There was a time when I thougth capitals where just to easy to kill and should be made more powerful. A capital agaist a bunch of smaller ships would get destroyed. I wanted that list ditch cap the AI makes to mean something.
I have been playing the BSG mod and have decided that deleivers just what I want. That last ditch cap is something the smaller ships should stay away from. It could hold its own, well unless it trys taking on another cap of course.
It works awsome, however, I would not want this in the regular sins game. I still like a small buff so you could see them more often, but not the the scale it is in this mod. When a fleet of 20 ships jump in with the cap and all you got is a cap and couple of ships your screwed, makes sense to me. Now say he jumps in with 20 ships and all you got is a cap. Okay still should be screwed depending on the ships.
Seems like in the BSG mod dude jumps in with 20 ships and you got a battlestar hes the one screwed. While I do enjoy it. Thats perhaps a little to powerful.
I just want some balance between what we got in sins and what we have in the mod. I would like to see capitals fulfill flagship roles.
The best way to improve that is to give them better, and indeed clearer roles. If the capital ship doesn't do much a cruiser can do, yeah, it's screwed. If it can give an advantage to your fleet somehow, though... then things get interesting.
As part of that, I'd rather like seeing the damage mitigation cap on capships raised - as it stands, they can be focus-fired to oblivion in all of thirty seconds against a late game fleet. And that just ain't right.
i, personally think that shield mitigation, while was designed to sort of punish focus fire... doesnt do it very well... and instead of bute-forcing an + in the midigation cap... a more logerithmic sort of mitigation would be much better.
Right now, it doesnt matter if 5 or 50 ships are focusing fire on another ship, hte shield midigation jumps straight up to the max and stays there till the doomed ship goes boom (or, if the player is paying attention, runs away).
I dont know, but that seems kinda mean.
When i think of a space battle, everyone almost never gangs up on one of the other guys, normally lasers and slugs are flying everywhere, with chaos, and booms, and everything... in sins, its like... fire on that guy, boom, aim at the next guy, boom, next... almost all the ships the survive the battle have full health at the end of it cause they never even too a shot...
I would much perfer (and this shouldnt be too hard, just little adjustment in the AI and in the shield midigation function) that, while, yes... if you want to kill a single ship, focus fire on it, but if you want to destroy an entire fleet... you need to spread the damage around a bit. This will also help with the capital ship thing.
I would suggest that it go something like this, and for simplicity... well ill try to keep it simple...
What i imagine is this, in a battle, lets say a ship is taking fire from a... comparable ship, so a cobalt is attacking a cobalt. our light frig is taking the damage of a factor of "1" if 2 cobalts are attacking our light frig, its taking a dmg of a factor of "x2" (I am obviously not taking into effect armor, research, the damage table, w/e, but these things should be factored in, but k.i.s.s. rule for now)
as our ship starts getting ganged up, from 1 ship against him, to around 4 ships against him, his shield midigation should barely go up, in other words, the more damage a ship is taking per second, the higher the midigation cap should be... so maybe from 15% to 25%, but at the 5th, 6th and 7th, it should really start to climb, as 1. the poor ships redirects all power to the shields, and the other ships around him, who are not taking damage are in contact, and doing thier best to sort of "share the load" by transfering their extra enegry, and helping to fine tune that resonate frequency to help midigate more damage. so by the 8th ship, (twice the 4 ships focusing before) the midigation should reach a point where attacking ships 5,6,7, and 8 are doing, say half of what ships were doing on thier own... so instead of 4 *(1-25% midigation)=damage factor of 3, at 8 ships attacking one, the shield midigation should be something like 8*(1-44% midigation)= damage factor of about 4.5, at 16 ships all fireing on 1 ship, midigation should be reaching 58% percent so the we get 16*(1-58%)=6.75 (4.5*1.5), if a ship is unlucky to be focused on by 32 ships, well you can be certain that the ships surrounding that ship are going to be doing their darnist to try to project thier own shields over the ailing ship, and the the midigation should be enough to give a damage factor of 10.125, or a midigation of 68%, and if the entire freaking fleet of 64 ships really really really wants that other guy gone, they should be dealing the "pure" damage of only about 15 ships, (a damage factor of 15.19ish), or the ship getting ownt should have a midigation of around 76% (64*(1-.76269)=15.19
In other words, those 64 ships are not doing nearly as much as they could be doing if they spread out their fire a bit, and attacked 16 ships at the same time. ( a damage factor of 15.19 vs a damage factor of 3 *(64/4)=48.
In other words, the ship in question is prolly going to end up ownt, but the attacking fleet is only doing 1/3 of the damage it could be doing if it just spread out thier fire a bit.
questions? comments? perhaps i should make my own thread about this idea?
and btw, all the numbers were completly spur-of-the moment, with no reguards to balancing or anything slightly smart like that.
