Warning -- this is probably more like a rant than anything. It is a collection of observations regarding the balance and direction of things more than anything.
Corinthian wrote:Velocity & Range
My suggestions for increased range and decreased velocity, are to provide an Artillery-Element to the game. It is true that not all missiles need this increased range, but the Sabre and Hellfire require it.
I think the most major question we need to return to when looking at this is 'do we want battlecruiser fights to be performed at extensive distances.' On one hand, I can appreciate the art of it in that you often require a small ship scout in order to obtain data on the opposing cruiser, or you have to rely upon ping information to make a strike, but soon enough it becomes to seem like a trade of blows from the shadows to me. I personally view fights like that to be more 'pot shots,' attempts to throw the other team off balance, rather than an actual 'killing method.' And, to be honest, that feels appropriate to me. By forcing the majority of a battlecruiser's weapon capabilities to be most effective a close range, you are forcing the player to close the distance in order to go for a decisive killing blow rather than being able to consistently aim for a large distance to destroy an enemy cruiser. While I understand that simply boosting missile range will not necessarily allow that, it starts to push the game in such a direction where it becomes more and more plausible to perform -- that is what worries me.
Corinthian wrote:While thinking about this, it should also be noted, that while effective, fast missile reloading is not fun to perform. It is only utilized when you are so far behind that there is nothing else for you to do. Typically you will have no small ships, nor any laser upgrades. It is not fun because of the time it takes to set up, the mess that is made of the bottom floor, and because the missile reloader will never see the battle. For these reason, in addition to the cap being placed on Piranha manufacture, I do not believe suggestions B and D will lead to off-screen fast-reloading exploitation.
I can agree with this. Even though exploitable, it often is not due to the inherent difficulty, coordination, and tedious nature of the task. At the same time, I feel like it often overlooked
because there are other tactics available, even if they are inferior. It is often a 'last resort.' But I still feel as if it should be appropriate addressed as it is still an issue.
Corinthian wrote:The decreased missile velocity is so that missiles, when used as artillery, punish stationary BattleCruisers, but are mostly wasted against more roving behavior. This increases the cooperation required for both the offensive and defensive crews.
While I can get behind the logic fully, I have to wonder how difficult it would be to hit a moving battlecruiser with missiles
already. It's a given that a battlecruiser that's not moving will be hit, but I honestly don't see many battlecruisers moving at less than 100GW when being directly attacked -- probably at least 200 -- and given that case, I would have to ask just how thouroughly this concept has really been looked into during play. Is it really
that easy for navigation, who has no unlockable camera, to coordinate with the weapons console to make a hit against the opposing BC that is well out of sight range? If it is, then by all means the change may be in order, but I have to wonder if this is a concept that has emerged based on theory is all, as I have seldom (if ever) seen it actually occur.
Corinthian wrote:The increased range is because missiles actually do not travel all that far. The last time I looked at this was before my work on GW-Distances, so many many patches ago, and I did not have a distance metric yet. My conclusion at the time, however, was that the ranges of all missiles except the Predator and Merculite were so minor, and the chance of asteroid impact so high, that they should never be used off-screen.
Based on the missile charts and what you suggested for range changes, I can fully agree to this overall. Especially given a chase situation.
Corinthian wrote:Phasing
Siretu, you are correct that missiles are infrequently used compared to other weapon types. Currently missiles need to be used within sight range, to be time and resource efficient. Their cost, mainly time to load, is so high that it is a waste to fire them if you are unsure of a hit. Missile centric tactics are the rarest of end game strategies. Ionic Corvette, Artillery Destroyer, Infiltration C-4, and Iron-Curtain Ramming are all way more common. Phasing-Technology will help make missile more viable.
Here is my take on it -- there will seldom be scenarios in which two battlecruisers are fighting and there will not be a clear path between them. The main reason being that if neither are moving, and are freely firing at one another, then clearly there must be an open path for laser fire. If either is moving, the only scenario in which asteroids would block fire is if the enemy cruiser quickly fled behind an asteroid field - but that would block fire, meaning the battlecruiser would have to move to make contact anyways. The only other scenario I see asteroids acting as a blocker would be out of combat or just before the initiation of, which would likely mean 'sniping.'
In short, this would primarily be used 'out of engagement' - frankly, that could be expected given that no other methods of attack other than small ships would normally be able to bypass an asteroid field and attack the battlecruiser. However, this again refers back to the 'artillery' concept. You are creating a method of barraging the opposing cruiser from a long distance using powerful missiles. In one sense, I can find this to be clever -- it forces the opposing team to be wary of an enemy cruiser even at a long distance, making sure they are being wary of potential harassment. On the other, it also brings up concerns regarding burst and chipping damage. Very quickly, your excess materials become a method of dealing large amounts of additional damage to an enemy cruiser that is well out of sight, regardless of obstacles.
