Weapon balance, we don't need that

[Neoclad]

Lecic: You don't even TRY to be constructive.
The goal of this thread is to start a discussion. I proposed what I think is a good solution. Please propose yours instead of just rejecting everything in block. You can take example on Valiant 70 for that.

At the moment the META is missiles in almost every situation.
Nerfing damage on missiles will only result in another weapon becoming OP, which will in turn be nerfed and etc... until we throw rocks at each other while running around in panties.

The solution proposed here is to to give special mechanics to each weapon to make them the most efficient in a specific situation. This is how we will get diversity in the weapons we use and in the ships that compose a fleet or even a squadron.

Maybe my examples or not good, and I am happy to discuss why but please propose something and do not just say "no".


Valiant70: thanks Valiant your suggestions are great an I really think they should be implemented.

 

[Effane]

The game really has 20 weapons, not 4. Keep that in mind.

4 Base {Base Cannon, Base Missile, Base Pulse, Base Beam}

16 Slaved - Then each has a slave with Cannon/Beam/Missile/Pulse.

Add in the effect modules and you get a really big number of weapons.

I do agree they each need a role, but avoid broad brushing them. Then you will end up with 4 unique groups of weapons, with little unique inside them. Its almost what we have now in some groups. Currently many of the slaves aren't used due to some issues. Balancing by the numbers never appeared to be done and the DPS of missiles is insane for everything they bring you. I am a big fan of fixing the weapons balance, but you have to think about it as give each base a role, then modify that role with the slaves.

Missiles are a great example. Base missiles are unlikely to see much use, mainly because they are slow, no seeking and not much damage. In this thread you hear quite a bit about all the lock on missiles... and crickets about the dumb fires. There is a reason for that.

I disagree that making a jack of all trades weapon is a bad thing, granted Cannon + Cannon should have reduced range for its downfall. It is by the numbers not as OP as Missile + Beam or Missile + Missile, but still very much dominating versus other weapons.

I actually have been working on this. It's not ready for public consumption and TBH somethings were changed enough to aggravate some of the die-hard vets that have made some idols out of 'how things used to be'. I tweak it a lot, let some harsh critics at it and then tweak it some more. Finding out about many of the bugs in weapons was a shock. Beams cannot hit anything beyond 2000 meters. So they are stuck as short range laser chainsaws for most 4k+ sector servers till its fixed. My current work was to first develop a model that could normalize a weapons stats into a rating but quantifying all the characteristics of a weapon. Then once it was able to predict weapon performance and predict what was considered by many to be the top weapons I set into using it to balance the weapon sets. I have made it through the Base weapons and now into the Slave systems.

Lets draw some real combat parallels. You don't need to reinvent war, humans have almost perfected it in the 20th century.

Base Missiles - Dumbfire (AT-4, RPGs, and other anti-tank rockets. Cheap and low tech)
Advanced Dumbfire - MLRS platforms. Essentially artillery for moderate range
Heatseakers - Your typical anti fighter missile seen in the movies.
Guided fast - TOW, Javalin, Stinger, a few dozen other guided systems. Mobile, fast and moderate damage
Guided Cruise - Planned cruise missile launches, delay in time to target but crushing damage.

Base Cannon - 20 mm Anti-tank from WWII comes to mind, but slower firing.
Heavy Machine guns - Think the M2 50 Cal in this case.
Heavy cannon - most tank cannons that are designed to kill other tanks
Artillery - 105 mm or 155 mm are decent examples. Just we lack default blast radius on cannons. Supposedly its coming.
Rail gun/long range heavy cannon - Mostly experimental stuff, but some of it can bulls-eye a tank from a great distance and go through it.

(pulse modern equiv is different demo packs)
Base AOE Blast weapons - Pretty much defensive explosives. Granted they damage anything, not just foes, but we can suspend that for Starmade
Bigger demo packs - Get close and make bigger holes, sometimes very big
wide area bombs - like the name says.
Smaller demo packs - Sapper satchels are like this, drop a building, not a city block. Cheap and small

Lasers/Beams (Not really modern equivs. But make a bullet move to near light speed and you get this)
Current starmade build has lasers hit 5 times, breaks 5 blocks without pierce/punch-through. T His makes them better cutters than cannons, and better at alpha strike versus shields than missiles and pulses.

