some general ideas about game balancing
1, 2
posted on August 5th, 2009, 8:59 pm
Last edited by tom on August 5th, 2009, 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
i've been playing FO for some time now (maybe not as long as the old timers here 
) and i developed a few ideas that i would like to share. i'm by no means on a negative side here, this mod is really gr8 imo.
1. my first concern is how ships counter each other. for example what is a chance of saber killing negh'var. with a good micro its 100%, but it should be 0%. to solve this 'issue' i think that negh'vars shields should take no damage from the saber. they should take no damage from all pulse and beam that is fired by destroyers but should take normal damage from torpedoes. from the opposite side negh'vars torpedoes should miss the saber 100% of times and his beam weapon should miss 90%. what this would achieve is that we would have soft and hard counters for units. its already in FO but not to an extend that it should be imo (the breen battleship has no counter). so a ship like sus'a would be a hard counter for a battleship like soveregin but it would be hard countered by a pulse based destroyer (b'rel for ex). a torpedo based light cruiser would be a soft counter for a battleship as it would take some damage from it, but it wouldn't be bothered to much by destroyers (maybe a little more by the beam ones).
2. to much value is put to weapon range right now. some units should be able to 'kite' other units but the entire fed fleet should not be able to 'kite' the entire klingon fleet. my idea to change this is: make short range weapons a shock weapons. a b'rel should fire 6 shots per burst and the burst should take almost the same time it takes now, but the reload time should be 3-4 times longer. the long range weapons should be like saber ones now, faster reload then short range weapons but smaller damage. to put it simple: a short range saber should fire 6 times in 2 sec then reload 10s and a long range saber should fire once every 2s so the damage output of both ships after 12 s is the same.
3. i'm almost always floating tritanium late in the game. tritanium is used for teching but is otherwise useless. make support ships cost more tritanium then dilitium. something like an reverse of war ships (200d/450t for ex). this would mean that if u want a lot of support ship u need to sacrifice ur teching. along with this i would change support ship stats.the first support ship should be fast (110-120), off close to 10 and def close to 20. so for every 10 war ships there would be 1 support ship but u would need to take care of it better then now cuz a loss of it would slow ur teching especially early game. most special abilities should have long and some even arty range (i mean range of 'casting' not effect range). the reason for this change is that right now i can only see big BLOBs of ships all together. the only concern u can have it to put ships having similar speed into ur command groups.
4. special abilities should cost less (right now 300d/800t. c'mon, thats way too much for a polaron field) but should research longer. and i mean way longer so building 2 research stations of the same kind would not be a misclick but actually a valid fast teching strat. also u should be able to start researching 3rd support ship ability right after 2nd one is started, u dont actually have to finish researching the 2nd one b4.
5. i would guess that hit chance base on ship moving or not is not possible in the current stage of development, right? it would be really cool if a stationary destroyer would be hit more often then a moving one (i think it would not include battleships as those things r to big & slow anyway).
6. ships should start with short or medium weapon range. for every ship there should be research options available in the shipyard: 'extend weapon range' & 'extend special energy'. this would add a little more depth to teching and allow ships from tier 1&2 to scale to late game better.
7. change targeting so ships target enemy ships closest to them. this is really a MUST. please, please do that.
8. i think i had more but i cant remember right now, i'll add them when my memory has a better day.
i hope somebody will be stubborn enough to read this WALL of text (one of the devs maybe
). this is also not a demand of anything, just some ideas of mine.
) and i developed a few ideas that i would like to share. i'm by no means on a negative side here, this mod is really gr8 imo.1. my first concern is how ships counter each other. for example what is a chance of saber killing negh'var. with a good micro its 100%, but it should be 0%. to solve this 'issue' i think that negh'vars shields should take no damage from the saber. they should take no damage from all pulse and beam that is fired by destroyers but should take normal damage from torpedoes. from the opposite side negh'vars torpedoes should miss the saber 100% of times and his beam weapon should miss 90%. what this would achieve is that we would have soft and hard counters for units. its already in FO but not to an extend that it should be imo (the breen battleship has no counter). so a ship like sus'a would be a hard counter for a battleship like soveregin but it would be hard countered by a pulse based destroyer (b'rel for ex). a torpedo based light cruiser would be a soft counter for a battleship as it would take some damage from it, but it wouldn't be bothered to much by destroyers (maybe a little more by the beam ones).
