View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002339 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Jan 9, 2011 2:34 pm | Jan 14, 2011 9:07 am | |
| Reporter | mr_lolz | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.064 | ||||
| Summary | 0002339: Balance: Zenith Beam Frigate | ||||
| Description | A full shipcap of MK I Zenith Beam Frigates has a DPS of 3571. (to put that into perspective, most MK I shipcaps have a DPS ranging from 15k to 60k- this is incredibly low!) imo, 7.5x increase in damage from weapon (for approx 23.5k dps/shipcap) | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
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Keep in mind their ability to hit multiple targets. As such, their DPS vs. a single target should be at or below average, because their DPS against a "blob" of ships will be much higher. If the shipcap really is a measly 3271, that is WAY too weak though. |
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Yea, haven't rebalanced these yet, need to do that. A basic question is: how many targets should it need to hit with one shot to get the same dps as, say, a fighter? 2? 10? 40? |
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On average, how many hits were Z beams getting per shot in the last 3.x version? Whatever that was, maybe balance against that number minus 1, assuming the beam mechanic hasn't changed. |
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I have no earthly clue what the average is :) |
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Time to dig through the archives and observe their previously balanced behavior. Dang it, now I regret not keeping a copy of the last SlimDX version. |
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the average isnt actually that high imo, in the players hands its usually just 1. its probably best to balance them normally then crop like 20% off their DPS to compensate for the effectiveness of said ability in the AIs hands. |
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they were balanced in the last version because the DPS of every other ship was like 5x lower |
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One more problem here: the AOE of their beam is so small, it's next to impossible to hit more than 2 ships per shot even when they're tightly grouped. I had almost a full cap of mk1/mk2 beam frigates (93 total) firing through a line of missile frigates (100 at least, probably more like 150), and they did minimal damage, getting the missile frigates down to 3/4 health generally. Assuming there were 100 missile frigates, and converting each mk2 beam frigate into 2 mk1 beam frigates for simplicity of calculation, it came out to be about 55k damage done on average per beam frigate in what should have been the most favorable situation possible. This was over perhaps a 30 second long engagement, so divide 55k by 10 (for roughly 10 firing cycles at a reload of 3.5 seconds), and we end up with each beam frigate doing about 5.5k per shot with bonus (would have been 2.75k per shot against any non-bonus ship), meaning they were hitting about 1.5 ships on average when armor is factored in to the damage. This was with about the most ideal set up the beam frigates could possibly hope for. The actual results were probably worse considering it was during a wave and the frigate grouping was within range of my turrets, and had likely taken a decent amount of damage from my turrets. Conclusion: being able to hit multiple targets should essentially not be factored in when trying to find a balance for beam frigates. This additional ability will be balanced out automatically by the low number of beam frigates in the field, and the very low likelihood of having any given beam frigate hit more than 2 targets. |
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For 4.066: * Zenith Beam Frigate: ** Base Health from 22k/26k/32k/38k/54k => 22k*mk. ** Base Armor Rating from 200/250/300/350/500 => 150*mk. ** Base Attack Power from 500/1000/1500/2000/3000 => 4000*mk. ** Base Attack Range from 8k/9k/10k/12k/12k => 6k/6.5k/7k/7.5k/8k. ** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 1. ** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 1. ** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 1. ** Can now hit a maximum of 10 targets with one shot; there is no particular logic (closest, etc) for selecting which 10 if there are more than that on the line, nor is it desired that there be. ** Beams now always go the full range, rather than stopping at the primary target. They may be OP now since their base dps when hitting 1 ship is about 56k (a fighter has about 58.8k), so 10 targets is an astronomical 560k (hence the max-hits cap, to prevent it going totally asymptotic). But worth a shot :) |
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ohh I really liked them as long range:( |
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You know, as I was making these changes I thought to myself "Self, I'm pretty sure that no matter what the numbers come out to be, superking will complain about something". It's good to know some things about this universe are reasonably reliable :) More seriously, thanks for reminding me to rebalance these, I'm actually very fond of beam weapons (as the various Fallen-Spire-related units may indicate). The range decrease isn't a beam-frigate-specific thing, in general we're wanting to shorten ranges to re-establish some of the "battlegrounds within battlegrounds" feel that used to be there before so many ships could cover half a planet with their firing range. If it'd make you happier I can change the range to 8k flat across the marks instead of building up from 6k to 8k. |
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For simplicity, I think that ranges and speed should remain constant within the differing marks of a specific ship class, so that they're easier to use in concert. Before the changes, the speed bonus of mk2 and mk3 deflector drones was of no use if you combined them with lower mark ships (space planes had a similar problem IIRC). With units with different ranges, they end up getting dispersed a little bit, so if you have them on waypoint queues it's possible for the ships to hit their targets in slightly separated waves instead of as a tightly clumped mass, and in-transit they're a little more dispersed making them a little easier to pick off. Usually these things aren't a problem, but there can end up being some weird edge cases that make differing ranges for a homogeneous group of ships a bit frustrating, especially if the ships are short range (it wasn't a problem for beam frigates before because the effective difference between 11k and 13k range isn't much, but the effective difference between 2k and 4k range is quite a bit as is the case of bombers IIRC). |
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I agree with Sunshine that ranges should be kept consistent among marks, except for maybe a few cases where the gimmick of that ship/structure is range and not firepower. |
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Yea, I definitely try to keep speed constant across marks. Though do remember to use group-move if for whatever reason you need a mixed-speed group to move together. As for range it's actually slightly better if there's, say, 100 units between each mark so that the lower mark ones tend to get a little closer to the enemy and thus more likely to be auto-targeted first in some cases. |
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Okay, I can see why that would be useful. Then how about not letting differences in range from Mk. I to Mk. V get beyond a certain multiplier. 6k-8k is a alright range (a 33.3% increase is fine), but anything beyond a 50% increase or so would seem awkward to me. |
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For 4.067: * Zenith Beam Frigate base range from 5500+(500*mk) => 7500+(100*mk). |
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Which of course means that the "real" range went from 9000-11000 to 10600-11000. Some day we need to re-unify the base and effective range stats, I'm just too lazy to go through and add 3000 to _that_ many unit data entries ;) |
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weee thanks keith now to find somthing else to moan about :) |
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Someone's got to do it ;) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 9, 2011 2:34 pm | mr_lolz | New Issue | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:00 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008097 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:02 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0008097 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:05 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008100 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:06 pm | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:06 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | new => feedback |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008101 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0008101 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:08 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008102 | |
| Jan 9, 2011 5:11 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008103 | |
| Jan 10, 2011 10:44 am | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0008132 | |
| Jan 10, 2011 10:44 am | mr_lolz | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Jan 10, 2011 10:45 am | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0008133 | |
| Jan 12, 2011 1:47 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008369 | |
| Jan 12, 2011 2:56 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008385 | |
| Jan 12, 2011 2:56 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Jan 12, 2011 2:56 pm | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Jan 13, 2011 6:05 am | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0008408 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 11:43 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008411 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:18 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008413 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:23 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008414 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:23 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008415 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:37 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008416 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:41 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008417 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:42 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Edited: 0008417 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 12:44 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008418 | |
| Jan 14, 2011 7:27 am | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0008463 | |
| Jan 14, 2011 9:07 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008467 |
