Let's create our own HWS PvPvE meta

Lizann · December 7, 2017, 4:32am

I have zero PvP experience in EGS, so if part of this meta is encouraging more people to participate… I’ll offer my two cents. The biggest barrier for me right now are these garage ships; I know they’re modded and have non-standard parts, so I have no idea how to counter them. I’m a new player and I don’t have the credits to buy a custom ship, so I’m basically avoiding the PvP areas for now. That’s 40 of 72 playfields that I’m not even going to enter, which is a bummer because exploration is one of the things I enjoy most.

So, what might we change? First off, I like the idea posted earlier of having a dedicated “battleground” area; we already have PvE planets that are only accessible via stargate, so why not do the same for PvP planets? Put them in an isolated region so that people can still enjoy them, but they’re not able to fly all over the place.

Second, it would be great to have some sort of stealth / smuggling meta… I’m not much interested in the big battle, but I’d love to sneak past it and deliver magnesium to the combatants (for profit, of course).

For purely PvE ideas, I’d like to see more hostile adventure planets that are PvE based. When you look at the map, it has 32 PvE playfields but there are lots of starter, donator, origin, and faction restrictions; from a practical standpoint, I can really only access ECC, PKE, PKW, Mio, Ray, and the faction home. Keep the gold and the glory in one section, but put the Erestrum, Zascosium, and Magnesium where the PvP folks won’t or can’t go. PvE players will mine and ship it to ECC and we’ll trade.

Last idea, is there any need for Search and Rescue in this game? I’d be happy to have a ship that was weaponless but nearly or totally invulnerable; it could be used to travel around and help people but not engage in combat.

speco · December 7, 2017, 6:17am

It’s hard to play - alone. Even with Donat. Lonely always loses to the crowd. Your servers for the collective game.
A bunker on a golden planet does not give any advantages to one who is alone. The lost money. When you can not do anything, the interest disappears.

Huge imbalance

Androniko1 · December 7, 2017, 10:28am

<–this, I feel that atm becuase rockets are so much better than anything else they have the most dps of any weapon becuase of that aoe damage, they have 90% hit rate if you have good aiming and they have massive range xD why use anything else? What would make the game more interesting is changes that improve your chance of winning with more skill involved, this way new players feel progression when they play as they slowly start winning more and more.

Some of the ways this can be implemented is:

Range Control. (right now the difference in sv weapon ranges is so small and the biggest range atm is rail guns and those are completely bugged they don’t even fire, so with the rest of the guns the range difference is maybe 5%?) Being able to keep a certain range on someone is extremely hard but should be rewarding.

Timing. (Being able to lure someone into the right spot then unleash hell on them, the only thing I can think of is burst damage.)

Placement. (This is mainly when your outnumbered, winning against more than 1 is a dance of placement as shown in this video, and lends it self well to kiting.)

Some other idea’s:

150 Range = +25% dps
300 Range = base dps
500 range -25% dps

P.S. just like @A.F.T My 1070 randomly burnt out…1 day after the supplier NCIX goes bankrupt…

Elfias · December 7, 2017, 11:45am

I jsut read about your concerns I have to say that you need to change how you look at it.

Pilot of garage ship must get you in crosshair, thats as difficult as with normal ships, you can make it pretty hard for him
Usually ppl thinks that they will win or loose with 1 SV. Thats not how it works, you go through many SVs per fight, you change them when they are too damaged. If you are 1 vs 1 with no option to disengage from combat just die there, respawn, take another SV and go and finish him.
You dont have to win, garage ship components cant be replaced. VWing…every destroyed device is lost forever, SV is from combat steel so with every thruster gone ship looses value and agility. Damage it, destroy weapons above limit and you win, its end of 12mils and no SV thruster placed back on it wont make it move, it need CV thrusters.
If you have friends storm it, dont look left or right just keep doing dmg, with miniguns as they are currently you can kill stuff inside through armor. Even if your group loose 5 SVs (which will never happend if you have good PvP ship) its fraction of garage ship price.
Last time we fought garage Vwing it was AFT with 2 of them in row, it was huge fun, everybody was just focusing him, counting the value of SV going down. And we lost some SVs on it.

If you afraid to loose ship change your mind or improve your automatic income of resources so you not woried about cost Hope it will help!