 

[PizzaPress]

I personally would like the ability to "clone" weapons systems in the weapons config and block-config, then modify the clones' stats as if they were their own.

 

[Effane]

I personally would like the ability to "clone" weapons systems in the weapons config and block-config, then modify the clones' stats as if they were their own.

Interesting idea, but this could affect the rules of the server. You generally want everyone playing under the same basic rules.

Tell me more so I can understand how you would balance this.

 

[PizzaPress]

Interesting idea, but this could affect the rules of the server. You generally want everyone playing under the same basic rules.

Tell me more so I can understand how you would balance this.

I think you misunderstood: it would be server-side. I just thought it was a nice long-term idea, for servers to create additional versions of weapons with just some text.

 

[Effane]

We currently have 20 weapons, 16 of which can be varying degrees towards the 4 base weapons. As long as the Slaves are unique enough, and the bases generic enough you can have a huge variety of weapons. Like the Mini Nuke = Missile + 50% Pulse + 50% Ion, or the Stunner Gunner = Cannon + Cannon 75% + Stop 75%

Notice the use of effects. There are 9 of them. So 20 weapons turns into 180 Flavors of weapons. Then even if you focus on 25% fractions between that you have another 5x and then the permutations of 25% (0, 25, 50, 75, 100) on the effect modules (15x). That gives you essentially 13,500 weapons systems of varying degrees and effects broken down into increments no smaller than 25%.

I would say that it isn't that we don't have enough weapons, its that the distance between 0-100% Slave and 0-100% effect isn't far enough in many cases to give us a satisfying amount of variation that matters. The parts are there, just many of them don't matter.

 

[PizzaPress]

We currently have 20 weapons, 16 of which can be varying degrees towards the 4 base weapons. As long as the Slaves are unique enough, and the bases generic enough you can have a huge variety of weapons. Like the Mini Nuke = Missile + 50% Pulse + 50% Ion, or the Stunner Gunner = Cannon + Cannon 75% + Stop 75%

Notice the use of effects. There are 9 of them. So 20 weapons turns into 180 Flavors of weapons. Then even if you focus on 25% fractions between that you have another 5x and then the permutations of 25% (0, 25, 50, 75, 100) on the effect modules (15x). That gives you essentially 13,500 weapons systems of varying degrees and effects broken down into increments no smaller than 25%.

I would say that it isn't that we don't have enough weapons, its that the distance between 0-100% Slave and 0-100% effect isn't far enough in many cases to give us a satisfying amount of variation that matters. The parts are there, just many of them don't matter.

I would agree on the short term, I merely meant in the long term.
Making it easier to scale back speed and range to sensible values would be helpful(200 speed and 5K sectors!... THE MISSLE SPEED!) maybe someone should make a guide or something. I don't think it would be that hard, though.

 

[Lecic]

Lecic: You don't even TRY to be constructive.
The goal of this thread is to start a discussion. I proposed what I think is a good solution. Please propose yours instead of just rejecting everything in block. You can take example on Valiant 70 for that.

At the moment the META is missiles in almost every situation.
Nerfing damage on missiles will only result in another weapon becoming OP, which will in turn be nerfed and etc... until we throw rocks at each other while running around in panties.

The solution proposed here is to to give special mechanics to each weapon to make them the most efficient in a specific situation. This is how we will get diversity in the weapons we use and in the ships that compose a fleet or even a squadron.

Your first mistake was trying to balance based on primaries only. You need to account for secondaries. Beam/Pulse and Beam/Cannon are two vastly different weapons, for example, and you shouldn't be counting them as one-in-the-same.

Here's my attempt at balancing the various weapon combos.

Cannons
Cannon- Keep it the same for now.
Cannon/Cannon- 0.6 sector range, reload time of 0.2s instead of 0.1s.
Cannon/Missile- Give it a tighter spread, maybe a 30m spread at maximum range. Also, either give it a symmetrical spread, or a handful of somewhat symmetrical pre-made patterns that it switches between (devs said random shotgun spread isn't doable.)
Cannon/Beam- Give it a little bit of pierce naturally. It's a sniper weapon, it should have some innate armor piercing to it. It'd be even more effective if you hooked it up with additional pierce effect modules.
Cannon/Pulse- Seeing as how it was originally called an artillery cannon, I think it should have explosive rounds. Either fix the explosive effect to allow better scaling for cannons and beams, or just give it missile type explosiveness.

