Suggested weapons tweaking from a PVP player’s standpoint

    IKindaCrashAlot

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    What needs to be done is for
    **Cannons:** buff the dps by a lot, increase projectile speed, get rid of recoil for the person who fires the cannons(but keep it for the person receiving the cannons projectiles).
    **Beams:** just reduce the efficiency of b/b, make it do like 17-20 damage power power instead of 24, make b/c 6km range.
    **Missiles:** Increase all missile speeds by like 2, most ships just outrun missiles right now. Don’t have more beam slave % on the M/B combo decrease the range.

    For cannons Also I was thinking of an idea for a “muzzle brake effect” for cannons as an alternative of just getting rid of recoil entirely. It increases damage by 1.1x but almost completely negates recoil felt by the user. This would only be viable if cannons got a decent buff in damage though, as the opportunity cost of changing from 1.5x damage from your usual kinetic, heat, or EM effect to 1.1x for your muzzle break effect is 40% damage

    (For those who have bought into video game myths about silencers and muzzle breaks, they actually increase the kinetic energy of projectiles by a small percentage in real life rather than decreasing the damage)


    Please input your comments and opinions about these proposed changes
     

    Valiant70

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    We really just need to get rid of recoil. It's annoying and makes cannons less worthwhile to use. I could understand adding recoil if cannons were overpowered, but we have the opposite problem.
     
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    What about you look at the current formulas/settings and give a full pvp friendly settings directly to lancake ?
     
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    **Beams:** just reduce the efficiency of b/b, make it do like 17-20 damage power power instead of 24, make b/c 6km range.
    when it comes to b b why do you think it needs less power efficiency? isnt it already really hard to aim + the shield depletion?
     
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    when it comes to b b why do you think it needs less power efficiency? isn't it already really hard to aim + the shield depletion?
    if you dock the bb the shield penalty goes away and you can put it on a player controlled turret to get rid of the aiming penalty, also because it is so comically efficient you can make a giant waffle of it, making it much easier to hit while also still being far more efficient than weapons such as b/m
     
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    if you dock the bb the shield penalty goes away and you can put it on a player controlled turret to get rid of the aiming penalty, also because it is so comically efficient you can make a giant waffle of it, making it much easier to hit while also still being far more efficient than weapons such as b/m
    shouldnt then those underlying issues be fixed instead? the docked thing should cause the main shields to go and the turrets moving should not change the direction the beams fire initially?
     
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    **Cannons:** buff the dps by a lot, increase projectile speed, get rid of recoil for the person who fires the cannons(but keep it for the person receiving the cannons projectiles).
    I'd support all of these. With cannons in their current state it is impossible to hit anything, even at point blank range, if both ships are traveling at max speed (which will likely always be true in PVP scenarios).
    An alternative to simply increasing projectile speed would be making cannons hitscan weapons with cosmetic projectiles, which would eliminate the need for moving your targeting reticle between the target and it's lead indicator when flying ships using both cannons and other weapons, while still preserving the cosmetic effect of the current cannon projectile speed.
    I like the visual feedback of the recoil, but combined with the slow projectile it just makes it even harder to hit anything. Some purely cosmetic screen shake that doesn't move the targeting cursor would be nice.
     
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    shouldnt then those underlying issues be fixed instead? the docked thing should cause the main shields to go and the turrets moving should not change the direction the beams fire initially?
    Perhaps even paralyze a ship/turret using Bb, so it can't rotate or thrust while the horrible thing fires?

    Yeah; I'd be ok with fixing the underlying issues, but to be honest I've found Bb to be unbalanced regardless. I'd rather see Bb become something equivalent to pure Beam but with a longer range and no/less dropoff in dmg from range.
    [doublepost=1534959280,1534957997][/doublepost]
    What needs to be done is for
    **Cannons:** buff the dps by a lot, increase projectile speed, get rid of recoil for the person who fires the cannons(but keep it for the person receiving the cannons projectiles).
    **Beams:** just reduce the efficiency of b/b, make it do like 17-20 damage power power instead of 24, make b/c 6km range.
    **Missiles:** Increase all missile speeds by like 2, most ships just outrun missiles right now. Don’t have more beam slave % on the M/B combo decrease the range.
    I feel that recoil is pretty mild at this point, but as mentioned by Valiant70 at this point cannon are so weak that this kind of penalty just kills them. I understand... because of the damage-over-time aspect of Cc and how that allowed it to dominate weapon profiles for years, they are afraid to unchain it, but they could start taking steps towards slowly adding damage to it until it reaches something akin to balance with the other weapons. I'd prefer to see them buff damage a little first without touching recoil and see how that goes...

