Time To Kill - My Biggest Starbase Concern

Saltylelele

Well-known endo
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#41
Talking about the ship designs and materials for now is not yet hmm current ? its not yet the time for it imo. (there is like 3 alloys done as materials and 21 ores).

Also bigger ships are slow and fighters can easily side strafe them, so that we saw in battle video and its good that it is so.

Devs have already said in interview that material purity and refinement to alloys make a huge difference in how the materials perform (meaning i assume the ships will weight even more). => at some interview they said that well built BIG ships will take 10 000 hits before they go down (or something like that). => but as always ships can not be 100% resistant to everything so, there will be balence vs that, just have to have wide range of guns with you.

Teamwork and tactics will lead to both sides prolong the fights. ( its another matter if skill makes a difference ).

Also to note, players/alliances/"corps" will sell ships that perform well in PvP, so those premade ships will not be as @Atreties stated.

I am pretty sure indeed that the player-made ships will take over anyway. Alloys are also a pretty nice system to make mining and refining waay more important.
 
Joined
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Messages
29
#42
here is a data dump from discord

LauriFBToday at 2:54 PM

we will release unedited footages from our latest combat tests also, but those tests were also artificially hectic in order to get more strain on tech and to root out issues faster

there's also edited set definitely coming, latest test saw a ton of very cool incidents

LauriFBToday at 2:55 PM

"real" experience most likely doesn't include infinite fighters at 2-3 minutes away from the fight, so the feeling will be different albeit action itself may turn hectic fast

when you see a tiny fighter in the horizon it's only maybe 30 seconds and you are next to each other, and cannons blazing all the way, so the fights turn very quickly very hectic

most likely sneaking behind is best tactic, the other never saw what was coming

LauriFBToday at 2:59 PM

I usually crew a gunship with two others and while it happens it's very rare for fighters to take out the whole crew, and so they usually focus on taking down the ship ... and of course gunship is built for that, and can easily sustain hundreds of hits

fighters in the other hand usually get screwed from a few hits, a few dozen at least

but they rely on speed and manouverability, so you just need to know how your vessel works the best

our best fighter pilots, based what I've been watching their flying, know when to disengage


ie. they leave just before the gunship gunner is going to tear them apart

and return 30 seconds later from another angle

LauriFBToday at 3:02 PM

videos will focus on showcasing the experience

we had 30 developers in a tight space with infinite respawns, so you can imagine it was pretty hectic

LauriFBToday at 3:03 PM

well, so many fighters coming at gunship that they collided with each other multiple times

and I shot down several fighters with bazooka since they came too close and just stay there .. hehe

from technical side, our matchmaking server crashed right away since it didn't have enough memory - but that was actually good thing, as the game actually survived that and all players who were connected didn't even notice it. once server came back people who had crashes also rejoined the fight

LauriFBToday at 3:05 PM

gunships are well armored and their generator/propellant area is extra armored

also their generator is arranged in a way that least volatile parts are facing outward

ArtturiFBToday at 3:06 PM

A really interesting thing I observed during the fight was how the differences in the Knight and Spatha's designs affect the way they get destroyed. So many knights got cut in half while spathas often got their stern blown off instead

LauriFBToday at 3:07 PM

hard to tell is that good or bad thing - I saw a lot videos where empire spathas blew up pretty easily

yeah, propellant tank explodes pretty easily

LauriFBToday at 3:07 PM

but it's only small explosion, but fighters have only one or two propellants so they won't fly after that

gunships have so many propellants around that even three of them exploding doesn't stop the ship

LauriFBToday at 3:08 PM

yeah there's some very cool splitting up footages coming ..


 

Jetthetank

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
118
#43
It looks like there will be automation, and I think with enough Yolol chips triggering other yolol chips in a complex system, you could make AI ingame possibly
Just might be really complex.
 

DrunkRussianBear

Chancellor of the Argentavian Federation
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
313
#44
I d
In short, ship-based TTK seems too short.

Armor plating appears to shred like paper, even against handheld tools and weapons, much less against ship-mounted weapons. Nearly every ship-mounted weapon appears to punch all the way through even a sizable ship, and due to the complex and inter-connected nature of shipbuilding in SB, if nearly anything that isn't empty space is in that path, there's a good chance the ship is disabled or heavily crippled.

Happen to hit where the generator is? Dead ship.
Cockpit? Disabled ship
Wiring? Partially disabled ship, if not fully
Engine? Partially disabled ship, if not fully
Weapon ammo box? Causes explosion, possibly disabling ship, or even causing a chain reaction and a dead ship
Boarder? Cuts in very quickly, and can attack virtually anything within seconds to heavily disable or even fully destroy a ship
And this is THROUGH plating, on a ship that's NOT tiny.

Yes, players will be able to manually craft and manually place multiple layers of different types of armor plating to bolt to the hull, or surrounding every single critical component that's protect-able, but the devs have stated that doing so will heavily show a ship down, likely making them a very easy to hit target, and thus heavily negating any benefit.

