Supernovas!

[El Nino]

the SN should follow a strict formula - best to use the cerberus formula! - the one i wrote above. - firstly, you don t get values that are totally off.. and secondly, you can actually really balance stuff. - adjustments should not be made in favour of or against a faction - only to round up / down the numbers - so a supernova does not do 139208 damage but 139000 instead.

what we are currently looking at are weapons that are all much much more powerful than the current supernova. again - i would urge those that balance them to think of the current SN as the BEST version. warships, fighters etc. are currently ... well, not balanced but at least used to the current SN. - no supernova version should offer better stats - and variations should be in the 1-5% range, not in the 1-30% range.

Read again what the Jinx suggested, it makes great mathematical sense, as far as balance goes...

And really No supernova (but perhaps the nomad version) should be better than the original version, as most probably are just recreations from factions desperate in building something similar...

Furthermore supernova as a weapon is a bit "super" compared to all other weapons, so the last thing we need is many boosted versions of it...

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[Jinx]

well, in a way, i am up for adjusting results of a mathematical calculation. - that means... RP lore to be put into the result. - so while i know that the rogues are rather petty in terms of both, technology, research and anything that involves executing their ideas ( they ARE rather the liberty lowlifes, not the superminds or supervillains of liberty ) - then it means that i follow a formula and round the stats downwards. - while when i think of the nomads as being superior ( basicly squids that are brain and energy only ) - then i can round the stats up.

the problem i had was that the values are off too much. - i can understand varieties - but i consider a variety as something like 1- maybe 10% from the original. - that means that 132.000 + 13.200 ( 10% ) should be the maximum damage of the most damaging supernova - while maybe 132k - 13.2k should be the lowest damaging supernova.

the problem is that we have supernovas doing far more than 10% more damage - and thats what i am concerned with. - i cannot back it up ( as ... someone ... once commented would not be a valid base to argue in such terms... ) - but its a feeling that 160.000 damage - as compared to the current 132 is simply too much. - same might go for the speed. - 280ms original - 299 BHG SN - personally, i don t know if thoe 19ms are really noticable - but experienced players claim so. - personally, i see little difference when shooting a 700ms weapon and a 750ms weapon ( but yes, i know that in lower speeds, the speed difference has a greater effect - like 1ms as opposed to 50ms )

however, when you consider the current supernova as the BEST one, you won t get into trouble with warship balance. - when you increase the damage to like 160.000 - you ll create some occasions when one SN can blow a gunboat up in one shot.... a gunboat that is not a BHG gunship. - it also has a great effect on transports. - 160k damage one shots most transports. - while 132 killed a few - but the heaviest ones can withstand it ( provided they got no armour )

now, i could live with such damage values, if the SN was limited in its use - means, if it used ammo - if it had ammo, i d say "alright" - when each shot costs 10.000 credits, ... its a weapon of terrible power, but highly limited. - but the supernova is and will stay an energy based weapon without ammo - and so it has to be balanced VERY carefully.

forget about adding ten thousands of damage or dozens of ms or hundreds of more range. - think of 10k damage higher to be the limit and maybe 10ms more to be the fastest and 250 meters more to be the longest range. - think small before you think big.

when you introduce good stuff - people are reluctant to let go in favour of balance. - when you start low, its easier to balance upwards.

@mjolnir:

i took the cerberus as an example of how specialized weapons are balanced in terms of gains and losses. - it looses 4 times as much in efficiency but gains 2 times in damage. - a formula that is used in many games that offer specialized classes.... you always loose more than you gain, but what you gain will give you a great advantage in a specific situation.

besides... i think the cerberus as it is now is well balanced. - and ... we are blessed tha the supernova only affects ONE shipclass - the bomber. we have 48k and 58k powerplants - thats a much better base to balance stuff on than to try to balance warship turrets where we have a great number of turrets and classes and powerplants to be affected.

however, it was only an example to show that - if you follow the cerberus example, the top limit of damage would be something like ten thousand more damage. - you can translate that to speed / range as well - with different modifiers ... but you might be aware that i can make ALL the supernovas based on one formula, which balances them better than pure guesswork. - if i am not happy with the result, i can still adjust them "slightly". - having a formula is not a dogma, its an assistance when balancing without lengthy beta testing.

in order to balance the whole lot of those SNs, you d need a few months of testing - and be asured, once the nerf bat comes, every faction will scream for their SN not to be nerft. - reason or no reason.... its ... well, the nature of players, i guess.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[McNeo]

160k may be able to one-shot transports without armour.... however, most transports have armour, and what if the bomber pilot mis-fires and misses? In a barghest, hes a sitting duck until he can recharge due to his size, and in a falcata he has to wait for his whole plant to charge up again. Thats mean't to be the checks and balances in that particular model.

