Fleet minmaxing/game balance

[Gamesguy]

I've only been able to reproduce your large vs. small weapon tests when I didn't use any utility slots except energy on my ships. If I use a sensible amount of defenses the small weapons win, and they win solidly. How were your ships outfitted when doing these tests?

20x Destroyer, 1 large xray laser, 2x small xray laser, sufficient anti-matter reactors to fit all the guns, crystal forged armor in the rest. advanced evasion computer, tier 4 engines.
20x Destroyer, same as above except all small xray lasers.

Large weapons do win sometimes in large fleet engagements, if they manage to quickly kill one of the earlier ships during the starting phase when they have range advantage. It's still a majority of small wins in ~10 tests.

Are you testing 1v1? I'm only testing reasonable sized fleet engagements.

And I made a separate thread about this, but might as well post it here. Accuracy and evasion are additive, meaning a weapon with 76% hitrate against a 60 evasion ship doesn't hit 0.76*0.6=46% of the time as might be expected but just 0.76-0.6=16% of the time. This is a big part of why evasion is so good.

So how was I getting 40% hitrates against 60% evasion corvettes with weapons that have less than 80% accuracy?

Also having a hard time reproducing getting anything to beat corvettes. I use stormfire autocannons and a PD with 3 HP plating in utility (best engines and defensive computer) and that build beats anything I make.

Are you using equivalent mineral cost and significant fleet sizes?

Try using the build I made for the cruiser above and replace lasers with autocannons.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

20x Destroyer, 1 large xray laser, 2x small xray laser, sufficient anti-matter reactors to fit all the guns, crystal forged armor in the rest. advanced evasion computer, tier 4 engines.
20x Destroyer, same as above except all small xray lasers.



Are you testing 1v1? I'm only testing reasonable sized fleet engagements.



So how was I getting 40% hitrates against 60% evasion corvettes with weapons that have less than 80% accuracy?



Are you using equivalent mineral cost and significant fleet sizes?

Try using the build I made for the cruiser above and replace lasers with autocannons.

I'm not sure if evasion versus to hit rates are an additive bonus or not, but it would seem illogical if it was not additive... what would the point be with the stat when it comes to the effectiveness of hit rates. It if effected hit rates the same no matter what it is why bother with it in the first place?!?

As long as the DPS of two weapons are the same then accuracy of a weapon would mean NOTHING!!! if evasion is not additive.

I will start running some tests, should be pretty easy to conclude how it is done if you mod the values to be more extreme.

 

[genrtul]

20x Destroyer, 1 large xray laser, 2x small xray laser, sufficient anti-matter reactors to fit all the guns, crystal forged armor in the rest. advanced evasion computer, tier 4 engines.
20x Destroyer, same as above except all small xray lasers.



Are you testing 1v1? I'm only testing reasonable sized fleet engagements.



So how was I getting 40% hitrates against 60% evasion corvettes with weapons that have less than 80% accuracy?



Are you using equivalent mineral cost and significant fleet sizes?

Try using the build I made for the cruiser above and replace lasers with autocannons.

Interesting! Well I've redone the test, this time with 60% evasion corvs with stormfire autocannons and am still seeing the additive behavior with 22% hitrate. I'll try to reproduce with your exact ship designs.

EDIT: Well, I don't know your corvette design. I did do a mixed battle between corvettes and cruisers and still got additive behavior. I am running this game on Linux. I wonder if it's maybe a platform specific bug?

There is something strange going on in your screenshot though. You sure you don't have weapon accuracy at 100% due to some mod or something? It's odd that M and L lasers have the same accuracy, and 40% at that. Against 60% evasion corvettes multiplicitively they should have 45% and 48%.

If anyone's wondering the screenshot I'm refering to is in the other thread I made
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-interact-with-accuracy.931927/#post-21205651

Don't post there though, it's not really needed.

 

[Loddgrimner]

I think I figured out the evasion/accuracy here, and you can see how I tested it and repeat:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/weapon-hit-formula-tested.933323/

It's additive but accuracy boosts are bugged and make accuracy 100%.

