TESL4
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Posts posted by TESL4
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Pt.1 Lightning, A simple damage drop off at range added to reduced accuracy with increased close range damage could be a reasonable means to negate the long range shield cracking abilities of lightning, while still allowing it to be relevant at long range, but devastating at close range to shields at least. It could also cause (providing it can be programmed) system failures causing short disabling of upgrade tokens engines, or shield recharging abilities as if it were shorting out systems rather then merely burning the hull of an enemy. This would make players not want to close with lightning ships, or feel the sting of one ambushing you.
Some interesting ideas. I like the idea of the damage falloff for them. The damage falloff could even be reversed making them more of a sniper weapon, making players want to close the distance to reduce the damage. Changing them as more of an EWAR weapon disabling systems is not a bad idea, but it will need a damage reduction to keep it balanced.
Pt.2 Rail Guns, Alot of words are being thrown around and lots of neat ideas about ship health mechanics and questions about how damage is applied I give the following approach. A number of different systems under the lexicon Accelerators multiple damage types would be available and each one would have differing mechanics.
Kinetic- much like our current rail gun in that damages is a result of a high velocity pellet transferring its energy into a target. The most ineffective against shields this type would be best at causing deep damaging shots that would harm internal blocks but all blocks along the way while dissipating its energy.
+Pen -low shield damage.
Antimatter-Rather then penetrating deeply it would have 1/3 the penetration but deal explosive damage as the material is being annihilated Still ineffective against shields as they are a field of energy, not matter. but doing greater damage to fewer blocks. Has power drain to hold the ammo.
+Hull Damage bonus -less pen -low shield damage -less power generation.
Energy-Rather then accelerating a slug of material this would launch a blast of charged electrons or some other particle that deal greater stress to shield but reduced comparable damage to hull. Small damage drop off at range (10k, 10%-20k, 20%) loss as the particles dissipate, no pen. Draws Battery power when firing (minimal)
+shield damage -no pen -small damage drop off - battery draw.
Plasma- a slug that is heated to plasma as it is leaving the weapon, Dealing damage to shields and hull to good degree, however with lesser range (66% of average) due to cooling. Lesser pen (1/5th of average) but no damage bonus like antimatter would have.
+shield damage +better hull damage then energy -less range -low pen
I'm not too sure how well this would work. While it sounds really cool, it would be a bit unfair to have railguns have this much flexibility, all the other weapons would become obsolete I think. Would be a great idea for a mod! Also, I have noticed that railguns are not as potent on the beta branch as they once were, but still do extremely well against hull, especially with antimatter damage. Perhaps they have already been balanced.
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The only real difference between a railgun projectile and a cannon projectile is the velocity at which the projectile is traveling, so it would make sense imo that a railgun projectile would use an explosive charge once piercing armor/hull blocks. A cannon projectile usually won't have enough velocity to pierce through thick armor (especially on the large scale giant space ships) so its explosive charge would detonate on the surface or within the first block. Of course you don't want to simulate all the real world physics of it, so a good representation of this would be for railguns to penetrate the outer layers of armor and hull, where a cannon shot is just applied at the surface it hits.
I was using the term pierce as essentially a bullet hole through a piece of paper. A purely kinetic projectile would just slice through a certain amount of the ship unless it hits something volatile which could cause an explosion. The amount of damage it would do wouldn't be much considering that railgun projectiles are usually much smaller than cannon projectiles in order to reach their high speeds. The damage to the hull/armor would be a hole and slight deformation around where the projectile went through. You could of course have a super massive railgun projectile, but that would be more of a doomsday weapon as a super massive projectile hitting a ship at a high speed would punch a large hole through the ship, vibrate it to pieces, and knock it back substantially.
So Perhaps the best representation of a railgun with an explosive charge would be to do ~10% damage through every block it pierces then full damage to the block where the explosive charge would detonate.
Another option if you wanted a kinetic only projectile would be to have it pierce through the whole ship doing damage to each block it passes through. The damage of the railgun would need to be drastically reduced though (~10% of value currently) and only do extra damage when hitting volatile blocks.
Shields might could use a nerf, but with enough plasma damage applied it may not need the nerf. Plasma damage type torpedoes are extremely good at taking out shields last I checked as well. Hull and armor still needs a buff though, imo. Antimatter damage absolutely lethal if your shields go down thanks to hull HP being much harder to build up and less rewarding since armor adds a ton of mass.
