Craft Weapons DPS Spreadsheet

[Eddie]

Ah, yes. I was looking at STR_BATTLESHIP. Thank you for clearing that up. And I actually have looked at Silver Towers before and seen the shield on it... Stupid me.

With the addition of pilots, Piratez vessels got a huge boost in effectiveness (better dodge, accuracy, engagement speed). Because of this I guess Dioxine will do a rebalance of aircombat soon. Maybe we will see more shields on enemy vessels as a result of that.

[ohartenstein23]

He did a little with the +10% accuracy boost, but I think it might not be enough with the huge effect high bravery or reactions has on the air game.

[legionof1]

Fine tuned balance of the air game is not a big deal. So long as some gateing of progress is occurring.

[Eddie]

So long as some gateing of progress is occurring.

Exactly. It seems to me you can take on strong vessels too early.

According to ohartenstein23's spreadsheets, you don't need high tech to take down a battleship (the 7500 HP thing). Kraken, Bonaventura, an interceptor. 105 mm Rockets, 50 mm Cannon and Seagulls. Maxed pilots in this setup and if you take one less seagull launcher the spreadsheet says it's a defeat and not a win. If you have a forth craft to contribute damage, you don't need maxed accuracy on all pilots. The most difficult thing to obtain here tech wise is the Kraken. The battleship blueprints that are required can get dropped in a base defence.

[Eddie]

My thoughts on air combat balance:

The pilot bonuses are too high. Low end weapons like the 25 mm Cannon get an inapropriately high boost in damage output. For the pilot bonuses, half the current values seem balanced values. I would go even lower (max +10% acc, +10% dodge, +50% approach speed). Then slap a bit of shielding (5 for medium ships, 10 for big ships) on the military vessels. This hurts low tech weapons more (as they are low damage), requiring higher tech to engange these ships.
Finally, I would like to have dodge bonuses and penalties tied to the combat stances. Cautious gets +10% dodge, aggressive gets -10% dodge. Right now there is no reason to ever use anything else than aggressive unless you outrange the enemy vessel. With this change, maybe differences in firing speeds of the weapons can be reintroduced to the stances as well.

[Dioxine]

I think +25% acc at max is just fine; I don't want pilots to be negligible. Doubling the output of a crappy cannon is not such a great feat.
Some shielding on large enemy ships - mixed feelings here. In general it's a good idea, but do we want to return to the age of long-range Lancer strikes being 90% of all air combat?

Acc/Dodge/Approach speed bonuses depending on stance is a good idea, but it requires new code. Firing speed does differ on these stances, just only for a selection of weapons (like 50 mm cannon and all missiles).

[Meridian]

Exactly. It seems to me you can take on strong vessels too early.

According to ohartenstein23's spreadsheets, you don't need high tech to take down a battleship (the 7500 HP thing). Kraken, Bonaventura, an interceptor. 105 mm Rockets, 50 mm Cannon and Seagulls. Maxed pilots in this setup and if you take one less seagull launcher the spreadsheet says it's a defeat and not a win. If you have a forth craft to contribute damage, you don't need maxed accuracy on all pilots. The most difficult thing to obtain here tech wise is the Kraken. The battleship blueprints that are required can get dropped in a base defence.

Since when can Kraken, Bonaventura and HK even catch a Battleship?

The result is not "enemy down", but "enemy escaped & burnt hellerium"...

[ohartenstein23]

The Kraken is not so hard to get if you've been interrogating engineers and pilots.  Having maxed stat pilots enough for all of those would be more difficult.  Also, Meridian is right that catching the battleship is not really feasible with craft as slow as the Bonny, but if you know where the ship will start slowing down and patrolling, and have your Kraken plus lots of DPS already in the area, it certainly does not take high tech levels to down it.  Before the pilot update, I managed to shoot one down with a Kraken and a surplus of Naval Guns along with whatever else I could get in the air.

