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DLC Avorion Into the Rift Out Now!

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TESLA's Comprehensive Combat Rebalancing


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Suggestion

First off, I'd like to say I'm very pleased with the way the devs have been taking the game, so great job!  I really think this is one of my favorite games I play currently, just wish I had more time to play it.  Being a perfectionist, I always look for ways to improve something, but I know there is no perfect solution.  My suggestions I make here are merely my personal opinions on what I view would make the game even better than it already is currently.

 

Shield and Hull Resistance Mechanics

Seeing as this is a newer feature to the game, I understand it may still be in its preliminary stages of development, but here is what I'd like to see to give further depth to this awesome mechanic in the future.

 

- An actively updating simple and intuitive indicator of the ship's shield/hull/armor resistances.  There are numerous ways to do this, but the point  of would be help the player know what damage to look out for and if their resistances are being nullified (see later suggestion). 

 

- Blocks have different resistance values.  Blocks like armor should have higher overall resistances to damage types, where as "squishy" blocks should have much less overall initial damage resistances.  Hull/Armor block's resistance would only be able to be seen in the builder when selecting a block due to varying resistances and materials (see next topics). 

 

- Certain blocks such as generators, shield generators, energy containers, and hyperspace cores should be volatile, where when destroyed it will cause anywhere from 1000% to 2000% extra damage to the total Hull HP Pool.  This extra damaged is based off of the HP of the individual block that was destroyed.  These blocks typically have low Hull HP to begin with so that is why such a high value is used to ensure it does cause a lot, but not too much extra damage.  There should also be semi-volatile blocks such as thrusters, engines, and crew quarters which only do an additional 250% to 500% extra damage when destroyed. 

 

- Personally I think that resistance systems installed in ships should have more depth and variety.  I would love to see two types of new systems for hull and shield separately (no shield and hull resistances in the same system unless a new artifact is added possibly  8)).  These two systems would be a singular damage type resistance which would give a moderate bonus (5% up to 20% depending on rarity) to a specific damage type, and another "adaptive" system which would increase all the resistances of the shield or hull to a much smaller degree than the singular version (2% up to 12% depending on rarity) .  There should definitely be diminishing returns with these systems in order to prevent large ships from becoming un-killable. 3 or more shield or hull resistance systems (separately) should be a detriment instead of a benefit (2 shield and 2 hull resistance systems would be ideal for a tanky shield and hull build as a further explanation).  These systems would need to be installed permanently in order to get the affect to ensure players can't "swap on the fly".

 

- Shield/Hull/Armor should start with the following resistances:

                      Physical        Antimatter      Plasma          Energy        Electric          Shrapnel

Shield:              40%                  50%              -250%                0%                10%                10%

Hull:                -25%            -200%                    30%              30%              10%                  0%

Armor:            25%                -75%                    50%              40%              40%                40%

Stone:                  0%            -200%                    50%              40%        (Immune)          10%

 

Armor Rework

Personally I think armor should play a different role into how a ship is built.  Armor blocks should not contribute to the Hull HP pool, but instead have their own independent HP.  The purpose of having independent HP values for each armor block would be to function as actual armor, protecting the underlying hull from damage. 

 

-  Armor should be much heavier making placement of it more important and tactical.  A ship completely covered in armor should be painfully sluggish and very weak to railguns (see later)

 

- Integrity field generators that affect blocks only increase individual armor block and hull block HP by 2x instead of 10x.  This is also important for hull as it will encourage focused fire on more "squishy" volatile blocks (see above) since more of the ship will be able to be destroyed with lower independent block HP.

 

More Combat Related Systems and Turrets

Avorion could use more variety when it comes to combat.  Currently combat is simply HP and  damage.  There should be more variety when it comes to fleet combat.

 

- EWAR systems should be introduced which affect enemy or allied ships in a radius around the ships.  Depending on the system, it would either negatively or positively affect enemy or friendly ships within the radius of the system. These systems would encourage fleet support ships and disruptor ships.  These systems  in combination with resistance modules would making choosing the right combination of systems on a ship much more thoughtful instead of just stacking shield and turret systems.  I would avoid any systems which completely restrict a ships ability to fight such as a "stun" or freezing in place.  None of these systems should stack with another system of the same type.  Only the highest value will affect a ship  Examples of what I'd like to see are: 

 

Warp Interdiction spheres (prevent enemies from warping in large radius - 10km to 35km)

