Alrighty this is a proposal I've had in my head for a while that I'm wrapping up in one of my "reassure the community that everything is completely as planned and the simulation is behaving exactly as planned you are currently enjoying yourself" effortposts because the people at large seem kinda pissed off about a thing and I feel that someone ought to address it. Please keep in mind that the majority of this wall of text was written on my phone while I was out for a walk and enjoying the fresh evening air and the last bits and editing are were mostly done while I was eating a burrito, and I really wasn't planning on posting this all tonight.
We all know that the PvE component to multiplayer Freelancer is a hot turd. This isn't EVE. Ratting (killing NPCs for money and loot; derived from "hunting pierats") isn't a profitable or engaging thing to do out in the world. Patrol NPCs have been detuned so hard that they're about as big a threat to the player as Mr. Rogers is to a warm sunny day. But there are missions! And while they're boring, and pretty disengaging, they're better than hitting "goto" and "dock" and "god damn you pile of absolute garbage get in the trade lane" over and over in a 5K. Of course, you can really only do them and make decent bank in a battleship, which, uh, is actually where this problem started.
About nine months ago we were wondering where the hell the spike in the economy was coming from and it was kindly pointed out to us that a single heavy battleship could roll up to a rank 42+ mission, blast off two salvoes of missiles before the newly-spawned ships even aggro'd, stroll towards the smoldering corpses, tractor in the loot, and go home for more. The end result was some people pushing over 200m/hour (!) between the mission reward and the credit cards and other pilot loot. Considering that a super-optimal lawful run is balanced for about 100m/hour in a 5K, and a smuggling run is balanced for something really not good like 55m/hour in a 4.3K (man smuggling sucks almost as hard as lawful trading), this was considered to be a Big Problem.
If I recall correctly, the first solution we came up with was "pack a pile of armour on capital ship NPCs so they can't just be single volley blasted by a Legate with three Hurricanes while they're still spawning." This had the effect of making it impossible to cheese missions in a heavy battleship -- yay! -- but had the unfortunate trade-off of making it just straight up impossible to do them in anything less -- boo. For obvious reasons this is not an ideal solution at all, so after running the numbers as to what we would need to do to make it affect everyone equally, we decided to roll this one back until we could come up with a better answer. Remember, our goal here isn't "ruin missions", or "make missions hard to do in anything but <insert dev name here>'s favourite ship". It's "balance the profit from missions to be in line with the rest of the economy".
Now, it appears that since then the solution was determined to be a lot more straightforward: slap a 90% effective infinite CM launcher onto every capital ship NPC that has a fire rate of 1.00 and no ammo limit. Subcapital NPCs got a faster fire rate of 4.00 but a reduced decoy effectiveness of 50%. I'm not 100% sure about my math here but I believe that comes out to a missile hit rate of between "not bloody likely" and "Powerball", since a cluster of NPCs can fire off 4-5 90% effective CMs between the time they realize that a missile is coming and the time you would expect it to hit. Clearly, chiefs, this ain't it.
The core of the problem is that missions are a high level are tank and spank mob rushes with no target variation and no mechanism for making it an interesting or profitable group activity. And unfortunately this being good ol' Freelancer, there's no real way to change this; Freelancer's four mission types are hardcoded and there isn't anything exposed to modify how they operate. As far as the mission-variety-versus-profitability-versus-server-engagement problem goes, I'm at a loss here as to how to make changes to the mission system from a technical perspective. You see, the mission system isn't just undocumented; it's undocumented and completely handled by some kind of extra state machine inside FLServer that communicates to clients through a number of types of packets that haven't actually been reverse engineered. So in case you've wondered, why can't we just add new mission types, there's at least part of the answer.
Yes, I could write a new mission scripting system. And yes, I plan on doing that eventually! It's part of my master plan for a complete PvE overhaul for Discovery. But that's not just still on the drawing board, I haven't even finished designing the end state, let alone figuring out the components, or even telling the rest of the team how it's going to work and how it will impact what they're working on. This isn't another case of drunkenly vomiting out a plugin to adjust damage values and cause bomber pilots to stroke out. This is a mixed server and client development effort not seen before in the history of Freelancer modding.
I get it. The CMs on NPCs are a pretty meh solution to a problem that treats the symptom without looking at it's causes fully. It stopped the immediate issue, which was that the economy was being broken by a handful of Legates ratting harder than a supercarrier in Delve. However it does make missioning real difficult at the point where it becomes actually profitable. So here's what I want to do:
Stage 1: Bounties for ratting that will make it possible to make decent money from missioning and casual NPC blapping. Right now the profit of missions is through the credit cards and other pilot loot that capital NPCs drop, and there's really nothing equivalent for fighter missions -- the loot is crap and in a fighter you have a cargo hold of maybe 40-45 units after armour, so even filling your hold with pilots and taking them back to the local Soylent factory isn't profitable. It is unlikely but possible this could get extended to PvP to provide some incentive for big fleet action to happen; I will have to really firm those kinds of details up with my colleagues.
