| Author |
My hopes/opinions on future balance changes |
Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
|  Posted: 2014-10-22 10:23
Quote:
On 2014-10-20 23:14, Forger of Destiny wrote:
60% reduction on stations is probably a bit much, as then they'll probably never manage to hit targets at even 1500-2000 gu (a big hit to the Nest, and the BattleStat too. Intuitively, I feel a 30-40% reduction from 1.703 turn rate values would prevent this from happening, while cruisers would still be able to evade.
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The thing is, missile accuracy has been obnoxiously hard to pin down. The two main variables I can fiddle with are missile speed and missile turn rate. I've tried adjusting each of these upwards and downwards, but Station missiles are always somehow more accurate than Frigate missiles. I've tried having them faster, having them slower, having them more agile, having them less agile... nothing so far has seemed to result in the outcome I want, which is Frigate missiles able to hit Cruisers, everything else able to hit Dreads and Stations but nothing smaller.
Hopefully this latest change finally nails it.
Quote:
Oh, and a minimum range increase for station missiles please? 
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Reducing their turn rate effectively increases their minimum range. Since Stations launch their missiles straight up, they have to take a long time to turn around and point back towards their target. This is the main reason they can't hit things right next to them: the missiles won't turn fast enough. I'll have to increase the distance at which you can't fire them in order to match their true minimum range, otherwise it'll be too easy to waste them on targets they can't hit.
Quote:
And say, could we have a skirmish version of station missiles? Ranges along the lines of 700 gu min to 1500 gu max. The Nest and BS which often fight LineStats at short ranges would be very grateful, and so would be the missile and carrier dreads fighting said Nest and BS.
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This would give them a weapon right in that sweet spot they're intended to be vulnerable at, and due to above reasons any missile capable of turning fast enough to hit targets that close would probably also be capable of hitting smaller ships. So, no. Don't think we can do this one.
Quote:
I think the currently large missile explosion radius is good for missile ship users to nab down small ships (their fault for not being evasive enough, especially after Jim's turn rate reduction), and anti-missile beams should just get a bigger range to provide better cover to allies, especially considering how most missiles shoot vertically before pursuing their target.
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I'm going to revisit their AoE anyway, since missiles aren't really intended as large-scale AoE weapons.
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Code Red
Chief Marshal
Non Omnis Moriar
Joined: September 08, 2007
Posts: 184
| Posted: 2014-10-22 14:30
Have to say I like what you are attempting to sort Jim , I look forward to Beta
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DiepLuc
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 23, 2010
Posts: 1187
| Posted: 2014-10-27 10:31
You may slow down the speed and raise up the signature of station missle a bit Jim. That allows player to dodge.
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2014-10-27 18:52
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 10:31, DiepLuc wrote:
You may slow down the speed and raise up the signature of station missle a bit Jim. That allows player to dodge.
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Ah, but slower missiles also have more time to turn and aim at the target. It's easier for them to overshoot if they're faster.
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DiepLuc
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 23, 2010
Posts: 1187
| Posted: 2014-10-28 09:25
[ This Message was edited by: DiepLuc on 2014-10-28 12:40 ]
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Incinarator
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 24, 2010
Posts: 237
| Posted: 2014-10-28 10:27
Quote:
On 2014-10-28 09:25, DiepLuc wrote:
Can you limit the maximum degree a missle can turn?
Actually, the high speed is the problem. With the new sensor mechanics, we can only detect misslle when it's really close to the ship and it's too late. We could not react fast enough to dodge it, even in destroyer. I would prefer bolder and lighter trail of missle because even when I launch them, I hardly see where they are.
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I honestly have no idea where this is coming from. I have no problems seeing a missile, it would just always out turn me. The glaring targeting icons are a pretty easy way to track them. If you're in a nebula, though, don't expect to see them.
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Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse
Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
| Posted: 2014-10-29 07:25
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 18:52, Jim Starluck wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 10:31, DiepLuc wrote:
You may slow down the speed and raise up the signature of station missle a bit Jim. That allows player to dodge.
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Ah, but slower missiles also have more time to turn and aim at the target. It's easier for them to overshoot if they're faster.
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I feel confused here. If you can tweak velocity V (speed) and angular velocity W (turn rate), then radius should just be V/W.
Turn rate is a free variable here. Velocity depends on range and cooldown time (you don't want players to fire 5 missiles before their 1st one runs out of fuel). Diameter (2x radius) should be fitted to the minimum range of the missile (so dread strike missiles get radius 600/2 = 300) so they can hit stationary targets at minimum ranges when firing vertically. And this radius will probably be too large for hitting moving cruisers and even dreads, so work from there by fitting frigate missile turn radius to turn radius of a cruiser, and others can be fitted to dread turn radius.