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Can confirm
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While I get the appeal of stuffing as much shield and hyperspace into a ship as possible and having a thin armor membrane as the exterior of the ship, in the games current state that type of build is much stronger than going for a hull tank since shields, hyperspace cores, generators, ect (even needing a larger volume) will still provide much more value to the ship than armor and especially hull. Hull and armor tanking is currently vastly inferior than shield tanking because the HP density of shield blocks. Also, shields regenerate much quicker and even have systems which boost their HP way more than hull polarizers ever could. There are even exceptional shield systems which boost the shields back up 35% when depleted. Given enough shields you can make your shields impenetrable with the impenetrable shield system and still maintain a massive shield tank. I'm not claiming shields need a nerf, hull could just use a buff, especially if armor is separate.
As far as the explanation of realism of the railguns the charges shot could contain an explosive charge which auto-detonates after piercing through armor. And for unarmored ships, because these railgun charges travel so fast, and the projectile is small they simply pierce through hull of the ship leaving a small hole doing no real damage BUT the charge still detonates doing the damage. You could also make it so where blocks not affected by integrity fields DO take piercing damage due to the hull of the ship being less resistant to overall damage. Just a thought
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Also, you can go to all of those "help we are under attack by pirate" pop ups. Look for the free the slaves mission as well and when you don't ask for a reward you get a pretty hefty chunk of reputation.
I'm not sure about the number of Xsotan near the core. I would expect there would be more the closer you get though.
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With the volatile and semi volatile blocks, the damage they deal when destroyed, is that to surrounding blocks, or only to the ship HP pool? I think it'd be good to have them deal it to surrounding blocks (and by extension that then effects ship HP pool if not surrounded by enough armor to "contain" it :) ).
Also, as a balance/incentive to use the single massive generator despite the obvious drawback, have it like cargo blocks with the internal walls. This would also make it so that generators under a certain size are useless, further cutting down on the hunting out of scattered blocks. Something similar should maybe be done with all functional blocks, each with their own individual wall sizes as what makes sense for their type.
I was just thinking HP pool that way ships could be more salvageable. Might be easier on performance as well. If railguns were made to only penetrate armor, you couldn't just build an "armor ship". 1 hit from a railgun would be devastating.
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One way is to bribe them every hour, giving them credits or ores. This should work in getting you to neutral where you can start trading with them and increasing it that way. You can also help them out in wars with other factions you don't care about. That pretty much assures you maximum status last time I checked.
I thought if you got the final blow on an Xsotan you would gain faction standing? Is this not the case anymore?
The wiki needs to be updated
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The idea of having no hull HP might still be risky, but I do really like the idea of having to protect key blocks in order to prevent ship destruction. I'm torn between liking it and not. I feel like a ship build like "The AI" would be very good if this happened. Lots of small segments of the ship that are self sustaining (crew, power generation, thrusters, ect).
Perhaps (values as an example):
- Keep armor separate from hull
- Armor HP is per individual block, allowing it to protect the hull and key components.
- Armor block HP values are increased 3x with integrity field generators
- Hull block HP values are increased 2x with integrity field generators
- Overall Hull HP of non volatile or armor blocks is significantly higher (lets say 10x to 20x)
- Scoring a critical hit ie: Destroying a block that is considered "volatile", deals 25x to 50x the HP of the block to hull HP
- Semi volatile blocks like thrusters and engines do 4x to 5x of the HP of the block to hull HP
- Ship still dies when HP goes to zero
This could be a way to incorporate a more ship operability approach? This way spreading out hundreds of volatile blocks wouldn't really work as hitting one would cause massive damage and it would be hard to properly protect every one of them. A single massive generator wouldn't be wise either, because you could just slowly destroy blocks until you reach the generator which when destroyed would instantly kill the remainder of the ship. Thoughts?
I didn't realize that railguns did that now. I remember not too long ago one of my battleships only had 3 railguns but the 3 of them would 1 shot volley any NPC ship once to hull and 2 shot volley the three ships in that boss fight. They only had a base damage of about 9000 as well so I was seeing numbers in the 100k range when all 3 hit. What made it worse was it was a 6 round burst fire with a crazy fire rate.
