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[Golde]

For how much we all praise the game, how does this kind of * balance even make it into release? edit to comply with forum rules by Thaago

It's a nested problem,

We will take fighting this mid-game remnant ordo for example, with the ridiculous lack of an officer cap this fleet sums up to a total of 487 fleet points if each AI captain counts as 10 - 7 -5 dp respectively.

My player fleet of 3 conquests 2 paragons and 9 cruisers in addition to maxed out officer count, 10 wings and +2 alpha cores is considered inferior in every way and gets the maximum DP penalty in combat.

The player gets *** regardless of fleet and officer composition, and should they dare think about playing at a leveled playing field dp (and only dp-wise), they would have no choice but to field cap ships and NOTHING but cap ships.

And should they do that, half the skill tree becomes more of a waste of time than it already is at a pathetic +2% to cr and +1% to damage and or other buffs that are penalized to the point of non-existent and are tangential to the outcome of any fight.

In addition to being *** DP-wise no matter the composition, the problem compounds with the Radiants; THE MOST dp efficient ship in the entire game piloted by officers whose performance otherwise unobtainable at only 40 rec cost a pop ontop of the existing DP penalty and the lowered overall battle size only adds contrast.

Is it just me or did the game get become more min-maxed than ever before?

edit: 477fp for the ordos*

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Anvel]

Nah it's fine, been farming flits as you posted, even 2 at a time with a fleet like this

Spoiler

[close]

, rare casualties yet sometimes get 3 alpha cores at a time, point is, in this patch battles become more tactical, you need fast ships to pick at least half of tactical points at the start of a fight

[Linnis]

Since a long time ago I have always just edited the files so that the max battle-size is like 5000 or something so that everyone gets to deploy everything in one go.

You should do so too.

Anyways deployment should be either just allowed to go bigger into the thousands or redo the way ships are deployed a long time ago. But hey, as long as the option for just opening a txt file and changing a number is there I don't complain too much.

[Sordid]

I really hope someone makes a mod to stop the enemy from cheating like this. I feel that would help alleviate a lot of this game's issues.

[Thaago]

@Golde Please watch the language, forum rules are posted here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0


In terms of QA/balance:

While there is an asymmetry in terms of DP available, and I have my own complaints about enemy officer count and its effect on the ECM skill from a systems design standpoint:

Playtesting reveals whether things are "fun", a subjective measurement, and whether things are "possible", an object measurement that can give hard answers in terms of what is needed. Remnants are challenging enemies, especially if they are the first fast and shield heavy enemies that the player encounters, but part of the "fun" (for me at least, its subjective) of the game is dealing with challenges and figuring out the right kind fleet to deal with them. This kind of enemy fleet is a mid game challenge, significantly less powerful than endgame bounties or self imposed challenges like fighting 3 or 4 of this kind of fleet at once (which is probably harder this version than last, to be fair). So if the DP imbalance is not fun for you, thats an issue and something to be fixed, because fun is important, but there's no problem with whether this fleet is a reasonable enemy to beat.

I'm not going to claim any mastery over the new skill system with so little playtime on it, but one effect of the leadership tree/scaling skills, change to DP calculations, and even heavier impact of officers, is that spamming more ships doesn't make the player fleet as much better as it did last version. There's a lot more emphasis on making a good fleet with a certain number of ships and DP (and how to make ships without officers still be worth having around!), rather than just a bigger fleet. The endgame difficulty has definitely gone up!

@Linnis
Removing battle size limits lets the player overwhelm the enemy with pure numbers, which is fine if thats what is fun for you, but it is a severe handicap if the player does have an effective, concentrated fleet. In the example here, at max battle size, the AI is limited to 240+up to 80 more from objectives, rather than their whole fleet. A fleet that can handle 320 DP of enemies at a time might not be able to handle all 487 DP. So removing limits would make that player need more ships, rather than less, to take on the same fleet.

[Sordid]

Removing battle size limits lets the player overwhelm the enemy with pure numbers, which is fine if thats what is fun for you, but it is a severe handicap if the player does have an effective, concentrated fleet.

[...]

removing limits would make that player need more ships, rather than less, to take on the same fleet.

Surely that's why that battle size slider in the settings exists? So that the player can adjust this aspect of the game to their own preferred playstyle? (There could be more elegant, in-universe ways of doing that, but that's a tangent I don't want to get into here.) I'm sorry to kinda spill over this discussion topic from my own thread into this one, but this is yet another example of the dev putting too strict of a limit on what playstyles are allowed. The reason Linnis has to resort to editing files is that, as designed by the dev, the battle size slider doesn't go high enough to accommodate their preferred playstyle.

[Golde]

I really hope someone makes a mod to stop the enemy from cheating like this. I feel that would help alleviate a lot of this game's issues.

I wouldn't consider this cheating but rather just bad designing in general.