[Eddie]

The accuracy of weapons is just a damage multiplier. But if you can get +25% from a pilot, the +10% from targeter are not that impressive. That's why I would lower the bonus, to keep the targeter interesting enough.
The dodge bonus in my opinion is a problem though. High dodge makes air combat more of a chance game, and this is not somthing I find fun. Prime example of this is the jetbike. With a 28% dodge pilot, a 70% hit chance shipping will have a 12% hit chance. Put a gauss on that jetbike and it can kill gunships singlehandedly, but in a russian roulett fashion. A counter to that would be less dodge in general (or even more accuracy on shippings) or higher fire rate with same dps on shippings to smooth out the statistics. This is my opinion of course and it may be this state of the game is intentional.

Btw, do thrusters stack? Can you get +18% dodge from two thrusters?

[Dioxine]

Note that jetbike has low HP and if the 78% dodge fails, you're toast; it's also the highest dodge craft by far. Also you have only 58% dodge vs. Mercs and Star Gods.
Targeters are used anyway. With dual cannons, that +20% from 2 targeters does make a difference. Also you get a large radar range bonus from them, which is hard to ignore.
And yeah, thrusters do stack as well (if I'm not mistaken)

As for the battleship battle, the result is 'win', but does it mean 'no losses' or 'kraken destroyed (along with 4 maxed out pilots), ventura heavily damaged'? Also note that you need 8 maxed-out soldiers to pull it off, which isn't that easy, especially reactions- and bravery- wise.

Indeed the enemy shippings could use some buff, though.

[Meridian]

Indeed the enemy shippings could use some buff, though.

I don't know... I "think" I am in the late game now (ep #155)... but I don't feel like I can do much... just barely shot down a Messenger (Nightmare, 2xSeagull, 2xGauss).

PS: I have researched many guns (e.g. Avalanche), but none seems to do more damage then previous models (I mean 6x80 or 5x90 or 4x160 or 1x600... is always just around 500 damage... do I really need to max out everything and bring 4 superfast craft with megapilots to shoot down a bigger ship?) I'm afraid that unless I will be forced to shoot them down by some research deadlock or something, I won't bother at all... which is a real shame.

[ohartenstein23]

I made a the sheet such that the 'lose' condition is the lead interceptor getting destroyed, on average - the Kraken will likely be very heavily damaged, and if you're unlucky, dead, even if the sheet says that you win with no losses, on average.  My first battleship shootdown had a Kraken with 1% remaining HP, so just because it's theoretically possible to win, doesn't mean it's a good idea economy-wise.  Similarly, throwing your expensive Jetbike and a well-trained gal at gunships is likely to lose you a lot of money when you could just use a heftier interceptor instead.

[ohartenstein23]

@Meridian: The heavy craft weapons do eventually have higher overall damage output, even the Naval Gun does more than the Avalanche given enough time.  The better weapons simply frontload the damage, reducing the chance of you getting shot down.  And even later in the game, when you have almost no landed ships, shooting down the big stuff is your source of monthly score.

Edit: You don't really need maxed stuff to do it, some good pilots plus a few good weapons is all that's necessary.  Four average speed craft on a target is possible once you know where the target is headed.

[Dioxine]

Since you can use up to 4 crafts in air combat, interceptions with a single one shouldn't be feasible against the toughest enemies, even with the late game tech.

Stingray/Hammermite/Lancer/Avalanche is matter of choice, not progression. All are deadly enough and substantially better than Seagulls.

[Eddie]

And yeah, thrusters do stack as well (if I'm not mistaken)

Going for maximum dodge is really powerful right now. With two thrusters the 10% dodge interceptors get a near jetbike dodge of 28% + pilot bonus. Brave Whaler can get 32% with 3 thrusters and Sabre tops it all with 33%.

Vs a 70% hit enemy with 28% dodge pilots:
The Crab has effective 993 HP + 5 armor;  525 * 70 / (70 - (5 + 28))
Predator has effective 1125 HP;  225 * 70 / (70 - (10 + 9 + 9 + 28))

This would mean a max dodge Predator is comparable as a lead attack craft to a Crab. Even better becaused dodged HP doesn't need to be repaired. This is just math though, I did not test it ingame if that is actually true. Also please comment wheather you think my math is valid, because I did not account for the Crab's armor.