View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002000 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Dec 11, 2010 2:10 pm | Jan 9, 2011 4:16 pm | |
| Reporter | Varone | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.049 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 4.064 | ||||
| Summary | 0002000: Turrets need some love. | ||||
| Description | Due to the balance changes of some bonus ships the AI waves have become a lot more potent, enough so that turrets are being destroyed quite quickly. I would suggest that turrets in general need a slight buff to their HP/Armor so they can stay in the fight a little longer. What does everyone else think? | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
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If this gets lots of votes, I'll take it as an indication that turrets need more durability ;) FYI, I am bearing in mind the impact on this when doing the rebalancing, in that I have been reducing or flat-out removing most of the bonuses that the ships have against turrets. But the overall increase in "non-bonus" DPS has been pretty significant for a lot of types. This is largely for the purpose of making sure that those types have at least a certain minimum of usefulness regardless of what situation they're dropped into (since the ARS is so random). This may also be leading to dramatically lowered turret survival ;) |
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I noted this recently.. even had a bit of a rant post prepared that didn't went through in which one of points was that turrets are kind of on the weak side now. Leech starships one shoots them, neinzul thingies from enclave simply remove your turrets and continue on their merry way and standard waves destroy tractors like there is no tomorrow. Basically it seems that having like half of cap of turrets is needed fo any defense and then quite many of them will die so you have kind of ongoing maintenance cost with them. |
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Most of the turrets were pretty weak already in my opinion except the lightning, tractor, gravity, long range missile and maybe the beam cannon. Regular turrets are kind of saved at the moment by being knowledge cheap. Flak was is particularly fairly useless seeming. The incredibly short range on an immobile turret that is mostly useful against things that all ignore tractor beams is really crippling to try to use effectively. |
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imo make their durability through armour rather than HP, that way starships+ can still blow turrets away with ease |
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I think the armor idea is both thematically and balance-appropriate. |
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If you can - consider removing turret bonus from neinzul tigers... they literally rip any turrets apart in seconds and there is always significant amount of these spawned by enclaves. |
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I can certainly remove that bonus, but just checking: have you seen a roaming enclave attack in 4.049? It should be roughly 30% the size of what it used to be. |
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Hmm did I seen it attack... they rampaged through my systems until fleet arrived to make some order in the area... and yes - they did arrive in multiples - 3 for example. Beam frigates also seem to sport sizable turret bonus - but they weren't rebalanced yet I think. |
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Is it just me or are laser turrets exceptionally weak? Perhaps having an armor damage bonus and higher fire rate/number of shots would help. I'm thinking along the lines that if you place all the turrets together then they complement each other. |
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For that complementing to work also basic turrets would need to get some more dps probably. They are only counter for few hull types but they are still only "basic". Laser towers leave something to be desired probably against targets they do not counter. I think that turrets could use some linearization pass like ships are getting right now. Some of them have quite linear stats and others seem to be quite erratic - like MLRS hp. I also agree on flak turrets - I'm not using them simply because they won't get more than 1-2 shots and enemies will run away. Gravity turrets - I'm not using them at all tbh - they seem so fragile and they need to be in direct attacking range of enemies to work. |
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Yes, basically my balance "itinerary" has been: 1) Vanilla DPS bonus types (and triangle). 2) Cloaked DPS bonus types. 3) "Special Attack" and other only-moderately-strange bonus types. 4) Self-attritioning bonus types (younglings). *5) Melee bonus types. 6) AOE bonus types. 7) Kamikaze bonus types. 8) DPS turrets. 9) Other turrets. 10) DPS/Special-attack Starships. 11) Rest of the starships. The next step is 5. |
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Laser turrets were really hurt from the migration of so many ultra-heavy ship types to heavy, with lighting turrets generally being the better choice against refractive ships. The only reason I ever build them is if I'm up against armor ships or vampires. The rest of the turrets all have their uses (with gravs and missile turrets being MVPs), but I agree about flaks being useless. They could stand to be given more armor and HP so that they'd make decent meat shields for the first half of the game, or even cloaked (if that isn't a horrible idea). |
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They're only meat shields if things stop to fire specifically at them. They aren't FFs. If they get ignored, they do nothing. The thing really crippling them is the fact that with their range and immobility they only ever get one shot off at the things you would really want them to blow up. |
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How about turrets enhancing structures? They could raise fire rate of all turrets on the planet. Maybe one or two dozen or them are available and they could be stacked up to 2 per planet for increased effect? Like 1 gives 1.4x and 2 gives 2.00x fire rate. They would consume few thousand energies. |
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FYI, a military command station provides an attack boost to all friendly units (including turrets) on the planet :) |
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How about economic command station boost resource extraction? :) edit: Also, we can not reinforce turrets on home planet with that. |