2. to much value is put to weapon range right now. some units should be able to 'kite' other units but the entire fed fleet should not be able to 'kite' the entire klingon fleet. my idea to change this is: make short range weapons a shock weapons. a b'rel should fire 6 shots per burst and the burst should take almost the same time it takes now, but the reload time should be 3-4 times longer. the long range weapons should be like saber ones now, faster reload then short range weapons but smaller damage. to put it simple: a short range saber should fire 6 times in 2 sec then reload 10s and a long range saber should fire once every 2s so the damage output of both ships after 12 s is the same.
3. i'm almost always floating tritanium late in the game. tritanium is used for teching but is otherwise useless. make support ships cost more tritanium then dilitium. something like an reverse of war ships (200d/450t for ex). this would mean that if u want a lot of support ship u need to sacrifice ur teching. along with this i would change support ship stats.the first support ship should be fast (110-120), off close to 10 and def close to 20. so for every 10 war ships there would be 1 support ship but u would need to take care of it better then now cuz a loss of it would slow ur teching especially early game. most special abilities should have long and some even arty range (i mean range of 'casting' not effect range). the reason for this change is that right now i can only see big BLOBs of ships all together. the only concern u can have it to put ships having similar speed into ur command groups.
4. special abilities should cost less (right now 300d/800t. c'mon, thats way too much for a polaron field) but should research longer. and i mean way longer so building 2 research stations of the same kind would not be a misclick but actually a valid fast teching strat. also u should be able to start researching 3rd support ship ability right after 2nd one is started, u dont actually have to finish researching the 2nd one b4.
5. i would guess that hit chance base on ship moving or not is not possible in the current stage of development, right? it would be really cool if a stationary destroyer would be hit more often then a moving one (i think it would not include battleships as those things r to big & slow anyway).
6. ships should start with short or medium weapon range. for every ship there should be research options available in the shipyard: 'extend weapon range' & 'extend special energy'. this would add a little more depth to teching and allow ships from tier 1&2 to scale to late game better.
7. change targeting so ships target enemy ships closest to them. this is really a MUST. please, please do that.
8. i think i had more but i cant remember right now, i'll add them when my memory has a better day
.i hope somebody will be stubborn enough to read this WALL of text (one of the devs maybe
). this is also not a demand of anything, just some ideas of mine.
posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:06 pm
posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:25 pm
Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on August 5th, 2009, 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Idea 1: Let me just state right off the bat that I HATE hard counters. Rock, paper, scissors is boring and unoriginal--just in my opinion of course. Using range and micromanagement should be the way to defeat players mainly... not just being able to build the right ship mindlessly for the situation. Can you imagine what would happen if you'd lost your small shipyard and yet were surrounded by tiny ships... instant loss pretty much, no? Why does the Breen ship have no counter? I'm confused... Personally I like the current balance--again with the exception of the Klingons (which you seem to be focusing on a lot in this post 
)
Idea 2: Yes, I do like burst damaging more for the short ranged units--always thought it was fitting for the Klingons anyway, and it would certainly give you more "instant" kill scenarios.
Idea 3: I find it peculiar that you are floating tritanium (again with Klingons I presume? It's the only faction I have trouble managing my resources properly... usually anyway). I always run out of both honestly--maybe it's just the way I tech up. Not sure about the rest...
Idea 4: I'd say that special abilities do cost very little at the moment (with the exception of the Klingons really ). I don't particularly like the idea of fast teching... it reminds me a lot of CnC3... which was disastrous because of how quickly you could tech up . Researching times increasing would be interesting... I don't have anything else to say on it really, but unfortunately I think that would mean that support units would become much less useful and much less built.
Idea 5: indeed this is possible. No idea it if will be implemented though...
