Author Topic: The lament of low caps:  (Read 1830 times)

Offline chemical_art

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The lament of low caps:
« on: April 18, 2012, 12:56:31 am »
Low caps are great ok. Low caps and ultra low caps. They let me have oodles of extra ships without killing my computer. But there is a game mechanic that suffers unfairly from them.

Fusion cutters.

Right now I want to play my dream game. I want to have enclaves and cutlasses and vampires running around zerging everything. But I can't! Why?

Because on low and ultra low caps, the arbitrary 1mil health limit gimps them. Ultra-low especially. The craft are useless to over 75% of the ai units toward middle game. Not fun!

Please devs, look into this. I miss my vampires.
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Offline Huaojozu

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2012, 02:51:24 am »
I feel like Ultra-Low needs a lot of rebalancing. From what I have noticed, Starship caps do not scale (making them much more useful), Spire Blade Spawner caps do not scale and lots of other things function a lot differently - Botnet Golem still insta-kills and converts 50 ships per 2 sec salvo with the main difference that 50 ships may now be half of the opposing fleet instead of a tenth. Martyrs still have the same amount of Tractor Beams and I'm sure there are others I have missed (like the Fusion Cutter problem).

Offline zoutzakje

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2012, 04:25:05 am »
ultra low caps was only recently added to the game, just to give some of the older CPU's a break, as some people were getting insane battles even on low caps. It has not been properly balanced yet no, but it's still perfectly playable. The unbalancedness only really has some impact on the high dif games, but a 7/7 low caps or ultra low caps game shouldn't matter much.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2012, 09:26:45 am »
Just for some extra background for new readers, this topic was touched on in this post (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10240.msg99732.html#msg99732) and the following posts

Offline TechSY730

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2012, 09:29:23 am »
Yea, lots of things mechanics to be revaluated whether they should scale or not. I know that number of tractor beams on non-scaling units are on the list of things that they are planning to scale, but also a bunch of other things should probably be looked at too. (Like for example, number of shots per salvo on non-scaling ships. Take the botnet golem as a good example why this may be a good idea)

Also, my suggestion from the previous thread

With the current state of affairs, I don't think the arbitrary system of health is needed.

Shredders, as pointed out, do not farm anymore because of the expodential costs for caps. Farming is still possible, but its farming in general, not being tied the hp directly.

For the vampires, I think high health has the opposite. When the vampire attacks a small health unit, it kills it quickly, reducing fleet battle dps more rapidly and allowing the masses of vampires to concentrate attacks on a smaller group. There is no real lag time in team fights because all the targets are bunched anyway. When it whacks larger targets it takes longer for the vampires to concentrate fire and attack (if not microed). The only theory I can see to why you'd ban the vampires is because you'd have them be able to attack the same target 30x before it dies as opposed to 10x, but as I pointed out earlier in large fleet battles it doesn't take more then half a second before its attacking at full speed again.

In conculsion, I feel like the limit nerfs shredders and vampires a little on normal and above, and really hard for us who use low caps or worst. If the limit was determined to still be needed, it should be on the ships themselves and not on their given health. So starships and buildings and super low cap fleetships could be banned, but others are left alone.

Agreed, keep the split, but hand out fusion cutter immunity to only things that need it, instead of automatically handing it out based on health.
Things that should probably keep fusion cutter immunity are ships with the "all attackers get a Nx bonus against me" (this mechanic wrecks havoc with "effect based on damage amount I inflicted" mechanics. Z mirrors + viral shredders lead to some pretty amusing oddities before Z mirrors were given fusion cutter immunity), things that are already supposed to be immune to melee attacks, and command stations that currently have this immunity (military, human home, and AI home command stations)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2012, 10:33:55 am »
Fusion cutters.
I already put it on my list a day or so ago when I saw you mention it in the poll thread :)
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Offline chemical_art

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Re: The lament of low caps:
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2012, 12:25:28 am »
Fusion cutters.
I already put it on my list a day or so ago when I saw you mention it in the poll thread :)

*swoon*

*so happy*

*so tired from 14 hour day of work*
Life is short. Have fun.