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I agree With the vast sum of your statements frankly, but in finding OP turrets that has come and gone again after the recent update, we did find another size 1 bolter turret with 15k dps, and we still make rail guns with the highest just under 9k dps so far none of us use lighting but that is because we thing the effect looks stupid, some people may like it, it just doesn't suit any of our aesthetics. A like experience occurred in from the depths where a weapon system was eventually found to be fairly more potent then others, and some abused it making is so those of us who were responsible could no longer have combat in the way we preferred having been "balanced" into irrelevance. I agree wit the changes made to the turret factory generator in that 16k damage turrets in the Xanion region outside the barrier is far too powerful. we came to that conclusion and reckoned that inside the barrier opponents must be that much more powerful. It was at that point we started to use Rail guns to not be as "OP" as the power of the bolters was frankly making the game "boring" however the turret factory change also made it that no point defense laser dose over 4 dps or has range over 5 this i thought was the most painful loss as I like laser point defense.
In beta at the core is it impossible to find weapons with over 8k dps? If not then i don't see how much will change for us atleast, but i guess all we can do is wait and see. Truth be told though we like having old turrets from before the update, it gives them this lost technology mystique where we regard them with great value and sadness when lost. My pal sold 4 of my point defense lasers i was keeping for later left int the alliance inventory, I will never have more of those so it is a greater loss then loosing 100 fighters or and amount of money or goods and that is cool to me. I hope there are still the "op hyper turrets" here and there as i think that making crafting turrets fun. It feels good to provide for the community by searching out and making a run of good turrets and doling them out. There is a almost gambling effect when looking for new turrets as we all obviously want eh most "OP" weapon we can get, that much is natural for a player base. I don't want every nation to have available one of each turret type be OP as I think the search itself is quite fun.
I agree overall Small/large ships speed mechanics need attention, but i don't think massive flat reduction to max speed or acceleration is a suitable answer. I think to some degree simply bigger ships should be better all around as they are simply put bigger and more suitable. It is not that small ships are just plain worse, but rather that different roles are fulfilled better by differing sizes within reason. a 5 slot fast small ship is a great escort or patrol ship, while larger hulks can tank and have the mass to fire rail guns in all directions. That seems fair to me. Think about it in comparable naval terms, in what way is a destroyer to be compared to a battleship? while certainly destroyers are faster, that can be achieved as is simply with the velocity bypass chip, beyond that a smaller naval vessel cannot be compared to a much larger ship the only drawback to a is ship is cost and price and that is what i see in the game now, and also fine by me.
I don't disagree with your ideas about armor that sounds pretty cool, TBH moving away from hull hit points would be neat in itself where a ship could be destroyed via systems loss rather then arbitrary damage values. My only counter is that having to put armor on the outside limits creative ability to some degree, I plate my ships in hull blocks to make them look sleeker rather then have the nasty camo which i don't care for visible. You could have Integrity fields also boost armor strength drawing from ship power instead of just helping reduce damage from collisions.
Having armor inside the ship would still be very beneficial as it could protect the important blocks like the generator and shield blocks when the outer hull is destroyed, especially if you were wanting to go with the system's loss approach. My only concern would be hiding hundreds of small support systems throughout the ship requiring relentless pelting to the point where you have to essentially destroy ever block in the ship for it to finally be destroyed. I like the integrity strength to boost armor as well. I suggested that very idea in my big comprehensive suggestion post I made.
In my eyes, bigger should not mean better. Sure, in a head on head fight a 15 slot ship should be able to take on several 5 slot ships if it is a fight to the death. What makes small ships competely useless is they can't even attempt gurilla warfare and making attack runs on the large ship because they are faster and thanks to their abundance in systems can easily equip a couple of engine mods making them even more insane while still having the system slots availible for turrets, shields, ect. I'm not suggesting nerfing their speed to the point where they are esentially a station that barely move, but there needs to be something that changes the way max speed and acceleration is calculated in order to prevent these issues. Having OP turrets also contributes to the problem because you can stack so many on a large 15 slot ship, that it can nearly 1 shot any 5 slot ship passing by no matter the tank.
