Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Harmful Mechanic on April 26, 2018, 10:04:08 PM
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I was thinking about this for unrelated reasons (mainly a hullmod of my own that does something similar), and it occurred to me that a flat 15% range cut is a drastic penalty to both energy weapons specifically and short-ranged weapons generally that makes Unstable Injector less useful on precisely the ships and builds that could benefit the most from it.
Instead, I'd like to suggest that the penalty be changed to 50% beyond 600 range, the same way Safety Overrides works; this would both trim more range off longer-ranged weapons (1000>800 instead of 1000>850, for example) while leaving shorter range weapons less affected, and as a side bonus the math is cleaner and more intuitive to the player - many more round numbers and multiples of 50, as opposed to the 800>680 or 450>382.5 values it produces now.
With this change, weapons at 600 range and under would be untouched, encouraging players to take a second look at weapons like the Pulse Laser and Heavy Blaster on ships that will be rigged up for close-range combat. As well, short-range weapons like the AM Blaster, Assault Chaingun and Heavy Machine Gun that need every last bit of range they can get wouldn't be touched either; you'd have viable uses for those in builds that didn't rely on Safety Overrides.
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I was thinking about this for unrelated reasons (mainly a hullmod of my own that does something similar), and it occurred to me that a flat 15% range cut is a drastic penalty to both energy weapons specifically and short-ranged weapons generally that makes Unstable Injector less useful on precisely the ships and builds that could benefit the most from it.
Hmm. If there are sets of weapons that are unaffected/largely unaffected, then UI becomes an "always-best" choice for builds using those, because of how important speed is. And 600 range also includes a large number of low-end small ballistics.
UI is very intentionally an unavoidable tradeoff between speed and range, since those are the two key stats. Otherwise it's at best a no-brainer and at worst overpowered. Or, I suppose, so overpriced that it's not worth picking - but it'd be very hard to find a middle ground. IIRC it did not have a range penalty for a while and it was basically an auto-pick.
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I was thinking about this for unrelated reasons (mainly a hullmod of my own that does something similar), and it occurred to me that a flat 15% range cut is a drastic penalty to both energy weapons specifically and short-ranged weapons generally that makes Unstable Injector less useful on precisely the ships and builds that could benefit the most from it.
Hmm. If there are sets of weapons that are unaffected/largely unaffected, then UI becomes an "always-best" choice for builds using those, because of how important speed is. And 600 range also includes a large number of low-end small ballistics.
UI is very intentionally an unavoidable tradeoff between speed and range, since those are the two key stats. Otherwise it's at best a no-brainer and at worst overpowered. Or, I suppose, so overpriced that it's not worth picking - but it'd be very hard to find a middle ground. IIRC it did not have a range penalty for a while and it was basically an auto-pick.
I think that was back when skills were much more powerful, no skill cap and we had augmented engines as well as UI
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I think unstable injector is in a good spot. I use it on certain builds and in certain parts of the campaign progression, but not others. I don't want it to be mandatory again, because then its just a case of 'the player's fleet is always faster than the AI' (how it used to be).
With 600 being the range cutoff, UI would become mandatory on most frigate builds again, instead of being simply a very good choice.
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Even with current range penalty UI is very attractive.
It's autopick for most frigates: exceptions are Hyperion (does not depend on conventional speed) or SO builds (too OP-strained and already faster than anything except SO+UI). All-beams Wolf can also make meaningful choice between having UI or not.
In DE size it's autopick for Medusa, others can be viable both ways (non-UI builds are stronger in same size class, but risk more against Cruisers/Capitals). But non-UI builds need ITU, and it's very hard to get in campaign.
On Cruisers and Capitals UI is generally not worth using - they don't get that fast either way, while losing range hurts them a lot more.
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If there are sets of weapons that are unaffected/largely unaffected, then UI becomes an "always-best" choice for builds using those, because of how important speed is.
That's kind of the point; it's a buff to shorter-ranged weapons like the Ion Pulser that right now are very niche (essentially restricted to SO or phase ships), and it penalizes longer-ranged weapons more; the Gauss Cannon gets cut down to 900 range instead of 1020, for example.
I agree that it becomes always-best... but I'm not sure that's inherently bad, because of which ships are affected. Capitals and cruisers already depend on longer ranged weapons; this makes shorter-ranged builds and hulls more viable. Ships armed with energy weapons already have few to no reasons to use Unstable Injector, because of the range penalty on top of the inherent range disadvantages of projectile energy weapons; this levels that out.
If the net result is that ITU/DTC are already must-haves for slower/ballistic-focused ships, but UI becomes obligatory for faster/energy-focused ships (and maybe most importantly, offers a clearer choice WRT midline ships that can mount both; take ITU, kite-and-snipe, or take UI, become a short-range sledgehammer exploiting the combo potential of ballistic and energy slots), that could level the playing field in a couple of areas where we keep hearing complaints; frigates, high-tech ships, non-beam energy weapons. Right now, ITU is already cheap enough in OP terms that it's mandatory (IMO) on non-SO frigates; it's a little different when the choice is between 'which hullmod should be mandatory' as opposed to which hullmod should you choose between (and if your concern is that ITU + UI would become mandatory; make them mutually exclusive, force the player to pick one or the other.)
