Battleship Balance Questions (vessel is in development)

[TChapman500]

posted on October 16th, 2010, 11:46 pm

Last edited by TChapman500 on October 16th, 2010, 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This vessel is going to be an avatar-specific vessel, but I'm wondering if the following is overpowered.

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Hull strength is stronger than a tactical cube without upgrades.

Quantum disruptor firepower matches a tactical cube disruptor beam even when not upgraded.

Chroniton torpedoes deal as much damage as the graviton torpedo, but directly to the hull.

Vessel cost a lot more than a tactical cube in terms of tritanium, but only costs a couple hundred in dilithium.

Vessel takes longer to build than a tactical cube and a sphere's build time combined.

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UPGRADES:
7 Upgrade Slots

Multi-Targeting Scanners:  3 slots, doubles the number of targets the vessel can fire on at once with each module.

Nanoprobe Generator:  1 slot, nanoprobe generator reduces time it takes to repair subsystems and hull.

Singularity Torpedo Launcher:  2 slots, adds artillery-ranged singularity torpedo that does damage to anything within artillery-range of the blast-point.  Rate of fire increases with more upgrades of this type.  Requires singularity weapons research.

Deflector Dish Installation:  3 slots, adds additional deflector dishes to the vessel increasing weapon effectiveness, re-enforcing torpedo guidance systems, and disrupting sensor readings on enemy targeting scanners.  Also adds the ability to fire a super-powered quantum burst from one of the deflectors.  Adds 1 additional deflector to the ship with each upgrade.

Tactical Armor Geometry:  2 Slots, adds more armor to the vessel and randomizes the angle of the armor throughout the vessel, reducing the damage received from all weapons.

Trans warp Cloak:  1 slot, allows the vessel to form a transwarp "bubble" around the ship, instantly hiding it from enemy sensors.  The transwarp bubble can be collapsed instantly to allow the vessel to open fire.  Vessel cannot fire while in the bubble, and the shields do not have to go down.  Requires transwarp research.

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Is that overpowered?  It won't be buildable until it's late in the game and it's hard for even the Borg to destroy.  It's an avatar-specific vessel.  Should I put a limit on how many can be built?  Or should I not put a limit?  By the way, the vessel has medium-ranged quantum disruptors and chroniton torpedoes.

By the way, how would you counter this vessel?

Chroniton torpedoes are effected by shield geometry.  4 percent damage reduction from torpedoes translates into 3 percent chroniton torpedo damage not making it to the hull, but ends up on the shields instead.  Chronitons by default will do 95% of their damage to the hull and only hull armor will actually reduce the total damage done by the torpedoes.  Except for hull armor, 3 percent standard torpedo reduction translates into 5 percent chroniton torpedo reduction.  A chroniton field reduces damage from only chroniton torpedoes and are a lot more effective against chroniton torpedoes than hull armor.

posted on October 17th, 2010, 12:03 am

I'd start by releasing the mod that way people can test it. Taken out of context from what the other ships have, what you plan on balancing it against, no tech tree, etc, it's too hard to say anything of any use.

posted on October 17th, 2010, 12:04 am

The whole mod or just that one vessel?

posted on October 17th, 2010, 12:24 am

The mod of course - you can't get a feel for balance without at least knowing how your ships interact. Sure a vessel that does a billion damage per second and can make a huricane feel depressed might seem overly powerful, but if the tech tree is setup in a way that you can never get to it, theyn you won't be able to balance it anyway. There needs to be a larger picture in place before any assumptions can be made.

posted on October 17th, 2010, 1:57 pm

Oh.  So I'm jumping the gun a little, right?

posted on October 17th, 2010, 6:52 pm

Correct.

Actually, if i were you, I would take a look at how tun developed things with his sigma mod.  He first had a teaser alpha version of one of his races (1 of 5 races in this mod).  This gave you a taste of what his mod would be like, but it was rife with bugs and and the mechanics weren't all in place.  But just getting the idea of what his universe would be like helped people get a better understanding, and it was good advertising, because people knew he was serious about his mod being released, unlike a lot of A2/FO mods promising to have "everything" and never being finished, we knew that tun was serious.

