View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009397 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Aug 29, 2012 12:07 am | Jun 19, 2013 5:34 pm | |
| Reporter | TechSY730 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.073 | ||||
| Summary | 0009397: Change how Spire Beam weaponry works some to make them worthwhile in the average case | ||||
| Description | Right now, in the average case, Spire Beam weaponry, well, stinks. Sure, it rocks in a few cases (vs slow moving big stuff or stationary stuff), but these are relatively rare compared to the normal unit vs. unit battles. Credit should also go to Lancefighter, who pointed several reasons why Spire beam weaponry as it is now stinks in the average case. (you can read this at http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11543.msg118126.html#msg118126 Copied from http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11543.msg118135.html#msg118135 I would suggest two things. 1. Make spire beam weapons deliver more of their payload per frame, but make the beam live less long so that the total damage is the same. 2. Make the beam distance follow a similar logic to what the heavy beam turret's beams do: go to the first target, stop until the first thing is dead or out of the beam, then keep going, stopping on the next target until it is dead or out of the beam, etc, until the beam hits its max range. This way, if the thing with the Spire beam fires at is something close, its beam won't be stuck at a pathetic range. These changes may make spire beams OP, and if they do, spire beam weaponry may need to go up a bit in max damage. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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Youknow whatd be really cool.. if it shot out multiple hbc-esque shots in rapid fire salvos, in sequence. We could call it a "spire lance repeater". I think thatd be cool. |
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Or possibly, in lieu of #1, have the beam rotate as needed to keep the fire pointed to their target. Credit goes to Draco18s for this alternate "drop-in" change. |
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I feel like actually the performance profile matters too much for this - It can only update so many times to maintain sync, I believe. I really feel like spire starships do considerably worse actual damage when the game starts becoming more laggy and/or worse performance profile. Im not really sure if this is actually true, or just me making up stuff, but I am not sure if that is technically going to be possible. |
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Actually, there have been some already documented cases of where the performance profile (and in some really bad cases, FPS) impacts balance, including DPS. It wouldn't surprise me if Spire beam weaponry was one of these. To me, this is a rather huge flaw of how performance profiles are implemented right now. In fact, it is enough for me to make a whole new "umbrella" bug report on (tomorrow, after I get some sleep...) Minor-ish things like how quickly a builder can iterate through its queue or how quickly collision resolution logic fires, while it can impact balance, isn't that huge a shift in balance, and I can see why tying it to performance profiles would make sense. But things like DPS and average damage and whatnot is WAY too important to balance to tie to a performance scaling setting. |
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I dunno. Its not as obvious/bad as it once was - Check one of my real early reports, for the 'repairs cost stupid amounts of material' If im not mistaken, you can basically ignore gravity turrets/guardians with fast ships on certain performance profiles - The ships just keep on going until the next tick happens, at which point they could be all the way through it.. Autobomb targetting logic also wasnt accurate enough at low performance last time I checked either. I am not really sure what can be done about it though. I dont think keith really wants to be rewriting the entire engine for fun, and I dont really think that is within the scope of this update atm, especially not with shattered horizon on the horizon. Oh gods what did i just do. Changing the mechanic to one that works faster I think is overall the best and simplest idea atm |
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From what I remember from my last spire campaign... their weapons were source of constant frustration. Practical use of them was to tear down WH guard post since it has tons of hp and is kind of stationary. I agree that this weapons need a fix - I think we could even live with dps reduction but with always applying all of that dps to enemy. |
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For the moment, it seems we are balancing them around dealing really high amounts of damage in the best case. (current patchnotes buff spire starships by 5x damage) |
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Suggestion: Beam shotgun. |
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Given the fact that they can move while firing it makes hitting the full amount of damage, even when shootinng immobile targets, nearly impossible, especially in groups. As they position themselves they are still firing, and you can only facepalm as most of the first shots never hit even close to max damage. |
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Reposted from http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11543.msg119370.html#msg119370: Alrighty, here is one case where I can reasonably consistently reproduce the "spire beams stopping mid-way" thing. When the thing with the spire beam is firing on a target ship, and the thing firing moves but the target ship remains still, and the target ship does not die, very often the beam will continue to go at the length it was at before moving, and just do a bunch of short ranged nothing. Happens more often with AI Spire ships, as humans are generally smart enough to keep their spire beam firing stuff in one place while in the middle of their payload. |
