Combat .. uhm.. Concerns? From irc

[kasnavada]

Suggestion to combat balance in general: Make weapon damage drop off with increased distance, and increase it overall (for the player, at least). That way there's a point in getting close, a direct relationship between risk and reward, and battles don't take so fukcing long.

This sounds like an suggestion which will increase the problem instead of solving it. As power level and difficulty goes up your kiting distance will have to go up and therefore combat length will be even longer than before, and kiting even more necessary.

[eRe4s3r]

Imo the combat currently suffers from a clear case of "Bullet Hell" ;P And this is a HUGE problem when a single hit can take down a shield from 100% to 10% as is very possible in late game. And unlike the races, our own ship does not increase in power nor CAN it increase in power in the same speed as other races. We have no way to let research happen "in the background" just for us. And so any focus on research is going to involve us not doing anything and thus constantly losing even more power advantages.

I don't know whether Arcen would consider a complete redo of combat though. The combat right now is really imo the worst thing about the game. I am honestly intrigued by the simulation, and I would probably love this game way more if we could somehow build up our own "proxy" empire. Ie, we don't just start with a ship from 1 race, but an entire colony worth of 1 race. That we can expand, build up, and do things with. Also it would allow us to field support fleets and do research. It would allow us to subvert the original race and have a use for prisoners.

I know x4000 said that this turn based gameplay was what he had in mind from the start. But fact is, that the combat has nearly 0 tactical elements. And this is partially because the enemies are stupid and partially because when the player faces 30+ cap ships, and as thus nearly 100 enemies, this becomes a SHMUP more than a tactical strategy game.

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Alternatively, give us a proper equipment system for our flag-ship with loot like Bionic Dues and allow us to recruit crew and elites (npc characters). Crew and Elites could level up over time, and do research on the flagships own research bay. Basically, lots of things could be done to make combat something that has a reason. (Currently, I honestly do not do missions with combat anymore after a certain level of AI growth)

[Histidine]

Hmm... I wonder if those of us finding it easy are the ones making it a point of picking up every tech that boosts combat stats as soon as it comes out (using the five finger discount coupon if necessary)?

Keith/Chris, how do combat stat multipliers work? In particular, do two 1.5x bonuses make a 2x or a 2.25x?

[DeBunny]

In the game I played through Friday, I noticed that combat started to get kinda scary as soon as you let up on picking up the UNI-upgrades, and got better again once you did.
Never really found things too bad as long as I was up to the same Mark levels as anyone else, barring AFA death squads.

Also, Scattershot makes little things trivial even on auto-fire and the Energy Blaster made even assassin shields trivial. Still take a few rounds, but not terribly many. I never really use any other weapons, since Scattershot seems to do acceptably even against armored things.
Played on Normal, if that makes a difference, I suppose.

[Admiral Tolwin]

IMO the Combat works fine for me atm.

I can kiting and also can go in to take a flagship quickly out of the game, so i think this is just a part u have to pratice a bit.

The Problems afaik are more in the missiondesign, the most missions played equal course u have always fight vs a overwhelming Enemy fleet.

Perhaps there should be some Missions where u fight vs much more lesser but much stronger enemys. ( A duell vs a spacemonster, or a new alien prototype)

Or Missions where u not only have some Allys, but u can give them some Orders (when u fight for the federation a.e.) this would made this much more interesting.

The Smuggling mission could be more Interesting when they are "Holes" in the defence that u have to find.

Also i thing there should be more options to customize the ship, and to upgrade and evolve the ship better in the lategame (secret Weapons only for u, sepecial shields with bullet/energy/gravity Resistence a.s.o.)

right now the game is realy young, so we should give the devs a chance to made this good game even better^^

 

[DeBunny]

There are actually those "lesser but stronger" enemy type missions. Assassins and the Burlust Warlords.
Throwing that one out there.

[GC13]

Those missions are also really easy because of the way kiting works. They would have to wildly outrange you for kiting not to work, since your shots don't have your velocity added to them (therefore their range) when you fire them. Therefore if you move five ship lengths a turn, and they're chasing you at a distance of ten ship lengths (your maximum range), they'll need a maximum range of at least fifteen ship lengths to be able to shoot you.

Even if kiting weren't possible, the missions would still be easier because you're not having to dodge dozens of projectiles, half of which are able to completely wreck your shields with one hit.

[DeBunny]

Well, wasn't saying they weren't somewhat simple, just saying they existed.

Warlords really need some sort of fast projectile...

Tucking velocity into projectiles could be useful, although it gives me daydreams of complex impact-velocity/direction damage bonuses that won't happen.

[Hartmann]

Tucking velocity into projectiles could be useful, although it gives me daydreams of complex impact-velocity/direction damage bonuses that won't happen.

Mmm... T'was a similar thingy in Mount & Blade, which was a small indie game. Can't be really hard to implement it.
Through I admit it'll take one heck of an update to fit it in the game.
But the thing that annoys me is that space battles don't look like realistic space battles. Bullets coming out of nowhere, ships shooting 5 bullets at once. It's danmaku all right. It's not a simulator all right.
Just replace the ship with a girl in a frilly dress and a silly hat, and you've got Touhou.


Hey, I just got one neat idea for a new mod.

