Back to the roots with Block limitation | PvP improvement

HWS General Discussion
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166

Personally I don’t really like the idea of specific block limitations. Perhaps certain playfields could be made more interesting, or certain metas. Currently resources aren’t really that valuable to anyone other than new players, but hypothetically, if some form of reward was able to draw players in mass to these specific areas, that could create some interesting game-play. Consider if GG had no bases, 2k block SVs and 3k block HV’s… that could create a fairly gladiatorial gold mining process.

If we’re just doing this to tweak certain capacities then this will be important to answer:

How many bases?
How much damage do these bases do?
Do we want an average faction of 5-8 players to be able to take out another factions bases?

How long should an SV or HV take direct base fire without being compromised*?
How long should SV to SV fights take 1v1? HV to HV fights?
How strong should an HV be vs an SV?

*By compromised I do not mean killed necessarily, but disabled to the point where a new ship is required or they are not combat effective (i.e. loses all guns).

Personally I think if we’re going for a cap, 4k should be the cap for an SV, and 6k the max for an HV.

Reasoning: 4k SV’s are still tanky enough to group together with others and assault a base, but cannot provide direct damage soaking, or last more than a minute before being compromised.
6k HV’s will fill the tanking void somewhat, and while still quite weak to prolonged base fire, will have a survivability edge over SV’s.

Garage Ships:

This tweak will severely impact the effective usefulness of most of the combat garage ships. The main draw of the ships in the past, was not the increased weapons - though that is nice - it is the CV drive train capable of handling 10-20k additional blocks while still maintaining class size. The price tags have been increasing, but were still worth the cost for this reason.

If this change goes into effect, garage ships prices must then be lowered, as their primary function is gone. They would then merely be disposable pew-pew ships, easily losing their effectiveness after a few encounters.

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167

That’s a smart solution. Decreasing small block HP is brilliant and far more manageable for whatever is determined the ‘correct’ balance.

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168

Here are my numbers…

Sv 2-3k
Hv 3-4k
CV 10k
Base 30k

I would love to go even lover on Sv / hv. Maybe sv down to 1-1.5k and 2k max on tanks.

Bases are supposed to be hard to take out. Still i can prove to you how to take bases out with 1.5k ships. Its all in the design.

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169

I vote for:
SV 3500 blocks
HV 4000 blocks
CV 10000 blocks
BA 20000 blocks

Global limit would reduce lagg on server not only at few playfields I think it is totally worth it.

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170

I would stay away from too many different limits. 50k blocks on this playfield, 20k on that, 5k on Lav, 3k on GG, 2.5k on Arma, 420 on a new PVP-lite playfield for new players - who is supposed to keep up with that? People do not even read the descriptions now, what kind of riot do you want to incite with a bazillion different limits?

If you go this route than make it simple and make the restrictions global for PVP planets. You can already have a PVP-lite effect if you do not insist on going to PVP hotspots with your prefab ship. There is no need to accomodate dumb people, they’ll learn eventually.

That said I’d propose block limits of 3k for SVs and 5k for HVs. That wouldn’t be a massive shift but would eliminate the true flying tanks.

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171

Not disagreeing entirely with the rest of your post… but Grizz and Speed were a 2 man faction until the 3 member min was introduced (regarding olp bases etc) and operated independently of other factions until this season (and giving in to the megalomerger).

Back on topic tho… I would love to see a playfield with really strict limits such as: BA 100 blocks, SV 1000 blocks, HV 5000 blocks, no class size restrictions. Then do that gold meteor spam that used to happen a couple seasons back (unintentionally).

Likewise with GG/HW systems, no class size limit, just block limits to prevent the really big structures… how about 5000 blocks for all BA/CV/SV/HV. Might create some new dynamics or bring back old ones. For example, 5000 blocks isn’t enough for a CV sponge to be overly effective, but I never thought that tactic should be eliminated, just reduce its effectiveness.

Towers would be different… not useless, but not as central as they are now.

Bunkers made people feel that living on GG was viable… stored materials and ammo there… processed their ores… always present CAP overhead or patrolling around. Gopher hunting was a constant thing. Skirmishes would start anywhere, anytime and develop into huge battles over a spec of gold colored dirt :wink:

That seems to have slowed greatly this season. Doesn’t look like many are actually living on GG. Just towers to fall back to.

How do we get that back without the downsides of invulnerable bunkers?

Anyhow, back on topic.

HW/GG: 5000 blocks for all BA/CV/SV/HV. No class restriction, CV’s allowed (so long as they’re 5k blocks or less).

If it goes well on HW/GG start spreading the concept to other PVP playfields.

2 cents and change o.O

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172

This could really work out much better than block limits. (thanks to whomever originally posted it)

Make flying things more fragile since they have mobility to their benefit.

Garage ships stay viable, just reduced in effectiveness. (there’s already disadvantages to garage ships; cost, can’t spawn from bp, manually built each time you buy one.)

Should it be combined with the Artificial Mass Block for HV’s being converted to the HV Specific “small combat armor” that’s 200-250 hp/block? This would put them back to being the primary method of attacking bases.

