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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 7 post(s) |
Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.24 14:55:00 -
[1]
Why is conflag the only short range T2 ammo that does not get a -50% penalty to optimal as it currently stands it has double the range of both hybrids and projectiles.
I think that is a problem I don't mind a range difference but double?
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.26 01:11:00 -
[2]
One issue I find seems to be with the entire lack of effect ammo range bonuses have on AC's. Why would anyone use anything other than the top damaging ones as you only gain 28.9% range and lose 50% of your damage between EMP and Carbonized Lead.
Between EMP and Barrage you gain 56.5% range and lose 0% damage, nice that barrage grants a fall-off bonus though the damage will still be greatly reduced.
Even Blasters gain 57% range and lose 58.3% damage between Anti-matter and Iron.
Between Anti-Matter and Null you gain 50% range and lose 8.3% damage
Now Pulse Lasers gain a spectacular 132% in range and lose 58.3% damage between Multifrequency and Radio.
Between Multifrequency and Scorch you gain 124% range and lose 8.3% damage
Really a fall-off and optimal bonus is nescessary for AC's and Blasters unfortunantly this would be over kill on artillery and railguns.
And of coarse we must mention missiles, Torps, HAMS and seem reasonable balanced. Rockets should get a 44% boost to damage making them a weapon at least viable to get into scram and web range to use, standard missiles should also get about a 40% damage boost.
Onto Heavies and Cruises, Cruises need their explosion radius increased to 480mm and their explosion velocity increased to 80m/s. Heavies need explosion radius increased to 150m and explosion velocity increase to 115m/s. This will bring them more into line as weapons more intended to be used against other ships of their size, though they will still function against smaller ships better than turrets will.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.27 03:42:00 -
[3]
My current concern with the damage changes to projectile ranged ammo is that they already suffer hugely in damage at range due to the projectile weapons tending to already be far out into fall-off losing at least 25% of their damage if not more.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.27 16:11:00 -
[4]
Has anyone noted that the 800mm Repeating Artillery II actually has less tracking .0432 than the Neutron Blaster Cannon II with .0433. This plainly does not fit the pattern between AC's and Blasters, to fit the pattern all 800mm AC's need their tracking increased to 0.0451 from 0.0432.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.28 15:12:00 -
[5]
Really the only way for a fair comparison is with items fitted in ships with the same equivelant bonuses or no bonuses. As really when you consider it if you balance AC's in a Hurricane compared to a Myrmidon well that is just going to end badly because it would be so hard to see the line. Now comparing the turrets on an Abaddon and a Maelstrom well you may was well compare turrets without bothering with a ship bonus.
All weapon systems need to be viable on an unbonused ship unless the intended race for those ships recieves an additional bonus or you simply create more imbalance.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.29 20:45:00 -
[6]
The current changes are now on Sisi, looks like large arty are getting 5-5.8% increase in DPS, only Carbonized lead and Nuclear take a damage hit. The tracking bonus scales from 1.0 on on EMP by 0.05 increments up to 1.2 for DU and then back down in 0.05 increments until carbanized lead with a bonus of 1.05. So it will be the medium range ammo that most recieve a benefit to tracking.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.09.29 21:12:00 -
[7]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 29/09/2009 21:16:32
1 change to 1 ammo. Actually 2 changes to 1 ammo would be best. Reduction of optimal and increase to fall-off for Scorch don't want to hammer them with the nerf bat.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.01 15:49:00 -
[8]
Well I've done some thinking and am beginning to come to the conclusion that Projectiles should become the most versatile weapon in ranges, both ac's and arty. It is a simple matter of increasing fall-off to make projectiles capable of dealing damage to ranges greater than that of Hybrids or Lasers but at the price of reduced damage through the spectrum. This would allow minmatar ships to attempt to use their speed to dictate the preferencial range of engagement the way it is supposed to be.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.02 06:55:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 02/10/2009 06:56:51
I keep looking at all these graphs and wonder what the actual damage taking into effect falloff and tracking rather than unmodified damage. Unfortunantly I am not productivity software savy enough to know how to make a graph. I did track down the formulas though.
