Balancing for 4.0

[orzelek]

Flaks are just right now, in my opinion. They are fearsome enough that you go "OH CRAP!" when one is nearby and you pretty much make sure to get out of the way to snipe it. It's kind of a "Devourer golem" feeling. I love it!

Artillery Guardians are really a pain in the ass, but I kinda like them too. They make for great priority targets. But as King said, the other guardians just get run over without you ever noticing them much.

But when you already have set of high priority targets on planet like various "fun" buildings and fortresses then you are guaranteed few wiped fleets before you can actually do something on that planet. Each of them considered solo may be simply powerful - but get 2 of each on a planet with 2 ions, eye and few other toys and you have a roadblock that is not fun to take on.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

I don't think it is a bad thing that guardians can go after Turrets, but it should only be a specific kind of guardian that has those bonuses. Or maybe, apply multipliers and hull types to guardians and turrets.

Also, I wouldn't mind if fleet ships got a health bonus. Maybe just a little one.

Finally, I think that there should be an audio cue- perhaps a taunt from the eye or a Guardian- that helps the player realize that they bunched up too much. Everybody here knows they cannot gather a bunch of ships and start flying a doom fleet across the galaxy, but I don't think that will be obvious to new players or players that are just now upgrading.

(All opened in mantis)

[Ranakastrasz]

Siege Star ships have no bonuses vs anything, making them incredibly inferior to bombers for taking force fields or anything else out. Their only bonus is long range.

[keith.lamothe]

Siege Star ships have no bonuses vs anything, making them incredibly inferior to bombers for taking force fields or anything else out. Their only bonus is long range.

Is that from experience?

[Winter Born]

I like the concept of limiting the mix of guardians at the start of a game. As the AIP goes up (implies you are gaining knowledge) then the variety of the guardians goes up as well - requiring more scouting to figure out how best to spend that new knowledge. (this may be a post 4.0 release issue)

[Ranakastrasz]

Well, It looks that way, But so I know for sure, I am going to calculate max cap stats/cost stats, to see if I am correct.

I was incorrect, The siege starships costs more overall, though use less power, but has much longer range, and vs force fields at least, deals about half as much dps as full cap of bombers. At least Now I know this for the future.

[keith.lamothe]

Numerical analysis combined with a few gameplay unit tests (no pun intended) are helpful

I'm pretty busy but I hope to add a few things to that reference tab, like being able to compare m+c, e, and k cost-to-build-to-cap, etc.  That will take a bit of thought to do properly since there isn't that much horizontal space to go with everything else, but could probably have a mode where it only displays one "side" of the currently displayed numbers, plus that economic impact info.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Numerical analysis combined with a few gameplay unit tests (no pun intended) are helpful

I'm pretty busy but I hope to add a few things to that reference tab, like being able to compare m+c, e, and k cost-to-build-to-cap, etc.  That will take a bit of thought to do properly since there isn't that much horizontal space to go with everything else, but could probably have a mode where it only displays one "side" of the currently displayed numbers, plus that economic impact info.

I don't suppose you could add a scroll keyboard button or something while you are there... It's my favorite window but I am unable to use it..

[keith.lamothe]

I do also intend to look at the scrolling thing, though honestly I don't know why it would behaving differently than the messages tab where you say it's working ok.

Basically our scrolling code is just a wrapper around the Unity stuff that handles it, not a lot there to be different between the windows.

But they are different classes (ArcenGrid and ArcenButtonTextlineSet) so it is possible.

[superking]

MK I parasites cost 800 metal, 80 crystal... that seems like alot for a swarm type

spacetanks are are incredibly good atm, nothing I have seen so far does more than the minimal 5% damage to them

beam & warbird starships have really low health, 300,000 for the warbird iirc

artillery gaurdians seem a bit overpowered, they one-shot light starships at MK II

the new armour system really favours single powerful shots over weak rapid fire weak ones, flak dps in particular scales up massively between MK and fortresses are much weaker

lightning turrets/shuttles are hit pretty hard by the new armour system

right now with tractor turrets so cheap to run, why would I ever unlock the MK II tractor?


combat is so fast its just silly on the 'normal' setting... FF go down almost instantly to mid sized forces and the 400 million hp wormhole gaurd posts takes maybe a few minutes to kill. everything happens so fast there is little or no room for tactics of any kind. I'm going to start my next game on 4x mode to see if things are more like old

[Gallant Dragon]

What I'm wondering is why Guardians are so fast when they're supposed to be mainly defensive, and why tanks have so much more armor than Armor ships.

[eRe4s3r]

Imo the current Armor calculation is flawed in that the min dmg values are assigned in a way that would make sense in ship vs ship, but not in a fleet scale, minimal damage values for super high armor would imo need to be around 33% with a 25% (or more) chance to "pierce" the armor entirely, maybe even inverse related to the ship level (MK1 25%, MK4 5% (More damage per hit = less piercing chance).

Though i have only played 30 minutes with the latest release i think these 2 changes are needed, as that would make high armor ships valuable but not impossible to handle and include the much needed "luck can win a battle, but never lose it" factor back in.

Well just my 2 ct on balance though not played long enough to lament specific ships, so this might as well be regarded as random ramblings.

[Gallant Dragon]

Imo the current Armor calculation is flawed in that the min dmg values are assigned in a way that would make sense in ship vs ship, but not in a fleet scale, minimal damage values for super high armor would imo need to be around 33% with a 25% (or more) chance to "pierce" the armor entirely, maybe even inverse related to the ship level (MK1 25%, MK4 5% (More damage per hit = less piercing chance).

Though i have only played 30 minutes with the latest release i think these 2 changes are needed, as that would make high armor ships valuable but not impossible to handle and include the much needed "luck can win a battle, but never lose it" factor back in.

Well just my 2 ct on balance though not played long enough to lament specific ships, so this might as well be regarded as random ramblings.

It's kinda like blending both the armor and shield mechanics.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, we aren't likely to re-introduce a random factor, for the same reasons that we removed it.  But I am thinking more and more that the 5% minimum is too harsh, leads to overly hard counters.  Better to use something like 10% or even 25% and if a ship becomes too fragile as a result then buff the health.

[eRe4s3r]

I can understand why no random chance but if you change the min dmg soak to 25% or there abouts that would allow for less harsh counters and thus pretty much fix that indeed. So yeah

Indeed 5% is pretty drastic though. Theres a huge difference between 25% = 1/4 vs 5% = 1/20 (translation - ships needed to do 100% damage to 1 ship in one salvo when 1 ship only does that percentage of damage). As i said, 5 % makes sense in ship vs ship - but you never only face 1 ship ;P 5% can quickly spiral to a required counter that is impossible to procure due to ship caps.

not much difference between 25 and 33 percent but i wouldn't go below 20% , i think 1:5 (20%) is already a very hard counter imo and maybe even too hard. But then again there ought to be some challenge ;p