rebalancing

[MamiyaOtaru]

I'm in the middle of rebalancing some things, with the aim of making combat possible without autotrackers. In 1.2 demons and dralthi are the worst offenders, being nearly impossible to hit.

I've made a few changes already and wouldn't mind some opinions. ie, are those changes enough already, or should I tweak a bit more? If anyone would like to try it out, fire me an email or PM.

Anyone who hates the Oxford or Palan missions with Demons, this is your chance at helping to fix them, instead of having long threads about how they suck

[Dire Wolf]

Personally I'd keep the autotrackers.

[Dark Shadow]

I think ships should be A LOT easier to hit and only in this case, the autotracker should be removed.
If it is only a litte bit easier, the autotrackers should stay in the game.

[klauss]

The idea is to leave autotrackers, but still be able to finish the plot without them (right now, it's not possible - for most, at least)

[Spaceman Spiff]

The idea is to leave autotrackers, but still be able to finish the plot without them (right now, it's not possible - for most, at least)

ahhhh. this is what i wanted to hear... i was short to open a "keep the autotracker foundation" - thread...

by the way... I did palan and ox3 with a centurion: 4x laser guns (not autotracked) and 20x ff on level hard with the keyboard... so it is doable!
I think MamiyaOtaru is right. People should better try than complain...

[klauss]

About that: lasers are overpowered, it seems. Did the info about its damage power come from official sources? I distinctively remember that upgrading from a laser to a mass driver was an improvement, and from a mass driver to a particle cannon, etc. etc... Every step was an improvement, one way or the other (that is, they weren't all the same).
But in PR, they're almost the same.

[klauss]

After rebalancing is done, I would reduce the tracking cone to... say... 1/4 of a screen (that would be... let's see... 0.305 radians). That would make autotrackers more balanced: they don't make life overly easier, and their price would be according to their potential (90K for something like that is, IMO, well balanced, since it will give you an edge, but will not allow to neglect aiming at all).

[chuck_starchaser]

I disagree about lasers in the original game; I did find them much more effective than any other cannon except the steltek: Their lower damage per round was far more than compensated for by the lower energy consumption, faster firing rate, faster exit speed AND longer range. In fact, I think it was probably a ruse for the player to discover: After spending half a million upgrading cannons, that the lowliest were the best. A Centurion with 4 lasers was unstoppable.

WRT autotracking:
Tracking cone is a function of the radar. All the autotracker does is correct your aiming. In the case of forward guns that you control (versus turrets functionin automatically), I would reduce the ammount of correction, to say a couple of degrees. In other words, you still have to aim pretty well.

WRT rebalancing:
First the bugs should be removed. Like in the original game, Oxford mission 3, you being a stronger threat to the demons, the demons tried to deal with you first; wheras in the remake they ignore you.
Another bug: If you are friends with the hunters, they look blue in that mission. In the original, their relationship to you for a given mission would override your current status with them.
Bug 3: Random units should not appear in the theatre of scripted mission. Like kilrathis showing up and attacking the Drayman in addition to the demons?!?! Okay, they 'happened to spawn', let's say, but why attack the Drayman, and not the demons, instead?
And I'm not sure whether to call this a bug, but it's a fundamental change from the original: In the original game, if you faced 10 enemies, only one or two of them were actually shooting at you; the rest were decoration until it was their turn. So, a mission with 10 enemies took 10 times longer to complete and therefore was 10 times more difficult. But with the VS engine, all of them are shooting at you at once, and so fighting 10 dralthis is like 100 times more difficult than fighting 1. I'm not sure how I'd "solve" this problem. Probably I would reduce the numbers of enemies relative to the original game, like use square root as many, approximately.

[commanderfalafel]

This just made me think of that SNL sketch from way back in the day, when all the ninja bad guys were commiserating about their latest defeat and one of the things that some of them complain about is how they always attack the hero one-on-one instead of all ganging up on him.

Having 10 fighters gang up on you is a completely rational decision, if it causes no risk for you or the rest of your squad. Would it be possible to tweak the AI so that the more fighters are ganging up on a single opponent, the more likely they are to collide, shoot each other, hit each other with missiles, and that sort of thing? Maybe aces could be less affected by this, whereas 10 rookies would start blowing each other up if they all chased after you. This would produce a good, rational reason to have some fighters hang back.

