View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0013755 | The Last Federation | Balance Issue | Apr 10, 2014 9:35 am | Apr 10, 2014 2:18 pm | |
| Reporter | zharmad | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.852 (Bugfixes Galore, Start of Quests) | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.853 (Solar Interface, Combat Balance) | ||||
| Summary | 0013755: Overall balance pass with player ship | ||||
| Description | With all the pieces in place for release, their relative power needs some work - else players will be forces to pick one for the whole game. Primary weapon balance pass: - Energy blaster are currently mandatory at all times. - - Bonus vs. pirates and structures, bonus versus shields. - - Means it has to be kept on for every mission. - - Heavy penalty for choosing a race that doesn't start out of this weapon. - - Suggest SHIFTING structure bonus to another weapon. Suggest removing energy bonus against pirate Ravens. Energy only good versus shields, and that's already OP. - Gravity lances outshining other choices, e.g. Mingun. - - Beam attack will always hit against any target in range. - - Not true for bullets, so worth trading some DPS over minigun. - - Has pierce, instant hit, thus better than armor-piercing except BURLUST resistance. - - Maximising weapon power makes it efficient versus swarms, scattershot not obviously better. - - Suggest SLOW fire, HIGH damage, make it not as good versus fighter swarms. - Minigun. - - It will tend to miss the fastest fighters. It's bonuses are meant to be against non-flagships. - - Making it faster will risk missing those fighters (again) because of failed collision, right? - - Re-evaluate the combat role of miniguns. - - No clear suggestions. Unless you want to make these AI-war like mini-seeking missiles so they never miss fighters (although they have to be faster to catch them.) - Armor Piercing - - Only weapon that can shoot down missile? Only weapon that can take out Burlust hulls FAST? - - Suggestion, decrease Burlust resistances to some other weapon types so that this is not as much of an advantage. Look at its relative damage w.r.t. to gravity lances. Gravity resistance isn't common. - Scatter Shot - - Used a few times, but not enough to make feedback. - Weapon that damages hull underneath shields - - Shot speed too slow. - - Only taken against shielded targets. Only shields targets are flagships. Flagships already countered by other more broadly useful weapons and player abilities. - - Suggestion: Make it competitive with energy blaster. Grant damage bonus only while shields are UP, like nukes? Also suggest giving shields to military structures, such that this weapon serves in a siege role. You can also use it against flagships, assuming that you can HIT them with it... Conclusion: All players needs Energy Blaster, and probably Gravity Lance, and probably Armor-piercing. This seems to be the optimal combination to me, and removes the need to customise the ship once you get them. = = = Power management. Literally a power-creep issue. - WHICH direction do you want: buff everything else, or reduce the effect of power management? Current problems: - Max weapon power outshines all offensive abilities, IMO. - e.g. no need o use Nukes/Giga Cannons/etc. if you can DPS ships down better with normal weapons. - e.g. better than trading hull for damage boost. However, boost still there if players need extra oomph. - Max engine power is often better than defensive abilities. - since you can't dodge while using an ability, diverting power to engines gets you definitely out of grav lance/taser range. - Overlaps with Afterburners (are they still in the game?) - Above two means that you dodge to the other side of the map, fire at will, repeat. It's a lot of clicks (I would want to have energy presets, although a click-to-maximise-output wold suffice). - Max shield power not relevant in combat. Players never have a reason to pump shield power to tank shots, only to regenerate outside of combat. - Therefore, does not obsolete divert power to shields. This is good. - Will we have time to test mitigation with shield power? = = = Ability balance pass. - Gigacannon vs. Gravity Missiles. - - Gigacannon could have a large hitbox, better damage and more impressive animation for its 5 shots. - - Missiles still at 30 activations? That needs to come down a little because you get 30 free blasts. Possibly fire several missiles at different flagships if possible (same flagship if not), so to keep the total ammo the same. - Nukes - - Not enough damage at all. No particular advantage over other two primary weapons. - - Should we give it a white screen-flash effect ala AI War? :P - Deploy Orbital Bombers is currently obsolete, except to trick the AI into gunning for them in orbit. - - No feedback from their bombardment, what are their weapons actually doing? - - Remove or repurpose? - Operation Zero - - I don't think they are suiciding properly? They tore through a lot of things whenever I summon them, far outstripping the other operations. - Operation Sharpshooter - - Need better AI to allow them to snipe target instead of circling your ship. Firing arcs prevent them from firing much of the time. - Mercenary hotline questionable. Penalty quite high - would use it against AFA and assassins only? - Various miscellaneous abilities. No time to test them at the moment. Never did dump garbage out, it has a similar function to cloaking, which I use. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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Since players start with a small selection of 3 weapons and abilities, some of the extreme variations sort of just artificially gates the difficulty. That is, the player difficulty curve is primarily determined by the number of hydral relic missions they choose to endure. Basically hunt until you get all you need, and then coast the rest of the game. - Burlusts are AWFULLY tedious until you get energy blaster + armor-piercing. Then onyl the duels are tedious. - Afterburners were VERY useful until power management came in. - etc. |
