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Author Topic: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - *hotfix* 4/14/22  (Read 722267 times)

Morrokain

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1560 on: September 13, 2021, 11:39:45 AM »

just started a new run with musashi
only played about half an hour but i noticed they only have the standard dedicated core (they generally are supposed to be hight tech midline, if that makes sense, and originally came with the supercomputer standard)
overall i like what im seeing so far
i will report more when i get more time into it

(stoked about the integration!)

The Super Computer would be too powerful in AO especially with their longer range weapons. The Advanced Core is possible, but they would need a bit less defensive stats for that to be balanced. My thoughts were that since their weapons already provide long range and some 0-flux assault options, it would be better to increase their initial contact defenses and skip the advanced core. Otherwise they tend to become sniper glass-cannon ships that completely fall apart when the enemy closes the distance. That creates gameplay that is a bit too binary for my tastes.

Lore-wise, they should still fit the high tech/midline doctrine simply because of their speed, decent shield efficiency and flux dissipation, and their general aesthetics. They have low tech armor levels, but that is offset by a low flux capacity in most cases. Also, keep in mind that not all of the high tech ships have advanced cores. Only a select few do and that is mostly due to balance and not lore.

I *think* they should be fairly effective per their DP, but I didn't do many tests with multiple ships, so they could quite honestly be pretty powerful in a fleet setting. Range and dissipation matter a whole lot under those conditions. Anyway, just my thoughts and feel free to disagree and provide an alternative solution. I'm certainly open to ideas and this was a first release so there is likely a lot of room for improvement and fine-tuning further down the line.

Morrokain, after I was stuck playing non-AO waiting for the update, I just wanted to poke my head in to thank you for all the common-sense balance changes you make in AO. It was physically painful being reminded of how bad vanilla beams are. :x

Thanks and I'm glad you like the changes! Hopefully this should be a fun and bug-free update after I fix the couple small-ish things left to do. They should also be save compatible so current saves can continue without worry. I'm going to try and get those fixed by the weekend.
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ansiboi

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1561 on: September 14, 2021, 04:39:06 AM »

@Albreo
Ok gotcha I looked at it more closely and read the key. I will evaluate it over a couple of days.

Overall, thank you very much for doing this! I find it extremely helpful since it categorizes the craft by multiple strengths and weaknesses rather than just giving blanket assertions. For a dev, that is invaluable information.

My initial hot take is comprised of two main counter-points atm:

1) Replacement rate should be taken into consideration or otherwise rolled into the survivability grade and it doesn't seem like it is. (At a first glance.) For instance, the Wasp might be very fragile, but it replaces quickly enough that an F grade is somewhat misleading to its actual impact on replacement rate, if that makes sense. Same thing for E grades for the Spectre, Fang and Imp. In my tests with the Legion, it was actually fairly hard to reduce the replacement rate against Spectres. They could take 80% losses in one pass and be back to full strength in about 10-15 seconds - so not enough time to really reduce the replacement rate much.

2) Some survivability and anti-ship dps grades seem off from my own tests. But, that could be due to differing baseline expectations - which I will address below.

Questions: (Not just for Albreo, these are to determine expectations and context for future tests and will eventually probably result in a poll of some kind.)

  • Should bombers be *mostly* successful with their attack runs if interceptors are not there to protect the ship? Or should they be situationally useful but damaging?
  • How survivable should the baseline craft be against ship weapons? For instance, if one wing is under destroyer fire, how many seconds should the wing last?
  • Should shields be better than armor defensively? Why or why not?
  • Should at least a couple of carriers be required in the players fleet - whether to defend with interceptors or strike with bombers/gunships? Why or why not?
  • What are the most useful types of craft you have used atm and why? What aspect of their design makes them better to use over other craft?

Hello, I have been thinking about this a lot. I usually just lurk but I love this mod battle system more than the vanilla because I do agree about the importance of fighter wings in space battle. I do mainly agree with the concept of battlestar galactica style of space battle that put an extra emphasis on fighter wings.

