Author Topic: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.  (Read 30966 times)

Offline Van-Tuz

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The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« on: September 22, 2014, 02:54:51 am »
Greetings. The situation that i'm about to describe has bugged me since the first time i saw the damage multiplier table. But i thought i would understand it better when i get more experience. It didn't happened.
Before i begin, let me explain 2 things:
1) TTK - i.e. "time to kill" is the average lifetime under constant fire. In most FPS TTK is less than a few seconds. But in an airship game longer and more intense battles are more enjoyable.
2) The official damage multiplier table mentioned above.

Is something bothers you when you look at it? Hint: explosive type deals 7 times more damage to the hull than piercing. Granted, all guns were designed with a specialisation. But when heavy flak could pound squid's armor all day without dealing any real damage it's not "specialisation" it's "Pigeonholing" The guns are so specialised that they're completely useless outside of their area of expertise.
Why it it bad for the game:
1) Inconsistent TTK. I could have a very long and enjoyable fight against a goldfish but a sniper spire could kill me in a matter of 10 seconds giving no fun.
2) Limiting loadouts. Some weapons are completely unusable and therefore nowhere to be seen.
3) Turning away many new captains. Some people (like me) come into this game to be a pilot. But a newcomer may (and most likely will) try an imbalanced loadouts. Like all rocket carousels for example. Then they play a few matches without any chance to kill someone and quit. They aren't getting their portion of fun not because they're bad pilots but because the system works against them.
Therefore guns should be specialised but not pigeonholed.

To fix this:
1) Even out all guns' DPS.
2) Even out all damage types' multipliers. They should be 1.5-2.5 in their speciaisation and 1 everywhere else.
That way TTK would be stabilised around one point that gives the most fun for both teams.

The second thing that bothers me is the carronade. No need to sigh and close the page, i won't suggest to nerf it to the ground.
If you ever got pinned by a carronade you know how bad it could be.
when you lose your guns you can't shoot but you still can run. Or use other guns because they rarely can be taked out in the same time.
When you lose your engines you still can move (vertically) and shoot. And engines are quite easy to rebuild.
But if you lost your balloon...
  • You can't shoot because all of your guns quickly lose the target.
  • You can't move in ANY direction.
  • You take serious damage from the fall.
  • You can't recover. The balloon have a very long rebuild time and the moment it comes back up it comes back down because the enemy's carronade is reloaded.
Basically, one gun makes your ship completely helpless. Being pinned by a carronade is a very long and a very, very frustrating death. On top of that it doesn't require any "skill" from the enemy. Just bring a carronade.

No, "asking for your teammate to help" and "bring a drogue chute" aren't the solutions.
1) If you need 2 ships to deal with one then it's overpowered. (same true for sniper spire) Moreover, your teammate may be busy with other ship. Or worse - be pinned by a carronade himself. Then it turns into a GoIO-style teabagging.
2) Enemy shouldn't choose what tools i should bring. Forcing the whole team to select one specific item (and never use it afterwards) because enemy have one light carronade in a 4th pyramidion's slot is a bad thing. Also, drogue chute doesn't counter carronade. It just eases the pain a bit.

The solution is simple and IMO elegant:
Make a ship with destroyed balloon be unable to control its altitude but do not fall.
With such tweak we would have a larger time window to shoot back before enemy can get out of our firing arcs, we won't take fall damage and we still would be able to move horizontally and escape.
That's it. 3 squids in a single shot.
I really hope these changes would be implemented as they can fix a lot of game's flaws.

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2014, 04:14:08 am »
The link to damage multiplayer table doesn't work.

I pretty much agree with all you wrote, someone have already made a thread criticising current meta (gat-mortar) and it's efficiency to kill (which is basically the only goal of most competetive games) - https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4733.0.html

Quote
Some people (like me) come into this game to be a pilot. But a newcomer may (and most likely will) try an imbalanced loadouts. Like all rocket carousels for example. Then they play a few matches without any chance to kill someone and quit. They aren't getting their portion of fun not because they're bad pilots but because the system works against them.
Therefore guns should be specialised but not pigeonholed.

So much this. I'll add that people also don't know ammo because of bad tutorials. And imagine you're a novice fighting against anything with flamer. Flamer is anti-noob gun, because the unexperienced engineers use extinguishers and they are simply not capable of dealing with flamers.

About carronade - I also think it's kind of overpowered. It's quite easy to aim (no weird recoils or bullet trajectory), aims at easy to aim objects (freaking BALOONS) and makes ship basically defenceless. Also after baloon is down the damage is moved to hull and then to permahull so basically you can disable pretty quickly and just bluntly shoot enemies to death with one gun. Add gatling or flamer to it and you have a close-combat killing machine. Oh and it one-shots weapons and engines.




Offline Dutch Vanya

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2014, 04:15:40 am »
The link to damage multiplayer table doesn't work.
Even if the link worked, that "official" damage table is not accurate.

Offline Van-Tuz

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2014, 04:19:59 am »
The working link. (i cannot edit my first post apparently.)
If it's not accurate then please point me to the on that is.

