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Big vs Small ship balance


Weylin
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If a large ship cannot outright defeat 10 smaller ships of the same total volume, then the balance is invalid. Bigger ships are supposed to be built specifically to defeat smaller ships. If it doesn't work that way, then there's no logic behind building them in the first place.

 

Small ships already has some benefits, like 2 free weapon slots, faster warp-drive recharge and lower profile against less accurate weapon types.

 

Poppycock. Smaller ships need to be more powerful than one bigger ship (of the same total mass) to promote diversity in ship building. Otherwise you get doom cubes. Which isn't fun.

 

Realistic for a space game, sure, everything will be doom cubes if we ever have a REAL war in space. But this is a game and a game is supposed to be fun.

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What's the point tho? This game is very bad at PvP (and barely usable at PvE unless in single player)

 

Because players will gravitate to the most powerful solution even in single-player PvE, and that solution should be 'gamey' and fun.Fighters should be better than doomcubes because that's more fun.

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What's the point tho? This game is very bad at PvP (and barely usable at PvE unless in single player)

 

It matters because the game could be better at PvP.  Also I suspect faction war servers will become popular eventually.  They always seem to in these kind of game.  Even in games that have even worse PvP gameplay than Avorion.

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I think electronic countermeasures My second idea is a module that would interupt all enemy targeting and randomly cause the weapons to fire from 1 to 10 degrees (higher tiers would give more distortion) off of where they are aiming. Of course there would be counter- countermease modules that could negate some but not all of the jamming effect with higher tiers being more effective. I think this would promote a more balance playstyle where you would have to take range and accuracy into account.

Side note, i have played Space Engineers, Starmade, Empyrion

 

ECM is a horrible idea. The primary rule of multiplayer, especially in MMORPGs, is that you *NEVER* take control away from a player. I played a game called Perpetuum that failed/fails because it's got effective ECM and as a result whoever has the most/first ECM mechs wins the fight.

 

If guns are going to be inaccurate they need to be inaccurate all the time, otherwise, it's someone interfering with your control of your ship. Even warp jammers are only border-line acceptable, but only because they solve an enormous problem.

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Poppycock. Smaller ships need to be more powerful than one bigger ship (of the same total mass) to promote diversity in ship building. Otherwise you get doom cubes. Which isn't fun.

 

Realistic for a space game, sure, everything will be doom cubes if we ever have a REAL war in space. But this is a game and a game is supposed to be fun.

I don't give a flying fuck about realism. I not even mentioned it once.

 

Diversity is provided by tactical flexibility, i.e an ability to divide forces in accordance with specific tactical goals. Besides, multiple people already pointed out (which you would actually knew if cared enough to read), that smaller ships are already more powerful (easier time getting more weapons), smaller targets, more mobile and require much fewer high-ranking officers to command.

 

Large ships are only viable at this moment, because they're more convenient to use personally (flagships), allow relatively secure use of fewer, higher-tier systems and can endure longer under concentrated fire without loss of their own combat potential.

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Because players will gravitate to the most powerful solution even in single-player PvE, and that solution should be 'gamey' and fun.Fighters should be better than doomcubes because that's more fun.

 

You are certainly entitled to your opinion regarding what you find both "gamey" and "fun", but I don't think you should be forcefully imposing that upon others. The only person that can do that is Sir Developer, and thankfully koonschi is willing to listen to the community so no worries there.

 

But as this is tangentical to the discussion about big versus small ships, I'd suggest you come over to this thread (https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2332.0.html) if you feel a need to discuss why you dislike cubic builds.