I haven't seen any turret factory turn out those numbers on the beta branch (which is what is coming to the game next update), but I haven't looked thoroughly enough to justify that statement. Based on the loot quality I have been getting the wepons seem to all be fairly low and balanced with a clear line between quality levels and sizes. The railguns may have lower overall dps, but its the penetration affect that makes them OP. Sure they have lower "DPS" but when they penetrate 8 times you multiply that 9k dps by 8 and end up with 72k dps per turret assuming no armor is hit. They are also hitscan which means it always hits whatever it is pointed at. (same with lightning). I'm sure the devs will get most of the weapon damages balanced before 1.0 though.
I sure hope that turrets in the core aren't weaker than the xanion region too lol. I mostly mess around in creative untill the final release, so I don't venture into the core much. I just stay around the xanion/trinium area to test builds agianst relevent ships as xanion and trinium are my favorite two building materials.
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That -50% penalty for independent targeting should be removed too... but that's what we have mods for I guess.
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I Agree with some of the points made in this thread, but also disagree with many. I have been playing for a few weeks now and have put in my impressions and feed back. In regards to the 3 main points being spoken of here I would like to give my opinion and throw it into the ether.
Speed, and distance from "warp in point/Center of system". I would agree that the speed mechanics could use a change, small ships simply cannot compete with the sheer thrust output from substantially larger ships. I do not know how the Mass to max speed equation works or how it is scaled, but i would say it could use attention. to a degree this can be over come with the velocity bypass circuit and engine boosters but this may not be every mans fix.I have not seen however combat taking place 500k from the center, and if there were enemy ships that ran that far, then why would i be concerned with them? I have fought battles where combat may take me 100k from start, but i don't think that to be that enormous of a range. when many weapons have 20-24 shot distance. Which bring up point No.2
Weapon Balance, And prevalence of certain weapon types. I agree that some weapon systems are under and some over represented by value. I myself use Rails guns ans lasers with anti shield torpedoes for combat, But that is me personally. I am playing with 4 other people all of us bought the game at the same time and all started together, yet we have come to radically different build and combat styles and ship lay-outs. For us the most prized and powerful weapons we have found are bolters with 10 range of Xanion material, Tech 35, 16,000DPS size 0.5. These were patched out of the ability to manufacture and so we only have 30 or so examples, afterward the most used weapon is Rail guns, then Cannons, then launchers. I have built Fast Lightly armored nimle ships, where as my companions have build slow heavy HP Tank ships. What I have observed is that we each have developed a unique combat and weapon preference despite fighting the same enemies, in the same areas and conversing about our exploration of the combat mechanics. I like to fight from far away and snipe with rail guns, another player has large brawlers that use bolters and plasma up close, the third whips around with bolters on the front of his ship making hit and runs, and our 4th has an all purpose ship that is intended to engage many enemies at once with cannon and pulse cannon fire. Simply I cannot agree with your assessment that rail and lightning too OP nerf now or combat will be all the same meta. I think that the problem is that you are unwilling to choose to have combat else-wise.
AS for DLC I am rather Ambivalent would I buy, Yes i would, simply because i want to reward the developers with my money for making something great. If great features or mechanics are locked behind a pay wall that are outside the scope of the core game i have no problem with that. If some types of cosmetics are introduced likewise locked behind a pay wall that too i am OK with as i want an excuse to reward the devs with my money. I bought 2 extra copies of the game i am so pleased with it. I do think there is much to be polished and much that needs further development, but i would rater encourage work on this then see them work on another title in hopes of revenue as ultimately they do this as a job first and a passion second. A dedicated player base alone will not buy beer and sausage for 5 hungry game developing Germans.
The first two problems could also entirely disappear with re balancing of the system upgrades though in a move away from chip slots based on mass and computer cores to one based on processing power and draw from individual chips. Who knows What i can say for certain is that whenever Devs listen to the loudest most obnoxious few voices they turn away their pleased silent masses. Look at Eugen Systems or From the Depths. We must be constructive not destructive if we want to help. I can see, and understand some of the points being made even the ones i disagree with, but nerveless I personally remain a Happy Customer.
I agree that is already a very good game, and based on the changes I'm seeing on the Beta, I believe it will be one of the most complete recent games upon launch. I too will be buying the DLCs provided they give enough new content based upon the price. I'm very content overall with the game, but think it could still really benefit from balancing and TLC, weather it be before 1.0 or shortly after.
