Combat .. uhm.. Concerns? From irc

[Histidine]

I should probably name a couple of things that DID annoy me:

1) AFA/Assassin missions. Objective is kill all enemies, not just flagships. Hypersonic Pods (and to a lesser extent, Interceptors). 

2) Shield/hull ratio seems to be too high for late game enemies; Disruptor or at least Energy Blaster feel mandatory as a result.

EDIT: Hmm, the Mark level defence techs actually grow hull faster than shield, at least according to the text. Still, I'm getting Model Xs with 3.7 million shields and just 100k hull...

3) Lancer/Monitor instagib. FFFFFUUUUU

[Joempire]

I like your ideas. I almost always play with combat speed on 2x. I like the idea of not having the enemy just dive bomb you like they are now. The only thing I can see a problem with is regards to the speed of the projectiles.

 Right now many of the AI ships rely on creating a wall of fire you either need to shield for or dodge around. If you speed them up you would need to either increase the fire rate and lower individual shot damage to keep the same DPS, thus making even more visual spam. Or changing the entire fighting mechanics to actually have the ai be able to be a threat. This would have to be something along the lines of the all those ai ships actually aiming at your ship making it even more difficult to dodge. Not really sure how to deal with the issue.

[Misery]

Professor Paul, those are all very good ideas actually, at least by my book anyway.  In particular the increased attack range is very important.  But it needs to be a good bit higher than the player's max range at full weapon power, and that might be a bit difficult to fully balance.  It IS possible to get half of the battlefield all firing at you at once.  Though I suspect the effect will be MUCH less intense than anything I'm used to.

As for turrets, they can be kinda wonky to balance.  Their range is short even on Misery.... with a couple of exceptions that have seriously monstous range, totally outdoing anything else in the game by far.  The turrets are likely to be the difficult bit to balance properly.  The gravity lance ones though should NOT gain much at all though, as you cannot dodge a lance weapon no matter what.

Write that stuff up as a Mantis ticket, if you would.  This is just the sort of thing that could make the combat that much more intersting overall, regardless of difficulty level.

-Increase the speed of enemy shots on "Normal" by 30%:
This probably sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. If I recall correctly, "Misery" difficulty has shot speed increased by 60% and the person who plays it most can still evade most incoming fire without kiting and hasn't blown an aneurysm yet (correct me if I'm wrong). That means that this tweak is already out there and has effectively already been tested and determined to not "break" combat.
As such, this tweak should make out-speeding the shots much less viable without requiring that much fixing after the fact.

Aye, no blown fuses here yet.

Would you believe I actually think it could be a bit harder in some ways? 

Though making it harder is likely a bad idea, from the point of view of others that may give this a go.  Hard to say.

[Professor Paul1290]

Right now many of the AI ships rely on creating a wall of fire you either need to shield for or dodge around. If you speed them up you would need to either increase the fire rate and lower individual shot damage to keep the same DPS, thus making even more visual spam. Or changing the entire fighting mechanics to actually have the ai be able to be a threat. This would have to be something along the lines of the all those ai ships actually aiming at your ship making it even more difficult to dodge. Not really sure how to deal with the issue.

Professor Paul, those are all very good ideas actually, at least by my book anyway.  In particular the increased attack range is very important.  But it needs to be a good bit higher than the player's max range at full weapon power, and that might be a bit difficult to fully balance.  It IS possible to get half of the battlefield all firing at you at once.  Though I suspect the effect will be MUCH less intense than anything I'm used to.

See, the nice thing I see here is that the latter concern sort of solves the former concern.   

Yes the projectiles won't be on the battlefield quite as long as before, but at the same time the increase in weapons range and the new ideal position for the player to do damage mean that more guns on the battlefield have the player as a viable target.


That's part of the beauty of this. With the exception of the change in pursuit behavior, the other changes I've suggested have already been tested in some way, at least as much as they can be without implementing them all together.

Hard and Misery difficulty have already demonstrated that an increase in projectile speed does not break combat.