[chuck_starchaser]

I agree about the rationality of it; it's just not realistic to expect the player to survive. Maybe perfectly realistic that your opponents would attack in such overwhelming numerical advantage that you don't have a chance; but it kills the fun to not have a chance. Or I can play at ultra-super-easy difficulty, but then I will ONLY be challenged by the most difficult missions an the rest will be too easy.
That's the whole point of "rebalancing"; isn't it.
So, what I'm saying is: With the original game as it was, you could multiply by X the number of enemies and get an X difficulty multiplier. But with the VS engine we should keep in mind that difficulty increases by X^2.

[klauss]

Well, the way to solve it, maybe, is increasing the number of waves while still leaving the number of total fighters the same. In fact, play the mission, and time your gameplay to see how much does it take to blow a wave, with no rush. Take 3/4 of that time, and use it as spawning separation. Or, better yet:

Spawn 4. Wait until there's 2 of them, and Spawn another 4, a distance away (like they're coming). Wait until there's 3, and spawn another 4, etc... ramping up difficulty as time goes by in a naturall and not overwhelming manner.

Or, perhaps, difficulty should ramp down:
Spawn 5. Wait until there's 3, Spawn 3, Wait until there's 2, Spawn 3, wait until there's 2, Spawn 2, etc...

All that until you've spawned enough.

It would be pretty realistic, it's just that they don't arrive at the same time.

[chuck_starchaser]

Exactly. What is absurdly difficult is when, say, jumping into Gamma and you are surrounded by like a dozen dralthis and never surviving even for 5 seconds. And that's another thing: The unfairness of it. I understand the realism argument that enemies might wait for victims at a jump-point, but in the original game they weren't all concentrated there and with the guns already aimed at the point where you're coming out. They were around, but you had time to think and pick your first target. In the remake, you come out of a jump point already seeing red.

[Qualidor]

I didn't fight them at all. I knew I couldn't possibly win. Fortunately, my ship at the time (Demon) was faster than theirs and I could just afterburner around the place.

Bit of a nuisance, though...

[Dire Wolf]

About that: lasers are overpowered, it seems. Did the info about its damage power come from official sources? I distinctively remember that upgrading from a laser to a mass driver was an improvement, and from a mass driver to a particle cannon, etc. etc... Every step was an improvement, one way or the other (that is, they weren't all the same).
But in PR, they're almost the same.

Laser power was always on target.

The problem with lasers is that they damaged and broke easily, and the repair robots didn't fix them. That, and they didn't pump out the damage fast enough. You shot all day with a fast firing bb gun. Tachyon's dished it out fast enough that your power pool dropped.

It doesn't take much for a laser to go from a neat weapon, but underpowered, to a great weapon. Take out the different categories of weapon breakage, let lasers refire just a tad fast, you know the drill.

But they were always good, just not good enough. Perfect for NPCs, especially with the faster fire lasers, as NPC lasers didn't break.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Honestly, I don't think the game needs rebalancing, not as far as the AI is concerned. I just redid the org campaign on medium and i didn't take brakes to earn money. During Ox3 I flew an Orion (2 Tachs (no autotracking) + laser turret, in the palan missions the tachs where autotracked an i used a tach turret. I admit, i needed at least ten tries per mission (And I have done them several times befor), but I think such hard missions are an important part of a good game. As I remember Privateer, Desert Strike, 3d Sports driving (stunts), LHX Attack Chopper, WC2, WC3 and all those other games I spent a lot of time on, there where always missions which took a lot of time.
If you don't have difficulties during a campaign, the game is not worth it...
And if you keep having difficulties after you have played the game a number of times, it makes the game just better... just remember all those games you've spent a lot of money for and after you were through once they became boring... won't happen here....

Plus... everybody has the option to buy autotracking...

[chuck_starchaser]

Oxford 3 I tried to do like 20 or 30 times, WITH autotracking. And finally had to cheat.
Now, if you're particularly good at games, good for you. I want less difficulty. Now, the problem is that even at easiest it's still almost as difficult to do the core missions.
What I would ask for is a rationale for difficulty. It seems to me there are a gazillon places in the code where difficulty level is taken into account, from speeds and accelerations, to AI, to whether one docks with or without pressing D.
To me, that's spaghetti code. And it doesn't satisfy.

