Discovery 4.87 Balance Discussion

[Govedo13]

Govedo, I'm under the impression that you think people pirate in nothing but gunboats and cruisers.

I am quite bad nub that likes to spill hate around just for the lulz- np. Now lets do some maths:

Speaking of the calculator, here it is. It's a bit basic and made mainly for gunboats, because those have the highest effective damage output. Bombers are almost equal, but slightly below, fighters do really less damage, compared. Most efficient gunboat weapons are primary guns, sometimes, like for light gunboats with 6 slots, your best choice are basic turrets, since they're most efficient but still drain your powerplant. For heavy gunboats there's some room for guns with higher dps, but if the efficiency gets lowered significantly, you will see the trader running time and distance grow.

Distance between trade lane ring pairs usually ranges between 6000 and 8000m.
For shorter lanes like the one in Magellan, from California gate to Freeport 4, there's only 5 ring pairs, so 4 segments. if you get stopped in the middle, you've got about 15-16K to the nearest docking point (FP4 quickdock or California gate, there's a border station on the other side)

So depending on your running distance, you may be unpiratable by a lone (gunboat) pirate in some areas.
Distance Calculator:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/attachment.php?aid=129

The dev that balanced the 4.85 hull ratings nuff said.

Using the simple calculator Hribek made which makes some rather funny assumptions
- pirate hitting with every shot
- trader never firing back

Then a transport with 120k armor, normal armor upgrade can run 18k before getting killed by a GB (max dps over time ship). That is more than enough to escape the pirate in most areas.

The other former head balance dev statement according to the calculator.

If you apply the proposed 4.87 data( increased transp speed, decreased GB guns DPS) in his calc you would see how terribly wrong are you together with the current devs.

In order to have normal piracy if the devs apply this they would need to reduce the transps hulls and this is not good thing, the whole thrust increase approach is wrong and half-thought and creates chain of unsolvable additional problems, while a bunch of other solutions that have no side effects are around.

Modify the calc, do the math, then show example how exactly one can pirate with the given values and prove me wrong.
If you are mathematically unable or if you does not believe the simple facts presented ask Carst to help you to test different pirate locations with different setups with his cap8 Uruz. You would notice that there are like 5-6 lines in the WHOLE SIRIUS where the pirate have chance to kill his transp- and this is now without any additional bounuses for the transp.

All issues are fixable with the two solutions that I proposed, they require no codding just a bit of grinding work that everyone normal PC user can do.

I see no point to arguing with the wall here and your tin heads- your attitude and lack of rational thinking is ridiculous and this would ultimately kill this fine mod.

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€œ

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.)

[aerelm]

most importantly - is the yacht's impulse/cruise speed bonus being lost in all the changes?

Yes. That ship already has the size/hitpoint advantage. The additional speed was considered unnecessary as that ship's survivability is already higher than majority of not all the transports without taking the additional speed into account.

As I said, I'm all for nerfing cruisers vs transports, but I wish they had left it at nerfing cruiser speed, without buffing transport speed (or at least not buffing large transports).

Nerfing cruiser speed any further would've effected Cruiser vs Battleship combat, which unfortunately is not a valid option.

decreased GB guns DPS

P.S: Contrary to the rumor some people have been spreading for a while, gunboat turrets are not getting a damage nerf.

Maybe once read before you post? Just for a change really... I could've went on doing the same with the rest of your post, but I'd rather not as it has proven to be a complete waste of time in the past. No offense.

[Govedo13]

There is huge difference between DPS and Damage nerf.
I said DPS nerf not damage nerf. DPS means damage per second that indicates efficiency over time.
Putting empty words shows nothing, for piracy usage the refire, speed and damage are quite irrelevant, only range and DPS count. Simple question:
Would the basic GB gun keep the same DPS or not?
Do prove me wrong with numbers.

I still await demonstration how exactly piracy in 4.87 compared to 4.86 would work with different classes of ships.
What would be the difference in survivability rate of the small and large class transports compared with 4.86 in distance?
Simple question that requires simple answer. Numbers and math works perfectly you can keep the rest of non-sense for the people that cannot do basic maths and have no idea how stuff works.