I'd argue that with weapons like the IR Pulse Laser, if you're relying on them you actually lose less range on an SO ship (500>462.5) than on a ship with Unstable Injector (425), so there's no real reason to use UI on those ships at all. It's even more pronounced when you consider short-ranged PD weapons that aren't affected by SO at all, but are by UI; Vulcan Cannons, LMGs, PD Lasers.
I'm coming at this from the angle of having designed a fast midline faction with lots of hybrid slots and wanting energy weapons to be competitive on them; perhaps that's not applicable to vanilla ships, but I think it solves a lot of edge cases and feels cleaner than the current percentage approach.
And 600 range also includes a large number of low-end small ballistics.
Yeah, that's a bigger issue. I dunno though - on something like a Lasher, is that really a problem? I guess it might be a minor buff to larger ships that use small ballistics, but given that those ships have short ranges as it is, UI would give them an option besides ITU, SO, or simply being second-best.
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If you pick short ranged weapons, you basically have to use UI anyway.
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On a side-note, how exactly do multiple flat and multiplication modifiers interact?
Like most difficult case - 1000 range beam + UI + Implants skill + ITU(Capital) + Optics + SO + Electronic Warfare.
If you pick short ranged weapons, you basically have to use UI anyway.
True, what really matters is not absolute difference in range, but how quickly can you close the gap (or get away).
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The only time I use Unstable Injector is on carriers with only fighters and PD mounted, since they are unaffected, and do not need to spend OP on ITU. -15% to shot range hurts enough on ships with conventional weapons. Maybe useful on ships with Gunnery Implants 3, in which case the penalty offsets the bonus, but the extra range from it (and no OP spent) is more useful than the speed.
The only reason why I do not get Gunnery Implants 3 is because I cannot decide whether I want to marry my character to a carrier or not. (I do not like to marry my character to a particular ship, and I leave points unspent due to decision paralysis.) If I do, then Gunnery Implants 3 is useless and I need the skill points elsewhere. If not for carrier flagships, Gunnery Implants 3 would be auto-pick like Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3. It is just that good for anything that relies on conventional weapons, which is most of the ships.
True, what really matters is not absolute difference in range, but how quickly can you close the gap (or get away).
At least with original -25% penalty (and less OP to afford other stuff I need), I could not get into range without taking too much hard flux on shield. For example, Hammerhead with UI could not attack effectively without Mauler and HVD, and even with them, it had to get into enemy range and trade shots. It was like using Mortar and Arbalest, except with less OP and much rarer weapons. -15% is not as drastic but still a noticeable bite out of shot range.
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True, what really matters is not absolute difference in range, but how quickly can you close the gap (or get away).
At least with original -25% penalty (and less OP to afford other stuff I need), I could not get into range without taking too much hard flux on shield. For example, Hammerhead with UI could not attack effectively without Mauler and HVD, and even with them, it had to get into enemy range and trade shots. It was like using Mortar and Arbalest, except with less OP and much rarer weapons. -15% is not as drastic but still a noticeable bite out of shot range.
"Attacking effectively" is not about having absolute range+speed dominance. That would be next step. There is no point to UI +Mauler + HVD. Your range is not going to be impressive either way, so UI Hamerhead needs to concentrate on efficiency. And also take hard shields and some caps, since it has no tricks like skimming to help with approach.
UI Hammerhead is weaker than non-UI ITU Hammerhead in most situations. Itt has easier time catching Medusa/frigates or avoiding Capitals.And you don't have ITU early in campaign to make the choice either way. No-ITU +No-UI is way too risky - vulnerable to pretty much everything in terms of range +speed.
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I think UO's debuff should scale inversely to ship size like its speed buff does, something like 20/15/10/10 (essentially same as its speed buff). As it is you might use it for Frigates but never for a Capital Ship.
I also would like Augmented Engines to get its speed buff back, give it another debuff if needed. Unstable Injectors thematically feels jury-rigged and a more "professional" version (like DTC vs ITU) would be nice.
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Re: Hammerhead
If I use anything other than Mauler/HVD, then attack range is so short that it eats too much hard flux before it gets in range and I am better off with Safety Override for better speed advantage and dissipation.
Similar results with various other gunships I tried. Hammerhead happened to be the most memorable. On something like Wolf, it was suicide with extremely short range with Pulse Laser or Heavy Blaster, and not enough OP to max out flux stats.
The point was the range penalty (on top of less OP to spend) is significant for everything that relies on weapons.
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I'm not sure the tradeoff of range vs. speed's quite right.
At 15%, 800 range is 680.
Presuming you traded OPs and range for 20 su/s speed, you've actually lost significant damage; 120 range is probably a second or so, even if the opponent's sitting still, and UI only contributed a little bit. So you've got more speed for at least one free hit from every gun in that range band, even if they're sitting still.