ChanceToHit=0.5^((((Transversal/(Range * Tracking))*(Turret Sig Res/Target Sid Rad))^2)+((max(0, Range-Optimal))/Falloff)^2)
Actual DPS=DPS(0.03+(chance to hit-0.01)x(0.5+chance to hit/2))
Just playing around with a spread sheet I found it very interesting and sad for large artillery, beam lasers rule due to their tracking up to the limit of their optimal range. Then Rails step in and take a resounding lead even as arty edges ahead of beams it falls behind rails. Now I wasn't taking into effect any ship modifiers on the weapons.
I'd be curious to see a graph of actual DPS on target over distance of the top sniping hulls on a target moving 150 m/s and maybe on one moving 800 m/s. This is a hing to those of you who may actually know how to graph such a thing.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.02 17:30:00 -
[10]
Fall-off only becomes useful when the percentage you are through falloff does not exceed the percentage the rival turret is through fall-off. You gain more from higher tracking if the target is moving.
What I now see is thes changes tp large arty entirely a luck based weapons system, even if it has the same chance to hit you are at the vagaries of a randomly calculated number. So hypothetically if you have a 75% chance to hit per shot and one gun fires 4 times and another gun fires 14 times in the same period both doing the same damage.
I am do not know statistics or odds but I do know that firing 14 shoots will have a far greater chance of performing at 75% than firing 4 will. With 4 there will be higher chance of doing more or less damage. In combat the more predictable your weapon the better it is.
So my conclusion is Large Arties have been made less useful by being made less predictable especially with their already poor tracking the reward of alpha will not out weigh a lack of consistancy. For PvP they will simple become less consistant than they are currently on TQ and lasers and rails will continue to supercede them. In PvE they will also take suffer as one poor volley allows a BS rat to recover a lot of HP.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.03 06:43:00 -
[11]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 03/10/2009 06:45:12
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 03/10/2009 06:43:39
Which race is number 2 in sig radius? Oh and here is a hint the caldari are the worst.
While the minmatar usually hold the best align times and speeds they do not unilaterally hold them, the only race that I haven't noticed with a ship every holding the lead or tied with the minmatar are the caldari.
I think AC's have recieved the boost they need pretty much in the ammo change. And will have to see how this works out over time. Though a boost in Falloff for both AC's and Blasters is really in order to offer a little challenge against the top dog Pulse Laser.
I am far from sold on the changes to Arty. Large arty in particular will not have time for its damage to average out due to its tremendously slow rate of fire, this leaves a lot up to just plain luck. There is the potential for being lucky and doing a lot of damage in very quickly and their is a potential for being unlucky and falling so far behind on the first volley you will never catch up to the much more rapid firing Rails and Beams.
On top of this Arty fails to support what is needed to commit so much of its damage to a single attack ponderous attack with the lowest tracking it is the most likely to miss. There are three solutions to this problem.
The first is to simply increase tracking to bringing it around the level of beams, it would probably mean alpha would have to be tuned down a bit.
The second would be to increase the damage potential enough to make the extra chance of missing worthwhile, the problem with this is when you get lucky well the alpha would just be insane
The third option is to simply out range the competition, the problem with this is simple the enemy couldn't shoot back especially against ships like the tempest or phoon which have enough speed to dictate range.
I unfortuantly am better at spotting the problem than I am at finding the solution, mostly this is because I need to figure out how arty is intended to fill its role. It ironically seems to fail fitting in with the philosophy of minmatar ships. It has poor tracking that makes attempts to use the inherent speed of minmatar ships to increase transversal to make getting hit harder pointless as the other weapon systems have better tracking. Ok well speed can still be used to dictate range, hmm moving away from a target drops transversal to almost 0 which pretty much removes that other minmatar benefit of a small signature radius, on top of that rails interestingly can out range arty. And since the lock range of minmatar ships are pretty much the shortest why are they using such a long range weapon.
Honestly I feel arty needs to almost be rethought from the ground up especially when one considers that beam laser have tracking and range more inline with the philosophy of minmatar ships. For now I would say leave arty as it is on TQ and hit the drawing board again starting from scratch, the TC and TE changes are good though.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.06 02:02:00 -
[12]
Many people may not like this idea but it is just an idea. Arty needs something to make it mesh with the minmatar philosophy of speed.
For large arty based on TQ values
Increase tracking by 75% giving it the best tracking by a slight margin.
Increase falloff by 50% and decrease optimal by 33%.
Increase duration 40% and increase damage by 40%.