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With regard to flak turrets, how about increasing the range? As previously mentioned, these are mostly useful against fast small mobile ships that evade tractors... wouldnt they be more useful and effective if these ships were in their firing range for more than a second or two? |
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They can't even reach a Command Station in the center of an FF1 if you put them outside of it... |
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I am also in favor of increased Flak turret usefulness. Right now I don't even look at them unless the AI is fleeting not-vampire melee ships, and even then the turrets sit just outside the FF over the command station. Laser Is could use a boost, I keep forgetting that the jump to Mk2 is simply huge and totally worth the KP cost (its like 4x damage and 150% shot number plus). |
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Varone: Do you mean like Prism Towers in Red Alert? That sounds interesting, but IMO all they really need right now is a damage boost - they have some mean armor piercing, they're just too wussy to really take advantage of it. Suzera: It would really only be effective at drawing some fire away from Tractors. True that it would be pretty useless in just about any other situation, and wouldn't help their effectiveness vs their intended target. Increasing their range does sound like it would be best. Engine damage or a gravity ripper effect might be interesting too, but it would probably be hard to balance. |
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Engine damage sounds like a great idea for flak turrets... it would slow down the speedy ships that bypass the tractors and it makes sense... flak punches lots of small holes in ships, engine damage is a natural byproduct of that. Not as much engine damage as a spider turret, but enough to slow down things like swarmer type ships. Is it possible to make it so that the engine damage only affects some types of ship hulls but not all? |
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flaks could do with more brutality, although I imagine the univerally lower armour values will help a great deal |
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My main issue is the low flak range -- they don't even reach the center of the human homeworld FF. |
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From the wiki change log: Flak Turret: * Ship cap multiplier from 1.2 => 0.5. * Base Health from 110,000*mk => 250,000*mk. * Armor Rating from 100+100*mk => 750*mk. * Energy Use from 150 => 300. * Base Metal Cost from 1150 => 2000. * Base Crystal Cost from 225 => 400. * Build time from 70 => 120*mk. * Base Range from -1000+750*mk => 1000*mk. * Seconds-Per-Salvo from 8-mk => 8 flat. * Base Attack Power from 3000*mk => 6,000*mk. * Bonus vs CloseCombat from 8 => 2.4. * Bonus vs Refractive from 8 => 2.4. * Bonus vs Composite from 3 => 2.4. * Bonus vs Swarmer from 1 => 2.4. What I see: Damage doubled, but bonus vs. close combat units dropped by a factor of about 3.3 (translation: flak lost ground against close combat units) Range formula changed (translation: Mk1 flak have [i]even shorter range[/i] than before, which is more lost ground vs. close combat units) Reload time increased by a slight amount (translation: more lost ground against close combat units) So my response is a hearty: bwuh? o.O |
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Please note the unary minus on the old range formula :) For the close combat thing, I'm certainly happy to rebalance these further, this was just a first pass. |
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There is a negative sign in front of the 1000 in the old range calc. That threw me off too. It's counterintuitive, I know. Also, final range = base + 3000. Edit: Beaten to the post by keith. Stop being so fast! |
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I did see the minus sign, but I was unable to determine how negative 1000 plus 750 (at mark 1) made a positive number. |
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Forum Ninjitsu seems to come naturally to this sort of thing ;) FYI, I just realized that I made a mistake on the Flak reload time thing; I was trying to set the reload time to be the same as the former mkI for all marks because I'm trying to avoid "double scaling" with mark level by increasing both attack power AND rate-of-fire (and, as it is, the higher flak turrets can hit more targets per shots). But I did it wrong. Anyway, it's now a flat 7 instead of a flat 8. |
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Draco18s, it's a remarkably confusing number, yes. The old MkI's effective range was -1000+750+3000 = 2750, the new mkI is 1000+3000 = 4000. Sorry about the confusion, I'll fix the release note to use effective range in this case even though I normally use the numbers I'm sure about because they're sitting in the code in front of me rather than doing the math in my head and potentially writing incorrect patch notes ;) |
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You mistyped the wiki then. -1000+750*mk != 3000-1000+750*mk (in fact, the latter is equal to 2000+750*Mk, completely negating the need for a negation) |
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Well, I didn't mistype it, the wiki was listing the base range, effective range is base + 3000 :) But in this particular case I should have been clearer; the wiki has been amended to clarify :) |
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Looks like this is largely complete? |
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I'd like to hear what the players think. It was a largely lateral set of changes on the whole (MLRS turrets were sooooo over-DPS'd), though all the non-aoe dps turrets should at least be significantly worthwhile now. |
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Fair enough. |
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In the tooltip for flak turrets (I guess grenade launchers as well?) would it be possible to list how many ships they can hit with the flak? It's kind of hard to judge effectiveness against, say MLRS turrets when we don't really know how many ships are being hit. Additionally, doubling flak turret damage (at least for the mk1 turrets) is still not useful, especially given their short range and decreased multipliers. They still get at most 3 shots off before an attacking force blows through the tractor beams and gets out of range, and they still don't cause a dent in any but the most lightly armored/HPed ship. Suggest reload time is decreased significantly to 4 seconds to give them a chance to deal out a pretty significant amount of area damage before things get out of range. Also makes it so that faster targets with fewer HP have a chance to get out of the way without being outright instakilled, and keeps armor relatively more effective against flak than straight-up increasing its damage would. |
