General Feedback for Update e0.1.62.30

[NathanTheZealot]

1: Weapon CPU

The max weapon CPU feels too small for the most part. With 500 weapon CPU I can get thirteen small weapons, one large armor gen, one large shield gen, and three ammo loaders. That's it.

It frankly looks ridiculous on a big ship. I would call a ship with this level of equipment a barely above small ship for the most part. There's also the issue where once you have the higher tier weapons, you'll be allowed even fewer of them, so you'll have a massive war ship with just two weapons. This just feels wrong to me, and it also reduces variety. There are going to be fewer possible combinations.

There is a secondary issue with this as well, ship design will tend towards the more extreme ends of the spectrum, as you don't have enough points to do several things effectively. Once you add two or three armor and shield gens, you only have a handful for weapons.
I think weapon CPU in general is a very good solution, but you'll be in balancing hell for a long while.

2: Nanobots

I'm not totally sure why it was added, ship repair right now is a fairly involved thing and you had several options to do so, but this just trounces them all in effectiveness. Should probably have the cost for all of them upped considerably to keep the others effective choices.

3: AFK Shield

I don't follow the logic behind this either. It feels like a bandaid, but why are you adding a bandaid in the same patch where you're fixing the issue that requires a bandaid in the first place? It's also a terribly "overpowered" bandaid. A minute is a ridiculous amount of time. 10 seconds would be enough. All of my ships that are big enough that I can't get to the cockpit in 10 seconds usually have an internal network of teleporters.

At the same time it's got several issues, notably that it doesn't stop hacking and there's zero indication that a ship has one, or even indication for you that it's on. As an attacker, you're going to need a separate weapon group with just one weapon of the cheapest ammo in order to keep warp disrupted for an entire minute, and if RNG rolls the wrong way enough, they could even hit warp before that minute is even up.

4: Warp Disruption

Feels like another bandaid, and will also encourage smaller, rapid fire weapons over big ones much of the time as you want to roll the dice as often as possible.
"As an attacker, you're going to need a separate weapon group with just one weapon of the cheapest ammo in order to keep warp disrupted" Combine that with a hacking terminal.

I'd suggest changing the RNG if possible so that heavier impacts have a higher chance of/longer duration for warp disruption, and perhaps making it only disrupt if shields are down. Once actual warp disruption devices are added, it wouldn't hurt to remove this entirely.

5: Armor

This is probably my largest concern with this update (now that power CPU is being removed). Big ships are once again ******. Going back to point 1 in this post, you can fit all of those devices I listed on a ship the size of an HSC Excavator. A large ship will be completely outclassed in maneuverability and speed by a gunship. Large ships have zero advantage under this system. No matter how you balance the numbers, it will always make more sense to build a minimal ship with all firepower and just pop in, fire off a volley, pop out again.

While this has been true to an extent for a while in IsR, the big ships could last a very long time and return fire for much longer. Point 1 and Point 5 are very closely tied together here, because whatever the max amount of weapon CPU is, the size of the ship that can manage to cram that many devices in is the new best combat ship.

It's an effective size cap; even on industrial ships, because anything bigger than that is a huge risk, as it's just as easy to lose (easier actually with reduced speed and maneuverability), be it to skrill or players, but the cost only goes up.
I do have a solution to this and the issue of armor stacking that I'm rather proud of, hopefully it's relatively easy to implement.
Keep hull points as is. The more exterior blocks you have/larger your ship is, the more you get. Armor and armor gens stay in, but your armor value is not tied to ship destruction. Instead, more armor equals reduced damage to internal devices. You could never get 100% protection, but you should be close with the max amount of armor gens. Armor piercing weapons/ammo could be added, which reduce this armor value. This also solves point two, as the nanobots could be changed to only repair the armor, not hull or interior devices.

Under this system, a large ship could carry on fighting for a long time, but unless it spends some of it's CPU points on armor gens it'll be in trouble. Crews would be "buffed" by this as well, as they could repair critical systems and keep a big ship in fighting shape. Properly designed and operated power groups would be needed as well if interior damage is treated as the main way to take a large ship out of action, since you'll need to reroute power as devices are damaged.

The only drawback of this I can think of is if you're trying to actually destroy a behemoth of a ship for whatever reason, you'll be spending a lot of ammo on it, but that could be countered by a mechanic of sorts that would cause hull points to start decaying when devices are leaking power for too long. The lost power is eating away at the hull or something.

