Omicron Scaling and Overall Difficulty

[ArchanDelon]

So I've packed a few hundred hours into Avorion so far and I see a glaring problem with the difficulty of the game even on Insane. As the Omicron of your ships increase, the enemies seem to stay the same power. The final boss of the game only had 5k Omicron, which is a score you can gain from weapon drops and shops at Titanium/Naonite levels. I'm not going to talk about Turret Factories because those weapons are so powerful you're basically cheating by using them. I suggest adding some form of Omicron scaling to the game and increase the base power of all the bosses by a large amount and here's why.

 

I spent a large portion of my time in the Xanion areas thinking I needed to be prepared for the Artifact bosses. I built a ship full of Xanion and equipped 20 Turrets I got from drops and shops for 11.4k Omicron, 400k Hull and 1.2m Shield. When I went to fight the bosses I was severely disappointed. I was massively outclassing the bosses by such a large scale my friend 1 shot Boss Swoks by ramming him. The power levels of the bosses was so low I could have taken them on with a challenge at Iron and Titanium levels. What's worse is the Pirates and Xsotan in the same areas as the bosses had a higher Omicron score and more health than the bosses themselves. Here's a quick comparison:

 

• On Insane Difficulty
  
• Boss Swoks - 250 Omicron
  
• AI - 500 Omicron
  
• Bottan - 400 Omicron
  
• The Four - 500 Omicron
  
• Naonite Xsotan 1250 Omicron
  
• Xanion Xsotan 2500 Omicron
  
• Wormhole Guardian - 5071 Omicron
  

 

I equipped five turrets at 46dps each and hit 251 Omicron. Total the turrets do 230 dps. It would take a 250 Omicron boss 86 mins to break my shield, if the shield did not regenerate during combat. I love the farming, building, trading, salvaging, weapon hunting, and feel of the combat but the game is waaaaaay too easy as I've only ever died from ramming an asteroid.

 

Personally I'd make the Artifact Bosses a baseline of 5000 Omicron, which is easily obtainable at Xanion levels. I'd make the Wormhole Guardian 50k baseline. I'd then place a 50% scaling based on the players Omicron levels above the baseline (Base + ((Player - Base)*0.5)). So if a player with 10k Omicron fought Boss Swoks, the boss would have 7500 Omicron (5000+((10000-5000)*0.5)).

[Daemon]

I agree to the scaling up a point.

At some point bosses should "cap", otherwise progression would start to feel meaningless.

[nDervish]

I'm not a fan of that kind of difficulty scaling in general.  If everything is always "your level" no matter where you go, then you can't choose to go somewhere harder to get greater risks and rewards or somewhere easier if you want to just do some casual comp-stomping.  If difficulties are fixed, then you can find a place which is as difficult or as easy as you like.

 

Strong scaling also tends to make player progression meaningless.  If everything else gets stronger whenever you get stronger, then you're not really making any headway.

 

In the specific case of this game, what happens if someone in a Xanion ship with 15k Omicron and someone in an Iron ship with 14 Omicron are traveling together?  Which of them should it scale to match?  Much simpler if the galaxy just is what it is.

 

None of which is meant as an argument against raising the cap for the high end of the difficulty spectrum.  That probably would be a good thing, just do it statically instead of making the end boss weaker if the player is weak and stronger if the player is strong.

[Hammelpilaw]

I do not know the omicron of other bosses, but the guardian got 25k omicron on highes difficulty, but I agree though, it is too easy. It should be at least about 10 times more, 250k omicron, or even higher, also I would add a little pulse cannon damage to penetrate the shields.

 

On our server we modded the guardian, he has about 1mio omicron i think (I dont know the real value cause the displayed value is falsified by some calculations), and it is still not too hard to kill it with a good 15slot ship, but means lot of more fun then the vanilla one. The vanilla guardian should really be stronger.

 

 

Personally I'd make the Artifact Bosses a baseline of 5000 Omicron, which is easily obtainable at Xanion levels. I'd make the Wormhole Guardian 50k baseline. I'd then place a 50% scaling based on the players Omicron levels above the baseline (Base + ((Player - Base)*0.5)). So if a player with 10k Omicron fought Boss Swoks, the boss would have 7500 Omicron (5000+((10000-5000)*0.5)).

 

But i agree to ndervish, to scale enemies based on the player is not the nice way.... also I don't know how this should work in Avorion? Every sector has its own difficulty (so also the npc ships and stations has). You can not change it this way, you need to change the sectors difficulty.

[ArchanDelon]

I'm not a fan of that kind of difficulty scaling in general.  If everything is always "your level" no matter where you go, then you can't choose to go somewhere harder to get greater risks and rewards or somewhere easier if you want to just do some casual comp-stomping.  If difficulties are fixed, then you can find a place which is as difficult or as easy as you like.

