PPB Rebalance Poll

[AJC]

IMO- I dont think the PPB is too powerful.

Although it may be prudent to increase the cost of researching it.

There is no doubt that it is a nasty weapon in the early stages of the game. But I believe there are ways to counter it such as armor and keeping repair ships in the vicinity of your fleets.

In fact when I faced a player using PPB extensively I didnt bother with shields and put alot of scattering armor and stealth armor on my ships which countered his advantage in weapon effectiveness until I had phased shields.

I do however think that level 6 phased shields need to be at least as strong as level 5 non phased shields.

[ May 30, 2002, 03:10: Message edited by: AJC ]

[geoschmo]

Master B, I have no doubt you could make short work of anybody using APB and you using PPB. However, I also have no doubt you could make short work of them with you using APB and them using PPB. You are on a different level than most of us here as far as skill as a player.

I also respect your opinion in a great many issues, but on this one I must respectfully disagree. I had come to the conclusion that PPB was a bit cheap to research, and thus imbalanced, but Rollo's comments got me to reconsider.

I did some experimenting today. I tried to make it as scientifically accurate as possible. I had three races all equal in characteristics. One researched PPB, one APB, and one MB (Meson BLasters, not THE MB ) I had a three planet low tech start. I did no colonizing, just stuck with the three home planets for each.

I researched until each race had Light Cruisers, and Shield generator 2, and as much as they could get of whatever their weapon tech was.

On turn 33 (Remember I didn't expand, so it's a little slower, but I wanted to eliminate that frmo the equation. It should be the same for all three races) All the races had LC and Shields 2. PPB had got to lev 2, APB level 4, and MB level 3.

By turn 48, PBB had got to level 5, APB to level 6, and MB to level 4.

At that point I started building ships. Each race built a LC with 6 engines, 2 shields, and as many large mount weapons as they could fit.

The PPB and APB could fit the same number of weapons on each ship. The MB race could fit more becasue they were smaller. The differance in cost though was telling. The APB race was able to build a ship every 2 turns, while it took 3 turns to build the PPB or MB ships.

I built for 1.2 years and then started fighting. The APB had 18 ships, to 12 of each for the other 2 races.

PPB and APB both consistantly beat the MB race. I guess the extra numebe of weapons couldnt make up for the weakness of them. Logical.

The APB race consistantly beat the PPB race as well. Honestly though it was not as cut and dried as it was against the MB race. A couple of times the PPB race did mange to fight to a draw, but usually they were completely wiped out. Although the shield skipping did allow them to damage the surviving PPB ships more heavily obviously.

This is fairly conclusive evedence that PPB's are balanced just fine, at least as far as in relation to APB. They are much stronger than MB, but that is more an issue of the MB being weaker as it is also weeaker than the APB.

If anything we should be leaving the PPB's alone and talking about making the MB's a little stronger. Although early on the MB's do have an advantage. It's jsut that the PPB catch up fair;y quickly. So perhaps they are jsut more of an early game weapon.

If we increase the level cost, or add two levels, or make the PPB's bigger, any of these suggestions, they will become too weak to be considered a legitimate choice. They are fine the way they are. The mineral cost of the comp makes up for the cheapness in research. This isn't raw numbers, this is a controlled experiment.

It would actually be somewhat worse for the PPB's in the real world, becasue people who do not research PPB's would probably tend not to research shields, or build ships with them. At least if facing an enemy that was using them.

I think the evidence is clear. Duplicate my expirement and see if my results were not accurate.

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

"If anything we should be leaving the PPB's alone and talking about making the MB's a little stronger. Although early on the MB's do have an advantage. It's jsut that the PPB catch up fair;y quickly. So perhaps they are jsut more of an early game weapon."

If they're just an early game weapon.. why bother? The PPB is more effective and costs the same, plus skips shields.

Doesn't factor into any of the *other* weapons (torps, WMG/ripper/incin, grav hellbore) either..and I think they'd end up on the wrong end of the scale.

EDIT:
"I do however think that level 6 phased shields need to be at least as strong as level 5 non phased shields."

Level 5 phased: 375 points
Level 5 normal: 300

Doesn't go to 6.

Phoenix-D

[ May 30, 2002, 03:47: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Phoenix-D]

Running some of my own tests in the simulator, same ship configs. 18 APB, 12 PPB. Strategy: default optimal weapons range.

APB: 0 won
PPB: 9 won (lost 7, 0, 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2)
Ties: 1 (APB: 13L PPB 8L)

that's with the APBs as player 1.

With APBs as player 2:
APB: 1 won (lost 4)
PPB: 9 won (lost 1, 4, 2, 4, 2, 1, 5, 3, 3

overall: APB wins 1, PPB wins 18, 1 tie.

this may be a case of the simulator being jacked, I'll try and run some real-world tests tommarow.