Change the bonus on barrage ammo to a 1.4 falloff and 1.4 optimal modifier
This gives an arty that will perform at closer range and hit hard and can make use of the speed of minmatar ships. It can still perform in a fleet and at range but will not provide the dps of other weapons at range.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.07 02:02:00 -
[13]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 07/10/2009 02:05:36
Ironically I find the increased random chance of artillery entirely unacceptable. A weapon that has as much chance of doing amazingly well or amazingly poorly as it does to be average is stupid. Lets just considered it if you have a 50% chance to hit the same as a coin toss.
Now just for fun we will consider you only have 1400's. 25% of the time both guns will hit, 50% of the time on gun will hit and 25% of the time both guns will miss. Pretty high odds you guns are amazing or crap.
Now we consider say a beam or rail. Which fire about 3 times to do the same damage so they will need to fire 6 times. LoL I don't even have enough skill in math out the odds for its damage. But odds are you will do much closer to the average amount of damage.
Add the fact that arties are even less likely to hit than lasers or rails are and guess what weapon I wont be using if the Alpha changes go through.
I will take a weapon that performs consitantly almost every time over one that may not even work sometimes. You don't make a weapon better by giving it a huge chance to epically fail and the same chance to instapwn.
With the huge alpha you can't even boost the tracking of arty over rails or it makes rails an obscene relic which in many ways they already are compared to beams.
Which would you use, 2 4-sided dice or 1 8-sided die
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.08 22:27:00 -
[14]
So pardon me I am a little confused why shouldn't a tier 3 battleship the maelstrom be able to out perform a tier 2 battleship the apocalypse. It costs half again as much as an apoc. Please when you throw dps calculations out at range consider the target to be moving, then calculate the actual dps that will hit the target, otherwise there is no point in comparing at all.
If you do not caculate the damage lost due to tracking you may as well say, a gun with 0 tracking that does 1000 dps will be better than one that does 10 dps but has tracking of 0.1. Guess which gun is better to have in reality.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.23 15:34:00 -
[15]
I recently had some time to play around with the arty changes on sisi some more.
My conclusion is the that +50% ROF and Damage changes to medium arty doesn't really drastically change their utility, they seem to track well enough that their alpha still works on moving targets as long as they are not really fast or close. A few slight changes in tactics and I was doing alright. In no way can I call the change a buff but it doesn't hurt the medium arties just makes them different. And unfortunantly probably rather good for suicide ganking haulers.
Large arties on the other hand do not seem to suffer with their +75% ROF and Damage change, yes they do become a more tolerable asset to a fleet in long range combat situation when you are not moving against slow or stationary targets and would probably be great for suicide ganking at gates. These improvements don't seem to make up for the fact that at closer range or against faster targets they virtually have no chance to recover the massive amount of damage lost by a single volley that misses do to tracking due to the glacial rate of fire.
So if the goal was to make the weapon sytem slightly more useful for sniping at the expense of general utility well the objective is complete unfortunantly it does not make the weapon particularly good at sniping considering the fragile nature of minmatar ships and their need to rely on speed and mobility to stay alive.
I really do not see how the change to large arty in anyway serves to balance out the large turrets if anything I think it actually drops their general performance in comparison to the other turrets. The same main issues still remain, hitting the target and lack of an effective sniper platform.
I feel the entire philosphy of Large arty must change, as it stands on TQ at the moment they are sorta like the crappy version of rails. Perhaps it should be that arty is changed to be more like AC's, the shortest optimal, immense fall-off, and improved tracking. I don't really know but I do know that the large arty on Sisi is in no way rebalanced.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.31 00:35:00 -
[16]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 31/10/2009 00:35:52
I've been messing around making graphs and essentially it looks like with standard and faction ammo AC's are going to be overpowered with the increased damage, better damage type selection and increased fall-off when compared to Pulses using standard and faction ammo. Blasters still retain a resounding lead at short range.
This is only using faction and standard ammo, Scorch is the problem though as when you switch to T2 ammo it so completely out classes the other T2 ammo that incomparisson they are really laughable
AC's do need a fall-off boost but a little less, they also need either the ability to select damage tyoe or the damage buff not both. I personally feel the ability to select damage type is more interesting so would like to see that made to work.
