I think by making every explosion damage leak/bleed through shields, they'd make them more useful. Leaked damage would be distributed along nearby exterior modules and hull. Not much, but a bit. Maybe also could add some inertia transfer, similar to force shell by default to every explosion, on top of maybe some module malfunction, like the scramble spectrum. Numbers can be of course tweaked, but I think something along this direction could make them more interesting and slightly change the meta.
Missiles should be an entirely independent hardpoint system.
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
So, to me, it seems you want to counteract power creep with more power creep.
No thanks. Especially when that power creep basicaly says "you must use missiles to benefit"
My suggestion to FD would be to remove stacking of benefits to counteract the power creep.
The trouble is, so long as things like this are in competition, you'll always have a few options that rest at the top, with the rest being mostly unused. You can't balance things like this merely with statistical adjustments because there will always be a best and worst choice.
Even worse, this tends to push weapons towards a single type, that functions best in the particular model of game.
The only way to make these otherwise substandard choices viable is to take them out of competition with one another entirely. Fortunately, this also allows these alternatives to be made in a completely different way from standard weapons, making them much more interesting and dynamic than they otherwise could be.
But in any case, that's not power creep. Power creep means things become obsolete and replaced by other, new things. By definition, this couldn't possibly qualify, as the existing content would be completely untouched.
I agree there are problems. I disagree with your solution.
The trouble is, as far as I can tell, the way you've proposed to fix the problems literally cannot solve said problems.
The only way to allow multi-faceted balance is to take said things out of competition with one another. So long as they're competing, you cannot reach a situation where they are both diverse in expression AND there isn't a clear best option.
How do you propose fixing this, if statistical changes won't work?
Well, i never said i was perfect. Maybe my solution is also not great. Doesn't mean your solution is any preferable
Well, i never said i was perfect. Maybe my solution is also not great. Doesn't mean your solution is any preferable
The question isn't what one of the two of us LIKES, it's which proposal will solve the problem of missiles being weak and rarely used. Can you deny my suggestion would fix these problems?
Since A: They would always be used by everyone, and B: their strength wouldn't matter anymore, since they'd be in addition to existing DPS, not in lieu of it.
Of course it matters whether we like the solution or not.
Whether or not we like changes to the game determine whether we play the game or not.
Which is why I specified 'one of the two of us'.
Because a change that may be good for the game as a whole may not be liked by some subset of the population. That's virtually guaranteed, in fact; there's always some people who prefer things as they are, no matter how flawed they may be.
But that has nothing to do with whether or not something is a good change.
Ah, and now we start, you assume that a majority are on your side and its only a minority who disagree with your "brilliant" idea, and that anyone who disagrees must be against improving the game.
Yeah, i'm not buying what you are shoveling.
I'll just reiterate my question; does my solution fix the problem as it has been laid out?
I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what the term “Power Creep” means.
It’s the slow and steady increase of power over time, hence the words “Power” & “Creep”.
No...no it does not.
It only compounds the problem by turning every ship into a Murder-Death-Kill Machine.
No, that's not it at all.
To quote wikipedia,
As you can quite clearly see, the requirement for power creep has nothing to do with JUST the release of new content, but is contingent on that content driving older content out of balance and use.
Given that this suggestion would be applied universally, it's not possible for it to qualify. Existing content remains just as powerful as always.
Therefore it cannot be power creep.
Not in a way that i like. Whether it would? It would need testing, but my feeling is it would add too much power to ships and require a corresponding increase to NPC health.
That's shifting the goalposts, friend.
The problem, as it has been laid out, is that missiles are rarely utilized and uninteresting in design, and that missile countermeasures are similarly unused.
Would this suggestion fix the problem as it has been laid out?
At least you admit it would fix the problem, so I appreciate that much.
Honestly, I don't think that the increase in power would be overwhelming in most scenarios. Say the average ship has 5 hardpoints fitted with Bandits. That's 1500 extra damage. Now, IF they all get through, that's maybe a single medium ship taken down on their own. But that's assuming they don't have or use effective countermeasures.
Jackhammers would have much more damage, but would likewise be much easier to evade.
When you contrast that with the standard weapons of most ships - a C3 Multicannon, for example, engineered with Overcharged, does 10500 damage alone - I really don't think you'd see the sort of massive effects you're concerned about.
As far as I can see, missiles have three major things blocking them from receiving any potential buffs.
Firstly, they suffer a bit from overpowered secondary effects. Not to the same degree as railguns and definitely not as much as torpedoes, but they definitely have some of the stronger ones. Some of the stronger secondaries might need a bit of downward tweaking (whether reducing their benefits or upping their drawbacks) to give additional headroom for other buffs to become possible as having a weapon with both powerful utility and high damage potential is quite a dangerous thing.
