This doesn't make any sense to me at all. How do focus fire effects help the swarm in this example?StormingKiwi wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 6:14 am Thank you for the support, Jorgen.
In response to Spidey's comments:
2) With a strength number, reporting the number of entities in the group, e.g. [Strength: 2000, (5)] gives the player valuable information as to whether or not they want to fight or flee from the reported target, while also being information that makes sense to report in-universe. I'm not thinking of a simple average, nor have I requested one.
Without quantity numbers, the quality number is meaningless. As soon as you have more than two entities engaged in combat, the strength estimate becomes useless because of focus fire effects and so on.
3) I'm not at all convinced that a number that presents military strength is unreasonable, as the computer's AI and the player both need some objective way of determining in which engagements to fight and in which to flee from at the highest level. From this perspective, the number is entirely fit for purpose. However, I do agree that a single number is inadequate as the number of entities involved in combat increases, which is why I have suggested my solution.
KISS principle, of course, applies, which is why I have suggested presenting a pair of numbers (strength and number of entities) rather than a more complicated solution.
4) The math concludes that an n-fold increase in quantity requires an n-squared increase in quality.
A link to the Lanchester's law discussion, as it relates to video games, can be followed through here: The ABC article by the mathematician is available through search engines, and numerous other recent articles can be found in the scientific literature discussing this topic, for those who have access.
The equations can be found on Wikipedia; however, they are also provided below:
The Lanchester system of equations is:
Where q_a, q_b is the quality of a unit of army a, army b;Code: Select all
a) dA/dt = -q_a x B; b) dB/dt = -q_b x A
while A, B is the number of units in army a, b.
I have found the most informative way to think about the equations has been as a ratio:Code: Select all
q_a/q_b = [ B(0)^n - B(t)^n ] / [ A(0)^n - A(t)^n ]
If you have one ship with 10 guns and 1000 hit points fighting against 10 ships each with 1 gun and 100 hitpoints, the focus fire effects actually help the single ship. Each time it does 100 points of damage, it reduces the enemy's damage output. Meanwhile the swarm has to do 1000 hit points of damage to reduce the single ship's damage (granted it's a bit more complicated in DW, with component damage and etc - but shields & armour still mean the big ship benefits in this situation). And all the while the big ship will be repairing itself & regenerating its shields - and its entire regeneration & repair will always apply to all of its hitpoints and components, while the swarm has their repair and regeneration divided across the individual ships.
Your interpretation of the conclusions of Lanchester's laws might hold true for a lot of situations in the real world, in history, in battles on Earth, but there's absolutely no reason to assume it should all hold true in a fictional videogame about battles in space, in the future, between fictional ships with armour and shields and self-repair and everything else - Lanchester was talking about men with rifles.
And in my experience, it is generally the case in games like this that bigger ships ARE better, all other things being equal. Precisely because having your firepower & hitpoints concentrated in one ship means you get more benefits from repair/regeneration and damage mitigation as well as retaining your full firepower for longer and often being able to mount longer ranged weapons. Usually games have to go out of their way to balance this by e.g. giving smaller ships bonuses to evasion or speed or making them more cost-effective.
It may well be the case that smaller ships are better in Distant Worlds - although I don't see why they should be mechanically, but i've not played enough to be able to judge - but if they are, it won't be because of Lanchester's equations!
And since afaik we don't actually even know how the fleet power numbers are calculated, if it is the case that equal "power" fleets with larger ships are less effective, the most likely explanation is probably just that the number's calculated badly. It's actually not a very interesting discussion at this stage - much more valuable to know what's better for fleets of equivalent DPS/HP/etc
Sorry, doesn't the game already tell you this when you select a fleet? And anyway, at least until very late in the game, it's usually very easily to see the size of fleets just by eyeballing them because normally they're not that big!
How does that follow? What if your one ship has got higher countermeasures and 20 times the armour or shields of their smaller ships?Jorgen_CAB wrote: Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:02 pmActually quite allot... if I have 1000 Fleet Power and 2 ships and the opponent 800 fleet power and 8 ships it is a bad idea to engage them ans they have allot more stamina and will likely win even if they have less fleet power.
