WARNING: Long post ahead. Prepare yourself.
pheonixstorm wrote:Missions: I think the mission pay can be adjusted in the python code
I believe so too. At first it might seem like the XML files in the Missions directory define variables like pay, but they are probably only for static test missions. It's the Python scripts in the Modules folder that must control the randomly generated missions.
Trading: Adjusted in csv files though after a bit you can make a lot of money off trading. Theres one item on the Atlantis/Serinity run that cost 23k and sells for 26k so trade profit is fairly good for some items.
Well then it's probably good for this upcoming release. In the future though it could be an improvement if all items were worth trading. At least for one reason or another, like maybe water trading doesn't pay very well, but subsequently pirates almost never bother to attack you for it; whereas trading ethanol. . .
Another factor is that since 0.5, cargo now adds to ship mass, making even the horrendously overly maneuverable Llama very, very hard to fly. If cargo was more profitable, you could either load up on only a manageable amount of it or have to make fewer of these difficult runs to make the same money. 0.5 essentially made trading a good deal harder without compensating you for the extra hardship.
Upgrades/Ships: Ships are definately expensive. But... compared to what you are buying I can see how the price for some can be rather high. The hunter spec Robin runs 75k while the milspec goes for 180k iirc. As for upgrades... I haven't really seen any of the higher end upgrades yet so can't really comment. Both ships and upgrades probably need to be tweaked though.
What I mean is, you can either make missions pay more or upgrades cost less, because either way you increase the player's buying power. That in turn makes the game 'progress' faster which helps make things less tedious.
You can look at it is in hours of playtime. I think the 'industry standard' amount of hours of playtime for the campaign of a commercial game is like 30 hours from beginning to end. So how far do you get after 30 hours of playing VS? You should be at about the height of your possible power and have left some kind of a visible impression on the dynamic universe at this point.
Or you can look at it from the perspective of how much interesting things happen or change from one hour of playtime to the next. From this angle it definitely feels like the game is progressing
too slowly.
Ship stats: This entire area probably needs to be rebalanced. It would be nice if we had some math formula that can adjust the values based on a single or set of numbers. Engine output or some such (same with weapon stats)
Well for one there has to be some calculable relation between the power of the lateral thrusters and the ship rotation they affect through torque, with the distance of the individual lateral thrusters relative to center of mass being a nice independent variable we can adjust to control that torque separately from the lateral acceleration.
missiles: Needs rebalace for speed, damage, range?
Not really, but since since that's all we have to work with for now, well. . . yes.
See the problem is that there's no effective way to evade or counter a locked missile that I can tell, in the current implementation. There's two "probably realistic" solutions I can think that should also have gameplay depth.
One scenario is that your ship can "outlive" a missile's fuel supply if it can avoid contact long enough. However the missile is a faster accelerator than you so to avoid contact you have to deploy counter measures and then make a harsh course change. The missile will stay on it's course until it flys through the countermeasures and (being a smart little bastard of the future) realizes it has been had, makes a full 3 axis, 360º sweep of the area, finds and comes after you again. But in process it's limited fuel supply is running out, so after maybe a few more of these maneuvers, it's spent.
Scenario two is for even the lightest craft to be fitted with point defense. But possibly only in forward and backward orientations for the smallest, like with shields. As the pilot your job is to keep away from a missile to buy the time the point defense needs to destroy it. The more missiles fired or possibly the more evasive the missiles, the more time you will need.
And these two things can be combined as well. Either of these would require some work though, so for the next release, I think the most practical solution is to reduce probably the damage of guided missiles (and unrelatedly, perhaps the damage, speed and/or ammo capacity of dumb fire missiles.)
autotracker: Not sure how these work code wise but they should be limited to a 10-15 degree firing arc. I know in several star wars books the A-Wing has something like this for the front laser cannons but the track is limited to 15 degrees.
That's basically the same arc used by VS' auto trackers. Unfortunately, now that I think about it, there's probably no immediate solution to balancing auto trackers.
In the future though, modular damage modeling could offer an solid advantage to not using auto trackers all of the time. If at close and medium range a good marksman pilot could take out specific, vital parts of a ship, while auto trackers only aimed for the center of mass, the marksman can get the upper hand by shooting out important and necessarily exposed things like thrusters, sensors, weapons, cockpits or radiators. With different targeting priorities working better against some classes or makes of ships than others.
push button warfare: Sadly we cannot change this too much as even modern technology has thrust us into push button warfare.
Ah well folks have been saying that for a long time. But it never fully comes. Take fighter aircraft. Fighters are obsolete because of strategic bombers. Then WWII, woops that was wrong. Fighters are obsolete because of guided missile interceptors. Then Vietnam, woops that was wrong again. Now they are obsolete because of M.A.D. But as your article shows, another woops there too.
It's because each new tech has major unforeseen limitations. And these are sometimes worse in a future/space setting. Cruise missiles need to breath air. Similarly, nukes need a medium to convert and distribute most of their power over distance (same basic thing for Matter-Antimatter weapons). Solid fuel missiles have only so much stored energy. Fusion or Matter-Antimatter reactors probably would not miniaturize well into smaller missiles. Lasers eat power, shit (waste) heat and so deliver damage with limited efficiency.
Dynamic uni warfare: Will have to check it out unless someone knows something.
I could be wrong about this, but I haven't seen the great invasions with systems being taken by Aera, Human and Rlaan forces in 0.5, that happened in big ways back in 0.4. I suspect someone might have reigned in the dynamic universe in preparation for a scripted campaign they never got around to implementing.
Also, I don't know how the existence, creation and destruction of military installations like starfortresses and fighter barracks or capital ships and factory stations, control of planets, etc. affects dynamic warfare, but at least in the future there should be a strong correlation.