Crew offensive passives- ITT I propose changes!

[Verain]

Offensive:

 

The four categories here are:

> 8% reduced reload times on missiles, torpedoes, and railguns (NOT mines)

> 25% extra missiles and torpedoes

> 6% extra accuracy

> 2 degrees extra firing arc

 

The most powerful here is 6% extra accuracy, by a mile. Frequently this is a 10% increase in blaster and pod damage, and often more like 20%! Very rarely does it "only" get down to 6% or less. (if your accuracy is low because of anything, such as tracking, your accuracy could easily be as low as 50%- if you deal X damage at 50% accuracy, you'll deal 1.12X damage at 56% accuracy, for instance). This passive is as good as having an extra capacitor component.

 

Does accuracy need a nerf? Maybe, actually. It's really really good compared to the others, and maybe the others shouldn't be buffed enough that they can compete. How much extra firing arc could even make up for 6% accuracy? How much extra missiles?

 

The "extra missiles and torpedoes" one is very valuable with either rocket pods (it's trivial to go out of them) and clusters (you gain 50% more instead of 25% with the double volley). It's far less valuable with the other choices, and entirely worthless for drones, mines, and railguns. It's fair to say that this secondary is deed entirely for four of the eight ships, in fact. This secondary could be a little bit larger.

 

The "reload time" one is in theory valuable, but in practice is a rather small effect, and likely not worth the passive cost.

 

Verain's recommendations if we're trying to balance the existing ones:

 

1)- Accuracy should come down, likely to 4% or 5%. The remaining 1% or 2% accuracy could be added somewhere else passively, as almost everyone uses this and we don't really need a global accuracy nerf. Even with this, I'm afraid it is mandatory for almost all ships.

 

2)- Reload Time should be increased to 15% at a bare minimum.

 

3)- 25% extra missiles could be increased to 50%.

 

4)- 2% tracking could also reduce the tracking penalty by 1 degree.

 

Even with these changes, you'd still feel like you need the accuracy one.

 

 

Verain's real recommendations:

 

> 5% accuracy

> 5% secondary weapon damage and 25% extra ammo (railguns, mines, drones, missiles, pods, torps, everything)

> 5% crit and 2 degrees firing arc

> 15% extra reload time and 5% firing rate

 

 

5% accuracy remains around 10% extra damage, but the others here can sort of be justified. The others become a bit more worthwhile.

 

 

This solves several problems:

 

1- Mandatory accuracy passive could now actually be dropped, even if it remains the best.

2- Secondaries are effective in some manner for all ships.

3- If you can't get the combo you want, your second best combo won't feel derp.

[Armonddd]

I would honestly be ok with dropping pinpointing to 3% accuracy, or even removing it entirely in favor of something else. It's just so ridiculously strong that it's never worth passing up. That said, I don't want offensive crew passives to turn into tactical crew passives, where you take whoever's prettiest because the passives don't really affect anything.

 

I think adding 5% crit to improved kill zone isn't a bad idea, but at the same time it just makes me want it even more than I already do, and makes me even more sad when I can't get it.

 

I'm ok with the idea of secondary weapon damage, but I don't think it really addresses any issue. What secondary weapons exist that would realistically gain kills faster because of it? I think the niche case of eating a conc or slug and living with a sliver of health is rare enough that +5% damage won't be useful in practical situations, and (just eyeballing) I don't think the burst capability of rocket pods will be affected at all (you'll just end up with more overkill).

 

Any other complaints I might have (railguns being railguns, drones being drones, mines being mines, torps not torping hard enough) are problems with specific weapons and are inapplicable to this suggestion.

 

Semi-related, I still think it would be better if passive abilities were untied from specific crew members, so you're not arbitrarily restricted on who you can bring with you. I love Blizz, for example, but dude's not copiloting any of my ships.

 

> 15% extra reload time and 5% firing rate

 

I think you mean less.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Armonddd

[Kuciwalker]

1)- Accuracy should come down, likely to 4% or 5%. The remaining 1% or 2% accuracy could be added somewhere else passively, as almost everyone uses this and we don't really need a global accuracy nerf. Even with this, I'm afraid it is mandatory for almost all ships.

.

 

No. No no no no no. The game needs less RNG not more. The only appropriate way to nerf this is if you correspondingly increase the base accuracy of every weapon in the game.

 

3)- 25% extra missiles could be increased to 50%.

 

25% is already plenty strong in the cases where it's actually useful, and where it isn't 50% is no better.

 

4)- 2% tracking could also reduce the tracking penalty by 1 degree.

 

Yes, the firing arc one needs to have a -5% tracking penalty or similar associated with it (like the railgun talents).

[Altheran]

I don't think that the 6% accuracy is too strong, but it's the (sometimes ridiculously low) weapon base accuracy plus tracking penalties that make this bonus have a dramatic impact. Edited April 7, 2014 by Altheran

[Ramalina]

Right now reload time really only has a practical effect on missiles with longish lock-on times. They don't work on rockets or mines, and the effect on railguns is 0.1 seconds per shot, in the best case scenario.

