Capital Ship Rebalancing

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

cruisers forward guns = 4000

gunboat forward guns = 2500

cruiser turrets = 2000

gunboat turrets = 1500

battleship weapons remained unchanged (a range of 800-2700 depending on the turret)

explanation about the ranges:

in case of cruiser forward gun the value 4000 is correct and also is correctly done in the game

it is based on the lifetime of the projectile (4 seconds) and its velocity (1000m) -> 4000 range

The projectile really travels 4000m.

The differences you see is based on the location of the turrets in relation to the HpMount (the docking point) of the ship firing aswell as the difference between impact point and its distance to the HpMount of the attacked ship.

On a small fighter this difference is minimal and might only result in a difference of 1-2m. On large ships this difference can become much bigger because the ships are bigger and the distance between turrets and HpMount is bigger.

The firing point for liberty cruisers forward gun is about in the center of the ship while the HpMount is at the "nose tip" of the ship (for the reason to get mooring done right)

However the true projetile range really is 4000m for these forward guns.

You compare this with the distance measurement of bigger station. If you get really close to the hull you effectively have reached it but the distance will still show 50-100m. That is the distance to the HpMount of the station.

Yes, gunboat forward guns are shield breakers. That is the purpose of these ships.

Cruisers and destroyers are most effective against hull.

Battleships are allrounders.

Taking the calculation as they are for the gunboat foward guns:

hull_damage = 15000

energy_damage = 60210

refire_delay = 3

Shield damage per second = ((hull_damage/2)+energy_damage)/refire_delay = 22570.

But I see your point... the burst damage is damn high. Maybe too high.

2 gunsx((hull_damage/2)+energy_damage)=135420

The default shield capacity of a battleship is only 63000.

The fact that the DPS is lower than the burst damage could be problematic. Dunno.

yes, bombers will be done for sure

but we need to get the balancing for cap ships right now

I have many open questions atm. e.g. the gunboat issue that you just mentioned or the different damage reductions for cruiser and gunboats due to your test against ancients. I am still not sure what the final numbers would have to look like.

Ill try to calculate the shield resist values for gunboats and cruisers similar to the one for battleships.

Of course these ship types need to be weaker than battleships.... so... dunno yet.

The high shield damage of gunboats generally is intended but the burst damage is too high. I think the only way to get around this would be turn these weapons into fast firing beam weapons instead. Need to test that.

I added this to my test environment yesterday and its looking pretty good on cap ships but I ran into some issues with the functionality. Need to figure out if there are settings that allow me to use it the way I want.

This might be a potential solution to defend battleships can cruisers from fighters.

If its not working I might tweek the flak turrets instead.

The spinning issue probably never gets fixed entirely due to the way how the game engine works.

All I was able to do is to minize the effect.

And regarding the buffs (dunno which exactly you mean)... it is not intended to make cap ships overpowered or allow them to easily kill fighters (that simply is not their job).

I just released the next update with the following changes:

• projectile speed of cruiser turrets increased by 50%; turret range remains at the previously mentioned values
• projectile speed of battleship defense turretes increased by 50%; turret range increased by 50% aswell
• rotation speed doubled for: battleship defense turrets, cruiser turrets, flak turrets
• shield damage reduction for cruisers increased to 85%
• shield damage reduction for gunboats increased to 90%
• gunboat forward weapons were changed from 3 second fire delay to 0.2 second (turning the weapon into a rapid fire one and therefore avoid the burst damage problem)
• hull damage of gunboat forward weapons were adjusted to this fire rate in order to keep exactly the same hull DPS as before
• shield damage of gunboat forward weapons got their DPS decreased a bit (this might be reverted again if tests show problems)
• 5 of the 6 Flak turrets got their shield damage increased (up to 300%) to bring them closer to a somewhat more equal total damage rate

The changes to projectile speeds and turret turn rates might help to defend against smaller ships. Gunboats did not receive these changes due to their forward firing nature.

oh, i might need to mention that the changes to the gunboat forward gun have not been tested in any way. dunno how it looks, if it works etc.

did not have any time for such tests and fine tuning

like i said, fine tuning still needs to be done

Based on the feedback so far the rebalancing is going into the right direction and the assumed issues with NPC difficulty might not be such a big issue.

Therefore I will take care of the reported detail issues with the weapons and their effects.

Probably this weekend a fix can be expected.

The issue with the new missile launch pods remain. As a result I decided to maybe turn it into a side mounted launcher for batlteships and dreadnaughts. Some minor redesign might be requird.

If that fails I have another option and was working on default style missile pod that is based on a more traditional design.

mpod2.jpg

Tests will show which one to take.

Intoduction and tests can be done maybe Eastern.

One topic left open is the balancing inner core cap ships relative to player fighters and player cap ships.

But i am sure I can figure that out in the next 2 weeks somehow.