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Post Re: DD cost disparity
MasterTrader wrote:
Engineer and FC are used to level because they are far and away the most skill point efficient ways to level.


Engineer and FC are used to level because

they are the only legitimate and "enjoyable" way to level without boring yourself half to death or suffering immensely.

If you're gonna chance this you probably need to nerf the hassle of levelling across the board.


Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:58 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Can we get specifics then?


Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:41 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Maxa, that was so incoherant I am not even going to bother quoting it. IF the system is as you discribe it, then your responce is pointless, we can simply add shielding, weapons, electric and radar skill requierments at level to every drone. Problem solved, while no one but engi are effected. I would like to point out that this entire conversation has been you trying to red herring me. Cute, now go away maxa.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:10 am
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
lrellok wrote:
Maxa, that was so incoherant I am not even going to bother quoting it. IF the system is as you discribe it, then your responce is pointless, we can simply add shielding, weapons, electric and radar skill requierments at level to every drone. Problem solved, while no one but engi are effected. I would like to point out that this entire conversation has been you trying to red herring me. Cute, now go away maxa.


I've read your conversations with Max235 and all i can see is that he has been telling you very succinctly that;
A) Your plan takes too much dev time for success. (because it creates more problems than it solves)
B) A better plan is already in action and is coming out soon.

And he has done so repeatedly, but your inability to listen to what he is saying and authentically process with a genuine and unbiased approach seems to show nothing but your own arrogance.

Try being humble for a minute and perhaps admitting that someone might have had a better idea than you, or even (god forbid) might be objectively correct when you are wrong in this instance.

As far as I can see you talk a good fight but you can't seem to walk your talk. Perhaps this comes off in your game as well.

Who can say?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Wed Dec 20, 2017 4:19 am
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
nccintrepid wrote:
Drone Deployment and RC both require Piloting 20 to aquire, which means to use them they require the highest cost tech(iirc) ingame. I don't feel raising them is required due to this.

In practice this tends to apply for others too, since without the augmenters/space/resists you can't bring out the most out of anything. Perhaps the only exception to this is swarms.
So for DD it's like, everyone needs piloting which is expensive, then they also need a bunch of other skills, which are expensive. However, instead of those other skills you can currently get DD, which gives better bang for buck. It is simply logical to prioritize DD over other skills because no matter the class, it helps you a ton unless you are already in the endgame, in which case skillpoint costs are no longer the limiting factor anyway.


Wed Dec 20, 2017 10:31 am
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
nc44 wrote:
MasterTrader wrote:
Engineer and FC are used to level because they are far and away the most skill point efficient ways to level.


Engineer and FC are used to level because

they are the only legitimate and "enjoyable" way to level without boring yourself half to death or suffering immensely.

If you're gonna chance this you probably need to nerf the hassle of levelling across the board.


I leveled a Shield Monkey and a Berserker and a Speed Demon without playing Engineer or FC. I had fun. I still have an Engineer alt that I haven't got past level 500 because it's simply not fun for me, sitting still and having my automated pets kill stuff while I do literally nothing is boring. Fun is subjective, skill point efficiency is not subjective.

I don't want to derail this thread, but what is it that is unfun about playing the game for the first time and leveling a character without going Fleet Commander or Engineer?
Keep in mind any class can use bots/drones, those classes just increase the power of said drones and bots by a massive amount.

I want to point out that I agree with Xonok about the cost of Drone Deployment,
and I don't see increasing the skill point cost crippling Engineer in anyway. It will make it so that you're not better off dumping your skill points into Drone Deployment than any other skill as a new player leveling up, but because of how Drones work you'll still gain levels faster if you use drones. The skill point cost will simply reflect the reality that you are gaining multiple skills worth of power for one skill (Not to mention that you're effectively creating another player's worth of Damage/Shields/Energy).

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 11:23 am
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
nc44 wrote:
A) Your plan takes too much dev time for success. (because it creates more problems than it solves)
B) A better plan is already in action and is coming out soon.

¯


A) As i explained before, one of the reason we keep having nerf round after nerf round is that the dev team taking to little time developing before implementation, so no, taking more time in development would be a good thing.

B) A plan that harms every other class in the game far more then it nerfs engi is not a good plan. EVERYONE uses drones, why are you penalizing all the classes that have to take all the skills by forcing them to pay for them twice. If the issue is that Engi are not taking all the skills, then make engi take all the skills. f the issue is NOT that engi are not taking all the skills, explain more clearly.

IF maxa wants to say that this idea is dead in the water, he can come say it, i have asked him at every post. But what i see him doing is opposing my counter to an idea that is totally off the rails.

Maxa, are you saying this idea is dead in the water?

This seem to be a massive exercise in penalizing new players trying to level quickly. Considering hober has already proposed several times that we should have a wow style system where you jump into the game at level 2000, i can only assume this is what is called a bait and switch, where the devmin deliberately make leveling hell then implement a system around it when new payers complain. My solution is; DO NOT make leveling hell in the first place!