 

For 'slow' missiles even doubling the effect wouldn't make that much difference because reload time is rarely an issue, and where it is an issue, the reload time is so long that doubling the reduction has a negligible effect on employment.

 

If you wanted to make it useful, the thing to do would be to keep the number the same (or maybe even nerf it a bit), but turn it into a lock-on time reduction. Rounded up that'd give you possibly in the range of 0.1 to 0.3 seconds off of lock on times. Might be enough to actually make things like proton torps and EMPs worth considering on type one strikes. As well as encouraging scouts to play with thermite and sab probe a bit more. Would even help some types of bombers and gunships, or at least make the missile components less unappealing.

 

I'm of mixed opinion on increasing missile capacity. Rocket pods could definitely use it (or at least part of it), cluster missiles could use it, but don't really need it. That's a small enough set that just changing the baseline ammo might be a better choice.

 

Basically when the limiting factor on missile employment for most missiles is actually hitting things with them, buffs to aspects that don't enhance the ability to hit (or do more damage on those occasions when they do hit), really aren't worth all that much.

 

Splitting the secondary weapons passives a bit more distinctly might be a good idea though. Make one clearly good for slow rate of fire guided munitions (this could potentially include seeker mines and drones, if it's possible to reduce the delay they have in target acquisition). Make the other clearly good for the non-missile secondary weapons.

 

Either buff what's good about them, or address their deficiencies.

 

Right now the options mostly address irrelevant aspects of secondary weapon performance.

 

Some tuning would be required for balance I imagine, but the secondary weapon passives could be made a lot more interesting, even if tightly tuned to prevent missile spam from becoming as bad as ion rail spam (though with the upcoming potential for some ships to effectively have 3 missile breaks, I don't really expect that to happen even if changes were a bit over-generous to begin with).

 

Not impressed by your "balance the current" suggestions, the "Verain's real suggestions" look fairly good, though I'm still not inclined to consider reload time reductions to be of much interest (well, maybe on minelayers).

Edited April 7, 2014 by Ramalina

[Sindariel]

Increased firing arc is actually quite useful on the Quell and Pike. It makes missile lock-ons much easier.

 

Remember: The 2 degrees from crew passives are actually 4 degrees in total.

[Sindariel]

Right now reload time really only has a practical effect on missiles with longish lock-on times.

 

And not even there. Protons have 12s base cooldown. With crew passive, it gets reduced to 11s. That's absolutely not worth to take over anything else.

 

Edit:

 

Damn. Double post. -.-

Edited April 7, 2014 by Sindariel

[General_Brass]

Nerf accuracy to give evasion even greater power ?

 

Don't see how that would be a problem.

 

/Sarcasm

[Ramalina]

Increased firing arc is actually quite useful on the Quell and Pike. It makes missile lock-ons much easier.

 

Remember: The 2 degrees from crew passives are actually 4 degrees in total.

 

It is very nice on proton torps, especially since if you hope to hit anything other than a turret, a bomber, or a new pilot the tier 4 upgrade choice between firing arc and missile speed really isn't a choice at all.

 

It's reasonable to get the extra firing arc p-torp upgrade if you stick to targets that you don't need the extra firing arc to hit. For the hard to hit ones you need the missile speed, and wish you could get the firing arc too.

 

In that sense the crew passive is another way to get at the 'very nice but you really need to pick the other one' upgrade from the component upgrade tree.

[Toraak]

I would argue that the +6% accuracy being the best depends on what weapons your using. for BLC you should be close enough when you fire to alrdy have over 100% accuracy, so using the faster reload ability is actually better. For ships without that, i'd say it depends on what your flying and what components your using.

[Ramalina]

I would argue that the +6% accuracy being the best depends on what weapons your using. for BLC you should be close enough when you fire to alrdy have over 100% accuracy, so using the faster reload ability is actually better. For ships without that, i'd say it depends on what your flying and what components your using.

 

Rapid reload has no effect on blasters. For the ships that can equip BLCs the only one that gets a noticeable benefit is the type 2 gunship, which can reduce proton torp reload by almost 1 second. Despite being a detectable difference, it's not really a worthwhile difference. As a practical matter, in real life situations a ship that can equip BLCs is going to loose damage output by taking rapid reload instead of pinpointing. Assuming the choice is between rapid reload and either the ammunition or firing arc options, it's a little bit less clear, but in a lot of situations reload is going to finish in last place (or a tie for last place) when it comes to benefits.

 

In most cases, even with BLCs you'll get benefits from the accuracy. Unless you're shooting at a lot of targets that are less than 2 km away, have no evasion, and are dead center in your weapon's firing arc circle.

 

The only ships that the accuracy buff isn't clearly the most potent for would be some builds of Pike/Quell and minelayer/dronecarriers. That's because they have builds where damage from weapons using accuracy is a fairly small part of their overall damage output.

[Verain]

Amidst some solid replies, we have...some people who can't read much!