Missiles
Missile- Starter speed of 1, but it accelerates up to 10 as it flies, reaching it at around 75% of its range. 16 blast radius instead of 12.
Missle/Cannon- Starter speed of 2, accelerates up to 6 as it flies, reaching it around 50% of its range. 1.4 range.
Missile/Missile- 0.75 speed, can only track when manually fired, 1.2 range. Give it IFF to compensate.
Missile/Beam- Increase lock on time by a second, decrease range to 4, decrease speed to 4.5. Give AI lock-on time when using it as well.
Missile/Pulse- I think it's pretty balanced as it is, personally.

Beams
Beam- 0.75 range instead of 0.5.
Beam/Cannon- 0.6 range.
Beam/Missile- A very focused spread. It's described as a "pencil shotgun" in the original chart. 15m spread at max range. 0.75 range.
Beam/Beam- 1.75 range, a slight innate punch effect.
Beam/Pulse- I would say make it a charge beam, but that's what Beam/Minelayer was going to be, so I'm going to say make the last damage tick explode.

Pulse
Pulse/Pulse- Does damage during the animation instead of after it finishes. Is attached to the ship, similarly to players, so that it doesn't sit in space behind you if you fire it while moving. Higher DPS/block, 0.5 is pitifully small.
Pulse, Pulse/Everything Else- Fires an expanding pulse a short distance (0.4 range or 0.55 for /beam). It passes through blocks, damaging or destroying them as it goes, provided shields are down, of course. It quickly collapses as soon as it hits a block. This attack pattern would deal heavy damage in funnel shaped impacts. However, it has the shortest range of any weapon and slow speed (0.98), so it's balanced in my opinion.

I also have a suggestion for a new primary type here, if anyone's interested in seeing some other combos I've thought up.

 

[Valiant70]

Cannon/Cannon- 0.6 sector range, reload time of 0.2s instead of 0.1s.

Too short range, and fires too slowly IMO.

Cannon/Beam- Give it a little bit of pierce naturally. It's a sniper weapon, it should have some innate armor piercing to it. It'd be even more effective if you hooked it up with additional pierce effect modules.
Cannon/Pulse- Seeing as how it was originally called an artillery cannon, I think it should have explosive rounds. Either fix the explosive effect to allow better scaling for cannons and beams, or just give it missile type explosiveness.

I like the idea of incorporating a slight effect into certain combos innately. This would allow for some interesting effect combos that are unlike anything we've seen yet.

Missiles
Missile- Starter speed of 1, but it accelerates up to 10 as it flies, reaching it at around 75% of its range. 16 blast radius instead of 12.
Missle/Cannon- Starter speed of 2, accelerates up to 6 as it flies, reaching it around 50% of its range. 1.4 range.
Missile/Missile- 0.75 speed, can only track when manually fired, 1.2 range. Give it IFF to compensate.
Missile/Beam- Increase lock on time by a second, decrease range to 4, decrease speed to 4.5. Give AI lock-on time when using it as well.

That could work. It would make plain missile and missle/cannon useful and deal with the stupid heatseeker spam.

Missile/Pulse- I think it's pretty balanced as it is, personally.

I'd like to see lock-on function with a slight (up to 10* over entire flight path) curvature so that it can hit a moving titan more easily. Ships that can maneuver at all could still dodge them with no difficulty.

Beam- 0.75 range instead of 0.5.

Good.

Beam/Cannon- 0.6 range.

This is underpowered. Cannon/beam already offers little advantage over the default. It's mainly a situational difference.

Beam/Missile- A very focused spread. It's described as a "pencil shotgun" in the original chart. 15m spread at max range. 0.75 range.

What about just a single, wide beam? That would make more sense to me.

Beam/Pulse- I would say make it a charge beam, but that's what Beam/Minelayer was going to be, so I'm going to say make the last damage tick explode.

Either this, or put all the damage into one tick.

