Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

Balancing Combat thoughts

This was originally from the Carriers are Overpowered thread.

Quoting Taslios,

reply 50

Quoting peregrine23,

reply 49

Increasing the effectiveness of defenses would also make battles longer and more interesting and balance the larger ships that have the room to stack up defenses against fighters and other small ships.

This in general. Especially now that defenses decay. if a base laser does 2 damage. a base shield should be 20 shield. so that it takes a few shots to wear it down. This would let ships use thrusters and move around. If people don't want to watch they can always skip the end, but I'd love to watch a 30 min epic battle with all my ships flying about. (at least once)

End of quote

Right now Carriers are super over powered. Also as there is not a base carrier design I have yet to see the AI design one. I've played through several games building no carriers just to make battles more interesting.

Some of my observations.

A. Energy weapons are easy mode. Their range makes it so they can often destroy an enemy ship before it can get close enough to return fire.

B. Thrusters do not seem to have enough effect either in causing misses or in closing the range fast enough to matter.

C. A ship with double the kinetic firepower and twice the health but using no thrusters and no shields will die before it can close the range of a smaller ship using energy weapons. adding thrusters and shields requires removal of weapons and an equally weaponed kinetic similarly dies before it can do enough damage.

D Un-modded missles fire too slowly to be effective and similarly die. the Slingshot and other rapid fire enhancements help a lot however.

E Energy weapons that can fire through shields can make even carriers ineffective.

I've been thinking about this over the past few days. Could we do a few things to make combat more interesting?

1. Lower the mass of the thrusters
2 Increase the effectiveness of thrusters.
3. Increase the power of defenses or create ways that the defenses can regenerate...

4. Lower the damage output of the lower level weapons.
5. Raise the cost of the "shoot through shields" booster significantly...

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Turkwise
popsursocks

Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

I like all of these suggestions.

Hopefully Paul and Co. are reading some of these ideas.

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Yes, I agree very much too. Thrusters are a waste of space and combat is over far too quickly.

I think weapons are too strong compared to ship HP. Defenses can keep a ship alive long enough so that it can fight back, but if - and only if - you've got the right kind of defense. Otherwise you get eaten alive before you can do any damage at all. By mid-game ships are dealing more damage than they have HP, so any battle with a weapon-defense mismatch automatically goes to whoever shoots first. (you certainly don't want to get in a fight with Han Solo!) Even with appropriate defenses and thrusters, it is difficult for Kinetic ships to get in range - and unwise to use them because your fleets will take more damage even if they win, than they would have if you had just loaded up on the Missiles and Beams.

The only decent kind of battle right now is beam/shield vs. beam/shield or missile/pd vs missile/pd or gun/armor vs gun/armor. Anything else is a rock paper scissors match where scissors dies instantly, rock doesn't take any damage, and nobody likes paper.

The ratio of damage to HP is way off, IMO. Winning a battle - even against same tech level ships - does not necessarily require taking any damage. Epic space battles should be epic space battles. Sure, the better prepared fleet should win, and win handily if they really counter the other fleet's tech- but without even the threat of taking damage? It just feels wrong. Part of the problem right now is that the AI focuses on one type of weapon/defense combo to the exclusion of others and does not build good fleets. But even if they did, I feel like ships are just too flimsy. Very un-epic.

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I'd say missile accuracy is a bit off as well. In three battles I lost 7 ships ranging in size from small to large to a single corvette class -- the same corvette.

The last fight was between my 0/112/0 : 131/32/0 HP 250 fleet against an Altarian 18/0/0 : 32/0/0 HP 50. My biggest ship was a large hull equipped with Harpoons (4) and -50% cool down time. In this fight One missile hit the enemy for 16 points before my last ship exploded. It was the only hit the enemy took in those three fights; all using missiles.

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Good thread.

I absolutely agree that defenses are to weak, thrusters need a buff, and weapon balance is wonky.

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I like to watch battles but thirty minutes per battle wouldn't work.

Are the thrusters light speed. If they are sublight speed theywouldnt work against lasers. Sensors would be better for affecting the outcome than sublight drives. How do we fight here.

i like the fact the games uses different weapon type, but what good are they if they don't work against laders. I think defence versus weapons needs to be redone. Lasers long range medium damage. Ship needs to be able to survive past this at least small hulls. Or maybe not if fighting against a large hull, or two tiered better weaponed ship. If you were outhulled or outtiered maybe not. lasers are more effective than missiles or mass drivers at this range.

Missiles are now most effective at medium range you need to survive this unless your enemy is two sizes or two weapon tiers more. Missiles are more effective than lasers or mass drivers at this range. Any small velsel should make it this far unless fighting a bigger ship. Any medium vessel should survive this, unless fighting a bigger or more tiered weapon ship.

The rest of the combat should be decided here. Mass drivers are the most effective here. Any medium hull ship that is not out gunned at leastbteo weapon tiers higher should make it short range. Unless fighting a large hull ship of the same weapon tier.

Lasers are medium damage long range. Missiles medium range heavy damage. Guns ate short range light damage. Sensors should play a factir in this.

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Tetrasodium

Join Date 03/2006

+17

If you look at shiphilldefs.xml. Most of the ships above small/medium have a penalty to manuverability. By the largest ships its like a multiplier of -.5. I could probably make a mod to change this behavior without too much trouble later. I updated my mod here based on this thread

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