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Wow! Sounds like a biggie. Just when my enthusiasm wanes a bit, you guys come through. Best of luck implementing this, and thanx for your efforts!!!
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Larger, slower ships are not likely to become any worse than they already are, lighter ships will simply become better and the disparity between the two will become more pronounced. Top speeds of lighter craft will be higher than that of the heavier ships, allowing for more interesting escort/combat scenarios.
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Not to put an early damper on things, but does this mean that the Prom will STILL not get fixed? Sheesh.
Larger, slower ships are not likely to become any worse than they already are, lighter ships will simply become better and the disparity between the two will become more pronounced. Top speeds of lighter craft will be higher than that of the heavier ships, allowing for more interesting escort/combat scenarios.
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Not to put an early damper on things, but does this mean that the Prom will STILL not get fixed? Sheesh.
The prom isn't really what I meant by "Larger, Slower". I'm talking more about trading vessels. But anyway, I'm not going to speculate on exactly how things are going to look next monday. If something isn't "fixed" by then, post about it and bring it to everyone's attention again. Game balance is a matter of "tuning", tweaking things and slowly getting there, not suddenly Having It All Be Right. I'd love to do the latter, but it usually doesn't work out that way in the real world. I know a lot of these problems have been very long-standing, but we are making some significant game-engine changes to try and address them.
Looks like I am going to have to start building up my serco and Itani characters to get in on the cap ship fun :)
woot woot!
Best In Progress ever
My foe the great frigate and myself shall meet in battle again in 2005 and this time...it's personal......
previous encounters @
http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta?page=5
My foe the great frigate and myself shall meet in battle again in 2005 and this time...it's personal......
previous encounters @
http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta?page=5
Okay, I'll have faith. :)
"2) Adjusting more of the fighter craft so they fall more in line with the ideal of a "highly maneuverable" ship."
Please don't make anything any faster than a Valkyrie currently is, I'm sure I'm not the only one that notices when you have a ship of that agility it doesn't move smoothly anymore but rather jitters all over the place when it strafes/dodges. Its practically impossible to hit with energy weapons (apart from the occasional lucky shot) and tough enough just keeping the target in front of you. I'm sure it has to do with the extrapolation of the ships speed and position per frame which are supposed to smooth out the motion?
Before anyone says, "bah.. you have crap connection/hardware...", I have a decent connection (for the UK - 1.5Mbps) and fast(ish) hardware (3.2Ghz P4). If its noticeable on my setup, it'll be alot worse for the majority of others... Perhaps its cos i'm not in the US so ping time is consistantly around 100-150ms, but then thats a little unfair for a global game to have a ship class that favours locals.
If you have already factored this in, then apologies.
Please don't make anything any faster than a Valkyrie currently is, I'm sure I'm not the only one that notices when you have a ship of that agility it doesn't move smoothly anymore but rather jitters all over the place when it strafes/dodges. Its practically impossible to hit with energy weapons (apart from the occasional lucky shot) and tough enough just keeping the target in front of you. I'm sure it has to do with the extrapolation of the ships speed and position per frame which are supposed to smooth out the motion?
Before anyone says, "bah.. you have crap connection/hardware...", I have a decent connection (for the UK - 1.5Mbps) and fast(ish) hardware (3.2Ghz P4). If its noticeable on my setup, it'll be alot worse for the majority of others... Perhaps its cos i'm not in the US so ping time is consistantly around 100-150ms, but then thats a little unfair for a global game to have a ship class that favours locals.
If you have already factored this in, then apologies.
I have to put in with icarus here. A good test is to take an empty valk, and put it out into a close-up dogfight with a vulture. The valk causes what seems to be framerate drop due to being so fast that it moves large parts onscreen with each update.
"I'm sure I'm not the only one that notices when you have a ship of that agility it doesn't move smoothly anymore but rather jitters all over the place when it strafes/dodges. Its practically impossible to hit with energy weapons (apart from the occasional lucky shot) and tough enough just keeping the target in front of you."
Had a nasty encounter lately ? I can't understand why you'd say that, I have little trouble hitting Space Hunter's Valkyrie.
Overall I agree though, as it is the Valkyrie is so fast it brings combat to the limits of what is humanly and practically possible, it gets tiring very very quickly.
As per the return of the Frigate: WOOHOO, I'll finally get to see that ship up close !
Had a nasty encounter lately ? I can't understand why you'd say that, I have little trouble hitting Space Hunter's Valkyrie.
