PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.

[Grandpa Kim]

Back to the balance issue. If the PPB is overpowered, it is by not very much. I agree with LGM that too big a change will make it as obsolete as Last year's tax form. I do like the idea of randomizing damage (as a percentage of max damage). I do believe this tends to "balance" weaponry.

But I've often wondered why the PPB my scientists invent is IDENTICAL to the one the Krill's scientists invent. Consider this: My scientists are dough heads in this department. The standard gun weighs in at 40 kt. and is not very efficient delivering a blow only 60% of the norm. The Krill hit their Version dead on the nail. Only 25 kt firing at 140% of standard values!
Not to worry, my newly invented Null-Space Projector though of average size delivers a blow 1.5 times the expected norm!

I would love this sort of randomization. Nothing is certain, but balance would only be affected in the short term and would even out in the long. Sure, you would occasionally get creamed when you invent three consecutive lousy weapons, but who said life, or SEIV, was fair? As it stands now, I know EXACTLY what I'm going to get when I research something. Even in real life this would be boring.

Limits would be required for this to work well. If you go too far, all weapons become identical and only the randomization matters. Keep the number of variables small and the range reasonable.

In the end we may find our own treasured weapons of choice may not be the best ones after all when we are forced to use different ones.

Kim

[Baron Munchausen]

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm... I think it's time to make my favorite observation about the SE tech system again.

D'ya ever notice how techs in SE always start at a given size and stay at that size but become more powerful (more range, more damage)? While techs in other games, like MOO, will stay at the given level of effectiveness (range, damage) and get smaller and/or cheaper? Have you ever considered the different effects that these different approaches have on game play?

If you know that a weapon you have just researched is going to get more powerful do you use it immediately at the level you have researched, or sit on it and keep researching to the next level? You have a pretty strong incentive to research to the end of the tree before using a weapon, don't you?

The reasons for this are pretty clear. Because the later generations of that weapon will have greater range and do more damage, so you'll just end up refitting the old ships with the newer weapons if you build now. If a weapon doesn't have enough range to match some other weapon your enemy is using until the third or fifth level or whatever, you're not going to benefit much from deploying it, are you? So it ends up being more like you are researching several new weapons rather than one, because the operational qualities of each level of that weapon are truly different.

In the MOO model, on the other hand, you know that the weapon will not become more powerful, except for special mods like heavy mount or whatnot becoming available. Well, at least we have mounts already in SE as soon as the weapon becomes available. Anyway, a weapon system in MOO has a discrete level of ability and it doesn't change much. Your ability to build the system improves and it become smaller/cheaper.

I think that the MOO way of tech development makes more sense. It doesn't require you to cover many levels of a tech in order to get the weapon system to the level of ability that you need. I wonder if we couldn't solve a lot of SE IV's balance problems by revamping the entire tech tree to work more like the MOO system, with weapons immediately producing full damage and range but having high expense and large size. Then later levels could lead to miniaturization.

[ June 07, 2002, 04:16: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Phoenix-D]

"I wonder if we couldn't solve a lot of SE IV's balance problems"

No, it wouldn't. Not the PPB issue at least. (PPB is STILL almost as effective as the APB and much cheaper, plus skips normal shields)

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

The suggestion has merits and could make an interestng mod.

However, if the weapons shrunk by a meaningful amount, isn't the situation still about the same? A higher tech ship will have more of the same weapon, doing more damage, instead of the same number of weapons doing more damage. Refits to new technology would still be desirable, but would be more complicated, since the changing component sizes would make more room on the design.

Seems to me the larger problem is that the research costs are pretty small and jumps in component abilities are pretty large. In the standard data set, without High research costs, it's just too quick to develop high levels in most techs, and to get to "the end" of them. In my Proportions mod, the lower levels are used quite a bit, simply because "waiting to get the highest level" means years and years of dedicated (and often inefficient, compared to lower levels of other techs) research.

PvK

[Tenryu]

I was thinking the other day, very dangerous, if a weapon always does, for example, 5 damage, if it hits at a certain range, and we can tweak the chance to hit, what if all weapons did only 1 damage and all components were only 1KT.

Yes, it is silly, but now instead of one 5 damage point weapon that either hits or misses, we have five 1 damage point weapons each of which may hit or miss and our real damage is going to be between 0 and 5 ! Some of us wanted something like this, so I guess we might say we sorta have it already.

Btw- Very interesting observation, Baron.

[geoschmo]

Baron, I guess I'd have to agree with Pvk here. What's the point? I think if SE4 had been set up that way to begin with, it would have been just fine. But I don't see why there is any advantage to switching to that kind of a system now. The end result would be the same kind of tech progression and retrofitting of ships just to newer smaller comps instead of newer strongewr comps. It wouldn't be any better or worse than the current system, just different.

Geo

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Grandpakim:

But I've often wondered why the PPB my scientists invent is IDENTICAL to the one the Krill's scientists invent. Consider this: My scientists are dough heads in this department. The standard gun weighs in at 40 kt. and is not very efficient delivering a blow only 60% of the norm. The Krill hit their Version dead on the nail. Only 25 kt firing at 140% of standard values!
Not to worry, my newly invented Null-Space Projector though of average size delivers a blow 1.5 times the expected norm!
be boring.

Wow Cool idea! I always though it would be good to add a bit of randomness to research. A couple games I've played have tried it though not like this. I believe Moo2 you can have 'breakthroughs' and Alpha Centari can be set so you just research on of 4 general area and don't know what you will get.