[Player & NPC Ship Class testing for Difficulty] Badly needed

[Abraxsus]

Hello All,

Hello Developers,

 

Today we have to Talk about the Games Difficulty advance.

 

# Early Game Good

+ The Game is interessting

+ Exploring & Mining

+ Enemy does damage to you (u have repair costs)

+ fights are interesting & dangerous

+ Traiding

* The game feals good

 

# Mid Game not Balanced

+ U get your first shilds (game will be more easy now)

+ U get ressources by Mining & Salvaging

+ Traiding is more usefull now (more money)

- Traiding gives u much money, thats bad... is to fast not balanced

+ Fights are still interessting, enemys will break your shild

+&- You craft your own equipment now, game will be much more easy after

 

# Late Game Totaly Broken

- Your Shilds are OP (more then 1 million) no enemy will ever harm u again

- Enemys are to bad, you dont fear them ... they are allmost oneshot

- your ship gets to big, no more challenge arround

- you dont need any more mining... no need for it

- you have to much money ... nothing will drain it (crew costs,Repairs,Building,ressourc buy out -> nothing will harm your credits any more)

- Quests are boring at this point

 

# What we not can do vs this problem

- more or bigger enemys by scripting or events becouse of massive server lags if u have many or big enemy ships around

 

# What we need

We need a System that detects what ship Class a Player has. m³+mass = class

Then we need a Script that will spawn enemys that can Match this Ship Class

(If, Player Ship Class = X then load Event X + Difficulty *X if more players are present) so that all events ingame has to check the Player Class before interact with a sektor

 

This new Event ships needs better Shilds, more Guns or a DPS++

 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

[WhatTheDuck]

i would also suggest that shield generator get a softcap. After reaching this cap, they slowly start to become less efficient and maybe the max shield hitpoints can't be higher than the 50 % of the hull-HP.

 

Trading is much to easy.  I need about 20 mins to go from 10.000.000 to 30.000.000  Credits by trading body armor to militarystations. I think items with a low volume shouldnt have a  big credits value, because i can store hundreds of them in a small ship and the profit is much to high if you have a good relation to a faction. I bought bodyarmor for 90.000 and sold them for 105.000, after 2 runs i have the best relation to the faction and can buy them for 75.000 and sell for 125.000. To buy and sell from trader to trader is much harder, but the militarystations pay to much.

 

 

[Guswut]

# What we need

We need a System that detects what ship Class a Player has. m³+mass = class

Then we need a Script that will spawn enemys that can Match this Ship Class

(If, Player Ship Class = X then load Event X + Difficulty *X if more players are present) so that all events ingame has to check the Player Class before interact with a sektor

 

This new Event ships needs better Shilds, more Guns or a DPS++

 

That's called "level scaling" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LevelScaling for some more details if you'd like) and it's one of the worst ways to handle difficulty in games.

 

Firstly, you already have control over the difficulty of enemies through two mechanisms: The galaxy generation setting for difficulty (which appears to handle how the scaling of enemies work, https://steamcommunity.com/app/445220/discussions/0/135507403155179996/#c135507403155348457) and your distance to the galactic core. If things aren't difficult enough you likely picked a galaxy difficulty that was too low, or you are not close enough to the core.

 

Secondly, using a ship's mass (and as such the mass-based class) would mean that a relatively small but extremely over-turreted gunboat would be getting underpowered enemies, whereas massive freighters for trade masters are getting ultra-powerful dreadnoughts. Is that the type of balance you're looking to see?

 

Alternatively, any sort of level scaling will have issues with how the variable or variables used will likely not be effective enough to avoid issues similar to the above. If you scale based upon firepower you end up having no challenge differences from the start to the end of the game, as another common example of a possible form of level scaling.

 

Instead of trying to generally control the difficulty of enemies, a better solution will end up being more complicated AI that handles more powerful players in a more dynamic fashion. But that's a different topic entirely.

[DivineEvil]

I can't comment on the suggestion, because author has not specified at which level of difficulty he had these experiences. Names for difficulty levels are quite counter-intuitive: A regular player introduced to Avorion might assume, that Normal difficulty is a leveled average, but it actually severely nerfs hostile ships, while Insane difficulty is one at which they do 100% damage, and the gameplay against them is fair.

[Abraxsus]

I can't comment on the suggestion, because author has not specified at which level of difficulty he had these experiences. Names for difficulty levels are quite counter-intuitive: A regular player introduced to Avorion might assume, that Normal difficulty is a leveled average, but it actually severely nerfs hostile ships, while Insane difficulty is one at which they do 100% damage, and the gameplay against them is fair.