And the whole thing about other ships "helping" was jsut sort of a visual... but that might not actually be a bad alternative idea... herm... (goes off to ponder a bit)
i guess thats what the Devs had in mind when they designed the Mitigation system, though if it doesnt work it should be upgraded
i do like the idea, and id also like the idea of flanking a ship means its shields will drop faster (i.e. firing at a ship from in front and from behind will cause the shields to fail faster than just firing at one point)
just on a side note, i think the lore with mitigation is wrong. In the manual etc, it says mitigation is a system that changes the shield harmonics to better shield against a type of damage, for instance, rockets only or lasers only. however, Mitigation should and could only work against 1 type of damage at a time, becuase you cant change the harmonics to counter rockets and lasers at the same time... this is my reason for thinking mixed fleets are better because IMO if you send a fleet of LRF against a cap or whatever, then the shields could be modified to provide greater protection vs long range weapons, and, ultimately, negate all damage taken. however, mix in some LF's or whatever, and the shields have to choose one or the other, or some sort of way point, meaning some damage will get through.
anyway, i like the idea of spreading damage around, though, at larger fleet sizes, i guess sometimes it doesnt matter...
ya... in sort of my side idea... i was thinking that close ships would donate both some of thier shields and midigation to the ship getting pwnt, but a ship on the edge of a group (or a lone ship) would be... well, left without support from other ships, and, since its "flanked" it would not get that sort of bonus.
Your point about mitigation lore is a good one... the problem is... is that flacks (anti-verylight) and kodiacks (composite), both do autocannon dmg... which is kinda like wtf when you consider they are completly different everythings (exploding small spam vs rather big, well, automatic cannons... and they should not be thown in the same bin as far as harmonics, unless your enemy is really really stupid)
And anyway... most of the focus fire comes from 1 unit type anyway, since every unit likes firing on its fav target, and so all the LMFs will fire on 1 cobalt, all the coblats will fire on one carrier or flack, all the support cruisers will fire on more support cruisers, and so forth.
The problem is that, in practice, focus fire just makes mitigation reach its cap sooner. Even small amounts of damage, given enough time will cap out their target's mitigation eventually. Hell, send 3 cobalts to a neutral asteroid gravity well and order them to attack the militia. They will reach their mitigation cap before you destroy them.
I'd like to see caps reduced in cost and have them cost resources to level up. Right now they are far to expensive for their return in the short term and then once at level 10 are more worth their value. It'd be better to have them reduced in cost by about 30% and then have that made up by paying to level them up. More as an upgrade. The great thing about caps is that you can make them as cheap as you want and they can never be spammed (cap is so low).
Also, caps would be a little better in my opinion if they were solely geared to fleet affecting. Leave the one on one to the frigs and cruisers and have the cap ships focus on affecting entire fleets. Whether this be like the Akan's increased range and chance to hit, or the Marza's missile barrage, I think all caps abilities should be designed in this way.
I believe half of the Caps should be almost completely revised in terms of their abilities. The best proof is that in 95% of the games with TEC/Vasari inside, you will see no other cap than EGG/Vulk/Akkan/Marza. That's four out of ten caps.
Another idea is to make them more starbase-like. IC has always been mentioning that they regret how they made caps, i.e. that one could have all abilities on their cap ship by level 10. Starbases require that you choose one above other. Why not do the same with caps with the next expansion/patch?
Some ideas:1. Add excluding ability choices (like dwellings in HoMM4 cities, if anyone played). For example, a Kortul could either choose Power Surge that increases its own weapon speed and shield regen rates by a lot OR choose Charge Field that would increase weapon speed and shield regen slightly to a limited number of nearby ships. A skirantra could choose Microphasing Aura OR Gravity Disturbance Generator that would slow down nearby enemy SC by some percent and reduce their armor by 1/2/3 or deal 0.5/0.75/1.0 damage per second to all nearby enemy Strike Craft. etc. etc. etc.2. Add 5 levels of "Battlestation" upgrades. They would act like a passive ability that increases Hull/Armor/Weapon damage (sth. like the first two upgrades of Starbases combined) and reduces antimatter pool/regeneration slightly. That ability would be available every two levels just like any other ability. A person would have a choice - either have a cap that can use a wide array of abilities or one with more limited "spellcasting", but that would wipe the floor with small neutral/pirate fleets or hold its own in a bigger battle instead.Those upgrades could vary from ship to ship. For instance, a Kortul would receive an ability to attack yet another target in its frontal arc + some hull and armor at the expense of 10% max antimatter and AM regeneration rate. A Marauder, on the other hand, would have its weapon damage, movement & turn speed and phase jump charge rate increased substantially, while reducing its AM pool/regen by 10%.
