Verain's suggested balance fixes

[Verain]

General:

 

Barrel Roll is almost exclusively used by all roles. Barrel Roll is a sprint as well as a missile lock, with the only downside being that it is poor at being used in compact spaces (but ALL the missile lock breaks really are). Barrel Roll, the effect, is cool and powerful, but Barrel Roll, the ability, is probably too good. I recommend increasing the cooldown on Barrel Roll by 5 seconds, or changing the reduced cooldown power to something else, such as increased evasion during the Barrel Roll. With this nerf it would still probably be the best.

 

The turn, the power dive, etc., might see a bit more use then. Perhaps some of them need buffs, but barrel roll is so common that it's hard to differentiate between them at this point.

 

Distortion Shield could also use a longer cooldown. The other shield powers could likely use a shorter cooldown. A dodge bubble is fine if we're going to have mechanics like this, but having it up all the time and having it break the already weak missile lock seems too much.

 

Evasion in general is too strong. Mostly this is because it has no counters. In the detailed section I will propose adding "evasion ignore" to some abilities.

 

Armor ignore is a bit too strong. Armor ignore is fine in places (such as proton torps) but seems freely handed out to various blasters and railguns at 100% rates. Given that having armor is such a choice to begin with, it doesn't seem right that so many options can ignore it (and don't have similar choices).

 

The "helps your allies" abilities need to have a more reasonable range, as do the "hinders your opponents"- but the 'helps your allies' is particularly silly, as they tend to limit to 1k, when you have plenty of solid reasons to fly with your partners at further than that. Each of the "helps allies" abilities I recommend go out to 10km and be balanced around that, or be redesigned.

 

Ammunition being finite seems archaic. I dislike saying this because I personally really like the more realistic aspects, such as limited ammo. Ships with missiles don't seem like they are balanced around actually running out of missiles. It's quite possible that other game modes will be more survival and less goal based. Friendly satellites, and the capital ship, should offer missile refills in domination mode.

 

Honorable Suicide- The playerbase is, to their credit, not exploiting this much yet. But if you are weak hull and at an empty node, or if you run out of missiles it is correct play to kill yourself.

 

This is bad news, and bad form. The players are mostly playing the game they WANT, and the devs should deliver it. Common ideas to fix this include, longer respawn times, further capital ships, scoreboard penalties, or requisition penalties. But I think something much more subtle could work: a stacking buff that increases damage done and decreases damage taken by 1% for ever 30 seconds you have been alive, with a small cap, such as 5%. This 5% boost would be harder to justify throwing away, while not being gamebreaking should you just be new, or playing a role where you die a lot (humpsat, bait). The ammo issue would be resolved with the above point.

 

 

 

 

Companion passives and voices:

 

It seems odd that certain combinations can be limiting. Abilities such as "have more ammo" and "your missiles load faster" need to be normalized to work on all ships, even gunships. They also are 100% mandatory on ships that plan on using these on cooldown, and could likely be redesigned entirely to something else. In the current game, for instance, an Empire gunship that wants Bypass will need to take +ammo, something that they don't even have. While this particular case is bypass based, there are a number of similar situations that don't exactly seem intended- where you have to take a VERY suboptimal (or useless) passive.

Alien voices are a lot less useful than English ones. The alien voices don't go to the log, instead appearing briefly in an unusual position. It would be nice to configure some of this.

 

 

 

Copilot active abilities:

 

All of these are on a 1 minute cooldown. All either a mild amount of defense or small to large amount of offense. These should not all have the same cooldown. The overall impact of these should be more similar. None of the offensive ones should have a range limit a single meter less than 15 km. It is silly that some copilots offer literally nothing to a gunship (and likely they will offer nothing to a bomber). These copilots could instead have alternate abilities for when they fly the other ship types. For all the suggestions below, I assume that the range on the actives is buffed to something large, such as 15km- without that, the debuff based ones need much more help.

 

Bypass is too strong in the current meta. I would say, redesign it as a 10% shield pierce for 10 seconds on a 30 second cooldown. Alternatively other abilities could be buffed up to the current level of bypass, but I won't cover that. I'd be fine with it though.

 

Hydro Spanner seems overnerfed. I guess it's unlikely that the devs will buy this though, given how popular it was in the beta. I think it would be better as a passive that heals every five seconds or something, and the amount of healing could be increased. Abilities like this would be stronger if there was a penalty for dying: as it is it just seems a way to punish an ace who has chosen a generally less useful ability that won't win him any single dogfight but will help him if he stays alive.

 

In Your Sights could be a much more potent accuracy boost. It could be up to 35% without much change, and this would greatly boost the value of it.

 

Slicer's Loop seems unusual. It's generally weak and not taken, but this is likely due to how powerful the other abilities are. Slicer's Loop could keep it's current effect and have a greater range and a lower cooldown (such as 15km and 40 second cooldown)

 

Lockdown, see Slicer's Loop. Note that I have never seen anyone cast Lockdown. This ability could alternatively keep its current long cooldown and have a mild snare / turnsnare attached.

 

Servo Jammer- A 20% maneuverability decrease seems a bit mild for an entire ability. Could this value go up a bit? At what level would you want to take it over the above nerfed/buffed abilities?

 

Running Interference- This should be buffed to be 10km, not 1km. With that buff, the 15% evasion is a nice bonus to the rest of the team- it is otherwise largely useless. Alternatively, it could be a much larger single target buff.

 

Suppression- This ability could also debuff the damage that the enemy does by 10%, and the accuracy decrease could be higher. Given how this ability could do literally nothing, and often will do little, it seems reasonable to have a magnitude decrease attached.

