Improved Carrier Logistics

[Spero]

Let's sort some facts out first.

1) The X series is awesome.

2) Carriers are awesome.

3) Carriers in X are a nightmare.

4) I didn't post this in the other carrier thread, because the other thread is about ways to automate carriers. I don't think that's a good idea. I'd like to discuss ways to ease the logistical nightmare of an otherwise A+ concept.

All agreed? Great, let's move onto some solutions.

Solution #1
Fighter bays. Instead of (or in addition to) docking fighters, you install fighter bays onto the carrier. Say I have a colossus, I can install a "Nova Fighter Bay" onto it. This provides a generic Nova fighter template and that fighter will behave as normal. If the fighter is damaged or destroyed, the installed carrier component becomes damaged or destroyed, and must be repaired at a shipyard for full cost. The goal isn't to make carriers better, they're already amazing, it's just to make them less of a clickfest.

Solution #2
Drop fighters entirely, and use specialized drones. The EVE method. Slightly more boring, but it's a question of whether this is more or less boring than assigning 60 Novas to their new homebase.

Here, you'd use a single drone ware for the carrier, let's call it "Carrier Fighter Drone" to differentiate it from regular drones. There could be multiple types, and racial variants, so you'd have "Nova Fighter Drone" types. Have them look and operate the same as regular Nova fighters to save development. Each carrier would be able to control [X] drones at once, and destroyed drones would draw new stock from the carrier's inventory, just like how missiles work. To prevent infinite drone-spam, the "carrier fighter drone" ware would take up a lot of space.

Solution #3
When a carrier's fighter is destroyed, it isn't truly lost. Instead, the fighter remains "alive" inside the carrier, but with 0% hull. It cannot be used, or undocked, or interacted with in any way. When the carrier returns to a shipyard, any fighters in this state may be repaired to functionality and become useable once more.

Personally I like #3.

FAQ

I've seen a lot of rebukes to suggested carrier improvements, and I'm gonna address them here because I've not seen any that are convincing.

Rebuke #1: "X isn't an RTS game!"

I'm not sure how that is relevant. Nobody is asking for to be an RTS game. They're asking for something awesome to be made less RSI-inducing.

Rebuke #2: "Micromanagement is part of the X series!"

Yeah, you're right. However every aspect of X requires less micromanagement as you master the mechanics involved. Every single aspect.

You start in a dinky little fighter, with all forward-facing guns. Combat is 100% micromanagement here. You even have to pay for aim assist. As time goes on and you move up ship classes, more and more of your ship's firepower is shifted onto turrets. Eventually as you move to the end-game ships, ALL of your firepower is in turrets, completely removing the micrpmanagement of firepower.

You start with a trader. You have to micromanage every aspect of it, from docking to selling wares. Eventually your trader becomes a sector trader, and ultimately a universe trader, where ALL of the micromanagement is shifted onto automation.

Same goes for stations. Start with a single station that you have to feed with wares, and end with a closed loop complex. Micromanagement is part of X, but the beauty of it is slowly removing the micromanagement.

So then we get to carriers, where your first carrier takes exactly as long to set up as your 50th. Which wouldn't be so bad, if not for the tiny fact that it requires constant micromanagement to replace lost fighters. By all means, lock the above feature(s) behind suitably significant payments, but I do hope that player carriers have a place in X4.

Rebuke #3: "It'll be overpowered!"

Now this is just plain silly. Balancing is a thing. Carrier hangar size, carrier price, cost to unlock "improved carrier logistics" feature, cost to replace damaged fighters, carrier speed/survivability, and requirements to unlock carriers can all be changed to something fair. Maybe it costs twice as much to replace a "damaged" fighter as it would to just buy a new one, whatever feels fair.

Rebuke #4: "It'll be mindless/just throw ships at problems until they go away"

You already can throw destroyers at problems until they go away, and that's already mindless. Cheaper, too. Both to set up, and over time. And faster to set up. That's why players do it instead of using carriers. Hence this thread.

