"Boring" (high defense, low offense) enemies

[NMS]

As George posted here, enemies that are tough to kill but not very threatening are just boring and tedious to fight. I think a few enemies currently fall into this category.

Drake-class Missileship: This one's borderline. In the early game they're reasonably threatening, making them closer to minibosses. Still, given that they can show up as early as the second system of vanilla or the first system of Eternity Port, they probably shouldn't be quite so hard to take down with low level weapons. I'd recommend reducing the compartment health a bit.

Tripoli-class Destroyer: I've had fights against these where they were literally unable to scratch my armor. That was probably with level 9 armor, which won't always be available when the player is facing these. But by the time they show up, there's a very good chance the player has access to level 8 Carbide Carapace, which renders their lasers ineffective and their missiles very weak (except for the 10% chance of KM550 Broadswords). I suggest replacing the KM110 Starbursts with KM120 Brutes and the turbolasers with a particle weapon of some sort (something that falls in between the Particle Beam Weapon and the Tev-9 would be good, but I'm not sure there is such a thing in vanilla). Also, they have almost as much compartment health as Deimos-class Destroyers or Ranx Dreadnoughts, so that could be reduced a bit.

Ranx Dreadnought: For all their intimidating size (bigger than a Phobos!) and flashy weapon graphics, these guys are hilariously ineffectual. Part of that may be due to this bug. But even if all the fragments were working, the Kiloton Cannon seems rather weak for the main gun of an enemy that ought to be a late-game threat. (6.5 thermo damage times about 3 hits) By comparison, a Gotha-10 missile has 1/3 the mass and does 100 thermo damage. I recommend improving the Kiloton Cannon's damage substantially (and maybe raising it to level 8).
Edit: I may have underestimated the average number of hits, as well as the value of doing some damage with shots that would miss if they didn't fragment. But I still think the Ranx dreadnought needs more offense, so either the Kiloton cannon should be raised to level 8 and buffed accordingly, or the dreadnought needs a much better fireRateAdj value.

Sotho-class Gunship: These are a bit too big and tough to feel like cannon fodder, but their weapon is too weak to be threatening. Could be adjusted either way. Should get a better weapon to differentiate it from the Oromo.

[JohnBWatson]

Drake: I agree with your observations. The health shouldn't be reduced too much, however.

On a related note, the base Corsair health could use a buff, possibly from ultralight to light. They'd still be easy to kill, but they wouldn't be as weak as Centauri raiders, and they would justify the presence of the player on low level escort missions.

Tripoli: They are well balanced, but simply placed too far out of their range. By the time the player encounters Marauders, all of their ships are obsolete. I'd suggest moving them towards the end of the New Beyond, and having them cease to have a presence after the first few Ungoverned Territories systems. Obviously, their heavier ships would be present later rather than earlier.

Ranx: You hit the nail on the head, the Kiloton cannon needs a buff. It used to be terrifyingly powerful, which led to a severe nerf.

[Song]

Ranx Dreadnaught: For all their intimidating size (bigger than a Phobos!) and flashy weapon graphics, these guys are hilariously ineffectual. Part of that may be due to this bug. But even if all the fragments were working, the Kiloton Cannon seems rather weak for the main gun of an enemy that ought to be a late-game threat. (6.5 thermo damage times about 3 hits) By comparison, a Gotha-10 missile has 1/3 the mass and does 100 thermo damage. I recommend improving the Kiloton Cannon's damage substantially (and maybe raising it to level 8).

Just checked the code, and I don't think the kiloton cannon has CanHitSource...so it's just that the gun isn't all that good. Unless that bug is more odd than I'd thought. This is worth investigating, perhaps. It's one of those very very old guns that used to be obscenely good (from memory, it was originally introduced as the endgame gun waaaaaay back in the day. When I started in 0.99c, it was merely terrifying), that then got nerfed massively. I think the Ranx DN isn't actually that far off being balanced....the size difference with the phobos is mostly because the phobos is using older graphics, and the DN got reworked to the new Capship scale. However I definitely agree about buffing the main cannon. Boosting the Akan 30's (with a rasiermesser enhancer) might also be in order..they were added to prevent the old "sit within the failsafe range and plink away" strategy that was almost required to kill an RDN back in their heyday (0.99c, for all the newer peeps). But they don't really do that very well....