 

Wingman- At a 20% boost to accuracy for 20 seconds, this is just a better version of In Your Sights. Boost the friendly zone effect up to 10km from the worthless 1km and it won't need the greater percentage (that I recommend) of IYS.

 

Nullify- This ability lasts 6 seconds, and is a 30% reduction. At 6 seconds, it could be higher- up to 50% easily. Alternatively, it could last longer.

 

Lingering Effect- This ability is ludicrous. Redesign it to anything except this.

 

Concentrated Fire- I've been sort of trying to aim everything at this thing's power level. It's hard to say if this is correct though, as six seconds is so short. One of the problems with a short cooldown is that it punishes dogfighters while rewarding gunships and missiles. Still, this ability has a good chance to make some damage happen. If anything, it could get a shorter cooldown.

 

 

 

 

UI:

We need flytext for DODGE on evasion induced misses.

It would be nice for each class of ship to have a different (configurable) icon on the map.

It would be nice to have a way to target friendlies.

It would be nice to be able to put the enemy and friendly bases on the map.

An artificial horizon would be AMAZING. The edges of the map can be uselessly disorienting with the ABC all clustered together, and it seems absurd that the ships natively lack any manner of relative orientation, when such an ability would be really important.

Unlikely that anyone would care, but the bugeye radar in X-Wing / TIE Fighter is excellent and would be wonderful, as would different UIs to represent the capability (or lack thereof) of the different ship's computers and sensors.

 

 

Bug/Exploit/Oversight:

Right-click -> instastop on a gunship. This might be too generous, and it is certainly not realistic- none of the other ships can stop on a dime, even though all can turn off their engines. Presumably switching to railgun mode would kill engines- why does it need to stop them instantly?

Friendly turrets should be solid. It should not be possible to hide inside a turret.

Cap ship turrets should be invincible.

 

 

By ship type:

Scouts:

 

It's possible that the Novadive will become more desired once Infiltrators are launched, but that's an if. It's also possible (and my assumption) that the Novadive is fine and that the Flashfire is a bit on the OP side. However:

1- The Novadive could come stock with a bit more pitch and yaw than it does currently, OR a bit more baseline speed.

2- The sensor beacon could be a lot more disruptive to the evasion rating of the enemies when they are near it.

 

The Flashfire is generally recognized as the best dogfighter in game, and that's kind of a hefty crown. It isn't so superior that the other ships may as well not show up, but it definitely is skewing the meta.

1- The maneuverability on this ship doesn't need to match the Novadive, which actually gives up a lot of power. Both of them inheriting generic "scout stats" seems a bit out of place. These values could be reduced a bit.

2- The adrenaline rush on the lasers could be given a slightly longer duration but with a reduced effect. This would net a nerf.

 

Strike Fighters

 

Generally these should be picked more than they are, is my impression. The lack of a strike fighter with both armor and shield secondaries seems mean when compared to the Flashfire, but likely a new Strike Fighter will bring this feature.

All strike fighters have access to interesting missiles, but very little way to make them land. What if, for instance, on a domination map, strikes could get lock ons through satellites? This rather large change would prevent one of the easiest ways of trivializing missile locks. Alternatively, this could be reserved for a special type of missile or torpedo.

 

Magazines seem odd. Why do magazines only offer tricks for the shot power? This component seems weak.

 

Could strike fighters get something that offered them extra accuracy? Perhaps an extraordinarily accurate gun could exist, with a general tradeoff in magnitude.

 

Starguard - I feel this ship should definitely have access to burst lasers. Having access to multiple weapon systems is supposed to be a perk on par with the turbo charge that the Flashfires have, but it rarely ends up feeling that way. With burst lasers added, the Starguard could make a much more meaningful ranged base choice.

 

Pike - The ammo magazine is unnecessary and bad- a trap, and a bad default.

 

 

 

Gunships:

 

Overall: Gunships generally need nerfs. But they need nerfs that render them still very strong and deadly ranged assassins. Note that many of the above suggested nerfs would impact gunships as well.

 

One shots: All one-shot tricks currently require Bypass active. With the above suggested nerf to Bypass (which is an issue for all ships), these would already be gone.

 

Railguns: Why do these all offer identical ranges? Why is there no weaker 18km railgun, and why is there no railguns that offer trade offs to be limited to 10km? This is a lot of design space left on the ground that I hope to see filled.

 

The charge value is also mostly identical. I don't feel that 3 seconds is that fair of a time to begin with (I think a base of 4 would be much more fair), but certainly some gun should exist that charges in 2, right?

 

Slug railgun: 100% armor ignore is a very generous ability. Does it need to be 100%? Would 50% not work well? This armor ignore makes a ship who tries to be "tanky" fail at his task. Remember armor is already a low value to begin with, which is why this value was chosen to be 100, but I think that it's too generous as it is. The raw damage on this shot could come down a little.

 

Plasma Railgun: This could gain some manner of trick to avoid evasion, and the debuff penalty on the shots could be increased. Plasma should be the highest damage of the railguns, as it requires a damage over time to deal its full effect, during which time the enemy can escape, heal, mitigate, pump shields, or finish his task- it's a fundamentally weaker mechanic, and it looks like it is intended to be the top.

 

Ion Railgun: At the very least, the "love tap" (apply fully talented debuff / drain | snare with a very small hit) needs to go. This ability is disruptive- fixes include requiring a half charge, or simply scaling the ability up to a full charge, so that a 10% charge only has 10% of the effect. The aoe effect could be subject to mitigation and evasion. I think everyone wants Ion Railgun to be an element that messes with shields and systems very well, but I very much doubt that "stunlock" was on the devs plate.

