To Haxus : Design Volume Overhaul--a way to better war?

[Yurk Embassy]

Howdy there--Haxus and everyone reading this topic. I haven't been known to post a lot here, but I figured it's never too late to start working on a habit. As many of you might agree, the new designer redefined the rules of designing a warship, and not necessarily in a good way. It used to be that you had to be clever about optimising space in your ship to place components. Each component was an individual piece on your design, taking up a defined amount of weight, adding a specific degree of qualities to your spacecraft. Besides, there was TL limiting the max mass you could design your craft to have, and, henceforth, max volume remained very limited, which somewhat prevented the creation of literal Death Stars.

Things have changed.

Designs can now have much more potential than they ever had back in the days of the old designer. Which also means balancing is going to be more delicate. But it's not necessarily for the worst, of course. We have never had that much creative freedom in SoH before the 3D designer, and although I too would be one to argue it is overly concept for the average player, this isn't the point I aim to debate in here, so I will refrain from discussing it in this thread, and invite each and every reader to do the same.


"So what's your point?" you may ask. Volume. The way volume is addressed in Shores of Hazeron has never really been balanced in itself. It is pure fact to say that bigger is better, and in my opinion, this is an issue for three reasons:

First issue, it unbalances planetary conquest quite greatly in the invader's favour. Buildings cannot take up as much volume as spacecrafts, and as a result, meta defence buildings are going to be extremely vulnerable to meta warships. This shouldn't be the case: a well-defended world should not be vulnerable to single warships. Fleets can retreat. Cities cannot.

Second issue, it creates a single viable meta design for warships: as big as possible. And since more faces mean the design is going to be more costly in terms of time (and resources? Not sure about that), and that the design's boundaries are a giant square, the best and biggest design possible is going to be a gigantic cube. Let's be real, Borgs are badass, but battles of giant, untextured cubes don't really sell much in space operas. To sum it up, it creates bland military fleets, since there is no real need for lighter ships, and, henceforth, no need for diversified rosters in your navy.

Third issue, it's pay-to-win. Hear me out: as far as I know, giant ships can take more than a month to build, and by the time your fleet is completed, your current subscription month will have ended, if your empire has not been ended first. This means the ones who cling to the game and renew their subscriptions are the only ones who really get to enjoy actual space battles in which they get to rival strong fleets. Of course, being more invested in a game ought to be rewarding, but in my opinion being able to even have a fighting chance in war shouldn't be something locked behind a paywall.


Now, to the solutions I suggest, which I consider to be rather easily feasible--but I could be wrong.

The first suggestion I would like to submit would be to make volume have more significant effects on the HP, armour and systems of military buildings. By systems, I mean weapon systems, shields and whatnot. Since buildings cannot be as big as spacecrafts, they should require less volume to achieve similar stats. This would make planetary conquest a bit less of a joke, and more of a serious matter for the invader to consider before acting upon it. Defenders would have a fighting chance if they bothered building a decent defence grid in the first place, and invaders would be forced to commit more forces in such a fight, making the overall battle all the funnier.

Second suggestion would be to implement buff/debuff factors linked to ship volume. Smaller crafts should have slight acceleration bonuses to make them more manoeuvrable without hindering the ship's other systems, as well as armour bonuses to represent the effect of a compact hull. On the other hand, a speed and armour debuff would be linked to increasing your spacecraft's volume, rendering them more vulnerable to damage, and less practical for sublight travel. Vessels that have more acceleration could also have a higher chance of dodging shots, that heavier crafts would be unlikely to have. All of this would give lighter ships some degree of purpose in space warfare, and bring a whole new diversity of meta designs, as building huge would no longer be ideal for combat. The ideal size of warships would not only get smaller but also more diversified. It wouldn't only be about which empire has the most resources, but also which one makes the smartest mix of ship classes to optimise their fleet in the long run.

PLEASE DO NOTE that I am in no way advocating for a suppression of fitting slots such as armour, gravity/rocket drives, and so forth. I am simply suggesting including effects produced by your ship's volume, which would act on the design's stats. Hypothetically, if you built a huge cube and got all those debuffs, but still wanted to compensate the armour debuff by adding more armour than usual, you definitely could, but you'd have to sacrifice space otherwise beneficial for weapons, shields, engines... it's all about making "big" less OP and overall perfect for spacecrafts, and forcing the player to make choices, which is often where things get interesting.

EDIT Third suggestion that I came up with in the comments below, would be aligned to the second one to some degree; giving smaller ships some degree of evasion from weapon locking systems, according to range. The smaller the ship, the closer you'd have to be to lock it and fire at it, or at least fire at it with acceptable accuracy, which would make more sense. A delay for locking any target in a spacecraft could also be another idea, something like "the smaller the target and the higher its acceleration in design stats, the longer the lock." Small frigates would be able to play on that to harass big ships, without causing an alarming rate of damage, but still being able to get some good shots on the big ship, and withdrawing before being caught in its range or locked and shot down, thus forcing the enemy fleet to dispatch their own interceptors in order to chase down yours. The big-ass ship in itself would not be useless, as it would still be a solid countermeasure against medium-to-large enemy ships, and military buildings planetside, but they would be dependent on a more diversified fleet (medium, tanky warships like destroyers, light, speedy interceptors like frigates, and so on), just as any genuine capital ship should be.