I agree with the comments on the Drake. In addition, it might be good to give the Maruaders a slightly upgraded version with the KM120.

The Tripoli right now is basically the Kronosaurus. Possibly with more internal HP though....I haven't checked. Armor-wise, it's exactly the same. Enhancing the lasers massively (collimators and the like) may help, or giving better guns (If I were altering them for SM&M++ [which I'm not], I'd probably give them the single version of the X-ray laser). Missiles could also be improved, but personally I usually just avoid these guys...their HP is too good. In SM&M I added a non-tracking version of the XM900....a stock equivalent in the later-marauder territories would give them something that can at least scratch other ships. The XM900 itself would be too much, I think (although I loved the days when they turned up in the arena, so eh....might work).


....howevr the high HP problem of the Drake and Tripoli leads on to a larger problem, and it's inherent to all three vanilla products (Stock, EP and CC): Internal hitpoints are really, really out of whack. Right now, most of the effective hitpoints of heavily armored ships are in their structures, not their armor. Mostly because against any non-WMD weapon, the internal components and modules take less damage than the armor that is supposedly super-strong and designed to protect them. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It makes lategame non-WMD omni weapons completely useless, and it makes taking out larger enemy ships a chore if you don't have either great ROF, or good WMD. It's an improvement over the non-critical armor system, which made ships impossible to kill from most angles, but this system just makes them annoying as hell to kill from all angles. It's actually a significant boost to ships survivability, without a corresponding boost to weapon power. This makes some guns (Eg. Stock ion blasters, EP's archura launcher and most ED weapons) completely useless against large capital ships, or even freighters. Internal hitpoints need to either be a LOT lower (possibly with corresponding buffs to armor), or the amount of damage done by non-WMD weapons against them needs to be significantly improved to allow those weapons to remain competitive.

[NMS]

Just checked the code, and I don't think the kiloton cannon has CanHitSource...so it's just that the gun isn't all that good. Unless that bug is more odd than I'd thought. This is worth investigating, perhaps. It's one of those very very old guns that used to be obscenely good (from memory, it was originally introduced as the endgame gun waaaaaay back in the day. When I started in 0.99c, it was merely terrifying), that then got nerfed massively. I think the Ranx DN isn't actually that far off being balanced....the size difference with the phobos is mostly because the phobos is using older graphics, and the DN got reworked to the new Capship scale. However I definitely agree about buffing the main cannon. Boosting the Akan 30's (with a rasiermesser enhancer) might also be in order..they were added to prevent the old "sit within the failsafe range and plink away" strategy that was almost required to kill an RDN back in their heyday (0.99c, for all the newer peeps). But they don't really do that very well....

After thinking about it, most weapons aren't as effective as the Kiloton Cannon if the shot doesn't directly hit the target. But if it isn't bugged, then maybe the main problem is that it goes off too soon when it's still approaching the target. If it collided and hit with about 1/3 of its 48 fragments, it would do serious damage. Also, I agree that the Akans aren't super effective right now either.

The Tripoli right now is basically the Kronosaurus. Possibly with more internal HP though....

Kronosaurus has the standard 100 for Charon Frigates. Tripoli has 250. Deimos and Ranx Dreadnaught have 300. (Ignoring engine compartments)

....howevr the high HP problem of the Drake and Tripoli leads on to a larger problem, and it's inherent to all three vanilla products (Stock, EP and CC): Internal hitpoints are really, really out of whack. Right now, most of the effective hitpoints of heavily armored ships are in their structures, not their armor. Mostly because against any non-WMD weapon, the internal components and modules take less damage than the armor that is supposedly super-strong and designed to protect them. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It makes lategame non-WMD omni weapons completely useless, and it makes taking out larger enemy ships a chore if you don't have either great ROF, or good WMD. It's an improvement over the non-critical armor system, which made ships impossible to kill from most angles, but this system just makes them annoying as hell to kill from all angles. It's actually a significant boost to ships survivability, without a corresponding boost to weapon power. This makes some guns (Eg. Stock ion blasters, EP's archura launcher and most ED weapons) completely useless against large capital ships, or even freighters. Internal hitpoints need to either be a LOT lower (possibly with corresponding buffs to armor), or the amount of damage done by non-WMD weapons against them needs to be significantly improved to allow those weapons to remain competitive.

