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Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Printable Version

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Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Haste - 04-19-2017

I would like to see how the playerbase feels about an idea I have pitched in a few chats:

Right now, among smaller snubcraft, Bombers, SHFs and Freighters, there is very little consistency to how many nanobots per armor each ship has. Some ships can repair their entire hull barely two times, others can repair a dozen times. This makes it - in my opinion - hard to gauge how much damage you have really done to ships "at a glance".

I believe it is fairly easy to change this and make the "red hull bar" more meaningful. This would allow players to "mentally" keep track of how many more times an enemy ship can regenerate its hull, making scanning enemies to keep track of this less mandatory (although it would still allow you to view things in greater detail). Another benefit is that the armor amount listed in a ship's infocard will directly correspond to the amount of "beating" a ship can take. Right now, it takes some calculations to actually figure that out. In other words, it would be simpler to tell from an infocard just how "tanky" or "fragile" a ship is.

To do this, I would first add up a ship's armor rating and the amount of armor their nanobots can repair in total. For example, let's take the Guardian VHF. The Guardian currently has 11,000 armor and 68 nanobots. This means that its total "HP" is 38,200, prior to armor upgrade multipliers, of course. Because it has a fairly high number of nanobots compared to its armor, it can currently repair itself a total of 2.47 times. Not an easy number to keep track of.

A ship that has a very different ratio is the Raven's Talon. At first glance, it looks heavily armored, at 12,400 armor. In reality however, it only has 38,400 total hitpoints when its 65 nanobots are taken into account. Barely more than the Guardian. As it has a very different armor : nanobot ratio, it can "only" repair itself about 2.1 times compared to the Guardian's 2.47 times.

So how would I like to change this? Again, we add up the ship's total armor. Then, one third of that becomes its "base armor". The other two-thirds of its HP will be put into nanobots and batteries. This way, every ship changed according to this will be able to repair exactly two times, while having no more or less "tankiness" than before.

The Guardian's 38,200 total HP divided by 3 makes for about 12,700 armor. The other 2/3rds adds up to 64 nanobots. The new total will be 38,300 hitpoints - an extremely negligible change. However, now it is easier to see that the Guardian is quite a robust ship, something the old 11,000 armor didn't communicate as well. In addition, it can repair exactly twice, and not some difficult-to-track number of times like "2.47".


To sum things up, these I believe are the pros and cons.

Pros:
  1. Clarity. Glancing at a ship's armor in its infocard will tell you how much damage it can take when compared to other ships. If a ship repairs itself at half health twice, you know that whatever fighter or bomber it may be, it can only repair its entire health pool one more time.
  2. Ease of access to information for players and developers alike. When rebalancing overly weak or overly powerful ships, one look at its armor will give a lot more information than it does right now.
  3. Ships that are needlessly within instant-kill ranges such as the Nyx (a ship that already isn't a natural groupfighter, where instakills come into play most) will likely be moved out of them as they gain a little bit of armor.
  4. As a program would be used to tweak all values automatically and avoid manual input mistakes, all infocards would also be automatically updated for every changed ship, making sure they are all accurate. Some may still show wrong or outdated values currently, as stats were put in manually.

Cons:
  1. Slight workload. As written above, I would have to code a quick program to change ships' armor and nanobot counts. I could spend this time doing other minor balance tweaks.
  2. Lighter ships affected by this, such as Heavy Fighters, might currently be instakillable for balance reasons. As Heavy Fighters generally have higher nanobot-to-armor ratios, they will likely gain some more base armor, taking them out of this range. I can't currently think, off the top of my head, of ships that really benefit balance-wise from being instantly killable, however.
  3. An extension of the last con, Light Fighters might have to be skipped for this change entirely as ships like the Liberator would nearly double their armor rating if they follow the same "formula". Even though their total HP wouldn't change, this would make them much stronger against Mini Razors and Nukes.


Is this a good idea? Is it worth investing some time into? Would you like to see a different approach to this? Please vote and post below Smile

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Vendetta - 04-19-2017

Can we not change the snub PvP system? It's fine as it is.

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Kauket - 04-19-2017

>>>removing the reward of trapping someone into doing something stupid so you get their regens




stop that

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Enkidu - 04-19-2017

(04-19-2017, 07:21 PM)Vendetta Wrote: Can we not change the snub PvP system? It's fine as it is.

Vendetta, I would strongly encourage you not to skype vote brigade a whole bunch of your friends to influence percieved opinion like you've done before with other team decisions.


This isn't a PvP system change. This is a quality-of-life, making fighter hulls make sense change. Even some of the "Cons" seem like possible plusses. "Fine" can always be improved. Do not ignore optimisation because something is "fine".


(04-19-2017, 07:23 PM)Auzari Wrote: >>>removing the reward of trapping someone into doing something stupid so you get their regens

I don't think anybody always absolutely makes an optimum regen in the middle of the fight when you don't have an exact percentage indicator.

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Vendetta - 04-19-2017

(04-19-2017, 07:25 PM)Tænì Wrote:
(04-19-2017, 07:21 PM)Vendetta Wrote: Can we not change the snub PvP system? It's fine as it is.

Vendetta, I would strongly encourage you not to skype vote brigade a whole bunch of your friends to influence percieved opinion like you've done before with other team decisions.


This isn't a PvP system change. This is a quality-of-life, making fighter hulls make sense change. Even some of the "Cons" seem like possible plusses. "Fine" can always be improved. Do not ignore optimisation because something is "fine".

Okay. You go ahead and make your assumptions. This is still a bad idea.

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - nOmnomnOm - 04-19-2017

You might as well just have the eagle as the only ship in the game . This change will take away another amount of variety and that's not cool

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Haste - 04-19-2017

I believe you're both making assumptions, but can we please not drag this thread down into personal bickering? The whole point of this thread is that people can post their opinions.

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Traxit - 04-19-2017

I like the idea, it solidifies the exact endurance a ship has, although I dislike that Heavy Fighters will be now more durable against Nuclear Mines and Mini-Razors. It is a burden I am willing to take for this change.
(04-19-2017, 07:23 PM)Auzari Wrote: >>>removing the reward of trapping someone into doing something stupid so you get their regens

I do not see how this removes the reward, sure it makes ships sturdier but 90% of ships will not be able to survive two nukes.

And for the ships that do:
@Haste Buff Nukes

(04-19-2017, 07:30 PM)nOmnomnOm Wrote: You might as well just have the eagle as the only ship in the game . This change will take away another amount of variety and that's not cool
How does giving each ship two times to fully regenerate its hull removing variety? It's a direct balance change aimed to remove any small albeit unbalanced stats.

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Unlucky_Soul - 04-19-2017

I feel its not snubs but caps that need changes. Snubs are fine as it is

RE: Armor & Nanobot Standardization | "QoL change" - Haste - 04-19-2017

I suspect this change could be applied to Transports, Gunboats and Cruisers as well (obviously not Battleships as they have no regens whatsoever). I'm just not an expert so I'm not confident suggesting it. They'd likely need more like one full repair rather than two, to avoid them getting silly low armor ratings, though. It is not necessarily just a snub change.

(04-19-2017, 07:30 PM)nOmnomnOm Wrote: You might as well just have the eagle as the only ship in the game . This change will take away another amount of variety and that's not cool

Any perceived "variety" here is more of an illusion than anything else. There is no practical difference between a ship with 11,000 hull and 68 nanobots and a ship with 11,800 hull and 66 nanobots. People are just led to believe that the latter is "tankier" even though it isn't in actuality.