Pilot Archive
Thread: How to balance all the ships in the game without driectly 'nerfing' any?
This would call for a sort of "Space Revamp", but in the end you'd have a system that's much simpler to balance IMO (loosing out a tad on the complexity of the mass system). The problems with using mass alone to balance ship components are far too vast to list, so I'll simply say that the system is flawed, and there are far more intuitive ways of balancing ships/components while fitting them into specific roles.
1. Get rid of mass
2. Classify each existing chassis according to a specific catagory among the following:
-Light Fighter
-Interceptor
-Medium Fighter
-Heavy Fighter
-Bomber
-Light Transport/Freighter
3. Take each ship chassis catagory and put standards of what level components of each type can be put in. This would take a bit of balancing/testing to determine what level components are appropriate for each chassis. A balance pass of items would need to be done as well to bring them up to par with their tier, so that there are clear distinctions between what chassis can use.
This solves the problems with the unbalancing of RotW ships without nerfing them, while at the same time taking existing ships and firmly planting them in a niche. Perhaps to make things a bit more complex, energy drain on components of tier could be upped a bit as tiers increase to leave a little bit of sacrifice within ship customization. The key here is that firm limits are placed on offensive/defensive/engine power as appropriate for each chassis type. This resolves the long outstanding issue of interceptors and light fighters not being able to even fit the strongest engines in, while creating a way that their firepower/shielding can be appropriately kept in check for their starfigther role. Weaponry max tier could intentionally be left a bit more flexible, but energy management of weapons would become much more important.
Obviously there's a little bit of tweaking to be done with the idea, but I genuinely think it could work. Thoughts?
I predict some issues among those that enjoy RE'ing and mass management inherent in that, but most of RE'ing would still remain useful, while the akward use of mass as a balancing factor for fitting components into ships wouldbecome a non-issue.
Problem with current system is, in an nutshell, ship parts and Re engineering combined with droid commands. Work it enough, you can output alot of performance with very little mass.
The one I'm proposing wouldn't be a totally different system, but it would defiantely be different. All existing stats minus mass would still be used when placing components in your ship. Let's use an A-Wing chassis (values given are arbitrary, this is purely to give an idea of how the sytem would work):
A-Wing - Catagory: Interceptor; same YPR, acceleration values, and chassis slots
Interceptor Chassis restrictions:
Engine: Level 10
Armor: Level 2
Shields: Level 4
Reactor: level 6
Weapons: Level 8
Ordinance: Level 8
Countermeasures: Level 6
What this basically means is that Interceptor chassis restrictions would apply to everything under the interceptor catagory (catagory would, for the most part, be determined by chassis YPR - as that's generally reflective of role - a sluggish interceptor wouldn't make sense 
) would be restricted to having similar loadouts. Despite this, reactor restrictions would mean you still probably won't be able to put all the best gear in, and you'll have to choose whether or not you want bigger guns, better engines, etc, since your reactor can only handle so much. Reactor overload might need to be tweaked a bit for this, but that's acceptable - and even if you could run all the best components of a level, you still won't be able to break into the next tier of fighter.
So let's compare the hypothetical interceptor restrictions to the hypothetical bomber setup.
Bomber Chassis restrictions:
Engine: Level 4
Armor: Level 9
Shields: Level 9
Reactor: level 8
Weapons: Level 8
Ordinance: Level 10
Countermeasures: Level 10
Obviously there's going to need to be some work done tweaking existing item value ranges on stuff like shields (I still can't see why level 10 crafted shields suck so much) and perhaps engines (since restriction to lower engines will kill your YPR too) but I definately think it'd be a much more workable system than the current one. There would still be a lot of ship differentiation and sacrificing that need to be made, but overall an interceptor would fill the role of an interceptor, a superiority fighter a jack of all trades but master of none, a bomber a flying death brick, etc.
The only thing that'd need to be tweaked in this case would be the YPR of the Heavy X-Wing, and maybe the ARC-170 as well (though to offset the ARC changes you could easily swap the lower rear turret to frontal nose guns... *hint, hint*)
R9D14 wrote:
really what ship has TWICE the mass and is twice as agile? a 10k light tie has better turning than a tie bomber which has i think 15 times as much mass.
Take a look at the ship stats in the FAQ. The heavy variants and rotw ships don't seem to fit into the system at all. It's not exactly twice the mass so we'll just say more mass and more agile.
Attacca wrote:
Doesn't this still achieve the same result, under nicer packaging? At the end of the day you're still tuning the ships, and changing the usability of some vessels. The call to balance the ships does the exact same thing. Either way you'd be making what are overpowered ships now less overpowered.
Message Edited by Raptor2k1 on 08-16-2005 09:33 PM
Doesn't work for me.
Raptor2k1 wrote:
At the same time though, it fixes one of the biggest issues I've had with the current mass system: the engines that give the best speed and performance weighing more than the fighters that are designed to use the best speed and performance. There is no way I could see that happening in the current system. Interceptors and light figthers should be able to have the biggest and baddest engines in the galaxy, but at the same time they shouldn't be able to carry the biggest guns and best shields. Bombers and transports making use of these engines doesn't make all that much sense, as they're slower and less maneuverable hands-down. The falcon was outpaced by standard TIE's in A New Hope -that should tell you something.
What this system would do is encourage people to play off their ships strengths, rather than trying to have our cake and eat it too like we do right now.
I mean, seriously - you pester the Devs enough, they NERF THE HELL OUT OF YOU. Think of us like the goats in Jurassic Park - jumping up and down and making noise just makes the T-Rex come and kill you FASTER.
You ask for changes, eventually you get them. And in this game, you end up getting WAY MORE THAN YOU ASKED for nine times out of ten.
So you're gonna hear me say something HIGHLY unorthodox for me.
DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.
Everytime I say that from now on, I picture Cleveland from Family Guy singing it.