 

Kuci quotes this from me:

"1)- Accuracy should come down, likely to 4% or 5%. The remaining 1% or 2% accuracy could be added somewhere else passively, as almost everyone uses this and we don't really need a global accuracy nerf. Even with this, I'm afraid it is mandatory for almost all ships."

 

His response?

 

No. No no no no no. The game needs less RNG not more. The only appropriate way to nerf this is if you correspondingly increase the base accuracy of every weapon in the game.

 

I'll briefly respond and say that the game is very RNG already, and it can use more or less as appropriate- but I was very careful to show that everything I was talking about was not meant as a global nerf to blasters, merely a way of handling the fact that 6% accuracy is basically 10-20% extra primary weapon damage, and is really out of line. As I stated above, you could bake this extra accuracy back into the weapons, or literally do whatever- it just shouldn't be mandatory.

 

Nerf accuracy to give evasion even greater power ?

 

Don't see how that would be a problem.

 

/Sarcasm

 

Again, this guy can't be bothered to read, and thinks that the name of this thread is "buff evasion". Meritless.

 

 

 

 

 

Then there's folks that disagree that 6% accuracy is too strong (this is incorrect, it is), and decided to talk about that:

 

I don't think that the 6% accuracy is too strong

 

Do you take it or not? If you do take it, then you agree with me. If you don't take it, then you will do more damage by switching to it- I guarantee.

 

This doesn't mean that BLASTERS are too strong, or need nerfs- if you pick the accuracy power, maybe you should do the same damage that you do today (same accuracy). But if you don't pick it, you shouldn't suffer -6%. That is wow awful!

 

I would argue that the +6% accuracy being the best depends on what weapons your using. for BLC you should be close enough when you fire to alrdy have over 100% accuracy, so using the faster reload ability is actually better. For ships without that, i'd say it depends on what your flying and what components your using.

 

Over tho course of 500 to 3000 meters, BLC scales from 117 base accuracy to 87 base accuracy. Versus a typical scout (33% evasion), you have an 84% hit rate at 500 meters, anywhere from dead center to 10 degrees off center- the most generous of any weapon. Versus this scout, this 6% accuracy passive is a 7% blaster damage increase.

 

If you are at 1000 meters, your accuracy is down to 111%. Your hit chance here is only 78% versus that scout, and the crew passive is up to 7.7%. At 1500 meters, still a reasonable range for BLC, you will have 105% accuracy, or a 72% hit chance on the scout. Here, the crew passive is an 8% bonus.

 

Now, you are correct- if you are attacking a bomber or a type 2 gunship at 800m, you may actually perceive no benefit for those few shots. But versus scouts and strikes, especially ones at the edges of your point of view, this is a massive boost. 500m shots within 10 degrees are NOT the majority of the shots you take.

 

NOTHING is close to this damage output increase. None of the others are even fighting.

 

 

 

The generally second place is the firing arc. The others are niche- you might want extra ammo on a rocket pod build, or you might care about reload time (probably not). Accuracy is a huge benefit- 6% accuracy is similar in value to 10% extra blaster and rocket pod damage, and very similar to 12% crit. The others need to be that good, or the accuracy needs to come down, with appropriate adjustments so as to not nerf every single ship, all of whom feel required to grab this universally amazing passive.

[General_Brass]

Amidst some solid replies, we have...some people who can't read much!

 

LONG post by a man upset about the flaws of his idea being pointed out.

 

Just a heads up anything that has people taking less accuracy makes evasion more powerful.

[Verain]

LONG post by a man upset about the flaws of his idea being pointed out.

 

Just a heads up anything that has people taking less accuracy makes evasion more powerful.

 

No it doesn't. READ THE POST.

 

I say, RIGHT THERE, that you would need to bake in the accuracy. THE GOAL IS NOT TO NERF BLASTERS.

 

6% ACCURACY is far too good.

 

 

But def complain when your inability to read is pointed out.

[Altheran]

Do you take it or not? If you do take it, then you agree with me. If you don't take it, then you will do more damage by switching to it- I guarantee.

 

This doesn't mean that BLASTERS are too strong, or need nerfs- if you pick the accuracy power, maybe you should do the same damage that you do today (same accuracy). But if you don't pick it, you shouldn't suffer -6%. That is wow awful!

 

I use Concussion Missiles on all ship who can have them. Is Concussion Missiles too strong ?

 

I use Pinpointing, not because it's overly powerful, but because I use accuracy reliant ships (Scout and Strikes). And I can assure you that on a Pike with Heavy cannon, it helps a bit, but not that much, because in center this weapon is the most accurate at max range, and the high max range make it easy to center the aim. Actually my Pike has it because I didn't bother to put her back to her initial crew member.

 

Why it works so well on other ships is because almost all weapons have absurdly low base accuracy until you point blank ennemies, and most of the time you'll fight around max range rather than mid and below.

 

So when you take this 6% on an inaccurate weapon, you feel its efficiency.