 

~~~

 

On topic, it would be very interesting if there were additional reasons to keep a smaller ship besides being able to fit through warp gates, being able to easily move around between asteroids, between stations, between other ships, between enemy (and sometimes friendly) fire, and for whatever roleplaying/personal challenge reasons a person might play with a smaller ship (which sounds like a fun challenge to undertake!).

 

The key will really be when the AI for fleetmates is strong enough to warrant having a fleet of smaller ships. This may or may not ever happen, so having something like a cloaking field block which requires a geometrically larger amount of volume as the amount of volume it needs to hide is greater (thus giving a maximum range where you can no longer cloak a ship, and leading up to that range would be most of your ship having to be cloaking block to possibly cloak, and thus not be a realistic design), perhaps with a smaller increase as the materials of the cloaking field block become better.

 

It would be better to have that kind of discussion in a Suggestion thread though, of course.

 

The bigger issue is that trying to balance the game between small and big ships is not a very realistic task. Without a large enough level of complexity (and even in that case, but more difficult to find), a system is going to have a lowest energy state that players are going to gravitate towards finding. The only counter to this entropy of ship design is that players have their own desires in design, so they're willing to make things less efficient to fit what they want to make/play as.

 

But trying to make it so that there is a clear way that a small ship can be just as powerful as a large ship is one heck of a task. One that I'd love to see the community undertake a brainstorming session to try and understand, and one that I'd love to see Avorion fulfill at some point in the future, but one that I don't think we'll see resolved in the short while.

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Based on the math I've been doing it looks like it would make more sense to protect sectors with small ships if you have to cover a lot of them.  Having one battleship in every sector looks to be pretty needlessly expensive.  This is more or less what you'd want to do in real life as well.  When I say protect a sector I'm talking about pirate suppression.  Obviously, if any enemy player dropped a battleship into a sector defended by three frigates the frigates will get owned. 

 

I don't have tools I need to do more exact testing in game.  But, from what I've found it seems like the devs have thought about the little ship vs big ship issue and there are already some measures in place to make both useful.

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>But trying to make it so that there is a clear way that a small ship can be just as powerful as a large ship is one heck of a task.

 

It's already halfway done. There's a non-linear ramp to the additional blocks you have to add to get an additional turret slot using ship upgrades. I'd suggest the mechanism be tuned to promote smaller ships having more firepower/block but the same hps/block.

 

The aspect of this game that prevents that from being the balancing factor is the railgun. You *NEED* giant blocks of thick armor to prevent a railgun from destroying your ship quickly. I honestly think it's just a bug that railguns penetrate the way they do - full damage to X layers if no layer can absorb all the damage, always full damage to the ship HP if there are X layers under the penetration point.

 

Also the dev has indicated he wants to make turrets physically larger if they are more powerful, which may require more surface area to place. That would also work against small ships having more DPS, unless it was a non-linear ramp.

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It's already halfway done. There's a non-linear ramp to the additional blocks you have to add to get an additional turret slot using ship upgrades. I'd suggest the mechanism be tuned to promote smaller ships having more firepower/block but the same hps/block.

 

I'd be interested in seeing how your proposed change would played out, as it could work well to further balance the design of your ship/fleet. Smaller ships that are, on a per-capita (well, per-block as it were) basis, more powerful in firepower than larger ships would then make swarms a fairly effective tactic. With the advent of custom fighters, it might even be possible to make custom heavy fighters (things on the same scale as most people's first builds, etc), and the like.

 

It could also be given as a way to handle "big ships are innately overpowered and cannot be countered except by another big ship" by having small ships able to overwhelm big ships. There, of course, would be the counter to that in that big ships would then have small ships (be it as fighters or fleetmates), and that increases the general complexity.

 

All in all it'd be interesting to see!

 

The aspect of this game that prevents that from being the balancing factor is the railgun. You *NEED* giant blocks of thick armor to prevent a railgun from destroying your ship quickly. I honestly think it's just a bug that railguns penetrate the way they do - full damage to X layers if no layer can absorb all the damage, always full damage to the ship HP if there are X layers under the penetration point.

 

