Counter OR Nerf (rockpaperscissors OR balance) [OR wait 4 newparts?]

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nop Oh I had hard time dealing with this design too. The power of focusing rail guns is incredible. A brilliant design that I haven't found a way to deal with elegantly. Kinda of slow though, and require a lot of micro. Perhaps a face-hugging cannon wall with well-spaced out cannons and enough thrust can overpower it, now that the rail gun's knock back has been halved.

nop

Mc2 As many mentioned, booster do not need any nerf

Whoa, did I miss the bandwagon? I don't see it in this thread.

SpaceCat So the balance here is between weapons and thrust - NOT between thrusters and thrust.

That's the idea. Reducing all thrust across the board or increasing shot velocities lets turret weapons hit things again. Before boosters you could build an unhittable kite with substantial investment in thrusters (e.g. coolroco ion kiters). With boosters you don't have to spend as much, and you can get instant acceleration so it works even better. Rebalancing on this axis is a heavy change and probably won't happen anytime soon, but it's fun to talk about.

Walt if we think boost thrusters specifically need a nerf

Boosters are really fun to use, but I for one think they are underpriced for what they can do in experienced hands. Price seems like a good tool for balancing things at the high end of the skill spectrum or MP in general, because casual/creative players are happy building multi-million dollar bounty hunter-beating death stars and don't care about cost. I might be wrong about this.

Mc2

nop

Whoa, did I miss the bandwagon? I don't see it in this thread.

This thread is uniting and continuing several ones, thrusters nerf was discused much more in else discusion.
There was only one for nerf boost thruster, while all other refused it.

Dalas120

Walt though if we think boost thrusters specifically need a nerf, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.

Mc2 As many mentioned, booster do not need any nerf, they work well, they do its nice job for the trade off for huge energy consumption, creating new very weak points and extreme exclusions zone.

I'm not certain if thrust is too strong or not, but it is definitely very strong. Since boost thrusters came out, I haven't seen a single competitive ship that didn't use at least one. I also haven't seen a single competitive ship that didn't use engine rooms. As a result, ship speeds have gone up drastically.

Extremely fast ships does not necessarily break balance (though it does hurt fleet play and multi-sided ships), but I think that it's a bad sign when a part is used nearly 100% of the time, despite having alternatives. IMO boost thrusters and/or engine rooms should be a deliberate decision that's strong on some ships and not on others.

@Walt
Just curious - what's planned for the next update? Right now the trello shows more missiles and tractor beams, either of which sounds really cool.

Mc2 your possibilities are very limited, and limitation in any way is not for me making anything more interesting. Limits create unification, not creativity.

I completely disagree! Limitations force you to be more creative, because you can't get away with the same boring thing for every ship. Imagine, for example, if thruster limitations (exclusion zones) were completely removed. Or what if weapon limitations (LOS) were removed and all weapons were top-mounted turrets? Designs would get a lot less creative and more boring.

nop A really good railgun ship I haven't seen played much is an Equalizer design, where you have something like 5-6 railguns and "wiggle" back and forth, setting all of them to shoot at a target part so they all hit the same place.

Wouldn't this be very weak to sumo? Since railguns can only destroy 1 structure per shot you'd never split the sumo before getting killed by the RoD. And since most walls now have lots of thrust, you wouldn't have to risk a specialized sumo ship.

Remember when we discussed "hooking" a triangle with a wall so you only have to fight one half at a time? Does the same tactic work vs long railguns, turning the enemy's spinal rails away from you while allowing your turreted weapons to hit? Just something I've theorized, but I'm curious if it's a viable strategy.

nop

Dalas120 Wouldn't this be very weak to sumo?

Probably, like any slow ship, but it does seem to have a decent amount of thrust (combined with high mass). Sumo is always a risky choice in single elimination..

Dalas120 Remember when we discussed "hooking" a triangle with a wall so you only have to fight one half at a time? Does the same tactic work vs long railguns, turning the enemy's spinal rails away from you while allowing your turreted weapons to hit?

I call it "wingtipping" and haven't tried it much against railguns, I expect it will be easier with the knockback reduction.

Dalas120 Limitations force you to be more creative, because you can't get away with the same boring thing for every ship.

👍 to this, the one limitation discussed here that I don't like is part count limits though. Seems like a lazy and broken approach to game balance.

nop

Dalas120 I'm not certain if thrust is too strong or not, but it is definitely very strong.

