Game balance

weapons

I tried fixing the bug with the biorelay lasers by making a plug and checking multiples fire at once. While this does fix the bug, it allows me to destroy a fed destroyer in about one second. My questions are:

1- This makes the lasers too powerful I belive, so by what factor should I lower the damage?
2- If I change the reload time of a weapon so that they fire one after another, will it cause the same ammount of damage as multipes fire at once. For example if i set a missle launcher with a reload time of 1 second and have 3 launchers is that the same as having having multiples fire at once and 3 launchers?

This post has been edited by Omran Khan : 27 August 2006 - 10:10 PM

1. 50% of original damage seems to work reasonably well.

2. The recommendation for fixing the beam bug with Reloads is to make the Reload of the weapon be equal to the maximum number that you can buy. For the BRL and TBRL, this works fairly well, as they have Maxes of 6 and 2, respectively, but it does not work very well for the Ion Cannon, as it has a Max of 14 (technically 16, but no ship has more than 14 gun slots). Note that if you use this method of fixing the beams, you will need to increase their damage.

3. Watch the add-ons page for Qaanol's fix for this bug. When he finally releases it, it will have options for all the various fix methods, all balanced, so you can pick which one is least obnoxious.

Edwards

@edwards, on Aug 27 2006, 11:19 PM, said in Game balance:

1. 50% of original damage seems to work reasonably well.

2. The recommendation for fixing the beam bug with Reloads is to make the Reload of the weapon be equal to the maximum number that you can buy. For the BRL and TBRL, this works fairly well, as they have Maxes of 6 and 2, respectively, but it does not work very well for the Ion Cannon, as it has a Max of 14 (technically 16, but no ship has more than 14 gun slots). Note that if you use this method of fixing the beams, you will need to increase their damage.

3. Watch the add-ons page for Qaanol's fix for this bug. When he finally releases it, it will have options for all the various fix methods, all balanced, so you can pick which one is least obnoxious.

Edwards

Thanks, think I will try increasing the reload time, any suggestions on how much to increase the damage by? 50%

@tenia-i, on Aug 27 2006, 08:25 PM, said in Game balance:

Thanks, think I will try increasing the reload time, any suggestions on how much to increase the damage by?

Because, like the simultaneous-fire fix, increasing the Reload causes beams to multiply properly, it's a good idea to try to get the same damage-per-second as that fix. Therefore, a single beam should have 50% of the DPS after fixing that it had before.

So, leave the TBRL's damage unchanged, and triple the BRL's damage. If you're fixing the Ion Cannon, I'd recommend giving it a Reload of 7, and quadrupling the damage.

Also, I over-simplified in my earlier post- the actual reload time you should use is Max minus 1, as Reload is the number of frames between shots, rather than "the gun fires on every Reloadth frame".

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 27 August 2006 - 10:34 PM

Thanks for the help.

Note that this method of fixing causes rather irritating 'flashes' of the beam if you have less than the max. Qaanol's plugs also include a version like this with special complications to eliminate the flashes. IMO, this is the nicest fix but it does use extra resources which create compatibility issues.

This post has been edited by Guy : 28 August 2006 - 12:32 AM

Yep, Twin Beams is the nicest IMO.
And just for that reason, I'll edit some of my wëap IDs