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@Zane Wolfe Agreed. Units with spire beam weaponry need an alternate "movement" logic that has them stay still when firing on a target (that is still alive and still in the beam) unless they absolutely have to move (like friendly forcefield or something like that with a high "push priority" came along and pushed it away). The only exception to this should be when the Spire starship has an explicit normal move order. In these cases, you are trying to get them from point A to point B, and you don't want them to stop. (Use attack-move if you do want them to stop) |
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Suggestion: Every time the Spire Proton beam hits a ship (as in, the game ticks over), it does a random value of damage between 1 and half its max damage. Once the beam has done its max damage, the beam disappears. However, random max threshold decreases by 50% on every additional ship you hit. This way, you have decent chance of doing very high damage to your primary target even if you just graze it, without allowing an overpowered tactic of raking an entire enemy fleet with the beam for massive damage. It also hopefully allows the preservation of the graphical flavor. |
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@Sunshine I dont like the idea of a random value, especially if the minimum is one. Sure, you might hit for only 2 ticks and deal half max on both hits, but youre just as likely to hit only two times (which is extremly common right now) and only deal 2 damage. That would potentially make them even worse than they are right now. Maybe if it was a % of the beam power for the minimum and for the max. Say, 20% - 60%? That way even if you only hit twice you still are getting at least 40% of your DPS per shot. If possible, including coding that allows for excess damage to be carried over. Say you hit something for 60% with one hit, but you only needed 10% to kill it. The beam would keep going, and it would still have 90% of its power left. This fits themetically as well, since the photon lance is, from my understanding, a continueus beam of unstoppable power. If one target cant survive its entire force it keeps going with the remainder until hits something it cant instantly destroy or hits the limits of its range. @KDR 11K Youre idea also seems interesting, but can you elaborate on it? |
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Multiple beams working like the current ones with a random spread. Probably something for a different unit but essentially focused damage up close or spreading it across multiple targets at range (or not doing much at all against too few enemies at range). |
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Okay, that's the Heavy Beam Cannon. Well, not really but that is the direction this discussion is heading. The Spire Photon Beam Weapon is designed to be fired from big units and be excellent at destroying big units so it has a unique mechanic to do. Now, I agree the mechanic has problems but keep in mind what this is supposed to be. The current mechanic fits this design in that it is supposed to be used when both units are stationary, which almost never happens. There are two things I would propose. First, the Spire Gravity Ripper (not the AOE, the Slow on Hit), give this on a one second duration to the Spire Photon beam so the target stays stationary (or slow enough that it does not matter) so a few more pulses of the Spire Beam hit. The other is to increase the position priority of ships with the Spire Beam. I know there is a mechanic for it so FFs and Fortress do not get pushed around so I imagine it would not be a big deal to give to the Spire Starship. The other, more radical suggestion is to accept the fact that the Spire Starship is not supposed to fire while moving. Boost the damage even further to compensate but give it a 1 or 2 second cooldown after moving before it can fire, like that Zenith Siege Engine that was recently added to the game. |
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I could see the stop target on hit mechanic working fairly well, but it personally doesnt seem to fit the theme of the weapon currently. Perhaps rather than give it an alternative affect, make the beam much wider? The theme, again as I see/understand it, is a massively powerful beam of death weapon, similar to the Zenith beamships, but while they can only hit up to 9 targets, the photon lance hits everything in its path and lasts much longer. (Just going from memory, but doesn't the Zenith version have longer range?) If you make the lance much wider (right now its very narrow) and give it the ability to turn while firing, should that not correct the issue while still keeping the current theme? As for position prioity, I am uncertain. I could see that working fairly well in a mixed group, more so for the Spire Starship than the Fallen Spire ships. Since when you have the Fallen Spire, you tend to have a lot of them. Increasing their position prioity doesn't help when 1/2 or more of your strike team is made up of units with photon lances, unless your team is very small. |
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This mechanic is even more problematic on champions. Their movement speed is much higher - it's more difficult to hit something and stopping to shoot is very inconvenient(aka you may die). Adding a fan will help a bit if move speed of both firer and target is slow enough. But only practical solution would be to allow certain degree of firing angle correction to be applied while firing. It may not be instant so fast or close ships will still be able to run away but you will hit in most cases then. |
