A beef that I believe many players have with GSB is the occasional spamming of particular weapons or hulls, i.e. plasma and fighters. It’s an aesthetic problem, to me, in that more varied fleets are more fun to create & to play against. The weapons of choice will change as stats adjust & new modules get added, and the spatial anomalies make a big impact as well.
I wanted to take a shot at addressing the issue more systematically. What if captains are assumed to “modulate the shields” when taking fire, with this mechanical result; when a ship takes a shield hit from a weapon type like beam, missile, or plasma, the shield becomes more effective against subsequent hits of that same type until the shield gets struck by a weapon of a different type? Perhaps the shield could become increasingly effective as the incoming fire remains constant, even unto near invulnerability?
This could create a paradigm that esteems variety in fleet design, which I personally think is a worthy goal. Thoughts? Other ideas with the same general aim?
This is the idea between the ‘enjoyment’ ratings for challenges. Some challenges are very difficult, but can be a bit irritating if they are too ‘unrealistic’. So I’m letting people rate those as different things. Some people like to play to win, some people like to just have fun battles, and hopefully GSB will cater to both types.
This is exactly how I rate challenges. Some fleets that have no engines/plasma cruisers, and tons of laser canon fighters are really hard to beat, but man they are no fun to play. We just need a way to sort by difficulty and enjoyment (right now it’s only difficulty).