Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => Multiplayer => Blue Planet Multi => Topic started by: bigchunk1 on March 27, 2011, 04:24:36 pm
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After the test yesterday, warship TvT games in BP WIH multi have shown a lot of potential. Just a few minutes ago, we have had many great ideas on what should be implemented next, including many creative warship abilities that you will be able to select in load out. With all the new and exciting changes we plan to make for capital ship games, we are playing with the idea of changing the way Blue Planet canon has balanced ships.
For example: We are considering 3 major playable ship classes for each side.
Naryana Chimera
Karuna Diomedes
Sanctus Deimos
We are considering allowing the player to select whichever ship he or she desires provided they are compatible with faction, but and here's the big but... that would mean augmenting the ships to make them viable options in their respective roles. So Chimeras/Naryanas are more for fire support Karunas/Diomedes are more midranged fighters and the Sanctus/Deimos are a sort of knife fighting rush type ship. This ultimately means that the idea that Chimeras are always better than Deimos ships would not be necessarily true and that a team might even want to compose their fleet with Deimos corvettes for a more well rounded fleet. This and your ability selection in the weapons load out will allow for many different strategic options.
An important distinction is that the Chimera and Diomedes represent next generation technology, and making them in any way comparable with a Deimos misrepresents them in the BP universe. In this event, we should take care to make game play fun in a way that compliments the universe, and not re-engineer the universe to satisfy game play. Thus the Chimera should remain as an overtly powerful corvette class which is in very few ways challenged by 2nd great war technology.
So the question before you all is would you enjoy having a system of tradeoffs in BP multi or would you prefer us to stay as true to BP canon as possible and largely leave the table values of these ships untouched? Keep in mind this in NO way affects balance for non PvP missions, and that coop missions will follow BP balance mechanics in every way. The results of this poll will carry a lot of weight in determining the direction of this project. Even if you have yet to participate in WIHmulti, your input is valued.
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I think it's important to keep the technological gap between the Deimos and the front-line ships. Trying to put em on par would be as much a bad idea as trying to balance the Sanctus to be comparable to the Karuna on the UEF side - while the gap is much more pronounced on the UEF side of course, the roles of the Deimos and the Sanctus in both fleet are pretty similar.
Even with upgrades and refits, a mass-produced Capella-era design shouldn't be able to compete on fair grounds with one of the new front-line warships of equivalent size. Although I agree that upgrading the Deimos, especially in term of point defences, is a good idea in PvP, it should be balanced with this technological gap in mind.
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Bellerophon, Chimera, and Dimoedes ~ Karuna and Narayana > Deimos or Sanctus
Sanctus < Deimos
Sanctus ~ Hyperion
I could see a tiered system.
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Er, I voted heck yes, but uh, by that I mean that they should be split into tiers, and that there should be a respawn limit per tier (ie. higher tier ships have fewer (if any) respawns).
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Personally I'd prefer an entirely thought out system and very carefully ballanced setting which allows for using real proper tactics. So could beam cannons be moved to front-only, dedicating the broadsides to missile-interception with flak and pulse turrets, so that maneuvering the ship to face the opponent with it's broadside will allow for defense against missiles. UEF ships can differ in that aspect by having capable cannons on their broadside, so that their strenght is trying to flank GTVA vessels once getting a few good artillery shots in. Therefor GTVA vessels try to deal damage with their frontal beam cannons while UEF ships try to force the GTVA ships into submission by giving missile barrages, thus forcing those GTVA ships to turn and lose their beam cannon lock. It could be that GTVA ships have slightly more armour, but that UEF ships are faster.
A second part is giving value to roles. Maybe cruisers can be made a lot faster to quickly outmaneuvre the beams or artilery of opponent capital ships. This makes having one or two cruisers in your team the more tactical choice instead of choosing the most guns. This speed issue can be resolved by only allowing cruisers to glide and use afterburners. That way, large capital ships can't glide and keep their front guns so easily on other ships. The stronger ships could also be made to fire slower, so that their serve the goal of staying in the back, while dealing ranged fire.
