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Savet's Combat Fix

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Jan 12, 2015 Savet link
I posted this in the mega-thread http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/29409

As suggested I am making it its own post. I don't claim this is my original idea, just the best idea that I have seen proposed with the highest probability for improving combat situations:

I'm going to share my observations from yesterday, and a very simple proposed fix based on my observations and prior suggestions over the years.

There was a reasonably largish battle between FAMY/ONE and TGFT/PA/ITAN yesterday. It was a very good battle from both sides. Kills were made, the battle shifted sectors across the Edras system, it was fun overall.

As the battle started dwindling, I noticed one player that would jump into the battle, fight until his ship was at about 35% health, then run to repair. I'm not naming names here, and I understand why he didn't want to lose his Valk....he can't buy them anymore....but this behavior causes:

1. His team to be impacted by his unwillingness to support them in the fight.
2. Members of the other team to practice similar behavior to avoid giving kills to someone they view as using "cheap tactics"
3. A general unwillingness to engage in large scale battles because of "runners"

The suggestion:

Once armor is < 50%, cut turbo thrust by 50%.

The benefits:

1. It becomes harder to run when the battle turns against you but your combat ability is not hampered in the fight at hand.
2. Your team benefits because you actually stay to finish the fight.
3. It reduces animosity on the opposing side because it's harder to disengage from a fight you are losing.
Jan 12, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
+1, though I think a 25% drop in turbo speed would also be in order.
Jan 12, 2015 Death Fluffy link
-1

This is a great suggestion for some pvp. However, it would affect all aspects of game play. A non combatant fleeing from an aggressor would effectively be crippled by this if they take 50% damage.

Further, it weakens what I see as a legitimate use of turbo in PVP which is to get oneself outside of a bad situation to regroup. It also then handicaps the ability of the player to aid a team mate who may be some distance away. Also, I've seen turbo used as a combat strategy of hit and run against a target.

It would mean that if you are damaged during a bombing run, you may not be able to properly stack your missiles and make you a much easier target for turrets, both cap ship and conq station as well as npc enemies.

It would reduce your effectiveness in PVE skirmishes. I for one get a nasty bit of pleasure from being able to steal npc kills.

These are just my immediate observations. As everyone knows, I very seldom bother with pvp so I may be missing something.

This isn't to diminish the problem described, as I fully understand how frustrating it can be.
Jan 12, 2015 Savet link
Fluffy, this would also aid traders as mines would damage pursuers which could prevent them from actually catching the trade ship...or a well timed swarm volley could cripple an attacker and prevent them from pursuing.
Jan 12, 2015 biretak link
-1 until... I think it should be directly proportional. Each percentage damage should affect percentage of turbo ability. No magic 50% number to give x1s and scps another advantage in the fight. The issues fluffy describes could be handled with a little tweaking.
Jan 13, 2015 vanatteveldt link
+1

I think it's good that combat damage has effect on gameplay, and this has the added bonus of not affecting most of pvp, so it is still exciting to try to fight if you're at 10%.

Since max turbo speed is not reduced, the effect on trying to run is not as pronounced (although jettisoning some cargo might be a good idea if you're hit - but that is an interesting gameplay choice, not a bug)

This also increases the usefulness of tridents *in the battle zone*, since it is attractive to repair quickly and especially to not need to make a jump before you can repair. Since tridents in the battle zone are also attractive and expensive targets, I think that is a good thing.

I agree with biretak in that I don't like magic numbers like 50%, so I base trust on damage%. Maybe it is best to do it non-linearly, e.g. sqrt(health), so 100% health = 100% thrust, 50% health = 71% trust, 25% health = 50% trust, 10% health = 30% trust. That would represent that slight damage is probably on exterior plating, while a 10% ship is really starting to fall apart.
Jan 13, 2015 greenwall link
-1 For every reason Fluffy said, as well as my following comments:


1. His team to be impacted by his unwillingness to support them in the fight.

I've observed the contrary -- most teams are fully supportive of this tactic, as evidenced by players of every major guild I've seen engaging in this tactic (FAMY most definitely included).


2. Members of the other team to practice similar behavior to avoid giving kills to someone they view as using "cheap tactics"

Nerfing gameplay for everyone is not an appropriate remedy to cheap tactics usage when the particular gameplay aspect in question has broad reaching benefits outside of the specific situation in which cheap tactics are used. Said usage will always persist in some form no matter what nerfing occurs.


