Hello, Disco. I've been floating around this community for a long time now, and I've noticed recently there seems to be a lot of complaining towards the balance of capital ships versus snubcraft (a permanent topic, really), the annoying factor of NPC capfleets popping up out of nowhere to make your life very difficult, very quick, and I've also noticed there is a certain thing I'm biased towards, shamelessly, because let's face it- The concept is cool, but the iteration leaves a bit to be desired. So, let me get right to it.
Section 1: Capship balance
Okay, so, I've seen my share of capship battles going on on the server. Most of the times, you gotta admit- They're a cluster****, very difficult to coordinate, find one's way in, balance out and make bearable for the server load. Too many projectiles, me thinks! So let's touch up on that one first.
Rebalance the battleship turrets. Most of the 'important' ones. I'm talking a complete tectonic shift. I know realism doesn't seem to be a great part of Discovery, but I would reckon a touch of verisimilitude would do absolutely fine; Particularly with something that should be flown and used in a VERY particular and careful manner. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, there are battleship turrets that can fire several times per second- And these are the ones pointed towards countering other capitals... Nah. Too much, y'all! So, to make things easier to read;
-Primary battleship turrets; These seem to be, for an anti-cap weapon, pretty damn powerful. They quickly turn into firestorms of doom (for the server), with a LOT of projectiles flying around and being, more or less, wasted, in the hands of a lesser pilot. My suggestion is to make their damage considerably higher, keep their range & projectile speed the same, but here's the caper- Make their refire rate much, much slower. I'm talking one shot every 4-5 seconds; A cannon this size should fire slowly, but be extremely powerful in terms of pawnch.
-Secondary turrets; Keep their function as is. Solaris, beams and such work fairly well as it is right now, for their job of countering smaller craft.
-Heavy stuff: Mortars, pulses, razors. Amazing stuff, there needs to be more of this used in capship battles. Hard hitting, slow to refire, hungry for energy. My only suggestion here would be to upgrade the mortar visuals- Right now, they're sort of underwhelming.
The idea behind these changes would be to make battleship combat much slower paced and tactic-oriented, reduce the load on the servers in large cap battles by cutting the projectile number in space by a great deal- Fiddling with the speed and range should also be up for discussion, and that's what the thread is for. And in the end, giving capitals a high skill threshold and giving them an 'elite', particular flystyle would reduce the amount of people that strive for one of these, simply because the concept is less interesting to 'those people' than something that basically is a flying machine of death and destruction.
Section 2: NPC balance
From my experience on the server, I've taken notice of a few things concerning capital ships. First of all, they seem to be a lot of players' wet dream, a sort of a 'top of the food chain' thing, and honestly- This should definitely be killed once and for all. I've noticed, in connection with the latter topic of NPC balance, that a player flying a battleship or dreadnaught, using a CAU8, is going to have VERY little trouble with popping up capfleets on his ass- Honestly, a battleship user, and a good one at that, will tear an NPC battleship into shreds, together with its cruiser and gunboat wing, with virtually no danger to his own self. This happens VERY rarely, as well; How often do you run into an NPC battleship while flying one of your own- And at that, having the run-into NPC hostile to you? Yeah, not too often.
On the other hand, those piloting cruisers, destroyers or gunboats- Hell, even transports at times, have to be extremely wary of many of these things. NPC cap spawns have far too much CDspam capabilities, but they do provide a certain tactical gimmick at times; Maybe not too fair or perfectly designed, but hey. Space is dangerous. So, on this topic;
-Remove the NPC's CD capabilities. Seriously. If you're flying a trader and have the bad luck of getting a gunboat spawn while flying relatively close to a hostile base, you will get shredded and locked down in place with little to no chance of actual escape, a topic that's been raised a lot of times. If you want to make things a bit more interesting, without nerfing them into the ground, leave CD's on those NPC's flying intercept role craft; Bombers, light fighters- The ones easy to shoot down and turn tail.
