Missile Prototype 5

nop

Dalas120 But I also think that we can't rely too much on 0.14.0 feedback for the same reason.

Other changes like crew efficiency will probably have a huge impact on missiles. It's great that we're getting these test builds, but it's really hard to judge the balance when things are starting so far from our point of reference.

Dalas120

nop Dalas120 I disagree. Anybody can beat a missile ship with 0 skill for half the cost - just build a huge wall of PD with a few shields and guns.

This is irrelevant to anybody trying to build a "general purpose" ship/fleet which can adapt to different types of opponents.

Dalas120 The part that's hard to do is managing to beat a side-firing missile ship and still be competitive vs non-missile designs.

This is exactly the theoretical problem that has been discussed to death in the missile/PD threads.

If you hard-counter missiles, you lose to everything else. If you play general purpose, you struggle to beat missiles. This is the issue that I think needs to be fixed.

nop As far as I can tell, EMP missiles are a frighteningly effective counter to PD and shields.

Don't forget about flak, which can ignore EMPs almost completely (though right now flak is still changing a lot). Though their ammo factories will be vulnerable to power drain.

I haven't even started to look at raw numbers balance for any of the new parts yet, I've only been thinking about their relative balance and overall design. Probably the goal for EMP missiles should be roughly double cost effectiveness vs shields compared to other weapons (which is half the cost-effectiveness of EB).

nop it's really hard to judge the balance when things are starting so far from our point of reference.

Yeah, I fully agree. Chances are no matter how hard we try, 0.14.5 is going to end up really unbalanced because there's just so much new stuff. Hopefully it can get fixed pretty quickly.

Vess

Factory Nerf
I know that were Building a Missile economy to try and encourage Changing weapons mid match. But I feel the Factory sizes Prevent that from being economical. What if In factory storage was cut to both shrink the Factory size and make storage more valuable?
Of course I Imagine this for all missiles.

nop

Dalas120 If you hard-counter missiles, you lose to everything else. If you play general purpose, you struggle to beat missiles. This is the problem that I think needs to be fixed.

General purpose ships can beat missile ships at the highest levels of play in 0.14.4. Nobody bothers hard countering missiles in tournament play because it's not worth it. This most recent tourney had issues with battery-powered missile modules which is a separate issue. In low-mid skill games, missile ships win consistently unless hard countered. This is the problem I outlined above.

Walt

Dalas120 I think I would suggest undoing this change. I don't think that mine ramming is going to be a very serious issue (most other weapons will be more effective at this role), and shrapnel can be surprisingly dangerous to friendly ships even when not ramming because of it's range. It's also inconsistent with other weapons - aside from mines, all explosions damage friendly players but no projectiles damage friendly players.

What I definitely don't want is for shrapnel to damage friendly ships but not penetrate friendly ships (which is how it worked in Prototype 4), because I think that'd be weird.

As for consistency, I think I disagree that it's less consistent. The way I look at it is this:

An effect that is triggered by an enemy (such as a bullet hitting an enemy ship or a mine being proximity triggered by an enemy) will do damage to all ships.
An effect that is triggered by a friendly (such as a bullet hitting a friendly ship) will do damage to no ships.

By those rules, a mine should be able to damage friendly ships when detonated by an enemy.

As for balance, I'm not sure. Allowing mines to damage friendly ships feels like it should create more interesting risk/reward choices, but in practice I'm not sure.

Dalas120 Chances are no matter how hard we try, 0.14.5 is going to end up really unbalanced because there's just so much new stuff. Hopefully it can get fixed pretty quickly.

Hopefully lots of people want want to test the RCs and that will help, but I'm not above putting out a 0.14.6 balance update a couple days later if need be.

Dalas120

Walt An effect that is triggered by an enemy (such as a bullet hitting an enemy ship or a mine being proximity triggered by an enemy) will do damage to all ships.
An effect that is triggered by a friendly (such as a bullet hitting a friendly ship) will do damage to no ships.

Isn't the shrapnel damage effect triggered when it hits my friendly ship? 😉

Walt As for balance, I'm not sure. Allowing mines to damage friendly ships feels like it should create more interesting risk/reward choices, but in practice I'm not sure.

I mostly think that it'll make it even more challenging to use mines in direct combat, since you're just as likely to hurt yourself as the enemy, especially if shrapnel range is increased. I'm not 100% sure though.

