Increase human ship HP across the board or cut human weapon DPS across the board #9802
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Amazinite
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I definitely agree that combat in human space tends to be excessively quick, and I believe MZ has said the same, though I haven't been able to find where. That said, T2 combat can sometimes become a bit too slow, particularly some of the Sestor fights. So, maybe there's an optimum to be found somewhere between the two? As far as the question of changing ship HP vs changing weapon DPS goes, I think the step up in weapon DPS with tier is so small that if we balanced HP around it, we'd lose out on the differentiation between tiers too much. Changing outfits is also backwards-compatible with old saves in a way that changing ships isn't, so that would be my preferred option. |
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Decreasing DPS will also have the impact of helping fighters survive longer. |
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I too think reducing damage would be the better approach. |
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I've messed around with expanding system jump in points and it also makes battles last longer and more dynamic. It effectively makes the battle field much larger. No big death ball. It makes a ships speed more relevant. Weaker ships have better chance to use the hit and run tactics. Unfortunately, it has no affect when launching from a planet. |
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While that may affect combat, it's been said before that we aren't interested in adjusting system sizes or ranges. I also disagree with the point that human tech is made useless. This is true if you're considering everything outside of human content, which is not the focus of the main story. Of course human content will be more "useless" in comparison, it's not supposed to be competitive to other higher tier species or tech levels. |
Yes, I've had the opportunity to try this too, and I agree - it's a rather remarkable improvement to the tactical landscape. One rather good coder in the Community, VitalChip, has a rather good demonstration of this where the Sol system is exapanded massively to the point there are actual trade routes and navigation paths forming between planets. It's impressive to watch, and feels so much more immersive and interesting. It also feels like the sort of world where a pirate could leap into a system, ambush someone, grab some cargo, and run. Instead of being a jump-in-and-die-instantly that so often happens now. |
I didn't mean make the systems bigger, I meant make the jump in (arrival xxx) locations further from the center so you have time to react. Ship speed means very little when you barely get time to move. I'd rather arrive further out in a system and fly to my target. Jumping into a system right in the middle of a death ball doesn't make much sense. I will say this, death balls and instant death aren't much fun, unless you like reloading your game constantly. I do get the whole concept about human tech and the main story. However, after you leave human space behind, traveling through human space just becomes annoying and pointless. Why, because there is zero challenge from anything in human space and no point for being there. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Even pirates become irrelevant. Why aren't pirates smart enough to steal higher tier ships? Especially, after we learn humans aren't alone. Just my opinion.
I feel the battles end so quickly for T1 ships because the AI for escorts and enemy is to stupid to break off an attack, move to safety, and regain some health before re-engaging. All ships tend to have a 'do or die attitude'. Another thing to think about, unless I missed it, the AI doesn't really use hit and run tactics. It just looks like it because small excessively fast ships with slow turning and not enough reverse thrust just overshoot their targets. But, not all small ships overshoot the target and just try to go toe to toe with vastly stronger opponents. That's just suicide. Is it possible to add hit and run tactics to small ships? |
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I think human weapons never shined for their dps anyway, its more about heat dmg, small size and energy use. So I agree with cutting down dps; but thats the easy part. Hai pace feels good to me, however, since their hp is higher and their highest dps is just trackers. Bringing human dmg down would in fact allow hai weapons to shine a bit more? (Rn there is not much reason to use their weapons tbh) |
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I'm kind of inclined to go the other way with heavy rockets: Stop using them as crowd control (they're not good at it anyway except when dealing with deathballs), and instead turn them into anti-capital weaponry. Yes, if a giant rocket hits your little ship, it should be terrifying, perhaps even lethal. But it should be hard to hit anything less than medium sized ship with it. But until death balls are solved, I guess they're decent.. |
Small interceptors have this. Their AI means they will rush at you (which they should) and the way the rockets fire (no aiming) means they pretty much will fire right on your face most of the time. Meaning game over |
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To break it down a bit: Torpedoes are a Capital Ship anti-Capital ship weapon. As in, the thing that capital ships should be shooting at each other at long ranges. Heavy rockets are the things that interceptors and light warships should be using as their primary (and perhaps only) effective weapon against capital ships. High risk, high reward, low quantity. Heavy rockets don't have guidance, so they should only be useful when used on ships that have sufficient agility to ensure accurate fire, or by slow ships vs other slow ships (ex. heavy warship vs heavy warship). For crowd control, yes, it should be a weaker weapon, but perhaps with a larger blast radius. (whereas heavy rockets could be boosted in damage, but reduced blast radius) |
This doesn't solve the inherent issue. You may be delaying combat, yes, but this doesn't shorten actual battle fights. In fact, it presents a similar issue where the first ship on either side, in the example of group battles, will be quickly obliterated by a fleet that jumped in together or vice versa once the actual battle begins. The problem to be resolved is combat time during a battle, which the above two suggestions are likely the best routes for.
