0002097: Mark III scouts currently render scouting trivial - Arcen Idea Tracker (Bugs and Features)

Notes
(0006590) Sunshine (reporter) Dec 21, 2010 3:30 am	I tend to not even upgrade to mk2 scouts, I can often (even on 120 planet maps using realistic/hubs, won't work so well on maps with less connections) scout most of the galaxy with basic mk1 scouts pretty early, and the 3000 knowledge to get to mk3 scouts I would rather use elsewhere, ESPECIALLY if it's a 120 planet map where you have to be a lot more careful with what you capture, and also (IMO) tend to need more firepower to deal with things that go horribly wrong in the much longer course of the game.

(0006609) x4000 (administrator) Dec 21, 2010 10:21 am	This is a real turnabout from recent discussions on how it was impossible to scout anything with any but the mark IV scouts. ;) Keith, I assume you were working on the balance of these?

(0006622) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 21, 2010 10:43 am	I didn't see those comments, but the only problem I'd had scouting prior to the rebalance was with the grav guardians. Now that their radius has been reduced, and mark 3's are immune to grav effects, I'm fairly certain that the old mark 3 stats would still be pretty reasonable.

(0006625) x4000 (administrator) Dec 21, 2010 10:45 am	This was further back than that... I guess it's about a month ago now.

(0006629) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 21, 2010 10:52 am	Odd, I thought the scout balance was fine back then. As the original issue says, it's a matter of what you think mark III scouts should do, I guess. If you want the player to be able to start from their homeworld and scout an entire 80 planet map without having to take anything else, the new balance is fine. I never got the impression that was the intent, though, and it's certainly less interesting IMO than having your scouting horizon expand with your empire.

(0006633) keith.lamothe (administrator) Dec 21, 2010 11:02 am	I hadn't actually thought of touching scout balance since they're so far outside the action, but I can certainly give it a try :)

(0006842) RogueThunder (reporter) Dec 23, 2010 5:21 am edited on: Dec 23, 2010 5:22 am	Scouts are definately having a little bit too much of an easy time atm. Though they were definately at one point a few months back VERY much having trouble doing anything at all. (Snipers for one, were eating them alive... which was fixed.) About where I consider them balanced... for referance. MkI scouts should be able to scout at least 2 planets out, often 3-4. This is nessary so you don't kerplode the first time you try to leave home due to any of many risks. MkII shoud be able to do a good bit of actual deep scouting, but still limited to around your half of the galaxy... Not sure how this works out hops wise... But yeah. MkIII should in most cases be sufficeant to have most of the galaxy scouted given the time to rebuild them a few times. Barring unusually dificult areas to scout, and of course counterspy crazy AI's. The MkIV scout exists, to make sure there is no "unscoutable" doom. And for when you need a scout to get past those tough places MkIIIs just cant quite manage. But that was just the opponion I have formed over the time I've played. Right now... MkII pretty much penetrate the galaxy entirely in most maptypes.

(0006844) Suzera (reporter) Dec 23, 2010 9:47 am	Mk 2 doesn't go the entire galaxy in difficulty 8. Mk 3 nearly does though. It is mostly just a no brainer time sink right now though. 3k knowledge is a small cost for saving overall hours of time and wasting AIP taking bad planets.

(0006847) keith.lamothe (administrator) Dec 23, 2010 10:02 am	Is this still true in 4.054? "The "shots instantly hit targets leaving their planet" logic was not previously working. It should be fixed now, though, but could use more testing. Consider this a pretty major nerf to scouts, FYI."

