Post by sagethe13th on Jul 10, 2014 19:02:00 GMT
The following was intended to be post on the main Starmade forum. I'm posting it here for review. If you don't want me to post it on the main SM forum I won't do it. Though I feel their input could be helpful.
Post:
This topic for discussing ways of potentially balancing Starmade to make RP more fun. While this topic will cover ways of trying to balance an RP server I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter, not just those people interested in RP. I'd especially like to hear from people who have a lot of hands on experience with the game. And who no knows, maybe an idea in here will help the devs out. That would be a win for everybody.
I play on a server call Epoch of Desolation. This post is going to be fairly critical of the way the server is set up, but this not a slam against the server owner or the server itself. EoD is a great server. I enjoy playing on EoD. The server owner has been active and helpful and the events run on the server have been a ton of fun. The balance problems largely stem from Starmade itself and are not solely the fault of the way the server is run. Also I'm pretty much the bad guy here as I didn't exercise enough discretion with regards to my ship design despite knowing how the server was set up.
First lets cover how the server is set up. Cannons aren't sold in the shop and are supposed to somewhat hard to obtain. The same goes for shield capacitors, only they are even harder to get a hold of and shield rechargers are basically non-existent so far. Hardened hull has also been buffed and made much cheaper. AI accuracy has been reduced. There are other changes, but these are the ones that have the most impact on what I'm going to be talking about. Basically these changes were made for the previous version of the game where AMCs were pretty much the only choice when it came to weapons. This set up also tries to make armor a lot more useful so combat isn't just the old, your shields drop, you die. The problem then is that the game changed a lot with the resent weapons update.
So here's a case study about how I broke the game because I'm a very bad man.. These are also the events that lead to me making this topic. Now, in addition to the changes listed above, pirates on the server are also quite different. The idea is that the pirate ships are all rouge AIs that throw crap tons of tiny fighters at their problems. As such the Isanth Zeros have been removed and replaced by little 10m long fighters call gnats.
Now I like this concept, but the massive swarms of small, fast moving AI fighters were a pain to fight. Given the problem, the clear solution was to use lock-on missiles. So my first serious ship, a flying tank called the Fly Swatter, had a lock-on missile turret. This overcame the inaccuracy of the AI while also letting me focus dodging when I wasn't using the beam weapon on the main ship. This worked pretty well but the would AI sent swarms of 20+ fighters at me because of the tank's price. That got old pretty fast so for my next ship I decided I would try to design it to take on any number of fighters and win.
And so I made the Perdition class missile frigate. Now I say frigate, but frigates on the server are only like 50m long, so it probably isn't like what most people think of when I say frigate. The main ship was armed with a 250 beam/250 cannon//250 overdrive weapon for knocking out shields and a 250 missile/250 missile/250 explosive weapon that I hoped would be able to kill multiple targets at once. Which it totally did. It had two turrets which were armed the same as my tank turret which had a 50 missile/50 beam/50 explosive weapon. The Perdition also had excessive shielding by server standards having 1000 cap blocks in the main ship and 300 in each turret.
Now I thought the shields were going to be the real game breaker here. But, it turned out to be the missiles. Despite being one fifth the size of the weapons on the main ship the missile turrets were far and away the ship's most effective weapons. This is due largely to the fact that you can't escape from lock-on missiles. At least an AI can't. The heat seekers were also powerful, but the AI could get away from them if I fired them from too far away. Too far away here being not all that far away mind you. The shields held up pretty well, but the lack of regen meant that they would still go down pretty fast if I wasn't dodging like a madman. The Perdition did it's job though. I could pretty much kill any number of pirates by playing keep away and killing them with lock-on missiles until their numbers got low enough that I could rush in and use the main beam weapon and the heat seekers. It felt pretty awesome having the most powerful ship on the server. The missiles were also really cool looking and I greatly enjoyed watching them zip over to their targets and kill everything.