Should you create and implement a well thought out system to leverage different advantages and drawbacks with FP calculations and DP distribution then introduce it to the player, just to turn around and say,

oh by the way you're permanently stuck at 160dp and -20% range and none of these mechanics actually matter... unless you're fighting two pirate mules and a kite, because oh boy you're sure gonna need all the advantages you can get fighting those things..

In addition to that, I went ahead and experimented on just exactly how many ships are needed to match the FP of that exact remnant ordo. 4 additional paragons, 1 astral and a Ziggy later, we are still at max penalty for being the "smaller" fleet.

it's nonsense, even less intuitive than flavor text.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[intrinsic_parity]

I believe limiting the number of ships in combat at once means the game can be guaranteed to run on lower end hardware, and the system was implemented for performance reasons, not balance reasons, but I could be wrong.

Also, capturing command points gives you a lot of extra DP, like 60-80 extra DP now. I've been deploying frigates early just to contest command points and it works quite well. You're definitely not stuck at min DP, like in the last release. IMO, that problem has been improved, not worsened with this patch.

The ECM thing is pretty annoying though, and I hope it gets adjusted. Even with the ECM skill, I feel like I have no chance to match enemy ECM. I can't spam officered frigates like the AI can.

I do like that the endgame is a lot harder. It's been much more interesting trying to find things that work, and I've been having a lot of fun.

[Golde]

Also, capturing command points gives you a lot of extra DP, like 60-80 extra DP now. I've been deploying frigates early just to contest command points and it works quite well. You're definitely not stuck at min DP, like in the last release. IMO, that problem has been improved, not worsened with this patch.

The ECM thing is pretty annoying though, and I hope it gets adjusted. Even with the ECM skill, I feel like I have no chance to match enemy ECM. I can't spam officered frigates like the AI can.

I do like that the endgame is a lot harder. It's been much more interesting trying to find things that work, and I've been having a lot of fun.

half the times, the objectives are in a line in the dead center of the map. With the officer personality changes, remnants actively suicide to trade damage and will only drive forwards.

Suppose that your frigates are superior in every way, capturing objectives still wouldn't be feasible from dog-piling of superior body count, and should you not get there fast enough the objectives will be permanently overrun.

I guess I'm really better off to go play cointoss.

[hkmist]

It is just odd that when the new skill rework want to favor small balance ship type fleet but the new deploy point system just working again it.

Anyways deployment should be either just allowed to go bigger into the thousands or redo the way ships are deployed a long time ago. But hey, as long as the option for just opening a txt file and changing a number is there I don't complain too much.

It may solve some issue but the problem is not only the max battle size. The balance at a whole is having problem, skill system, late game enemy fleet composition and mission reward of bounty(well, other mission type also not scale right but that is not DP system problem) all have a problem because of how the deploy point system is working now.

The skill system want player have a fleet around 200 point to have the most effective fleet composition, which is ok since it is Alex's vision on the game(although i am a big fleet man so I want there are at least a minimum bonus on those skill so i don't spent 1 skill point for getting 0 bonus)

Than the odd thing come, mid game enemy fleet start growing bigger on both ship size and number, even player with a same fleet size start having DP disadvantage(why do this!?) and player only counter on this is increase fleet size to have a fair fight, at this point player fleet usually start going over the 180pt limit on the skill system. And bounty here is around 150k to 200k, depend on LY this start getting unprofitable for a combat fleet (trade fleet is always broken because of how the system work, how can anyone blame player cheese the trade system when that is the only way player can get profit )

Then the balance go haywire, enemy fleet go much bigger (like 8 capital with 10+ support ship AND a lot of officer), even mix size player fleet is having DP disadvantage, a normal size player fleet can't even field a working fleet. The way to counter the DP disadvantage now (not by super player skill or OP ship) is increase fleet size again.  At this point bounty is around 300k(really with that composition?), consider it is a 1 month operation in 15LY with a 4 cap 15 other ship player fleet and end the fight in 1 deploy, what is the cost ?
Around 400DP maintenance (400 supply per month = 40000c) + 2500crew(25000c) + 8 max level officer(20000+c) + 50fuel per LY with return cost(15*2*50*25=37500c) + 1 300DP battle recover cost(30000c) = 152500c not include repair cost , anything not these ideal can lead to a lost
 
And this is the problem, Alex want us play with a small fleet(The new skill system) but the way it increase the difficultly is increase both number of ship and size of ship to a double or triple to ideal size player fleet on the new skill system, and on top of that a DP penalty system when player have a smaller fleet(why?), this is just nonsense when this all sum up. Not to mention Golde's situation when ai also have higher ship quality and DP efficiency than player.

   

[Anvel]

The game clearly balanced around 180 dp max for the player, what's the point of builds and tactics if you can just deploy 10 capital ships to faceroll every challenge. Now small ships have their purpose even at late game.