I don't see any problem in this. This is how gameplay progression works. Again, we aren't looking to make human space relevant at all points in the game. The main story of the game is focused in human content. Human content is relevant within human content, and even slightly outside of it for the Hai, etc.. Once you push, again, of course it will seem less useful. You're beyond the main chunk of the game, to explore the new facets. It's a matter of comparison, not annoyingness or usefulness. You're simply comparing it to how more efficient later content is. It's forward progression, not necessarily hind-sighting human content based on said progression.
AI improvement can have an affect, that is true, but not one so much that changes the time spent in a battle as that is more strictly dictated by values of balance, not behavior or range. Regardless of AI behavior or tactics, the concern is that the fight is shorter because the period in which ships are destroyed during the combat phase is shorter. It may give a result, but it won't give one as noticeable as you're suggesting it will be, meanwhile stat changes will see a much more drastic and desired result. |
This is both realistic, and a flaw in tactics, and basically demonstrating how our AI is terrible. You don't solve AI and bad tactics by just keeping with the status quo that ensures everyone gets into the biggest deathball possible ASAP. Delaying the start of combat does, in fact, change battle fights. It means long-range weaponry actually has time to be useful and provide an advantage. This allows greater varieties of weaponry, too. |
@Zitchas How could we test both approaches? I don't have the skill to do it myself. Text files yes, but my C++ coding skills are very limited. I guess the real issue here is some players prefer to jump in guns a blazing, while others, like me, prefer to take a more tactical approach. So what's the balance? |
Small ships can employ torpedo pods quite effectively, arguably more effectively than large ships can employ torpedo launchers. Mobility makes it easier and more effective to take advantage of the range advantage, or alternatively the lack of blast radius on torpedoes allows them to be employed at point blank in a flyover type strategy - in both cases, greater mobility provides a major advantage. Torpedoes are the ideal anti-capital weapon in many ways, and you'll only lose differentiation by trying to get heavy rockets to fill that role instead of their current unique (at least among human weapons) crowd control / anti-fighter role.
Long-range weaponry is already extremely useful and provides a huge advantage. The ability to destroy an enemy without ever coming within range of their weapons is incredibly powerful, and having combat consistently start at point-blank is one of few ways to actually permit counterplay against that advantage. |
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My original responses are to Dillinger as to the issue's suggestions of resolving this manner. For the sake of avoiding circular debate, I will put things this way: This issue is proposing that we either nerf human weapon damage or increase human ship health. I don't disagree that AI changes will help battle behavior in the long haul, I would very much like to see future AI changes similar to some proposed here and elsewhere. However, changing the AI isn't a full fix to the described issue here, would be a huge undertaking compared to the above, and Amazinite has not stated an alternative where AI will solve the problem. However, I will not speak for that as it is up to him. Though, for what it's worth, the Devs are in agreement that the suggestions in this issue are good approaches and we're interested in them on their own. As mentioned and in past suggestions before, we are not interested in increasing system sizes (i.e., planet distances/spacing between stellars, etc..). Now, I don't know our explicit thoughts on arrival ranges, however, that sort of falls in line with expanding system sizes as it also would require an expansion of the system fence and AI capability, both of which are not what this issue is referencing. If anything, current arrival distances are being underestimated - the varying differences between stellars and these distances have brought different styles of combat in those examples rather than the static arrival distance we had in the past. Take a look at supergiant star systems versus small stars, for example. ES combat is intentionally within the range that it is right now - as Quantum says above, there are some aspects as to why closer combat is beneficial to combat overall. Again, I agree that AI changes can change this for the better, but to extend the range in which combat occurs is not necessarily what we're looking to do here. In fact, as above, I believe the current ranged advantages are being underestimated for the sake of having much longer ranges of combat. Regardless of if the combat begins at a farther distance or not, the issue is that once damage is taken, it is taken. Say we did increase arrival distance - this still has a flaw. Any ship flying against a fleet with missiles or heavy ranged weapons will eventually fly into a cloud of said weapons and die very quickly, which isn't much different than being part of a death-ball. Yes, AI may fix this, but again, this is tangential to the issue here. (As a side-note, I don't think death-balls are inherently a bad combat type - yes, always having them be the case is not ideal, but never having them is not. The Battle of Coruscant in Star Wars is a great example.) Adjusting HP or DPS is a direct solution to the issue of fights lasting shorter or longer within the currently envisioned combat environment. Increasing combat range or AI behavior (in which AI behavior improvements are always welcome) is a bit larger of a scope than what this issue suggests as it affects everything, not just human content, so I'd imagine that would be better as a separate issue. I don't agree with the argument that human tech suffers from this as it still fulfills its purpose within human content and the main section of the game, while later content is still relevant within itself. |
