Removing Boost from the players/Adding Boost to NPCs

[Kyuhau]

In most gameplay scenarios, most of the events where we encounter hyperspace blockers or pirates during a false request signal, the player easily boosts out of the area and warps out. To me, this feels like a "get out card" that only characters have. This removes the purpose of pirates, hyperspace blockers, and makes them more of nuisance, instead of becoming "dangerous encounter. I understand that the spawn rates for pirates and xsotan are high, and that sometimes they're too weak and later on become annoying rather than dangerous, but that in itself requires its own form of balance.

 

My primary concern for this topic is that boosting gives too much of an advantage to the player. By removing boosting, we would enable ships to have a purpose for having a higher max speed/velocity. The advantage this brings will increase the alertness of players entering and warping into sectors they should normally not win. By removing boost from the player, or adding boost for NPCs, this can cause gameplay to change in terms of difficulty for the better.

 

 

 

Example of player without boost: Player A goes to attack a pirate outpost. Player A does not have Boost function, and his ship is of similar but above tier of those in his sector. When he damages the pirate outpost, he realizes that he could be overwhelmed by reinforcements/ a hyperspace blocker. Player A can now choose to take risk over reward if he is to continue this.

 

 

Example of player with boost: Player B goes to attack a pirate outpost. Player B is in the same scenario as player A, but has boost. As a result, he is not worried about the reinforcements or hyperspace blocker, and uses this to his advantage constantly. 

 

NPCs with boost+player: Basically an more so even playing field where the player is able to be chased down by the hyperspace blocker, and now is required to shoot it down before warping out.

 

 

While I do suggest removing boosting, I also encourage a similar system. Another form of "boost" to accelerate to or achieve to the ship's max speed, along with increasing the general speed of ships. This way, it does not take forever to jump through warp gates and travel. Of course, NPCs would have this function too.

 

I vaguely understand the way AI currently works is that it flies slowly in order to prevent crashes to other ship, so adding the current boost to NPCs may not be the best course of action as of right now. The reverse however is not. I'd like to see the community's opinion on this matter and would like to see if you guys feel the same way as I do on this topic. Thanks.

[Nachtu]

I agree that the "get out card" is somewhat op.

 

I think the boost efficiency should be tied to a new system upgrade chip, or maybe a the size of some new ship building block.

 

And then balanced somehow, so that the players can still build very fast ships (fast traders, scouts etc.), but it would be at a cost of other functions.

[Shrooblord]

I love the boost for getting around Sectors when there's not a combat encounter. You can save a lot of time by boosting up to 3-4 km/s for a couple of seconds and then letting go, allowing your ship to gently drift towards the Station over 30 kms instead of constantly holding W until the last couple of km. For this, I really like the boost and would like it to remain.

 

Alternatively, how about this: the Hyperspace Blockers also jam your afterburners, so your boost is taken away? I'd also like to see AI ships with boost / warp speed. I'd like to see where the game takes a challenge like that.

[Kyuhau]

I love the boost for getting around Sectors when there's not a combat encounter. You can save a lot of time by boosting up to 3-4 km/s for a couple of seconds and then letting go, allowing your ship to gently drift towards the Station over 30 kms instead of constantly holding W until the last couple of km. For this, I really like the boost and would like it to remain.

 

Alternatively, how about this: the Hyperspace Blockers also jam your afterburners, so your boost is taken away? I'd also like to see AI ships with boost / warp speed. I'd like to see where the game takes a challenge like that.

 

For the first paragraph, I encourage the implementation keybinding/mapping of "holding down W." While I am against the idea of keeping boost, I agree with the notion that it would be best to be able to move around sectors still, hence why the need for a universal speed buff to both NPCs and PCs.

