View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0003080 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Mar 21, 2011 11:00 pm | May 23, 2013 7:13 pm | |
| Reporter | Sunshine | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 5.005 | ||||
| Summary | 0003080: Split Zenith, Spire, and Fleet starship lines into separate trees? (Response to knowledge costs) | ||||
| Description | The jump from Light Starship to Flagship is a logical jump to make, but the jump from Flagship to Zenith Starship? That's a little strange, especially since they are aesthetically completely different, which makes them feel a little out of place, considering it's the only research tree to function like that ever since the leech/raid split. Propose throwing in a Battleship for Mk3 fleet starship, which will be a larger flagship - more damage, radar dampening, muniboosting, and linearize the light starship/flagship/battleship line. Light starship would remain unlocked by default, Flagship unlock cost should jump to 2500, and Battleship unlock cost should be 3500 (to match the progression of Riot Starship line, but shifted up one tier since mk1 is already unlocked). This line should be on the high side of hitpoints and armor, but lower on weapons (or remaining where it currently is), with the muniboost making up for lower weapons power. It should also be made faster, up to 76 across the board to be able to match with Fighters and Bombers. For the Spire Starship line, this would make for an easy conversion to that Modular Main Combat Starship players have been asking for. Mk1 would start out locked (much like the riot starship) and would have research costs on the 2500/3500/4500 line much like Riot Starships. This would also give a tie-in to the Fallen Spire campaign and make the Spire Starship feel less out of place with regards to that. Certainly don't give the Spire Starship the proton beam weapon, and give it only a few modules (maybe 3, with different mark modules for each or whatnot, selected from Laser/Beam/Sniper). This would perhaps be a bit on the long range side, a bit lower hitpoints, middling speed (somewhere between 50 and 68; 56 like the other Spire capital ships might work well). The Zenith Starship line would probably stay as it is now, as a mini fortress (remove the muniboost though), and add in the mark levels. This starship branch, because it's alien technology, would be locked at mk1 as well, with the same 2500/3500/4500 unlock costs. To distinguish it from the fleet starship line, it should be significantly slower (missile frigate speed?), hitpoints could be a little on the high side, and it should have high damage across many targets as it does now. These research cost should also be normalized across at least Siege and Bomber starships, so that their mk2 and mk3 are 2500 and 3500 respectively, to promote more usage at higher marks. Raids and Leeches might be a different story, since they're more abuseable. Edit: as an extension of this, there could then be Mk4 Starship fabricators instead of mk4 bomber starship fabricators, which would function as Advanced Factories, but for those starships a player has unlocked mk3 in. These would not be guaranteed in-game, and as a result there would not need to be an excessive increase in knowledge costs because of the extra stuff one would be getting. Also, because players will prioritize fleet ships over starships regardless, I'm guessing. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
| related to | 0002902 | feature for later | Chris_McElligottPark | Spire Starships utility vs cost |
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"For the Spire Starship line, this would make for an easy conversion to that Modular Main Combat Starship players have been asking for. Mk1 would start out locked (much like the raid starship)" What are you talking about? The Raid starship Mk. I comes unlocked. Other than that. Sounds great. I wondered why the Zenith and Spire starships were considered the same line as the Fleet starship, despite them being basically completely different in stats. Would you support linearizing the Bomber and Siege starship lines? (The Raid starship should be sub-linear, thanks to how powerful FF immunity is; the riot control and Spire starships are a trickier issue, thanks to how the modules interact with effectiveness) |
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Oh, and what about the rarely seen beam starships, warbird starships, and core (Mk. V) starships? Do you want to keep the first two AI and fabricator only units, and the last one entirely AI exclusive? In any case, what starship line should the core starship be balanced against, or should it remain its own starship "line", but just better stats than any of the Mk. III or Mk. IV starships? |
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"For the Spire Starship line, this would make for an easy conversion to that Modular Main Combat Starship players have been asking for. Mk1 would start out locked (much like the raid starship)" Sorry, that should be "Riot Starship," not "Raid Starship." Fixed above. Bomber and Siege Starship lines are already linear IIRC - if they're not, I do support linearization. Riot control is a different issue, and could probably use some balance tweaks to make the mk1 and mk3 more effective compared to the mk2 tazer. Spire Starships would be easy enough to linearize if the devs go the easy way of making the mk3 hull three times better than the mk1, the mk2 twice as good, and the modules the same way, and kept the number/type of modular points constant over the ships. Doing that would also give the added benefit of not needing a separate template for pre-made ships for every mark, since they're all essentially the same ship, just with bigger guns for higher marks. This is, of course, less interesting, but I can't comment so well on the alternative. Beam Starships and Warbird Starships can remain Fabricator exclusive, I guess. Warbirds would be highly abusable, and Beam Starships are kinda funky but not really necessary. Core Starships could either remain as mk5 Fleet Starships, or could be their own separate thing, it doesn't really matter since they're AI only right now. All of that being said, an alternative to players starting with all these starship types (which might get overwhelming) is to linearize the warbird and beam starships across 4 marks, and remove the Spire and Zenith starship lines from player starting inventories. Then, stick them in ARS, so that grabbing your first 4 ARS will provide you with mk1 and mk2 of a random fleet ship, and mk1 of a random alien starship. The fifth ARS will simply provide a free upgrade to one of the player combat starship lines, which will all have been unlocked by that point. This would keep it down to starting only with human technology (Enclave Starship, Z Spacetime Manips excepting), would provide a little more incentive for ARS grabbing (not that there's been too little of that recently, what with unlocking mk1 and mk2 fleetship), and importantly would allow for an easy way to increase the number of starships in the game if they're intended to play a larger role since 3.0 or whenever it was. |