The results I see from promoting the usage of long range attacks is a game of mental warfare. Right now, it is commonly accepted that an 'object' will have to approach your enemy battlecruiser before making an attack, and there are often ways of going about figuring such things out. Even through the use of a frequency nullifier, you can observe a corvette approaching your battlecruiser visibily - even failing that you don't catch it until the last moment, you can often react to it. Even given a battlecruiser that suddenly bursts across the map attacks you, at the very least it creates a situation where there is a heavy drain on energy, and given preparation due to the distance you can properly react to the attack a large portion of the time. It is an issue with
burst damage at such a range. This method, however, the only prior indication of attack would be the 'bubble' around the battlecrusier of which you can judge to be 'missile range.' There is no real way to 'understand' that such an attack may occur, and the potential of such attacks can without doubt be rather devastating -- by example, the usage of six hellfire missiles on an unaware crew could potentially kill everybody on board immediately, making way for an attack on a defenseless battlecruiser. This means that you would create a situation where you would either expect high shields at all times from a team in order to counter the potential of such attacks. However, these concerns would primarily be voiced during the late game in which resources could readily be expended at will in order to make such attacks. However, I would quickly draw you back to the tournament as a warning as to how the potential of missiles should not be underestimated. That mistake was readily made with Scorpion Missiles, leading to an absurdly abusable mechanic that was truly considered overpowered.
I like missiles -- they're a nice way to create a combat advantage through the usage of a variety of materials. And that's how I like them -
a bonus. I am extremely wary about making them a full method of combat.
Corinthian wrote:Jackal Bays
There are many reasons that these would increase the skill requirement of combat, and so would further differentiate skill levels. They also make sense. Military vessels should have defensive counter-measures to dissuade continued assault.
a) Chases would become more dynamic, with chased more quickly gaining the opportunity to becoming the chaser.
b) The cooperation needed between Defending Navigator & Weapons Officer would increase.
c) The Attacking Navigator, in conjunction with the Weapon Officer, and Engineer, would need to balance the cost-benefit of direct following, to a back-and-to-the-side chasing position.
d) Often the Rabbit has lower energy. So weapon firing is limited. This upgrade provides a reason to keep the weapon station maned instead of having another person running repair duty.
I would first like to point out the potential opportunity for a chased person to already fire missiles at a chaser --
Inertial Nullifier. By quickly turning around and spamming your missiles, you are capable of unleashing a six missile salvo upon a chasing enemy at the cost of a decrease in speed and energy, given a single upgrade of inertial stabilizers was already in place. The comparative cost would be an upgrade in order to do so fluently in combat.
Moving along, I see jackal bays as a trick that forces a fleeing party to maintain a particular course if they so choose to retaliate -- and that means it often becomes simpler for the chasing party to maintain a course to follow, allowing them to appropriate retaliate with missiles as well. That does not necessarily mean I feel it is balanced, however -- it is all too simple to simply fire a wasp missile backwards, creating a 'mine' due to velocity difference that will almost inevitably strike the opposing party. Why? Because unlike the fleeing party, the chasing party has a set target - the fleeing battlecruiser. Alternately, the ability to consistently lay a field of Piranha Missiles behind you as your run, a
free missile, also begins to feel rather absurd. I would begin to question the plausibility of such a chase where the enemy team can simply lay down a relatively consistent field of 100/100 missiles that will either force the opposing team to expend large amounts of shields or divert course -- both of which are
heavy consumptions of energy that cannot be exacted in the exact same method by the chasing team since the fleeing team does not have a target course they
must abide to in order to achieve they goal. It is because of this simple concept that I begin to question the balance of such an upgrade where being in the fleeing position is actually
advantageous.
Corinthian wrote:Battle-Cruiser Size
Also, slightly tangential to the topic of Missiles. The size of the BattleCruiser is still ridiculous. There use to be so much more space on the screen for BattleCruiser vs BattleCruiser interactions. The battles use to be way more epic. Both ships could be on the screen with ample visual area to plot, and change, engagement vectors.
Steerage was so much more interesting. Now, with the increased size of the Battle-Cruiser, it seems that some of the more skillful navigation tricks have been lost. I know the size is more in accord with the size of the launched ships, but I do not think it was worth the price.
Returning the BattleCruiser back to its original size will benefit numerous game elements.
These include:
a) Increased skill requirement for firing Broadsides, and the other weapon types.
b) Fewer AI-Miner Battle-Cruiser entrapments.
c) Increase tactical requirements of engagements. From small ship positioning, to asteroid flying, to the more esoteric understanding of camera tilt and its effect on linear line distortion along the 45 degree axes.
d) Currently there is a problem with rushes disabling, and then killing a Battle-Cruiser outright. This is due to many factors, but a decent mitigation would be a decreased cruiser size.
There is a side of the argument that demands the current battlecruiser size in order to maintain a proper aspect ratio of ships. This creates a situation where the battlecruiser is easier to hit, meaning that skill shots become much lessmeaningful when dealing in battlecruiser on battlecruiser fights.
Alternately, if we want to keep the aspect ratio we would have to return the battlecruiser to it's original size and reduce the size of all
small ships. This means that object interaction at that level would become far more difficult due to the perspective in mind, making hitting objects more difficult both on terms of ramming and shooting.
The reason for all of these issues are because only the battlecruiser's size was scaled rather than the entirety of it. In order to maintain the same mechanics, you would have to also scale projectile speed, movement speed, and so on. Is this necessarily a bad idea? No, but it's a butt-ton of work, so that isn't quite ideal either.
No matter how this is proceeded with, it's going to be an issue one way or another. Scaling is an annoying issue simply because of the number of aspects that need alteration. Yeah, it can be done, but it is not in any way a pretty job.