[Shrugging Khan]

Eh...adding ship velocity to projectiles and factoring projectile velocity into damage is pretty easy. Even I can do it 

[Professor Paul1290]

I don't think it's as much a matter of how difficult it would be to put in as much as it would likely create a need to rebalanced a lot of stuff right away.

Unless Chris and Keith give a big yes to it immediately I think it would have to be something for much later on.

[DeBunny]

That was my general thinking.
Not that it'd be hard to implement (maybe), but that it'd probably change a lot of stuff...a lot.
Probably change player behavior though, which is a possible plus?

[Professor Paul1290]

Probably change player behavior though, which is a possible plus?

In the long-term term, yes. In the short-term, no.

I mean I'm definitely in support of adding ship velocity to projectiles eventually, but as mentioned that it changes player behavior and touches so many things balance-wise that I don't think it can be seen as a good immediate "fix" unless Chris and Keith come out and say they're really confident in it.

[BobTheJanitor]

Might as well throw in my 2 bits as well. I have to say, I don't really like the combat much. It's far too shallow compared to the depth of the rest of the game. It feels like I'm being forced to go paddle around the kiddy pool every few minutes when all I want to do is explore the nearby ocean. The outcome is pretty much binary. You win and get to continue playing the fun part, or lose and thus end the entire game. (A few variables aside that can allow you to get extra goodies out of it, or withdraw which effectively does nothing and makes the whole exercise moot)

I'm not feeling the risk vs. reward is properly balanced here. I don't know where the solution lies, maybe losing doesn't need to mean a game over (or really a reload which, if as assumption that the player is going to save scum is factored in as part of balancing, I would argue that balance is off), but instead you escape but have to waste some months repairing your ship before you can do anything else. And when I get a game over screen in TLF, that feels like it's time to quit. I don't feel like reloading and trying again, and I don't feel like starting a whole new game, I feel like doing something else. The game shouldn't be so actively encouraging people to stop playing it. A prominent option to reload the last autosave before combat on the game over screen would be a bandaid fix, but really mistakes just shouldn't be so fatal.

That's the overall view, but getting down to the gritty details, combat just feels like a confusing mess right now. This is partly because I'm still getting used to the game. But that's going to be a problem that every single player is going to have to deal with, and we don't want bad first impressions turning people away. There are a plethora of little problems here that all add up to an experience I find it hard to enjoy. Most obvious is the screen clutter. Shots everywhere, tiny ships everywhere. Lots of little things, and no way to prioritize what's important and what's not without mousing over hundreds of dots and reading tooltips. Is that little pointy cylinder a highly dangerous missile that's going to punch through half my health? Or is it just a piddly fighter that my guns will probably destroy without me even noticing its existence? There's almost no at-a-glance way to read the battlefield. An enemy that's on full health and an enemy that's almost dead don't seem to have any visual difference (sans shield graphics), so I've got to mouse over them and look at health/shield totals that may both be 6 digit numbers. Not that all of this isn't doable, it's just not really helping to make fun happen.

When you do die, there's no after action report or combat log. No one stops to tell you the license number of the truck that hit you. You might have been flying along through apparently empty space trying to get away from the bullet hell, like I was just earlier today, and blow up. Why? I don't know! I can never know! Sometimes I die with full shields. I guess there are weapons that punch through and ignore shields? OK, but how do I know? How do I prioritize what to run from? Like everyone else has mentioned, the best tactic seems to be constantly running from things and slowly kiting everything to death. Effective but very dull.

Usually games that have multiple levels of high strategy and up close combat have options for auto-resolving battles. (Total War, Mount & Blade, Endless Space, Divinity: Dragon Commander, etc. etc.) There are usually many randomness problems with this, but that aside for now, I find myself wishing that TLF had a way to do this. With the current mechanics, it wouldn't really make sense, of course. Since your combat outcome is a binary 'achieve your goal' vs. 'lose the entire game' it wouldn't really make sense to have an RNG decide that. But that just sort of spotlights the problem.

I should also mention that I've been playing so far on Easy, just trying to find my footing. And yet I have had several fledgeling games fail due to inexplicable deaths in combat. I don't think I'm especially terrible at games (although that's always possible) but I'm also not sure what I'm doing wrong to get instagibbed, again, due to the game ironically providing me with so much information on the one hand that I can't sift through it (through mouseover details and a busy bullet hell playing field) while not providing me any information about what killed me when I do die.

[DeBunny]

The only shots I ever noticed ignoring shields did seem to be rather glowy and red, also slow, so simple enough to avoid.
Then again, I actually play bullet hells all the time, so perhaps I'm just more predisposed towards picking out things amongst an enormous blob of colorful death.

The screens do tend to get covered in a lot of stuff, though. I like it, but I can see where it'd be a problem for some people.
What I don't generally see are horribly lethal things unless I've dipped behind on upgrades, or am fighting bosses/assassins/deathlance-turrets/that-kind-of-stuff.

And from that thought, comes an idea.
What if shots were color-coded by the amount of damage they would do to you? Maybe by %health damage, so you could assess high-threats easily and ignore the littler stuff.
"Oh, blob of blue does nothing, who cares. But hooooly crap there's a lot of red-death missiles coming from that edge."