Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)

[Shrugging Khan]

I've always been fond of the GAMEPLAY OVER GRAPHICS! maxim 

[c4sc4]

I'd love to do this, but we'd probably have to make it a starship instead of a bonus ship type, because modular stuff involves a lot more UI work for the player (at least getting the queues set up).  And removing a bonus ship type from the game isn't a great idea for a variety of code reasons, so basically it would be "add tank starship, rename tank bonus ship to bomber-that-kills-bombers or whatever".  But for that, I'm a little lacking in art support for the starship graphics

Well, what if the player didn't get to choose the modules for the ship? That way you wouldn't need to setup a UI and players don't have to manage the queries, the ship just builds them when it is built, the players don't know its modular. I guess that would take out the fun of it being modular but it would make it more useful.

[Bognor]

If Keith is willing to listen to our concerns, we should at least take the time to check that our intuitions are borne out by the stats.  To that end, here's an epic spreadsheet showing cap DPS, health, cost, and a bunch of other stats for all Mark I fleet ships plus most turrets, starships, and a couple of others.  It's based on a table Keith uploaded earlier, which I've updated and expanded, and converted into what I hope is a user-friendly spreadsheet (Excel only, sorry).

Edit: Added a more accurate and up-to-date for 5.27 version.  I've left the 5.26 version in as it has a little extra info about cap DPS.
Edit: Added a 5.031 version with tonnes more detail.  Also noticed I'd been omiting a digit in the version numbers 

[Hearteater]

I have to ask: what would be enough durability?  The things have 30M cap health.  The only other fleet ship that high is shield bearers (zenith mirrors technically have 150M, but that's because they take 10x damage from everything).  Next down, only 7 fleet ship types have ~20M.  Tigers have ~17M.  Then there are 11 types with ~15M, and from then on it's ~10M (17 types) or ~5M (17 types). (edit: some of those have changed, the numbers I had are from 5.024, but it's pretty close)

As for the armor; I do agree that the mechanic needs attention, but 750 armor vs a mkI fighter's 1200 attack power (on high caps) is a 62.5% damage reduction (edit: nvm, forgot the fighter has 750 armor piercing, heh).  I don't have the per-shot strength of each type in front of me, I'll try to remember to add that to my balance export.  Anyway, that armor, on top of having 2x/3x/6x as much hp as most other fleet ships in the game... if that's not durability, is any fleet ship durable?

All that said, sure, they could use a dps boost.

Compare them to Bulletproof Fighters.  It is tough to have a role of "tank" when some ships have flat-out immunity.  In any game you have Armor Ships, Bulletproof Fighters would be better.  I'd probably go with the following changes:

1) Increase reload time to 9 seconds (from 3 seconds) and increase their attack damage to bring their DPS up to around 120% of what it is presently.  As a durable ship long reload times are less of a problem and they give it a better alpha strike assaulting a warp point.
2) Up their engine damage, which is really needed because of their slow speed.  It doesn't need to be super great, just enough to slow targets down so they can catch them.
3a) Ideally make them immune to armor piercing.  This is much better than just upping their armor.  You have to find it funny that the basic Fighter pierces all the Armor Ship's armor.
3b) If you have to up their armor, their health needs to come down some (probably about a third).  Any armor over around 3k will have them capping mitigation against most fleet ships.  You could probably go to 5k/mark.  But I still think armor piercing immunity would be more interesting.

[Bognor]

Armor ships: I don't see why anyone's arguing that these should have their DPS increased.  Presently their base cap DPS is almost identical to that of missile frigates', and 20% higher than bombers'.  After hull bonuses are applied, armor ships have higher cap DPS than all but 12 bonus fleet ships, excluding those that kill or injure themselves as they attack (and ignoring bonuses for area attacks etc).  And it's not like it's hard to find Light, UltraLight, Swarmer, Structural, or Turret hulls for them to target.  If anything I'd have thought a defensive-themed ship would have lower DPS.  If people aren't getting enough damage out of their armor ships, might it be because they're not microing them enough to account for their short range?  Note that bringing them to the front of a battle also makes the most of their durability.