 

 

 

 

 

Please come up with anything else. Thoughts appreciated, and thanks for reading.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Verain

[silvershadows]

General:

 

 

Alien voices are a lot less useful than English ones. The alien voices don't go to the log, instead appearing briefly in an unusual position. It would be nice to configure some of this.

 

 

I'm not ignoring the rest of what you wrote, this just stuck out to me as I was reading as something I could reply to quickly without reading the rest (I am going to read the rest, don't worry!) - you CAN edit the GSF UI and move the companion chatter closer to the center of your screen to make it easier to see. I believe you can scale the size as well, not sure.

 

I suggest, though - that EVERYONE play this game with their sound ON, even if you usually play the ground game with it off - because those missile locks are much easier to hear than see, and you don't need to hear/see what your companion says if you can hear it yourself (I realize you likely play with your sound on, OP, but that was for the general populace, not you).

Edited December 27, 2013 by silvershadows

[Ramalina]

Well though out post. Personally I consider hydrospanner to be a mandatory crew skill, and I've used it to heal to full from a flaming smoking mess many times on my starguard. If it got much stronger it might be a bit overpowered.

 

There are definitely crew + upgrade combos that produce excessive payoff when combined. If this were equally available to all ships it might not be a problems, but so far it doesn't seem that's the case.

 

Tuning will be delicate though, I suspect that small changes could potentially produce large effects, and really, things aren't very far from a good balance as they are. I'm partially reserving judgement until after I have fully mastered ships and can swap out different combos of max level components.

[Svarthrafn]

I will say two things:

 

Evasion is fine. The counter is accuracy. Certain companions grant it, and one even has an ability to boost it. On top of that, some weapons are better accuracy-wise than others. Pick those weapons if you are having issues hitting. You can also counter it but making some distance so you can keep the enemy closer to the center of the targeting arc. Distortion Field is a little insane though. You pretty much have to forget about doing head-on passes against scouts because of it.

 

Barrel roll is also fine. For classes like the strike and gunship (mostly strike), it is one of the only things that allows them to be competitive with scouts, and not be hit-and-run fodder. In addition to breaking missile locks of course.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Svarthrafn

[mr_sim]

Wow that's a lot of things, most of which I disagree with.

 

I do agree on cooldowns extension on distortion field

 

but barrel roll is not OP simply because it only dodges the missile it doesn't cahnge the fact that there is somebody on your tail.

 

infinite missiles also wrong in fact Scouts probably carry too many compared to their size, shooting yourself out is a viable tactic to exploit it's called endurance it's the kind of thing that forms combat roles.

 

honorable deaths for new hulls and reloads somebody paid the price for those missiles you shot, Honorable suicides just removes all the value of what it cost them.

 

Also I have about 5 total minutes in a GS, but have been shot at plenty by them, other then maybe less bypass no significant nerf required.

 

I do have a nerf-on for Flashfire/sting but I'm not going to elaborate again, I've talked it to death in too many threads already today.

[Verain]

really, things aren't very far from a good balance as they are.

 

I certainly don't think the game is in bad shape. If the game was worthless, I wouldn't make a big post!

 

But like... ok, here's a list of abilities. Tell me when you use each:

 

Bypass, Hydro Spanner, In Your Sights, Slicer's Loop, Lockdown, Servo Jammer, Running Interference, Suppression, Wingman, Nullify, Lingering Effect, Concentrated Fire

 

Did you end up with reasons for more than four? There's 12 abilities, and I would expect each one would fit a playstyle, goal, or something. In practice, few do.

 

You also mention "heal to full" (heh). Did this... help your team? Did it help you win? Or did it just go along with the game YOU want to play (and so do I!) where not dying is kind of important? In other words- pretend you had taken your smoking wreck and dashed it into a sat, the moment the enemy was defeated. Then repopped with full everything, and taken off to where you were needed next.

 

I get that a lot of people love Hydro Spanner. It's cool to go a whole match without dying, and it's great to have a little robot to repair your ship a bit, and I like that as well. But after running both it and offensive ones on my Pike, I just have to say, there's not much benefit that it brings towards the objective, given that dying is worth like 1 point to the enemy, gives you a fresh hull, etc. I feel it was nerfed because it was too popular, not because it was too good, I guess is what I'm saying

 

Evasion is fine. The counter is accuracy.

 

Why does almost everyone have distortion and light hull then? I think it's because there's so much to win from a miss where damage reduction doesn't get you much. So if some things mostly ignored evasion but were weaker overall because of it, I feel that would be an interesting mechanic- and it would encourage some players to metagame over to armor.

[Kuciwalker]

I would start with one, much more modest change: remove the passive evasion from distortion field. I think with that gone we'll see a substantial realignment.

 

I would also suggest that 100% armor piercing abilities be changes to 50%, but this is less important than above.

[mr_sim]

General:

 

 

 

Bug/Exploit/Oversight:

Right-click -> instastop on a gunship. This might be too generous, and it is certainly not realistic- none of the other ships can stop on a dime, even though all can turn off their engines. Presumably switching to railgun mode would kill engines- why does it need to stop them instantly?

Friendly turrets should be solid. It should not be possible to hide inside a turret.

Cap ship turrets should be invincible.

 

 

If you look at the various GS designs it does look plausible it has enough reverse thrust to come to a complete stop so suddenly. SW has never followed the "Turnover" concept of Zero G navigation anyway. If you'd I and I would support is that switching to snipe mode costs engine power reserves.