The balance is the opposite of this:
Namely, combat should have a variety of start points, in a variety of environments. Having every system start the player at 20000 out from their enemy when there is no terrain is always going to advantage the sniper. The solution is to have terrain, and have variety. If some systems have very short arrival distances, while others have long ones, then this presents an opportunity for the player to choose (sometimes) where they are going to engage the enemy. Likewise, if a system has an asteroid belt (and I do mean an actual asteroid belt, not just the general presence of asteroids flying every which way), then suddenly there's a barrier to long-range fire and something that can be used to approach the enemy and control the fields of fire. The general "floating field of asteroids" is... OK at limiting long distance fire, but fairly useless in providing interesting options for maneuver and cover. It could be more useful if we had larger (as in, say, heavy warship sized asteroids, or even bigger) asteroids that could individually be used as cover. Both of these are good options for increasing the duration and complexity of combat; ideally to be done in conjunction with dropping human weapon DPS, increasing variety of weapons. (Right now there is a huge lack of variety in this regards, especially in terms of range. Amusingly, this also applies to the close end of the spectrum. We definitely should have some close quarters weapons. Things like the lance from EVN that was very effective, basically an ultra short heavy laser. High risk getting in close, but highly effective. Instead of the current... system... where we have something like 36 weapons between 900 and 300, with maybe 4 accessible weapons above that (none of which are purchaseable), and 8 below that, only 1 of which is purchaseable (and most are gegno) and that one purchasable one is the mining laser, which is... less than ideal for a combat environment. Just to be clear, when I talk about "long range ", I'm talking about things like EVN's railguns. Turrets that had abysmally slow turning speed, likewise a very slow rate of fire, and weren't super fast, either. Flying a small ship one was almost immune to t he things due to how easy it was to dodge. Their only real use was chewing up targets that had been pinned down by interceptors and fighters or slugging it out at range with other similar ships (typically carriers or battleships). They had the dual use of both making tiny ships feel valuable (because they can swarm and fly circles around those ships easily dodging the big guns), and being very effective at chewing up ships of a similar size. This is something we don't have in ES, and it shows. In fact, those big 400mm railguns were actually hard to use even in capital-vs-capital fights if the ships actually did get too close together. Not impossible, but not convenient. One could really tell that they weren't designed for close quarters, and there were other weapons much better suited for it. |
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I think dropping DPS slightly is a good idea, but I'm not sure how far it would be a good idea to go. Interceptor vs interceptor battles don't take too short an amount of time when you're fighting an enemy at or slightly above your own strength, they almost take too long. If the issue is that strategy and skill are no match for armament in determining the outcome of a battle because everything happens so fast, then I would suggest that the problem is in the engine and not the armament. Nerfing DPS in relation to HP is a good starting point, and it will slow down the way-too-fast battles of the FW campaign... but those battles are still going to be won with superior firepower, not superior tactics. To change that would require changes to the engine. At the same time, if the nerf goes beyond, say, 10%, then you're spending much longer fighting off pirate interceptors, because every time you do a hit-and-run on them you do less damage and they have more chance to regenerate their shields. I'm also not sure that ZItchas' approach solves the issue. I agree that there should be varied terrain, and asteroids should provide reasonable cover for interceptors and similar, but:
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On Delta (the Experimental testbed area) we implemented lateral thrust as well as shifting from a high-drag to a low-drag environment. In simple terms, it means spaceships actually act like spaceships instead of like boats in water. And one thing we quickly discovered is that battles spread out a lot, resulting in the fact that large battles tended to be a lot of smaller combats between a few ships rather than singular deathballs. My personal experience was that it transformed a lot of the major fleet battles (FW vs Navy, for instance) from the current "You are just one more ship in a deathball, so nothing matters other than DPS and HP" into a situation where there were lots of 1v1 and small groups vs small groups of combat, which meant that I could fly around and join into individual battles and be a deciding factor as I tipped the scales in favor of my allies. It suddenly felt like I was actually made a meaningful impact on combat; and could actually do things like rescue ships that were losing; and my personal skill (or lack thereof) actually meant something. As far as hp goes, I think regen should be nerfed; as all it currently does is eliminate hit-and-run as a valid option and forces players onto the path to "bigger ship is better in every circumstance". I am quite optimistic that a combination of reduced DPS and reduced regen would improve combat; but I still think that weapons need to be more diversified with at least a few of the highest DPS weapons really pulled into the CQC ranges of <200, with some added options for >1000 guns with suitable drawbacks. (this is all talking about human space exclusively). Regarding larger asteroids... The AI doesn't know about hiding inside an asteroid, so that's basically an opportunity for the player to actually have a meaningful impact on combat. Likewise, if one is hiding in an asteroid, one can't shoot out with most weapons, and can still be hit by blasts. It's a useful survival mechanism, but it's no better than (and in some ways worse) than just booking it off into the wild black yonder to recharge. And regarding arrival distances.... That sounds about right, then. We don't want any feature to completely eliminate risk or guarantee that the player can always arrive 100% safely. The main intent was to allow the player to have at least a split second to react to enemies present in the system, and to sometimes be able to retreat or maneouver for better advantage, and perhaps engage at long range before being in melee. The biggest goal was to ensure that the player isn't always dumped straight into melee, which was often the case. Variety and opportunity to have an impact is the purpose, not to guarantee anything. And shifting deathballs from "always happens" to "sometimes happens" is a massive improvement. In other words, your description of arrival distances is "Working as intended, sounds great!" |
This isn't my experience of such engagements at all. I've found that interceptor vs interceptor battles tend to be over extremely quickly, with one- or two-salvo kills from torpedoes or heavy rockets or just the sheer DPS of spammed javelin pods. It's very rare for these to last more than a few seconds from the point where one side starts taking damage, and as such there's almost no time to react.
Regen is the thing that allows hit-and-run as a valid option, and one of the main issues with it currently is how long it often takes you to heal before doing the next hit - which, amongst other things, gives more time for reinforcements on either side to show up and turn a skill-dependent 1v1 engagement into a one-sided victory for the reinforced side. If anything, buffing regen would be the best way to help it.
Even the "small" differences between ranges of weapons currently are hugely advantageous if you take advantage of them. Kiting to weaponize a range advantage is extremely effective even when that range advantage is 'only' one or two hundred, and would only become more effective, if not outright overpowered, if the spread of ranges was increased. Also, missiles provide a long-range option currently, with strengths and drawbacks that balance them in a very different way to other weapons - they have ranges in the mid thousands, homing capabilities, high damage output and minimal energy/heat costs, but that comes at the cost of limited ammunition and the ability to potentially be shot down by anti-missile turrets. These two disadvantages are quite important in allowing counterplay against missiles - which would otherwise be totally overpowered - to the point where (in my experience, at least) the tactic of baiting out all the enemy missiles before engaging them is one that's more or less universal both in human space and beyond, with only a handful of exceptions. A long-range gun which did not have limited ammunition would effectively disallow this counterplay, without really introducing any alternative - the tactic of circling around to avoid a target's guns isn't really an option at long range, as effectively the aim point is moving far more quickly for the same angular speed than at close range, and any significant hit force would make closing the distance almost impossible. |
please dont nerf human regen, it sucks enough as it is. even the largest generators take minutes to regen the shields fully, I can never be bothered to do hit and run using human shield gens |
