Game Balance Suggestions

[CIR]

Hello players,

Up till now most balance changes were discussed internally within the council and Schine. We would like to move away from that and let any player have a part in that. To do this as efficiently as possible, we’re going to organize it in a 1-way suggestion thread.

You name one (and only one) suggestion per post that you think should be changed to create a more balanced game, config changes can be implemented immediately. If you ask for mechanic changes or want more functionality for something it will most likely be delayed, sorry. In both cases, you provide some argumentation for the proposed change and that's it.

We, the council will read them and discuss the proposed changes internally together with a Schine member. The Tester Team will make sure the new config values are properly tested and if needed adjusted before the next release.

All suggestions are gathered in the Config Suggestion List so you can easily follow status changes and if a suggestion is already posted or not.

A changelog will also be provided for every release that includes argumentation for every change where possible.

Config Suggestion List

Spoiler: APPROVED

• Increase free rail mass and rail mass/enhancer
• splitting Block Count and Mass into two separate lines

Spoiler: PENDING

• give missiles HP based on damage output
• shields should block star damage
• allow template pastes to be centered on the ship core
• overheating ships should re-appear at your homebase (rebooted)
• faction point income de-buff with territory loss
• add a block HP healing mechanic to shipyard
• allow micro assemblers on ships and allow them to break junk down
• allow factories on ships but not enhancers
• split the mass enhancer config between turret docks and rails
• reduce range of heat-seeker missiles and/or speed
• increase jump and/or warp gate distance
• weapon option to boost damage, but reduce aiming arc
• remove faction home-base invulnerability
• lower mass of thrust blocks
• powersupply and shieldsupply should not affect the mothership it is docked to
  
• Reduce missile speed and maneuverability as overall damage increases
  
• add zoom mode to weapons (link-able block?)
• new modules to slave to a jump-drive
• undo the thrust nerf
• planet gravity scales with planet size
• enabling passive effects through logic
• let docked thrusters draw power from the docked entity first
  
• mass enhancers need to enhance more than 1 chain
• split up config station cargo and ship cargo
• increase max rail speed but leave default speed the same
  
• reduce the base power storage of entities from 50,000 to 5,000
  
• increase power capacitor scaling by a large factor
• ability to change thrust settings per group
  
• remove box dimensions from the turning calculation for ships and base it mostly or entirely off of mass
  
• make enemy stations in faction territory drain faction points (configurable)
• make thrust consume a lot more power
• further reduction in shield sharing to buff turrets

Spoiler: DENIED

• ...

Spoiler: Players who left a suggestion for this release cycle

• Kilim
• godmars
• Guthris
• darkracer125
• ithirahad
• n42k
• malacodor
• GRHayes
• BillBoBAGGINSIS
• Valiant70
• Jaaskinal
• AlterIntel
• JC1223
• <SCRIPTKITTY>
• ZackeyTNT

Spoiler: DELAYED

• Increase missile damage but use storage racks to limit capacity
  - Can't be implemented right now
• Rethink Cannon + cannon, reduce its effectiveness. Make Cannon + missile more accurate
  - Proposed way of changing can't be implemented right now.
• AI ships move at different speed relative to their size (might be implemented with thrust update)
  - Can't be implemented right now
• Increase spawn chance of blue asteroids
  - Can't be changed right now
• Increase the damage of a torch
  - Needs a bug fix first
• Change how "activate all turrets" works for docked entities
  - Can't be implemented right now
• allow turret grouping for better mode toggling
  - Can't be implemented right now

Changelog

Spoiler: v0.19538, 18/12/2015

Spoiler: APPROVED

• don't issue warning but instead delete + send message
  - we don't want to punish you for making suggestions, all your previous warnings related to this thread were removed. If you still have them, contact Lancake
• Decouple armor color from resource cost
  - We've implemented 2 new blocks: standard hardener and advanced hardener. Both use 1 ore type (fertikeen). We're using these 2 hardeners in place of the resource costs for all standard and advanced armor blocks.
• Use metal meshes in more crafting recipes (like hull)
  - Currently we added more meshes needed to make hull (in the hardeners). We're planning to overhaul existing recipes to fit this more.
• new players start with more blocks
  - By removing the cannon computer and cannon barrels, the starting inventory has way more room for other, more essential materials without increasing the netto value of the inventory: 550 basic hull, 100 power, 100 thrust, 5 ship cores, 2 salvage computers, 50 salvage modules, 2 faction modules + all meta items
  
• lower faction mining bonus but increase default ore/crystal yield
  - We've added a new config option "unowned system bonus" which will increase the mining yield of unclaimed territory. This reduces the gap between faction and neutral territory bonus. Both faction bonus still give the same yield though so there's no change for them.