Of course, all the above numbers are subject to balancing, but I think them decent ideas. It is obvious some abilities are useful all the time (Repair Cloud, Power Surge, PMS, Radiation bomb, etc.) while others are much more capable, but the right circumstances occur very rarely (like the Marauder - its abilities, including Phase Out Hull, are marginally useful most of the time, but when facing a level 6 Marza I would trade any other cap for it). Give caps more options to choose from, so that every cap has some general use while waiting for the moment that would let its specialised abilities shine.
Nice ideas. I heard that in some future expansion (not the next one) that IC was going to do something like that.
Good idea. It would make it a bit more challenging, in that you wouldn't know what Marauder variant just popped into your system. Offensive ? Fleet support ? It would be a nice change from the current status quo epitomized by the lvl 6 Marza ( I mean, what else is it gonna have except MB ? ).
Sadly, though, it'll end up optimized, and you gradually see only the one true maximized build, with possibly one other optional build.
Some changes would be nice. It does get kind of boring seeing only the same caps, and also how few you see. How many do people really play with? I doubt 16 is reached very often. I would be nice to see more of them, and make them more worth the cost it takes to build them. As it stands now they are easy enought to destory that you don't see them to often.
Unless you count the Marza. It puts out a enougt firepower that it does a lot of damage before going down.
nice ideas.
by 'battlestation upgrades' do you mean permanent changes or do you mean an alternate mode that can be switched on or off to give those bonuses? I'd prefer the latter.
alternatively, and somewhat simpler, one might copy from warcraft III: dota. instead of an ability, you can use the point for general stats upgrade. might be hard to find the right balance that makes both options interesting. could work though via a system as in the starbase. you can chose between extra weapons, extra armour or maybe extra fighter bays, etc. [hm, though extra fighter bays might even be too powerful, considering that some capship abilities only give 1 extra fighter per squad (advent) which would make it a 10% increase at lowest levels compared to a 33% increase in higher levels. but I guess that is a somewhat weak abilitiy anyway.] you could even vary the max level according to ship type, like battleships having more combat upgrades available than colonisers or carriers having more squad type upgrades than siege ships.
and of course something needs to be done with mitigation. the raw power of late-game focus fire just makes the time and reource investment into capships almost pointless.
I've mentioned before, this solution might work. We could add a penalty under fire. The penalty being 10% reduction in damage output. This way if someone is focus firing on say a capital ship, that capital ship will do 10% less damage but the rest of the fleet will be doing full damage. If that fleet however, is spreading it's attack at all ships, then all those ships will be doing 10% less damage.
This way you can still focus fire to strategically take out certain ships (hit and run for an ie.), but at a cost to overall damage.
I think implementing it would be pretty easy, just take the carriers penalty to build rate and change the build rate to damage output.
From a logic and lore view, the ships under fire will do less damage because they are being hit which would disrupt their targeting and force them to take evasive maneuvres and lower their ability to hit enemies.
You probably should make your own thread about it, but I agree with what you're saying. The biggest problem with shield mitigation as a deterrent to focus firing is that it goes up with ANY damage.
In other words, if I have 1 ship firing on a target until it dies, the shield mitigation will go up for every 10 damage that I do. If I have 30 ships firing on a target until it dies, the shield mitigation will STILL go up at THE SAME RATE.
In other words, if I deal 400 damage to a target, the shield mitigation will be THE SAME whether I'm doing it with one ship or if I'm doing it with 30. The only difference is that the 30 ships will do it faster. In this way, I think mitigation actually ENCOURAGES focus firing more, because you will do less and less damage no matter what, but focus fire will keep the damage lethal.
I think a better system (if you want to discourage focus firing) would be to base mitigation off of the number of ships firing on a target, rather than the damage dealt. (like Pbhead suggested).
The problem with this is that all of Advents anti-ship (ie non-bombardment) weapons are energy weapons, so they would be at a severe disadvantage.
not at all, the Advent have lasers, plasma, and beam weapons, and the starbase has that psionic surge whatsamacallit
perhaps in reality all those weapons types would be very close mitigation wise, however lore-wise we can say that lasers are fine tuned so the mitigation is different to say beam weapons whos beam confinement is larger and different to plasma weapons because its not a photon beam as such but a 'ball' of plasma particles etc
i mean, in the game each weapon has its own value and damage output and effectiveness vs diff armor etc, so from a gameplay point of view it wouldnt be hard. from a lore point of view, its fairly easy, i mean, 2/3 TEC weapons (missiles and auto cannons) involve damage via throwing something heavy/hot at a target at very high speeds. you could say for that reason mitigation could disperse alot of TEC armaments very easily as well
however, we just use poetic license and say, for some reason, missile damage is mitigated in a different fashion to autocannon rounds which is different to plasma which is different to beams etc etc.
your right, which is why i suggested what I suggested.