Now here is where the real problem starts, there was a PvP event on the server. One of players is an alien who was tasked with killing everyone else on the server. As such they get a lot of help from the admin, like free ships and AI wing men. You know so they aren't horribly crushed for being the only antagonistic character on the server. One day there's a PvP event. The alien player shows up at spawn with a frigate and four AI controlled heavy fighters provided by the admin. I'm the only other player on at the moment, so this basically and encounter meant for me. Which I had kind of asked for. Anyway, I rather handily defeat the player controlled frigate destroying it's turrets with missiles and slicing through it core with my beam weapon. All the while the heavy fighters mostly get distracted by neutral NPC ships. I started to mop the heavy fighters when a swarm of 30+ pirate fighters decide to show up for the party. The enemy player is also given a second frigate and Tped to the battlefield for round two.
The turrets on our respective ships start dealing with the pirates first. I get the enemy frigate's shields down with my beams. Heavily damaged the frigate tries to run for it, until it's cameras all get destroyed and then one of my lock-on missiles lands near the core, taking it out with splash damage without even breaking through the exterior armor. By the end of it I had taken out 2 frigates (both player controlled), 2 heavy fighters, and god knows how many of the pirates. In return my ship had only taken minor hull damage largely around the turrets, because the AI appears to want to take those out first.
Afterward I realized that I had started an arms race that was going to be very bad for the future of the server. So now I'm looking for solutions to the problem. Now one of the problems is on my end. I know better than to make ships too strong. I've been gaming long enough to know the dangers of uncontrolled power gaming. However, there are some problems with the way the server is set up.
First, the server is set up assuming that cannons are the most powerful weapon and need to be limited. This isn't really the case anymore and getting cannons is still pretty easy because pirates have them.
Second, missiles are arguably the best weapon in the game and even more so on a server where shields are sometimes hard to come by. There are ways to counter lock-on missiles and heat seekers. One way would be a jammer. But, these are also very rare on the server. The other is to use an overdrive effect to out run them. Haven't really tested how well this works though. The problem still remains that lock-on missiles are kind of OP.
Third, pirate stations spawn with shields so there's no way to keep them out of player hands. Also shields have their role to play in Starmade. So trying to limit them to much also causes problems (more on that later).
Fourth, weapons destroy armor very easily even when the armor is made better (the effect gets worse as ships get bigger) and missiles and piercing effects can be used to bypass armor altogether.
Now I know how I'd address these problems. But I'd like people to try and come up with their own solutions before reading mine in the next post.
Post:
This topic for discussing ways of potentially balancing Starmade to make RP more fun. While this topic will cover ways of trying to balance an RP server I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter, not just those people interested in RP. I'd especially like to hear from people who have a lot of hands on experience with the game. And who no knows, maybe an idea in here will help the devs out. That would be a win for everybody.
I play on a server call Epoch of Desolation. This post is going to be fairly critical of the way the server is set up, but this not a slam against the server owner or the server itself. EoD is a great server. I enjoy playing on EoD. The server owner has been active and helpful and the events run on the server have been a ton of fun. The balance problems largely stem from Starmade itself and are not solely the fault of the way the server is run. Also I'm pretty much the bad guy here as I didn't exercise enough discretion with regards to my ship design despite knowing how the server was set up.
First lets cover how the server is set up. Cannons aren't sold in the shop and are supposed to somewhat hard to obtain. The same goes for shield capacitors, only they are even harder to get a hold of and shield rechargers are basically non-existent so far. Hardened hull has also been buffed and made much cheaper. AI accuracy has been reduced. There are other changes, but these are the ones that have the most impact on what I'm going to be talking about. Basically these changes were made for the previous version of the game where AMCs were pretty much the only choice when it came to weapons. This set up also tries to make armor a lot more useful so combat isn't just the old, your shields drop, you die. The problem then is that the game changed a lot with the resent weapons update.
So here's a case study about how I broke the game because I'm a very bad man.. These are also the events that lead to me making this topic. Now, in addition to the changes listed above, pirates on the server are also quite different. The idea is that the pirate ships are all rouge AIs that throw crap tons of tiny fighters at their problems. As such the Isanth Zeros have been removed and replaced by little 10m long fighters call gnats.