Stage 2: Lootable equipment that can be sold to players or vendors or used as is. This could be anything, like faction guns, newly implemented weapons and ship modifications, or special commodities that can be used in later stages of the PvE overhaul. The details of this are still all in my head but I'm expecting to tie it into...
Stage 3: An industry system that allows players to construct "non-standard" equipment (read: not civilian vendor or faction vendor) of all types and doesn't rely on POBs. I hate POB crafting. It's a time and money sink that requires significant investment and often OORP trading and resource funnelling to accomplish. There's no reason the system can't be expanded and implemented in a way that allows more people to get into it, doesn't require player-owned structures, doesn't require sci-data pooling and farming, and can be performed entirely in-game without need for GM intervention.
Stage 4: New scripted missions that generate semi-randomly both based on player activity and total happenstance. These may vary from "something you can do on your own in a fighter" to "something you want to grab a buddy for and go at it with a couple cruisers" to "listen you're going to need a fleet and here's the recommended composition..." and will result in the spawning of rare loot, payout of significant credit rewards, possibly gateways/escalations to other, more difficult and more profitable missions, and a measurable improvement in your sense of self-worth. This is going to be the biggest and the hardest stage, and if we can get it underway at some point in the future, it'll probably be a progressive rollout that continues to evolve and improve as time goes by. It depends on how much control we can get over the mission system, how much we have to write ourselves, and how much is even actually possible. But it's a goal, and I think it's one that will be super important for Discovery going forward.
When should you expect some of this? Well, in theory, the code for stage 1 is pretty straightforward, so it's mainly a case of time investment to get written and working, working as a team to determine the optimal payouts for solo versus group play and target ship class/player ship class disparity etc., testing to make sure it doesn't do anything weird, then putting it live. In reality, expectations are the devil, and not the cool "smoke pot and listen to heavy metal" devil that 80s preachers warned terrified American suburban moms about. I'm doing this up on my own with the intent of taking it to the team and hoping that they say "yeah let's make this happen". I'm hoping that they will, but I've had a yellow name again for like not even 36 hours so for all I know they're going to see this post and decide that I need to not be allowed to near anything more energetic than a sneeze.
So, yeah. I know it sucks. You know it sucks. We all know it sucks. But I'm working on figuring out how to make it not suck. Please, just, give me some time.
TL;DR reading is good for your brain and you should scroll back up to the top of this post and start from there
(05-29-2019, 06:14 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: About nine months ago we were wondering where the hell the spike in the economy was coming from and it was kindly pointed out to us that a single heavy battleship could roll up to a rank 42+ mission, blast off two salvoes of missiles before the newly-spawned ships even aggro'd, stroll towards the smoldering corpses, tractor in the loot, and go home for more. The end result was some people pushing over 200m/hour (!) between the mission reward and the credit cards and other pilot loot. Considering that a super-optimal lawful run is balanced for about 100m/hour in a 5K, and a smuggling run is balanced for something really not good like 55m/hour in a 4.3K (man smuggling sucks almost as hard as lawful trading), this was considered to be a Big Problem
Neither was this true or a big problem, and missions ended up being overnerfed with detrimental results to regional and faction activity as a result.
You straight up cannot compare missions to trading - it's like comparing snub pvp to cap pvp - it's different strokes, with a higher level of base investment compounded into the only end game Disco had, all with its own risks and opportunity for activity generation.
First and foremost all mission changes in the past year need to be reverted, as well as changes to the Hurricane ammo price. These didn't even fix then non-existent 'problem' (Corsairs are doing missions in Xi just fine with Nightmares) they were trying to solve, and only made missions exclusive to an even smaller pool of factions in certain systems. Missions also need their credit reward to not be split between players, as that discourages people from doing missions in groups.
But I do like the idea of more scripted mission systems, and if we could create similar avenues for trade ships that would be cool too.
(05-29-2019, 06:14 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: Now, it appears that since then the solution was determined to be a lot more straightforward: slap a 90% effective infinite CM launcher onto every capital ship NPC that has a fire rate of 1.00 and no ammo limit. Subcapital NPCs got a faster fire rate of 4.00 but a reduced decoy effectiveness of 50%. I'm not 100% sure about my math here but I believe that comes out to a missile hit rate of between "not bloody likely" and "Powerball", since a cluster of NPCs can fire off 4-5 90% effective CMs between the time they realize that a missile is coming and the time you would expect it to hit. Clearly, chiefs, this ain't it.
Don't want to be rude here, but when did this happen? I haven't seen any patch notes regarding this matter. Was this another Dev thing done behind community's back without consulting the players? If I missed this thing posted somewhere excuse me
(05-29-2019, 09:02 AM)Lythrilux Wrote: Neither was this true or a big problem, and missions ended up being overnerfed with detrimental results to regional and faction activity as a result.
They were overnerfed. That is definitely without question.
Quote:You straight up cannot compare missions to trading - it's like comparing snub pvp to cap pvp - it's different strokes, with a higher level of base investment compounded into the only end game Disco had, all with its own risks and opportunity for activity generation.