Overall I agree though, as it is the Valkyrie is so fast it brings combat to the limits of what is humanly and practically possible, it gets tiring very very quickly.
As per the return of the Frigate: WOOHOO, I'll finally get to see that ship up close !
"Had a nasty encounter lately ?"
Umm.. no.. but you might...
"I can't understand why you'd say that, I have little trouble hitting Space Hunter's Valkyrie."
Why must people continuely defend the Valk by saying "hey i can hit some random n00b that can't dodge for shit, so it must be ok"?
Its an observation.. the ship is extremely difficult to hold in front of you on the screen and it just looks plain shitty jumping around like it does...
Umm.. no.. but you might...
"I can't understand why you'd say that, I have little trouble hitting Space Hunter's Valkyrie."
Why must people continuely defend the Valk by saying "hey i can hit some random n00b that can't dodge for shit, so it must be ok"?
Its an observation.. the ship is extremely difficult to hold in front of you on the screen and it just looks plain shitty jumping around like it does...
'Jitteryness' in which the ship jumps about is usually caused by lag.
What's happening is that in absense of any updates about the ship's posistion, the client postulates that the ship continues moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Of course, this is rarely true, so when the client gets a position update from the server it has to quickly shift the ship's position to the new one. This quick shifting causes the appearance of jitteryness, and yes if you are on dialup its occassionally going to make your opponent very hard to hit.
I played on dialup for about two years. As you probably no if you've ever played any sort of FPS on dialup before, the technology is right at the limit of what is needed to make FPS's playable and thier is nothing that the dev's can really do about it. Some days your ping will go under 190ms, and Vendetta's engine is so good you'll hardly notice your lag, and so days your ping will get up around 300ms and suddenly Vendetta will become basically unplayable.
As for the rebalancing, here are my basic thoughts:
1) a1k0n's previously posted something that was an extremely elegant solution to a problem I'd been wrestling with for sometime. He proposed that for the heavier ships, the mass to thrust ratio should remain constant, but the mass and thrust themselves should be multiplied by some factor. The result is that a ship like the Centaur would remain sluggish, BUT (and this is a big but) loading it down with cargo and heavy weapons would have only a small impact on its agility. They would not 'feel' the extra load nearly as much as a lightweight and agile ship.
This is a GOOD IDEA(TM)
2) There was a time when gauss, sunflares, and rails were each good and close to balanced with each other. At that time I proposed that if the (then) Tachyon blaster went 210, it would be balanced against the Gauss and the 'flare. Adding weight (in a rather arbitrary fashion) so that those weapons weighed different ammounts totally screwed with that. The current dominance of the N3 and 'circle straffing' tactics now that the gauss and the flare have been weight nerfed is I think proof of my theory. If the gauss and the flare were still ~600kg, you'd see alot more variation in the weapons used. The difference between the weights of weapons needs to be reduced far more than the difference between the weights of the ships needs to be reduced.
3) With the weapons rebalanced, an ideal way to proceed would be to closely balance the ship's weights with a presumed weapons load out.
4) I generally agree with the diversification implied, but I strongly disagree with the apparant implication that some ship's are going to get nerfed even further or that the only viable combat ship should be of the highest manueverability. Going back to #1, it ought to be clear that we have alot more potential tools than that.
What's happening is that in absense of any updates about the ship's posistion, the client postulates that the ship continues moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Of course, this is rarely true, so when the client gets a position update from the server it has to quickly shift the ship's position to the new one. This quick shifting causes the appearance of jitteryness, and yes if you are on dialup its occassionally going to make your opponent very hard to hit.
I played on dialup for about two years. As you probably no if you've ever played any sort of FPS on dialup before, the technology is right at the limit of what is needed to make FPS's playable and thier is nothing that the dev's can really do about it. Some days your ping will go under 190ms, and Vendetta's engine is so good you'll hardly notice your lag, and so days your ping will get up around 300ms and suddenly Vendetta will become basically unplayable.
As for the rebalancing, here are my basic thoughts:
1) a1k0n's previously posted something that was an extremely elegant solution to a problem I'd been wrestling with for sometime. He proposed that for the heavier ships, the mass to thrust ratio should remain constant, but the mass and thrust themselves should be multiplied by some factor. The result is that a ship like the Centaur would remain sluggish, BUT (and this is a big but) loading it down with cargo and heavy weapons would have only a small impact on its agility. They would not 'feel' the extra load nearly as much as a lightweight and agile ship.
