So, I've been with the game for a while, but only lurked in the forums. I've observed the discussions and now would like to talk about what I personally think is most important to address in future updates.
A balanced economy
...not. I know lots of people want to see that one soon, but I think it's both unproductive and not really feasible right now. I mention this since I often see the "the Titans should be balanced by the economy". No, they should not. At least not only by the economy. I agree that a Titan should be very powerful for a very high price, but "whoever has the most money can build the most Titans can destroy the most Titans, and whoever is bankrupt first loses" isn't a balanced system.
Now on to what I really believe should be changed soon:
Movement
I saw that one in a thread here about shields being overpowered, and for some reason I still don't understand everyone acted like it was completely unrelated and wouldn't help at all. It wasn't, in my opinion. I'm not saying we shouldn't change shields, and I think the current setup of having two blocks instead of one for storage and regen is a great starting point, but I can wholeheartedly agree to the general idea that we can't really talk about balancing ships, especially balancing survivability of ships, while the moveset only allows for combat to be on the level of "one ship goes forward, one backward, both hold LMB". So yes, we need some sort of evasion, and no, I don't think that this should only be the case for fighters. So for example, if we have a Titan with a really big and powerful gun, and a frigate is dumb enough to run in front of it, it should easily be killed. But if it can avoid the beam because the Titan moves very slowly, it can survive. Same for ships closer in size to one another. I find it very obvious that a 100m ship should be able to avoid some weapons of a 800m ship. Those that it can't avoid (tracking missiles, rapid fire, etc.) it should be able to hold off for a good while with it's shields.
So yes, I think the most important part of combat balancing right now is somehow changing movement so that piloting matters, instead of just balancing shields and weapons just because in the current system, one constantly hits the other anyway.
Which brings me to the next two points:
Big weapons vs. small weapons
I agree that ship combat should be slow. It should be about planning and using the tactics and weapons a situation demands. I DO think though that ships shouldn't be limited to using small weapons to achieve that. There should really be this giant, powerful death laser your ship can use and it should be so powerful that it can easily tear your enemy to shreds; it only has to be hard to do so in some other way than absolute damage numbers (see, for example, evasion)
Big ships vs. small ships
I don't think a small ship should kill a bigger ship. At least not the Titan vs. Fighter scenario people commonly mean by that. I remember a thread about that problem where the author said that everyone wants to feel like the hero, which means they'll use the most powerful ship - I think that applies here as well, people want to feel like a hero, destroying the Titan all by themselves, but I don't think that's good balance. Not even if only a really good Fighter pilot can shoot a really dumb (or even afk) Titan pilot. They just shouldn't. The problem here is that if a good fighter pilot can kill a dumb Titan pilot, then a few good Fighter pilots can just roll over a good Titan pilot, which simply shouldn't happen. I like the "Luke attacking the Death Star" scenario as much as the next guy, but the point here is that this is a really unique achievement happening... well, two times... while for the mechanics of a multiplayer game it would mean that this somehow has to ALWAYS happen. Smaller ships have to get more useful, and for example a 500m ship should be able to kill a 700m one, but not a fighter. It's just wrong.
Transport/Travel
I like the general idea of what was laid out by the devs, but the execution - as we see it in the Dev build as well - not really good.
My general thoughts:
- There should be exploration, we shouldn't just jump to whatever sector we like.
- There should be a certain sense of "infrastructure", see the former, so that we have a sort of "frontier" with people exploring, mining and salvaging and the "inner realm" where factions settle and fight. (and probably a innermost, safe circle for newcomers)
- You shouldn't have to sacrifice a huge part of your ships for jump drives.
How to do that?
Jump drives should only need a computer, no blocks. They should consume power, and lots of it. Also, fighters should only jump a few sectors, bigger ships more. Essentially, the bigger the mass, the bigger the power consumption, the farther the reach, BUT no blocks needed to jump.
Gates should be completely changed, while the idea of having those rings is cool, it's just not viable ingame. I propose that we get gates and Beacons. What do they do?
Gates: Ships can travel from and to them. They are more alike to the Mass relays in Mass Effect, so they don't need the ring; but they need more blocks the more mass they want to transport.
Beacons: You can only travel TO Beacons, but not from them. Beacons can be set up with a simple usable item you can buy from a shop, and appear as a premade structure (the owner can modify it, but I want to discourage ugly few-block-designs due to laziness). Whoever places the Beacon can name the "system". This encourages people to explore and build a infrastructure for other ships to come later.