Gravity Net (slows speed of enemy ships AND fighters in medium radius - 7.5km to 20km, 5% to 25%)

Tracking Disruptors (slows turret rotation speeds of enemy ships in a very small radius - 1km to 7.5km 10% to 35%)

Shield Nullification Aura (lowers shield resistances of enemy ships within medium radius - 7.5km to 20km, 2.5% to 22.5%)

Shield Aegis Aura (boosts allied ship's shield resistances in medium radius - 7.5 km to 20km, 2% to 20%)

Engine Energy Re-router (boosts allied ships AND fighter speeds in medium radius - 7.5km to 20km, 5% to 25%)

Tracking Assist Computer (slightly boosts allied ships turret rotation speed within large radius - 10km to 40km, 2% to 22.5%)

Cloaking Generator (makes the ship invisible, un-targetable, and not able to talk with NPCs until decloaked.  Recloaking can only occur when out of combat and after a certain time period has passed.  Can't be installed on stations)

 

- New weapon/Damage type: Proton beam emitter with a new nullifier damage type.  It will have very low overall damage and medium range (~7km @3 Turret slots). It is a projected pulsating beam which lowers the hull and shield resistances of the target slowly over time .  The more nullifier damage being applied the faster the resistances lower.  Will only affect hull when shields have been destroyed.  There is a limit to how much it can reduce hull and shield resistances of the ship, but should be significant in order for ships to be able to break massive hull or shield tanks (roughly 20% to 120%).  Should be available in Xanion tier regions and up and is 3 turret slots or more.

 

- New weapon: Scattershot cannon.  Has low range (~4km @1 Turret slot), low accuracy,  and high projectile speed.  Will shoot anywhere from 10 to 20 physical or antimatter based projectiles each doing similar damage to a bolter turret and will have a moderate fire rate with a heat up time and burst fire potential.  Its purpose is to be a very close range brawly type of turret with very high  hull/armor damage capabilities.  Should be available in Naonite zones and up.

 

- New weapon: Swarmer missiles.  Has average range (~7km @1 Turret slot), high projectile speed, and very low accuracy.  Guaranteed tracking projectiles and turrets will shoot anywhere from 4 to 12 projectiles at once at a moderate fire rate.  Damage should be either antimatter or plasma and should have an average dps similar chainguns

 

- Railguns penetrate armor only.  Change railguns to where they pierce through armor (doing no damage) and damage the hull directly via an explosive charge which uses a mechanical trigger.  Once it hits the hull it will not penetrate any more and just do a flat damage to the Hull block/HP pool.  These will be deadly to ships/stations built with only or mostly armor and volatile blocks.

 

-Increase projectile speed of cannons slightly ~50% to allow them to hit targets farther off better

 

-Greatly increase missile speed ~100%, and update the missile animation (would be cool if they looked like mini torpedoes)

 

-Increase the spread of lightning guns significantly making them unlikely to hit smaller or far off targets.  They should remain as high damage capital shield killers.

 

Fighter Rework

Fighters currently are very fragile when a dedicated flak/PDC ship targets them making them not worth the large investment of time and resources when entire squadrons are destroyed in seconds. They are also much slower than built ships which doesn't make sense for a ship meant to be small and fast.

 

- When a fighter is built at a factory, the durability and speed increment increases should give much more value to the fighter.  Fighters will still have the same base stats, but their HP and speed will be able to be drastically increased per level added making them viable and worth the expensive cost when using a high quality weapon.  Max speed (max increment value) of fighters should be around 1500-3000 m/s depending on material.  HP would need to be balanced to ensure that they are killable, but able to stay in the fight much longer than they currently do (roughly 1500 max total shield/hull hp with Xanion material).

 

- Improved fighter commands in addition to the current "dive bomb" attack such as orbit, intercept, and sentry.  Orbit would make fighters orbit at 50% of max range and shoot at selected target, intercept would work similarly to the "defend" independent turret option, where fighters seek out and destroy enemy fighters and torpedoes, and sentry would make fighters closely orbit the target and shoot at enemies within range (think of the end fight of Ender's game movie).

 

- Improved UI and usability of fighters to make commanding wings of fighters easier and less cumbersome.  Users should be able to command either an entire squad or a group of squads with ease.  Easy to use Hotkeys should be created for these commands and the ability to create a custom group of fighters similar to how turrets are grouped.