Split Polygon

I would like to end this by saying I still think you guys are the best dev team I've ever come across, making the best game ever. I've been spending a fair amount of time lately tearing your ideas apart, but you guys are still awesome.

[Johnno]

A few quick points:

1. Weapons CPU is more about balancing amount of weapons you can have active/fire at once, versus armour & shield. You could still carry any amount of weapons, a group of each small, medium and large weapon, fit for each different opponent, missile launchers loaded with different types of missiles, etc. Not to mention enough large shield gens and armour gens to swap to full tank if you so prefer.

It's mainly about balancing, you may feel that 13 guns is too little, but that's what we're trying to balance, overuse.

You'll rather be able to carry several sets of weapons, and have to decide what's the most effective against a given target, rather than just sticking to those 13 guns with their best ammo and never using anything else.

Same thing comes into play with shields and armour, we're by now so used to stacking that it feels off to only have one large shield generator (although we could have 5 if we go full shield tank), while it really is just an issue of balancing and getting used to a new idea.

Want to take it further? If ships could only have a single shield generator which settings would have to be managed depending on CPU usage.

But I agree, this'll take some time to balance, the main thing being TTK (time to kill), which needs active combat testing.

Main culprit here is the freedom of design and the vastly different sizes we can create ships in. I'm still pondering how to balance your 2-3M mass monstrosity against "medium" ships around 200-300k. I don't personally feel that bigger is better is the solution, it's just as bad as stacking.

3. AFK Shield - Not a big fan either. There is and indicator both in your cockpit (yellow bar rising across your shield bar), and on the HUD of another ship (yellow bar across the shield bar).

Even after you engage warp though you continue being invulnerable, so you can go through a few failed warp attempts before it's gone. I agree that 1 minute is a long time.

4. Warp Disruption - I've mentioned this a few times on Discord. It's necessary for PvP engagements considering you're invulnerable in warp, and once it takes longer to disable player ships it'll be far too easy for them to disengage without a warp disruption mechanic.

However in PvE, in its current form, every hostile becomes potentially lethal unless you can outrun it, kill it or tank it. If you can tank it, you're simply stuck. Any unarmed ship that can't outrun or tank a hostile, is dead. Currently skrill and drones still do damage rapidly, compared to what defenses we can now utilize.

Personally I prefer the concept of limited warp disruption, that is from very specific enemies. But for PvP this is essential.

5. Armour and big ships - This is the tough thing, balancing big vs smaller ships. Stacking armour leads to having to bring an equally sized ship, otherwise you'll simply be outlasted. Or several smaller ships, to outDPS the big ship before you lose all yours. That also leads to a big ship jumping small ships that then have no chance to take it out, simply because the player has spent more resources. Main culprit I see here is that a single player can run that big ship.

I'm sure this'll spark a huge PvP discussion, but having to consider cost vs effectiveness and weigh in what others are flying is sensible for a PvP server. On a PvE server you can fly anything you want and as long as you know how to fight skrill/pirate drones you're fine. A PvP server will eventually balance itself out where people meet at the middle, and those who want to go bigger can do so at their own risk, where the reward is easier material collection, carrying capacity, etc etc.

But for combat balance there does need to be a middle to balance around, it'll be impossible to do with complete freedom of size.

[MrKiel]

Hmmm.

While I don't really use massive ships over 1mil mass, I understand that some people do and want them to be more effective.

But, as has already been said - there has to be a cutoff point somewhere (at least as far as combat is concerned) where building bigger becomes less effective.

The thing is, that's kind of what the problem was/is. So far, the only effective counter to a combat ship is... A bigger combat ship.


I don't see many big combat ships any more, the cost and risk of loss is too great to justify them. They tend to be for special occasions only. I mostly use ships that are inexpensive to run and replace. I'm inclined to think that encouraging smaller builds for PvP is the way forward - losing a big ship (combat or otherwise) is discouraging.

I believe (just my opinion, and I know it's not shared by all) that big, heavy ships are great for mining, refining and manufacturing, and they should be able to defend themselves to a point, but making them as capable as a specialist combat ship would be a mistake.

The other side of the coin is that setting the bar for combat ships even higher makes them less accessible to new players - it does nothing to solve the problem of newer players getting ganked outright by ships out of their price range.

So what's the answer? Not sure. Perhaps a mechanic that boosts CPU with more crew, so that bigger ships are better in some way?

Also worth mentioning that once the update is in place for wider testing, there's nothing to stop the numbers being increased. Nothing is set in stone right now.

