ship subclassing

[Ursus]

I've been studying on model sizes and stats, and am pretty well convinced that the ship classes need to be subdivided in order to achieve sensible balance.

For example, if you look at all the ships in the LF class, there are the teensy little ships like Liberator and Hayabusa, the medium LF like the Decurion and Scimitar, and the large LF like Falchion and Sea Serpent. Some of these are well-known problem ships, like the Hyena, but others are not (Sea Serpent is taller than Hyena, while Falchion is longer and wider). Some of them are completely OP for their stats (Surveyor is medium sized but huge hull and guns, completely OP). So one way to balance these is to come up with a median set of numbers, and if something is say ~20% below that it gets the teensy sub-class features, while something that is ~20 above gets the large sub-class features.

Another angle on this would be to split the available equipment 3 ways, and let people choose what they want. For example, 3 classes of armor per ship class, 3 classes of shield per ship class, etc. Then balance it so the smallest sub-class can hold the strongest shields and armor but wont have enough cargo space for power core or guns, making them excellent for scouts and interceptors but unable to be aggressive. Alternatively if you have a ship in the large category and want to mount the light shield and armor, you would have more cargo room, perhaps allowing for LF cloak.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Jinx]

in a way, you do have a point... however, - there is also a benefit in not putting each shipclass into a strict corset of rules. - the more ships are different, the more "character" they do have. of course that is still all down to the fairness in pvp.

some years ago, there was a discussion about factionized ships vs. generic ones. and while the topic was based on a very different assumption, the arguments can be applied to this one.

what is the reason for a player RPing a Rheinlander to fly a rheinland LF? - there is hardly any reason based on pvp... but all the reasons based on roleplay. a rheinlander is proud on the brand. - same with a BHG choosing the AP line or a Lane Hacker flying a Falchion ( thats still hackers, isn t it? )

a player knows the differences and his disadvantage ... a character is only vaguely aware of it though. it may be similar to a middle class toyota vs. a middle class ford. you can read up the different technical specifications - but it doesn t really tell you much about what you like to drive more.

in terms of lore, some ships are simply old designs - but kind of trusted and solid, others are very modern, very recent designs and naturally they perform better. - if we could ( and wanted ) we might include the maintenance of ships.. like making some modern and rarer ships more expensive to repair than some old and well known designs. - but thats not possible ( and probably taking things too far )

generally subclassing ships isn t too bad though - or applying standarized class names in general. ( and not just by feeling like we did in 4.84 and before )

i m all for reviewing like all the ships we have - and applying fitting class names. - i m just not about about rebalancing them based on that.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Govedo13]

fairness in pvp.

This does not exist because some ships are a way better then others in its class.
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm56/...nowtoo.png
Indeed as we can see in reality all Rogues and Mollys fly civilian LFs because their sux, if we make the Liberator and Hussar with the Hyena Size the police players would also fly the civilian one. As it seems it works exactly in the way that you does not want to work.

i m just not about about rebalancing them based on that.

Indeed bunch of biased people that give good stuff to their skypefriends/factions that they are part of is a way better and works perfectly.

About the idea- it wont work because then the better stuff should stop to be better and the current users would be butthurt- reality.

"But it is too hard to balance, it wont work because insert various stupid irrelevant reasons"- casual Disco balance answer.

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Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[Ursus]

what is the reason for a player RPing a Rheinlander to fly a rheinland LF? - there is hardly any reason based on pvp... but all the reasons based on roleplay. a rheinlander is proud on the brand. - same with a BHG choosing the AP line or a Lane Hacker flying a Falchion ( thats still hackers, isn t it? ) [...]

i m all for reviewing like all the ships we have - and applying fitting class names. - i m just not about about rebalancing them based on that.

Why not? We already have sub-classing for some things and it seems to work pretty well. Light and medium and heavy bombers, or destroyer and cruiser and battle cruiser, where they have different turning speeds and power cores and such. Just formalize it a little bit, and do some simple things like +5/-5 speed and maybe some diversity in shields and armor.

