Let's Bring the good old tourney days back!

Discuss all things Battleships Forever that aren't Ships and Shipmaker - Missions, Development, etc.!

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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

They're a pain in the arse to balance, and by default are somewhat overpowered I think. The only way to fix that is to allow them, but have the submunition damage modded to 0.
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Skrim
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Post by Skrim »

I have an idea. Simplify the weapons into 10 classes on the basis of modifiable characteristics:



____________________


Regular Weapon:
Blaster, Gatling Blaster, Pulse Gun, Gatling Pulse Gun, Repeater Gun, Twin Blaster, Plasma Ball, Vulcan Cannon, Particle Rifle, Machine Gun, Tachyon Driver, Quad Blaster, Sidewinder.


Beam Weapon:
Beamer, Mega Beam, Mining Beam, Scatter Beam, Shock Beamer, Twin Scatter Beam, Twin Laser, Tesla Gun.


Sniping Weapon:
Railgun, Twin Railgun, Sabot Cannon.


Penetrating Weapon:
Tachyon Cannon, MegaTachyon Repeater.


Explosive Weapon:
Plasma Torpedo, Tactical Nuke Cannon, Repeating Artillery.


Guided Weapon:
Missile Launcher, Mini Missile Rack, HV Rocket Pod(guided).


Explosive Guided Weapon:
Torpedo Launcher, Flash Bolter.


Submunition Weapon:
Weasel Gun, Autocannon, Twin Autocannon, Particle Cannon.


Delayed Weapon:
Pulsar Gun, HV Rocket Pod(non-guided).


Point Defense Weapon:
Particle Gun, Flak Gun, Point Beam, PD Rocket Pod.

____________________




Whoever is holding the tourney sets the specs and point costs for each of the 10 weapon classes, giving you 10 weapon choices. It doesn't matter what you use as your base since the weapon will be using the stats specified for it's class. The base weapon would only matter in a few cases(like the Sidewinder firing constantly-turning shots, the Weasel having curly submunitions, etc.).
But if you use a Blaster or a Particle Rifle or a Machinegun, it doesn't make a difference, as you have to punch in the same numbers anyway for the Regular Weapons class.

Edit: Noticed that the Demeter wasn't in there. The Demeter would have it's own separate class and stats, making 11 classes in total.

Get what I mean? :)
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Ixranin
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Post by Ixranin »

EriErin wrote:I present to you an expanded equipment table, in case anyone wishes to start a tournament with the new equipment.
I'd say the Plasma Ball and Vulcan are probably worth only 1-2 points, considering they have 3.4 and 4.4 DPS, respectively. (And demonstrated by that Nagaya2 armed with 5 Vulcans how horrible they do even with blanket fire.) They both have huge sprites too, which is an inconvenience on tourny ships where you can't have weapons/modules overlap.

The Tesla would be tempting to ditch. Currently it's the highest DPS weapon (35 DPS), yet is a beam-type that deals its damage very quickly and has a short reload, making it pretty OP stock-wise. It was already bad enough that Beamers with their ~8.4 DPS were being spammed horribly effectively near the end of the tournies.

Half the other new weapons though, never got around calcing the DPS of and working out their pros/cons. My guess is Sabot Cannons would become a pretty popular weapon, because of their speed and high burst damage, like with Beamers. One good Sabot barrage could probably wipe out most tourny ships, since their generally lower HP.
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Ninteen45
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Post by Ninteen45 »

I say we price them very high.
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Post by VNilla »

Agreed. I've always found Sabots to be rather powerful (and therefore I love to put them on my wankships).

On a side note, how is Sabot pronounced? I personally prefer SABB-itt (rhymes with "grab it") but I usually hear SAY-bott (which for some reason I really dislike :?). I've also come across SAY-bote and SAH-bote. Is there an "official" pronunciation or is it just a matter of personal taste?
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Post by Sponge »

Where's the "none-of-the-above" option? The correct pronounciation is "sa-bow."
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Post by SHAD0Wdump »

Sponge
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Post by Sponge »

That's only remotely helpful if you make two fairly bold assumptions. First, you assume that most people can decipher IPA. This is almost assuredly false. It's still tricky even with a chart. Additionally, you also assume that the person writing the page can correctly convert the word into IPA format. Granted, they're probably close, it's an obscure word. There's also a French word on that page, and I'm all but certain the two have different pronunciations. I love Wikipedia, and it's generally correct, but I cannot vouch for its less popular offshoots. Use that page with caution, and verify and information contained with a second source.
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Post by the mulletron »

Just to add my opinion to the original topic, I like the idea of a Tournament, but its always been poorly executed IMO. The biggest problem I can see is balancing, or more specifically, that any attempt at balance is to implement a point based scheme which gives point values with no real logic behind them. What is really needed is a formula which can be applied to every weapon, then modify that value using another formula, based on any special attributes the weapon has (piercing/explosive/etc.)

