#Fleet Engagement Discussion 2024-11-25

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

ripe finch
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Fleet Engagement Discussion 2024-11-25

sacred helm
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if you have to have A to counter B and B to counter C and C to counter D and D to counter E and E to counter F

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you just aren't going to have that situation in 90% of the game that is actually being played by people, even in big ships

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you are going to get a bunch of fights with lots of A + B, maybe C

mossy horizon
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for that 10% of time

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when you see it

sacred helm
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so for pvp

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for the average groupplay

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where you have maybe 10 people

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and you have a neat capital ship

mossy horizon
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average group play is not capital combat

bronze kelp
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I can see that being made for either big org to org events or pve raid like content which are prepared and filled help tonparty finder

sacred helm
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lol tell that to the 1000s of polarises flying around

mossy horizon
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you can have your fancy capital ship with 10 people

sacred helm
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anyway

mossy horizon
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and you gonna be eaten alive by just slightly bigger group

mossy horizon
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for no reason

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when combat gonna be for a reason - they gonna be eaten alive

bronze kelp
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Imo ships like Polaris should have been limited sales too

sacred helm
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the point is that you're designing the meta of your large ship combat to be based on a fantasy situation that wont happen in practice for the vast majority of player experiences

mossy horizon
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if you want "limited" ship, you can buy it

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If I ever wanted Idris - I would have it

sacred helm
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if CIG only designs for a big 30v30 engagement, they are going to end up with a really shitty game.

bronze kelp
mossy horizon
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not for random dude who bought Polaris to solo it

sacred helm
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look

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what i'm saying

mossy horizon
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its not that much of players in MMO PvP

sacred helm
mossy horizon
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for PvP

sacred helm
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for pvp? no

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they've got 3 roles

mossy horizon
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yeah, no

sacred helm
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we're talking about 10+ different roles in this conversation alone

mossy horizon
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because DPS role is more wide

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meele, range, caster etc

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there are much more "roles"

sacred helm
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except large ship proliferation in this game is insane

mossy horizon
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what is insane - player who mindlessly buy those ship

sacred helm
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that's not super relevant when you factor in crew requirements

mossy horizon
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they would not be able to use

sacred helm
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5,000,000 accounts are mostly alts or people who will never play

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the active accounts will multicrew those ships

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if that's what is effective

mossy horizon
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its just

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you want endgame being small group content

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but it should not

sacred helm
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no i dont

bronze kelp
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As an example when I was playing Aion there was a daily pvp event and both size knew about it. Players/guild would gather around it and at a certain time battle would start. I talk about hundreds of players.
Win would be set by manpower organisation and individual players skills.
Same thing can be done in any mmo

mossy horizon
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so why there is problem with 30 vs 30?

sacred helm
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what i want is for it to scale gracefully across multiple group sizes

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well

mossy horizon
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when you want use capital ship with 5 crew I guess

sacred helm
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what i'm saying is that at low group sizes, there's no real argument for flying fighters

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if a big ship is "immune" to fighters

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just fly the big ship

mossy horizon
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so why you need to take down capital with group of 5?

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its out of your league

sacred helm
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you can crew a capital with a group of 5 though

mossy horizon
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you can

sacred helm
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polaris would be just fine with 5

mossy horizon
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but you gonna lose to any properly crewed capital you engage

sacred helm
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sure, but that should be a given with a crew number imbalance

bronze kelp
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I think what Sharezar is having issue with is imagining a very large amount of players grouping and organizing themselves with a commonn goal on a regular basis.
I might be wrong ofc

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Ive seen that being made for weekly events yeah. Not impossible to donif people are motivated by a reward or something

sacred helm
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anyway, I think they have it all backwards. with the way they are designing it, it stacks down from capital ships. you need subcaps to hit caps, you need gunships to kill subcaps, etc etc.
I would design it in reverse. make it so that any ship is vulnerable to fighters (even if not at threat of being destroyed), and needs fighters of their own to counter that threat.
its like a pyramid
at the base of the pyramid of whatever fleet you're building, you have fighters
then if you have a relatively small fleet, you have a fighter or two and a gunship
then if you have a medium fleet, you might have a couple gunships, a wing of fighters, and a perseus
then if you have a large fleet, you'd have a bunch of fighters, 4-5 gunships, several subcaps, and a capital ship

