category Let's Discuss Game Balance

[Spit_Fyre 334]

if you made the table in Excel, just mark the cells, press CTRL+C, move over to paint and press CTLR+V

I think this works for wide tables too.

 

Or.. you just slim down the font size :P

 

Or you consider, that if you post tooooooo many detils, noone will read into it :P

 

After A LOT of slimming down... and drowning guilty details, it's done :P. A table showing DPM across all turrets; how protection affects it; and an overall idea of efficiency.  I'm posting it anyway - if anyone can make use of it, let them. Don't know if this is completely accurate enough. Open to corrections:

 

 

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spit_Fyre

[Tani_S 736]

I have done a series of analyses in the past days. Here are the results in form of a couple of charts. The main purpose of this is to show the differences of the turrets and to compare them better. Have fun  :wub:

 

Here you can read the underlying assumptions before

 

 

• I ignored the effects of modules and drugs
• Damage of Turrets that have a damage spectrum along the bell curve are replaced by the constant average damage
• The damage per second (DPS) is in general calculated by the (average) damage divided by the reload time and as well the discharge time (i.e. Rail's shot delay time). For energy-amount turrets (like Freeze, Isi, Rico, etc...) is in general the consumption/charge/discharge time taken, but not the reload time included.
• The time element for the chart 'damage of a magazine' is the sum of reload and discharge time, which is also the basis for the thereafter following 'Damage per minute' chart.
• In general I compared M3 weapons with 0/50 MUs and also taken the same level of medium hulls into account.
• Fire: Afterburn ignored
• Freeze effect ignored
• Twins: All shots hit the enemy
• Hammer always hits with all pellets
• Smoky's critical shot included in the average damage / dps
• Thunder's Splash ignored
• Rail's penetration power ignored
• Shaft - Sniper: Always taken max. damage, but also included the charge time (first charge also for DPS)
• Shaft - combined: First a sniper shot and then an arcade shot
• The time to kill (TTK) of turrets that inflict damage every tick (quarter sec.) is rounded on every quarter sec.
• The TTK measure is based upon the necessary shots to kill an enemy (leading to charge & reload time) and the first reload time doesn't count (i.e. for Thunder).

 

 

 

This chart shows the damage of the turrets and how long they need to reload and consume their energy to inflict this damage. Those turrets below the trendline are better than the average in terms of the DPM measure. Since Twins can shoot endlessly, I just assumed it is 5 seconds shooting.

 

 

 

Associated to this comes the DPM ranking:

 

 

 

 

Here is an overview of the growth in stats regarding the damage per second of each turret. Note, that these are two charts, one shows the growth from M3 to M4 in a % scale and the other goes from M0 to M4 with a factor (that means i.e. Twins M0 DPS * 4 = Twins M4 DPS).

 

 

 

This one shows the number of necessary M3 shots to kill an M3 medium hull. Tick damage turrets are rounded as stated before.

 

 

 

Following on the number of shots, here is the ranking of the Time to kill performers. I added also several alterations (abbreviated with 'alt.') and differentiated some turrets between this turret with an empty magazine or with a full magazine (standard). Vulcan's starting bullet phase is included, so if you make extensive use of the overheat, you can surely go with 1 sec. less, so with 4.75 sec.

 

 

 

And finally here is the chart to show the average damage per second of M3 turrets over all the ranges. I marked alterations in a color similar to the respective standard turret. I only included alterations or turret shooting modes when it made a notable difference over the ranges. Those lines that end somewhere show that they have reached the maximum range and the shots die out. By the way, Vulcan has the same range like Thunder & Smoky and the Rico alteration is the one with the longest maximum range, but is not independent from range though.

I hope the chart is still not too complex  :D

 

 

 

 

In case you are interested, here is an overview about the principles how the turrets cause damage in the game:

 

 

Edit: I edited this damage principle table

 

 

 

I hope you liked it  :P  and it triggers some discussions on the game balance or on personal preferences.