EDIT:
With Idea 6: hmmm, I really don't like that to be honest. I mean, I just can't see a Defiant firing long range pulses, or a Borg Scout Cube getting a long range torpedo. Nice thought nonetheless
)Idea 2: Yes, I do like burst damaging more for the short ranged units--always thought it was fitting for the Klingons anyway, and it would certainly give you more "instant" kill scenarios.
Idea 3: I find it peculiar that you are floating tritanium (again with Klingons I presume? It's the only faction I have trouble managing my resources properly... usually anyway). I always run out of both honestly--maybe it's just the way I tech up. Not sure about the rest...
Idea 4: I'd say that special abilities do cost very little at the moment (with the exception of the Klingons really
). I don't particularly like the idea of fast teching... it reminds me a lot of CnC3... which was disastrous because of how quickly you could tech up . Researching times increasing would be interesting... I don't have anything else to say on it really, but unfortunately I think that would mean that support units would become much less useful and much less built.Idea 5: indeed this is possible. No idea it if will be implemented though...
EDIT:
With Idea 6: hmmm, I really don't like that to be honest. I mean, I just can't see a Defiant firing long range pulses, or a Borg Scout Cube getting a long range torpedo. Nice thought nonetheless
posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:40 pm
posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:41 pm
Last edited by tom on August 5th, 2009, 9:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Dominus_Noctis wrote:Idea 1: Let me just state right off the bat that I HATE hard counters. Rock, paper, scissors is boring and unoriginal--just in my opinion of course. Using range and micromanagement should be the way to defeat players mainly... not just being able to build the right ship mindlessly for the situation. Can you imagine warping in a Descent if you only have Rhienns? Why does the Breen ship have no counter? I'm confused... Personally I like the current balance--again with the exception of the Klingons (which you seem to be focusing on a lot in this post
imo it would require more micro. having a hard counter for every unit is just the opposite of spamming. it promotes combined arms like nothing else.
i just play klingons the most, but my post addresses general gameplay i think
Dominus_Noctis wrote:Idea 3: I find it peculiar that you are floating tritanium (again with Klingons I presume? It's the only faction I have trouble managing my resources properly... usually anyway). I always run out of both honestly--maybe it's just the way I tech up. Not sure about the rest...
thats because most games dont last long. after u research everything u will float tritanium cuz there r no things that u can build for it (that is if u dont have support refit as ur main ship
). not only with the klingons btw 
Dominus_Noctis wrote:Idea 4: I'd say that special abilities do cost very little at the moment (with the exception of the Klingons really ). I don't particularly like the idea of fast teching... it reminds me a lot of CnC3... which was disastrous because of how quickly you could tech up . Researching times increasing would be interesting... I don't have anything else to say on it really, but unfortunately I think that would mean that support units would become much less useful and much less built.
imo it would take longer to tech with this idea.
Adm. Zaxxon wrote:Ok, Let me clarify, A rock parer scissors battle is really boreing, and takes no skill. I think that the way ships work right now is fine, but like I said, when a small ship takes on a larger more advanced ship, in order to do any damage to the shields of the ship, they would have to divert power from other subsystems. That is all I mean.
u got it wrong i think. its always dominus killing my ideas with his misconception of what i meant
i'll write more about the idea laterposted on August 5th, 2009, 9:49 pm
thats because most games dont last long. after u research everything u will float tritanium cuz there r no things that u can build for it (that is if u dont have support refit as ur main ship ). not only with the klingons btw
In what game do you research everything honestly?
With Dominion I move my miners around so that I never have an imbalance. With Feds I do lots of research and support ships. With Borg, I switch modules (I always run out of dilithium not tritanium actually)... so I have never found the tritanium issue to be true honestly.
I have to go to a research practice symposium now, but I'll write more later. Sorry for not going through all the points immediately
posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:51 pm
I rarely get to sovereigns. Some one has usually one by then. I don't think I have ever researched all the tech in a online game.
Some one has usually one by then. I don't think I have ever researched all the tech in a online game.posted on August 5th, 2009, 10:06 pm
Last edited by tom on August 5th, 2009, 10:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Dominus_Noctis wrote:In what game do you research everything honestly?