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Well, it's kind of like anti-missile: It's a great counter to missiles... until it's so great that everyone forcibly has to have antimissiles, and then there's no point anymore. Some regen is great, until big ships have more regen than small ships, which means that hit-and-run, which is predominantly a small-ship tactic, is rendered impossible. Since big ships have more regen, more health, more dps... there's no point where a smaller ship can do anything better than the big one, other than dying by the boatload. And then just to top it off, we have the heavy rocket. Instead of sticking true to its' inspiration as an anti-heavy-warship weapon to give small ships an edge, it's designed to be an AOE effect to help kill off groups of small ships even faster. Definitely a case of creating tools to help the best be even better. So now we're back where we started, where the only options are a) get a bigger ship; b) get a fleet, and the best option c) get a fleet of bigger ships. But anyway, back to the suggestion at hand: Sure, let's cut human DPS across the board. It's a simple thing, I don't think it'll accomplish anything other than slowing down the combat a bit (which is a good thing, and the whole point of this issue). I do suspect that there's a good chance that it ends up with everyone spending more time in deathballs, which inherently and absolutely favor the computer, since the computer has an infinite supply of ships, and the player does not. So this has a definite possibility of resulting in people feeling pushed to get bigger ships faster because it's the only way to deal with the regen and/or being swarmed. |
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Part of me feels sorry for creating grief for the devs but part of me is not sorry. My whole goal is to make people think. I suspect the polar opposite view points, on the degree of survivability, depends greatly on the players style and what they are using as their flagship. Do you prefer an offensive, tactical style or a defensive, slugfest style? Fast and Maneuverable Flagships:Pros:
Cons:
Slow and Cumbersome Flagships:Pros:
Cons:
I know this doesn't answer Amazinite's question of decrease DPS or increase HP, so my answer is neither. Either way it's just masking a larger issue and this is what all this seemingly off topic conversation is really about. |
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You aren't creating any grief for the Devs. This is how issues work, we discuss them and those involved put their opinion, and many matters can be subjective as well as include in-depth analysis. As of this moment, based on above discussion, the devs and core balancers and contributors to the game believe these options to be useful for balancing the current game, and I'm afraid anything beyond that would be circular debate as standpoints have been made. I'm eager to see a PR opened for it so we can actually play around with changes and get a more direct feel for what is being suggested. Disagreements happen all the time in game development, it is hard to make everyone happy with results. In the end, decisions are made based on how development sees the vision of the game, so we'll have take a look at how this fits in with where we'd like to see combat go with the current environment. ES is open source after all, changes can be done at any time in the future based on results. I appreciate you taking the time to put in your own perspective on the problem. |
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I honestly believe that increasing the arrival distance and decreasing human weapon damage together would both help with the combat problem in human space, I disagree with the idea that increasing the arrival distance is just a band aid or whatever, it genuinely makes longer fights in a system more interesting and last longer, and one of my main common gripes is big battles getting bogged down with new arrivals that keep arriving close to the center of the fight. And making it so human weapons are at least a little worse would help with the fact that human ships are completely outclassed by higher tier races, while human weapons like the particle cannon can still be considered competitive with much higher tech equivalents, the particle cannon being a main offender for quick death in human space. Human shields are completely and totally outclassed by alien tech in such a way that they become obsolete, so the idea that human weapons can still compete is very strange honestly. |
Factions can have things they're good at and some things they're bad at. Humans have some things that they're arguably too good at and things that they're really bad at. With that said, it does need to be within reason; humanity shouldn't suddenly have Wanderer-level technology; it needs to make sense in the Universe. However, I support some things being a bit worse than they should be and some things being a bit better than they should be. It adds to the worldbuilding. |
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Quoting Zitchas
I disagree. A small ship can outrange the bigger ship. It can also use hit and run weapons (blank range torpedoes, gatling gun, tripulse shredder). Furthermore with human space and their trash shields you only need 32 outfit space to beat a warship's shield gen (2 corundums) - or just about any remnant ship. You can also sometimes dodge the main guns, provided the enemy ship turns slow enough (which isnt often enough if you ask me). |
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What Zitchas is saying, and I agree with him, is that when a large ship has a lot of shields and fast regen, hit and run tactics become pointless. Why, because said large ship just recovers between passes. Yes, you can use high DPS secondary weapons against the large ship but then you have trouble fighting the small ships. Faster regen for small ships helps make hit and run more viable. And smaller ships having faster regen does logically make more sense. Less surface area covered in shields should be faster to regenerate. As it has already been pointed out, we are getting off topic. |
