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ICC Shield: Liability? |
Sens [R33]
Admiral
Joined: September 27, 2008
Posts: 1020
From: Edge of th...
|  Posted: 2008-10-09 14:56
Quote:
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On 2008-10-09 14:38, Crim {Pants?} wrote:
Easy solution for ICC people who complain..
Learn to play your faction, or get off it.
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QFT
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2008-10-09 15:45
There is NOTHING broken with shields.
We're not doing anything with them BECAUSE there's nothing wrong with it.
Nothing to do with laziness.
Nothing to do with wanting ICC to be crap.
Shields are fine.
We want them to be as they are.
If you don't like how it plays, then try a different faction. For some, the shields suit a certain type of gameplay, for others they don't. We're not going to make ICC = UGTO with shields.
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2008-10-09 16:01
Here's an interesting thought.
Enable shields to either regenerate faster or be repaired by a supply...
...but ONLY when they're switched off.
That way, the ICC could have a similar ability to recover after a fight, but not make them impossible to destroy while covered by supplies/depots. And if they try to do it mid-battle, well, their armor is a lot thinner than the UGTOs, so they'll suffer accordingly.
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Winters Rapture
Fleet Admiral
United Nations Space Command
Joined: December 09, 2007
Posts: 355
| Posted: 2008-10-09 16:16
i like that idea, i thnk it would work very well.
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Coeus
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: March 22, 2006
Posts: 2815
From: Philly
| Posted: 2008-10-09 16:44
Unnecessary.
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Don Nukey of ICC *CO*
Chief Marshal
Interstellar Cultural Confederation United
Chatting in 'DarkSpace English'
Joined: June 05, 2006
Posts: 429
From: Zeebrugge, belgium
| Posted: 2008-10-09 16:49
our ships are fine, the only thing we need is everyone in servers, and not in the lobby whining about how weak the icc has become, cus it isnt
i fought earlier 4 kluth dreads in my command station, i still died but i've hurt em all very good in the end
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2008-10-10 21:10
While I agree that a lot of the ICC's issues are probably overexaggerated, I am also shocked at the replies from the developers whom, in observation, have stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled 'LALALALALALALA NOTHINGS WRONG'. Please, please do not make me consider my re-evaluation of this game to be a big mistake.
Reading the complaints from the various people, it seems like that the UGTO (and possibly K'luth?) are exploiting a loophole in the game mechanics. Throwing dozens of depots and supply platforms together that can regenerate a crippled UGTO ship to battle-worthiness in a matter of moments, even in the midst of combat. This gives an unforseen defensive advantage to the UGTO. The ICC, however, lack this defensive advantage because depots and supply platforms have no effect on shields.
The 150% regeneration advantage pales in comparison to the repair effect on UGTO armor that is several magitudes faster.
A good suggestion, in my opinion, would be to put a limit on the amount armor can be repaired in an amount of time.
Edit: Cleaning up this post.
Edit: Due to popular demand, im tacking a suggestion to the end of this post.
[ This Message was edited by: RedXIII on 2008-10-10 21:47 ]
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DarkSpin
Captain
Sanity Assassins
Joined: August 03, 2005
Posts: 651
From: Somewhere in the USA
| Posted: 2008-10-10 21:18
Quote:
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On 2008-10-10 21:10, RedXIII wrote:
While I agree that a lot of the ICC's issues are probably overexaggerated, I am also shocked at the replies from the developers whom, in observation, have stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled 'LALALALALALALA NOTHINGS WRONG'. Please, please do not make me consider my re-evaluation of this game to be a big mistake.
Reading the complaints from the various people, it seems like that the UGTO (and possibly K'luth?) are exploiting a loophole in the game mechanics. Throwing dozens of depots and supply platforms together that can regenerate a crippled UGTO ship to battle-worthiness in a matter of moments, even in the midst of combat. This gives an unforseen defensive advantage to the UGTO. The ICC, however, lack this defensive advantage because depots and supply platforms have no effect on shields.