This! Fast ships absolutely bully slow ships. I'm disappointed that railgun knockback was reduced, because railguns are one of the few ways a slow ship can fight a fast ship. Nerf by popular demand strikes again. The populace just wants to build walls, apparently. 🙁

Thrust is one of the things that separates skill tiers of ship building. Experienced builders pile on engine rooms with big thrusters and/or boosters to maximize ROI and everybody else eats their dust.

Speed has always been king, now it is a tyrant.

Mc2

nop

Remember when we discussed "hooking" a triangle with a wall so you only have to fight one half at a time? Does the same tactic work vs long railguns, turning the enemy's spinal rails away from you while allowing your turreted weapons to hit?

I call it "wingtipping" and haven't tried it much against railguns, I expect it will be easier with the knockback reduction

This tactic work badly, due CA in action making ship slow down when close to ram, and when you hook on side all that rotation make ship touch and untouch again, and this cause CA to get in action again and again wit every ram and spliting, to get rid of sided conected ship is very easy and almost instant with this.

Dalas120

I completely disagree! Limitations force you to be more creative, because you can't get away with the same boring thing for every ship. Imagine, for example, if thruster limitations (exclusion zones) were completely removed.

Well, exclusion zones of thrusters is start about limitations and lets stay with it- if you doouble them, than you will have only 2 posible designs (and still effective), wall with thrusters on back, and triangle, with thrusters on edges inside,.
No more polarbear incredibly good broadsider, no more veranias fast ships with thursters hideen inside.

Well, some limitations make you to be creative sometimes, like making picture with black pencis only, is not bad.
But i stilI prefer whole color scale.
And limitations which force you paint on white with white color are really against every creativity.

And about top mounted super cannon, which is already planed in trello im woried most, becasue how it is now i feel it has perfect balancing between build freedom and chalenging limits for designing. Hope that roof part will be not implemented.

Walt

Dalas120 I'm not certain if thrust is too strong or not, but it is definitely very strong.

Honestly this is kind of a relief! My original fear when I first started making Cosmoteer was that thrusters wouldn't be strong enough.

Dalas120 I haven't seen a single competitive ship that didn't use at least one. I also haven't seen a single competitive ship that didn't use engine rooms. As a result, ship speeds have gone up drastically.

Extremely fast ships does not necessarily break balance (though it does hurt fleet play and multi-sided ships), but I think that it's a bad sign when a part is used nearly 100% of the time, despite having alternatives. IMO boost thrusters and/or engine rooms should be a deliberate decision that's strong on some ships and not on others.

I definitely agree with that about boost thrusters, not every ship should have them. I'm not sure I agree with that about engine rooms though, they're intended more to make thruster positioning more interesting and to allow large ships to utilize more of their internal space for thrust than they are supposed to be an interesting binary decision in and of themselves.

Dalas120 Just curious - what's planned for the next update? Right now the trello shows more missiles and tractor beams, either of which sounds really cool.

That's the plan! I'll probably start a couple discussion threads for missile types and tractor beams a bit later.

nop the one limitation discussed here that I don't like is part count limits though. Seems like a lazy and broken approach to game balance.

I agree, the limits should be more simulation-based rather than just a hard number. The only time I've ever limited something arbitrarily like that were when there was a max of 32 thrusters, and I only did that for performance reasons. (I suppose you could also argue the grid size is another arbitrary limit, but that's also done mainly for performance reasons.)

nop I'm disappointed that railgun knockback was reduced, because railguns are one of the few ways a slow ship can fight a fast ship. Nerf by popular demand strikes again. The populace just wants to build walls, apparently. 🙁

The way railguns applied knockback was pretty broken and applied radically different amounts of force depending on whether it penetrated a shield or not, it just made no sense. Now it works more intuitively and predictably. I tried to balance the new numbers such that a railgun that fully penetrates a ship provides the same knockback as a 0.14.3 railgun hitting a non-shielded ship. Perhaps that's not enough in practice?

Lafiel

nop to this, the one limitation discussed here that I don't like is part count limits though. Seems like a lazy and broken approach to game balance.

