CF Balance

There are 40 replies in this Thread. The last Post () by Salim.

  • Once again it appears like the release of CF 1.8 is near. So before it is too late I want to report some of the current problems in the CF Balance. I am sure that everything I write is a little subjective as I hate missiles and love guns, but im also sure that there are big parts that carry the truth.


    Also I do not know in how far CF 1.8 will change the Balance but I prepared some ideas about how to make some changes.


    Maybe there are some things to add that I forgot, so feel free to add them. Also feel free to discuss this matter.




    Here is once again the current metagame:


    Lagg
    Paralyzer - takes down 90% of a shield
    Nemesis - 10% of the hull
    Cataclysm - 10% of the hull
    3 Guns - hardly any hits. One hit with 3 guns would be ~7.5% of the hull
    2 CDs - used for finishing off low targets - often shot together instead of saving up some for more damage
    Dual mines
    CM


    I wrote this because im not sure if OP knows about it, tbh the last time I saw him online he was flying the Shroud and that was at least one year ago.




    And now here goes the List of problems like I see it.


    Ships:
    The Lagg is overpowered
    The Lagg is used by about 90% of the people on the server. It is small and extremely hard to hit. It outturns every other ship. The speed of the ship and the resulting distances between ships in fights are very high.
    -->make more Ships turn almost at the same speed, only small differences overall


    Guns:
    Completely out of the metagame. They are not at all neccessary to win a fight. If you use them youll face problems like the different projectils speeds, the lagg that can evade everything and a way to high power drain when you use 6 guns. Paralizer missiles are a big problem for the energy bar. PvP with guns only needs ~20minutes.
    In fact it is not really possible to get a ships hull down guns only without toilet breaks. If you ask me the shield is no problem at all, thats why people would propably use missiles for the Hull no matter what currently.
    -->make ships easier to hit (bigger models are not possible i guess so: higher projectile speeds, same projectile speeds)
    -->make guns less/independant from the energy bar


    Missiles:
    Completely overpowered. Allow you to eveade gunfire cause dropping missiles will only take seconds. Minimal risk of getting a backfire, as ships are fast and hornetts have to move over a big distance. 50 missiles are way to much for a usual fight, spamming them is supported, tactical use isnt. You can afford to have a hit ratio of about 10% which is ridicolous in my oppinion.
    -->restrict the amount of ammo
    -->make missiles dependant from (a slow regenerating) energy bar
    -->restrict missiles per ship to less than 3
    -->make CDs regenerate? would result in more spamming though


    Torpedos:
    Well balanced, high risk of backfires, timing has to be good. No real homing like the missiles do, more tactic required. Average damage to the hull and the shields.
    50 units of ammo is fine as thats needed for NPCs and BSs
    -->maybe increase the time delay between the shots. less spamming


    Mines:
    Fell out of meta too. Explode to often near your ship while launching them.
    Also its said they cause lag, using them is like using bots and bats to some people.


    Armor vs. Weight reduction kit:
    Currently all players use the Armor. WRK does not fit on lags and the changes it causes are not significant as missiles will still track. No real disadvantages, the weight of the armor does not really restrain the lagg
    -->idea is cool. maybe make the changes more extreme, only mountable on high armored ships to have a wider spectrum of ships used


    (This is of course mainly an open letter to OP. Still Id like to hear oppinions)

  • Btw I still have 1 oppinion. When you have 50 missiles you have the same weight as you need to do. When you left with less missiles, the weight is not changing, you still have the same weight. I belive in 1.8 it would be good at least 30 Missiles for a good fights^^

  • considering the fact that missiles don't track too often nowadays its much more harder for me to hit someone


    other than that I agree hitting Lagg with guns is very very hard especially when you fight people who think PvP is evading, shooting 1 salv every 5 minutes and spamming CDs


    but I do not think using an energy bar to prevent people from spamming missiles is necessary afaik in 1.8 the missile "cooldown" will be 4 seconds instead of 2 seconds (?)



    Fleet Captain Spiky / WL

  • Quote

    Originally posted by Spiky-
    but I do not think using an energy bar to prevent people from spamming missiles is necessary afaik in 1.8 the missile "cooldown" will be 4 seconds instead of 2 seconds (?)


    Yay more evading, longer fights. If spamming missiles wasnt necessary to win a fight, you could use them only when a hit is sure. With my Torpedos i could increase the hit ratio to about 3/4. Its just that i fired only 40 in all those fights up in Sovietskaya...

  • Missles are slow and easily evadable. Even flying towards them sometimes causes them to miss haha.


