Weapon balance v2

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JohnBWatson
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PM wrote:If Wind Slavers need stronger defenses, give them more armor segments. Combined with .30c speed, neutron blasters, and spawned as packs, they will destroy unprepared or underleveled playerships quickly.
I don't think they have to have a neutron blaster. They are worth exponentially more in loot than the effort it takes to kill them, and to get the threat level in balance with the rest of the current UT, they basically have to fall apart before they can put up a fight against anything. Like I said before, being quickly and easily killed by a stock playership is undesirable for an enemy that'll be showing up into the late Outer Realm, and makes little sense for something that's supposed to be jumping the player because it thinks he's an easy target.

That said, I think the best solution here is to buff their armor to a level where they aren't killed instantly, decrease the rate and quantity at which they spawn in encounters, and lower the number of them guarding minor stations. This would make farming them less overpowered, let the player not wonder how the Sung isn't bankrupt from using them, and keep them relevant in combat for as long as they need to be. They're effectively the Sung's only long ranged defensive option, and right now that makes their citadels far too easy to kill for the loot they provide.
I view Wind Slavers a greater threat than Steel Slavers because no playership can outrun Wind Slavers when they are encountered. If Wind Slavers catch the player in the open, the player must win that encounter quickly or die. Wind Slavers do not need to be resilient.
Fleeing doesn't need to be an easy solution for every fight, especially considering how easy it is to lure an enemy into a station's attack range. While Transcendence isn't supposed to be as hard as nethack, there should be genuine danger if a player is in the Outer Realm in a Wolfen with advanced reactive and a dual laser.

Random patrols, especially, should not be something that can be trivially fled from. Their entire Raison D'être is as a skill/equipment gate that maintains the necessity of improving one's skill and equipment even when the player isn't actively destroying enemy stations. Making them trivial to escape(unless they have long ranged weapons like the Tundra and Chasm encounters, and can actually get a few shots off at the player before he's out of range) just results in a player careening around the system with a horde of non - threatening random encounters following him. This is funny in Eridani, with the enemies that aren't supposed to be a threat, when this happens with factions that are supposed to prey on civilian ships roughly as fast as the player, it's a bit depressing.
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Could you maybe put what you're suggesting into numbers, John? I'm having a hard time following exactly what you want changed.
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I just tried stock Wolfen and EI500 against Wind Slavers. Playerships with original equipment die. Wolfen can take out one or two before finished off by remaining Wind Slavers. Omni laser does not shoot fast enough to save the EI500.

Wind Slavers had light Sung armor since at least 1.01. The ceralloy you may think of is part of the fluff description with the armor, which will become outdated in 1.7, since ceralloy does not resist blast. I checked 0.99b and they had heavy ceramic armor back then, which is similarly weak. The change from four armor segments to one really did make them easier to kill.

I do not get much loot from Wind Slavers. They do not leave wrecks often, and when they do, I usually get nothing or damaged junk. It is rare that I loot an intact Shuriken.

Funnily, Outer Realm is relatively safe for a Wolfen because everything is slower than it, except the rare Sung in early Outer Realm. All of the enemies with .25c or more are mostly early-game threats. Much like how loot thieves (Salvagers) are all in the early-game.
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Just noticed that the slam cannons lost damage, making it weaker against gunships. Seems high WMD is worth a lot.

With so many changes happening rapidly, it would be nice to see another updated table.

P.S. Just read the weapon balance ticket. Ion9 has been weakened more than current Ion9! Now has fireRate of 22, or 2.72 shots per second. 50 * 3.75 = 187.5, and 60 * 2.72727272 = 163.6363. 163.63 < 187.5! Also, powerUse is now 200 MW, just like Ferian Cannon, which will be stronger than before. (60 > 50). Looks like Ferian Cannon will be even more of a no-brainer than before - why bother giving stuff to Dvalin, the item thief! (if not Freyr) when I can beat up Ferians early (in Ungoverned Territories instead of Outer Realm) for a better weapon!
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Xephyr wrote:Could you maybe put what you're suggesting into numbers, John? I'm having a hard time following exactly what you want changed.
As I see it, there are two problems and two (not mutually exclusive) solutions:

Problems:

1. Wind Slavers have weapons whose cost far exceeds their survivability. This causes two issues. The first is immersion(Why would they build this ship? How can it fill its intended role? How are the Sung not bankrupt from losing so many?), and the second is the ability to farm them for a superb weapon and a lot of credits with little to no effort.