 

If weapons were more accurate, you wouldn't feel any significant improvement from 6% accuracy. It would be almost as effective as the upgrades removing 5% tracking penalties (you want to nerf them too ? They're mandatory). It's just that when you reach hit chances around 50%, 6 extra percents start to matter a lot.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

the one problem I see with nerfing accuracy is that it is the only counter to evasion. So a nerf to accuracy becomes an indirect buff to evasion. In order to keep the current balance you'd need a proportionate nerf to evasion.

 

I think honestly a main reason accuracy is always taken is because evasion, while not the god stat it once was, is still very powerful and you're looking to gimp yourself if you don't take accuracy to counter it. (This being particularly true for strikers who regularly have to contend with high evasion scouts in dogfights). Taking accuracy isn't simply occurring in a vacuum, it's occuring because it is the only counter to what is still arguably the most powerful defensive stat.

 

For my part I fly a Star Guard. Given that 2/3 of my weaponry are blasters and accuracy based it'd be kinda stupid to take crew passives that primarily benefit missiles (while the firing arc technically benefits blasters too given that the best hull damaging blasters for the Star Guard also have the highest tracking penalties it makes little sense to take a passive that will have marginal benefit, if any, to my selected blaster weapon types). For the other ships I fly (typically the Type 1 & 2 scouts) it makes little sense to take passive combos that will primarily (or only) benefit 50% of my weapons.

 

Overall I'd say the problem is that people take accuracy not because it's too powerful but because the only other passive that benefits blasters (2 degree firing arc) either doesn't compliment the high tracking penalty of their weapon choices (HLC/Quads) or doesn't benefit them as much as accuracy due to inherently low base accuracy at anything beyond point blank (RFL/LLC). Except for BLC & Lasers that might be able to benefit from either that pretty much means the majority of blaster weaponry scouts/strikes have access to lack the stats (either base accuracy or low tracking penalty) to benefit from an increased firing arc which pretty much leaves accuracy as the only worthwhile crew passive for blasters.

 

IMO if evasion was no better than taking damage reduction odds are the other offensive passives would be taken more often too (provided of course firing arc was balanced to actually be worthwhile for the majority of blasters and not just missiles). I do agree though that the reload time passive needs to be looked at since the buff it gives can be negligible at times.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Verain]

I use Concussion Missiles on all ship who can have them. Is Concussion Missiles too strong ?

 

Only two ships have concussions, and you aren't automatically wrong for not taking them.

 

I use Pinpointing, not because it's overly powerful, but because I use accuracy reliant ships (Scout and Strikes).

 

Don't forget gunships, who actually ARE "accuracy based", whatever that means (scouts and strikes can at least have lockon missiles).

And don't forget that it's the correct passive on bombers as well.

 

In fact, it's the best passive by a mile because it increases your blaster damage by anywhere from 5 to 20 percent

 

And I can assure you that on a Pike with Heavy cannon, it helps a bit, but not that much, because in center this weapon is the most accurate at max range, and the high max range make it easy to center the aim. Actually my Pike has it because I didn't bother to put her back to her initial crew member.

 

Heavy Laser is a great example of a weapon that benefits massive from it.

 

If you are at max range, your accuracy approaches 95%. Lets assume you are at merely 100%. Assume your target is a strike with evasion crew member- 10% evasion only. That's a pretty best case for you, and we'll even assume you are precisely on target (right). In that situation, your damage increase is 7% for picking the passive. That's pretty big.

 

Now lets pretend you are a bit off target- 3 degrees is totally reasonable. Unlike most guns, you have to choose between your tracking fix and armor pen, and we both know armor pen wins. And maybe, just maybe, it's a Pike, not a Starguard, with lightweight armor. Now your target has 19% evasion, and your hit chance is down to 75%. That evasion passive is now around 8% extra damage. If it's a scout who has 33% evasion and is 4 degrees off target, your hit chance is now 59%, and your crew passive represents 10%.

 

Why it works so well on other ships is because almost all weapons have absurdly low base accuracy until you point blank ennemies, and most of the time you'll fight around max range rather than mid and below.

 

It's honestly just simple math as to why it's good. Your accuracy is less than 100% in essentially every case, and as the accuracy decreases, the power of a flat increase in accuracy goes up and up.

 

It's often a 10% damage boost to all blaster fire. Unlike a 10% magnitude boost, it often will keep shields from regenerating as well. It's simply far too good, and should not be a passive.

 

It's mandatory for all ships. Period. It needs a nerf.

 

If weapons were more accurate, you wouldn't feel any significant improvement from 6% accuracy.

 

Weapons would have to be MASSIVELY more accurate for this to make sense.

 

It would be almost as effective as the upgrades removing 5% tracking penalties (you want to nerf them too ?

 

Do you even READ.

 

It's supposed to be a choice and it isn't. The tracking penalties, and evasion, and all that jazz- that doesn't need to be changed unless you are supposed to be making a choice. You aren't- the only time you EVER make that choice is versus armor pen on heavy lasers (where you normally want the armor pen, actually, making it not mandatory, ZING!).