(0006849) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 23, 2010 10:21 am	Reposted from the forum: Did some quick testing on this. Set up a 120 planet realistic map, no factions, no plots, no waves, 2 diff 7 vanilla AI's. While still on .053, I ran a cap of mark III's down each of five separate paths on the map to see how far they'd get, ran caps of mark II's and I's down a few of those same paths, made notes, then patched to .054 and precisely repeated the operation. Number of stars successfully scouted in .053 are before the slash, in .054 are after the slash: Path 1 - III's 9/7, II's 4/4, I's 3/3 Path 2 - III's 6/6, II's 4/4, I's 2/2 Path 3 - III's 8/7, II's 4/4, I's 3/3 Path 4 - III's 10/7 Path 5 - III's 10/8 Averages - III's 8.6/7, II's 4/4, I's 2.7/2.7 So from patch 4.053 to patch 4.054, I show roughly a 19% drop in scouting efficiency for Mark III's, and no discernible effect on the other two marks of scout.

(0006850) keith.lamothe (administrator) Dec 23, 2010 10:25 am	Thanks :) I wasn't seeing notifications about that forum, I think.

(0006851) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 23, 2010 10:28 am edited on: Dec 23, 2010 10:29 am	No problem Keith. In that same thread Chris mentioned ion cannons and counterspies getting radar jamming immunity, which would obviously also help a bit. That plus this may be sufficient, depending on what the intended range of a cap of scout III's under "typical" circumstances really is.

(0006857) x4000 (administrator) Dec 23, 2010 12:51 pm	Excellent!

(0006860) TechSY730 (reporter) Dec 23, 2010 1:11 pm edited on: Dec 23, 2010 1:21 pm	Ion cannons with ignore radar jamming seems a little broken. However, I am fine with counter-spies having radar jamming piercing, as many of the good cloaked ships these days have radar jamming. EDIT: Is it radar dampening or radar jamming? Dang it, that's going to be tough to keep straight.

(0006862) x4000 (administrator) Dec 23, 2010 1:14 pm	Radar dampening was never meant to make insta-kill ships less effective.

(0007018) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 24, 2010 2:48 am	Again reposted from the forum for reference: Identical setup to earlier tests but under 4.055, cumulative results (.053/.054/.055): Path 1: III's 9/7/7, II's 4/4/4, I's 3/3/3 Path 2: III's 6/6/6, II's 4/4/4, I's 2/2/3 Path 3: III's 8/7/5, II's 4/4/4, I's 3/3/3 Path 4: III's 10/7/5 Path 5: III's 10/8/6 Averages: III's 8.6/7/5.8, II's 4/4/4, I's 2.7/2.7/3 I'm assuming that I result is simply an outlier. The gist is that the changes from .053 have had little effect on Mk. I and II scouting, but have dropped Mk. III efficiency by around 38%. Keep in mind all these tests are from a homeworld, too, so the first world is "free" in that it doesn't have a tachyon guardian.

(0007040) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 24, 2010 10:14 pm	Identical setup to earlier tests but under 4.057, cumulative results (.053/.054/.055/.057): Path 1: III's 9/7/7/5, II's 4/4/4/4, I's 3/3/3/3 Path 2: III's 6/6/6/5, II's 4/4/4/4, I's 2/2/3/2 Path 3: III's 8/7/5/5, II's 4/4/4/4, I's 3/3/3/2 Path 4: III's 10/7/5/4 Path 5: III's 10/8/6/5 Averages: III's 8.6/7/5.8/4.8, II's 4/4/4/4, I's 2.7/2.7/3/2.7 Again, keep in mind all these tests are from a homeworld, so the first world is "free" in that it doesn't have a tachyon guardian. By the standards I've been using we've now seen a 44% drop in Mark III performance since 4.053, but if we account for that free world it's really more like 50%. I was actually surprised to see another scout nerf in .056, I kind of thought you already had it about right in the last patch, maybe even towards the harsher end of the "good" range.

(0007041) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 25, 2010 1:42 am	So I should note that all my testing's been done on epic game speed. Apparently folks playing on higher speeds are getting much, MUCH more range. BigJake's testing in the original forum thread (which I'm hoping he'll reproduce here) shows a factor of 2-3 difference in effective scout range between epic and blitz speeds.