 

+3  maxed out

[Guswut]

+3  maxed out

 

So does that mean you are playing on "Insane" difficulty mode with "Full" collision damage, and have gotten to the very center of the galaxy where things are the most dangerous?

 

 

[Abraxsus]

jeahr.... every xsotan is oneshot there ^^ they dont even harm me...

 

50.000 OM Railgun, contact, down

[Guswut]

jeahr.... every xsotan is oneshot there ^^ they dont even harm me...

 

50.000 OM Railgun, contact, down

 

So the issue is that you've got a weapon (or collection of weapons, if you've found a turret factory and mass produced those railguns) that are extremely overpowered (partially because they are currently bugged in how they handle damage piercing which makes them do WAY more damage than they should), which makes the game boring, correct?

 

Perhaps you should try removing the extremely overpowered weapon to see if that helps the game feel more difficult?

[Abraxsus]

jeahr.... every xsotan is oneshot there ^^ they dont even harm me...

 

50.000 OM Railgun, contact, down

 

So the issue is that you've got a weapon (or collection of weapons, if you've found a turret factory and mass produced those railguns) that are extremely overpowered (partially because they are currently bugged in how they handle damage piercing which makes them do WAY more damage than they should), which makes the game boring, correct?

 

Perhaps you should try removing the extremely overpowered weapon to see if that helps the game feel more difficult?

 

Ok then i use Laserbeams ? and cut enemys in 2 halfs in about 3 secons ? xD... sorry the game is broken endgame. But this is ok becouse its EA

I fight with a Deathstar vs Corelian Frigates  XD

[LordMaddog]

No the problem is the scale of resources higher tire stuff is 11X more powerful then the base making the game extremely unbalanced

 

I don’t think resources should be so dramatically different.

I would suggest something like this.

Iron is heavy, cannot have a reactor, and its armor is only medium however because of its cheapness and availability its use in kinetic weapons is good.

 

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

3            4                  0                            1                    2              4

Titanium is light and all-around balanced in almost every aspect and because it’s slightly more availability it is to go to resource.

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

2          2                2                            2                    2              2

Naonite just goes well with all things energy though its armor is poor and kinetic capabilities nonexistent

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

1          2                4                            5                    1              0

Trinium lightweight and durable and relatively balanced.

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

3            1                3                            3                    2              2

Xanion medium weight good durability but it’s innate properties aren’t the best for energy generation.

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

4          3                  1                            1                    3              3

 

Ogonite heavy solid and packs a punch but can’t generate energy at all.

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

5          4                  0                            0                    3              5

Avorion  this amazing new mysterious material is quite volatile and excellent for generating energy however it’s explosive nature means that no one in their right mind would use it for armor or energy weapons in fear that it might explode.

Armor    mass      energy generation  energy weapons    explosives    kinetic

0          3                  5                            0                    5              0

 

These stats are of course completely my own arbitrary idea and most likely do not line up at the devs in the least bit. But something along these lines would be nice to see.

 

I also think specific resource asteroids should become extremely rare but once found give thousands of materials but have some sort of Guardian.

And instead have normal asteroids become the default resource node. As you mine an asteroid it is possible to obtain any material all the way up to Ogonite but mostly you’ll just get iron with a chance of obtaining other resources slightly increasing as you get closer to the core.

 

Avorion is looted in very small amounts from killing any alien and can only be mined from the area around the core. To keep in line with the rift  blockage tho The Avorion Hyperdrive should be a blue print only buy able in the core.

 

This way the inter galaxy is still viable for higher level players and npc across the bored stay relevant.

 

 

[DivineEvil]

All I can tell at this point, is that NPC ships need a bit of expansion on procedural generation algorithm, to prevent large numbers of small blocks, that do nothing but overload the game engine when destroyed, and replacing them with larger, beefier blocks, more durable armor covering and, possibly, allowing them to have IFGs as players progress further into the center of the Galaxy, regardless of difficulty level. If the progression for NPC ships is limited to their weapons and materials, something is definitely wrong.

 

Difficulty can instead be used to influence the average volume of ships, probability of their weapons having dangerous features such as shield bypass and seeker missiles, frequency of encounters/attacks, ratio of friendly/neutral/hostile factions, power of their response fleets, saturation of trade opportunities, frequency of loot drops, etc. Difficulty level should not be something you usually change in the middle of a game process, but instead it should affect the general factors in accordance with a name given to it. Normal difficulty should a baseline of default values, not a 70% power nerf.