[TexMurphy]

Ok Im gonna open the can of worms.

What Jumpgate Evolution gives us is the chance to create a new and fresh chapter when it comes to ships. The best thing about Jumpgate ships is that they wherent replicas of each other but that each faction really had their own ships. Problem was that the factional trends in design where set before the impact of the components where fully analyzed. We have learned alot about ships in the past few years. I think this knowlege should be used to create a baseline from which the new ships should be ballanced.

I think two very importants "attributes" of a ship are initiative and survivablilty. These arnt attributes of their own but a mixed back of all attributes.

Survivability for example is not only durability. A fragile ship can be very survivable if it is fast. A slow ship can be a pita to kill if its agile. Ofcourse flash fires boost the survivability of a ship as well. So imho survivability is a combo of armour, shield max reflection, shield recharge rate, speed, accelleration and number of flashfires. I personally weigh shield over armour as shield regenerates, armour doesnt and you cant take someone out of a fight by only doing shield damage.

Initiative is the ability to engage and disengage from a fight. So initative is partially speed but also acceleration and flashfires.

A ship with low initative has to have high survivability or it wount ever be ballanced. Since as you noticed initativy and survivabilty are partially the same thing. This means that a ship with lower initative has to have more shield and armour.

Traditionally in Jumpgate Classic we saw the low initiative ships have more armour then the high intiative ships while they had same or less sheilds (except the dragon, which broke a factional pattern, Ill come to that). This ment that the ships that had to dock and launch to repair armour couldnt disengage because they lacked the initiative. The ones that had initiative didnt need to repair.

What Id like to see is that low initiative ships have a shield advantage to ballance the initiative through increased survivability.

Further a problem that I see with the old Jumpgate Classic ships is that high speed always means high accelleration (well more often then not at least). As speed and acceleration both work towards a high initiative I dont think they should be combined.

If high speed equals low accelleration and vise versa then the initiative will always be much more even then it was in Jumpgate Classic where fast ships had high accell and slow ships had bad accell. Speed will always be superior to accell when it comes to intiative because at some point ballance will break and pilots of fast ships will fly "ranger style" and never slow down, creating extreamly booring fights. So this part cant be over done but within reasonable values I do think it will work well.

The slight advantage in initiative that the ships with top speed have over the fast accelling slower ships should be ballanced with more sheilds to armour for the slower ones.

Next is the offensive capability of a ship. A ship with lower survivability needs higher offensive capability. Offensive capability I do count as pure damage per second. A ships offense is in fact the damage per second + missiles weighed with the initiative of the ship. Though Id rather keep initiative separate so lets just talk.

A ship with high initiative and/or high survivability should have lower damage per second then a low initiative and/or low survivability ship.

Given that I said above that ships should be ballanced survivability vs initative then the room for the ballancing point above is very small. I do think it is as it should because ships within the same class should not have that big a difference in fire power as they had in Jumpgate Classic.

Imho firepower should be used to fine tune the survivability vs initative ballance nothing more.

If you look at the numbers below I show an example how the LF, MF and F of 3 factions could look based on the ballancing baseline above. The factional "trends" would be faction A "shields and acceleration", faction B "overall ballanced ships" and faction C "speed and armour".

Grmf screw this just attaching file making a nice table in forums is a pita.

I think establishing a baseline FIRST then factional characteristics is extreamly important. As I said above the dragon. Imho it proves quite well that shields is much more important to survivability then armour but what its introduction proved more then anything is that implementing stuff that is "against the factional line of design" is a very painfull process. Shields belonged to solrain and now a oct ship came with huge shields, this was not good.

Also given that shields was the only thing it had going for it in terms of survivabilty it became so extream. Since the shield was sooooo big the ship had to have sooo bad accelleration that it became a brick. Also the size of the shield resulted in extreamly thin armour and so think armour on a heavy fighter is just wrong imho. Imho it became a extream ship (not necesarily over ballanced but extream) due to the fact that there was no baseline and no philosophy behind the original design. If there are guidlines and a philosophy then its soo much easier to add new ships.

Also I do think that the types HF, MF and LF are enough for fighters, maybe add a interceptor once a interception role has been defined through gameplay. But what I would like to see is factions having more ships within the same ship class.