Also, the 19ms wont have a profound effect, but double that would, which is why I constrained the speeds...

Also, im not aware that gunboats with armour could be one shotted, even the least armoured gunboat/gunship bar the BHG gunship has like, 80k armour. Multiply that by the Mk VIII universal that everyone owns and you get 200k...

Furthermore, I see more pirates in gunboats than in bombers, because of the need for bombers to dodge and their vulnerability to lone fighters such as escorts.

I also consider variety to be good, but a 10% difference in damage either way is not noticable enough to give people a clear choice as to what to buy. For example 145k to 120k is only a difference of 25k, which is not that noticable when you're pounding against a cap VIII battleship.

One of the other reasons for the 160k SN is that the rogues face Liberty cap fleets in the bucket loads, which I can say from experience having been repeatedly ganked on my Xeno.

when you introduce good stuff - people are reluctant to let go in favour of balance. - when you start low, its easier to balance upwards.

I do not agree. The first part is accurate, but providing that there is more than one type of anything, there will be one which is the best, no matter how small or large you think.

Besides, if it goes pear shaped, chances are that we'll have 5 or so betas to sort it out, right? No one can make it perfect the first time around, but I do think my values are more reasonable than the original ones proposed.

[Jinx]

but how can we ensure that players don t play the "ally" card? - that they mount anything their huge alliance allows them. ... i can see the rogues having use of such a strong weapon, even if i don t see how they possibly could have contructed something THAT devastating ( but thats roleplay not balance, so we don t need to pay attention to that ... ) - however, don t you think that hackers, outcasts, hessians, dragons, mollys etc. will all pick the one SN out of their large allied fleet that they see fit?

like we said ... a small bomber uses up all its power for one shot - but a catamaran with a rogue SN will do a lot of damage - can stay at 2000 from a capship and can dodge one handed, blindfolded. - in a pair, they take turns firing the SN. - in such a battle, range and damage matters more than energy.

edit: but i ll be highly suspicious about anything that improves the current supernovas, cause i think their power is over the top already. - so i gotto admit, that almost anything that might justify better SNs wont count for me much - can t help it... i don t like them.

but i guess, the best thing to do it to give it a try.

one more thing... it might be better to make a SN for the houses only and corsairs / outcasts and the zoners.

that way, we don t get too many of them - the house SNs can be balanced easier, cause their ZoI is for one very limited and they can be balanced towards one another. - corsair /outcast versions can be based on the parent weapon ideas - and all their allies can use them - no need to make seperate ones for everyone - even if they can build bombers and capships of their own. - the order / nomad version should be similar - they are close to one another. - the zoner / civilian version ( used by IMG, GMG and possibly BHG ) can be average or slightly below average.

i think the scaling should be like that:

1. order / nomad should be equally efficient
2. house SNs should be the second strongest due to the resources they have and the greater research teams - they should be worse than the nomad / order SN, but still second best
3. pirate SNs should be more damaging, but much less efficient - all in all only the 3rd best of them
4. civilian / zoner versions should be the least efficient... but cause its a civilian weapon, could be much cheaper ( like make it worse in every stat - but make it cost only 50% of the others )

that way, it would be 9 supernovas only - with the current SN on top along with the nomad SN. ... one can even make one for rheinland / kusari ... and liberty / bretonia, cause they might have developed it as a joint project - making it only 7 different SNs - and no one will get into trouble cause he is mounting ooRP weapons + we don t have a ton of new weapons.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[sovereign]

This stuff is as hard to balance as faction guns- that is, hard. I'm liking where McNeo's stats are headed.



As for that bit on the Nomad Sun Destroyer, that wasn't a Nomad battleship. That was a Nomad Sun Destroyer firing its main gun- the ship its mounted on is about 7km long if the ships around it are any indication, and there are some serious issues in including something so utterly huge in the mod (so Yuri tells me at least). The scale of destruction there can't be compared to anything else we've seen, the ship is at least four times the size of the next smallest ship and was likely shown as a "wouldn't it be cool if..." from the programmers.



Someone mentioned the original Nomad SN design being able to be dual-wielded from the snub- GUESS WHAT? I said it before when someone mentioned this, since Wild and Nomads are closely monitored and need admins to setup, they can be told to not mount two and reasonably do it. If anyone is seen with two, *poof* guess who just got kicked from the faction?

As for a faster SN being used like a mini razor, Nomad one is actually the only one I can see that not being an issue with- since when do people come after the Keepers in fighters and not cruisers? I might think a Nomad SN to be like so- almost complete energy usage, very fast, very slow refire, and very high damage. Sort of an extreme. You *could* use it to snipe but if the speed isn't that high it wouldn't be terribly easy unless they set themselves up for it (in which case you'd probably be dead from a normal SN's speed anyway) and if you miss it would be very punishing.



