Defense and Movement in Ship Combat Idea

[resistor]

Why torpedo builds are OP:
1) They essentially have double the firepower of other builds, since other builds have to burn half their RP to try to get closer
2) They have more Nav/Pilot Assist Modules. They only need 3 weapons, or 4 at most, to use all 8 RP, giving them lots of free component slots. This translates to greater Defence and range change compared to other builds

My suggestion to level the playing field: make it so that if a ship wants to use all RP for weapons then they will have much less range change and Defence for that turn.
In addition to arguably improving ship combat gameplay, this makes sense from a lore perspective because if a ship uses all its power for weapons, it won't have much power to move anywhere, and therefore won't be able to dodge effectively.

[fallen]

Interesting feedback! I imagine a rule like that would need more complexity, as you could just level 1 RP unused each turn to avoid any penalty.

[resistor]

Nov 7, 2017 19:29:53 GMT -5 fallen said:

Interesting feedback! I imagine a rule like that would need more complexity, as you could just level 1 RP unused each turn to avoid any penalty.

Yeah, I should've elaborated more. I was thinking that the amount of unused RP someone who is not moving needs to not suffer a Defence/range change penalty should be equal to the number of RP they need to Advance/Retreat.

This is what I was thinking:
When RP=8
and RP Required for Movement = 4
4RP to Weapons + 0 to movement = no penalty
8RP to weapons + 0 to movement = Full penalty to Defence/Range Change
4RP to Weapons + 4 to movement = no penalty
6RP to Weapons + 0 to movement = half penalty to Defence/Range Change

[resistor]

I think the exact percentage of Defence/RangeChange reduction from going overboard on RP to weapons should be high enough to be discouraging, but not too high as to make it in no circumstances a viable choice. Maybe 80% defence/rc penalty for 100% of RP->weapons would be a happy medium?

[Cory Trese]

Thanks for the feedback!

[contributor]

Yeah I've been experimenting with a heavy torp volley ship too. It's pretty effective. With high crit I'm ending most battles in 1-3 turns on impossible. Damage is so severe that even if they can change range, they're going to have a hard time recovering from the damage already done. With Coordinated Fire I'm often doing around 600 damage on the first turn.

One thing I've been thinking about is the fact that choosing not to move and then getting to spend all of our RP on weapons is not very realistic if the other ship is trying to change range. There's a big difference between not moving and trying to maintain range, at what it currently is, when the opponent is trying to advance. Essentially if the opponent is trying to change range, and I'm trying to maintain range I should have to spend MP to do that. I don't know if there would be any way to make the Move Points conditional on what the opponent does. For example, if you choose "maintain range" you can select some weapons to use those RP, however if the enemy tries to advance or retreat, you will not fire those weapons as the RP will be spent on maintaining range.

The other idea I had was a system in which you would wager RP on movement, defense or use them all for weapons. Basically for movement you would decide whether you want to Advance, Retreat or Maintain. You could then assign as many RP to movement as you want (including none at all), which would significantly increase or decrease your chances of being successful. It would be highly dependent then on what the other Captain did. If he assigned 0RP to movement you would basically be guaranteed to be successful, even if you only put 1 RP into it. You might significantly over-wager sometimes and that would be part of the fun. At the same time if you both wager 4 RP on movement it's really going to come down to ship stats and abilities. Even in a 3-4 or 3-5 wager a lot could still depend on ship abilities, but the further your wagers get apart, the more chance the higher wager has of winning. Remaining RP can then be spent on weapons or not spent and be allocated to defense. I see a system like this as being a lot of fun and being both simple and extremely deep at the same time.

I know you don't have time for a total rework right now, but if you get more feedback post-launch, think about it.

[bookworm21]

Also seeing more enemies using twitch surge could make thngs interesting

[fallen]

We'll keep working on the design. Weapons are scheduled for some rebalance, including reduction in damage of 4-5 range weapons.