 

 

A note on Rico:

I think calculating the Rico values for DPS and all the variations of it was the hardest part (spent around 70 excel rows on it and 20 of them were miscalculations) because it is both an energy amount turret and a reload turret (and it loads while you are shooting). By the way the standard Rico has 12 shots before it needs to wait for further reload and the Rico M1 alteration has 14 shots.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Tani_S

[Tani_S 736]

 

 

After A LOT of slimming down... and drowning guilty details, it's done :P. A table showing DPM across all turrets; how protection affects it; and an overall idea of efficiency.  I'm posting it anyway - if anyone can make use of it, let them. Don't know if this is completely accurate enough. Open to corrections:

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like we both had about the same idea ;)  Though I didn't thought about protections at all. 

Maybe we can check if there are differences in some numbers.

 

 

Edited November 26, 2016 by Tani_S

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

finally I can post here. It was not possible yesterday.. I could post everywhere but not here.

 

 

Guys:

awesome work !!!!

 

 

SpitFire, I think you should check the Freeze row, the damage per clip should be different from friebird

 

Tani_S, the DPS graphs, do they count in the reload times for a Hammer Clip? Or just the reload per shot?

Edited November 26, 2016 by BlackWasp777

[Tani_S 736]

 

 

finally I can post here. It was not possible yesterday.. I could post everywhere but not here.

 

 

Guys:

awesome work !!!!

 

 

SpitFire, I think you should check the Freeze row, the damage per clip should be different from friebird

 

Tani_S, the DPS graphs, do they count in the reload times for a Hammer Clip? Or just the reload per shot?

 

 

Thank you!  :D  It was quite a piece of work  :P

 

Sorry, I misplaced the spoiler in my last post, which left the whole topic to be broken and in a sense closed...

 

When it just talks about Hammer, then it is a full Hammer (=energy amount turret), which means it is 2*shot reload. When you see "Hammer (empty)", then you have 2*shot reload + magazine reload.

[Spit_Fyre 334]

It looks like we both had about the same idea ;)  Though I didn't thought about protections at all. 

Maybe we can check if there are differences in some numbers.

Yeah! Nice job with the charts and all. You've brought in some interesting angles. Off the bat I can say that one significant difference in comparing numbers is going to be with these charts having smoky(crit included) and thunder(splash excluded) and the table having both special effects excluded.

 

I went over it all... kinda quick (because I already have a relative picture), so correct me if I've missed anything significant in stating my conclusions -

 

The ricochet seems to be in a sore spot AFTER the 1 clip is exhausted.

The twins and vulcan can use some cooling down.

The shaft - I've never been able to make head or tail of, so I'll keep shut.

The hammer has a very circumstantially effectiveness and probably can use a dose of uniformity or simply less of the "skew" factor.

The thunder seems pretty darn effective across all ranges.

The smoky is struggling a bit with a heavy effort intensive gameplay and a high accuracy bar.

The railgun looks to be doing fine.

The short rangers - fire/freeze/isida will be short rangers. It's such a melee, there's no sense in getting into it :P

[Spit_Fyre 334]

finally I can post here. It was not possible yesterday.. I could post everywhere but not here.

 

 

Guys:

awesome work !!!!

 

 

SpitFire, I think you should check the Freeze row, the damage per clip should be different from friebird

 

Tani_S, the DPS graphs, do they count in the reload times for a Hammer Clip? Or just the reload per shot?

Thanks! I'll see about freeze. I wanted to give a rough idea of the state of things so didn't include it initially.

 

And that spoiler confusion... has happened to me too... tags *shrugs* meh.

[Spit_Fyre 334]

If anyone else wants to pitch in (while I'm looking into it), some more angles that I think we can derive useful info out of are-

 

1. Standardization of hulls (light/med/heavy) based on HP and how this affects the number of opponents a player can kill effectively with a turret; in how much time.
2. How special effects including impact force make up for higher/lower numbers.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spit_Fyre

[Tani_S 736]

 

If anyone else wants to pitch in (while I'm looking into it), some more angles that I think we can derive useful info out of are-

 

1. Standardization of hulls (light/med/heavy) based on HP and how this affects the number of opponents a player can kill effectively with a turret; in how much time.
2. How special effects including impact force make up for higher/lower numbers.

