Waiter, Hold the Spam Please!

posted on September 12th, 2009, 6:40 pm

Not even Spheres or Probes Tyler?

posted on September 12th, 2009, 6:40 pm

Plan B

posted on September 12th, 2009, 6:41 pm

 

posted on September 12th, 2009, 7:02 pm

I see two variations of options to make things less spamable.
1. Nerf: Take away one of the defining abilities of the spamable ship and require a support vessel nearby to give it back to them.

Example:
The ability to shoot at artillery range could be given to a support vessel (i.e. "Increase all Level 5 ships (of some type) range by 1"), requires special energy.

1.2: Nerf(general)

Example:
The Excelsior II's level 5 artillery range could be changed to torpedoes only and make the torpedoes forward firing only (keeping the phasers at long and 360 degrees). Makes the Excelsior II have to commit more.

Give the Excelsior II's (and some other kiters) a minimum range for their torpedoes.


2. Counter for Counter (for Counter):
No, not rock-paper-scissor counters, which thankfully FO does *not* have. But at least some general counters to long range classes.

Klingons with a 1 sec decloak (w/ 4 sec cloak) on certain short range vessels would be a nice little counter.


EVE helps prevent spamming (by guilds) by basically not allowing "big gun" type weapons to hit little targets. FO has this to a degree (with the torpedo miss chance against little targets), but it could be cranked up a notch (say, by also adding a miss chance to phasers) giving a counter to all late game units by massing cheaper early game units. This would in turn require the late game units to be accompanied by some earlier game units (increasing fleet diversity and giving some life to those early units late game).

posted on September 12th, 2009, 7:04 pm

I'd prefer counters over nerfing (mainly because I hate that concept entirely).

posted on September 12th, 2009, 7:16 pm

Yes, I'd prefer counters as well Tyler, though a few ship classes seem overtly powerful against all units and structures 

Some nice ideas Yandonman, I like your idea for minimum ranges on a few torpedo based vessels especially

posted on September 12th, 2009, 8:20 pm

Well, if the game is well balanced, there is not such a thing like spamming.

When every ship got its own purpose, the shouldnt be a way that it would be the "best" ship. I hope you understand.

To me, in Fleet Ops I think there are sometimes too many ships out there. Okay, on large Maps, it would be okay if you have 100 ships, but there are two problems:

At first you have to handle all those ships parallel. The AI can do that, you not.
The second point is, that more ships with less abilities do the same job as one ship with many abilities. The only disadvantage is: It cant be on many places in one timepoint. Many little ships can.

So when we want to stop spamming, the idea could be: Make the ships holding out longer. Double the time you need to destroy a ship and make the costs of a ship x2. We already are able to do this. With this method, you have fewer ships, must think in a more stratecig way and have the advantage, that you can recall your ship instead of letting it being destroyed by another one.

In canon, the fight between two ships is never clear. In Fleet Ops, always the ship with the better stats wins, even if they are only slightly better. If we could change THIS behavior, it would be more interesting.

For example in live-action games like Klingon Academy, you were able to take out a K'tinga cruiser with a bird of prey, if you were good enough. In Fleet-Ops, this wouldnt be possible.

So my question is: How can we do that AND... DO we want that in the first place?

[RYDERSTORM]

posted on September 13th, 2009, 1:35 am

Last edited by RYDERSTORM on September 13th, 2009, 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

In canon, the fight between two ships is never clear. In Fleet Ops, always the ship with the better stats wins, even if they are only slightly better. If we could change THIS behavior, it would be more interesting.

For example in live-action games like Klingon Academy, you were able to take out a K'tinga cruiser with a bird of prey, if you were good enough. In Fleet-Ops, this wouldnt be possible.

So my question is: How can we do that AND... DO we want that in the first place?

I agree it would be more interesting but on the other hand in mp matchs it would really suck to mass up a diverse expensive fleet and have it taken out by first build ships due to a "randomization modifier" thingy...I see that as very unbalanced.....so my answer is no I dont want that.


EDIT: On a side note...WOHHOO!!!!! 300th post now I gota watch 300.

posted on September 13th, 2009, 1:47 am

you can take out a cruiser with a brel. The brel has just to be good enough - or also called veteran The attributes have been implemented to give players a fast way to compare units. Thats important in an rts.

On the other hand, a complete torpedo-based vessel needs quite a good attributes advantage if it wants to win against a destroyer of similar attributes-level. So we already have something similar. But the next patch will include some new elements that will underline that and give each unit a bit more profile

posted on September 13th, 2009, 1:54 am

I would just hate to see a feature where a veteran galaxy could get blown to bits by a first rank brel in a one on one fight or something similar. Though bug ramming is kinda similar to this at least it costs the player a ship to do it. 

posted on September 13th, 2009, 9:12 am

nah we dont like those extreme counters, too.
The new unit profiling won't exceed the degree we already have with torpedo and pulse weapons. They give the last ditch to cost efficency, but they dont make a vessel totally worse if used in the 'wrong' place. Thats also canon, a photon torpedo in Star Trek is always a good tool to blow something up

posted on September 13th, 2009, 11:12 am

actually there will always be main ships in every fleet that will be spammed, the question is just: do they need more ships as support or not. Actually no player should be able to whipe the floor with a oponent just with 1 ship type. thats the main problem that i see

posted on September 13th, 2009, 1:04 pm

Caveat - Cubes.

If you leave the collective alone long enough that they actually can deploy a FLEET of Cubes, you deserve what you get.

posted on September 13th, 2009, 3:34 pm

Yeah, well Cubes aren't exactly easy to spam (cost and CC's) and nor are they good to spam (medium range and slow). So many counters exist for the cube that you'd have to be pretty silly to want to spam them... unless you are facing a pretty inexperienced foe.

posted on September 13th, 2009, 6:26 pm

I've yet to find much of a reason to move cubes in more than a trio.

One station-breaker (3x Torp, 1 Regen, 2 Tac)
Two General Mayhem (3x Torp, 1 Regen, 1 Tac, 1 Beam)

With Boarding, Devestating Attack, Sensor Relay, and Partial Adaption for them, they do a nasty number on most things.  Of course, if you let the Borg build up to that without at LEAST assembling a massive fleet of doom, you probably deserve it coming in and popping your stuff like cheap balloons.