View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002462 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Jan 16, 2011 11:42 am | Jan 19, 2011 7:29 pm | |
| Reporter | Sunshine | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.068 | ||||
| Summary | 0002462: Beam Frigates are RIDICULOUSLY overpowered | ||||
| Description | In about 10 minutes, they've scored about 500 kills (in the previous 3 hours, they'd scored 230-some). Most of this is probably from shooting up a giant autocannon minipod swarm, but they went and turned a wave (schizophrenic) of 750 guys into a wave of 160 guys with the help of some turrets. The "beam goes to maximum distance" is useful, and I like it. It makes a huge difference because it's pretty easy to see where their shots would normally converge in the middle of a swarm, and how they're getting a lot more hits because of the continuation. But, their damage could probably stand to be halved (48k damage for mk3 beam frigates on normal/normal is pretty insane). Edit: I should probably use them without muniboost to really be making this claim, but with a 2x muniboost they're ridiculous. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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I should probably also mention that the beam frigates were under the effect of a 2x munition boost (military mk3) at the time as well, so by themselves they don't perform as well as the above would suggest. |
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Yep, it looks like the buff was a little too buff. At least time its something you get, rather than a minor faction (like the marauders *shudder*) |
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It's something you get until the AI unlocks beam frigates, and then you can kiss your fleet good bye every time a wave shows up. |
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Before I did the balancing I asked multiple times how many targets-hit-per-shot I should balance against, and multiple players responded that basically it should be balanced against hitting 1 target per shot. So that's what I did; their cap-dps when hitting one target per shot is slightly less than a fighter. Actually, since they get no bonuses and fighters get 2.4x bonuses they're significantly less powerful (on average) than fighters when only hitting one target per shot. As a sanity check during that balance I also put in a rule preventing a single zenith beam frigate from hitting more than 10 targets. Anyway, I'm not going to nerf these without some wider base of feedback, or I'll be playing player-complaint ping-pong for a rather long time ;) |
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Idea: balance the beams by spreading out the damage. If it hits one ship, it does a total of 100% damage to that ship. If it hits two, do a total damage of 110% damage. 3, 121% damage, and so on, cumulatively adding 10% (or fifteen, or 7, I dunno). Then portion out the damage in shares to each that was hit, with 1 share to the farthest away, 2 to the next closest, 4 shares, then eight, and so on, with n^2 shares to the closest of the n ships hit. This compromises between the crowd management of THE BEAM and the sheer distructive power of THE BEAM, as the overall damage increases the more it hits like it is now, but it simulates the front ship both absorbing the brunt of the blast and shielding its comrades. Now that I think of it, a similar method could be used on area electric attacks, a ship close to the electrical discharge would recieve more current than one farther out, which would receive more than one who's farther out from another ship who "caught" a share of the blast. |
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We already have a damage-degrades-as-it-hits-targets beam mechanic for the heavy beam cannons, the zenith beams are intended to be more of a "penetrating heat beam" type thing with more of a true-line-aoe. Not that the 100/110/121/etc mechanic wouldn't be interesting for something else, but the mechanic for the zenith beam frigates is as-intended. The electric attacks are balanced by having very low magnitudes and a per-planet-per-player-per-mark-level minimum-time-between-bursts to keep the alpha strike from being too much. |
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Here is the thing. The average number of ships per hit was just a little over 1 with the old beam logic. The new beam logic gives a higher average, >=2 probably. I haven't done enough with this version's z-beams to narrow it down any further than that though. |
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Well, y'all figure out what that new average is and let me know ;) And the munitions-boosting thing is significant, but my question there is "are zenith beam frigates with 2x muni boost any more ridiculous than, say, zenith chameleons with 2x muni boost?" |
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I'll post screenshots of beamers in action that I take over the course of this game, to give an idea of dispersal pattern/hit averages. Above is the first one. Edit: The part that made the damage change potentially too much, I think, is the new beam penetration. I would agree that before, without beam penetration, multiple hits were pretty uncommon because it would depend on formation clustering, formation size, where the frigates tended to target in the formation. Now, since beams always go max range, these three issues are largely irrelevant (formation size less so, but it's because even a cluster with a diameter of 5 ships can provide a large number of hits instead of being hugely variable with old fire pattern based on precise lines of fire). |