-Adjust the NPC capitals weapon stats. For something with an infinite powercore, NPC gunboats and higher have a very jolly time punching you repeatedly with full salvos, razors, pulses and forward guns if applicable without mercy or pause- This is a big problem for anyone flying a matching class, apart from battleships- Battleship pilots are in very little danger from NPC's at any point, but if you, in a transport, run across a hostile battleship or cruiser patrol? Say bye bye, you'll get torched in seconds without a chance to run away. At least nerf their ranges and refire rates, if anything. (Yes, I'm aware certain tricks exist, like spamming shield bats and praying the trick of thrusting away while noseturned to the NPC's under engine kill gets you far enough so you can turn and cruise, but that's honestly a glitch, and shouldn't be referred to as a proper escape tactic.)
People have suggested many things- Removing NPC's entirely being one of them, and the most extreme- Recently, I've read someone's rage thread about the concept of PVEing on Discovery- You may laugh, but you need to remember everyone plays the game for their own joys, and I don't think we should deny people this when the problems caused by said NPC's are removable by rebalances.
Section 3: The bolter
Alright, I come to my personal little thing. The Bolter turret, the one for transports... I love it. I absolutely adore the concept behind it. Oldschool slug mechanics? Hell yeah! Except... Not really. Anyone who's tried to use these turrets on anything smaller than, say, a Pilgrim, will have gone 'What the f**k is this?' and sold them in about 20 seconds post purchase, 10 of these seconds being the time used to undock and redock. HUGE model, ridiculous sound, ridiculous projectile.
-Change the turret's model. Give it a model of, say... The gunboat Solaris. You know, one of those asymmetrical ones with the little dish and gatling gun look. Would be absolutely perfect, the size would fit on most transports very smoothly, and it's a neutral coloured gun. Delicious.
-Change the turret's firing graphics and sounds. For example- The Kusari photon guns, the ones for the fighters? You know 'em. Their 'muzzle flash' looks very cool, even if the projectile doesn't, and their sound is pretty good. Dakka dakka dakka; It doesn't even require importing sounds from outside the mod. Use this sound, the muzzle flash, and give the projectile the appearance of, say, a Vengeance laser shot, recoloured a bright yellow. That would make the Bolter a real bolter, and it'd make it more used- Plus, make me a very happy camper.
That's it for the balance topics- I've decided there's one more thing to add in the whole wall of text I've thrown at you folks here, and here it is.
MD-7 Rail Cannon
Class 9 Heavy Turret (battleship)
Hull damage: 185,000 - 197,000
Shield damage: 3,000 - 5,000
Refire rate: Once a minute/40 seconds
Range: 7000 m
Projectile speed: 3500 m/s
Energy consumption: Forgive me, I have no clue about battleship power cores, so let's say... low.
The MD-7 Rail Cannon serves the purpose of a tactical battleship or, if you fancy the idea, cruiser weapon- A sort of sniper round, only usable at certain times, able to hit from very far away; The speed of the projectile would ensure that, inside 3.5k range, it's more or less a guaranteed hit, and at 7k, with a bit of skill, can be used as a support snipe for when the target's shields are down. The idea behind it is a large heavy metal slug, without an explosive payload, being launched at ridiculous speed by a system of extremely powerful electromagnets in a stream- Of course, the slow refire is based on, well, reloading the cannon with the massive slugs. Hence, the miniscule shield damage, but pretty serious hull breaching capability. The number range would vary from house to house, as do most of the weapons already. For terms of projectile size and visibility, I would suggest using a white or blue-ish teardrop shaped projectile with a trail left behind it- Something like the beam weapons we have already, with a slow fade once the weapon has been fired. Numbers are, of course, subject to discussion.
That's it from me for now- I hope whoever has read through this all hasn't gotten an aneurysm, and I do hope you will participate in discussing this as rational adults, with constructive criticism and with my lack of battleship knowledge in general taken into consideration. Have at it!
Sucks to be a weight on the wrong side of the brilliance-insanity scale.
Good stuff. The NPC's will lose missiles, mines and CD's in the next update for sure.
I like your idea about slow-firing cap weapons, but the problem is that the FL engine is terribly bad at handling caps - especially when they turretsteer, you'll find that aiming at the crosshair will lead to a miss more often than not, and when you free aim, the turrets are located so far apart from each other that you will miss - or worse, shoot in the direct opposite direction of where you are trying to shoot. So caps need to be able to fire relatively fast, otherwise they will be really bad even at taking down enemy capital ships. But you are right, maybe reduce the number of slots for fast-firing guns, remove cerbs and add more variety to the hard-hitting long range weapons.