X is awesome. X4 is going to be awesome. Hope you're having a stellar day.

[Killjaeden]

he other thread is about ways to automate carriers. I don't think that's a good idea. I'd like to discuss ways to ease the logistical nightmare of an otherwise A+ concept.

"Automation is bad. Lets make suggestions about automation" - is what you are saying.

Solution #3
When a carrier's fighter is destroyed, it isn't truly lost. Instead, the fighter remains "alive" inside the carrier, but with 0% hull. It cannot be used, or undocked, or interacted with in any way. When the carrier returns to a shipyard, any fighters in this state may be repaired to functionality and become useable once more.

So to reduce micromanagement you propose that instead of sending new fighters to the carrier when they have been destroyed, the carrier should instead dock at a shipyard everytime he loses a fighter ? And that for some reason a destroyed ship (that exploded in space) is somehow ghosting inside the carrier with 0 hull for no logical reason? Or that a destroyed ship also causes sympathetic explosion and destruction inside the carrer... Wat...
This isnt making any sense or making it any more streamlined.

Really, you are proposing ways to automate things but trying to deny that you want to do it - which requires some mindbending logic like ghost ships and telepathy destruction.

Drones are freaking boring, there is no attachement to drones - they are just disposable throwaway stuff. I want my fighters to have pilots with name and face. I want successfull pilots to be recognizeable.

And the way you talk about main purpose drones (easy to buy) is what was talked about in the other thread. Logistical problems of replacement and micromanagement are solved by making purchase templates and providing logic systems that automatically trigger the purchase of new fighters (doesnt matter if you call it a drone or a fighter) in case of loss, if it has been set up by the user.

[Spero]

Nah I'm not. None of the 3 solutions I put forward were automated.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Spero: Thanks for opening up this detailed debate.

Your solution 1 and 3 just don't appeal to me at all. To my mind they involve totally unbelievable mechanisms and procedures.

Solution 2 to my mind doesn't really address the micromanagement problem as such; it is more a change of name and a restriction of choice plus a few additional employment and balancing rules.

I personally don't see much inherent difference between drone and fighter approaches apart from the latter having the possible immersion and roleplaying advantages of requiring identifiable pilots - albeit at the cost of some additional but minor personnel management.

Why not, for example, just streamline the buying and equipping processes for 'repair or replace to blueprint standard' of whatever fleet elements the player wants on the carrier? Call that automation if you will, or just simplification if you don't like the former term. Most players could probably at least identify with the procedural logic of going down that route and it offers further scope for tailoring your carrier fleet package.

I'm not disagreeing at all with your underlying assessments of the need for change from the previous X game systems, just with your limited 3 proposed solutions and an inherent dismissal of other potential solutions (for reasons that are not entirely clear to me).

[mr.WHO]

I think everybody overthink the problem.

We already know that there will be production templates for shipyards in X4.

I don't see a problem to have "fighter compliment" template for carrier, e.g:
10 / 10 Nova fighter variant
10 / 10 Nova strike fighter variant (diffrent weapon set than above)
10 / 10 Buster interceptor

Each of above is the shipyard template.
Then lets say after the combat carrier lost some fighters, there will be "reinforce buttons":

5 / 10 Nova fighter variant (+1) (reinforce full)
10 / 10 Nova strike fighter variant (diffrent weapon set than above)
0 / 10 Buster interceptor (+1) (reinforce full)
(reinforce all to full)

Clicking reinforce will automatically do one of following (which player can define):
1) Order selected template ship at nearest friendly shipyard.
2) Order selected template ship at player owned shipyards.
3) Check if there is an idle player ship that fit selected template.

After above the designated ship will automatically fly towards and dock to base carrier.


...Done! Simpe and effective - you can manage entire carrier effectively.

If you really want to push this to the limit you just also need to add copy/paste carrier templates between multiple carriers - that way you can play with entire carriers (plural) groups.

