Yeah, about that.
I just had to post this.
At least with Heavy Bomber it actually has kinda viable damage XD
About Heavy Bomber tho⌠The release of this spacecraft makes my older calculations kinda pointless, because of how its volleys are generated. I cannot see any pattern between different weapons. It is a killing machine with certain guns (Vulcan Chaingun , Plasma Rifle), but other guns (Lightning Fryer) are as useless as they were before.
If it stays as it is right now, there will be no point in continuing WBP to be honest, so I am concidering cancelation of the project. My older posts just became obsolete, and I donât have enough time to redesign everything once again. I will wait and see how things evolve (how community responds to the Bomber etc.), but for now WBP goes on hiatus until further notice.
Tbh, utensil poker pisses me more, because of eggs.
Weapon balancing should only be done on âstandardâ single-weapon spacecraft. The heavy bombers should be ignored. Their algorithm of splitting/assigning firepower to their weapon banks may or may not change in the future. Either way, their firepower advantage comes at a heavy price, so itâs mostly a gamestyle choice rather than a weapon choice.
Itâs not the firepower advantage with a cost of worse manouverability that is a problem. I see an issue with the fact that this advantage is very unequal amongst various weapons. For example, plasma rifle gets huge boost with what feels like almost 2 two times the original damage. Lightning Fryer on the other hands feels like it didnât get any boost whatsoever. In fact, on some power levels it is actually worse. On heavy bomber lvl 12, lighting fryer has less damage than on standard lvl 10. On levels 7 and 8 it is also weaker than normal(I didnât test other levels).
Various weapons react differently to the heavy bomber so I canât really predict what will happen if I balance the weapons for standard spaceship. If weapons were balanced ONLY for standard spaceship, we would end up with the same situation, but on the Heavy Bomber. Thatâs why I am going to wait and see what is going to happen with new spaceship.
If every weapon reacted the same way when used in Heavy Bomber, there wouldnât be any problem. (+50% dmg buff, or doubling the volleys for all guns wouldnât break anything.) Right now some weapons get huge advantage, while others get very little, balancing everything only for the standard spaceship would make the guns that get huge advantage completely overpowered compared to others on Heavy Bomber. So yeaa, in such scenario balancing everything only for the standard ship is kinda pointless.
I actually just finished making a spreadsheet that shows normal 10 damage per volley compared with 10 on the BX-9. Not a lot of information, but I think itâs enough to point out at least a part of the problem.
To sum it up:
Bare in mind that this only takes 10 into account.
I could try to figure out all other power levels but I honestly canât be bothered. Especially if each bomber has different power levels.
Actually, does each bomber have different patterns, or is the max power level just higher on the heavier ones?
Not gonna lie, the way Heavy Bomber generates volleys is a total mess.
Why not simple +% damage boost or simply doubling the volleys? Such solutions would affect all guns in the same way and would be probably even easier to implement.
But would alĹżo be leĹżs intereďŹ ing from a gameplay point of veiw.
Donât stop, and it is NOT pointless.
About heavy bomber, can we just ignore it first? Itâs a new problem, but that would be even worse if the older problems havenât been fixed (weapons).
Hereâs an idea,
Ouch.
That is stupid.
Whatâs wrong? I just tried to simplify those things.
Itâs pretty hard to balance, except you just multiply their firing rate, bullet per volley, damage or whatsoever. But that will double or even more the gaps among them.
Any form of multiplier would indeed double the gaps, but only if we take absolute damage value into account. But the relative difference between two weapons is still the same. Letâs say that we have 2 guns. one deals 2000 dps, other deals 3000, so the dps gap is 1000, second gun is 50% stonger than the first one. Now if we multiply the damage 2 times, we get 4000(2000 times 2) dps and 6000(3000 times 2) dps. In such scenario, absolute damage gap is indeed doubled. (6000-4000=2000), but the relative difference is still 50% (2000 x 150% = 3000 | 4000 x 150% = 6000), so the balance is still intact.
Itâs worth to note, that relative % difference is much more important than how big the absolute damage gap between two weapons is.
Anyways, I am thinking about how the Bomber problem could be solved, but right now, every solution I come up with involves either having the same power levels on 0-10, or some form of damage multiplier(direct or indirect) that leaves 10 and 20 as two highest power levels. Anything else leads me back to the âvolleys of every weapon must be designed for a bomber from a scratchâ. Idk what to think about it.
I totally agree with this. Itâs nice to finally see new bullet patterns for all the weapons after constantly using the same ones over and over again.
I think that, first of all, we should talk about the way the bombers currently handle the additional power levels and whether or not this part of the system needs changing.
The BX-6âs max power level is 23. The pre-max level gap starts at 13, meaning it gets no upgrades on 14-22.
I tested the power levels on the BX-6 and the BX-9 with the Laser Cannon and I think I figured out how the firepower increases between the ships.
The power levels follow a linear progression until they reach the pre-max level gap. In case of the Laser Cannon, the increases usually involve adding/upgrading two beams, to which Iâll refer as a single step. This means that, for example, the difference in DPV between 8 and 9 is 200 damage. When max power is reached, one step is skipped, increasing the gap to 400 damage.
The difference between the bombers is that the heavier ones start their pre-max level gap one power level later. So the BX-7 starts it at 14 and maxes out at 24. And so on.
If we decide that the current power level progression system is okay, then we can get on to the balancing.
The way we can fix this is:
From left to right: 1-4. I made them asymmetrical just because why not.
So now we fixed the issue of it being too weak on some power levels. If weâd now apply the damage changes proposed in CIU weapon balance program - Part 5: Laser Cannon weâd get this:
Itâs not perfect (4-10 stays the same as on the fighters despite every other power level being stronger), but it sure as hell is better than what weâre dealing with now.
Feedback would be highly appreciated.
[edit] Actually, introducing the 200 damage jump on 4 instead of 5 would fix the last issue (maybe), but Iâm really sick of looking at spreadsheets for today.
Based on what IA said, if your calculations are implemented, not just normal spaceship weapons have better and smooth linear damage growth, but also affects bomberâs linearly.
So keep going @1galbatorix
Update on WBP:
I see that my project is quite popular on the forum and that there is a solid demand for next parts. Because of that, and few conversations I had with some people, I decided to not cancel WBP. Heavy Bomber is still a serious problem, but for now I will finish the weapon balance for the fighters. After that, we can think about what to do with a bomber. I belive it may be easy to fix, once weapons are correctly balanced around the fighters.
Few hours ago I finished redesigining stats for two last weapons (Corn Shotgun and Lightning Fryer). This means, that I have all the numbers and graphs ready. Unfortunately, I wonât be able to post as frequently as I used to, because writing the posts itself is very time consuming and lately I donât have that much free time. (I know that I didnât post that often anyways, but writing WBP is much more time consuming that you might think.)
I also made a roadmap what to expect next.(This may change, but itâs what I have in mind now.)
Cool to see!
(Sadly my favorite weapon is the last)
Did you considered popcorns on overheat for corn shotgun?
Yes, I did