 

It's just that when you reach hit chances around 50%, 6 extra percents start to matter a lot.

 

If your accuracy is 94%, you gain 6.4% damage from the passive. The other passives are nowhere NEAR that good!

 

 

And next...

 

the one problem I see with nerfing accuracy is that it is the only counter to evasion. So a nerf to accuracy becomes an indirect buff to evasion. In order to keep the current balance you'd need a proportionate nerf to evasion.

 

But here's what I said...

 

1)- Accuracy should come down, likely to 4% or 5%. The remaining 1% or 2% accuracy could be added somewhere else passively, as almost everyone uses this and we don't really need a global accuracy nerf. Even with this, I'm afraid it is mandatory for almost all ships.

 

See how my goal isn't to nerf blasters? See how all my posts in this thread have to repeat that, even the first one that you didn't read?

 

For my part I fly a Star Guard. Given that 2/3 of my weaponry are blasters and accuracy based it'd be kinda stupid to take crew passives that primarily benefit missiles

 

It doesn't matter though. You could fly a gunship, same thing. Pike, same thing. Bomber, same thing.

 

Accuracy passive is mandatory and too good. This doesn't mean it should be nerfed without compensation, but we really need to make it a choice with the others, not just "you have to take accuracy". Probably, that passive should just be entirely deleted- who would say no to such a power? And replaced with something appropriate.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Verain

[Ramalina]

Accuracy passive is mandatory and too good. This doesn't mean it should be nerfed without compensation, but we really need to make it a choice with the others, not just "you have to take accuracy". Probably, that passive should just be entirely deleted- who would say no to such a power? And replaced with something appropriate.

 

Shush, be quiet! Devs read this stuff you know. If all crew passives are nerfed into oblivion I'll have to go back and rewrite big chunks of my crew abilities post in Stasie's guide (in addition to the parts that already need more work).

 

The design intent looks to me like a full set of crew are supposed to be about as powerful as a five tier starship component slot and that optimized crew selection should make a hefty difference compared to worst possible crew selection. Take the sensor abilities, as originally designed they were very powerful due to how sensor damping worked. Their current weakness isn't representative of a design intent for weak crew passives, it's a byproduct of the designers not foreseeing how badly broken stealth gunships were from a balance standpoint.

 

My take is not that the accuracy is too powerful, it's that because of not fully anticipating how all the stats would work out the other abilities are probably far weaker than intended. Missile rate of fire, blaster firing arc, ammunition capacity; in theory these are all potent offensive traits. The problem is that they interact with other things like: lock-on times, missile reload times, missile breaks, tracking penalties, life expectancy, and rearming that devalue the benefits at the levels that are present in the passive abilities. What makes accuracy different is that there's no interaction that you have to anticipate in order to adjust the level of payoff to where you intended it to be.

 

I could be wrong of course, but I suspect that the simplest case illustrates what they meant to do, and the underwhelming performance of the others is because they either failed to anticipate the interactions of the others or vastly underestimated the effects of the interactions.

 

**Edit: Crew abilities in general could probably use a second pass of polish and tuning, but they're in the same category as ship components that are practically never taken. There are enough options available so that everyone can get by, so in terms of budgeting developer hours they aren't at the top of the to-do list, more likely on the, "we wish we had time to get around to it," list.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Ramalina

[Armonddd]

It's honestly just simple math as to why it's good. Your accuracy is less than 100% in essentially every case, and as the accuracy decreases, the power of a flat increase in accuracy goes up and up.

 

This. As long as misses do 0% damage, accuracy is incredibly important.

 

Imagine if the ground game had a talent for +6% accuracy. That would be huge. And that's with your worst case accuracy being 90%, with most people bumping that up with legacy stuff. In GSF, the fact that evasion exists brings your worst case accuracy significantly farther down.

 

If I had to choose one offensive crew member passive instead of two, it would be pinpointing every time. You can't even make an argument for bombers taking something else because they rely on blasters less than other ships, because bombers who know what they're doing use their blasters a lot.

 

The point of choosing your crew members is supposed to be to make a choice about how to outfit your ship. If that's what the devs want, the blatant discrepancy in power between various passives needs to be addressed. Pinpointing and rapid reload are probably the worst offenders, but depth of field, silent running, power to blasters, and power to engines all lag behind the other options.

 

If that's not what the devs what, they might as well replace crew passives with a skill tree like they use in the ground game, which only the most naive of players wouldn't instantly recognize as an illusion of choice.

[Ramalina]

One thing that's a minor but somewhat important detail, is that the accuracy buff isn't quite as good as the flat damage increase math would indicate. As a low magnitude stochastic buff, it needs time for the laws of probability to kick in and get the full effect. That is, it shows up over many many short bursts of blaster fire, but will tend to slightly underperform the listed value for any individual short burst of blaster fire. Increase to average damage isn't quite the same as a flat damage boost if not all samples are large enough for their mean value to be forced close to the population mean value.