Offline Sprayer

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2014, 06:11:06 am »
Carronades are only effective if they can shoot. Seeing as it is one of the lowest range weapons, why not bring a counter build? A single artemis can make a carrot or a blenderfish useless. Or you go Pyramidion and just make sure you never let them get in your back. How about packing drogue chute? Or bring a double LJ galleon and camp some wide, open space.
Only taking away an enemies ability to maneuver vertically instead of what destroying balloons does now would nerf the carronade to the ground, as oppose to what you said. But it would also make the LJ completely useless.

Offline GeoRmr

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2014, 06:56:56 am »
If it's not accurate then please point me to the on that is.

I don't believe there even is an accurate table...

Offline Van-Tuz

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2014, 07:04:01 am »
How about packing drogue chute? Or bring a double LJ galleon and camp some wide, open space.
Like I said before, if some item on the enemy's ship/crew says: "you must bring these items or to be subjected to a slow, painful and humiliating death" then said item is horribly designed.
Don't pretend that "they're okay" because you can counter them by triple-jumping trough fire.

Carronades were discussed a thousand times and i'm just suggesting another way to fix them. I'm more interested in your opinion about damage overhaul.

Offline Sprayer

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2014, 07:13:52 am »
I tend to avoid writing "meh no likez" so I intentionally left my opinion about the damage overhaul out of my post.

But if you insist, I like how the damage system currently works and if I had to change it, all I would do would be to add a tertiary damage type to all guns.

Offline Replaceable

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2014, 12:20:25 pm »
I pretty much agree with all you wrote, someone have already made a thread criticising current meta (gat-mortar) and it's efficiency to kill (which is basically the only goal of most competetive games)
I'd rather we forget about that whiny-ass thread xD
About carronade - I also think it's kind of overpowered. It's quite easy to aim (no weird recoils or bullet trajectory), aims at easy to aim objects (freaking BALOONS) and makes ship basically defenceless. Also after balloon is down the damage is moved to hull and then to permahull so basically you can disable pretty quickly and just bluntly shoot enemies to death with one gun. Add gatling or flamer to it and you have a close-combat killing machine. Oh and it one-shots weapons and engines.

Yeah agree, hit the dangerous gun (i.e. Gatling gun) on enemy team, Start pounding balloon, reload, They're gun goes back up, They will be popped and sinking before that dangerous gun can do anything. Carronade is fairly decent vs. hull armour too, so after some time you have nothing. Which sucks. I do however appreciate the skill needed for 'carronade sniping' i.e. getting a disable first hit with heavy clipped carronade.  And also once the balloon is rebuilt it's lack of full health and slow rebuild means getting re-popped is almost certain. Paired with fire from a banshee or a flamer (both of which i run.) They're gonna have a bad time.

1) Even out all guns' DPS.
2) Even out all damage types' multipliers. They should be 1.5-2.5 in their speciaisation and 1 everywhere else.
That way TTK would be stabilised around one point that gives the most fun for both teams.
Yeah i had this thought a while back too- i totally agree with you, I would like to see some variation in builds. This would do exactly that.

Make a ship with destroyed balloon be unable to control its altitude but do not fall.

I like this idea. They could make the component be called altitude control to fit in with the lore. Hell even have it similar to hull armour and perma hull. Altitude control is destroyed first, and then what's keeping you afloat- the balloon. Make both repairable. Have the controls a relatively quick rebuild and the balloon the same rebuild time as normal.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2014, 12:24:13 pm »
The guns should not be balanced on time to kill because some guns primary roll is to control a fight rather than win it as fast as possible. Your example of the carronade proves the point.

It is possible to fight your way out of a balloon lock with just a gat/morter. I have killed many blender fish by sitting on the floor and out DPS'ing him. Alternately you can fly away and tar them. Blender fish have to be close to take advantage of the gun blind spots and often don't have time to evade a surprise tarring.

The best strategy is to stick close to your team mate. A well coordinated team is the bane of blenderfish. Even if both enemy ships are balloon locked it is impossible to stay out of two ships firing arcs. If this game allowed for 1v1 ship battles the carronade would be incredibly overpowered.

Offline Imagine

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2014, 12:29:22 pm »
This game has always (well, in theory always) been about combinations of weapons and allies, never about boiling down to 1v1 I shoot you, you shoot me, let's see who dies first. Normalizing damage would do nothing but strip away the feel that weapons currently have.

Offline Queso

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2014, 02:02:24 pm »
I actually ran some tests with normalized damage types on the Dev App with a bunch of players. At that point it starts to just boil down to range and DPS, and you lose a lot of the depth of the game.

Offline Van-Tuz

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #12 on: September 23, 2014, 04:06:28 am »
I actually ran some tests with normalized damage types on the Dev App with a bunch of players. At that point it starts to just boil down to range and DPS, and you lose a lot of the depth of the game.
Then I need to ask a few questions:
1) Was guns' DPS was evened out? (depending on range, arc etc)
2) How high was the specialised damage type multiplier set?



Offline sparklerfish

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #13 on: September 23, 2014, 01:13:12 pm »
What is the point of even having different guns if they don't do different things?

Offline Canon Whitecandle

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Re: The damage system is flawed. Suggesting overhaul.
« Reply #14 on: September 23, 2014, 10:32:20 pm »
What is the point of even having different guns if they don't do different things?
because it's much easier to just gatling down someone's hull (and therefore win) than it is to bungee-tow an enemy into a wall with a harpoon Junker. If other guns are made invalid by others accessibility then there's a problem.