Now I like this concept, but the massive swarms of small, fast moving AI fighters were a pain to fight. Given the problem, the clear solution was to use lock-on missiles. So my first serious ship, a flying tank called the Fly Swatter, had a lock-on missile turret. This overcame the inaccuracy of the AI while also letting me focus dodging when I wasn't using the beam weapon on the main ship. This worked pretty well but the would AI sent swarms of 20+ fighters at me because of the tank's price. That got old pretty fast so for my next ship I decided I would try to design it to take on any number of fighters and win.
And so I made the Perdition class missile frigate. Now I say frigate, but frigates on the server are only like 50m long, so it probably isn't like what most people think of when I say frigate. The main ship was armed with a 250 beam/250 cannon//250 overdrive weapon for knocking out shields and a 250 missile/250 missile/250 explosive weapon that I hoped would be able to kill multiple targets at once. Which it totally did. It had two turrets which were armed the same as my tank turret which had a 50 missile/50 beam/50 explosive weapon. The Perdition also had excessive shielding by server standards having 1000 cap blocks in the main ship and 300 in each turret.
Now I thought the shields were going to be the real game breaker here. But, it turned out to be the missiles. Despite being one fifth the size of the weapons on the main ship the missile turrets were far and away the ship's most effective weapons. This is due largely to the fact that you can't escape from lock-on missiles. At least an AI can't. The heat seekers were also powerful, but the AI could get away from them if I fired them from too far away. Too far away here being not all that far away mind you. The shields held up pretty well, but the lack of regen meant that they would still go down pretty fast if I wasn't dodging like a madman. The Perdition did it's job though. I could pretty much kill any number of pirates by playing keep away and killing them with lock-on missiles until their numbers got low enough that I could rush in and use the main beam weapon and the heat seekers. It felt pretty awesome having the most powerful ship on the server. The missiles were also really cool looking and I greatly enjoyed watching them zip over to their targets and kill everything.
Now here is where the real problem starts, there was a PvP event on the server. One of players is an alien who was tasked with killing everyone else on the server. As such they get a lot of help from the admin, like free ships and AI wing men. You know so they aren't horribly crushed for being the only antagonistic character on the server. One day there's a PvP event. The alien player shows up at spawn with a frigate and four AI controlled heavy fighters provided by the admin. I'm the only other player on at the moment, so this basically and encounter meant for me. Which I had kind of asked for. Anyway, I rather handily defeat the player controlled frigate destroying it's turrets with missiles and slicing through it core with my beam weapon. All the while the heavy fighters mostly get distracted by neutral NPC ships. I started to mop the heavy fighters when a swarm of 30+ pirate fighters decide to show up for the party. The enemy player is also given a second frigate and Tped to the battlefield for round two.
The turrets on our respective ships start dealing with the pirates first. I get the enemy frigate's shields down with my beams. Heavily damaged the frigate tries to run for it, until it's cameras all get destroyed and then one of my lock-on missiles lands near the core, taking it out with splash damage without even breaking through the exterior armor. By the end of it I had taken out 2 frigates (both player controlled), 2 heavy fighters, and god knows how many of the pirates. In return my ship had only taken minor hull damage largely around the turrets, because the AI appears to want to take those out first.
Afterward I realized that I had started an arms race that was going to be very bad for the future of the server. So now I'm looking for solutions to the problem. Now one of the problems is on my end. I know better than to make ships too strong. I've been gaming long enough to know the dangers of uncontrolled power gaming. However, there are some problems with the way the server is set up.
First, the server is set up assuming that cannons are the most powerful weapon and need to be limited. This isn't really the case anymore and getting cannons is still pretty easy because pirates have them.
Second, missiles are arguably the best weapon in the game and even more so on a server where shields are sometimes hard to come by. There are ways to counter lock-on missiles and heat seekers. One way would be a jammer. But, these are also very rare on the server. The other is to use an overdrive effect to out run them. Haven't really tested how well this works though. The problem still remains that lock-on missiles are kind of OP.
Third, pirate stations spawn with shields so there's no way to keep them out of player hands. Also shields have their role to play in Starmade. So trying to limit them to much also causes problems (more on that later).
Fourth, weapons destroy armor very easily even when the armor is made better (the effect gets worse as ships get bigger) and missiles and piercing effects can be used to bypass armor altogether.
Now I know how I'd address these problems. But I'd like people to try and come up with their own solutions before reading mine in the next post.