After that, you can develop small betas to fix a few large errors and bugs, and introduce content every now and then to get feedback on it.  You wan't get any really good feedback until it's "done" and playable.

FO has been in the same boat as well.  They developed betas and pre releases to get ideas from the community.  And while no other mod will get the attention that FO has, you'll get some people who are interested in taking it for a spin.

posted on October 18th, 2010, 8:21 pm

Okay, so right now, just release enough units to make it so that it can be played with, then later, release more units?

I think I definitely jumped the gun on getting the main thread for the Tereanan Empire mod locked.  I cancelled it, then found out that that basically was the only thing I could work on.

By the way, how is this for the starbase.  It's not done yet, and it's not going to be the fully functional model with the trans-warp gate on it, but it's a start.  I'm thinking of making different models for the base so that you know whether or not it's been upgraded.  And this isn't actually what the non-upgraded starbase is going to look like.

By the way, if anyone has milkshape, I would like to send you the starbase models so that they can be hard-pointed and exported to the SOD format.  Also, I'm working on a few of the unit speeches and I would like some other voices besides my own.

Attachments

posted on October 18th, 2010, 9:03 pm

Well, that's a step in the right direction.

To be honest, I looked back at your old thread and I'm really no closer to understanding the mod.  What you need to do is inform people of a few things.  For example, what kind of mod is this?  I'm assuming it's an add on, since there's a destroy Borg avatar.  But it's never actually mentioned as to what this mod does.

For example, you could open with an explanation like:  "The Terranean Empire mod is a FO add on.  I wanted to create a kind of "what if" race of humans; ones who weren't bound by Federation principles, as things could have easily gone several different ways.  The ingenuity is the same, so some ships will have similar designs compared to canon Trek, with an attempt to bring some of my own creative thoughts on ship design to the mod."

This helps explain to people why you're doing this:  That it's a fun project for you and maybe people can add their ideas to your mod and make it better.  Also, if you're making this mod just for you, then that's cool.  But if you want people to play this mod, then you'll have to have a little marketing savvy.  First, you need to get that you are a niche market.  You can cater to those who have ideas that might not fit well into FO, but you could add to your mod.  Also, balancing for multiplayer will be next to impossible, for quite a few reasons that I won't go into.

But, the good news is that you're making your mod at the perfect time, because by the time you get all your ships and they're semi balanced, Megadroid will have MMM working, and you can create interesting single player campaigns.  This could be your market, because people will always love a good single player game if your added on race is interesting to them.

Oh, and you can get your old thread unlocked (there was no reason to ask for it to be locked in the first place ), but if I were you, I would just start a new thread, but make sure you don't make a TUN of posts in it.

posted on October 18th, 2010, 9:52 pm

This is designed to be an addon for Fleet-Ops.  Using four avatars instead of two.  I'm wanting (and needing) help with this mod.  I just don't know how to get the help.  It won't be just for me.  It'll be for anyone with fleet-ops.

Define "savvy".  Define "niche".

I'm wanting ideas for some specials.  I have some of my own, but I would like others.  And I have thought of starting a new thread over here.  I would definitely like some ideas and I think I'll start a new thread.  Since one seems to be in order.

posted on October 18th, 2010, 9:58 pm

look savvy and niche up on dictionary.com lol

simple explanations:

savvy = knows about stuff.

so savvy about computers means you know about computers

niche =  rare and not common, only for some.

posted on October 18th, 2010, 10:59 pm

rare and not common

That's a bit redundant.

Thanks for the input.

posted on October 18th, 2010, 11:25 pm

You want to know if a single ship better than a Tac Cube is balanced!? Not to mention its for the Feds... xD

posted on October 18th, 2010, 11:39 pm

It's for the Tereanan Empire.  And technically, you should be able to easily defeat it if the vessel doesn't have any upgrades or even if it has one multi-targeting scanner upgrade.  Two multi-targeting scanner upgrades would require reinforcements.  Three multi-targeting scanner upgrades and you're done for!  But the upgrades on this ship are very expensive.

Plus, something like a Defiant "critical shot", which exploits some sort of weakness in a target vessel.  Do it on this battleship and you'll disable the entire tactical system.