Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

Info Terminal => Updates => Topic started by: SirEmi on April 09, 2015, 12:03:09 PM



Title: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: SirEmi on April 09, 2015, 12:03:09 PM
+ Ships you meet in combat mission encounters are more competitive, They can install illegal modules and ship optimizations.
    * More dangerous missions over the 1 million power mark can have specialized combat fighters.

+ Pirate Hijacker mission reward multiplier has been reduced to 100% of enemy power instead of 200%, to make it in line with the other missions.

+ Combat mission ships are still vulnerable to Death Ray, but not as vulnerable as before.
    * For high level missions you'll also need higher level Death Ray modules to break the enemy defenses.

+ You can now use Action Points to complete ship / station scans, or wait for the timer.

New missions and features coming soon, now that we have the new system in place.

Godspeed commanders and have fun exploring space!



Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 02:47:30 PM
So, now we have new cluster somewhere ?


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Merkaba on April 09, 2015, 03:11:11 PM
could we please look into changing the scan read out?
Could we either see a list of the modules installed, so we could copy it for further reference.  

-or-

Could you make it so that once i have scanned a ship i can always see the modules/scan results?  leaving and coming back to the same ship wastes the hour I spent scanning it.


PS: I'm currently enjoying trying to figure out the new system.  Some of your ship combinations are very very powerful.  I dont want to say too powerful because that just admits defeat, but its a drastic increase in difficulty, not a minor one.


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lavis on April 09, 2015, 03:55:20 PM
My nest gave me nothing?

OVERLOAD IMMINENT!
Pirate station exploded in a ball of fire!
Target cargo bay was empty.

wasted 58 hours! :(


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Merkaba on April 09, 2015, 04:28:48 PM
Two people in my corp are saying the same thing.  the stations when destroyed are giving no loot.
anyone else having similar bug?

I havent done one myself to see if the loot was increased from the loot phase and thus it's just there.



Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 06:13:24 PM
It's happen to me too, SirEmi is this a bug or nest will not give resources ....


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 07:14:40 PM
First new nest ..
i lose first attempt because pirate ships do insane dmg ..
1. ship with 2782903 power make 4751715 dmg
2. ship with 1799440 power make 3946907 dmg

botom line Defender with   10961431 power make about 13 700 000 dmg thats more then double dmg then until now

also taking dmg is not normal 1 ship with 1316350 power take 4505146 dmg
station with 450 000 power take 1093493 dmg
*ps all ships have safety override modules
total reward is about 13 mil ..


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lavis on April 09, 2015, 07:30:43 PM
emi I'm sorry but the change to coms is terrible... just did a hijack at 3.5m only reward.. failed twice.. The top 3 ships were 700k power and I used 2.2 million attack and did not even make them flee. it seems I need to do 100% damage to every ship? Why on earth lower the reward by 100% and increase the difficulty by what seems to be 10x of what it was before...


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Merkaba on April 09, 2015, 07:36:52 PM
yeah we are going to have to study the game and how the ships are set up.

I've done a couple 3m reward looters. (around 8.5-9.0 m defender power)

one battle needed lots of shields to survive, another battle needed lots of damage to win.  

so it's not every ship is the same any more and that is good imo.
the battles are varied and more difficult now.  but they can be done.  

Scanning has now become important.!! this is great IMO. 
No longer can i just pop into orbit, activate the com and press a button to win because I know how it is.
I now need to look at all the ships and see the make up, do some scans, and decide how i want to beat the battle.

this will force people to learn more about the game.

**I'm not saying I 100% like it or there isn't some room for adjustment but its not the end of the world

thanks for the update and hope you are open to constructive proposals SirEmi :D  

Also I'd advice dropping down and collecting lower level payouts to relearn the system.
it's shocking how much of a difference the EMJO's and various optimizations make.


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Other_Bartel on April 09, 2015, 07:42:08 PM
Looks like SOS missions became a lot better income source


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 07:42:45 PM
yes but 11 death rays hit and didn't take down 1 ship (in second experiment nest)
so for what to use them , to make fire in cold nights ..