The idea that I propose is to base point value on damage per second, using a formula like...

{Damage of a single projectile * Number of projectiles in a clip} / Delay between shots (in frames)

/

Reload time (in frames)

then times everything by 30 (to get the value in seconds)


That should give the DPS of projectile based weapons at least. For beam weapons, we would first have to find out how damage is inflicted first, then its a simple case of putting that info into a similar formula.

Once you've got the base damage, it can then be modified using a formula, depending on one or more special attributes. For example, say you're working out the point value of a railgun, the formula may look like...

{DPS / Damage inflicted on each section}

*

{1.5 (modifier to compensate for piercing ability) * # of sections pierced(value could be squared to penalize extra piercings)}


This formula would cause the point value of a railgun to be much higher than that of a simple blaster (which is fair, considering what the railgun is capable of)

Now don't take these formulas as absolute, I only came up with them in the past hour or so, and I haven't factored in things like range or accuracy, but it should give an idea on another way to solve the balancing problem.


As for the word sabot...Sponge is correct. The 'T' is silent. Don't believe me? Pick up any good dictionary and look the word up. All good dictionaries have the words spelt phonetically beside it, and a book is a damn sight more reliable than any webpage.
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Post by Arcalane »

Ixranin wrote:I'd say the Plasma Ball and Vulcan are probably worth only 1-2 points, considering they have 3.4 and 4.4 DPS, respectively. (And demonstrated by that Nagaya2 armed with 5 Vulcans how horrible they do even with blanket fire.) They both have huge sprites too, which is an inconvenience on tourny ships where you can't have weapons/modules overlap.
The PBC cost was cranked up at my recommendation due to shot immunity to interceptors, similar to the Particle Cannon. The only defenses are Flux Shields and Deflectors. PC spam could be utterly brutal - the gun is fairly small and the fast moving shots are hard to avoid. They may scatter a lot of damage all over the target, but they would gradually chew things up.
Ixranin wrote:The Tesla would be tempting to ditch. Currently it's the highest DPS weapon (35 DPS), yet is a beam-type that deals its damage very quickly and has a short reload, making it pretty OP stock-wise. It was already bad enough that Beamers with their ~8.4 DPS were being spammed horribly effectively near the end of the tournies.
Not to mention the Tesla is also immune to rorschach devices and flux shields, making deflectors the only effective counter. Tesla DPS is actually identical to beamer DPS on a per-shot basis as it deals the same amount of damage over a shorter beam duration, although yes, the Tesla does recharge faster.

Otherwise, yes, the Tesla could very easily become the new beamer.
Ixranin wrote:Half the other new weapons though, never got around calcing the DPS of and working out their pros/cons. My guess is Sabot Cannons would become a pretty popular weapon, because of their speed and high burst damage, like with Beamers. One good Sabot barrage could probably wipe out most tourny ships, since their generally lower HP.
This is quite likely, and a good reason for the Sabot Cannon to be highly priced. PS: that last sentence makes no sense whatsoever. It should be "due to/because of their", I think.

Future tournament notes; the Flaregun and EMP Torpedo should probably be highly priced and highly restricted - the latter is pretty good at what it does, though I have tried to make sure that they're not too good. A PD platform with four particle guns can generally neutralize four flares and two out of three torpedoes from 600px or so.
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Post by Ixranin »

Arcalane wrote:The PBC cost was cranked up at my recommendation due to shot immunity to interceptors, similar to the Particle Cannon. The only defenses are Flux Shields and Deflectors. PC spam could be utterly brutal - the gun is fairly small and the fast moving shots are hard to avoid. They may scatter a lot of damage all over the target, but they would gradually chew things up.
I was talking about the Plasma Ball Cannon. What are you talking about? Particle Cannon is slow as hell; I think you meant the Particle Rifle.

After calcing the DPS of the rest of the weapons and checking the point sheet posted... I've come to this conclusion: Twin Beamer. Deals an incredible amount of burst damage, at long range with good accuracy. Puts the normal Beamer to shame since it does over 3x the damage.

