Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: TrashMan on January 05, 2007, 08:24:42 am

Title: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: TrashMan on January 05, 2007, 08:24:42 am
The story outline is more or less set, I need your oppinion on some balancing stuff.

One of the moist memorable FS missions was the first incounter with the Shivans in FS1. You really had a feeling of despir and a savage battle for survival. (actually I kinda prefer the FS1 feel to FS2..might be the music)

for chapter 3 I'm thinking of radicly rebalancing everything, to create a more gritty and realistic feel. I was thinkiong of doing the following:

a) Double or triple the shielding on all shivan fightercraft.

b) Double or triple the damage their fighter weapons do

c) Re-balance the hitpoints of all capships, according to their size. Destroyers would end up with approx. 200000HP, and capital battles would last longer.

d) Drasticly reduce the secondary bank capacity of ALL fighters/bombers. (or increase size of all missiles)

e) Make missiles more powerfull and accurate.

f) Increase shockwaves and damage of dying ships. Big kabooms!

Of course, this would mean less shivan fighters would come after you, but those that do would be far harder to kill.


discuss!


EDIT: Added point f.
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: Snail on January 05, 2007, 09:08:16 am
Also, a good idea would be to higher the damage of beams.
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: TrashMan on January 05, 2007, 09:20:24 am
You mean Terran/Vasudan ones? I allready made them last a tad longer, they're powerfull enough as it is.

the goal is to make the battle between destroyers last a bit longer (just look at the fight between 2 cruisers or two corvettes)
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: Mehrpack on January 05, 2007, 09:30:06 am
hi,
mmhhh not easy to say, i will think a little bit about it.

but why i post, i have a question.
do you want only to rebalance the figthers or the battleships too?

Mehrpack
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: DarkShadow- on January 05, 2007, 09:35:49 am
Yeah, the battles between capships are way too short imo. For example, if a BGreen fully hits a Ravana it's down below 50%. Atm in one of the Machina Terra missions I have the problem that the enemy caps die too fast, but if I add an enemy destroyer, the friendly ships die too fast.

In my mod (which uses quite an amount of your ships, Trashman, although with complete different weapons ^^), capital firepower is way smaller and battles last longer. This way the player has a better possibility to react on enemy capitals and his part of gaining victory is much bigger.
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: Polpolion on January 05, 2007, 09:58:20 am
chapter 3 of what?
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 05, 2007, 11:56:30 am
Shouldn't this be in the campaigns forum?
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: TrashMan on January 05, 2007, 03:14:31 pm
Quote
chapter 3 of what?

Chapter 3 of Flames of War..

Quote
Shouldn't this be in the campaigns forum?
And I though about where to put it but this is also a discussion about the balance in FS universe and what effect could cpossible changes have..

Quote
but why i post, i have a question.
do you want only to rebalance the figthers or the battleships too?

More or less everything.. Some thing will need less changes than others and I'm using the current FS cruisers/corvettes as a base to which to compare other ships.
So the biggest difference in HP will be felt on the destroyers, while corvettes and cruiser will prolly get a bit more firepower (making the slashers actually usefull, and those Fusion Mortars and Flux cannon also, the SGreen rate of fire, etc..)

Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: Sarafan on January 05, 2007, 11:24:51 pm
Okay, I'd say that you would need to do this:

1- Increase the HP of the ships
2- Increase the beam damage
3- Double the Shivan shields, so that way you can still get a good number of enemies on the mission and they wont be too overpowering.
4- Shivan lasers could get more powerfull to be an actual threat.
5- Leave the missiles the way they are.
Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: phatosealpha on January 06, 2007, 02:10:01 am
Wouldn't increasing the HP of capital ships seriously reduce the ability of bombers to be a significant threat, especially if connected with reduced load outs?  This is fine if you intend them to be a background which occasionally shoots at the player and which is handled by other AI, but might very well impact how much fun the game is.  Being an irrelevant gnat among giants isn't all that dramatic for the gnat, and being dependent on AI to get the mission done could be very frustrating unless you're gonna do a lot of scripting and balancing to make sure all goes the way it should.

Title: Re: Designing Chapter 3, need your suggestions.
Post by: TrashMan on January 06, 2007, 03:26:01 pm
You get bigger bombs too:D

How does the Judgment Day tactical bomb sound (with 25000 damage PER BOMB?)

Oh, I just tested it with changes (changed everything except the missiles). I made a test mission where you have to escort a heavy destroyer (240000HP, starts with 58% hull integrity). Escort is 2 wings - Alpha (Herc III - the palyer) and Beta (Valkyrie mk2 - 3 waves).
the attacking force is 3 enemy wings:
4 Mara fighters (5 waves)
6 Taurvi bombers (5 waves)
2 Vindyachal bombers (3 waves)

Even with the heavy weaponty on the destroyer and the new guns you can use the mission isn't easy. It takes a lot to take own a single shivan..
and the strange this is that part of hte damage tehy do seems to go trough the shields!? Which is REALYL bad for your health given that their weapons now do a LOT of damage (for comparison - Kayer does 28 per hit, Prom S does 30, the Shivan heavy laser does 40,  megalaser does 72)