AlexAKM · December 7, 2017, 6:47pm

All we need: its optimization. Nothing more.

All dat tons of ideas/changes - everything costs NOTHING, while our fights shows 1-3 fps lag-show with unknown dmg through armor (dat rumors about “they fix it” - u could left for yourself. I’ll check this here, and check this on private servers. Still got bug-dmg).

So… Mb someday they make this, and then we would speak about implementing our cool (or not) ideas. But, right now, all this - meaningless. Fight with 3 fps - its lag-show, not fight.

Elfias · December 7, 2017, 8:16pm

@RexXxuS you need to make clearer OP next time

Ok so this is 100 miniguns. From 60fps to 5 fps, unplayable in Creative, no server, just on single computer.
CPU no meassurable difference, GPU sleeping. It just doesnt work. Movement stutters from absolutly smooth one.

Now just here is one big problem. Particles which represents minigun fire wont die on impact, but they live through whole range.(this also causes players think they are being shoot at through walls, but its not the case of shooting through armor, that really happends)
Particles which represents bullet impact are too rich in this amount, should decrese dynamicly or something like that.

We are up to do some tests, what will 100 plasmas do etc…

But this clearly proves that attacking 10 BAs (10x6) with 6 HVs (6x6) all miniguns will simply never work. Its absolut nonsense what is currently in game, its clearly SP setting for one player going against POI 4 turrets.

Now for others to make it even more clear. What are we supposed to achive here is finding reasonable setting for weapons, MP one which will allow us to play game instead of leaving.

Its really not about suggesting about bunkers etc.

Plasma 100 end of story, 60 palsmas playable, turning on 4th HV going up to 80 end of story. Again CPU no difference, GPU also.

I know what will be the setting already. 10x lower rate of fire, and 2 turrets of each kind max, while 10 higher hit points for turrets.
Interesting but expected is 100 plasmas are even worse than 100 miniguns, probably becasue of AOE.

Anyway moving to server with this, but ppl wont like this results, they didnt like Class 4 CV as they love disconects and lags probably.

Slainalot · December 7, 2017, 8:42pm

Seems like a lot of discussion around weapon/ship balance, which is good but I am not sure it’s the best thing for Rexxxus and the rest of the HWS team to try and tweak.

Any changes made there are going to break the next time Eleon decides they want to change something. I would rather see effort be put into mechanics that are more directly under HWS control.

For new players (or ones behind the curve) pvp is pretty daunting. They will never be able to catch up on the gold to buy HWS ships/Bunkers once the mainstay PvP guilds get set up on Golden Globe. Especially against guilds set up with their HWS Bunker. Having a permanent indestructible base somewhere other people can’t just means that folks will try once, get smoked and then never go back.

PvP should be as level a playing field as possible, with the advantage going to whoever has the better design and/or piloting skills (yes i know weapons are kinda broken). And in every game I’ve played once you get into objects that can’t be destroyed balance tends to fall apart.

I would like to see the HWS bunker made destructible next season, give it crazy hit points or pull them out (would be a shame they look great) so it becomes a lot more of a game to have a permanent base on GG rather than a gold race.

Androniko1 · December 7, 2017, 8:58pm

Lets put both into the hypothetical.

Eleon does the changes that Rex suggests. 5-10 days later, pve guys are complaining that they don’t see million projectiles flying through the air on their single player games, Eleon changes it back to what it is now.

Eleon put all turret settings into yaml, HWS tweak the settings its not quite right tweak it again ahh it’s perfect, single player people want a new weapon a beam laser that does damage every 0.1 seconds over a 10 block aoe for fun, HWS has the option to now tweak this monstrosity before it runes pvp for everyone.

Hmm there is a lot of sides to the story, and sure it would be nice if new players stood some type of chance, but at the same time its also nice for the new player to be able to grow and if its super equal for all then there is no growth and that becomes boring pretty quickly. The biggest problem with having things super equal for everyone no matter the skill is then it becomes a numbers game, who ever brings more wins and that is the worst pvp possible.

Elfias · December 7, 2017, 9:01pm

I understand what you saying and you might be right but imagine this:

There will be no bunkers on GG. GMC arrives, RED arrives. Newbies run around in panic.

Everything start to shoot. 3Fps, disconnect from playfield in 10s, end of story. Everyone upset and leaves.

