The Custom Weapon Balance Thread

Anarki · Post by **Anarki** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:14 pm

Alright.

What seperates the War Clockwork IV from something like... a ship with custom weapons?

Custom weapons.

A custom weapon on one ship might have an obscenely high DPS compared to a blaster.

This thread is dedicated to find a way to give custom weapons point rankings compared to their original, in a universal formula. (Ex. Blaster is 1 point, while an Autoblaster might be roughly 2.4 points)

So, any idea's how this might be achieved?

I was thinking of simply checking DPS and range/hp/deviation ratio's or something.

If we actually come up with a formula, we could create a little program which will allow custom weapons to be ranked with ease.

Satanic Mechanic · Post by **Satanic Mechanic** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:03 pm

The speed of a ship they are mounted on, especially in regards to the range of a weapon, a slow ship with a short range loadout is going to be much less effective than a fast ship with exactly the same weapons loadout. You should see the calculations for battle value in battletech, especially with force ratios, it gets insane, because they've tried to account for everything.

But good luck anyway

Anarki · Post by **Anarki** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:34 pm

This thread was more aimed towards trying to give ratings to the actual individual weapons themselves, regardless of what ship it was mounted on.

Ixranin · Post by **Ixranin** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:23 pm

Would probably need to make different formulas for different weapons, which would make things tough. I'm not sure where you'd begin.

Anarki · Post by **Anarki** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:43 pm

I mentioned a while ago for the point tournaments that each statistic has a %, and that you could shift % from one stat to another. To get additional % from nowhere, you could pay points.

You could possibly base something off that - also, it would have the advantage of being able to be used in tournaments.

Imagine some of the weapons on the forums... if we get something working, they might have point rankings of 1000+... >.>

The Boz · Post by **The Boz** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:48 pm

You can't really grade weapons like that.
How would you rate a Blast Cannon, range 750, 0 deviation, 150 damage, 0 fire rate, 1 clip, 55 reload, 0.6 turn rate?
And how would it compare to a Plasma Stream, range 550, 1 deviation, 5 damage, 1 fire rate, 30 clip, 25 reload, 0.6 turn rate?
Plasma Stream does the same DPS, but has somewhat shorter range, and is more reliable. How much damage must the Blast Cannon do to be comparable to the Plasma Stream?

Anarki · Post by **Anarki** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:50 pm

It would be proportionate to the base weapon. So comparing them would not be perfectly accurate, and there will be loopholes - but it would be a start towards classifying weapons, and having actual battles between custom weapon ships.

The Boz · Post by **The Boz** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:05 pm

Well, if you need help in making some sort of quantifiable rating system, I offer my services.

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:59 am

Simple.

Double the damage or range, and it's twice as effective. Easier to intercept, but the focused damage is better against deflectors.

Halve the ROF and reload (together), and again, it's generally twice as effective. Similarly, it's not too hard to extrapolate this to weapons with varying clipsizes- a time-focused barrage has obvious advantages and disadvantages.

The problem comes with abstract statistics like deviation, firing arc, turn rate, etc. There isn't ever going to be a quantifiable way of rating changes in those, since (for instance) deviation can be both a blessing and a curse- allowing the occasional lead shot, hitting unshielded sections (albeit erratically) but losing accuracy and reliability as a tradeoff. So individual costs need to be set depending on the weapon- and only human judges can deal with that.

wonderwhy-er · Post by **wonderwhy-er** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 2:28 am

Well I personally think we need some way of ship appraising. Not balancing but appraising. And it should be built in to the Ship Maker. I think it should be based on alternative characteristics. For example we have weapons with different damage, reload, fire rate. I think it is possible to calculate characteristics such as MaxDMGPerSec(big for one uber shot weapons) and AvarageDMGPerSec. Other thing is to find such thing as DamagePerDegree which can be calculated from all ship weapons like DMG*Arg/360. That’s all is just a suggestion in which way we should think. I know there are people who don’t care but I feel kind of down by seeing in which direction custom ships go. More section and more weapons and that’s it…

I am thinking on making small fast assault fighter with loads of weapon and take on a Ragnarok or other giants with it. Building large ships with no restrictions looks like endless road with no winners…