[Vandragorax]

Personally I feel that Rebirth went a long way in the right direction with carriers. Automating them so far as calling the ships they use "drones" would not be a bad thing. They have issues in Rebirth sure, like only launching a certain tiny amount at once (probably due to performance issues) but having those fighters basically counting as drones helps in so many other ways.

Let's face it, in most cases you can distinguish ships you'd want to launch from a carrier into two main categories: Fighters, and Bombers.

It would be extremely easy to select on the carrier's menu how many of each fighter and bomber types you'd like to stock, tell it to collect wares at whatever the cost would be to your bank account, then take itself to dock at the nearest drone manufacturing plant to buy them. It would also allow for running trade ships to your front line with replenishment stocks of drones for the carriers (but the trade ships can't launch the drones themselves as they are only cargo at that point).

They just need to take the next logical step up from Rebirth and continue with this trend to make carriers perfectly easy to deal with. The issues arise when we are expected to upkeep not only the carrier, but a whole 50-100 small fighter craft where upgrades and repairs and replacements have to all be done on a massive scale through a buy/sell/upgrade interface that makes this task take such a long time it feels pointless (like in X3).

[Rei Ayanami]

My biggest gripe with carriers in X:R is that drones are a joke in X:R because they're too easily destroyed and thus practically useless in in-zone combat. That's why i think having normal ships as carrier loadout would be far better, at least they can survive longer and are more dangerous. Or make carrier drones more durable and with shields.

Also, i'd like carriers to have a rule-feature, where the player can set rules when the carrier is launching its ships depending on what ship type the carrier is attacking, something like this:

Fighter launch options:
XL fight ship : <select any option>
XL transport ship : <select any option>
L fight ship : <select any option>
L transport ship :<select any option>
M/S fight ship : <select any option>
M/S transport ship :<select any option>

Bomber launch options:
XL fight ship : <select any option>
XL transport ship : <select any option>
L fight ship :<select any option>
L transport ship : <select any option>
M/S fight ship : <select any option>
M/S transport ship : <select any option>

Where options are:
Always - Carrier will always launch fighters/bombers to fight that ship type
When own shields less than X% - the player can enter a number
When own hull less than X% - the player can enter a number
When outnumbered - Carrier launches fighters/bombers when many enemy ships are present in the current zone
Never - Carrier will never launch fighters/bombers to fight that ship type, only attack with the carrier ships weapons

When a carrier engages an enemy, the captain will look up these rules and then decide what to do.

I personally don't see much inherent difference between drone and fighter approaches apart from the latter having the possible immersion and roleplaying advantages of requiring identifiable pilots - albeit at the cost of some additional but minor personnel management.

They could just make buying/equipping carriers with small ships better by removing pilots skills entirely (skills only matter on large ships) or have small ships actually have competent pilots in the first place when you buy the ships.

[nemesis1982]

I personally dislike all three solutions described by spero. I think the mechanics as described are insufficient for a game as X.

I think the solution as described by mr.WHO would be the best. I would however like to make some additions and call it solution #4

solution #4: Templates
Ground rules:
- The usage of templates should not be required. You can use each carrier the regular way as well as the template way.
- We can create fighter templates
- A template may define less ships than the carrier has room for

Now let's say we have a carrier type with 40s and 10m ship slots.

Carrier Template 1:
10 Small Fighters according to template Small Assault
20 Small Fighters according to template Small Defend
10 Small Fighters according to template Small Bomber
5 medium Fighters according to template medium Bomber
5 medium Fighters according to template medium Defend

Carrier Template 2 (gives you some spare space to play with):
10 Small Fighters according to template Small Assault
10 Small Fighters according to template Small Defend
10 Small Fighters according to template Small Bomber
3 medium Fighters according to template medium Bomber
3 medium Fighters according to template medium Defend

Automation:
- You can configure a carrier to replenish automatically when their compliment is at a certain level
- You can manually order a carrier to replenish
- If a player takes a fighter out belonging to the carrier he can choose to deduct it from stock or to "borrow" it. If the ship would be gone longer than X time the ship would be deducted from stock
- Replenishment can be done in a few ways:
--> Carrier picks up the ships from a shipyard
--> Ships fly to the carrier on own power
--> Transport ships/carriers deliver the ships (this might be to much wor to implement)
- Replenishment can be done from the following sources:
--> Player stock (already built ships doing nothing)
--> Player owned shipyard
--> AI shipyard

With this you still have the benefit of solutions 1 and 3.

solution 1&3: partitioned carriers where you can replenish a single partition by going to shipyard

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

My thoughts on this.