MasterTrader wrote:
Keep in mind any class can use bots/drones, those classes just increase the power of said drones and bots by a massive amount.
[/color]


Ok, so you at least understand other classes use drones....so why are you penalizing them? I am serious, IF an engi has no reason to put points into weapons and Radar, and a sniper/gunner/zerker HAS to, then all you are doing is making leveling more expensive for everyone BUT engi. Currently, getting all core skills to 20 plus your class zen skills requires 4700 skill points or 970 levels to achieve. With this proposal, assuming ONLY Drone Deploy was effected, it would require 7000 skill points or level 1400 to achieve. IF RC where included in this insanity, it would not be until level 1850 that anyone is leveled to 20.

Which is a MASSIVE nerf!. Now that i look at the numbers, that is actually TOTALLY INSANE. 1850 is red wattage and MF reaver levels. There is no way a solo anything at tech 18 is going to take down those, hell, i cannot imagine a tech 15 taking down an Icepick or a Vulture, much less several, which is what they would be facing at level 1200. I am not even going to consider seriosly the proposal that people should just level without drones and bots...go stream it, stream a zerker or a sniper or an SD level 300 in jungle with no bots, i could use a laugh.

And this is again WHY we need paid, professional developer who are willing to spend an hour sitting down with a spread sheet and calculating the effect of the proposal they are adding. I worked 70 hours this week and i can guarantee i just did more work then Xonoc or Hober have on this idea.

Hober, if you want me to be not argue with you quite so much, stop making batshit insane proposals you obviously have not done the math on.

Xonok, I am incredibly disappointed right now, i really, really expected better of you then this.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 12:19 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
There is a massive difference between taking one's time to come up with and implement a better solution, and doing grunt work for the sake of doing grunt work.

We have Option A presented by Ingendum and Option B presented by Rendghast.

Quote:
Option A: Development team researches, calculates, and implements a formula for the final stats (Damage, RoF, Range, Tracking, Shield Max, Energy Max, Shield Regen, Energy Regen, and Resistances) so they can be adjusted automatically via the Dev Panel and vastly speed up development time per drone.

The Drones will be adjusted to the formula's curve. Some drones will be nerfed. Others will be buffed. This process is automatic. Arbitrary final stat differences as per Drone-subtype can be addressed in the process.

At most it will take a few months to complete and any under or over performing drone after development can be automatically adjusted as needed.


Quote:
Option B: Development team goes into manual edit to check tech level of all items that make up every single drone. They arbitrarily adjust each drone to make it suitable for users at all levels of the game based on various potential random setups. The tech of the items that make up each drone require tech skill to use the drone, regardless of the drone's actual tech level. Drones that use gear that represent tech outliers -- such as gear below the expected power level of the player, or gear whose tech level prevent obtaining the skill level because it's way too high -- will have to be manually edited and adjusted to use an item more appropriate for the player, based on those random potential setups.

The final stats of all drones will have to be spawned by a developer or an administrator on the test server and tested against the Beta Antares Targets to eyeball the actual final stats based on all those random potential setups, and then adjusted with more powerful or less powerful gear, and tested again until their final stats are balanced enough not to break the game.

At the very least this project will take several years and require multiple developers to complete.


Which one is better? It took the better part of an hour for NCCIntrepid (he was streaming it) to test a about 7 different drones in the Beta Antares Test Range to come up with their final stats based on ONE potential setup and make notes on whether it was too much, too little, overwhelming, underwhelming, or just right.


Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:14 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Rend, my suggestion is the last one in the first post. That is:
6,9,12,15, etc.
Starts at 6 for DD 1, 3 extra SP for every next level. You're looking at the middle where I specifically said that those numbers are ridiculous and I don't support them, because it would fucking suck.
Look at the last part where I actually suggest numbers rather than just hypothesizing.
The final cost of DD with my actual suggested numbers would be 690 SP total.

Also, which classes do you need healing drones for?
I have a zerk that I made the same day as Hober's noob zerk. The recorded /age is 1 day and 7 hours. In that time I got to 224 and have got to killing tigers in jungle ALONE. The only slaves I have are 2 paxis that barely deal damage and magic attacks that I don't need because my own regen, resists and lifesteal combined make me nigh-unkillable. I only have 1/3 points in the resistance subskill.
Note that for this char I:
*Do not use missiles.
*Do not use fighters.
*Do not give excessive amounts of extremely high tier gear to the char(jungle ships)
*Do not use a huge swarm of slaves.
*Do not use jungle drones.
Any other quick leveling tricks I might have used? I don't know, but I sure as hell didn't make it easy for myself and am still doing fine. I'm doing group content alone and still doing fine.


Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:26 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
nccintrepid wrote:
Drone Deployment and RC both require Piloting 20 to aquire, which means to use them they require the highest cost tech(iirc) ingame. I don't feel raising them is required due to this.


....

Shield Monkeys use bots to level. They specifically have a skill which gives their bots +damage. Changing RC hurts Shield Monkey leveling more than it hurts FC leveling.

FC and Engineer leveling gets used because you can AFK, not because it's faster. Established/endgame players probably use FC and Engineer leveling more often because they can AFK and don't want to tediously go through leveling again.