 

Figuring out the real value would be a lot of work, and would require a lot of assumptions about what is going on during the 'average' dogfight. It's a bit less than the napkin math in this thread is claiming though. What's being claimed is the theoretical maximum effect of the 6% buff, not the in practice effect. Too lazy at the moment to chase down exactly how big that difference is though.

 

Doesn't change that the accuracy is still generally the best option in its class by a fair margin though. Just makes backing up our arguments about the exact values of relative balance stats a lot more work if we want to do a good job of it. Can probably hold off on the theorcrafting math models until the differences in passives are changed to be close enough so that you need probability models to tell if there's a difference.

 

As far as a recommendation for thread direction, I think it might be a good idea to bounce around ideas for bringing the other options into line with accuracy. Sort of been neglected since the initial post, and without the math to back it up properly I'm not sure arguing about the exact value of the accuracy buff accomplishes much in terms of giving the Devs useful feedback.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Ramalina

[Kuciwalker]

One thing that's a minor but somewhat important detail, is that the accuracy buff isn't quite as good as the flat damage increase math would indicate. As a low magnitude stochastic buff, it needs time for the laws of probability to kick in and get the full effect. That is, it shows up over many many short bursts of blaster fire, but will tend to slightly underperform the listed value for any individual short burst of blaster fire. Increase to average damage isn't quite the same as a flat damage boost if not all samples are large enough for their mean value to be forced close to the population mean value.

 

Math fail. The ultimate outcome is binary (win or lose the match) and so the value of a stochastic buff is lower bounded at its nominal value.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Heavy Laser is a great example of a weapon that benefits massive from it.

 

If you are at max range, your accuracy approaches 95%. Lets assume you are at merely 100%. Assume your target is a strike with evasion crew member- 10% evasion only. That's a pretty best case for you, and we'll even assume you are precisely on target (right). In that situation, your damage increase is 7% for picking the passive. That's pretty big.

 

Now lets pretend you are a bit off target- 3 degrees is totally reasonable. Unlike most guns, you have to choose between your tracking fix and armor pen, and we both know armor pen wins. And maybe, just maybe, it's a Pike, not a Starguard, with lightweight armor. Now your target has 19% evasion, and your hit chance is down to 75%. That evasion passive is now around 8% extra damage. If it's a scout who has 33% evasion and is 4 degrees off target, your hit chance is now 59%, and your crew passive represents 10%.

 

 

 

It's honestly just simple math as to why it's good. Your accuracy is less than 100% in essentially every case, and as the accuracy decreases, the power of a flat increase in accuracy goes up and up.

 

It's often a 10% damage boost to all blaster fire. Unlike a 10% magnitude boost, it often will keep shields from regenerating as well. It's simply far too good, and should not be a passive.

 

It's mandatory for all ships. Period. It needs a nerf.

 

But see you're missing one of my points (I know you're responding to another person but I think the example you made also applies to what I was saying): HLC will gain marginal benefit (if any) from a passive combo that combines firing arc with a passive exclusively for secondaries. Its tracking penalty is high enough that odds are it's of little benefit to increase your HLC firing arc since you don't need to be far from the center before you can start taking a massive accuracy hit.

 

Likewise RFL/LLC have such poor base accuracy at range it makes little sense to take firing arc instead of accuracy since it's quite likely you'll be facing enough targets stacking evasion that it won't be useful.

 

BLC could maybe swing firing arc since they aren't especially useful at range anyway. Lasers might have just low enough of a tracking penalty and a high enough base accuracy to benefit from either.

 

How is everyone taking accuracy a demonstration of it being too powerful when 4/6 of blaster weaponry dogfighters can use so clearly can't get much, or any benefit, from an increased firing arc?

 

As also noted in your above example evasion still hits really hard even though it isn't a god stat any more. Considering that accuracy is the only counter to it and it remains the most powerful defensive stat why would people NOT take accuracy?

 

For my part I run with Qyzen (accuracy/firing arc) as my concussion missiles get barely any benefit from reload time and the only times I run out of missiles are when we're steamrolling the other team. In all other scenarios I either find a reload drone or die before running out. As rightly noted the reload time is too weak so it really isn't worth taking and ammo is only beneficial if you regularly run out. So in the end for me it makes little sense to take a combo other than the accuracy/firing arc one.

 

It just seems you're focused on attributing people taking accuracy due to the amount of damage it increases and discounting how most blasters lack the base stats to truly benefit from firing arc except in a very narrow set of scenarios (namely point blank) and that accuracy still needs to be taken to counter the most powerful defense stat in the game. Likewise it seems your discounting how ammo is only useful to people who run out of ammo regularly.

 

Overall it seems that firing arc benefits missiles more than most blasters so it doesn't make much sense why you would skip out on the one passive that is clearly focused on benefiting blasters almost exclusively. Especially when ammo and reload are so circumstantial and/or underpowered.