 

Make Large ships "large" and small ships "small"

Currently there is an issue with large 15-slot ships having the ability of a higher top speed and able to maneuver the same as a small ship. To fix this I think that there should be limits to ship's rotation values and modifiers to agility and acceleration based upon either ship slots or the mass of the ship using some equation.  This would allow small ships to have an actual role, instead of the bigger is better. 

 

As an EXAMPLE

(agility modifier is in regards to the 4 rad/s maximum, so a x0.1 modifier reduces maximum achievable agility to .4 rad/sec.  Velocity and Acceleration modifiers apply directly to the base stats of the ship) 

 

Ship Size          Ship Agility Modifier          Ship Max Speed Modifier        Ship Acceleration Modifier

1                          x1.0                                              x2.0                                                        x2.0

2                          x1.0                                              x2.0                                                        x1.75

3                          x1.0                                              x1.75                                                    x1.5

4                          x1.0                                              x1.5                                                        x1.25

5                          x1.0                                              x1.25                                                    x1.0

6                          x0.9                                              x1.0                                                        x0.95

7                          x0.8                                              x0.95                                                    x0.9

8                          x0.7                                              x0.9                                                        x0.875

9                          x0.55                                          x0.85                                                    x0.85

10                        x0.45                                          x0.8                                                        x0.825

11                        x0.3                                              x0.75                                                    x0.8

12                        x0.325                                        x0.75                                                    x0.775

13                        x0.3                                              x0.75                                                    x0.75

14                        x0.25                                          x0.75                                                    x0.75

15+                    x0.15                                          x0.75                                                    x0.75

 

Shield Visuals

I know this may not be for everyone, but personally I'd love to see shields that form a bubble around the ship instead of a larger square for each block.  This would likely even be more performance friendly when dealing with larger block count ships as the shield would be generated based upon the longest length/width/height values of the ship and their position.  Additionally shields would make shield "ripple effects" easy to do making taking shield damage look very awesome.  Shields should be very transparent except when regenerating or taking damage from enemies

 

Active Tanking

Active tanking will allow the option for ships to not just be pools of HP vs pools of HP.  This will need to be carefully balanced, however in order to prevent large ships from becoming un-killable.

 

- Active tanking systems which encourage more than just HP pools and resistances.  These systems would greatly decrease the current designed overall Shield or Hull HP for the trade off of the shield and hull being able to regenerate itself during combat at a decent rate. 

 

- Due to the system's large decrease in total HP, this would eliminate the possibility of a ship being able to withstand an ungodly amount of damage from stacking regen systems thanks to a significantly smaller HP pool.  Active tanking would be more beneficial for smaller skirmishes with enemies and being a detriment in larger fleet fights. 

 

- These system's affects should not take affect on the ship if there are not enough mechanics or engineers crewing the ship. 

 

Rethinking Material Tiers

Currently in Avorion each tier of material essentially has something like 25-50% more HP and "ability affectiveness" (not sure what to call it but essentially generator's energy output, shield generator's shield, engine's thrust, ect).  I feel as if this shouldn't be the case with every tier of resource, and each tier of resource has a few "specialties" which won't just encourage everyone to shoot streight to Avorion tier as fast as possible.

 

- Below is a suggestion of each material tier and its "specialties".

Iron- Remains relatively unchanged, its dirt cheap, very common, and the only other block with inertia dampeners besides avorion.  Solar panels -50% credit cost per volume.

Titanium - The lightest possible material, yet durable and heat resistant.  All blocks have 5% less mass than avorion blocks currently in the game and 10% more Hull/Armor HP per block than Titanium blocks do currently.  All blocks have 10% extra plasma damage resistance for all blocks but 10% less antimatter damage resistance.

Naonite - Possesses abnormal but useful magnetic properties.  Hyperspace core blocks are only give 10% less jump range per volume than avorion hyperspace core blocks (still can't pass through void though).  All Naonite blocks have +25% extra electric damage resistance.

Trinium - A lightweight material with a very neatly arranged molecular structure.  All blocks have 5% less mass than currently in the game and have 10% less physical damage resistance.  Integrity field blocks of this material also give 10% extra resistance to all damage types in addition to 2.5x more individual block HP instead of 2.0x more.

Xanion - A material which possesses many great superconducting properties. Generator, Shield Generator, and Energy Container blocks have 10% less energy/shield per volume than avorion equivalent blocks do currently in the game.  Destroyed volatile blocks do 200% additional volatile damage (instead of 1000%-2000% more damage its 1200% to 2200% additional volatile damage).

