So, yesterday I released version 1.20, there wont be that many patches now before final release, so I’m interested in collecting feedback people may have on the balance of the game. Are there modules you think that are too powerful? or useless? are some things too cheap or too expensive? Lets collect everyone’s feedback here…
A few minor tweaks I think most could agree on:
Underpowered:
-Antifighter missile Modules (frigate, cruiser) have poor tracking and missile speed.
-Cruiser ECM missiles don’t appear to do anything. There’s no shock duration listed like the beam. Bug? This weapon potentially has a very large effect on balance.
-Cruiser defense lasers do a very poor 3 damage on a 2000 interval. For reference, the frigate equivalent has 10x the fire rate.
-Operational costs (weight, speed, etc) of the maneuverability engines feel a little high.
-Refire times of the generic point defense options consistently keep them underperforming compared to RTS or Scrambler beams. They have some benefits, like being able to reroll on a missed shot, but they just can’t handle volume with that fire rate.
-Point defense scanners don’t feel useful. There’s very few dummy missiles this time around.
-Fighter/Gunship anti-shield bomb (not the disruptor) doesn’t appear to have any attractive feature in it’s niche to put up with the considerable downsides.
-Frigate high resist shields have extraordinarily low strength values, especially when stacked.
Confusing:
-Cruiser torpedoes/nuclear missiles are really hard to see for how much damage they do
-I have a poor understanding of payload RADIATION effects - need tooltip descriptions here
-There are a number of volley weapons I was completely unaware of - also need tooltips - I won’t comment on them until I’ve used more
-FLAK damage type sometimes hurts frigate/cruisers. Usually it doesn’t. Doesn’t seem that shields or armor are a factor. It also appears to friendly fire. Huh?
-Do point defenses benefit from target boosters? (NOT point defense scanners)
-There are some armor plates with very strange properties. For instance, the frigate plating worth 200 credits and some race specific ones?
-Race specific modules should probably be marked in the UI
Overpowered:
-A single Frigate radiation gun does a horrifying 45 (30* 1.5) hull instant damage per shot on a 300 interval, which is 150 dps on unshielded or naked targets. Yeah, It’s a difficult weapon to use, but that payoff is absurd. A pack of these drops a dreadnought in a matter of seconds.
-Each cruiser Multiwarhead missile hits about as hard as the fast missile launcher, but it’s firing 5 at a time. This is putting it a hair over 73 dps on a shield. There is an inherent advantage in firing multiple warheads when point defense is concerned, so this weapon has a bit of a multiplying effect on itself that needs to be accounted for. It’s currently doing 3x-5x more damage than any comparable antishield weapon.
Especially the cruiser-based thrusters seem to expensive and to heavy compared to real engines. I didn’t try out propulsion support beams, thus I can’t say anything about using propulsion beams in conjunction with thrusters.
Compared to the next lower frigate armor, the ‘Graphene Armor’ costs considerably more, but weights only the half and absorbs a little bit more damage. It may be an option for fast, light frigates.
The cruiser ‘Powered Armor’ and ‘Hyper-Vanadium Armor’ (Zyrtary only) are more problematic for me. In particular the stacking effectiveness of 0.80 (the others have 0.85) makes them almost useless if you want to use more than 1 armor module on your ship.
True. The displayed damage should be distributed over the 5 missiles in my opinion.
I haven’t had enough time with the game yet to give a long list of comments, but I agree 100% with Yurch’s note about the fighter / gunship anti-shield bomb. I don’t see much point in equipping it and doing 6 dmg vs shields when I could go the torpedo route instead and do 21, while also retaining the ability to do hull damage after the shields go down.
The Fusion Core also seems a bit useless - it’s worse than the Heavy Powerplant in virtually every respect, but costs more. If I’m guessing right, it’s intended purpose is as a lightweight power option for fast dreadnoughts - a significant reduction in weight (and possibly crew requirements) could make it a more viable option.
Also, the Zyrtari currently have two fighter weapons named ‘Pulse Laser’.
EDIT: Just noticed, the Terrans have two dreadnought weapons named ‘Pulse Cannon’.
Thanks for the awesome feedback! stuff like this is really hugely appreciated. I’ve made the following changes today:
- Increased the missile speed of Frigate based anti-fighter missiles.
- Reduced duration of standard ECM shock weapon, fixed missing data for ECM Shock missiles.
- Increased rate of fire for cruiser defence laser.
- Reduced crew and power requirements of point defense modules.
- Reduced crew and power requirements for point defense scanner module.
- Frigate radiation gun now actually does radiation damage.
- Radiation weapons now show payload and decay stats.
Notes:
The tracking speed of the anti fighter missiles seems pretty high to me, they should have no problem hitting fighters.
Graphene armor (the 200 cost frigate armor) is designed to be lighter than normal armor for its strength, hence the cost.
I’m working on explaining the radiation stuff better by showing the relevant stats instead of conventional damage when they are present…
More feedback vastly welcome!
ok although I have no proof of this im assuming cliffski dosent look at the the steam forums on this that much (probably because its terrible place)
anyway I thought it would go and ‘report’ some of the ideas there
I realize that given the development cycle some of these ideas are not feasible, but i doubt that the steam people are smart enough to voice their opinions on the form, where the devg will more likely see them.
any views that are expressed by these people are not necessarily also mine
Blaank wants to be able to give his ships orders in battle (or as he put it: manually pilot the ships)
ironborn wants local multiplayer (the ability to set up both fleets)
Motör wants a Campaign mode (this one was answered in thread but i got desperate to find more ideas)
there was a lot less ideas then expected here
For the antifighter missiles; I was going by the 2.2 tracking of the cruiser variant. I’m not sure if cruisers even need a good version of that weapon to be honest; but 2.2 is kind of low if you want it to be functional. I think all of my good gunship/fighter designs exceed 2.6+ speeds, but I roll Y’ootani. Is the hit formula still the same?
I noticed the cruiser defense laser has a tracking of 3.7; that might need to be examined if we’re going to buff the weapon heavily.
You could cut the multiple warhead launcher to 11 damage per shot (or use less missiles) and it’d still be a top-tier antishield option. That weapon is just going to dominate challenges if it’s not brought back some - the expensive cruiser shields don’t resist them anymore as of the last patch.
Furthermore, we have the percentile stats to balance weapons now (e.g. 70% armor damage). Do we want to up the penalty for a few classes of weapons?
I support this.
This (effectiveness against hull, armor and shield) is a powerful tool. I think this could be used to prevent spamming the same weapon (or weapon type). At some point this sould absolutely be considered. Maybe wait until more players are playing and we see what weapons are used the most.
Another balancing suggestion:
If you compare the Cruiser ‘Droid Bay’ to the ‘Large Crew Quarters’ it has almost only disadvantages:
- costs more: 160 vs 110
- less HP: 100 vs 120
- requires more power: 12.2 vs 8
= same weight: 120 vs 120
- has more crew: 250 vs 240
In my opinion ‘Droid Bay’ should at least be lighter (like in GSB1).
from experience when you are pressing for just that little more crew with that last slot and you need to keep everything in balance, well unless this is the highest capacity crew part it will never get used because of that power demand that advantages do not outway the disadvantages, when compared to other crew compartments
The fighter beam lasers are almost entirely superseded by the excellent fighter sniper laser, with the possible exception of the race-specific Scimitar.
This is a shame, because they look neat.