At any rate, it can get worked out in beta. If we're modifying stats by nature of the faction guns, check the class 9 faction gun balancing proposal that Mjolnir wrote up and base off that. I can dredge up the Nomad class 9s to help if we go further in this direction- as stated before, its pretty stupid to base class 9 balance off a class 10 gun.

I'll go fetch the link to that proposal.

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[McNeo]

Hmmm, I would actually agree with that, but im not sure the faction who'd be left out if it was house/large pirate faction/civilian models would be too happy about that.

Also, if the "ally" card became a massive problem, as I think it may, we could make the Rogue SN take 48001 energy to fire, making it impossible to use on Catamaran's, Falcata's and so on. That may work, but I do think you're idea of one for houses and the others is better than the current setup. Also, a capital ship shouldnt be flying without an escort. In the case you describe, the capital ship would die to normal supernovas too.

However, fighter escorts can disorientate bombers which allows the capital ship to close the distance while the bombers are trying to fend off the fighters. The rogue SN also makes it very hard for catamarans to be multitasking like they are now, allowing one shot per full recharge, while the current one allows one shot per 3/4 recharge. This would make a Catamaran, Falcata and Thor (It has the small plant doesnt it?) really vulnerable to fighters, as they cant use anything but a mini razor. Even then, I doubt they'd have a mini razor as, being Outcast allies, they'd choose the inferno.

I do not think that there should be more than a vague trend when deciding the stats. Maths is all well and good when you've got a dependant variable and an independant variable, with the rest of the factors being constants. However, we have all the factors being dependant on each other which makes this a very complex problem.

@Sov: No one would even attempt to fly against the keepers in a fighter if the nomad SN was given 350ms speed. If you dont believe how destructive a 350ms instakill weapon was when I say it was, ask Dboy. He was the king of the hill with those weapons, and he sweeped up everything in his path. So we'd end up with one side moaning that the Keepers had uber weapons and the other side moaning that no one ever flies fighters against them (even more polarised than it already is).

I am also not a fan of letting players moderate themselves, as this has repeatedly proven to be inadequate in the past. Admins also have better things to do than to keep watch over who mounts what.

[sovereign]

Note: Thor is getting a beefier powerplant to be closer to the Barghest. It flies and is hitboxed like a heavy bomber and will be far closer to it next mod.

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[Doom]

4. civilian / zoner versions should be the least efficient... but cause its a civilian weapon, could be much cheaper (like make it worse in every stat - but make it cost only 50% of the others )

Hmm..i see a problem there...

we need to keep its power consumption quite high if we want to prevent mounting two of them on any bomber...so when there is decreasing of hull damage power usage still must remain high enough not to be able to fire two of those on most powerful bomber...

[Jinx]

personally i have no problem in having an order SN that is the original and a civilian SN that is doing 15.000 less damage for exactly the same stats else. - same energy, speed, etc... only less damage. - its a civilian one - and if its not 7million but something like 2.5 million, its reasonable.

however, we know very little about the plans concerning capital warships. - IF they are upgraded, and how. - everyone agrees that they re useless, but many people also agree in mistrusting the players to wield them responsible if they were set back to a fraction of the power they should have.

many suggestions have been made - and out of the dozen threads, none has been commented by igiss. - so we are completely in the dark.

those supernovas are tightly linked to how warships are. - if we don t know how warships are gonne be in the next mod, we cannot really make supernovas - unless igiss takes the supernovas and adjusts the warships after them.

maybe 170.000 damage is OK - cause battleships get a 550.000 shield with 5.500 regen/sec and their armour is multiplied by 10 to make them more durable..... but maybe its not, we simply dont have enough information about that. - thats why i suggest to keep the current SN as the BEST possible, cause we simply KNOW how it does against the warships we have.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[ScornStar]

I actually think the nomads should have a slightly better supernova than the rest. Not only is it logical in roleplay , since the technology heritages from them, but they are outnumbered and almost enemy to everyone, and that to me plays an important factor too.

Chopper, calm down by the way.

I havent played SP in a while. But I could have swore that the Nomads were infultrateing the Humans to make us kill each other because they knew they could not beat us in a stand up war. They knew we were far too distuctive.

Thus this leaves me to believe the Nomad tech is based more on skulldaggery and pretty much everything but sheer war fighting. Humans haveing the edge on sheer killing power even the relatively few left in Surius.

just something to consider if it is true. The nomads should not have the highest damage outputs or best armor shield combos. I see better repairs/or equivelent and more manuverablity. Maybe thier cannon wont hit as hard but shoot faster.

Anyway my two cents.

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