Ogonite - An extremely dense and tough material that is hard to fabricate.  All blocks have 25% more mass per volume, 25% more credit cost per volume, +15% extra Hull HP per volume, and +10% extra damage resistances across the board than currently.  Armor blocks get 25% more HP instead of 15% more than currently in the game.

Avorion - Still the king of lightweight and powerful materials.  15% more thrust and acceleration from engines and thrusters and all blocks have 5% extra damage resistances across the board.

 

- These changes should help to ensure that all material tiers are still useful in a way even in the endgame, with avorion still remaining the best overall.  Ogonite will still be useful as armor/hull plating, Xanion shield gens/generators/and energy containers will be a discount slightly less effective version of avorion, Trinium will remain lightweight and its integrity field generator will be very useful, Naonite will have great discounted hyperspace cores and be useful in high energy damage situations, Titanium will be incredibly lightweight for builds designed for speed, and Iron will remain as the heavy, cheap, and abundant building material with cheap solar panels (good for the start)

 

- Armor blocks should all have 50% more mass

 

Let me know what you think about these changes!  They are meant to work with one another to enhance the combat and gameplay while still remaining balanced. 

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Great ideas! Thought about the same issues but didn't have the time to write it down yet, couldn't  do it better!

Totally agree :)

 

BTW the shield and arms resistance systems are now already in game! Came with the latest update yesterday ;)

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Great ideas! Thought about the same issues but didn't have the time to write it down yet, couldn't  do it better!

Totally agree :)

 

BTW the shield and arms resistance systems are now already in game! Came with the latest update yesterday ;)

 

Thanks, and glad there are others who think the same way I do! 

 

Is there a place where you can see values for these shield/armor resists?  Please excuse my ignorance, but I wasn't able to find it when I was playing briefly yesterday, I could just see what the ships "weakness" is. 

 

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Seems like the turrets get varying damage bonuses to hull/shield which can vary but is shown on the turrets themselves.  I'd really like the system to more revolve around resistances and have damage types just be used in different resistance stats.  Antimatter would still be great against hull, and plasma shield, but this would be represented in the block's/shield stats. 

 

Also some visual indicator of shield resistances would be amazing imo.

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Just my 5¢ on this topic...

 

Shield and Hull Resistance Mechanics

Smells like EVEOnline ;) Though I can already predict that the only thing that will be used to add to shield resistance is vs plasma and vs electric. And that's it. No point in adding anything else. Best defence is, as always: run if you're getting your S kicked.

 

-  Armor should be much heavier making placement of it more important and tactical.

and we'll end up with ham sandwich ships with two plates of armour and tasty insides. Oh, and don't forget to cover them with 0.0001 thick layer of trinium stone, to render the tesla/ligtning guns useless.

 

it will encourage focused fire on more "squishy" volatile blocks (see above).

That's if you'll manage to get to the distance close enough to actually aim at those squishy blocks between the armour sandwich. Most fights happen on a far greater distance than that of an aimed fire.

 

Max speed (max increment value) of fighters should be around 1500-3000 m/s depending on material.

IMO, fighters just need the ability to boost, like big ships do, and that will solve all the speed issues with fighters.

 

Make Large ships "large" and small ships "small"

I think this can be implemented via modding, by using

Entity.addMultiplier()

 

-New weapon: Scattershot cannon. Swarmer missiles.

- Active tanking systems which encourage more than just HP pools and resistances.

-Increase projectile speed of cannons slightly to allow them to hit targets better

-Greatly increase missile speed, reduce range slightly, and possibly update the missile animation

-Increase the spread of lightning guns significantly making them unlikely to hit smaller and far off targets

All can be done via modding.

 

Though a lot of the points mentioned are really worth looking into, I'd say resistance subject is quite useless in reality of Avorion. Shields are only need to be hardened against anti-shield type of damage, hull - against anti-hull. Which, basically, is a plain increase of effective HP of said systems. Might as well just plug a shield extender instead.