Its not about changing bunkers or so, we are not even that far, problem now is that its unplayable.

We set up server meassuring some stuff. its I7 etc blabla, 5 hvs against CV and we are geting to point where you dont want to play.

So this all is only about performance, what to change …bunkers, etc comes after game is playable.

Androniko1 · December 7, 2017, 9:06pm

I understand you want to get performance down first then worry about balance, but lets put more thought and math into it and kill 2 birds with 1 stone, then we will only need small tweaks in the future.

Elfias · December 7, 2017, 9:54pm

Thing is we need to see what amount of fire can happend at same time while game is still playable.

For example we put down 5x HV with all turrets and spawned one CV which was not firing. Basicly those 5 HVs firing at once at moving CV is enough. It a bit feels like you dont want more HVs on battlefield.

Now probably some base should be involved and some SVs. With what we have currently (amount of weapons and ROF) its done. It will lag and freeze.

So its 5x15 turrets on HVs and you are near what you want to play. now you can spread it out when you know how many “firing” can go on.
You put only 2 plasmas, 2 minigun turrets, 1 arty. and suddently you can have 10 HVs on playfield, that much closer to what we do.

Aim is at making some of those battles we do at least not crashing. Let it lag when there is 16 ppl at once but it cant freeze for minute followed by disconnect.

How many calculations of fire can be hapening at once while server is running, thats what we need to know first. Then spread this number amongst some number of vehicles/bases…and balance it.
And its clear that its like 3x less than we have now at least.

Its those situations like on GI base. You approach 7 BAs and all stops, so how many turrets you can approach while game wont stop. And then balance it.

Androniko1 · December 7, 2017, 11:00pm

That is a very good point indeed! But It’s possible to reduce calculations way more than 30x or so without having too much overkill on blocks which is a nice thought :], also overkill isn’t too bad becuase then we can do hybrid weapon types and so on :stuck_out_tongue have already thought of plans, its a fun thought to think of empyrion withoing freeze dc maybe not just a dream anymore

Scorp · December 7, 2017, 11:33pm

Good SCIENCE. Well done Elfias, you’ve identified the problem that 80+ turrets firing reduces the game to a steaming pile of cheese.

So we could say the breaking point of the game is around 500 bullets per second (in the same chunk)

A CV in space or BA produces 200 bullets per second on its own.

I believe the bullets are doing a block-by-block check when they get close to another structure, then a face-by-face check inside those blocks. This is too much when there are 10 massive structures and 500-1000 bullets flying around. I’m not really suprised the game goes into a coma, it’s been badly programmed without PVP in mind.

What we need to do is massively reduce the ROF of turrets (like by 5 or 10 times), and probably half the turret max cap.

Another idea to reduce server load… how about having separate PVE and PVP servers, with different settings, connected by a CSW ? Like some kind of wormhole, call it a BLACK HOLE or something …

Androniko1 · December 8, 2017, 9:25am

Some tests to see how much we can adjust them while still being effective:

HV Minigun Stats: Damage = 7
ROF = 600RPM = 600/60 = 10 a second or 0.1s

no aoe so lagfactor = 10 calculations a second + 10 muzzle flash per second
+10 new bullet animations per second, the projectiles are fast so they only last
0.5 second so on avg its 15 bullet animations per second.
Lag Factor = 10+10+15 = 35 (rough becuase they all have different effects on lag but meh)

dps = (7 x 10) x (Aoe Coefficient single target so only 1) = 70 dps
Effectiveness = DPS / lagfactor = 70/35 = 2

Asuming HV wants to be super effecient vs sv + hv then max damage = block hp = 500

Minigun with 500 damage (maximum effeciency) at 70 dps would get a fire rate of:
70 = (500 x ROF) x (Aoe Coefficient single target so only 1) = 70 dps
ROF = 500/70 = 7.14 shots per second.

New Lag Factor would be 1 calculation every 7 seconds (rounded off) 1 muzzle flash every
7 seconds 1 animation every 7 seconds (projectile speed is much faster than 7 seconds so
stays at 1) so lag factor = 3/7 = 0.42
New dps would be 500/7 = 71.4
Effectiveness = DPS/Lagfactor = 71.4/0.42 = 170

Difference in effectiveness = 170/2 = 85

So its posible to make the Minigun 85 X less laggy while maintaining the same clearing
speed of Sv’s and HV’s.