There is nothing bad in me being wrong or you being wrong, after all there is no ultimate proper way to do things, however in this type of the discussion the best possible middle ground option can be found. I know that I sound offensive and act like jerk most of the time, my wife say all the time, but this does not means that my general grumpy bad attitude have to do something with the facts that I state.

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€œ

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.)

[aerelm]

Would the basic GB gun keep the same DPS or not?
Do prove me wrong with numbers.

4.86 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 1,400ms speed - ~800m range.
4.87 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 990ms speed - ~800m range.

While we're on the subject of gunboats, here's some more math for you:

4.86 Basic Gunboat missile turret: 1 DPM - 9,750 SPM - 2,500m range - 200,000u EPM, unlimited ammo.
4.87 Basic Gunboat missile turret: 9,750 DPM - 4,875 SPM - 2,500m range - 200,000u EPM, 40 ammo.

[Karst]

Yes. That ship already has the size/hitpoint advantage. The additional speed was considered unnecessary as that ship's survivability is already higher than majority of not all the transports without taking the additional speed into account.

Well I would say that is counteracted by the low number of turrets, low cargo space, lack of a cruise disruptor, and very high price, making it a vessel already useful only for RP purposes and as a dealer ship.
Considering it is already an extremely rare sight, I don't think it needs a speed nerf compared to other transports.
But meh, whatever.

As I said, I'm all for nerfing cruisers vs transports, but I wish they had left it at nerfing cruiser speed, without buffing transport speed (or at least not buffing large transports).

Nerfing cruiser speed any further would've effected Cruiser vs Battleship combat, which unfortunately is not a valid option.

To clarify: In my opinion, making Cruisers slower compared to transports is good, making small transports faster is good, but making large transports faster compared to everything is not good.

So, Cruiser speed nerf is good, small transport speed buff is good, large transport speed buff is not good.

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[EisenSeele]

Would the basic GB gun keep the same DPS or not?
Do prove me wrong with numbers.

4.86 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 1,400ms speed - ~800m range.
4.87 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 990ms speed - ~800m range.

While we're on the subject of gunboats, here's some more math for you:

4.86 Basic Gunboat missile turret: 1 DPM - 9,750 SPM - 2,500m range - 200,000u EPM, unlimited ammo.
4.87 Basic Gunboat missile turret: 9,750 DPM - 4,875 SPM - 2,500m range - 200,000u EPM, 40 ammo.

Actually, Govedo is right about the DPS reduction - since a decrease in projectile speed results in a corresponding decrease of actual damage done due to a decrease in ships being actually hit. With cerbs, at least, with 900m/s speed, the effective accurate range to hit a moving gunboat of medium to large size (tridente to imp) is about 400m, after which most shots will just miss. 90m/s won't really do much of anything for that, but let's say that the effective range increases by a further 100m to an effective range of 500m/s - with gunboat primary DPS net output, any <3600+ cargo transport could easily tank for fifty seconds until the gunboat is irrelevant. Even gunboat cerb dps output can't take down even a lightly armored transport with regens within 50 seconds in those conditions.

EDIT: Also, Jack - You seem to keep saying that these silly buffs to the survivability of transports against combat ships are necessary because "a solo activity shouldn't have a 100% success rate."

That would be fair, if trading solo in a transport would come with a 50% chance that the base you offload to just steals the goods and says, "404 cargo not found."

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FEEDBACK

[aerelm]

With cerbs, at least, with 900m/s speed, the effective accurate range to hit a moving gunboat of medium to large size (tridente to imp) is about 400m

Cerbs are far less accurate than prims. They have 20% less accuracy, actually, which happens to be a big difference. As said before, if the changes to gunboat turrets (And any other drastic change made with 4.87, actually) turn out to be effecting gameplay more than intended, they will be adjusted.

Feel free to continue basing your assumptions off pure numbers and inaccurate comparisons though. That's always been a fun way of passing time while waiting for the new release. I would've probably been doing the same if I wasn't on this side of the table.

P.S: If you think this was a sarcastic post, you're wrong.

[EisenSeele]

With cerbs, at least, with 900m/s speed, the effective accurate range to hit a moving gunboat of medium to large size (tridente to imp) is about 400m

Cerbs are far less accurate than prims. They have 20% less accuracy, actually, which happens to be a big difference. As said before, if the changes to gunboat turrets (And any other drastic change made with 4.87, actually) turn out to be effecting gameplay more than intended, they will be adjusted.