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The thing with the enhanced resistance mechanics is that it won't just be plugging holes.  Depending on the areas and factions you face, different weapons are used.  Usually in the core there is quite a bit of electric damage from lightning and tesla, especially from Xsotan.  A certian faction you are at war with could also be heavy on the physical or antimatter side so these resists will help with that.  It will also make PVP unique because you could design a ship which doesn't use the typical damage types and be able to do much more damage since most ships will be equipped to "fill holes".  Also the resistance nullifying auras and weapons will make the need for resistance buffing a thing as well.  This will give the game so much more to consider than just equipping tons of turret systems.  I actually got the idea more form star conflict than from EVE, but yeah I can see that XD

 

Ham sandwhiches won't be a thing becuase of how I described changing railguns.  They penetrate armor only and then explosive charge is triggered detonates once through the armor.  Railguns would skewer ham sammich ships and turn their unbeefyness into a big weakness, better hope your shields don't fail.  You will need to incorperate different build strategies and if you build the "perfect" armor tank your ship will be highly immobile with the mass increase.  This is where having small and fast ships come into play as they will be able to close the distance and fight under those slow turning sniper weapons that you said will be on every ship.  Also with the way the hull HP and individual block HP due to integrity field generators, you will need to score critical hits in order to destroy the hull of a ship without blowing off nearly every block.

 

Fighter boosting would work too, they just need to be faster somehow.  They should definitely be tankier as well because dedicated PDC and flak ships can wipe out entire squadrons of fighters which took ~4hrs to assemble and tons of resources.

 

I realize most of this can be done with modding, but that isn't really the intent of the post, its what I think would make the game's combat more balanced and interesting.  Just as something the devs can look at and consider when thinking about one of their planned DLCs.  But if someone wants to mod all this, I'm 100% up for that lol.  I have 0 experience with modding and little time to learn so I wouldn't be the best candidate for that.

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dedicated PDC and flak ships can wipe out entire squadrons of fighters

 

Duh, that's the point of dedicated PDC ships! If you make fighters unkillable by dedicated AA ships, what's the point of those then?? Besides, even a non-dedicated cruiser should be able to handle a squad or two of fighters, otherwise PD weapons are useless.

 

And on sandwich ships, game mechanics counts blocks railgun charge have passed, thus nothing is stopping you from: a) making 10 layers of 0.001 thick armour plates; b) same 10 layers of stone and 1 layer of armour; or c) an armour plate and 10 thin layers of cheap blank hull behind it.

This may only change if rail shots will be made all-penetrating through the whole ship, but that would be too overpowered thing to do.

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Hey,

 

these are a lot of possible changes. To be honest, nothing of this will happen before release on next monday. I will mark that thread for myself and will take a deeper look into it after the release, there are interesting ideas and once the great bug fixing and polishing phase is over we will have more time for new features.

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Duh, that's the point of dedicated PDC ships! If you make fighters unkillable by dedicated AA ships, what's the point of those then?? Besides, even a non-dedicated cruiser should be able to handle a squad or two of fighters, otherwise PD weapons are useless.

 

And on sandwich ships, game mechanics counts blocks railgun charge have passed, thus nothing is stopping you from: a) making 10 layers of 0.001 thick armour plates; b) same 10 layers of stone and 1 layer of armour; or c) an armour plate and 10 thin layers of cheap blank hull behind it.

This may only change if rail shots will be made all-penetrating through the whole ship, but that would be too overpowered thing to do.

 

Its the purpose of PDC ships, yes, but when you don't even have time to react and your fighter squadrons are instantly taken out, that is an issue when you have spent the time and resources into making the fighters.  And with the amount of PDC/flak ships they are pretty much useless currently apart from mining/salvaging or getting a quick few shots with long range fighters before needing to recall.  I never suggested making them unkillable, but able to survive long enough to recall them or reposition them.  The PDC  and flak would still be effective they just couldn't instantly take out a full squadron or two.  If increasing the HP of the fighters isn't the answer, then they need to be made super cheap, because spending 30k trinium and an hour per fighter is a little high for something that instantly dies (Using a legendary weapon).

 

And as I stated, the MECHANICS of the railgun would change to where it would pierce armor, until it hits hull.  Doesn't matter how many layers of thinly sliced bread armor you put, the projectile will pierce all of them until it hits a non-armor block.  You can do the same with thinly sliced hull however and that would be a semi effective defense for your squishy blocks; but, if you have a dedicated railgun ship with lets say 10 ish railguns which all hit the target in the same spot (hitscan) those weak thin slices of hull will be taken away 10 at a time unless they are absolutely humongous thin pieces and have decent HP.

 

Hey,

 

these are a lot of possible changes. To be honest, nothing of this will happen before release on next monday. I will mark that thread for myself and will take a deeper look into it after the release, there are interesting ideas and once the great bug fixing and polishing phase is over we will have more time for new features. 

