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Post Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
Discussion topic for post: http://www.starsonata.com/news/weekly-d ... -december/


Thu Dec 22, 2016 4:59 pm
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
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What will happen is that your Wild Bots will do less damage unless you pick the Advanced Class Subskill (which we will be adding as an option, it will most likely be Wild Man) that gives you their damage back. However, making this decision will prevent you from using Fighters. We may include an alternative for fighters, which would lock you out of Wild Bots in exchange for more powerful fighters.


Prevent slaves from using fighters, or just no fighters entirely?

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Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:30 pm
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
Fyuryus wrote:
Quote:
What will happen is that your Wild Bots will do less damage unless you pick the Advanced Class Subskill (which we will be adding as an option, it will most likely be Wild Man) that gives you their damage back. However, making this decision will prevent you from using Fighters. We may include an alternative for fighters, which would lock you out of Wild Bots in exchange for more powerful fighters.


Prevent slaves from using fighters, or just no fighters entirely?


Right now, we're working with the model of no fighters at all. Wild Bots are currently very powerful, and we do not want to push Fleet Commander back into the realm of being overpowered again. We may be willing to revisit this choice should it prove not to be as big of an issue as we first believed.

EDIT: Here is a link to the proposed stats, they are listed as multipliers. This means 1.2 = 20% and .8 = -20%. 2 = 100%, and so on. If a cell is blank then it means that the multiplier is set to the default of 1 = 0%.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1285066390

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Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:46 pm
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
Just to point out, 6x t22 control bots , 3x t21. I miss some combat bots. (I see the google sheet has them, still too many t22 compared to lower tech levels)
I see a flat +50% elec temp on every mf bot, that seems unreasonable high and static.
Some of the non mf bots have really nice stats, I like to see more turning speed thrusting radar as stats too (-weight?). So more non combat stats.

For FC I hope u don't take the ability of using fighters away from the Wildman FCs, even with like minimal fighter offensive stats they are useful (cannon fodder).

So no more farting drones , yay patch it ...


Thu Dec 22, 2016 10:17 pm
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
I don't see why electric tempering has to be added to the MF bots, ignoring that though if it has to be done, that's quite a sizable amount you're adding there...... my slaves run out quite fast at the moment as it is, you're just going push folks into using capital ships.

Also, splitting Wild Man/Fighters is ok, but these fighters better be good.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 12:42 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
All the flat bonuses like +damage are worthless as on base. Not sure if ur new balance shit takes that into account.


Fri Dec 23, 2016 1:44 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
The Controlbots are balanced the same way that Augmenters are balanced now, so their stats are the stats that would be acceptable on an augmenter. All of these stats are additive, so the less of a particular stat you have the more valuable it is marginally. One big reason MF bots are so good is that multi-firing is a very rare and hard stat to get, so +100% multi-firing is (in almost all cases) exactly double your DPS. The issue is that, because of the strength of multi-firing controlbots, they were outshining every single other bot choice. When you have multiple choices in game, and none of those choices are viable compared to one or two of them, something must be done to encourage people to use them.

One way of doing this would be to make controlbot stats multiplicative on the backend, meaning that the end effect would be very similar to the way Evil/Radioactive/Resonating mods currently work. This idea was deemed unacceptable, and instead it was decided to buff the other combat controlbots until they were worth using. Due to MF bots being, close to 100% of the time, double DPS it is impossible to make bots that scale at a similar rate as MF bots. Because of this, MF bots needed a harsher downside. Why? Because getting a bot to power one weapon is not very difficult, and with nothing else for bots to use electricity on a Multifiring controlbot would continue to be the obvious answer.

Players tend to search for the most efficient options, and in order to get them to make different decisions and choose different paths I decided the best way to do this would be to further decrease the efficiency of Multifiring controlbots. I originally wanted to make MF bots use 4x the electricity vs 2x the electricity they currently use. It was decided that we would instead cut that down to 3x the electricity used, and if it turns out to be too negligible we may look at increasing it in the future.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 4:23 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
Ugh, please don't add anymore completely unnecessary and pointless boundaries like the one you've just proposed with Wild Slaves and their fighters. Adding Wild Man into the game, effectively opening up the possibilities of Wild Slaves being used effectively, made Fleet Commanders actually feel like a Fleet Commanders, a slave swarm with some slaves launching fighters. Now you're going to put a barrier up to stop FCs from using Wild Slaves with Fighters unless they get another class skill.