Obviously, in real fights, your opponents aren't sitting still. If you're both equal without UI, and they back-peddle, then the gap is now 6 seconds where you're in their range band but not vice-versa... ouch.
Because that's the math, I tend to spend on UI only when I need a pursuit ship that always wins vs. fast Frigates (and past midgame, I don't bother; I let them go); the times when being a lot faster matters are usually at the end of fights.
I think it's fair to say that ship speed's a "god stat", but only when there's a pretty large difference between ships A and B, or it's a fast player-ship being used to kite endlessly (which CR is there to deal with). I agree that UI without penalties looks like a "must-buy", but the range decrease matters quite a bit; anything that decreases range, I don't take, other than SO (and then only before midgame; SO's effects on CR are simply not viable when you're facing 20-minute battle scenarios).
If the range nerf was roughly 5%, it's about right; ship A can dictate engagements to B, but B always gets to shoot first, all other things being equal; what you're paying OPs for is to win pursuits, at that point. I might consider buying UI then.
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#Hammerhead
2x Heavy Mortar, 2x Railgun, UI is a great build for early and midgame where the enemy has a surplus of fast frigates, but struggles against cruisers because it gets outranged. HVD + Mauler gives it the range, but low kinetic DPS means it needs to close to the 700 range band anyways.
For my 'junk' Hammerheads, 2x heavy autocannon 2x light assault guns works and tears fighters up without using too rare weapons.
@Xenoargh
One on one comparing the numbers that may be right, but as you point out real combat is so much more complicated than that. Speed lets you avoid being surrounded if outnumbered, or flank if having an advantage. A ship doesn't need to be in weapons range to be a threat; if the enemy turns away, it then swoops in and fires without taking any hard flux at all. (The AI is actually pretty good at it too.)
Another case to consider is the (very common) situation where two ships are fighting in the middle of their range bands and one gains a flux advantage. The ship with UI can safely disengage - taking a few armor hits probably - or can just keep firing on the overwhelmed enemy. The ship without UI can only hope it can drive the enemy away with damage, or by an allies intervention.
The current UI is weighing all those advantages against being outranged. I tend towards speed when fighting numerous frigates/destroyers and only a few enemy cruisers, to negate their flank advantage, but switch to range once the enemies can field a real battle line.
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If the range nerf was roughly 5%, it's about right; ship A can dictate engagements to B, but B always gets to shoot first, all other things being equal; what you're paying OPs for is to win pursuits, at that point. I might consider buying UI then.
Is it even necessary to manually fight pursuits? With the loss of pre-0.8 skill power, just about anything that is fast enough to catch things is at risk of taking significant damage or getting killed. Plus, it takes about a minute to resolve. Given how quick, easy, safe, and reasonably effective auto-resolve is, even with civilians or recently recovered warships with junk weapons recently looted from battle, I do not even bother fighting pursuits anymore.
P.S. I forgot one other use for Unstable Injector - Hounds and Cerberus spec'ed as dedicated freighters without annoying Civilian-Grade that blocks Safety Override. If I want freighters early in the game - early enough that I cannot outfight everything that can ambush my fleet, those ships with both UI and SO should be fast enough to outrun most enemies.
P.P.S. @ Xenoargh: AI backpedals much and gleefully kites away from your ship unless it is ready to swarm with several buddies. There is a reason why I call AI cowardly frequently, or Spathi occasionally. This is why I do not use UI on most ships. I have considered UI on ships with Gunnery Implants 3, but due to decision paralysis between generalist and dedicated carrier pilot, I have not taken it (without a backup save to undo skill picks needed for various campaign or simulator tests). Generally, I pick skills that everyone needs (like Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3) and I have about 18 skill points unspent on my level 40 character.
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If the net result is that ITU/DTC are already must-haves for slower/ballistic-focused ships,
ITU/DTC are must-haves on larger hulls by design, though. It could've also been handled by making them built-in on cruisers/capitals, but I like the idea of allowing some room for more specialist builds that don't use those.
The reason is that large ships generally need longer weapon range to avoid being easily kited down by anything smaller and faster. Basically, without those hullmods, large combat ships are in a very precarious position, design-wise; near to being obsolete. I don't think you could make the same argument for UI, it's just not as fundamental, and I'd just as soon have fewer must-haves.
Right now, ITU is already cheap enough in OP terms that it's mandatory (IMO) on non-SO frigates
Probably an argument in favor of the frigate-sized ITU being underpriced. Two points is very low, and looking at the progression, it's out of line. I think when I was pricing it, I wasn't thinking that 10% was as impactful as it is in practice. So: raised the cost to 4, which is in line with the progression.
I'd argue that with weapons like the IR Pulse Laser, if you're relying on them you actually lose less range on an SO ship (500>462.5) than on a ship with Unstable Injector (425), so there's no real reason to use UI on those ships at all.
SO has a bunch of other downsides, though.
I'm coming at this from the angle of having designed a fast midline faction with lots of hybrid slots and wanting energy weapons to be competitive on them; perhaps that's not applicable to vanilla ships, but I think it solves a lot of edge cases and feels cleaner than the current percentage approach.