Anyways fire away and lets try keeping the discussion more towards what can be done from a clean sheet then traditional whines about old Jumpgate Classic ballance. That said it is important to learn from the old Jumpgate Classic ballance.

Tex

[Injustice]

This is kind of off-topic, but I always wanted to see how an elemental system would work in Jumpgate. By elemental, I'm talking about different resistances to different types of weapons. Kind of like how Allegiance had energy weapons for shields and projectile weapons for armor, or how Mechwarrior had reactive armor for HE rounds and reflective armor for lasers.

The concept of an interceptor class ship is something I've wanted to see for a long time. Something very fast and agile with a good supply of weapon mounts, but paper-thin defenses.

[SingleShot]

profile profile profile profile profile x 100000000.

Just didn't see it in your original post. I want to say it's more important than any other single ship attribute, and difficult to quantify to boot.

It's what made a slow turning 3 gun ship fearsome back in the day, or a ship like the phoon an amusing sideshow.

[TexMurphy]

Very correct SS,

My entire post is based on one big assumption and that is "profiles are of equal size". There is just no way you can ballance a ship with a horrible profile look at the monsoon.

Tex

[Injustice]

And the Craptor

[SingleShot]

Yeah, it's what you have to do.

But here's to hoping that the ND team does work a bit more carefully with the models with respect to ease of being hit. I can understand some differences, but building ships that nearly have holes in the 0,0,0 point (Invader) or look like the death star painted bright white (moon) really pushes sanity.

I'm not sure if I see how initiative and survivablilty, as you define them, are really different. Ships that are one are, by and large, the other one. The main exception might be slow turn rate ships like scouts & rangers.


edit: And honestly the profile on the craptor wasn't complete...crap. Not great, but not what made it a terrible ship imo. A TM ratio that probably rivaled a loaded-with-ore LM with respects was more of a problem.

[TexMurphy]

SS

As I said speed and tm are part of both. But a ship with low initiative can still have alot of survivability. Dragon was an example slow, bad accell but huge shield. As I said was really extrem and Id like to keep ships more closely togehter and ballance them more or less by having high speed equal low accel and high accel equaling low speed. Then adjust that through ballancing the survivability through armour and sheild where slow equal shield and fast equals armour. Then finally adjust it by gun damage.

tex

[GrimGriz]

For the record, HMs and freighters with turrets would have zero initiative, but good survivability

[Karash]

I am with Injustice in wanting to see more types of "armor" and "shields". Different damage types mixing it up with different armor/shield resistances.

[TexMurphy]

Originally Posted by GrimGriz

For the record, HMs and freighters with turrets would have zero initiative, but good survivability

A broken record would have zero appeal but good anoyance.

[Radi]

We also have to include damage to the ships components that is getting most likely implemented. That might prevent smaller (weaker) ships from trying to take down bigger (with more firepower) ships. Also, this can cause that even with moderate shield damage, pilots will flash away and even more severe ganking of heavier ships. We all know how that is exciting.

IHMO, heavier ships should be feared but not a win button.


I like IJ's idea. That brings totaly unpredictable factor into PvP. Does the other pilots has good protection against my lasers or not?

On the negative side, I can hear now all the accusations that other pilot is cheating. And might be a challenge to balance it.

@ balance guidelines

Sounds reasonable, but does it work in Jumpgate world? By that I mean fleet fights vs duels. Which way do we want to go? Fleet fights seams like way to go.
Just look at tensy. Good fleet ship. Average for dueling.

Negative

1. According to your guidelines Tex, nothing changes. Fast ships (LF, MF) run away, average (F) get by, heavy ones are going to get ganked. Same what we have now (fleet = more than 10). It becomes game of numbers and "initiative". Greater initiative gives more options and most likely better results (kill ratio). Even in equal fleet numbers.

2. It is predictable. Creating ships that go with mentality of a particular faction sound reasonable. But it boring in the long run. Octs will get always different variants of nix, etc.

I think that getting to fly ships with different characterstics that your faction provides is better.

[GrimGriz]

Originally Posted by TexMurphy

A broken record would have zero appeal but good anoyance.

I'm not really concerned if I annoy the close minded. Particularly on ship balance issues these things should be considered, lest bombers be considered underbalanced compared to other fighters because their usefulness against heavier ships be forgotten.