With Dominion I move my miners around so that I never have an imbalance. With Feds I do lots of research and support ships. With Borg, I switch modules (I always run out of dilithium not tritanium actually)... so I have never found the tritanium issue to be true honestly.
I have to go to a research practice symposium now, but I'll write more later. Sorry for not going through all the points immediately
dominus i swear some day i will go to US and i will talk u to death. u took the first sentence from my idea and made it the idea
. this idea is to make support ships more valuable and less spamable. as much as i like to see 5 norexan back up by 12 support refits i just dont think it works well (it works for romulan player but not the gameplay). what is wrong with sensor blackout? i think that fleet containing 7 war ships and 5 canaverals is wrong. i would like to leave sensor blackout as is and limit canaveral spam.what will u achieve by nerfing sensor blackout to 10s? the fed player will just need more canaverals. with dil/trit cost altering canaverals would be harder to spam and spaming them would cut ur teching to 0. i would like support ships special abilities to be strong but the ships itself to be too valuable to just throw it in the middle of a battle. if u destroy my support refit now i dont care cuz i have 10 more
posted on August 5th, 2009, 10:11 pm
@Dominus
He actually was stating that, in the long run, Tritanium is always a surplus, as most of its use is research. IF you finish all your research, ship building uses considerably less tritanium (or dilithium availability limits the shipbuilding) so you end up with excess of it.
And yes, online games tend to be excessively fast. That's the reason I try to go for strategies that force the other players to slow down to my rythm. Otherwise, I'm dead meat.
He actually was stating that, in the long run, Tritanium is always a surplus, as most of its use is research. IF you finish all your research, ship building uses considerably less tritanium (or dilithium availability limits the shipbuilding) so you end up with excess of it.
And yes, online games tend to be excessively fast. That's the reason I try to go for strategies that force the other players to slow down to my rythm. Otherwise, I'm dead meat.
posted on August 5th, 2009, 11:17 pm
Last edited by tom on August 6th, 2009, 12:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
i will try to analyze romulans (not klingons 
) vs the feds (also not klingons) to get the first idea clarified:
what we have now (this is greatly simplified but lets keep it basic shall we):
spam rhienn early game (this is spaming, i think there is no question about it). get to genrix asap. spam generix. toss a few more ships into ur generix BLOB.
what is a counter for rhienn? i would say saber (?) is at least till refit is researched. but we all know there is only one strat with the feds -> warpin ftw ('for the win' if somebody doesnt know) + canaveral & excelsior2 spam later.
what i would like to see:
i would like to have a nice fast shock destroyer (monsoon i assume) that would close up with rhienn and dish a massive damage in a short time. on the other hand i would like to have i would like to have a light cruiser for romulans (griffin is nice) that would punish stupid raid on my rhienns (disruptor refit could be a long range ship while torpedo is a shock ship). this way monsoon counters rhienn but griffin counters monsoon so u need, lets say, saber to fight griffin. if u understand me right the game is not as simple as rock/paper/scissors. first u need to find a good balance of saber+monsoon, then u need to micro ur ships so the actually attack what they should. to make it even more interesting some 'crowd control' weapon is needed so just blobing all ur ships together wont work. but we already have something like this: for feds its sensor blackout and for romulans its serkas (arty ship) they just need a little change.
sensor blackout: change 'casting' range to long and effect range to short. this means that blobing ur fleet is certain death to romulan player as feds just use sensor blackout and move in with their ships. spreading ur fleet is the way to go vs sensor blackout. the way it should be imo
serkas: just make the ships faster and the torpedoes faster. fed player blobs his ships together -> boom, no ships left.
if u think this is simple just look how much value it adds to the gameplay:
1. u need to position ur fleet right so sabers attack griffins and so on
2. u cant blob
3. u need to balance ur fleet more
4. u need to think ahead and scout what ur opponent is building to get those counters b4 ur opponent has a mass of ships that counter yours
look how much cloaking is improved. u can cloak ur griffins and only show rhienns. this way ur opponent can think that u dont have a counter to his monsoons and assault ur rhiens only to be welcomed be a salvo from decloaking griffins. u can send some cloaked torpedo refitted rhienns behind ur enemy lines and after battle starts u can decloak and take out canaverals so u can blob and make it harder for the fed player to target saber->griffin, monsoon->rhienn.
this is what hard and soft counter are about not just: u r building rhienns so i will smap monsoons and win, yay!
