Just got back from testing the mod. Version 4.74 had perfectly balanced battleships. Now the missiles only do 2000 damage, and the turrets are overpowered. -_-'
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." --Sir Peter Ustinov
He said he was going to tone down turrets somewhere inbetween their values last patch and their current values. For examle osiris turrets were 1000 something, now 1500. I believe he said he was going to put them around 1250-1350.
Igiss toned down missiles because certain ships are immune to them. He said he was going to change them, but still reduce their power so that the strongest would be about 5000 instead of 7000.
Also I talked him into testing increasing flak turret damage radius to see if that would hit the missile immune areas better. it could work, but the radius might have to be gigantic for them to hit. However, that actually sounds really cool, flak turrets that hit for 1000, but have an explosion radius the size of an armored transport.... or bigger. :D
Currently flak turrets are stronger than battleship missile turrets..... why? They track better than missiles and still don't hit dead zones (which was his hope). Personally I think the missiles should do much more damage, and the flak should be sort of a special weapon...... Greatly increased tracking radius and huge explosion radius.
*Note:* Rheinland battleships still dont take off from planets as indicated in the patch notes. The explosion on the other hand is massive and impressive as the ship breaks into two pieces. A second and third test have indicated that you can take off, but you suffer massive hull damage. Could we please, please get planetary collison damage removed? has anyone ever accidently run into a planet? I know some peopel purposefully ram them to return to their prefered outpost sooner to get to the next mission.... Isn't that more abusive?
Personally I think the proposed weapon changes are not a good idea. Intermediate ships would be much weaker than battleships due to the difference in gun totals. If you increase the weapons say 25% a medium sized ship like a cruiser will recieve that increase on 6-8 guns (typical cruiser fire arc). Battleships have more guns, and usually better fire arcs, so the 25% increase will affect them much more..... imagine a 25% increase on 17 guns (about 3/4 of which fire forward) that already do more damage to begin with.
Name a capital ship of cruiser size or larger that does not have an angle of missile immunity. I honestly can't think of one, and I've tried just about every one except the new nomad ships. The nomad battleship by the way is near totally missile immune if not completely; I suspect the latter. The Osiris/Liberty dreadnaut is virtually missile immune, which is why Denier-of-Soup bought one to replace his beloved Bretonia battleship. Missiles are indredibly non-reliable all things considered. Therefore I propose they should keep their old damages. Another problem with missiles is that sometimes your missiles will lock onto incoming enemy missiles (without the player doing anything). This makes a missile stalemate as your missiles charge theirs and neither of you does any missile damage to the enemy vessel. As previously mentioned turrets have about 4 times the projectile velocity of missiles, which means they potentially hit their intended target near instantly, while missiles take about 5 to 6 seconds to reach their target. As also previously mentioned, the time to reposition to correctly fire missiles added to the relatively slow velocity of missiles makes them inherently less powerful than turrets against any ship larger than a cruiser.
If the weapon options were as follows:
1) Keep existing weapons as they were in 4.74 (aside from the corrected torpedo and the new fighter energy weapon).
2) Increase turret damage slightly and keep missile damage the same.
3) Increase turret damage slightly and reduce missile damage slightly.
4) Make turrets crazy awesome and missiles terrible.
This is how I would order such a list in terms of fairness ( all things considered). This ordering also happens to coincide with how I believe players would be most willing to accept the weapon changes.
He gave the Osiris 1500 turret damage because it doesn't have flak. It's at times like these I feel like going back to vanilla FL. No balancing issues at all. =/
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." --Sir Peter Ustinov
Quote:3) Increase turret damage slightly and reduce missile damage slightly.
This is what I'm planning to do.
Turret power for all battleships was increased quite a lot to compensate poor missiles, so now I'll turn it down (almost) to 4.74 - with the exception of Rheinland and Osiris that will have their turret power slightly increased.
I will probably make battleship missiles 4000-4500, but for now this is not yet certain. I'll have to do more tests. Cruiser and gunboat missiles will be back to normal.
Few words about explosion radius. Theoretically the visible hull of the ship should block the damage and prevent the actual damage surface from being hit. The 'damage absorbing surface' is buggy for large ships and no one, even Chips (confirmed) was able to solve this problem. This surface in most places is underneath visible ship hull. That's why only energy weapons can hit it. By the way flak radius was already increased... when I was making 4.73, even before this mod went public. So I will try more but chance of success is very very low.