2. Wind Slavers do not present a threat in the late Ungoverned Territories. This leaves the Sung stations that rely on them for rapid response with no means of retaliating against distant attackers.

Solutions:

1. (Solves p1) Switch the Wind Slaver's gun with that of the Steel Slaver. With the firerateadj Wind Slavers have, its DPS wouldn't have to be all that different. This would also make Steel Slavers less boring to fight.

2. (Solves both) Buff Wind Slaver armor, and make them less present early on. I would recommend the same stats as ceralloy, but with particle resist at -50%, ion resist at -25%, and blast resist at 50%. This would restore their balance while still leaving them less difficult to kill than they originally were. It also makes the Sung more intuitive as a faction, resisting the weapons of their typical victims while being weaker against advanced weaponry that they don't expect to be on the receiving end of.

Decreasing the number of them present early on would give people time to get used to them while enhancing the feeling of accomplishment when destroying a Citadel. It would also make the rapidly appearing packs of them much less annoying.

Funnily, Outer Realm is relatively safe for a Wolfen because everything is slower than it, except the rare Sung in early Outer Realm. All of the enemies with .25c or more are mostly early-game threats. Much like how loot thieves (Salvagers) are all in the early-game.
Yeah, I find that to be a bit of an oversight too. Kobol's dual Tev9 variant, Luminous drones(especially considering their weapon placement), and Ares sandstorms should be able to keep up. Ranx gunships are a bit too slow right now, but they feel like they should be slower than most gunships, so perhaps they should get longer weapon range instead(The Akan could do to have a bit better range anyways).

Gaians are in late game(though they seem to appear much later than they did, only starting up at around the same time they become obsolete and start to die off rapidly). I'm in favor of moving them back up towards the mid outer realm, and having them slowly stop showing up towards the end, given that they're not much of a threat anyways.
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The problem with giving the steel slaver a better gun is that it's generally counter to its style....it's a support gunship that hacks enemies. Giving it a good gun as well may well overpower it (not to say that it doesn't have some issues with underperforming in the gun department right now)

I don't really have issues with the sung using a disposable gunship/fighter/interceptor (the Ares do the same thing with the Sandstorm...albiet with a much better disposable ship. The sandstorm is a proper gunship, minus the shield and survivability. The Wind slaver is a bit more like an early-game interceptor or fighter). What would be nice is an in-universe justification. The Ares can get away with it because they use cloning, have a lot of resources, and have a rather strange totalitarian political system. The Sung.....I can sort of see how they might be able to do it. But a few hints in-story would be a good clarification.

...and personally I don't consider the Shuriken to be that good as a player weapon. The range is a bit low, although it's certainly a fun weapon.
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Noticed that Katana Star cannon lost DPS and range. I think it may have been weakened too much. I think Katana Star Cannon should have at least range 40. Otherwise, with higher powerUse and lower DPS, why bother with it instead of alternatives, if available?

As for Wind Slaver, I do not see a problem with it, except maybe having too few armor segments when compared to Charon's Corsairs and Vikings, and Ares' Sandstorms. Neutron Blaster is roughly level appropriate, and their weak armor is compensated by their fast top speed.

Gaians blow up wrecks, but they do not loot. They means leaving items in wrecked stations where Gaians live is completely safe! Gaians do not steal items from your stashes. At worst, it is a race to grab items from shipwrecks before Gaians destroy them, which is a minor annoyance and not on the (rage-inducing) level of Salvagers raiding your stashes.
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PM wrote:Wind Slavers had light Sung armor since at least 1.01. The ceralloy you may think of is part of the fluff description with the armor, which will become outdated in 1.7, since ceralloy does not resist blast. I checked 0.99b and they had heavy ceramic armor back then, which is similarly weak. The change from four armor segments to one really did make them easier to kill.
It's not just the number of segments. Heavy ceramic is a level higher and has twice the hp, which is pretty significant. And it has +100 bonus against laser, so it has 167 effective hp against laser, compared with 31 for light sung armor.
PM wrote:Noticed that Katana Star cannon lost DPS and range. I think it may have been weakened too much. I think Katana Star Cannon should have at least range 40. Otherwise, with higher powerUse and lower DPS, why bother with it instead of alternatives, if available?
Lifetime 30 on a lightspeed weapon will give it range 60, down from 120.
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When Wind Slavers had heavy ceramic armor, it only had 20 hp instead of 50 hp today.