TLDR I say give it a go, see where how it pans out.

[baddoggs]

@MrKiel, In PvP capable games that involve ships people are
ALLWAYS going to want "capital" ships. It is just human nature.
I personally only use "light" ships compaired to the ones refferd
to in this post but EVERY PVP you will ever play in your life, you
are allways going to see everything from outragous to plain stupid.

[MrKiel]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

@MrKiel, In PvP capable games that involve ships people are
ALLWAYS going to want "capital" ships. It is just human nature.
I personally only use "light" ships compaired to the ones refferd
to in this post but EVERY PVP you will ever play in your life, you
are allways going to see everything from outragous to plain stupid.

Yes. I don't see what your point is, sorry.

[baddoggs]

My point is, it dosen't matter what WE think.

[MrKiel]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

My point is, it dosen't matter what WE think.

Seems like an odd point to make and a little off-topic, but okay.

[NathanTheZealot]

Okay after some discussion on Discord, I've got a few conclusions.
First, my idea does not fully solve the issue of armor stacking. This is unfortunately true, you can still add armor points to infinity and beyond. (How useful those extra points are is a matter of ongoing debate, but I digress.) So, simple solution here, cap it. Just a hard cap. Something like 500k-1000k points. The largest version of the Daedalus I've ever built (mass just over 2 million) has 518k hit points to give you an idea of the scale. It should also be noted that an armor generator right now provides 100k hit points, so this is not that extreme.

My main concern with this change in armor is not that big ships lose an advantage (still a concern, but not the main one), it's that the small ships have all the advantage. A minimalist combat ship is faster, can turn better, is cheaper (both to build and operate), is easier to repair internal damage (assuming TTK is adjusted high enough that that's a combat advantage), and quite a few other minor benefits. These are all benefits they had before, but now they can tank just as well as any other ships.

Originally posted by NathanInThailand:

No matter how you balance the numbers, it will always make more sense to build a minimal ship with all firepower

This is my main concern. The smallest possible ship that can fit max weapon CPU will always be the best combat ship. There is no reason to build a big one. There will be no massive battleships, tanking attacks. All combat will be done by disposable gunships (gunwalls?). Any ship with a purpose that isn't sole combat has no reason to even slot weapons besides for skrill, just pure armor so you can keep your ship alive long enough to hopefully hit warp or open a rift. No point with weapons because you won't be able to hit it as often as it can hit you. Eventually this drags down to opinion of whether you want combat to have multiple size ships for combat and enable ships that aren't entirely combat focused to have a chance at victory that isn't running away.

[MrKiel]

Well, yes.

If you're it fitting for combat, then there's no point in building a ship larger than you need.

If however, you're planning to do anything else, then you'll need space for extractors, refineries, cargo pads, etc. So you're going to be playing an efficiency game - how big do you actually need the ship to be, to do what you want it to do?

I think this is kind of the point.

Big ships are expensive to build, expensive to run, and expensive to lose. Do you need a ship with more than 1-2 extractors and a refinery? Does it need all the bells and whistles you can fit? Does it have to have enough cargo space to build itself twice over again?

No. It's just convenient to be able to do all that, and if you want that convenience then you have to sacrifice something for it. Mass. Maneuverability. Risk.

You're asking, "why should a smaller ship have the advantage over a larger one?", but I ask "why wouldn't a ship that is designed solely for combat have the advantage over one that is not?"

How big does the ship need to be, anyway? If you increase the number of available weapons, shields, hitpoints to make larger ships more appealing, then you'll still have the same problem, just at a slightly different size class.

Would that be wise? Making the "best" combat ship something that is large and expensive to build & maintain? Wouldn't that shut newer players out of PvP until they can "build big"?


I appreciate your point, and I'm hoping that in the future there will be additional devices, weapons and possibly even shields that are heavy and power-hungry enough to only be fitted on larger ships, so that they do have more of a role. The small guns, after all, are still only named "small" guns. :)

But for now, combat changes are a necessity:

• Make PvP accessible, not gated behind enormous resource cost
  
• Ensure those entering into PvP aren't outright ganked or outclassed by overpowered ships (gun walls)
  
• End the scaling up of combat ships that put a drain on server resources
  
• Eliminate thoughtless device spam (just adding more guns, shields etc to win)

We have to start somewhere, and I hope there are additional devices for larger ships (like the strip miner did for mining!) in the future.

[Mojack]

some and many <words>, from somebody using big ships and thus biased.