Off the top of my head, cruiser turn radius is 20 * 57.3 / 16 = about 75 gu. Frigate Skirmish missiles having minimum firing range 150 would be hitting cruisers reliably at around 300-500 gu or so.
V, W, R, and maybe the frequency at which missiles update their turn rate in game. These parameters should govern everything from missiles to mines, so what am I missing here?
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2014-10-29 07:42
Quote:
On 2014-10-29 07:25, Forger of Destiny wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 18:52, Jim Starluck wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 10:31, DiepLuc wrote:
You may slow down the speed and raise up the signature of station missle a bit Jim. That allows player to dodge.
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Ah, but slower missiles also have more time to turn and aim at the target. It's easier for them to overshoot if they're faster.
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I feel confused here. If you can tweak velocity V (speed) and angular velocity W (turn rate), then radius should just be V/W.
Turn rate is a free variable here. Velocity depends on range and cooldown time (you don't want players to fire 5 missiles before their 1st one runs out of fuel). Diameter (2x radius) should be fitted to the minimum range of the missile (so dread strike missiles get radius 600/2 = 300) so they can hit stationary targets at minimum ranges when firing vertically. And this radius will probably be too large for hitting moving cruisers and even dreads, so work from there by fitting frigate missile turn radius to turn radius of a cruiser, and others can be fitted to dread turn radius.
Off the top of my head, cruiser turn radius is 20 * 57.3 / 16 = about 75 gu. Frigate Skirmish missiles having minimum firing range 150 would be hitting cruisers reliably at around 300-500 gu or so.
V, W, R, and maybe the frequency at which missiles update their turn rate in game. These parameters should govern everything from missiles to mines, so what am I missing here?
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Whatever it is, we're missing it to. Missiles should be able to hit on paper, but in practice they keep missing. It's been immensely frustrating.
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2014-10-29 08:09
Quote:
On 2014-10-29 07:25, Forger of Destiny wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 18:52, Jim Starluck wrote:
Quote:
On 2014-10-27 10:31, DiepLuc wrote:
You may slow down the speed and raise up the signature of station missle a bit Jim. That allows player to dodge.
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Ah, but slower missiles also have more time to turn and aim at the target. It's easier for them to overshoot if they're faster.
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I feel confused here. If you can tweak velocity V (speed) and angular velocity W (turn rate), then radius should just be V/W.
Turn rate is a free variable here. Velocity depends on range and cooldown time (you don't want players to fire 5 missiles before their 1st one runs out of fuel). Diameter (2x radius) should be fitted to the minimum range of the missile (so dread strike missiles get radius 600/2 = 300) so they can hit stationary targets at minimum ranges when firing vertically. And this radius will probably be too large for hitting moving cruisers and even dreads, so work from there by fitting frigate missile turn radius to turn radius of a cruiser, and others can be fitted to dread turn radius.
Off the top of my head, cruiser turn radius is 20 * 57.3 / 16 = about 75 gu. Frigate Skirmish missiles having minimum firing range 150 would be hitting cruisers reliably at around 300-500 gu or so.
V, W, R, and maybe the frequency at which missiles update their turn rate in game. These parameters should govern everything from missiles to mines, so what am I missing here?
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You haven't factored in update rates for missiles. You're acting like they can immediately turn whenever they require - they can't. They're limited to one update per second. This is sadly a world where we need to control the world simulation rates, and SmartNouns are extremely costly, which is why they're limited to one simulation per second.
In a twitch world, this can mean the difference between hitting a ship, and missing it completely.
We're looking into dice-roll based missiles so we can just apply a percentage hit rate, have other things effect that (how much PD is on active on the target, signature, etc), and make everyone much happier (including the server).
This would remove some of the cooless of missiles (being that you can intercept them, etc), but sometimes you have to trade-off with things like this (like in the case of planetary defences, which were using a ridiculous amount of CPU).
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Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse
Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
| Posted: 2014-10-29 09:18
So a solution would be for diceroll based missiles. Another would probably be increasing the sizes of cruisers themselves by 50% or so (5 gu radius becomes 7 gu). Another could be halving the missile launchers on ships to double update frequencies for missiles.
But are these solutions the only means of improvement?
Compare the missiles with other smartnouns - mines, bombs, transport pods (not including fighters here for contrast). Mines use their turn rates to the fullest in combat. They will hit a target at twice their turning radius all time, every time. If they miss (generally miss faster, smaller ships), they run perfect circles around the target. No cruiser can hope to dodge a dessie's mines that are fired beyond 200 gu. Their update frequency seems to be upwards of twice a second, and a minelayer destroyer drops 12 of them every, what, 15 seconds?
