Posts by SWAT_OP-R8R

  • Capital Ship Rebalancing

    Quote from LancelotOnCrack

    I don't think it's 95% absorption, mate - 0:12

    You are right, it certainly does not look like an absorption at all, which is strange since in all my tests so far it was working.

    I might have found an explanation for that already.

    The shield capacity looks pretty high, higher than the ones in my tests. Tribbs might have a shield upgrade on that ship and I most certainly forgot to apply the absorption to these upgrades.

    I just patched it.


    Quote from LancelotOnCrack

    Seems the cap ships are a little more stable now, but VHFs colliding with them are now the ones spinning like crazy - 0:34 and 1:31.

    This could be a geometry issue with the ship surface of this specific ship. I think it is worth to test it again with a vanilla battleship.

  • Capital Ship Rebalancing

    ok, lets see where we get this now.

    I intend to release a first try to rebalance stuff about an hour.

    The changes have to be tested online and some feedback would be nice.



    So what has been changed?

    • Capital ship handling for dreadnaughts, battleships, cruisers/destroyers and gunboats has been recalculated with the goal to prevent that ships start spinning.
      The math behind it sounds reasonable but in the end only tests will show if it works.
    • Cruisers have their maneuverability improved to make them more distinct from battleships/dreadnaughts.
    • Engines of all the cap ship classes got their visuals improved.
    • Engine sound effects got adjusted by ship class and faction.
    • Cruise charge time for battleships and dreadnaughts got increased to 10 seconds to reflect the larger energy demands.
    • Cruise charge time for cruisers and destroyers got increased to 7 seconds (same reason).
    • 8 new cruise charge sounds got introduced.
    • 1 new engine type got added for the simple reason that it was missing (bretonia destroyer engine).
    • Cap ship weapons are now categorized into 5 new classes.
    • Cap ship shields are now categorized into 4 new classes.
    • Cap ship shields have a 95% absorption rate on all non-cap ship weapons. (this value might change depending on feedback).
    • Cap ship weapons remain at 100% damage dealt on fighter shields (this might change depending on feedback).
    • Irregularities on gunboat, destroyer and cruiser weapons got fixed.
    • Adv. Battleship turret was brought in line with the other battleship defense turrets.
    • Damage outputs and range of battleship turrets remain the same (waiting on feedback here).
    • Gunboat and Cruiser/Destroyer turrets remain at the same damage outputs but got their firing range improved.
    • Gunboat forward guns got their shield damage reduced by ~2/3 but their hull damage increased by ~10% (since shield capacities on capital ships are much lower than the hull the overall damage output remains the same).
    • Gunboat forward guns models got replaced.
    • Gunboat forward guns fire delay has been increased to 3 seconds, the damage values for hull and shields have been adjusted to fully compensate this change.
    • Cruiser/destroyer forward guns now have a fire delay of 5 seconds, the damage values for hull and shields have been adjusted to fully compensate this change.
    • Cruiser/destroyer forward guns shield damage has been reduced while the hull damage remains very high. The lower shield damage is compensated by a superior firing range for this ship class (and of course its higher maneuverability).
    • The suggestion to add thrusters to gunboats did not really please me since that would have made them more of a overpowered fighter/bomber. In my eyes capital ships should not use thrusters at all. However, I increased the normal engine speed of gunboats by 25% (based on feedback this value can be adjusted).


    Many changes based on a lot of strange math.

    I guess it is testing time.

  • Capital Ship Rebalancing

    This turns out to be extremely complicated especially since the numbers currently dont seem to be that much out of place.

    I had to simplify the calculation by putting up some inaccurate assumptions.

    e.g. I did the calculations for fighter damage based on a VHF with 6 PPCs. In reality the VHF only have 4 mk10 weapons and 2 mk9 weapons. But they also might have an additional turret and missiles. So for simplicity reasons I went with the assumption of 6 mk10 weapons (in this case PPC). I think this compensates the variation with turrets and missiles. The difference should at least not be significant.

    All my calculations ignore shield gating and are done under the assumption that there is no energy drain from the weapons. I also did not consider any mounted armor equipment or the fact that after 12 seconds shields would rebuild with 15% capacity)


    What I mean with "the numbers currently dont seem to be that much out of place" is that a VHF with 9700 hull and 11038 shield (this is a very likely scenario) is going to be destroyed while being under constant attack with 6 PPC in ~1.5 seconds. I verified this number in a test environment.

    This of course is based on the assumption that every shot hits.


    Now what is the situation with 6 PPCs vs Cap ships?

    I took into account the hitpoints aswell has the shields with non-stop fire.

    Assuming 0 damage reduction of the new shield modifiers a gunboat would survive 4,28 seconds, a cruiser 8,57 seconds, a battleship 25,8 seconds and a dreadnaught 31,43 seconds.

    The chart below shows how the numbers change if a certain % damage reduction is applied to the shields (hull damage remains the same).


    Screenshot 2021-02-24 105648.jpg


    Ignoring the damage reduction however, it means that a VHF by calculation will survive 1.5 seconds while a battleship at least makes it 25.8 seconds.

    By these numbers the current balancing does not even sound wrong.

    There is a fundamental difference between these ship classes that I can not simply measure and put into perspective.

    Ship size and agility.

    There are no numbers to really meaure that and that makes balancing everything super tricky.


    We have to apply subjective goals instead.

    Such as "how long do we want a battleship to endure when being attacked by a fighter?".

    5 minutes?

    10 minutes?


