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Author Topic: Flameout Duration Too Long?  (Read 7717 times)

MidnightSun

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Flameout Duration Too Long?
« on: February 21, 2012, 01:52:59 AM »

I like most of the tweaks that have been made since 0.35 in terms of combat mechanics, with the exception of the extraordinarily long flameout duration (and to a degree, the weapon disability duration, but that's far less of an issue). This is a bit too easily exploited on both the AI and human fleets.

For instance, in Dire Straits: I was able to single-handedly take down a Medusa using the Hammerhead by scoring a flameout when it was distracted by my Hound. Then, since the Medusa's momentum was carrying it straight forward without turns, I proceeded to continuously overload the shield that he directed to cover his engine while he was immobile and strike his engine again, triggering another flameout. Repeated about 4-5 times, and I had then taken out a much stronger destroyer that I would have to avoid back in 0.35.

Another example, from Predator or Prey: The Wasp wings, which could almost be ignored by the Dominator back in 0.35, will continuously strafe my engine, triggering an almost-continuous flameout. If I am unlucky enough to have some sideways momentum, I will spin and due to the frontal shields of the Dominator, be unable to block the nonstop Hurricanes from the Astral. That, and I will be nowhere near close enough to the Astral to deploy my Reapers.

I think either (or both) of two tweaks could be made to make flameouts more balanced:
  • The flameout duration could be cut in half
  • One would have to take a significant impact to the engine area to trigger a flameout (ie, the minimal damage by a Wasp wing would not trigger a flameout, whereas a Salamander missile would)

Personally, I think the latter is the more important change, as intuitively it's a bit improbable to think that a tiny drone wing could keep a much larger ship disabled indefinitely. I would venture to say that such a change to the weapon-disabling system would also balance the game as well.

Thanks for bearing with me through this lengthy post!
« Last Edit: February 21, 2012, 01:56:54 AM by MidnightSun »
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CaptainCato

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2012, 02:00:16 AM »

Well I think that the duration is good enough. I mean, imagine an engine being constantly hit by lasers and missiles. It would simply melt and would probably take days to repair, not just half a minute, so I think the flameout is good enough and needs no change. Besides, a capital/cruiser ship with no back shields WILL melt in the face of multiple fighter wings, because that is what the fighters are made for. I suggest you take some fighter wings yourself to defend your bigger ship as it is bad versus small fighters alone. This is a much more realistic set-up and it is better from my point of view. A single big ship (especially one that does not have all-round shields) is very vulnerable to smaller ones.
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SgtAlex86

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2012, 06:30:30 AM »

actually like the duration right now... shorter wouldnt make any difference to the actual fight and could be ignored and longer would be bit too much :/ (it might unbalance the missions but atleast it works just fine in campaign where u can make sure your loadout includes some PD to keep those pesky critters off ur ass  ;)
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arwan

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2012, 06:53:48 AM »

i am on the fence for flame out duration.. in some situations i do believe it is a bit long.. (maybe the flameouts are stacking up on ships that get hit excessively in the posterior) i believe a large ship with more engines which in turn could mean more engineers on the ship. should be able to get going again under its own power faster than a frigate that will have significantly less engineers aboard to fix such things.

that being said most of the time when it happens to me i am dead anyway regardless of getting the flameout or not.

also that being said though the times when i do get a flame out and live.. it can seem a bit of a long time just drifting away from a battle. not shooting and not being hit. or taking light fire. so coming back a little bit faster would be nice. though cutting it in half i believe would be a mistake.
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Alex
You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

SgtAlex86

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2012, 07:40:57 AM »

i am on the fence for flame out duration.. in some situations i do believe it is a bit long.. (maybe the flameouts are stacking up on ships that get hit excessively in the posterior) i believe a large ship with more engines which in turn could mean more engineers on the ship. should be able to get going again under its own power faster than a frigate that will have significantly less engineers aboard to fix such things.

that being said most of the time when it happens to me i am dead anyway regardless of getting the flameout or not.

also that being said though the times when i do get a flame out and live.. it can seem a bit of a long time just drifting away from a battle. not shooting and not being hit. or taking light fire. so coming back a little bit faster would be nice. though cutting it in half i believe would be a mistake.
getting flame out on bigger ship takes lot more big hits cause u loose your engines 1 by 1 first... small ships only got few but even hammer head destroyer has what.. 5? and those engines come back online one by one so u would need to really screw up to loose em all in at the same time causing flame out.  :-\
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Avan

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2012, 07:54:52 AM »

I think the flameout duration is good; enough that you have to deal with losing mobility and its costs, while also having the ability to stop, line up, and take potshots at the enemy before they can recover their engines. Though it was pretty lame when an enemy lasher and my own caused flameouts while on anti-parallel paths, resulting in us each quickly floating well out of weapons range of each other.

Some of the designs I've been messing with have "flameout-resistent" construction of the engine blocks, so that they are physically isolated from each other, making them harder to hit, and sometimes having barriers to absorb the hits, with the philosophy that taking the damage to the armor is preferable to losing engines and being a sitting duck (these ships tend to be speed/movement dependent, such as the manta or hyena).

Still these are just modded ships.