It is hard to believe that Hayabusa and Sea Serpent are the same class. They should not have the same guns, shield, or armor, they should not go the same speed, etc. But they are treated the same. There is no way to balance these without recognizing that they are different from each other.

what is the reason for a player RPing a Rheinlander to fly a rheinland LF? - there is hardly any reason based on pvp... but all the reasons based on roleplay. a rheinlander is proud on the brand. - same with a BHG choosing the AP line or a Lane Hacker flying a Falchion ( thats still hackers, isn t it? )

This isnt about the Phantom specifically but instead that all the ships of a class are kind of lumped together. Yeah the Phantom is a little large for a house LF, but if it had medium core and hull and some better guns, its size would be an asset. The lane hackers already gave up the Falchion and turned their whole line over to BW CX series, so they dont want it already.

The attraction to using some other tech is when there is a clear benefit to do it. Like when everybody flew Sabre because it was just obviously better than most other ships. Surveyor is the example I gave above, it is unbalanced and that is why people look for ways to use them. On the other hand, nobody goes running to a Falchion, or to a Griffin (Hawk) LF, becaue they are worse than most. Anyway, sub-classing provides a way to fix this stuff. People may still want other ships for tactical reasons (I have light and heavy bombers in house fleets for tactical reasons), but would not feel like they had to do because their own ship is horrible.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[jonfreelanc]

you're talking about a lot of balance work when you add new classes to everything. like jinx said, I think that also eliminates character of each ship. they'd only be different in the model and everything would be similar.

also, I think right now, these balance issues exist not because this system is flawed but because of a lack of balance work. the newer models are better because they are shiny and got more attention.

while they were being deployed in the mod they were given attention, while a ship like griffin or falchion that maybe less popular due to being a rebalance of original that has 2 original variants which are better than it, or being kind of ugly in the case of the falchion, don't get as much attention.

I like your idea of adding cargo-costly improvements of existing technology. as there are guns in the same slot which are different than eachother, you could use cargo as the limiting factor to prevent small maneuverable ships from getting the best ones. but still you're talking about a ton of complexity being added to the current system for that, and if that work doesn't get done, you'll just have an even more buggy and complicated balance problems.

hyena just has stats that are too big period. same is true for the heavy fighter.

bh ships should have maneuverability to offset their size. this was the way it was originally and it fits with the bh style.

small ships like hayabusa and liberator should have guns lowered, shields lowered, armor reduced, or maneuverability taken away. but that's 4 things and how do you pick which one without ruining the fun of the ship, or the style of it, or pissing off its faction it belongs to?

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I'd say this could be fixed by having a vastly different sur than the model though I heard that fighters don't use sur they use the shield bubble (which is probably why I didn't have trouble with freighters or transports and hit hull recognition/detection). I'd say make the shield bubble bigger, but for light fighters there aren't any new shields made, just reused ones and I already have trouble with hits not hitting the hull and instead hitting the shield and it makes no sense. so I don't know if that would be a fix.

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oh that's cool I wish more forums did this.

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so I recently started exploring Coronado. I must say you're all doing a wonderful job.
so I recently started exploring Koeln. I must say you're all doing an amazing job.
some time ago I explored Rousillon. Impressive. Particularly the music on the planet that was a nice surprise.
so I recently started exploring Omega-55. LOL... NOMADS. LOTS AND LOTS OF NOMADS. SHOOTING THINGS. I GOT THE HELL OUT OF THERE. (and I was thinking, jeez I can't remember what that one was from the news. I hope I don't run into a nomad system)
recently started exploring Omega-41. what did you guys do to the star? that new effect there, that's impressive.

Tech Chart (shameless stolen from puv's sig)

click here url Gun cargo list

[Ursus]

you're talking about a lot of balance work when you add new classes to everything. like jinx said, I think that also eliminates character of each ship. they'd only be different in the model and everything would be similar.

That's not necessarily true. Disco has enough ships to afford some amount of eccentricity. Look at the Arrow, maybe the largest LF in terms of length and only 2 guns, they dont get more eccentric than that. There are enough civilian ships that you can keep some of the oddballs around, and as long as they are not OP they wont create any problems.

But mainline ships that are supposed to be used for combat should be balanced and if there is some kind of tweaking required to make them competitive then that should be done. A lot of people expressing concern about gameplay here but there are a lot of ships that nobody wants to fly.

small ships like hayabusa and liberator should have guns lowered, shields lowered, armor reduced, or maneuverability taken away. but that's 4 things and how do you pick which one without ruining the fun of the ship, or the style of it, or pissing off its faction it belongs to?

A couple of ultralights in the middle, a medium on each side, and a couple of heavy LFs on the ends.