In all honesty, half the new weapons are pointless or redundant for a tournament. Half of the remaining are incredibly strong. Then from that, the only weapons that seem like they'd add anything to the tournaments are the Autocannon, Twin Blaster, Particle Rifle, and the Mini-Missile Rack. Maybe the Torpedo if it didn't have any PD-resistance.
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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

Ixranin wrote:I was talking about the Plasma Ball Cannon. What are you talking about? Particle Cannon is slow as hell; I think you meant the Particle Rifle.
I was typing quickly, gimme a break. :P
Ixranin wrote:Maybe the Torpedo if it didn't have any PD-resistance.
If the Torpedo didn't have any PD resistance it would be a joke. It would replace the PBC as the red-headed stepchild of the new weapons tree. It tracks poorly, it moves slowly, and if it couldn't resist PD there would be no point in using it at all, unless I went and rearranged the PD tree again.

As it is, all of these features are required to balance it's immense firepower and the fact that the moment it comes into range of PD guns, they will gun for it over everything else in a volley due to the way PD target prioritization works - either as soon as they see it or as soon as they've killed their current target.
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Post by Ixranin »

Hmm, forgot about the PD priority list. I suppose judgment on the Torpedo probably has to wait until the PD Flares come out.

If people do want tournaments though, they'll have to figure out and run them. Pretty much all the previous people who ran the old tournaments are long gone, and I'm not going to start one since I'm behind enough on everything else.
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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

Ixranin wrote:PD Flares
Don't hold your breath, my hard drive copped it before I could get the files to th15. :roll: Figures, doesn't it?

Worst comes to worst I have to recode the next update (arse!), but it was pretty small stuff, so it shouldn't take too long if I sit down and get to it.
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Post by Strangepork »

Evening' gents, here's my attempt at balancing;
Rather than employ a simple point system, which is great because it's fast and fairly accurate, but has it's downsides as balancing some weapons requires a little more than a simple point system, for example in beam weapons and point defenses; Spamming either one leads to a relatively easy victory, or the at the very least rendering a fight null by totally countering the offensive weaponry of the enemy ship. As such I am trying a system thats a combination of EVE Online and Masters of Orion. It will hinge on a combination of Power, CPU, Weight and Space, all of which is decided upon sections, IE you have a section of your ship meant to generate power, a computer core in another section, and regular old sections on a ship result in space and weight. CPU and power sections will have reduced health resulting in a definitive core to a ship; It will be destroyed quickly, and usually is flanked by other sections to allow for better protection of these sections. Beam weapons, for example, will now use heavy power to result in few beam weapons on a large ship with many sensitive core sections; It may be able to win a stand up fight, but it had better not be flanked. Also Aegis shielding is out. Invulnerable sections are dumb to try and balance.

Sections;
Cores grant a standard amount of Power and CPU, and a small quantity of space. This is to allow for fighters and smaller ships, but at the same time limits their ability to arm absurdly powerful weapons, meaning fighters will have things like machine guns or a single blaster, etc, but not mega beams. Power sections grant, obviously, more power, and use some CPU, making for larger ships the more power sections you use. CPU sections, well, you get it. Regular sections are those regular old sections all over your ships for decorative purposes, to house weapons, etc. Reinforcing a section COUNTS AS HALF A SECTION, ROUNDING UP due to the increased weight of the armour/reinforcing. You can only reinforce a power/cpu section once, as to avoid overly tanked sensitive sections of the ship. Weight is the effective count of the sections you have on your ship, but still keep the number of sections you have in mind. Power sections weigh twice the other sections to avoid some ship made out of power sections fitting beam weapons zipping around the screen. While you can still do that, it's effects will be diminished.

-----Name-------|---CPU---|--Power--|--Space--|---HP---|--Weight--|
Core Section------| 10 | 2 | 10 | 450 | 1
Power Section----| -2 | 10 | 0 | 250 | 2
CPU Section------| 10 | -2 | 0 | 300 | 1
Regular Section---| 0 | 0 | 10 | 400 | 1
Reinforce a section| 0 | 0 | 0 | +100 | .5

Speed, acceleration, so on;
Speed;Top speed is dependent upon your weight, and the power you have at your disposal. Example; Your ship has 30 weight, and 10 EXTRA power (Power unused in weapons, sections, etc). It's Power divided by weight times 4 (This number can be adjusted depending upon how fast the tourney runner wants your ships to be, represented by S from here on). That results in a ship with a speed of 1.3. Take a core section (Fighter) ship; 2 power, 1 weight, meaning 2, multiplied by S, meaning 8 speed for a fighter that uses no power. (P/WxS=SP) Zoom!
Turning; Turning is much like speed, power divided by weight, multiplied by S (P/WxS=T). By default, S is 1 (Meaning the above fighter has a turning of 2 (2/1x1=2), and the above ship has .33 turning(30/10x1=.33)),
Acceleration; Exactly like the past two, only divided by S, which is by default, 4. (P/W/S=A). So the fighter has an acceleration of .5, the ship has an acceleartion of .08.