    Cannon - yeah, a little bit more DPS please, with option for more after.

    Beams - a 10% reduction to Bb might work, or more non-numeric restrictions could be brought in to balance it out (I like that everything isn't reducible to a simple equation anymore, with weapon issues like charge time, dumb aim and shied discharge).

    Missiles - better base speed, better arm time for Mm would be nice (currently went from being insanely OP to utterly useless), but honestly until the turret AI is fixed and PD starts being more effective at countering missiles it's hard to advocate for them being buffed. Particularly lock-ons; it would overbalance very quickly IMO.
     

    IKindaCrashAlot

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    I feel that recoil is pretty mild at this point, but as mentioned by Valiant70 at this point cannon are so weak that this kind of penalty just kills them. I understand... because of the damage-over-time aspect of Cc and how that allowed it to dominate weapon profiles for years, they are afraid to unchain it, but they could start taking steps towards slowly adding damage to it until it reaches something akin to balance with the other weapons. I'd prefer to see them buff damage a little first without touching recoil and see how that goes...

    Cannon - yeah, a little bit more DPS please, with option for more after.

    Beams - a 10% reduction to Bb might work, or more non-numeric restrictions could be brought in to balance it out (I like that everything isn't reducible to a simple equation anymore, with weapon issues like charge time, dumb aim and shied discharge).

    Missiles - better base speed, better arm time for Mm would be nice (currently went from being insanely OP to utterly useless), but honestly until the turret AI is fixed and PD starts being more effective at countering missiles it's hard to advocate for them being buffed. Particularly lock-ons; it would overbalance very quickly IMO.
    PD already counters them very well, turret AI actually works now, there’s no problems with it. At this point missiles are so slow that PD easily shoots them down. However well placed PD with a little bit of tech can easily shoot down faster missiles. It’s not the problem of PD working right now it’s how you apply it. Missiles need a buff, you can’t just dumb everything down so that every bodies ships are decent, there has to be some thought that goes into making ships if you don’t want to get annihilated rather that just saying “This doesn’t work as well as I’d like on my ship”
     
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    shouldnt then those underlying issues be fixed instead? the docked thing should cause the main shields to go and the turrets moving should not change the direction the beams fire initially?

    bb. op since inception.
     
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    PD already counters them very well, turret AI actually works now, there’s no problems with it. At this point missiles are so slow that PD easily shoots them down. However well placed PD with a little bit of tech can easily shoot down faster missiles. It’s not the problem of PD working right now it’s how you apply it. Missiles need a buff, you can’t just dumb everything down so that every bodies ships are decent, there has to be some thought that goes into making ships if you don’t want to get annihilated rather that just saying “This doesn’t work as well as I’d like on my ship”
    Why are you talking about 'dumbing' things down to make all ships equal in response to a concern about whether it's appropriate to push through a buff for a system that currently has a poorly functioning counter?



    My last PD test, about 3 weeks ago, had very poor results, and it wasn't about implementation because the results were fine within certain ranges and missile sizes. I'm talking about PD turrets that functioned fairly well between 200m and 1km, but would refuse to shoot the same missiles from the same ship during the same session if fired from more than 1km... even once the missiles closed range.

    They work fine under certain conditions, then lapse into a condition of 100% failure if conditions change slightly. That's a correctly implemented & confirmed PD turret failing because of an AI issue.

    But of course that was 3 weeks ago, and it sounds like you're saying that they've totally fixed turret AI for PD now?

    That's great news!! Out of curiosity, what testing methods are you using?
     
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    I think that's far too light on b/b. Make it share top spot for power efficiency with a cannon variant, and at somewhere like 10 damage per power.

