Cruiser Command

Remaking/rebalancing stuff is fun! Let's do more of it!

Right now, BC combat is not really where I'd like it to be. A big part of this is shields. Raising shields prematurely is very important. Generally, if you lose your shields first, you die. Taking hull damage late game is horrible and there's no way to reset it. You're going down. We talked a lot in Skype and we want a more flexible shield.

Changes:
* Reduce shield per GW
* Increase shield regeneration per GW
* Remove emergency shield energizer
* Don't disable shields when they reach 0, just disable the regeneration for 5 seconds or so.
* Rework shield boost (lower cooldown so it can be used more than once per battle and make it more interesting)

Alright, I've run some quick numbers to get a quick idea of a few things. Out of the above changes Siretu has suggested, I'd like to suggest these following amendments:

• Reduce the effective cut on shields for the battlecruiser to approximately 0.5 seconds. After hitting the 0 threshold for hull, it will be very easy to continue knocking down shields most of the time due to the 'burst' nature of Penta. Even so, half a second of disabled shielding when constantly applied time and time again is very dangerous. It will encourage attempts at disengagement so as to build a decent degree of shields back up, which means more movement.

Now, what I'm about to list below is running under a few major assumptions:

• Small ships will contribute a lot in breaking an enemy battlecruiser's shields -- such would mean an effective increase in DPS that would not ultimately cost the battlecruiser much from the loss of a power docked ship. (Ignoring Ravens.)
• There will be a significant enhancement to the Weapons Console to the battlecruiser that will make it more interesting. Primarily, I believe this will entail giving it more 'effects' rather than simply 'click on the enemy BC to win' -- and I imagine some of those effects will be related to damage.

Running under those assumptions, here's some math on a more 'regeneration based' shielding for the battlecruiser.
A key note to make of this is that shields, in this particular case, is not designed to tank everything. Some damage is meant to get through unless you heavily increase shields -- however, by simply disengaging from combat for a short moment, you can get more out of your shields as they have a high regeneration rate.

The reason why 'sit down fights' occurred before was because disengaging the enemy was difficult and served no purpose other than to run. Baiting out high shields wasn't that huge of an issue since shield regeneration was slow compared to maximum shields -- it hurt, but it would also mean they got back into the fight with maximum shields while you, the disengaging party, didn't necessarily fully recharge. It only works out really well if you can get away for a long period of time such that the difference in shielding didn't matter as much due to a 'reset'.

In the case where the necessary time to reset is made shorter, baiting out high shields is actually far more effective. Since the recharge rate is far faster compared to the maximum shielding, it takes a lot less time for both parties to recharge to maximum shields after a disengagement -- meaning that the party that disengaged with fewer shields up will likely have spent less energy for the same result as the enemy, who will effectively be forced to start decreasing shielding due to the disengagement.

Before, you'd have a situation where both parties would be forced to heavily decrease shields, and upon the re-engagement ten or so seconds later the one who had more shields up will still be at an obvious advantage in terms of shields. In a system that relies on heavier shield regeneration and less maximum shields, it's far easier to reach your 'maximum value' more quickly and therefore put less of a benefit upon those high shields during the time in which you spent disengaged.

Idea to stir the pot: What if power to shields has a dual purpose of providing armor and hp?

For example, lets say that shields are down, but energy to shields is at 100 GW. What if that 100 GW somehow contributed to damage reduction during the fight with some kind of diminishing returns scale, like 100 GW of shields reduces 20% of damage, and 200 GW reduces 30%, and 300 GW reduces 35%?

bbot wrote:Idea to stir the pot: What if power to shields has a dual purpose of providing armor and hp?

For example, lets say that shields are down, but energy to shields is at 100 GW. What if that 100 GW somehow contributed to damage reduction during the fight with some kind of diminishing returns scale, like 100 GW of shields reduces 20% of damage, and 200 GW reduces 30%, and 300 GW reduces 35%?

I'm not sure I like it. Although I don't have a proper argument to explain my feelings.

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Shield changes have been mostly implemented in the beta (I'm going to publish it to beta in 5 minutes or so). It looks very promising and I cant wait for you guys to test it out and tell me what you think.

The way shields have been set have is very trying right now -- 10 shields per GW is far too low. One combination barrage of either Pentas and Broads will rip through even hundreds of it instantly, resulting in shield fluctuations.

WhyteDragon wrote:The way shields have been set have is very trying right now -- 10 shields per GW is far too low. One combination barrage of either Pentas and Broads will rip through even hundreds of it instantly, resulting in shield fluctuations.

Yeah, it seemed a bit small to me. It is the way you said though, right? "Shields per 5 GW: 10" means shields per GW is 10 / 5 = 2. I multiply the shieldpower by 2.

... oh wow. I did write that.

I am very sorry -- that was not my original intention. I don't know how it ended up like that, but I meant to put 20 per 5 GWs as a bare minimum.

... that's what I get for doing this late at night...

Fixing up the numbers and math as appropriate.

I modified it to 25 per 5 GW, because it makes for nicer numbers imo. It'll be published on NA beta in 5 minutes.

What about doing increments of power by 10GW instead of the normal 5GW, that way you can get what you want with power settings twice as fast and 10 is a nice number to work with
because usually when your under attack, and your trying to raise shields or engines it takes to long and the enemy tends to blow you up before you get to a nice number like 300-500GW in shields then use emergency sheilds and boost like normal to keep the sheilds up.

DinoChicken wrote:What about doing increments of power by 10GW instead of the normal 5GW, that way you can get what you want with power settings twice as fast and 10 is a nice number to work with
because usually when your under attack, and your trying to raise shields or engines it takes to long and the enemy tends to blow you up before you get to a nice number like 300-500GW in shields then use emergency sheilds and boost like normal to keep the sheilds up.

That, in part, is by design. It promotes foresight.