Feel free to continue basing your assumptions off pure numbers and inaccurate comparisons though. That's always been a fun way of passing time while waiting for the new release. I would've probably been doing the same if I wasn't on this side of the table.

P.S: If you think this was a sarcastic post, you're wrong.

Enlighten me. How is this "accuracy" statistic derived? If you're talking about spread, which appears to be rather insignificant in gunboat cerbs (at least to the point of gunboat sized targets), is 20% of insignificant going to make any difference at all?

The whole point of the balance discussion forum is to discuss the balance changes, no? With the way balance is being carried out, with multiple stacking untested buffs to some ship classes and multiple stacking untested nerfs to others, there's really no science at all to tell how things will work out precisely unless it's wrong - and given that people like playing the game for fun, and not to wait for aspects that were fine as they were being changed drastically with little regard for how badly each individual major change would interact with another.

Anywho, you're right - it is a fun way to pass the time when there's only 47 people online XD No hard feelings, I hope.

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FEEDBACK

[Govedo13]

4.86 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 1,400ms speed - ~800m range.
4.87 Basic Gunboat turret: 2,800 DPS - 8,000 EPS - 4.00 refire - 990ms speed - ~800m range.

This is not the correct way to represent the situation, nor the example that I requested.

Let me do the math that you in the Dev team should have been done:
1 Mammoth transp fully stocked with bots and bats and with cap8 and 100k shield including the regen should die in 93 seconds under 6 basic gb turrets( most efficient and fast way to kill something in gb) according to the provided calculator.
The given range of 800 combined with 10 m/s difference means that the GB guns should be out of range after 80 seconds. The Mammoth stays alive with small amount hull as result.
It means that the most effective GB guns have only 80 seconds in DPS vs small transports.

Note the transport favouring exceptions:
-GB have 100% accuracy ( no skill of the transp pilot side is required- only thrust ahead and using b/bs and e kill to keep the thruster on)
-GB attack the transp at 0m distance. (the transp pilot is dumb enough to allow the GB to come at 0m, note that 200-300m difference means 20-30 seconds less on fire and those could be critical)
-Transport never fire back. ( as I said very dumb transp pilot, however if he is full with pulse guns.. and do fire them.. the situation changes)
-Shield outage never absorbs any damage (transp dies faster in calculation then in reality another transp bonus)
-Weapon vs shield type modifiers are not taken in account.
-I ignore here the single corsair GB ship since it is rather exception then the rule.


The example shows that none of the small transports bigger Mammoth is piratable with GB.

If you want to look at the bigger transps- np lets take the Cap8 Uruz with full bots and bats- if he does the exceptions as per calculator the time to kill it with GB( better DPS then bomber) is exactly 23k with the new speed of 150 compared with 21k with the old 140 speed- enough distance to safely dock to the nearest station note without firing a singe shot. Even in 4.86 it is damn hard up to impossible to kill competent cap8 battle-transport as pirate except few a bit longer lines.
Bit ignore that lets say it is not battle transport but simple 5k train- 21,8 k is needed in this case in 4.87, 20k currently in 4.86
So for around 30 hours trading to get cau8 the 5k ship becomes almost unkillable, it is good that a big portion of transp pilots are greedy and dumb and buy caps and other stuff instead.

With this "balance" you wont be surprised if you see more often couple of pirate cruisers one line kill everything moving into their guns range.

Now the most funny part- if you are going to change the transport gun range but if you keep it with the current stats all middle class transports like Big Dragoon, BWT , P-transp etc would be able not only to run from GBs but to kill it as well without hassle having better speed and 300m more range.

I know that you cannot increase the GB guns range because then they would rape cruisers in the same faction as transports raping gbs shown above and that every move that you make to balance stuff screws more and more the situation, so may be you can finally check on the shield type modifiers and balance the mod properly.

Now do prove me how this is supposed to be good balance and this time please with numbers in reasonable realistic example.

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€œ

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.)

[aerelm]

Marvelous perception of the upcoming changes, Govedo. Glad to see at least in theory we've managed to achieve what we were aiming for, let's hope it turns out as good in practice as well.