Experimental Balance Changes for 0.14.7

CaptainRedstone

Walt I don't know, if anything I think that the ranges of a lot of weapons should be increased rather than decreased. With the kinds of ranges stated here, I could see a lot of ships having the problem of "Star" sized ships - Only a small amount of weapons are ever close enough to fire at any given point, because the range of the weapon is far smaller than the length of the vessel in question. Added range and speed to most weapons (NOT NUKES) imo would help prevent ships from getting stuck on each other from close range, and might help make the game more realistic. Ultimately though, I think that the ranges and speeds are quite balanced as they are now, with the exception of nukes, and maybe ions. Flak doing more against clustered projectiles will really wreak havoc, because a simple flak wall will utterly annihilate anything except ions, as flak walls right now can almost keep it with an entire meta small cannon ship. It will certainly make ions great again, but at the price of basically every other weapon, with the possible exception of railguns.

As far as ions go, I think it would be a good idea to increase the total range to something around HE missiles, doubling the base damage, but also making the beam do progressively less and less damage the further away it is (down to 1/2 original, 1/4 new damage)

Also, PLEASE fix nukes/EMP missiles being nearly invulnerable to flak/PD

Walt

CaptainRedstone if anything I think that the ranges of a lot of weapons should be increased rather than decreased.

The only weapons that have received significant range decreases here are cannons and nukes. The cannons I don't think were especially viable at their max range anyway due to their slow projectile speed. The range decrease simply brings their range more in line with their projectile speed. (Though their range-per-speed is actually still 50% higher than lasers.)

A few weeks ago I tried an experiment where I increased the ranges of all weapons by 50%, and it was.... very, very bad. Not in terms of balance, but in terms of how the game felt. To see the whole battle, you have to zoom a lot farther out, which makes it harder to tell what's going on and makes all the fun explosions and effects a lot smaller. The result was the game just felt much less fun to play. So yeah, increasing range across-the-board is a no-go, though for certain specifically long-range weapons I think it's fine. (See range increases in this mod for missiles and railguns.)

CaptainRedstone because the range of the weapon is far smaller than the length of the vessel in question.

I'm not sure what you mean. The only weapon with a range shorter than the build grid is the Nuke.

CaptainRedstone Flak doing more against clustered projectiles will really wreak havoc, because a simple flak wall will utterly annihilate anything except ions, as flak walls right now can almost keep it with an entire meta small cannon ship.

Yeah, this is my concern about Flak, but I want to get some actual real-world testing on it, especially since Flak ammo usage has been doubled. (I figure it's better to make it OP and dial it back than to undershoot.)

CaptainRedstone As far as ions go, I think it would be a good idea to increase the total range to something around HE missiles, doubling the base damage, but also making the beam do progressively less and less damage the further away it is (down to 1/2 original, 1/4 new damage)

I'm open to this, and it adds a nice twist to the Ion Beam, which I currently feel like overlaps a bit much with the Railgun. There just needs to be a way to visualize it losing power with range. Perhaps the beam gets narrower at longer ranges?

CaptainRedstone Also, PLEASE fix nukes/EMP missiles being nearly invulnerable to flak/PD

Well I think Flak should be considerably better vs nukes/EMPs in this mod (the reduced explosion randomness helps a lot).

PD is weird I think because their burst fire makes them feel really binary when shooting at Nukes/EMPs; either you have enough to shoot it down or you don't, regardless of range. I'm wondering whether I should remove their burst fire, but the problem with that is then of course their per-shot damage would need to be much lower, which also doesn't feel great.

Alternatively, I could give PD high-damage continuous fire but also a large random spread, which would make each shot feel impactful but keep overall DPS relatively low due high percentage of missed shots. (And it'd probably also make PD better at hitting large, fast-moving projectiles like EMPs.)

Dalas120

5) Weapon range feels too short on large ships, and too large on small ships.

CaptainRedstone if anything I think that the ranges of a lot of weapons should be increased rather than decreased. With the kinds of ranges stated here, I could see a lot of ships having the problem of "Star" sized ships - Only a small amount of weapons are ever close enough to fire at any given point, because the range of the weapon is far smaller than the length of the vessel in question.

Equalizer What the appropriate range of weapons should be depends on what size of ship they are supposed to be balanced for.

One idea I've toyed around with before is letting larger control rooms buff weapon ranges (but not projectile speed or accuracy). I think this vaguely makes sense (larger control room = better computers+sensors = better targeting range), and would let weapon range scale somewhat with ship size, instead of fighers being too far apart and dreadnaughts being too close together.