Spoiler: DENIED

• Reduce cloak power requirement by 50%
  - with the power growth increase, doing this would allow too many ships to cloak easily
• lower price of all blocks
  - no benefit from doing it, max credits won't always be capped (you can use a player shop to store credits if needed)
• hotkey triggered logic
  - there are future plans for more logic
• change how spawns work
  - spawn system will be changed at some point
• increase default volume of blocks to be equal to player inventory
  - player inventory is big for player reasons, increasing volume per cargo space would make all cargo holds ridiculously small in size. Increasing it for the default inventory space of factories/chests would make cargo spaces useless for low quantities.
• stop balancing the game and add more gameplay
  - we prefer doing both at once.
• Reduce offline faction member FP gain
  - doing minor tweaks on a system that is broken at its core will not help. It will be reworked at a later stage.

Spoiler: v0.19519, 04/12/2015

Spoiler: APPROVED

• Reduce ship HP penalties (<100% SHP)
  - The curve is less harsh now:
  90% SHP => 90% output of remaining systems
  80% SHP => 80% output of remaining systems
  and so on...
  
  
• Raise shield recharge under fire (25% max instead of 10%)
  - This should make shield rechargers more useful in any fight.
  
  
• Raise power soft-cap to 2 million
  - Introduced to make the transition between ship sizes smoother. Currently ships that needed something like 1.5-2 million power required a lot of wasted space to make them work. This in turn made the smaller and bigger counter parts way more efficient/stronger in terms of efficiency.
  At 2 million power or higher, most ships usually have enough room to switch over to external reactors if needed.
  
  
• Shield sharing: 50% -> 30%
  - Introduced to make turrets last longer during fights, they usually die too fast to make a difference.
  
  
• More starting cash, decreased station price
  - Should help a lot for creating permanent bases from the start: 50 000 credits to start with, and 50 000 to buy a station block
  
  
• Update block stacking groups
  - Lights are paired with light rods, delay signal is sitting in a logic multi slot again. We're planning to add it for computers + their modules but this showed issues in the dev build and is delayed for now.
  
  
• Increase missile speed of dumb missiles (only for missile + cannon for now, can't change it otherwise)
  - We can't change it for the normal dumb missile just yet but that's going to happen. For now only missile / cannon has been buffed, should be 6 times the max server speed at 100% support.

Spoiler: DENIED

• Make advanced armor cheaper
  
• Undo the armor block weight changes
  
• Increase all weapons damage output and power consumption, reduce power cons. of secondary and effect systems.

RULES
To keep this thread clean and structured we made some rules. Any post that violates these rules will be removed.

1. Keep it short and to the point, 10 lines or less (font size: 4). If it’s longer, we will not read it! Images are in spoiler tags. Links to other suggestion threads are not allowed if it is not accompanied with a 10 lines or less version!
2. No player <-> player interaction allowed: don't quote each other, don't talk about stuff others have mentioned (unless it's your own suggestion about the same mechanic, but it must not be addressed to what someone else has said previously). You are free to discuss it internally in a private conversation or another thread.
3. You are not allowed to go off-topic, only suggestions are allowed.
4. You can only make 1 suggestion per release (every 2 weeks). Using other accounts to bypass this is NOT allowed!
5. No mention of any exploits, please report these on our bug tracker or PM Lancake

 

[Blaza612]

Reduce ship HP penalties (<100% SHP)

Don't entirely understand what the quoted is for, but onto my balance suggestion (It could be what's above)

Make it that any objects docked onto a ship/station use the shield until it gets to 15%

 

[Aynslei]

Credits.

From a new player perspective it feels pretty rough. 20k start cash, 1mil needed to pay for 1 block station.
I don't really know what changes need to be made apart from making a station cheaper.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Reduce offline faction member faction point gain.
Honestly, most of the faction points factions get is from members who were online recently enough, but are offline. It's a little bit odd.

 

[alterintel]

This balance suggestion has been deleted by the user.

Reason: only 1 suggestions per release cycle

 

[Edymnion]

Update default block stacking groups.
Have computers stack with their modules, the different guns (have a stack for utility guns like healing/marking/power guns, one for offensive guns like laser and rocket launcher), stack lights with the matching colored rods, etc.

We have a lot more blocks these days, and the same number of inventory slots. We need to have better and more efficient default stacking.

 

[The Filth]

Make advanced armour cheaper. They already make you a slug, so at least make them a bit cheaper.

 

[HolyCookie]

Increase dumb fire missile damage and speed (and maybe decrease power usage)

Dumb fire missiles are never used, weak and hard to hit, use power and well.... the fact that nobody uses it is enough reason to buff it. By buffing the damage, small manoeuvrable ships are more likely to use it, they can flank an enemy and hit them in the back. Speed should be increased if you fight against the somewhat faster enemies, who can dodge missiles because missiles are so slow. It is also a reward for using the difficult tactic, one where you have to aim. In the end I think dumb missiles should be stronger than missile+pulse in any way, e.g dmg per power used, dps etc.

 

[Malacodor]

Decouple armor color from resource cost, it's not fair that some colors require more valuable ores than others.

Edit: Crafting armor could use "hardener" instead of capsules/ingots which in turn can be made out of any type of capsule.

 

[Captain Fortius]

-Undo the armor block weight changes.

Reason; Everything is too heavy now, while thruster capacity remained the same. Extra weight is also a problem for radar jammers and jump drives. Now, we need to build disproportionately large engines and reactors for ships that worked fine before.

