Resizing of encounters & killer fleets fix

[SirEmi]

After several feedback reports about enemy fleets wiping out too many ships, I've made some tests and optimized the cost calculator that generates the enemy fleets.

The old values where like this:
For encounters, the enemy armada can cost encounter power + 150% of fleets used. - changed from 150% to 115%, it should lower the odds of facing a very costly enemy. Similar updates to lower the costs of the enemy armada have been made for missions / encryption missions.

But keep in mind that the enemy has always a bigger budget then your armada, for example if you have 1 bil power and attempt a 500 mil encounter with 100 bil fleets, the enemy has a 115 bil budget + 500 mil = 115.5 bil from the encounter... similary if you attempt a 1 bil power encounter at 1 bil power, the enemy has the aprox _same_ budget, 115 bil + 1 bil = 116 bil  but you face 1 bil power instead of 500 mil...

The encounters / missions resize depending on the fleets used for battle in them, however I have made a partial fix for this that should improve the odds of facing the full enemy fleets and gain the full reward.

As you know, the lowering of the reward / enemy fleets was because of the cost calculations and deductions from the enemy fleet. Now after the costs are calculated, the enemy can have a lower power then the mission maximum because the fleets in their armada cost so much that they can't cover the whole power.

The fix was to redistribute some of the cost between fleets to reach a certain power. For example, by deducting from a costly fleet and boosting another fleet that has a higher power degree, up to the maximum cost allowed for the enemy, or the maximum power.

This in turn makes encounters / missions more dangerous, because the odds are you will be facing full enemy armada a lot more often, but with the lower cost of the enemy armada, this should make the missions no less easy or harder then before...

Still, the resizing may appear on several ocasions, and it is normal, no need to submit bugs about a resized enemy fleet, it still happens but not as often as before...

God Speed! 

[KenquinnTheInsaneOne]

Sir Emi would you mind telling us how this works for MotherShip Missions? The only other post you have about how they work is almost 2 years old.

I've decided to do some testing and adjust the cost/fleet in missions and encounters.
The fleet costs are taken into account all the time now, previously it was only when you encountered less than 7 fleets.
The cost/fleet has been improved, if your fleet costs 10 million cr, than that's the fleet you will get, with the exceptions described below:
Ex: Your fleet cost = 10 mil
- In missions, the formula is (10 mil * (1 + difficulty/30))
- In encounters, it is (Encounter power + (10 mil * 3))
- If a ship encountered costs 11 million, than you get to fight 1 ship, with that cost, all other ships after this one are dismissed


The test was on 300 missions and 30 encounters.
Encounters ranged from 15 million power to 30 million.
Missions ranged from 1%-250%

The design Gun Corvette is an excelent ship for missions and encounters, and has managed to complete more than 70% of the missions and encounters in the test. That's why I've chosen the design to do most of the tests.
Other designs will perform better or poorly, depending on their design.

On 50% difficulty missions, it performed rather well, with insurance 50% of the time, and an average 80% success rate.
On missions of more than 100% difficulty, it managed to complete most of them with insurance, and a 60% success rate.

On Encounters, the design proved to complete 70% of the encounters that were below the commander power level.
Example:
The base commander power was 10 million power, fleet power of 10 million, to a total of 20 mil power
2 Gun Corvette fleets managed to get every encounter below 20 mil power whitout any problems on mostly the first attack


Example result using 2 Gun Corvette fleets on a 20 mil power encounter:
-- Start --

e(#1)'s 1289 Gun Corvette 4 are destroyed during battle.
e(#1)'s 664 Gun Corvette 2 are destroyed during battle.
Unidentified Fleet(#)'s 477 Hikari 1 are destroyed during battle.
Unidentified Fleet(#)'s 2097 Geinosian Fighter 2 are destroyed during battle.
You attacked Unidentified Fleet(#)'s fleet and mothership from deep space.
You destroyed Unidentified Fleet(#)'s 2574 ships and lost 1953/81382 ships.

Incoming transmision!
Thank you for your help commander, you have been awarded 3 command points.
Unidentified Fleet(#) lost more power than you during battle.
(+331 Exp)

-- End --

In conlusion, the missions and encounters should be ballanced and they will leave room for the commander abilities to help you in missions and encounters, so you can increase your profitability margin, as your commander progreses.

I trust this analysis will help you in some way or the other, that's why I've decided to release it

God Speed!

Sir Emi

Or does the cost calculations above still work for mothership missions?

[FTP]

Ok guys be aware that the cheapest fleet will be boosted which are swarmers so be aware


Thx for the update very anoying to do an encrypt at 1/100 from your power and still see it resizing :o

[SirEmi]

Sir Emi would you mind telling us how this works for MotherShip Missions? The only other post you have about how they work is almost 2 years old.

For the mothership missions, the values are:

maxEnemyFleetCost = enemyFleetPower + ( ( 1 + difficulty / 66) * totalFleetCostUsedInBattle )

If you replace difficulty with a max 255 for mothership missions, you will see that you have a very high risk at that difficulty... possibly facing up to 486% of your fleet costs in battle for a 255% mission, however that shouldn't be a problem if the enemy power is 5 - 10 times smaller than your armada.

[Gunfighter Frank]

I am noticing a disproprtional amount of single fleet missions now.  I swear they are now putting a massive effort to kill off my lead ship.  I Know they dont have to worry about long term cost and can afford to just throw away massive numbers of swarm ships just to win.  but this is getting a bit over the top. have been hearing about many folks loosing a lead to a 60% encrypt and less. or a mission that is less that 60% thier total power because the AI is putting all its cookies in one fleet of swarm ships.  might want to check that and see what is going on.
but on another note now the missions are tougher to win and I like that since I thought they were way to easy before. now you have to bring some attack to the table to win a mission.  those 1:5 ratio ships are not winning the missions now.

[KenquinnTheInsaneOne]

I am noticing a disproprtional amount of single fleet missions now.  I swear they are now putting a massive effort to kill off my lead ship.  I Know they dont have to worry about long term cost and can afford to just throw away massive numbers of swarm ships just to win.  but this is getting a bit over the top. have been hearing about many folks loosing a lead to a 60% encrypt and less. or a mission that is less that 60% thier total power because the AI is putting all its cookies in one fleet of swarm ships.  might want to check that and see what is going on.

Ya about half of the missions i do have 1 fleet in them and half the time I kill most of them but the mission fails because it thinks i only kill 0%.

PS: Yes I'v sent Sir Emi messages about this just not all of the battle logs too many of them

[baltic]

i have sent 3 messages with battle logs to emi today...think he got enough.
i have as many others lost lead ships etc.
so we are kinda suffering right now, if you are afraid of your ships, dont use them atm. take a break until this is fixed, if you do that you can avoid my fate...

[SirEmi]

- Decreased probability of 1 fleet enemy armada (killer fleet) from 1 in 30 missions / encounters to 1 in 50 missions / encounters.

[drakken]

hey emi, is the mothership missions still based on commander level ? in your post explaining them here i dont see any mention of it....

[FTP]

The power is based on the cdr lvl so is the reward, but the formula for maximum fleet cost is not.