(0007042) BigJake (reporter) Dec 25, 2010 1:55 am edited on: Dec 25, 2010 1:55 am	I tried to duplicate Vinraith's experiment but accidentally used a different speed. My data was gathered on three 120 world maps, 2 vanilla diff 7 AIs, no plots or factions, normal caps and at blitz speed. A full cap of scouts was sent down four different routes on each map four times from a homeworld. I'm going to steal Vin's formatting for clarity, but the numbers separated by slashes are iterations on the same route and not previous versions. All data is from 4.057. Map 1 Path 1: III's 12/11/12/13, II's 7/6/5/7, I's 4/4/4/4 Path 2: III's 12/14/11/12, II's 5/7/5/7, I's 4/4/5/4 Path 3: III's 16/14/21/17, II's 4/4/4/4, I's 3/3/3/2 Path 4: III's 17/21/20/18, II's 6/5/5/4, I's 6/5/5/4 Averag: III's 15.06 II's 7.125 I's 4.19 Map 2 Path 1: III's 10/11/10/11, II's 6/7/7/7, I's 3/3/4/3 Path 2: III's 13/11/14/11, II's 7/6/7/6, I's 4/4/4/4 Path 3: III's 11/9/8/10, II's 7/8/5/6, I's 4/3/4/5 Path 4: III's 11/9/11/12, II's 8/6/6/5, I's 4/5/6/4 Averag: III's 10.75 II's 6.5 I's 4 Map 3 Path 1: III's 12/13/15/13, II's 9/10/6/7,I's 5/5/5/5 Path 2: III's 9/11/10/9, II's 8/7/7/7, I's 4/4/4/4 Path 3: III's 17/12/9/10, II's 7/8/7/7, I's 4/5/6/5 Path 4: III's 11/13/13/12, II's 8/7/8/8, I's 4/5/4/4 Averag: III's 11.47 II's 7.56 I's 4.56 Outlier not included in average.

(0007043) Vinraith (reporter) Dec 25, 2010 11:55 am edited on: Dec 27, 2010 8:54 pm	I think it's very good that you did use a different speed, Jake. I hadn't even thought about a potential difference as a result of game speed, but apparently there's a huge one. It was sloppy of me not to have noted the speed I was testing at from the outset, but I think between us we've exposed a fairly fundamental problem with balancing scouts that may require a creative solution. Hopefully Chris and Keith can have a look at it once they get back from a well deserved vacation. Come to think of it this might warrant a separate ticket.

(0007383) TechSY730 (reporter) Jan 3, 2011 5:32 pm	This leads to another thing to test. Does DPS and/or ship survivability scale properly with game speed?

(0007385) x4000 (administrator) Jan 3, 2011 5:34 pm	Roughly, yes. However, scouts are an unusual thing in that they are noncombat unit where their movement speed is directly linked to survivability. We're not really looking to expand the scope of our issues, FYI, actually quite the opposite. ;)

(0007896) x4000 (administrator) Jan 7, 2011 10:43 pm	I'll be really interested in hearing how things look in 4.063, if anyone has a chance. Things have really changed a lot since the last numbers (including accounting for a lot of the things mentioned here).

(0008207) x4000 (administrator) Jan 11, 2011 12:22 am	I'm optimistically marking this as resolved, for now. I've been hearing good things, and/or about how difficult scouting is now.

(0008247) Red Spot (reporter) Jan 11, 2011 12:21 pm	Havent done exaxt tests to compare the different stats, but several patches ago scouting with full caps of mk2 scouts could get you about 20jumps away from your homeplanet/startinglocation. If you do the same now you may lose about 12scouts the first planet you encounter that has tachyon thingies near its gates. You wont often get past 6-7 jumps with only mk2 scouts, if you actually get that far at all. In short, scouting is somewhat difficult now, requires or thought or mk4 scouts or in some cases even both.

(0008265) RogueThunder (reporter) Jan 11, 2011 4:06 pm	XD Yeah. Were on the other side of balanced now... scouts often struggle to be worth knowledge... But a helluva lot closer to it none the less.