Space tanks:  With their low speed, I actually see these as primarily defensive ships, given they make excellent counters to waves of bombers or frigates, which tend to be among the more dangerous waves in most games.  Secondarily they of course take down fortresses with impunity.

Anyway, if armor ships or space tanks are to be buffed, I'd rather the buff affect their durability than their DPS, thus enhancing rather than diminishing their distinctiveness.

[PokerChen]

To me, armor ships, space tanks, and several other default unlocks seem to be more a victim of creeping biggerism as the expansions came in... perhaps they aren't meant to be awe-inspiring unlocks - I don't know, should every possible unlock be equally powerful?

Anyway, I haven't been inclined to used either - just not my playstyle to have slow, lumbering critters. Haven't unlocked them from ARSs either.

While taking about their durability, distinctiveness and the overall armor discussion, it might be interesting to implement one of the more exotic suggestions to these ships and see how that works out currently. Would it be worth trialling, say, Armour*Mk or logarithmic functions in our two ship-types?

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9884.msg93078.html

EDIT: By the way, since vorticular cutlasses have increased speed now - vampire claws will need to be faster than that to suit its current vessel hunting role. The Zenith-version that reproduce like rabbits, maybe not yet... it's more a defensive iteration. ^^

[Martyn van Buren]

Gosh please don't make a modular fleet ship; that would be chaos in my hands.

EDIT: I mean the bad kind of chaos where you have 60 ships flying around with no modules and the remaining ten fighting at melee range because I forgot I put the long-range module on them.

[Shrugging Khan]

How about giving them standard-issue modules by default (whatever seems the most balanced)? That way, players could spend resources to refit them with whatever they like, and wouldn't have to worry about underequipped tanks. Although half-finished tanks DID see service, now and then...historically speaking.

Otherwise, for the fleet ship approach, I also like the idea of keeping the modules hidden.

[Philature]

I remembrer once getting both armor and spacetank unlock and totaly went for it, the created fleet was very tough and with enough support and repair lasted a very long time on the battlefield.

I would have to agree with Bognor:

Anyway, if armor ships or space tanks are to be buffed, I'd rather the buff affect their durability than their DPS, thus enhancing rather than diminishing their distinctiveness.

any changes should focus on these ships strength, increasing their DPS would just make them more average and hence not interesting by definition. Both ship need to stand out for being really and insanely tough, living up to their name of Amour and Tank.

I really thing the Vampire Claw should be next to get an upgrade. Following the Vorticular Cutlass upgrade it make them sad little vampire. However, they have the possibilities of being interesting because of the theme and mechanic. Increasing their lifesteal and buffing their speed to match (or at least approach) the cutlass would go a long way to make these guys dangerous.

The spider are not horrible but not the best either; not my favourite ship and I never got the mkIII (which may prove the point of them being underpowered) but I often end up using the mkI and mkII version in defense to avoid any serious spillover passing my defensive system.

The teleport battlestation used in defense are also great in that regard and can clean up any ennemy ship lucky enough to pass my defense (such as cloaking ship or stuff immune to tractor beam and mine) but don't leave them in a system that will take a direct attack they will die quickly as they'll be the first to get in the action (they need to be micromanage a bit and keep in reserve).

[keith.lamothe]

Armor ships: I don't see why anyone's arguing that these should have their DPS increased.  Presently their base cap DPS is almost identical to that of missile frigates', and 20% higher than bombers'.  After hull bonuses are applied, armor ships have higher cap DPS than all but 12 bonus fleet ships, excluding those that kill or injure themselves as they attack (and ignoring bonuses for area attacks etc).

I appreciate the analysis (welcome to the forums, btw ) but it looks like there's something different in our numbers; I'm seeing 21 types (excluding nanoswarm/autobomb/miniram) as superior max-dps (in ascending order of how much higher) :

ZenithElectricBomber
Sniper
ElectricShuttle
Raider
TeleportRaider
Infiltrator
EyeBot
VampireClaw
Bomber
EtherJet
Spider
AcidSprayer
YounglingVulture
MissileShip
Fighter
MicroFighter
BulletproofFighter
ZenithBeamFrigate
ImpulseReactionEmitter
ZenithPolarizer
VorticularCutlass

Maybe it's from the aoe and other special stuff.