3. A general unwillingness to engage in large scale battles because of "runners"

I suggest those who have such strong feelings take a tissue from my box. If someone is avoiding large scale battles because of a grudge, then they are only hurting themselves. Again -- nerfing everyone's gameplay to appease the chronically resentful is a bad move.


[benefits]
3. It reduces animosity on the opposing side because it's harder to disengage from a fight you are losing.


Animosity between guilds (at least, at present) exists primarily because of historical and ongoing negative behavior (i.e. ganking and griefing). The specific issue of "running from a fight" is a very small ingredient in a much larger pot of resentment soup. Which is to say that overall animosity will remain whether or not this nerf would be applied.

I would argue PvP aces in general despise running from a fight more strongly than others because they feel robbed of an essentially gauranteed PK.

I think we all make a conscious decision whether or not to give someone a "fair fight to the death", and the reason for witholding it has clear and specific motivations. No amount of game play nerfing will change those motivations.

*sorry -- finally done editing*
Jan 13, 2015 Savet link
Keep your tissues and condescension. Retarded behavior encouraged retarded behavior and the current mechanics reward retarded behavior.
Jan 13, 2015 greenwall link
Since most of this behavior could be addressed by political negotiation (since much of it has to do with guild relations), I think it makes much more sense to open dialog between guilds than try to nerf something that many people find valuable. I know for a fact that PA would consider discussions along these lines.
Jan 13, 2015 joylessjoker link
Here's my two cents.

Grayspace is a place of natural anarchy. No rules, and everything goes. If you desire to follow some kind of PvP etiquette, be my guest. However, don't expect it from other players, especially not in grayspace.

That said, people who throw tantrums about runners are beyond ridiculous. I don't get upset about runners. It's an automatic win for me. It's one less player on the opposing team, regardless if he dies or runs. It takes more time to get to a station to RR and fly back into battle, than to die and fly back with a fresh ship. Kill ratio is absolutely meaningless, especially if people pad their death count via moving ships followed by EC-89 suicides for a quick ride back home.

If you insist on crying and blowing into tissues about runners, at least stop flying those slow-ass ships and learn how to chase. You weren't in a good ship for chasing? That is a problem that you should remedy by yourself, sir.

+0 I'm neutral to the idea of reducing turbo as ship is damaged. It could make for interesting dynamics, but I don't see how it's much needed.
Jan 13, 2015 tarenty link
+1 to reducing turbo thrust as damage is done, started at 80% hull and decreasing thrust linearly down to 50% thrust (at 30% hull).
Jan 13, 2015 abortretryfail link
That hull armor exists to protect your ship's sensitive subsystems and squishy meat parts (you). It doesn't make sense to affect the subsystems underneath when the armor is still 80% intact.

I am totally for adding subsystems and subsystem damage to ships, but I don't believe they should be able to take damage from standard weapons unless your armor is almost completely gone.

+1 to begin reducing turbo thrust on heavily damaged (<15%) ships when they take shots from the rear. I believe this should be limited to direct hit weapons or purpose-built "disruptor" type weapons which don't exist in this game (yet). It's too easy for rocket splash damage to hit the back of someone's ship when the rocket explodes in front of them or far off a wing tip. Especially since the game does no object occlusion for splash damage.

The pilot should have some indication that there is subsystem damage done and this damage should go away when the ship is repaired in-flight with repair modules and their hull strength goes back up above 15%.

Honestly, if we expect to have more large-scale PVP, we're going to need more objective based combat incentives with a clear victory condition. There's not much point in having a big battle just for kicks when the only goal is to kill your enemy until somebody gets tired of it.
Jan 13, 2015 greenwall link
Honestly, if we expect to have more large-scale PVP, we're going to need more objective based combat incentives with a clear victory condition. There's not much point in having a big battle just for kicks when the only goal is to kill your enemy until somebody gets tired of it.

I disagree. "Just for kicks" is entirely sufficient reasoning to have a big battle. The universe is far too large and playerbase far too small for any goal and/or victory condition to affect large group PvP frequency long term. Conquerable stations and Trident type M manufacturing is a perfect example. While it *sorta* worked for a time, eventually everyone built their tridents and demand for the stations has dropped nearly completely.
Jan 13, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
That hull armor exists to protect your ship's sensitive subsystems and squishy meat parts (you). It doesn't make sense to affect the subsystems underneath when the armor is still 80% intact.