Shipyards should take care of all of the logistics.

Ok, the carrier should have details of all the ships it carries, give the fleet commander a budget and when a ship needs replacing an order is placed at the shipyard that then delivers the replacement.

This would mean that you fleet can continue its current activity and will eventually be resupplied.

The shipyards both player and NPC will need at least one logistics craft to deliver orders to fleets.

Shipyards should also stock repair crates / spares that can also be delivered to NPC and player fleets. These allow carriers to repair damage craft.

[PowerPC603]

Solution 3 can be interpreted as when fighters get destroyed, they magically appear with 0% hull inside the carrier?
They can't be damaged from inside the carrier, so they must be flying outside, in space.
When damaged, they cannot undock? But they're undocked already.
So something must bring the damaged fighters inside, or does every carrier have an automatic transporter to beam damaged fighters inside?

And solution 1:
If your fighter gets shot outside, how can the corresponding fighter bay on the carrier get damaged as well? Does the damage go somehow from the fighter to the bay on the carrier? Upon taking a hit by the fighter, redirect half the damage to it's fighter bay?
Or are they holo-fighters? That might explain this behaviour. When a holo-ship gets hit by an energy-beam, the energy gets redirected towards the source of the hologram (the holo-emitter = the fighter bay).

I'm not sure how to interpret these ideas otherwise.



I would like to see fighters get repaired onboard the carrier itself, using some materials in the cargohold of the carrier.
There may be a setting on each carrier whch determines when the fighter must come back onboard automatically for repairs, like 50% damage to the hull.

Or even when there are templates and any fighter is destroyed, to let the carrier rebuild the fighter using materials.
The carrier might have a tractor beam onboard to pull in damaged fighters automatically when they're fully destroyed (pull in the wreckage).
Then they don't have to rebuild everything, but just do a full repair.
For each hangar bay, it can rebuild/repair one fighter at a time.
If a carrier has 6 hangar bays, it can repair up to 6 fighters at once.

You might even need some special equipment, for which you need to do some research before your carriers can reproduce the damaged items onboard a fighter.
If you don't have a specific technology researched yet, you cannot fully repair damaged fighters, but only up to 80% or so.
Or repair the hull up to 100%, but you cannot repair a weapon or shield on the fighter.
Then you have to research the appropriate technology first before your carriers can repair those technologies.
This gives an extra usage to research and crafting.

Even if you don't have the required research, you would still be able to buy the stuff.
Instead of repairing a damaged weapon onboard a damaged fighter, you could simply replace it by buying a new weapon and installing it.
But this is more expensive of course, because the finished weapon is sold for a higher price than all the mats together to make the weapon.

And if you have the factories to make the materials or weapons yourself, you could consider this as a free repair being executed by your carrier.
The only cost would be time to repair your fighters and time to transport the materials from factory to carrier.

Unless all resources are gone of course.
To resupply it, you can use trading ships or even drones to supply the carrier with the required materials.
Or they could have a trading ship onboard to automatically go fetch the required materials when stock onboard the carrier becomes low.
It's a carrier, so it should have the ability to carry it's own resupply ships as well.

And when a fighter comes back onboard, please don't stop the carrier.
Let it fly on as if no fighters are coming in.
Carriers are slow, massive ships and fighters are alot faster than a carrier.
They can strafe while flying towards the docking bay and when they're really close, the get caught in the gravity of the carrier like in Rebirth.
Or let an external/internal tractor beam take over, to pull the fighter inside when he's close to the docking bay gate.