In regards to your statement about the bolters and combat balance, the OP bolters you have are rather irrelevant now, since they seem have fixed the craziness with the turret RNG. I've been playing in the most recent version of the beta branch and can confirm that turrets are more consistent now without the random nutty modifiers or stats. If you and your friends use only turrets received from the new beta branch, you will find that if your friends with the large and tanky ships were to equip lightning turrets with plasma damage, and railguns with antimatter damage, there will be no real contest. Small ships will not be able to get within range of the longer ranged weaponry for long, and they can't really kite either due to large ships having the ability to have a much higher thrust and top speed. They are much more balanced in beta, but still are the "meta".
As I've so adamantly proclaimed in this thread already, I don't think a range reduction is the right method to take, but instead change the mechanics of these two weapons. Lightning should be given a very high spread making their ability to hit small and some medium sized ships, especially at range, more difficult. Railguns should also be changed to pierce armor blocks to do a flat damage to hull underneath (armor blocks shouldn't contribute to hull HP, but instead have individual HP and serve to actually protect the hull and components underneath).
The thrust and speed issue of large vs small ships is probably the biggest change that needs to happen in my honest opinion. Bigger ships are just plain and simple better with their only drawback being the are bigger and easier to hit because the are faster, accelerate more, can be boosted in speed even further thanks to more system slots, tankier, more potential damage output (more turrets). They even have a better hyperspace reach in most cases thanks to being able to run a larger hyperspace block volume and plenty of system upgrades which can reduce the jump charge time to equivalent to any small ship.
I still greatly enjoy the game and think the dev team has done a great job considering the size of the team. I look forward to the balancing to come!
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Seems like the turrets get varying damage bonuses to hull/shield which can vary but is shown on the turrets themselves. I'd really like the system to more revolve around resistances and have damage types just be used in different resistance stats. Antimatter would still be great against hull, and plasma shield, but this would be represented in the block's/shield stats.
Also some visual indicator of shield resistances would be amazing imo.
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A major issue with NPC's, is the fact that they have omnidirectional firing turrets(can't fire more than X# of them at a time, but still) and because they are not limited by A)heavy burst cooldowns like players, B) overheating or C) Power drain from weapons/Boosting, it makes it extremely unbalanced with their new speed mechanic(yet a player owned ship controlled by a captain will still incur the 50% damage reduction from indep. targeting turrets. Just remove that stupid penalty and require them to cost like 3x more crew for each weapon type to make them independent, or more power.. Nerf railgun range/lightning range, give missiles their old speed back(but reduce their range as well), Give cannons a MUCH better projectile speed, and make player weapons dropped from npc's not so crappy. I kid you not i can be out in tech lvl 30+ and still get tech lvl 3 iron turrets from EVERY pirate/Xsotan I fight. It's asinine.
It would be nice if the 50% penalty was removed and all turrets were independant. Let the gunners do what they are payed to do... shoot lol. I don't think rail/lightning range nerf is the right move, though. I agree they need to be nerfed, but as previously mentioned here their mechanics should be changed to bring them more in balance with the other weapons. Lightning = much greater spread (especially at long range) and Rails only penetrate armor (which should be seperate from the ships Hull HP). Having lightning with very high spread makes smaller ships and ships at range very hard to hit giving it a more specialized role as a capital/station killer (unless electric damage and asteroid base). Feel free to check out my suggestion post I made about my comprehensive game balance and give me feedback.
Agree with everything else in regards to combat balance and the goofy iron turret drops you suggested though.
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Are you using or messing with steam mods by any chance? I had this issue when switching to/from the beta branch and adding/removing different mods. I can't remember exactly what I did but once I verified my workshop mods or something it fixed it and I could play on the server again.
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You said it, I am not putting words in your mouth. If you reduce the range of 2 of the 3 long range weapons to equivalent to the other non long-range weapons, then yes all weapons will basically be the same just with different damage types with these two still being OP thanks to the penetration and high damage.
As I stated, the mechanics of lightning and rail need to change not their range. As do the mechanics with large ships having a higher base speed than small ships. The NPC ship AI should not ever revert to their old and cumbersome selves, it made the game incredibly boring and easy.
