Who is in charge of balancing caps?

Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Printable Version

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RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Occam Razor - 06-04-2014

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: I think the sentiment he was trying to express was that battleships are only effective at killing other battleships and bases. Everything else will either kill the battleship or run away.

Sometimes scaring the enemy away is the point of using a Battleship.

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: Very skilled? No. The Cruiser (maybe the gb - don't have any experience with GB-BS combat) pilot doesn't have to be 'very skilled', he just has to be competent, and know what his advantages are - weapon range and maneuverability.

I did not fly a Cruiser against a Battleship in 4.87, so I have no up to date information about how it is right now, but in .86 it was not easy to solo a Battleship in a Cruiser, since you did not have that much dps and a single mistake could cost you alot due to the Battleships heavy punch.

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: A cruiser using mortars at max range can hit the battleship because the battleship is large and slow. The battleship cannot hit the cruiser, because the cruiser can easily move out of the way before the BS's mortar can reach it.
Missiles would be the logical anti-cruiser weapon in this scenario, but the cruiser has 70(?) countermeasures and BS can only carry -20- missiles.
(Because of this, a battleship mounting missile turrets is quite effective against a cruiser that has chosen to equip a cloaking device instead of a CM dropper, but this is not the norm)

Assuming the cruiser pilot is competent and has set up his ship with at least one mortar, the cruiser always wins because the battleship can't hit it.

Well, again, did not check in .87, but in .86 Light Mortars did not have the DPS necessary to destroy a Battleship, aswell as most Battleships could evade a mortar shot at highest range possible (except maybe the nephilim, that thing can't evade anything) I've only flown a light cruiser, which could not mount two light mortars, so maybe that was different when flying a heavy cruiser, I don't know. I usually used Cruiser cerbs against Battleships, but that was quite dangerous since you had to come in close. Two cruisers, nevertheless, had no problem with a Battleship

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: Pretty much this. If you've got a huge ship with a huge powercore and huge guns, I don't see why you should be both outmaneuvered and outgunned by a smaller ship. We need BS weapons, either heavy or primary, that are intended to combat cruisers. Either long-range low damage missiles that you can fire a bunch of, or sniper turrets that have long range, fast projectile speed, low damage, and slow turret rotation rate. Or significantly increase the amount of ammo we can carry for our existing missile turrets.

You are not outmaneuvered and outgunned, you are just outmaneuvered. Battleship turrets pack a very heavy punch against a Cruiser and any Cruiser pilot has to be very careful not to get hit by them.

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: They are not really intended to be anti-battleship weapons, they're more suited for attacking cruisers, and their damage is fine for this purpose. The problem is, as I said above, that unless the cruiser has no CM, you will run out of missiles and have never hit the cruiser.

I remember BS missiles to be quite scary in .86 for Cruisers, since they had infinite ammo and you had limited countermeasure. But that changed, yes.

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: There are other turrets for fighting battleships, and I am fine with having to choose whether to set up my battleship for fighting cruisers or battleships, just as I believe the cruiser has to make this choice.

Well, depends on the Cruiser. I only really tried the AI Cruiser, and outfitted with cerbs that thing was strong against both Cruisers and Battleships, although soloing a BS with only cerbs does take some time and good evasion maneuvers.

(06-04-2014, 03:18 AM)Trogdor Wrote: S'fine. BS's health really isnt an issue. Fights already last a good long time. The problem is that most fights are long, drawn-out slaughters where the BS has no chance and may as well just be a punching bag, while the battleship's offensive capabilities amount to, well, this guy:

Yes, just like the stuff in WW2, where Battleships had hundreds of anti-air guns but rarely hit any fighter or bomber while being destroyed by bombs and torpedoes. It just proves that a Battleship in Disco needs an escort, fighters, a Gunboat or something like that. That's how it's supposed to be anyways, as the devs stated when they changed the way it worked if I remember right.

RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Veygaar - 06-04-2014

What happened to late .85 again?

Good balance + there was turret steer, but no zoom to make things so boringly simple with the cap classes.

Now it's just knowing your stats and picking an angle (or running if you know you're "out classed"). Aiming while dodging is a thing of the past. Dodging, to the extent it used to be used, is a thing of the past.

RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Lonely_Ghost - 06-04-2014

While, I enjoy healthy debate, unfortunatly, we not progressing into problem solving much. Both sides has their points "for" and "against".

So Im offering to summarize all our eforts, and create some kind of "wish list", based on a gaming, but not theory.
Let me start again.

1) Increas battleship's surviveability by:
a) 50% BS armor's buff for every shipp.
b) Make Primaries to be effective anti-cruiser weapon, increasing it's range to 3500m and speed to 1100 m/s, but reduce hull damage to 10K.
c) Increasing BS sheild capacity.
d) Increasing number of not heavy slots. +2 for Prims +2 for secondarys.
The main porpouse is to ELIMINATE ANY CRUISER'S ABILITY TO SOLO BATTLESHIP. Just make it be impossible.
(Also pleas not. This not including nerfing cruisers)

2) Adjust mass simulation for a battleship.
a) Increasing cruise engine charging time (hard to say numbers, because, never counted it's current time Smile

)
b) Decreasing cruise speed to 70% of destroyer's/cruiser cruise speed.
e) Decreas cargo hold, so no heavy armor and cheaty equipment like Cloaks or JD could be instaled together and should not carry tons of fuels to operate them for too long.

