Balancing systems in a same vessel 1v1 pvp scenario

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    # Before we start: This topic is in the first place to talk about same mass vessel combat in a 1vs1 pvp fight on smaller scale (my example:100mass, up to 500 mass should work), and fighters that have the purpose of attacking bigger sized ships are not the matter of this talk.

    # My last question is about embedding a good fighter design into slightly larger battles of 5vs5 where 4 ships on each side are fighters, and one is a flagship of 10 times the fighters mass.

    Introducing Story
    3 days ago, I tried to make a dogfight vs another player on Genxova just for fun, and we weren't able to get our shields down at all. I thought: hey his fighter is pretty strong amoured and maybe just as drone purpose in a fight vs bigger ships as company. He didn't build his fighter around the purpose being a threat to other small sized vessels, but to attack bigger targets. Basically it was wrapped into adv. armor and had some decent shields.

    "Thx god the fighters I build are suitable for 1vs1 pvp fights, too bad we didn't use mine but his." Was my thought. I was wronged very hard on this one.

    So some time ago I made fighter, name FGT Colonial Viper, and it is my interpretation of the Battlestar Galactica one's.
    The systems are gutted so the specs are not the real ones! 20170419185233_1.jpg

    The actual fight scenario vs AI
    Then, yesterday, the server was lagging me out again, and so I tried a 1vs1 vs my own pirate controlled fighter, thinking "Hey my fighter has pretty small shields and I only used basic hull, it should be interesting."

    It came to my attention, that I neither of us was able to defeat the other, and the fight was just as frustrating as the one on Genxova.
    Colonial Fighter's original systems:
    100mass;only basic hull; cc with 36 total size; 2k shields with 99 regen; max possible thrust (225); 2 missile-beam 3x3; around 3k power recharge

    So I remade the fighter entirely and changed all of its systems; power first to achieve the maximum of power possible first (now that I learned first if you design a pvp fighter: its overall force is all about the power it regenerates).

    New specs:
    only basic hull, some hull parts replaced with systems; cc with 66 total size; 500 shields with 20 regen; 160 speed; around 8k power recharge

    The fight vs the pirate AI in this 1vs1 was able to defeat me this time.

    Noticable design choices and mechanics
    Things to notice on the new design:

    -The AI still needed like 5 minutes to bring me into a defeatable position where I had a significant system loss of 30%. This means a human fighter would need even longer to defeat me, as the AI has a advantage in aiming (yes it is possible to spray the cc fire into movement direction and all that stuff, but even if a human is as good as the AI he still would take 5 minutes).

    -The smart missiles never hit, or can get shoot down. This mean that even with 160 speed you are fast enough in this size of ship to evade a big chunk of projectiles.

    -The shields were not one shot, it needed like 10 cc-bullets or 2 missile hits to bring them down.

    -Targetting of certain ship parts was never possible, even when we only had 100m distance between each other.

    My questions and the purpose of this thread
    So why all this fuzz about some small fighter combat?

    Here are my questions:
    How can I design a small fighter, that it can defeat itsself in a 1vs1 within less than 5 minutes? The less time needed the better. Important here: The fighter should be inside a basic hull and not be some kind of "glass cannon" - visible system parts are not welcome and should only be visible in rare spots, and very slow fighters of 10m/s that shoot 5 smart missiles once are a no go as well. And the human fighters are smart and not very dumb.

    How would you design a small fighter, that can defeat many other small fighter designs in a 1vs1 within less than 3 minutes of dogfighting?

    Can we design fighters, that are actually fun to fight with in a 5vs5? Where 4 vessels on each side are fighters, and one vessel is some kind of flagship with 10 times the fighters mass. The thing is: the small fighters should still be able to do some sort of damage to the flagships.

    Now please bear in mind, that stuff that works on fighters of a very small mass, is also scalable up to a certain size, where the targets are still too small for being hit by missiles and the thrust is overall big enough to evade cannon fire. And that's why I want to theorycraft on a small fighter first: I want to see if it could work in a small mass scenario, and then use that knowledge for bigger sized battles that involve like four fighters shooting down each other in a very small amount of time like less than 3 minutes accompanied by like one flagship on each side.
     
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    Crashmaster

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    Not using cannon-cannon might be a good start I think.
     

    AtraUnam

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    Cannon/cannon is too weak at that scale. You want beam/nothing/punch.
     
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    But then the fight still lasts like 5 minutes when I take beams to kill all that blocks.
     
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    But then the fight still lasts like 5 minutes when I take beams to kill all that blocks.
    It might seem like it, but beam+punch is still better than can/can. Beam is easier to score a hit with, and punch allows more damage to transfer to blocks behind it. Also: is your complaint on beams about only being able to take out 1 block at a time? Because cannons aren't any different.... Unless I'm misunderstanding your issue. It takes a long time for any ship to destroy itself, unless it's a glass cannon or something lol
     
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    Ok I made the systems now with beam-cannon-punch. 68 =32:8:28 With 2 outputs.