Of course, that only really works if control rooms have *additional* effects that discourage players from using huge control rooms on fighters or tiny control rooms on battleships.

CaptainRedstone

Walt Well I think Flak should be considerably better vs nukes/EMPs in this mod (the reduced explosion randomness helps a lot).

PD is weird I think because their burst fire makes them feel really binary when shooting at Nukes/EMPs; either you have enough to shoot it down or you don't, regardless of range. I'm wondering whether I should remove their burst fire, but the problem with that is then of course their per-shot damage would need to be much lower, which also doesn't feel great.

Alternatively, I could give PD high-damage continuous fire but also a large random spread, which would make each shot feel impactful but keep overall DPS relatively low due high percentage of missed shots. (And it'd probably also make PD better at hitting large, fast-moving projectiles like EMPs.)

I didn't mean that as much as the fact that they both have enough health to usually survive a volley from 5-10 PD, or decent amounts of flak, while the EMP's high projectile speed greatly emphasizes this issue. I have seen an EMP missile shot down like, 3 times, ever?

Terket

Walt I'm open to this, and it adds a nice twist to the Ion Beam, which I currently feel like overlaps a bit much with the Railgun. There just needs to be a way to visualize it losing power with range. Perhaps the beam gets narrower at longer ranges?

~~o.o tapering ion beams~~ I'd be up for that change. That'd be a great change, which more inspires the up-close combat ~~{i love charging}~~

Dalas120

2) Nukes/EMP missiles are nearly invulnerable to flak/PD

I agree with this, particularly for nukes. EMPs I think have some additional challenges, which I talk about in the post below this one.

Walt PD is weird I think because their burst fire makes them feel really binary when shooting at Nukes/EMPs; either you have enough to shoot it down or you don't, regardless of range

Is the problem that range doesn’t matter or that they feel binary?

I think it’s ok if range doesn’t matter much. Having range be important means that nuke bombers (with their fast-moving nukes) are even stronger compared to slow nukes. And realistically, flak/PD range are so short compared to missiles that missiles will almost always be fired from outside the flak/PD range.

I do think that binary damage is concern though. Flak, for example, will frequently get a clump of nukes down to low health without destroying any of them. If the bursty/expensive flak changes suggested previously happen, maybe a single flak burst could deal exactly enough damage to kill one nuke/EMP/railgun bullet (fixing the all-or-nothing issue). I’m not sure about PD.

Since PD and flak can be distracted by cannon and laser bullets, I think it’s probably ok if nukes have low enough hp that nuke-only gets demolished by PD/flak. The burst flak changes suggested previously make distraction especially powerful – you could shoot in a few cannon shells to trigger flak, then shoot off your nukes after.

(on a side note unrelated to balance, I think PD would feel cooler if it shot more bullets per burst, with the same burst duration and per-burst damage. It would feel more like a stream of bullets instead of a few individual ones)

Walt

CaptainRedstone I didn't mean that as much as the fact that they both have enough health to usually survive a volley from 5-10 PD, or decent amounts of flak, while the EMP's high projectile speed greatly emphasizes this issue. I have seen an EMP missile shot down like, 3 times, ever?

Yeah I know what you mean, I'm saying that Flak does significantly more damage due to reduced randomness. (The current 0.14.6 flak misses a significant portion of the time, meaning it often takes flak an extra shot or two to shoot something down. This updated flak almost always hits.)

SpaceCat Cannons generally getting nerfed when they are no longer OP at all seems strange.

The cannon range nerf is specifically to solve the massive momentum-boosting advantage that cannons have over other weapons. That's not even really a balance issue, it's just really weird and makes no sense. They might need a separate buff to compensate though.

SpaceCat Unsure how the railgun changes will work out - simply giving them less range still means they can fan if you come close. Also means missiles beeing the only real longrange weapons now.
I think to actually nerf rail there needs to be some weapon very effectively cutting/melting through armor. Because railguns seem rly only OP on heavily armored fans/spinners. (Similar to nukespinners.)

It is not my intention to nerf railguns. (Though if y'all think they should be nerfed, we can have that conversation, but I haven't gotten much feedback that railguns are OP right now.)

The range reduction 250 -> 200 is misleading due to the fact that accelerators now buff range. Only for zero-accelerator railguns has range been nerfed. Every other length of railgun has at least the same range as vanilla 0.14.6.

SpaceCat Another nerf to thrusters, assuming is meant for preventing kiting further, BUT ships with more thrusters will still kite ships with fewer thrusters and can do so for a prolonged time because the overall ship speed is slower.

