SE IV future

spoon · #1 October 13th, 2002, 09:45 PM

I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

[ October 13, 2002, 20:46: Message edited by: spoon ]

oleg · #2 October 14th, 2002, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by spoon:
I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

I agree with both spoon and Q - see, it is possible

Relentless play balancing by MM is more than welcome but if it is possible to achive by adjusting values in data files rather than hardcode changes than I would vote for "softer" approach.

Jmenschenfresser · #3 October 14th, 2002, 06:21 PM

Sounds like these problems would be solved if MM introduced multiple damage types to some limited extent.

However, I can see some point to this. There is a line somewhere between expansion and revamping. After a while you just have to take your hands off of what exists and move on.

I'm not for stopping the tweaks, but we've all gotten used to the game as is--exploits, bugs and all. Time is better spent adding things or expanding what is instead of endlessly changing values.

I don't mind the changes that much, although the engine weapon was a fave of mine for defensive purposes.

Taera · #4 October 14th, 2002, 07:06 PM

For one thing, i feel some degree of shame because it is i who had endlessly suggested and supported various changes to game balance because i feel some things are much stronger while others are much weaker. It had never been so in SEIII, in there i had tested and proved in combat that the most useless of weapons in the game (MB, Torpedoes and so on) were useful to an exteme if used correctly. In SEIV there is no such thing, there are several weapons that briefly overpower others and are somewhat easier to research than their counterparts in SEIII if they did exist.
Example? PPB could be a perfect example. To research PPB you had to research shields 3 (i think), APB 6, Physics 2. And the research project itself wasnt any cheap. In SEIV you can rush to Physics 2 and get the PPBV in same cost you would get APBVII.

Yet i consider the changes being done rather logical. Organic armor cannot regenerate over its capacity but it makes sense to have it regenerate itself after combat because it would do so in combat anyway, and one game turn or even move is MUCH more than a combat or even two. Allegiance Subverter - how in name of god can you convert a destroyed computer??? Makes sense, too. Psychical weapons are still one of the best in the game, Telekinetic shows one of the best (size to research to range to damage to cost) ratio and it is easy to research. Mental flailer is also powerful because of early availability compared to its counterpart, Energy Dampener which is lvl.6 racial weapon which is only aviable in late mid game. And so on. I still would like to see PPB and crystalline and so on changed, but i consider all the changes rather logical.

And Last thing, Q - you say this distrupts the current games. Think differently - it makes more challenge for the players to adapt to new tactics in progress. And Q, Ionic Dispenser is in no way useless weapon even after being unable to skip shields. They have a decent damage and 1 ROF and 30kT size and rather cheap cost, and even if only 1 is put to a ship eventually it will overpower similar design with no Ionic Dispenser. Tachyon are weak and only way for them to be powerful is to skip shields, and Shield Distruptor is specialized weapon which costs heck a lot to build and to research and is SUPPOSED to be able to skip all shields.

spoon · #5 October 14th, 2002, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Relentless play balancing by MM is more than welcome but if it is possible to achive by adjusting values in data files rather than hardcode changes than I would vote for "softer" approach.

That's my preference too. There seems to be very little fine-tuning done by MM, and I think that's too bad. I'd like to see every weapon have its place, and for every facility to be worthwhile - something that can all be achieved by simple data changes...

Wardad · #6 October 14th, 2002, 08:32 PM

I'd like to see crystaline racial tech improved.

Skulky · #7 October 15th, 2002, 07:23 AM

Unless you are fighting a only organics player it is completely useless. I'm in a game now where my ally and i are fighting a crystalline player. I'm organic he's not so he does all the main fighting because my ships get ripped to shreds whenever i attack yet his (sheilded) roll over fleets of the enemy that are 10x their size.

One thing that admins need to think over is how the change to a new mod will affect current players. Big play balance changes can obsolete entire fleets and then turn someone who is in 1st into a Last place player through no fault of their own, while this wasn't really a true change, but rather a bug, the TDB bug in, IIRC, 1.78 has really hurt an ally of mine in one game.