This is a GOOD IDEA(TM)
2) There was a time when gauss, sunflares, and rails were each good and close to balanced with each other. At that time I proposed that if the (then) Tachyon blaster went 210, it would be balanced against the Gauss and the 'flare. Adding weight (in a rather arbitrary fashion) so that those weapons weighed different ammounts totally screwed with that. The current dominance of the N3 and 'circle straffing' tactics now that the gauss and the flare have been weight nerfed is I think proof of my theory. If the gauss and the flare were still ~600kg, you'd see alot more variation in the weapons used. The difference between the weights of weapons needs to be reduced far more than the difference between the weights of the ships needs to be reduced.
3) With the weapons rebalanced, an ideal way to proceed would be to closely balance the ship's weights with a presumed weapons load out.
4) I generally agree with the diversification implied, but I strongly disagree with the apparant implication that some ship's are going to get nerfed even further or that the only viable combat ship should be of the highest manueverability. Going back to #1, it ought to be clear that we have alot more potential tools than that.
Balance coming. YAY!.
OK that out of the way, Celebrim makes a very strong point in #2. I cant use tactics i spent 2 years developing because the only weapon you can mount effectiely is most useful on light agile ships. 4 months ago turboing towards me in anything was a good way to die, because i didnt have to be aimed withing 5 degrees of you to hit you. Of course that was with a gauss or a advanced gat, which mass so much that they are effectively useless at the moment. Now a heavier ship cant alter its facing fast enough to hit a ship thats closing with short bursts of turbo at slight angles. A1k0n's post about the mass/thrust of the ships seems like a perfect solution to this, as it would give parity to some of the heavierier ships, and i seriously hope that it gets implimented.
As to the ship bouncing, i have to agree with icarus here. I have little to no lag, i'm located in Ohio on a 1.5 DSL connection, and my ping usually averages somewhere in the 40's. I have a good machine and even with the graphics turned way down to test it, the valk jumps around on my screen when it gets in close.
OK that out of the way, Celebrim makes a very strong point in #2. I cant use tactics i spent 2 years developing because the only weapon you can mount effectiely is most useful on light agile ships. 4 months ago turboing towards me in anything was a good way to die, because i didnt have to be aimed withing 5 degrees of you to hit you. Of course that was with a gauss or a advanced gat, which mass so much that they are effectively useless at the moment. Now a heavier ship cant alter its facing fast enough to hit a ship thats closing with short bursts of turbo at slight angles. A1k0n's post about the mass/thrust of the ships seems like a perfect solution to this, as it would give parity to some of the heavierier ships, and i seriously hope that it gets implimented.
As to the ship bouncing, i have to agree with icarus here. I have little to no lag, i'm located in Ohio on a 1.5 DSL connection, and my ping usually averages somewhere in the 40's. I have a good machine and even with the graphics turned way down to test it, the valk jumps around on my screen when it gets in close.
Spellcast, thx for confirming the Valks jumpyness with your setup too, as your ping time is roughly half mine. The ship seems able to move too far, too quickly, so its making the correction (when you recieve the next positional data packet) look very noticeable.
I'd hate to see what it looks like on dialup!
I'd hate to see what it looks like on dialup!
Just want to back up Icarus. I was actually going to post about how the "light" fighters were so ridiculously light they move too fast for my eyes to follow. I've been playing FPSes since QuakeI and flight sims since around the same and I can't quite compare the experience to anything.
I had it happen with a guy in a Vult IV and neut3s. I don't know exactly what he was doing, but if we got closer than about 150m, he would start to change directions quickly to dodge me. It resulted in him moving so fast about the screen that I literally couldn't follow him. This was with rglow off, with an avg ping of 50 and an FPS avg of 70-80. His ship was just moving too fast.
I had the same thing happen with the Valk. It could do 180 degree changes of direction so fast that it seemed like it was bouncing off a wall or something, and skipping through time and space to do it.
I don't remember this happening in Alpha with either sunflare or tach fights. It seems to have come about with weights and the new universe. I know it might be unpopular, but it might be better to slow down the light fighters ability to jump back and forth rather than speed them up.
I had it happen with a guy in a Vult IV and neut3s. I don't know exactly what he was doing, but if we got closer than about 150m, he would start to change directions quickly to dodge me. It resulted in him moving so fast about the screen that I literally couldn't follow him. This was with rglow off, with an avg ping of 50 and an FPS avg of 70-80. His ship was just moving too fast.
I had the same thing happen with the Valk. It could do 180 degree changes of direction so fast that it seemed like it was bouncing off a wall or something, and skipping through time and space to do it.
