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Specific Demolition ships for Defense mode

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Naoura:
Not sure about having the drills be a massive threat unless the vessel's that spawn in no longer target the base. You'd only be adding gas on the fire if you made them add pressure like that.

Maybe make it so that the drills are the only threat? They deal a lot of damage to the base if they are left to their own devices, but are pretty heavily guarded, while the smaller assault vessles are going out to dismantle your defenses for the Boss spawn. He only spawns after all drills are destroyed, and your defenses are more geard against the boss rather than the smaller attack vessels. That would explain whythey go down quicker.

As for balancing 1 through 4 ship balances... well, use the war effort. Make the missions rather stable and difficult, and reward using different type of runs. Do a 4 ship run? You're more likely to win, so you get less of an impact on the world. Doing a 3 ship run? A little harder, so they'll throw you a bone. 2 ships? Great game, you guys did really well, here's a nice plum for your faction. Solo? Goddamned, you did that?! Nice, big weight on the victory. This goes with my running idea that MMR should not give you a solo-ship lobby if it can't find another lobby. Just make a 2 ship lobby, like in Skirmish. Solo should be an option, but it should only be a custom option.

Unarmed Civilian:
It's not as if the drills have to spawn right at the start and keep respawning something over and over and over. But right now it feels like the drills don't do anything.

And it's not as if the drills are doing 5000 damage per second to the base. They can just do slow chip damage to it. Since chip damage is a huge problem as it currently is, even doing as little damage as a solo gat plane would be enough to make every drill something to prioritize.

The support ships should primarily target players and try to overwhelm and destroy them before targeting the base.

Ships don't have to even be present with the drills. They could be part of different waves, or could have a trivial number of ships assisting the drills. You could even have the ships retreat after the drills are destroyed as if they were regrouping for a larger attack. MvM has a system where there are enemies you are required to kill on each wave, but certain "support" enemies can also spawn that are destroyed as soon as the last required enemy is destroyed.

As for war effort and other reward nonsense, I don't care. They can balance that after they balance the modes for fun and engagement. If I spend money on a game, I want to have a good time in exchange. I've played MvM and blown up money-powered robot armies with no rewards for years despite there being a version that actually does have rewards. I want it to tell a coherent story, does not even have to be a good one, and be fun.

...

I will say, however, that rewards should be skewed to encourage cooperation. If 16 players who really want to influence the map find that they can do 16 individual solo runs and have more total influence than one big 4 ship run, why on earth would they ever want to work together? See complaints about single-man Oblivion Retrieve runs.

Richard LeMoon:
What about this: if the drills had massive mortars on them that would be shelling your base with a new type of damage called anti-structure or some such which does minuscule damage to armor. Give the base a good amount of armor, and a 'structure' that can only be hurt severely by anti-structure ammo. Now add in ship mounted guns that also do anti-structure damage and put them on the 'VIP' ships along with a light piercing gun.

What you end up with is structure armor that can not be hurt enough by the drills or main VIP cannons. The other ships need to break the armor for them. This makes the drills a severe threat if your base armor breaks. Letting a VIP get close to your base will also be a large threat. Destroying the drills will allow you to concentrate on killing incoming VIPs and the boss, if included.

Also, give your base a few Gatlings. This would allow it to clear out those annoying planes after a while, and break the armor of assaulting ships.


It you can keep the regular ships away, your base takes no damage. If you take out the drills, the main source of damage is removed. Then a rush of VIPs come in for the next 5 minutes along with maybe a boss.

Unarmed Civilian:
The drills don't even need mortars on them to make sense. The base is labeled "Geothermal Tap", it's a geothermal power plant. The drills are trying to dig vents for the heat/heated water to escape, threatening the ability of it to make power. I'm fairly certain that is the idea behind the spider drills in the first place.

In other words, it could just deal direct damage to the base over time.

Also, the devs seem to be adamant on not giving the base armor. I don't know why. It's the only entity in the entire game that does not have armor and isn't invulnerable. Even the small refineries on Retrieve have armor.

Naoura:
I think that one complicates it a little too much, @Richard. Doing both makes it too cluttered.

I'd say either make the drills do constant damage and be actively defended, with a Boss wave at the end aimed at taking out the base, which your defenses help take out.

-OR-

A Siege craft wave that spawns in from each lane every 2 minutes, and is the only vessel that is able to deal damage to the base. Fragile bu heavily defended, it can engage from mid-short range and easily knock out the base if you don't deal with them before they get within firing range.

The drill option would make speed a priority. Shut down the drills before they do irreparable damage, and keep your defenses up for when the boss rolls in to try and knock you out. With this, it'd be defending the guns and knocking out the drills, and would reward speed rather than hard defense.

In the second mode, strong patrols and an iron shield would be more useful, a lot slower paced and more focused on keeping the lanes bottled up. A longer, more paced mission than some of the others, so for longer runs for the players, it's better off. The boss wave gives a nice climactic element... if they even pretend to balance out the Boss's speed.

I do agree with defenses on the Tower, though. You know those little howitzers on the refineries? Why the hell can't we have those on our so-called "critical structure"?

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