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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0002242AI War 1 / ClassicSuggestion - Balance TweaksJan 7, 2011 10:48 pm
Reporterlyravega Assigned Tokeith.lamothe  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version4.059 
Summary0002242: Marauders are powerful
DescriptionI like that buzz-bombs and stuff has changed significantly, but now they tend to tear every ship of ours apart.

They're having a very high HP (don't know if attacks do much more to them although), and especially buzz-bombs are having a massive range and firepower. And they now arrive in clusters, rather than 3-5 ships.

On our last game, we lost all our combined starships, and 2 command stations (in short, everything on 2 planets) to marauders. And when they tear some other AI sectors apart, AI retalliated us, rendered our game kind of "unplayable"
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Relationships

has duplicate 0002058 resolvedkeith.lamothe Marauders: I changed my mind :D 
has duplicate 0002150 resolvedkeith.lamothe Maruaders Attack Often 

Activities

Chris_McElligottPark

Jan 6, 2011 5:56 pm

administrator   ~0007625

Keith, I've been doing the balancing on these lately, but you've been balancing other stuff. Care to take a look at these with your other recent shifts in mind to see how they compare? They should be solid mark-IV level ships.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jan 6, 2011 5:57 pm

administrator   ~0007626

Although, perhaps a better solution would be to split them out into marks II-V. Then have just the variant from "current mark level of the AI + 1" attack you. That might be easier to balance all around.

keith.lamothe

Jan 7, 2011 7:18 pm

administrator   ~0007793

I think it's best (and simplest) to keep them single-mark and balance them against MkIV or even MkV types and make sure the numbers being spawned are reasonable.

The problem right now is that they (at least buzzbombs, iirc) are way beyond even MkV, I think.

TechSY730

Jan 7, 2011 7:36 pm

reporter   ~0007795

Beyond a Mk. V huh? I'd like to see how well they stack up against the Superfortress, or if you are feeling dangerous, the Mk. V hunter-killer. Let's see how much their over-poweredness stands up to those. ;)

But yea, right now pretty much only high level Mk. V stuff can reliably stand up against a good sized fleet of Marauders.

keith.lamothe

Jan 7, 2011 8:51 pm

administrator   ~0007821

Mantis keeps eating my replies (and they don't stay in the browser cache somehow), it's wasting my time. I just need to always type in a text editor and then copy-paste...

Anyway:

Chris, from the code it looks like on difficulties > 5 and <= 9 the max marauder counter is 40 before it has no random chance of not triggering, so the maximum size of the spawn would be 40 ships unless there were no eligible planets for a marauder spawn in which case the counter could keep piling up.

Looking at the hp and dps and whatnot, both buzz bombs and dagger frigates are actually a bit lower than how I would balance a mkIV type with a 0.1x ship cap (40 / 2 = 20, which is 0.1 the standard cap on high, where I get my balance numbers from).

So my questions are:
1) Do we need to somehow prevent the marauder counter from exceeding the max for its difficulty (40, for most cases), by just not incrementing it past that or by forcing a spawn on a human world or something?
2) Roughly what metaphorical "ship cap" should they be balanced as? That is, should 20 marauder dagger frigates be in the same balance class as a full cap of MkIV missile frigates, or half a cap of said, or a quarter, etc.

TechSY730

Jan 7, 2011 8:54 pm

reporter   ~0007822

Isn't the equivalent power of a Mk. IV a bit too strong for players to handle early game, even if only a very few number of them spawn?

Chris_McElligottPark

Jan 7, 2011 8:54 pm

administrator   ~0007823

To your questions: I don't really care, as long as it makes sense. I'd need to analyze the numbers to make a good decision on that, and I'm hunting other issues at the moment. As far as I'm concerned, you have a free hand to fix this in whatever way makes sense to you, whether that's by limiting quantity of marauders or adjusting quality, etc.

soMe_RandoM

Jan 7, 2011 9:14 pm

reporter   ~0007840

core marauders so they able to steal from AI o_O

keith.lamothe

Jan 7, 2011 10:17 pm

administrator   ~0007856

Ok, here goes for 4.063:

* Marauder rebalancing.
** The rough target is to balance each like a MkIV fleet ship type with a 0.2x ship cap (i.e. a ship type that would have a mkI cap of 40 ships on high caps), since on difficulties less than 9 it's generally unlikely that more than 40 total marauders will spawn unless it's been a long time since there were any eligible cases for a marauder spawn.
** The marauder spawning code will now not spawn more than twice the "high cap", regardless of how long it's been since a marauder spawn. On difficulties greater than 5 and lower than 9, the high cap is 40, so this new absolute cap will be 80 (which generally means 40 dagger frigates and 40 buzz bombs) on those difficulties.
** Marauder Dagger Frigate:
*** Base Health from 3,300,000 => 2,200,000.
*** Armor Rating from 3,000 => 600.
*** Base Attack Range from 30,000 => 15,000.
*** Bonus vs Structural from 30 => 2.4.
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 8 => 2.4.
*** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 2.4.
*** Bonus vs Light from 6 => 2.4.
*** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 4 => 2.4.
** Marauder Buzz Bomb:
*** Base Health from 3,000,000 => 2,000,000.
*** Base Attack Power from 15,000 => 12,000 (note that these shots can hit 14 targets at once).
*** In many ways this is now a condensed version of the MkIV Grenade Launcher, rather than the Autobomb, so it's been renamed the Marauder Buzz Bomb Launcher.

Anyway, they should be more "bounded" now in terms of how much impact they can have, but will still be a major pain particularly in the early-game (though bear in mind it takes 53+ minutes to "charge up" to even a 40-ship attack). We'll see how it goes.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jan 7, 2011 10:19 pm

administrator   ~0007858

Yay!

lyravega

Jan 7, 2011 10:48 pm

reporter   ~0007875

Thanks ^^

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Jan 3, 2011 6:54 pm lyravega New Issue
Jan 6, 2011 5:56 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0007625
Jan 6, 2011 5:56 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => keith.lamothe
Jan 6, 2011 5:56 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status new => acknowledged
Jan 6, 2011 5:57 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0007626
Jan 7, 2011 7:18 pm keith.lamothe Note Added: 0007793
Jan 7, 2011 7:36 pm TechSY730 Note Added: 0007795
Jan 7, 2011 8:51 pm keith.lamothe Note Added: 0007821
Jan 7, 2011 8:54 pm TechSY730 Note Added: 0007822
Jan 7, 2011 8:54 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0007823
Jan 7, 2011 9:14 pm soMe_RandoM Note Added: 0007840
Jan 7, 2011 10:17 pm keith.lamothe Note Added: 0007856
Jan 7, 2011 10:17 pm keith.lamothe Status acknowledged => resolved
Jan 7, 2011 10:17 pm keith.lamothe Resolution open => fixed
Jan 7, 2011 10:19 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0007858
Jan 7, 2011 10:19 pm Chris_McElligottPark Relationship added has duplicate 0002058
Jan 7, 2011 10:19 pm Chris_McElligottPark Relationship added has duplicate 0002150
Jan 7, 2011 10:48 pm lyravega Note Added: 0007875