From what we've seen and if SB is anything like any similar game, ships will be sizable investments, take a lot of time to gather for and a lot of time to set up and construct. Investments this substantial should not be as fragile as wet paper. Fights should not come down to who got the first lucky hit.

Obviously, these concerns are based on only seeing short videos and not actually playing the game, but I'd seen videos of dev fights in other similar games before playing them, and I did not get this impression. Maybe things will somehow be different in practice, but I don't see how that'd be possible from the examples we have available to us so far.

As far as a suggestion for how to resolve this - it's difficult to say without actually playing the game, but a good start would be to do something along the lines of doubling the durability armor plating, and possibly other sensitive components as well.

What are your thoughts on time to kill from what we've seen?
I do remember that plating strength was reduced significantly in the testing videos so the time to kill in them is not representative of the final game.
 

Morrgard

Master endo
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Aug 9, 2019
Messages
374
#45
I am pretty sure indeed that the player-made ships will take over anyway. Alloys are also a pretty nice system to make mining and refining waay more important.
Ohhh they most certainly will. There will be so many player designs made that will vary so much in design type, size and functionality that there will most likely be an abundance to choose from!
 

DrunkRussianBear

Chancellor of the Argentavian Federation
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Aug 9, 2019
Messages
313
#46
If they can pull off the damage model correctly you'll have some fairly awesome battle damage post battle, you'll end up with scenarios where you'll be analysing warships and figuring out where ships were hit and still returned to base safely in order to correctly up-armour specific ship compartments.
 

Vexus

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Messages
280
#47
I love the idea of pouring over a wrecked ship to learn 'how it works'. This is hours of gameplay just learning what made that one faction's ship so difficult to fight. Seeing where all the parts are and learning its strengths and weaknesses. Someone's amazing and rare, closely guarded ship design, if you manage to secure one, you'd haul back to your protected secure Area-51 hangar to study it's advanced technology ;)
 

Morrgard

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Messages
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#48
If they can pull off the damage model correctly you'll have some fairly awesome battle damage post battle, you'll end up with scenarios where you'll be analysing warships and figuring out where ships were hit and still returned to base safely in order to correctly up-armour specific ship compartments.
Like battle stress testing haha


I love the idea of pouring over a wrecked ship to learn 'how it works'. This is hours of gameplay just learning what made that one faction's ship so difficult to fight. Seeing where all the parts are and learning its strengths and weaknesses. Someone's amazing and rare, closely guarded ship design, if you manage to secure one, you'd haul back to your protected secure Area-51 hangar to study it's advanced technology ;)
Yea, ship designs from different players & factions will be intriguing to see, there will be such a large quantity of them. And then the chance of you managing to kill that well designed ship AND then getting the opportunity to research it I think will be rare. But it would be cool to see something like it
 

Vexus

Master endo
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Messages
280
#49
managing to kill that well designed ship AND then getting the opportunity to research it I think will be rare.
Self-destructing your own ship becomes a game in itself. Maybe your ship gets disabled in combat; you spend the time to destroy all your YOLOL chips and force your generator to explode so the enemies get nothing of value except the scrap of your hull. The attackers then might race against time, taking extra risks to finish you off before you destroy the valuable intel.
 

Morrgard

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#50
Self-destructing your own ship becomes a game in itself. Maybe your ship gets disabled in combat; you spend the time to destroy all your YOLOL chips and force your generator to explode so the enemies get nothing of value except the scrap of your hull. The attackers then might race against time, taking extra risks to finish you off before you destroy the valuable intel.
yea.. self-destruction sequences I'm sure will be a thing, nobody wants you to get valuable information on how they're ships work internally with electricity and whats where mainly yolol chips I'm sure people will want to protect.

Things are many ship designs will have features, hidden ones too that no other ship has at least yet until that ship eventually gets taken over.

But it definitely won't be easy to get enough of a ship to research after a battle in any case, either because of self destruction or the battle itself. And the fact that the one ship you may want to research is down but the rest of the fleet you are fighting is not..
 
Joined
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Messages
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#51
Well personally i hadn't really felt ship TTK was a problem until this thread. A lot of valuable discussion going on in here and i have learned a lot.

I feel like there are a couple more things that need to be taken into consideration apart from simply armor effectiveness. One of these things is crew size and how it should be connected to ship size. The larger the ship the more crew you will need, since you are a bigger target and thus easier to hit. So if, for example, you have a gunship you can't expect to be 100% effective in combat with it as a solo player. You will need others manning the guns and/or doing repairs with you.

Secondly is that whatever ships you are able to buy when first starting out don't need to be top of the line. Like many other MMOs out there, you can get mediocre stuff from the NPCs but if you want the real good stuff you either make it yourself or you buy it from another player. Heck, buy one of these mediocre ships and make upgrades to it yourself if you don't feel confident designing your own from scratch.

Both these issues can be solved by simply joining a group and not playing solo. "But what about players that only like to play solo?" I hear some of you asking. Well, let's face it. If you make a game where you can do everything alone with the same efficiency as a group, what is the point of groups? Solo players should be able to play the game, but they should also realize there are downsides to it as well.