Secondly, Packhounds are a problem in terms of balancing missiles. They are so much more powerful and more effective than regular missiles in having more than 3 times the DPS as well as being much more reliable at hitting fast moving targets or applying secondary effects repeatedly. Compared to the sidegrades that are the rest of the powerplay modules, they are a definite outlier on the power spectrum as they are almost strict upgrade. This power level means that sweeping buffs to missiles in general can't really be done, although some buffs to bring regular missiles up to Packhound level might be an option.
Thirdly, synthesis is a problem for any weapon that is meant to be limited by ammunition. Because synthesis is so easy and convenient, it practically renders ammunition irrelevant from a balancing perspective as any weapon with synthesis has practically infinite ammunition. This obviously causes problems for regular kinetic weapons, but for a weapon like a missile rack that is meant to be primarily ammunition limited it requires them to be barely more powerful than regular weapons. As the age old balancing mantra goes: "a drawback that can be trivially mitigated is not a drawback at all". To be honest, I feel that synthesis needs a full rework in order to be a useful and balanced mechanic, rather than the current implementation of "material-fuelled cheatcodes".
I don't think a massive sweeping change like giving missiles their own hardpoints is the solution, there's definitely design space for players to choose between high alpha strike potential (explosives), high combat endurance (lasers) and somewhere in the middle (kinetics). Separating out the weapon slots between ordnance and regular weapons would effectively remove combat endurance on weapons as a variable, as all ships could effectively max out on both sustained damage and burst damage as they would rely on different slots. It's the same reason why I argue against putting HRPs into sub-slots in the bulkheads or restricting them to military slots, as it would remove all choice between HRPs vs utility vs shield reinforcement vs SCBs as then every player would have both max HRP and max "other".
So my suggestions for missiles would be simple: Remove the ability to synthesise ammunition for them, buff regular seekers up to packhound levels in terms of DPS, pending beta testing potentially buff damage on missiles further, check to make sure secondaries are not being too overbearing and buff up damage numbers on dumbfire missiles to keep them hurting more than seekers.
Firstly, they suffer a bit from overpowered secondary effects. Not to the same degree as railguns and definitely not as much as torpedoes, but they definitely have some of the stronger ones. Some of the stronger secondaries might need a bit of downward tweaking (whether reducing their benefits or upping their drawbacks) to give additional headroom for other buffs to become possible as having a weapon with both powerful utility and high damage potential is quite a dangerous thing.
Secondly, Packhounds are a problem in terms of balancing missiles. They are so much more powerful and more effective than regular missiles in having more than 3 times the DPS as well as being much more reliable at hitting fast moving targets or applying secondary effects repeatedly. Compared to the sidegrades that are the rest of the powerplay modules, they are a definite outlier on the power spectrum as they are almost strict upgrade. This power level means that sweeping buffs to missiles in general can't really be done, although some buffs to bring regular missiles up to Packhound level might be an option.
Thirdly, synthesis is a problem for any weapon that is meant to be limited by ammunition. Because synthesis is so easy and convenient, it practically renders ammunition irrelevant from a balancing perspective as any weapon with synthesis has practically infinite ammunition. This obviously causes problems for regular kinetic weapons, but for a weapon like a missile rack that is meant to be primarily ammunition limited it requires them to be barely more powerful than regular weapons. As the age old balancing mantra goes: "a drawback that can be trivially mitigated is not a drawback at all". To be honest, I feel that synthesis needs a full rework in order to be a useful and balanced mechanic, rather than the current implementation of "material-fuelled cheatcodes".
I don't think a massive sweeping change like giving missiles their own hardpoints is the solution, there's definitely design space for players to choose between high alpha strike potential (explosives), high combat endurance (lasers) and somewhere in the middle (kinetics). Separating out the weapon slots between ordnance and regular weapons would effectively remove combat endurance on weapons as a variable, as all ships could effectively max out on both sustained damage and burst damage as they would rely on different slots. It's the same reason why I argue against putting HRPs into sub-slots in the bulkheads or restricting them to military slots, as it would remove all choice between HRPs vs utility vs shield reinforcement vs SCBs as then every player would have both max HRP and max "other".
So my suggestions for missiles would be simple: Remove the ability to synthesise ammunition for them, buff regular seekers up to packhound levels in terms of DPS, pending beta testing potentially buff damage on missiles further, check to make sure secondaries are not being too overbearing and buff up damage numbers on dumbfire missiles to keep them hurting more than seekers.
Science H Logic!!!
We’re just completely incapable of any critical thinking or self reflection aren’t we?
I’m done feeding the obvious/oblivious troll.
Have fun arguing in circles