Hmm - a couple of things. One, energy weapons and ballistics are not very competitive with each other in direct-damage-dealing. Energy weapons are all-around worse at that, which is compensated by ships using them having better speed (to counter the lower range, again the see-saw of the two prime stats) and flux dissipation. The only way energy weapons really compete *in the same slot* is when they provide some utility in a way that ballistics don't - Ion Cannons, Ion Beams, long-range PD (yeah, a bit of a niche case), beam weapons (range + flux trading), a Heavy Blaster for armor cracking, and perhaps a few other things.
So, if you're putting a hybrid slot on something, "ballistics go in it" ought to be the baseline expectation, with the slot type providing a bit of flexibility for utility. That's just the grain of the weapon design. This is also why hybrid and universal slots are used sparingly in vanilla.
Two, "fast ships with hybrid slots" is a potential warning sign. You've basically got fast ships with ballistic weapons, then, which could mean they're going to be overpowered - or at least hard to balance - due to a combination of speed and range. If really depends on where their speed and mobility systems (if any) place them, relative to say midline ships (if you'll note, those tend to have maneuvering jets, which while having good utility, aren't an overwhelmingly good mobility system otherwise).
If it were me, I'd probably look at a built-in hullmod as a way to make ballistics and energy competitive on your ships. If a general-purpose hullmod did that, it'd probably break things. But with a built-in, you have so much more freedom - for example, you could increase energy weapon range, or reduce ballistic range, depending on how fast your ships ended up being and what you wanted in terms of balance.
And 600 range also includes a large number of low-end small ballistics.
Yeah, that's a bigger issue. I dunno though - on something like a Lasher, is that really a problem? I guess it might be a minor buff to larger ships that use small ballistics, but given that those ships have short ranges as it is, UI would give them an option besides ITU, SO, or simply being second-best.
(I meant more in the sense that small ships using those weapons would also take UI as a no-brainer choice; i.e. it would harm overall build diversity.)
On a side-note, how exactly do multiple flat and multiplication modifiers interact?
Like most difficult case - 1000 range beam + UI + Implants skill + ITU(Capital) + Optics + SO + Electronic Warfare.
Generally, percentile reductions are multiplicative; cases where they're not are either oversights or something where it wouldn't make sense (such as, say, the hazard rating of a planet). Percentile increases are additive. This prevents both increases and reductions from stacking out of control.
The order is: percentile increases, flat modifiers, then multipliers. The "range mult after cutoff" modifier is special and applies after the initial range calculation.
So for a beam with UI, it'd be something like:
(1000 (base) * (100% + 15% (gunnery) + 60% (ITU)) + 200 (optics)) * 0.85 (UI) * <whatever EW happens to be>, then modified by SO. Which you couldn't put on a capital ship, but that's beside the point.
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So for a beam with UI, it'd be something like:
(1000 (base) * (100% + 15% (gunnery) + 60% (ITU)) + 200 (optics)) * 0.85 (UI) * <whatever EW happens to be>, then modified by SO. Which you couldn't put on a capital ship, but that's beside the point.
Where does Glitched Sensors go? And does it add with something or multiply everything (for less range)?
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It's a percentile reduction, so it's a multiplier.
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I think I would like to see a range boost hullmod whose purpose is to give a flat bump in range to all weapons (50/100/200/300), incompatible with ITU/DTC/ATC, and costing less than the original hullmod (3/6/12/18 OP). This would offer a cheaper option somewhere in between an ITU and having no ITU, with a niche applicable to extremely short-range weapons.
Right now, since ITU/DTC don't really have a cheap alternative, the choice really just boils down to:
1. Use ITU/DTC.
2. Make a balls-to-the-wall berserker build.
There's not much depth.
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Agree w/ DR there; there’s a niche that’s probably valid.
@Thaago: I agree with your points; it’s just a matter of, “how much is too much”, really. I’ll play with it and see where it really gets must-buy again.
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Right now, ITU is already cheap enough in OP terms that it's mandatory (IMO) on non-SO frigates
Probably an argument in favor of the frigate-sized ITU being underpriced. Two points is very low, and looking at the progression, it's out of line. I think when I was pricing it, I wasn't thinking that 10% was as impactful as it is in practice. So: raised the cost to 4, which is in line with the progression.
I think this moves frigate ITU strictly into 'luxury I'd always pass on' territory. Aside from frigate vs frigate skirmishes, a frigate has to usually operate under assumption that it's outranged. 4 OP for narrowly specialized mod doesn't seem competitive vs universally useful stuff like 6 OP Hardened Shields or 3 OP RFC.
I don't see myself using it on anything but Optics Wolf at 4 OP. AI is not good enough at exploiting narrow range advantage to pay so much for it. While best performing player-piloted frigates are not about range at all (endgame Hyperion + phase frigates / early cost effective LMG Lasher).
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Having a range boost - even a 10% one - on a frigate is a big deal early-game.