Using Elfias calulation at 5fps at 100 miniguns it would require 100X85 = 8500 miniguns
before we get to 5fps, 8500/ 6 per hv = 1416 HV’s full of miniguns.

But this is before DPS balancing between guns so the effectiveness will go down a little becuase dps on avg is too low compared to block hp.

P.S. yes its a lot of work to balance a single gun xD

RexXxuS · December 9, 2017, 3:12pm

Alright @everyone. The secret is lifted. PLEASE start working intensively on the config file. Let’s collaborate together the best stats for the “perfect” PvPvE meta!

Example of a Base Flak Turret:

{ Block Id: 700, Name: TurretBaseFlak
Group: cpgTurret
Material: metalhard
WeaponItem: TurretBaseFlakWeapon
AllowPlacingAt: Base, display: true
IsActivateable: true
IsActivateableInCP: true
IsLockable: true
Info: bkiTurret, display: true
Category: Weapons/Items
BlockColor: "26,50,89"
SizeInBlocks: "3,2,3", display: true
StackSize: 5
MaxCount: 6, type: int, display: true
BlastRadius: 3
BlastDamage: 80
EnergyIn: 5, type: int, display: true, formatter: Watt
Mass: 2000, type: int, display: true, formatter: Kilogram
HitPoints: 3000, type: int, display: true
RotSpeed: 110, type: int, display: true
Range: 660, type: int, display: true
Damage: 40, display: true
AmmoCapacity: 150, display: true
AmmoType: FlakRocket, display: true
ReloadDelay: 5, display: true
ROF: 0.4, type: float, display: true, formatter: ROF
Zoom: 5, type: float
UnlockCost: 15
UnlockLevel: 15
TechTreeParent: TurretBaseRocket
TechTreeNames: Base
}

As you can see we can change pretty much everything with it.
Also thruster force, etc. etc.

Let’s GO!

Elfias · December 9, 2017, 3:18pm

For slower of us

I dont see anything about paperclips in config file

Whoop Whoop!

Now this will be drama so far never seen. It could be good to have some results of what it can handle.
Like same test as i did from different configurations etc. before ppl will start to set shit even worse.

I mean liek everyproject this needs some rules, goals, some way how to approach it. For example we was thinking about leaving blocks as they are, starting from BAs etc. for all that we have some reasons.

What we dont need is 1000 paperclicps, i mean 1000 diferent configurations from 1000 ppl.

Limiting factor here is not our wish but what can engine handle. Might look nice to set 20 arties on HV but probably better would be going from minimal setting up.

Stunner666 · December 9, 2017, 4:00pm

I wouldnt change soo much because then its hard to get a balance. But what we have to do, is to look thats fights have a End… so as a only PVP player i could say we must increased CV Turret Damage massiv! (Espacily Rockets because they hit) and the manuel firing Laser Weapon of CV. So that CV fights dont take a duration of 1 houre and no Ship is down… that sux.(After 50 min of fight Ive lost only the first armlorlayer of much more…)

And Then increase SV vs SV weapons. especialy 135 mm ZK massiv! so at moment Class 1 SV vs SV fight has a durance of 40 mins and more. That sux. perhaps increade Laser weapons too so we could uses other weapons in fight as only 135 mm Zrak.

Elfias · December 9, 2017, 4:14pm

I think we all noticed that in laggy fight dmg is not done or appears much later on ship, thats one of reasons we dont die.

Its hard to say its doing too less dmg (it doest but im not sure how much) as if i fly alone, no lag i have to say that BAs eating my ship quite easy. In 5vs5 i can fly around whole day.

But yes generaly it seems most of us wants the same aproximatly it seems, thats good

Stunner666 · December 9, 2017, 4:25pm

Try 1 vs 1 CV fight I bet you dont come to layer three of my ship in a duraion of 45 min and more. Yes I could say damage isnt high enough. Plasma and Artillery makes damage but they dont hit. Rockets and Canon tower who make hits must make much more Damage.

Elfias · December 9, 2017, 4:26pm

Oh yes of course not denying that, for sure its too much hp too low dmg…

Just pointing out that up to that half of dmg is not delivered at all…and renge is joke too for CVs, you bump with front in enemy but your turret at back of ship is to far to reach him