| Author |
Dread and station missiles... and more! |
Jhomes
Chief Marshal
Joined: June 22, 2013
Posts: 92
|  Posted: 2014-11-07 06:48
Ok so in 1.703 we all knew missiles were over powered superweapons and needed changed. We had battle stations and line station spam dominating systems. We had ganglia 1 shotting full health cruisers, and lets not forget the all missile ship standoffs that went nowhere and instantly killed all fun.
In this release dread and station missile accuracy has been altered from "good enough to hit dreads but missing everything else incuding stationary platforms" to worse. Missiles of dread level for Ugto and ICC dreads nearly useless for any combat situation, as they miss moving dreads 95% of the time or less. All this did for kluth ganglia missiles was make them slightly easier for cruiser to dodge but still can hit quite easiliy.
I understand the logic behind this as dread/station missiles were entirely too powerful, but to put simply it did not work.
Looking at missile damage from frigate to cruiser you see smooth normal gadget level damage increases through the classes until you reach dread level when missile damage suddenly doubles. ALL that needed done was to cut dread and station missile damage in half. This would solve all problems and put missile ships back into the game without making them the entire game as was before. So please cut ALL dread/station missile damage in half, keep the new better arming ranges/ranges, restore former accuracy, and problem solved.
Please back me up on this if you agree as this is by far best and simplest solution. End of missile section.
2. stations of the supply and command type.
Supply station- (problem) has lots of cool PD beams and the rep ring, but thats really it besides its heavy beam arrays, and its nearly never used because it isnt practical or fun at all.
(solution)- remove the near pointless heavy beams, replace with anti ship mines. This makes sense from a tactical standpoint of keeping enemy ships away from rep field, and makes for a much more usable/fun station.
Command station-(problem) its a huge station with all the cool extras of command class, auras, build drones ect, but only 8 fighter wings? I know its technically not for combat but thats not much for something so large.
(solution)- could either remove heavy beams and give few more wings maybe 10 or match agincourt dread and give 12 (it is a station afterall). Or remove beams and give it just a few capital cannons, by that i mean in any given fire arc only firing 3 or 4 at a time. nothing overwhelming for attack just a light (for a station that is) capital cannon battery.
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Zero28
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006
Posts: 591
| Posted: 2014-11-07 09:54
We do have difference in the Angle of fire betwen the gang and the ICC ships .he Gang fire from the front, wich makes it the most accurate.
ICC fires from above, wich is useful in avoid any obstacle in the way like a planet
but it also means we cant hit anythign in under 1800GU since the missiles over shot sitting dread (i tried) I also notice it sometimes makes wierd curves when the target is moving (target turns right, missiles goes Left..huh?)
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Incinarator
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 24, 2010
Posts: 237
| Posted: 2014-11-07 13:17
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 06:48, Jhomes wrote:
Ok so in 1.703 we all knew missiles were over powered superweapons and needed changed. We had battle stations and line station spam dominating systems. We had ganglia 1 shotting full health cruisers, and lets not forget the all missile ship standoffs that went nowhere and instantly killed all fun.
In this release dread and station missile accuracy has been altered from "good enough to hit dreads but missing everything else incuding stationary platforms" to worse. Missiles of dread level for Ugto and ICC dreads nearly useless for any combat situation, as they miss moving dreads 95% of the time or less. All this did for kluth ganglia missiles was make them slightly easier for cruiser to dodge but still can hit quite easiliy.
I understand the logic behind this as dread/station missiles were entirely too powerful, but to put simply it did not work.
Looking at missile damage from frigate to cruiser you see smooth normal gadget level damage increases through the classes until you reach dread level when missile damage suddenly doubles. ALL that needed done was to cut dread and station missile damage in half. This would solve all problems and put missile ships back into the game without making them the entire game as was before. So please cut ALL dread/station missile damage in half, keep the new better arming ranges/ranges, restore former accuracy, and problem solved.
Please back me up on this if you agree as this is by far best and simplest solution. End of missile section.