Yeah, railguns are certainly bugged in that regard, as it makes them FAR too powerful. To the point that I refuse to use them (or at least I can claim that is why I don't use them when I just really enjoy the usage of laser turrets, even if they aren't anywhere near as effective when taking that into account).

 

It could be interesting if they had a slight multiplier based upon the projectile (certain turrets could have projectiles that would be better at piercing, or do more damage but pierce less effectively), or something else of the sort, but the current mechanic is just outright broken.

 

Also the dev has indicated he wants to make turrets physically larger if they are more powerful, which may require more surface area to place. That would also work against small ships having more DPS, unless it was a non-linear ramp.

 

It certainly makes sense that larger turrets will, on average, be more powerful, no? The balancing point would then be more smaller ships gaining more total damage, which should be more economical in regards to certain aspects of the game.

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It could also be given as a way to handle "big ships are innately overpowered and cannot be countered except by another big ship" by having small ships able to overwhelm big ships. There, of course, would be the counter to that in that big ships would then have small ships (be it as fighters or fleetmates), and that increases the general complexity.

 

All in all it'd be interesting to see!

Its already the case. Not only each ship has 2 potential Armed turrets by default (thus each additional ship = 2 free turrets), but small ships require very little increase in volume for added system slots. In fact, the volume increment to achieve the 9th system slots drops from 2.5 to ~1.58 because at this point the requirements become so ridiculously high, that using the same increment across the board would require you to have a ship of 7.6 billion m3 to the the final 15th slot (over 50x times the current requirement).

 

It could be interesting if they had a slight multiplier based upon the projectile (certain turrets could have projectiles that would be better at piercing, or do more damage but pierce less effectively), or something else of the sort, but the current mechanic is just outright broken.
Personally I think, that penetrating potential should be proportional to damage, but damage itself should be balanced with other factors like fire-rate and power drain. As for the damage mechanics themselves, I think that Railguns should do 1/2 damage to the first block, 1/4 damage to the second, 1/8 to the third, etc. until penetration factor is expended and the last block gets the same damage as previous one. Armor simply would take full damage and prevent any further progress. Either way, no extra damage is generated, but penetration will still be pretty dangerous due to internal components having few of their own HP.

 

It certainly makes sense that larger turrets will, on average, be more powerful, no? The balancing point would then be more smaller ships gaining more total damage, which should be more economical in regards to certain aspects of the game.
The only question here is how larger weapon mounts would be limited by ship's size in any degree. Anyone is capable of designing a ship for large-footprint turrets if need be, so it has to rely on some other mechanisms, like an exponential power usage or extreme recoil force, to make them unfavorable on smaller vessels.
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Its already the case. Not only each ship has 2 potential Armed turrets by default (thus each additional ship = 2 free turrets), but small ships require very little increase in volume for added system slots. In fact, the volume increment to achieve the 9th system slots drops from 2.5 to ~1.58 because at this point the requirements become so ridiculously high, that using the same increment across the board would require you to have a ship of 7.6 billion m3 to the the final 15th slot (over 50x times the current requirement).

 

Very true, and although smaller ships would innately have smaller resources to pull from (energy specifically) you can handle that by using weapons that don't require energy. That could easily mean you have a smallish ship with two or so system slots rocking nearly a dozen chainguns. And that ship could be one of many, a part of a small (not in quantity of ships, but in their size) fleet. That sounds like a terrifying enemy to have to try and fight, especially given how hard aiming can be on small targets.

 

Personally I think, that penetrating potential should be proportional to damage, but damage itself should be balanced with other factors like fire-rate and power drain. As for the damage mechanics themselves, I think that Railguns should do 1/2 damage to the first block, 1/4 damage to the second, 1/8 to the third, etc. until penetration factor is expended and the last block gets the same damage as previous one. Armor simply would take full damage and prevent any further progress. Either way, no extra damage is generated, but penetration will still be pretty dangerous due to internal components having few of their own HP.

 

