Sins needs more rock/paper/scissors in combat

I have been finding this myself. Actually, I do buy a good deal of it on the black market.

I really don't see what Dreadnoughts would add to the game, and I don't know of anyone who plays Rock, Paper, Scissors for fun.

Ehh "Rock, Paper, Scissor" is besides a game where you use your hands also a often used term in game design. Its based on the idea that some units is very good at dealing with another unit while weak against some other units.

It should help promote diverse fleets instead of simply massing one unit.

Hoped that explained some.

About the dreadnought... well it would add atmosfeer to the game, or maybe its just becouse im such a big fan of the super star destroyer. But ill admit i like things big and epic in the space games and now i just dont think the current capital ships capture that in big games.

I don't think we need a new ship class. The main problem is that we aren't really using any cruisers. As long as it takes less research to get a capital than a cruiser, we're all going to jump to capitals, which is why we have so many in our fleets. If we were forced to get some mileage out of our cruisers, then capitals would become the rarities they are meant to be.

Also, I really dislike classic rock-paper-scissors balancing. Right now Sins is reasonably close to achieving an acceptable balance while relying on unit abilities rather than abstracted damage tables. (The flak frigate is a notable exception, but its function is perfectly logical, so I don't have any issues with it.)

On many points I, myself, agree with Awac. I agree that a) there needs to be more diversity in the ships, if they don't add another ship class the Capital Ships should be much more of a rarity. Also, in the respect to accuracy, Capital Ships should NOT be able to hit frigates for the same damage as they would larger ships. If this game is supposed to be in an era where accuracy is perfect, then I can understand that. Perhaps it takes a fraction of a second longer to fire? Anything to make a bigger rift between the advantages and disadvantes of the classes of ships. Bombers could, and as of now are, be the weekness of most Capital Ships. That would give reason to have flak frigates accompany the Capital Ships. In reality, this is plausible. You wouldn't accumulate a mass of Capital Ships and just be able to ravage through the galaxy. If that is intended, make then much more expensive and/or slower in transit. As for the new ship classes, if the devs do have enough diversity in the factions then there wouldn't be a need to have more ship classes. But if the factions are too similar in ship abilities, then there should be another class if only to add more strategies in gameplay. Perhaps add a Create-Your-Ship-Class like in GalCiv? In any way, this game has great potential. My main point of advice: Don't ruin the game. Keep your opinions open to the players and customers.

There is nothing wrong with what you call "abstracted dmg tables". It makes PERFECT sense that some weapons simply wont put a dent in some unit. Take a rifle against a tank. No matter how many rifles or round you fire at the tank it wont take dmg.
What is silly and unrealistic is having a dmg model where everything is balanced using only weapon dmg and hitpoints. In such a scenario enough rifle men would be able to destroy the tank.

And before some clever guy says anything then yes! im aware that chinas standing army of a million men if only armed with rifles would be able to overcome a single Main Battle Tank. But that would be taking the discussion out of context.

On another note maybe i should add that i find the need for the rock-paper-scissors balance becouse it forces diversity. And that is what Sins needs as of this point. Atleast the TEC ships seems vary one dimensionel. But if the devs can make em diverse in some other way then ill ofc be happy to settle for that

EDIT:
Another example for the "abstracted dmg tables" would be a fantasy setting. Is it not within reason to assume a creature from hell is imune or resistent to fire? But how would you go about this if you didnt use "abstracted dmg tables" that said X creature have fire res 40% ??? which would ofcoure make the "Fire mage" a poor choice to combat X creature.

How it appear to work in Sins is that every ships have only Shield and HP and weapon dmg. I might be wrong ofc, some of the mods please shed some light? Butif its like that then this simply cant make for good tactical combat OR important strategic decisions.
Each weapon needs some characteristics that makes em more effective against X this and Y that. Another example, Missile should do poorly against shields but well against heavy amour. While laser should be better for shields and light amour but be worse off against heavy amour.
Have weapons that maybe ignore shield etc. something to spice things up. Into the "weapon type vs amour type" can you also throw the "Weapon turnrate/accuracy vs target size". And to anyone who disputes me on this plz tell me if the Iowa class battleship was able to shoot torpedo boats with its 16" main cannons.
And i dont give much for the whole, technolgy is so advanced in Sins that we have perfect accuracy, simply becouse it makes for borring uninteresting tactical combat.

