Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)

[superking]

next on the need love list:

higher MK engineers
autobombs

and imo
anti-armour ships (8k hp? On one of the larger fleet ships? but whhyyyyy?!)

[x4000]

next on the need love list:

higher MK engineers
autobombs

and imo
anti-armour ships (8k hp? On one of the larger fleet ships? but whhyyyyy?!)

Good points.  I think you'll be happy with the next prerelease.

On another note, I'm running the simulation logic to recalculate all the strong/weak values now that there have been so many balance shifts -- and my goodness, but the simulation runs faster now.  All those internal optimizations are really showing off here, it's running 2-4x as fast as it was previously.  Nice work, Keith -- most of that was you!

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I was kidding, and I think it's good to push the envelope a bit and make use of those gains.

One thing I had thought of at one point for low-end hardware would be an option to, for example, halve all ship caps (and probably adjust select stats in proportion) and reinforcement sizes and whatnot... probably a bridge-too-far to balance at this stage in the game, and certainly not something I'd want to do as a non-option, but it seemed like an idea for folks that want to run this on a netbook or something like that.

So when I saw you increasing the caps it was kind of like "nonono! wrong way!"

[ShadowOTE]

Heck, throw in an option to double ship caps while you're at it!

[keith.lamothe]

I think we call that starting with multiple homeworlds

[x4000]

Could be interesting, yes, Keith.  I have been thinking about some sort of low option like that for the game, myself, for a while.  I just never have done it because of the inherent complexity of re-balancing it, as you say.  And honestly I am not aware of many people who want to play this game but can't because of system requirements.  So my goal is more to optimize the experience that we have, on the general range of hardware that we expect, versus trying to go too much off the path.

[keith.lamothe]

Right, I agree.  Much better to focus effort on the trunk, rather than make faster branches.  The system requirements themselves are really low for a modern game, as-is, my main interest performance-wise is in making large mid-and-endgame battles run silky-smooth to the extent possible.

[x4000]

my main interest performance-wise is in making large mid-and-endgame battles run silky-smooth to the extent possible.

Ditto.  Exactly.

[superking]

Heck, throw in an option to double ship caps while you're at it!

and for those packing gentlemanly rigs, 10x ship caps.
it'd be cool just to have a multiplier we can select, like from 0.1 to 10 (where 1 is current)

starting with multiple homeworlds isnt the same

@anti armour ship

because it has the size and speed of a bomber already, I would love to see these have similar high levels of shielding- then they would would be excellent ranged standoff units, that still disintergrate up close

[x4000]

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