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Have the beam act as a tractor beam on whichever target it hits. You'll get to drag the target with you and not have to implement an auto-stop function (which would be REALLY frustrating), and get to avoid the whole "low damage" malarkey against small targets, at least until you destroy your target. |
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Allowing it to lock on the first target, angling correctly every few ticks, and reaquire on target death would certainly help. Actually, the main problem with it is, unlike other weapons, it doesn't recycle missed shots. Unless it was changed, Projectiles, if their target is lost, disappear, and take a bite out of the ship's cooldown, making it fire again pretty quickly. PBC doesn't do that. Aside from essentially shooting hundreds of projectiles, none of them are recycled. A solution would be to recycle each beam-tick that misses a target, so as to let you refire immediately if they all miss. However, that is not ideal, mainly because it would have to wait till it stops firing to re-aquire. Hence, add a bit to that When a beamtick fails to find a target, wait ~half second (how many ticks do you get, and does game profile alter that?) Anyhow, wait a single gametick, I think, and recycle the rest (full efficiency) if nothing is hit in that delay. That way, if you hit a line of units, they all will take damage efficiently, but once you pierce through all of them, it will stop prematurely and send the remaining reserverse into the next attack charge-up sequence. Hence the next attack will come sooner, but you still have some overkill (which is important due to it's unusually high damage) If you have a tracking failure, the beam will stop to recycle, and reaquire it's target shortly. If you are trying to hit a single target which moves fast, you are expected to have trouble. It will throw beams at it repeatedly in sequence, with a short pulse delay. However, if there is a large group of tiny units, and it shifts to a different unit, no problem, it will keep firing. Only complete misses will cause it to abort and recycle. Edit: Interestingly, The spire beam, as is, actually sweeps slightly. Not enough to notice or even make a notable difference. However, if you were to use some basic calculus, take the movement dx and dy of the spire ship and target ship, and then calculate from that, the instantanious rate of angle change, using that as the spire beam sweep rate would give it some moderate tracking ability. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 29, 2012 12:07 am | TechSY730 | New Issue | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:11 am | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0028041 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:18 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028042 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:18 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028042 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:18 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028042 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:19 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028042 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:20 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:20 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:20 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028042 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:24 am | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0028043 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:27 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028044 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:28 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028044 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:35 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0028044 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:43 am | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0028045 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:56 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Aug 29, 2012 1:03 am | Lancefighter | Description Updated | |
| Aug 29, 2012 1:17 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:51 pm | orzelek | Note Added: 0028054 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 12:54 pm | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0028055 | |
| Sep 4, 2012 3:53 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Sep 4, 2012 3:53 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Sep 4, 2012 4:14 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0028198 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 8:18 am | Zane Wolfe | Note Added: 0028221 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 10:03 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028224 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 10:06 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028225 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 11:57 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0028229 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 12:32 pm | Zane Wolfe | Note Added: 0028230 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 12:34 pm | Zane Wolfe | Note Edited: 0028230 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 12:38 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0028231 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 1:23 pm | Dazio | Note Added: 0028236 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 1:24 pm | Dazio | Note Edited: 0028236 | |
| Sep 5, 2012 1:25 pm | Dazio | Note Edited: 0028236 | |
| Sep 6, 2012 12:10 pm | Zane Wolfe | Note Added: 0028250 | |
| Sep 6, 2012 12:18 pm | orzelek | Note Added: 0028251 | |
| Sep 6, 2012 12:25 pm | orzelek | Note Edited: 0028251 | |
| Sep 7, 2012 4:42 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0028261 | |
| Jun 19, 2013 5:34 pm | Ranakastrasz | Note Added: 0032992 | |
| Jul 18, 2013 12:17 pm | Ranakastrasz | Note Edited: 0032992 |
