Experimental Balance Changes for 0.14.7

Terket

Perhaps with more thrusters, they get less effective.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

mleise

Updated thruster calculator for 15% linear damping: https://bit.ly/2TYZZAm
Ship speed should be 35% slower according to my calculations.

Dalas120

*disclaimer*: I was not in the post-tourney VC, and don't know what was discussed there

In general, I really don't think there are a lot of glaring balance problems with things as they currently are. Tournament ship types were refreshingly diverse, and nearly every weapon was used at least once.

From reading this discussion, it looks like the problems that these changes are trying to solve are:
1) Flak feels too weak against clustered cannon and laser bullets.
2) Nukes/EMP missiles are nearly invulnerable to flak/PD
3) Thrust is too strong; slow, tanky ships are not viable.
4) Cannons, and especially nukes, can too easily be range-boosted further than other weapons.
5) Weapon range feels too short on large ships, and too large on small ships.

Dalas120

1) Flak feels too weak against clustered cannon and laser bullets.

@Walt So I wonder if part of the perceived weakness of Flak is that it unintuitively doesn't get stronger against clumped projectiles. (Do to using the flat explosive damage instead of the old per-target damage.)

I don’t think flak feels weak vs cannons/lasers. Flak showed up in many tourney matches, and generally seemed effective. The complaint I hear a lot more is that EMPs and Nukes have too much health, which I think I agree with.

I think that problems with flak right now are:
1) flak is quite strong vs cannons, lasers, HE, and mines, but pretty bad vs everything else (rails, nukes, ships, etc.). Since railguns and nukes are most common right now, this makes flak ineffective against many current ship designs.
2) flak isn’t significantly better vs clumped projectiles than spread out projectiles.
3) flak is difficult to fit on ships, given it’s large size and low firing arc.
4) it can be difficult to see how effective flak is being (or not being) because it fires very rapidly with low damage per shot. This feels bad.

Regarding the experimental changes - I’m all for making flak stronger vs clustered projectiles, but I don’t think that pure AOE is the way to go. As @Equalizer said, pure AOE means that flak could theoretically block infinite amounts of damage.

Starting from 0.14.6 balance, what would you think about giving flak much higher damage per shot, but with a much, much longer delay between shots. I think that that would help with #1, #2, and #4. More bursty damage would help flak be more effective vs nukes/rails (#1), and it would definitely make flak’s effect more visible (#4) (a single big event rather than a trickle of destroyed projectiles).

Bursty flak would also be stronger vs clumped projectiles without being broken vs spread out projectiles (#2). Since it would deal heavy damage, infrequently, in a small area, most of flak’s damage would be wasted vs spread out bullets. Flak would still be unable to block 100% of damage because of long downtime between shots/volleys.

(I do like the rapid-fire autocannon feel of flak though… so I’m a little torn)

I also suggest making each individual flak part much more powerful, but also much more expensive (cost and ammo). This would help with #3 by making it much easier to physically fit flak on ships, and would also help with #4 by making each individual flak feel more effective. Hopefully this would combo with fire rate/damage changes to make flak placement more important, instead of just making a forward-facing wall of it.

Finally, I also wouldn’t be against letting flak (and PD?) do increased dps-per-cost vs ships (to help with #1). Since flak and PD have serious weaknesses compared to other weapons (short range, low arc, can’t set target) it’s probably ok for them to have similar dps-per-cost.

Walt

Dalas120 Starting from 0.14.6 balance, what would you think about giving flak much higher damage per shot, but with a much longer delay between shots. I think that that would help with #1, #2, and #4. More bursty damage would help flak be more effective vs nukes/rails (#1), and it would definitely make flak’s effect more visible (#4) (a single big event rather than a trickle of destroyed projectiles).

Totally fine with this, I'm just wondering about ammo usage, whether that should scale as well. (Keeping in mind that I'm already planning to fix the half ammo usage bug.)

Dalas120 I also suggest making each individual flak part much more powerful, but also much more expensive (cost and ammo).

How much more? At some point, probably around $15-20K, flak starts feeling really expensive for its size.

Dalas120 Since flak and PD have serious weaknesses compared to other weapons (short range, low arc, can’t set target) it’s probably ok for them to have similar dps-per-cost.

As an aside, I'm wondering about giving PD very long (200+) range, continuous fire, and a bit more spread so that the per-hit damage can stay relatively high while keeping effective DPS relatively low. The problem with the current burst fire is mainly just that it feels really frustrating having the PD do nothing for a couple seconds in the face of incoming missiles. I think it'd feel a lot better (and more dramatic!) to have PD continuously firing on missiles from long range "desperately" trying to shoot them down before they hit. That seems more in line with how PD tends to be used in space sci-fi, I think.

Dalas120 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

I agree, it's just a bit of a performance issue that people have complained about in the past.

Dalas120 and mines (which are a strong counter to engines) were basically banned because of friendly fire

For the record, I am strongly against turning on friendly fire until mines are proven to be an issue without it.

Dalas120 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.

I think it can, but requires some major new U.I. to let the player dictate the direction in which EMPs (and presumably other missiles as well) can approach. Not happening for 0.14.7.

Dalas120 200 feels like far too high of a starting range, given how many accelerators are on the average railgun (unless the accelerator formula changes).

From a lore standpoint though, I don't think it makes sense for a min-length railgun to have a range much lower than 200.

Tweaking the accelerator formula I'm open to, though if it's tweaked specifically for range (such that range increases less quickly than velocity) then that runs the risk of being unintuitive and reintroducing the problem that longer railguns are less momentum-boostable.

Dalas120 What would you think about making the different firing modes of the heavy laser have different balance effects?

I'm open to it. What do you have in mind?

Dalas120 This sounds very strong. I haven’t had a chance to test it out in depth though.

~~The 0.14.6 Ion Beam DPS is comically low at 1000/sec. For comparison, the Heavy Laser is 1600/sec.~~

Nevermind, my calculation was incorrect, it's 2000/sec. Maybe 2500/sec is about right?

Dalas120 I think that decreasing their range to 90 is pretty extreme

Maybe 120, coupled with the other changes to Nuke HP, flak, etc?

Dalas120 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.

I'm thinking about buffing cannon projectile speed so that they're just under small laser speed and setting range to match. That'd be a significant projectile speed buff and a modest range nerf.

Dalas120 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.

I've thought about that as well, but haven't yet come up with something that sat right with me and didn't feel too arbitrary/rulesy.

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)

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.

IVIemories

Dalas120 50% of the reason for changing to arena was simply so that slower ships could actually attack an objective instead of just having the fast ship dictate the pace of the battle and only engaging when it wants to engage. Remember, fast walls were prevalent before the switch to arena.

Dalas120

IVIemories I think that fast walls getting less common was mostly caused by 1) 0.14.6 and 2) a rail spinner winning the grand tournament. I do agree that arena has definitely made tournaments much more fast-paced (thank goodness), but IMO it hurts single slow ships more than it helps - slow ships struggle to chase down enemy AI, defend their own AI, or reposition when AIs respawn.