Those are mine options, so I suggest, that if we want some kind of a resoult, there shoul be a structured list of our wishes.

RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Trogdor - 06-04-2014

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote: Trogdor...a very good reply, thank you, for starters. You tried to at least address every point I made, and that's a good start for having a discussion.

Okay, let's address a few things:

Quote:I think the sentiment he was trying to express was that battleships are only effective at killing other battleships and bases. Everything else will either kill the battleship or run away.

Okay...but this also seems to equate the enemy running way as losing a fight, when in-fact, area denial can be considered a victory. People need to learn that not every win ends with a blue message. As a Zoner, I'm sure you're aware of that.

I do agree with this. I was only attempting to clarify what Antonio probably meant when he said "Everything else pretty much wrecks [battleships]."

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote:
Quote:The Cruiser (maybe the gb - don't have any experience with GB-BS combat) pilot doesn't have to be 'very skilled', he just has to be competent, and know what his advantages are - weapon range and maneuverability.

Quote:A cruiser using mortars at max range can hit the battleship because the battleship is large and slow. The battleship cannot hit the cruiser, because the cruiser can easily move out of the way before the BS's mortar can reach it.
Missiles would be the logical anti-cruiser weapon in this scenario, but the cruiser has 70(?) countermeasures and BS can only carry -20- missiles.
(Because of this, a battleship mounting missile turrets is quite effective against a cruiser that has chosen to equip a cloaking device instead of a CM dropper, but this is not the norm)

Assuming the cruiser pilot is competent and has set up his ship with at least one mortar, the cruiser always wins because the battleship can't hit it.

Quote:We need BS weapons, either heavy or primary, that are intended to combat cruisers. Either long-range low damage missiles that you can fire a bunch of, or sniper turrets that have long range, fast projectile speed, low damage, and slow turret rotation rate. Or significantly increase the amount of ammo we can carry for our existing missile turrets.

Right, and I did address the weapon range short-comings in my suggestions. Maybe one addendum would be to return BS missles to unlimited ammo like back in 4.85? That might help counter the CM/CD abilities on the cruisers.

Seems fine. It doesn't make much sense that they should use both ammo and a huge chunk of ship energy. I'd rather they use energy and not use ammo.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote:
Quote:Zapper turrets are useless due to technical limitations.

Well, they DO cause damage...just not effectively when it comes to hitting an enemy ship. My thought was...instead of being an anti-ship weapon, would they be better if they served as a sort of aiming countermeasure, like a flak turret, but without the area damage? Given a longer range and their high refire rate, I think they would become an EXCELLENT point-defense counter-measure against Novas.

Yes, they do cause damage... when they manage to hit the target. And they also have the unfortunate, afaik unfixable, issue of firing even when they cannot rotate far enough to aim at the target. And so they turn as far as they can and then shoot straight ahead in whatever direction they happen to be pointing, wasting energy and looking stupid.

I guess I don't see the point. Why not just use flak turrets? They are fairly effective at deflecting bomber torpedoes, with practice.
Furthermore, I believe they fire with the 'fire missile' keybind, so you don't have to devote a weapon group to them.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote:
Quote: I assume you mean regular Solaris turrets. Solaris Gatling turrets are completely useless and never hit anything because of their wide spread.
I wouldn't mind having more effective solaris turrets but I think it's a lower priority; bombers are supposed to be strong vs battleships and even small buffs in this area could tip the balance seriously in the battleship's favor.

As I said, I haven't piloted a cap in 4.87, but back in 4.86 (and on another server) I did fly a Bret BS that was out-fitted with about 12 Solaris Gats, which actually did a decent job at hitting snubs...just not damaging them greatly. Do they still use Solaris Gatts in 4.87, or have they just been replaced with straight Solaris turrets?

AFAIK both kinds are still available.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote: I would say...why not make the Gatts actually effective by increasing their damage (just enough so that they are effective against snubs, but wouldn't be overwhelming against other caps..maybe this would also call for increasing their energy use to compensate?) and their range so they could potentially hit bombers before they get within prime SNACing range (about 1.5k range). As of now...the favor seems to be tipped a bit more in the Bombers favor...and I would see this as more of an equalizer...especially since the BS pilot would have to sacrifice his firepower vs. other caps by using a Gatt.

Reg. Solaris are somewhat effective against snubs. Chain-firing them helps with accuracy. Mostly, it comes down to swatting their torpedoes away with flaks, spamming flaks at them when they close in to snac you, and trying to lay into them with chainfire solaris when they get close enough.