Hmm... I think that you and I are laboring under slightly different definitions of rock-paper-scissors, so I'll try to provide a better explanation.

For an example of what I consider RPS balancing take a look at Rise of Nations. There each unit is hard-coded to have significant damage bonuses against some units and significant weaknesses against others. The classic example is that heavy infantry are designed to absolutely crush cavalry. I don't actually have a problem with this, because I can take a much more advanced simulation factoring in detailed weapons, armor, and moral and achieve virtually the same result. I do have a problem with RON's naval combat, where light ships are magically flame-retardant when faced with fireships and destroyers almost always crush submarines. (Yes I do realize that the destroyer is the submarine's arch-nemesis, but the relationship is much more complex than sub fires torp, then gets owned by destroyer)

I don't think anyone would disagree that ships need to have various strengths and weaknesses, I'd simply prefer that these differences were created with more subtle means, such as speed and abilities, than with simple this beats that dynamics. The first can allow a surprising diversity of strategies to emerge, while the latter tends to create stock armies where both sides know the result before the battle even begins.

I really think a lot of the problems you are experiencing come more from the weak cruiser class than any lack of diversity among the other ships. We have a lot of frigates that perform completely different tasks, and a lot of capital ships with different strengths and abilities. My understanding is that the designers wanted the cruisers to add a layer of direction and specialization to the predominately frigate fleets, but right now that simply isn't happening because the only cruiser worth building is the carrier, which sits quietly until the battle is over while the capital ships, cobalts, and bombers finish the fight.

Finally, I have to strongly disagree with capital ships being weak to frigates. With only one cruiser made for front-line combat (And it not being that great...) there would be no reason to build capital ships. Anyone facing capital ships would just build frigates, and anyone building capital ships would just be dumb. Instead, capital ships (at least those intended for front-line combat) should crush frigates because that's their job. They just need to come in later, and be given a run for their money by mixed groups of frigates and cruisers.

He he Angros its funny you should mention RoN which i think is a highly overrated game. But i agree with you that it ofc shouldnt be like it was in RoN becouse you can also very easly overdo the whole "RPS". But i still think that the ships feel to generic in Sins so i would like to see some added. But you might be right about the cruisers. If they were to implement them properly so they actualy was worth there name it might do alot. Right now cruisers seem like nothing more then slightly larger frigates. But my biggest beef is the capital ships, they need more diversity. I dont think that simply giving them different abilitys is enough. The carrier should hold more squadrons, the planet bomber should do it thing better. Right now why build one when a kol can do almost the same but add so much more in raw power. And the dunov and that last one, its like they was added as nothing but placement holders, sure there abilitys are usefull but couldnt they get a defined role or something?
Right now when i have to build a captial ship i dont care which one i build becouse they are all pretty much the same, i just build the one i dont have so i get the abilitys and thats it. I want it to be interesting for me, i want it to matter if i build one over the other.

Im not saying captial ships should be weak against frigates. Im saying the dreadnought class should be, if such is introduced. The size difference between frigate and captial ship is so small that it shouldnt play any role. This is also why i want a broader selection of ship classes. Namely a bigger class added. Id imagin the dreadnought being a anti captial ship while weak against frigates.