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173

SV : 1000 blocks
HV: 1500 blocks
CV: 3000 blocks
BA: 5000 blocks

Garage ships have to be adjusted !!!
Double damage ? I vote YES !

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Will 3k block svs and 4k block hvs be able to take out bases with the current boosted base dps? Will sv/hv dps be boosted to compensate for their lower block counts and effective durability? Is boosting dps all around to make battles faster and more expensive the right pathway?

Before the dps updates late last season, I experienced plenty of times fighting huge svs (during the no-oversize-warning period) and dogfights taking forever. I was one of the proponents of increasing weapon damage. I can appreciate block limits, but I want to be sure that the limits are reasonable and the ships will still be effective enough for a cluster of 10+ bases as is on GG atm to not be essentially impossible to take out with svs/hvs.

I know sv/hv gun range/damage is inferior to base gun range/damage, and sv/hv armor is 1:10-1:12.5 the relative durability of base armor. If svs/hvs are not durable enough to withstand base damage long enough to deal some of their own, or if sv/hv weapons are too weak to deal meaningful damage during their short lives in direct fire from bases, then attacking bases will be an exercise in futility.

Comparing multiple cores in a small area, base dps/durability increases at a faster rate than sv/hv dps/durability, and with size/block limits of svs/hvs, bases have a much higher cap for durability. Bases have no block limits, only class size limits. Base dps, gun range and durability are all higher. Multiple factions can cluster bases very close to each other. These all concentrate a potentially huge amount of durability and firepower.

I propose, if groups of svs/hvs are found to be ineffective vs bases at the proposed block limits, that sv/hv gun damage be adjusted/perhaps increased, or base gun damage be decreased. I would tend to suggest increasing gun damage vs decreasing, because I believe increasing damage increases the speed of battles and also increases net expense, making resources more valuable and stockpiling less common.

The metric considered as the counter to increasing net expense is the risk:reward ratio, calculating whether it’s worth it to even bother attacking bases due to the expense from ship losses. When factions stop attacking bases because of ship costs, that should be the guide for telling us that things have become “too valuable” and damage should be decreased rather than increased. I don’t think we’re there yet.

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175

Yes, you just need more of them but they’ll be able to survive long enough to do some damage. If you go much lower than that you’ll have to take bases down a notch or two. Pretty big notches because a 1000 block size class 1 SV would be taken out in a single volley or two. If you remove the size class limitation you can make them last longer but it would be silly.

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176

What problems do you have taking out bases ? Size doesnot matter.

Hover behind hill… pew pew… first turret out
Hover behind hill… repeat

= base down in 3 minutes.

Low numbers of blocks will force players to be more creative in building plus skilled in piloting, gunnery and battle tactics.

It will replace „block war“ by „skill war“.

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177

The game is balanced around bricks, I just tried to take a POI with turrets on starter with a hv a noob can make with 6 mg from what can be looted raiding others POI on foot, it’s impossible to destroy enemy turrets unless you dismantle a POI to build a brick.

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I think the reason block limits ate being implemented vs damage buff, is that newer players will get swatted like flies. Bases would take out half their sv in a heart beat. That and block limits can be implemented on a oer playfield basis, damage is global… if only we could make damage changes based on playfields.

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Just kind of a ‘wake up call’ to the group wanting 1000 to 1500. You realize that is fewer blocks than some of the tier 3 prefab SV’s right? Just sayin.

If 1000 blocks is the max, might as well be 50 blocks max against current bases.

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180

SV blocks: 1k
HV blocks: 1k.

Not more.

@H@H@H@H@H@H@

WTF u talking about? What creativity in stupid CUBES ?.. I saw only FEW ships, which didnt looks like fight-cube. 95% of others - just giant cubes. No creativity. No healthy logic. Just Cubes.

I think block must be reduced heavily with nerf of H-MSL dmg. Then we will return to Plasma/Railgun fights. In other way - we need burst H-MSL so hard, as possible. Bc watching 1 vs 1 fight for 30-40 mins, with no winner (bc out of ammo), looks so pity right now…

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181

Look from other side: Faction could have 1-2 BA only. But enemies - its 10-20 ppl. Who wins now? ofc number of ppl. BA must be Fortress, which could hold enemies by its self for some time, and not like POI right now, vs SV 7th class, which even didnt need to dodge, and only shoot…

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182

Gold words!

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183

Okay, even IF you limit SV’s/HV’s to any size number of blocks, you are not going to see ‘pretty’ ships in PVP. The only way ‘pretty’ ships are going to be in PVP is if blocks stop being the ‘health factor’ of SV’s/HV’s and instead it is mostly shields/generators. Sorry Alex.

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184

This new limit, is going to see the rise of more SV’s like the Scorpa.

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No, I did.

I saw where you said and double BA block HP. So then the same result as just halfing all small block hp armor values occurs SV/HV become paper mache to BA turret fire.

Right now we know how much damage a set of blocks can take before needing to retreat or dying in a ball of fiery death lol. You want to make sweeping changes and have no idea how that will actually affect the balance, to be fair neither do I and it could be perfect but I doubt it from a mathematical perspective.

Leaving HP and damage values where they are and setting a block limit is more controlled. People can adjust builds and put armor where they know it’s needed to avoid easy deaths to splash damage and things like that.

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