"Systems" are newly introduced. To disencourage, people from placing a Beacon in every sector (thereby making traveling meaningless again and not actually "channeling" the flow of where ships move to), a certain distance has to be held from another Beacon. All the sectors in half of that distance then belong to that "system" (the other half obviously to the system of the other sector). Admins should be able to decide whether Beacons are public or can be owned by factions. That would bring in another interesting part to faction warfare, trying to own systems. (The same restriction for distances would be made for Gates, it would just be a greater distance.) From a gate, you can travel to ANY beacon. Or at least a very, very big radius so that you might for example, when traveling from one end of the known galaxy to another hop to two others gates on the way first. (Also, it should somehow be discouraged to lay out a simple grid relay; it should be more akin to branches growing from the center of the universe.)
Also, we need a star map with the sectors and systems displayed, on which we can then travel.
The jump drive should also work with that map, and you should only be able to jump to known sectors (because calculating safe paths yadda yadda technobabble). Sectors with Beacons are automatically known.
To summarize, travel at the "edges" of the known galaxy should be slow and more or less just be done the normal way, with thrusters and overdrive, while the "inner realms" can be quickly traversed through a network of Beacons and gates or by jumpdrives.
The hyperdrive, as currently explained to us, seems completely useless. I'd cut it out.
Cloaking/Jamming
I really wonder why nothing has be done about that yet. These are my thoughts on the two:
- We shouldn't need both for the intended effect.
- EVERY ship should be able to completely cloak and jam AND do so permanently. Yes, you read that right.
- Cloaked ships should be vulnerable while cloaked and immediately after being uncloaked.
- While all ships should be able to cloak, smaller ships should be faster to be battle ready again.
- There should still be advantages for ships explicitly built for Stealth warfare.
Why do I think this? My most controversial point will probably be to cloak huge ships. I just think that in a battle, it'd be a really epic feeling when there is this fleet, trying to attack another, seeing their slight advantage over them, and suddenly this huge Titan reveals itself and the opposing pilots just think "oh shit" before being blasted into bits. I really, really like this idea of being able to make ambushes with a ship that can really pack a punch instead of just having small reconnaissance fighters.
What do I propose? Jamming and Cloaking get two completely separate purposes. Cloaking does what it does now plus what jamming does now, thereby hiding the complete ship, no matter the size; BUT it also cripples it.
Jamming does what it does now, thereby essentially making it immune to AI-driven-turrets (if we can later add crew to turrets, those would still be able to hit them), and maybe seeking missiles; BUT it can't be permanent.
What does cloaking do to a ship exactly? I think it should be like this:
- you're unable to fire weapons; if you do you get uncloaked; you can only use the defensive effect of stop
- stored power is lowered to x percent; stored shields are lowered to x percent. X increases with size, so that a fighter might have nearly full shields, while a Titan may run at 10% shields.
- shield regeneration is deactivated; power regeneration is deactivated (or rather, reduced to the current thruster consumption, so you can essentially still fly around, but not save power)
- you can't use gates or the jump drive
- when uncloaking, those effects disappear (but you still have to fill the tanks again)
So essentially, you can be clocked all the time, and you can travel while doing so, but if you uncloak, you're vulnerable for a bit of time, and even worse, when you're forcefully uncloaked. If you get hit three times, you get uncloaked. Also, shield regen delay kicks in normally. Essentially, if your cloaked Titan gets spotted and hit by another Titan, you have no chance to win.
In general, normal cloaking would be much more valuable for Fighters, which can quickly jump in and out of it without losing much, while for a Titan it might be useless in a fight even to escape since it can't escape quickly enough to not get uncloaked before; and would loose massive amounts of shields and power if trying to cloak and surprise his opponent in an early stage of the fight.
Now what for dedicated stealth ships? They can install a second computer, with stealth blocks linked to it, require count increasing with mass.
Those would lend the following effects:
- firing while cloaked, and using all effects
- power- and shield-reduction lowered
- you can jump and use gates while cloaked, but only at a maximum at 50% of normal range
- spotting distance reduced to down to 50%
- Immunity to long range scanners
Spotting distance? Long Range scanners? Yes, those are new methods for ships to spot cloaked ships.