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The first, it's impossible to make the UEF ships for boardside; it'd look silly having their mass drivers anywhere but the front.
As for the second point, I've done some of that. The Aeolus has 50 max speed, 70 overclock, and a 90 m/s afterburner. Though the Sanctus is a bit slower. I'm going to make the tev corvettes a bit faster than the uef frigates and make the Karuna, nara, bell, and chimera have slow turning and speed, as they are mobile artillery, basically, so that way they could be flanked among other things, meaning you'd need teamwork to protect them, by utilizing your sanctus/aeolus/deimos allies.
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I never said broadside mass drivers. :confused: Just stronger cannons.
Right now it's still too much a case of aim at the opponent and hope. There's no real strategy there (yet) safe Karuna vs Karuna, where one can turn their ship to intercept the incomming Apocalypse missiles, to then return fire again with frontal guns. That tactic alone allowed for winning most duels.
An entirely different idea (if possible) is making each cap ship the leader of a group (Alpha, Beta, Delta etc) and giving them three fighters they can command to do things, such as disarming or disabling enemy vessels.
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...I'm going to make the tev corvettes a bit faster than the uef frigates and make the Karuna, nara, bell, and chimera have slow turning and speed, as they are mobile artillery, basically, so that way they could be flanked among other things, meaning you'd need teamwork to protect them, by utilizing your sanctus/aeolus/deimos allies.
We'll see how this poll goes. Whatever decision we make I'd like it to be a collective one as this is a community project. Suffice to say, people have proposed some interesting ideas.
An entirely different idea (if possible) is making each cap ship the leader of a group (Alpha, Beta, Delta etc) and giving them three fighters they can command to do things, such as disarming or disabling enemy vessels.
I like this idea. Perhaps orders could come from anyone on the team.
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I never said broadside mass drivers. :confused: Just stronger cannons.
That's rather dumb.
Seeing as the GTVA can handle broadside engagements just fine with the Deimos and Diomedes, and none of the UEF ships have demonstrated any real good broadside capability.
Why invert it?
Just leave the flanking to the GTVA...
Personally I'd prefer an entirely thought out system and very carefully balanced setting which allows for using real proper tactics. So could Mass Drivers be moved to front-only, dedicating the broadsides to missile-interception with flak and pulse turrets, so that maneuvering the ship to face the opponent with it's broadside will allow for defense against missiles. GTVA ships can differ in that aspect by having capable cannons on their broadside, so that their strenght is trying to flank UEF vessels once getting a few good beam shots in. Therefor UEF vessels try to deal damage with their frontal Mass Drivers while GTVA ships try to force the UEF ships into submission by giving beam barrages, thus forcing those UEF ships to turn and lose their mass driver lock. It could be that UEF ships have slightly more armour, but that GTVA ships are faster.
See, look how well that works.
All you need to do is provide some incentive for UEF ships to stop pointing at the enemy.
Direct-fire beams provide this incentive to a degree: if you eat powerful direct-fire beams head on, they'll sometimes punch through several subsystems at once. If you turn, they stand a fair chance of missing.
Unfortunately its reversed for slash beams...
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Seeing as the GTVA can handle broadside engagements just fine with the Deimos and Diomedes, and none of the UEF ships have demonstrated any real good broadside capability.
what about the brolaris
(actually a lot of UEF ships are good at broadside, and will kick GTVA ass, because point defense turrets + apocalypse on VLS is pretty sweet)
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Well, all of them except the Solaris are better facing towards the other guy, as the torps still fire and you have direct fire guns added in.
The Solaris doesn't really give a damn, it does the same thing from pretty much any angle.
A Karuna facing you (in a capship) is a lot scarier than a broadsiding Karuna.
Same with a Narayana.