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Author Topic: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown  (Read 3178 times)

SafariJohn

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High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« on: May 02, 2021, 05:44:10 PM »

Phase ships are in a pretty wild place atm, but they have always been an outlier. They are not simply invincible to damage while phased — most ships can barely affect them at all.

There should be a general way to counter phase ships, and I believe KDR_11k has put forward a workable idea:
something to increase the cooldown on the phase drive after the ship surfaces

In game mechanics: the higher a phase ship's flux is, the longer its phase cooldown is when it unphases.

I say the multiplier on cooldown should be big, like over 10x as long at max flux. And I would add that a phase ship can't active vent while on phase cooldown.

This would make it so the longer a warship can keep a phase ship under, the more vulnerable it is when it comes up. Distinct from, but not so different from shooting shields.
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bobucles

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2021, 06:02:22 PM »

The strength of the most dangerous ships can be summarized in one word: Venting. Phase ships have a lot of venting ability. They further benefit from phase cloak boosting their vent rate, and by not investing flux into shields.

Harmful Mechanic

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2021, 08:35:26 PM »

10x might be too much; if it were in my hands, I'd try it at 5x and only bump it up to 10 if it needed that, but yes, very much seconded.
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SCC

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2021, 05:32:02 AM »

I like this idea, though phase cooldown shouldn't prevent venting, unless it's going to be typically shorter than venting (and with 10x multiplier, it doesn't sound like it). Or have phase mastery present a slight downside: phase cooldown is cut in half, but you can't vent while it's going on.

Inhilicon

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2021, 09:27:26 AM »

I'm in favor of any phase ship nerf, having played a Doom extensively, it felt bloody dirty from beginning to end. Since then, I've been reluctant to touch them again.
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Megas

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2021, 09:31:39 AM »

I rather see the new skills tweaked.  Phase ships were fine before, but the new skills made them unfair compared to most other ships.
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Dread Pirate Robots

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #6 on: May 03, 2021, 10:37:36 AM »

I agree that changing skills and systems - specifically phase mastery, systems expertise, mine strike and quantum disruptor - should be the approach, and I don't understand the appeal of nerfing anything good so hard that it becomes weak. The game is much better with the doom as a powerful ship than it was with the doom being useless prior to 0.9.

A small increase to phase cooldown as flux increases seems reasonable, but giving a 10-20 second cooldown as suggested is just outrageous. Do you really think the AI would be able to handle that? Phase ships would either be complete jokes that die the first time they unphased in every battle, or they'd be complete cowards unwilling to ever commit to an attack and just run away until they run out of PPT or retreat. Either way the game gets noticeably worse.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2021, 10:41:59 AM by Dread Pirate Robots »
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #7 on: May 03, 2021, 02:41:05 PM »

Is it possible to test this idea with 0.95? It looks like those cooldown values are hardcoded. I have only looked at ship_data.csv.

One possible issue with increasing the cooldown is it mainly punishes frail aggressive close contact assassins (think Shade and Afflictor with AMB) which are already at risk, but does not affect much snipers (think Doom with beams and mines, or Z. with HVDs and Tachyon Lances, both having ITU). Also the bigger phase ships, having a much stronger armor, may still handle short range loadout (possibly with Armored Weapon Mounts, Automated Repair Unit and Resistant Flux Conduits hullmods) just fine for a while.

One good thing with such a change though, is could provide incentive to (1) value un-phased mobility, (2) dedicate some weapons slot to effective PD, (3) assign permanent escort (like, 2 phase frigates working together, or maybe an Omen and/or some heavy fighters escorting a bigger phase ship). It could also change the I-want-the-largest-flux-pool-and-I-don't-care-about-vents situation into a more balanced/varied choices. Or maybe you'll just want the smallest flux pool to prevent AI overcommit?!  ;D

I rather see the new skills tweaked.  Phase ships were fine before, but the new skills made them unfair compared to most other ships.

I kind of remember Alex writing something about the phase skills changing in next version, so it looks like this is planned already.
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SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #8 on: May 03, 2021, 05:23:11 PM »

10x might be too much; if it were in my hands, I'd try it at 5x and only bump it up to 10 if it needed that, but yes, very much seconded.

Phase cooldown is basically overloading for phase ships, except they still get to shoot. Max overload is about 16 seconds I think, so 20 seconds with shooting seems pretty comparable.


Is it possible to test this idea with 0.95? It looks like those cooldown values are hardcoded. I have only looked at ship_data.csv.

You should be able to do a mod with a hullmod that dynamically modifies cooldown time - the Z has a cooldown reduction hullmod and the phase skill reduces it too IIRC.


One possible issue with increasing the cooldown is it mainly punishes frail aggressive close contact assassins (think Shade and Afflictor with AMB) which are already at risk, but does not affect much snipers (think Doom with beams and mines, or Z. with HVDs and Tachyon Lances, both having ITU). Also the bigger phase ships, having a much stronger armor, may still handle short range loadout (possibly with Armored Weapon Mounts, Automated Repair Unit and Resistant Flux Conduits hullmods) just fine for a while.