I don't remember this happening in Alpha with either sunflare or tach fights. It seems to have come about with weights and the new universe. I know it might be unpopular, but it might be better to slow down the light fighters ability to jump back and forth rather than speed them up.
woohoo update! sounds pretty cool...
anyway:
>there was a time when gauss, sunflares, and rails were each good
>and close to balanced with each other. At that time I proposed
>that if the (then) Tachyon blaster went 210, it would be
>balanced against the Gauss and the 'flare.
This is SO important. These weapons were very close to being balanced before and I think as Celebrim says that they would be now with the advent of faster tachs.
It seems like the flairs were nerfed with weight because of the tri-flare valk thing, but valk+best weap is best combo no matter what that weapon is. I'd rather see tri-flair and tri-guass valks than all neut III's and nothing else. Really I think the neut III's are a natural counter to tri-flairs anyway, but we'll never know unless we bring the weights closer together.
This would also give UIT something viable to fight against neut III's with.
anyway:
>there was a time when gauss, sunflares, and rails were each good
>and close to balanced with each other. At that time I proposed
>that if the (then) Tachyon blaster went 210, it would be
>balanced against the Gauss and the 'flare.
This is SO important. These weapons were very close to being balanced before and I think as Celebrim says that they would be now with the advent of faster tachs.
It seems like the flairs were nerfed with weight because of the tri-flare valk thing, but valk+best weap is best combo no matter what that weapon is. I'd rather see tri-flair and tri-guass valks than all neut III's and nothing else. Really I think the neut III's are a natural counter to tri-flairs anyway, but we'll never know unless we bring the weights closer together.
This would also give UIT something viable to fight against neut III's with.
<The prom isn't really what I meant by "Larger, Slower". I'm talking more about trading vessels.>
Thank goodness.
I was thinking, that since heavies turn slower, their weaponry would be either
(1) good at long range, fast: large port railgun that does a lot of damage, so they don't have to turn so much to aim, and turboing at them is not so great.
(2) proximity detonation (rockets!)
(3) high autoaim that is also high velocity.
Thank goodness.
I was thinking, that since heavies turn slower, their weaponry would be either
(1) good at long range, fast: large port railgun that does a lot of damage, so they don't have to turn so much to aim, and turboing at them is not so great.
(2) proximity detonation (rockets!)
(3) high autoaim that is also high velocity.
Hoax: It always seemed to me that the Flare was perfectly balanced in multiples of one or two. It was only in threes that getting hit for 4500 damage a pop made combat against a tri-flare Valk too insanely quick. To my mind the perfect solution therefore involves some combination of:
1) Making the 'Flare heavy enough that mounting three involves a minor agility penalty compared with mounting energy weapons, but not so heavy that you can't mount 2 and a light weight energy weapon and have competitive set up. I spent two years as a rocket jock, and a year flying a dual flare Valk with tachyon backup. All this circle strafing is driving me nuts.
2) Reduce the Sunflare damage by a couple hundred points - say to 1200. 3600 damage is just barely more than the 3000 dual flares used to produce, and we all pretty much agree that dual flares weren't a problem. 2400 damage from a dual flare is still going to be a big hit. Also, it more sharply draws a distinction between the large slot Jackhammer and the 'Flare (series), and the heavy weapons have never had enough of an advantage over thier S port counterparts.
1) Making the 'Flare heavy enough that mounting three involves a minor agility penalty compared with mounting energy weapons, but not so heavy that you can't mount 2 and a light weight energy weapon and have competitive set up. I spent two years as a rocket jock, and a year flying a dual flare Valk with tachyon backup. All this circle strafing is driving me nuts.
2) Reduce the Sunflare damage by a couple hundred points - say to 1200. 3600 damage is just barely more than the 3000 dual flares used to produce, and we all pretty much agree that dual flares weren't a problem. 2400 damage from a dual flare is still going to be a big hit. Also, it more sharply draws a distinction between the large slot Jackhammer and the 'Flare (series), and the heavy weapons have never had enough of an advantage over thier S port counterparts.
I don't know about all this, but I'd say my 'Flare & GT equipped Hog TD is breaking through. Valks and Vults aren't completely the top winners. A few of us UIT can deal with the neut3 problem.
Harvestmouse is somewhat on the right track about prom set ups. Dual flare & GT and dual rail and jack OR mines. Mines you just don't see. The first is aggressive and the second being support or guerilla.
Harvestmouse is somewhat on the right track about prom set ups. Dual flare & GT and dual rail and jack OR mines. Mines you just don't see. The first is aggressive and the second being support or guerilla.