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I typed out some stuff but it got lost and I'm just about to go to bed so have this instead: Flak turrets have plenty of raw damage to render armor of low consequence compared to most other turrets. They may be the best DPS turret per ship cap now assuming the way AE works for them multiplies the damage, not splits it but keeps the same total. They are at least useable with the range increase. They're probably going to mostly be useful for chokepointing a single warp link and not much else unless they get a lot more range. |
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Well, that takes care of the "normal" turrets, but how about lightning turrets? I know that you guys are planning to revisit the overall balance of units with AOE damage. |
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Lightning turrets get the chance to do hundreds of thousands of damage per shot pretty often on difficulty 8. I think they're at least fine on difficulty 8. They're one of those ones that scales heavily based on difficulty though so they could very well be rather useless under 7 difficulty. |
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Yea, the relatively large aoe with absolutely no cap on simultaneous-targets-hit makes lightning turrets _awesome_ at raw dps when dealing with really big waves. But for smaller stuff, yea, they're pretty inefficient (though the ignores-armor bit can be helpful). I'm not entirely sure that's a problem. |
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Sorry, I wasn't trying to say they were over or under powered. I was just wondering if they were any plans to revisit it. Based on what you guys said, I guess there is no need for it. |
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I take back everything I've said about the new flak turrets. Those things have saved me repeatedly in this diff 9/9 game against a tech raider and a Z descendant. They are awesome. |
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How are we now with this? The flak turrets still need some adjusting (probably downwards from what I have heard), but other than that what? The only thing I can think of is a small boost to the ship cap of turrets, due to how many you need to be able to hold off AI attacks from the late-mid game to the end. But that is a minor thing, and I would be fine if the caps stayed as is too. |
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I'd rather players have slightly-too-little than slightly-too-much, honestly. That encourages thriftiness as well as usage of things like minefields, ARSes, and whatever else they can get their hands on. Thanks for bringing this up -- it does sound like this is darn near ready to be closed. |
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I have two concerns left (outside of the flak turret thing). One, are the Mk. III versions of turrets worth getting if you want good defense? While the relative usefulness of Mk. IIs over the Mk. Is is very clear, it seems less clear that it is worth it for the amount of knowledge it takes to the get Mk. III version. This is particularly true for Mk. III lightning turrets. Two, tractor beam turrets of all marks are a bit too fragile. Even a large number of Mk. III versions die pretty quickly against a large sized wave of Mk. II ships, and also die quickly to a mid sized Mk. III wave. (Note, this is assuming that the wave contains many ships that are good against turrets, which for schizophrenic waves, is quite often) Other than that, you're really close to getting these balanced (for now at least) |
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Ships that are good against turrets will just eat turrets. You can't really say that turrets aren't beefy enough in that situation, as it's like saying that frigates die too quickly to bombers. |
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Sorry, let me clarify. If the AI sends a appreciable number of units that don't suck against turrets, the tractors die quickly. Yes, tractors are supposed to be the first to go, but they seem to last too short even with that in mind. |
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After playing around a little more, I retract my earlier sentiment of tractor turrets. They seem to be doing just fine. However, my concerns about the Mk. III version not being worth their knowledge cost still remain. |
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The main benefit of the mark III tractors is intended to be for players that want extra capacity to their ship cap. They are also better, but not worth the cost, as you say. That's pretty much as it's always been, and I'm pretty happy with that honestly. I suppose they could use a bit of a health boost to differentiate them at least a little, though, in light of your comments. So... in general it's sounding like things are looking good to folks? Dare I suggest we close this issue soon? ;) |
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Well, if the balance of the Mk. III turrets is doing their intended job, then yea, I'm happy with turrets right now. (Of course, that's just one person's opinion) |
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* The health of both mark II and mark III tractor beam turrets have been doubled. Okay, I'm closing out this topic for now. It's too general, and I think the general complaints have all been dealt with in terms of the broad imbalance. If there are specific balance complaints about various turrets, other topics can be created for them, but it sounds like most people have been pretty happy for a while with them. |
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I know it's closed, but I just want to echo the sentiment that I'm super happy with all the turrets right now! |
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Glad to hear it :) It is good to know that folks are happy with it rather than just being silent for any number of reasons. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 11, 2010 2:10 pm | Varone | New Issue | |
| Dec 11, 2010 2:27 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0005961 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 2:27 pm | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Dec 11, 2010 2:27 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | new => considering |