 

See how my goal isn't to nerf blasters? See how all my posts in this thread have to repeat that, even the first one that you didn't read?

 

Ok so to clarify (as I think this is what confuses me since your main reason for nerfing accuracy seems to be the power buff it grants) you aren't opposed to blasters having the current power buff they get with accuracy provided it was achieved through combined higher base accuracy and slightly lower passive? Unless you buffed firing arc to provide an equally powerful benefit to blasters I guess I don't see why people would suddenly stop taking the accuracy passive unless they were flying something like a Pike.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Armonddd]

HLC will gain marginal benefit (if any) from a passive combo that combines firing arc with a passive exclusively for secondaries.

 

This is exactly the problem: Pinpointing is too good compared to the other options.

 

If I had to make the choice between dropping Pinpointing (and sacrificing my HLC output) for a significant buff to my secondaries, that'd be interesting. I might go for that on a bomber or a pike, and I might consider it on a type 1 strike if I bring ions and HLCs (since at that point I can try using HLCs as a secondary weapon with most of my damage coming from ions and missiles).

 

But I don't -- I get two of whatever I want. That means Pinpointing is autopick. There's no choice involved; it's just, here, pick two of the four, and one of them is twice as good as the others. It's literally an illusion of choice, just like the entire design behind skill trees in the ground game. At this point, I'm not choosing two of four passives; I'm choosing between Pinpointing and Spare Ammo, Pinpointing and Improved Kill Zone, or Pinpointing and Rapid Reload. Except Rapid Reload is on the opposite end of the spectrum and is absolutely awful, so I'm choosing between Pinpointing and Spare Ammo or Pinpointing and Improved Kill Zone. Of the twelve offensive crew members in the game, only four have viable passives. Add in the fact that Jaesa has a terrible active ability and Kira has a subpar active ability, and there's really only one good offensive crew member per faction if you want an offensive crew member active ability.

 

Other companies have made massive strides towards eliminating illusions of choice, resulting in more interesting gameplay and more even playing fields, and BioWare should too.

 

How is everyone taking accuracy a demonstration of it being too powerful when 4/6 of blaster weaponry dogfighters can use so clearly can't get much, or any benefit, from an increased firing arc?

 

The fact that the firing arc increase also affects secondary weapons makes this question irrelevant. (We'll ignore the fact that you were trying to debate Improved Kill Zone's effectiveness at range, when firing arc increases favor short-ranged combat, and that you forgot about ion cannons entirely.)

 

As also noted in your above example evasion still hits really hard even though it isn't a god stat any more. Considering that accuracy is the only counter to it and it remains the most powerful defensive stat why would people NOT take accuracy?

 

This is exactly the problem -- there's no reason to not take accuracy.

 

It just seems you're focused on attributing people taking accuracy due to the amount of damage it increases and discounting how most blasters lack the base stats to truly benefit from firing arc except in a very narrow set of scenarios (namely point blank) and that accuracy still needs to be taken to counter the most powerful defense stat in the game. Likewise it seems your discounting how ammo is only useful to people who run out of ammo regularly.

 

You're coming at it from a different angle from Verain and I. We're saying, accuracy is too good, there's no reason not to take it. You seem to be saying, everything else is bad, why wouldn't I take accuracy. The end result is the same: Pinpointing needs a nerf (with increased accuracy baked into the blasters themselves), and other options need a buff.

 

(Also, point blank range is far from a narrow set of scenarios, and it's far from the only time increased firing arc is useful -- see also: railguns, quads, and torpedoes).

 

Ok so to clarify (as I think this is what confuses me since your main reason for nerfing accuracy seems to be the power buff it grants) you aren't opposed to blasters having the current power buff they get with accuracy provided it was achieved through combined higher base accuracy and slightly lower passive? Unless you buffed firing arc to provide an equally powerful benefit to blasters I guess I don't see why people would suddenly stop taking the accuracy passive unless they were flying something like a Pike.

 

Yeah, exactly. Blaster accuracy and damage output is fine (except for BLCs, but that's another topic). What's not fine is that you don't really have a choice when it comes to your crew members.

 

The goal here is to make choosing your crew members an interesting decision. Currently it's not -- I just load up the same four crew members every time I unlock a new ship, possibly with a difference in the defensive crew member.

 

The goal isn't to stop people from taking Pinpointing. Pinpointing is and always will be a strong buff for blasters, railguns, and rocket pods, and that's a good thing. People that use those weapons should want Pinpointing.

 

Other ships -- Pikes, Bombers, certain Starguards -- should want to think about bringing something in place of Pinpointing. They currently don't, because nothing is nearly as good as Pinpointing, even if you're doing less with your lasers. If they decide that Pinpointing supports their goals and playstyle better than the alternatives, that's fine -- so long as they're not 'choosing" to take Pinpointing because everything else is crap.