There has never been issues with you playing the game, it is functional and it works well mechanically. The only thing "preventing you from plaing" is your gripes with issues which do indeed need resolving, and they have fixed alot of issues already. I'm not saying they are done because there indeed does need to be fixes, which is what they are currently working on. Nearly all "1.0" releases by every single company need patches, do you know why? The answer is because nearly no games are released perfect. This game is already functional and MAGNITUDES more bug and glitch free than any Bethesda game, its not really a contest.
This is not a cop out card I'm giving the devs, so far they have continued to fix the game issues and give us new content. Yes its at a slow pace, but when you have such a small team like the devs have... what do you expect? More than likely they can't really afford to hire extra help, and are hoping the extra sells on release will allow them to get help and finish patching up the completed game (content wise).
There is nothing wrong with damage type gameplay, Pokemon do this and look how big that industry is.
I have to strongly disagree with all of your points based on my analysis of obvious game problems that everyone here can see crystal clear within the first day of gameplay, by how you sound it just adds to my diamondstrong belief that it just feels like everyone wants to defend their ability to snipe and be unbeatable to due the range problem..., which makes this game...NOT a game. The fabric of the game mechanics are completely torn down by this issue and the defenders need to move aside for the sake of the games future. The game has NOTHING to fight you back with once you have your lightning and rail cheese. I dont mean to sound like a doctor but...
Step one to fixing range problems with lightning and rail is to admit that range with lightning and rail is a problem, this denial harms Avorion. Defending this is what is going to be one of the main causes of people walking out the door, me included and we're fed up of it.
Its time to stop the ''i want to keep my godly build'' and change it to ''ok its time to seriously balance this''.
There absolutely are issues with me being able to play the game due the games fabric being so torn full of these gamebreaking holes and bugs that right now i cant play because these issues are a showstopper. They frustrate me to the point i cant continue.
If by function and work well you mean enemies flying over 300km and disappearing from your HUD because they are so far away is good mechanics, i just....i dont understand why you continue to defend an obvious gamebreaking bug. I have no idea why some of you Defend obvious, proven bugs, youre killing Avorion with even this being a debate, which it shouldnt be.
Extra sales does not = faster development speed. In many cases especially in the Indie industry, it can often mean the total opposite. Some decide to keep developing, some take the money and RUN. With a AAA game company youre almost garauntee'd further development, but with Avorion...it is not possible for us to know, even if they say they plan to continue, they may not. Nobody knows.
1.0 needs to be stable, and bug free as possible. Currently, it is neither.
27 days left. See how quick these days are ticking by? And we still have denyers blockading the vital changes neccasary.
Enough of this Shielding and deflecting, put it aside for vital fixes and changes. Clock is ticking.
Are you even reading what I write completely? Please read others posts throughly before responding. And when you disagree, explain WHY exactly that is instead of being closeminded. I don't mind debating the issue, but when you are not giving enough proof for me to believe you and NOT really reading what I'm writing then I find it pointless. Currently, it just seems like you want to toxic flame post because you are upset (which I get).
Everything I have suggested will fix the lightning/rail "meta". I have never stated I want to "keep my OP lightning and rails" and I can assure you I want them nerfed. This is you putting words in my mouth, I literally said I want them nerfed because they are OP. I just disagree that nerfing their range is the right choice, because I don't want weapons that all have similar ranges... many railguns I find in the beta branch already have a range barely of 10 km.
I ALSO previously stated, the ship speeds need to be changed such that larger ships with the long range weaponry will not be faster than smaller ships which results in the "cat and mouse" 300+ km away from the start. The issue is when these longer range large ships are speeding away tring to get at the optimal range (which it is based on) and the small ship chasing after because of its shorter range. This is why the new AI isn't flawed, just how the game calculate's ship's speed which is also an easy fix.
I ALSO never said I dislike the damage type model. I just don't like making all the weapons with similar ranges where the only real difference is infact the damage type. That is far too simplistic for a game with one of the best ship building.
You are correct that alot of game companies will take the money and run, and that could be what happens here, who knows? I'd like to think the devs with this game won't but it is a possibility. I just hope that they use the extra money to ensure their game gets fully polished. It doesn't hurt to be optimisitc.
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So nerf weapon range. The elephant in the room is Lightning and Rail, some of us have been screaming from the bottom of our lungs for over 2 years to nerf these. The nerf has never happened and these 2 types of weapon are damaging the games potential, Lightning and Rail have been holding Avorion hostage for too long.
