just a simple question...why? it has to be one of the most unrealistic aspects of the game. I understand that it is there to keep things fair but, thats the problem...life is not fair.

I think that if a person has the stats and cash, the should be able to have exceedingly powerful ships, unbalanced ships...as it were. I dont think it would affect the game that much either.

any player would be insane to try and fight a cappie on thier own, the same would be true of "unbalanced ships". as for the people with "unbalanced ships" would find little challenge in newb hunting in these ships.

there could be safe gaurds even. remember the AI pirates? an AI police force, similar to the strike force but more like beat cops, some camed outside station, some on a patrol...say in a formation of 3 light fighters and 2 heavy fighters? they respond to any unprovoked attack in what ever sector they are in.

it just seems like the current balance is more of a limitation.

It depends on what you mean by "exceedingly powerful". And we've been through periods of massive imbalance before (especially during alpha) and they.. sucked. But anyway, if you mean ships that are extremely fast and maneuverable, the problem there is more of latency limitations on the internet. I don't want to make the game unplayable for everyone other than those who have the perfect ping.

Secondly, AI guards aren't silver bullet. Making AI actually do anything very intelligently, and not be hideously exploitable, is not a simple thing. We are moving towards having heavier guards, because we expect users to start having capital ships and heavier firepower. But I'm still not going to make the Superbus available to the public (which has like 70k armor and no speed cap). The amount of AI-guard firepower that would be needed to hold off a group of nasty newbie-griefer users in superbusses would just be.. well, insane. Perhaps impossible, short of just making the users spontaneously explode.

There's a lot of cool new stuff that we can add that doesn't involve the tremendous headache of, well, giving everyone a Superbus. I would rather make the game deeper, rather than just adding "uber fighters". You know, capships and bigger targets and organization and big-ass space battles and all that.

well I didnt mean extremely fast and maneuverable...it was just a broad idea. extra large/small ports, maybe even medium, added armor a few new ships/weapons...I just dont think keeping it balanced is realistic.

but I tend to trust you so i suppose if you say great things are coming than I believe you. so when are cappies coming for players?

Balance is important, or the game is no fun for anyone. But rather than the kind of balance where everyone's been neutered so they're the same, a kind of rock-paper-scissors balance is best, kind of like in Warcraft III (I know, it's an old game; but I'm still addicted). Every race is quite different, and has at least one huge weakness and strength. So you have to overcome your weakness with whatever strength, and know your enemy very well to exploit their weakness. It makes it a completely different experience to play each race. We need more of that kind of balance in this game: Rather than neutering something too powerful (of course you have to sometimes, but as a last resort), counter it by giving the other side something equally powerful, but very different.

Yeah, we're moving towards more of a rock/paper/scissors type thing, although I'm not sure how nation-dependent it will all be.

Dug this up from some old musty site, but "Aside from the changes in appearance caused by the modular configuration of the ship's hardware (engines, weapons, etc)..."

Seems to me, the only balanced (and realistic) way to add more ports, or cargo, or just altogether space to your ship, would necessitate making the exterior bigger too. So from the sounds of things, it's a comin' either in the way of bigger ships, or maybe even visually customizable ships. Which would be really freakin' sweet. Especially if you could then target those points and... gah, to the suggestions forum I go!

Actually the idea to introduce rock/paper/scissors balance is to specialize into different damage types. We have energy and explosion damage now, but we could make things more interesting by making ships which are armored against one but weak against the other. But the idea can be carried out a lot further, similar to the d20 analogue of "crushing" and "piercing" damage, etc. It doesn't need to be as complicated as this but that's the general idea.

That's hilarious, a1k0n, it reminds me of when I was younger, my brothers and I tried to come up with an expanded rock/paper/scissors, and we had all kinds of weapons, at least a couple dozen.

One way would be separate damage types. I posted way back a basic idea that needs tweaking for many armor types here, and having several different weapon and armor types, and different nations/corporations specializing in different ones, would be cool. Once there are player owned stations, it would be interesting to have a sort of tech tree that guilds and nations can research, or steal through espionage.

Another way to make a rock/paper/scissors balance is to have other types of technologies: Some nations/corporations/guilds/whatever are better at mining, giving them an economic advantage, some are faster, others have better stealth technology, others make up for lack of defensive technology by having lots of weapons instead, etc.

Now this is a suggestions thread, sorry.

When I played RPS I always had the lawnmower and that beat everything execept rock ;P

the extra ports/armor could be done so that for say...50,000 per you could sacrafice X amount of cargo and add X amount of armor plating or L/S weapons port...(kind of like EV Nova)...it wouldnt make the more powerful fighters...(vulture...etc...etc...) too powerful because of the limited cargo space available, where as it would open the door for interesting new hybrid ships.

the Moth missile platform
the Maurarder bomber
the Centaur heavy gun ship
the Ragnarok that actually lives up to its name

to name but a few...

damn, this really should be moved to suggestions.