The main thing that needs to be looked into is the balance between the T2 ammo, Scorch is the most pressing issue with turret balance. Even if Scorches range bonus was droped to 25% it would still out class barrage and null badly. So ideas on how to fix the T2 ammo balance which is the main reason Pulse lasers are so OP.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.31 17:14:00 -
[17]
AC's and Pulses cannot be balanced until T2 ammo is addressed. Without addressing scorch to make AC's have a role that is competitive with scorch means the only time Pulses will have any advantage is when using scorch. The weapons must be balanced without considering T2 ammo first then balance the T2 ammo afterward. Maybe giving null and barrage a damage boost or tracking boost as currently they offer nowhere near the benefit of scorch.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.01 18:32:00 -
[18]
I have been making graphs and have been failing to get the same curves as some of the graphs already in this thread.
This is the turret damage equation I could find, it projects the average effects of falloff on dps.
(Turret_DPS*(0.03+(0.5^((((Transversal Velocity/(Range_to_target*Turret_Tracking))*Turret_Signature_Resolution/Target Signature_Radius))^2+((max(0,Range_to_target-Turret_Optimal))/Turret_Falloff)^2))*(0.05+0.5^((((Transversal_Velocity/(Range_to_target*Turret_Tracking))*Turret_Signature_Resolution/Target_Signature_Radius))^2+((max(0,Range_to_target-Turret_Optimal))/Turret_Falloff)^2)/2))
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.01 22:52:00 -
[19]
^ operator is correct but I am not sure what you mean by floating point.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.03 15:51:00 -
[20]
Those of you who say Falloff is worth only half of optimal are wrong, that part you are missing is that optimal is only better in a pure damage sense. The reality is a ship with 10km optimal and 1km falloff does essentially 0 damage at 12km where a ship with 1km optimal and 10km Falloff does about 45% of its damage at 12km. Basically falloff hands out versatility not pawnage and probably needs a slight boost on TE's and TC's over optimal but +100% is far too much, +50% might be better or possibly still to much.
We have to be carful not to give AC's the ability to do everything.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.17 16:21:00 -
[21]
Considereing standard and faction ammos only boost optimal, and hardly have any effect on AC's because of that. I feel that It wouldn't be implausible to put the long range ammos in the range nuclear used to be at. Almost the only ships that use those 3 ammos are snipers and with the current change to the ammo they have currently been rather unbuffed losing 28% of the damage from nuclear.
This would all be fine if there was even a concept that arty was intended to be used at closer range, but tracking equals usefulness at close range and arty has the poorest tracking.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.25 23:44:00 -
[22]
Pulse lasers actual tracking but also have the range make the tracking unimportant as the other races short range turrets are fighting very deep in fall-off.
Beam lasers on the other hand have a very significant lead in tracking and have the optimal range to match the other 2 turrets types.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.11.28 16:33:00 -
[23]
I am beginning to feel they didn't need to touch the damage amounts of our ammo just allowing type selection was enough. Use what was EMP, DU and Nulclears ranges. The tracking boost is really irrelevant it may as well not even be there.
AC's need a tweak to make tiers worth while. +0%/+12.5%/+25%. Changes to tracking are alright but might be better with the same change.
The changes to TE/TC's is OP on AC's as compared to Blasters and Pulses but largely irrelevent when it comes artillery as rails benefit nearly as much and even beams get a substantial range boost. Drop the fall-off bonus on them by 1/4 and give arty a fall-off buff.
None of this addresses the fact small projectiles are amazing, medium projectiles are pretty close, but large projectiles are sub-par on sub par ships.
The biggest issue of all is the T2 ranged ammo, Scorch and Aurora are both divine. The long range ammo of both hybrids and projectiles are immensly sub-par in comparison. They really need a flavour hook, or at the very least a more competitivr range bonus.
The biggest problem with this balancing approach is the failure to focus on the entire picture. What really should be happening is that Hybrids, Lasers and Projectiles should be all getting balanced at the same time with a cohesive thought process. Missiles would follow once a tolerable balance between turrets was struck.
I personally would say give the TC/TE tracking bonus as it absolutely is needed then keep working on the overall picture until we are happy with it. Not just projectiles.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.12.01 16:26:00 -
[24]
Edited by: Kalia Masaer on 01/12/2009 16:27:41
The last poster does have a point, Caldari, Amarr and Gallente all have battleships that will function in a fleet or for small gang warfare. Minmatar BS's are an epic fail in fleet warfare, no real range, low damage, and very fragile. The only thing they have is Alpha, oops forgot to add maneuverable. Neither of their benefits really help out that much in a large battle.
Though I guess you could have a make do phoon with cruise launchers, but again cruises are not popular in fleet fights.
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