Special Weapons Complaints

posted on July 30th, 2009, 6:12 pm

Since nobody seems to have complained about this in a while, and the Devs haven't given a heads up whether anything in this area is going to be changed for the next patch... a few complaints follow:

FIRST: Damage splitting weapons--most specifically Nanites, Field of Fire, and Plasma Coil. At the point when you can use Nanites and Field of Fire in battle, there are too many ships, and thus the abilities are practically worthless. Since Plasma Coil comes earlier, it is still useful, but mid game and later it's power rapidly fades as there are too many ships--regardless if they are small vessels.

I'd like to suggest a change to these damage splitting weapons, in order to constrain their overall capabilities, but at the same time to ensure their usefulness. Instead of having the damage split between ALL units within the area of affect, what about giving the weapon a max split affect: in other words, these Area of Effect Weapons would affect a specific amount of units and no more.

Thus, when cast, the weapon would deal damage to up to N number of units in the region, and its damage dealt would be split between these N number of units. For instance, if Nanites did 100 damage, it would still deal 100 damage to an isolated unit, but if 20 units were present and the N for Nanites was only 10... then only 10 units would be affected--each one with 10 damage points.

Maybe with some modification, this system would still allow these sort of special weapons to be deadly... instead of everyone just crowding their units in one location to avoid incurring almost any damage (1 point of damage is pretty easily regenerated...).

SECOND: There still exist at least two extremely deadly special weapons which have seen barely any changes--and which are quite powerful with very little skill. Those are the Canaveral's Sensor Blackout (75% reduction in damage over 25 seconds) and the Generix Support refit's Shield Recharge.

I request that the Sensor Blackouts' range of effect (not how close the ship has to be to deploy the weapon--rather how large an area the special weapon affects) be either decreased to medium, or the time the weapon lasts be reduced. I honestly prefer the first route, as this will allow people to again micromanage their units to attack from different sides. At this time, Sensor Blackout affects an enormous area when triggered, and makes it so any unit which attacks the Canaveral from any direction will be affected regardless of where the weapon is triggered (I believe Blackout affects a radius of long range... it could be a diameter of long range--can't remember off the top of my head  ). This is quite ridiculous, and allows you to easily remove your opponent's firepower--especially when considering that you only need 1-2 Canaverals in total (each one can use the ability twice without recharging).

Shield Recharge can be set to automatic weapons (in fact, most people use this) and it will recharge your friendly ship's shields constantly for quite a long time--again very little micromanagement needed. I think the only change needed here is to slightly increase the energy usage of the Shield Recharge.

posted on July 30th, 2009, 6:32 pm

FIRST: agreed
SECOND: agreed.

posted on July 30th, 2009, 6:53 pm

FIRST: agreed too
SECOND: partially agreeing. The shield recharge is the romulan key to survival in laggy games, where you can't micro, and we all know that klingons and romulans are the races that rely most on instant microing (ok,klingons are a topic of their own at the moment). We also know that lagging is present in most games with more than 3 players and when users from US and EU are participating. In games where the romulans can micro, this is an unfair extra I agree. 

posted on July 30th, 2009, 7:57 pm

Sry dominus i didnt read the whole thing, but at the mention of the plasma coil being good in only the early part, i have an idea

What if you could upgrade the plasma coil?

For instance right now (havent played in a while so correct if im wrong)

the build order is mining, small shipyard, and then whatever unlocks the norway, then the norway reserch, so, maybye we could make it so that you can upgrade it with 1000 trilithium, 500 dilithium, and having........... the advanced shipyard built, or somthing so that its strength can be increased later, because the feds realy on the norway the most, the other support ships cant match up to well, and with no miranda 2 to help us in regular play..............

same for kligons as well, maybye an upgrade

as for nanites, omg can they please be removed, that has got to be the most annoying voice, and annoying messing up your screen, and the most annoying thing in the game, (havent played for a few ptaches so tell me if it was changed)

posted on July 30th, 2009, 8:14 pm

Sensor Blackout's effect is long range (radius 400, diameter 800 obviously)  I do know it off the top of my head.
I'm curious how you could pick out only 10 ships (basetargets maybe?)  However they do it, I do like the ship cap idea.  It works well for nanites, because there's still the annoying gui effect that can affect any ship.

Another thought is maybe field of fire could only affect certain ships?  Maybe some ships are more prone to internal explosions than others?  Maybe ships with photon torpedoes on board?  Just a thought.

And if Wippien ends up being all the rage for games with a lot of players in it, there might not be any lag anymore, even if playing with someone from the EU/US.

posted on July 30th, 2009, 9:26 pm

  Agree, sensor blackout is too powerful. I suggest that special weapon to be placed on remoore class. That way, it will enter in the game later. The sensor blackout is the bane of the early klingon gameplay. And the duration should be reduced a bit. 25 second is a bit much.
  Also, gravimetric mine mecanics should be changed a bit. Maybe klingons could deploy it like romulans do ? And costs a litle bit less energy ? I think this should be valid for fighters too. They should cost only energy and supplies. That way maybe people would actually use them.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 12:05 am

Sry dominus i didnt read the whole thing, but at the mention of the plasma coil being good in only the early part, i have an idea

What if you could upgrade the plasma coil?