CaptainCato

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2012, 08:40:12 AM »

i am on the fence for flame out duration.. in some situations i do believe it is a bit long.. (maybe the flameouts are stacking up on ships that get hit excessively in the posterior) i believe a large ship with more engines which in turn could mean more engineers on the ship. should be able to get going again under its own power faster than a frigate that will have significantly less engineers aboard to fix such things.
 
I have to disagree. The duration is realistically good enough, I just do not see how engines can be repaired from such immense damage (because only pretty huge damage will cause flameout) can be fixed by engineers in 10 seconds or less....And for the comparation of the larger ship engines/smaller ones, it is the same mostly because small ships have small engines and small crews, while larger ships have bigger engines and bigger crews, so the duration should be almost the same, a bit bigger in cap ships and cruisers as they have really huge engines and they are harder to work on.
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MidnightSun

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2012, 02:02:52 PM »

Well, if you want to talk "realism," the actual "engines" of ships aren't even exposed; what you see are just the "nozzles." So, shooting at the nozzles wouldn't disable the engines themselves. But I think that's getting a bit overly-technical.

Speaking more from a game-balance point of view, the ability to nearly-continuously keep a ship's engine disabled (thus killing the ship) seems overpowered to me.

I'm kind of on the fence regarding the duration as well; I do see that if it was cut in half, flameouts wouldn't be as much of a tactic.

But what I'd really like to see is it taking a big impact to knock out engines (thus also making missiles such as the Salamander more useful for immobilizing ships), rather than "collective" minimal damage (from, say, a Wasp wing) that "realistically" a large ship's engineering/fire control teams would be able to handle.

Try playing Predator or Prey a few times and you may see what I mean.
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arwan

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2012, 02:23:33 PM »

i think its also worth noting that after i read this i went into a ship refit and looked at the hull mods and i believe there were 2 hull mods that lower the time of a flame out or make it harder to be flamed out.

insulated engine assembly (100% harder to flame out)
automated repair unit (reduces flame out duration and system off line duration in combat by half)
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Alex
You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

CaptainCato

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2012, 02:56:21 PM »

Well, if you want to talk "realism," the actual "engines" of ships aren't even exposed; what you see are just the "nozzles." So, shooting at the nozzles wouldn't disable the engines themselves. But I think that's getting a bit overly-technical.
That is correct, the engines themselves are not hit, but seriously now, if a missile/laser hit the bloody nozzles and destroyed the nozzles and everything around them, do you think the engines would still be working properly?

Speaking more from a game-balance point of view, the ability to nearly-continuously keep a ship's engine disabled (thus killing the ship) seems overpowered to me.
I do not see how this is unbalanced really. It is just so much more chalenging, in a good way, making you need to actively move your shields back and forth, or being careful if you have all-round 360 degrees shields, plus encouraging you to buy small fighters/bombers and carriers, giving them some more depth.
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Flare

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #10 on: February 21, 2012, 03:02:55 PM »

Well, if you want to talk "realism," the actual "engines" of ships aren't even exposed; what you see are just the "nozzles." So, shooting at the nozzles wouldn't disable the engines themselves. But I think that's getting a bit overly-technical.
That is correct, the engines themselves are not hit, but seriously now, if a missile/laser hit the bloody nozzles and destroyed the nozzles and everything around them, do you think the engines would still be working properly?

I think it's possible if the designers put some safeguards around the engines in order to ensure they still function somewhat if someone shoots a missile into it. It'll obviously come at the cost of efficiency or price, but given how many times I've shot stuff into engines and had stuff shot into my own, I think it's reasonable to suspect that this is actually the case in the universe.
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ClosetGoth

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #11 on: February 21, 2012, 03:58:20 PM »

To me, the long duration of the flameout increases the value of the Insulated Engine Something hullmod. Also, the nerve-wracking wait while your vehicle spins helplessly is quite exhilarating!  ;D
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Zapier

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #12 on: February 21, 2012, 05:01:49 PM »

I guess my battles always turn out far more differently because I rarely experience flame-outs... nor do I cause many either... it's usually a head to head slugfest while simultaneously playing chicken with our ships. As for the duration, I think it's fine as well. If your ship, or the enemy's ship is too slow to turn and keep weak points out of the line of fire, then it is getting outmatched by more maneuverable ships which should be the case. Positioning, range, speed, firepower, etc. all come into play and most battles generally have the outcome that whoever gets the upper hand, wins... except in good tactical situations... or just plain luck.

While this game can be played with say 1 ship or perhaps a handful of carefully selected ships... it's still designed around fighting as a fleet. If you have no support when you get get a flame out, then you will and should have a greater chance of being beaten... AI or human. This is especially so in a 1v1 fight... in any fight... those who can score the first major blow gets the upper hand and that's when you take advantage of it, be it an engine flameout or your primary weapon being disabled... or even that one weak point in your armor from the precious battle that had yet to be repaired. If the duration is reduced to a point that it won't impact fights, it might as well be removed completely because then it goes from being an annoying deciding factor in some fights, to just plain annoying.
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MidnightSun

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Re: Flameout Duration Too Long?
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2012, 06:11:12 PM »

Yes, I do know about the hull mods. Yes, I do know about rotating omni-shields. And for the record, I think I might've gotten a flameout during the campaign maybe a total of once or twice.

But again, you might want to try playing the mission Predator or Prey, where you have a Dominator with frontal shields and no hull mods.
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