 

RE: turrets. Remember that GSF is built on the same engine as the rest of the game, Turrets are an NPC and the game engine allows player characters and NPCs to pass through each other. My assumption is that Bioware could not alter the game engine for GSF only and still keep the standard configuration for the main game.

 

RE: Cap ship turrets: Really what does killing them have to do with objectives anyway, I say let people wast time trying to take them down out in the middle of nowhere.

[Verain]

I would start with one, much more modest change: remove the passive evasion from distortion field. I think with that gone we'll see a substantial realignment.

 

Well, the whole point of the ability is that it offers passive evasion at a cost of shield. They would probably want to remove the shield cost if they got rid of that I think?

 

If you look at the various GS designs it does look plausible it has enough reverse thrust to come to a complete stop so suddenly.

 

I agree, but there's no animation or explanation for that. It's also INSTANT, which is jarring.

 

switching to snipe mode costs engine power reserves.

 

This could be ok, but the problem is that you often go in and out of snipe for aiming reasons- if this chewed your engine, UGH.

 

Turrets are an NPC and the game engine allows player characters and NPCs to pass through each other.

 

Try that on an enemy turret, and you'll see that they did, in fact, code collision detection

 

 

RE: Cap ship turrets: Really what does killing them have to do with objectives anyway, I say let people wast time trying to take them down out in the middle of nowhere.

 

You would want your teammates to do this for damage medals instead of contributing to a victory?

[Kuciwalker]

Well, the whole point of the ability is that it offers passive evasion at a cost of shield. They would probably want to remove the shield cost if they got rid of that I think?

 

The active ability is powerful enough on its own to justify -30% shield.

[Suzina]

 

Barrel Roll is almost exclusively used by all roles.

Personally, I find being able to do a snap-180 in the opposite direction more useful. Only my gunship uses Barrel Roll as it's often out in t he distance with wide distances to fly across for capping.

 

 

Evasion in general is too strong. Mostly this is because it has no counters. In the detailed section I will propose adding "evasion ignore" to some abilities.

I actually don't use evasion, even on my scout. Once I cap, I hit F2 to re-route power to shields and sit idle. Eventually some scout or strike fighter will boost in on a direct attack-path. Unlike me, their shields go down lower, indicating power to weapons. In the short exchanges of mutual blaster fire, shield recharge and hydro-spanner are always on cooldown, but I'm alive and my wood-be attacker is dead. It's even more decisive if I have my sensor-probe out or there are turrets to add to my fire. When holding a turret off from multiple foes, satellite-hugging, power to shields and shield-based survival is still my preferred method of maintaining control.

 

 

The "helps your allies" abilities need to have a more reasonable range, as do the "hinders your opponents"- but the 'helps your allies' is particularly silly, as they tend to limit to 1k, when you have plenty of solid reasons to fly with your partners at further than that. Each of the "helps allies" abilities I recommend go out to 10km and be balanced around that, or be redesigned.

I agree 100%. I suspect they meant 10k, that's about missile range. 5k is standard-issue blaster range... but 1k is like wing-tip to wing-tip. Ridiculous. The dev blog mentioned the size of the ships is strange, maybe it confused them. I also think you should be able to cap a sat at a greater radius, perhaps blaster-range?

 

Ammunition being finite seems archaic. I dislike saying this because I personally really like the more realistic aspects, such as limited ammo. Ships with missiles don't seem like they are balanced around actually running out of missiles. It's quite possible that other game modes will be more survival and less goal based. Friendly satellites, and the capital ship, should offer missile refills in domination mode.

Agree! As it is, Self-Destruct is an instant-reload, and the ONLY reload. 3 Turrets should = missile reload station or something.

Copilot active abilities:

 

Hydro Spanner seems overnerfed. I guess it's unlikely that the devs will buy this though, given how popular it was in the beta. I think it would be better as a passive that heals every five seconds or something, and the amount of healing could be increased. Abilities like this would be stronger if there was a penalty for dying: as it is it just seems a way to punish an ace who has chosen a generally less useful ability that won't win him any single dogfight but will help him if he stays alive.

I pretty much consider hydro-spanner mandatory on all my ships. After I kill a ship, I'm often near death. This is my only way to recover.

 

 

UI:

We need flytext for DODGE on evasion induced misses.

It would be nice for each class of ship to have a different (configurable) icon on the map.

It would be nice to have a way to target friendlies.

It would be nice to be able to put the enemy and friendly bases on the map.

An artificial horizon would be AMAZING. The edges of the map can be uselessly disorienting with the ABC all clustered together, and it seems absurd that the ships natively lack any manner of relative orientation, when such an ability would be really important.

Unlikely that anyone would care, but the bugeye radar in X-Wing / TIE Fighter is excellent and would be wonderful, as would different UIs to represent the capability (or lack thereof) of the different ship's computers and sensors.

 

Yes. These are well thought out and needed things. I really wish i could target a team-mate and "follow them in".

I wish I could tell when I am upside down, because that completely breaks the map for navigation purposes. Also being sideways breaks it.

 

 

Bug/Exploit/Oversight:

Right-click -> instastop on a gunship. This might be too generous, and it is certainly not realistic- none of the other ships can stop on a dime, even though all can turn off their engines. Presumably switching to railgun mode would kill engines- why does it need to stop them instantly?

Friendly turrets should be solid. It should not be possible to hide inside a turret.

Cap ship turrets should be invincible.

 

 

Please come up with anything else. Thoughts appreciated, and thanks for reading.

 

We don't agree on everything, but you put a lot of thought into this, and I dare say more thought than some. There's a lot of stuff here I wish the devs would listen to.

