PPB Rebalance Poll

[geoschmo]

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

Phoenix-D

Ok, it may be that. It also may be that in my "Real World" test I neglected to play with the fleet arangments and see if that had any impact. I left all that default so both sides wer staying in a nice V formation. It may be that this skewed my results in favor of the APB since it had the larger fleet.

But, regardless of that my test was trying to find out whether they weapons were balanced at a point in the game when PPB was strongest. In real life the enemy would not wait for you to get to PPBV and LC's to attack. My APB and MB races were both well ahead of PPB in ship tech early on. They both had LC and level 2 of their weapon almost 6 months before PPB race had started on PPB's. They were still on destroyers and researching Physics 2.

There very well may be a valid point that the PPB is imbalanced at certain points in the game. When it jumps to PPB II for instance. It also may be that that point in the game corelates with about the time when Master B is ready to move on any poor sap unlucky enough to start near him.

I still disagree that it is an uber-weapon. Yes, it is very popular with the better players. But is that why they are better? I think those people are just modest and don't realize that they would have much sucess regardless of which particular weapon they choose. But that is an argument for another thread.

Early on a PPB using race would have trouble against one that concentrated on DUC's. Late in the game the PPB race would have trouble against races with APB's. It's the mid game when the PPB's are king. But it's also the mid game when most games are won or lost.

Any amount of changing we do to make them less powerul is going to make them less efective in the mid game when they are superior, but it will not make them any better in the late game when they are already inferior.

Geoschmo

[Andrés]

I repeat what I had posted below.
Weapons were balanced in SE3, where all weapons had the same size.
When they were copied into SE4 they were given different tonnage and that balance was lost.
My proposal is give them the same tonnage again.

Leave PPBs and APBs as they are, but decrease tonnage of other weapons such as torpedoes, high-energy weapons, graviton hellbores to 30 kt to RESTORE SE3 weapons balance and make them valid options again.

PPB should still be among the best weapons, but be one among the many possible choices. Its final stats below APB compensate their initial advantage by skipping normal shields.

[Baron Munchausen]

Andre, you have a different edition of SE3 than I ever saw. The very first weapons in the game, APB and MB have different sizes in SE3. APB is 3 spaces and MB is 2 spaces.

[ May 30, 2002, 21:24: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Weapons were balanced in SE3, where all weapons had the same size.

What are you talking about?!?
The SE3 weapons may have all had the same number of hitpoints (1), but they certainly were NOT the same size.
WMGs took up seven slots, MB took up 2.

Sizes have simply been multiplied by 10 for SE4.

[Suicide Junkie]

[ May 30, 2002, 17:39: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie. ]

[Phoenix-D]

SE3 weapons had different sizes.

"Ok, it may be that. It also may be that in my "Real World" test I neglected to play with the fleet arangments and see if that had any impact. I left all that default so both sides wer staying in a nice V formation. It may be that this skewed my results in favor of the APB since it had the larger fleet."

I didn't use ANY fleet formations It was just one huge furball after another.

I don't use them in real games so I don't use them in sims. The only reason I even fleet my ships is experience and ease of movement.

Phoenix-D

[Taera]

Valid point about comparing the weapons to SEIII.
Unlike all what i said before i have to agree with most of the things said by most of the players here who are against rebalancing.

Going back to SEIII and the mentioning of MoO brought me a solution. A difficult, requing some work to be done by Aaron, but i guess it will be the best solution.

Read it here

[Rich04]

I would also like to point out that in SE III. Phased Poloron beams had a counter in addition to Phased Shields.

Emissive Armor.
You pretty much slapped on at least one component of EA to counter Poloron Beams and reduce the effectiveness of several other weapons.
To get around EA you needed Heavier Weapons to rip through it. I rather enjoyed the dynamic.

However with weapon mounts in SE IV pretty much negate the effectiveness of EA with just about every weapon.

Just my thoughts.

[Taera]

Yes. Weapon mounts are fun but they take a big chunk out of balance and dynamic. OT.

[capnq]

This is looking more and more hopeless. Each faction looks at the same raw data, then interprets it as supporting their own position.

I'm beginning to think that whether PPBs are balanced mainly depends upon who's using them.