| Dec 11, 2010 4:59 pm | orzelek | Note Added: 0005975 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 5:48 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0005979 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 5:49 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005979 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 5:49 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005979 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 6:15 pm | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0005983 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 6:45 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0005986 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 6:58 pm | orzelek | Note Added: 0005989 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 7:50 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0005997 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 8:21 pm | orzelek | Note Added: 0006010 | |
| Dec 11, 2010 8:22 pm | orzelek | Note Edited: 0006010 | |
| Dec 12, 2010 5:22 am | Varone | Note Added: 0006053 | |
| Dec 12, 2010 5:57 am | orzelek | Note Added: 0006055 | |
| Dec 12, 2010 9:33 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006057 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 11:52 am | unclean | Note Added: 0006098 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 11:58 am | Suzera | Note Added: 0006100 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 12:13 pm | colonyan | Note Added: 0006102 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 12:14 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006103 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 12:43 pm | colonyan | Note Added: 0006105 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 12:47 pm | colonyan | Note Edited: 0006105 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 1:10 pm | twistedreasoning | Note Added: 0006106 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 2:15 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0006107 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 2:18 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0006108 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 4:50 pm | unclean | Note Added: 0006126 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 6:27 pm | twistedreasoning | Note Added: 0006129 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 6:31 pm | twistedreasoning | Note Edited: 0006129 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 6:48 pm | twistedreasoning | Note Edited: 0006129 | |
| Dec 13, 2010 7:26 pm | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0006131 | |
| Dec 15, 2010 3:53 pm | Winter Born | Note Added: 0006220 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:43 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0006438 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:44 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0006438 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:47 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006439 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:48 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0006440 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:49 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0006440 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:51 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0006441 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:53 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006442 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 2:55 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006443 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 3:11 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0006444 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 3:14 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0006444 | |
| Dec 20, 2010 3:14 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006445 | |
| Dec 22, 2010 10:58 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0006814 | |
| Dec 22, 2010 10:58 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => feedback |
| Dec 22, 2010 11:04 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006819 | |
| Dec 22, 2010 11:05 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0006820 | |
| Dec 22, 2010 11:42 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0006828 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 2:55 am | Suzera | Note Added: 0006839 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 2:56 am | Suzera | Note Edited: 0006839 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 11:01 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0006846 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 12:24 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0006854 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 12:33 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0006855 | |
| Dec 23, 2010 1:57 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0006858 | |
| Dec 28, 2010 7:17 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0007172 | |
| Jan 5, 2011 11:49 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007575 | |
| Jan 5, 2011 11:58 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0007576 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 12:23 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007577 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 12:27 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007575 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 12:29 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007577 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 9:25 am | Draco18s | Note Added: 0007588 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 8:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007635 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 8:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007635 | |
| Jan 8, 2011 1:18 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007986 | |
| Jan 8, 2011 1:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0007988 | |
| Jan 8, 2011 1:29 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007989 | |
| Jan 8, 2011 9:20 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008008 | |
| Jan 8, 2011 9:20 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | feedback => resolved |
| Jan 8, 2011 9:20 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 4.064 |
| Jan 8, 2011 9:20 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Jan 9, 2011 12:16 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008077 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 4:16 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008088 |