 

Thanks for keeping it in mind!  I wouldn't expect it before 1.0 because I know that deadline is approaching and y'all are busy squishing those bugs and polishing (Keep it up!).  Best of luck on your 1.0 release!

 

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While I like the idea of some E-warfare,

 

I really don't like the idea of this game becoming Eve. It could be because  Eve has put a very sour taste in my mouth.

 

"Completely open sandbox game....*cough* as long as you follow the meta that we enforce *cough".

 

And I mean anything players do that break this meta...AT ALL, even if it doesn't effect the mass fleet warfare and overall impact of the general game....will be patched out or corrected.

 

This meta enforces rock paper scissors gameplay which I am not a fan off.  Having different options to deal with differing situations you may come across and pre-planning for those, and some situations may spike difficulty a bit ,awesome!  Just don't make it so I auto-lose because I didn't bring the lightning weapon and have a "deus ex machina module" every third or fifth jump, because  I couldn't equip it at the same time as a laser weapon and "starchild" module that I need so I do not auto-lose every fourth jump.

 

That kinda crap is annoying and is nothing more that "artificial" difficulty and lazy "balancing".

 

The rest however I agree with and have suggested myself.

 

 

I will say that fighters are not too fragile.

 

However the ability to see their overall health and squadron count with maybe a color denoting health/dodges remaining will allow you to manage when their is a flak ship or squadron is at risk in the area and either pull them back or re-direct them elsewhere.

 

 

That is more a GUI issue to me.  Fighters should never be invulnerable. More powerful true starfighters that are larger and you can field a limited number off with much higher health pool and shields with boost and maybe two weapons would be great. But I have that all suggested in my thread and do not want to hijack yours :)

 

I will say their cost while being fairly high denotes you ability to field them, but could be lowered a bit.  120 fighters with 180 dps  is 21k dps.  At about 650 dps a xanion fighter with almost max upgrades costs about 120k of a resource.  That is 78k dps I can field in addition to my ship. Where it also really hurts...it takes a massive assembly station/ship to be able to get that down to even 15 minutes per fighter.

 

I think that gets tricky to balance because you do get to a point in the game where you can easily afford such disposable resources.

 

 

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While I like the idea of some E-warfare,

 

I really don't like the idea of this game becoming Eve. It could be because  Eve has put a very sour taste in my mouth.

 

"Completely open sandbox game....*cough* as long as you follow the meta that we enforce *cough".

 

And I mean anything players do that break this meta...AT ALL, even if it doesn't effect the mass fleet warfare and overall impact of the general game....will be patched out or corrected.

 

This meta enforces rock paper scissors gameplay which I am not a fan off.  Having different options to deal with differing situations you may come across and pre-planning for those, and some situations may spike difficulty a bit ,awesome!  Just don't make it so I auto-lose because I didn't bring the lightning weapon and have a "deus ex machina module" every third or fifth jump, because  I couldn't equip it at the same time as a laser weapon and "starchild" module that I need so I do not auto-lose every fourth jump.

 

That kinda crap is annoying and is nothing more that "artificial" difficulty and lazy "balancing".

 

The rest however I agree with and have suggested myself.

 

I don't think what I suggested would be too "meta defining".  I too don't want it become just like eve, but you can take examples from it both good and bad and use that knowledge to make this game even better.  In particular I don't want any kind of E-War which makes your ships unable to function at all like ECM or the insane stasis web and energy neut builds.  That turned me off form EVE as well (that and huge gangs ganking when I was looking for solo pvp). 

 

Primarily just simple buffs/debuffs like the resistance amps/nullifiers, ship speed boosters/webs (not nearly to the effectiveness as some ships in eve), warp interdiction (already in the game for the headhunters, would be nice if we could use too? Would be good for PVP), and the tracking disruption (would help smaller ships stay under the super heavy guns of super heavy capital ships).

 

I see this and everything else I suggested as a way to encourage building more than just 1 OP ship (you still can and it will be viable)  It would also further increase the difficulty of attacking NPC factions and pirate bases and combat in general.  I'd also love the ability to make dedicated buff/debuff ships which aren't really meant to be offensive but tanky and stick with the fleet.

 

I will say that fighters are not too fragile.

 

However the ability to see their overall health and squadron count with maybe a color denoting health/dodges remaining will allow you to manage when their is a flak ship or squadron is at risk in the area and either pull them back or re-direct them elsewhere.