[TrinityLyre]

There's lots of great points here. I think they would need to put in the major changes first though, like a solid nerf to evasion-stacking (ever tried killing a gunship running an evasion build with distortion field?), armor and shield piercing. I'm fine with there being an attrition battle between skilled and geared-up strikes/scouts/gunships through piercing effects, but they definitely need to be toned down some, especially if evasion is going to be cut a bit. You can clear a ridiculous amount of enemies with a single bypass cooldown on a gunship. Do skilled players consistently USE anything but bypass or spanner?

 

Barrel roll could definitely do with a cooldown extension or distance reduction. It's pretty silly that it's my go-to missile break, evasion, gap-closer and gap-widener on every single ship; the other maneuvers don't offer the same versatility and probably should. I don't see this changing with upcoming releases, it's simply too good.

 

Right now the combat scout (Sting/Flashfire) and gunship (Mangler/Quarrel) are definitely the choice ships of many of the skilled players I've seen. I don't feel like it should be that way. The Blackbolt/NovaDive and Rycer/Star Guard shouldn't be stepping stones on the way to bigger and better things unless they were explicitly designed to be that way. The Blackbolt/NovaDive could have their probe become a turret or mine, or a system activation that slows enemy ships without costing it a secondary weapon slot. I like the idea of giving Star Guards BLC, but honestly BLC (burst laser cannon) either needs a minor nerf or more ships (including future releases) need access to it. The other laser weapons don't really compare when playing Domination. Both ships need some kind of adjustment to keep them competitive assuming no other changes are being made.

 

Gunships - I've mastered one, and I really wonder what they were thinking allowing them in this way. Your weapon choices are either instagib-cannon or CC-an-entire-group-with-one-tap cannon. Fix it in some way, I almost feel bad for the little ships I'm tearing apart with them.

 

I'm not convinced changes need to be made until the actual launch, though. We'll see how it all pans out in February - they made a good move taking out the bomber for rebalancing, but I'm sure it'll complicate balance even further having little drones wrecking people and tons of mines sitting on satellites. That's not even including the alternate game modes and maps.

 

I'll end my reply with something for the devs: Great job designing GSF. It's engaging, fun and hasn't even begun to feel old despite my ridiculous amount of hours playing it. I'm really excited to see what else is in store.

Edited December 28, 2013 by TrinityLyre

[Lymain]

General:

 

Barrel Roll is almost exclusively used by all roles. Barrel Roll is a sprint as well as a missile lock, with the only downside being that it is poor at being used in compact spaces (but ALL the missile lock breaks really are). Barrel Roll, the effect, is cool and powerful, but Barrel Roll, the ability, is probably too good. I recommend increasing the cooldown on Barrel Roll by 5 seconds, or changing the reduced cooldown power to something else, such as increased evasion during the Barrel Roll. With this nerf it would still probably be the best.

 

The turn, the power dive, etc., might see a bit more use then. Perhaps some of them need buffs, but barrel roll is so common that it's hard to differentiate between them at this point.

 

I agree in the sense that I want Barrel Roll on all of my ships no matter what. However, I'm not sure that I would ever want to fly a strike fighter without the mobility that it provides (or a gunship, but I don't have access to them yet).

 

Distortion Shield could also use a longer cooldown. The other shield powers could likely use a shorter cooldown. A dodge bubble is fine if we're going to have mechanics like this, but having it up all the time and having it break the already weak missile lock seems too much.

 

Evasion in general is too strong. Mostly this is because it has no counters. In the detailed section I will propose adding "evasion ignore" to some abilities.

Agreed. Accuracy counters evasion, but the main problem is that evasion stacks additively beyond 100%, making it stronger and stronger the more you stack it. Damage reduction would have the same problem if there weren't so many ways to completely ignore it.

Armor ignore is a bit too strong. Armor ignore is fine in places (such as proton torps) but seems freely handed out to various blasters and railguns at 100% rates. Given that having armor is such a choice to begin with, it doesn't seem right that so many options can ignore it (and don't have similar choices).

Agree 100%. I'd actually say that it's more than just a bit too available.

 

Ammunition being finite seems archaic. I dislike saying this because I personally really like the more realistic aspects, such as limited ammo. Ships with missiles don't seem like they are balanced around actually running out of missiles. It's quite possible that other game modes will be more survival and less goal based. Friendly satellites, and the capital ship, should offer missile refills in domination mode.

Agreed. And replace the ammo capacity upgrades with something else so that secondary weapons scale better.

 

Copilot active abilities:

I agree that these do not appear very well balanced at all, but I don't really like your specific suggestions. Hydrospanner seems fine to me in its current state. It allows me to defend a satellite indefinitely in some situations instead of having my hull slowly eaten away. I would just reduce the duration on Bypass to 6 seconds (/shrug). Your suggested 10km radius on the group buffs seems overpowered to me without significantly reducing the effect, but we can just leave the specific numbers to the devs.

 

All strike fighters have access to interesting missiles, but very little way to make them land. What if, for instance, on a domination map, strikes could get lock ons through satellites? This rather large change would prevent one of the easiest ways of trivializing missile locks. Alternatively, this could be reserved for a special type of missile or torpedo.

Oh god, that sounds like my worst nightmare. I think missiles do need a buff (as I suggested above), but, in all seriousness, I think this specific suggestion would be pretty terrible.

 

Magazines seem odd. Why do magazines only offer tricks for the shot power? This component seems weak.

Agreed. Weakest minor component except for possibly sensors, which I don't think are working as intended currently.

