Author Topic: Part Stats Balance  (Read 5690 times)

Offline chemical_art

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #30 on: September 17, 2013, 11:28:40 pm »
Played more tonight.

Not impressed with the magnitude of stat progression as rarity increases (at least early game)
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #31 on: September 17, 2013, 11:30:26 pm »
Played more tonight.

Not impressed with the magnitude of stat progression as rarity increases (at least early game)
Can you provide examples of rare+ parts that are unimpressive, and the common parts they are unimpressive when compared to?
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Offline Misery

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #32 on: September 21, 2013, 01:51:38 am »
Ok, more stats stuffs for ya.

Weapon items:  They seem to hit a wall as far as effectiveness goes.  I'm about halfway into the game, and.... these pretty much have hit the point of being worthless, as far as attack power goes.  They do not scale well at all.  And the problem with this is that enemy health is ballooning a bit out of control; 3000-4000 shields is pretty average on most enemies, with 2000 being a bit in the low range, and some enemies having 8000 to 11000. This isnt too bad, or it wouldnt be if weapon items did scale better, so I dont really think it's the enemy health that's the problem here.  Some weapons become entirely worthless (Basic lasers, machineguns, grenade launcher), and the Assault Exo has hit a point where it's only use is to finish off things that for whatever reason become immobile, such as CannonBots, and it takes a bazillion hits to do so. No amount of weapon-related equipment can fix this, the reason being that it's all percentage based, so you simply cannot increase the power of a low-attack weapon very much at all.  Those weapons are only decent for the earliest missions, and quickly hit a point where they're mostly useless, and they stay that way.

That's not to say that the weapons require a super-dramatic effect;  part of the idea of the enemy shield boost on higher difficulties is to make them take a bunch more hits, so they're more of a threat.  Them taking many hits is fine.  But the current weapon-part scaling is just too weak, specifically in that it outright seems to stop rising like that.  I've had to use lots and lots of mines, and virus the heck outta things in order to get through each mission, because I cant deal enough damage without those at all.  That's not too bad either, as Expert mode really should make the player use those things, but using them to the extreme that I've had to is a bit much, yet it's pretty much required to get through these missions.   Running out of ammo frequently.


Let's see... computer parts, hacking equipment is scaling badly as well.  It seems to hit a point of giving anywhere from 10-13 hacking skill, and then it just stops rising, while the points required to hack continues to go up. 

Sentries seem to be scaling kinda badly right now as well, particularly now that enemies are smarter about dealing with them.  The most that a sentry can generally do is vaguely delay approaching foes for a turn or two.   Mines, however, are scaling fine.  They require very careful use but can do some good damage if used right.  EDIT:  Sentry specific items also seem super-rare;  I've found only one the whole game so far.


Shield items are kinda funky as well, though suddenly I cant remember the specifics.  I do remember that Field Emitters in particular are kinda bad right now.


I still havent lost a mission yet though, aside from a Lion's Den that I did :D
« Last Edit: September 21, 2013, 01:53:59 am by Misery »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #33 on: September 21, 2013, 04:38:04 am »
@Misery:

Thanks, very helpful info :)  I'm not messing with stuff at the moment until the recently introduced bugs appear to have thoroughly settled down but I'll try to address this stuff soon.

On sentry rarity, I know what the problem is there and can fix that.  There's just only 2 variants of the part, compared to 4 or 5 for a lot of others.  But it's already in a weighted draw bag, I just have to assign weights :)  Though it's fine that sentries be more rare, such that a science lab is where to go for them.

On the +attack thing: is that the "+% attack on this specific weapon" stat, or the "+% attack on all your exo's weapons" stat?  Or both?  About where do they cap out?

On the +hacking thing, sounds like both that and the attack one are just hitting the 25-item-levels limit and ceasing to increase (though other effects on those items would continue to increase, if they had any).  What day of the game do you start noticing this?  Is it with common items, or only uncommon+?  Are you playing Meg?

Anyway, I can increase the per-effect cap above 25, though the exponential math gets... tricky way up there (as you've noticed with enemy health level, it's "explodential").  May be a good indication to just stop trying to do the automated-exponential thing for these and go for a more pre-defined progression for attack (hacking isn't really exponential, just probably needs a longer permitted progression).

