Frustration (balance)

geoschmo · #1 December 28th, 2001, 09:27 PM

I think someone did a mod along these lines once. If not it wouldn't be that hard to do.

You can't go on infinitly, but your only limitation would be the number of components allowed in the Components.txt data file. 64,000 or something like that IIRC.

Geoschmo

Suicide Junkie · #2 December 28th, 2001, 09:29 PM

quote:
One of the things that's *really* missing from the play balance. . . imho. . . is that, unlike in MOOII, higher levels of the same tech aren't *smaller* than their originals. Yeah, I know that isn't strictly realistic(modern tank cannons are far larger than their forebears in WWI, to defeat today's armor with additional mass).

High-tech weapons can be seen as smaller:
A PPB I does 30 damage in a size of 30KT
A PPB V does 60 damage in a size of 30KT

So, you can replace 6 PPB I's with 3 PPB V's and get the same amount of damage (at pointblank range)
So, PPB V's can be viewed as half the size of PPB I's!

Argh · #3 December 28th, 2001, 09:41 PM

True. . . but on the other hand, if you worked out the pure damage levels(and since this game, like MOOII, only has pretty weak "if damage doesn't exceed X, then has no effect" defenses, this is a fair way of looking at things) in MOOII a ship loaded to the gills with, say, Gauss Cannons(a midgame weapon) was more effective than a ship using Phasers(a late midgame weapon) for quite awhile, simply because it could dish out far more damage:

20 Heavy Gauss Cannons @ 24 damage apiece = 480 damage/turn max
10 Phasers @ up to 30 damage =300 damage/turn max

Now, this didn't Last very long- eventually, you ended up being able to mount *almost* as many Phasers as Gauss Cannons, and the Phasers, with their inherently higher max damage(plus mods like Heavy, Auto, and others) did more damage by far. But for awhile. . . with just about every gun. . . there was a period where the newest gun was decidedly inferior to each new one. . . until you ponied up the research points to improve it.

Anyhow, just a thought.

Baron Munchausen · #4 December 28th, 2001, 10:42 PM

The different approach is because of the different design systems. In MOO you could get a 'reward' for making a ship less than the max weight. It could be a bit faster and more maneuverable. In SE there is no difference in the ship's maneuvarability if it has less than the absolute maximum amount of equipment that can be stuffed into it. So, while you could re-arrange the tech fields in SE to work more-or-less like they do in MOO -- giving smaller Versions of the same tech instead of more powerful Versions at the same size -- you would not get the same rewards even then. It would be interesting to see AIs cram more & more weapons into their ships, though. With missiles this could either become unbalancing, or it might correct the balance problem vs. PDC.

You know, I think the MOO style is better because it doesn't encourage you to 'hold back' on using your latest tech until you get some more levels. You get full performance of your new tech right away, it just uses more space.

Argh · #5 December 29th, 2001, 12:26 AM

Actually(and I'll have to check now that you've mentioned it) in MOOII movement bonuses were purely based on engines(and mods to them) and ship size. A strange thing about MOOII is that you had a sharp trade-off point, however. . . when you reached the smaller sizes, you simply couldn't mount all of the specialized gear(mainly concerned with shooting things) that made the larger ships much more effective for their size. SE:IV duplicates this trend, although to a FAR lesser degree. . . the main way that larger ships are better, imho, is that they can mount far more armor and shields.

My play thus far has revealed another annoying tendency- instead of firing your weapons one at a time, and auto-switching to the next available target, Strategic combat ships don't seem to do that right, so big lumbering hulks can only kill single opponants per round. . . I still need to experiment with this, of course, to make sure that this is right, but if it is. . . that's going to strongly effect how I play PBW games. I've noticed that the Targeting instructions seem to get around this, so maybe I'll just experiment with that a bit and get ships working in Strategic combat a bit better.

geoschmo · #6 December 29th, 2001, 12:29 AM

Others have mentioned this. I haven't been able to confirm it. Athough honsetly I haven't tried very hard.

You are adding multi-plex tracking to your ships right? They aren't supposed to be able to shoot at more than one ship per combat turn without multiplex-tracking.

Geoschmo

Suicide Junkie · #7 December 29th, 2001, 02:12 AM

quote:
You know, I think the MOO style is better because it doesn't encourage you to 'hold back' on using your latest tech until you get some more levels. You get full performance of your new tech right away, it just uses more space.

That just dosen't make sense.

What is the difference between a MoO like system and the SE4 way?
MoO: Weapon does 10 damage, starts at size 10, ends up at size 5.
SE4: Weapon is size 10, starts at 10 damage, ends at 20 damage.

Both weapons double in usefulness from start to maxtech.
SE4's way just makes it more convienient when upgrading ships, since the upgraded components fit perfectly, just like the old ones.