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Returning to the original point of this issue, it seems T2 ships have, on average, 5.86 times the HP of equivalent T1 ships, and 1.61 times the weapon space. So, to have DPS:HP ratios at T1 match those at T2 as requested, the DPS/ton of T1 weapons would need to be on average 1/3.64 of that at T2. |
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I think it comes down to how big we want the gap between tiers to be in terms of combat ability. While a large gap (i.e., reducing T1 weapons DPS further) would make doing the various alien campaigns very rewarding, I think it would be a shame for everything in human space to be made that obsolete Instead, buffing human ship HP to make combat times match (or maybe 75% as long as) T2 combat would be better for the longevity of content in human space. I know it's generally expected that human ships should become obsolete as the player progresses, but I think there's a difference in degree between "something better is available" and "human ships are completely inadequate past FW." That the player can also quickly acquire Hai/Remnant ships and outfits is also something to consider, as nerfing human DPS would even further encourage strategies based around rushing alien technology before FW. While I don't think this is really a bad thing, as it's just experienced players having the freedom to play through FW in their own way, I think that if human weapons are weakened it'll just become that much more tempting to instead acquire alien ones before anything else. Buffing human ship HP instead of nerfing their weapons would lessen this disparity without eliminating it, making the decision more about the kind of story the player wanted to play through instead of a lopsided choice between technology levels. I also think we should take a look at whether outfit space should really scale with tier. To me, it would make for a more interesting game if higher tiered ships were designed to dedicate more of their hull mass towards shields and armor due to their outfits being generally smaller and more space efficient. This would mean a slight trend downwards in outfit space with tier, to give T1 ships a small advantage that could keep them somewhat relevant in flexibility, if not raw combat power. Of course, this wouldn't necessarily need to be a hard rule, (as with all tier-based scaling) but I do think it would be better than higher tiered ships just continually getting better in every statistic. At worst I think we just shouldn't scale outfit space with tier at all. |
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Human stuff is completely relevant for sheer dps anyway, it's only the fire weapons and ranged ones, like the proton turret and torpedoes that have a niche in my opinion. Not like you keep flying human ships once you get smth else. |
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I always dislike basing outfit space on tiers at all, I feel that should 100% be it's own thing purely based on the ship and it's category, with tier only mattering if you are bringing in weird space warping behavior like with tier 3+ stuff. So a human ship and a korath ship have no difference in the outfit space if both ships are meant to be the same size, the difference is that the armour and shielding would be much greater on the korath ship, while if they had the same hull and shielding the korath would have more outfit space purely because they had to dedicate less space to the hull and shielding. |
The issue with this is it'd require rebalancing not just human ships, but Hai, Remnant, Korath Exile ships, and all campaign instances where those are used to make sure it's all still behaving as intended. Hai/Remnant/Exiles because those are meant to be above human stuff, and if human ships get more HP then those would need adjusted to keep their intended edge. Theoretically it would close the gaps more, but it might prove very problematic with all the rippling across missions. The need to buff Hai ship HP as well could affect Wanderers balance, for instance. Additionally, the Bunrodea ships might need adjusting too depending on how much the Hai/Remnant/Exiles get boosted. |
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ON TOPIC: RELATED: OFF TOPIC but related: I read somewhere, that a player really liked the Emerald Sword but because of it's weak shields felt it wasn't very useful. He altered his game file to give it shields that made it more inline with other ships of it's size. He personally justified it buy removing 1 million from his account and also justified it with the following logic. When the Emerald Sword was built, shields weren't very advanced, but know that it has been recovered, he sent it to the shipyard to have it's shield emitters upgraded to something more modern. This logic makes perfect sense to me and is very believable. Lot's of players strip out everything and upgrade anyway, so why not the shields? My point is, time passes and things become more advanced except in human space. The Hai, Wanderers, Remnant, and even the Exiles learned to make big improvements in tech and ships during the games timeline. Why not humans? |
Why would you need to rebalance everything? There is very little interaction between Human NPCs and other civilizations NPCs outside human space. And of the interactions that do occur the NPCs used are custom anyway. Balance those anyway you want. I'm I missing something? And, as I just posted balance between player and NPC is irrelevant. That balance changes the second a player upgrades anything.