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I do not agree. Missiles should never have been able to hit ships the same class as them, let alone a class below. Just halving their damage won't solve that problem, and we'll return to the world of missile-camp-space. No, their accuracy needs to be nerfed, although I believe the current nerf is slightly too far. Hopefully some more fine tuning from the devs will find a nice balance between accuracy and usefulness.
I do have to admit, though, that the random doubling of damage would be a strange feature unless it came with a doubling of energy use or reload time.
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 06:48, Jhomes wrote:
2. stations of the supply and command type.
Supply station- (problem) has lots of cool PD beams and the rep ring, but thats really it besides its heavy beam arrays, and its nearly never used because it isnt practical or fun at all.
(solution)- remove the near pointless heavy beams, replace with anti ship mines. This makes sense from a tactical standpoint of keeping enemy ships away from rep field, and makes for a much more usable/fun station.
Command station-(problem) its a huge station with all the cool extras of command class, auras, build drones ect, but only 8 fighter wings? I know its technically not for combat but thats not much for something so large.
(solution)- could either remove heavy beams and give few more wings maybe 10 or match agincourt dread and give 12 (it is a station afterall). Or remove beams and give it just a few capital cannons, by that i mean in any given fire arc only firing 3 or 4 at a time. nothing overwhelming for attack just a light (for a station that is) capital cannon battery.
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I find neither of these solutions particularly palatable. At the moment these ships are both designed around having a large supporting fleet. With a smallish playerbase they will not see much use, but adding weapons to them is not the way to remedy this issue. I do not want to see the return of stat-space. No, if these stats are going to be buffed they need to be buffed to fulfill their primary roles more effectively, not to be made into hybrid combat/support roles. We could buff the SSs armor or speed and give the CSs another build drone.
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Jhomes
Chief Marshal
Joined: June 22, 2013
Posts: 92
| Posted: 2014-11-07 14:16
Ships shouldnt be able to hit ships of the same class with missiles??? Thats a bit extreme incin, by that logic a dread missile only could hit stations and a station missile should hit nothing, which is exactly the situation now lol.
The only dread that can hit other dreads right now is the ganglia which gives it a huge advantage over every single other missile dread (also it still can hit cruiser quite easiliy although is little easier to dodge now), but this post is not about that at all.
Think about it a bit more incin, missile camping was done because dread and station missiles did so much more damage than other weapons. Line dread, currently each harpex missile does 7900-13700 area 7900-13700 straight damage, thats exactly 4x the amount of a heavy rail gun for each harpex. So line dread hitting with 10 heavy railguns and 8 harpex would be like being hit with equiv of 42 heavy rail guns, Why would anyone choose to use a combat dread or assault dread when they can do so much damage from a safe range? Now picture dread missile damage cut in half to equal the gadget level of smaller ships. Line dread then would then do a little more damage than a combat dread but at a safer range and susceptable to PD. Makes its intended purpose still relevant without making it insanely powerful.
Making arcing dread missiles only accurate enough for stations is not the answer, and is unfair to UGTO and ICC as kluth missiles do not fire in the same way and can easily hit if aimed properly.
The only real solution that will affect every faction evenly is to keep with the gadget level class increases from cruiser to dread level. (cutting dread and station missile damage in half, but restoring 1.703 accuracy.)
and as for your worry that adding/changing weapons on supply and command stations would cause darkspace to become STation space again is incorrect, have you already forgotten about seige torps? or just have not yet been on receiving end of them. They are devestating and no station would be safe. Cruciform armed with them does around 1.6 million damage on average each shot. Even icc seige torps work enough to blast a station away quickly. The player base is not and lets face it will never be large enough to have a supply station that has current limitations and needs a fleet to soley defend it. Removing beams and replacing with mines would hardly make it powerful in any way but would help it to be relevant in todays DS. Same with adding a modest cannon battery to command stations.