--Weapon Type----|CPU|Power|Space| Notes
=Projectiles=====|===|==== |=== |=====================
Pulse Gun---------|-2-|---.5--|--4--| Fighter weaponry pretty well. If you're mounting this junk on ships, you'd better hope the other people have no point defenses.
Gatling Pulse------|-3-|---1----|--6--| Fighter weaponry pretty well. If you're mounting this junk on ships, you'd better hope the other people have no point defenses.
Blaster Cannon----|-1-|---1----|--4--|
Twin Blaster----- |-2-|---2---|--6--|
Gatling Blaster-----|-4-|---4---|--6--|
Quad Blaster------|-3-|---3---|--6--|
Repeater Gun----- |-1-|---.5---|--4--| Fighter weaponry pretty well. If you're mounting this junk on ships, you'd better hope the other people have no point defenses.
Tachyon Cannon---|-4-|---8---|--6--| If you think beam spam is bad, wait until you see tachyon spam.
Tachyon Repeater-|-6-|---12---|--12-| If you think beam spam is bad, wait until you see tachyon spam.
Tachyon Driver---|-4-|---6---|--6--|
Plasma Charge----|-1-|---1.5--|--6--|
Missile Launcher---|-1-|---.5---|--5--|
Mini Missile-------|-4-|---2---|--6--|
Tac Nuke Cannon--|-4-|---6---|--12-|
Plasma Ball-------|-6-|---8---|--8--|
Repeating Arty----|-4-|---6---|--10-|
Vulcan Cannon----|-3-|---5---|--8--|
Particle Rifle------|-5-|---6---|--8--|
Particle Cannon---|-7-|---9---|--10--|
Torpedo---------|-4-|---4----|--8-|
Flash Bolter------|-4-|---7----|--6--|
Machinegun------|-.5-|---.5---|--5--|
Railgun----------|-6--|---8---|--6--|
Twin Railgun-----|-10-|--16---|--10--|
Sabot Cannon----|-8--|---10---|--8--|
Autocannon------|-6--|---4---|--10--|
Twin Autocannon-|-12-|---8---|--18--|
=Beams===========|=============|
Name-----------|CPU|Power|Space|Notes
Mining Beam-----|-1--|---1---|--2--|
Scatter Beam----|-2-|---5---|--3--|
Twin Scatter----|-4-|---10--|--6--|
Beamer---------|-3-|---6---|--4--|
Twin Laser------|-6-|--12---|--8--|
Shock Beamer---|-2-|---6---|--4--|
Mega Beam------|-4-|--11---|--6--|
Tesla-----------|-6-|--16---|--5--|
=Point=Defense===|=============|
Name-----------|CPU|Power|Space|Notes
Flak Cannon------|-6-|---4--|--8--|
Particle Gun-----|-9-|---4---|--6--|
Point Beam------|-8-|---8---|--4--|
Point Rocket-----|-7-|---4---|--8--|
Yeah, I got lazy before finishing it, and still have modules and weirder weapons to finish. Overall I feel that weapons need to be longer range, bit faster projectiles, and point defenses need longer range as well, as well as a limiting factor, for instance arc on point defenses would be fantastic, because right now offensive capabilities can be heavily blunted with as few as 8 flak, and crippled with 6 flak, 2 particle, 2 point, 1 impeder, or even just 8 flak, 1 impeder. And this is before we throw in deflectors, nano matricies, and overall just missing. This is primarily why beams are so popular; It's easy to counter and setup a field to counter everything else, but beams have no viable counter, outside of a ship presenting a deflected side towards it. Maybe some sort of mirror chaff missiles can be made to counter beams, or we can just set them up to be short range, and everything else long range, forcing beam ships to lean down on defensive weaponry and weather the storm until they reach shooting range, making them close range or assault weapons, instead of the generic good weapons they are now.

So yeah, arcs in point defense weapons please?
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