Fleet Ship vs Starship general balance discussion

[x4000]

Yes, this could make it so that in some cases the guardians were working as-intended, and other times they are rapid-firing death machines that absolutely obliterate the fleet ships when they shouldn't be.  So that could be why some folks feel strongly one way, and others another.

[Winter Born]

Of potentially devastating note, exasperated by the guardian's heavy firepower:

I just realized what this is: it's for multi-shot ships, as soon as any shot misses their timer gets reset. This is making multi-shot ships vastly overpowered right now, for example with this. I'll have to make it so that it's percentage based or something along those lines.

Could this mean that guardians were doing incredible amounts of damage because one of their shots 'missed'? Quite possibly.

Dang where did X4000 comment come from?

[x4000]

That was in here: http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1288

[Lancefighter]

came across it in my usual forum/mantis/changelog trawling

[orzelek]

That fix for multi-shot will nerf all turrets... MLRS will get most of the stick but all other can feel it too - remember all of them have x3 shots..

Can we get some more love for them - some hp maybe ( basic turret needs a buff anyway so I'm going to mantis it).

[x4000]

I doubt the effect will be as severe as all that.  We'll see how things look as time goes on, but ships intentionally avoid overkill when possible, anyway.  Mostly this would only nerf very long-range ships with slow attacks, as those get counted as snipers and thus shorter-ranged closer ships will kill the ships before the shots arrive.  I doubt it will be too severe for most things.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, ships generally avoid overkill pretty well where there are non-overkill targets are available, but one of the big repeated player requests was things going for overkill targets when nothing else was around, to avoid a large blob just waiting for some shot to finish off that raid starship currently banging on your command station, etc.  That change was made months ago.  But then there were problems with turret balls and whatnot all triggering their reload cycle when a couple fighters came through (as they always do at the start of a wave), causing a substantial loss in alpha-burst dps, which is pretty significant when a fair percentage of those engagements are decided (not ended, but decided) within 2 or 3 reload cycles.  So I put in the overkill-refund logic to just be "nicer" and avoid motivating low-power-micro on turret grids, etc.

Like I said in the mantis thread, it's better to have this effective-nerf to turrets than to keep having asymptotically-powerful artillery guardians and fortresses, etc.

[lanstro]

I suggest that starships should be made a bit more expensive and take a bit longer to build, but only moderately so (+50% in costs or so, and so a corresponding +50% in build time).  They seem too accessible right now for how good they are.

Secondly, still on the accessabilty, it seems anomalous that so many mark I starships are unlocked at the start for free: would've thought light starships, scout starships and bomber starships would be enough (equivalent of scouts and the 3 triangle fleet ships), and players should have to spend knowledge to buy the rest.  In particular, leech starships, even at mark 1, seem far too good to get just for free. 

[keith.lamothe]

The nice thing about having the mkIs free is that people actually try them.  Many people would love leech starships if they only tried them, but never did because they didn't want to spend that much knowledge sight-unseen.

Of course, they should just save, unlock it, try it, and revert to the save if it really doesn't work out, but psychologically speaking people just don't do that, and tend to not explore a lot of their options, cutting down on both their fun and and their awareness of their tactical options.

That said, it seems like some nerfs to the mkI starships to compensate for the knowledge-free aspect wouldn't be out of order, and would help the mkI fleet-ships compare better against them.

On the other hand, it's not necessary that everything be equally useful, since the player is presented with several strong motivations to "do both", so to speak.  Currently things are skewed towards being able to "just do starships", and that needs attention.

[x4000]

That said, it seems like some nerfs to the mkI starships to compensate for the knowledge-free aspect wouldn't be out of order, and would help the mkI fleet-ships compare better against them.

I'm not in favor of this at all, as then it's not representative of the other higher-mark starships.  A single mark I starship should be worth quite a lot of fleet ships, perhaps the entire cap of a single other fleet ship type, but at the same time they shouldn't be able to work on their own.

Basically, the question of "which is preferred" should ultimately be irrelevant.  The AI should be tough enough on its planets that you have no hope if you don't build all the starships plus all the fleet ships you can.  Trying to choose one or the other should be like trying to choose infantry or cavalry in terrestrial RTS games: in some cases you can get away with it, but when you can you're not really being challenged to your fullest so it's not exactly a true test of it.

On the other hand, it's not necessary that everything be equally useful, since the player is presented with several strong motivations to "do both", so to speak.  Currently things are skewed towards being able to "just do starships", and that needs attention.

I'm honestly not sure that it's "just do starships" except in a few cases, such as things for taking down heavy defenses (forcefields, etc).  In those cases, at the moment the siege starships and bomber starships definitely outstrip their smaller bomber counterparts.  And you know what?  I think I'm okay with that, for the moment.  In a perfect world you'd need both, but the bomber/siege ships feel cool and seem better than managing hundreds of smaller bombers.  Not that I want to keep it that way forever, but I don't think of it as an egregious wrong situation that we have to leap on to correct immediately.

We'll have to see how it all shakes out, I know the balance is not perfect or even close right now, but starships should feel... big.  When they don't feel big, they might as well just be a few fleet ships.  Possibly starships are simply way too cheap or something along those lines -- perhaps they need to be 5x or more expensive across the board, so that the fleet ships are more attractive for cost reasons.  That would also make starships take 5x longer to produce, as the burn rate of starship constructors is the constant.

I guess that's basically what lanstro and others were saying, in the end.  And... yeah, I can see that.  I think I'll try something along those lines.  In combat, starships feel about right to me, but their cost-to-benefit ratio at production time might be out of whack, and I haven't been focused on that part as much.

[keith.lamothe]

I personally don't think the starships need any nerfing; I love starships, and I actually enjoy playing with just starships.  But the fact that said is possible (when also using the freebie mkI fleet ships, and a bit of ingenuity) is counter to your stated goal

And yea, it's not like this needs immediate pouncing, I didn't mean to imply that.  But having this discussion going and hopefully matured to the consensus-point by the time we hit next week would be helpful to have time to implement, test, and iterate on whatever changes are made.

[x4000]

I gotcha.  What I've done at this point is put in the 5x cost increase, and we'll see what people think of that.  Starships are then just as awesome, but it puts more stress on the player economy and makes their ROI lower.  We'll adjust from here, of course, as the current implementation may simply be too much.

[Lancefighter]

erm.

you did WHAT?!

[keith.lamothe]

We have an internal checklist for estimating the success of a balance change.  Checkbox #1 is labeled "Player Rage".  Normally we don't get to check it before the change is released



... I am kidding about the checklist

[x4000]

...Maybe just 2x.

But now I have your attention.