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Just marking this as feedback until someone has a clear idea of how many targets are actually being hit, etc. |
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Maybe it can deal full damage to first target, and lower amounts to other targets it hits respectively. I don't know if it can be done, and also it'll cause another issue; the target you want them to attack can be far behind in the line. How about a wide-spread attack (like the beam towers has), lets say beam normally does 10,000 damage in a line, to X targets, make it 1,000 x 10, and beam can hit less than X targets, or just 1 and stops. More of a sweeper, rather than piercing like spire beams do. Or, how about a booster style effect, continuously dealing damage to a target? Using sniper target mechanics to take out targets one by one - although this will cause some FPS issues I assume. Or, hull based piercing maybe? On X type hulls, it doesn't penetrate, on Y type hulls, can hit 2 targets, etc... sounds complex though. |
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I'm happy with the mechanic, there are other ships that use the alternate mechanics (HBCs with the only-does-so-much-total-damage, Electric Shuttles with the new can-hit-200-but-can-hit-as-few-as-40-with-same-total-damage, Flak/Grenade with the circular-aoe-but-small-max-hit-cap). The Zenith beam mechanic is staying as-is, it's just a matter of finding the right numbers. |
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How about cutting the base attack a little bit (500*mk to 100+300*mk for example, a base beam power and on top of it, improvement (mark) power), but higher marks can hit more targets at once? dunno. |
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We don't really do split formulas like 100+300*mk for attack power anymore, the linear-growth part is important to overall balance. First fact to establish here is how many targets a beam frigate hits per shot, from there good baseline numbers can be determined. |
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they are fun now, the name of the game is get the enemy fleet to attack in a long thin line then bundle all the beam frigates close so the beams run down the group... like this they can easily be hitting 10x targets each. I dont think they are *that* overpowered atm, but having now played with them a bit i think it might be sensible to balance their damage downward a bit because players will easily abuse the line-fire |
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Definitely balance downward, but the original post was pretty much a knee-jerk reaction (by which I mean, my comment of them being RIDICULOUSLY), since they vaporized a pile of a couple hundred autocannons in about two shots - but this was while they were 2x muniboosted, and that's the kind of target they're implicitly supposed to be good against. I agree with Superking that if you can get the enemy forces set up properly, 10x targets is easy to achieve, and beam frigates will easily be getting 3-5 hits on average in a typical fleet engagement because of the beam-continues-to-max-range attack pattern. I think, for DPS purposes, I would probably assume 3 to 4 hits, depending on if you want to have the beam frigates have a 3x DPS multiplier or 2.4x DPS multiplier in a "most favorable" engagement where you can set up the AI to get the 10 hits in. I think the math for this (to keep them on-par with Chameleon DPS, as was suggested above) would work out adjusting their damage down by half, since their current capDPS is a little less than a fighter, and Chameleons have 1.5x capDPS(?) from fighter not counting bonuses. So, give them .5x capdps from fighter, assume 3 or 4 hits on average in a normal fleet encounter for 1.5x-2x capDPS, and then the extra 2.4x or 3x "bonus" multiplier for proper set up or large engagements will take the place of armor type bonuses. Also to be kept in mind is that Beam Frigates, having no armor piercing, and having no bonuses, will end up consistently losing a lot of damage potential to armored targets. It's not like hitting 10 targets is 10(damage)-(armor), it's 10(damage)-10(armor), and even in best case scenario (unless you end up against a cloaker-heavy AI), there's a minimum of 300 armor on most ships. |
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As ugly it would be to change it now, having everything hit by the beam for full damage would be sort of broken unless you balance for like 8 hits on average or more. Of course, then they become somewhat useless in the true average case. Two alternatives I can think of. 1. Some sort of "max damage" the beam can do in a single firing, and once it hits that, the beam stops. The old rules of max of 10 hits and limited length still hold, of course. 2. The previously mentioned decaying damage for everything along the line. (The thing hit first, aka. closest to the ship along the beam, is hit with full damage, 2nd takes less, and so on) |
