Cold Hard Numbers

posted on February 20th, 2012, 11:28 pm

Imagine what you could do with 5-10 Veq's and a few cloaked scouts! (And alternate armaments, of course.)

you can already piss off people in certain situations with veqs. usually this means against non cloakers. works well against feds who went warpins. the alt arms will cause them so much annoyance as their micro turns to crap.

posted on February 20th, 2012, 11:36 pm

Well, for this you have your own scouts, dont you? The Veq's dont hold up against much firepower, so the best way is to engage against them.

But back to the topic: I think, the 25% on and off are a little too much. This will force the game to wield pulse-units and torp-units, where both are at the same time at advantage and disadvantage. It will be very hard to figure out, which fleet would now be best against the fleet the enemy got.

IF (!) a balanced fleet will always be a good counter, then it might work, but you still have to micro the hell out of your fleet in order to be effective. I await long learning curves out of this, while at the same time giving new tactical approaches that might be neat.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 1:25 am

Well keep in mind, we currently already HAVE +25% and -25% for pulse and torps, but it's based on ship size which usually means torpedoes > lategame ships and pulses > early game ships and (usually) miners.  This new system allows both damage types to be viable throughout the whole game.

In general, pulse-based ships will not be good for fleet battles because they will be autotargeting defensive ships, but you can still micro them if you need to.  Torp-based ships, on the other hand, will be bad at raiding (which they sort of are now, but not as much) but can handle a tough defensive fleet.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 1:34 am

Seems like the classic bomber/interceptor divide.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 11:48 am

Yeah, and I dont like this "primitive" handling.

For example, if you have a dominion bomber, it should be good against large ships, stations and should be good from firing from afar, while your main fleet is engaging on the frontline (with bugs or S-2). I think the dominion bomber should be something like a fire-support vessel, that relies on the spotting of your scouts and tactical map-clearing of you frontline-units.

If you play the dominion, you want to have some frontliners, that pin down the enemy (bugs), a driving force, that lets you hold your initiative (S-2) and a good firesupport, to do safe, but worthy damage (bombers).

In early game, I see that tactic to fail if you engage a pure offensive-fleet, that might make spacedust out of your fleet.

I think, we need a good balance of synergy and passives to work this out.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 8:18 pm

What E2 only 2 quantum torpedoes now D: I dislike this. They were my favorite mini Sovereign.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 8:42 pm

What E2 only 2 quantum torpedoes now D: I dislike this. They were my favorite mini Sovereign.

each does more damage. so dps should be roughly the same, if not a bit higher.

this will give a similar balanced ship but without the visual wall of torps.

[godsvoice]

posted on February 21st, 2012, 8:57 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on February 21st, 2012, 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i'm not even sure what my question is about this, but:

torps have a miss chance right?

before, we had an e2 that shot what, 4? individual torps, each with its own miss chance right?

now we get 2 torps, each with its own miss chance.

so if one misses, and one hits, we lost 50% damage. I guess before you would have needed 2 to miss. but you would never see all four miss right? (also, it seems like there was more often just 1 missing, and 3 hit, so 75% damage)

is it being made that you can't have both miss? like, its down to two torps, is it possible that both those torps miss, because you would never have four torps miss before.

im not really bringing up a concern. I just don't know if I see what it means. i mean, lots of units probably have double torp shooters. so it would be similar. like generix or something maybe?

Is there a difference that I'm hinting at? Or is it pretty much meaningless?

posted on February 21st, 2012, 9:26 pm

It sounds like you're wondering if each volley is calculated as a single attack: the answer is no.  Each torpedo has its own miss chance, meaning that all 4 torps could miss a medium-sized target. (although the chances of this are very low)

The devs are saying that both Torp and Pulse weapons deal more damage than beam weapons, such that two ships with the same offense value will deal the same DPS to a medium-sized target.  One might have beams, which deal "full" damage, another could have pulses which deal 20% reduced damage but still amount to the same DPS.  A ship with torpedoes should deal the same average DPS as the beam-ship, including the fact that 20% of them will miss.

posted on February 21st, 2012, 10:11 pm

Laws of average would suggest that, whether you are firing a million 1-damage torpedoes or a single 1-million damage, given enough time they will always have the same dps.

posted on February 22nd, 2012, 12:32 am

Laws of average would suggest that, whether you are firing a million 1-damage torpedoes or a single 1-million damage, given enough time they will always have the same dps.

It will average out that way, but in the end, what you are shooting at does not have a million hit points, so the frequency of hits may matter because you may need to get those strikes in and run before backup arrives. If half your torpedoes are guaranteed to miss, having more torpedoes with lower loadout MAY actually allow for higher average DPS

posted on February 22nd, 2012, 2:41 am

I think that the point everyone is missing is that torpedoes are better against defensive ships too so they will hit them more often

posted on February 22nd, 2012, 3:47 am

1. Well, my point is that the devs want everyone to stop thinking of torpedos doing "full" damage vs large targets and missing vs medium, and consider it as "normal" damage vs medium and "extra hits" vs large.

2. FA11OUT!!!!!!!!!  It's been months, how's it going, man!?  You should come play with us again!  I feel like we've gone through 2 generations of newbies since you left; a lot of them have grown up and gotten quite good, and their personalities are pretty good as well 

posted on February 22nd, 2012, 10:03 pm

Laws of average would suggest that, whether you are firing a million 1-damage torpedoes or a single 1-million damage, given enough time they will always have the same dps.

Not trying to be pernickity, but strictly speaking there is no "Law of Averages". In gambling, a long low streak does not make you more likely to win the next hand or dice roll.

Missing a million times in a row is very unlikely, but if you have already missed 999,999 times already, your chance of missing again is just as likely as if you hadn't missed at all.

posted on February 23rd, 2012, 1:31 am

Probability is a very stupid thing; Boggz is technically correct, as are you.