DamageData
ChanceToHitTargetType:ANTIVERYLIGHT
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.700000
BOMBER 0.850000
ChanceToHitTargetType:ANTILIGHT
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.650000
BOMBER 0.75
ChanceToHitTargetType:ANTIMEDIUM
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.1000000
BOMBER 0.1000000
ChanceToHitTargetType:ANTIHEAVY
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.100
BOMBER 0.100000
ChanceToHitTargetType:ANTIVERYHEAVY
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.100
BOMBER 0.100000
ChanceToHitTargetType:COMPOSITE
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.100
BOMBER 0.100000
ChanceToHitTargetType:CAPITALSHIP
CAPITALSHIP 1.00000
INTERCEPTOR 0.100
BOMBER 0.100000
ChanceToHitTargetType:CAPITALABILITY
CAPITALSHIP 1.000000
INTERCEPTOR 1.000000
BOMBER 1.000000
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:CapitalShip 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:VeryLight 1.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:Light 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:Medium 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:Heavy 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:VeryHeavy 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:CapitalShip 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:VeryLight 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:Light 1.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:Medium 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:Heavy 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTILIGHT:VeryHeavy 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:CapitalShip 0.75
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:VeryLight 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:Light 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:Medium 1.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:Heavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:VeryHeavy 0.75
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:CapitalShip 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:VeryLight 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:Light 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:Medium 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:Heavy 1.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIHEAVY:VeryHeavy 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:CapitalShip 0.75
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:VeryLight 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:Light 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:Medium 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:Heavy 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:VeryHeavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:CapitalShip 0.75
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:VeryLight 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:Light 2.0
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:Medium 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:Heavy 1.25
DamagePercentBonus:COMPOSITE:VeryHeavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:CapitalShip 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:VeryLight 0.25
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:Light 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:Medium 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:Heavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALSHIP:VeryHeavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:CapitalShip 0.75
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:VeryLight 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:Light 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:Medium 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:Heavy 1.0
DamagePercentBonus:CAPITALABILITY:VeryHeavy 1.0

As you can see, there is already something like this.

Btw. i hate rock/paper/scissor gameplay in rts. It's awkward and no fun to me. Imho there are much better ways to accomplish the same, with enough specialication between the ships themselves.

Awac, you say capital ships aren't rare enough for you. I then take it you must rely on them heavily. Say you have 10 capital ships. That's 400 ship points. For the same amount of ship points, and less credits, I can build a fleet comprised of 32 cobalts and 60 javelis missile frigates. Then I could spend the 6900 credits I would have left over upgrading them. How long do you think a capital ship could stand against the firepower of 60 missile frigates? You find capital ships too common because you misuse them. This also seems like a good example of counter-tactics, something you're saying Sins lacks.

Quite long, actually, if I read the files correctly.

LRMs are attack type antimedium vs armor capitalship:
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMEDIUM:CapitalShip 0.75

Which would give them a malus of 25%.

A LRM does 88 damage per shot and shoots every 8 seconds.

60*88*.75=3960

A Kol has quite large shields, add to this shield mitigation:

shieldAbsorbGrowthPerDamage 0.001
shieldAbsorbBaseMin 0.2
shieldAbsorbBaseMax 0.6

After 400 damage, shield mitigation would be at 0.6

To make the calculation easy, I won't make a diff.equation for that.

3960-400=3560
3560*.4=1242

So, one shot against a capital ship would result in 400+1242=1642 damage at max.

Since a Kol has easily over 1800 shield points. The first hit wouldn't even damage its hull.

Now depending on the lvl of the capital ship, it will have quite some armor and hp (hp over 4000, armor over 7 armor (how does the damage calculation with armor works, I wonder?)

So it could survive a surely a second, and highly likely, a third volley.

So, let's say 60 LRM need about half a minute to destroy one lvl 1 Kol.

A LRM itself has about 450hp with 250 shield hp (which isn't enough to bring shield mitigation over .45 btw.).

A full hit of every Kol weapon does 90+36+66+66+36+54=348 damage. (It gets 10% damage boost each lvl and shoots 3% faster each lvl.) It's able to do this amount of damage about every 10 seconds. So it will need about 3 shots per LRM frigate, or half a minute.

So 60 LRM need half a minute to destroy a Kol, while a Kol needs half a minute to destroy one LRM.