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the "max damage" is what beam cannons do, and you'd only ever end up with the frigates hitting one target because their damage is too low to do any pass-through damage in most cases. balancing for 8 hits as they're DPS against fighter DPS will make them severely underpowered, since the maximum damage multiplier they'll then get (if they hit 10 targets) is 1.25. I don't know about you, but a cap of beam frigates doing 1.25x fighter dps total only if they all hit 10 targets seems pretty bad. They should be usable in not-huge-fleet-engagements (which balancing at 8 hits won't allow for), and they should do significantly more DPS than comparable ships (on par with bonusDPS for comparable ships) in huge fleet engagements. Balancing at 3 or 4 hits allows for that, if you assume that many bonus ships (see microfighters, laser gatling, bulletproof, space tank, chameleons, for some examples) are going to have normal DPS of about 1.5x that of a triangle ship, with some bonuses on top of that. |
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"As ugly it would be to change it now, having everything hit by the beam for full damage would be sort of broken unless you balance for like 8 hits on average or more." I'm thinking that either you're not understanding the current state or I'm not understanding what you're saying :) Currently a Zenith Beam Frigate beam can hit a maximum of 10 targets, regardless of how much is on their line. If I nerf the base damage I'll extend that max-hits up so that the "ideal" (max hits every time) case is something like 300k or 400k cap-dps; on the other side I'm trying to avoid anything lower than 15k cap-dps in the worst case (1 hit per shot) and preferably no lower than 30k, but with an AOE ship that can be hard to attain. In general keeping any ship from being totally useless (unless it's some edge case like electric shuttles vs one target, that's pretty much doomed) and keeping any ship from being asymptotically powerful. AOE is often the most challenging to keep that balance. |
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I know about the 10 max no matter what. I am saying that nifty players may turn them into brokenly good units by learning to "trick" the AI into making "lines" with their ships, and then positioning their Zbeams to take advantage of it. I was saying that this exploitation wouldn't have much effect if the Z-beams were balanced for 8 hits on average, but as I said that makes them near worthless in the general case. Then again, if a player can really get that good with manipulating Z-beams, should they be rewarded with crazy DPS? |
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I think it's valid that a player who can pull off the necessary conditions be able to squeeze 300k dps out of these things. It's basically the same as if you pull off optimal match-offs of normal fleet ships against their bonus types. For some fleet ships the payoff is pretty small (1.4x or 2x bonuses, or even none in some cases) but their base dps is high. For others like bombers or missile frigates the base cap-dps is low (30k-ish) but they have 10x bonuses and thus have 300k cap-dps in ideal conditions. So it's ok that the zenith beam frigates have 300k or even 400k under ideal conditions. I don't want to encourage micro too much (hence wanting things to do _decently_ without ideal conditions), but having optional micro that is profitable isn't a fundamentally bad thing. If someone is playing on Diff 9 or something it will feel more like mandatory micro, but that's more an issue with playing on Diff 9 ;) |
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Actually, Beam Frigates are more likely to perform well on Difficulty 9 even without micro, simply because of the larger quantity of AI ships present because of how waves ramp up faster, there are more reinforcements, etc. |
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That's true. I was thinking of the general effect of a big difference between "how effective is unit xyz without micro" and "how effective is unit xyz with micro". |
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Also, currently beam frigates have max cap DPS (assuming every ship hits 10 targets, no armor) of 2.24 million at mk1 (normal/normal), so 560k for high/epic. If you're aiming for 300k to 400k at high/epic, then shaving 1/3 off the damage will put them at an upper bound of around 373k, shaving half off will put them at 280k upper bound. Somewhere between those two is probably a happy medium if 300k-400k is the allowable range for upper bound. |
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Oh, in that case, on difficulty 9 micro is pretty necessary in the sense that positioning and proper targeting really does matter for surviving engagements. So yeah, mandatory micro, but I'm strangely okay with the micro necessary for diff 9, since it tends to work itself out once you give the initial set of orders (that and the pause button is my best friend). |
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So I guess the damage ranges Sunshine posted and assuming an average of 3-4 ships per hit (3.5 maybe?) is a good place to adjust their balance again. |
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It's not a very precise thing, if the game is more "fun" in folks' general opinion with them being at 450k, then I don't care that the numbers say 450k (I'd care if they said 750k ;) ). Particularly with the lack of armor piercing (though the shot damage is high enough to not get totally shut down there). But yea, my numbers also show 560k and that's too high. |