That rather depends on whether there's 80% of the armor layer distributed evenly across the entire ship, or, whether there's 80% of the total original armor distributed unevenly across the entire ship. The latter, with 100% of your armor in most places and very little if any in one or two places you've taken the most incoming fire, would seem more sensible given how armor and projectile weapons work.

Now shields I get being an all or nothing thing. But armor is more like swiss cheese than a soap bubble.
Jan 13, 2015 smittens link
The Mechanic
I think everyone has some good suggestions, and we should mostly just glob them together. I propose;

==========================================
Any damage you take from 50% down to 10% linearly reduces both your turbo thrust and your turbo max speed. There should also probably be some slightly decline from 55 or 60% down to 50, so that it's not like someone at 50% is 'crippled' but the opponent at 51% is totally fine. This should be rather gradual though, and then once you start getting below 50% then your stats really start taking hits.
==========================================

Personally I think max speed should be more affected than thrust to preserve little bursts of turbo in combat. As for how much the two stats get lowered, the devs probably have to weigh in.

It's Potential Effects
Savet summed it all up very succinctly: "Retarded behavior encouraged retarded behavior and the current mechanics reward retarded behavior"

Joylessjoker is almost right, but this is still a game that is supposed to be about combat. The ratio of running : explosions is just too imbalanced for a space pew pew simulator. Even if experienced players know that running can hurt the opp team more than a kill (a notion that isn't really correct anyway)* new players are constantly frustrated, sometimes to the point of quitting, by their inability to finish off the majority of players. This is simply not good gameplay for an MMO that wants to grow

Fluffy, regarding how it impedes the ability to hit-and-run, or escape to help teammates, remember that this will only come into play if you are below 50%. At that point, your ship should be a bit crippled. And at this point, either your opponent is at a similar level of damage to you (ie, a close fight), in which case the stat-change is a wash OR they are beating you handily, at which point they would probably get the kill anyway. Honestly, combat could stand to be sped up a bit. I suppose this would make heroic comebacks slightly less likely.. but if you've got a heroic comeback in you, you shouldn't be letting a little turbo thrust nerf get in your way :P

Bombers WOULD be pretty hugely affected. But as is they're kind of all-or-nothing; again, if someone gets you below 50%, they're probably going to ruin your bombing run anyway. If you somehow manage to limp out, it doesn't take THAT much speed to stack missiles. Ideally the affect would be balanced so that with anything more than say, 20%, you're still capable of stacking.

Greenwall... I think you're way off :P
I've observed the contrary -- most teams are fully supportive of this tactic, as evidenced by players of every major guild I've seen engaging in this tactic (FAMY most definitely included).

It's a virus of a tactic. Just because everyone does it to get back at each other doesn't mean it should be supported

Said usage will always persist in some form no matter what nerfing occurs.

This is not a valid argument against trying to fix what could be a fixable problem

If someone is avoiding large scale battles because of a grudge, then they are only hurting themselves. Again -- nerfing everyone's gameplay to appease the chronically resentful is a bad move.

It's not just those most obnoxious of players who we all think of with the phrase "avoiding battle." New players are constantly frustrated that they can't get a kill. The fact is that running is easy enough that anyone who knows what they're doing can escape a new player lucky enough to finally have a chance at a kill 95% of the time. The skill gulf is wide enough... it shouldn't be IMPOSSIBLE for new players to finish off veterans. They can and have gotten frustrated enough to quit from this

Which is to say that overall animosity will remain whether or not this nerf would be applied.

Again, just because this is only one part of the larger issue doesn't mean we shouldn't be fixing it

I would argue PvP aces in general despise running from a fight more strongly than others because they feel robbed of an essentially gauranteed PK.

Most people get frustrated by it, from noobs to pros, and honestly I think the noobs feel it worse. Vets have at least learned to accept it for the most part... except for those of us who have been around long enough to remember the before time (, the long long ago)

I think we all make a conscious decision whether or not to give someone a "fair fight to the death", and the reason for witholding it has clear and specific motivations. No amount of game play nerfing will change those motivations.