I think I will take kerrek's advice and make a new thread so Ima not derailing this one... After I do a bit of fine-tuning of the idea. ***goes off to think a bit.
I don't think I ever looked exactly at how mitigation worked, just what it means and what it does. but yes, a single or few ships should not result in high mitigation whereas a lot of ships should trigger high mitigation soon, at best higher still than the current max.
I also like the idea of the ship under fire penalty, but I don't think it will work. this may make it less interesting to ff on frigates and cruisers, but if you have top priority targets like dangerous capital ships (say, a lvl 6 marza) you WILL ff on that no matter how much penalty you'd be forgoing otherwise, because some of those special abilities are just very dangerous. or you just want to deny the enemy of the benefit of experience and high lvl capships.
Probably the best way is to make mitigation depend on a certain amount of DPS incoming, not total dealt so far.
A quick and dirty way to do that (Which is a bit primitive, but at least computationally inexpensive) is to have mitigation based on a total damage to date chart (AKA, 100 points of fire = 50% mitigation or something), and then have that total reduced by a percentage each turn. If it knocks off 25% every turn and 50% mitigation is at 100 damage, then you need a steady 25 DPS to maintain it. Likewise, 10 damage * .75 = 2.5 incoming fire is a stable figure. 4000 damage? You need 1000 DPS to keep it that high; and if you stop the mitigation will drop very quickly indeed.
While not quite logrithmic, it does at least remove the issue of "It'll keep climbing until it hits the cap" - rather, it keeps climbing till the mitigation drop-off rate equals the rate of incoming fire.
You don't actually need to track the totals in question - you can actually calculate this based only off the damage in the last ten seconds (Or even second if you wanted) and it'd work fine. But it'd be a vast improvement over current...
That is the point though. Having a system that completely eliminates focus fire is removing a strategy from the game that has good strategic value. If you eliminate the ability to focus fire then you've eliminated hit and run tactics from the game. Also, if you want to eliminate that one specific target than you should be able to, what the under fire penalty does is make it so that you can't do that for an entire fleet battle because you'll lose. You can pop a ship or two here and take extra damage to your entire fleet, but if you try to focus fire everyship you'll lose out on enough damage that you'll end up taking more damage than you inflict and lose the battle.
I think I sounded more extreme than I intended. sure, ff should be a tactic, but there should be more of a price tag, an opportunity cost to it on the one hand. and there should be some way to prevent capships from insta dying. of course, you can only do that to an extent, otherwise they become far too untouchable. so, maybe ff should have (more) of a decreasing effect on killing ships. like you say 10 hcs bring a capship down in 2 minutes, 20 in 1:30, 40 in 1:10 and so on, so that it sort of reaches a certain value. yes, I am thinking of some kind of logarithmic system. more ships still do more dmg, but the benefit gets smaller, so that at some point, adding more ships simply does not make any sense. but it still allows you to concentrate on a ship and take it out quickly, if you chose to. it's just that you waste an awful lot of firepower. heck, maybe I should try and mod around a bit and see what happens if I set mitigation to a ridiculously high number, like 90% or 95% ...
also, with the ship under attack penalty, I might be tempted to create a secondary fleet consisting of the cheapest ships available that I leave on auto-target and use my actual force to ff. imagine 30 or so scouts firing around. yeah, the do low loads of dmg, but they ARE doing dmg and thus cause your penalty. and if you start making this penalty dependend on incoming dmg, it gets too complicated imo. I mean maybe that approach would be stupid, but 30 scouts don't cost particularly much of any resource.
Tkins: The point of mitigation is to reduce Focus Fire from being The Only Way To Play to being a tactical choice with costs - you can choose to take out a single target quickly, or several targets more efficiently (but slowly).
The issue at hand (at least at the immediate moment) is that damage mitigation does not do this. Rather, everything tends to climb to its cap in no time at all, and merely sit there - which means that effectively, everything has slightly over doubled hitpoints for all it matters in game.
You have to ask yourself. "Do I want to make a radical change to the fundamental chemistry of this game and risk destroying it?"
Isn't that what I said?
Maybe then can increase armor and hull points maybe the amount of time it takes to repair? Some small changes that help keep them alive. I say keep the current level up the way it as. Add some research options to up capital armor effectiveness agaist weapons aboard say lrms and frigets. HC should be the capital ships worst enemey.
It really is all about balance. The caps are kind of weak but I don't want to see them so powerful that frigets are a waste of time.
Tkins: Sorry, it seemed you were arguing against mitigation counteracting focus fire. My bad.
Oh I see. There are a lot of people that actually argue mitigation is broken and actually aids focus fire because the healing abilities of a ship will negate small amounts of damage. So since mitigation lowers damage to such a small amount it is often better to overcome the shield regen by focus firing.
In theory though I agree, mitigation is meant to stop focus fire. In practice it doesn't do a great job.
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