Balance: Shield delay #9930
Balance: Shield delay #9930
Conversation
Preserves their performance relative to human shields, and the large/small split mirrors human shields. The Lunarium's small recovery module is optimised for hit-and-run usage on small ships, but a future large recovery module might instead be optimised for tanking with large ships, and hence have higher base regen with no delay.
I misremembered and thought human ones had 120, not 240. Having done some playtesting, I think ~3-5 seconds is probably about the right length of time for most delays to last; 1-2 second delays felt too short.
Quantumshark
added
the
balance
|
Seems to me at least initially that for the current Wanderer campaign, Wanderer shields are better left without a delay. First they fight the Unfettered, who use trackers extensively; to a shield with delay, this would probably keep causing the delay timer to reset after a bunch of spaced-apart hits. The Wanderers then go to fight the Mereti, who are good at wrecking shields. Leave Bunrodea to Derpy, if they're not being used for any story then I don't think they necessitate changing rightaway. Seems like an opportunity for a Shield Delayer outfit to me though.
|
The Mereti are good at bypassing shields, so the characteristics of Wanderer shield generators are not as relevant during the Mereti fights as they are elsewhere. |
Longer delay balances out the very strong total regen/ton, and fits thematically with the Wanderers' long-term thinking and general patience.
|
Seems like a good concept, but haven't tested or done any real analysis. For the Remnant, I do agree that any of their ships that can either outrun typicaly opponents or cloak is probably a good candidate for getting a delay in exchange for an increase in regen capability. Definitely fits with their intended combat style and reinforce the fast in-and-out-of-combat methodology. |
Most ships recieved -50% to base regen, delayed regen equal to their prior base regen, and a 3.5 second delay. Albatross unchanged because it's clearly built to tank rather than disengage, Smew and Puffin unchanged because they're never going to be trying to re-engage or otherwise take a risky course of action, so being slightly more survivable under fire is more useful than being able to recover faster out of combat. Ibis recieves more delayed regen (150% of prior base regen) but a longer delay (7.5 seconds) to provide more regen to give to its carried units when supporting them - this style could also appear on future Remnant carriers.
|
The tiny syscore is present on fighters and could have some delayed regen? |
|
I think it might be premature to have this open now. While I do want to make use of shield delay more widely, we also have #9616 and #9851 open, both of which will majorly change up how powerful shield and hull repair outfits are. It seems pointless to discuss specifics on making use of shield delay when those two are open and likely to be merged first. |
Balance
This PR implements the feature for which the attributes in #9771 were added.
Summary
Human, Wanderer and Coalition shields now have a more nuanced size scaling than the standard improved performance with size - the larger ones have better non-delayed regen per ton, but worse total regen. As large ships cannot dodge or disengage as effectively as small ones (especially with #9616), this means large generators are still favourable for large ships, but small ships are significantly better able to recover from damage than they could previously. This also makes human regen less terrible in the early game.
Regenerators provide all their shield generation up-front. As pointed out here, this makes more sense thematically, and also provides a non-delayed regen option for small ships in the early-mid game, so there's more room for build customisation. Similarly, Ka'het shield generators are unchanged, because thematically it feels more logical for them to have continuous shield generation to match their continuous energy drain, and also because the grand restorer already uses a form of delay.
Korath systems cores also remain unchanged, because the Korath are not a faction that builds ships designed for the kind of hit-and-run tactics that would benefit from delayed regen - their fighters tend not to use shield generators at all, and with the exception of a handful of Mereti ships the Korath don't have any other ships with the speed to really perform hit-and-run attacks.
Most Remnant ships were given -50% base regen and gained delayed regen equal to their prior base regen (so, +50% total) with a 3.5 second delay. The exceptions were the Ibis, which gained more delayed regen with a longer delay to better serve its role as a carrier, and the Albatross, Puffin and Smew, which are unchanged.
The Bunrodea also don't really have any hit-and-run optimised ships, but I think it'd be more interesting to do something with their boosters and limiters delay-wise rather than leave them unchanged.
The Pug are left unchanged, because changing them in any way would hugely alter the balance of the fights against them in FW. They could be changed if there was a significant desire for it, though.
Testing Done
I did do some minor playtesting to get the delays to feel right, but I haven't yet fully tested the balance implications of this.
When either this or #9616 is merged, the other will need to be re-playtested to confirm that having both of them together is balanced.
Todo