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* The "energy vulnerable field" that is on many ships now only increases the damage from energy attacks by 2x, rather than 3x. This keeps the energy blaster in particular from being quite so mandatory all the time. * Structures now have a concussive-vulnerable hull instead of an energy-vulnerable field on them. * The flagship bounty hunter colossus now has a concussive-vulnerable hull in addition to an energy-vulnerable field. * Spy probes, freighters and troop ships, pirate ravens, and thoraxian exterminators no longer have energy-vulnerable field. * All gravity lances now fire 3x less frequently, but do 3x more damage. So their DPS is the same, but they do much worse against swarms and much better against large targets. * The speed of minigun bullets has been increased substantially, to help them hit the faster fighters moving around. * Cutters, and the thoraxian exterminator, no longer have the ability to dodge piercing shots. Piercing shots have also had their attack power reduced to 60% of their prior value. * Burlust flagships (including warlord ones) no longer have armored hulls resistant to regular bullets. * The spreadshot now has 6 more bullets per salvo, and 6 more intermediate angles that it sprays at. This makes it so that it is a lot more effective at just absolutely spraying and area, making it a much more interesting option. |
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* The boost to attack power (and penalty to it) when using power management has been reduced so that the effect is not so extreme. The boosts to attack range are still the same. * The movement speed bonuses and penalties for adjusting power to the engines have been reduced in severity in both directions. The boosts to the turning radius are still the same. |
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Not clear on this: - Max shield power not relevant in combat. Players never have a reason to pump shield power to tank shots, only to regenerate outside of combat. - Therefore, does not obsolete divert power to shields. This is good. - Will we have time to test mitigation with shield power? |
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* The max ammunition of nukes has been reduced from 5 to 1, and their base attack is now up 8x. They also now have an AOE effect that is very nontrivial. * The max ammunition of gravity missiles has been reduced from 30 to 5, and their base attack is now up 4x. They also now have an AOE effect that is very nontrivial. |
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* Mobile ships no longer have firing cones. Previously only snipers and claymores did, anyhow. This caused some issues with AI that are not worth trying to solve, and visually it was also confusing some folks. * Operation zero was previously letting off 60 zero interceptors per salvo; now it lets off 20. * The penalty for using mercenary hotline has been reduced from 20/10 influence loss with allies/enemies to 4/2. It was definitely too high. -- Note that orbital bomber is not obsolete or useless, it just doesn't tell you what is happening. I've made a note for us to add that! |
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Okay, marking as resolved for now -- will go for another balance pass in further versions, we'll see what is still up after all these changes are in effect. |
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Cool, We'll be in Scotland on release so I probably won't get time to make another comprehensive round. Do you intend to have shot leading in the game? I remembered (for the nth time) that players fire bullets at the enemy's current location, which is probably part of the reason why miniguns were missing all the time. However, I forget whether enemies try to predict the player's position. |
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No problem, and thanks for everything so far! And yes, there is already shot leading in the game. Not sure why the player shots would miss from that. |
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Argh!! The shot-leading was indeed disabled for the player shots. Doh. Putting the speed back, and re-enabling that. Sheesh... |
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On shield power, what I mean is that, under current mechanics: - while players are expecting to get hit, they have reason to not place power into shields. It gets wasted when they get hit, AFAIK. - while players are not getting hit, the regen values are high enough so that 3 or 4 units (default) is usually sufficient. They may want to max shields if they really want full healing on that turn. but otherwise it's perfectly fine to ignore shields. - So what I end up doing is set shield power to 1, and just dodge/weave. - Shield-regen abilities are reserved for those occasions when you cannot avoid being hit, but you still need to regen. It's in an okay place. - Therefore, if we want some tension during combat, we can still give some benefit to using shield power other than regen. Although I'm not sure how this will interact with your auto-energy management. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 10, 2014 9:35 am | zharmad | New Issue | |
| Apr 10, 2014 9:46 am | zharmad | Description Updated | |
| Apr 10, 2014 9:51 am | zharmad | Note Added: 0035723 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 9:53 am | zharmad | Description Updated | |
| Apr 10, 2014 1:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035728 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 1:43 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035729 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 1:43 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035730 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 1:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035731 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:02 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035732 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035733 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 0.853 (Solar Interface, Combat Balance) |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:10 pm | zharmad | Note Added: 0035734 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:13 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035735 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:16 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0035736 | |
| Apr 10, 2014 2:18 pm | zharmad | Note Added: 0035737 | |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