Ye olde 0.99b heavy ceramic armor had 20 hp, resists: +100, -25, +50, 0. Strong against laser and particle, and weak against kinetic.

Modern light Sung armor has 25 hp, resists: 0, 0, +50, -25. Strong against particle, weak against blast (for now).
NMS wrote:Lifetime 30 on a lightspeed weapon will give it range 60, down from 120.
Gah! I meant lifetime of 40 or range 80.

Range 60 seems too big a nerf for the Katana Star Cannon (on top of slower fireRate), because it just turns it into a light ion blaster that trades raw DPS for passthrough and higher powerUse. In other words, it would make Katana Star Cannon too similar to other ion weapons.
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PM wrote:Noticed that Katana Star cannon lost DPS and range. I think it may have been weakened too much. I think Katana Star Cannon should have at least range 40. Otherwise, with higher powerUse and lower DPS, why bother with it instead of alternatives, if available?
What would you trade off instead? Lower DPS? The current version is at +30 balance, which implies a +60% increase in cost.

Or is there a way to differentiate the other ion weapons?
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It seems strange that most particle weapons have 80 range while most ion weapons have 60 range.

Light ion blaster and Ares lightning cannon already have 60 range. It might be easier to change Katana Star Cannon than two or more ion weapons.

To answer the question, I honestly don't know.

If DPS (damage and/or fire rate) gets sacked much more, then it would need to multi-hit frequently to make up for lost damage. At that point, just get something reliable and does not use as much power.

I assume Star Cannon's powerUse is still 75 MW, instead of light ion blaster's 50 MW. With the Star Cannon's current nerfs, I might go for light ion blaster or Xenophobe ion lancer already (assuming I can choose whatever weapon I want). I might even take ion disruptor because disruption is a powerful debuff.

I guess Katana Star is mass produced for Commonwealth fleet, so it probably does not make too much sense to crank up cost and be an elite Rolls Royce if cheaper ion options can get the job done just as well but cheaper, politics and government waste notwithstanding.
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Shrike wrote:The problem with giving the steel slaver a better gun is that it's generally counter to its style....it's a support gunship that hacks enemies. Giving it a good gun as well may well overpower it (not to say that it doesn't have some issues with underperforming in the gun department right now)
It could use it with a high firerateadj, if we're going the route of nerfing the Wind Slaver's weaponry to make it more balanced, in order to maintain a difference in weapons between the two ships.
I don't really have issues with the sung using a disposable gunship/fighter/interceptor (the Ares do the same thing with the Sandstorm...albiet with a much better disposable ship. The sandstorm is a proper gunship, minus the shield and survivability. The Wind slaver is a bit more like an early-game interceptor or fighter). What would be nice is an in-universe justification. The Ares can get away with it because they use cloning, have a lot of resources, and have a rather strange totalitarian political system. The Sung.....I can sort of see how they might be able to do it. But a few hints in-story would be a good clarification.
It seems like a very cost - ineffective setup. There's also the fact that it will definitely take casualties against the wandering CW ships that it's supposed to jump to take the pilot as a slave, and losing several of their own personnel just to enslave one freighter pilot is an unsustainable business model. Unless the Sung's entire gimmick is to be retconned, I don't see how it can be justified at all.
...and personally I don't consider the Shuriken to be that good as a player weapon. The range is a bit low, although it's certainly a fun weapon.
Fair enough. Much better than the guns that can be used to easily kill the WS currently, though.