Not sure why you think they'd be 'overwhelming against other caps' tho. Going off wiki numbers, they do 3800 hull dps per turret. Heavy bs can mount what, ~14? Less if you have flaks? And light slots are spread all over the ship. Even if you had 10 of them shooting the target at once, that's only 38k dps. A single cerberus turret does 45k... and uses 1/5 as much energy per second as those 10 solaris.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote:
Quote:Why do you think this is necessary? Razors aside, all of those other guns are good at doing what they're intended to do - hitting other battleships.

Well, my primary thought was to make effective BS combat much more dependent on skilled energy usage and not just weapon loadout. Right now, the big craze seems to be for everyone to use Cerbs because among the heavy weapons they give the best bang for the buck.

There are other factors to consider too.. like lag, strafing, hardpoint position on each ship, etc. Cerbs are popular not just because they're the most efficient damage output, but also because they're the most forgiving in terms of missing the target.

A big part of the reason I'm so partial to caps is because I have a consistently high ping to the server, and therefore am at a disadvantage when it comes to fights that involve a lot of dodging and jousting. So, too, would I be at a disadvantage using high risk, high reward guns that put so many eggs in one basket.

Not to say that I am against increasing mortar / forward gun dmg, but I'm just saying, there's other factors to consider that are often hard to quantify.

I would also note that when a weapon lists its range, I believe that is the range FROM THE TURRET, and not necessarily the range it will reach from your ship. I remember posting in a thread much like this one a while ago, detailing my findings.
Just because your weapon says it reaches to 5k on the infocard, and on your screen it says the enemy is 5k away, doesn't mean you can hit the target if your ship is 1k long and your turrets are in the middle.
Your speed also factors in. Your weapon range is a little longer if you're moving towards the target vs. standing still, as I recall.
Try it. Get a battleship with missile turrets and mortars and bring it to conn with a buddy. Go to listed max range, then see what factors influence whether the red + appears that indicates whether your missiles will track the target or just fly off in a straight line tracking nothing.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote: I think it might be interesting to give BSes the option of being more of a "shot-gun" type fighter if some of their weapons had greater damage, but at the cost of much more energy usage...and maybe even shorter range (or maybe split...some have long range and do more damage (Sniper fighter) but eat way more energy, while others have much smaller range and do less damage but are more energy efficient.

We already have this in Heavy Mortar/Mortar/Cerb setups. Pick mortar, you have a heavy long range punch... if you can hit. Pick Cerb, and you have higher dps, better energy efficiency at a shorter range.

(06-04-2014, 04:59 AM)Highland Laddie Wrote:
Quote:S'fine. BS's health really isnt an issue. Fights already last a good long time. The problem is that most fights are long, drawn-out slaughters where the BS has no chance and may as well just be a punching bag, while the battleship's offensive capabilities amount to, well, this guy:

Well, the bot removal plus Hull increase idea would serve two purposes that I think also need addressed: a) making BSes less effective bot feeders, but b) countering by giving the BS more hull (aka staying power) in the fight, which would hopefully help satisfy the "NO NERFING" crowd.

1) I think BS would have less incentive to botfeed if they themselves were more effective combatants, and felt less like that guy in the gif I linked. :p
2) I would rather see bots and bats completely overhauled/removed.

To me, bots and bats are oorp. Who makes them? What materials are used in their construction? Why don't they take up cargo space? Why are they available for sale for exactly the same price on every single base across Sirius and Gallia? To me, they're a load of baloney as far as being physical items that can be traded between ships, especially in the middle of a fight.

Instead, they should only be an abstract concept - nanobots are a representation of the crew's ability to make in-flight repairs to the ship's hull and internal systems. Shield batteries are a representation of the crew's ability to divert power to shields. When they run out, you're out of spare parts to fix the ship / you can't put any more stress on the ship's power grid without overloading/damaging stuff.

This functionality of self-repair could be accomplished with ship modules. Maybe even POB-built ones of better quality.
You could have one that repairs hull over time and never runs out - just a passive HOT.
You could have one that repairs big chunks of health when activated, but has a cooldown.
Same thing for shields - Have one that increases shield regeneration rate passively, one that increases shield regeneration rate while consuming power, one that restores a big chunk of shield on a cooldown.

The only ships that should be able to repair other ships in flight are repair ships, whom you could give a hull-restoring beam or an activated module that will restore the hull of whatever ship you have targeted. Or even a 'bot field' module that repairs all ships within a certain range.

I'm just throwing out ideas here. I don't know how much any of this is possible. At the very least, I don't think bots/bats should be trade-able items. It kind of defeats the whole concept of a 'repair ship' if all it's doing is hauling around massive amounts of ship candies, and not actually using its robotic implements to make repairs.

If these kinds of things are possible, it opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, I can picture a Junker ship that is part offense, part repair ship. I can see a carrier with a bot field. I can see bombers launching healing torpedoes!

RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Ursus - 06-04-2014

Maybe its time to let BS equip cruiser weapons in the light slots

RE: Who is in charge of balancing caps? - Trogdor - 06-04-2014

(06-04-2014, 05:38 PM)Ursus Wrote: Maybe its time to let BS equip cruiser weapons in the light slots

Lulz intensifies. Equipping 10 cruiser missile turrets, BRB