The problem is you don't have ITU available in the early game.
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I would buy DR's suggestion, if it was priced cheap and available early, and then switch to ITU later. ITU's a no-brainer in Vanilla. It isn't in Rebal right now, where there are other options at different price points.
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I don't think you could make the same argument for UI, it's just not as fundamental, and I'd just as soon have fewer must-haves.
That's fair. I'd also like fewer must-haves; that's why I like the idea of a penalty that hurts (say) high-tech ships less, symmetrically with ITU/DTC benefitting them less due to the shorter base ranges of non-beam energy weapons. It becomes more competitive, and it opens up a little more design space; there's an incentive to maximize speed on the ships that benefit the most from speed in the same way that ITU creates an incentive to maximize range on the ships that benefit the most from range.
I'm coming at this from the angle of having designed a fast midline faction with lots of hybrid slots and wanting energy weapons to be competitive on them; perhaps that's not applicable to vanilla ships, but I think it solves a lot of edge cases and feels cleaner than the current percentage approach.
Hmm - a couple of things. One, energy weapons and ballistics are not very competitive with each other in direct-damage-dealing. Energy weapons are all-around worse at that, which is compensated by ships using them having better speed (to counter the lower range, again the see-saw of the two prime stats) and flux dissipation. The only way energy weapons really compete *in the same slot* is when they provide some utility in a way that ballistics don't - Ion Cannons, Ion Beams, long-range PD (yeah, a bit of a niche case), beam weapons (range + flux trading), a Heavy Blaster for armor cracking, and perhaps a few other things.
So, if you're putting a hybrid slot on something, "ballistics go in it" ought to be the baseline expectation, with the slot type providing a bit of flexibility for utility. That's just the grain of the weapon design. This is also why hybrid and universal slots are used sparingly in vanilla.
Agreed. This is more of a way to get things to that point on idiosyncratic hulls than to supersede the existing weapon design.
Two, "fast ships with hybrid slots" is a potential warning sign. You've basically got fast ships with ballistic weapons, then, which could mean they're going to be overpowered - or at least hard to balance - due to a combination of speed and range. If really depends on where their speed and mobility systems (if any) place them, relative to say midline ships (if you'll note, those tend to have maneuvering jets, which while having good utility, aren't an overwhelmingly good mobility system otherwise).
Yup, hence the need for a hullmod to control it. Lots of mod factions play around in this space, with various workarounds (because it's player bait; enormously fun to fly, and creates opportunities for unique weapons and ships that are satisfying to use). Range limitations are mine, which I think is an elegant solution but hardly the only one.
If it were me, I'd probably look at a built-in hullmod as a way to make ballistics and energy competitive on your ships. If a general-purpose hullmod did that, it'd probably break things. But with a built-in, you have so much more freedom - for example, you could increase energy weapon range, or reduce ballistic range, depending on how fast your ships ended up being and what you wanted in terms of balance.
Yeah, it's what I'm doing for the built-in, which used to just chop ballistic range 15%, but was generally messy; now it chops peak potential range by more while leaving inoffensive shorter-ranged ballistics alone. I think you're right that it's best for a built-in, but I thought I'd throw the idea out for the modular and see if it had legs.
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I think I would like to see a range boost hullmod whose purpose is to give a flat bump in range to all weapons (50/100/200/300), incompatible with ITU/DTC/ATC, and costing less than the original hullmod (3/6/12/18 OP). This would offer a cheaper option somewhere in between an ITU and having no ITU, with a niche applicable to extremely short-range weapons.
I would very much like to see such a hullmod added to the official game content.
Right now, since ITU/DTC don't really have a cheap alternative, the choice really just boils down to:
1. Use ITU/DTC.
2. Make a balls-to-the-wall berserker build.
There's not much depth.
Agreed in full. We should have a "third way" to allow finer-grained build/variant diversity.
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I think I would like to see a range boost hullmod whose purpose is to give a flat bump in range to all weapons (50/100/200/300), incompatible with ITU/DTC/ATC, and costing less than the original hullmod (3/6/12/18 OP). This would offer a cheaper option somewhere in between an ITU and having no ITU, with a niche applicable to extremely short-range weapons.
I would very much like to see such a hullmod added to the official game content.
Sounds like DTC replacement.
For high-tech ships with short-ranged blasters, I probably would pick this over DTC for having roughly the same range increase for less OP cost (as proposed by Revenant). Low-tech ships would get shafted until they get ITU.
As long as OP costs are discussed, it would be nice if Shield Conversion: Omni cost was drastically cut. For frigates, it is insanely expensive. It should not even be expensive for what it gives (and takes away).
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Having a range boost - even a 10% one - on a frigate is a big deal early-game.
The problem is you don't have ITU available in the early game.
Getting a range boost has one of 4 effects:
- You outrange slower/same speed enemy. That's what it's all about. But frigates get here too rarely to pay for ITU through the nose. Vanilla ones at least.
- You increase range advantage over faster enemies. Once again rare for vanilla frigs.