Why whenever I nerf thrusters does everyone assume it's to nerf kiters? It's not! 😛

The consensus in the post-tourney discussion seemed to be that thrust was simply too strong, that building slow, tanky ships wasn't viable and should be.

SpaceCat Reminding @Walt that you wanted thrusters to play a major role.

Thrust should absolutely be important, but it shouldn't be all-important. Right now it seems absolutely necessary in the meta, but ideally it should be viable to build slow, tanky ships.

SpaceCat

Weapons

this:

Standard Cannon
Range: 200 -> 150
Large Cannon
Range: 200 -> 120
Speed: 35 -> 40

and this:

Flak
Number of explosions per shot: 2 -> 1
Damage per explosion: 900 -> 1800
Explosion radius: 4 -> 5
Explosion damage is now applied per projectile in the radius instead of a flat amount, thus making flak more effective vs clustered projectiles.
Random explosion offset: 5 meters -> 4 meters
Ammo usage per shot: 0.5 -> 1 (this is actually bugged in 0.14.6 and is only using half the ammo that was intended)
No longer does friendly-fire to friendly ships.

certainly leading to this:

Cannons having a very much harder time then they allready have against flak. - I dislike that.

Cannons generally getting nerfed when they are no longer OP at all seems strange.

Other weapons getting range/speed buffs will give cannons the rest ... cannons decommissioned ?

Other Weapons

I like the range buff to most of the weapons! (more range seems reasonable, agreeing with: @CaptainRedstone)

Unsure how the railgun changes will work out - simply giving them less range still means they can fan if you come close. Also means missiles beeing the only real longrange weapons now.
I think to actually nerf rail there needs to be some weapon very effectively cutting/melting through armor. Because railguns seem rly only OP on heavily armored fans/spinners. (Similar to nukespinners.)

Thrust

Another nerf to thrusters, assuming is meant for preventing kiting further, BUT ships with more thrusters will still kite ships with fewer thrusters and can do so for a prolonged time because the overall ship speed is slower.
Avoiding missiles by outrunning will be harder (especially nukes).

0.1.44 thrust meta was fun - admitting it was too extreme and unbalanced - but "NOspinupbonus" did take care of that more then enough!
Reminding @Walt that you wanted thrusters to play a major role.

Balance changes i had in mind (after the last official tourney):

FLAK could do more damage to shipss/parts & missiles but less damage to cannonballs.
Overall making flak almost 50/50 attack/defense wise.
But not as strong as cannons in attack ofc.

Lower the spinup time of thrusters slightly to get a better reaction time of ships while keeping the "NOspinupbonus" with engine rooms.

actually wanted to make a thread for balancing after tourney - but Walt was faster - ofc

regards,

SpaceCat

Walt They might need a separate buff to compensate though.

Fair point - obv if you buff the speed momentum boost would be back again.
(lifetime & speed results in range - as i understand it.)
So the only thing to buff rly is damage they deal.
Just afraid that cannonshots will hardly hit anything because they get cought by FLAK.
Also i though playing with the momentum required a lot interaction, thus not a balancing issue ...

gameplay wise:
i was already was replacing cannons with lasers to get through FLAK - if canons get nerfed in any way i will do this more often most likely ... (thats why my decommision rant.)

Walt It is not my intention to nerf railguns. (Though if y'all think they should be nerfed, we can have that conversation, but I haven't gotten much feedback that railguns are OP right now.)

The range reduction 250 -> 200 is misleading due to the fact that accelerators now buff range. Only for zero-accelerator railguns has range been nerfed. Every other length of railgun has at least the same range as vanilla 0.14.6.

understand that it is a bit misleading and agree, as i wrote:

Walt I think to actually nerf rail there needs to be some weapon very effectively cutting/melting through armor. Because railguns seem rly only OP on heavily armored fans/spinners. (Similar to nukespinners.)

Walt Why whenever I nerf thrusters does everyone assume it's to nerf kiters? It's not! 😛

The consensus in the post-tourney discussion seemed to be that thrust was simply too strong, that building slow, tanky ships wasn't viable and should be.

... ok "thrust nerf has nothing to do with kiters" i remember that ;-)

Thrust WAS OP because you could avoid almost all projecitles - that is much harder now and i think tanks (railgun turtles, missilebarges, etc ...) do much better already.
No matter how much you nerf thrust - turning rate will always be faster then flanking speed (relatively to thrusters used) - so it will always be very hard to flank with just one ship.
By nerfing thrusters further you also nerf "Tanks" speed so the ratio between fast and slow ships will always be the same. (also but not only applying to kites.)
Also reducing total speed will make it harder to outrun missiles - making them even more powerful (and players still love to complain about missiles.)

all of this needs some testing now ...

repost:

Balance changes i had in mind (after the last official tourney):

FLAK could do more damage to shipss/parts & missiles but less damage to cannonballs.
Overall making flak almost 50/50 attack/defense wise.
But not as strong as cannons in attack ofc.