Spotting distance: If one approaches a cloaked ship, at a certain distance it'll automatically appear to the approaching ship (but not uncloak to everyone else). That distance is greater the bigger the ship is, so for a Titan it might be 100meters.
Long range scanners are computers one can install in their ship. They'll show THAT there is a ship, on the minimap, but not how big, and not show it's core signature. When getting near it three times it's spotting distance, the core signature appears.
The pilot of the cloaked ship probably should get a blinking alarm when getting spotted.
Ship-Core/Docking
I honestly don't understand why we're still sticking to this idiotic core system as it is now. The most annoying part is probably the whole one hit to the core, the whole ship is dead mechanic, but luckily the HP system is already planned.
There are two others horribly annoying aspects though:
- The ship core shouldn't be from where you pilot. We need a dedicated piloting seat from where to enter Flight mode
- The ship core shouldn't determine where to dock. It's dumb to have to build both you docking system and your ship according to the placement of the core. We should be able to determine "Here's the airlock where the ship docks, here's the point on the ship that shall dock to the airlock". That would also make it possible to dock the ship sideways instead of always with the bottom of the ship to the docking station.
I think those are currently the most important parts to address. Cloaking and movement because of how they will have to be done before deeper combat balance can be established; travel because it'll influence how to build the universe, faction warfare and the economy; ship-cores and docking because of how they influence ship design in the long term.
There are other aspects of course that I think need to be addressed. For example, the problem of detailed interiors reducing efficiency could be solved if we could designate "rooms", like for example in Dwarf Fortress or Prison Architect, that also raise effectiveness (e.g. a weapons room for better weapon efficiency, an engine room for a slight power boost, a core room as a requirement, a bridge as a requirement, etc.) And/or give bonuses for a certain percentage of the ship being decor, hull and air in general.
Or the whole "turrets sharing shields or turrets not sharing shields"-thing: I'd propose giving the turrets shield points from their carrier equivalent to half their block count (so, as if half the blocks were shield capacitors), and regeneration equivalent to the same, but they drain both from the main ship and regen is delayed both when the main ship and/or the turret get hit.
Armor-efficiency and survivability in general (HP system). The economy, faction warfare, etc., but I think those can wait, while the above mentioned are more important right now.
Opinions?
A balanced economy
...not. I know lots of people want to see that one soon, but I think it's both unproductive and not really feasible right now. I mention this since I often see the "the Titans should be balanced by the economy". No, they should not. At least not only by the economy. I agree that a Titan should be very powerful for a very high price, but "whoever has the most money can build the most Titans can destroy the most Titans, and whoever is bankrupt first loses" isn't a balanced system.
Now on to what I really believe should be changed soon:
Movement
I saw that one in a thread here about shields being overpowered, and for some reason I still don't understand everyone acted like it was completely unrelated and wouldn't help at all. It wasn't, in my opinion. I'm not saying we shouldn't change shields, and I think the current setup of having two blocks instead of one for storage and regen is a great starting point, but I can wholeheartedly agree to the general idea that we can't really talk about balancing ships, especially balancing survivability of ships, while the moveset only allows for combat to be on the level of "one ship goes forward, one backward, both hold LMB". So yes, we need some sort of evasion, and no, I don't think that this should only be the case for fighters. So for example, if we have a Titan with a really big and powerful gun, and a frigate is dumb enough to run in front of it, it should easily be killed. But if it can avoid the beam because the Titan moves very slowly, it can survive. Same for ships closer in size to one another. I find it very obvious that a 100m ship should be able to avoid some weapons of a 800m ship. Those that it can't avoid (tracking missiles, rapid fire, etc.) it should be able to hold off for a good while with it's shields.
So yes, I think the most important part of combat balancing right now is somehow changing movement so that piloting matters, instead of just balancing shields and weapons just because in the current system, one constantly hits the other anyway.
