@Albreo
Ah thanks again for the video! I will do my best to learn from it and make any necessary changes - especially since its hard for me to test late game officer scenarios I really appreciate the demonstration of how those battles look.
You also make a good point regarding battle size considerations in the current format. I kind of wish the admiral AI did more wave-like deployments and retreated vessels after a mid-map skirmish is considered "lost" in order to lure the player into the reinforcement wave. Thing is, it might be hard to get that to feel right or not be abusable just like the current reinforcement pattern. It also might be hard to programmatically determine when a battle is "lost" to the AI in a relative-to-space way rather than a DP ratio way (which I assume the current admiral AI uses to determine when the AI ships full retreat).
The thing I was referring to with the upcoming objective changes was that the enemy ratio of DP will better favor them if they have a larger fleet. So in that sense, the AI can better utilize a numbers advantage from the onset of the battle without necessarily needing a large battle size to make the player feel the pressure. The breathing room factor will remain - but consider that small faster wolfpacks will also be encouraged in the new system over pure capital engagements. When putting those two changes together - there is likely to be less realistic breathing room without punishment if that makes sense. That's where I'm basing my assumption, anyway. I'll have to wait and see how it plays out in the end. The theory seems sound but who knows.
Is there an estimated time as to when the next update might take place?
At this point it's hard to say. Conceptually the new system is in place, but finishing the important details of each build and getting the balance to feel a bit better takes exponentially more time than the programming side of things. Work-wise if I put my axe to the grindstone - probably a week. Realistically though? Much harder to say with any real confidence. There are currently 982 variants in the mod. Minus the station modules and a few other ones that don't consider OP, the vast majority of them are going to require changes. I could just slap on vents or hullmods to fix them all quickly, but that seems like a wasted opportunity to make them more meaningful. It's not that they are bad now, per se, but they could be better in some areas - especially carriers. Then, of course, I'll need to add new variants for suggested balance issues and the new wings.
Generally, I balance weapons through stat changes other than OP because changing OP usually means changing a bunch of variants. Since I
have to do it anyway for the carrier changes, it's a good time be careful about considering OP.
As an example, when thinking about a single carrier bay, how much of an OP gap does there need to be between wing tiers to make the increased effectiveness of the wing feel like a consideration of the build rather than an easy choice assuming the wing is available? That's one I'm still wrestling with, actually, and the only way to "find out" is going to be to make and test builds along tier lines with multiple carriers and feel it out until it feels right. Math can only get you so far with this sort of thing.
In fact, if anyone has opinions based upon your current experiences to that point, I'm all ears!
*EDIT* Oh hey welcome to the forums! Didn't catch that this was your first post at first.
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Topic: [0.9.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - Update preview 6/24/20 (Read 273988 times)