    Black if you have a problem with hitting with your guns, then that's poor aiming.
    The game compensates in terms of weapons' speed differences. I use tizonas and DKAs. No hitting difficulties whatsoever. No jumping targeting crosshair.
    Spamming your missles faster helps the fights not last 2 hours.
    More CDs = "i take ur shieldz doun and spamm CDz at u untilll ur ded muwhahahahaha". No thanks it's already lame enough cause most people do more damage with their CDs than their missles.



    100% Armor is the equivilent of 2 health bars, no ?

    Guns rely on ammo, energy bar's that ammo. If you don't want ammo why not just make them insta gibs: [78] that'd be more boring then missles.


    Missles have a limited number of shots meaning you run out of those, a gunner will shred you to pieces.


    Guns are good enough as they are. That's my oppinion.


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  • yep guns are not the problem at all, its the shields which regenerates too fast... afaik in CF 1.0 - 1.5 or whatever number the first ones had there was only the armor upgrade and people died a lot faster back then



    Fleet Captain Spiky / WL

  • I agree with Black. To continue to enjoy PvP I have completely switched over to use of capital ships. All my other chars are a variety of VHFs that only fight NPCs (if it can be helped, at least). It's true that guns-only can still work if one's marksmanship is extraordinary, but I whenever I fly a fighter that isn't a lagg - lining up the guns is pretty much impossible to do without the target already turned to face me and firing a missile salvo - needless to say, the opponent will inflict several times as much damage if I don't break off (in which case I'm being chased by a more agile, heavily-armed fighter).


    In terms of weaponry there is often a balance between firepower, defenses, and speed. For VHFs to be balanced, if a ship class has exceptional ability in one area it must be lacking in another. It's only an idea, really, but I do think fighters would be much better balanced if there were tradeoffs between agility, number of weapon slots, and hull + max shield class. People flocking to a single ship class indicates imbalance. CF has dozens and dozens of marvelous VHFs, and yet most are relatively useless for PvP right now. x.x

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  • So the Lagg gets nerfed ? Im sure SFP would be very happy with that.......


    Guns can knock down shields just fine with 2 tizonas and 4 ppcs.


    If people want to nerf the missiles then it is only fair to limit the amount of ammo guns have.
    Missiles have certain advantages for high damage ( when they can actually lock on). Guns have certain advantages for unlimited ammo.


    I mean no disrepect to anyone but how many times must we have the same tired-out discussion? These kind of threads get very old :(

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  • 1. the shields are hard enough to hit


    2. face it, you will enver be able to survive 50 shots and guess what, i do not want to wait 15minutes untill you guys are done with shooting missiles before i can spend another 20 mil with trying to bring your hull down. evading missiles works only when the missiles are timed bad.


    3. i dont care if SFP will be happy or not, all im saying is that the current balance is boring, everyone has to use the same to deal some damage and not getting killed. Also the lagg is by far not the only advantage of sov.


    4. I know that i start these discussions every once and a while. But the balance does not change and appearently not to many people care about it. Telling that guns are not the problem is nothing but a lie from my point of view. If your opponent is using guns and does not hit your missiles with a lucky shot of his cd your on godmode. Espechially because all you do is evading.

  • agreed


    we have had enough of those threads, changes will come with 1.8 let´s just wait for them.


    burro
    i even remember about upcoming new shield revisions :}


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  • I just remembered, if you want to nerf missles, fix the countermeasures. "90% efficency" is kinda like saying that the Earth is flat and that everything revolves around us. I had a pitstop on 2 different servers and there the countermeasures just take missles away from your ass. 1 CM and that's it you're home safe so long as you don't fly straight towards the missle. Here you can spam 50 CMs without any effect. I'd say they're more like 40-50% effective rather than 80-90%. If it were 90, every 1st-2nd CM must take away missles from you, but it ain't happening.


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  • I agree to most of Blacks marks. The ships needs more balance to each other - or worst balance so one ship has advantages in attacks and the next more advantages in defence - so both ships would be balanced. I really have to admit that the Lagg is overpowered. I think meanwhile we have more than 90% in massive fights almost up to 98% Lagg users with nearly the same equipments. It not in the interest of the mod that everyone flies the same ship. There are dozen of others ships around that no one flies cause he would not have any advantages.


    I can remember fights where the fight was canceled because the fighters run out of missiles and evaded every gun fire. Its like throwing around with cotton balls.


    I know that OP will change the missiles performance with CF 1.8 but i think we also need to see what can be changed on the other guns. Would be nice to encourage some people to work on balanced stats. Because i mainly think this discussion is nearly to late and when changing all this we have further delay on the delivery for cf 1.8.
    Maybe this should be part of the beta phase for testing... So would be nice if some good fighters could spend their attention to this.