Engineer/FC leveling has a higher startup cost. You need a ship of the tech level of drones you want to use, and an FC needs to pay for two, three, or eight bots. For an endgame player, setting your alt up with these things is easy.

Setting up 3+ bots as a new player is.... not easy. Been there, done that. A new player that doesn't understand the game fully yet, doesn't understand ICs, colonies, etc, is going to find it more expensive to run an FC and more complicated to run an Engineer which are probably the two most complicated classes in game.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:24 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Max235 wrote:
There is a massive difference between taking one's time to come up with and implement a better solution, and doing grunt work for the sake of doing grunt work.

We have Option A presented by Ingendum and Option B presented by Rendghast.
.


Strawman at no juncture have i replied to anything Ingendum wrote. I have replied to Xonok/hober. The person who brought up Ingendum is you. If the best you can do is half assed ambush tactics maxa, i suggest you stop arguing with me.

Xonok2 wrote:
Rend, my suggestion is the last one in the first post. That is:
6,9,12,15, etc.
Starts at 6 for DD 1, 3 extra SP for every next level. You're looking at the middle where I specifically said that those numbers are ridiculous and I don't support them, because it would fucking suck.
Look at the last part where I actually suggest numbers rather than just hypothesizing.
The final cost of DD with my actual suggested numbers would be 690 SP total.


I have strawmaned you sir, and i apologize. I will read more carefully in the future.

Very well, the increase from DD alone would raise the final level total for t20/cz50 to 1,100, or 1250 if hober includes RC. I still do not see how this is superior to making the drones require main skill equivalent to their level. This would have the same effect of requiring engi to take all the core skills (unless i am misunderstanding your concern as well?) while increasing the cost of DD (and RC?) serves only to push the timeframe on when people are WS ready out by 150-300 levels.

Xonok2 wrote:
Also, which classes do you need healing drones for?


Nearly all of them. Two Vazaha Operatives on my zerker for mid DG healing, six jungle drones on my FC for the same reason, and when i had a ShM it had jungles and toasters because solo ShM is hell. Also, i have never seen lifesteal do anything useful...inevitably i loose more shields killing whatever i am shooting at then i regen, and with the cooldown....yeah, need the VOD.

Also, most new players are not going to have access to jungle ships, they are going to be using something like Ragnarok or Agamemnon, which has a fraction or the resists, or, if they are very clever, Blue Scouts. Try soloing Jungle in a Ragnarok and see how that goes.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:29 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Increasing the sp needed for drones is simple for both the devs to do and for players to understand. Your option would not be easy for devs to implemetn as we would need to redo drones so that there items are the same tech, this would need a massive rework of dronees, that change would be needed so players arnt surprised that they cant use the new drones.

Healing drones arnt needed for any class to level, they might be to maintain the speed and ease of leveling with fc/engi(which are too fast and easy compared to everyone else).


Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:13 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
urzaserra256 wrote:
Increasing the sp needed for drones is simple for both the devs to do and for players to understand. Your option would not be easy for devs to implemetn as we would need to redo drones so that there items are the same tech, this would need a massive rework of dronees, that change would be needed so players arnt surprised that they cant use the new drones.


Adding skill tags to drones requires code work? Why? My original suggestion (before maxas tantrum) was that tech 5 drones require tech 5 in radar and weapons. If Ingen's balances are accurate, then it should not matter what the actual items are, the "Drone" is what has the tag.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 5:29 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Xonok has already explained everything worth explaining, I will respond to one thing though:
Quote:
I am not even going to consider seriosly the proposal that people should just level without drones and bots...go stream it, stream a zerker or a sniper or an SD level 300 in jungle with no bots, i could use a laugh.

Will do.

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Wed Dec 20, 2017 10:37 pm
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Post Re: DD cost disparity
Wow, I'm only back 2 weeks after a 7-8 year absence, and already I'm seeing the same tired old "suggestions", nerf droners, nerf drones. I've just finished reading the DM / Engi Aug re/nerf/balance thread, and here's another one. Honestly people, please change the record.

I was in the middle of writing a long-winded and overly detailed response to all of the above, but to be honest I can't be arsed, It'll just be ignored and the nerf will be implemented over all objections, like it always has. So I'll just say this:

The options for leveling have always been the same, invest your time or invest your money. You make your choice depending on how you like to play, how much time you can commit and the resources at your disposal. DM/FC have always been expensive, the benefit is you get to level faster, simple as that.

I also think your all overlooking the impact swarm control and hull tech restricted drones have. I was a little shocked to learn I couldn't use better drones until I bought a higher tech ship, no other class is forced to do this in order to upgrade their main weapon/DP's. Or that I was limited to some pitiful number of combat slaves. Turns out I was investing SP in skills I couldn't actually fully benefit from. Perhaps the Dev's could spent a little time making drone descriptions actually descriptive, you know telling new players they need multiple skills to use them.

-NAV

P.S. Drone elec regen is still fucking shit. That's a nerf that just keeps giving.


Thu Dec 21, 2017 12:42 am
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