(0008326) Vinraith (reporter) Jan 11, 2011 11:27 pm edited on: Jan 11, 2011 11:28 pm	I'm averaging about 5 or 6 hops with mark 3's (through systems with tachyon guardians, that is), closer to 3 with mark 2's and 2 with mark 1's. That's on epic, no idea what the new rebalance has done to the variation in performance between speeds, as I never play anything but epic.

This issue is already marked as resolved. If you feel that is not the case, please reopen it and explain why.
Supporters:	Vinraith Master Cylinder Pants
Opponents:	Lancefighter

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
Dec 20, 2010 11:28 pm	Vinraith	New Issue
Dec 20, 2010 11:30 pm	Vinraith	Description Updated	View Revisions
Dec 21, 2010 3:30 am	Sunshine	Note Added: 0006590
Dec 21, 2010 10:21 am	x4000	Note Added: 0006609
Dec 21, 2010 10:21 am	x4000	Assigned To	=> keith.lamothe
Dec 21, 2010 10:21 am	x4000	Status	new => confirmed
Dec 21, 2010 10:43 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0006622
Dec 21, 2010 10:45 am	x4000	Note Added: 0006625
Dec 21, 2010 10:52 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0006629
Dec 21, 2010 11:02 am	keith.lamothe	Note Added: 0006633
Dec 23, 2010 5:21 am	RogueThunder	Note Added: 0006842
Dec 23, 2010 5:22 am	RogueThunder	Note Edited: 0006842	View Revisions
Dec 23, 2010 9:47 am	Suzera	Note Added: 0006844
Dec 23, 2010 10:02 am	keith.lamothe	Note Added: 0006847
Dec 23, 2010 10:02 am	keith.lamothe	Status	confirmed => feedback
Dec 23, 2010 10:21 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0006849
Dec 23, 2010 10:21 am	Vinraith	Status	feedback => assigned
Dec 23, 2010 10:25 am	keith.lamothe	Note Added: 0006850
Dec 23, 2010 10:28 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0006851
Dec 23, 2010 10:29 am	Vinraith	Note Edited: 0006851	View Revisions
Dec 23, 2010 12:51 pm	x4000	Note Added: 0006857
Dec 23, 2010 1:11 pm	TechSY730	Note Added: 0006860
Dec 23, 2010 1:14 pm	x4000	Note Added: 0006862
Dec 23, 2010 1:21 pm	TechSY730	Note Edited: 0006860	View Revisions
Dec 24, 2010 2:48 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0007018
Dec 24, 2010 10:14 pm	Vinraith	Note Added: 0007040
Dec 25, 2010 1:42 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0007041
Dec 25, 2010 1:55 am	BigJake	Note Added: 0007042
Dec 25, 2010 1:55 am	BigJake	Note Edited: 0007042	View Revisions
Dec 25, 2010 11:55 am	Vinraith	Note Added: 0007043
Dec 27, 2010 8:54 pm	Vinraith	Note Edited: 0007043	View Revisions
Dec 27, 2010 8:59 pm	Vinraith	Relationship added	parent of 0002185
Jan 3, 2011 5:32 pm	TechSY730	Note Added: 0007383
Jan 3, 2011 5:34 pm	x4000	Note Added: 0007385
Jan 7, 2011 10:43 pm	x4000	Note Added: 0007896
Jan 11, 2011 12:22 am	x4000	Note Added: 0008207
Jan 11, 2011 12:22 am	x4000	Status	assigned => resolved
Jan 11, 2011 12:22 am	x4000	Fixed in Version	=> 4.065
Jan 11, 2011 12:22 am	x4000	Resolution	open => fixed
Jan 11, 2011 12:21 pm	Red Spot	Note Added: 0008247
Jan 11, 2011 4:06 pm	RogueThunder	Note Added: 0008265
Jan 11, 2011 11:27 pm	Vinraith	Note Added: 0008326
Jan 11, 2011 11:28 pm	Vinraith	Note Edited: 0008326	View Revisions