Having avoided railguns thus far (mostly as I really like lasers) I don't really know enough to comment regarding that, but something needs to be done to keep railguns from being as overpowered as it has been claimed (damaging all blocks for all of the damage it does until it reaches the maximum pierce distance or is stopped by a block with more health than it can damage).

 

The only question here is how larger weapon mounts would be limited by ship's size in any degree. Anyone is capable of designing a ship for large-footprint turrets if need be, so it has to rely on some other mechanisms, like an exponential power usage or extreme recoil force, to make them unfavorable on smaller vessels.

 

Both of those factors would make sense as small ships (as I stated above) already wouldn't be able to as easily field high-energy-usage turrets. For non-energy based weapons, having larger/more powerful turrets have much greater recoil would likely be a good way to properly counter that. Of course we are still left with the possibility of small ships that have well balanced weapon loads, and shouldn't be overwhelmed with exceedingly overpowered tiny ships with mega-guns being able to utterly destroy anything in their path.

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Having avoided railguns thus far (mostly as I really like lasers) I don't really know enough to comment regarding that, but something needs to be done to keep railguns from being as overpowered as it has been claimed (damaging all blocks for all of the damage it does until it reaches the maximum pierce distance or is stopped by a block with more health than it can damage).

First, I'm the one who tested them recently to provide the data.

 

Secondly, its even worse than that. Railguns penetrate as many blocks are their hidden penetration factors allows, regardless of their size. It deals full damage to all of them, and for each block it also deals full damage to the ship HP, meaning, that penetrating trough 10 blocks multiplies the damage to ship HP by 10, no matter what these blocks are. Armor only prevents the damage to the blocks behind it - it does not prevent the multiplying effect against the ship HP. The only two things, that reduce that effect are shields and too little blocks to penetrate trough.

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First, I'm the one who tested them recently to provide the data.

 

Ah, awesome! Thank you for going through the effort of testing and getting that out in the open!

 

Secondly, its even worse than that. Railguns penetrate as many blocks are their hidden penetration factors allows, regardless of their size. It deals full damage to all of them, and for each block it also deals full damage to the ship HP, meaning, that penetrating trough 10 blocks multiplies the damage to ship HP by 10, no matter what these blocks are. Armor only prevents the damage to the blocks behind it - it does not prevent the multiplying effect against the ship HP. The only two things, that reduce that effect are shields and too little blocks to penetrate trough.

 

Phew, I did not understand the vastness of the brokeness of railguns.

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Check out starmade: every weapon does 10pt dps per energy used and still how damage is delivered and applied to hull/armor makes each unique and useful.

 

That said, ship gigantism is bad for a whole other amount or reason beyond ship-vs-ship balance:

 

-  lag servers

-  make cooperation superfluous

-  make engagements last hours

-  make easy to grief players well beyond newbie levels

 

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Check out starmade: every weapon does 10pt dps per energy used and still how damage is delivered and applied to hull/armor makes each unique and useful.

 

That said, ship gigantism is bad for a whole other amount or reason beyond ship-vs-ship balance:

 

-  lag servers

-  make cooperation superfluous

-  make engagements last hours

-  make easy to grief players well beyond newbie levels

 

As far as lag goes the general rule of thumb for block games is that more blocks = more lag.  Yet in Avorion an absolutely huge ship could be made of only a hundred blocks and a small ship can be made of thousands.  Now, turrets factor into this but it's hard to tell what actually causes lag in Avorion.

 

Currently, ships stop getting system slots at 15.  So, if I make a ship that has double the volume of a 15 slot ship I should have build two 15 slot ships and doubled my firepower.

 

I'm getting rather bored of people talking about physics and other games and not actually talking about Avorion's game mechanics.  It's caused them to overlook the advantages Avorion actually gives smaller ships.  And everybody seems oblivious to an actually broken mechanic that makes larger ships not only just as fast as small ships, but actually makes them universally faster.

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As far as Small ships vs Large ships goes, good piloting and making use of terrain in sectors can do a lot to allow a smaller craft to counter large opponents.

 