A simplified battle could look like this:
10 Kol vs 60 LRM
9 Kol vs 50 LRM
8 Kol vs 41 LRM
8 Kol vs 33 LRM
7 Kol vs 26 LRM
7 Kol vs 19 LRM
6 Kol vs 12 LRM
6 Kol vs 6 LRM
5 Kol vs 0 LRM
The Kol wins!

Of course this would only be with only focus fire (spreading your fire could be better in this case, perhaps (at least for the LRMs).

So, I think it could be quite an interesting battle. Though we will anyway need multiplayer to balance the game, since you can't really balance it against the AI.

PS. I know I left the Cobalts out. I didn't wanted it to be even more complex.

PPS. Research would benefit the Kols more then the LRM, since they don't have much of a hp and shield to increase.

PPPS. 10 high lvl Kols would win this battle anyway.

rock/paper/sissor sucks. A good example is "empire at war" were it was so rock/paper/sissor that if you use 5/6 flak ships against a cruiser it dont even take damage but 2 bombers cripple it on no time. so you only need 2 kinds ships to take anything. boring.


The other example is starcraft. Were units are different, were no real counter against a especific unit. Than a tactic or upgrades, were units are so different that makes you think not just look and say ...he has x fighter so i use y to counter.

You cant put it up like that. Yes the capital ships would peoperly die depending on there level etc. But its not becouse i simply mass captial ships. Im saying they lack diversity. Another thing is is force multiplyer. Sure 10 capital ships would lose. But now remove 6 of them and replace em with 35 missile frigates and 15 cobolt cruisers and see who wins.

The only thing to consider when you want to build a capital ship is weather you have one already and then rather take another for its special abilitys. You dont have to consider the enemys fleet composistions. This for me just seems strange considering its a strategy game.

If we can take it over to a starcraft analogy. If im terran and im up against zerg then i know i better have some science vessles handy with irradiate if he comes with massed mutalisk. While if i see he have massed ultralisks then my science vessels wont do me that much good, becouse the splash dmg is of little use. Then im better off with something like vultures and tanks for there good dmg against large units etc.

Im not saying it should be so each ship have a single counter ship etc. But the lines need to be drawn a little sharper then they are now. The player who can scout and counter the enemy units best should win. But right now all one can do is pretty much mass units becouse counter units are rather generic.

EDIT:

BDUakito trust me i too dont want Sins turned into something like Empiere are War, or AgeOfEmpiere or Rise of Nations. I can only agree with you that those games are way to much RPS to be any fun. What im saying is that Sins imo needs more RPS then it have now. Im not saying the devs should go crazy and make every X ship have only Y counter that then have Z counter with nothing else that can dmg them except for there specific counter unit.

But i dont understand that you bash starcraft. Imo its the example of near perfect balance between units and counter units.

Rock/paper/sissors is poor game design. A good design is where you make all ships unique and useful in their own way so the player actually wants to make their army/fleet/whatever diverse not because one of their units won't be able to kill another, but can kill this other one the enemy has, but because they want to use each unit to achieve a different goal.

I agree that cruisers are underused, but I rarely get more than 10 cap ships by the end of the game, and they aren't even in the same fleet, most cap ships I use in one fleet is 3, supported by 20-30 frigates. If you rely that heavily on cap ships, even at this stage of the game, most of us could easily crush you.

My hat is off to you. Although the point of adding the cobalts in is that the cap ships would probably go after them first, as they always appear to be the more urgent threat. This of course leaves more time for the LRMs to be firing. And when you say research benefits Kols more than LRMs, I'd have to disagree. There is the most research benefiting missile weapons, as well as the incendiary rounds upgrade. But anyway, what I was saying is that if both players were given the same number of credits (30,000), the frigate player would still have almost 7000 left over with which to research upgrades.

i wasnt bashing SC, i was tring to say that it was a good example, but my english sucks