My big ships are either Miners,
or a floating Home base:
A ship that has it all, does it all, so I can wander off into the fartherst corners off space
and stay there indefinitelly if I chose to do so.

Because I can (could), I put ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of shields and weapons on it.
It would not cross my mind, to use them for initiating PvP, since the risk off loss is always
present (bugs, disconnects, wife).
Its there for pure self defence, and it works nicelly as a deterrent.
(always puts a smile on my face, when approaching players ask for permission to come closer)

So,
It would really piss me off, if I am not capable no more to have any advantage with my big ship
over a small maxed combat ship coming at me, quite the opposite.
I am a sitting duck now.

Either I accept the risk, or I have to scale down, which means I can not gather at the speed
I am used to (ex. Quad Strip Miner)

To limit or punish ship size in this way means, I reach the endgame earlier, progress stops.
Only after my stockpile in the Vault grows big enough, that I simply do not care to lose
an expensive capital ship.

A solution would be capital ship sized systems (as already suggested),
that are big and heavy;
Like the Strip Miner and drone bay.
A ship with one Strip miner by nature has to be a big ship.
That device alone weights 250k and takes a lot of space, plus the reactor, batts and engines that have to support it.

Limits could also be introduced by ship cores. It could be the cockpit itself. It could be heavy and expencive. (think this was also suggested)

Whatever the method,
a slow big ship, needs to have more tank or some means, since it can not run,
which puts it in a really bad spot.

Dunno about others, but I dont want to be in that bad spot.

If I put time and effort into grinding up ressources, I want to use those ressources
for a big ship, but for sure I am not willing to sit there with my pants down.

Cuz there is nothing else to do (for me) in this game at its current state,
then to grind and proggress towards a bigger ship -
besides npc stations construction maybe.

Ship building is still the core of this game.
Please do not place that hard cap to low.

Also,
I do not agree with Devs argument "scaling into infinity".
Server, Computers and real life do not support "infinity"

(I was not able to spawn a ship with 4 Stirp Miners and 4 Drones bays. pretty finite for me)

[iO]

These limits are fantastic because they can be tweake... Now we have a good starting point...

Self healing armor is a fantastic idea and just makes sense... It just does..gives the game a proper feel of high tech.

I can see this concept being expanded to internal system as well.

Weapon limits are a good thing as well... If you want your ship to be an unbeatable death star mega gun sled what's the point?

The only way to defend against such creations is to build one of your own..

Is it really a freedom design questions ?

If everybody builds massive gun boats ...then everyone has to build massive gunboats to defend against them.

That in a way takes away users freedom of design because we all will have to build something just as capable...

It will be the cold war effect.. All designs could end up the same by convention since we all work from the same palette.

Capital and large ships have their place...without a doubt.

Just look at real shipping for example... Big ships have limits..lots of limits..

They are slow...heavy and need (pardon the pun), boat loads of power and a more than one person to operate.

Cap ships should be slow, slow to turn ..slow to warp..slow to fix.. Slow to be destroyed. Cap ships should Makes tons of heat...and require a fair amount of user overwatch and be impossible to hide from detection.

This takes nothing away from the ship power projection wise as she is still strong...

It just will take some work. As the user has selected size as one of the biases

This basic concept could be enforced in this game as well.

Users that want weapons platforms can have them..and weapons will be their perk..their bias...their specialty... They just have to be willing to sacrifice something.. High weps count may mean lower shield protection due to the high discharge rates..

Their bias is power projection..But their fault could be the power needed.. And limits to their other capabilities.

Looking good so far Devs

[Mojack]

@windy

you missed my point.
and I fail to see, how that is even possible.

to be fair - and for new players :

I maybe did not explain well enuff, that big ships are capped in speed.
That is what I meant by "sitting duck"

Cuz since this topic is discussed mostly between experienced players and the Devs,
I assumed it to be clear that I am refering to the low max speed of big ships.

Superior speed is the number one advantage in any scenario, its the most effectlive
and "cheapest" method of defence, and even attack.

So that being clarified, now, please, windy explain to me,
how is that "fantastic" if
ship A has : 40k shields, 40k armor, 16 guns, 380 speed, ressource cost 5 mil
ship B has : 40k shields, 40k armor, 16 guns, 150 speed, ressource cost 50 mil

[iO]

I'll do it in dicord one on one. Thanks mojack

Originally posted by Mojack:

@windy

you missed my point.
and I fail to see, how that is even possible.

to be fair - and for new players :

I maybe did not explain well enuff, that big ships are capped in speed.
That is what I meant by "sitting duck"

Cuz since this topic is discussed mostly between experienced players and the Devs,
I assumed it to be clear that I am refering to the low max speed of big ships.