 

As for the second, this does not fundamentally fix the imbalance between a PC versus a NPC as your only goal then would to be destroy the hyperspace blocker and then boost away instantly at minimal damage. If you had to destroy the hyperspace blocker and then fly away at your ships "buffed" max speed where the enemy Pirates could also chase you down while you charge up your hyper-drive, that would be a more so dangerous choice yet more meaningful decision that you could make while playing

 

 

My greatest concern for this game is the issue of imbalance between NPCs and PCs. I strongly believe in the development of "Smart AI" where players are fighting of similar statistic ships with their own implemented strategy/role in combat.

 

 

While this will derail the topic of Boost that we are on, I believe this is necessary for the discussion.

 

To ensure a well balanced and arguably "fun" experience, it's important that both the NPC and the PC has the same tools available to them. I personly would enjoy fighting multiple specific fighting role ships.

 

EX: Railgun ships sitting at 7km, multirole ships that engage close range, ultility ships that repair, etc.

One good example of that implementation would be the fight in the quest "Artifact delivery" where you fight the folllowing units from the wiki.

----------------

The four each have their own specialisation, related to their name:

 

Reconstructo heals his allies

Shieldbreaker has plasma turrets to sap your shields

Hullbreaker has railguns to drain your ship HP

Tankem has less firepower but is very durable

----------------

And going back on topic...

 

In my first play-through of the game, I had no form of worry losing my personal ship against them as I just boosted away from their fire, began to spool the hyper drive and warped out at an estimated 10KM distance or so. I took minimal to no damage as a result. However there was one major problem. My escort ships.

 

I had only begun to use Captains at that time and had three Fire escort ships. None of them were able to Boost alongside me to the distance that I could have escaped at. They were sacrificed as a result of not only my poor judgement to bringing them on this odd quest, but to poor game-play design.

 

Why should this form of convenience only be given to the player and not the foes we face, or the allies that we have? I am certain that we as a player base wish to fight enemies of equal standing both player and NPCs alike, and not a game of scaling of simple HP/Damage.

 

 

 

I do not wish this game to become another form of bullet sponge and scaling like the common issues we face in today's AAA gaming. I only wish for this game to achieve some form of balance where we can reasonable play on similarly equal playing field versus both PCs and NPCs alike.

 

 

 

[Ulrich_Rüstungjäger]

Just going to trow in my 2 cents here, while I am against removing boost I do think it should be effected by the hyperspace blockers. I have had points in the game where I am in my tradeing vessel and a decent sized group of pirates or pissed off Xsotan spawn directly on top of my very slow, very vulnerable ship. If I had no boost that ship, the goods, and all the time spent building up to that point will vanish. While this may not sound too bad to a well established player, I would say look at it from the perspective of a new player in a galaxy.

[Ravien]

What about a new type of "turret" that some AI ships can spawn with that reduces the effectiveness of your boost and maybe also blocks your hyperdrive? Make it a very obvious and distinctive visual effect so you know which ship(s) you need to either kill or get away from.

 

Said turret could also pull you towards them (or combine with other ships that have force turrets to pull you in). Of course your engines can fight against it, you should never be in a situation where your unarmed trading ship has NO chance to escape, but it should be something to look out for.

 

These new tactics should probably only be used by pirates who live in mission sites or in more dangerous parts of the galaxy.

[Shrooblord]

My greatest concern for this game is the issue of imbalance between NPCs and PCs. I strongly believe in the development of "Smart AI" where players are fighting of similar statistic ships with their own implemented strategy/role in combat.

(...)

EX: Railgun ships sitting at 7km, multirole ships that engage close range, ultility ships that repair, etc.

One good example of that implementation would be the fight in the quest "Artifact delivery" where you fight [the Four].