I would suggest there be just one parameter difficulty affects, such as numbers of enemies. Just a -1 and -2 settings where the numbers of enemies are reduced by one or by two, at any encounter, *including* the core missions. I know how to press D.

[spiritplumber]

well, most of what the difficulty setting does is decided in vegastrike.config which you can edit easly no worries. it does take a while to learn how to edit it though, and it's XML so it can crap out fairly easily.

To check if you have a valid vegastrike.config try to open it in a web browser, if it's good you'll get a blank page. in some browsers, if it's bad you will get the file as plaintext and the browser will tell you where the error is (Opera does this).


Oxford becomes somewhat easier if you buy or hire some wingmen, and tell them to protect the drayman (CTRL+P in WCU).

[Spaceman Spiff]

Oxford 3 I tried to do like 20 or 30 times, WITH autotracking. And finally had to cheat.

I see this sucks...
I was just affraid that making the enemy vessels easier to hit would spoil the whole game. Regulating the number of enemies via diffivulty level sounds fine to me...

[Nur-Ab-Sal]

Hi!

WRT rebalancing:
First the bugs should be removed.

I agree with chuck. There are still some bugs in the game that should be fixed first. Here is what I found:

1. Damge report for hull/armor and shields, damage report in the HUD and damage report in the ship dealer section don't always agree with each other. I had damage hull/armor, repaired them, so everything was green, but the ship's display still showed the damaged armor and reacted in that way. I had to sell the armor and rebuy it.

2. I consider it a bug if I can accept cargo missions even if the cargo doesn't fit in the cargo bay. Especially since the used space seems to be randomly decided after launch. I had two cargo missions, but got shot down, I loaded my save game and one cargo mission was a failure (no space), I destroyed myself, loaded again and failure again. The fourth time there was no failure.

3. I think there is too much random creations in the game. I didn't have problems with the Oxford escort mission but with the data pirates, because a) I always had Retros and Kilrathi after my launch from Oxford at Oxford, so I was always damaged until I got to my destination, and b) at the destination, there were not only the pirates but Retros and/or Kilrathis as well, of course always jumping at me all at once. This happened in other missions as well. At some jump points you are faster shot down, before you can even count the red points at your radar and figure out who is who. Of course this may be more realistic, but if this game gets too realistic, I become a bartender, because you don't have save games, if you play realistic. IIRC you only had one kind of enemy in the original game at a jump point.

4. My turret radar shows me other blinks as my front radar and doesn't take my target I selected in my front cockpit.

5. If you take a mission from a computer, your fixer in the bar will refuse to deal with you, because you already have a mission. If you go first to the fixer and then to the computer, it will work. Why?

6. The news tell you sometimes about a privateer that helped in a certain cause. I assume that should be me. So I would suggest to replace privateer with the name of the guy. Sounds and looks better to me.

7. There seem to be bugs (only one bug?) in the Palan system missions. I've got my first one, but I can't accomplish it, because my computer doesn't tell me the place to go. If I launch, the target place is only an empty string.


What I think sucks in the new game (compared to the old, playing medium level):
1. The animations seem to consist only of one image, no moving mouthes, no moving lights when I analyze my artifact at Oxford.

2. Hell, I want to know to which base a cargo mission will lead me. In the old game you could see the complete destination. And of course even a Centurion went never out of cargo space with three cargo missions.

3. I can't run away anymore. In the old game the enemies stayed around the jump point, so if you got far away enough, you could escape. Now they always follow me, and they not only can keep behind my Centurion with afterburner but they can fire at me as well.

4. Why did you change the bounty mission concept? If the computer tells you where to go, where is the fun searching for your target?

5. Sometimes I ask me who decides the fee for a mission. Hunting down a pirate with two wingmen gives you sometimes more money than hunting a cat with *six* wingmen (hell, who would accept such a mission? In most cases I would need a ship dealer before I get to the target system.).


If you want to do the game more balanced, I think it would be enough to assure that only one kind of enemy would be at a place.

Stephan

[Wendy]

I'm only going to comment on what I have a feel for or what I remember asking about way in the past, before I lost access to the Internet.

What I think sucks in the new game (compared to the old, playing medium level):
1. The animations seem to consist only of one image, no moving mouthes, no moving lights when I analyze my artifact at Oxford.