I absolutely agree, but it's been said before, so I thought I'd focus on another aspect of the problem.

[Song]

The balancing tables (used by most vanilla stuff and registered extensions) assume that 1/6th of all fragments will hit the target. I don't know if this is the case or not....proximity has been broken for years, and while there was a good discussion about how to fix it (mostly by giving the option to set the proximity range for a fragment), those improvements haven't as of yet made it into the game.

[NMS]

I think I've come up with a good solution to the WMD issue: change WMD damage against compartments from a divisor to a bonus.

Non-WMD weapons would do their raw damage to compartments. This eliminates the need for rounding up to 1 and the difference between fast firing, low damage weapons and slow firing, high damage weapons.

Then, choose a factor by which top-tier WMD weapons should be better than non-WMD weapons. It should be large enough to incentivize WMD weapons, but not so large that non-WMD weapons are useless by comparison. Something like 3 seems about right. Increase compartment health by 3 times across the board, and multiply weapon damage against compartments by 3^(WMD rating / 7). So each level of WMD rating would do 17% more damage to compartments than the previous level. The net effect is that WMD-7 weapons and no-WMD weapons that do 3 damage stay the same, but low- or no-WMD weapons gain effectiveness against compartments proportional to their damage.

Multi-hull stations work a bit differently, but they could be handled by giving them reasonable amounts of compartment health under their armor, or multiplying their armor health by 3 and applying the WMD bonus against their armor.

The balancing tables (used by most vanilla stuff and registered extensions) assume that 1/6th of all fragments will hit the target. I don't know if this is the case or not....proximity has been broken for years, and while there was a good discussion about how to fix it (mostly by giving the option to set the proximity range for a fragment), those improvements haven't as of yet made it into the game.

The obvious simple algorithm is to keep track of the distance to the nearest hostile within the blast radius. If it's greater than it was on the previous frame, you're passing the target, so explode. Otherwise, wait and see if you collide with the target to maximize the number of fragments that hit. (I'm not actually sure if projectiles that hit a target will fragment, but they should.)

[AssumedPseudonym]

The obvious simple algorithm is to keep track of the distance to the nearest hostile within the blast radius. If it's greater than it was on the previous frame, you're passing the target, so explode. Otherwise, wait and see if you collide with the target to maximize the number of fragments that hit. (I'm not actually sure if projectiles that hit a target will fragment, but they should.)

 If you’re firing without targeting, that’s fine, but otherwise you should probably keep track of the distance to the actual target, not the closest hostile. I can imagine it would be fairly frustrating to be shooting at, say, a Charon frigate, only to have the projectile immediately burst into fragments when it gets past the escorting Corsair sitting half a meter beside your nose.

[Song]

The balancing tables (used by most vanilla stuff and registered extensions) assume that 1/6th of all fragments will hit the target. I don't know if this is the case or not....proximity has been broken for years, and while there was a good discussion about how to fix it (mostly by giving the option to set the proximity range for a fragment), those improvements haven't as of yet made it into the game.

The obvious simple algorithm is to keep track of the distance to the nearest hostile within the blast radius. If it's greater than it was on the previous frame, you're passing the target, so explode. Otherwise, wait and see if you collide with the target to maximize the number of fragments that hit. (I'm not actually sure if projectiles that hit a target will fragment, but they should.)

This is, more or less, what actually happens. It's a bit temperamental though. In addition, that system by itself proved very buggy in the past....back in 0.99C (and earlier), a proximity weapon would not detonate on a direct hit, as it would always wait to pass the closest hostile within detonation range....which obviously never happens if it hits. So to get the most damage out of an M5, you actually aimed *beside* the target. It got fixed via the introduction of the current system when the 1.0 release candidates came out about 5-6 years ago...but since then the system has been basically unchanged, and it kinda shows. The main problem is the range at which that proximity trigger will detonate on a glancing hit. The current algorithm seems to sometimes detonate too soon, or too late....or just too far away. It's a very difficult thing to fix though. Being able to tweak that proximity radius would definitely help though.