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So, would the current Zenith starship be considered the new Mk. II or Mk. III Zenith starship? The current Zenith starship seems too effective for a Mk. I starship. Similar question for the Spire starship. |
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I imagine the current Zenith Starship would probably fit in as the mk3, with the mk1 being 1/3rd as effective, and the mk2 being 2/3rd as effective (or twice as effective as mark 1). That being said, it would lose its muniboost, and would have its speed decreased. I don't actually remember its stats, so I could be off base. Spire Starship would have to be rebalanced completely, but here's some general thoughts for a rebalancing. Keep in mind that Spire and Zenith should be a bit more powerful than Fleet Starship line, because Spire and Zenith are not unlocked from start -> require extra knowledge. Probably 20% more powerful overall in their own ways is a good measure, but remember to count the Fleet Starship muniboosts in your calculations: Fleet Starship line should have around 70%-80% base firepower, 120% HP, muniboost, speed 76. Range would be on the low end, around 4000 probably, to keep them locked in with the "fast" blob of fighters and bombers. Armor will be classed as somewhere in "low-medium" range, so maybe 750-1000 per mark. Zenith Starship line would be looking at 100%-140% base firepower, 120%-140% HP, 44 speed, and its current penalty against polycrystal with no other bonuses. Range would be moderate, looking at 6000 as a lower bound and 8000 as an upper bound - this makes it less effective on defense if it is not already in position, but if it is in position, it should be VERY effective. Armor would be classed as "high," so maybe 2000 per mark as an upper bound. Spire Starship line would be looking at 100%-160% base firepower (depending on modules chosen). Hitpoints would be 80%, speed would be 56, armor would be "none" (we're thinking quite literally Glass Cannon here, kind of like the Spire Frigate which has 4 million attack but only 5.6 million HP). Range of base weapon (suggest multishot Laser type, which fits with Spire thematically) would probably be in the 8k-10k range. Modules would be the choice of Laser or Railgun (sniper) for "base" modules (probably two or three of these), and then one or two advanced modules that can fit powered-down beam weapons or the plasma artillery. No shield gens. The module specs for the Spire Starship are definitely going to take some work to both have enough loadout slots to make it interesting, and have enough module types to make it interesting. Here are some thoughts that fit less well, thematically, with the Spire, but since it's humans retrofitting the Spire technology, it could work. I believe the developers have stated that any module weapons must have longer range than the starship's base weapons, so keep that in mind. Additional basic modules: flak module (similar to flak turret in dealing with CC), machine gun (high RoF, low damage no AP, bonus against Swarmers and other similarly weedy ships). No MLRS, because that's already covered by Zenith. Additional advanced modules: lightning module (but as Electric Shuttle, not as Lightning turret - that would be ridiculous), engineering module (acts as a mk1/2/3 engineering drone. can only repair one thing at a time, but it's a slow alternative to dragging an MRS along), combat drone module (functions much like Blade Spawner, but much, much less powerful. Also, maybe the drones have ranged attack instead of self-destruct melee). Just some thoughts to make things interesting for the modular Spire Starship. |
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One, if this is too big of a change for right now, can it be marked suspended instead of marked won't fix, so you know to revisit it when are more willing to try out bigger balance restructurings? Two, if those new modules proposed are made, would those also be available to the Fallen Spire ships? Other than that, it looks like you really thought this through. It will take some extra math to get exact stats and to make sure their overall utility is normalized with whatever the devs use as their ship cap base utility metrics (especially with the new Spire starships), but your proposal as it is now doesn't seem too far off from balanced. |
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I don't think the new modules proposed would be made available to Fallen Spire ships. The point is, for the Fallen Spire ships, those are Spire ships using spire templates and spire production technology. There's not enough time to retrofit human technology to it. With the Spire Starship, it's human reverse engineering of Spire technology, so it will be compatible with human technology. It would be something unique to make it known that "yeah, this is Spire tech, but look what fun things we can do with it even if it doesn't have a proton bombardment cannon." |
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This is something I've been planning for a while, to get to eventually. |
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Resolved as of 5.050? |
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Yep :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 21, 2011 11:00 pm | Sunshine | New Issue | |
| Mar 21, 2011 11:10 pm | Sunshine | Description Updated | |
| Mar 21, 2011 11:11 pm | Sunshine | Relationship added | related to 0002902 |
| Mar 22, 2011 7:06 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011211 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 7:09 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0011211 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 7:23 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011212 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 7:24 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0011212 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 9:59 am | Sunshine | Description Updated | |
| Mar 22, 2011 10:25 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011213 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 5:54 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011242 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 8:27 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011263 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 8:41 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011266 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 9:02 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011268 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 11:46 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0011302 | |
| Mar 22, 2011 11:46 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Mar 22, 2011 11:46 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => feature for later |
| Sep 5, 2012 1:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028234 | |
| May 23, 2013 7:13 pm | keith.lamothe | Internal Weight | => New |
| May 23, 2013 7:13 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0032592 | |
| May 23, 2013 7:13 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | feature for later => resolved |
| May 23, 2013 7:13 pm | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
