SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[cybersol]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, that is EXACTLY how PPBs worked in SE3, and they worked beautifully there IMO. They should not be a mainline weapon, they should be a support type weapon, only useful in some situations. As it is now, they are so powerful that they become main line weapons, with really no decisions to make at all. Increasing choices to be made is ALWAYS a good idea (except when you increase from 30 to 40 choices or something ludicrous, ofc ).

I agree that increasing choice is good, but a stated goal of this mod is to not break existing AI's. If you were to convert the PPB from its current mainline role into a niche role it would severely impact the AI's that use it as a mainline weapon. Thus for the purposes of this mod, it would propably be better to balance a weapon than to completely change its identity.

[Fyron]

Perhaps PDCs should be split into two comps, one that targets seekers and one that targets fighters. The fighter one would then not have the auto-fire ability. The biggest thing that makes fighters impotent is that PDC is much longer ranged than their weapons, AND it always hits them before they ever get a chance to fire (except in some WP battles, but those are an exception). Fighter weapons should be kept short ranged. Making the PDC not auto fire will make them at least get a chance to fire before being slaughtered.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Perhaps PDCs should be split into two comps, one that targets seekers and one that targets fighters. The fighter one would then not have the auto-fire ability. The biggest thing that makes fighters impotent is that PDC is much longer ranged than their weapons, AND it always hits them before they ever get a chance to fire (except in some WP battles, but those are an exception). Fighter weapons should be kept short ranged. Making the PDC not auto fire will make them at least get a chance to fire before being slaughtered.

That would be really good for a mod. That's pretty much the exact reason we pushed for the addition of the fighter and seeker as separate target items. It wasn't possoble originally. But of course it would be very bad to implement somehting like that into the stock files, so it's not so good for what we are trying to do here.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

---

(armor skipping weapons ignore EA ability regardless what component has it)

Are you positive about that, having done testing to back it up? I don't think that is true, though I have not done testing on it in quite some time. I think EA ability is not ignored by armor-skipping weapons if it is on a non-Armor comp. Though if it is, that gives me a great new way to make Shard Cannons be useful in Adamant Mod...

---

I believe it is true that armor-skipping weapons bypass emissive effects, especially in the patch before the Last one, which was the one I tested it on when modding the armor in Proportions.

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

---

Many of the major changes to armor suggested would be design changes suitable for a custom mod...

Such as a balance mod... there is no balance between shielding and armor as it is now...

---

Don't worry about it Mr Fyron. That was clearly Aaron's design decision, and we're not trying to make major changes here.

[Fyron]

*sigh*

[Pax]

Originally posted by Asmala:
It's enough for me if the armor has nearly the same hp/kT, I'd choose it still (with one shield of course in case of engine destroying weapons or boarding parties). Of course those new changes can change this a lot, especially armor skipping for Graviton Hellbore and weakening the PPB.

My point, though, is: PPBs might not need to be toned down nearly as much, if armor was strengthened. Okay, maybe the Last two levels need to be 7 and 8 hp/kT instead of 8 and 10 (10 was just a nice end-target number to aim for).

At 8hp/kT, shields are clearly still better overall, but at least a couple slabs of armor wouldn't be pointless.

Also note, I'm advocating improvements to the Shield Regenerators (10kT size, regenerate 10xlevel per round -- it's what I did in Small Ships). That inherently makes shields more attractive.

Got 100kT of space for shields and armor? One shield, one emissive armor, two standard armors, and two regenerators. With my proposed changes to shields and regenerators, that's 500 nonphased (or 250 phased) shields, +100/turn regeneration, and decent armor behind those shields.

Or, if you're facing a crystalline race, two shields and two regenerators. 1000 shields (or 500 phased), with +100/turn regeneration.

Or, against a shield-skipping-weapon user, go with two emissives and eight standard armors. Lots of non-shield HP to sustain the Emissive-Armor goodness.

[PvK]

Besides, it seems to me there is balance between armor and shields in the unmodded game. PPB and SD are powerful standard-tech counters to shields. The only armor counters are Shard Cannon (low-damage expensive racial tech) and Null-Space (expensive, low damage, low range, low ROF). Armor balances itself by being relatively weak protection, but it is still somewhat useful in some cases. Moreover, racial armors can be effective.

I wouldn't object to some changes to armor to make it a little stronger, but I think trying to make it competitive vs. shield effects would be overcompensating and changing the design.

As for Emissive Armor, in most cases it isn't very useful, and it is expensive. One suggestion would be to increase its structure (say, to 80kT), which wouldn't do a whole lot but would at least make it as good as standard armor discounting the emissive effect. It would also give players a way to make tougher armored ships, albeit at significant expense.

Shield REgenerators are pretty pointless as is. Reduce the cost and/or increase the effect a lot. There is little danger of them becoming uber-defenses when they are high on the tech tree and there are shield-smashing weapons around (not to mention the destruction rate in fleet combat).

One topic we haven't touched on is mounts. The AI always uses them, so they can't be balanced to the point where unmounted weapons are as good or better in some cases. There are several options available, but I'm not sure which if any of them would be acceptable for this mod. That is, many changes to make them more balanced would change the gameplay/design. One simple subtle thing might be to remove the advantage to structure of mounts. That'd also help make armor more valuable by comparison. That is, currently unmodded gives more of an advantage to structure than the size increase, meaning big weapons increase the durability of the ship.

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

Shield Regenerators do help prevent ship capture & such, since your ship will almost always have some shielding left.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
... Armor III, since it has a better ratio than the Stealth/Scattering armors.

Do not underestimate the power of Emissive Armor. Please excuse the following self-quote.

The amount of 'soak' on Emissive Armor III makes it exactly equivalent to Armor III: 40kt structure/10kt for Armor III and 50kt structure + 30kt 'soak'/20kt for Emissive Armor III. If you increase the amount of 'soak' on Emissive armor I think it would be proper to decrease the amount of structural kt, as this balance seems appropriate.

[edit: here rather than another reply.]

I think lowering the damage on the PPB would make other weapons more attractive, but the same thing could be accomplished by reworking the other weapons. There should be one weapon with the best damage / (tonnage * rate), but it should be the one without all the other goodies, like superior range, low supply usage, to-hit, and other special abilities.

For this one, best, all-around weapon I think you could just tool-up the DUC, make it the moderate range heavy D/TR. Make PPB a little more specialized, maybe lower its D/TR. Make APB the long-range moderate D/TR direct fire weapon that this game is more-or-less lacking, you might need to add a to-hit bonus just to make it actually hit things at those long ranges and that's all the more reason to lower it's D/TR. Or maybe we already have this long range, better to-hit, moderate D/TR in the WMG, and the APB is meant to be used a moderate ranges, it just penalized the heck out of you for misusing it...

I'm not going to try to address the other entries on Taera's List, but I do think Shield Regenerators need to be fixed. (Or maybe someone just needs to tell me how they're meant to be used.)

I think Armor is fine, except for maybe the way the AI treats it. But then the AI designer should be able to call for Emissive, and it's the best non-Racial protection offered.

[ July 28, 2003, 12:47: Message edited by: Loser ]