The 150% regeneration advantage pales in comparison to the repair effect on UGTO armor that is several magitudes faster.
Edit: Cleaning up this post.
[ This Message was edited by: RedXIII on 2008-10-10 21:14 ]
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As much as I hate to say this I do agree with that. "Not that it matters what I think."
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Fornax
Marshal
Raven Warriors
Joined: April 30, 2002
Posts: 906
From: Jacksonville, FL
| Posted: 2008-10-10 21:42
Quote:
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On 2008-10-09 05:46, BackSlash *Jack* wrote:
...No matter where you are, what you're doing, as long as you have energy, your shields are going up.
Armour does not.
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I think this is an incorrect statement. Briefly, just to test, I flew UGTO and encouraged a planet to hurt me a bit. While flying off to safety, I watched my Reflective Armor repair.
I didn't get around to trying ablative or standard, yet.
My take on all this is, I don't think it's a good idea to rush into changes. I don't necessarily agree that all the design decisions are sound, however, a constant stream of rapid fire tweaks is not often the best way to test balance.
Another point is, I think it is an incredibly VALID point about the extensive use of supply depots. You can always count on players to find the flaws in the design and throwing up a dozen (or more) supply depots at a planet that in the past had to juggle how many spots were depots against defenses...has the potential to be extremely unbalancing. Going from 0 to full armor and hull in under a minute without player assistance - the equivalent to having a dozen ships repairing you, is probably not a planned for situation.
My own opinion on shields. In general combat against a roughly equal sized opposing fleet - equal terms - I think the ICC ships do just fine. In the last few days we've driven for some heavy combat and I don't really think the ships are unbalanced against each other - regeneration seems fine - we're not wiped out by power problems (any more than ICC has always been). We are hurt by the ammunition problem - that's another issue.
So far, I think the ships and systems are fairly evenly balanced. However, the depot recharge boost on armor is possibly a significant problem. Keep in mind, any reduction for armor repair (by depots) would affect ALL factions and likely must affect repair done by player ships.
Personally, I think I'd like to see what the first month brings. As I stated earlier, no game system survives contact with it's players. The weaknesses and methods to Metagame (and yes, I do exactly mean that word) come out under stress. I'd rather see a full month of the current patch before wanting to venture an opinion that something is completely broken and must be fixed.
Nax
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2008-10-10 23:50
Here's another idea.
When you have multiple depots/supplies working on a single ship, currently they appear to function linearly: two depots repair twice as fast as one, three depots three times as fast, four depots four times as fast, etc.
Would it be possible to have an incrementally lower increase for each depot/supply working on a ship? Suppose the first depot repairs at 100 of an arbitrary unit per second. Instead of an additional 100/sec, the second depot only adds 50 or something. Then the third only adds 25/sec, the fourth only 12/sec, etc. Diminishing returns, basically.
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Borgie
Chief Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: August 15, 2005
Posts: 2256
From: close by
| Posted: 2008-10-11 03:46
Quote:
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On 2008-10-09 14:38, Crim {Pants?} wrote:
Easy solution for ICC people who complain..
Learn to play your faction, or get off it.
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the man speaks the truth
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Russian Roulette with Muskets
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 04, 2002
Posts: 393
| Posted: 2008-10-11 08:34
the whole depot discussion is always discussed with lab condition-arguments.
Yeah sure 12 depots rep a single ship very fast. but how often do you see single ships?
And the fact remains that the icc's defense is independant on depots.
The whole damage icc armada will reg its shields. at the same time. for no cost or effort involved.
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Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
| Posted: 2008-10-11 08:37
Quote:
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On 2008-10-11 08:34, Russian Roulette with Muskets wrote:
the whole depot discussion is always discussed with lab condition-arguments.
Yeah sure 12 depots rep a single ship very fast. but how often do you see single ships?
And the fact remains that the icc's defense is independant on depots.
