As some of you may have noticed, I'm rather militant when it comes to my game balance. You should see the page after page of damage/second/ton spreadsheet and AI ship matchup odds. It's easy enough to go in and tweak Anathema's content to hell, but I run into some problems in balancing stock Nova outfits and ships. Not in that it's hard to do, but in that I don't know exactly what to do.

The two weapons I've currently singled out for a major overhaul are... take a guess. No really, guess. I'll put the answer in a spoiler block.

Spoiler

Ionic Particle Cannon and Thunderhead Lance.

Did you get it?

For quick reference, here are a few numbers on Anathema weapons. These obviously have greater damage/second/ton ratios than their standard Nova analogs:
Improved Medium Blaster Cannon: 2.6 damage/second/ton
Super Heavy Blaster Turret: 1.215 damage/second/ton
Improved Polaron Cannon: 2.57 damage/second/ton
Polaron Turret: 1.8 damage/second/ton (and takes 2 turret slots)

For the Ionic Particle Cannon, my reasoning is essentially that a 25-ton weapon that, in Anathema (with the "beams do half damage and fire simultaneously beam change) deals 1 mass and 2 energy damage per frame and is a 270° turret is crazy. That's a damage average of 1.8 damage per second per ton, and it's almost a full turret, and it only takes a gun slot. And it's easy to get if you go for the illegal version. Plus it's ionization of 60/second. And it's a beam so it really never misses.

Then there's the THL. Sure, it's short range and forward-firing, but let's look at its stats. 6 mass damage and 6 shield damage every frame. And it weighs 8 tons. That's a damage/second/ton ratio of 22.5. There's something wrong with that. Like, seriously.

So anyways, my question is this: how far can I responsibly go in trying to balance Nova around Anathema? I tried to leave most of the stock Nova resources untouched, but it just seems like leaving those resources as they are will totally shoot the plug's balance. I mean, who cares if you have a Mauler Device with 4.8 damage/second/ton when you can get 22.5 d/s/t Thunderhead Lance instead?

So here's what I was thinking: the Fed BioRelay Laser is 2 mass 2 energy damage per frame at 25 tons. That's 2.4 d/s/t (it also drains 9 energy per second). Since the THL has such short range, I think that a d/s/t ratio of 3.6 would be acceptable, or maybe even 4.8. But not 22.5. What seems appropriate to you all?

For the IPC, I think that making it a 90° turret rather than 270° is a good start. Sure, the Manticore will be hurting a bit from that, but come on, who can't just stay in it's blind spot as it is? I don't want to change its weight because that would throw off the total tonnage of the Manticore. I think it would be fair to reduce its ionization to 1/frame instead of 2, and perhaps reduce the damage slightly by making it fire more like a THL (short pulses instead of a continuous beam). This would also help the frame-rate issues that stem from 8 simultaneous Ion Cannons going off at once.

Sound fair?

This post has been edited by Archon : 15 June 2008 - 01:28 PM

In practice THLs don't really seem that overpowered to me, since they require getting (and staying) in so close. Fighters are easily knocked back by recoil and can't take very many hits and so have to dodge, which limits the amount of time one can actually be firing. Heavier ships can employ them more constantly, but at that range, size becomes an increasingly limiting factor in avoiding hits, and slowness makes it take longer to close. They are pretty powerful on medium ships, however, but they aren't terribly overpowered.

Ion cannons, however, are pretty danged awesome. I think ionization is kinda the point of the weapon, so I don't think reducing the ionization per damage would be good. Giving it a shorter burst and longer reload would probably be a good idea, though. Maybe you could make the Manticore's ion cannon's "special" in that they can fire the full 270 degrees, and make the other ion cannons front turret only. I think that would be reasonable, since Manticores need to be a little bit dangerous... staying in their blind spot isn't hard now, but with only forward weapons it would be laughably easy.

It's true that THLs are difficult to employ since larger ships have a hard time catching targets and smaller ones get blown back, but look at it from a medium ship perspective. They can easily fit the maximum 4, are quick enough to catch their targets, and they have the mass and defenses to stay on them. When you're dealing 720 damage every second, it doesn't really matter if you're not avoiding fire. Even a Nilk Raven will die in under 4 seconds from that. And it only takes 32 tons of space.