Which brings me to the next two points:
Big weapons vs. small weapons
I agree that ship combat should be slow. It should be about planning and using the tactics and weapons a situation demands. I DO think though that ships shouldn't be limited to using small weapons to achieve that. There should really be this giant, powerful death laser your ship can use and it should be so powerful that it can easily tear your enemy to shreds; it only has to be hard to do so in some other way than absolute damage numbers (see, for example, evasion)
Big ships vs. small ships
I don't think a small ship should kill a bigger ship. At least not the Titan vs. Fighter scenario people commonly mean by that. I remember a thread about that problem where the author said that everyone wants to feel like the hero, which means they'll use the most powerful ship - I think that applies here as well, people want to feel like a hero, destroying the Titan all by themselves, but I don't think that's good balance. Not even if only a really good Fighter pilot can shoot a really dumb (or even afk) Titan pilot. They just shouldn't. The problem here is that if a good fighter pilot can kill a dumb Titan pilot, then a few good Fighter pilots can just roll over a good Titan pilot, which simply shouldn't happen. I like the "Luke attacking the Death Star" scenario as much as the next guy, but the point here is that this is a really unique achievement happening... well, two times... while for the mechanics of a multiplayer game it would mean that this somehow has to ALWAYS happen. Smaller ships have to get more useful, and for example a 500m ship should be able to kill a 700m one, but not a fighter. It's just wrong.
Transport/Travel
I like the general idea of what was laid out by the devs, but the execution - as we see it in the Dev build as well - not really good.
My general thoughts:
- There should be exploration, we shouldn't just jump to whatever sector we like.
- There should be a certain sense of "infrastructure", see the former, so that we have a sort of "frontier" with people exploring, mining and salvaging and the "inner realm" where factions settle and fight. (and probably a innermost, safe circle for newcomers)
- You shouldn't have to sacrifice a huge part of your ships for jump drives.
How to do that?
Jump drives should only need a computer, no blocks. They should consume power, and lots of it. Also, fighters should only jump a few sectors, bigger ships more. Essentially, the bigger the mass, the bigger the power consumption, the farther the reach, BUT no blocks needed to jump.
Gates should be completely changed, while the idea of having those rings is cool, it's just not viable ingame. I propose that we get gates and Beacons. What do they do?
Gates: Ships can travel from and to them. They are more alike to the Mass relays in Mass Effect, so they don't need the ring; but they need more blocks the more mass they want to transport.
Beacons: You can only travel TO Beacons, but not from them. Beacons can be set up with a simple usable item you can buy from a shop, and appear as a premade structure (the owner can modify it, but I want to discourage ugly few-block-designs due to laziness). Whoever places the Beacon can name the "system". This encourages people to explore and build a infrastructure for other ships to come later.
"Systems" are newly introduced. To disencourage, people from placing a Beacon in every sector (thereby making traveling meaningless again and not actually "channeling" the flow of where ships move to), a certain distance has to be held from another Beacon. All the sectors in half of that distance then belong to that "system" (the other half obviously to the system of the other sector). Admins should be able to decide whether Beacons are public or can be owned by factions. That would bring in another interesting part to faction warfare, trying to own systems. (The same restriction for distances would be made for Gates, it would just be a greater distance.) From a gate, you can travel to ANY beacon. Or at least a very, very big radius so that you might for example, when traveling from one end of the known galaxy to another hop to two others gates on the way first. (Also, it should somehow be discouraged to lay out a simple grid relay; it should be more akin to branches growing from the center of the universe.)
Also, we need a star map with the sectors and systems displayed, on which we can then travel.
The jump drive should also work with that map, and you should only be able to jump to known sectors (because calculating safe paths yadda yadda technobabble). Sectors with Beacons are automatically known.
To summarize, travel at the "edges" of the known galaxy should be slow and more or less just be done the normal way, with thrusters and overdrive, while the "inner realms" can be quickly traversed through a network of Beacons and gates or by jumpdrives.
The hyperdrive, as currently explained to us, seems completely useless. I'd cut it out.
Cloaking/Jamming
I really wonder why nothing has be done about that yet. These are my thoughts on the two:
- We shouldn't need both for the intended effect.
- EVERY ship should be able to completely cloak and jam AND do so permanently. Yes, you read that right.
- Cloaked ships should be vulnerable while cloaked and immediately after being uncloaked.
- While all ships should be able to cloak, smaller ships should be faster to be battle ready again.
- There should still be advantages for ships explicitly built for Stealth warfare.
Why do I think this? My most controversial point will probably be to cloak huge ships. I just think that in a battle, it'd be a really epic feeling when there is this fleet, trying to attack another, seeing their slight advantage over them, and suddenly this huge Titan reveals itself and the opposing pilots just think "oh shit" before being blasted into bits. I really, really like this idea of being able to make ambushes with a ship that can really pack a punch instead of just having small reconnaissance fighters.
