Is the more Open Playground feel of 3.0 making a comeback?

[chemical_art]

I'm going to go on a limb.

I don't like armor. I don't like ships meant to counter it. I don't like how it still doesn't change strategies much.  I don't like the answer to high armor is always just more firepower.

I'd be tempted to say split the bomber role to two ships: anti structure and anti armor. Then make armor not simply a barrier to be overpowered somehow. Decrease the minimal damage to hp by armor to 10%...

but the idea sounds dead on arrival since I'm breaking the sacred triangle of ships. It's nice. It's good. I'm sure there is another way to make armor useful...if you can make it so armor gets stronger as it is simply tried to be overpowered (via a timer delay similar to how repairs can't be used?)...but that sounds CPU intensive and also not good.

But anyway I find myself usually discounting the effects of armor more or less. Since the answer is inevitably more ships it just feels...clunky...a trip to ruin the homogenous triangle fleetships. The zenith and fallen spire can offer options to counter armor but base player must rely on raiders and snipers.  So then it just really encourages starships and defense or expansions, which is ok I guess since I have spire tools which cut trough everything with ease. Again, the solution to high armor is not anti armor, its anti-everything, since even "armored' fleetships don't feel armored enough to make an impact.


I know changing it is time consuming. And it isn't really broke. So it's just an issue to put to the side. I'd rather have this delightful wrinkle then to simply slice it away and leave nothing in its place. Those bloody motherships does make armor matter...i wished it was more impactful overall.

[TechSY730]

...Lots of text...

Now that you mention it, you do bring up a good point. The average armor rating (if you exlude the armored forcefields and the mother ship, and ships that are not supposed to have a decent armor rating) is quite possibly an order of magnitude lower than the average firepower. If this is true, you're right, this does make armor barely do its job.

That order of magnitude thing may hold true even if you only average this armor rating of ships designed to be about a good armor rating, which would make those types of ships near useless.

[zoutzakje]

I can find a use for almost any bonus ship actually. Whenever I start a new game I usually pick one of my 2 favs (blade spawners or bulletproofs), but if they aren't available on the map seed, I'll go with something else and learn to play with it. Can't remember coming across one that was useless.
I don't know how it was in the 3.0 days (started during 4.20 or something), but I'm amazed at how much freedom you have in this game. from the creation screen you can custumize so many different things that you want or don't want in the game. And in the game itself you can try out so many different strategies and ways of playing the game. Anything that makes the game strategically more interestin is good IMHO, which is why i love the core shield generators and AI eyes.
I don't think that there are a lot ships that currently need rebalancing. Most aspects of the game are good as they are now. Just waiting for more content P:

[NickAragua]

It's less of an "Open Playground" and more a "Series of Interlinked Puzzles". Most of the puzzles can be solved via Raid Starship (i.e. bust open all the guard posts to get the locals pissed, kill them as they trickle into your systems, then send in a mop up force). Sometimes though, you have little kinks - Spire Shield guard post + AI Eye, Raid Engine next door, Counterattack posts, Fortresses/SuperForts. And then there's the global puzzle of "how do I keep AI progress down", which can be solved by a number of mechanics.

As for armor, I also pretty much ignore it when making tactical considerations. Usually, the AI forces are too well-mixed and not well-enough armored to justify taking the time to separate anti-armor ships from my forces.

But, you know what, it's a hell of a lot better than that "shields" mechanic that was floating around way back when. It was "hilarious" when none of my ships or turrets could shoot at the MKIV enemy ships that would show up, because their "shields" reduced my forces' effective targeting range to 0. At least now, my guys can pretend to shoot at the AI ships.

Edit: Hey, anyone remember those horrible "wave multipliers"? Like the Ion Cannon, the Zenith Power Generator and the Golems had? Man, good thing those are gone, 'cause otherwise, I'd never even consider keeping an Ion Cannon alive or capturing a planet with a golem on it.

Focus: There's a lot more variety now than there was in 3.0. That means there are more things to get in the way of how a given player wants to play (again, e.g.: Eyes, Spire Shield Guard Posts, Raid Engines / Alarm Posts/ Counterattack Posts, Core Shield Generators). Sorry the AI isn't just letting you fellas steam roll.

Full Disclosure: I've yet to win a game.

[Nalgas]

As for armor, I also pretty much ignore it when making tactical considerations. Usually, the AI forces are too well-mixed and not well-enough armored to justify taking the time to separate anti-armor ships from my forces.

But, you know what, it's a hell of a lot better than that "shields" mechanic that was floating around way back when. It was "hilarious" when none of my ships or turrets could shoot at the MKIV enemy ships that would show up, because their "shields" reduced my forces' effective targeting range to 0. At least now, my guys can pretend to shoot at the AI ships.