For heavens sake even the final boss Guardian has a max attack range of 5km...not 22+ is this not obvious evidence of a diamond-clear problem everybody can see. Everybody can see this issue right, you cant miss it. If you have fought the Guardian, then you already know its attack range, and you probably stay right in that sweet 5.1 spot where it just doesn't attack or chase you.
You said it, I am not putting words in your mouth. If you reduce the range of 2 of the 3 long range weapons to equivalent to the other non long-range weapons, then yes all weapons will basically be the same just with different damage types with these two still being OP thanks to the penetration and high damage.
As I stated, the mechanics of lightning and rail need to change not their range. As do the mechanics with large ships having a higher base speed than small ships. The NPC ship AI should not ever revert to their old and cumbersome selves, it made the game incredibly boring and easy.
Im being quite firm and asking them them to quickly bandage the game because i am honestly annoyed with the current state of the game, have waited a year and a half to play but these issues have prevented me from playing a proper game, the incredibly slow development speed of the game, and the announcement that on March 9th they want to call it a 1.0. It is not ready and unless the development speed increases and fixes start coming in rapid-fire style, it looks like it is the purpose plan that theyre going to release an unfinished product perhaps intentionally to get a 'New Release' popup on steam and some smallscale extra sales. Seems morally wrong to shorthand the customers like that. Kinda bad behavior i would expect from a Bethesda game, not from these guys.
There has never been issues with you playing the game, it is functional and it works well mechanically. The only thing "preventing you from plaing" is your gripes with issues which do indeed need resolving, and they have fixed alot of issues already. I'm not saying they are done because there indeed does need to be fixes, which is what they are currently working on. Nearly all "1.0" releases by every single company need patches, do you know why? The answer is because nearly no games are released perfect. This game is already functional and MAGNITUDES more bug and glitch free than any Bethesda game, its not really a contest.
This is not a cop out card I'm giving the devs, so far they have continued to fix the game issues and give us new content. Yes its at a slow pace, but when you have such a small team like the devs have... what do you expect? More than likely they can't really afford to hire extra help, and are hoping the extra sells on release will allow them to get help and finish patching up the completed game (content wise).
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Going to another galaxy almost sounds like an Avorion 2 release to me. *shrug*
Wouldn't be a bad idea for a DLC possibly, attack the aliens back!
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TESL4-
You make a good point about the trading empire--perhaps you could jump back and forth between the two? Since there is already an "issue" about keeping sectors "alive" in a normal game, jumping between the galaxies wouldn't be much different.
As for the multiplayer, I don't think this would be an issue either. Given any quadrant in space, the game is only rendering that area at a time. Should be no different than it is currently, except if player 1 was in [-500,-500] in galaxy 1, and player 2 was in [-500,-500] in galaxy 2 (potentially overlapping) this would require the game to "display" two quadrants at the same time...but when players split and go in different directions to mine, it is already doing that. I know I am making this sound SUPER EASY, and I know it isn't.
Perhaps adding a "Z" direction in the galaxy as it is would offer more content...I just wouldn't know how to display it on the map.
Hmm the idea of a Z direction is interesting. Perhaps add a material which takes avorion's place on the material list, and once you defeat the WH guardian you can go to a different "Z" dimension which could be the alien's "home systems" and there is nothing but the upgrade Avoion in those systems. It will be incredibly hard to mine because the alien "home systems" will be heavily defended by fleets and defensive stations.
Its a cool concept, but idk if it will be implemented with the 1.0 release. Maybe one of the DLCs that they decide to release?
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I thought the repair turrets only "repaired" shield? I don't remember them saying that they repaired hull last I checked (barely use them anyways).
Yeah, some do shield, some do hull, some are supposed to do both. All random chance which you get.
Good to know! That makes them slightly more appealing now :) (if they work)
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And as far as the OP, I 100% disagree that the NPC ship AI should go back to the way they were. This is a terrible idea as the game was incredibly easy and you could literally just snipe an entire system from where you jumped in without ANY of the AI getting to shoot back.
So nerf weapon range. The elephant in the room is Lightning and Rail, some of us have been screaming from the bottom of our lungs for over 2 years to nerf these. The nerf has never happened and these 2 types of weapon are damaging the games potential, Lightning and Rail have been holding Avorion hostage for too long.