As for having more weapons within effective range at once, a lot of us already willingly do combat under those conditions. I do combat that way, Misery does combat that way, and if the videos are anything to go by even Chris does combat that way, and I'm sure some more people here do.
Arguably a lot of us are already doing combat under the conditions these changes would enforce, so we know it's not totally screwed up. The fact that those of us who do tend to enjoy the combat more reinforces that.

The only change in the set that hasn't been directly or indirectly tried already would be the change to pursuit behavior, because that's the only thing that hasn't already been done in the game before, but that's really up to Chris and Keith to decide the difficulty of.


Also I agree that the Gravity Lance should NOT get a range increase, those things are pure evil in a can.


Mantis:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14284

So there's the ticket if you want to comment and/or support that.

[ElOhTeeBee]

I think I've managed to pin down the single biggest thing I hate about the combat:

Smuggling missions are lovably awful. There's way too much shit to deal with, and if you don't spend a billion years pecking away at the defenses, then you're going to die as soon as you try to get close to the beacon.

[ShiroIchida]

Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?

You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in. Mix and match cloak/afterburner/coasting with abilities/deploying chaff to keep you alive - you just need to touch the thing and you're done.

Also, I really, really, really wish there was either an autoresolve or a "COME AT ME BRO" button, because killing a 100-ship fleet in increments of 5 at a time is horrifyingly dull. It's too easy to be fun, and you have to do it like twenty times. Over and over again.

[kasnavada]

No, I think it's "smuggling people from pirate stations to change who controls the planets".

I tried one on normal, it's... bad.

Your "smuggled people" just dies in a few rounds. You on the other hand have to protect them but there is no realistic way to do so.

About combat, kiting is the only realistic way to fight, everything else will end with you being one-shot by stuff after a few decades. And, as there is no way to gain tech apart from stealing them, it's getting worse as the game goes. The only enemy I found which represent a threat to this strategy is some kind of sniper thingy which has high damage, high speed shots... except that when there are a dozen of them it turns into a quick hydra shred game. It seems to the the suggestion above to make enemy shots more like this. I think it's far from a good idea as the only thing that will do is worsen long range combat with short range still being undoable. Not that I have better solutions at hand... but looking at other bullet hell games might help.

[Shrugging Khan]

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.

[Azurian]

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.

Completely agree.  High weapon power should be "concentrated"  while low weapon power weak but high range.  I think we can increase the number of power levels if needed to make the max have very low range but be super powerful.

[eRe4s3r]

Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?

You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.

There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.

Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.

[Professor Paul1290]

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.

I'm not really against this much at all, but at the same time I'm not too keen on this being done just yet.

My current issue with this is that it's an attempt change the existing player behavior, and as such seems liable to lead to a lot of other balance problems that would have to be resolved along with it.
You could very well end up with the scenario where most players end up not closing anyway then complaining about the lack of damage leading to longer fights, especially if there are a lot of ships and the total enemy DPS is high.

In the short term I would rather the game be balance around the behavior that's already there and not try to fight it just yet.

[Coppermantis]

Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?

You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.

There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.

Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.

Okay, so I got this mission. It said I was supposed to shoot down ships so that technology would end up on their planet, and if I killed them all then I could take some for myself.

Yet, when I start it, there are no flagships, and all I have to do is get to a drop zone. Is there supposed to be one, or did the wrong text get displayed?

[Mick]

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 would make getting kited by speedy flagships even more frustrating. Right now my projectiles barely hit them or they fizz out before they connect. I WANT to get close, but the game won't let me.

[eRe4s3r]

Smuggling missions, as in delivering space tech?

You really shouldn't be fighting them, you should turn on full engine, rest to shields, and run in.

There is a quest mission in the game, where you have to shoot down capital ships in orbit so that a race gets space-faring, which puts you against 14 other cap ships, you are only supposed to kill 1 but there is no way to run-away with 13 cap ships (+ their squads) hunting you down.... that's a horrible mission ;P It's where I died in the tutorial game.

Start ships also have apparently identical stats, which is imo a bug.

Okay, so I got this mission. It said I was supposed to shoot down ships so that technology would end up on their planet, and if I killed them all then I could take some for myself.

Yet, when I start it, there are no flagships, and all I have to do is get to a drop zone. Is there supposed to be one, or did the wrong text get displayed?