I wholeheartedly disagree with you about needing more rock/paper/scissors fleet strategies. I am sorry but this game is not meant to be some kiddy game that any 13 year old can figure out(Sorry but I am geting tired of Blizzard games). Your whole point about the Frigates being useless endgame is moot, because I assure you a mass fleet of upgraded combat frigates can take out a capital ship like the Kol. I am starting to loathe games that rely soley upon r/p/s format because then unit's don't operate like they would in real life. While there is a place for some r/p/s I believe the unit balance in SINS is just about where is should be, just needs some minor tweaking. Plus we have yet to see the other two races. Good point Strattegi about the cobalts, it is silly to make theorize about battles in how many LRMs would you need to take on a Kol when it is a crazy idea just to build LRMs in the first place. Instead of 80 LRMS make the fleet composition more like 40 Cobalts, 30 LRMS, and 10 Carriers. 10 carriers translate into 20 Bomber wings.

None of the R/S/P matters if battles require attention which you cannot give.

As I have stated elsewhere. I also think that the ships need a little more specialization (so that there is a point to having different kinds of ships). However, if that is introduced to make a big difference then you will lose every battle that is going on while you are conducting some other battle at the same time (or while you are simply managing your empire). Everyone knows how to make a decent rock/scissors/paper battle system, but the real difficulty for Sins is that even if you had one it would likely take a lot of your attention so that you would lose a battle any time you were not directing it. The question is how to make different kinds of ships matter without in combat without requiring a lot of careful attention? Again, I think tactical governors are the way to go.

I do think that there should be some rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Now hear me out.

If each unit has a unique purpose, that's fine. But if there is a unit for every situation, then there will be either too much micro managing or severely underused units.

Look at Homeworld, for example. Strike Craft < Frigates < Capital < Super Capital < Strike Craft

Although on paper this looked childish, it created a system that has been the basis of countless games. Although I have nothing against some unique units, too many unique units without some sort of class-rule will lead to gameplay too complicated for most.

For example: Frigates in general should have an advantage over a particular class. This not only appeases rock/paper/scissors gameplay but also allows for unique ships.

As it is now, people dislike rock/paper/scissors because they do not know that the system allows for an immense amount of unique units.

That's just wrong. Not all Frigates kill Strike Craft, and not all Strike Craft kill Capital/Mother ships. If you want to send Ion Cannon Frigates against a squadron of bombers be my guest.

Rock, Paper, Scissors simply declares that the winner is whomever guesses and then builds the correct counter.

There is a large whiteboard in the room that has a big picture of a network of the relationship between each ship type that we all refer to while playing. It isn't a simple rock/paper/scissors diagram. Each ship is better/worse against other types of ships based on a number of factors including cost to counterability ratio, weapons, armor, abilities, research etc. Also, each ship is designed to be useful at all stages of the game, although their role may change over time. The biggest problem right now is the AI isn't so great at unit composition (yet) so you aren't getting pressured into determining better unit compositions yourself and thus not getting a better understanding of the relationships. They are much more apparent to us when we play multiplayer as humans can adapt and counter much better. Hopefully we'll have the AI's unit composition up to par sooner than later so you can get a better idea of what we are going for.

Im not saying RPS should be implementet so that figthers beats this, and this beats that based on ship class. But an example in homeworld. The ion frigate is the paper while cruisers are the stone, while a normal assult frigate might be the sicssor.

AND saying that who ever guesses wins, im sorry but i have to give out a very big ROFL. Its called scouting and is a vital thing in any strategy game and in real life war as well.

I demand a screenie of the white-board! NOW!

"There is a large whiteboard in the room that has a big picture of a network of the relationship between each ship type that we all refer to while playing. It isn't a simple rock/paper/scissors diagram"

Good to hear, rock/paper/scissors = nasty boring

In war there is always the specialist but the bulk of the force is the generalist and that blows rock/paper/scissors concept entirely.

Yes there doesn't need to be more rock/paper/scissor. There just needs to be more love for individual ship types. Like giving cobalts the anti-matter killer, and LRM more range then cannons; that was a great idea. Yet between the capital ships right now there isn't much of a difference. They all shoot pretty well and bomb pretty good, I only ever build Akkans (for colonizing) and Kols. The abilities don't matter too much in the long run when you're commanding tens of capital ships and frigates.