    On recoil, I think it's fine to keep a push force on the one shooting, just not fine to make the view jump around. Views jumping around makes sense on tall, flexible, rooted things like people in an FPS, not on free-floating ships.

    Agreed on projectile velocities needing to be faster. Missiles should be a fair bit above server max ship speed at least.
     
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    Valiant70

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    b/b Is iffy when mounted on the main ship, but not insane. On turrets, it's absurdly overpowered. Simple solution? Disable it on turrets. It's a specialized "spinal" weapon.
    EDIT: Less simple solution:
    • Any shield covering the entity gets disabled while charging b/b. (Docking anti-exploit)
    • Turret cannot rotate while charging. The ship has to turn to keep the target in sight. (Turret anti-exploit)
    EDIT2: A way to make b/b less iffy: Make armor blocks soak up a higher percentage of its damage than other blocks. Basic armor soaks up 2x, standard armor 3x, and advanced 5x as much damage as system blocks.
     
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    IKindaCrashAlot

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    That's great news!! Out of curiosity, what testing methods are you using?
    The testing where I take a ship equipped with PD and pvp on a survival server. I’ve fought a couple of missile oriented ships and camped a couple of missile heavy bases and my PD has done completely fine.

    What I’m talking about “dumbing things down” is that you should have to place your PD properly instead of just spamming them all about the ship like most people do. If you don’t place them in the most effective manner you should suffer for it. And inproper use of PD doesn’t necessitate a buff


    Nebulon_B_Frigate
    I think that's far too light on b/b. Make it share top spot for power efficiency with a cannon variant, and at somewhere like 10 damage per power.

    That would be a horrible idea since beams only do 40% of their damage at a range. Now you’re looking at 4 damage per power which would completely throw b/b out of the equation for being a decent weapon since it has all of the debuffs like disabling your shields and a long reload time. Even B/M has a damage per power of 5, and almost no reload which would be far better. And on par with cannons, I think the most efficient Cannon combo which is Cannon-cannon is something like 2 damage per power, so unless they got a huge buff then b/b would be so weak and utterly useless because beam’s debuffs for being hitscan is only doing 40% damage at a range where areas cannons don’t have that. So in conclusion cannons and beams aren’t even really comparable
     
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    Agreed on projectile velocities needing to be faster. Missiles should be a fair bit above server max ship speed at least.
    Yep. Dovetails with fixing thrust balance so not every ship is pushing either server max or above as well. I'm really glad armor is actually worth a damn now, but heavily armored ships (5+ thick AA) should straight up wallow. Seriously. If anything is gonna, they should.

    Speed is all relative, but the combination of all the ships being too fast and projectiles being too slow is hard to swallow. The current missile and projectile speeds are only good if getting ships up to max speed is made expensive. Then getting a ship to evasion-level thrust is a decision that means passing over some other stuff in compensation and most ships won't do it. Mobility chambers go some way towards this, but I do think that thrust power draw needs to be balanced up slightly as well; the two factors compound on each other so it probably doesn't have to be doubled or anything. Just keep cranking it up in small increments until it hurts a little. Just a little.
     
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    MacThule Said:

    Speed is all relative, but the combination of all the ships being too fast and projectiles being too slow is hard to swallow. The current missile and projectile speeds are only good if getting ships up to max speed is made expensive.


    Do you even PVP? Making a server max speed ship is expensive. It takes up like 30% of your power consumption while thrusting which is a huge chunk. It’s expensive in the fact that mobility chambers are not cheap to produce, and having turn rate and max speed chambers along with 2.5 TMR take up a lot of your ships power and room to put other systems. The game needs to be balanced so that 2.5 TMR is considered the normal amount of thrust so that missiles can actually hit their target and cannons are more accurate with a faster projectile.
     
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    Making a server max speed ship is expensive. It takes up like 30% of your power consumption while thrusting which is a huge chunk. It’s expensive in the fact that mobility chambers are not cheap to produce, and having turn rate and max speed chambers along with 2.5 TMR take up a lot of your ships power and room to put other systems. The game needs to be balanced so that 2.5 TMR is considered the normal amount of thrust so that missiles can actually hit their target and cannons are more accurate with a faster projectile.
    As I already noted, the main cost of speed now is for going above server max (i.e. chambers).