Bombs have >perfect< usage of turn rate. Careful observers will notice that bombs miss planetary targets by only a fraction of a GU due to planet rotation. Just about no destroyer going slower than 10 gu/s will escape the harmless MiRV granted the bomb doesn't run out of fuel. Update frequency seems equal, if not faster, than mines.
Transport pods always travel towards their target. Not much to comment, besides that their update frequency is probably 5x a second ^^.
I can only say, that whatever missiles are missing, are probably hidden in these. Mines especially seems to be of interest, as they resemble missiles closely.
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2014-10-29 09:57
Those all use the same code to track. The difference is missiles fly much, much faster, so travel further between updates. There is no special "trackMuchBetter()" function. It is literally just projectileSmart() true or false with just turnRate() and projectileAutoTarget() being active for that.
[ This Message was edited by: Pantheon on 2014-10-29 10:00 ]
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Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse
Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
| Posted: 2014-10-29 10:12
Then a good course of action would be to make mines and missiles complementary.
Mines do the work of chasing ships around and protecting gates and planets and etc. Maybe speed them up a bit (+5gu/s) and more ammo for popularity.
Missiles for long range sieging, intended for firing while facing at target. Ranges varying from 2kgu to 3.5 - 4 kgu as ship class changes from frigate to station. A bit higher damage on lower ship classes, much high speed, longer cooldown and less frequent updates (like once every 3 seconds). Something done about vertical firing so human ships actually hit anything without wasting 40% range on turning.
I don't know about missile performance in 704, but until 703 the roles of mines and missiles seem overlapping as two guided projectiles intended to chase moving targets.
Either that, or the dice roll implementation for missiles... (kind of funny to see dicerolls deciding damage at 2000 gu distance).
[ This Message was edited by: Forger of Destiny on 2014-10-29 10:14 ]
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Forging legends and lives outside till naught remains inside.
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DiepLuc
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 23, 2010
Posts: 1187
| Posted: 2014-10-29 11:42
Quote:
On 2014-10-29 08:09, Pantheon wrote:
We're looking into dice-roll based missiles so we can just apply a percentage hit rate, have other things effect that (how much PD is on active on the target, signature, etc), and make everyone much happier (including the server).
This would remove some of the cooless of missiles (being that you can intercept them, etc), but sometimes you have to trade-off with things like this (like in the case of planetary defences, which were using a ridiculous amount of CPU).
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In this case, you need to make missle lightning speed so it visually hits any target regardless of distance as long as the target is within missle range. This immediate compact removes the circumstance where player questions why their missles sometimes do no damage although they hit on screen.
Then, PD acts as a damage reduction percentage. Example:
5 missles total damage = 16356 + 23000 + 19578 + 17235 + 20001 = 96170 HP
5 PD reduction percentage: 4.0% + 5.1% + 4.6% + 6.0% + 5.3% = 25%
Real HP loss = 96170 * ( 100% - 25% ) = 72127.5 HP
The more PD, the less damage. PD device will have to be split like sensor device (local, narrowband, etc...) to make pd role more useful in DS.
For game diversity tasting, there might be 2 PD types: light PD 3.1->5.0% (cooldown = close-range missle recharge) and heavy PD 5.1->7.0% (cooldown = long-range missle recharge).
I think this solution is quite simple and acceptable for both players and developers. Some players will complaint about the 100% accuracy, adjusting missle damage and pd percentage reduction may solve that.
[ This Message was edited by: DiepLuc on 2014-10-29 11:46 ]
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Zero28
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006
Posts: 591
| Posted: 2014-10-29 14:14
If the update per second is truly a problem, then maybe having the missiles move so fast trought those updates and force em to make such a huge turn ( like firing from the top) is maybe not the best combo, even thou it look so cool
Considering the fact that the heavier missiles shouldn't hit faster target, maybe just having the heavier missile move slower to a point were much smaller ship outruns it (dreads vs destroyers) while the not soo smaller can just out turn and/or PD effectivly in time (Dread vs Cruisers)
I gonna put the idea of even removing tracking ability of the most damaging missiles, but allow them to move at a good speed towards target, kinda like sabot rockets are But still being able to get Pded
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mousey
Chief Marshal
Joined: July 21, 2004
Posts: 73
From: Singapore
| Posted: 2014-10-30 07:45
Some ppl are good in expressing their opinions, while others are not, some do say things tat are not good in their favours, without mentioning things that are in their favour, like for eg., a ganglia can kill a cruiser in salvo, 1 of each, assuming more?, & many more examples, like nightshade, etc. etc., like the hallbard.
So now what we use as icc?, some suggest railguns, wahahahahaha
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