For heavens sake even the final boss Guardian has a max attack range of 5km...not 22+ is this not obvious evidence of a diamond-clear problem everybody can see. Everybody can see this issue right, you cant miss it. If you have fought the Guardian, then you already know its attack range, and you probably stay right in that sweet 5.1 spot where it just doesnt attack or chase you.
You cant just design the entire game differently, to revolve around these 2 weapon types. Clearly, the easy fix is to nerf range. DONE.
Sure there are other ways of doing things, but 1.0 is March 9th, they no longer have time to redesign the combat for the 50th time.
This whole dilly dallying over these issues is costing time and harming the game, these urgent issues need nailing out NOW or it will be too late, the game will launch, and the reviews are going to divebomb because combat is so disfunctional.
We need to stop argueing and get these issues SLAMMED DOWN before 1.0 (they ARE in a rush at this point). That deadline is so short, theres no time for us to keep butting heads, we need quick RAPIDFIRE solutions and not to debate ideas for redesigns.
Release your game right, THE FIRST TIME.
28 days left...
I hope my formatting emits the aura of proper urgency Avorion is currently in, to get these fixes down. 28 days is a blink in the development world. The deadline is not long enough for indecision.
You can't just nerf weapon range and expect to be fixed, THAT is what should be obvious. There are meant to be weapons with longer ranges and mechanics for different playstyles. Yes, Lightning and Rails are indeed OP and 100% the meta. But that doesn't you mean you make all the weapons the same and boring with little to no variation. Lightning could be made to be way more inaccurate, especially at long ranges, railguns could be made to pierce armor blocks (doing no damage to armor) and hit the underlying hull underneath doing a FLAT damage with no penetration. Armor should also be sperate from hull, cannon and missile projectile speeds should be raised. I made an indepth post on how all this would work in a suggestion I made.
While your idea may be one way to help the game, I, personally do not view it as the right way and here is why, give it a consideration. Railguns would still be overpowered because of the penetration multiplier, and lightning would still also be OP because of its very high damage output. Lightning and rail ships will still dominate in close up fights with the only contender being teslas. Add the slow and cumbersome old AI to the mix and you are guaranteed to hit these slow ships There needs to be a comprehensive balance to weapon damages, damage types, projectile speeds, resistances, ect in my opinion to make the game diverse and engaging.
Yes the devs have a lot of balancing to do and yes they are going to be under a lot of time pressure to fix it. The last thing the devs need is a post telling them THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO FIX YOUR GAME and guilt tripping them.
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EDIT: idk why it posted twice
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An interesting Idea for sure. Might be hard to do in a multiplayer setting though. The game would have to run several different galaxies at once which would not be very performance friendly. It would also be kind of a bummer if you set up a trading empire and loose it all when you go to the next area. I love the idea of a boss unlocking more content though.
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Well, I think there are two things.
First, the new behavior where the ships try to stay at max range. I think this is where most of the flying 200-300km out is coming from.
Second is that yeah, large ships can get up to 1kps pre-boost while smaller ships can only achieve a few hundred m/s. I almost feel like that should be flipped. Big ships' advantage should be larger weapons (and thus increased range) and the ability to soak damage. Smaller ships should be able to avoid damage through maneuverability and speed.
Preach! I've been wanting the speeds to be flipped for awhile. I've rarely seen the case where ships fly that far off either.
And as far as the OP, I 100% disagree that the NPC ship AI should go back to the way they were. This is a terrible idea as the game was incredibly easy and you could literally just snipe an entire system from where you jumped in without ANY of the AI getting to shoot back. If anything make easy like that, but its not engaging or challenging. I do not want the devs to make the combat dull again. Ship speeds just need to be fixed as furyofthestars suggested.
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I thought the repair turrets only "repaired" shield? I don't remember them saying that they repaired hull last I checked (barely use them anyways).
You are not ready for release...but if you have to:
in General Discussion
Posted
Really if it were an explosive charge it would still cut through hull blocks too then the explosive charge would detonate at the penetration level. So I guess in my original post I should have changed that. Would be a great weapon for sniping important blocks like shields and generators. I like the purely kinetic idea as well, the only reason I'd want it to cut all the way through was so the firing animation could go through your ship making it look like your ship was getting skewered.
Edit:
I still like the idea of just giving lightning greatly increased spread too. Essentially the same as having damage falloff at long range