Pulse
Pulse/Pulse- Does damage during the animation instead of after it finishes. Is attached to the ship, similarly to players, so that it doesn't sit in space behind you if you fire it while moving. Higher DPS/block, 0.5 is pitifully small.
Pulse, Pulse/Everything Else- Fires an expanding pulse a short distance (0.4 range or 0.55 for /beam). It passes through blocks, damaging or destroying them as it goes, provided shields are down, of course. It quickly collapses as soon as it hits a block. This attack pattern would deal heavy damage in funnel shaped impacts. However, it has the shortest range of any weapon and slow speed (0.98), so it's balanced in my opinion.

I've never seen pulse used so it's hard for me to comment on this part...

Good ideas overall. They just need a little tweaking.

 

[Knack]

I would suggest to let the system as it is (until shema has time to realy redo it) and just do some little modifications.

At first, as i know the missile-hit-all-entities bug should be fixed soon. (As long as you have more than 50% shield)

So every weapon, except damage pulse, has the same dps, which is fine, but i think the range should not be forgotten.

So simple solution aggainst op missile-beam lock-ons:
If the slave increases the range by 3, the damage is decreased by 3.

You can choose, normal range normal damage or longer range, less damage.

And of course, i would increase the range of beams to 0.75 OR make them a lock on 99% hit chance weapon.

Damagepulse should have a bigger range the more modules are used. For example (blockCount^0.5)/2 * default range.
1 .. 0.5 range
4 .. 1 range
16 .. 2 range
64 .. 4 range
265 .. 8 range
1024 .. 16 range
16384 .. 64 range <-- DN or Titan with Pulse ?

Because on a small ship the pulsrange is fine, but in all bigger than 500 mass it is completle useless.

All modifications except the pulse-range are simple changes in the blockBehavier.xml

 

[Planr]

The current state of weapon systems in the game is fine. The real issue is AI for point-defense. It takes too long for AI to react to new incoming missiles, and continues trying to shoot down missiles that strafed by the ship and are continuing to fly away from it. If AI was made smarter for point-defense, then missile-beam weapons would not "be" so OP as people complain that they are.

 

[Jolly Roger]

I posted my entire idea under the forum post "Very simple ways to make small ships useful" But I think it is also relevant here. Basically, if we need to make speed mean something in this game for small ships. They need to be able to avoid shots, and they should be able to use speed as a weapon.



"I think overdrive should be based on increase in percentage of thrust instead of server speed limit. Of course, this would make smaller ships go even faster than server speed limit. This way, even if you put overdrive on a large ship, it will still be slow. You could also exponentially increase the effectiveness of overdrive on smaller ships. This would make them be able to avoid missiles coming at the wrong trajectory, and come in and out of weapon range of a turret quickly. It would also allow pilot skill and a well rounded ship with the correct mass to be able to avoid being hit as well as be maneuverable enough to make meaningful shots back, and encourage people to fly fighters the way they are meant to be.

I also want to add that turret tracking should not be nerfed so that they are less effective. Instead, maneuvering a small ship to avoid every single shot from a turret should be challenging instead of impossible. I may be wrong, but the current AI system does not seem to support this. It seems like every number of shots, one will hit dead center, while other shots are programmed go to off course.

Instead turrets should hit with pinpoint accuracy on every shot on a stationary target, but only decrease in accuracy for a moving target. Perhaps turret speed shouldn't change, but the AI tracking should be slightly slowed down to allow fast moving ships to escape."


Also, who would not build fighters if they go extremely fast?

Planr, I do like the idea that AI needs to track missiles faster, otherwise there is no point in point defense. Perhaps, the smaller the turret, the faster the turn speed? AI could treat incoming missiles differently than ships by being faster against them so it can actually take them out.

 

[Effane]

I would agree on the short term, I merely meant in the long term.
Making it easier to scale back speed and range to sensible values would be helpful(200 speed and 5K sectors!... THE MISSLE SPEED!) maybe someone should make a guide or something. I don't think it would be that hard, though.

Actually a guide would be fairly easy, but would require maintenance. When I get some spare time I might tackle the topic of modding the config and XML files and what things mean. Sounds like a job for a Wiki branch TBH.