Are you sure you clicked on the QUEST text in the top? Because that's the only way to get to this mission...  if you see a drop-zone it's the normal space faring mission with huge influence penalties, the quest one gives you huge influence bonus and no penalties.

I am now playing on 1 below Normal and the combat is FAR easier. Still a bit odd balance that's for sure.

[nas1m]

Ok, I just has a bit of an "epiphany" and I'm going to go out on a limb to be really daft for a bit, so please tolerate me for a moment. 

Scratch what I said earlier, I think there might be an even easier short-term fix that won't require as much finicky balancing as I just got reminded what "Misery" difficulty does and why Misery perhaps doesn't see the same problems.

-Increase the speed of enemy shots on "Normal" by 30%:
This probably sounds crazy, but hear me out on this. If I recall correctly, "Misery" difficulty has shot speed increased by 60% and the person who plays it most can still evade most incoming fire without kiting and hasn't blown an aneurysm yet (correct me if I'm wrong). That means that this tweak is already out there and has effectively already been tested and determined to not "break" combat.
As such, this tweak should make out-speeding the shots much less viable without requiring that much fixing after the fact.

-Increase weapons range of "slow" flagships and turrets to beyond the player's weapons range:
These guys are much less agile, carry more armament, and use completely different weapons from you. I think it would make sense for these guys to be able to shoot farther than you can. Also right now turrets aren't very effective at doing anything due to their short range, and again it make sense for dedicated immobile weapons to be able to shoot farther than their mobile counterparts.
The flagships that can fly faster than you probably should NOT get this for obvious reasons.

-Have enemy flagships only pursue until the player is within of weapon range.
It doesn't make sense for the player to fight at point blank, so maybe the enemy shouldn't try to do this either. Instead they should only pursue until they can fire effectively. With their increased range, this should put them at the distance the player would want to fight at anyway and they won't encourage the player to make a run for it because then the player's weapons would become ineffective before the enemies would.


This will NOT solve all the problems with combat of course, but in the short-term this will accomplish four major results for people on both sides of the fence.

Theoretically this will:
A. Hopefully "hard-kill" the player's kiting behavior by making it so that retreating will mean sacrificing the ability to do damage, and making it so the enemy won't encourage kiting behavior via relentless pursuit.
B. Reduce "battlefield clutter" due to higher projectile speeds causing projectiles to leave the immediate field of play much quicker than before, mean fewer actively dangerous projectiles in flight at any given moment. (This would also hopefully compensate for increase in difficulty due to faster shots)
C. Keep the ratio of enemy DPS and player DPS the same as it is now, as the maximum DPS a given number of enemy ships can do to the player stays about the same (only shot speed is affected, not rate-of-fire or damage). This means that combat difficulty only makes a minimal leap, "kiting exploit" aside.
D. Better satisfy people who don't want to spend so much time in combat by making combat generally SHORTER.


"Wait a sec" you might ask. "How the hell would this accomplish the last result?".  I'll try to explain why I believe so.

By changing the optimal combat distance in this manner to one where everyone has a clear shot more of the time, weapons on both side will be provided with a more "target-rich environment" for a greater fraction of the total time you spend in combat. This means that weapons on both sides will be able to take advantage of their maximum DPS more of the time, including the player's. Drops in overall DPS on both sides due to distance will be reduced, and as such the death of one of the sides should theoretically occur in a shorter amount of time.

Also because kiting would no longer offer as much benefit, situations where the player has to "return to the blob" after killing a bunch of enemies, and therefore time in which neither side is dealing damage, would be drastically reduced. Combat blobs would theoretically stay together more of the time, and this reduces the "travel time" that may occur on either side.


So in summary I believe (and I could be wrong) that this would result in:
-Less kiting!
-Less clutter!
-Minimal change in difficulty!
-Shorter battles with fewer turns!

WHEW!


That said, admittedly a lot of this is "theory" and may have some or a lot of holes in it, but in the interest of trying to throw any possible solutions on the table for this I really thought I should plop this in here anyway.

Any Thoughts? Any Comments? Any "F*ck No! You're Totally Bonkers!"?

Sounds reasonable and worth a try to me - even more so since most of the stuff proposed seems to be doing its job on the higher difficulties...