 

 

That is more a GUI issue to me.  Fighters should never be invulnerable. More powerful true starfighters that are larger and you can field a limited number off with much higher health pool and shields with boost and maybe two weapons would be great. But I have that all suggested in my thread and do not want to hijack yours :)

 

I will say their cost while being fairly high denotes you ability to field them, but could be lowered a bit.  120 fighters with 180 dps  is 21k dps.  At about 650 dps a xanion fighter with almost max upgrades costs about 120k of a resource.  That is 78k dps I can field in addition to my ship. Where it also really hurts...it takes a massive assembly station/ship to be able to get that down to even 15 minutes per fighter.

 

I think that gets tricky to balance because you do get to a point in the game where you can easily afford such disposable resources.

 

Hard to balance for sure.  I think that if the cost and time for each fighter is kept the same they need some buff to HP.  If the enemy ship has actual anti-fighter turrets they are the main cause for fighters getting instantly rekt.  They 100% need a speed increase for sure though.  I think the different commands like the orbit and sentry would be quite helpful as well.  But yeah UI for fighter interaction and stats need an overhaul.  Maybe being able to see the HP would help, but from what I've seen those anti-fighter turrets are like a porcupine flying through a bundle of balloons, no fighter stands a chance.

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"Like a porcupine flying through a bundle of balloons"....this made LOL.... awesome.

 

Fighters and PD/anti fighter flak weapons get tricky to balance due to rng.  I have a 250 dps flack weapon I rolled on...it's hellacious, and would mean fighters would require monstrous health pools to balance against it, but typically you do not see more than 20-40 in the xanion range.... So a 300-400 hp fighter would do fine.  But against a 250dps one....nothing can stand up to that.

 

From what your describing on balances and e-war addition, I think what you want to add is fine..... Maybe have it so the targeting jammers require a minimum speed to be effective, so in a sense you have to be moving to be missed. I just wanted to lay the foundation to ensure it doesn't cross into eve territory.

 

Improved fighter commands would also be interesting, reminds me of homeworks when you did sphere formation, that was always pretty cool. Maybe you want something more advanced, but damn for it's time the tactical options were amazing.

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Fighters and PD/anti fighter flak weapons get tricky to balance due to rng.  I have a 250 dps flack weapon I rolled on...it's hellacious, and would mean fighters would require monstrous health pools to balance against it, but typically you do not see more than 20-40 in the xanion range.... So a 300-400 hp fighter would do fine.  But against a 250dps one....nothing can stand up to that.

 

Yeah that is part of the problem for sure, that's enough dps to actually make a dent in smaller ships too.  Perhaps only increase the maximum HP of fighters to the ~1.6k range (including shields) in the xanion range so it might could survive a single hit from high end flak, but nothing more.  Don't get me wrong, though I like the range the RNG for the weapons has currently in the beta branch, lets you find some amazing turrets without them being Insanely OP like before.

 

But the HP increase may not even be necessary if the new commands for fighters are implemented.  Longer range fighters with orbit would be able to stay away from flak, but not PDC.  Sentry would allow the carrier to hide behind other ships and its fighters would orbit closely and shoot out of range of flak unless the flak ship made a suicide run into the death ball.  Lots of cool possibilities. 

 

Btw I got the idea of the sentry from Ender's Game when the drones formed effectively a drone shield around the flagship that shot forward through the swarm.  Pretty cool scene.

 

From what your describing on balances and e-war addition, I think what you want to add is fine..... Maybe have it so the targeting jammers require a minimum speed to be effective, so in a sense you have to be moving to be missed. I just wanted to lay the foundation to ensure it doesn't cross into eve territory.

 

It may only need to have a very small radius where it could really only affect 1 maybe 2 ships that are VERY close.  Or perhaps its some kind of targeted ability which only affects the selected or target ship within a close range (if an enemy).  The main goal of it is to get underneath those huge long range heavy hitting capital guns, and make the turret turn very slow, never really being able to hit the smaller fast ship that is "tackling" it.  The maneuverability nerf of large ships would help solidify that small corvette and frigate type ships would actually have a role other than tanky PDC/Flak turds that float around your big ships.

 

There might need to be more commands in the tactical menu implemented as well.  Like a standard attack this dude at your optimal range and a tackle this target so that ships with the short range ewar won't stay at their optimal range which could be semi far depending on its equipped weapons.

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