 

Strong scaling also tends to make player progression meaningless.  If everything else gets stronger whenever you get stronger, then you're not really making any headway.

 

In the specific case of this game, what happens if someone in a Xanion ship with 15k Omicron and someone in an Iron ship with 14 Omicron are traveling together?  Which of them should it scale to match?  Much simpler if the galaxy just is what it is.

 

None of which is meant as an argument against raising the cap for the high end of the difficulty spectrum.  That probably would be a good thing, just do it statically instead of making the end boss weaker if the player is weak and stronger if the player is strong.

 

I understand your point, and I would agree if the scaling was unilateral across the entire galaxy (which instead should be in varying tiers based on distance). The scaling I am referring to right now is only for the bosses themselves. The underlying story is that this unknown alien race has walled off the center of the galaxy and is exterminating the galaxy faction by faction. Such a powerful race should feel just that, powerful. Currently the artifact bosses are weaker than pirates and Xsotan that attack titanium areas, let alone Xanion areas. If you are required to fight these bosses to get past Xanion, you would think the bosses would be scaled for people with Xanion ships and Xanion weapons. Perhaps we could add a minimum Omicron level just to get the bosses to spawn, so you don't have someone in iron getting one shot by Boss Swoks.

 

The scaling I suggested is on a difficulty curve in favor of the player. While the bosses grow with the player, they are growing at a much lower rate, so the stronger the player the weaker the bosses overall. Using the  (Base + ((Player - Base)*0.5)) scaling I suggested you would have something like this:

 

• Player 2.5k Omicron - Boss 5k Omicron - 200% Player Power
  
• Player 5k Omicron - Boss 5k Omicron - 100% Player Power
  
• Player 10k Omicron - Boss 7.5k Omicron - 75% Player Power
  
• Player 15k Omicron - Boss 10k Omicron - 66% Player Power
  
• Player 25k Omicron - Boss 27.5k Omicron - 55% Player Power
  
• Player 100k Omicron - Boss 40k Omicron - 52.5% Player Power
  

 

As far as difficulty when playing with friends, this will never be balanced as the devs have said that this game was not made with multiplayer in mind. It was more of an afterthought and all the current difficulties in the game are set for a single player. That is not to say that you couldn't base the calculation from average power (Two players of 5k power and 10k power would have an average power of 7.5k, so you could scale the boss off this average amount. Players severely under the bosses power shouldn't really be there with a friend severely above them in power because it is easy for the Xanion friend to upgrade someone in Iron to Xanion. 

[ArchanDelon]

Personally I'd make the Artifact Bosses a baseline of 5000 Omicron, which is easily obtainable at Xanion levels. I'd make the Wormhole Guardian 50k baseline. I'd then place a 50% scaling based on the players Omicron levels above the baseline (Base + ((Player - Base)*0.5)). So if a player with 10k Omicron fought Boss Swoks, the boss would have 7500 Omicron (5000+((10000-5000)*0.5)).

 

But i agree to ndervish, to scale enemies based on the player is not the nice way.... also I don't know how this should work in Avorion? Every sector has its own difficulty (so also the npc ships and stations has). You can not change it this way, you need to change the sectors difficulty.

 

I agree, I wouldn't have every sector in the galaxy scale with player power because, as you mentioned, NPC factions and bases would also have to scale which adds too much complexity. I think the current tiered scaling in the galaxy is the correct approach in that regard, although the difficulty in these areas needs to be increased. Faction stations already have massive shields and hulls in all areas, so the power of ships in the area could see an increase without risking the factions.

 

I'd start by looking at the average obtainable Omicron in an area and base the enemy power tiers there. For instance, with 15 mid tier turrets you can easily hit 5000 Omicron in a Xanion area so the enemy ships should be at least half of that if not more, otherwise you are swatting flies that cannot even break your shield. As I said in my OP, I hit 11k Omicron just from ship drops and shops which would still give me the ability to scale well beyond my enemies while still adding a challenge to a new area of the next material grade. Every great game that has a way to scale the player has a method of scaling the enemies, you just scale them in a way that favors the player.

 

In the games current form you can build a starter ship and jump safely all the way to the barrier, wait for a few Pirate/Xsotan attacks on a friendly faction and join in for money/turrets or do a few trades and buy turrets, mine xanion for an hour and build a Xanion ship. Equip mediocre weapons and demolish the bosses with no difficulty. You then move into the center of the galaxy and beat the final boss in the same Xanion ship you just built. I seen videos of people beating the game in just a few hours, which leaves nothing left but the gathering/building/trading aspects of the game.