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Merkaba on April 09, 2015, 07:49:45 PM
yeah the death rays do little damage.  and with the EMJO's and now all the ships having some MAU's, they have more manpower.

The days of mk1 Death Rays taking out ships is over.  this too is good imo.  they were too powerful.
but a mk10 DeathRay would hit for more, but as you know they are hard to find and take alot of effort.
I'm not if using 10 death rays to make 1 mk10 is worth it.

Perhaps after time Emi will relook at the deathrays and increase their damage a little?  or allow for mk2 death ray to = 2 mk1 dmg instead of 1.25 mk1

if you had scanned the ship you might have seen that the ship had more than 100k manpower and since a death ray does 1-11k at mk1 it was going to take alot of them.

the emjo listed protection of 70% at mk53 is 70 + the 25% of the ship normally.  so you must kill 95% of the crew.

** sir emi this in effect reduces the amount of POW by 94%.  perhaps you can look into that ?  ***


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 08:08:23 PM
my proposition is to leave pirates as they was before and just turn of possibility to speed up pirates with AP or make that 1 AP speed up pirate mission for 10 min ...


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: SirEmi on April 09, 2015, 08:59:44 PM
my proposition is to leave pirates as they was before and just turn of possibility to speed up pirates with AP or make that 1 AP speed up pirate mission for 10 min ...

This update was in the making for some time, because combat needs to be interesting as well as challenging.

As pointed out above, you need to study the enemy fleet before attack and make a strategy, it should be easy once you get the hang of it.
I would suggest a mothership with a few fighters / specialized ships, and try to pair the interceptors against enemy damage dealers and bombers against enemy tankers.

Looking into counting all ships in the mothership hangar when taking the mission, to boost the mission power.

Good suggestion to keep the scan data if scan was completed on a particular ship, will make it so.

Also working on adding some more information in combat analysis, maybe a few icons to see what each ship type is, combat fighter, tanker, damage dealer so you don't get a surprise if you run into a bomber squadron  :)

Aside from that, all professions need to have something, and so mining and trading is less risky and moderately profitable, while combat should be challenging, riskier and more profitable.

I've checked the Pirate looter stations and there is always loot in the cargo bay, but if you choose to destroy the station with "Capture / Destroy" attack, there is a chance that all the loot will blow up with the station, so then it will say the cargo bay is empty because it was destroyed. However the real reward of the looter mission is the "Safety Override Mk ???" module you occasionally find, witch is worth a lot, kind of like a treasure hunt. More missions like that will be introduced soon, where the boss will have a really nice module or nothing.



Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lisunken on April 09, 2015, 09:10:08 PM
so, now we need a fleet carries too.  :)) now is the best time to build hang bay  hi


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Other_Bartel on April 09, 2015, 09:31:26 PM
Awesome,  :) I have been working on a mothership with hanger bays for some time now.

looks like it will pay off


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 09, 2015, 09:38:19 PM
but income per ship is already lower 50% if we have to use 3-4 ship for 1 mission then income will be much more lower and ship licence cost are very very high later, maybe then to lower cost of ship licence ..

i understand your intentions but changes are very extreme maybe with new update will all be balanced but with this change game is even slower than it was

collecting of death rays is very hard and making them useless is not best choice i think ..
i didn't count how much of them is needed now (probably MK XX)to take down 1 ship but if 11 death rays mk 1 didn't take down 1 ship to have 1 death ray mk XI we need to collect 41 death rays and that is not enough for 1 ship and still that death ray can miss  :))


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Other_Bartel on April 09, 2015, 09:56:37 PM
#no death rays B-)  like i've never had them


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Rostin on April 09, 2015, 10:16:51 PM

Good suggestion to keep the scan data if scan was completed on a particular ship, will make it so.


I assume if the ship is changed the scan data will need to be renewed right?


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Merkaba on April 09, 2015, 11:28:12 PM
I believe he meant that one you scan the enemy ship it will be viewable still if you close and look at it again later


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: sargas on April 09, 2015, 11:50:19 PM
or it keeps the same report until you re-scan the ship (like planetary reports which only report what you have already seen)


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: SirEmi on April 10, 2015, 06:49:51 AM

Good suggestion to keep the scan data if scan was completed on a particular ship, will make it so.