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this scales to basically any group size you want

mossy horizon
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if you make fighters threat for every ship - we end up with the same

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swarm of fighters

sacred helm
mossy horizon
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multicrew if fleet battle

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but if figters are threat for ANY ship - noone gonna fly anything but fighters

bronze kelp
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Again a capital ship should’t be a fleet on its own. Too vulnerable

sacred helm
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people talk a lot about how rediculous it is to solo a large combat ship, but somehow their brain falls out when it comes to fleet composition and flying a solo ship

sacred helm
mossy horizon
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well

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capitals are vulnerable to fighters

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fighters take down PDC

bronze kelp
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Lets be honest majority of people just think "big pew pew I want to blow up everything" well theyll be good meat to send frontline as decoy xD

mossy horizon
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making capital even more vulnerable for bombers

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making it even more vulnerable to high caliber

sacred helm
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I'm aware, but there's an extremely prevelant delusion by almost everyone in the SC community that their "hammerhead should win against a bunch of fighters"

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yes, but my point is most people are like "this multicrew ship vs a bunch of fighters loses!"

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the vast majority of this community has it in their brain that their fleet IS their ship

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or their ship IS their fleet

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yes i agree

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i'm just saying this is clearly the dominant viewpoint from all the conversations i've ever seen

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people think about flying their ship in isolation and complain when it cant "win against fighters"

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i mean even fucking avenger one

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with his stupid hammerhead video recently

bronze kelp
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Because so far cig never or rarely bring group or fleet subject on the table and educated players with powercreep ships

sacred helm
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he's very delusional

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but the video was actually decent

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his conclusions were braindead

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but he brought up the fundamental problem affecting multicrew ships currently

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you mean that he was referencing?

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target size and displacement vs range

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basically a fighter can sit out at 2km and hit a hammerhead all day because the hammerhead cant possibly dodge those shots and its hitbox is massive. meanwhile the hammerhead wont hit shit at that range.

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against a fighter

bronze kelp
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Considerating content creators words is like asking for someone else to think for you imo. Especially in a constantly moving case like SC

sacred helm
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that's what he's arguing, but it isn't necessary

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that's just a bandaid fix

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the real fix is engineering + armor

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engineering shrinks the hitbox of actual vulnerable components on the large ship to be smaller than fighter sized

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combine that with armor, where you need very slow projectile speeds to penetrate the armor to actually damage those components

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and you get an asymmetry

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a fighter would have to take something like deadbolts to damage a hammerhead component

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while a hammerhead can run CFs all day

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suddenly the hammerhead has 1800m/s weapons while the fighter has 900m/s weapons

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and the fighter has to hit tiny little components on the hammerhead

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the fighter would need to get very close to the hammerhead to effectively apply damage

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(if it even has those weapons equipped)

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they can give the turrets armor

mossy horizon
sacred helm
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and the turrets are about fury sized

sacred helm
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but in this case he's not wrong about the problem. he's just wrong about the solution.

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ehhh fuck me

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i dont like linking to him rofl

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one sec

mossy horizon
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Armor pass and Maelstrom essentially gonna resolve it. For fighter to deal damage short range would be required, making evading lot harder

sacred helm
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its very typical of high skill players in games to recognize the problem and be horrible about understanding the solutions

mossy horizon
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Good thing I'm not that skilled so I can see both problem and solution

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Nah, I would not do that. I don't see range itself being solution. But effect over range

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Like you can't penetrate armor from 2k range, but you can form 1k

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So HH at 2k range spreads your fighter paper armor

sacred helm
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my whole idea for armor penetration is that basically you get bonuses/penalties for different aspects of your weapons

basically, take your hardpoint size as your base penetration value
then if it is ballisic, add +2 to that value. if it's laser +0
if it's 1000m/s, add +1 to that value. 1400m/s is +0, 1800m/s is -1
if its a cannon, add +1 to that value, if it's a repeater -1 (repeaters would get a raw dps advantage)

then ships would get an armor value. so something like a capital ship would get an armor value of 10. a fighter would have like 2.