(also, I did see and am still thinking about your discord concerns)

nop General purpose ships can beat missile ships at the highest levels of play in 0.14.4.

They can, but by the looks of it they're at a definite disadvantage at tournament cost levels or higher, at least if the November tournament is any indication. As you said, using a general purpose ship to kill a barge takes a lot more skill than using a missile barge to kill a general ship.

The more general-purpose the ship is, the bigger of a disadvantage it's at vs missiles. The more specialized anti-missile the ship is, the more useless it is vs non-missile ships.

nop

Dalas120 They can, but by the looks of it they're at a definite disadvantage at tournament cost levels or higher, at least if the November tournament is any indication. As you said, using a general purpose ship to kill a barge takes a lot more skill than using a missile barge to kill a general ship.

The more general-purpose the ship is, the bigger of a disadvantage it's at. The more specialized anti-missile the ship is, the more useless it is vs non-missile ships.

I think, to refine all of these ideas, we can agree on a couple of problems:

Side-firing missile ships are too deadly against general purpose ships, especially at large scale.
Battery-powered missile modules are too efficient at all scales.

It could be that making missile factories consume a lot more energy helps with both of these problems by increasing the overall cost of sustaining missile output and limiting the number of missiles you get out of an energy storage to a more reasonable level. It may have the side effect of making missile storage a more useful part.

Walt

Dalas120 Isn't the shrapnel damage effect triggered when it hits my friendly ship? 😉

Well not in prototype 5 cuz it'll bounce off! In the next update (prototype 6 or RC 1) I'll probably make them explode when hitting your own ship without launching shrapnel.

Dalas120 I mostly think that it'll make it even more challenging to use mines in direct combat, since you're just as likely to hurt yourself as the enemy, especially if shrapnel range is increased. I'm not 100% sure though.

I think friendly damage with mines is something I want to at least try in an RC. It's easy to change if it doesn't work.

nop Battery-powered missile modules are too efficient at all scales.

Do you have any early opinions about the increased power-consumption of missile factories in Prototype 5?

Dalas120

Walt Well not in prototype 5 cuz it'll bounce off! In the next update (prototype 6 or RC 1) I'll probably make them explode when hitting your own ship without launching shrapnel.

Actually I meant damage from the actual shrapnel projectiles, not the mines. Not that it really matters!

nop Battery-powered missile modules are too efficient at all scales.

I think the root problem here is not that missiles can be run on energy storage, but that people want to run missiles on energy storage because the 0.14.4 crew AI is bad. With any luck, the improved crew AI in 0.14.5 will solve this problem on it's own, because if you need to power 10 factories, it'll be cheaper to have 1 reactor than 20 storages.

Of course, this is a moderate buff to HE missiles, so they'll probably need a nerf to compensate (they probably needed changes anyways with all the drastic missile/PD stuff in 0.14.5).

Tobi-wan_Kenobi Just make energy storages start empty. Problem solved. It's fine if ammo storages start full, but just toss that out for energy. Why make all these balance changes to suit one specific multiplayer game option?

I think that it would be good to try and bring multiplayer and singleplayer closer together, not further apart. If a cheesy strategy works in singleplayer (e.g. 500 energy storages with 1 reactor that you sell before starting the battle), I don't think it should be arbitrarily disabled in multiplayer. To be honest I don't really like the start full/empty option anyways, because it's an arbitrary divider that makes some ships completely useless.

If you've ever played Overwatch, I really like their model of game modes: one base configuration that's balanced for both casual and competitive games, both pve and pvp, and then some auxiliary and player-customizable game modes that nobody expects to be balanced but are fun anyways.

As an aside: I'm really hoping that once blink drives are added there can be a "ships must FTL into the battle" default on option in multiplayer to replace the start full/empty option. Since FTL/blink/whatever would probably involve energy drain (particularly at low efficiency), that would help solve issues with too many energy storage in both singleplayer and multiplayer.

nop

Walt Do you have any early opinions about the increased power-consumption of missile factories in Prototype 5?

It looks like you will need two additional energy storages to get the same number of missiles out of the modules, adding minimum $4400 to the module cost. This is roughly a 12% increase in cost, or potentially 18% if another bunk full of crew is needed to haul batteries. I won't be able to try it until next week, but on paper this doesn't sound like enough. I think other players with more experience with the design will have more informed opinions than I. Initial rumblings on Discord are negative.

