I dislike that idea, but it did lead me to an interesting thought that rewards combat without the problem of having ships gain experience.

What's wrong with an experience system for ships?

There are two primary problems, from an immersion standpoint:

1) It doesn't fit with the the theme of a 4X game.
In a 4X game, you're focused on high-level issues, and things that take years, decades or even centuries. The leader of even a modern-day nation doesn't order individual ships around; they focus on task forces. (Aircraft carriers can be something of an exception, but a) they're a task force in and of theirselves, and b) they're part of a task force, albeit an important one). Focusing on an individual ship is jarring; it's like saying 'I have dozens of planets and don't worry about the details, but I'm only going to have a handful of ships and obsess over each one'. (This is also something I greatly dislike about most 4X games since MOO1; almost all of them try to restrict you to a handful of ships, rather than allowing you to have stacks of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of ships).

2) 'Ships' aren't a monolithic organism. The only thing that could improve is the human (or other sentient race) component, and that's made up of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of individuals, who are rotated on and off on a regular basis. Are some ships better than others? Yes, in reality, they are, because some captains are better than others, some officers are better than others, and some non-coms are better than others; yes, combat can correct that to a degree (in a very darwinian manner), but remember what I said up there about people being rotated out? Combat isn't going to improve just one ship significantly unless it was in very bad shape to begin with; the benefits would diffuse out into the entire fleet.


Alternate Approach
Don't have experience improve ships. Have it improve your _fighting capability_.

A civilization which is constantly at war is going to be better at it than one which hasn't had to use its military in centuries. Add in some new technologies, which directly improve combat abilities (bonus to targeting/damage/repair/shield regen/ship maintenance) _and have combat contribute points to those technologies automatically_.

That would mean that a civilization which is constantly at war would have a head-start on a civilization that never fought, unless that civilization devoted resources towards researching those technologies (which implies that they're deliberately maintaining their ability to fight).

I'd recommend having enough of those technologies that it's simply not possible to research all of them _and_ other technologies easily, and scale the research points gained from battle somehow... possibly by comparing the cost of the ships involved to the total production capacity of the civilization if all planets were producing ships (so that having two scout ships in a battle is useful if you've only got the one planet, but not useful if you've got thirty planets), or perhaps just scaling it with the cost of the ships, period; it would almost certainly require some testing to figure out the sweet spot.

It might also be good to have battles continue to contribute points for several turns, at a diminishing rate based on the number of points contributed and how long it's been since the civilizations forces were involved in a battle of at least that size (e.g., something like current_value = previous_value/(log10(previous_value) + turns_since_comparable_battle) and a cut-off below which no points are accumulated) so that some benefit is still accrued from constant low-level skirmishing, even if it's not as much as what is learned from large battles.

This would keep the focus where it belongs, on the civilization rather than the ships, while providing a reason to actually _use_ your fleet of ships rather than keep them home as nothing more than a deterrent.

Thoughts?

[CellNav]

1) It doesn't fit with the the theme of a 4X game.
In a 4X game, you're focused on high-level issues, and things that take years, decades or even centuries. The leader of even a modern-day nation doesn't order individual ships around; they focus on task forces. (Aircraft carriers can be something of an exception, but a) they're a task force in and of theirselves, and b) they're part of a task force, albeit an important one). Focusing on an individual ship is jarring; it's like saying 'I have dozens of planets and don't worry about the details, but I'm only going to have a handful of ships and obsess over each one'. (This is also something I greatly dislike about most 4X games since MOO1; almost all of them try to restrict you to a handful of ships, rather than allowing you to have stacks of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of ships).

Well, if we obsessed over a handful of ship, I suppose we'd also obsess over a handful of a dozen, hundreds or thousands of stacked ships ... I see no difference except the scale.

2) 'Ships' aren't a monolithic organism. The only thing that could improve is the human (or other sentient race) component, and that's made up of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of individuals, who are rotated on and off on a regular basis. Are some ships better than others? Yes, in reality, they are, because some captains are better than others, some officers are better than others, and some non-coms are better than others; yes, combat can correct that to a degree (in a very darwinian manner), but remember what I said up there about people being rotated out? Combat isn't going to improve just one ship significantly unless it was in very bad shape to begin with; the benefits would diffuse out into the entire fleet.

Proper rotation of the crew wouldn't significantly improve anything, but instead slightly lower their abilities a notch then slowly rise in time. Mostly, it's the old teaching the new. The strength of the ship (attack,defence,repair) would be effected as such. But yes, the benefits would diffuse out into the entire fleet, but the fleets strength is still as strong as it's weakest link (ship). Tracking individual ship performance (crew XP) makes up the final product for the fleets XP.

Alternate Approach
Don't have experience improve ships. Have it improve your _fighting capability_.

A civilization which is constantly at war is going to be better at it than one which hasn't had to use its military in centuries. Add in some new technologies, which directly improve combat abilities (bonus to targeting/damage/repair/shield regen/ship maintenance) _and have combat contribute points to those technologies automatically_.

Very good idea. This could fit where an abstract "fighting capability" improves combat on a global (galactic) scale, but I believe that we cannot rule out individual ship XP though ... One can improve the combat abilitites but you'll need to train the crews which take time as they so call "level up" as it were.

[Lithari]

I was going to suggest a empire-wide combat experience type of thing.

[Lithari]

Well, if there was going to be a xp system in place , i suggest, that in stead of making things do more damage, make the officers on the ships more accurate and the troops more accurate during invasions, because a green troop or officer could, most likely panic in a combat situation, its the experience of combat that helps you get past that fear that all soldiers feel during combat, regardless of their experience.

So, that would make sense that as they gain experience, attacks are more accurate, which means it increases our ships and invasions more efficient.

[StoneCold822]

+1

[True_poser]

Every time a weapon is fired, a small % of RPs needed to level up that weapon is added to the research.
So, for instance, if you needed 2000 shots to level up your laser cannons from level 3 to level 4, you'll need the same 2000 shots to level up from level 6 to level 7.

But these shots count only from ships that survived the engagement and lived to tell the tale.

[Janster]

I like experience on ships, I don't care for explanation, it is as abstract at many of the tech's we do.

Remember what makes things 'fun' compared to what makes it boring, empire wide xp can be boring.