mossy horizon
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But fighter need to close to 1k just so it can have a chance of penetration

sacred helm
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so a s5 deadbolt would have
+5 (from hardpoint size)
+2 (from ballistic)
+1 (from 1000m/s)
+1 (from cannon)
+9 total

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so you'd be -1 against a capital armor value, meaning you could deal damage at a reduced value

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meanwhile a s3 CF
+3 (from hardpoint size)
+0 (from laser)
-1 (from 1800m/s)
-1 (from repeater)
+1 total

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it wouldn't do shit

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its at a -9

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you'd probably cap the ability to deal damage at a delta of -4 or something

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tbh i dont really know what they plan for shields going forward

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but yeah, shields down lets say

mossy horizon
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There surely plan on shields level affect damage to hull

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And it looks like level itself matter, not power into shields

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But also, what is important, looks like CIG going into specialization of damage type. Energy takes down shields fast and melt armor, but have no penetretion or very low

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While ballistics is actually what deals internal damage

sacred helm
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I'd probably scale it like this based on delta:
+4(and higher) - 100% damage
+3 - 80% damage
+2 - 70% damage
+1 - 60% damage
+0 - 50% damage
-1 - 30% damage
-2 - 20% damage
-3 - 10% damage
-4(and below) - 0% damage

mossy horizon
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I would say that there would be not damage on this scale

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But penetration

sacred helm
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yes penetration

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essentially how much of the damage penetrates through the armor

mossy horizon
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No, you don't get it

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Ships going away from HP

sacred helm
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but parts still have hp

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and they are protected by armor

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do a simple raycast of the projectile and see what armor pieces it hits on its way

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do the delta calculation, deduct that from the damage value

mossy horizon
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At 100% you penetrate 100m into hull, at 25% it is 25m

sacred helm
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ehhhhh

mossy horizon
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I don't like bullet sponge damage model

sacred helm
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I'm not really a fan of distance-based-penetration

mossy horizon
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And looks like CIG too

sacred helm
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the armor isn't consistent throughout the volume of the ship

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it's a thin layer on the outside

mossy horizon
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Which slow down projectile, yes

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So it lose energy and penetration deep

sacred helm
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sure, which means less damage

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at least for ballistics

mossy horizon
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Damage as number is something that eventually won't matter that much

sacred helm
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they definitely will because that is what's going on underneath lol

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in the end it's the same result

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if you use guns that are slower, have limited resources (ammo), or have a damage penalty/ROF penalty (cannons vs repeaters), you'll get more penetration

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you compare the penetration value against the armor value of the target, calculate the difference, and use that to determine the damage value

mossy horizon
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That's part I don't like now and I don't like in futture

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HP

sacred helm
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its always hp underneath

mossy horizon
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Yes, but component HP

sacred helm
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but CIG is moving those "hp" values to components

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yes

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those are the things you'll have to shoot through armor

mossy horizon
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Not "hey, this hull part have 100 HP"

sacred helm
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i'm not talking about hull HP

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shooting the crew area will do 100% nothing

mossy horizon
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Then yeah

sacred helm
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component hp being the actual lifeline of a ship is 100% necessary for making large ships work

mossy horizon
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Penetration depth and component damage scale is something I expect

sacred helm
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otherwise they'll lose on hitbox size alone, every time

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i dont like penetration depth because the ships are horribly inconsistently designed with respect to that

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like take perseus with that nice engineering area right behind the cockipt. easy as fuck to hit that area, it's exposed as hell

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then take other ships where it's buried deep inside the center of the ship

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like most things in SC, the ships just weren't designed with that in mind

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I'd rather see them just do a raycast and see what armor the projectile would hit on the way. then they can place armor hitboxes wherever they want to make a ship vulnerable from whatever angles they want to varying degrees