    If you are spending 30% of your total regen on raw thrust, then you are probably either building sub-standard reactors (probably not the case, if you are fighting competitively, but still sometimes a thing, particularly with the new reactor systems), or are over-armoring with massive regions of 10+ and 20+ layer armor because you are in a dueling bubble, outside of the context of actual gameplay (i.e. including legit mining for 100% of your resources). Because most of the most active, self-styled "PvP" leets I have played with have for many years always been and presumably still are (protestations aside, because even when I was in their factions and saw them exploiting and was told how it worked, they claimed publicly and with great offense not to be doing that) cheaters who exploit for resources in MP either through bug exploits or admin exploitation, and therefore build much differently than legit players and even legit PvPers in an open MP setting.

    That's not a matter of a build perspective "based on PvP," it's a matter of build perspective based on a closed circuit of play with a handful of known opponents, and a much different kind of overhead cost for build materials (in terms of time) than real players face, which of course leads to much, much different ship styles which are absurdly impractical for real MP gameplay but justified to others in their unrealistic excess by being purportedly "PvP" ships.

    So it's fine sport and all to try and draw the dialogue into a classic fallacy of argument from special expertise, but even if arguments from expertise "I have a master's degree, so I know what's best" weren't irrational and fallacious (which they absolutely are), the context would still be very important. We must include a consideration of both the Material (resources) and Efficient (time/effort) Causes involved, not only the Form which the ship takes or the End for which it was designed.

    Because the game is being developed not solely for serial deathmatches (although I believe it is definitely meant to accommodate that style). So basing default balance settings on a personal challenge of "Do you even PvP, bra??" is disregarding the entire existence of the universe, mining, trade, exploration and every other consideration. As opposed to a comprehensive approach that considers PvP as happening within the context of those other things as preconditions. That said, to answer your question, I did PvP on Starmade - on and off - for several years, including some melees as well as pirating and faction warfare in open MP. Lately though, I have returned to Starcraft 2 & DoTA 2 for my straight-up twitch PvP fix. In part because of the long period of inviability of real combat in Starmade recently, but honestly I had dropped it even before last Spring because I started to find it... unstimulating, repetitive, and mostly limited to a rather unsavory subculture that isn't entirely reflective of truly dedicated PvP games in a global sense (though those players are everywhere, to be sure), where victory isn't always a matter of who knows the most exploits. So "once avidly," but "not recently?" Because there really is no legit PvP at the moment. Not until systems are balanced, shipyards are fully working, people actually have bases that can be defeated, and most importantly the resource exploits and mass of other exploits are completely and solidly closed. Any "PvP" before that point is... maybe fun, but not a good basis for discussion about gameplay 'balance.'


    To leave behind the issue of whether PvP competition is even a real thing in this unbalanced, easily cheated, alpha-state "sandbox space shooter" as of yet or if it's just a matter of competitive exploitation out of sync with intended gameplay, and return to the actual subject of my comment that apparently so upset you that you felt the need to confront me on the issue - propulsion, speed, and acceleration - I believe that it probably should cost - easily - upward of 50% of a huge reactor's power to propel a truly huge pile of advanced armor and weapons meant solely for combat (or even a lightly armored heavy industrial facility / miner) at rates of acceleration like those server max involves.

    Certainly if we wanted an armored and armed naval vessel to accelerate and cruise at rates and speeds similar to those of a light patrol craft or speedboat, the ship would have to be almost entirely composed of power plant and propulsion. Which is why they tend to be lumbering and extremely slow to reach cruising speeds instead. This does not reflect the state of thrust in Starmade at all. And that is not meant to be interpreted as me saying that Starmade thrust should somehow reflect RL naval thrust, only that greater consideration of physics would help balance out contextual, legitimate PvP combat. There are plenty of PvP games out there (Star Battle, World or Warships) that involve slow acceleration, clumsy turns, and slow overall move rates requiring forethought to go into every click and they each have thousands or tens of thousands of avid players. So I definitely don't believe that additional thrust costs would kill PvP in any way, not based on the actual evidence contrary, anyway. Rather I believe that making it borderline impossible for large capital ships to move the way light, small craft do will actually greatly improve gameplay in terms of both balance, player choice (i.e. go with huge, lumbering cruisers and dreadnaughts or with fighters, corvettes, escorts and fast frigates because you don't enjoy the slow, more tactically thoughtful action of capital warfare), and gameplay variety.