- You decrease range advantage of slower enemy. In case of vanilla frigs, that's fractions of a second usually. Hard shields of just caps would decrease approach disadvantage WAY more.
- You increase advantage vs slower or decrease vs faster. Essentially no effect.
Fast frigates with at least light ballistic mount and decent flux can benefit more from ITU. But they do not exist in vanilla (Lasher and Brawler are slow for frigates and have low flux dissipation rates). I don't think nerfing ITU to cost that can only be justified for modded ships makes balance better.
Also, even when frigate gets it's minor range advantage, countering it is often easy enough (if speed difference <50) - just armor tank on zero flux boost. It's probably just Needlers or beams anyway - won't do much during very short approach. AI not doing so is an AI problem, not core balance problem.
Only something like flux-positive (1 Grav + 3 Tacs is not without skills) Wolf with Helmsmanship 3 can really try to kite to death in not so easily counter-able manner, and it's limited due to being soft-flux. Hardly overpowered considering it takes rare hullmods and skilled officer.
As long as OP costs are discussed, it would be nice if Shield Conversion: Omni cost was drastically cut. For frigates, it is insanely expensive. It should not even be expensive for what it gives (and takes away).
Yeah, just a trap option for auto-generated variants or newbies. Not just on frigates either.
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Now that an actual economy is shaping up, I think rarity should also be considered as part of balance.
With that in mind, rarer ships, weapons and hullmods don't necessarily have to be balanced compared to common ones, e.g. ITU for frigates.
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Now that an actual economy is shaping up, I think rarity should also be considered as part of balance.
With that in mind, rarer ships, weapons and hullmods don't necessarily have to be balanced compared to common ones, e.g. ITU for frigates.
New release will have colonies and blueprints. If colonies will let the player spit out whatever ships and weapons he wants as long as he has the components, then rarity will ultimately matter mostly for blueprints and hullmods.
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I think I would like to see a range boost hullmod whose purpose is to give a flat bump in range to all weapons (50/100/200/300), incompatible with ITU/DTC/ATC, and costing less than the original hullmod (3/6/12/18 OP). This would offer a cheaper option somewhere in between an ITU and having no ITU, with a niche applicable to extremely short-range weapons.
This could be fun for things like small slots on large ships, yeah. Especially the AM Blaster, since it'd actually benefit more than from the ITU, even aside from the reduced OP cost.
It does feel a bit fiddly, though. Like, you've got to do some math to figure out whether one is better than the other, and the numbers (intentionally, I assume) end up being fairly close for small weapons.
I wonder. So this really isn't something that destroyers and frigates would make much use of, right? +20% for 8 OP vs +100 range for 6 OP isn't a particularly compelling/interesting choice, anyway, and there's most likely a "right" answer for whatever loadout. But it gets more interesting at the high end; making it cruiser/capital-only might be more clear cut. It'd probably feel better if the range bonus was a bit more (400/500?), to really make small slots qualitatively different, but if it's that high, then it starts to overtake ITU for larger weapons, particularly energy ones. So that's awkward. Hmm.
Basically, I think it would be better if it was a more pronounced choice, either in terms of OP cost and what it did, but there doesn't seem to be enough room to crank up its effect.
Right now, since ITU/DTC don't really have a cheap alternative, the choice really just boils down to:
1. Use ITU/DTC.
2. Make a balls-to-the-wall berserker build.
There's not much depth.
Also 3) carriers/missile boats/anti-fighter ships/something defensively specialized/etc. Not saying all of those are large niches, but they're there if that's what the player wants to experiment with, and ITU/DTC being optional is meant to let the player do that, so whatever depth is in that end of the pool is what it gives. How much there is of that is not really a function of the hullmod, which really just enables "baseline" gameplay. This also makes me a bit wary of messing with having multiple options there; muddy the waters too much and it's not clear what "baseline" is anymore. (Which I think is another argument for making whatever other thing be more pronounced/specialized...)
Yeah, it's what I'm doing for the built-in, which used to just chop ballistic range 15%, but was generally messy; now it chops peak potential range by more while leaving inoffensive shorter-ranged ballistics alone. I think you're right that it's best for a built-in, but I thought I'd throw the idea out for the modular and see if it had legs.
Yep, definitely worth thinking about!
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A flat range increase seems to me to be something where the lines between overpowered and worthless would be way too close. There are just too many really strong short ranged weapons. AMB's for one. Imagine putting those on an Aurora, Doom or Paragon.
Or an Onslaught with HMG's, LMG;s, Light Mortars, Dual Flak, etc... You'd be gifting Onslaughts with sizeable zones of absolutely unbalanced destruction.
Advanced Optics would likely also become obsolete.
IMO the only way to make it work would be to have very small flat range increases for a lesser OP cost, and it would have to be less effective than ITU in general. Otherwise you're decreasing the rarity value of ITU, making it seem unreasonably rare, and players will feel disatissfied about it. If you then reduce the rarity, you've now unbalanced the system, making range increases more ubiquitous.