In terms of making WMD work a bit differently.....that makes sense. Might require some rebalance to make the mass destruction stuff not completely overpowered....but armors could use a few tweaks here and there anyway, so eh.....it could work out. It might be useful to have a method of penalising compartment damage on a weapon though, if WMD is changed to a pure bonus system (Also, removing the wmdX rating on damage entirely and going with a simple percentage bonus/penalty system would be *really awesome* for usability. Likewise armorX and shieldX. *cough*).

[Atarlost]

This is, more or less, what actually happens. It's a bit temperamental though. In addition, that system by itself proved very buggy in the past....back in 0.99C (and earlier), a proximity weapon would not detonate on a direct hit, as it would always wait to pass the closest hostile within detonation range....which obviously never happens if it hits. So to get the most damage out of an M5, you actually aimed *beside* the target. It got fixed via the introduction of the current system when the 1.0 release candidates came out about 5-6 years ago...but since then the system has been basically unchanged, and it kinda shows. The main problem is the range at which that proximity trigger will detonate on a glancing hit. The current algorithm seems to sometimes detonate too soon, or too late....or just too far away. It's a very difficult thing to fix though. Being able to tweak that proximity radius would definitely help though.

The pre-1.0 system was a lot better for things like the high flux MAG and XM900 that have fragments less effective than their direct hits. I think the M2 and M5 also fall into that category along with the Urak Howitzer and maybe the KM120. It was mainly just the kiloton and Ares nukes that fizzled on direct hits. If that kind of design with primary projectile damage greater than fragment damage were the norm that would be an improvement.

[NMS]

This is, more or less, what actually happens. It's a bit temperamental though. In addition, that system by itself proved very buggy in the past....back in 0.99C (and earlier), a proximity weapon would not detonate on a direct hit, as it would always wait to pass the closest hostile within detonation range....which obviously never happens if it hits. So to get the most damage out of an M5, you actually aimed *beside* the target. It got fixed via the introduction of the current system when the 1.0 release candidates came out about 5-6 years ago...but since then the system has been basically unchanged, and it kinda shows. The main problem is the range at which that proximity trigger will detonate on a glancing hit. The current algorithm seems to sometimes detonate too soon, or too late....or just too far away. It's a very difficult thing to fix though. Being able to tweak that proximity radius would definitely help though.

Could this be due to "quantum" effects? What's the speed of light in Transcendence in pixels per frame?

In terms of making WMD work a bit differently.....that makes sense. Might require some rebalance to make the mass destruction stuff not completely overpowered....but armors could use a few tweaks here and there anyway, so eh.....it could work out.

Under my proposal, WMD7 would be 300% damage against compartments, but compartments would have 300% as much health. So WMD7 weapons would be exactly as overpowered as they currently are. The lower the WMD rating of a weapon, the more it would benefit from my proposal, except for low damage, low WMD weapons that are currently benefitting strongly from the minimum of 1 damage per compartment hit. Here's how most common weapons would change in effectiveness against compartments under my proposal:

Code: Select all

WMD0:                                         change in effectiveness against compartments:
Laser Cannon, Mining Laser                                   83%
Light Recoilless Cannon                                     100%
Recoilless Cannon                                           150%
Turbolaser                                                  250%
Lancer Cannon                                               117%
Particle Beam Weapon                                        183%
Shuriken Neutron Blaster                                    167%
X-Ray Laser                                                 667%
Ion Disruptor                                               583%
Light Ion Blaster                                           467%
Katana Star Cannon                                          433%
Tev-9                                                       600%
Ion Flame Cannon                                            150%

WMD1:
AK15 Partisan, RK15, Smartcannon                            390%
Slam Cannon                                                 409%
Ion Blaster                                                 975% to 1500% (depending on enhancement level and whether the division is adjusted to round rather than truncate)
Heavy Ion Blaster                                           975%
Omni Ion Blaster, IM90                                      546%
KM110 Starburst                                             351% (blast), 214% (kinetic)

WMD2:
Flenser, Akan 30                                            456% (Or maybe a bit more depending on rounding)
PK25, Plasma Torch                                          ??? (I don't know how damage for these is currently calculated against compartments)