On one occasion yesterday I was running a search for the last set of components I needed to build a set of horrendously OP laser turrets I found in a factory (~4K DPS with ~4km range) for low cost. As such I'd shifted down from my 8mil volume craft into my little Scouting Corvette that clocks in at ~350K and has a much larger jump radius and top speed. Since it's for scouting it comes with an Exotic Hyperspace Booster, Xsotan artefact for more guns and a Shield Booster to make sure it survives long enough to jump out of a few hostile sectors, so it's not exactly harmless. I had fitted it out with a set of 5 factory built Xanion Railguns with a stupid max range (11.62km) and a pair of Lightning guns with a good bonus vs shields and ~8km of range. 

 

After around an hour of hunting for these items I stumbled into a previously uncharted sector controlled by a faction I had aggravated (If they are a proper faction they shouldn't call themselves pirates!) and decided that I was gonna take a break from shopping and see how much damage I could manage to do against their cruisers to relieve my frustrations :P. Given 10 minutes, the nearby asteroid field and a lot of kiting and I had killed off the pair of 0.25mil health/0.25mil shield ships without taking damage. In PvP I'd assume that this would be a lot harder, but a group of coordinated players with small fast ships, quickly recharging shields and a good long range or burst fire weapon loadout could probably do this to a lone larger ship that cannot manoeuvre as easily through obstacles or accelerate clear so easily.

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Check out starmade: every weapon does 10pt dps per energy used and still how damage is delivered and applied to hull/armor makes each unique and useful.
Except that equal DPS makes the balance completely non-existent, and there's clear preferences to applying damage, i.e. Missiles and Cannons. Beams has low range and has very few fans, while Pulse is completely unusable.

 

-  lag servers

-  make cooperation superfluous

-  make engagements last hours

-  make easy to grief players well beyond newbie levels

All of these apply to Starmade.

Neither do apply to Avorion.

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then take away all automatic  targeting and targeting assistance completly. Make people rely on skill and ability, not let the computer do the work.

That will make large ships completely pointless. Everything is good in moderation.

It is also not just PVP players who play games.  Why does every cool and fun feature have to be abandoned because the minority pvp crowd will abuse it
Because PvP is an important aspect of modern multi-player games, that desire to have long-lasting history and consistent community. I'm not even talking about ECM being 100% useless for PvE aspect. Or that its neither cool, nor fun. It's just a feature, that is redundant.
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Freelancer was one of the greatest games ever (i play this game because it reminds me so much of Freelancer) it was not a multiplayer pvp game and it still has an active community. A game that is fun to play in single player will be fun to play in multiplayer. Multiplayer does not always mean PVP. This game claims i can explore, trade, build, mine and fight; but since the pvp crowd (who will abuse any system put in place) are always the most vocal the they are the ones who get catered to. Pvp players should play games designed and balanced around combat. Arena style, deathmatch style games where things are balanced a certain way and countered a certain way.  Instead they come to games like this where they can abuse the games and give themselves crazy advantages because they don't like to play fair and then complain that there is no one to fight them. And all the while the non-pvp crowd gets left out of development because they don't speak up. So eventually the pvp crowd finds another game with even cooler way to kill people that they can abuse while the rest of us are left with a game with no cool features because of potential pvp abuse.

I wish game developed would stop listening to people who claim that games can only be good and last if multiplayer pvp is the most important thing.

 

Who said it was the most important thing?  It's well understood that PvP balance comes third after single player and co-op play.

 

Also EMC is your idea.  You're the one who's being a little baby and trying to force it on everyone else.

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That was just a thought to help with balance, i was not trying to force it on anyone, i think the game is fine the way it is.

I guess we will see how this game

Im sorry i forgot the one rule about these forums, Pro -Pvo suggestions only.

If this game actually puts single player and coop play first, and doesn't cater to the pvp whiners, it will be the first to do so. If you disagree with that then you havnt played that many multiplayer games.

 

We're here to talk about small ship balance.  Discussing some non-existent ECM system is pointless.  Take it to the suggestion sub-forum instead.

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