IMO UI is in a good place. It's an appropriate punishment. Speed is highly impactful. Most of ya'll seem to be concentrating only on the approach to target but it's also very valuable for general survivability and tactical repositioning. When combined with good maneuvreability it even does a substantial amount of damage reduction through evasion. Also think about the scenario where UI would allow a slower ship 'A' with a better weapon system to keep faster ship 'B' with a lesser weapon system in range as it desires. That's a critical breakpoint that can obliterate balance.
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IMO UI is in a good place. It's an appropriate punishment.
Except for dedicated carriers. UI is a no-brainer for them, and they can kite-and-snipe (via fighters) with impunity like gunships used to do before 0.8.
Approach to target is critical for attackers. If an attacker cannot get close enough to attack without losing the flux war (due to poor shot range and defenses), it is useless without help. In which case, get a better ship that can be useful as an attacker with or without help.
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A flat range increase seems to me to be something where the lines between overpowered and worthless would be way too close. There are just too many really strong short ranged weapons. AMB's for one. Imagine putting those on an Aurora, Doom or Paragon.
Or an Onslaught with HMG's, LMG;s, Light Mortars, Dual Flak, etc... You'd be gifting Onslaughts with sizeable zones of absolutely unbalanced destruction.
Hmm, those sound like fun use cases that that would open up. Say the Onslaught got +500 range on small weapons - that could be a lot of fun and a whole new brand of Onslaught builds, but ones that sacrifice long-range firepower.
What in particular are you thinking would be unbalanced about it?
Advanced Optics would likely also become obsolete.
That's a good point, yeah. I guess either the modifier wouldn't affect beams or they wouldn't stack and the costs would be different enough or... well, something. Might actually be just ok to have small beams with that range on large ships, they get there with DTC + optics anyway.
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Hmm, those sound like fun use cases that that would open up. Say the Onslaught got +500 range on small weapons - that could be a lot of fun and a whole new brand of Onslaught builds, but ones that sacrifice long-range firepower.
What in particular are you thinking would be unbalanced about it?
Wouldn't it be quite useless on Onslaught? It has only 6 small slots, and that small amount is in 3 separate non-overlapping arcs. Slot configuration just does not mix with such hullmod.
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You could put smalls in the medium slots (which might make sense if the range bonus only applied to small weapons), but yeah, the arcs would probably be a problem.
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What in particular are you thinking would be unbalanced about it?
Machine Gun and other high flux efficiency weapons would be too strong. Shields would be obliterated near-instantly even for Capital class. Follow that up with the barrage of Annihilators or Reapers and Onslaught will vaporize anything that gets within range. It would completely circumvent the flux limitation of LowTech. And, of course, those weapons all double as PD. With all that, Onslaught will be immune to fighters, missiles, phase ships, flanking frigates and most destroyers. In the player's hands, every use of Burn Drive will guarantee at least one kill.
It will be fun, sure, but way too effective in my opinion. 'Beserker' builds are already possible and fine as they are.
Currently there isn't too big an incentive for this kind of strategy because the range is short enough that many ships can still get out of range before dying, but if you increase their range too much then they become immune to everything but very long range energy and ballistics, and even that can be dealt with by giving the Onslaught Gauss Cannons and of course it has it's TPCs so that its still capable of waging flux war at long ranges.
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Ah, good point about LMG flux use! Something to watch out for, but it'd be interesting how that would stack up about being generally deficient at long range. TPCs are nice and all, but their sustained dps is nothing to write home about, and they wouldn't be range-boosted at that.
(That said, it'd be fairly time-consuming implementation-wise to add separate range modifiers based on weapon size, so unfortunately this is mostly hypothetical.)
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What in particular are you thinking would be unbalanced about it?
Machine Gun and other high flux efficiency weapons would be too strong. Shields would be obliterated near-instantly even for Capital class. Follow that up with the barrage of Annihilators or Reapers and Onslaught will vaporize anything that gets within range. It would completely circumvent the flux limitation of LowTech. And, of course, those weapons all double as PD. With all that, Onslaught will be immune to fighters, missiles, phase ships, flanking frigates and most destroyers. In the player's hands, every use of Burn Drive will guarantee at least one kill.
It will be fun, sure, but way too effective in my opinion. 'Beserker' builds are already possible and fine as they are.
Currently there isn't too big an incentive for this kind of strategy because the range is short enough that many ships can still get out of range before dying, but if you increase their range too much then they become immune to everything but very long range energy and ballistics, and even that can be dealt with by giving the Onslaught Gauss Cannons and of course it has it's TPCs so that its still capable of waging flux war at long ranges.
Nah, even if you downsize medium slots, Onslaught can have only 5 forward facing small weapons. That's not enough to overwhelm any Capital before it causes enough damage to disable your LMGs. Also downsizing slots means losing flak, so it actually becomes more vulnerable to fighters.
I think, you skipped part where new hullmod is supposed to be exclusive with ITU. Assuming it only helps with small weapons, LMG-focused Onslaught using it will get kite-sniped by everything except frigates. TPCs also depend on ITU, their raw range of 1250 is not enough to prevent that.