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Offline Misery

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2013, 05:05:47 am »
The weapons bit, the main issue is with the specific-weapon-only stat; it makes sense that the "all weapons" one would increase very gradually.   The specific-weapon one tends to stop at right about 13%, and it's actually been stuck there for.... quite awhile.   I've got 25 days left currently, and am seeing level 14 items in the store, and they dont generally go higher than that for that stat.  And that level of damage increase is the same as some level 4 or 5 items that I have (which is why those havent been switched out).  I've got a green level 3 barrel that gives +14%, even.  Generally I'm using blue/purple items as much as possible though.

There are some parts that can go over that, those are generally the things that can be used in more than one slot type, which seem to scale up much differently.

Not using Meg, either.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2013, 05:10:15 am »
  I've got 25 days left currently, and am seeing level 14 items in the store, and they dont generally go higher than that for that stat.
Bear in mind that the level of an effect is not the level of the item.  A level 14 common item, for example, will generally have a total of 16 effect levels.  Theoretically the level of the item is the _sum_ of the levels of the its effects, though in practice there are always some extra effect levels due to some stat-jumpstarting done at the beginning of the game.  If it only has one effect that means a level 16 effect.  If it has a major prefix that would probably mean 5-6 levels for the prefix effect and 10-11 for the main effect.

If you'd like to see the level of each effect on the item (which would be helpful to me in this case), press F3 to toggle on debug output, and then mouseover the item (if it doesn't show up, move the mouse off and then back on).
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Offline Misery

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2013, 05:50:41 am »
Allright, if I look at it that way, the stuff I already have equipped is generally anywhere from 10-14 in total levels for the item, with a couple being down at 7 or 8.    The parts like amplifiers and such that go in many slot types seem to have higher total levels (not counting the ones for the slots it's not in), up closer to 20-ish, with the higher attack percentage;  the strongest of those that I've got gives +30%.

The stuff in the store currently is anywhere from 18-22.

Hope that helps a bit.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2013, 05:52:10 am »
Hmm, ok, sounds surprising actually.  So the stuff with the highest "+% to this specific weapon's attack" value is not showing a (25) next to that effect?  More like 14?  Same with the stuff with the highest +hacking?
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Offline Misery

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #38 on: September 21, 2013, 06:25:02 am »
Most of the +attack weapon parts, the 13% ones, are listing it as 2-4.  There's a couple that are up at 15-ish, around 10 levels on that.   The strongest effect is one of the amplifier type parts, with 19 levels for 30%.     It's almost like the game simply isnt generating weapon-only parts that go up very high on that stat, since  they've been right around that 13%, for the vast majority of those parts that I've seen throughout the game.

And that amplifier looks like it's going over 25 total levels?  It's got the +30 for 19, and then the non-slot-specific stats it gives are two stats that are each worth 5.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #39 on: September 21, 2013, 06:50:31 am »
Ahhhh, ok.  Sounds like the nano-rifle barrel isn't being picked very often, as I think that's the only dedicated +attack% part.  Very important for me to realize :)  And actually what may be more important is that there isn't an equivalent part that works for energy weapons.  Or is there?

Another thing going on there is that the +attack% stat's exponential growth just doesn't go up very fast early on compared to its 10% base.  Once it gets going, as you see, you get into the +30%s and so on.  So a change in progression would probably help there, even if the overall "ceiling" at effect-level-25 stays similar.

On the amplifier thing I still need to fix how it adds prefix/suffix stats to those (it multiplies them when it should not), but again I've been letting the code rest a bit lately (more recently due to code instability, less recently due to newborn plus the return of the 3-year-old and 6-year-old from stays at grandparents).  Will address it soon, though :)

Anyway, makes sense on the +attack% stuff; just checking, what are the effect levels on the apparently "capped" hacking parts?
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Offline Misery

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #40 on: September 21, 2013, 07:14:05 am »
I've only got two hacking parts to look at at the moment, but they're levels 9 and 11, for 11 and 13 points respectively.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Part Stats Balance
« Reply #41 on: September 21, 2013, 07:15:13 am »
Ah, ok.  Yea, I don't think anything's really capping out (except the buggy multiplication on amplifiers, etc) then :)
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