Frustration (balance)

[Argh]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

---

Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
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.

---

It does make sense. Your 'new' weapon in SE is almost always weaker than the old one. Less damage per hit and less range. What sort of 'technological advance' is that? Especially when you consider emissive armor this is not good at all. In the MOO system, your new weapon IS better, it just uses more space and so the total damage a ship can deal out is less. You get better range and better damage per hit immediately.

SE numbers -- ship sizes and component sizes -- are too small or rather in too large a gradient . With larger numbers to allow for smoother cost/benefit curves the system could be as easy to use in the MOO style as MOO itself. I don't have the time but if someone were to take the time to multiply all the numbers by 20 or so and then re-design the weapon families (and maybe some other components like engines) to use a single performance level and then smoothly reduce in size as they got higher level it could be quite nice.

[ 29 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Mephisto]

quote:

---

It does make sense. Your 'new' weapon in SE is almost always weaker than the old one. Less damage per hit and less range. What sort of 'technological advance' is that?

---

Pardon me? What weapons gets less effective with higher classes?