I think that the Ion Cannon suggestios you made were reasonable enough. Perhaps I could give the Manticore User-Modified cannons and keep them as they are, since I'm running dangerously low on free outfit resources (17 left).

WOOT! WOOT! OUTFIT LEVELS DANGEROUSLY LOW!

....

I think the THL could use a little less Impact. It keeps knocking away enemies before I can do them any real damage. It's damnedly annoying.

THLs are really a dash-and-retreat fighter weapon, and are very useful if its your style. I'd suggest knocking down the maximum number of THLs to 2 and changing the reload/count values so that 1 will fire on/off ever 2s or so, and 2 will fire continuously, so there won't be any "fire simultaneously" stacking issues. Also, nerf it down to 4/4, and if necessary add a few pixels to the beam length (5 at most) to counteract the damage nerf.

@lnsu, on Jun 15 2008, 07:56 PM, said in Balancing Acts:

THLs are really a dash-and-retreat fighter weapon, and are very useful if its your style. I'd suggest knocking down the maximum number of THLs to 2 and changing the reload/count values so that 1 will fire on/off ever 2s or so, and 2 will fire continuously, so there won't be any "fire simultaneously" stacking issues. Also, nerf it down to 4/4, and if necessary add a few pixels to the beam length (5 at most) to counteract the damage nerf.

The THL is actually one of the weapons that dodges the beam stacking issue since it has a reload and count of 10. So at the max of 4, you still haven't dropped below 0 reload.

I'm not sure exactly where I'll end up knocking the damage down to, but I've got an Exile variant relatively well-balanced for both small and medium ships. I'll probably just re-balance the standard THL around the Exile one. It's got 8 damage, 20 reload, 5 count, 1 ionization, 110 range, 1.5 energy drain, max 4, 12 tons. That's a 5 damage/second/ton ratio, much higher than, say the Fed BRL or Imp. Polaron Cannon.

I just tested this one, and a heavy fighter with around 300 defense total sporting 4 of these can get a Behemoth class Titan down to 70% by just sitting there pounding on it. Of course you get smoked in seconds, but that's still some respectable damage for only 48 tons of weaponry. Seems good to me. I may or may not take off the ionization since said heavy fighter already has a pretty damn good ionizing weapon.

This post has been edited by Archon : 15 June 2008 - 03:21 PM

I should point out that Nova was never about balance. In a real universe, some weapons are better than others, and if you can only afford the inferior weapon, then so be it.

In the same vein, the various races don't necessarily "balance" in terms of their fleets and weapons, in the same way as the modern world doesn't.

Basically, there are two major factors that those ratios don't take into account: range and price. Also important are factors such as ammo, inaccuracy, proximity and blast radius, and ionization. So, those numbers don't really mean anything. It all depends on the skill of the pilot. If you're dealing with the AI, price would not be an issue, but it should reflect the scarcity of the item. Basically, if you want to ensure balance, make sure that each side wins about as often.

THLs are way overpowered i remember killing fed and auroran carriers in an astroid miner AN astroid miner! I mean come on.

Well by that logic railguns are way overpowered, eheheh. The asteroid miner is a pretty nice little ship for the price--lots of cargo room, ok outfit space, and though slightly sluggish, it isn't totally lacking maneuverability like a terrapin.

And while THLs do massive damage in a close range surprise attack against a single ship, I hardly ever end up using them for very long as getting close enough to use them involves getting hit way too much to be sustainable in a long running firefight.

@archon, on Jun 15 2008, 04:15 PM, said in Balancing Acts:

The THL is actually one of the weapons that dodges the beam stacking issue since it has a reload and count of 10. So at the max of 4, you still haven't dropped below 0 reload.

I'm not sure exactly where I'll end up knocking the damage down to, but I've got an Exile variant relatively well-balanced for both small and medium ships. I'll probably just re-balance the standard THL around the Exile one. It's got 8 damage, 20 reload, 5 count, 1 ionization, 110 range, 1.5 energy drain, max 4, 12 tons. That's a 5 damage/second/ton ratio, much higher than, say the Fed BRL or Imp. Polaron Cannon.