This would make it possible to let fighters dock safely on a moving carrier.

[Silla]

I think what this game needs is something like a fleet manager in general. A management system in which you can set up fleets and their ships in advance including a certain budget either as one time payment or as timely restock payment with a minimum of money available at all time and a maximum. Once that is done your fleet will be ordered, build, resuplied to your specifications as long as there is money. Combine this with a monthly or yearly report of all incomes and payments so you can set up your fleets accordingly.

[nemesis1982]

@Silla: From what I gather the whole NPC Hierarchy is supposed to achieve that (partially, not the ordering part). In Rebirth this never really worked well in my opinion. However I would love to be able to employ a Admiral and or a fleet administrator who could do all the task you described.

[Gazz]

1. To me, "drone" fighters still make the most sense.
   Hiring and putting another muppet into every lost fighter does get old.
   A carrier's fighters need to be viewed more as consumables, just like the ammo on a battleship (destroyer in X3 terms =).
   
   That's not to say there shouldn't be pilots. They are simply stationed on the carrier and "remote control" their fighters within x range.
   A fighter that goes out of range directly flies back to the carrier on it's own.
   This way pilots aren't lost as easily and some sort of XP gain makes more sense.
   
   That also reinforces the difference between carrier-based fighters, where the carrier takes some risk by being close-ish to the fight... and individually piloted long-range fighters.
   Risk vs reward(power) is quite a key concept in game balancing. =)
2. Replacement of the hardware... is the trickiest problem.
   Spero's #1 of fighter bays as self-contained units is a bit weird but does make a lot of sense as an organisational structure.
   
   You put a nova into bay#27 and bay #27 will remember that blueprint for all time.
   If that fighter gets destroyed you dock your carrier with a shipyard / repair ship and fighters will be repaired or rebuilt in the exact same bays "they belong to".
   
   Carriers remain highly configurable because you can stick any fighter you want into any of the bays but unlike X3, a fighter bay is more than a higher number in the fighterBays integer.
   
   You don't fiddle with the logistics of producing and ferrying 27 fighter of 13 types hither and yon.
   You repair the carrier as a unit.
3. Managing a carrier's fighter wings can become easier as well.
   Flag some of those bays as reserves.
   
   Wing 1 loses a nova or has it damaged far enough to trigger an auto-pilot RTB.
   The carrier automatically replaces a nova in that wing with a fresh one from a reserve bay. The returning nova's pilot switches control to the replacement and launches.
   
   This would greatly increase the endurance of carriers because unlike a battleship, where shields regenerate and damage can reasonably be repaired in the field, an X3 carrier which loses 30% of it's fighters instantly becomes 30% weaker.
   With a system of reserve fighters a carrier doesn't require maintenance after every bloody fight.
4. Another aspect is that X3 carriers were so (potentially) powerful because the combined firepower of 60 novas was just plain nuts and would shred everything.
   Of course that fully kitted-out carrier was insanely expensive but viewed as a single capital ship it was extremely powerful.
   
   Now if the number of pilots on a carrier limits how many fighters can launch at the same time you have a more manageable power scale between capital ships, a carrier is still highly flexible in it's roles, and the "reserve bay" system extends the time that a carrier can remain fully operational.

[spankahontis]

Should have a fighter carrier like the Collosus and a drone carrier like the Griffin from X3:AP.
Drone Fighter Carriers are lore friendly due to the Terran Conflict claiming many pilots on both sides of the fight.
All automated to reduce need for an extended crew, only a captain, defence officers and a crew of engineers to repair/refuel the drones.

It would be wiser for Fighter AI to break off from any dog fight and return to the Carrier for repairs if damaged beyond a certain percentage.

Carriers should have a repair crew onboard which you hire, rather than a single engineer repairing everything on the ship like in Rebirth (Which makes no viable sense to me) crews to which you can hire up to 50 max for fastest results, repair damaged fighters (Again getting rid of a ton of unneeded micro-management.).