    Current thrust removes variety and choice - you are forced to either go server max or be outclassed by those who do because they so easily can. The tradeoff between speed and firepower is insufficient to have a lumbering ship with well-designed armaments outperform a fast ship because the fast one can still afford to power very comparable DPS.

    And, without devaluing those points above, I think it's worth mentioning that in Starmade - of all games accommodating PvP play - I think that empowering low-speed combatants is extremely relevant. Because of sector transitions mostly, and also chunk loading and other performance issues that directly and substantially affect combat. All of those issues are compounded by speed of travel. Which means that allowing hyper-inflated speed & acceleration is a very poor decision for ensuring a satisfying "user experience." The higher the speeds, the poorer the gameplay. I don't want a speed limit nerf, because fast craft need that speed to evade things - the balance for their lack of heavy armor - I just believe that increasing the power curve of thrust acceleration would be beneficial in that it would increase the cost of speed and force substantially more trade-off in heavy ships - combat and industrial.
     

    IKindaCrashAlot

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    The problem with your argument MacThule is that having a master's degree in a subject DOES tend to make you more knowledgeable. It is not a fallacy that somebody who has a masters degree doesn't know more about a subject than somebody who does not. The claim you made saying that you must be lugging around 10-20 layers of advanced armor to need 30% reactor to thrust at 2.5 TMR is not true. If you know anything about cars and the tuning community, you'd know that people take the seats and unnecessary equipment out of their car for weight reduction to achieve a higher power to weight ratio. Same thing happens when building ships. You said that "I believe that it probably should cost - easily - upward of 50% of a huge reactor's power to propel a truly huge pile of advanced armor and weapons". This is not true because people use as least weight as possible. Personally I only use basic hull but some people are more extreme and use even lighter girders or motherboards. They'll still take somewhere between 20-30% power to thrust which I think is perfectly fine for a 2.5 TMR max speed.

    The fact that you just keep butting in with your suggestions despite never having legitimate qualifications when it comes to discussing major changes is completely counterproductive
     
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    Valiant70

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    Speed is all relative, but the combination of all the ships being too fast and projectiles being too slow is hard to swallow. The current missile and projectile speeds are only good if getting ships up to max speed is made expensive. Then getting a ship to evasion-level thrust is a decision that means passing over some other stuff in compensation and most ships won't do it. Mobility chambers go some way towards this, but I do think that thrust power draw needs to be balanced up slightly as well; the two factors compound on each other so it probably doesn't have to be doubled or anything. Just keep cranking it up in small increments until it hurts a little. Just a little.
    Thrust needs to change even if projectile speeds go up. If every ship dodge like a rabbit on amphetamines, there's not going to be a lot of variety. On the flip side, it's amost as boring if building a "rabbit on amphetamines" ship is impossible. There needs to be a proper tank <---> dodge spectrum.
    [doublepost=1535309095,1535308683][/doublepost]
    Do you even PVP? Making a server max speed ship is expensive. It takes up like 30% of your power consumption while thrusting which is a huge chunk. It’s expensive in the fact that mobility chambers are not cheap to produce, and having turn rate and max speed chambers along with 2.5 TMR take up a lot of your ships power and room to put other systems. The game needs to be balanced so that 2.5 TMR is considered the normal amount of thrust so that missiles can actually hit their target and cannons are more accurate with a faster projectile.
    Okay now this is some good information. About 30% for max speed is still doable. It's a crap ton, but it won't prevent you from being effective. Increasing the power requirements of thrusters significantly would just about force you to focus thrust over all else to hit max speed. There would be some pros and cons to that, but it would at least raise the limit, after a fashion, for specialized speedster ships. On the other hand everything else is going to be slow AF. How would this actually affect PVP meta though?
     
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