The whole damage icc armada will reg its shields. at the same time. for no cost or effort involved.
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I'd agree. It takes less than a minute to repair a dreadnaught with 12 depots. However, it takes 12 minutes to build those depots, in which time the entire ICC fleet have recharged their shields umpteen times over...
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2008-10-11 10:35
Quote:
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On 2008-10-10 21:42, Fornax wrote:
Quote:
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On 2008-10-09 05:46, BackSlash *Jack* wrote:
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ALL standard armour regenerates incredibly slowly. That goes for the ICC too - your armour regenerates just as fast as ours.
Ablative and Reflective armour do not self repair (the downside to specialising).
If we up the recharge rate, we start seeing issues like we did with the ED - which is why it was so strong. It's all very well saying that you want an increased recharge rate out of combat, but there's not a way to do that without adding lumps of code to the server backend to time how long people have been in combat, or fired their last shot. If we increase the recharge time, it doesn't only effect the out of combat recharge, but the in combat recharge rate as well - and THIS is what was causing ICC to be so strong last patch.
Right now, the ICC are fine in combat. I've had my behind kicked by many ICC pilots so far.
It's not that we're not listening, it's that the problem you have is with shields is not with shields, but with armour.
Now, listen to this:
Shields recharge in combat.
Standard Armour does, but to a MUCH lesser degree - for both factions.
Shields can be rotated.
Armour cannot.
Shields cannot be repaired by depots or platforms.
Armour can - for both factions.
You have no unfair disadvantage or advantage. Should UGTO players be complaining that armour is a liability because they cannot be rotated like shields? Should they be complaining, because it doesn't recharge as fast as shields in combat (which is a huge advantage)? No, they should not - these are all fundamentals in the designs of armour and shields, and how they work.
There is no-where near enough combat data to see if there are issues, and the combat I've seen so far, shows that they're completely fine.
Also bare in mind that whilst in normal combat conditions, you're being shot at on one facing, if you rotate shields, THREE faces are recharging to provide you with the option to push all of that into the front side. You're not gaining 1% every tick for shields, you're gaining a possible 4% on one facing - more than ANY other ship by a simply GIGANTIC amount.
Hell, it's not even a problem with shields, or armour - it's a problem with the amount of platforms. If we find, after extensive testing, that the huge amount of platforms are causing the combat to skew in favour of one faction (which they aren't showing so far, at all), then we will ofcourse change them.
So, to those of you who think we're sitting here going "LALALALALAL", with our fingers in our ears... We're not changing shields, not because we don't care, are stuborn, or want our own personal faction to win more - we're disagreeing because boosting shields will not solve any of the problems, and will create daft imbalances.
If there's a problem with the amount of supply depots - say it.
Don't say "If UGTO and Kluth have 20 supply platforms, they can repair instantly - so, buff the shields by lots.".
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash *Jack* on 2008-10-11 10:42 ]
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Delando
Marshal
Joined: May 04, 2007
Posts: 260
| Posted: 2008-10-11 12:06
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I'd agree. It takes less than a minute to repair a dreadnaught with 12 depots. However, it takes 12 minutes to build those depots, in which time the entire ICC fleet have recharged their shields umpteen times over...
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12min in 1.500 non-multibuild time is a blink of an eye. Who goes in an engineer ship w/o expecting HOURS building?
And u only need to do it for the first engagment. A their benifit will stay there for whole day, unless ur too lazy to resource em. B/c icc unfurtunatly do not have SUPERMAN suppys to tractor them into planets.
And btw, 12 sup plats was a MODEST estimate to the Exploitive POTENTIAL of these things. Whos stoping u from building more? All it takes is 1 or 2 presistent players to spend half an hour to crank out 30 or more sup plats. Heck, all ugto dreads needs to do then is just make a PASS over them and hop right back into battle.
I can see it now, a whole assembly line of supp plats
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-dread-100%--sssssssssss--- <== dread 15%hull
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