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Weapon Statistics / Mechanics

#1
Having a good bit of experience with the many weapons in X3 - and the balancing thereof - I thought I'd raise the subject.

IMO, weapon systems should be procedurally generated, too. A bit of Borderlands in Space. A reason to explore and find a better pew pew laser.

Actually, there's a first-before-first thing. =)
Limited Ammo
With lasers and possibly missiles in the game, a wide array of weapons would turn into a nightmare of ammo micromanagement.
I suggest to ditch it. One value for "ammuniton" and the ship is set. Doesn't matter if it's using space shotguns or ICBMs.
With one value, this can be a strategy game where a supply ship can supply a fleet. All the stupid details of how many bullets of which caliber - that's what the admiral delegates.
A ship's ammo magazine would then be a factor in ship creation. A missile frigate with a small magazine could be devastating - but useless in a long engagement. A larger magazine would mean not being able to include other things...

The core meaning of ammo would be fully present: it would be limited. The micromanagement of it can go die in a fire.


Now first things first. To PG weapons you gotta start with properties, not numbers.

Candidates are
  • DPS (different vs shields and hull?)
  • Range
  • Bullet speed (there is an almost linear relationship to accuracy - within sensible values)
  • Energy efficiency ( = EnergyPerSecond / DPS )
    How much energy I have to spend to cause x points of damage...
  • Ammo efficiency ( = AmmoPerSecond / DPS )
    ...if any
  • Instead of using ammo, some or all energy-based lasers can overheat, lowering the rate of fire with increasing levels of heat.
    Could be a generic value of the ship, not of each individual laser. That way a huge ship could keep firing a tiny pew pew laser all day long.
    Also would create the possibility of installing heat sinks. Getting rid of heat is a major issue in space and radiating heat makes you an excellent target and visible at very long range.
  • Accuracy!
    How many degrees is the max deviation of the shot.
    Often overlooked but a major issue in a 3D game with real collision detection.
  • Multi shot.
    The space shotgun. Hitting moving targets is difficult and in an anti-fighter / point defense role, this would come in handy.
    Should carry an automatic malus to accuracy to make it less effective as a "sniper gun".
    DPS can basically stay as-is, divided between the projectiles, of course.
    One would expect this with smaller lasers but there's no telling if some alien race might consider it a great idea to build a Big Bertha sized shotgun.
    There is no practical difference between this and a high-ROF gun with low accuracy but it's a well-worn trope. =)
  • Rate of fire. This is mostly for looks and should (with a hefty dose of randomness) scale with DPS.
    Basically this is just the factor which translates DPS and EPS into per-shot values.
    Important stat to scale the number of projectiles in the air and therefore the amount of CPU power eaten by collision detection.
  • Turret range of movement.
    There is no rule stating that every turret must be able to cover an entire 180° sphere.
    If the tracking angle of Flak turrets were more limited, you would either have to waste a lot of space on Flak or accept that you don't have perfect coverage.
  • Tracking speed.
    If your turret turns at snail-speed, you're not going to be hitting a maneuvering fighter at close range.
  • Continuous beam capital ship lasers 1
    Another use of "tracking speed":
    A continuous beam is fired at the enemy ship but the beam is locked in position while it is firing. While you might brush a fighter, it's going to leave the "static" beam quickly.
    The only way for this weapon to be effective is to fire it at something big, where such a non-tracking beam stays on target for most of it's duration.
    This could be amplified by the beam power ramping up to max so that it starts at maybe 20% damage and only reaches 100% damage output after 3-5 seconds.
    Even if it has great bullet speed, it would be just about useless against fighters.
  • Continuous beam capital ship lasers 2 + FAO (Forward Artillery Observer)
    The laser takes a long time to charge up. Then it fires for maybe 10 seconds. While it fires it cannot follow the target, making it hit & miss.
    The range of this laser would be very very long so capital ships could have real long range duels.
    The twist:
    If a friendly is "laser designating" a target for the capital ship, the capital ship laser does move while firing. It slowly "walks it's fire" towards the designated target area.
    If the FAO is forced to maneuver radically (evade fire), the link is lost. No more corrected fire.
  • Special effects.
    Certain "bullets" could affect the target ship in creative ways.
    • Lock controls completely or accumulate a reduction in maneuverability.
      Any single hit may reduce maneuverability by 10%, which declines over 10 seconds or so.
      Consecutive hits increase that to maybe 50% with diminishing returns because the higher the %, the faster the decay.
    • Shield piercing. Some or all damage is going straight through to the target's hull.
    • Critical hit
      % chance to disable a subsystem
    • Plasma warhead
      The plasma cools with distance traveled so the damage declines with range.
      Similar damage model to the space shotgun but as a single bullet so probably useful for small ships to attack a capital ship at knife range.
    • Area damage
      Everything within x meters is taking damage - which could scale with distance.
      Heavy explosives / warheads like that should probably reduce bullet speed.
      Avoid damage models that are based on interaction of a damage area with the ship model, leading to ^3 exponential damage increases. It's not going to work.
    • Beacon
      Getting hit by something heat-inducing like laser or plasma creates a hotspot on the target, making it more visible.
      It can be targeted by missiles or other ships more quickly and at greater range.
    • Sensor degrading
      A residual plasma cloud (or other AOE) temporarily weakens the sensors of the target.
    • Ricochet
      A projectile on "final approach" to the target ignites a penetrating charge, blasting the penetrator directly towards the target. If possible, it orients itself so that the shell can also hit a nearby hostile target. Waste not, want not!
      For all practical purposes, this happens on impact.
    • Miniaturised sensors
      The bullet contains a tiny sensor unit that transmits data back to the ship, increasing sensor "penetration" along it's path.
      Obviously this only makes sense with long range bullets but it could allow "targeted" fire beyond the ship's own sensor range and without requiring an FAO.
  • Cost of using in ship construction.
    Can be raw materials / monetary cost and something like internal size or structure points to limit the total power of a ship.
  • Guidance System.
    • RADAR guided.
      Best acquisition range.
      At long range, can target the wrong blip if several similar ships are close together.
    • Optically guided.
      Operator-induced reaction delay in acquiring targets.
      Operator-induced "inertia". Turret may briefly continue it's movement before reacting to a target course change starting to track the target lead point again.
    • Artillery spotter.
      If the gun can shoot beyond the ship's sensor range (we're thinking big 'round here!), and the ship uses second hand information from another ship, accuracy is severely degraded.
    Hmm. "Guidance" needs considerably more meat before it may become an interesting feature.
  • Guns "zero in" on a target.
    The accuracy of a gun somewhat increases while the gun keeps firing. You can't just "aim carefully", then fire.
    Speed of accuracy increase depends on how much of it's maximum traversing speed the turret is currently using.
    If the gun stops firing, any such bonus is lost. (like when the magazine runs dry) Probably modeled by a constant decay that the increase must overcome.

    Since the bonus is generated by firing, the turrets traversing to a new target carries no penalty from the maximum traversing speed. Only the traversing speed to "keep tracking" is relevant.

    A capital ship "staying level" will be firing with higher accuracy... at the cost of not evading incoming fire.
    Any such bonuses are temporary, limited by magazine size, so they don't become a permanent ability of a ship.

    Capital ship guns can be inaccurate. They can have long ranges of maybe 20 km and still miss wildly at 10 km.
    That makes Big Guns quite useless at knife range and against small targets, where they would have to traverse at their maximum speed to even stay on target... so they wouldn't be able to build up much of an aiming bonus.

    At long range, where capital ships are motionless for all practical purposes, the long range batteries would come into their own.
    Long range guns would have a bigger (potential) aiming bonus because for fast-tracking guns, it would turn into a nearly permanent bonus.
    However, it would be a useful mechanic to have for anti-fighter guns. A fighter just shouldn't stop moving. Ever.

    In most games you just fire as energy is available. With this system, reloading would be an actual consideration.
    If you want to get the full effect out of a salvo, it is best to fire a full magazine.

    Alternative / implementation:
    With manually targeted weapons (like your ship's main battery) there could be brackets on the HUD that close in as the aiming bonus increases. Direct feedback on how you should be flying. No need for lengthy explanations when the system is immediately intuitive.
    (it would still only increase with every shot, scaled to offset ROF-differences)
Missiles and lasers could be "rolled" with the same system.
A weapon is simply called a "missile" if it has the "homing" property. Other than that there is no conceptual difference.
I created a Missiles thread earlier but it would be less useful for generic / PG implementation.
  • Homing
    While technologically it's complete BS (requires more technobabble =), I would suggest using missile technology of around 1950-1960.
    Think Sparrow and Sidewinder - sprinkled with a few expensive "advanced" IFF / fire&forget missiles.
    The reason is that you can simply get more gameplay out of these not-so-great early missiles.
    You can make them powerful because it requires some effort - or risk - to get them to the target.
    • Implies a value for turning rate. (thank you, Captain Obvious!)
    • Automatically adds a considerable ammo cost.
    • Heat seekers. If a ship is "running hot" from using a lot of energy lasers, a heat seeker would gain a target lock in record time and hardly lose it to countermeasures.
      While simple in principle, heat seekers could become more useful as the battle progresses.
      A clear departure from the usual static missile stats system.
    • Early RADAR guided missiles didn't have their own RADAR but required the plane to illuminate the target with the RADAR in it's nose, seriously limiting it's maneuvers.
      The obvious advantage is that these missiles were passively homing. They didn't emit. Back then this didn't make much of a difference but it's something to keep in mind.
    • More modern HARM use a similar concept to home in on someone else's RADAR signal.
      Shut down your active sensors and they don't see you any more.
      (close enough for gameplay purposes - in reality it's a bit more complex)
    • Active (RADAR) homing. Think AMRAAM.
      Your staple long range fire & forget missile.
    • Image Recognition. In Wing Commander these were the cool ones. Never lose track because they home in on a particular ship... type.
    • IFF. Locks on any hostile or any non-friendly IFF signal.
      Just make sure you don't have friendlies with a damaged IFF transponder.
    • "Wire guided".
      Player manually controls the missile. Quite situational but who knows...
  • Continuous acceleration.
    These would be classic kinetic energy weapons that cause damage through their kinetic impact. The more they accelerate, the more they go boom.
    Not so great at knife range where they hit like wet noodles.
  • MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle)
    Horribly implemented in X3 because the engine was never trained to deal with it. Any weapon without counter is a terrible concept.
    What could work is that at a range of x the missile fragments into y unguided warheads - using the shotgun mechanics from above.
    Unlike with lasers this should come at a considerable total DPS penalty because guided delivery negates a great deal of the accuracy issue.
  • Terminally guided 1.
    Some sort of scout fills the role of a Forward Artillery Observer.
    Very long range missiles are fire by a far away capital ship towards that scout, way beyond the range at which the capital ship can even see the target.
    Once the missiles get close to the scout, control is handed over to the scout who assigns targets for the swarm of missiles.
  • Terminally guided 2.
    Alternatively, forward scouts can fire missiles with homing beacons at a capital ship, allowing long-range bombardment missiles to accurately hit a target.
    This way is probably much easier to implement because the AI wouldn't have to make a good guess about a future situation.
    Also provides more gameplay possibilities because once such a homing beacon is attached, the capital ship's buddies / fighters could attempt to take it out before the missiles arrive.
    Very good motivation for having your own fighters around.

With procedural generation, a weapon can be "rolled" by picking random values for all of these values within a considerable range.
This results in a weapon of completely uncontrolled power.
Each individual weapon stat then has a point cost attached.
The points are added up and the resulting total is compared to the desired power level of the weapon system.
Every weapon stat is scaled by this factor and you have a genuinely random weapon of the desired power.

The point cost of each property is a matter of balancing.
Big can of worms and a premium candidate for distinct values to externalise to some text file. I guarantee lots of "weapon mods", "balancing mods", and whathaveyou, without the issues that come with "real" modding. =)
The desired power level would be another obvious balancing factor. Increase it and the game gets a lot more deadly.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#2
Racial diversity.

Any PG race could be unique by picking a single (rarely two) weapon property and applying a set bonus to it without adjusting the "scaling point cost".
Maybe a 15% bonus for most stats.
If "ammo" is selected, all weapons of that race would be using ammo (a serious weakness) but get a 30% bonus to ammo usage...
What ends up working is a balancing issue and unknown at this time. =)

The "desired power" should only slightly change with things like the tech level of a specific planet.
Too much vertical scaling quickly eliminates a lot of content from a game. (See Elemental - War of Magic only to name one)
The result of vertical scaling would be that when you're shopping for new weapons you slog through crap, crap, more crap, and yet more crap, with very few findings that aren't completely superseded by what you already have. Not a lot of fun.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#3
With procedural generation, a weapon can be "rolled" by picking random values for all of these values within a considerable range.
This results in a weapon of completely uncontrolled power.
Each individual weapon stat then has a point cost attached.
I'm not sure whether that would be such a good idea. The RNG is a harsh mistress, and I foresee a tendency to produce a lot of nearly useless weapons (RNGs tend to hate me with a passion. I have to assume it's karmic). As you said: you slog through crap, crap, more crap, and yet more crap...

I'd suggest grouping weapons into types, and adjusting the range of possible values for all given stats in accordance to said type. That would allow you to implement specialized armor/shields (with more efficient protection against certain types, and weaknesses against others), while also making weapons of one type behave more consistently across.

Also, there needs to be a way to ensure that weapons of a specific model can be reliably bought. I can't think of anything worse than having to fit a ship with an assortment of mismatched one-of-a-kind weapons that all have different spreads, ranges and projectile speeds. While building your own might be an option in the long run, it won't be in the beginning.
Hardenberg was my name
And Terra was my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
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Re: Weapon statistics

#4
Hardenberg wrote:I'm not sure whether that would be such a good idea. The RNG is a harsh mistress, and I foresee a tendency to produce a lot of nearly useless weapons
You skipped over the final paragraphs of the post. =)
Complete randomness would indeed produce tons of junk but if you take the randomness and scale it to whatever desired total power, you get diversity. Not necessarily always in an effective mix but at least you'd never know what to expect when meeting a new faction. =)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#5
Gazz has already posted some good suggestions for weapon properties. In particular
Cost of using in ship construction.
Can be raw materials / monetary cost and something like internal size or structure points to limit the total power of a ship.

If the mass of the ship has an influence on flight performance, I'd suggest adding the mass of the weapon to the cost aspects. Put too many guns on your ship and it will become sluggish to fly.

Combined with other costs like energy consumption or taking away cargo space this would result in less being more after a certain point. It might also make limits on the ship editor (as mentioned in Gameplay demo #2) redundant. Let people put 100 lasers on their ship if they want to, they will find out that they suck the energy banks dry with one salvo and the ship flies like an overwight pig ;).
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Re: Weapon statistics

#6
Hmm I don't know... I think care should be taken that the weapons are not too hard to tell apart. In Borderlands (since you mentioned it), I ended up with about 4 free slots and 20 weapons for all kinds of different situations. If the guns are more sparse and each has its own role and you then have significant upgrades then it becomes cool to discover/buy a new gun. If it's all too close together then it becomes a headache calculating which is better (dps vs burst vs energy consumption vs range vs projectile speed vs...).

Now, I didn't read all of your posts, so this might already be in there, sorry if it is :)
No wait: why should I say sorry? I'd better say thanks for already thinking about it :)
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Re: Weapon statistics

#7
Godwin wrote:Now, I didn't read all of your posts, so this might already be in there, sorry if it is :)
No wait: why should I say sorry? I'd better say thanks for already thinking about it :)
As a note in general (and not a dig at you Godwin), anyone who comes into a post of Gazz's that's a wall of text, the posts are DEFINITELY worth the read. He puts thought into all the little bits, and not just the general idea of his topics. It's a fine grain that you just don't find much of in the design part of the game industry anymore.

I'm surprised Josh hasn't hired/appointed him as a designer in LT. :D

I made the mistake of skipping past one of his wall-o-text/ideas, and it wasn't until going back that I realized how in-depth it is.

Carry on Gazz. :)
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#8
DWMagus wrote:I'm surprised Josh hasn't hired/appointed him as a designer in LT. :D
Carry on Gazz. :)
+1 while i dont see him as a designer id definitely recommend him to being a Vizier XD.
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#9
In regards to: "A missile frigate with a small magazine could be devastating"

I am not so sure that the missile frigate would have a small magazine. If you had only one figure for ammo then wouldn't the amount of ammo per shot be different for each weapon, so a missile frigate might have a large ammo store, and yet only be able to fire a much smaller number of shots due to each shot taking more ammo than the "pea shooter".

Gazz you didn't specifically mention it but I think you alluded to this by "Ammo efficiency ( = AmmoPerSecond / DPS )" and "Homing - Automatically adds a considerable ammo cost".

Personally I like the idea, loved the range of guns in borderlands, assuming a couple of things:
* weapons can be modified later by going into the shop (cost to move property values around, higher cost to add to overall power of weapon)
* when buying pre-built weapons you can filter by property values
* when building a weapon (either in your own factory or a custom order from a merchant) then you can set the stats.... overall power of weapon implies the cost

I also think with custom built weapons there should be some time delay in them being created.

(Edit) P.S. I also think this could work in well with different resources being required to add to certain properties in an efficient way. What I mean is when weapons are created in a factory they require certain resources, you could create a weapon with just a certain subset of resources.... and create it with any property populated, but resource X is much more efficient at adding to property Y.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#10
* weapons can be modified later by going into the shop (cost to move property values around, higher cost to add to overall power of weapon)
* when buying pre-built weapons you can filter by property values
* when building a weapon (either in your own factory or a custom order from a merchant) then you can set the stats.... overall power of weapon implies the cost
No. Just simply NO.

You can't use money to balance weapons around in this type of game. Given the setup of the game and the nature of the genre, money shouldn't be used avoid the limits on anything. Money is abundant. Enabling it to remove design limitations will result in pretty much one thing only: the unstoppable superweapon/ship and the player that is complaining that the game is too easy.

And I say that like it's a bad thing exactly because it IS a bad thing.
It removes any semblance of tactics, any fun from fiddling around with ship loadouts and any challenge combat might offer. If you can simply buy godmode, something went VERY, VERY wrong. I assume you intent to jack up the costs for overpowered weapons into areas that are unfeasible. And IMHO, this is almost worse.

(***)

Deeply philosophical rant mode ON:

Josh (and in extension, maybe us) needs to decide on limiting factors as far as ships go. Maybe there could be a hard power limit keyed to ship size which can be used to power shields, guns and engines. Maybe you could hardlimit the number of weapon and shield types, and turn that into a game of rock, paper scissors. Maybe introduce Equipment slots to limit the amount of stuff you can cram into a single hull. Maybe limit it via mass. But whatever, LIMIT IT!!!

(Ironic, considering the name of the game and the idea behind it, but just because the universe is unlimited doesn't mean that so is the power creep, and the hull space.)

Make sure there is no "best" weapon, no "best" hull, no "best" engine, no "best" shield. Ensure that there are situations where some parts shine, some others feel underwhelming. And also make sure that owning a capital ship isn't the be-all, end-all, but merely an invitation for half a dozen corvettes to tear you a new one, because your guns can't track fast enough to get rid of them.

The worst enemy of creativity is limitless freedom. Only when faced with limitations, we can put our mind on how to get the best out of the situation and resources at hand. Right now, all I'm seeing are ideas on how to increase the players power. All nice and dandy, but in the end those things are a side note. The important part is how to make the player interact with the environment and the factions, and a sorry lot of those ideas pretty much detach the player from everything. That's not good, people. That's not how you play a involving, riveting game.

The player must be forced to interact with the environment and the factions. And that's why ALL the things must remain useful in the long run - the small ships, the medium ships, all the gun types. All the minerals, all the trading goods. Maybe even all of the factions. There shouldn't be a point where you can say "Oh, the XYZ system - well, I've totally outleveled that, all they sell is starting level crud."
Else we're on the slippery slope of power tiers, which means that a lot of players would simply gun for "the best", ignoring 95% of the game just to get there.

Deeply philosophical rant mode OFF.

I'd like to hear Josh's thoughts on combat in general, as well as the outfitting of ships. It's a lot easier to work on improving an idea when you know the framework you're dealing with.
Hardenberg was my name
And Terra was my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
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Re: Weapon statistics

#11
Hardenberg wrote: Maybe there could be a hard power limit keyed to ship size which can be used to power shields, guns and engines. Maybe you could hardlimit the number of weapon and shield types, and turn that into a game of rock, paper scissors. Maybe introduce Equipment slots to limit the amount of stuff you can cram into a single hull. Maybe limit it via mass. But whatever, LIMIT IT!!!
I Cant speak for everyone but ive always assumed this was a Give me. it stands to reason that a ship has a 'Maximum power production' value based off of the ships warp-core/power-generator/Desuexmachina which in turn is limited by ship class (no matter how massive the ship once its at the top end of the mass scale its hit the Supper capital ship class and can get no bigger...) therefor you cant have the BEST of everything and have to pick what your power supplies can maintain. this was brought up when people inquired about fuel (wherein josh said fuel would not be part of the game and all ships would be based around a 'power' system and that was the end of that.)
Hardenberg wrote: Make sure there is no "best" weapon, no "best" hull, no "best" engine, no "best" shield. Ensure that there are situations where some parts shine, some others feel underwhelming. And also make sure that owning a capital ship isn't the be-all, end-all, but merely an invitation for half a dozen corvettes to tear you a new one, because your guns can't track fast enough to get rid of them.
I have to both agree and disagree. theres nothing wrong with having a 'Best' anything the issue is you cant have the best everything. small difference but an important difference. your ship might have the best sensors mining lasors and best hull. but in trade your engins are sub par and your shields are the laughingstock of snub fighters... the game will require hard choices in outfitting your ship and in all reality you will need to think about what you want your ship to be able to do. and if you want to do everything you will never have the best of anything but be ok at anything. the thing i agree with (and though it might not sound like it I am on your side on this post i hate GOD mode XD ) that you should never reach the top. there should always be something that you wont be able to immediately cope with whithout any effort. you have a nice flag ship youve got a fleet of ships at your command and even managed to scrap a few repair frigates to do combat repairs to keep everyone in top form. nothing stopping the army from the next system over from feeling threatened and coming to eliminate an hostile threat. will you win? will you lose? will you negotiate? will you run? all options s and many more ive not mentioned. its all options that you as the player will have to call.

I also see nothing wrong with an upgrade system to build/augment your systems/ships to better specialize in an area of tech your interested in sol ong as theres an equitable trade off. (IE that top of the line experimental transporter would speed up cargo transfers but would mean that we cant install that yamato plasma cannon you wanted...darn) also being able to build and design your own weapons (a fast low damage weapon that focuses on draining shields rather than hull damage would be ideal for pirates wanting to capture the ship intact or used by police forces to subdue but not destroy a target for example would also be of use to a particular player type.)

the game is Limit Theory. for me this means to what limit can we push the game. it by no means that the game itself is without limit. (joshes biggest nemesis is time at the moment XD.)

TLDR sorry i talk a lot XD I love these forums
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#12
Bryce wrote:I am not so sure that the missile frigate would have a small magazine. If you had only one figure for ammo then wouldn't the amount of ammo per shot be different for each weapon, so a missile frigate might have a large ammo store, and yet only be able to fire a much smaller number of shots due to each shot taking more ammo than the "pea shooter".

Gazz you didn't specifically mention it but I think you alluded to this by "Ammo efficiency ( = AmmoPerSecond / DPS )" and "Homing - Automatically adds a considerable ammo cost".
It's all about design trade-offs.

If you skimp on the magazine space, you can use that space to include another missile launcher or two.
The magazine will empty faster but until that happens, you have a higher density of fire.
More DPS, better chance to get missiles past point defenses.
Naturally everyone would want a large magazine in a missile frigate but it would not necessarily be the always-best design.

If you let the player change the design of ships then the ship stats must be meaningful. All of them.
If any single stat is a winning strategy (yes, I'm inflicting set theory on you) then it is no choice at all and the designer is better off making it a fixed value, tied to a specific hull or ship mass.

I didn't bother with any numbers in the OP. The first order of business is to nail down the kind of dials that can be turned to balance things. What systems there are, what interdependencies and trade-offs.
If something is overlooked at this stage, it's going to create all kinds of crazy balancing issues later on because you end up working around the quirks in the system.
For instance, a laser's accuracy is undefined in X3. It just works however well it works dependent on bullet shape or whatnot. That's dumb! Accuracy should be a planned feature instead of a problem!

So yes, if you can think of any kind of stat that I overlooked, speak up!


In X3:TC and AP (starting with the TC 1.4 patch - long story) I ended up rebalancing several vanilla ships.
In one case a completely broken and useless ship became one the top 5 favourite ships in the game although I didn't change a single point of ship stats. Nada!
All it took was turning the turret mounts by a few degrees. That was it!
On paper the ship was still a piece of crap. Still is. Those who actually tried it in game found that both side turrets could now rotate a good bit into the frontal arc. That gave a "crappy" ship the highest sustained firepower in it's class - but only in a very specific situation, with specific guns, against specific targets.
(apparently I ah... forgot to mention those balancing changes when ES accepted the package of fixes)
Oh and it was also an ability that the AI could and would use! All too often, balancing is more concerned with how the player does something... while it's the AI actors that bring the game alive. =)

My point? Balancing / design is not about numbers. It's the usefulness of the feature ingame that matters and this usefulness can change greatly with only a tiny tweak.
I like to use situational abilities for balancing instead of just making the entire ship 30% stronger in every respect. See winning strategy. =)



Wall of text, I know. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Come to think of it, not really. The magic system in Elemental was terribly bland so I offered a few suggestions. You're getting off lightly, here.
Sometimes a little tweak won't do when the system has serious conceptual flaws...
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#13
Gazz wrote:Wall of text, I know. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Come to think of it, not really. The magic system in Elemental was terribly bland so I offered a few suggestions. You're getting off lightly, here.
Sometimes a little tweak won't do when the system has serious conceptual flaws...
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Weapon statistics

#14
Hardenberg wrote:
* weapons can be modified later by going into the shop (cost to move property values around, higher cost to add to overall power of weapon)
* when buying pre-built weapons you can filter by property values
* when building a weapon (either in your own factory or a custom order from a merchant) then you can set the stats.... overall power of weapon implies the cost
No. Just simply NO.

You can't use money to balance weapons around in this type of game. Given the setup of the game and the nature of the genre, money shouldn't be used avoid the limits on anything. Money is abundant. Enabling it to remove design limitations will result in pretty much one thing only: the unstoppable superweapon/ship and the player that is complaining that the game is too easy.
I definitely wasn't trying to say that you could create a superweapon from throwing money at it. I think there definitely need to be limits, but within those limits a stronger weapon should cost more than a weaker weapon.

To clarify a little on my points above, my idea was more along the lines of:
* being able to change a slow firing more powerful weapon into a fast firing less powerful weapon at the workshop.
* being able to improve a weapon, within given limits, from weaker to stronger - so when you are early on, you buy a weak weapon, I would rather have the option of upgrading that weapon at some point rather than having to replace it

BUT I fully agree there definitely need to be limits to these things.
Post

Re: Weapon statistics

#15
and i think most agree that being able to retool and upgrade you preferred weapon type would be nice so long as it came at an in game balance. the obvious way to do this would be to balance all equipment against your ships power rating. small ships have a smaller usable power supply and therefor couldn't arm the Armageddon death laser for instance (unless you completely ignored your ships shields engines cargo capacity life supports ect until you might have enough to self-destruct trying to build up power to fire it...)

this would also be a limit on all equipment as a whole (shields weapons sensors ect ect) so that if you wanted to build a ship with strong engins and shields but dident need weapons as much you discard them and reallocate that power into using higher grade equipment than most would expect you to have (at the expedience of no weapons for instance.)

as always let me know what you all think if im missing the mark let me know. XD
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.

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