All i want (and everyone should want) is ALL ships in this game to serve a purpose, be used, and remain balenced. We need to see ALL ship roles being relevant again but no ship type/role be too powerful. This is not as hard as it sounds. Ive thought about it this alot. So give it another go in your head incin, trust me, this would work for sure. (well the missile part that is)
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Incinarator
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 24, 2010
Posts: 237
| Posted: 2014-11-07 14:47
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 14:16, Jhomes wrote:
Ships shouldnt be able to hit ships of the same class with missiles??? Thats a bit extreme incin, by that logic a dread missile only could hit stations and a station missile should hit nothing, which is exactly the situation now lol.
The only dread that can hit other dreads right now is the ganglia which gives it a huge advantage over every single other missile dread (also it still can hit cruiser quite easiliy although is little easier to dodge now), but this post is not about that at all.
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For one, stations would obviously be exempt from this rule. Not even considering the fact that stations do not follow the linear drop off of speed they would obviously need to be able to hit something as you say. The correct way to interpret this is that a ship of the same class trying to dodge missiles should successfully do so, but a ship of that class sitting still, or even going half speed, should not.
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 14:16, Jhomes wrote:
Think about it a bit more incin, missile camping was done because dread and station missiles did so much more damage than other weapons. Line dread, currently each harpex missile does 7900-13700 area 7900-13700 straight damage, thats exactly 4x the amount of a heavy rail gun for each harpex. So line dread hitting with 10 heavy railguns and 8 harpex would be like being hit with equiv of 42 heavy rail guns, Why would anyone choose to use a combat dread or assault dread when they can do so much damage from a safe range? Now picture dread missile damage cut in half to equal the gadget level of smaller ships. Line dread then would then do a little more damage than a combat dread but at a safer range and susceptable to PD. Makes its intended purpose still relevant without making it insanely powerful.
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This ties straight into the point I want to make. Missiles should deal that much more damage per gadget. They're designed for taking out ships a class or two higher than them because any of their normal weapons (as you say) are woefully underpowered in comparison. Rather than making missiles 'guided cannons' we should leave the damage as they are, but make them useful ONLY against class +1 or class +2, instead of practically all ships as it stands now.
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 14:16, Jhomes wrote:
Making arcing dread missiles only accurate enough for stations is not the answer, and is unfair to UGTO and ICC as kluth missiles do not fire in the same way and can easily hit if aimed properly.
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First off, the factions are not even. That's the point. That being said, I can agree that the arcing patterns aren't exactly fair. However, if we give K'luth missiles the same arc as the humans they will never have a chance to hit their target as demonstrated by the previous version of the Nest. If, instead, we give humans the forward arc of the K'luth then their missiles will suddenly become much more useful against smaller class ships... which would defeat the goal I'm trying to reach. The best solution I can think of is to give the Ganglia an arc but at much less of an angle. We could also give the Ganglia a comparable arc to the humans, but we'd have to buff the range to compensate. I'm honestly not too sure how to address this issue, but it does need to be fixed.
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 14:16, Jhomes wrote:
and as for your worry that adding/changing weapons on supply and command stations would cause darkspace to become STation space again is incorrect, have you already forgotten about seige torps? or just have not yet been on receiving end of them. They are devestating and no station would be safe. Cruciform armed with them does around 1.6 million damage on average each shot. Even icc seige torps work enough to blast a station away quickly. The player base is not and lets face it will never be large enough to have a supply station that has current limitations and needs a fleet to soley defend it. Removing beams and replacing with mines would hardly make it powerful in any way but would help it to be relevant in todays DS. Same with adding a modest cannon battery to command stations.
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If siege torps are as stunningly powerful as you say then they're undoubtedly going to be headed towards a nerf, as stations will become next to useless. If they aren't, then your point is moot. Either way, I still insist that giving them combat roles IS NOT the way to balance them. Make them worth bringing out for their primary roles, not because they are mobile guns that can also do something useful on the side.
You seem to be under the impression that players will not employ this tactic even in the face of siege torps, but stat spam is king in most players eyes. This situation is very analagous to what hapened with missile frigates.