Starguard - I feel this ship should definitely have access to burst lasers. Having access to multiple weapon systems is supposed to be a perk on par with the turbo charge that the Flashfires have, but it rarely ends up feeling that way. With burst lasers added, the Starguard could make a much more meaningful ranged base choice.

Yes, please.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write that all out, Verain. Hopefully the devs get some use out of it.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Lymain

[Lymain]

I'm not convinced changes need to be made until the actual launch, though. We'll see how it all pans out in February - they made a good move taking out the bomber for rebalancing, but I'm sure it'll complicate balance even further having little drones wrecking people and tons of mines sitting on satellites. That's not even including the alternate game modes and maps.

 

Yeah, not to mention how a lot of these changes that might seem like no-brainers at first glance can end up hurting balance in obscure ways. I won't complain if they wait until we have the whole system in place before they start messing with balance, and even then I hope it's gradual, minor changes rather than one patch that tries to fix everything (or a whole bunch of things).

Edited December 28, 2013 by Lymain

[Bleeters]

I'm generally of the mindset that active offensive abilities (such as blaster overcharge or targeting telemetary) from ship systems shouldn't be useable alongside offensive copilot abilities (bypass, concentrated fire, etc) at the same time. Not to say you can't run with both, but having one put the other on cooldown for the duration of the ability doesn't seem unreasonable.

 

Lingering effect is a joke. I think it deals its damage directly to enemy hulls regardless of shields, but the actual damage it does for the cooldown it has is nothing short of pathetic.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Bleeters

[Zoom_VI]

General:

Distortion Shield could also use a longer cooldown. The other shield powers could likely use a shorter cooldown. A dodge bubble is fine if we're going to have mechanics like this, but having it up all the time and having it break the already weak missile lock seems too much.

 

Evasion in general is too strong. Mostly this is because it has no counters. In the detailed section I will propose adding "evasion ignore" to some abilities.

Evasion does not work like I *think* your implying. Evasion seems to exasperate the tracking accuracy penalty, thus is in much weaker the closer the target is to center. A target dead center of you should never evade. (note due to absence of combat logs this cannot be proven but it matches experiences me and my fellows have had much better the traditional ground defense model does.)

 

Ammunition being finite seems archaic. I dislike saying this because I personally really like the more realistic aspects, such as limited ammo. Ships with missiles don't seem like they are balanced around actually running out of missiles. It's quite possible that other game modes will be more survival and less goal based. Friendly satellites, and the capital ship, should offer missile refills in domination mode.

Bombers where meant to fill the weapon reload capacity, when they return this should be fixed.

 

Concentrated Fire- I've been sort of trying to aim everything at this thing's power level. It's hard to say if this is correct though, as six seconds is so short. One of the problems with a short cooldown is that it punishes dogfighters while rewarding gunships and missiles. Still, this ability has a good chance to make some damage happen. If anything, it could get a shorter cooldown.

I will point out that both railguns and missiles are secondary weapons, and concentrated fire only affects primary weapons.

 

 

 

UI:

We need flytext for DODGE on evasion induced misses.

It would be nice for each class of ship to have a different (configurable) icon on the map.

Please this, would help put the evasion myths to the test since there are no combat logs.

 

An artificial horizon would be AMAZING. The edges of the map can be uselessly disorienting with the ABC all clustered together, and it seems absurd that the ships natively lack any manner of relative orientation, when such an ability would be really important.

 

I will point out that there is no horizon in space no up or down, and to limit yourself to your capital ship's orientation is basically a self gimp, adding this feature may make new players orient easier, but would ultimately be detrimental to them.

 

You should NOT be using your UI for guidance. The only aspect I use to navigate at all is the targeting ring.

[Verain]

Evasion does not work like I *think* your implying. Evasion seems to exasperate the tracking accuracy penalty, thus is in much weaker the closer the target is to center. A target dead center of you should never evade.

 

This is absolutely untrue.

 

(note due to absence of combat logs this cannot be proven but it matches experiences me and my fellows have had much better the traditional ground defense model does.)

 

Sorry, this is incorrect.

 

Here's how it works: You have an accuracy. This depends on a number of things, such as your weapon (ion cannons have a base of like 120), your companions, any talented bonuses, etc.

 

Then, subtract the evasion the ship has. This can be passive- lightweight armor, for instance, can cause you to miss a dead center target point blank. Distortion field trades shield strength for passive evasion as well. So without blowing any cooldown, you absolutely can attack someone dead center and miss. This is intended.

 

Then you subtract stuff like, "does the guy have a +evasion active, such as the distortion field cooldown", and "penalty for each degree off center". Your shots off center are a lot less likely to hit, which you know, but this is only one of many mechanics at play here.

 

Bombers where meant to fill the weapon reload capacity, when they return this should be fixed.

 

I don't think that's relevant. I would never waste an ANYTHING on "reload my allies". I would definitely waste stuff to HEAL them, but if they want to refill their 8 torpedoes they can run into a wall.

 

Or, better yet, reloads should happen near allied structures in some manner. It's also possible that a different game mode might have different values- for instance, if you were playing stock 4 (four lives and you stop respawning), then reloading would be desired on that map, because you could meaningfully want to make use of it. It could have value.

 

Right now, it's a false resource- it doesn't matter, and if you run out and DON'T kill yourself, you are hurting your team.

 

I will point out that both railguns and missiles are secondary weapons, and concentrated fire only affects primary weapons.

 

Hrm, a good point. This is something else that should be fixed then, as it's on the list of "only useful for dogfighter" abilities.