I don't see a problem if it's related to ship size or mass. The number could increase either constantly or exponentially or reversed. Note this is for boosters. You can still maximize thrust but in exchange for lesser choices on other parts. Hence, it forces more creativeness and tweaking while preventing full spamming. It does however set a hard limit on maximum thrust to mass ratio.

Mc2

nop
Well, i just meet this 500K ship:

image https://i.imgur.com/zlnNMSM.png
and this ship kiled my 500k diagonals with 4 bosters still on, 2 standard and 2 small thrusters. My speed was higher, but i did not get even in position to shoot once (damage on that ship was made by previous spawn). I think that knocbak force of rails is fain.

In 500k i can survive that enemy make from my ship carousel and shoot me apart without letting me even release projectile, that is undestable
And when i played bit bigger ship with weight of 2200 tons, aprox 24 long rail did still some push, but not any more ridiculous one like before.

Lets say, i suppose that most rail balance is in 1 mill category for its

nop

Mc2 This tactic work badly, due CA in action making ship slow down when close to ram

You have to use force move and approach manually.

Mc2

nop Force move is viable only for forward move, no way how to force move to get iniside circling ship avoiding your ram.
Force attack move is missing.

nop

Mc2 here's a contrived example.

video

Atarlost

Walt I definitely agree with that about boost thrusters, not every ship should have them. I'm not sure I agree with that about engine rooms though, they're intended more to make thruster positioning more interesting and to allow large ships to utilize more of their internal space for thrust than they are supposed to be an interesting binary decision in and of themselves.

Large ships could already use all of their internal space for thrust. Before railguns they were the only useful space filling component.

SpaceCat

@nop i agree that boos thrusters are very strong - and that they nerfed "kites" but at hte smae time buffed "clingers".

Also it is right that it is a run fo rthe fastest most maneuverable ship ATM.
I think this is fun - it also made playing multiple ships (fleet play) more attractive.

What about a one slow heavy ship and one light nimble ship duos (?)

Maybe the "tractor beam" will become very handy for slow ships also ...

You can see when it comes to balancing i mostly wait for new parts to be added (at the moment).

Mc2

SpaceCat
I think that boosters bring in game manouever, before them most of players move we just forwart do weapons range, and that way all.
And that was plreaty boring.
I remeber January when most of ships had just thrusters on back, charged and crashed each other and just wait till one ship burnd to ashes, so stupid 😃

There were few exceptions, and it is not accident that exceptions are from best players like you ,nop, oneye..

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SpaceCat Calling boost thrusters strong is an understatement. A single booster provides the thrust of 3 large thrusters (2,400/sec) at the same power consumption (600/sec) for half the price (6,000 vs 12,000). This is straight up power creep. The base drain of boost mode is only 80/sec. No more than an engine room or a shield. As such, there was no point of using the normal mode of booster. If you are able to power 3 large thrusters indefinitely, you can keep a booster up forever (again, for HALF THE PRICE, and NO SPIN UP TIME). I haven't incorporated boost thrusters in any of my designs, mainly because I don't like to take advantage of this situation.

My suggestion: If boost thrusters were to keep the current thrust and price. Their power consumption have to be at least double. Simply increasing the power drain of boost mode from 80/sec to 600/sec should fix the problem. The use of boost mode should be a strategic option, not a mean to save credit, and certainly not to be energy-efficient.

Edited: Thanks for the correction from Dalas120. The base drain of booster is 800/sec instead of 80/sec, which is quite reasonable for the thrust it provides.

nop

SpaceCat they nerfed "kites" but at hte smae time buffed "clingers".

Are clingers good now? Seems like most good players know how to shake them off or are using cannons anyway.

Oneye

samepage I was actually the one who requested that the boost thruster take less power. Maybe increase the power consumption by an ok amount but also make it more expensive?

Dalas120

samepage A single booster provides the thrust of 3 large thrusters (2,400/sec) at the same power consumption (600/sec) for half the price (6,000 vs 12,000). This is straight up power creep. The base drain of boost mode is only 80/sec.

This is not correct. The base drain of boost mode is 800 power per second, not 80. This can be tested out in-game (2 boost mode thrusters will drain a reactor), or check in the game files (drain is -80, interval is 0.1 seconds).

I still agree with you that boost thrusters are probably too strong though.

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Oneye Not against this, they seem to provide the value more than the cost.

Oneye

samepage yeah well that is still a big nerf.