    Now it took me below a minute to kill itsself when it stands still.

    Would it be better to use beam-nothing-punch, and do I get efficiency losses if I use a slaved cannon?

    And what's about using a slaved beam? Would that help?

    I think it doesn't matter, because the damage over time of a weapon system depends on it's main size, doesn't it? (except for overdrive)

    Current Systems:
    20170419233335_1.jpg
    20170419234127_1.jpg
     
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    Ok I made the systems now with beam-cannon-punch. 68 =32:8:28 With 2 outputs.

    Now it took me below a minute to kill itsself when it stands still.

    Would it be better to use beam-nothing-punch, and do I get efficiency losses if I use a slaved cannon?

    And what's about using a slaved beam? Would that help?

    I think it doesn't matter, because the damage over time of a weapon system depends on it's main size, doesn't it? (except for overdrive)

    Current Systems:
    View attachment 41232
    View attachment 41236
    Damage depends on total weapon size. Primary, secondary and tertiary block counts. You would get better damage per shot if you took out the slaved cannon and used that space for more beam and punch blocks for the primary and tertiary

    EDIT

    your dps over time equals out, but beams default recharge is pretty fast. It'd probably be worth your while to get as much damage as you can out of each hit. Is it better to miss a lot, but take your target out in fewer shots, or is it better to fire quickly, still miss a bunch, and hopefully whittle some hull or armor enough to tear up systems?

    Theres pros and cons to either, but if you want 1v1 results, you need to focus on making your ship hit as hard you can
     
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    I suppose this is a bit of a broken record for some, but I will again point out the Marauder. If you don't think a ship below 500 mass can kill stuff, you need to try fighting this thing. A half second in this thing's fire and shields are down. This thing regularly kills stuff ten times it's mass.

    The trick is power. Learn to generate lots of it, then learn how to employ that power most effectively.

    The neat thing about the Marauder is in fact, it's not as powerful as it 'could' be if I were to rebuild it now. (!!!)
     
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    I suppose this is a bit of a broken record for some, but I will again point out the Marauder. If you don't think a ship below 500 mass can kill stuff, you need to try fighting this thing. A half second in this thing's fire and shields are down. This thing regularly kills stuff ten times it's mass.

    The trick is power. Learn to generate lots of it, then learn how to employ that power most effectively.

    The neat thing about the Marauder is in fact, it's not as powerful as it 'could' be if I were to rebuild it now. (!!!)

    yeh it eats bad ships but strong ships have the same effect on it as it does on new people. the level dmg scales compared to everything else is insane, and people think guns are too weak rofl
     
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    Thx for the help for finetuning my system, Atra and BrokenGauge.

    Well one thing I want to mention again here is, that I want it being fun to fight it with itself. (Or against a vessel of comparable technological advancment, meaning powerregen and efficient weaponry.) That's why I wanted it to be some sort of glass cannon but not some ugly thing that shows too much system blocks, or where the function (powerregen=x shape) defines the function.

    Even though if the x-shape is so usefull some x-wing inspired builds should be very usefull imho. Ofcourse not accurate to the original, just resembling the idea of the shape, as the accurate x-wing shape is kinda difficult to combine with efficient powerregen.

    Back to fun when you fight it with itself: This darn thing is so small, it took me ages to overheat it in a AI fight. At 80% systems there were so many hull blocks over my system blocks, that I was unable to do any system damage, even when I diminished the armour to zero. It took me like 15 minutes for that fight.

    The missiles were totally useless, they never hit target at this size. Even with the reduced speed of 143m/s maximum. I can now ofcourse change the missiles for additional main gun modules and might test that out. But 6 modules more or less beams are not that great and without missiles this feels even less like a fighter... Anyway I gonna try that out, and if that doesn't work I will go for even less speed.

    But I still run out of ideas, because if that fight takes 15 minutes, it is because I used too many hull blocks. But using less hull blocks will destroy the shape. This means I would have to use a bigger size for the fighter overall, and I want to avoid that, because when the figthers of mine have a certain size, the ships that accompany them will grow in size too. Right now this 40 mass fighter doesnt even fit into the hangar of my 3k mass corvette. Yes is has some very spacewasting form, but still...Hm maybe I could make the hangar in a triangle shape. :D But I hope you are able to understand my concern here. Still I am open to design fighter in a bit larger size, as I don't try to stay static on that challenge I laid upon myself.
     
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    Az14el

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    Actually landing those hits can be really hard when such a small opponent only has to move a few meters away from its original position to dodge a shot (where as a larger ship has to move much further and likely at a slower rate of accelleration in order to clear the area)
    Superior dps uptime from turrets/AI will shorten fights quite a lot under most server settings