WMD3:
Moskva series                                               240%
Mark I Howitzer, White/Green/Black Strelka                  266%

All WMD4:
Dragonfly, Mark III Howitzer, Tritium Cannon, TM7,          187%
Plasma Cannon, Reaper Missile

All WMD5:
AK505, Mark V Howitzer, Thermo Cannon, Fusionfire,          141%
Longbow, 400 and 600 MAG, Red Strelka

All WMD6:
Mines                                                       116%
All WMD7:
Lucifer, Siege and High-flux MAG, Gotha missiles,           100%
M2, M5, Ares Plasma Archcannon

It might be useful to have a method of penalising compartment damage on a weapon though, if WMD is changed to a pure bonus system (Also, removing the wmdX rating on damage entirely and going with a simple percentage bonus/penalty system would be *really awesome* for usability. Likewise armorX and shieldX. *cough*).

That does seem like it would make things easier. So WMD1 through 7 would become something like compartmentX:117 through compartmentX:300 if my proposal were also implemented.

[NMS]

The main problem is the range at which that proximity trigger will detonate on a glancing hit. The current algorithm seems to sometimes detonate too soon, or too late....or just too far away. It's a very difficult thing to fix though. Being able to tweak that proximity radius would definitely help though.

Could this be due to "quantum" effects? What's the speed of light in Transcendence in pixels per frame?

Ok, I figured this out myself and I think it's the answer. The speed of light is 2 light seconds per tick and a light second is about 24 pixels, making the speed of light 48 pixels per frame. So if a ship and a projectile have a closing speed of .5 c, that's 24 pixels per frame. The fraction of fragments that hit on average (EDIT:) should be proportional to the inverse cotangent of distance to target over target's radius, so 24 pixels could make a huge difference. If the projectile didn't detect the collision until it was inside the target, it could even hit with all of its fragments. (Have fun taking 312 thermo damage from the Kiloton Cannon.) Since this doesn't seem to happen, presumably the proximity radius sets them off at a distance where the number of hits is more consistent. So I'm back to my original recommendation of increasing the Kiloton Cannon's damage.

[Song]

....Since this doesn't seem to happen.....

it does, but it takes a very particular set of circumstances to occur. When it does, you will get the entire weapon detonating on one place. I've run into it a lot with various SM&M versions...I've actually had to cancel entire weapons because they just became too powerful through this. If you grab the old SM&M+ version on xelerus, the M4 missile suffered from it a lot before I reworked it for SM&M++ (and then ditched it for the revamp. I'll redo it again later). Fired into the side of a large target like the phobos, you'd often have all [insert stupidly large number] fragments detonating in one place, taking massive chunks of health off the ship. It's a lot less common than weapons detonating too far (or behind) the target....but it does occur. Even in vanilla, although it's not a common thing.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

I agree with the comments on the Drake. In addition, it might be good to give the Maruaders a slightly upgraded version with the KM120.

Tripolis have a chance to spawn with KM550 Broadswords, which are guided KM120 Brutes. The don't always have them, although it would be fun if they did (or had a chance to spawn with a small stock of XM900s and then switch to KM500 Stilettos). I feel that Drakes with KM120s would be overpowered when first encountered at or before Charon - the Drake's missile turret is very accurate. This could make reactive or blast plate close to obligatory at a certain stage of the game since there is no blast equivalent to particle resistance barrels. However, the KM110 Starburst could stand to be a little bit more exciting than it is right now.

[NMS]

It wasn't on my original list, since I assumed it was supposed to be cannon fodder, but the Revelations-class Missileship got a big buff in 1.6 beta, replacing the laser cannon with an omni Flenser. In other words, it's now more dangerous than a Tripoli.

Also, I concluded that the Sotho definitely needs a weapon buff. Nerfing its defenses would make it too similar to the Oromo.

[Deltax]

Two more ships that I believe fall into this category are steel slavers, and urak destroyers. Steel slavers have a single particle beam weapon, but fire it so slowly that they struggle to get through shields that are level 3 and higher.

Urak destroyers have tough armor, but are armed with a pretty terrible level 5 fragmenting howitzer. There secondary weapons have good DPM, but are so short ranged that they can only hit targets who are literally right next to them.