I just tested this one, and a heavy fighter with around 300 defense total sporting 4 of these can get a Behemoth class Titan down to 70% by just sitting there pounding on it. Of course you get smoked in seconds, but that's still some respectable damage for only 48 tons of weaponry. Seems good to me. I may or may not take off the ionization since said heavy fighter already has a pretty damn good ionizing weapon.

No, when count=reload you only need 2 of a weapon to fire continuously. You had a total damage of 8/8, not 4/4. Add mass if necessary. Add fuel consumption if necessary. Nerf it down to 4/3 or even 3/3 if its still overpowered. But don't make it a short-life-long-reload weapon. Its hard enough to get a shot in on big ships with a fighter using the THL as it is, nerfing the count/reload ration will have other compounding issues. If you try to hit with the nerfed count/reload THL in a fighter, you'll have to lay off the primary weapons on approach, which drastically reduces the effectiveness of your dumb-projectile weapons, not to mention weapons with a player-damaging blast radius (not that any of these are primary).

I don't have time to grab stats of other weapons now to illustrate my points, but I'll add them into this post tomorrow.

@lnsu, on Jun 16 2008, 12:50 AM, said in Balancing Acts:

No, when count=reload you only need 2 of a weapon to fire continuously. You had a total damage of 8/8, not 4/4. Add mass if necessary. Add fuel consumption if necessary. Nerf it down to 4/3 or even 3/3 if its still overpowered. But don't make it a short-life-long-reload weapon. Its hard enough to get a shot in on big ships with a fighter using the THL as it is, nerfing the count/reload ration will have other compounding issues. If you try to hit with the nerfed count/reload THL in a fighter, you'll have to lay off the primary weapons on approach, which drastically reduces the effectiveness of your dumb-projectile weapons, not to mention weapons with a player-damaging blast radius (not that any of these are primary).

Actually, we both got it wrong; when count=reload, you need 1 to fire continuously, but given 4 exit points and the THL's maximum of 4, it doesn't suffer from the beam bug. At least I think that's how it works; all I remember is that it's not subject to that particular glitch.

The weapon I described was a new weapon based off the Thunderhead Lance, not the Lance itself. With four, you end up with what appears to be a continuous beam assuming that there are 2 or fewer individual exit co-ordinates. With two, you get the "every other" flicker back and forth. It doesn't seem to be a huge problem to me actually since almost all ships have only one beam exit co-ordinate, and the one ship that has this weapon built in is a small fighter with 2 co-ordinates very close to one another. I don't get what you mean by the "have to lay off the primary weapons on approach" part; could you elaborate?

As for pipeline's comment, I understand that there should be inter-factional imbalance. This isn't WoW and one ship from one faction shouldn't be on equal footing with any ship from any other (not that WoW was that well-balanced anyways, at least when I was still playing). However, int ra -factional balance should be a serious consideration. Of course Wraithii should be more powerful than Raven Rockets, but that's not what I was talking about. For example, outside of very specific circumstances, what reason is there to use a Grav. Missile over a Hellhound? The THL is so far out in terms of power that it pretty much eclipses everything else in Nova in terms of bang for your buck (and all it takes is a license) when other Federation technology runs more along the lines of the 2.2 damage/second/ton Medium Blaster. Sure the THL is more expensive and has 1/3 the range, but like I said, 4 of them will kill anything in the game in under 4 seconds. I also agree that some weapons within one faction's arsenal should be better than others, but 1/3 of the range for 10x the damage (along with the advantages beam weapons have in terms of accuracy) seems overkill. For another comparison, the (standard) Polaron Cannon deals an average 4 damage/frame, which at 25 tons is a ratio of 4.8. It also requires a mission string to unlock, and only gets 80 extra range. So that 21% of the efficiency for 55% extra range, at the cost of being more expensive and unlock requirements. Plus the cannon costs 50% more.

Speaking of which, I need to try out the standard Polaron Cannon with a beam bug fixer. I always wondered why it seemed like 3 of them did the same damage as 1...

This post has been edited by Archon : 15 June 2008 - 09:07 PM

By "Lay off the primaries" I mean this:

You approach in your heavy fighter (I'm thinking wild geese lightning herre). You have 2 T-head lances, and the rest of your space is filled with dumb projectile guns/blasters (no turrets, missiles, etc). If THLs have a reload of 30 and a count of 10 (10 frames fire, 20 frames nofire), you need to stop firing at least 29 (really, ~24-20 to be effective) frames before you come within THL range of the target to avoid wasting your THL firing time out of range. This results in 20 frames where you could have been firing your other guns and doing damage but were not.