Lower the spinup time of thrusters slightly to get a better reaction time of ships while keeping the "NOspinupbonus" with engine rooms.

SpaceCat

Walt The cannon range nerf is specifically to solve the massive momentum-boosting advantage that cannons have over other weapons.

Is it possible to nerf momentum of cannonballs directly instead of other cannon-stats (and thrusters)?

Dalas120

3) Thrust is too strong; slow, tanky ships are not viable.

Walt The consensus in the post-tourney discussion seemed to be that thrust was simply too strong, that building slow, tanky ships wasn't viable and should be.

I'm not sure if this is so much a balance issue as a game mode and settings issue. The arena format encourages speed so you can hunt down the AI ships (and defend your own), and mines (which are a strong counter to engines) were basically banned because of friendly fire (and start empty, to a lesser extent). Also, tractor beams are next on the trello, and they will almost certainly weaken thrust.

The only part of thrust I think might be a balance problem is that EMPs aren’t very good at shutting down engines, mostly because of their guidance. Ideally EMP missiles could be aimed at the engines on a fast-moving, direction-changing ship, and actually hit their target. I’m not sure if guidance can be made that intelligent though.

EDIT: also, maybe mines could last forever instead of 3 minutes? Or at least long enough to survive a standard tournament game.

Dalas120

4) Cannons, and especially nukes, can too easily be range-boosted further than other weapons.

Walt The cannon range nerf is specifically to solve the massive momentum-boosting advantage that cannons have over other weapons. That's not even really a balance issue, it's just really weird and makes no sense. They might need a separate buff to compensate though.

Walt Instead of lowering range, I could also buff projectile speed a bit, which would simultaneously buff cannons (both accuracy and making them harder to shoot down) while also reducing the effect of momentum boosting. That might be better than a range nerf, though there's a limit because I still want cannons to be slower than lasers.

Equalizer That said railguns and ions can have ranges about 2-3 times that of cannons since they gain little/no range from ship speed. They should be able to match the range that cannons can get from momentum boosting.

First off, I don’t think it’s key for all projectiles to have the exact same 3-second lifetime (which it looks like most of them have in the experimental changes). As long as the lifetime is similar, it should still be difficult to range boost a cannon or nuke more than other weapons.

Walt Standard Cannon
Range: 200 -> 150
Large Cannon
Range: 200 -> 120
Speed: 35 -> 40

Range decreases sound fine to me, as long as they get buffs to compensate. I would suggest keeping the large and standard cannon at the same range though, because I think it doesn’t feel very “large” to have shorter range.

In general I was thinking cannons could be cheap and durable, but short-range and inefficient with surface-area. So in addition to the range decreases, they could get cheaper (cost and/or ammo) and tougher as compensatory buffs. I also wouldn’t be against making them extra-strong vs armor.

Walt Railgun
Range: 250 -> 200
Range is now increased by accelerators
Speed: 110 -> 100

Near-infinite range would definitely help single large railguns compete with fans, but I’m not sure what other consequences this change might have. 200 feels like far too high of a starting range, given how many accelerators are on the average railgun (unless the accelerator formula changes).

Walt Small Laser
Range: 150 -> 160
Heavy Laser
Range: 150 -> 200
Speed: 60 -> 100

What would you think about making the different firing modes of the heavy laser have different balance effects?

Walt Range: 200 -> 250
Damage: 200 -> 300

This sounds very strong. I haven’t had a chance to test it out in depth though.

Walt Nuke
Range: 150 -> 90

I think that decreasing their range to 90 is pretty extreme, but I agree that they can probably be boosted too far now, and I also think that increasing their projectile speed (to reduce lifetime) would feel weird. The only other option I can think of is to have them transition to grid-relative movement over time (like mines), but that makes them difficult to chase enemies with. So I’m not sure….

What to do with nukes probably depends heavily on any reductions to nuke hp, any changes to flak/PD, and the increased range of some other weapons (railguns/HE/EMP).

In general, with these specific numbers I'm a bit worried that turreted weapons will have too short range to be used on slow ships.

Walt

SpaceCat Lower the spinup time of thrusters slightly to get a better reaction time of ships

I would prefer not to do this because that would make the different sizes of thrusters more samey.

SpaceCat

Walt would prefer not to do this because that would make the different sizes of thrusters more samey.

i get that.