Larger phase ships already have much higher hard flux rates while phased IIRC, so in theory it would balance out.
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Alex

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #9 on: May 03, 2021, 06:43:44 PM »

Phase cooldown is basically overloading for phase ships, except they still get to shoot. Max overload is about 16 seconds I think, so 20 seconds with shooting seems pretty comparable.

Hmm - only if turning off shields overloaded the ship :)

That said, though, it's an interesting idea. I think functionally it'd make phase ships similar to the new non-SO Hyperion - if you're going to unphase, you need to make sure the target gets dead, and that it doesn't have friends nearby.

I've been mulling over something somewhat simpler and more AI friendly - just flat-out increasing the cooldown (by a fair bit) and making the phase ships tougher hull/armor-wise at the same time. So instead of "just never takes real damage" it'd ideally turn the fights into something where there *is* progress being made, damage-wise, and there's more of a window to really unload with burst damage, at least sometimes. Originally, two seconds seemed like it might be enough for that, but it's just really not. And hopefully it'd make some of the uh, less reasonable player uses of them more difficult to pull off.
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bobucles

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2021, 05:22:50 AM »

Currently the phase action is pretty instant. If there was a windup, it would remove twitch play and make projectiles harder to avoid. Obviously that would make missiles far more scary.

For crazy shenanigans, make phase cloak decals a subsystem that can be disabled. Every downed drive will slow cooldown and increase cloak time. If all the cloaks are disabled (tiny ships only have 1), the ship can't cloak. EMP weapons would get a HUGE leg up against phase ships, creating a weapon type suitable for attacking them. Small phase ships would get much easier to destroy, while large phase ships have a bit more resilience against being helpless. It'd be very difficult to totally lock down a Doom's 4 drives, but smacking 2 or 3 will give extra time to deal a devastating torpedo strike.

A major advantage of phase cloak subsystems is that it's a very tunable system. Subsystem HP, down time and penalties can all be tweaked, and it works explicitly on phase ships without messing up balance elsewhere. Phase ships can stay dangerous in all the fun way, but they now gain a weakness to be scared of.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2021, 05:45:21 AM by bobucles »
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SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2021, 05:37:05 PM »

Phase cooldown is basically overloading for phase ships, except they still get to shoot. Max overload is about 16 seconds I think, so 20 seconds with shooting seems pretty comparable.

Hmm - only if turning off shields overloaded the ship :)

??? wat ???

The basic concept for overload and phase cooldown is the same: make the ship vulnerable by denying it its main defense.


I've been mulling over something somewhat simpler and more AI friendly - just flat-out increasing the cooldown (by a fair bit) and making the phase ships tougher hull/armor-wise at the same time. So instead of "just never takes real damage" it'd ideally turn the fights into something where there *is* progress being made, damage-wise, and there's more of a window to really unload with burst damage, at least sometimes. Originally, two seconds seemed like it might be enough for that, but it's just really not. And hopefully it'd make some of the uh, less reasonable player uses of them more difficult to pull off.

I do not think that would achieve the desired effect. Say it is 6 seconds cooldown - that would punish skimming skirmisher builds (long cooldown means less quick-defense reactions against high-alpha) while not necessarily affecting deep-dive assassin builds (can set up attack angles where cooldown doesn't matter).


With the flux mult on cooldown, phase ships would be at greater and greater risk the longer they pushed a fight because every time they phased the cooldown would be longer on the next de-phase. And backing out using phase would create breathing room for the target because the phase ship would have to wait for the cooldown to finish before it could reengage at 0 flux.

For the AI (and player) friendliness with the flux-mult, make the cooldown mult exponential instead of linear (still capping at 5x or 10x or whatever) and perhaps make the phase ship AI more conservative with its hard flux.
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Alex

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2021, 05:56:03 PM »

??? wat ???

The basic concept for overload and phase cooldown is the same: make the ship vulnerable by denying it its main defense.

(I just mean, coming out of phase is analogous to turning shields off. And turning shields off does not overload the ship. So the phase cooldown being that long is a lot meaner than an overload, since it's triggered by just coming out of phase.)


I was thinking of something around 4 seconds, reducible to 3 with skills, which the AI would not generally get.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but - "assassin" builds kind of rely on phasing again to get away, no? And at times need to wait for the cooldown before firing the final shots to avoid the ship explosion. The window for what a viable attack angle is depends on how long it needs to be safe for, so it seems like increasing that would matter. Very much open to further thoughts/counter-arguments, though.

"Skirmisher" builds need to be punishable, too, I think, btw... otherwise they're just in a "wait out their PPT" place, anyway. I should say, much of the focus here is on making phase ships better to fight *against*. If it reins them in a bit as player ships too, that's great, but if not, that's not the worst thing in the world.