Same with buying basic ships. Easy to get, cheaper then player made (possibly) but you know what you are getting.
 

Morrgard

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#52
Well personally i hadn't really felt ship TTK was a problem until this thread. A lot of valuable discussion going on in here and i have learned a lot.

I feel like there are a couple more things that need to be taken into consideration apart from simply armor effectiveness. One of these things is crew size and how it should be connected to ship size. The larger the ship the more crew you will need, since you are a bigger target and thus easier to hit. So if, for example, you have a gunship you can't expect to be 100% effective in combat with it as a solo player. You will need others manning the guns and/or doing repairs with you.

Secondly is that whatever ships you are able to buy when first starting out don't need to be top of the line. Like many other MMOs out there, you can get mediocre stuff from the NPCs but if you want the real good stuff you either make it yourself or you buy it from another player. Heck, buy one of these mediocre ships and make upgrades to it yourself if you don't feel confident designing your own from scratch.

Both these issues can be solved by simply joining a group and not playing solo. "But what about players that only like to play solo?" I hear some of you asking. Well, let's face it. If you make a game where you can do everything alone with the same efficiency as a group, what is the point of groups? Solo players should be able to play the game, but they should also realize there are downsides to it as well.

Same with buying basic ships. Easy to get, cheaper then player made (possibly) but you know what you are getting.
I dont believe there were going to be any more NPC's than the store clerks, but that may have been your reference point.

Solo play will be most definitely possible, it will just be rendered harder unless you want to play solo and play small.. those are the two main things about playing solo, as running a larger ship solo is going to be at the least very difficult. However as I see it this game is meant to be played in a group because of the features of the game making everything more "safe" and approachable in a group, whereas a solo player might get overrun

But you are definetly right, it will be a lot of factors for a ships durability and overall effectivity, crew, and size being major parts of that.
 
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#53
I trust the devs will balance weapon and armor stats so TTK feels right; something between insta-death and bulletsponge.
 

Morrgard

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374
#55
I mean yeah, but you'd be surprised how many people mess that "simple" formula up.
I trust the devs will balance weapon and armor stats so TTK feels right; something between insta-death and bulletsponge.
I trust it will be good, from what I have seen already it doesnt seem terrible, and I know i've seen developer comments where
it takes a few(hundreds)
shots for certain vessels before they go
 

LauriFB

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Frozenbyte
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#56
Our current damage model is far from complete, and currently we are not balancing damage/armor but testing the extreme cases. Balacing is coming later.

Our tests now are artificially bloated fights, as that's tecnically most challenging (a lot of shooting, a lot of damage, a lot of ships in a small space, infinite spawns very close to fighting area etc.). A lot of damage is also the most challenging technically speaking, so for current tests that's good, but it shouldn't be taken as any indication of the final experience. Also I doubt our tactics of "lets rush straight to the fire since we have free new ships" is the one players will be using, which also plays big part with the damage (the accuracy of turrets is not that great from any longer distances).

For avoiding damage there's already one very good tactic: keep your eyes open and have the fastest ship on the sector ;). That recipe can be spiced up by being experienced flying inside asteroid field (or have some automation for that), as chasing someone inside the asteroid field is very dangerous and it's also easy to lose visual contact inside there. I'm sure players will come up with a lot more tactics as well.

Our goal is to support all kinds of ship designs to support all play styles, and since the space is vast there should be room for everyone.
 

Morrgard

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#57
Our current damage model is far from complete, and currently we are not balancing damage/armor but testing the extreme cases. Balacing is coming later.

Our tests now are artificially bloated fights, as that's tecnically most challenging (a lot of shooting, a lot of damage, a lot of ships in a small space, infinite spawns very close to fighting area etc.). A lot of damage is also the most challenging technically speaking, so for current tests that's good, but it shouldn't be taken as any indication of the final experience. Also I doubt our tactics of "lets rush straight to the fire since we have free new ships" is the one players will be using, which also plays big part with the damage (the accuracy of turrets is not that great from any longer distances).

For avoiding damage there's already one very good tactic: keep your eyes open and have the fastest ship on the sector ;). That recipe can be spiced up by being experienced flying inside asteroid field (or have some automation for that), as chasing someone inside the asteroid field is very dangerous and it's also easy to lose visual contact inside there. I'm sure players will come up with a lot more tactics as well.

Our goal is to support all kinds of ship designs to support all play styles, and since the space is vast there should be room for everyone.
That's good to know.


I'm glad you are going to support all types of different ship designs allowing players to play out their personal preference of playstyle. It will be cool to see what they come up with then.

I'm curious as to what tactics players will take utilizing their playstyles too. But I figured long-range combat would not be too viable due to accuracy as you mentioned. Although there is a lot of talks about making such crafts. Exciting :)
 

Atreties

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
110
#59
Balacing is coming later...

...A lot of damage is also the most challenging technically speaking, so for current tests that's good, but it shouldn't be taken as any indication of the final experience.
Make sense, sounds good, and thanks for the answer. I'm glad to hear that TTK is something you guys will be keeping your eyes on to balance.
 
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