Capital Ships Rebalance Discussion

[Firewolfy]

So after taking a long time to read everything in here again with a clear head and taking a more objective view, I have come to that realization of some possible changes to cap balance that hopefully all can enjoy. For one thing, I believe that making major changes that there is not a significant consensus on, may turn the game sour for many that already enjoy what they currently do.

So with that I am going to do my best to try to sum up what my opinions are based on all this, and what appears to be the overall places of agreement that I see players want.

My opinions:


NPC spawns: There is a lot of talk of greatly reducing NPCs or possibly removing them from certain areas to help in the “spinning issue”. For me, I dont think that removing NPC spawns is a good thing because that ruins the immersion of the game. Seeing other factions flying around you on patrol, trading, engaging in combat is one of the biggest things that give the galaxy “life” and making it feel like you are flying through deadspace even in what should be a populated area would seem kind of boring. I dont really understand how this is a big issue for most people as with my capitals when flying anywhere, unless I am on top of a station or already in a fight, I almost never get hit by random NPCs flying around. Eliminating or at least reducing the spinning bug is more important to fix, rather than just removing NPCs because the problem will still exist.

Cruise disruptors: There is talk of making fighters / bombers incapable of stopping larger caps. I think this is a good idea because i believe it is immersion-breaking to see a tiny fighter being able to stop a huge dreadnought. That role should be kept to Gunboat and larger ships.

Capital gun damage on fighter shields:
I saved the best for last considering that there has been significant arguments from both sides on this. Also because this would have a major impact on game balance. The first thing is PvE balance. For those that mainly do PvE, this would become a major issue to kill fighters when alone, because you will not always have other player fighters to assist you. I dont feel it is fair to make such a change that is mainly for PvP purposes while those doing PvE will have a hard time regardless. Although if the change is being made purely to PvP shields, then it may not affect them so much.

As has been touched on by many players, outright reducing all weapon damage from caps on fighter shields would be immersion-breaking and could allow people to use certain tactics in combat that would give them a unfair advantage against capitals. There have been points made on the fact that there are already issues with capitals interfering with fights and also changing the way that fighter players interact in combat with each other. There are people that like to use friendly capitals for additional protection in combat and i see how some dont like this.

A fighter having to take on other fighters without the help of some of their allies could be a issue for RP, especially if the cap vs fighter ratio is significantly different. Now you can argue the fact that it would be the same thing with capital guns reduced, but then you just give people a new meta to exploit and you enter a apples to oranges argument. Some people would still use capitals for cover in a effort to not die and run circles around the hull, with the capital likely getting rammed anyway in the process and not being able to do anything short of just sit there and watch. Also if the ramming issue is fixed, people may start using capitals as frigates and try to run into other fighters anyway to damage them.

Maybe a compromise can be met? Such as reduce damage of Class 8 and 9s against fighter shields so they cant be insta-vaped. Take away Solaris turrets but leave Class 10 faction-specific secondary turrets alone so they can still be somewhat effective against smaller ships. Another option would be reduce Secondary turret damage by about 20-25% so they cannot kill fighters so fast. If a change absolutely must happen, then make it so that Secondary guns do about 50% reduced damage to player fighters but no more, that way capitals can still hurt fighters but not kill them very quick.

I also really dont understand why this is being considered now when things have been this way for over 10 years.


Consensus:

Solaris turrets: – I dont really use them so not sure exactly how strong they are. But many seem to agree that these either need to be adjusted or removed, and this may help with balancing capitals out more with fighters.

Spinning issue - Of course this has been touched on by nearly everyone that it must be fixed. I believe that attempting to fix this problem should be the primary goal at the moment and any changes to capital mechanics should be left on the back-burner for now.

[Xenon]

I think Solari's turrets are good as they are, and capital ships are good as they are at the moment, except for the spinning/ram problem with a smaller ship. Simply if you want to balance battleships more, then think about buffing not rerfing - Cheers and best of luck

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[Czechmate]

solaris are needed to deal with GBs and bombers. The OP VHF and smaller shield will mean they can stay as they are

[Admiral.Nikolai]

Am so happy to see all of you so passioned about these new changes... I just wanted to remind everyone that in the end, no matter what happens. Lets never forget that the Admins are here to help us and continue to improve our community. And that one person cannot ever satisfy everyone's desire ?