PM wrote:Noticed that Katana Star cannon lost DPS and range. I think it may have been weakened too much. I think Katana Star Cannon should have at least range 40. Otherwise, with higher powerUse and lower DPS, why bother with it instead of alternatives, if available?
I said the same thing on Ministry. I think it's supposed to be an alternative to the APC that loses some effectiveness against gunships in exchange for the ability to hurt capital ships and stations. With current changes, they appear to lose their effectiveness against both gunships and capital ships.
As for Wind Slaver, I do not see a problem with it, except maybe having too few armor segments when compared to Charon's Corsairs and Vikings, and Ares' Sandstorms. Neutron Blaster is roughly level appropriate, and their weak armor is compensated by their fast top speed.
If the AI had perfect dodging ability(above the level of a human player), I could see that working. As it is, anyone with an OTL, which can be acquired halfway through TNB, is nigh-immune to the things and can farm them with impunity.
Gaians blow up wrecks, but they do not loot. They means leaving items in wrecked stations where Gaians live is completely safe! Gaians do not steal items from your stashes. At worst, it is a race to grab items from shipwrecks before Gaians destroy them, which is a minor annoyance and not on the (rage-inducing) level of Salvagers raiding your stashes.
True. Thoughts on spreading them back over their old level range? Right now they're way below the curve when they show up, and often die before the player meets them. I'd be unsurprised to hear that they cause a net increase in the amount of wrecks in a system, just by dying so soon.

Lifetime 30 on a lightspeed weapon will give it range 60, down from 120.
There really ought to be some way of quickly determining the range of a weapon. Is there a way to input the speed and range of a weapon, and have it calculate lifetime automatically? That seems like it would be much more intuitive to both code and read.

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PM wrote:Noticed that Katana Star cannon lost DPS and range. I think it may have been weakened too much. I think Katana Star Cannon should have at least range 40. Otherwise, with higher powerUse and lower DPS, why bother with it instead of alternatives, if available?
What would you trade off instead? Lower DPS? The current version is at +30 balance, which implies a +60% increase in cost.

Or is there a way to differentiate the other ion weapons?
Something I floated a while back was to give Katana bolts a counter that measures how many times they've successfully passed through, and when they fail to pass through generate an explosion based on that value. I don't know if that's viable, but it would both make the weapon worth using and differentiate it from its peers.
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@ JohnBWatson: I do not have much time now, so I will be brief.

Use missileSpeed and lifetime to get range.

If your problem with Wind Slaver is farming stuff, then the solution would be to give them their notForSale knock-off of the Shuriken, akin the Resurrectors' taubeam cannons. For something quick and dirty, same stats as Shuriken except damage per shot is 4.5 (1d6+1) instead of Shuriken's 5 (2d4). With notForSale, cost is not much of a factor.
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PM wrote:If DPS (damage and/or fire rate) gets sacked much more, then it would need to multi-hit frequently to make up for lost damage.
Higher passthrough chance would be interesting because it makes it more effective against larger targets and swarms.

JohnBWatson wrote:There really ought to be some way of quickly determining the range of a weapon. Is there a way to input the speed and range of a weapon, and have it calculate lifetime automatically? That seems like it would be much more intuitive to both code and read.
range (in light seconds) = speed (in % lightspeed) * lifetime (in ticks) / 50

Beams (and maybe other shots) have speed 100 unless otherwise specified. Calculating range is more complicated for shots that accelerate, but there aren't many of those. Being able to specify the range instead of the lifetime in the XML would be nice.
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PM wrote:@ JohnBWatson: I do not have much time now, so I will be brief.
Use missileSpeed and lifetime to get range.
I'm aware of this, but it requires a lot of searching around to find the right missile type and get its speed. Would be a lot easier if we could just input range, and thus adjust either a missile's speed or a weapon's range without searching/editing as many things.
If your problem with Wind Slaver is farming stuff, then the solution would be to give them their notForSale knock-off of the Shuriken, akin the Resurrectors' taubeam cannons. For something quick and dirty, same stats as Shuriken except damage per shot is 4.5 (1d6+1) instead of Shuriken's 5 (2d4). With notForSale, cost is not much of a factor.
That would solve one problem, but not any of the others.

Higher passthrough chance would be interesting because it makes it more effective against larger targets and swarms.
That could work too, with similar effects to my proposal. Anything that accentuates its advantage against capital ships and swarms of light gunships would be a good buff.
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