However, that will only at worst rear-load the damage instead of front-loading it. Worst case, if you have a weapon that fires for x damage over 1 sec and rests for 1 sec, you will still have done x damage after 2 sec. Assuming a random point of contact with the enemy, you will on average be doing the same amount of damage in a given period of time, sometimes a constant amount more (i.e. it doesn't depend on the amount of time you're engaged up close) if you hit it just right, sometimes a constant amount less more if you hit it just wrong, and everything in between. And if you have a good sense of timing and said weapon is your primary/only damage dealer, you will be taking things out that much faster.

@pipeline, on Jun 15 2008, 03:54 PM, said in Balancing Acts:

I should point out that Nova was never about balance. In a real universe, some weapons are better than others, and if you can only afford the inferior weapon, then so be it.

In the same vein, the various races don't necessarily "balance" in terms of their fleets and weapons, in the same way as the modern world doesn't.

I like this aspect of Nova quite a bit. Weaponry isn't simply perfect-balance same-damage - the strategy of combat extends beyond damage ratios to fighting style, enemy type, etcetera. While I do definitely appreciate the importance of checking damage ratios, the weapon resources have much more to play with than mass and shield damage. Impact, proximity radius, blast radius, burst reload, fuel and ammo usage, mass (outfit resource), extra effects on a ship (also outfit resource), etcetera all should be integrated into game balance as well, and sometimes you're just going to have to go up against someone tougher, and figure out what to do anyway.

Keep up the discussion, though. As I said, damage ratios and simpler balancing are also important.

@crusader-alpha, on Jun 16 2008, 02:53 AM, said in Balancing Acts:

I like this aspect of Nova quite a bit. Weaponry isn't simply perfect-balance same-damage - the strategy of combat extends beyond damage ratios to fighting style, enemy type, etcetera. While I do definitely appreciate the importance of checking damage ratios, the weapon resources have much more to play with than mass and shield damage. Impact, proximity radius, blast radius, burst reload, fuel and ammo usage, mass (outfit resource), extra effects on a ship (also outfit resource), etcetera all should be integrated into game balance as well, and sometimes you're just going to have to go up against someone tougher, and figure out what to do anyway.

Keep up the discussion, though. As I said, damage ratios and simpler balancing are also important.

Oh yeah, there's certainly more than damage and range to be taken into account. I've tried to make all the many new weapons well-balanced but still unique, something that stock Nova does a very good job with with a few exceptions. Different sizes, fire arcs, blast radii, ionization, range, speed, decay and all need to be taken into account, but in the examples I gave, I think I pretty much covered the variables.

@archon, on Jun 15 2008, 09:02 PM, said in Balancing Acts:

Oh yeah, there's certainly more than damage and range to be taken into account. I've tried to make all the many new weapons well-balanced but still unique, something that stock Nova does a very good job with with a few exceptions. Different sizes, fire arcs, blast radii, ionization, range, speed, decay and all need to be taken into account, but in the examples I gave, I think I pretty much covered the variables.

Indeed. I am not suggesting that damage ratios are all that you are taking into account. My statement was just to add to the discussion in general, and wasn't aimed at your examples. As a general rule, while damage ratios and simple balancing issues are important, other things are as well.

Edit: Also, I was just pointing out to pipeline that I liked some of the lack of balance in stock Nova, in various places.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 15 June 2008 - 10:12 PM

aka hellhound missiles.

But missiles are very expensive, and aren't even all that worth it except if your weapon slots are full, and, in the case of Hellhounds, maybe if there's a big swarm of ships.

The lowly IR missiles are in fact the most damaging missile weapon per ton vs. a single target (not counting multitorps, obviously) though their ammo has the highest credit cost for the damage done--almost twice as expensive as hellhounds.

Either way, anything with ammo is a real pricey way to be doing damage when you can get weapons nearing the same effectiveness that cost nothing to fire.

Missile weapons are also made really tricky because you have to weigh in damage/credit, weight per unit, weight per launcher, max ammo load, guidance, durability, blast radius, and then combinations of those factors. More of an art that a science to determining balance there.