 

Please this, would help put the evasion myths to the test since there are no combat logs.

 

Evasion is not a myth dude. The ability says what it does. I have lived through gunship duels where their shot hits me and mine hits them but I evade. Unless you want to tell me that this ace gunship who can nail my scout mid barrel roll somehow twitched his mouse, and this sort of thing happens repeatedly. In each case, I turn on distortion field active when the hit is about to happen, and I almost always live, because that's what evasion does. It also lets me ignore scout ganks, becoming unhittable even while stationary and ganking his friends. Please reevaluate what you know about evasion before continuing down this path.

 

 

I will point out that there is no horizon in space no up or down

 

Nonsense entirely. We adventure in a rectangular prism. The up and down are very limited compared to the breadth and depth. I mentioned, EXPLICITLY a RELATIVE method of orientation- aka, I would set my artificial horizon to whatever the plane that both cap ships, all three satelites, and literally every constructed piece on both things is. Also, half of the maps thus far on at the upper reaches of a planet, and have a literal horizon as well.

 

Pedantics aside, a starfighter would have a need to orient himself relative to literally anything. If nothing else, the ability to not fly like a moron into an enemy cap ship by marking it on the map would be a universally good thing, as would be marking the source cap ship. An artificial horizon would be easier to provide than, say, the bugeye radar (which is position and orientation invariant, but which we also lack).

 

The "it's space lol" defense also falls flat on its face when there is, in fact, a 2D map in the lower left, showing everything viewed top down. A map which is only useful if you are oriented to its artificial horizon, which, again, we should probably have. Note that the map in question is accurate- I can barrel roll from top to bottom twice or maybe three times and then self destruct, but would require like 10 to cross the map laterally.

 

and to limit yourself to your capital ship's orientation is basically a self gimp

 

Ok, how about this: an artificial horizon that you can turn off. I won't be turning it off, of course, and it will be a huge advantage to me, as any time I'm at the edge I would know my orientation relative to other things.

 

You should NOT be using your UI for guidance. The only aspect I use to navigate at all is the targeting ring.

 

The targetting ring is the only UI we have, and it is limiting. One of my suggestions was to change the icons so that we could see more than just "bandit" and "targetted bandit". We should have more instruments in general in a starfighter, but also, we really don't have enough for the sort of unlimited free flight that we almost kind of have. If we were actually in 1000 km spherical space with numerous objectives to reach and orientations to achieve, you would find the existing lack of instruments to be very disheartening, and so would Luke Skywalker!

[Verain]

Also, there's a lot of folks who like Hydro Spanner in this thread. Now, it's a good ability, but I want you to really ask yourself if it actually matters. Not just to you or me, but to the game state. The other actives can result in you surviving a dogfight you would not otherwise survive, or destroying an opponent you would not otherwise destroy. The weakest hull in the game is still over a thousand, and the heal is for 210. If you are injured almost to death and recover from this, you've pressed it at least four times. The strike fighters have a minimum of 1450 hull, recovering from a 650 hit will take three minutes right there.

 

Pretend you beat the dogfight and you are at 40% hull. There's no bogeys around, so you run into a wall. The game currently says that this is correct. Even if it didn't, your ability to heal to full over 4-6 minutes is hardly game breaking, and doesn't impact any single dogfight, node defense, or node cap.

 

 

So those who use Hydro Spanner- consider that you are playing the game you want to play, not the game we were presented. I don't want to run into a wall either, and in practice, I do not. But you cannot deny that it is correct play, AND you get an offensive or burst defensive copilot ability instead. So even though you are using it and it is popular, it doesn't mean that it is too good- or even good enough.

[Itkovian]

A good thread all around, nothing wrong with making suggestions.

 

Though I got to say I don't agree with Barrel Roll, if only because it's about the only way for a Strike to get out of a Gunship's sights. Without it, Strikes would be far more vulnerable than they currently are (which would be bad, IMO)... same goes for Scouts, but their extra speed makes boosting a viable alternative.

 

Of course, the fact that it is almost vital does present a balance issue, but that's more an issue with Gunships than Barrel Roll.

 

In any case, a good thread in general.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Itkovian

[Lymain]

Also, there's a lot of folks who like Hydro Spanner in this thread. Now, it's a good ability, but I want you to really ask yourself if it actually matters. Not just to you or me, but to the game state. The other actives can result in you surviving a dogfight you would not otherwise survive, or destroying an opponent you would not otherwise destroy. The weakest hull in the game is still over a thousand, and the heal is for 210. If you are injured almost to death and recover from this, you've pressed it at least four times. The strike fighters have a minimum of 1450 hull, recovering from a 650 hit will take three minutes right there.

 

Pretend you beat the dogfight and you are at 40% hull. There's no bogeys around, so you run into a wall. The game currently says that this is correct. Even if it didn't, your ability to heal to full over 4-6 minutes is hardly game breaking, and doesn't impact any single dogfight, node defense, or node cap.

 

 

So those who use Hydro Spanner- consider that you are playing the game you want to play, not the game we were presented. I don't want to run into a wall either, and in practice, I do not. But you cannot deny that it is correct play, AND you get an offensive or burst defensive copilot ability instead. So even though you are using it and it is popular, it doesn't mean that it is too good- or even good enough.

 

Yes, Hydro Spanner definitely helps me win games. We have fights at satellites that last nearly the entire length of the game sometimes. If I die, the satellite will likely be lost and we might lose.

 

It's not the most amazing ability ever, but it feels balanced to me. I guess it's a question of how powerful co-pilot abilities are supposed to be.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Lymain

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Evasion in general is too strong. Mostly this is because it has no counters. In the detailed section I will propose adding "evasion ignore" to some abilities.