What do I propose? Jamming and Cloaking get two completely separate purposes. Cloaking does what it does now plus what jamming does now, thereby hiding the complete ship, no matter the size; BUT it also cripples it.
Jamming does what it does now, thereby essentially making it immune to AI-driven-turrets (if we can later add crew to turrets, those would still be able to hit them), and maybe seeking missiles; BUT it can't be permanent.
What does cloaking do to a ship exactly? I think it should be like this:
- you're unable to fire weapons; if you do you get uncloaked; you can only use the defensive effect of stop
- stored power is lowered to x percent; stored shields are lowered to x percent. X increases with size, so that a fighter might have nearly full shields, while a Titan may run at 10% shields.
- shield regeneration is deactivated; power regeneration is deactivated (or rather, reduced to the current thruster consumption, so you can essentially still fly around, but not save power)
- you can't use gates or the jump drive
- when uncloaking, those effects disappear (but you still have to fill the tanks again)
So essentially, you can be clocked all the time, and you can travel while doing so, but if you uncloak, you're vulnerable for a bit of time, and even worse, when you're forcefully uncloaked. If you get hit three times, you get uncloaked. Also, shield regen delay kicks in normally. Essentially, if your cloaked Titan gets spotted and hit by another Titan, you have no chance to win.
In general, normal cloaking would be much more valuable for Fighters, which can quickly jump in and out of it without losing much, while for a Titan it might be useless in a fight even to escape since it can't escape quickly enough to not get uncloaked before; and would loose massive amounts of shields and power if trying to cloak and surprise his opponent in an early stage of the fight.
Now what for dedicated stealth ships? They can install a second computer, with stealth blocks linked to it, require count increasing with mass.
Those would lend the following effects:
- firing while cloaked, and using all effects
- power- and shield-reduction lowered
- you can jump and use gates while cloaked, but only at a maximum at 50% of normal range
- spotting distance reduced to down to 50%
- Immunity to long range scanners
Spotting distance? Long Range scanners? Yes, those are new methods for ships to spot cloaked ships.
Spotting distance: If one approaches a cloaked ship, at a certain distance it'll automatically appear to the approaching ship (but not uncloak to everyone else). That distance is greater the bigger the ship is, so for a Titan it might be 100meters.
Long range scanners are computers one can install in their ship. They'll show THAT there is a ship, on the minimap, but not how big, and not show it's core signature. When getting near it three times it's spotting distance, the core signature appears.
The pilot of the cloaked ship probably should get a blinking alarm when getting spotted.
Ship-Core/Docking
I honestly don't understand why we're still sticking to this idiotic core system as it is now. The most annoying part is probably the whole one hit to the core, the whole ship is dead mechanic, but luckily the HP system is already planned.
There are two others horribly annoying aspects though:
- The ship core shouldn't be from where you pilot. We need a dedicated piloting seat from where to enter Flight mode
- The ship core shouldn't determine where to dock. It's dumb to have to build both you docking system and your ship according to the placement of the core. We should be able to determine "Here's the airlock where the ship docks, here's the point on the ship that shall dock to the airlock". That would also make it possible to dock the ship sideways instead of always with the bottom of the ship to the docking station.
I think those are currently the most important parts to address. Cloaking and movement because of how they will have to be done before deeper combat balance can be established; travel because it'll influence how to build the universe, faction warfare and the economy; ship-cores and docking because of how they influence ship design in the long term.
There are other aspects of course that I think need to be addressed. For example, the problem of detailed interiors reducing efficiency could be solved if we could designate "rooms", like for example in Dwarf Fortress or Prison Architect, that also raise effectiveness (e.g. a weapons room for better weapon efficiency, an engine room for a slight power boost, a core room as a requirement, a bridge as a requirement, etc.) And/or give bonuses for a certain percentage of the ship being decor, hull and air in general.
Or the whole "turrets sharing shields or turrets not sharing shields"-thing: I'd propose giving the turrets shield points from their carrier equivalent to half their block count (so, as if half the blocks were shield capacitors), and regeneration equivalent to the same, but they drain both from the main ship and regen is delayed both when the main ship and/or the turret get hit.
Armor-efficiency and survivability in general (HP system). The economy, faction warfare, etc., but I think those can wait, while the above mentioned are more important right now.
Opinions?
Last edited:
