Changes to the Boosting mechanic for better ship scale balancing

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

A small ships strength is it's ability to control the engagement.
They generally don't pack a big punch, or have good defences, but they should have the best acceleration, deceleration and agility, by far.

Large ships bring the rain, and/or are nigh on invincible, but getting away from them should be a doddle.

Perma boost breaks that balance completely, so something needs to be done.

The afterburner idea I suggested would probably fix that, and the reverski manoeuvre.

But it's a huge change, I doubt FD would rebuild the boost mechanic, unfortunately.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[StiTch]

To be totally honest, I am not sure smaller ships should be able to run rings around larger ships.

It's one of the fundamental aspects of space combat...you have full freedom of movement. To "run rings" around an opponent suggests you can travel in a circle a distance away from them faster than they can turn in a circle on the spot; without aerodynamics forcing the opponent to also travel they have a significantly decreased effort required to keep you in sights while they're on the inside. And this is compounded when the larger ship isn't just sitting still but actively using thrusters to assist keeping them in sights, and most notably when using FA Off.

That said a competently flown ship can circle strafe. I do it regularly in my iCourier. But that doesn't mean you'll never be in sights: I suspect in combat between a competently flown small ship and a FDL, the FDL would be able to more or less retain the small ship in sights even without boost. Whether its projectiles will actually be hitting, or doing damage at the distance away the smaller ship is, is a totally different piece of theorycrafting.

Probably the more poignant issue in small/big ship balance comes down to shield strength. Smaller ships still have relatively fragile shields, but thanks to the drastic potency of higher class SCBs, bigger ships can expect to retain shields for 15 minutes+ against a smaller ship...and because of the nature of shields, that can ultimately mean the bigger ship has taken naff all damage in that time. If shields and hull were more balanced, and smaller ships could expect to down shields without the use of cheese tools such as torps, they could strategically chip away at modules while evading - without taking away the notion that if caught in the bigger ship's crosshairs, it's going to take catastrophic damage in moments.

 

[StiTch]

I also support making it a mechanic that involves risk. Boosting should generate MASSIVE engine heat (that dissipates quickly so as not to have too much imapct on hot weapon loadouts)

I don't think the fundamental boost mechanics need to change but I'm pretty sure no-one ever considers heat from boosting unless in SR or being hit by thermal shock weapons.

Definitely increase their thermal load so they have an offset and require a little consideration, rather than people assuming it'll be safe to the point they spam the boost key 24/7.

 

[PeLucheuh]

Perma boost is what makes combat way more dynamic. Without it people will just reverse and face tank each other and there is nothing more boring than that.

There are already a differences regarding boost. As an example, a FDL (5A thrusters) has a 5sec duration when a FAS (6A thrusters) has 6.
Now take an awesome pilot like PiPko and he can mostly out manouver any medium ship in a viper.
Perma boosting is a non issue and provide way more dynamism in combat.

 

[Madrax573]

Perma boost is what makes combat way more dynamic. Without it people will just reverse and face tank each other and there is nothing more boring than that.

There are already a differences regarding boost. As an example, a FDL (5A thrusters) has a 5sec duration when a FAS (6A thrusters) has 6.
Now take an awesome pilot like PiPko and he can mostly out manouver any medium ship in a viper.
Perma boosting is a non issue and provide way more dynamism in combat.

Ok...

Perma boost has simple reduce combat to a few meta ships that joust the crap out of each other.

Which is fine if you are of the PvP groups that organise and enjoy that.

But the boost mechnics simple reduces the ability of smaller ships to compete with the meta ships.

Without boost a big fat ship can't just reverski as it's cruise speed isn't big enough. the small ships just outpace them in that respect. The reverski works so well BECAUSE of the boost mechanic to set it up.

And if you read the original idea I'm actually more in favour of a restricted boost not a total removal...

 

[Hydrino]

Boosting is an odd mechanic.

I thought it would be better to have a "press and hold" boost, or afterburner instead.
Your acceleration increases dramatically over time, as does your heat, and fuel consumption.
But your agility goes out the window, and under greater acceleration, you begin to "drift" which requires more work to correct.

Smaller ships would accelerate waaaaaaay faster than larger ships*. But you'd both theoretical cap out at a maximum speed that's stable for P2P instancing. It'd just take longer for a large ship to get there.
Smaller ships would also retain more agility during boost (but not much), and be able to slow down much faster.

*Outfitting depending of course.

A similar system could be applied to supercruise too, so we get zip about on fire trying to reach distant stars. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

Like this idea.
Large ships should accelerate more slowly and burn fuel faster when afterburner or boost is on.
+1 to OP as well for the topic/discussion.
I've said this other ways-the naval ship analogy being primary. An Aircraft carrier cannot out-maneuver a fast-attack boat. It can possibly shoot it out of the water, but both speed and maneuverability will never match the smaller craft more purpose built for fast attack runs.

 

[PeLucheuh]

Perma boost has simple reduce combat to a few meta ships that joust the crap out of each other.

Absolutely not. How was it before 2.1 ? Meta FDL/FAS as well (remember you can also permaboost in stock ship)

But the boost mechnics simple reduces the ability of smaller ships to compete with the meta ships.

No, small ships never really compete with meta ships (except in hands of awesome pilot like PiPko). Engineers makes it even harder because of power creep regarding shields/armor which benefits the most medium/big ships.

Without boost a big fat ship can't just reverski as it's cruise speed isn't big enough. the small ships just outpace them in that respect. The reverski works so well BECAUSE of the boost mechanic to set it up.

On the contrary, perma boost reduce drastically the possibility of REVERSKI and as it is now, big ships are being outpace by medium and small ships. You are making the confusion between cruise/boost speed with perma boost.

And if you read the original idea I'm actually more in favour of a restricted boost not a total removal...

I never said you were for a removal. I just expressed my opinion on the permaboost topic.

 

[Starwolfe]

I'm taking purely about combat here and a bit of light travel.

Ok so lets think about this. The small ships are supposed to be nippy, agile ships that 'should' be able to run rings around bigger, heavier ships yes?

Well most of the small ships in game can do that to a certain extent. They have higher cruise speeds, better turning etc UNTIL you engage boost.

Then all that goes out the window. After all it's one of the primary reasons the FDL/FAS ships are considered simply the best combat ships right now.
Then add the ability to mod your distro so you can nigh on perma boost simply means that many of the medium combat ships just simply out perform the small combat ship.

So my first suggestion is to remove boosting altogether and give a slight boost to normal speed and agility. This would bring the ship scales back into a better balance point and can be tweaked further to enhance it. Hoever I know that most of the very vocal PvP crowd would just go crying buckets to FDev if that happened.

So suggestion 2

Change the boost so that it becomes a real space cruising mechanic.
You can boost (I'd probably increase the duration a tad as well) But when you do your manoeuvring thrusters get turned off. No turning or slewing at all, just straight line fast movement. Then have a cooldown period to your thrusters so no perma boosting any more.
This way you can 'cruise' in real space to cover decent distances, around starports, rings etc and still use boost as a tactical re-position as such. Maybe if you are skilled and your opponent not so much even as a ram still.

I am more in favor of the second.

Turn Boosting into a speed gain at the cost of agility and maneuverability. You get to go fast - in a straight line.

This will let ships remain unique with unique flight characteristics outside boosting and make the game more varied.

 

[Madrax573]

Absolutely not. How was it before 2.1 ? Meta FDL/FAS as well (remember you can also permaboost in stock ship)


No, small ships never really compete with meta ships (except in hands of awesome pilot like PiPko). Engineers makes it even harder because of power creep regarding shields/armor which benefits the most medium/big ships.

On the contrary, perma boost reduce drastically the possibility of REVERSKI and as it is now, big ships are being outpace by medium and small ships. You are making the confusion between cruise/boost speed with perma boost.


I never said you were for a removal. I just expressed my opinion on the permaboost topic.

I've not seen perma boost in stock non engineered ships. If that is possible then even more argument to change the boost mechanics IMO.

True small ships can't compete with Meta but then not many can tbh thats why they are meta.
Hopefully the new engineering system will reduce the gap between a lot of ships etc but I'm not confident about that tbh.

I think ships in general need a bit of a speed /agility increase and boost should be straight line no turning kind of manoeuvre... But we both know that FDev won't do this as the current boost mechanic is too embedded in the flight model..

 

[Starwolfe]

I think ships in general need a bit of a speed /agility increase and boost should be straight line no turning kind of manoeuvre... But we both know that FDev won't do this as the current boost mechanic is too embedded in the flight model..

I don't think its too embedded in the flight model.

IIRC they did change it in the past - by adding the accelerated turning - which is how we got into this mess the first time.

I'm sure they could undo or reverse it so it slows turning while boosting.

 

[SushiCW]

I tend to agree with the problem that boosting (especially perma-boosting) does too much to make big ships more nimble than they should be compared to smaller ships.

I doubt it's going to change at this point, but for what it's worth: I'd simply make boosts less powerful on bigger ships. Longer duration than smaller ships, maybe, but less acceleration and less boost to turn rate.

Perma-boosting should be less of a thing as you get into Medium+ ships, not more.