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Yeah, I agree that it would involve a lot of work due to the cascading impacts of making adjustments starting with human ships. But given that we're already looking at rebalancing ship masses across the board, I think a similar look at HP (and maybe even outfit space?) might also be feasible. I've also heard quite frequently that the balance of the battles in the Wanderer Campaign could use some adjustments, especially after the changes to heat and ion damage, so if we're going to need to do that eventually I don't think there's that much additional overhead when it comes to also balancing ship HP. |
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What I'm I missing?
If human ships and ships from other civilizations rarely meet, what cascading impact would there be? Outside of the storylines, what happens in human space has very little, if any, impact in the rest of the universe. I assume, most if not all the storyline NPC's that interact with non human NPCs, are custom anyway. I'm I wrong? I'm not trying to argue I'm just trying to understand. |
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Whether or not human ships meet any other faction's ships isn't the criteria for balancing based on the intended tech levels of species. |
What you're describing and implying would be a better system is the way that tiers work currently. I don't know where the claims otherwise come from.
The Pug are not a good example. They are a deliberate exception, an extremely advanced species that deliberately produces much weaker vessels than their actual capabilities as a method of pursuing specific goals.
You already fly Human ships for the early game where they're the only option. If they remain as effective as other options late-game, there's not really a reason to ever try anything else. I think it's good that the game encourages you to try new ships and outfits rather than sticking with the same old human ones you've been using so far.
Humans have made big improvements in tech and ships during the game's timeline. The Catalytic Ramscoop, the Electron Beam, the Typhoon, the Syndicate's massively better shield regenerators, the flamethrower, and the Dreadnought are all advancements in tech and ships. But, there's a limit to how much it's reasonable for one faction to advance over the course of the game, and humanity has advanced as much as it should do. |
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Thanks for all the information. Things makes a little more sense when you get some back ground information. Some how, I missed all that while playing. I guess my perception of what's going on in the game must be wrong. I'll stop trying to make sense out of things players don't need to understand and just play the game. |
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If we buff human ship hp without buffing the rest we'd be making all hai ships irrelevant, and even more depending on how much we do it, even if they dont fight together. Outfit space already doesnt depend on tier much? |
I believe we're talking about tier based changes, not just to human ships and outfits. Presumably this also applies to Hai equipment, (as a roughly T1 species) both for adjustments to ship HP and weapon damage.
It definitely does. To steal from Doom's earlier comment,
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The issue presented is the pace of combat, and it refers to human ships and outfit. |
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If we tweaked T1 HP instead, you could justify a slight buff to Hai weapons to maintain the pace of Hai combat. |
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Sure but then the wanderers would get demolished, also it would make the issue of taking ages to replen shields worse (at first we shouldnt touch hai ships I think, and that means only touching the dps and not the hp) |
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I've been playing around with a simple plugin I made that's somewhat of the opposite approach for the HP idea, by downscaling things above humanity's T1 to a more linear scale. It's just experimental to see how the game plays out with the values. Leaving it here if someone would like to check it out, might be useful for considering the proportions of HP between Tiers when comparing with humanity: I am aware this is not appropriate for vanilla, this is purely to mess around with and see how matchups change. |
Problem Description
A common comment that we get about the game's combat is that many find that it goes too fast. Not that the ships move too fast, but that they die too fast. These comments are typically from the perspective of human space combat.
It's been noted that T2 combat is actually much slower because the increase in weapon DPS is outpaced by the increase in ship HP, and there have been positive comments about this.
If people feel that T2 combat is better paced, then perhaps we should try to make T1 combat closer to it.
Related Issue Links
#9469 People feel that turn rates on turrets are too high; slower turn rates would mean slower paced battles.
#5271 Heavy warships are too fast; slower heavy warships that give smaller ships the chance to use hit and run tactics would lead to slower paced battles. This also ties into #9460/#9771.
Desired Solution
Increase the length of combat encounters in human space by either increasing the HP of all human ships, or decreasing the DPS of their weapons.
Alternative Approaches
N/A
Additional Context
Changes to human balance would likely have a knock-on effect to Gegno, Hai, T1 Pug, and potentially Coalition balance.
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