 

Maybe part of the problem is that the passives favor secondary weapons too much, and part of the solution is to rework Spare Ammo and Rapid Reload. Maybe the current four should be merged -- I'd take +2% accuracy and +2 degrees firing arc on my Flashfire, and my Pike would love +15% ammo -20% reload time. At that point you could introduce other interesting passives, perhaps reducing lock-on time or increasing range or something. That would make me really think about my crew members, instead of just loading up the same four every time I buy a new ship.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Armonddd

[Gavin_Kelvar]

This is exactly the problem -- there's no reason to not take accuracy.

 

So you'd be in favor of further nerfs to evasion if it would help decrease the value placed on accuracy? (the quote was in reply to my point that accuracy is the only counter to evasion and even post 2.6 evasion is still the best defensive passive in the game which strongly encourages people to take the offensive passive that is its only direct counter).

 

 

 

You seem to be saying, everything else is bad, why wouldn't I take accuracy. The end result is the same: Pinpointing needs a nerf (with increased accuracy baked into the blasters themselves), and other options need a buff.

 

To some degree yes. But more accurately I'm saying accuracy is the only one that clearly benefits blasters all the time and isn't like firing arc that depends on you using a weapon at close range with a low tracking penalty to truly be of any benefit. I'm also pointing out that reload time is currently useless (in that regard I agree it's in need of a buff but I wouldn't agree it's justification for nerfing accuracy). Ammo capacity is circumstantial and only beneficial if you regularly run out of ammo, if you don't normally run out of ammo though there's really no reason to take this.

 

Also I'd like to point out that so far as blasters are concerned accuracy is the only one that benefits blasters exclusively. So unless you're building a ship that is missile heavy (such as the Pike) it doesn't make sense why you'd exclude the only passive that (primarily) benefits blasters.

 

I'm also fuzzy on how the damage output increase of accuracy really demonstrates it being too good since firing arc depends on being at close range with a low tracking penalty weapon to be helpful with blasters, ammo capacity won't increase your total damage done unless you would have run out of missiles otherwise. Reload time seems to be the only one that could have a straight buff to damage output since its benefits aren't circumstantial (unlike firing arc and ammo).

 

If you want to argue damage output comparing accuracy to reload time seems like a fair comparison since they both should have a straight increase to damage under any circumstance but firing arc/ammo isn't since they're so circumstantial and they're not going to result in a straight damage buff like accuracy or reload time.

 

I'm just skeptical of the math demonstrating that accuracy is too powerful when the only passive that would have a straight damage buff with no drawbacks and thus be a direct comparison is reload time which we can all agree is too weak and so of course accuracy will appear really good by comparison. When firing arc/ammo capacity buffing damage are circumstantial I just feel it's too easy to manipulate the numbers to "prove" accuracy outpaces them since you're comparing something that provides a straight buff in all scenarios to passives that will only provide a buff in some scenarios but not others. (not saying anyone is maliciously trying to manipulate numbers)

 

(Also, point blank range is far from a narrow set of scenarios, and it's far from the only time increased firing arc is useful -- see also: railguns, quads, and torpedoes).

 

Well I was addressing firing arc in the capacity of blasters. In which case it does fulfill a narrower range of scenarios since they'll only really benefit at close range. For a weapon with high tracking penalties I'm skeptical that an increased firing arc is beneficial at all since it's entirely possible that you wouldn't be able to hit anyone consistently at the edge of the firing arc anyway.

 

Other ships -- Pikes, Bombers, certain Starguards -- should want to think about bringing something in place of Pinpointing. They currently don't, because nothing is nearly as good as Pinpointing, even if you're doing less with your lasers. If they decide that Pinpointing supports their goals and playstyle better than the alternatives, that's fine -- so long as they're not 'choosing" to take Pinpointing because everything else is crap.

 

Now to be fair one of the primary adversaries of Pikes & Star Guards are scouts who normally stack evasion. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that they gravitate towards the passive that specifically counters the defense of one of their most common/dangerous enemies.

 

Maybe part of the problem is that the passives favor secondary weapons too much, and part of the solution is to rework Spare Ammo and Rapid Reload. Maybe the current four should be merged -- I'd take +2% accuracy and +2 degrees firing arc on my Flashfire, and my Pike would love +15% ammo -20% reload time. At that point you could introduce other interesting passives, perhaps reducing lock-on time or increasing range or something. That would make me really think about my crew members, instead of just loading up the same four every time I buy a new ship.

 

I think the passives benefitting secondaries too much is probably the case. For blasters you're only alternate to accuracy is firing arc. Unless you're in a ship like the Pike that relies primarily on missiles for damage it doesn't make sense why you wouldn't choose accuracy. Also you should factor in that, prior to 2.7, with landing a missile shot being so hard due to the ease in evading it there was little motivation to go with passive combos that favored secondaries.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Kuciwalker]

If you nerf pinpointing then yes, you "balance" the offensive options but mostly just by making them indistinguishable. All of the options besides pinpointing are very weak/situational/niche. Two of the options do literally nothing for some builds (Spare Ammo / Rapid Reload on a bomber with a mine secondary).

 

The answer is that the other options need to be radically buffed.