To implement that, i have some ideas in my mind, if you don't mind or too hard to implement:

Fighter Archetype role issue:
I think there should be a differentiation between the archetypes of fighter wings. Bomber archetypes, as they going deep into the enemies PD death zone, should be equipped with higher armor/shield, higher hull HP and a good survivability skills such as fortress shield or plasma burn with longer cooldown and short duration (eg: 1 second) but long redeployment time, slow-ish speed and low maneuverability. This make sense as they SHOULD survive the first bombing run but struggle madly to survive after that. For fighter/heavy fighter, they should have decent speed and maneuverability, medium redeployment and *skillfull* ship system that focus more on dealing more damage or spamming flares, going in and out the PD death zone, with narrow angle hardpoint weapon but should be pitifully weak against interceptors. Now how could fighters, with decent armor n hulls be weak against interceptors archetype? By buffing interceptors wing size, speed and maneuverability! Interceptors doesn't have to have good armor or high hull HP, basically paper thin, but they should deal shitton of damage to fighters and fighters should be struggling to destroy interceptors, mainly with their weapon mount type: leaning towards anti-fighters wide angle mount type or even interdictions type. So it will be like this: bomber will be able to weather the PD and interceptors alpha strike, but will be deadbeat if not supported. Fighters will be able to harrass ships even ships with good PD because fighters long range and skill spamming, but fighters will be beaten black and blue by interceptors because interceptors higher maneuverability, speed and wing size.

Carrier archetype issue:
Lore wise, carrier should be support type ship, slow, lower armor and decent hull, focusing on PD defense rather than striking. The problem i think with carrier archetype is the lack of specialized fighter supporting hullmods. Maybe you can implement three types of fighter support hullmods only for carriers, where players can only choose 1:
1. lowering redeployment time for a specific type of wings but twice the extra time for the other type (make sense lore wise as we can use a specific streamlined nanoforge) so each carrier can have 1 specialty wing type
2. extra speed or launch speed for fighters but lowering the flux pool or regeneration rate (make sense lore wise as we can equip the carrier with catapults for the fighters and some of the ship energy should be drained to maintain those)
3. wider deck so bigger wing size but with a penalty in redeployment time and armor (make sense lore wise because we have mass deployment skill in vanilla tbh, lowering armor because some of the ship armor is taken down to support the extra deck)

I hope this can spark an idea for future development, as I really love this mod of yours. Thank you and cheers.
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Albreo

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1562 on: September 14, 2021, 10:31:02 AM »

Quote
By buffing interceptors wing size, speed and maneuverability! Interceptors doesn't have to have good armor or high hull HP, basically paper thin, but they should deal shitton of damage to fighters and fighters should be struggling to destroy interceptors

There are already crafts of this type in the build, mainly drone interceptors, and a slight problem with how AI utilizes them. Since we barely have any control over it, what most likely going to happen with paper-thin armor is that the interceptor will be sent against ships instead of other crafts or strafe far enough into PD range and they will all go poof, turned into space dust.

Quote
lowering redeployment time for a specific type of wings but twice the extra time for the other type
I mainly put only one type of craft onto any ship so this penalty will not apply to me.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1563 on: September 14, 2021, 11:10:39 AM »

Here's hoping someone  makes a mechanic that allows you to control what fighters attack more effectively.
Being able to tell a ship to hold fighters in formation with home carrier, send specific wings to do specific things etc.
It would be nice to be able to have one wing escort home ship, one wing escort another/do specific strikes, or to be able to have wings specifically stay out of enemy ships range and attack only enemy fighters, and to be able to specify order of importance concerning what fighters are targeted.
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Flying Dice

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1564 on: September 14, 2021, 05:53:12 PM »

It would also be nice to have a third wing setting to force them to dock. A lot of times I'd like to be able to set my fighters to stand off like you're talking about so they don't all melt in the initial exchange of fire, but the only way to do that right now is to order them to... fly right into it with Engage. No idea if it would be possible to have a way to order them to land until you order them to launch into one of the other stances, but it would be lovely if so. Half the reason I use remnant fighters is to avoid crew attrition.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1565 on: September 15, 2021, 01:06:09 PM »

yea one of the best things about AO is the short range of fighters on main attack ships due to the way carriers are handled
it helps with that a lot; still doesnt address the "intercept only" issue
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1566 on: September 17, 2021, 10:30:20 AM »

The fighter changes proposed and discussed would be most welcome, though at this late of a development stage I'd be surprised if they were implemented. I've been wrong about that sort of thing before though.