This is kind of what I've been thinking while looking at some of the posts in this thread and remembering how stuff used to work way back in the day.  In most situations, it's not not really possible to take armor into account very well or worth it, unless you're going up against a single ship type in a wave or against a single large target, so it largely gets ignored (as a separate stat, that is; it does still contribute to the overall durability of some ships a little sometimes, but not in a way you have to be consciously aware of).

Anyone who played with its predecessor stat, shields, and hasn't forgotten how it worked like I nearly had until I read some old threads recently linked from the Godlike 10/10 thread about doing it successfully back in the 3.0 days, knows just how incredibly complex it could be to deal with and overly fiddly it made things.  Even if armor isn't terribly exciting or hugely impactful most of the time, you can estimate its effects in your head rather easily if you can do basic mental arithmetic, while shields...no one other than the game code itself could figure out the effect of shields on any given fight.  They changed the probability of your shots hitting the target at all, and it varied with distance.  I think damage done also varied based on the distance your ship was firing from compared to its rated effective firing range, if I'm remembering right, so with those two things combined, good luck figuring out what's going to happen.  It also made some things quite over/underpowered in some situations, kind of brokenly so, because they had a disproportionately high chance to hit or avoid being hit.  In that sense, be glad for armor.

There's a lot more variety now than there was in 3.0. That means there are more things to get in the way of how a given player wants to play (again, e.g.: Eyes, Spire Shield Guard Posts, Raid Engines / Alarm Posts/ Counterattack Posts, Core Shield Generators). Sorry the AI isn't just letting you fellas steam roll.

There are a couple ways to look at it.  There's a lot more variety in terms of what's in the game, which means that at least in some ways it can require handling those things differently instead of just sending the Blob of Doom marching across the galaxy (although that still works pretty well for most things).  On the other hand, between that stuff and the changes to knowledge raiding and deep strikes and whatnot, there has at times been kind of a "THOU SHALT NOT PLAY AI WAR QUICKLY WITH LOW AIP" feel to some of the updates.  It hasn't bothered me personally for the most part, because that's not how I tend to play (aside from the deep strike stuff, which was the final nail in my Raid Starships' coffin), but it sure did upset a lot of people at the time.  Being able to turn CSGs back off definitely helped with that, though.

[Fleet]

Am I the only one who really liked the bonus ship usefulness / balance of TZR days with the old combat system? I've never felt the same way since. I just had a "feel" for what ships would do well against others, and I had that really useful VS % statistic at a quick glance.

Now, its just memorizing hull bonuses and shot types.

It seemed that every ship had a personality. Not so anymore.

P.S. Love the game to this day, still an avid player.

[TechSY730]

Am I the only one who really liked the bonus ship usefulness / balance of TZR days with the old combat system? I've never felt the same way since. I just had a "feel" for what ships would do well against others, and I had that really useful VS % statistic at a quick glance.

Now, its just memorizing hull bonuses and shot types.

It seemed that every ship had a personality. Not so anymore.

P.S. Love the game to this day, still an avid player.

Yea, I miss the strong vs, weak vs summary thing.

How about bringing it back, but with a variation to make it match the current battle model and statistics tracking.
For all fleet ship types, the Strong vs. could show the top 5 fleet ships that it beats with the widest margin in a ship cap vs. ship cap fight (pulled from the reference page)
Similarly, the Weak vs. could show top 5 fleet ships that beat it with the widest margin (again, pulled from the reference page)

If a fleet ship type does not have 5 things it can counter or 5 things that can counter it, then that is a good sign of a balance problem. As such, this would also make it easier to spot under-performing or over-performing fleet ship types.

Of course, things with weird damage mechanics like spire maws and mechanics that can change the battle like vampires and viral shredders won't be properly represented, not sure what to do about that.

This way, we can still get a feel for what the ship can do at a glance, but not have to rely on the flaky, hard to maintain "simulation statistics" of the 3.0 era. And as all the information presented can also be gotten from the reference page, we can cross check it ourselves and get more information if we want it. Also limiting it to the top and bottom 5 matchups only would reduce the amount of information clutter.

Hmm, sounds like Mantis time.

[Nalgas]

I had that really useful VS % statistic at a quick glance.

I'm pretty sure the accuracy of the numbers displayed in that depended heavily on the actual positioning of the ships, thanks to how shields and range worked and how complex they were, so especially when you had mixed fleets (i.e. nearly always) it was full of lies and half-truths.