The house lawfuls have full shiplines for combat purposes, so the main role of a house lawful LF is to scout and intercept. In fact, I would argue that people who use them for combat are exploiting the lack of balance by being extremely difficult to hit while also shooting class-9 guns and dropping nukes. The ultralights should be for running only. They should be so good at it that they can even intercept other LFs and Freighters, seeing as they are just a wee bit faster.

Meanwhile the very large ships like Griffin and Sea Serpent are not hard to hit at all, but have the same weaknesses as the ultralights. They cannot survive a nuke, and they dont have the power to pump out anything more than 4 class-8 and -9 guns. You are better off flying a HF instead of trying to fight a bomber with one of these, since you would get more hull, shielding and weapon output in a ship that is the same size.

This is why I say balance them to size, a little bit of variance in speed, number of guns, powercore, etc. If the heavy LFs are able to soak up a nuke explosion, more people would fly them. If the light LFs are not able to deal out as much damage as the heavies, they would not be such troll boats.

Also, I would like to say that I think the LFs are most balanced this way already in terms of armor and regens and such, relative to size. I would just like to see it formalized a bit more into actual sub-classes like we already have with bombers. It was also brought up for discussion before that LFs need more something, and I am trying to raise the point here that they cannot be fixed until they are treated as different from each other. Sea Serpent dies to the same mines as Liberator, and Liberator does the same damage output as Sea Serpent, that's wrong.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[SnakThree]

My grandma could do better balancing than what Disco has now.

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[jonfreelanc]

I'm not against the concept itself that you are laying out right here. Make small fighters, the ones which are too small to be hit, role ship, and make the larger ones useful in combat. No I get it. And I agree with it. I just think that could be done with tweaks in shiparch.ini. I didn't quite understand the details of it as you were putting forth. I thought you meant for example, we'd have three ships for each actual ship. The original one, the new one, and the new new one. I thought basically you were saying new classes to achieve whatever it is you wanted instead of rebalancing current classes, replacing one ship gameplay-wise with a new ship. But adding extra variants of equipment which are balanced with cargo space creates a ton of balance work that if not done properly puts you in the same boat. Much the situation with creating a new class of each ship based on whether it's a light sea serpent (pirahna), a medium serpent, or heavy serpent.

Just fyi, as you've laid it out there, I agree with it.

But there is one more problem. House police factions need a ship to fight in don't they? They do actually fight and not just wait for the Navy players to show up right? If you make the Kusari LF, and Liberty LF role ships, and get rid of their combat potential, then what do the players of police do to play?

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so I recently started exploring Coronado. I must say you're all doing a wonderful job.
so I recently started exploring Koeln. I must say you're all doing an amazing job.
some time ago I explored Rousillon. Impressive. Particularly the music on the planet that was a nice surprise.
so I recently started exploring Omega-55. LOL... NOMADS. LOTS AND LOTS OF NOMADS. SHOOTING THINGS. I GOT THE HELL OUT OF THERE. (and I was thinking, jeez I can't remember what that one was from the news. I hope I don't run into a nomad system)
recently started exploring Omega-41. what did you guys do to the star? that new effect there, that's impressive.

Tech Chart (shameless stolen from puv's sig)

click here url Gun cargo list

[Ursus]

But there is one more problem. House police factions need a ship to fight in don't they? They do actually fight and not just wait for the Navy players to show up right? If you make the Kusari LF, and Liberty LF role ships, and get rid of their combat potential, then what do the players of police do to play?

Part of the answer is to give them functional HFs. All of the house lawfuls have HF models, they just aren't very good. Liberty and Bretonia have MkII HFs that are relatively poor, while Rheinland and Kusari have MkI HFs that are useless. That gives them an entry-level ship to fight with.

Another partial answer is the same we get for bomber sub-classes: use civilian tech. You can use one of the CTE or BW ships, just like you do when you want a super-heavy bomber in Liberty.

The other partial answer is the same we get for cruiser sub-classes: learn how to use the tech to its strengths. In the case of Liberty and a superlight, it should be able to intercept other LFs and Freighters (being just a wee bit faster) and you either work it out with fewer guns or you get someoby in another ship to come do the killing.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Sava]

Liberty and Bretonia have MkII HFs that are relatively poor

Maybe, they need some minor buff, but overall they're fine. I myself flew liberty HF.

Light fighters have to be fixed. Ships that have extremely different sizes shouldn't have similar stats.
Imagine Osiris with Valor's power, or vice versa - such ship would be completely out of balance.