>.> the moth looks nothing like a missle platform

??? if you mount Katiushkas or TOWs on a pick up truck it becomes a missile platform. a "misslie platform" is simply a means of transporting and launching missiles. wether it be the RR mounted types the Soviets used to use or the Chevys and toyotas that seem popular with many rebel groups.

dude a chevy looks more like a missle platform than a bloated moth

anyways i dont want a moth with 120Cu of swarm or Lmine ammo thats just too much

i agree, there would have to be limits. example, I could strip my s10 of all un needed parts to get more speed/better MPG and such but obviously if I strip too much I not only any benifits but make it fairly dangerous to drive.

so if a moth went over board on weapons, it would have little to no cargo space with all the weight of a full load making it even slower with less armor due to the added weapon ports.

Old link to my thoughts on ship balance, and the rock paper rock/paper/scissors thing.

[Quoted from: http://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15517?page=2#195755 ]

What I would like to see is some balance differentiation. What this would do is to forever unbalance every ship in the game. Let me explain.

Take for example a very well balanced RTS Age of Myth. It has three types of attack damage. Hack for swords and such, pierce for arrows, and crush for buildings. Different units have a higher and lower tolerance to each type of damage. Lets convert this idea to VO.

Armor type.

When a ship is purchased now, all you have is the basic HP's . What would be much more fun, and much simpler to balance due to the very nature of its design, is armor that is more effective at absorbing, or tolerating, different kinds of damage.

So on one side you have three types of damage, energy, mass/penetration, and concussion. Different weapons do different amounts of one or two of these types.

On the other you have types of armor. I will start with 4, but there is no reason to not add more.

Light carbon, Hardened carbon, Heavy metal, and Xithrite alloy.

Balance it off with varying degrees of weight, and tolerance of damage type.

Light Carbon is similar to a Graphite composite, made light and fast, is vulnerable to all types of damage. However it almost instantly recovers from concussion effects, and is very hard to hit.

Hardened carbon is very vulnerable to energy as carbon constructs, even diamonds, burn. The deflection strength of its Diamond/Graphite hull makes its mass/penetration strong. Its light weight allows it to recover from concussion very quickly, and speed from its light weight makes it hard to hit.

Heavy Metal is very tolerant to energy, almost ignoring it, reasonably tolerate to mass/penetration, but is totally useless against concussion due to the amount of recovery time needed to stop being affected (spinning). Larger and heavier ships are harder to effect with concussion, so this disadvantage is felt mostly by the mid size heavy ships. Additionally, ships with this load out are harder to maneuver, relying more on overall durability than getting out of harms way.

Xithrite alloy is very middle of the road average to mass/penetration, reasonably tolerant to energy, but heavy enough that concussion causes problems. Its middle of the road mass makes these ships slower and heavier than the Carbon models.

If shields are brought into it, then they would be all but immune to mass/penetration (deflects most of the force rather than absorbs), even on energy, but very weak to Concussion. (lots of energy to be absorbed over a large area tends to severely weaken shields)

Allow any ship purchased to equip an armor type at purchase, and determine mass and basic armor strength based on that.

Control the speed vs. agility factor more by adjusting the auto aim radius of weapons, based on their damage type(s), making the weapons that are effective against light fighters (energy) have a broader range of acquisition to compensate for difficulty to hit.

This way you end up with a rock paper scissors type of relationship.
Type A ship has an advantage over type B, but is weak to type C. While Type C is weak to Type A ships etc...

More variety, and no one thing is really better than another, and no matter what you are in, you could get owned by someone in a ship designed to take out your type of ship.

I also agree with Shapes comment: I don't want perfect balance, I want lots of new things..

[Note: why is this thread not in suggestions?]

Cooler than just multiplying damage per type I think is when actual tactical advantages end up doing more damage. In Warcraft, melee footmen had a damage bonus against ranged riflemen, but a mixed force would beat a plain one of all footmen every time, because the ranged units could sit behind and unload their superior firepower on the happless melee enemies, while the smaller yet not useless force of allied footman defended them.

In a sense VO has this, since a Centurion stands a chance against a more armoured and powerful Hornet, because it's manuverability and small profile essentially act as a rock to the hornet's scissors. There's a whole bunch of more creative ways to simulate that kind of advantage besides 50% off discounts to damage. Like if each section of a ship registered damage, than explosives would be way nastier to small ships which get enveloped by the whole splash. Or if a certain type of armour knocked off 200 damage from every shot, then ships equipped with that would have an advantage over fast repeating blasters (AGT anyone?) but not so much on heavier ones.

AGT deals 400 damage, so it'd end up doing half as much.
Plasdev kicks out 1600 a shot, so it'd do a nominal amount less.

Thats a good point Mega. There could be many varieties of armor types. Some that take of a flat amount of certain types of damage, and others that shave off a percentage.

In your example, the flat reduction amount of 200 would be better than armor with up to a 50% reduction against the AGT. It would however be worse against a Plasdev compared to armor as little as 15% (240/shot) across the board reduction.

Mixing, matching and combining would definitely change the usefulness of certain weapons in certain situations, as well as allow certain armor types, capital ships with a 400 flat for example, to be impervious to lower end light weapons.

Please post your excellent suggestions in the Suggestions forum. I would like to keep this post here because it begins with a question which is answered by incarnate.

sorry bout that...it did kind of evolve from a question to a bunch of imo, good suggestions.