It's a spaceship shooting game. People want to have explosions when they beat someone. Not an extended chase and the scene of 1+ blue warpy things (hey devs, when are we getting those new intersystem jump animations again? :P)

Since most of this behavior could be addressed by political negotiation (since much of it has to do with guild relations), I think it makes much more sense to open dialog between guilds than try to nerf something

Diplomatic solutions to this issue are temporary at best, and when they fail it just makes the problem snowball even faster. Diplo is how it has always been managed, and while there have been solid periods of respectful combat... when it goes bad, like really really bad, it seems to become irreparable if you rely on pure hearts & changed minds

Arf I mostly agree with you, except on needing more things to do. There are so many more things to do than back when PvP was at it's best... the problem is we've done them all at this point (a lot) :P We have the numbers and the features for large scale PvP, there is just too much animosity to allow it to happen frequently and with any kind of duration

*Fairly common situations in which an explosion is loads more useful than forcing a run-off: If your opponent is homed far away, or if they are out of a particular ship/weapon, or if they are carrying CtC
Jan 13, 2015 Savet link
Smittens nails it.

You'll also notice from all of my suggestions that I try hard not to let my game-play overly influence my suggestions, and recommend things which I feel are good as a whole rather than just good for me.
Jan 13, 2015 biretak link
Can someone summarize what smittens says in all that so we can know what we are going to +1 or not? What is the suggestion now?
Jan 13, 2015 csgno1 link
-1 to OP.
Jan 14, 2015 greenwall link
Sorry, but this entire idea still sounds like a way for people who love 1v1 PvP to "trap" their victims into finishing a battle that they may or may not have started. This does NOT sound like a way to encourage (i.e. via neutral or positive means) PvP.

I'm willing to bet 100 million credits that if this proposal actually saw the green light from the Devs, there would be absolutely no change to the "problems" Savet indicated as benefitting from this. Instead:

-We'd see those who would normally run after their armor got low simply NOT engage in PvP at all unless they felt an above 51% chance of success.

-Conquerable stations would start to be taken by pirate and fantatical groups to simply abuse this new mechanic and farm PKs (you think station battles are PK farms NOW... just wait). This would only serve to increase the current tensions and toxicity.

-Deneb battles, botting and hive skirmishes would suddenly become much more difficult for newbs who would find it even MORE difficult to avoid being killed because they suddenly can't escape like they used to, resulting in decreased player retention.

-Piloting in general becomes more of a nuisance, which would just make this game THAT much more undesirable to play on mobile.

Diplomatic solutions to this issue are the only effective means available, as it is purely a guild relations issue (in the scope of large group PvP, anyway). This whole thing started with FAMY formed (YES, it DID), and has since trickled like venom through our game. Before that time, such behavior was isolated to a couple bad actors here and there, and we just put up with it. If the major guilds would come together and agree to mandate honorable PvP in it's most basic form (i.e. if you start a fight you should finish it), then I think all of Savet's complaints would be easily minimized.

I think resistance to diplomacy shows a preferred desire to reserve the right to be assholes in game, and yes that is a bad thing.

Lets also try to remember that there is a difference between being a "runner" and pulling out of combat when things get too rough. In large group PvP, I personally have no problem if the opposing team pulls out when they are hugely outnumbered, so long as they return again. I might throw out some shittalking about them being a runner in good fun, but ultimately it's the continued battle that I want.


I said; "said usage will always persist in some form no matter what nerfing occurs."

Smittens said: "This is not a valid argument against trying to fix what could be a fixable problem"


It's part of a valid argument, the other part is what I said in the sentece preceding my above quote: It's not appropriate when the nerf will broadly and negatively affect other gameplay aspects not directly related to the problems outlined in the OP. This "fix" would create more problems than it solves, in otherwords.

I said: "If someone is avoiding large scale battles because of a grudge, then they are only hurting themselves. Again -- nerfing everyone's gameplay to appease the chronically resentful is a bad move."

Smittens said: "It's not just those most obnoxious of players who we all think of with the phrase "avoiding battle." New players are constantly frustrated that they can't get a kill. The fact is that running is easy enough that anyone who knows what they're doing can escape a new player lucky enough to finally have a chance at a kill 95% of the time. The skill gulf is wide enough... it shouldn't be IMPOSSIBLE for new players to finish off veterans. They can and have gotten frustrated enough to quit from this"


How in the hell does nerfing a newbs turbo thrust HELP them kill a vet? This would make it even MORE impossible for new players to kill vets. You think NewbMcDoob UIT player who gets shot at by YT-1300 in Azek for not paying 50 credits to avoid death is going to suddenly be able to turn around and trap YT's greyhound and kill him? I'll have whatever you are smoking cause it must be strong shit.
Jan 14, 2015 biretak link
Greenwall, you bring up great points. I change my -1 until it's linear to a full out -1. The most I'd consider, after seeing it debated in a separate thread, would be ARFs suggestion.