 

 

#1 I can do this, I will have to compare the HP of light and heavy hulls to the turret's damage and then make another two TTK charts. Though you can also have an estimation of the damage that is in one magazine with my first chart (though it also takes the reload time for melee turrets into account).

#2 I don't think it is possible to quantify the effect of impact force or many other special effects. The Thunder Splash is also very dependent on the use of it. 

 

I included Smoky's critical because it was simply possible to calculate effectively, but I can't do this with Thunder, except a standard player will say that i.e. 30 % of the total damage he inflicted, came from Splash. Then I will do it of course  ;)

 

BTW if the Rico's mag is empty it takes 1.48 seconds on M3 to shoot one shot :o

Edited November 26, 2016 by Tani_S

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

Great work my friends! :) However, just one thing to keep in mind for the graphs:

Freeze and firebird's damage drop-off from the edge of the range of max damage to the max range is not linear.

[Spit_Fyre 334]

#1 I can do this, I will have to compare the HP of light and heavy hulls to the turret's damage and then make another two TTK charts. Though you can also have an estimation of the damage that is in one magazine with my first chart (though it also takes the reload time for melee turrets into account).

#2 I don't think it is possible to quantify the effect of impact force or many other special effects. The Thunder Splash is also very dependent on the use of it. 

 

I included Smoky's critical because it was simply possible to calculate effectively, but I can't do this with Thunder, except a standard player will say that i.e. 30 % of the total damage he inflicted, came from Splash. Then I will do it of course  ;)

 

BTW if the Rico's mag is empty it takes 1.48 seconds on M3 to shoot one shot :o

1. Ok, sure.
2. It doesn't have to be a numerical comparison. I'll try to come up with this one, since it's ambiguous and keep my fingers crossed that it'll be a just one.

I understand the part about smoky. It's all numbers - through and through. Pretty straightforward, I'd say. While the others are more "slippery",  -escaping the numbers game in a way.

 

The ricochet fires 2 shots per sec. One more thing to consider - because the ricochet has a recharge/sec working away even as it fires, it's actually building up charge so the magazine is never really completely empty. So, are you sure about 1.48secs? I'd guess it's closer to 1 sec. This turret is so unique, it's stats were a serious pain in the you-know-where to chart.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spit_Fyre

[Tani_S 736]

Great work my friends! :) However, just one thing to keep in mind for the graphs:

Freeze and firebird's damage drop-off from the edge of the range of max damage to the max range is not linear.

Thank you! Oh I did not knew this. In which way is it working then? 

 

 

 

1. Ok, sure.
2. It doesn't have to be a numerical comparison. I'll try to come up with this one, since it's ambiguous and keep my fingers crossed that it'll be a just one.

I understand the part about smoky. It's all numbers - through and through. Pretty straightforward, I'd say. While the others are more "slippery",  -escaping the numbers game in a way.

 

The ricochet fires 2 shots per sec. One more thing to consider - because the ricochet has a recharge/sec working away even as it fires, it's actually building up charge so the magazine is never really completely empty. So, are you sure about 1.48secs? I'd guess it's closer to 1 sec. This turret is so unique, it's stats were a serious pain in the you-know-where to chart.

 

 

Yea right, the other ones are kind of slippery and varying. 

What I meant about Rico (M3 level) is this:

 

a Rico with a full magazine (because it is hindered by the reload per shot time) needs 0,547 sec. for one shot

a Rico with an empty magazine (because it is hindered by the energy reload per sec.) needs 1.48 sec. for one shot. 

 

 

 

some further explanations  :)

I know that the Rico stats are a serious pain. I miscalculated 20 excel rows (I always calculate M0 till M4 of one number in one go) before  :lol:

I updated a small paragraph on Rico on the end of the chart post. You can calculate the 1.48 secs pretty straight-forward tho by taking the needed "energy per shot" and divide it by the "Reloading" (which is the energy reload per sec.), so 123.53 divided by 83.33. Note that the energy per shot parameter was slightly changed again after the rebalance. Well, you are right the 1.48 are only this high in theory and it is only this way if there is totally no energy left. Btw the magazine damage of Rico in the chart shows only the damage and reload+discharge time of the full shots of the total energy (which are 12). The reload time is already reduced by the remnant energy.