Yes, I would love something like this. The devs do mention "specialised enemies" as part of the Combat Updates, so I guess we can wait and see whether something like what we're discussing is already being implemented. I'd also like to see more of a "drawback" to going the Jack-of-all-Trades route of ship design. As it stands currently, my capital ship is huge, has a huge cargo bay, has huge engines, massive shields, many fighterbays and production capacity, and is basically tanking everything while it has enough System Module Upgrade slots to (in vanilla) support up to 30 Turrets, which could be a wide variety of plasma, chaingun, lasers, launchers, cannons, railguns, teslas and lightning guns. And because each gun caters to different weaknesses in the enemies' ship design, it basically means I have the optimal strategy for all situations. While their shields are up, my Energy Weapons take care of shields. When the shields are down, I have hullbusters that tear through their armour. Meanwhile, I'm just sitting there with my shields, covered in a swarm of fighters that are distracting the enemy's targeting, and I've got my hyperspace and boost charged up in case things get really hairy against all odds.

 

This doesn't make any sense.

 

The reason is that, meanwhile, AI ships are always specialised. You have tiny, light craft; bulky, heavy craft; shielded monsters; and what are effectively snipers. Each ship has one loadout of guns and sticks to that: all lasers, all chaingun, all teslas.

And they're missing out. They don't seem to work together well enough that their shield eaters tear through my shields, and then their hullbusters try and wreck my exposed ship, while artillery is at the back providing fire support, and there's a mess of tanks in my way distracting me from getting to the back line. The AI has no tactics and therefore my completely unspecialised ship can just get at them all while suffering none of the downsides of "going wide" instead of "going tall". There's literally no drawbacks or vulnerabilities in trying to do it all at the same time rather than focusing on one strategy and doing that one thing well. I mean, I guess the drawback is the Resource and monetary cost for setting all of this up. But supposedly, the AI also has these concerns (even though, currently, they don't, as they're just spawned in willy-nilly, but that's another discussion).

 

I think you've hit the nail right on the head when you say there's an imbalance between players and AI ships. There's also an imbalance in strategies. There is one, clearly superior strategy that just wins out on all scenarios, even if another strategy would be more "RP fun" to play, if you know what I mean.

 

Don't get me wrong: I adore playing a bad-ass capital ship that is terrorising its enemies with its very presence, but even those ships should be vulnerable to some tactics.

 

Perhaps this is where the Specialised Enemies and long-distance custom Weapons coming in the Combat Updates, and yet-to-be-implemented game mechanics like Boarding would come into play to balance things out. But I get the nagging sensation that that's not all there is to it, and something more fundamentally crooked right now could do with some fixing and thinking over, perhaps even overhauling some core combat mechanics altogether.

[Kyuhau]

Just going to trow in my 2 cents here, while I am against removing boost I do think it should be effected by the hyperspace blockers. I have had points in the game where I am in my tradeing vessel and a decent sized group of pirates or pissed off Xsotan spawn directly on top of my very slow, very vulnerable ship. If I had no boost that ship, the goods, and all the time spent building up to that point will vanish. While this may not sound too bad to a well established player, I would say look at it from the perspective of a new player in a galaxy.

 

I get what you mean. Nobody wishes to lose all of their progress. Everybody wishes they never crashed into that asteroid or allied alliance and lose "X" thing. But the thing is, playing as a new player in a galaxy gives them time to learn and adapt to this style of gameplay. While I know for certain it will make the game difficult, it will surely make the game far more balanced and possibly more enjoyable for players depending if they enjoy this form of balance or not. The beginning player will learn to not build a giant ship stacked with every single block, money, and crew-member, and accidently die in a crash or pirate attack/ xsotan invasion.

 

As a result of losing things early on, the player learns to adapt to the style of gameplay and will realize not to put all their eggs in one basket. I knew myself not to adapt to that mindset whenever I played game, but if the player wishes to go for a high risk/reward by doing that, they should have the power to do so. Risk everything shipping large amounts of cargo with the chance of losing it all, versus the today where you can build said cargo ship and just run away with ease. 

 

Just understand that I only wish to find some sort of way to make it that the NPCs can fight equally vs PC. The adoption of a hyperspace/boost blocker is only a stopgag of sorts and will do minimal balancing in comparison to what I have discussed. I do appreciate your input in the discussion though.