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 14:16, Jhomes wrote:
All i want (and everyone should want) is ALL ships in this game to serve a purpose, be used, and remain balenced. We need to see ALL ship roles being relevant again but no ship type/role be too powerful. This is not as hard as it sounds. Ive thought about it this alot. So give it another go in your head incin, trust me, this would work for sure. (well the missile part that is)
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I agree that all ships should have a purpose, but the fact is that they will not. PD ships are next to useless. Fighters are only used because missiles made attacking suicidal. Ships less than cruisers are very rarely used by good players. Transports, engineers, and supplies are almost universally seen as necessary roles to slog through, not something to enjoy. If it were so easy to make these things balanced the devs would have already done it. Give them some credit.
As a side note, making your arguments legible would go a long way to legitimizing them. I know it seems pedantic to some, but an argument made in a well spaced out 'mini-essay' with correct grammar, punctuation, and syntax will be much better received and understood than one in a giant wall of text with many errors and misspelled words. So please, for your argument's sake and the sake of people trying to give your argument a chance, try to at least space out your paragraphs and compose in full sentences. A good way to help with this is to type out your post in a word processor that will point out errors in your writing so you can fix them. Write your response beforehand in Word, for example.
[ This Message was edited by: Incinarator on 2014-11-07 16:09 ]
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Chewy Squirrel
Chief Marshal
Joined: January 27, 2003
Posts: 304
From: NYC
| Posted: 2014-11-07 15:32
All I know is that I am having a lot more fun in 1.704 than 1.703 since 90% of the game isn't getting obliterated by station missiles anymore. If there is no way to perfectly balance missiles then the current balance is certainly the lesser of the two evils.
On the topic of siege torps.... Maybe you finally have a reason to install something other than PFE engines on a station 
[ This Message was edited by: Chewy Squirrel on 2014-11-08 15:25 ]
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2014-11-08 12:43
The reason Dreadnought missiles are doing more damage than smaller ship missiles is because they cost twice the points, and Dreadnoughts have enough points to carry a lot of them.
Anti-Radar? Ion Tracker? Sparrow? Psionic? These all cost 1 point base, which goes up to 3 points when you factor in their Full arc. Frigates have 12-24 points, so they can carry up to 6 of them, depending on Tier. Destroyers have 18-36 points, so they can carry up to 8. Cruisers have 24-48 points, so they can carry up to 10.
Dreadnought missiles--Harpex, Linear Drive, Raptor, Shroud--those all cost 2 points base, which goes up to 6 points with arc costs. They do twice as much damage and use twice as much energy, just like the "Heavy" variant of normal cannons. Dreadnoughts have anywhere from 56 to 112 points, so they can carry up to 10 of them.
One thing we're definitely going to do is to fix missile attributes at a consistent level, rather than having them increase by ship level. Right now you've got that mixed in with Dreads having bigger missiles, so a Missile Dreadnought will do more than twice the damage of a Missile Cruiser. This will also allow us to nail down missile guidance more precisely so they're just as accurate as we need them to be, but no more or less.
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-xTc- ExisT
Chief Marshal
Army Of Darkness
Joined: March 20, 2010
Posts: 534
From: Red Lobster
| Posted: 2014-11-08 15:20
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 15:32, Chewy Squirrel wrote:
All I know is that I am having a lot more fun in 1.704 than 1.703 since 90% of the game isn't getting obliterated by station missiles anymore.
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I agree with chewy, I actually want to play now.
No more fighting the impossible and mind numbing line dread and LS spam surrounded by ecm'd plats.
I havent paid much attention to missles this patch, but I know that crusiers and dessies can now reliably dodge dread and station missles now, for me this is a HUGE improvement.
Quote:
Jhomes wrote:
2. stations of the supply and command type.
Supply station- (problem) has lots of cool PD beams and the rep ring, but thats really it besides its heavy beam arrays, and its nearly never used because it isnt practical or fun at all.