To add my own theory: if we're really dead set on balancing the game such that starting ships full of energy and ammo is the default, it generally seems like either energy storage is undervalued or factories don't consume enough energy, or maybe both. This is a pretty weird thing to care about balancing because there isn't any apparent value to it in SP (specifically the case where energy storage has no reactor available). This may be good cause for a fundamental change instead of just tweaking numbers.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

nop if we're really dead set on balancing the game such that starting ships full of energy and ammo is the default

Just make energy storages start empty. Problem solved. It's fine if ammo storages start full, but just toss that out for energy. Why make all these balance changes to suit one specific multiplayer game option?

nop

Dalas120 I think the root problem here is not that missiles can be run on energy storage, but that people want to run missiles on energy storage because the 0.14.4 crew AI is bad. With any luck, the improved crew AI in 0.14.5 will solve this problem on it's own

Combined with the factory energy requirement changes in this test, maybe. Hooking up a reactor to 12 missile factories has space and crew overhead even when crew aren't abusing their hall pass. It's hard to beat micro-modules at the scale game.

Dalas120 To be honest I don't really like the start full/empty option anyways, because it's an arbitrary divider that makes some ships completely useless.

The option is a hack to defer balancing storage. If the tournament continues to start empty we could keep kicking this can down the road, but now that a wider population has seen how to exploit it, casual play (starting full) may be uncomfortable until it's addressed.

Dalas120 If you've ever played Overwatch, I really like their model of game modes: one base configuration that's balanced for both casual and competitive games, both pve and pvp, and then some auxiliary and player-customizable game modes that nobody expects to be balanced but are fun anyways.

A worthy goal, their core gameplay is balanced quite well. The casual mode is an abbreviated version of the competitive mode. These things happen when you drop millions on a new IP for your entertainment dynasty.

IVIemories

Dalas120 I think the root problem here is not that missiles can be run on energy storage, but that people want to run missiles on energy storage because the 0.14.4 crew AI is bad. With any luck, the improved crew AI in 0.14.5 will solve this problem on it's own, because if you need to power 10 factories, it'll be cheaper to have 1 reactor than 20 storages.

I think I'm gonna have to agree with Nop here that for a 1/2 speed 10 minute battle batteries are way too strong since you can just run straight in missiles firing without waiting for crew to power up each individual factory, and at the same time you don't really lose in a prolonged fight either.

IVIemories

As an aside, I'd just like to mention that storage balance is more to do with the game settings than Walt. I know that I said on stream that game balance is Walt's responsibility, but I'm gonna have to eat my words and say that without an "official" set of rules first there's no balance to be had.

Walt

IVIemories As an aside, I'd just like to mention that storage balance is more to do with the game settings than Walt. I know that I said on stream that game balance is Walt's responsibility, but I'm gonna have to eat my words and say that without an "official" set of rules first there's no balance to be had.

The "official" rules are the built-in rulesets, though for tournaments I'd at the very least turn fog of war off.

IVIemories

Walt there are still multiple rulesets though, and budget will often affect the balance of a part as well

thatPolarBear

Walt Can you make pd targeting ships a toggle switch? It is a in-effective use of crew and energy so it's makes ships a lot harder to make efficient with.

Walt

thatPolarBear Can you make pd targeting ships a toggle switch? It is a in-effective use of crew and energy so it's makes ships a lot harder to make efficient with.

Yeah, that's on my list to do, assuming I don't change them back to long-range lock-on PD like in prototype 4, which may or may not happen.

GodoftheGrove

Walt Yeah, I was hoping that making mines repulsed by each other would make that strategy less viable, but since you can literally make an enclosed compartment and then blow it open with explosive charges, it's probably still a problem.

I dunno, it's like actually building a weapon out of parts, which is a next level thing and sounds actually interesting.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Walt, I think it would be helpful to have a manual fire toggle mode for nuke torps. In their current state I wouldn't trust them to fire at the right time. I want to have a hotkey that I could press to manually fire them. Of course there's auto-fire, but that's hard to click in a fight.

Or a feature like this could be built into all weapons. By pressing Alt+1 or something, the selected ship would manually fire once from weapons in grouping 1, or maybe toggle auto-fire for that grouping.