Additive is good, because if the weapons and evasion are rebalanced correctly, weapons can be good against their respective size class. I would do something like, tone down bonuses to evasion from upgrading engines/cpu and such, or even remove them completly and just have base evasion for each hull, alternatively match them with accuracy buffs exactly, to keep the balance in line across tech levels. Then make Large weapons have an accuracy in the 20-40% range, mediums, 50-70% and small weapons 80-100%. Make large weapons do a lot of damage, something like 20x that of small weapons, mediums 10x. That way, large weapons would be very effective against large targets with low evasion (5-10%), but useless against corvettes with say 50-60% evasion that they would never hit, with mediums ideally inneffective but not useless in that scenario.

 

[The Cosmic Muffet]

I feel like the suggestions here are trying to maintain a static relationship between these ship classes.

In real life, the tradition of weapons vs armor development has followed a round robin of protection and firepower. Whether it's achieved through armor, range, maneuver, or better weapons, it basically goes back and forth (however those things are counted--in infantry, static defenses, canons or drones/fighters/missiles).

Over-simplifying, but the trend from 1800 to now has followed this arc:
firepower: large ships of the line mounted guns that allowed them to pummel forts or each other
protection: ironclads made the firepower irrelevant
firepower: torpedoes and better artillery pieces on more stable platforms made battleships more effective
protection: faster ships, better intel from radar and scout planes, or, to an extent, subs made it possible to avoid being 'caught' by superior firepower
firepower: aircraft carriers make it hard to hide from anyone, and eventually cruise missiles and drones step in to fill roles better than aircraft could
protection: stealth and anti-missile systems are trying to push missile systems out. This isn't figured out yet, though.

I'd like to see invulnerability play a role in more than one way. Evasion should be a perfectly acceptable early counter better weapon systems, but it should give way later on with negative evasion gear that any ship can equip, and things like armor, shields, and other more esoteric systems should. There's all these psychic and sentient AI techs--why not ones that negate evasion (but, for obvious reasons, can't negate armor, shields, or stealth).

And a back-and-forth between jamming gear and self-guided weapons.

And fix the fighters, obviously, because until you do that, you're missing a major component of the cycle.

IMO, anyway.

 

[AtomicTank]

Are you using equivalent mineral cost and significant fleet sizes?

I suspect that minerals as a measure of fleet cost is best for starting empires, but it switches over to energy by midgame. I think that fitting a fleet within all constraints (minerals, energy, fleet cap) is probably the best reporting.

 

[genrtul]

I suspect that minerals as a measure of fleet cost is best for starting empires, but it switches over to energy by midgame. I think that fitting a fleet within all constraints (minerals, energy, fleet cap) is probably the best reporting.

Energy maintenance is linearly related to mineral cost. It's 0.5% monthly (or maybe annually?). So mineral efficiency and energy efficiency are the same thing.

 

[Jelbert]

I feel like the suggestions here are trying to maintain a static relationship between these ship classes.

In real life, the tradition of weapons vs armor development has followed a round robin of protection and firepower. Whether it's achieved through armor, range, maneuver, or better weapons, it basically goes back and forth (however those things are counted--in infantry, static defenses, canons or drones/fighters/missiles).

Over-simplifying, but the trend from 1800 to now has followed this arc:
firepower: large ships of the line mounted guns that allowed them to pummel forts or each other
protection: ironclads made the firepower irrelevant
firepower: torpedoes and better artillery pieces on more stable platforms made battleships more effective
protection: faster ships, better intel from radar and scout planes, or, to an extent, subs made it possible to avoid being 'caught' by superior firepower
firepower: aircraft carriers make it hard to hide from anyone, and eventually cruise missiles and drones step in to fill roles better than aircraft could
protection: stealth and anti-missile systems are trying to push missile systems out. This isn't figured out yet, though.

I'd like to see invulnerability play a role in more than one way. Evasion should be a perfectly acceptable early counter better weapon systems, but it should give way later on with negative evasion gear that any ship can equip, and things like armor, shields, and other more esoteric systems should. There's all these psychic and sentient AI techs--why not ones that negate evasion (but, for obvious reasons, can't negate armor, shields, or stealth).

And a back-and-forth between jamming gear and self-guided weapons.

And fix the fighters, obviously, because until you do that, you're missing a major component of the cycle.

IMO, anyway.

The problem with this approach is that it mirrors real life.

What the problem with that you ask?

Well for gameplays sake we need empires that are significantly under teched to stand a chance, whereby in real life the next gen of tech is often a complete hard counter to the last gen.