When looking at it from a money creation and economic effect standpoint, it's kind of required to make that kind of comparison.
Quote:First and foremost all mission changes in the past year need to be reverted, as well as changes to the Hurricane ammo price. These didn't even fix then non-existent 'problem' (Corsairs are doing missions in Xi just fine with Nightmares) they were trying to solve, and only made missions exclusive to an even smaller pool of factions in certain systems. Missions also need their credit reward to not be split between players, as that discourages people from doing missions in groups.
I would like to definitely revert the changes, but I would also personally like to revamp the way that credits are generated via missioning. The current method of doing it with credit cards and loot is a bit problematic; I think it'd be a good idea to have kill rewards scale a bit more nicely than that, where a solo player obviously gets 100% of the reward, and then as the number of people in a group increases, the per-player kill reward gradually approaches 1/x where x is the group size. Encourages smaller groups rather than larger groups, but still pays out well to everyone, and a lot better than a straight percentage split. My current math would have each member of a 3-person group get a 60% kill reward instead of a 33% one, whereas an 8-person group would have each member get a 17.5% kill reward instead of a 12.5% one, for example.
Quote:But I do like the idea of more scripted mission systems, and if we could create similar avenues for trade ships that would be cool too.
All depends on how much the engine decides it hates me.
(05-29-2019, 09:48 AM)Nepotu Wrote: Don't want to be rude here, but when did this happen? I haven't seen any patch notes regarding this matter. Was this another Dev thing done behind community's back without consulting the players? If I missed this thing posted somewhere excuse me
Not sure, sorry. I haven't been back for long enough to have figured out a change timeline for the past six month.
1) You totally forgot Dual-nova Bombers. Not many people were able to do that, but it's completely possible for such heavy bmb to easily bring down several NPC caps both with actual mission completion or without. Assassination/pilot capture missions could be completed fully with proper knowledge of mission templates on certain bases, other mission types couldn't due to limited ammo count.
2) Maybe devs would finally finish at least one self-made FL project and implement any mission ideas there instead of finding ways to rape this old worn-out corpse? Focusing your forces on something more important could turn out to be better at the end for the community itself.
From my experience, there is no lawful 5k trade route that makes more than 50 mil an hour. The most profitable 5k route is Gran Canaria - > Corfu, which makes about 90 mil per hour, and the return trip involves contraband. Not to mention it goes through both Hessian and Corsair territory and is easy to bottleneck. Just wondering where you got that number from, perhaps mining? But mining requires at least two people, and the profits should be split for a fair comparison.
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Mephistoles
(05-29-2019, 06:14 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: Stage 4: New scripted missions that generate semi-randomly both based on player activity and total happenstance. These may vary from "something you can do on your own in a fighter" to "something you want to grab a buddy for and go at it with a couple cruisers" to "listen you're going to need a fleet and here's the recommended composition..." and will result in the spawning of rare loot, payout of significant credit rewards, possibly gateways/escalations to other, more difficult and more profitable missions, and a measurable improvement in your sense of self-worth. This is going to be the biggest and the hardest stage, and if we can get it underway at some point in the future, it'll probably be a progressive rollout that continues to evolve and improve as time goes by. It depends on how much control we can get over the mission system, how much we have to write ourselves, and how much is even actually possible. But it's a goal, and I think it's one that will be super important for Discovery going forward.
i'm fine with missions getting some nerfs interms of missiles being able to clear all NPCs, that was a bit overpowered.
what i'm really uncomfortable with is the rate of high level mission spawn on the job board on stations, sometimes it takes 10-15 times of relogging to get a high mission and you have to do this every time. makes me not want to bother with the hassle.
maybe high lvl missions could be made to spawn on certain bases ( battleship bases)
In order to asses what changes to mission payouts to make you will need to find out what the current payouts are. For this you will have to do 1 hour runs of doing missions on different factions because not everything is the same. Note that NPC cruisers and battlecruisers all drop the same amount of loot. Sometimes it's more profitable to try getting missions that spawn cruisers (5 cruisers per wave*8 creditcards worth 100.000 each = 4mil per wave). 4mil per wave is the amount of loot you gain for 2 battleships and it's significantly easier to do.
You will find that you have more profit farming Rheinlanders in Xi with a Legate than you will have farming against any unlawful faction anywhere - this because of the loot drops (captains, admirals etc). After that you have to consider that some factions have lighter ships, others heavier, meaning that along with the NPC infinite power core missions against certain factions are prone to be harder, NPCs dealing more damage and dying slower.
Another point to consider is the time it takes to reach mission areas. Some bases give missions that are significantly further away than others. In house space where there are tradelanes they can put you on the "road" for 5-6 extra minutes to the base and back compared to non-tradelane system missions. If I recall correctly in House space they can give you missions even in a different system, thus increasing the time spent even more.
Then there's the fact that not every faction has access to heavy battleships, but that's a balance issue and doesn't concern missions if you don't want to.
**missions were overnerfed because of economy issues born in 1 area, in 1 system, for 1 faction. try to take that in consideration when making your adjustments so we don't end up back where missions need nerfed again