I also could see in my excel if I shoot 11 shots, that I have enough energy for another shot and didn't have enough for a 13th shot when shooting 12 shots.

 

 

Edited November 26, 2016 by Tani_S

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Regarding those two graphs that show TTK and #shots to kill:

 

the followin things would be very usefull:

- same for light + heavy hulls

- how much % protection do I need on a specific turret, to last +1 shot, +2 shots, +3 shots ...

 

That's not for me, but a lot of players think about "how much MUs shall I spend on that protection module..".

Therefore such stats would be very, very usefull.

 

 

(actually it needs M4 stats too, but M3s would be great to start with)

Edited November 26, 2016 by BlackWasp777

[Tani_S 736]

So would you think that the "# of shots" chart is more important for this than the "TTK" chart?

Or are both charts needed? 

 

Anyway I can do this in the coming week, because I won't have the time for this this weekend.

 

I will have to think how to visualize the effect of every % protection increase...

Edited November 26, 2016 by Tani_S

[Spit_Fyre 334]

a Rico with an empty magazine (because it is hindered by the energy reload per sec.) needs 1.48 sec. for one shot. 

 

 

 

some further explanations  :)

I know that the Rico stats are a serious pain. I miscalculated 20 excel rows (I always calculate M0 till M4 of one number in one go) before  :lol:

I updated a small paragraph on Rico on the end of the chart post. You can calculate the 1.48 secs pretty straight-forward tho by taking the needed "energy per shot" and divide it by the "Reloading" (which is the energy reload per sec.), so 123.53 divided by 83.33. Note that the energy per shot parameter was slightly changed again after the rebalance. Well, you are right the 1.48 are only this high in theory and it is only this way if there is totally no energy left. Btw the magazine damage of Rico in the chart shows only the damage and reload+discharge time of the full shots of the total energy (which are 12). The reload time is already reduced by the remnant energy.

I also could see in my excel if I shoot 11 shots, that I have enough energy for another shot and didn't have enough for a 13th shot when shooting 12 shots.

 

 

If I may summarize what you are trying to say, it's that 1.48secs is accurate when the user keeps the spacebar pressed down continuously after 1 clip is used up. Correct?

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

So would you think that the "# of shots" chart is more important for this than the "TTK" chart?

Or are both charts needed? 

 

Anyway I can do this in the coming week, because I won't have the time for this this weekend.

 

I will have to think how to visualize the effect of every % protection increase...

 

No, I consider both things as usefull: the #shots as well as the TTK.

Number of shots is valuable for campers and for Rico pilots; the TTK for all pilots.

 

 

Maybe you can craft a table like this, as graphs would be too nonlinear:

 

railgun                Thunder                   ....

#shots TTK    prot.    #shots  TTK  prot

3      8,7sec    0%      4     ...  0%

4      13 sec   17%      5     ...  19%

5      17,5 sec 32%      6     ...  35%

...

 

So the table tells the reader, which protection is needed to survive a certain number of shots by a turret.

 

btw, is yout TTK for railgun correct? It seems to me, that you just summed up the energy-reload times, and not the pre-charge before the shots. But maybe I am mistaken here, as it's late already :P

Edited November 26, 2016 by BlackWasp777

[Tani_S 736]

If I may summarize what you are trying to say, it's that 1.48secs is accurate when the user keeps the spacebar pressed down continuously after 1 clip is used up. Correct?

Fully correct :-)

[Tani_S 736]

 

 

No, I consider both things as usefull: the #shots as well as the TTK.

Number of shots is valuable for campers and for Rico pilots; the TTK for all pilots.

 

 

Maybe you can craft a table like this, as graphs would be too nonlinear:

 

railgun                   Thunder                   ....

prot. #shots  TTK         prot   #shots  TTK

0%     3      8,7sec       0%      4     ... 