 

[Dnote]

I also feel like Hangars need to be a bigger part of this equation as well. Battleships were formidable in WWII, but the Carrier soon replaced them and the Bomber became the most important instrument of war since.

I also think Evasion should not only have a diminishing return, but also be squarely related to weapon size. For example, 20% evasion is the max you can achieve against a small weapon before diminishing return kicks in, 40% against medium, 60% against large. This would again improve fleet composition and force diversity.

 

[Gamesguy]

I also feel like Hangars need to be a bigger part of this equation as well. Battleships were formidable in WWII, but the Carrier soon replaced them and the Bomber became the most important instrument of war since.

I also think Evasion should not only have a diminishing return, but also be squarely related to weapon size. For example, 20% evasion is the max you can achieve against a small weapon before diminishing return kicks in, 40% against medium, 60% against large. This would again improve fleet composition and force diversity.

Check out the combat balance mod I made. It addresses most of the concerns raised in this thread.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687150723

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Having played around some more, I really hope they fix combat by adjusting how evasion works rather than nerfing corvettes. I'm stuck with corvette fleets while all my neighbors have cruisers due to RNG

 

[The Cosmic Muffet]

The problem with this approach is that it mirrors real life.

What the problem with that you ask?

Well for gameplays sake we need empires that are significantly under teched to stand a chance, whereby in real life the next gen of tech is often a complete hard counter to the last gen.

That makes sense. I think you could still have stuff like the missile system given to pre-industrial era guerrilla cavalry or fire ships or something like that which would let the underteched group still hang.

I guess I'm not offering any specific remedy, just looking for that idea of a cycle, rather than a race to the right answer (or a counter system that requires rebuilding your fleet between wars, and making it almost impossible to fight 2 differently equipped empires and still have a good time).

 

[Dnote]

The Dev Diary mentions nerfing evasion, but without the full patch notes the extent of what they've done remains a mystery.

Hopefully it fixes a few of the combat bugs and does more than just nerf evasion.

 

[Erei]

The Dev Diary mentions nerfing evasion, but without the full patch notes the extent of what they've done remains a mystery.

Hopefully it fixes a few of the combat bugs and does more than just nerf evasion.

Quite frankly, you shouldn't be able to have 100% evasion, for obvious reasons. Which is currently true if you stack everything. Even 80% evasion is huge.

ATM you have players destroying FE in the middle game by sending corvettes with so much evasion the FE can't hit them.

 

[Ihit]

Currently max evasion is 91% tbh.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I have to say I'm a little nervous about what they are going to do to evasion. Clearly evasion was able to get to ridiculous levels where it could not be countered, however, I do believe that Destroyers wrecked Corvettes at levels below that critical mass. In my current game, I'm running a Corvette swarm with a fleet power of 6000 or so, and continuously countering the AI's use of battleships and cruisers with fleet powers of slightly greater. To me this seems like good balance.

I'm hoping that they just straight up cap evasion at some level (e.g. at 70%) so you can increase evasion up to a max of 70% and no more.

 

[JDNIGHT]

I'm hoping that they just straight up cap evasion at some level (e.g. at 70%) so you can increase evasion up to a max of 70% and no more.

Personally, I think they should cap evasion at 50%, but decrease the hit chance of larger weapons even further. A small weapon should not have a hard time hitting a ship as large as a corvette, but a large weapon should.

To counter the drop in accuracy the mid and large weapons would have, their damage should be increased. Which might not help much against corvette swarms (over kill), but would make these large weapons more effective against larger ships. As they should be.

However, a DD or CA loaded with small weapons should cause some consternation for corvettes, for certain. To counter this, a CA or BB with large weapons should wreck the small weapon DD or CA. But... a swarm of corvettes would still beat a BB with all (or mostly all) large weapons.

 

[JDNIGHT]

Also, the evasion cap should be different for different ship classes. A corvettes cap might be 50 or 60%, but a battleships cap should be 25 or 30%, with the destroyer and cruiser in the middle. This way, the larger ships would never really get to use evasions to protect themselves from larger weapons. To make up for this, the larger ships should have increased HPs. Also, to address increases to targeting chance in the game, they should be either: A) scaled to the weapon size (smaller = more advantage) or B) just give a raw damage increase. Otherwise if someone were to stack targeting chance modifiers, then large weapons would hit all the time.

EDIT: I keep talking about large and small weapons, but to be fair I should address mid size weapons by stating that they should be a compromise between the two.