Though not beeing able to outrun missiles will hurt.
again ... the ratio between fast and slow ships will always be the same no matter how much thrust is nerfed or buffed.
So it is mostly about the "Projectiles to Ship" speed-ratio then the "ship to ship" speed-ratio.

🙂

Walt

SpaceCat Is it possible to nerf momentum of cannonballs directly instead of other cannon-stats (and thrusters)?

Not without changing the fundamental physics behind momentum boosting.

Instead of lowering range, I could also buff projectile speed a bit, which would simultaneously buff cannons (both accuracy and making them harder to shoot down) while also reducing the effect of momentum boosting. That might be better than a range nerf, though there's a limit because I still want cannons to be slower than lasers.

SpaceCat So it is mostly about the "Projectiles to Ship" speed-ratio then the "ship to ship" speed-ratio.

That is correct.

Terket

Perhaps with more thrusters, they get less effective.

Salephz

I think that both types of cannons should still have the same range...

IVIemories

I know I said railgun ranges should be increased, but I think this might be a bit too much - if only because AI ships literally can't even target the player at max range.

I think a effective range decrease of ~25-30% might be good for balancing, while still keeping the feeling of railguns as a sniping weapon.

It might also be a good idea to give each accelerator diminishing returns on the additional range.
image https://i.imgur.com/taNzRTi.jpg

Walt

IVIemories Ideally railgun range would get buffed equivalently to projectile speed. That's what prevents them from losing range when fired from fast moving ships. Though even if range was buffed less than speed, that'd still be better than vanilla.

Inedilarion

I think it is necessary to try to make the growth of speed damping exponentially. This will significantly limit the speed of fast ships, almost without interfering with slow.

Reducing the range of guns has a strong effect on large ships with guns located at the stern: they will not reach the target at the far end of the enemy ship. An example is shown in the screenshots, lasers reach the point of deception, but all other weapons fire at random targets with minimal benefit.

image https://i.imgur.com/ANoiijS.jpg

image https://i.imgur.com/WFyknc8.jpg

Walt

_star This is not the thread for pointing out bugs

Lafiel

Up until about 0.14.0 cannons only had a range of 100 and 120. Now that thrusters, boosters, engine rooms and lighter armor allow up to 10x better acceleration plus being able to impart speed and increase range of shots... I don't see that much of a problem with these minor changes. Increasing shot speed would have the greater impact. Overall I'm leaning toward increases than decreases but I do also see no point for slow shots having more range when ships fast enough to escape.
The impression of fun is connected to speed and action. So keeping things relative is key. If fights are at longer ranges than things have to go faster. The only downside with zooming out I see is explosions might be less enjoyable.

After testing related defenses I think cannon shots are a bit tough to destroy. Flak does need a bit more explosion range. It's damage against operational is fine but could use more damage towards shots.

_star It would be more troublesome when setting are not reset and things go haywire before you can set them right. At worse you won't be able to save, load and the game would crashes like it usually did before 0.14.6.

Equalizer

What the appropriate range of weapons should be depends on what size of ship they are supposed to be balanced for.

I'd suggest weapons have a range of approximately 2 ship lengths.
So the proposed ranges should be fine for ships of lengths less than ~60 cells beyond that there will be issues with some weapons not being usable on certain shapes.

I think taking a middle ground between reducing range and buffing speed would be slightly better otherwise issues that came up before the ranges were increased are likely to return.
(e.g. Standard cannon range 200 -> 175 speed 50 -> 60)

I feel that there is a bit of an issue with there being plenty of players than want to make really big ships (either max ship size or use the huge ship mod to build even bigger). Short range weapons just look silly on such large ships meaning they can only practically use missiles and railguns. I don't think there's a good solution to that at the moment.

Regarding ion cannons would it be possible to apply an alpha gradient to the beam? At the moment it actually looks rather odd how the beam just stops. The beam damage could also then fade with range.

Some of the smaller projectiles (small cannon, electo bolt, laser, and heavy laser) probably need higher hp or flak will work too well and basically block focused fire completely due to damage to all in area. Likely creates a scenario where focusing fire is actually bad.

IVIemories

Equalizer I feel like Railguns and Ions could stand to gain a bit more range than 2 ship lengths given their nature as fixed targeting weapons without any way to turn.

Equalizer

IVIemories The issue with the ranges being too long is that to have both ships on screen at the same time would make it hard to see much more than their shape.

That said railguns and ions can have ranges about 2-3 times that of cannons since they gain little/no range from ship speed. They should be able to match the range that cannons can get from momentum boosting.