(solution)- remove the near pointless heavy beams, replace with anti ship mines. This makes sense from a tactical standpoint of keeping enemy ships away from rep field, and makes for a much more usable/fun station.
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SS is actually incredibly useful, its the hands down best support ship in the game.
Try bringing it with your fleet when attacking a planet, it does the following things:
Provides slow but constant repair to allies
Provides amazing PD cover for allies
If Kluth, provides free cloak for allies with ecm
Is large and tanky enough and deals enough damage up close to provide your teamates a relatively safe place to fall back on
Now if you're not the type of person who likes support your teammates then yeah it appears useless.
[ This Message was edited by: -xTc- *XO* on 2014-11-08 15:39 ]
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2014-11-08 18:16
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 06:48, Jhomes wrote:
2. stations of the supply and command type.
Supply station- (problem) has lots of cool PD beams and the rep ring, but thats really it besides its heavy beam arrays, and its nearly never used because it isnt practical or fun at all.
(solution)- remove the near pointless heavy beams, replace with anti ship mines. This makes sense from a tactical standpoint of keeping enemy ships away from rep field, and makes for a much more usable/fun station.
Command station-(problem) its a huge station with all the cool extras of command class, auras, build drones ect, but only 8 fighter wings? I know its technically not for combat but thats not much for something so large.
(solution)- could either remove heavy beams and give few more wings maybe 10 or match agincourt dread and give 12 (it is a station afterall). Or remove beams and give it just a few capital cannons, by that i mean in any given fire arc only firing 3 or 4 at a time. nothing overwhelming for attack just a light (for a station that is) capital cannon battery.
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The heavy beams were added to Stations to deter people from camping ontop of them and using them as a shield against their own teammates. Sure you can still do it, but now you have those beams burning a hole into your ship which kinda limits how long you can park there.
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-DBS
Marshal
Joined: January 04, 2011
Posts: 204
From: St. Petersburg, FL
| Posted: 2014-11-09 21:27
Quote:
On 2014-11-08 18:16, Talien wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-11-07 06:48, Jhomes wrote:
2. stations of the supply and command type.
Supply station- (problem) has lots of cool PD beams and the rep ring, but thats really it besides its heavy beam arrays, and its nearly never used because it isnt practical or fun at all.
(solution)- remove the near pointless heavy beams, replace with anti ship mines. This makes sense from a tactical standpoint of keeping enemy ships away from rep field, and makes for a much more usable/fun station.
Command station-(problem) its a huge station with all the cool extras of command class, auras, build drones ect, but only 8 fighter wings? I know its technically not for combat but thats not much for something so large.
(solution)- could either remove heavy beams and give few more wings maybe 10 or match agincourt dread and give 12 (it is a station afterall). Or remove beams and give it just a few capital cannons, by that i mean in any given fire arc only firing 3 or 4 at a time. nothing overwhelming for attack just a light (for a station that is) capital cannon battery.
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The heavy beams were added to Stations to deter people from camping ontop of them and using them as a shield against their own teammates. Sure you can still do it, but now you have those beams burning a hole into your ship which kinda limits how long you can park there.
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And, I can't sit cloaked forever ontop of an enemy station anymore :/
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2014-11-10 00:58
Okay, so as of the results of today's dev meeting, we're going to try a different approach towards balancing missiles.
Currently, the game has a built-in "fudge factor" when calculating where to steer a missile to hit a ship. Since there's always going to be an element of lag, we have the missile aim a little bit further forward than it would otherwise. Missiles will continue to do this going forward, but we're making one notable change: the fudge factor will be disproportionately larger on smaller ships. This should make missiles deliberately miss them, regardless of their turn rates.
This should allow us to revert the recent changes to turn rates so they aren't so sluggish anymore. I'm planning some additional fine-tuning in the days ahead, but I'd like to see how the current changes shape up before taking further steps.
If anyone wants to help test, please hop into Beta after tonight's update and try to hit a smaller ship with missiles.
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