Shipyard & CC_07

[zombywoof]

Actually the real problem with his plan is that nukes are only marginally more powerful than AB missiles, and are (overall) worse than AB missiles. That makes 0 sense to me.

[cashto]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Aug 3 2009, 03:15 PM) Actually the real problem with his plan is that nukes are only marginally more powerful than AB missiles, and are (overall) worse than AB missiles. That makes 0 sense to me.

You're right ... I was trying to introduce a gameplay mechanic, but it doesn't make 100% logical sense -- how can such a bigass capital ship fail to carry the same sort of ordnance that a lowly bomber can carry? (Then again ... drag in space, GAs that take effect immediately, instantaneous transfering of people to faraway bases, three wormholes in the same 6km radius ... all pretty ridiculous too if you think too hard about them).

The yield change was more a nerf for exp than a perk to SY. I am positive it will be bought by 100% of teams that go SY.

Sort of the problem with this (as well as most other proposals on the table) is that it is a radical change to gameplay and may require several versions to get all the balancing issues right.

I guess you could go the same way we have been going ... to make SY a standalone tech on par with exp or sup (all paths are potentially dual techable but tac is more a "support" role than the other thre). But my feeling is, it's hard enough to balance exp with sup, it's even harder to have a 3-way balance.

[Correct]

I like the idea of making the sy use he rocks.

[notjarvis]

QUOTE (cashto @ Aug 3 2009, 10:40 PM) [*]Tie drydock to endgame tech (figbees, sbs, or htts).

Sorry - I may be mis-understanding here, are you saying you need those techs before you can get a drydock?
IMO this will mean in most cases Drydock will not be bought as you have already got a way to finish the game at this point (by definition).
Why drag it out by saving up for Uber-Sy capships if you've already got SBs out? or a TP2 with figbees waiting?

[Psychosis]

cashto: tying drydock to adv tech defeats the purpose of revamping SY, making it even less useful and even less used

kage: I have been harping this forever, but it looks like the only place we get to test this stuff out is in the beta because the AU is too slow if we break something, also, innovation does have to start somewhere and some of us would like to see it start at MS 1.25, also MadP's revamping ideas have been brought to the table

[Xeretov]

As cashto and others have pointed out, there are a few different themes we can use for SY here.
1) As a purely support path, where the SY tech is meant to compliment the other techpaths.
2) As its own standalone tech. This has two flavours: Tough, expensive ships or cheap, more expendable and replaceable ones.
3) As a means to end a game, by being expensive and very difficult/impossible to stop.
4) Others?
Before any more discussion goes on about specific ships & tech I think the community needs to decide which theme it wants to go with.


My thoughts:

I would say the current (DN) implementation is a cross between 2 and 3. Because of the current power of dis versus caps, its too expensive to be a standalone tech and too weak to be completely game ending. The expense of capital ships is one of the main culprits in scaling as well - a battleship costs $10K whether you have a team of 10 or a team of 30. Unfortunately the difference is 5 enemy figs or 25. I agree that scaling is going to be an issue regardless, but we can at least aim for some flexibility in the 10-25 per team range. Below that I feel SY should be turned off, and above that we will hopefully have a cc_large edition sometime in the future.

That said, I'd like to see capital ships changed to be cheaper and the strength brought into line with the new price. Dis definitely needs a nerf, but not to the point where its useless. Sup should remain the strongest path against SY, with tac in the middle and exp at the bottom. But I think the money sink in SY should be in the tech, not the ships. This is the case for the other techs already: FBs cost a fortune to get, but an FB run only costs a couple thousand. SBs and HTTs are a bit cheaper to get, but the ships are far cheaper than the tech and can be replaced with just a couple paydays.

While I don't think a couple paydays should pay for something like a frigate or cruiser, they shouldn't be so expensive that losing one or two is enough to force the SY team into a resign due to being broke. The cheaper ships would also mean you can afford to get more even numbers player wise. By that I mean not having a crew of 5 on one cruiser (and maybe nans) against 15 figs, but rather 2-3 cruisers (and maybe nans) against 15 figs.

[Correct]

I did once have an idea to tie sy to the techpaths. eg adv exp gets you frigs [Non-rip like ints], adv sup gets you cruisers [Rip like figs] and adv tac gets you ass ships [stealth]. You could fine tune something like that.

[Adept]

QUOTE (Xeretov @ Aug 8 2009, 07:17 AM) While I don't think a couple paydays should pay for something like a frigate or cruiser, they shouldn't be so expensive that losing one or two is enough to force the SY team into a resign due to being broke. The cheaper ships would also mean you can afford to get more even numbers player wise. By that I mean not having a crew of 5 on one cruiser (and maybe nans) against 15 figs, but rather 2-3 cruisers (and maybe nans) against 15 figs.

This sounds like the way to go. The cap costs need to be at least halved. 3k for a Frig and 4k for a cruiser is still a lot, but it would be closer to sane than the current ones. Those may still be too high, mind you.

Once Dis no longer chews through cap hull they will immedeately become a better invesment. Skycap damage should probably be looked at as well, since I understand it was raised to balance the increased fragility of caps.

IB's idea of reducing the scale of some of the caps still sounds good to me as well. A frigate just doesn't have the power to justify it being like a flying apartment building A cruiser, sure, but not the stealthy frig.

[guitarism]

I'm going to insert this here, since it deal with the SY tech tree.

Torpedo and Killer Swarm are completely screwed for killing caps. Killer Swarm does almost no damage, has a range shorter then turrets do (1800 or so), and is of the light/medium damage class. Torpedo isn't much longer (2800) is also lt/med damage class but at least is a lil more powerful payload wise (800 vs 200).

It's tech supposed to be used to kill other caps. Up the damage class and the range so that they have a shot vs caps, otherwise it's pointless to even give them the ability

[Xeretov]

QUOTE (guitarism @ Aug 8 2009, 07:25 PM) Torpedo and Killer Swarm are completely screwed for killing caps.

I was toying around with some changes to these and I think the best solution here is to either remove both techs, or perk one or the other to actually be useful in the anti-cap role. Due to the hit-or-miss nature of killer swarm I'd rather remove that and perk torpedo. Moving the damage class of torpedo from its current (missiles/DM04) to that of Killers/Dis (DM03) would be better off. The raw damage would have to be adjusted, but I figured it should be somewhat stronger than an LRM killer, maybe 50% more. Range/speed/etc. would probably have to be tweaked too.