Common sense: Armor plating can contribute to a large percent of a vehicle's weight, yes. But it's a lot of weight because you use a large amount; The metal itself is not heavier than the metal you use to build your engine (aka thruster blocks) or guns (aka weapon blocks)

Why am I right; All the replica ships I built are ponderously slow if I put thruster blocks only in the parts that are supposed to be the engine. Some of those ships were quite nimble, or at least capable of immense straight-line speeds. You can't say all other sci-fi sources were wrong.

 

[nagygeri01]

Drastically increase all weapons damage output and power consumption. Reduce power cons. of secondary and effect systems.

Reason; With the current balance, it takes tediously long to defeat a same sized ship, and irrealisticly long to destroy even much smaller opponents. Two-part turrets further reduce the amount of blocks you can put into a weapon system, while theoretically your main hull could provide enough power for much larger weapons.

Confirmation; In most sci-fi sources relatively small turret mounted weapons pose considerable danger even to the mightiest ships.

Why is it good; More room for creativity, faster battles (right now if it looks like you'll loose, you easily have enough time to fly back to your home base and dock.), formations of small bombers could be a viable weapon against large targets.

 

[Lecic]

The best choice of cannon for nearly all situations is Cannon/Cannon. Higher RoF, identical DPS, and better scaling as an anti-block weapon than higher alpha cannons due to the diminishing returns on cannon block removal make it the best choice of cannon except in a small handful of roles that could still be done almost as well with Cannon/Cannon anyway.
I suggest you:
-Reduce the innate punch ability of Cannon/Cannon.
-Increase the innate punch ability of other Cannon combos.
-Massively tighten the spread of Cannon/Missile, and give it a symmetrical pattern. (I suggest the same for Beam/Missile.)

 

[LegoF4]

Raise the free rail motion limit, and make rail mass enhancers more effective. This is to allow players to constructed much larger sections of their ships on rails, and prevent docked objects from being merely stuffed with mass enhancers. The raise is the un-enhanced limit should allow a little more freedom when creating spinning "wingy bits".

 

[terra mining corp.]

up damage from missiles but limit there numbers to storage racks , that way you will be more reluctant to use dumb-fire at long range, the missile blocks could be refilled at a station or store , could make more role playing opportunities between factions.

 

[nightrune]

Suggestion: Increase the damage of a torch.

Reason: Currently at 1 damage a second and 250hp for a core it takes ~4 mins to pop someone out of the core. Boarding successfully is quite hard and almost not worth it right now.

 

[Phocian]

I reported this as a possible bug (T833) and have been advised that it isn't a bug, but perhaps is something for the council to look over.

DESCRIPTION
On a station in build mode activating turrets will activate all station turrets and all turrets on docked ships.
In a docked ship in activating all turrets via the entity structure tab will also reset and activate all station turrets and docked ship turrets.


This leads to lag.
I think this relates to performance really. If you build a station that can defend itself then it will require a reasonable number of turrets.
Now if you have say two ships docked each with ten turrets then this just drops the fps to single figures and PINGs the server to where it effects other players. When all these turrets start tracking and firing.

If performance was not an issue, personally I would like each entity (ship/station) to be seperate, but maybe other players would want the maximium amunt of firepower to be activated.

Something to consider and maybe if more optimisation took place this wouldn't be a concern but that is not something I shouldn't comment on further.

 

[Winterhome]

Tournament and other regulation based events oftentimes require an accurate readout of block counts. Previously, mass was sufficient to determine a ship's eligibility due to all blocks having the same mass.

I strongly suggest splitting Block Count and Mass into two separate lines, and adding a "Total Block Count" part to the Block Count line, so a builder may see the total block count of an entity as well as all docked entities, rather than having to go through and add up the block count of every single entity on a ship manually.

 

[ltmauve]

Metal mesh is not used in crafting except for thrusters, power capacitors, and in the basic hull. These hardly use any of it and in a large ship most of the blocks (weapons, shields) use crystal circuits and ore capsules. This means any refinery will have tons of metal mesh hanging around. Therefore I recommend
1 circuit + 1 mesh = 1 hull
1 hull + 10 mesh = 1 S. armor
1 S. armor + 100 mesh = 1 A. armor
This also eliminates the problem that some colors of hull require rarer ores.

 

[BJammin]

Not entirely sure if this is something that can be changed through config edits, but if AI ships could move at a speed more relative to their size that would be nice. Player vs AI fights in larger ships (especially titans) tend to feel more like ludicrous, high-speed dogfights than massive power struggles between two metal behemoths. Most sci-fi typically shows large vessels moving either slowly or not at all duking it out with each other while smaller ships dart in and around, having the much more action-packed experience (as should be expected).

 

[Visitor]

I actually would rather have less starting cash and simply a few more blocks for bigger variety of potential ships. It's rather easy to gather credits, and average player on largely unpopulated server (or playing alone) can easily make millions in a day. Probably that will change with new venues of acquiring cash, quests dangers etc but right now - credits aren't an issue.