    I hope would allow to have a look at this. It would increase the overall situation in game a lot. For my understanding its worth to have a look.


    Huor

  • One of the main advantage (other then the turn rare) of the lagg is that it can take missiles from the front and not take any or very little damage. If that only fact was fixed, I'm sure the lagg would loose most of its advantage. The better turn rate is relatively well balanced by the fact that the lagg has low armour.


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  • Hello cough...Black... Pee-rat!


    Quote

    Lagg Paralyzer - takes down 90% of a shield Nemesis - 10% of the hull Cataclysm - 10% of the hull 3 Guns - hardly any hits. One hit with 3 guns would be ~7.5% of the hull 2 CDs - used for finishing off low targets - often shot together instead of saving up some for more damage Dual mines CM


    I disagree, what are you talking about.


    90% of shields, when, where(even with skill sub-targeting this is not possible) and this depends of many things in different situation, with different, ships and blah, blah.


    For some guns only higher cadence of fire.But little bit.
    Again,this fine tune require updates, toward Aces opinion about efficiency!team work!


    And you must chose, guns or missiles!And when to use!Yes money is the problem, but think about young players in PvP, for example.Start trade, and start RP, Tax ppl!


    About Lagg, simple yes, we must have more balanced ships, in the game.But i use Predator and Shroud atm. and three Laggs.
    Imo we don't need thousand of non useful ships.


    I play many games and this game(mod) is very balanced, need some correction but very good.
    Personally i like more exploring games, with finding rarely equipment in secret and well guarded places(equipment from parts, also), instead buying all.Team work against NPC for example.
    But OP know very well, what this can mean for game play.


    I have more then 1000 hours on line(in this game) for about three months(freelancer +SFP)more then 1500 PVP and i know some things about fighting.
    Need more time for training, but PvP is not my mission in this game at this moment, i like RP and friendship and this is where I found some kindred spirits
    When you see me as I train in the Colosseum and the Cube arena, fear me!


    And why lose time with you Pee-rats,in chat, after all.
    Look for me, and fight me!


    p.s.
    @OP
    can we participate in ur efforts (imagine 1 euro/per month from every player, or even better 5e/per one year ) ;)

  • Funny thing, when I first started playing here, everyone told me I was an idiot for flying a Lagg (not enough this's and thats)....then I started learning to fly and did well in that ship...somehow everyone decided my strategy didn't suck so much after all!!! Btw...I have seen other pilots, such as Myric pick the less used ships and learn to be very interesting and skillful pilots in many ships. Personally I like another ship...however the bugs seem to never get fixed on it so ......I do like the turn rate on Lagg.....but I like other ships as well and if Lagg get's "disabled" and others don't get fixed.....well thats a shame.

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  • Interesting discussion - and I will give my opinion as a non-playing member of CF at the moment - but still a member of this community.


    I would like to see that clans use the ships in their own systems as far as possible -


    I think it would be neat if, for example, clan members from system X proudly flew ships from that system and so forth - recognising that would not always be possible.


    I vaguely remember hearing about a programme that calculates all the ships variables to ensure advantages in one place is taken account of somewhere else.


    OP also said once people have forgotten to fly the other ships which is why the lagg is so popular now -


    Why oh why oh why in a mod with so many beautiful ships so many people use one?


    It's a shame!!


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  • Off Topic: Comically most of you think SFP rented Sovetskaya so we can control the Lagg. That is probably the last item on the list. As my members will tell you, we have other reasons due to some real foresight by two of us^^ "All ya'll" will find out in 1.8 muwahahaha.


    Sometimes it pays to actually read descriptions of equipment / ships / weapons and commodities and more so, pay attention to what those descriptions say^^

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  • I think theres one thing thats always overlooked....


    Theres no weight in space, lol. its a wieghtless environment. so, i think relying on weight to be a major part of game for balancing issues seems rather wierd to say the least. [8]


    personally, i think Shield typeis the answer.


    Usable other types of shields!!!!! i cant stress this enough, it would be the single most important thing to add variety to this mod.


    i.e. not just everyone using the CHAMP 10 sheild, maybe we should have an equivalent in the other 2 types of sheild too (brigante/barrier, etc...)!!! just imagine what it would be like to not know many many gun hit you need to land before you can fire a missile to blow your opponent up. it makes it much more exciting.


    Battles will be more dependant on your setup, and not on missile timings.


    also would be good if there was a particular sheild thats strong against missiles but weaker against guns. a new sheild type maybe. i think this combined with the fact we have anti-sheild guns will produce some interesting possibilities. also, maybe anti-sheild guns that are good against specific sheild types, just to make even more interesting :)