Moving mouths are still images that are strung together. The game D/L size increases dramatically when you use enough of them. I think some were fixed, but not all. I can't say for sure, because I haven't played this particular version deeply enough yet. I was without Internet access for a little over seven months...or was it eight?

Game size is huge compared to some of the beta versions. Bandwidth is an issue.

2. Hell, I want to know to which base a cargo mission will lead me. In the old game you could see the complete destination. And of course even a Centurion went never out of cargo space with three cargo missions.

Well, I never did ask the Cat on that one. Yes it would be nice, but what the heck... It's all in system and you don't have to worry about landing and losing the mission like in the original game from Origin.

3. I can't run away anymore. In the old game the enemies stayed around the jump point, so if you got far away enough, you could escape. Now they always follow me, and they not only can keep behind my Centurion with afterburner but they can fire at me as well.

YEAH! RIGHT ON!
But how? Cat said it was really harsh for the fix and it MIGHT make it after the release. I hope it does. How does a talon outrun a Centurion? Their shields and generators are equal, so they should run out of power slowing them down. Shouldn't they? But they DO follow you. Jump as often as you like, they STILL follow you.

I tweaked my game settings so I could run faster. I set my AB speed to 1500. I STILL have trouble outrunning the buggers, but I do get far enough away.

Then I changed my jump fuel load and capacitance. I can jump 18 times not 6. That gets me away IF I didn't blow out my jump drive.

You can always tweak for now. But what a real fix is I can't say.

If you want to do the game more balanced, I think it would be enough to assure that only one kind of enemy would be at a place.
Stephan

Well, even with a Joystick that jumps and jitters, I don't mind several enemies at a time. It keeps an edge on the game. I used to be the worst fighter in the bunch, now I only take a mission with five or more attackers. I only wish I could run away to come BACK to fight, not have it follow me to base and be waiting for me before my shields have a chance to re-generate when I launch.

But... It's head and shoulders better than the original game. Thanks Guys!

W.

[chuck_starchaser]

Moving mouths are still images that are strung together. The game D/L size increases dramatically when you use enough of them. I think some were fixed, but not all. I can't say for sure, because I haven't played this particular version deeply enough yet. I was without Internet access for a little over seven months...or was it eight?
Game size is huge compared to some of the beta versions. Bandwidth is an issue.

We could achieve compression by isolating the eyes and mouth, though. Would just need a bit of engine tweak, I suppose.

[hellcatv]

as for being chased by units--it sure beats the time when jumping would land you with shields down.

Talons can't chase me in a centurion--but I usually run my shields at 2/3 with the 's' key...
in fact they have trouble chasing me in anything upwards of a Tarsus.

in a tarsus--just get 20 missiles (unless you want to go mining in the asteroid field and tractor those baby's in)

[cerewa]

About that: lasers are overpowered, it seems. Did the info about its damage power come from official sources? I distinctively remember that upgrading from a laser to a mass driver was an improvement, and from a mass driver to a particle cannon, etc. etc... Every step was an improvement, one way or the other (that is, they weren't all the same).
But in PR, they're almost the same.

I haven't really checked in to lasers in PR or WCUniverse, but I know what the stats showed to be the best guns in the original.

The guns that could pump out the best damage per second were these:

1. Fusion Gun -best
2. Tachyon Cannon
3. Meson Blaster
4. Laser -4th best. quickest refire, and larger damage per second than mass driver, ion cannon, etc.

The laser of the original couldn't compete with the tachyon or meson. Tachyon, Fusion, and Meson also had the benefit of being the guns whose shot went fastest, besides the laser.

All the other guns were a waste of money. I think the plasma gun WOULD have been good in damage per second, despite its slow refire, IF the shots didn't move so slow.

[Wendy]

All the other guns were a waste of money. I think the plasma gun WOULD have been good in damage per second, despite its slow refire, IF the shots didn't move so slow.

I always used it, but then I held my fire until I was on top of my target. With each weapon there was a tradeoff. Plasma is the one to have, but you need to be so personal with your target you can smell their breath.

And Kirathi breath does NOT smell like catnip.

eeeooo! YUK! OLD Dead Fish!

W.

[tarus-begin]

Down with the overpowerful demons!!!!