Currently the phase action is pretty instant. If there was a windup, it would remove twitch play and make projectiles harder to avoid. Obviously that would make missiles far more scary.

For crazy shenanigans, make phase cloak decals a subsystem that can be disabled. Every downed drive will slow cooldown and increase cloak time. If all the cloaks are disabled (tiny ships only have 1), the ship can't cloak. EMP weapons would get a HUGE leg up against phase ships, creating a weapon type suitable for attacking them. Small phase ships would get much easier to destroy, while large phase ships have a bit more resilience against being helpless. It'd be very difficult to totally lock down a Doom's 4 drives, but smacking 2 or 3 will give extra time to deal a devastating torpedo strike.

A major advantage of phase cloak subsystems is that it's a very tunable system. Subsystem HP, down time and penalties can all be tweaked, and it works explicitly on phase ships without messing up balance elsewhere. Phase ships can stay dangerous in all the fun way, but they now gain a weakness to be scared of.

Hmm, that's interesting! My gut feeling here, though, is that if you're able to land enough EMP hits on a phase ship for this to kick in, then that means the problem has probably already been solved to begin with.
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Amazigh

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #13 on: May 04, 2021, 07:17:54 PM »

I was thinking of something around 4 seconds, reducible to 3 with skills, which the AI would not generally get.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but - "assassin" builds kind of rely on phasing again to get away, no? And at times need to wait for the cooldown before firing the final shots to avoid the ship explosion. The window for what a viable attack angle is depends on how long it needs to be safe for, so it seems like increasing that would matter. Very much open to further thoughts/counter-arguments, though.
This sounds like a solid change to me. And agree with your comments on how it influences "assassin" builds, as far too often i've been overenthusiastic with firing last shots with a SO Harbinger and tanked a bunch of armour/hull damage from the resulting explosion.

"Skirmisher" builds need to be punishable, too, I think, btw... otherwise they're just in a "wait out their PPT" place
With the increase in phase cooldown times, i think skirmisher builds (assuming this means generally longer range builds that only phase to avoid fire.) then they could suffer from this, as they'd no longer be able to just flicker inbetween very narrow gaps in salvos and fire off their own weapons.
For example, you are in a phase ship, and taking accurate constant fire from a single Hellbore (3 sec reload)
With the current 1-2? sec cooldown, you can easily pop in and fire a shot between rounds with no risk.
But with a change to 4/3 seconds cooldown, you are all but guaranteed to take a hit from it if you unphase.

This increased cooldown would notably lower the availability of safe windows you can use to fire from, which would be make defending against a phased ship lots easier. As you have longer to punish a ship after it unphases, so you could quite reasonably get a shot or two in before it can re-phase. And it means that you can much more easily "saturate" the space a phase ship is in, making it a bad idea to unphase, as currently with such short phase cooldowns, pretty much the only effective "saturation" weapons are the Hephaestus, Assault Chaingun and HIL.


For crazy shenanigans, make phase cloak decals a subsystem that can be disabled.
While this does sound good at first glance, i'm unsure if it'd really be fun in practice, it's not like you can knock out a ships shield projector by hitting it with EMP damage after all.
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IonDragonX

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #14 on: May 04, 2021, 08:11:37 PM »

For crazy shenanigans, make phase cloak decals a subsystem that can be disabled. Every downed drive will slow cooldown and increase cloak time. If all the cloaks are disabled (tiny ships only have 1), the ship can't cloak. EMP weapons would get a HUGE leg up against phase ships, creating a weapon type suitable for attacking them. Small phase ships would get much easier to destroy, while large phase ships have a bit more resilience against being helpless. It'd be very difficult to totally lock down a Doom's 4 drives, but smacking 2 or 3 will give extra time to deal a devastating torpedo strike.
Hmm, that's interesting! My gut feeling here, though, is that if you're able to land enough EMP hits on a phase ship for this to kick in, then that means the problem has probably already been solved to begin with.
I've suggested something like this in previous threads. Its not a hard counter by any means. EMP will not disable on every hit. It would be crazy for a fleet to bring EMP on the majority of their mounts. Phase-hunter type classes would be created, tried, discarded, ad infinitum. Support ships that are specialized always seem like a counter except they are obvious as transponders. Phase ship AI would simply rate those ships as 'very dangerous' and pick off anything else with their superior maneuverability.
Spoiler
I still suggest that phase ships turn their "phase cloak emitters", which are common on all their sprites, into actual weapons that can be disabled, emp'd or even suffer malfunctions. Each device lost would put a proportionate malus upon the phase cloak's cd, either a full stop on the cooldown timer or slowing it down. Basically, Ion weapons would soft-counter phase cloak and AI phase ships would mark enemy ion weapons as more dangerous to themselves.
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