I assume if the ship is changed the scan data will need to be renewed right?

It's a simple fix. It will remember witch objects you scanned during the session and those will no longer need to be scanned unless you logout...

I might even add a window in combat analysis like you have on system view with the nav data, a small icon that when clicked will bring up the scanned ship stats for review.



Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Raptor on April 10, 2015, 08:19:40 AM
Thumbs up for the two-way communication that's taking place right now SirEmi :)


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Fenix on April 11, 2015, 11:54:04 AM
Cut the profits from coms in half while increasing their difficulty... I really hope the next thing on your list is cutting down the timers. It's nice and all that you are trying to make hanger bays actually useful but honestly most people will never be able to afford not only building them big enough to fit decent ships in there but also getting a bunch of specialized ships together with good enough modules and optimizations and things to actually win a fight. I mean if you actually have to use multiple ships now for COMs then that vastly increases the amount of money you have to invest in order to make money off of them... and you've cut the money we make from them in half. That is pretty dam harsh if you ask me.

I haven't had one of these "new" missions yet so I'll stick around and see but if it is as bad as I've read on here then honestly I think this particular update may have caused more problems than it solved and could require several updates in the future to balance it.

At least the updates are happening quickly however, that much is certainly an improvement.

*Edit- Also one of the points you brought up SirEmi with the AP mechanic allowing for more casual play, well this combat update kind of undermines that. It's not very casual if you have to start up a COM, scan the ships to see what they can do and then realize you aren't equiped to deal with the mission and you have to let it sit there for a week, two weeks, a month, however long it takes to not only create new modules or ships you might need but to also somehow get the money together to make what you need without doing COM's because you aren't equiped to deal with them. I feel like this update has made COM missions only for the super involved that can spend 8 hours or so every day playing this game, which certainly isn't me anymore I know that. I honestly don't even know how I'm supposed to play/enjoy this game right now.


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: Viracocha on April 11, 2015, 07:18:31 PM
SirEmi can you at least add total power when we pick up nest ?


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lisunken on April 12, 2015, 09:01:25 AM
Jumper LR #98530 Vs. Pirate station
Boarding assault
Jumper LR #98530 maneuvers into boarding range first.
Jumper LR #98530 sending Marines Assault Unit MK CD to find a boarding spot.
The boarding party found an area and sabotaged it, doing 654221 damage!
OVERLOAD IMMINENT!
Pirate station exploded in a ball of fire!

Target cargo bay was empty.

Objective: Destroy the Pirate station.
 
this is getting bad


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lisunken on April 16, 2015, 09:35:37 PM
37 m3 Taenite, 12 m3 Cabriite, 27 m3 Mercury, 265 m3 Diamond, 792 m3 Graphite, 348 m3 Lonsdaleite scooped into cargo bay.
Target cargo bay was empty.

Objective: Destroy the Pirate station.

This take over 140 hours. payout is get very bad. :4:


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: raphael on April 17, 2015, 12:47:44 AM
Maybe you forgot to power down?


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: lisunken on April 17, 2015, 06:13:38 PM
mmmmm. lol


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: JamJulLison on May 10, 2015, 06:00:10 PM
I got no issue with making COMs a little harder.  But reducing the pay is ridicules. Especially with how much it has been done. 


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: sargas on May 14, 2015, 11:03:31 AM
...start up a COM, scan the ships to see what they can do and then realize you aren't equiped to deal with the mission and you have to let it sit there for a week, two weeks, a month, however long...

Meanwhile I will have to fight your leavings along with my own mission, or wait until you return to finish your mission. I may have to start sending you a bill (I'm thinking 1QP per mission or even 1QP per ship))


Title: Re: Combat mission improvements & balancing
Post by: JamJulLison on May 14, 2015, 04:54:05 PM
Well since we can't speed up PVP timers now it seems like PVP is now non-existent. There is no way anyone is going to wait around for a large timer to resolve.