I don't think you should be forcing people to make such massive decisions with Advanced Skills. Choosing between them is already difficult enough, as you get different outcomes depending on the combination. By forcing players to make even bigger decisions on whether or not their wild slaves fully function or not is a terrible idea. Advanced Subskills are extremely valuable, after all you only get two and creating what is essentially a two-part skill where if you want Wild Slaves to function properly, you need to use both of your skills in order to do so.

I strongly urge you to reconsider. If you're that "afraid" of FC becoming overpowered again, even though I'd say the reduction in number of Wild Slaves has significantly reduced that, then maybe the problem lies in how powerful fighters will be once the change comes in, and not the class.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 4:56 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
so how do you envision people power thier MF slaves now? theyeve just taken a 50% elec hit nerf

basically youve handed a collection of shit in return for nerfing mfbots. Cant you just leave mfbots alone, i wanted to resub at some point.

its not like slaves are OP, even with MFbots they still struggle to dps stuff even at endgame.

basically who complained slaves were OP DPS with mfbots?


Fri Dec 23, 2016 5:52 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
Tomzta09 wrote:
Ugh, please don't add anymore completely unnecessary and pointless boundaries like the one you've just proposed with Wild Slaves and their fighters. Adding Wild Man into the game, effectively opening up the possibilities of Wild Slaves being used effectively, made Fleet Commanders actually feel like a Fleet Commanders, a slave swarm with some slaves launching fighters. Now you're going to put a barrier up to stop FCs from using Wild Slaves with Fighters unless they get another class skill.

I don't think you should be forcing people to make such massive decisions with Advanced Skills. Choosing between them is already difficult enough, as you get different outcomes depending on the combination. By forcing players to make even bigger decisions on whether or not their wild slaves fully function or not is a terrible idea. Advanced Subskills are extremely valuable, after all you only get two and creating what is essentially a two-part skill where if you want Wild Slaves to function properly, you need to use both of your skills in order to do so.

I strongly urge you to reconsider. If you're that "afraid" of FC becoming overpowered again, even though I'd say the reduction in number of Wild Slaves has significantly reduced that, then maybe the problem lies in how powerful fighters will be once the change comes in, and not the class.


Players have access to 3 Advanced Class Subskills on the Test server at present. We plan on keeping this the same.

Fighters being powerful is much more desireable than Wild Bots being powerful, because Fighters actually cost you something (Energy and Hull Space) while Wild Bots do not take any resources. The issue is Wild Bots, because they are free DPS. I personally do not have a problem with throwing the Fighters into the game as they are, because they require a significant amount of energy. The problem is that there is a concern that a player being able to launch fighters and use wild bots and regular bots will return to the very high DPS they were doing prior to the nerfs to Wild Bots.


sabre198 wrote:
so how do you envision people power thier MF slaves now? theyeve just taken a 50% elec hit nerf

basically youve handed a collection of shit in return for nerfing mfbots. Cant you just leave mfbots alone, i wanted to resub at some point.

its not like slaves are OP, even with MFbots they still struggle to dps stuff even at endgame.

basically who complained slaves were OP DPS with mfbots?


The issue isn't that MF Bots do too much damage or that slaves are OP, if the issue was damage then the damage on the MF bots would have been affected. The issue is that no other bot is used because the MF Bot is the best, and the downsides (Less weapon diversity = less DPS in certain situations, more electrical consumption = less sustained DPS) are not enough of a drawback to encourage the consideration of other choices. I am in favor of just making all stats on bots multiplicative so that they scale and are desirable in some situations, but this is not the path we decided on as a team.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:12 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
then back off until you have a suitable solution, people still wont use those other shitty bots and you will just piss people off when thier slaves cant power when its taken bils and getting all the way to end game to finally be able to power them.

if the lower bots suck then improve them! all those improvements suck, you know they do!


Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:24 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
iirc wild bots cost you 1 wep slot that might otherwise be usefully occupied.

is there a reason you clever guys can't make fighters + wild slaves balanced without an advanced skill, then make one more powerful at the cost of the other's strength via advanced skills?


Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:27 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
sabre198 wrote:
then back off until you have a suitable solution, people still wont use those other shitty bots and you will just piss people off when thier slaves cant power when its taken bils and getting all the way to end game to finally be able to power them.

if the lower bots suck then improve them! all those improvements suck, you know they do!

I know exactly why they suck compared to MF bots, however my hands are tied when it comes to addressing that issue head on. Thus, in order to achieve my goal I needed to hit the MF bots at the same time. I explained why in earlier posts.

If you haven't already, take a look at the tentative stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1285066390

iwnh01 wrote:
iirc wild bots cost you 1 wep slot that might otherwise be usefully occupied.

is there a reason you clever guys can't make fighters + wild slaves balanced without an advanced skill, then make one more powerful at the cost of the other's strength via advanced skills?

Wild bots don't cost you any weapon slots that might be otherwise usefully occupied. They literally cost you nothing to use.

Making fighters and wild slaves balanced together wouldn't be hard, but there's a bigger issue at play here: I do not believe it is justified for bots that are free, and do free damage, to constitute a significant portion of a Fleet Commanders offensive power. Fleet Commander's currently do nothing with their energy banks, allowing them to launch fighters that are actually useful and worth using (for a large upfront energy cost) along with all of the quality of life changes will give FC's bonus DPS.

I definitely think that having to spend a resource, in this case Energy, in order to do damage is highly preferable to that damage coming from Wild Bots (Which do not cost you anything, resource wise or time wise). This is the perspective I am coming from.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:11 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
sabre198 wrote:
then back off until you have a suitable solution, people still wont use those other shitty bots and you will just piss people off when thier slaves cant power when its taken bils and getting all the way to end game to finally be able to power them.

if the lower bots suck then improve them! all those improvements suck, you know they do!


This pretty much sums up MFing with Hydra Gear as well.

Diversity with different ways of playing a class is one thing, trying to create diverse slaves for FC is something else. MF Slaves are just one of those things that will never really be beaten unless you literally punish people who want to use MF Bots, which seems to be what you're trying to do. Also can we please stop throwing around this label of things being "Free DPS" when it is often the total opposite. Free DPS was used to justify the nerf on Hydra gear when in reality, people spend billions on Hydra Gear and then a further more few billions, sometimes hundreds of billions on Bindomite just to get a very specific modification.

I wouldn't call Wild Slaves free DPS either, as people are often looking for very specific ships with very specific augmenter setups on them. It's not exactly free when it can take ages to find the specific AI you want and then a specific combination of augmenters equipped is it? It's not like buying a Zebucart, shoving the most basic gear onto it and soloing Kidd is it? When you consider the most common wild slaves are roaming Aliens in Perilous Space, which as we all know are only available at certain times during the Universe when someone hasn't decided to clear subspace. If subspace was to be completely cleared for the whole Universe, you'd never see fresh and new Wild Aliens again. Why don't you make it more difficult to obtain Wild Slaves instead? Maybe its time to update the tradition of radiating the ship down to 0 and shooting it with a Prismatic Conversion to something a bit more time consuming? While we're at it, let's nerf the crap out of all cappable AIs which are tech 0 to tech 14 because you know, they're giving free DPS to new players and all.

Instead of tarring these things with the same brush as "Free DPS", make it harder to obtain them instead of just outright nerfing the crap out of them in the name of "diversity". If you don't like the high damage they deliver then you could start by maybe reducing the number of equipped augmenters on the capped AIs once they've been captured, just have them lose some of their augmenters. This would be for the wild slaves that have 5 to 10 augmenters equipped. That would reduce the damage from wild slaves, or you could reduce the %Resists that Wild Man gives to Wild Slaves in the first place. There are plenty of alternatives, but the solution isn't to nerf them down to the stone age when you could just make it a bit more difficult to obtain them. The same goes for Controlbots, multifiring is just one of those things which is preferred by the majority and if you want to create diversity then thats where you'd add MF Bots with better bonus stats over others. Some might have +Damage and +ROF and others might have +Radar and +Range but sacrifice other stats.

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:19 am
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Post Re: Weekly Dev Blog – 21st December
So what's the base damage mod that would be equivalent ?
Is it something like +temp100 and +dmg 640%

Why can't you do that?


Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:42 am
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