 

Agreed although I believe it is too powerful because there are no passive accuracy buffs that can effectively counter this. Now IMO evasion should just be scrapped (or nerfed down to the amount required to compensate for any wacky hitbox mechanics) but if they aren't going to do that then a component class needs to be added that includes a component that passively buffs accuracy at a 1:1 ratio of the passive buffs granted by existing components.

 

Ammunition being finite seems archaic. I dislike saying this because I personally really like the more realistic aspects, such as limited ammo. Ships with missiles don't seem like they are balanced around actually running out of missiles. It's quite possible that other game modes will be more survival and less goal based. Friendly satellites, and the capital ship, should offer missile refills in domination mode.

 

I would much rather see an automatic refill occur from friendly sats than a scrapping of secondary ammo. Scrapping it would just lead to even more missile spam since there would no longer be any reason to choose whether or not to use missiles.

 

Hydro Spanner seems overnerfed. I guess it's unlikely that the devs will buy this though, given how popular it was in the beta. I think it would be better as a passive that heals every five seconds or something, and the amount of healing could be increased. Abilities like this would be stronger if there was a penalty for dying: as it is it just seems a way to punish an ace who has chosen a generally less useful ability that won't win him any single dogfight but will help him if he stays alive.

 

First I think it should be a % based rather than flat number so every ship class benefits equally from it (and so using certain armor components doesn't make it less useful).

 

UI:

We need flytext for DODGE on evasion induced misses.

It would be nice for each class of ship to have a different (configurable) icon on the map.

It would be nice to have a way to target friendlies.

It would be nice to be able to put the enemy and friendly bases on the map.

An artificial horizon would be AMAZING. The edges of the map can be uselessly disorienting with the ABC all clustered together, and it seems absurd that the ships natively lack any manner of relative orientation, when such an ability would be really important.

Unlikely that anyone would care, but the bugeye radar in X-Wing / TIE Fighter is excellent and would be wonderful, as would different UIs to represent the capability (or lack thereof) of the different ship's computers and sensors.

 

All of this would be pretty nice and a great improvement

 

Strike Fighters

 

Generally these should be picked more than they are, is my impression. The lack of a strike fighter with both armor and shield secondaries seems mean when compared to the Flashfire, but likely a new Strike Fighter will bring this feature.

 

From what I gather the problem with strikers isn't anything to do with the ship per se but rather the fact that there is nothing it offensively can do that the flashfire can't also do. It's more the lack of a role distinction between strikers/scouts/flashfires than it is due to any design fault of strikers. IMO all the devs need to do is balance out scouts/strikers to perform distinct roles that have minimal overlap then we'll be fine.

 

Evasion is fine. The counter is accuracy.

 

In theory this is true. The problem is aside from companion passive buffs there are no passive buffs to accuracy. So while in theory the counter is accuracy in practice evasion has no counters because there are practically no passive buffs to accuracy that come even close to a 1/2:1 ratio much less a balanced 1:1 ratio.

 

Evasion is only a problem because it is effectively impossible to buff your accuracy stat to keep up with the passive buffs that can be stacked on top of a ship's base stat (the companion passive accuracy buff isn't even enough to counter a scout's base evasion leaving any additional passive evasion they gain from components/companions completely unchecked).

Edited December 29, 2013 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Sharee]

Why does almost everyone have distortion and light hull then? I think it's because there's so much to win from a miss where damage reduction doesn't get you much.

 

Armor - yes. Because damage reduction is worthless(armor penetration is common) and health increase is worthless(because base hp on a scout are low, and there is no decent way to heal). So light it is. Not so much because its good, as that the other options are crap.

 

However distortion is another story. On my Flashfire, i use directional shields along with large reactor. A scout with distortion dies in two hits. I don't.

[BuckeyeChris]

I disagree with a lot of this, but the larger point that I seem to keep repeating is that these knee-jerk "balance suggestions" are not helpful at this early stage. You are not a GSF expert, and your opponents aren't either. At a rough glance the balance is pretty good overall and that being the case the best course is to go with it for a while. "Balance" suggestions are more likely to F up what could be a good thing.

Only the most egregious, glaring issues (like, IMO, the ion railgun love tap) should be corrected at this point and anybody suggesting this many changes at this detailed a level needs to take a step back and realize there's a lot they still don't know.

[Zoom_VI]

I disagree with a lot of this, but the larger point that I seem to keep repeating is that these knee-jerk "balance suggestions" are not helpful at this early stage. You are not a GSF expert, and your opponents aren't either. At a rough glance the balance is pretty good overall and that being the case the best course is to go with it for a while. "Balance" suggestions are more likely to F up what could be a good thing.

Only the most egregious, glaring issues (like, IMO, the ion railgun love tap) should be corrected at this point and anybody suggesting this many changes at this detailed a level needs to take a step back and realize there's a lot they still don't know.

 

^^this lol

 

We are still finding new ways to use the different weapons right now, and we haven't even seen the new classes.

[Kuciwalker]

Evasion does not work like I *think* your implying. Evasion seems to exasperate the tracking accuracy penalty, thus is in much weaker the closer the target is to center. A target dead center of you should never evade. (note due to absence of combat logs this cannot be proven but it matches experiences me and my fellows have had much better the traditional ground defense model does.)

 

You keep spreading this misinformation. It's completely false. When I pop distortion field, I know 100% that no shot is going to hit me, even dead center. And I've shot - dead center - at other gunships using distortion field and missed.

 

Stop spreading lies.