As far as myself doing that sort of thing, I'm not sure its possible due to engine limitations. I haven't really tried to go that deep into the combat engine to know for sure. I definitely do agree that I would like some finer grained control of wings using the current implementation of carriers.

As far as the balance part of the discussion, I've made a mental note. So far, the general consensus seems to have been that bombers might need to be a bit stronger in the future.



The update to fix the couple of reported issues has been posted on Nexus Mods. I also made some of the proposed sprite changes to the Onslaught and Aurora.
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Raio_Verusia

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1567 on: September 19, 2021, 03:38:42 AM »

Hey Morrokain, I have a question about the Musashi integration. Did you do a balance pass? Because playing with Musashi non-AO atm, it seems seriously broken, in hilarious ways. Bishamonten is ridiculous, Onryo cannon on a Radiant class is also ridiculous. Kirin Burst is stupidly strong but slow. Just wondering how it fares in AO for when I go back to it.
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1568 on: September 19, 2021, 11:55:29 AM »

Hey Morrokain, I have a question about the Musashi integration. Did you do a balance pass? Because playing with Musashi non-AO atm, it seems seriously broken, in hilarious ways. Bishamonten is ridiculous, Onryo cannon on a Radiant class is also ridiculous. Kirin Burst is stupidly strong but slow. Just wondering how it fares in AO for when I go back to it.

It should be relatively balanced. I spent about 2 to 3 weeks playtesting against other AO ships and the weapons fit the current design philosophy and generally have a niche role alongside the regular weapons available in AO. That was after the initial design pass to make the weapons similar to the TC weapons.

I also tried to keep the balance in the original spirit of Musashi so while the Onryo cannon is still powerful and so is the Bishmonten (About equal to a Paragon iirc) the Onryo has a massive OP cost and only ships with really good flux dissipation (like the Bishamonten) should be able to fire it on its cooldown cycle. The Bishmonten also has very good armor, but its max flux is low enough that it can struggle with being surrounded where at least one enemy is able to pressure the shields while its trying to fire its main battery. Its secondary battery is flux free and meant to stave off destroyers and frigates.

Just generally speaking, if I integrate a mod with the TC's mechanics in mind, then I will attempt to balance it accordingly. That doesn't mean I will get it right every time though so feedback in that area is certainly welcome.  ;D
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1569 on: September 20, 2021, 08:43:20 AM »

Ifnyou could make a custom start option containing musashi ships it would make playtesting a bit easier, though it isnt necessary.
The independent starts allow for random acquisition if you're patient.
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1570 on: September 20, 2021, 01:12:37 PM »

Ifnyou could make a custom start option containing musashi ships it would make playtesting a bit easier, though it isnt necessary.
The independent starts allow for random acquisition if you're patient.

Noted for the next Musashi update. I want to work on a few other things beforehand, however, since I said I would do them a while ago and they aren't very trivial.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1571 on: September 24, 2021, 02:39:59 PM »

hope design is going well

some notes- the ships feel a bit squishy to me.  i havent tested the largest ships yet
it seems the design choice is high mobility middling armor long range heavy burst weaponry
i am liking the general them so far- i need to do some frigate and destroyer testing, and i havent even touched the capital ships yet
overall it rings true to the original as far as i can see, and i am thoroughly enjoying the work

also, the current fighter implementation feels really good compared to the original (back when talons had 5 armor)
looking forward to what you have in the works!
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Raio_Verusia

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1572 on: September 26, 2021, 12:07:35 AM »

Just generally speaking, if I integrate a mod with the TC's mechanics in mind, then I will attempt to balance it accordingly. That doesn't mean I will get it right every time though so feedback in that area is certainly welcome.  ;D

Very good to hear, it's a great mod that just... Needs some tweaking. I'm really glad to see a ship mod entering the AO fold :D
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1573 on: September 28, 2021, 01:24:56 PM »

Development has significantly slowed but is still in progress. I've been a lot busier with RL stuff lately.

The focus for now will be on the dialogue systems since I'm also working on the standalone mod for vanilla faction mods as well that will have dialogue merging components.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21
« Reply #1574 on: September 29, 2021, 02:11:57 PM »

same has been happening for me as far as playtesting goes
happy to have you participate in the hobby in any capacity!
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