17%    4      13 sec      21%      5     ...

30?    5      17,5 sec    41%      6     ...

...

 

btw, is yout TTK for railgun correct? It seems to me, that you just summed up the energy-reload times, and not the pre-charge before the shots. But maybe I am mistaken here, as it's late already :P

 

 

Ohhh, the Railgun's TTK is indeed incorrect... the correct value should be 8.71 as far I can see it. I will check the TTK values of some other turrets also and upload a new chart, but tomorrow I won't have time for that.

 

There will be then 3 "#of shots" charts and 3 TTK charts :wacko:  :lol: Okay we'll go for it :)

 

If I will do the protection thing via a table, then this one will be quite big. Some questions for this:

• Do you want 1% or 5 % steps?
• Which turrets do you want? Just the basic ones + shaft arcade or also some alterations?
• Will it be only a % increase or some kind of increase to reflect MUs?

Edited November 26, 2016 by Tani_S

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

TTK chart for lights and heavies:

if you place the turret name at the x axis, you can simply plot 3 graphs in one chart. This would be a very usefull overview

 

Shots2Kill

You could use a stacked bar chart (base = light hulls, middle = +additional shots needed to kill a medium, top = +additional shots needed to kill a heavy)

 

 

TTK-vs-Protections.

I edited the post where I asked for TTK-vs-Protections.

The idea was that the tables gives the protection that is needed, in order to survive a certain number of shots.

Giving the TTK too makes sense here, as surviving one more railgun shot gives you more time, then suriving one more rico bullet.

For Rico it would make sense to calc for each +2 bullets per line; for Twins maybe for +4 bullets per line.

Also for Fire, Freeze, Isida and Vulcan steps in +1 second make sense.

 

Maybe lets skip the MUs.. too complex to start with.

 

but as said (!) - I don't ask you to do it, but if you like to do it, you would help quite a lot of players.

Edited November 26, 2016 by BlackWasp777

[Tani_S 736]

Alright now I got it :) That's a pretty good approach   B)

This table will be much smaller then. I will have to check if I can get it done with some automation and/or references to the original turret values.

[Spit_Fyre 334]

Anyone else think we should maybe compile all of these in a separate topic? Or make them all available together somewhere at a later point maybe?

Edited November 27, 2016 by Spit_Fyre

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

Anyone else think we should maybe compile all of these in a separate topic? Or make them all available together somewhere at a later point maybe?

Good idea, I actually have a topic for that but I'm not sure you would want to use it.  I've been doing quite a bunch of tests myself, mainly on the equation the fits the rate of damage decline for the short-rangers.

 

On a side note, I would use m4 statistics for all your tables. They are the simplest and easiest to configure with each other, and plus there's really nowhere to go from there, as that is the end result.

[Tani_S 736]

Good idea, I actually have a topic for that but I'm not sure you would want to use it.  I've been doing quite a bunch of tests myself, mainly on the equation the fits the rate of damage decline for the short-rangers.

 

On a side note, I would use m4 statistics for all your tables. They are the simplest and easiest to configure with each other, and plus there's really nowhere to go from there, as that is the end result.

Well, yes on the one hand it makes more sense to compare M4 stats because they have the ultimate stats. On the other hand M3 stats can tell more players something about their weapons, because I think there are lot more M3 weapons than M4. So for the purpose of the practical benefit I'd prefer the M3 a bit more, but I am open for further discussions on this.

 

I'd appreciate if you can describe the damage decrease of short-rangers i.e. fire & freeze, because you said that it is working differently, which you might have gained as a result of your tests. I just relied on the wiki stats.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Tani_S

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

M3 :)

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

I'm currently working on a spreadsheet that shows TTK for all turrets at various ranges against various hull classes. Taking into account protections would clutter up the graph too much, so the only protection value shown would be 50% protection, which would be represented in the "DA" tables or the "heavy hull" tables for light hulls, as heavy hulls have exactly twice the hp of light hulls. Also testing fire/freeze damage loss/distance.  Do you guys want to create a separate topic for all these graphs?

Edited November 28, 2016 by r_I_already_won0