You are also spot-on about the capital ship patrols. They wreck snubfights but look nice when they are drifting around - but they are in no way a deterrent for capital ship pilots, as they are supposed to be. I don't think they should be gone, as it does add some atmosphere to undock from Manhattan to see a battlegroup pass by slowly. Maybe give them 1 gun and paper hull, and thus make their presence entirely cosmetic, and then bring back capital ship missions where you can spawn "proper" NPC caps for those who want a PVE challenge of sorts?
Your gun is problematic. It can more or less insta a whole lot of things, and with 3500 m/s and turret auto-aim it will just be way too easy. People would pair up, so one can drop shields, and the other can take the kill without much effort. No fun to play against, at all. The Warwolf Valor forward gun is in my head the best thing we can get along these lines within the limitations of the engine.
Of course, the ideas are not flawless. This is what the discussion is for- Give certain suggestions on how to fix the issues, yes! Like... Would it help if the rail cannon's projectile impact zone were tiny? Thus, only allowing it to actually register a hit on a capship, but making it extremely difficult for it to hit a snub unless it's moving a straight line, in which case it kinda deserves to get insta'd? (Bad me, I know.)
Sucks to be a weight on the wrong side of the brilliance-insanity scale.
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There are already plans similar to what you suggest, although there are significant differences as well. Dropping refire rates on capitals could significantly improve server performance in battles - right now the server is awfully prone to crashing when two large forces (with capital ships) clash.
Weapons such as Battleship Solaris are as problematic as Battleship Primaries, really. As such, I'm a bigger fan of moving more towards (low refire) flaks and such than high-refire, high-speed laser guns. Flaks are - I find - much more consistent at hitting smaller ships, provided you know when and where to fire them. At the same time, they come with the convenient drawback of hitting allies and enemies alike. This makes the good old "hug your battleship" technique a lot less appealing (a nice bonus if you ask me).
A weapon like your railgun would need some severe drawbacks. That, and the range is just ridiculously long. I know it sounds very cool and flashy, but it just doesn't really fit in with the other weapons. In all likelihood, it'd need truly abysmal tracking speed and perhaps a tiny portion of dispersion (the stuff that makes bomber guns spread out when you fire them) to avoid it being a snub/gunboat insta-killing weapon.
(01-12-2015, 04:46 PM)Haste Wrote: <snip> In all likelihood, it'd need truly abysmal tracking speed and perhaps a tiny portion of dispersion (the stuff that makes bomber guns spread out when you fire them) to avoid it being a snub/gunboat insta-killing weapon.
YES. Much, much yes. The turret's rotation should suck, very, very badly. I had managed a few oversights; The role of this cannon should be a long-range accurate hullbusting threat, which would put pressure on capship captains, as to when to pop shield batteries, and when not- The dispersion idea also rocks, making it have around 100 meter dispersion radius at maximum range, or less, depending on the impact it'd have on accuracy; It'd also make it a good catch-up chance weapon. Someone escaping with no shields, low hull... You take the shot and pray it hits the mark. Risk for potential reward!
Edit: To tackle Mimir's points; Yes, I have noticed this problem. The turretsteer thing is somewhat abysmal when it comes to aiming; However, this could be fixed easily, I believe. Thinking about it a bit more, ALL battleship turrets and cannons apart from the flak might be better off with a bit of dispersion, and much higher projectile speeds? It'd make fights much more dangerous for the capship captains, but less so for the snubcraft involved. I'm just throwing around ideas, but my guiding thought is, well, modern day naval combat. The cannons are fast, hit hard, extremely dangerous; But, they require a lot of focus and skill to be aimed correctly. This can be simulated by dispersion- The occasional gunner miscalculation, or the other.
Very slow gun refires for battleships would make it more worth it to fire the guns one by one, or in limited groups- Chainfire, even. I can see a lot good coming from rebalancing capship fights in this manner, and the drawbacks could be easily countered with a little bit of balance juggling.
Sucks to be a weight on the wrong side of the brilliance-insanity scale.