Phoenix-D

[Andrés]

I think I found the solution to our problem!

Original Problem:
PPB seems to be unbalanced, being very cheap to research and comparable or superior to the strongest weapons, such as APBs that at their highest level cost almost 6 times PPBs at their highest level.

Opposite positions in the discussion were.
a- it is one of the few late game weapons left. Don't touch it. If any change needs to be made, just increase the research cost.
b- weapon must be weakened. And it must be reduced to a "support" weapon role. Reducing damage, increasing size or reload rate are just different ways to achieve the same result.

To solve the question if PPBs should be a main weapon or only a support weapon, I went back to SE3, and found that PPBs were a MAIN weapon in SE3.

IMHO this entire problem was originated when weapons were converted from SE3.
In SE3, weapons (or any other component BTW) couldn't have different tonnage. Weapons could only be balanced by changing their damage and reload time.
A good balance was achieved and you had a good palette of different interesting weapons.
When weapons were copied from SE3 into SE4, they were assigned different tonnage values, while damage and range were simply scaled up in the same way for all weapons.
That's when SE3 balance was lost, damage rating of "heavy" weapons was lowered while that of "light" weapons was increased.

Proposal for a quick "balance mod": make tonnage of all weapons equal, say 30 or 40 kt.
Suddenly many "forgotten" weapons such as Torpedoes, Wave-Motion, Graviton Hellbores, Incinerator Beams are back among the highest damage weapons, and there is not a weapon far above the rest.
I think we can have SE3 balance back this way, and remove the unbalance I intuitively noticed since the first time I played SE4, but I didn't actually recognize until now.

You should be a little more careful with some weapons that were not in SE3, since some can grow too weak or too strong.
But there are A LOT of different late game options.

If you want I can show you some numbers to help you see my point. Or I can make and post this "SE3 balance" mod.

I admit that I initially though position B was right, and I voted to decrease PPB's power.
Now, after this observation I'm changing my vote to other.

My conclusion is that TONNAGE of ALL weapons, not just PPB needs to be revised.
Or if you want to keep current tonnage, compensate by changing damage.

If any change has to be made ONLY to PPBs, I'd agree that it should only be increasing its research cost to make it more fair to pay the same research points to get a similar weapon.
Tenryu's idea, increasing research cost by adding more techs levels and intermediate steps, instead of just increasing the initial cost sounds very interesting.

[ May 30, 2002, 04:44: Message edited by: Andr&eacutes Lescano ]

[Master Belisarius]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Master B, I have no doubt you could make short work of anybody using APB and you using PPB. However, I also have no doubt you could make short work of them with you using APB and them using PPB. You are on a different level than most of us here as far as skill as a player.

I only expected that Ashkan believed that the PPB doesn't need to be fixed! Maybe I could have a chance to defeat him!
Honestly, the "challenge" was more a joke than other thing... but Rollo have accepted it and we're playing now!

Originally posted by geoschmo:

I also respect your opinion in a great many issues, but on this one I must respectfully disagree. I had come to the conclusion that PPB was a bit cheap to research, and thus imbalanced, but Rollo's comments got me to reconsider.

Ok. No problem George, I understand.
But what argument changed your mind, because Rollo was wrong comparing APB VI with PPB VI...

About your experiment with Meson BLasters, looks interesting. I'm not against to try to find a work around, ok?
I'm against to play my PBW games (and solo games), using 95% of the time the same weapon...
And the sad thing, is that most of the trained players does the same than me... It mean games where all the people research PPB and Armors IV fast, Sensors and ECM, and not very often research Shields (only to avoid Boarding ships, and after the next patches, Ionic Dispersers).

Maybe the people is not very creative, could be. But I think that the people know that the facts, have demonstrated that is worthless spend research points in weapons that probably will have not time to use... because for the time to reach APB XII, your empire should be a dead meat from a long time ago... The problem is that most the games are with small/medium galaxies, and you usually start with a human neighbor...

PPB is the "über-weapon", not matter if it's something more expensive.
I don't support an special way to "fix" the PPB (although I have voted for change the cost to research it), but think that MUST be fixed, because the only drawback is some more cost in minerals, that will not keep me out to continue using it as main weapon in my games.

Somebody could say: "But if you're tired to use PPB, then use something else!" And maybe I'll start to use other weapons, only for enjoy... but the problem is that mostly I enjoy win!

[Thei R'vek]

Geo, it took you THAT long to figure out that PPBs are the best weapon for short-term games? Everybody who ever played a game against any one of the old greats from the Ladder or the BC before the advent of SE4 knows that one!

Fortunately, a good portion of good SE3 strategy carries over to SE4 strategy, we wouldn't want any of you pitiful SE3 players being able to hide forever would we?