) vs the feds (also not klingons) to get the first idea clarified:what we have now (this is greatly simplified but lets keep it basic shall we):
spam rhienn early game (this is spaming, i think there is no question about it). get to genrix asap. spam generix. toss a few more ships into ur generix BLOB.
what is a counter for rhienn? i would say saber (?) is at least till refit is researched. but we all know there is only one strat with the feds -> warpin ftw ('for the win' if somebody doesnt know
) + canaveral & excelsior2 spam later.what i would like to see:
i would like to have a nice fast shock destroyer (monsoon i assume) that would close up with rhienn and dish a massive damage in a short time. on the other hand i would like to have i would like to have a light cruiser for romulans (griffin is nice) that would punish stupid raid on my rhienns (disruptor refit could be a long range ship while torpedo is a shock ship). this way monsoon counters rhienn but griffin counters monsoon so u need, lets say, saber to fight griffin. if u understand me right the game is not as simple as rock/paper/scissors. first u need to find a good balance of saber+monsoon, then u need to micro ur ships so the actually attack what they should. to make it even more interesting some 'crowd control' weapon is needed so just blobing all ur ships together wont work. but we already have something like this
: for feds its sensor blackout and for romulans its serkas (arty ship) they just need a little change.sensor blackout: change 'casting' range to long and effect range to short. this means that blobing ur fleet is certain death to romulan player as feds just use sensor blackout and move in with their ships. spreading ur fleet is the way to go vs sensor blackout. the way it should be imo
serkas: just make the ships faster and the torpedoes faster. fed player blobs his ships together -> boom, no ships left.
if u think this is simple just look how much value it adds to the gameplay:
1. u need to position ur fleet right so sabers attack griffins and so on
2. u cant blob
3. u need to balance ur fleet more
4. u need to think ahead and scout what ur opponent is building to get those counters b4 ur opponent has a mass of ships that counter yours
look how much cloaking is improved. u can cloak ur griffins and only show rhienns. this way ur opponent can think that u dont have a counter to his monsoons and assault ur rhiens only to be welcomed be a salvo from decloaking griffins. u can send some cloaked torpedo refitted rhienns behind ur enemy lines and after battle starts u can decloak and take out canaverals so u can blob and make it harder for the fed player to target saber->griffin, monsoon->rhienn.
this is what hard and soft counter are about not just: u r building rhienns so i will smap monsoons and win, yay!
posted on August 5th, 2009, 11:52 pm
posted on August 6th, 2009, 12:04 am
posted on August 6th, 2009, 12:16 am
RCIX wrote:If you want i could expand on this and come up with a sort of prototype counter system for FO...
what i want isn't really relevant but it's nice of u to ask. i want a Ferrari
a counter system could prove useful but i think its up to the devs to take from this ideas what they like
. i pretty much know how balancing and bug fixing is a bitch comparing to developing new stuff. let's just wait and see if they like any (reading users long posts is also a bitch so...)(thx for the reply. i hope my reply doesn't seem offensive or disrespectful. i just cant control my stupid jokes mechanisms
)posted on August 6th, 2009, 12:18 am
I think I disagree more now ironically 
In your method you have no room for error. If one person builds one thing, the other person MUST, without question build the polar opposite. NO ROOM FOR ERROR. Even if you controlled the battlefield early on with a gaggle of Rhienns, if your opponent starts building the Monsoon counter (to use your hypothetical reasoning) they can contest that much too easily. Of course, I'm not going to dissect the fact that you only listed one strategy of several, for only one avatar of both factions (in fact, I'm pretty confident that early warp in isn't the only way for Feds anymore... I just require more testing). In my opinion you've oversimplified the balance that is in FO currently, and I still really despise rock, paper, scissors games.