 

PS: Ulrich_Rüstungjäger, I'm a big fan of your ship work. Loved your Musai-class,Dolos and Oggo from the workshop. While I'm a EFSF boi myself I can always ewnjoy some sieg zeon once in a while :3

[Ulrich_Rüstungjäger]

Just going to trow in my 2 cents here, while I am against removing boost I do think it should be effected by the hyperspace blockers. I have had points in the game where I am in my tradeing vessel and a decent sized group of pirates or pissed off Xsotan spawn directly on top of my very slow, very vulnerable ship. If I had no boost that ship, the goods, and all the time spent building up to that point will vanish. While this may not sound too bad to a well established player, I would say look at it from the perspective of a new player in a galaxy.

 

PS: Ulrich_Rüstungjäger, I'm a big fan of your ship work. Loved your Musai-class,Dolos and Oggo from the workshop. While I'm a EFSF boi myself I can always ewnjoy some sieg zeon once in a while :3

I understand that a multipurpose blocker would only be a bandaid, but in a game such as avorion it is always difficult to ballance things such as boost. You could always up the power consumption of the boost so it is more of a punishment than a blessing, but then people would just make ships with larger power supplies to make that null and void.

 

PPS

I plan to do fed ships after I finish the main zeon fleet, currently I am working on th chivvey and papua, after that is the Pazock and Gwazine then I will start with the fed bois. Probably with the Colombus class.

[Shrooblord]

A non-trivial argument for keeping boosters, which I initially overlooked, is that, for me at least, they're a massive help when navigating through dense asteroid fields, especially if you're in a ship whose break thrust is not so high (perhaps because it's humongous). Point forward: accelerate, nose down a little, boost, and now forward again, boost more - it allows you to make some tight manoeuvres you otherwise couldn't perform.

[Kyuhau]

I'm under the impression big ships should be less maneuverable due to its size, kinda strange to see a death star doing a tokyo drift lol. But I agree it wont be fun to just slowly cruise through a field of asteroids. (Even though arguably a giant ship should take a while versus a smaller one)

 

Honestly, this could easily be solved if the NPCs could just boost so they could chase the PC, but I understand that the NPCs currently programmed are bare bones so far, so perhaps they would get that function in a future update.Would be helpful if we could get dev input on this matter.

[SivCorp]

Yeah, the boost mechanic is a problem.... perhaps it should only be available if you have the velocity module equipped? 

 

The reason the AI ships don't use it is the same reason they don't travel fast in player made ships.... the breaking thrust.  I've made some escort ships that can keep up with the player very nicely, by having the breaking thrust insanely high.  It's all about figuring out the design that works. 

 

That said, the ability to outrun the AI so easily removes any challenge from combat, especially once you have shields. 

 

[Ulrich_Rüstungjäger]

I have seen the AI break 500m/s. I had to stop for a second and do a double take at my velocity  (I was cruiseing at combat speed [150m/s]) it was quite surprising to be honest. But seeing as the AI is randomly generated with random setups, some get lucky most dont.

[Kyuhau]

I've never encountered high speeds NPCs on my travels, even at the core. I've watched them only slowly approach me at a certain max speed that was lower than 500. Even 500 is too slow to catch up to ships made early game. Even though that's definitely better than the current status, it's still imbalanced. I really dislike the RNG type of ship building in this game. It makes me wish we had a way we could introduce our own steam workshop factions/buildings. I'm certain people would love to have custom made factions and ships to fight against/alongside with.

[SivCorp]

It is in the roadmap that custom creations will be able to be added into the core game experience... not sure when that will be implemented, and if we can have it override the sometimes poor generated ships. 

Perhaps the generated can be updated to have more directional thrusters for breaking in order to make faster ships possible

 

[MetalX]

Last night I was piloting my ship across this sector, just passing through, to get to the gate.  I passed out, right here in my chair on the way there.  This has happened a few times in the past while mining the large resource asteroids.  It is so boring I just nod off.