And yes, the base-dps is right there with the missile frigate, but the missile frigate has x6 bonuses, the armor ship has x4.  Considering bonus types are supposed to be 1.3x - 1.5x as good as triangle types, the armor ship would need some pretty serious advantage to compensate.  It has 2x as much hp and 5x as much armor, costs half as much cap-m+c , is slightly faster, costs slightly less cap-energy, but has only 34% of the range.  It also does a little engine damage but I'm not really wanting to emphasize that: serious ED should be the domain of only a few ship types.

The thing that sticks out most to me is the combination of low speed and low range.

[TechSY730]

For the polarizers,

As mentioned in the armor thread,

Some quick numbers, more to follow on Keith's alternate armor idea.

Average Armor of Fleet Ships: 238.4
Median Armor of Fleet Ships: 150
Maximum Armor of any Fleet Ship: 750
Fleet Ships with no Armor: 20 of 56 (35%)

So, given this information, what is the DPS of the polarizers vs. a target with 238.4 armor, and 150 armor? (I am assuming these values are for high caps, so thus the high cap damage of polarizers should be used.)

How is this compared to the average attack?

Average  Damage per Attack of Fleet Ships (excluding suicide ships*): 6,518
Median  Damage per Attack of Fleet Ships (excluding suicide ships*): 2,000

* Mini-ram, Autobomb and Nanaswarm

It should be noted that this information does not really show the whole truth to polarizer effectiveness in an arbitrary game. Three reasons:
1. Not all fleet ships in guaranteed to be in every game, so the overall average will rarely come into play exactly (even if it does come into play in the expected value sense)
2. Targetting logic is smart enough for polarizers to favor targets with higher armor
3. These figures are only for fleet ships. It ignores things like starships and golems, where polarizers begin to shine.

However, this should give us a start to the "average effectiveness" of polarizers.

[keith.lamothe]

So, given this information, what is the DPS of the polarizers vs. a target with 238.4 armor

238.4^(1/2)~=15.4 , or 72.4k cap-dps

and 150 armor?

150^(1/2)~=12.3, or 57.8k cap-dps.

How is this compared to the average attack?

Fleet ship non-bonus cap-dps generally ranges from 30k (for stuff with 10x bonuses) to 100k (for stuff with no bonuses).

[TechSY730]

So, given this information, what is the DPS of the polarizers vs. a target with 238.4 armor

238.4^(1/2)~=15.4 , or 72.4k cap-dps

and 150 armor?

150^(1/2)~=12.3, or 57.8k cap-dps.

How is this compared to the average attack?

Fleet ship non-bonus cap-dps generally ranges from 30k (for stuff with 10x bonuses) to 100k (for stuff with no bonuses).

That's actually pretty good, considering that polarizers are meant to counter high armor targets, which are generally not fleet ships. (Assuming no hull bonuses. Do polarizers get hull bonuses?)
Still, there is the fact that about 30% of the time vs. fleet ships, they will be doing a paltry 80 or so damage (high caps)

[keith.lamothe]

Still, there is the fact that about 30% of the time vs. fleet ships, they will be doing a paltry 80 or so damage (high caps)

I think it's more like 170, because their minimum multiplier is 4.  So about 18.8k cap-dps, which is very low; this was thought to be justified because max cap-dps is well above the normal max of 300k (at 470k, it is second only to the cutlass among fleet ships), so the min cap-dps could be below the normal minimum of 30k.

[TechSY730]

Still, there is the fact that about 30% of the time vs. fleet ships, they will be doing a paltry 80 or so damage (high caps)

I think it's more like 170, because their minimum multiplier is 4.

That's not what the in game tooltip tells me. The in game "will do this much damage to what I am hovering over" tool-tip gives me the base damage (the 60 or whatever) on a target with 0 armor.
Wait, if the minimum multiplier is four, does the in game UI report the internal base damage or 4 * internal base damage in the base weapon damage field? If it is the latter, then the tool-tip thing is correct.