Tweak Hull/Shield Ratios

posted on September 17th, 2011, 4:02 pm

I noticed the following average hull/shield ratios on the following factions.  Green text indicates consistency in the ratios with undetectable to no variations in any ships.

Borg - 100/0
Dominion - 34/66
Federation - 23/77
Klingon - 50/50
Romulan - 39/61

This shouldn't effect balance that much, but could the hull/shield ratios be tweaked to exactly match the average ratios (to the nearest hitpoint)?

posted on September 17th, 2011, 5:51 pm

why would they need to exactly match the ratios, the ratios shouldnt be set in stone.

posted on September 17th, 2011, 6:02 pm

Wouldn't the term 'average' imply some degree of variation?

[godsvoice]

posted on September 17th, 2011, 7:05 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on September 17th, 2011, 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Doesn't this just mean that, in general, the shields are stronger i.e. have more strength than the hull?

Why is that a problem? Makes sense to me.

Although, it is nice and I enjoy the Klingon aspect of 50/50. For them, it adds class. Klingons even after losing shields are still incredibly durable in battle. I wouldn't want it to be like this for all races.

I think this sort of variation between factions in the game is actually a bonus...

Edit: I mean, if I understand what this post is saying that is... Or is it that within one faction, there is variation from ship class to ship class. Ie Phalanx has 80% of its strength in its shields, whereas sovereign has 72% and you want all ship classes within a faction to balance perfectly? I'm not sure I know enough about the technical side exactly. But yeah, again variations aren't bad. Destroyers, cruisers and battleships are set differently.

posted on September 17th, 2011, 7:13 pm

This is actually news to me, I thought they matched the 60/40 and 70/30 ratios perfectly.  Which ships did you look at for these ratios?

[Anonymous]

posted on September 17th, 2011, 7:22 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on September 17th, 2011, 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm talking about ship class to ship class among a single faction.  I like the fact that each faction has different hull/shield ratios, but it would be much easier to calculate how long the shields will last if that faction maintained a consistent ratio.

In the statistics I've shown, only two factions have their ratios consistent.  The Borg, with no shields, and the Klingons, with 50/50 shields.  The other factions shield ratios vary around an average.  Which makes it harder to calculate shield strength for a particular vessel.

I don't want all of the factions to have the same base shield ratio, but rather, all of the ships affiliated with the said faction to have their shields in the said ratio of that particular faction.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I looked at the base Saber ODFs for each avatar of the Federation, the Leahval and Rheein for the Romulans, and the base battle cruiser for each Dominion avatar.  As well as several Klingon vessels.

Only the Klingons and Borg matched perfectly.  The base Saber data showed an average of 23/77 with several other Federation vessels being around 1/3 hull to shield without deeper analysis.  The Leahval and Rheeins showed a 39/61 average and the Battle Cruisers showed an average of 34/66.

I will be testing more vessels (only the ones that are built, not ranked up) to confirm the ratios but so far, those are the results.

EDIT:
Only the vessels built will be included.  In the case of Federation warp-ins, the vessels are not built by the player and will not be included.  Rank-ups are not built by the player and will not be included.  Refits will be included only if the ship can be built with the refits already in place.

posted on September 17th, 2011, 7:41 pm

ehm.. all races do actually have consistent shield/hull ratios, as long as no passive modifies the base values. +/- comes from rounding

posted on September 17th, 2011, 8:11 pm

Well, so far, I've found a +/- 0.13% in the Federation vessels (max) without any passive modifiers.  So when rounding to the nearest percent, it is extremely consistent.  Just not consistent enough to be able to get an accurate estimate of the shield strength from the hull strength.  Well, for the Intrepid, you'd only be 22 hitpoints off.  For the Akira, only 16 hitpoints.  So it's not as bad as I thought it was.  So far I've tested 11 ships.

posted on September 17th, 2011, 8:47 pm

Oh I see.  I've only looked at the rank 1 ships, not any ranked odfs.  Also with ships like the rhienn and saber you can expect a higher percent variance because it rounds to whole numbers and they have fewer hitpoints overall.

posted on September 17th, 2011, 11:34 pm

Why do they need to be exact again? And of course it effects balance how many weapons are there that effects only shields.

posted on September 18th, 2011, 12:12 am

With only a 20-hitpoint deviation in the ratios, I doubt that the balance would be thrown off that much.  Also, I only looked at the rank 1 ODF files.  What's that, 1 to 2 extra shots?

posted on September 18th, 2011, 1:51 am

Im a big fan of not doing extra work i would assume that the devs are as well so why should the numbers be exactly the same?

[Atlantis]

posted on September 18th, 2011, 7:18 am

Last edited by Atlantis on September 18th, 2011, 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Does it matter?

posted on September 18th, 2011, 9:31 am

the values are actually exact, rounded to the closest integer