I think part of why it seemed more like every ship was unique before compared to now was that it was a lot easier to make them feel different from each other when there were half as many of them.  It's also harder to have a "feel" of what will do well against everything else or cram in a list of everything a ship is strong/weak against in their tooltip when there are so many more ship types running around to be aware of at once.

[TechSY730]

I had that really useful VS % statistic at a quick glance.

I'm pretty sure the accuracy of the numbers displayed in that depended heavily on the actual positioning of the ships, thanks to how shields and range worked and how complex they were, so especially when you had mixed fleets (i.e. nearly always) it was full of lies and half-truths.

Actually, now that the damage mechanics are far more deterministic, the display should be a little more accurate than it would be back then. Still, even the reference page poorly represents "in a mixed fleet" performance and my previously mentioned "oddly behaving" ships. But at least it was something.

[Nalgas]

I had that really useful VS % statistic at a quick glance.

I'm pretty sure the accuracy of the numbers displayed in that depended heavily on the actual positioning of the ships, thanks to how shields and range worked and how complex they were, so especially when you had mixed fleets (i.e. nearly always) it was full of lies and half-truths.

Actually, now that the damage mechanics are far more deterministic, the display should be a little more accurate than it would be back then. Still, even the reference page poorly represents "in a mixed fleet" performance and my previously mentioned "oddly behaving" ships. But at least it was something.

Yeah, it would be more useful now, because the way hit/damage calculation works isn't such a nightmare, except it's also dramatically less necessary in the first place.  It was required before, because ships had specific damage bonuses against other ship types, so you needed some sort of display like that, or else you had no way of knowing what they would do to each other.  That was the only way of finding that information back then, and it was kind of messy.

With the introduction of hull types and removal of individual ship type multipliers, that got simplified enormously, and I don't really find myself missing that big wall of poorly formatted text cluttering things up.  Most of the time "I have a big bonus against them, and they don't against me" or whatever is plenty of info these days, and if you really need more, you can pull up the reference.

[zebramatt]

Every time this discussion about the strong-vs.-weak thing comes up I'm left wondering if I'm the only person who actually now finds it both easier and more rewarding to diagnose which ships are good against which ships.

Easier because I can actually rely on my assessment of "this ship is strong against that ship's hull" - as opposed to "ah, this ship is strong against that ship... hm... it doesn't seem to be doing much against it... perhaps another ship is better... but which one... there are so many... should I just try them ALL...ah, sod it, I'll just use X general purpose ship - or build more!"

More rewarding because now when something new pops up and wrecks my stuff, it feels like a problem which needs solving through a little reliable research; as opposed to the game either simply telling me what to use or blatantly lying to me about it (see above).

[NickAragua]

Every time this discussion about the strong-vs.-weak thing comes up I'm left wondering if I'm the only person who actually now finds it both easier and more rewarding to diagnose which ships are good against which ships.

Easier because I can actually rely on my assessment of "this ship is strong against that ship's hull" - as opposed to "ah, this ship is strong against that ship... hm... it doesn't seem to be doing much against it... perhaps another ship is better... but which one... there are so many... should I just try them ALL...ah, sod it, I'll just use X general purpose ship - or build more!"

More rewarding because now when something new pops up and wrecks my stuff, it feels like a problem which needs solving through a little reliable research; as opposed to the game either simply telling me what to use or blatantly lying to me about it (see above).

Nope, you're not alone. I like the 'armor type' system better too. The old system was very unreliable, and given the number of ship types in existence, I don't see how it would be possible to present the info as was presented back then without making the ship data popup enormous.

[TechSY730]

I would agree. The armor system is unquestionably superior compared to the old shield and ship vs. ship level bonuses of before.
However, the "new" strong vs. and weak vs. would be using the same data as the data in the reference tab; it would only be misleading if the reference tab is misleading (which may be the case actually)

[Cyborg]

Maybe it's just the inconvenience of trying to find your ship in the reference tab, which has some unintuitive labels in and of itself?

The move to unity probably did alienate a lot of players. The only way you could guess is by looking at the upgrades/achievements. But the gamble was on growth; attracting new players, especially from the Mac "gamer" ( ) contingent.

[Nalgas]

But the gamble was on growth; attracting new players, especially from the Mac "gamer" ( ) contingent.

Heh.  You laugh, but at any given time probably half the group I play with is happy to be using the Mac version instead of having to reboot into Windows, run it in Parallels, or deal with the series of hacks that getting it working in VirtualBox involved.  Rather bizarrely, we played L4D2 last night, and I was the only one running the Windows version.  If you'd asked me a few years ago if I'd thought that would ever happen, I would've been laughing, too, and I didn't even have a Windows box at the time.