[Golde]

The game clearly balanced around 180 dp max for the player, what's the point of builds and tactics if you can just deploy 10 capital ships to faceroll every challenge. Now small ships have their purpose even at late game.

sounds good!

Mind telling us why don't we just cap DP at 180 and call it a day then? I'm sure by that point the game would be a lot smaller and would be much easier running on toasters no?

it's a win win for you, right?

[Thaago]

The current non-modded cap is 240 deployment points at max battle slider, if the player gets all objectives. I wouldn't mind the skills being scaled up to meet that instead of being at 180.

Is that the cap you mean, or some other kind?

[Alex]

(@Golde: Just on a personal level, I'd really appreciate it if next time, you can try to keep it a bit less heated. That's not to say that the game is perfect or doesn't have issues that should be talked about - but, frankly, I could do without the stuff that borders on personal attacks.)

In addition to that, I went ahead and experimented on just exactly how many ships are needed to match the FP of that exact remnant ordo. 4 additional paragons, 1 astral and a Ziggy later, we are still at max penalty for being the "smaller" fleet.

Than the odd thing come, mid game enemy fleet start growing bigger on both ship size and number, even player with a same fleet size start having DP disadvantage(why do this!?) and player only counter on this is increase fleet size to have a fair fight, at this point player fleet usually start going over the 180pt limit on the skill system. And bounty here is around 150k to 200k, depend on LY this start getting unprofitable for a combat fleet (trade fleet is always broken because of how the system work, how can anyone blame player cheese the trade system when that is the only way player can get profit )
...
And this is the problem, Alex want us play with a small fleet(The new skill system) but the way it increase the difficultly is increase both number of ship and size of ship to a double or triple to ideal size player fleet on the new skill system, and on top of that a DP penalty system when player have a smaller fleet(why?), this is just nonsense when this all sum up. Not to mention Golde's situation when ai also have higher ship quality and DP efficiency than player.

The thing you're both missing, I think, is how the deployment point allocation works now. It's explained in the tooltip, but having already played the game, it's kind of natural to assume it works the same way as before, look at things in those terms, and become frustrated.

But - what primarily matters is officers, not the ships they're on. Adding an extra 10 Paragons won't help much. 10 Paragons with officers vs 10 frigates with officers also doesn't make much of a difference. If you *really* need a leg up for a tough fight, you can hire some mercenary officers to go above the limit. You're not encouraged to go with a fleet full of large ships because it doesn't help at all. Neither does trying to "match the dp" of the enemy fleet.


Barring mercenaries (which are a very stop-gap measure), capturing objectives is how you overcome the DP deficit if you really need to get deployment parity to win a fight.

half the times, the objectives are in a line in the dead center of the map. With the officer personality changes, remnants actively suicide to trade damage and will only drive forwards.

Hmm, really? They're not supposed to be; if they are it's an issue. I've done a fair bit of testing vs similar strength Ordos as you're showing and objectives were very much key there - and also quite easy to capture the first couple, at least. If that's not your experience, then that'd be something to look at.

... and I have my own complaints about enemy officer count and its effect on the ECM skill from a systems design standpoint:

The ECM thing is pretty annoying though, and I hope it gets adjusted. Even with the ECM skill, I feel like I have no chance to match enemy ECM. I can't spam officered frigates like the AI can.

Yeah, that's fair. It's quite possible that the number of officers is over-tuned - especially in some cases. And how ECM stacks up could probably use another look. Perhaps the player needs some means to boost it more if they go that route, or perhaps... well, it's a separate topic. Just, needs some thinking about.

Again, just want to be super clear that I'm not saying everything is perfect or anything like that. The 0.X.1 releases tend to be very heavy on balancing and gameplay tweaks, and it doesn't look like 0.95.1a is going to be an exception!

The current non-modded cap is 240 deployment points at max battle slider, if the player gets all objectives. I wouldn't mind the skills being scaled up to meet that instead of being at 180.

(Yep - I've actually got a note to raise the skill cap from 180 to 240 where applicable. I think that'll just make more sense as the number to settle on there.)

[intrinsic_parity]

Barring mercenaries (which are a very stop-gap measure)...

Do you mean a stop gap measure for the player within the campaign to overcome a specific fight, or a stop gap in game balance where you intend to implement something else?

half the times, the objectives are in a line in the dead center of the map. With the officer personality changes, remnants actively suicide to trade damage and will only drive forwards.

Hmm, really? They're not supposed to be; if they are it's an issue. I've done a fair bit of testing vs similar strength Ordos as you're showing and objectives were very much key there - and also quite easy to capture the first couple, at least. If that's not your experience, then that'd be something to look at.

I've seen this occasionally as well, sometimes the objectives are in a line or a very flat U across the middle of the battle field. It can be tough to get to them before the AI, although usually you can get at least 1-2 captured in my experience. I haven't tried farming remnants yet though, so I can't speak on that, but in normal fights, I still usually get 1-2 captured early.