Superior speed is the number one advantage in any scenario, its the most effectlive
and "cheapest" method of defence, and even attack.

So that being clarified, now, please, windy explain to me,
how is that "fantastic" if
ship A has : 40k shields, 40k armor, 16 guns, 380 speed, ressource cost 5 mil
ship B has : 40k shields, 40k armor, 16 guns, 150 speed, ressource cost 50 mil

[MrKiel]

It's not great Mojack, not looking good for big ships.

As much as I hate being on the same side of an debate as Windy, I believe that the short term overall benefits to PvP are worth it.

I hope that there will be additions in the future to make big ships more viable (up to a point, such as 'capital ship' versions of shields, armour and/or weapons), but I think you nailed it here:

Originally posted by Mojack:

I do not agree with Devs argument "scaling into infinity".
Server, Computers and real life do not support "infinity"

Players can build as big as they want to. As long as bigger ships are (for whatever reason) better, players will build bigger - more devices, more guns, more shields, more armour.

The game, and servers running it, cannot continue to support that system.

And for players, if the combat simply boils down to building an size n ship, then an n+1 ship to blow that up, then an n+2 to blow that up... well, that's a lot of grind and not much fun, and it means anyone starting PvP has to build a ship of size n+3 just to compete - that's just silly.

I don't know how to balance big ships in this equation, or even if they should be balanced at all, but I know something has to be done and this seems like a good starting point - but not the end.

[iO]

The balance point would be power and the faults that come with that if it were my game.

Factory ships like see in the work shop that have 15 of the same devices.... on board mining rocks look cool...

But should they be able to fight well or even protect itself well?

Also with out knowing the games setting or lore... We don't know if at this time ...that at the games release if the resource rates will be the same..

Capital ship class me be self-limited but resource spawn rates..

We just don't know.. By release it may be impossible to build some of the city ships.. It may large ships of a curtain mass may require users to team up and share vaults...who knows what the future will bring once a back story is I place.


I think last year or maybe it were 2 year back... mojack, we had an interesting back and forth on ship classes being a thing in this game. ( I think it were you and I)

The concept called for the user to select their class prior to laying the ship out. Using it a guidance.

Maybe that concept could be revisited ?

Mrk. ..there is no side mate..these are just thought concepts.. If there be a side... I will side with the devs as they know best how to structure their game.

[NathanTheZealot]

Originally posted by windyblack:

Cap ships should be slow, slow to turn ..slow to warp..slow to fix.. Slow to be destroyed.
Looking good so far Devs

This bit right here shows that you don't actually have any clue what the armor system even is and that you haven't actually read my post or you would be disagreeing with the armor system, so please stop derailing my threads.

MrKiel, I'm not sure why you have this assumption that bigger is always better in every regard. They can't add any more weapons. They do have lots of drawbacks, and it is not guaranteed that they will win every engagement. As an attacker they're liable to lose most, or at least be unable to actually destroy the ship before it manages to leave weapon range thanks to superior speed.
However, even if you assume that to be the case, the armor mechanic currently in experimental has the opposite effect. The smaller ship will win, assuming it's of the same tier. I don't know why no one else sees this as the main issue. There will be no variety.

Originally posted by MrKiel:

You're asking, "why should a smaller ship have the advantage over a larger one?", but I ask "why wouldn't a ship that is designed solely for combat have the advantage over one that is not?

Short answer: they have too much advantage under this system. All ships, no matter the cost, will be equally as easy to destroy. It's always been the case that pure combat ships win more fights, but this update only tips the scale even more firmly in their favor. I don't think it's that much of an opinion that the more expensive thing to add to the game should be more expensive to remove from the game.

You also mentioned the idea of allowing people to join in PvP sooner. This is completely flawed. You'll still be unable to effectively fight a tier 2 or 3 combat ship if you're flying a tier 1 fighter. By the time you have enough tier 2 and 3 resources to risk some of them on a combat ship, I'd hardly call you new. New players can attack (if they really want to get into combat) other new players.
Why should new players be allowed to attack and win against veterans with ease early on? By that logic strip miners, drone bays, etc., should be unlocked and available from the get go. Why should they be gated behind mining?