I'm really thinking option #2 would be much much better.
If you drecrease missile damage by 1500 to hull, then you'll be reducing the shield damage by a ton, because typically you have one half the other.
7000/3500 lets say becomes 4600/2300. Would then the old 6200/3100 become 3000/1500? Boo.
So basically we're putting missiles into the crapper because 1 ship (possibly and most liekly 2 now) has missile immune shields? Has ANYONE even tested to see if the Rheinland ship takes hull damage from missiles? I have one, but I've never had my shields reduced that low.... and frankly I forgot to test it as the duels usually end when my opponent gives up not wanting to have to repair the hull.
Maybe we could take a poll on those four options???
when I say bigger flak explosions I'm thinking gunboat sized! Even if it doesn't solve the problem flak cannons, a massive explosion radius would be really fun.
As I suggested somewhere else, could we not make the missile immune ships even more so ridiculously expensive... say 100+ million? I really think it's a shame to change missiles so drastically as a result of some being immune and others only being between 90-50% immune.
Wrath,Jul 31 2005, 01:33 PM Wrote:Could we please, please get planetary collison damage removed? has anyone ever accidently run into a planet? I know some peopel purposefully ram them to return to their prefered outpost sooner to get to the next mission.... Isn't that more abusive?
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:cool: Cool post. Good that pilots are checking out the changes in detail, thanks Wrath.
Doing away with planetary collision damage though would take away a lot of realism I feel, it wouldn't be FL without it. Now that docking has improved it's not the issue it was, the only times I crash into planets now is through carelessness :$ and not due to some crazy autopilot. It's a bit too drastic just for the sake of a flyable ship.
Quote:If the weapon options were as follows:
1) Keep existing weapons as they were in 4.74 (aside from the corrected torpedo and the new fighter energy weapon).
2) Increase turret damage slightly and keep missile damage the same.
3) Increase turret damage slightly and reduce missile damage slightly.
4) Make turrets crazy awesome and missiles terrible.
I would've gone for option 2. The most important thing is that capital ship weapons should have a greater damage output per second than anything that can be mounted on a fighter. As long as that's the case, I'm generally happy, but I've not tried half as many ships. Speed and range are of secondary importance. I certainly feel that more skill is involved in using the turrets, particularly against non-capital ships. But missiles are missiles, they ought to do more, despite the fact they track.
While on the subject I'd be against having missile ammo for battleships. I don't think that's something a battleship should have to worry about, it's big enough to manufacture the things on board (if you want to think in a role-playing way).
Is there an argument for giving all turrets of a particular type the same stats? After all, these things can be mixed and matched, can they not? I know a couple of players who won't like me saying that (sorry) but in the interests of balance, would it not be better to differentiate battleships just by armour and cargo space, and possibly maneuverability? Give the most expensive ones or those with less guns more cargo and armour? e.g. Give the Osiris much more cargo and armour to make up for what would be less firepower. Otherwise a player wanting the best load-out will just find a way to mix and match. It's not the same issue for non-capital ships as they don't come with guns.
Role-played characters:
daedalus - Liberty Navy
bandersnatch - Ruthless criminal possessed by a (huge) alien
Shredder - Small-time Kusari pirate, looking to join the Blood Dragons
"Bounty Hunters. We don't need that scum." - Admiral Piett
Battleships cost more now, if someone wants to pay twice as much to get 6 better turrets, let them do it. They are enough expensive now.
I will modify the planetary docking to remove the atmosphere bug once and for all.
No ammo for battleships, right. Adding ammo to 20+ missile launchers and adding them to all or almost all bases... it's too much work for no particular reason.
Ok you scared me at first with the initial changes and talk about 4.75 coming out soon. But it sounds like things are equalizing back towards the previous values a little bit for the final release. And someone mentioned the tracking speeds of flak... to which i say " O_o ? " None of the flak turrets i ever used tracked anything, they were all line of sight ballistic. Did i miss something?
Everyone who got stuck on any planets in Rheinland or Nomad battleships - please report, I'm fixing this right now. Seems that a few planets have larger atmosphere than others, for example Kurile and Curacao.