For instance right now (havent played in a while so correct if im wrong)

the build order is mining, small shipyard, and then whatever unlocks the norway, then the norway reserch, so, maybye we could make it so that you can upgrade it with 1000 trilithium, 500 dilithium, and having........... the advanced shipyard built, or somthing so that its strength can be increased later, because the feds realy on the norway the most, the other support ships cant match up to well, and with no miranda 2 to help us in regular play..............

same for kligons as well, maybye an upgrade

as for nanites, omg can they please be removed, that has got to be the most annoying voice, and annoying messing up your screen, and the most annoying thing in the game, (havent played for a few ptaches so tell me if it was changed)

sry dominus and ray i didnt read both of ur posts but at the mention of "didnt read the whole thing" i suddenly want to share:

[align=center]ATTENTION fleetops users:

TESTICLES !!!

that is all.[/align]

posted on July 31st, 2009, 12:43 am

Yeah, well, your MOM!

Aaaaaanywaaaaaay, back on topic. I agree Galefury, some rework of the Graviton Marker is needed... taking less energy would certainly be nice (that way you can decloak and work your magic). Honestly it seems as if many Klingon vessels now require waaaaay too much special energy for their special weapons. 

posted on July 31st, 2009, 12:48 am

Wouldn't a high SE cost imply that they are not too efficient? Which would usually describe them well.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 1:23 am

To me each race should have one weapon of Pure Power. Something that if used can really twist things in battle. Because I personally think each race should have one or two ships boasting power exceeding others of its race within its game period. (For example: One early game and one late game ship boasting incredible power making it a priority target. Each race should have one where their powers each cripple or work in some differing way. Such as a weapon where damage increases the more ships within radius.)

posted on July 31st, 2009, 6:12 am

concerning area weapons... I would use a different approack. I believe the best balance between constDamage for each ship and 1/nrOfShips time a ground damage per Ship would be a factor that balances between these extrema, increasing the overall-damage with the number of ships, but also decreases the damage per ship when more ships are present. This could be achieved by a factor 1/squareroot(nrOfShips) or 1/(1+log(nrOfShips)) depending of the developement of the slope. This can't be too much of a work to be implemented.

For the first case and a arbitrarily proposed ground damage of 500 applied on ...
... 1 ship ... 500 damage (one monsoon (478) dies)
... 2 ships ... 354 damage/ship (nearly kills a rhienn disruptor refit (397))
... 3 ships ... 288 damage/ship (kills a rhienn torp refit (275))
... 4 ships ... 250 damage/ship (still kills off a brel (237) or a bug (245))
... 5 ships ... 223 damage/ship
... 6 ships ... 204 damage/ship
... 7 ships ... 189 damage/ship
... 8 ships ... 177 damage/ship
... 9 ships ... 167 damage/ship
... 10 ships ... 158 damage/ship (still removes the half lifepoins of an average destroyer)

This suggestion features too high damage, especially when stacked, so please expect it to get a lower ground damage.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 10:43 am

To me each race should have one weapon of Pure Power. Something that if used can really twist things in battle. Because I personally think each race should have one or two ships boasting power exceeding others of its race within its game period. (For example: One early game and one late game ship boasting incredible power making it a priority target. Each race should have one where their powers each cripple or work in some differing way. Such as a weapon where damage increases the more ships within radius.)

So basically commander units aka Dawn of War 1?

posted on July 31st, 2009, 11:32 am

yep i'm thinking about some changes for the splitting weapons again, similar to what posted here earlier.

Sensor Blackout, Shield Recharge and Cascade Feedback are all on todo for removal, replacement or change

[mimesot]

posted on July 31st, 2009, 12:40 pm

Last edited by mimesot on July 31st, 2009, 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I personally feel that no one of these unique features should get removed, just modified so they are acceptable for proper gameplay.

The plasma coil is essencial IMO, as it is THE anti-spammer-weapon for the feds.

The cloakers lack of staying power (except the d'dederidex which is slow cant escape, thus especially needs the support) and recloacing is not much of an option, as 2 seconds are a long time in a battle, so shield recharge is the essential part of late game battle retreat. So a removal of that valuable feature would need a replacement by a rescue-jump, instant cloak or auto-repair.

The klingons are even more in need of such features, as they have even higher cloaking times and lower defense values.

Cascade feedback is a feature, whichs role in game I am not so sure about. But IMO it should stay at least for its creativity.

EDIT: Just for my personal pleasure ... what would you think about upgradeable special weapons. E.g. that the basic shield recharge (much lower than the present one) is researchable as it is now, but an additional, very expensive upgrade, that enables the current power of the generix again. The rason for this suggestion is, that in most (laggy) games the romulan power growth is not smooth. In the early stges romulans are really vulnerable and once they get that special they are stable as a rock. This seems an unfortunate behaviour of their gameplay for me.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 2:13 pm

Might I suggest also taking a look at the Eresis' Radiation Array weapon too then? Currently it does almost no damage (I'm dead serious) and it does split damage... which is quite odd for a weapon of that caliber (or lack theroff).

Yes... not so sure how I feel about removing weapons... but I guess I'll have to wait and see how things go.