Please note that these suggestions are presented as complementary rather than in a "either one or the other" scheme.

I'd like to hear what y'all think about that. Honestly, I feel like right now, SoH does not invite players to design a diversified navy. Civilian fleets (explorers, cargo ships...) still call for some variety in designs, but whenever it comes down to war, the fact there is only one meta, and that spacecrafts are overall stronger than defence buildings, greatly hinders war gameplay as a whole in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks for reading all of that, and be well, all of you!

[QuakeIV]

I’ll note that the ‘we need a variety of ship sizes’ problem is as old as time, more or less, and that speed/dodge chance tends to always be a dead end. It either ends in big ships still being better, or little ships being invincible due to dodge chance going too high and the opposite problem happens. The issue here is there isn’t much trade off, one class of ship will inherently be superior to the other when playing purely with dodge chance, and speed in this case doesn’t matter much because the fights tend to be over fixed targets like high ql resource worlds.

In the real world, the only reason people don’t show up with 50 aircraft carriers every time the police pull someone over is economic. I would suggest dealing with that problem is indeed for the most part fundamentally an economic one.

It’s not impossible to deal with the issue at hand by fiddling with combat mechanics but it’s not usually a simple answer there either.

[martianant]

In the real world, the only reason people don’t show up with 50 aircraft carriers every time the police pull someone over is economic.  I would suggest dealing with that problem is indeed for the most part fundamentally an economic one.

It’s not impossible to deal with the issue at hand by fiddling with combat mechanics but it’s not usually a simple answer there either.

Check out https://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2527 it may interest you

I postulate some ideas on how to overhaul the economic system so money maybe matters more and could be used as a way to limit expansion and shipbuilding. The TL;DR is by not being able to print infinite money and instead relying on taxes and other incomes, and by having upkeep for things, an empire can only field as large of a fleet as it can financially support. Larger empires -> larger economic base -> larger/more fleets and bases.

[Kami]

tl;dr? That's a huge wall of text

[martianant]

tl;dr? That's a huge wall of text

The TL;DR is by not being able to print infinite money and instead relying on taxes and other incomes, and by having upkeep for things, an empire can only field as large of a fleet as it can financially support. Larger empires -> larger economic base -> larger/more fleets and bases.

[Yurk Embassy]

I’ll note that the ‘we need a variety of ship sizes’ problem is as old as time, more or less, and that speed/dodge chance tends to always be a dead end.  It either ends in big ships still being better, or little ships being invincible due to dodge chance going too high and the opposite problem happens.  The issue here is there isn’t much trade off, one class of ship will inherently be superior to the other when playing purely with dodge chance, and speed in this case doesn’t matter much because the fights tend to be over fixed targets like high ql resource worlds.

In the real world, the only reason people don’t show up with 50 aircraft carriers every time the police pull someone over is economic.  I would suggest dealing with that problem is indeed for the most part fundamentally an economic one.

It’s not impossible to deal with the issue at hand by fiddling with combat mechanics but it’s not usually a simple answer there either.

Although economics remain an interesting factor to address for fixing the issue, the fact is that there is absolutely no disadvantage of building as big as possible, aside of building time. Which in itself, is unrealistic as the bigger you build, the less stable your framework is going to be, and the more sensitive to damage and speed it will become. It also is detrimental to the game, for reasons I mentionned above (building time vs. subscription time, meta ships being plain and simple giant cubes).

The buffs and debuffs I'm suggesting are relatively slight (as in, you could still have a well-armoured titanic ship if you're willing to sacrifice some of your weapons' power, and their shields would still render them very resilient anyway), and these changes are in no way meant to let a small craft obliterate a huge one in 1v1. Rather let a couple of well-fitted, armoured, mid-sized crafts stand a solid chance against a big-ass cube, and, in most cases, allow well-fitted light ships to harass bigger ones longer before they either fall or retreat. It's all about making titanic ships less worth it. Make it less worth it to send a ship that took one month to build into battle with no escort, by making them more vulnerable and less optimised. Not rendering them obsolete, as they would still be able to pack an obscene degree of weaponry, but rather forcing fleets of more compact and manoeuvrable vessels to form around them.

An additional suggestion I'll edit into the first message, would be to give smaller ships some degree of evasion from weapon locking systems, according to range. The smaller the ship, the closer you'd have to be to lock it and fire at it, or at least fire at it with acceptable accuracy, which would make more sense. Small frigates would be able to play on that to harass big ships, without causing an alarming rate of damage, but still being able to get some good shots on the big ship, and withdrawing before being caught in its range, thus forcing the enemy fleet to dispatch their own interceptors to chase down yours. The big-ass ship in itself would not be useless, as it would still be a solid countermeasure against medium-to-large enemy ships, and military buildings planetside, but they would be dependent on a more diversified fleet (medium, tanky warships like destroyers, light, speedy interceptors like frigates, and so on), just as any genuine capital ship should be.