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To clarify, I meant HMG + LMG. Or LDMG rather.
Onslaught has 5 forward medium turrets I believe. 8-ish if you count the large slots. That's an absurd amount of Kinetic damage for a piddly amount of flux. 5120 shield dps for 960 fps. Nearly 6k for 1k with the small slots. And while they aren't as effective as Flak against missiles and fighters, that huge mass of them will create clouds of PD capable of stopping anything. Or you could just add in a couple of Dual Flak Cannons. It won't affect the outcome of near-instantly suppressing shields.
Again, Gauss Cannons in the large slots would help to alieviate the long range harass, but even so, Burn Drive makes that moot when it comes off cooldown. Aye, TPC is of limited use but it's still another tool. That flat range bonus will also affect long ranged weapons, just not as much as ITU/DTC. And it's not like Onslaught will never have any allied ships supporting it. All you need is a long ranged, mobile fleet to support it. Imagine this monster with an aggressive or reckless AI fighting your fleet. There's nothing you could do about it obliterating several of your ships before you can manage to take it down.
Another case to consider is the Odyssey. If I recall correctly you have 6 small energy turrets point in the same direction. A burst of 6x AMBs with High Energy Focus? Yikes. And that's only 6 out of 12 total. You could place AMBs in most small slots (maybe save the two rear slots to protect the engines from Salamanders) and just rotate the ship. Obviously this won't be quite as lethal in AI hands, but IMO it would be too OP in player hands. It'd be hella fun, but it would also evaporate the difficulty level of the game.
Hmm, how about instead of such a global boost to weapon range, how about hullmods tailored specifically to weapon types? Not just as range mods but an overall modification of the weapons. Sort of like the rune system for abilities in Diablo3. That way they can more easily be balanced but still provide players with a ton of additional depth and variety.
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@Philder
Onslaught can target something in front of it with:
- 2 TPCs (for target to be hit-able with both it needs to be at least a far away Cruiser)
- 1 Large slot
- 3 Medium slots
- 2 Small slots
Using all of these offensively means PD hole in front. Everything else can't fire forward due to limited firing arcs.
Flat bonus of 500 to everything would be plain broken - only few weapons get more out of Capital grade ITU (720 for Gauss, 600 for Mauler/HVD/TPC/beams, 540 for large ballistics), so I assumed medium/large slots would get much less. At which point getting kited becomes a very real problem.
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Onslaught can target something in front of it with:
- 2 TPCs (for target to be hit-able with both it needs to be at least a far away Cruiser)
- 1 Large slot
- 3 Medium slots
- 2 Small slots
Using all of these offensively means PD hole in front. Everything else can't fire forward due to limited firing arcs.
Because of this, if I do not have Expanded Magazines on TPCs (and do not plan to rely on TPCs), I prefer to tilt the Onslaught slightly so that it uses more of the other mounts, like two heavies and possibly other mounts, and ignore TPCs. Onslaught is almost a mild broadside ship, a bit like Conquest.
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@TaLar
I never claimed that TPC is perfect or anything of the like. I'm just saying that its there as potential long range pressure.
Larger targets at close range cross into the firing angles of additional turrets I'm fairly sure. Haven't double checked, though. While perhaps some cruisers and smaller may not get the full brunt of the turrets with limited forward firing angles, if the target veers to the sides it will get at least one additional set of turrets firing at it.
HMG's, Dual Flak and LDMG are PD are they not? I'm not sure what you mean about creating a PD hole since they would be doing double duty, prioritizing PD. Missiles and fighters are not a constant, ever present danger either. Onslaught will just quickly deal with them. Annihilator barrage will also do a fair amount of PD duty towards the Onslaught's target.
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I like UI as it is. For such a massive speed boost, limiting the versatility of its loadout, and ensuring it's inherently more vulnerable due to how much closer it has to get, is a fairly even trade imo.
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so if ui is fine as is then just make it unusable on dedicated carriers then? that's pretty much the only other unbalanced thing with it
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so if ui is fine as is then just make it unusable on dedicated carriers then? that's pretty much the only other unbalanced thing with it
Maybe. It is UI plus Helmsmanship 3 that enables carriers to kite. Without Helmsmanship 3 and loss of zero-flux speed boost, carrier will likely be too slow to kite-and-snipe very well even with UI. Carrier will need to recall fighters to get zero-flux speed back. They could still kite-and-snipe enemies with terrible shot range like Aurora or SO Lasher, but they will not be able to run away while fighters kill things beyond 2000+ range. UI might still be a no-brainer on carriers, though. Helmsmanship 3 is a problem perk - overpowered for carriers, but almost useless for everything else useful in a fight. Probably best to remove it from the game.
Dedicated missile boats without weapons are also unaffected by UI, but they are a low-ammo build that are not relevant for long.
Then, there are the civilians (and non-civilian frigates spec'ed for hauling) who are deployed only when escaping from a pursuit. There, UI is no brainer for them. (Although if it gets to that point, you probably took a big loss recently and it is time to reload the game.)