I do this all the time anyway. No need to change something to promote this in my opinion
I believe the rest of those suggestions in the most recent paragraph are already undergoing changes for the next patch, so no need for discussion there I think.
As for the old statements...
I usually only have 1-2 Canaverals in a fleet... maybe I build 6-8 total for redundancy. However, the power of that ability means that instead of making them more valuable like you've stated you wish to, you've still shown that you only need 1-2 still. If you take care of them (send them out of the fleet) 1-2 is far more than enough for any battle. Your suggestion doesn't take care of these issues I think. Most people build way too many Canaverals because they can and because they don't take care of their ships when they could instead be building other vessels to take their place. Making the ability weaker means that I can now more effectively destroy my opponent's firepower. Currently I don't build that many Canaverals, and thus I get more effective fleets because I am spending the resources to build more combat oriented vessels. Even if on the off chance my 1-2 Canaverals are destroyed, it doesn't matter because by that time I've already one the battle! Your suggestions (in my opinion of course, so no offense meant) really seem to try to gear people to choosing one particular strategy, and I don't think that's good.
I guess I won't get it then, because I for one never enjoyed the gameplay that Dawn of War I and Starcraft I had--it was too limiting, too repetitive, and it forced you to play only one particular style--which quickly bored me.
Incidentally, you may wish to try Risner at some point: you'll find that the Monsoon is much more useful
what we have now (this is greatly simplified but lets keep it basic shall we):
spam rhienn early game (this is spaming, i think there is no question about it). get to genrix asap. spam generix. toss a few more ships into ur generix BLOB.
what is a counter for rhienn? i would say saber (?) is at least till refit is researched. but we all know there is only one strat with the feds -> warpin ftw ('for the win' if somebody doesnt know Smiley) + canaveral & excelsior2 spam later.
In your method you have no room for error. If one person builds one thing, the other person MUST, without question build the polar opposite. NO ROOM FOR ERROR. Even if you controlled the battlefield early on with a gaggle of Rhienns, if your opponent starts building the Monsoon counter (to use your hypothetical reasoning) they can contest that much too easily. Of course, I'm not going to dissect the fact that you only listed one strategy of several, for only one avatar of both factions (in fact, I'm pretty confident that early warp in isn't the only way for Feds anymore... I just require more testing). In my opinion you've oversimplified the balance that is in FO currently, and I still really despise rock, paper, scissors games.
look how much cloaking is improved. u can cloak ur griffins and only show rhienns. this way ur opponent can think that u dont have a counter to his monsoons and assault ur rhiens only to be welcomed be a salvo from decloaking griffins.
I do this all the time anyway. No need to change something to promote this in my opinion
I believe the rest of those suggestions in the most recent paragraph are already undergoing changes for the next patch, so no need for discussion there I think.
As for the old statements...
if u destroy my support refit now i dont care cuz i have 10 more
I usually only have 1-2 Canaverals in a fleet... maybe I build 6-8 total for redundancy. However, the power of that ability means that instead of making them more valuable like you've stated you wish to, you've still shown that you only need 1-2 still. If you take care of them (send them out of the fleet) 1-2 is far more than enough for any battle. Your suggestion doesn't take care of these issues I think. Most people build way too many Canaverals because they can and because they don't take care of their ships when they could instead be building other vessels to take their place. Making the ability weaker means that I can now more effectively destroy my opponent's firepower. Currently I don't build that many Canaverals, and thus I get more effective fleets because I am spending the resources to build more combat oriented vessels. Even if on the off chance my 1-2 Canaverals are destroyed, it doesn't matter because by that time I've already one the battle! Your suggestions (in my opinion of course, so no offense meant) really seem to try to gear people to choosing one particular strategy, and I don't think that's good.
if u dont get it by now u will never get it my friend Smiley
I guess I won't get it then, because I for one never enjoyed the gameplay that Dawn of War I and Starcraft I had--it was too limiting, too repetitive, and it forced you to play only one particular style--which quickly bored me.
Incidentally, you may wish to try Risner at some point: you'll find that the Monsoon is much more useful
posted on August 6th, 2009, 12:24 am
Last edited by tom on August 6th, 2009, 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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