Put simply, I'm advocating for changes that ought to promote an "Artillery/Heavy Cavalry/Light Cavalry" type of trinity, which in my opinion would make space battles waaaay more tactical and interesting.

When it comes to military buildings, I do maintain their stats need to be drastically buffed. A max-sized military weapon system and a max-sized spacecraft, both with nothing but power plant and weapon bay, should at least deal identical damage. Same thing for armour, shields and sensors. Otherwise you're just giving the attacker the upper hand by default, which is ridiculous.

[Neils Iyssada]

One thing I could see about ship diversity : it requires Haxus to first add a proper fleet mode.

[Norm49]

This show once again that the new ship designer just doesn't work.

[Rockinsince87]

Lots to agree with here. Bigger should not = better.

There is a lot that can be done to provide balance. 

Realistically the larger the ship, the slower it should be inherently. It should be hard to maneuver aka dodge. Smaller ships should move much faster and be difficult to hit. Unles the design calls for some massive engine voulme. 

Weapons should have different hit to damage ratios. Weapons that have a high ability to hit should have lower damage. Weapons that have lower ability to hit should have higher damage. Then throw in some multipliers based on type of weapon, aka physical shells vs beam vs all the others. Targeting/Acquisition aka hit chance could be dictated by overhauling sensors.

Sensors could be overhauled to provide additional balance. Sensors along the line of something you see in Aurora 4x. Passive vs Active sensors. This alone would provide a gigantic rebalance and change how ships are designed based on purpose. External link for reference: https://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Sensors

So active sensors, would be required for target acquisition, and instant identification while giving away the source ships position and radar signature. Active sensors would naturally have their own range limitations and volume requirements. Survey sensors would fall under active sensors but have their own mechanics. Let them function the way that they do but don't give them any combat abilities. This could have a research tier that improves functions.

Passive sensors would fall under two types, Thermal and Electromagnetic signatures. These would have much higher ranges naturally and their own volume requirements. EM signatures would detect shields and colonies at longer ranges. Thermal would detect missiles/torpedo's, beam weapon sources as well as engines. If generic speed multipliers for ships were added to helm controls/ships orders you could have: All Stop, Dead slow, Slow, Standard/Cruse, Full and Flank. These speeds would just be multipliers of your ships design speed limitations. This would allowed players to fly with a lower thermal signature in combat operation zones. This means a ship with huge engine volume (big ship) will have a larger signature at any speed as expected. Ships with their shields down would put out a much lower EM signature. Thermal sensors could have a research tier that improves functions. 

Turrets would naturally use these acquisition sensors as well. Their ability to provide point defense could be based on the ability for sensors. 

This adds an additional area for space and the natural environment to play a role. Certain star systems could have natural sensor inhibiting qualities like nebulas. Being close to different types of planets could provide different disruptions. Example, thermal sensors have a hard time distinguishing what's going on inferno planets. Frozen planets thermal sensors would work really really well. EM sensors would work in both situations BUT could be disrupted by the type of atmosphere. 

These above changes would dramatically force players to design ships based on function/role. You would not be able to build a "I win ship". A player would be forced to think and consider the balance of reactor power output (EM and thermal signature), engine size and acceleration (Thermal signature), Shield strength and type (EM signature), and finally all the various sensors types and ranges. With the proper fleet controls, you would be pressed to build fleets with various types of ships and capabilities. 

This would change the way players interact and make decisions. Do I warp in and survey this system blindly? If I do so I'm going to generate a massive EM spike. Do I care? nah, get the survey data and warp out. Any player in the system (starting out or advanced) would detect the EM spike. A thermal and EM scan could let the surveying ship get he idea if there are any colonies or ships present. They might not even be able to detect all or some of them based on the ship design, size of the colonies, and the star systems natural interference. 

On the flip side, a colony and or player in the system would see an EM spike form the ship conducting the survey scan since it's considered an active sensor. A player could order all stop and reduce power to conceal them self's. Do I move in to investigate? 

Honestly if you want the game to be more interesting and "realistic" you actually have to implement realistic elements. Any attempt to balance an "Arcade" style systems will result in a "Arcade" style system when you are done just rebalanced.

[Greydog]

I have always advocated for #1 to a degree. A well thought out and implemented defense should always at least give the attacker reason for pause. Not necessarily only because of larger weapons or stronger shields, but because it makes the battle more than "park and shoot" which is pretty much where all of SoH warfare is at atm.

What warfare in SOH needs are uses for actual tactics. Like LoS that forces you to maneuver to actually bring your guns to bear, or multiple smaller ships that can actually do damage to that Leviathan. (giving smaller faster ships value. Finding ways to force the attacker to the planet so all the troops, aircraft and assault vehicles can also have some value.

IMO the real problem with warfare in SoH is its extremely limited scope.