    If we assume 5 minutes to be a value to go for that would be 300 seconds.

    A 95% damage reduction would mean 243.35 seconds for a battleship under non-stop fire. But lets face it no fighter would non-stop attack without evading and/or reloading weapon energy.

    Let's assume a 95% damage reduction and we get into the area of having fights take 5-10mins. (I can only make rough estimates here.)


    Figther vs Fighter gameplay would remain untouched.

    Fighters vs capital ships would have significantly more difficulties.


    But we also need to consider what it looks the other way around. How fast can battleships in theory destroy fighters?

    Again, lets start with the numbers.

    The calculation is purely based on the turrets (the main weapons are excluded).

    The 4 gunship turrets can in theory destroy a VHF in 3.3 seconds.

    The 7 turrets of a cruiser require 1.8 - 5.7 for that job. (cruiser turret damage is highly inconsistent and needs to be rebalanced)

    8 Battleship turrets need ~1.25 seconds with the exception of the Rheinland turret which is much stronger but has a much shorter range.

    Not bad actually. (I have not even take a damage reduction into account)


    And now to the subjective part.

    With the exception of the gunboats the other cap ships are that big that you will never get the chance to point all the turrets at your target.

    Some turrets are on the left side.... some on the right side... some on the bottom... some on the top and in the end there always is a big ship hull between them.

    In theory you can double or tribble the numbers for battleships and cruisers above.

    The question is if it matters at all since cap ships are not meant to destroy fighters with ease. Maybe these numbers are exactly where they belong to.

    By increasing the survivability of cap ships we would also increase the time they have to take care of attacking fighters.

    Maybe that already is enough.


    Of course the inconsistent cruiser turrets have to be balanced.



    Once the balance between the different ship classes is sorted out it would also be required to figure out the number for cap ship vs cap ship combat. I guess specifically the primary cap ships weapons will play a very big role there. But I did not do any calculations here yet because first the balancing between cap ships and fighters need to be done in a meaningful way.

  • Capital Ship Rebalancing

    this topic is going to get a bit more complicated

    finished the calculations based on the current numbers


    bsrebalance.html


    as reference for balancing we need to take values from fighters


    for shields this would be: Adv. Champion H. F. Shield

    capacity = 11038

    regen = 245

    offline_threshold = 0.150000

    shield_type = S_Graviton01

    -> 11038*(1-0.150000) = 9382,3 = total shield capacity


    and a mk10 weapon lets say.... a PPC (i guess it fits into the average top tier range)

    hull_damage = 977.100006

    energy_damage = 100

    refire_delay = 0.330000

    ->DPS-Hull = 977.100006/0.330000 = 2960,91

    ->DPS-Shield = ((977.100006/2)+100)/0.330000 = 1783,48


    based on these numbers we will have to find a meaningful balance


    I tested the different shield classes and the damage reduction and it seems to work as intended.

    Now its only a totally messed up balancing process.


    A VHF with 6 PPCs would do 17765,46 damage to hull and 10700,88 damage to shields.

    A Dreadnaught has 450000 hull and 63750 shields. Without damage reduction from the new shield types the shields would be down in 6 seconds, the hull in another 25 seconds. A 50% shield modifier would in this case only make the fight 6 seconds longer.

    A 90% damage reduction on cap ship shields would increase the time required to take out a battleship shield to 60 seconds or even longer due to the regeneration rate.


    A vhf with ~10000 hull and 10000 shield would explode after a little more than 2 seconds after being hit with 4 PPCs (confirmed by tests).

    The benefit of a vhf.... it moves fast and wont get hit as much as a capital ship.

    Balancing is really going to be tricky.

    By raw numbers most cap ships are not even in a bad spot compared to fighters... its about the subjective component of getting hit vs not getting hit.

    I think to balance it we would first need to figure out how long do we want cap ships to last under direct fire. How long does a normal fighter pvp take?

    Based on such a timeframe it would be possible to balance the cap ship damage input... and then from that point take care of the damage output on fighters.

  • Capital Ship Rebalancing

    Quote from GodEatGod

    How about add hull dmg reduction

    that is not possible


    Quote from GodEatGod

    Would you like a more direct suggestion approach OP, or having a post like this helps you figure out how to balance/buff things?

    I already started gathering numbers by ship category have applied a few changes based on the suggestions.

    Nothing is final yet since I did not take the DPS numbers into account so far.


    What I have implemented are the new weapon ranges and damage reductions by shields.

    I currently run with a 50% damage reduction. This is not a final number but significant enough for conclusive tests.

    The way I have set it up makes it possible to balance based on weapon type and also based on the ship class.

    There are 4 new shield categories (battleship, cruiser, gunboat, utility) and so far 5 weapon categories (battleship turrets, Cruiser forward guns, cruiser turrets, gunboat forward guns and gunboat turrets). Cap ships deal normal damage against other cap ships but 50% reduced damage against fighters. Fighters deal normal damage against other fighters (depending on the shield class) and 50% reduced damage against Cap ships.

    I can do a rough calculation which numbers would work best but in the end some tests will have to be done online.


    This weapon shield balancing has to be extended when the Blackstar update will be released because of the new fleet.


    Battleship turret ranges have not been altered yet. Its a range between 800m and 2700m depending on fire rate and damage output.

    Cruiser/Destroyer forward guns have a new range of 4000m

    Gunboat forward guns 2500m (due to higher maneuverability)

    Cruiser turrets are set to 2000m

    Gunboat turrets to 1500m


    Maybe these numbers will have to change due to the DPS calculations.