[Admiral.Nikolai]

i completely agree with Firewolfy , finally someone who has researched this subject deeply.

I also wish to add one more very simple idea of mine ?
Perhaps making the battle zones a bit bigger, in a way that npc Battleships don't spawn in less than 1.5/2k from your ship. Because currently they always spawn 500m from you and it kinda gets very dengerous because in zones where all factions are enemy, you can get upto 3 battleships spawn. And all of them just 500m from your location ^^

Anyways, lets keep this conversation going, any suggestions are better than no suggestions ✌️

Best regards

[Greylock]

Right, I thought I had posted this earlier, but apparently I forgot.

Population zones can have their density adjusted to lower npc spam, but removal is a bit extreme.

They don't even need removed completely. Just make them spawn solely around stations/planets, and not chase more than 6k from where their path is.

Systems do have "ambient" npc zones that causes NPCs to spawn system wide, no matter where you are. Maybe removal of these ambient zones is an idea, as you wont meet npcs outside of specific patrol paths, jumpholes/gates and station/planets. Patrols paths include unlawful/lawful patrols, so you would not have zero npcs on the map, but you wont meet them off in some random corner that npcs have no logical reason to visit. Ambient zones also overlap all other zones, so that may add density.

The issue of chasing is based on the AI assigned to the NPC ship. There are other AI sets to assign, and for example Gunboats have fighter sets which makes them very aggressive/mobile, and we can give them cruiser AI so they mostly sit in formation/not chase, but we cannot give fighters cruiser AI, as that would be quite weird. TLDR; Not much we can do about the chasing as is.

This is kind of what I had in mind. Complete removal would make the game rather boring. Keeping them in populated zones such as near stations and trade lanes is perfectly fine. The one system that has uber NPC spawns everywhere (Omicron Major) is probably fine as it is, just because people rarely go there to fight anyway, but you can also actually escape the NPC spawning zone. The inability to change the fighter AI to only chase for a certain distance and then return to their previous path is unfortunate, but even so, killing the three or so NPCs that you picked up crossing a patrol path is still far better than having them spawn every time you're about to fire a pulse or mortar.

NPC spawns: There is a lot of talk of greatly reducing NPCs or possibly removing them from certain areas to help in the “spinning issue”. For me, I dont think that removing NPC spawns is a good thing because that ruins the immersion of the game.

As I said above, we wouldn't do complete removal, but we would make it so they don't spawn outside of existing patrol paths. This way we don't completely destroy all hopes for any immersion, but we also don't have the most irritating gameplay possible.

solaris are needed to deal with GBs and bombers. The OP VHF and smaller shield will mean they can stay as they are

I'm going to have to agree with Lemon on this one, even though a competent bomber or GB won't die to Solaris turrets anyway. If the entire point of yeeting Solaris turrets is so battleships can't dunk on fighters, then going through with the fighter shield buff, which I will discuss further on, is rather a silly idea, because hey, as many have pointed out, if a snub is near a battleship with it's shield down, it's going to get hit by any secondary turret, Solaris or not. Did I mention flaks? Mount enough flaks and you can just instakill the snub anyway.

So, fighter shields. I see a couple of issues with the implementation of them taking almost no damage from cap turrets. "da hell is wrong with you? this is a great idea!" you may be saying. I simply do not know if our terrible wonderful little balance plugin can figure out what ship type the shield in question is mounted upon, and as many of you I'm sure are aware, Pretty much every bomber in the game has the capability to use a VHF shield. Only heavy bombers (I think) can even use Freighter shields. So for this to work, we'd have to add bomber-specific shields, and take away the ability for bombers to use any kind of fighter shield whatsoever. That is, unless balancemagic can decide reliably what ship is using what shield, and if it can differentiate between player ships and NPC ships. Because let's be real. Not being able to damage NPC (mainly the strong ones; the weak NPCs use a shield that nobody will ever use so that one doesn't even need buffed) fighter shields is just... ew.

That's just my opinion of course.

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