How will "victories" and "retreats" work?

[SiWi]

Hi,

 

Given that the campaign is "soonish" here, I'm wonder alot of things.

However 2 of the most important, I think, will be the follwing:

how will the game determent "who won" after an battle and how can ships retreat.

 

The first is important since I understand that campaign resources are base around that.

If we imaging the following:

I have 2 BC that attack an enemy convoy with 12 Transtports, 4 DD's and 2 BB's (which are similar tech as my BC's).

I sink 8 of the transports, 2 of the DD#s and damage one BB heavily, while my ships both take around 30% damage. And then I retreat.

As what does this counts? Is it a defeat, because I retreated and I will lose "prestige" for it? IF yes, that would mean that many "raiding tactics" would be invalid in game.

But lets say that game doesn't simply make a "last ship swimming" as victory condition. Then what else should be counted?

Value of the ships sunk? Tonnage sunk? Should damage % count? (which potential could mean that one loses all ships but wins the fight)?

 

And of course the question is, how does one retreat? Right now the maps are endless ocean, with no borders or retreat points (or features that make them more intresting).

Would a ship simple need to be far enough? Not spotted for a while? O do we need certain points for disengament?

Personally I think getting spotted for a while could be a good soluation.

 

 

What are your thoughs?

[Stormnet]

I agree with your points.

I also talked about objectives being poorly designed sometimes in the game in this post. 

I talked about a lot of things related to the in-game dificulty, but these were my points (some were the same as yours) about the objectives:

 

"And by the way, the mission objectives are also and usually pretty bland, vage and unclear. They are usually:

A - sink X% of enemy ships of certain or all types

B - keep Y% alive of allied ships of certain or all types

Missions are essentially varied combinations of A and B. This makes them unoriginial. No "Do B until F time ends" or else.

 

Also, the percentage of ships can be quite misleading, vage, confusing, or all. You'd think percentage would be based, you know, if enemy has 10 ships, and you have to sinj 50% you have to sink 5 of those ships. Number based kill count right? But then we run into issues:

1- First the rules are inconsistent and unclear. Apparently in Proove your Might, despite needing to sink 70% of ships (the enemy has a BB and 3 CAs, so you need to sink 2/3 warships right?) you can get away by just sinking the BB (althought it sorta makes sence, as I'll explain below, the rule is still flawed);

1- Second, think about this example: If enemy has 10 ships, 5 DDs and 5 BCs, and mission tells you to sink 50%, does that mean sinking 5 DDs counts the same as sinking 5 BCs? You see where I'm going? If the game rates the % based on numbers, it sounds stupid that sinking a torpedo boat is the same as sinking a large expensive battleship. If the game rates them based on their value/strenght/specs, then its impossible right now to know what those parameters are.

3- Third, as you saw above, the objective rules are either unclear, inconsistent, or complex, which leads point 3, that having to do calculations to know how many ships of a certain type you have to sink, what specs are they, or whatever, is ridicoulous. Even if the rules were clear and consistent (and made sense), with percentages you would always need to do calculations to know what you have to sink, or how much. Who would want to do math, not while designing a ship or coming up with a strategy, but TO UNDERSTAND YOUR ORDERS."

 

This is a minor point, but sometimes, when its a large fleet vs fleet battle, sometimes I simply ditch the objectives, based on point 3 of being anoying to track your progress on a mission objective, and go for a "search and destroy" type of attack, essentially going after and destroy all enemy ships I find, not caring about their type or what the objective asks me, until the game tells me I won. I feel like, as a player, I am discouraged of trying to destroy the specific amounts of enemy ships the game asks, to simply kill them until it win.

 

I do believe, based on what you said and what I said, that this game needs an overhaul of the mission objectives, as right now they are very arcade like, and begin to break down on complex missions.

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Stormnet

[Cptbarney]

I find the objectives mostly easy to understand, but very very limited atm. It's kill all/Kill the ship or maybe damage the ship to a certain percentage of structure and catch the ship, depending on the mission at hand.

For custom battles its only kill all and nothing else. There's also little lee way in terms of allowing players too win via domination or crippling the enemy fleet. I guess its too, also the lack of specifics as the above poster pointed out means we don't know if DD's the same as killing a BB (As these ships would have a different impact on the fleet, the enemies morale and their nations prestige).

Although they are placeholders atm, im sure the devs will improve them at somepoint.

 

[SiWi]

my point is less about the missions or custom battles but that it would be a problem for the campaign, if there is no retreat option and if the game only count "last ship standing" as victory.

[madham82]

I know I have brought up the same point before about missions and the future campaign. War at sea is not about sinking ships as much as it is about sea control. Both sides need the ability to withdraw from battle. In a purely combat fleet engagement, that means the side that doesn't withdraw wins. In terms of supply convoys, the transport need some kind of consideration. Could be as simply as reduction in war materials that are imported or transferred to foreign bases. 

Since we haven't heard really anything about logistics in the campaign (other than references there will be logistics), I'd assume the devs do have plans. 

[Cpt.Hissy]

Don't you think this would be worth talking about when it will actually exist?
Current objectives were likely just thrown in at the very earliest battle prototype and just never touched again.
I'm sure devs have their plans on mission objectives in campaign, let's see what are those and then complain?