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dropping damage by about 1/3rd rather than 1/2 will probably be more "fun," because otherwise individual target damage may be too low for beam frigates to actually kill anything on lower difficulties, where massive piles of enemy ships are less common. If they can't really kill anything, or don't seem to be making any kind of noticeable dent in the enemy fleet, they're not likely to be used again by incoming players. |
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Feel free to re-open if necessary, but marking resolved as 4.072 has this: * Zenith Beam Frigate: ** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 3200*mk. ** Max targets hit per shot from 10 => 9. Which basically means that the ideal cap dps went from 560k => *0.8 *0.9 => ~403k. It might need more, but don't want to overdo the nerfing since it does already have the right "feel", was just a bit too stiff in the power department. |
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I was going to suggest 8 hits per shot instead. I'll try to test this new cap. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 16, 2011 11:42 am | Sunshine | New Issue | |
| Jan 16, 2011 11:43 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008705 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 11:44 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008706 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 11:49 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008708 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 12:04 pm | Sunshine | Description Updated | |
| Jan 16, 2011 12:04 pm | Sunshine | Description Updated | |
| Jan 16, 2011 3:02 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008740 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 3:02 pm | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Jan 16, 2011 3:02 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | new => feedback |
| Jan 16, 2011 3:16 pm | Prezombie | Note Added: 0008745 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 3:22 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008747 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 4:03 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008753 | |
| Jan 16, 2011 4:06 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008754 | |
| Jan 17, 2011 12:14 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008809 | |
| Jan 17, 2011 12:14 am | Sunshine | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Jan 17, 2011 12:14 am | Sunshine | File Added: BeamFrigateActionShot.png | |
| Jan 17, 2011 12:19 am | Sunshine | Note Edited: 0008809 | |
| Jan 17, 2011 11:46 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009022 | |
| Jan 17, 2011 11:46 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => feedback |
| Jan 18, 2011 12:21 pm | lyravega | Note Added: 0009079 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 12:24 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009080 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 5:06 pm | lyravega | Note Added: 0009112 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 5:14 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009114 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 6:45 pm | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0009126 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 6:45 pm | mr_lolz | Note Edited: 0009126 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 8:56 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009138 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 8:56 pm | Sunshine | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:04 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0009140 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:05 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0009140 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:13 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009144 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:23 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009149 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:28 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0009151 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:34 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009153 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:43 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009156 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:45 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009158 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:50 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009160 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:52 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009161 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:53 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0009162 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 9:54 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009163 | |
| Jan 18, 2011 10:08 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0009175 | |
| Jan 19, 2011 10:39 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0009233 | |
| Jan 19, 2011 10:39 am | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Jan 19, 2011 10:39 am | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Jan 19, 2011 7:29 pm | Kordy | Note Added: 0009288 |
