One thing I am finding incredibly difficult to deal with, now that the AI is using them, is phasors. Phasors are able to lock down my ships, even my titans, with minimal effort. The crew spends the whole time stunned while their ships fire away at me. Even if my titan is still undamaged because its shields are up, I have seen my crew get infinitely stunned. What methods are there to defend against this? EDITING FOR CLARITY: MORE DESIRABLE APPROACH If there aren't any, perhaps a "cooldown" or grace period should be placed on a crew/ship when it is stunned before it can be stunned again. This would be the best solution to prevent ships being rendered useless for an entire battle. It also leaves the phasors usable for damage or for stunning other ships that haven't been recently stunned. LESS DESIRABLE APPROACH Alternatively, you could place the "cooldown" on phasors similar to the Doom Cannon. This would help, but not prevent someone from alternating firing their phasors to keep a specific ship in lockdown. It also makes phasors unusable just for their damage, which is not the problem with them, so it not my preferred approach. Not sure what the best solution is. I just noticed in Alpha 2b that having all your ships stunned by inferior ships with a level V tech isn't much fun. Shown here: the stats of a titan designed to deal with the Draguul (if it isn't obvious) is stunned without taking any damage.
Multiple smaller ships rather than fewer larger ones. This happens to me as well. Knowing the AI will target my largest ship most of the time, I make sure it's well shielded so it can handle the pounding while the rest of my ships annihilate the offending culprits. So I see the lack of an in-game counter as not much of a hindrance and would hate to see a cool down for phasors, perhaps other would as well. You're a vet like me, and at the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would suggest you explore different tactics until this becomes a negligible issue. If this doesn't suit your taste, then I would rather see the stun effect removed entirely instead of having a cool down, as that would be one less effective weapon for me to choose from...
I could certainly build around it, but something about it doesn't feel right to me. It isn't a fun mechanic, and if it isn't fun or interesting, it doesn't belong. If we are trying to force people to build larger fleets, I suppose it works, but I think there are better ways to promote this. I also feel like a player can exploit this big time against the AI. If I just load all my ships up with phasors, I could stun the other side entirely and win every battle easily, could I not? Something to try. I tend to use small, but very beefy/powerful fleets to both attack and defend. I don't mind being stunned on occasion, but having the whole battle decided on turn 1 because they've got me on stun-lock? Not very fun to me. Yes, I could, but what if I don't want to be forced to use many small ships? For instance, because having a lot of ships makes each combat take a long time to play out with the current animation speeds? As I said, I'm not against the stun, I just think it can be used excessively and will be abused. Just one person's opinion. Maybe it is fine. I just wanted to throw the thought out there.
I would rather the ship being stunned have a grace period before it can be stunned again. I don't want the phasors themselves to be put on cooldown. I mentioned that option only because that mechanic already exists. I'm not sure the game has a way to work the way I'd prefer, where the stunned ship can't be stunned in back to back turns.
Then I would really prefer that the chance to stun is either reduced or eliminated, a cool down means bye bye phasors for me, I don't like weapons that have a cooldown. I understand that maybe you don't want to alter your tactics, I'm sure others feel just the same... I' also sure others still, feel like I do. So can we seek a solution where neither of us would be displeased?
Ok my bad, it is the effect you want a cooldown for, not the Phasor itself. I would be fine with that
No problem, perhaps I was unclear. Yes, I want the effect to have a cooldown. I want the weapon to still be usable, do damage, and potentially even be able to stun a different ship. This seems ideal if it can be easily implemented. At least, we both would be fine with it.
Edited my initial post to be a little clearer regarding my preferred approach (protect the defender from back to back stuns, don't penalize the aggressor). I realize this may be a post-launch consideration, and may in the end be rejected, but I wanted to toss it out there.
The infinite stun issue should be resolved now. Previously, a phasor shot had a 50% chance of stunning the target. This was too much. Now it starts at 10% for 1 weapon in the phasor bank, 25% if you have 6 weapons in the bank, etc. So, if you have 2 phasors, the chance of stunning the target when you hit is around 14%. Sounds fair to me, especially because one side will probably have more than a couple of ships with phasors, so the chance of being infinitely stunned should now be much lower. We can keep assessing the numbers as we go. By the way, the ion cannon shield disabling/destroying chance was also toned down. Thanks for bringing this up, and for the discussion!
Not sure how the diminishing returns are being calculated, but those numbers sound much better. I have been able to fit quite a few phasors on a ship with high levels of miniaturization, so I'm glad that won't be exploitable by either me or the AI. Excellent, I'm glad you found a good solution.
It's a sqrt(x) * 0.1 function. Sqrt is great for this kind of things so that higher numbers matter but don't get out of control.
Excellent. This is per slot/bank right? So a bank of 20 phasors has one attempt to stun at ~45% chance. Two banks of 10 have two attempts at ~31% chance each. So multiple banks is superior to a single large bank if you want the optimum stun chance. Up until you hit the bank/slot limit on the ship anyway.
Yes, that's exactly how it's working now. Apart from one thing. Currently there is no bank/slot limit on the ship design... I thought about going with 8 or 10, but people hate constraints. What do you think?
I think a constraint should be set to avoid abuse. This is one mechanic where the potential for abuse is evident. Just put all your phasors in separate banks and you can almost guarantee a stun again. A prime example of the issue. It also rewards "bad" behavior in creating tons of single bank weapons. Why not use 1 weapon per bank so you can avoid overkilling a target? Multiple banks offers a lot of flexibility and no disadvantages other than micromanagement. You want to allow different configurations, but not exploits.
Well, most people won't know your formula (though now I guess some do) and only extreme players will attempt to figure it out. So while there is potential for abuse, it may not be as great as you envision. I hate limits myself but sometimes they are needed. Against the AI, I already had my own solution, and to tell the truth it was satisfying. You presented a problem that I solved with tactics. Now you have reduced the chance to stun, in an attempt to satisfy the player that either can't or won't work through this. Not insulting anyone by the way, just stating the obvious, so for one segment of players, you reduced the satisfaction they could have gained by defeating the phasor stun on their own. Again just stating the obvious. I don't disagree with what you have done by the way, as newer and younger players may be more impatient and not used to the way games like ISG work. But by doing this you have already addressed (and weakened) the AI on a tactical level, you must now redress the balance as a player can take advantage. The thing is artificial limits suck. So what to do? Do you artificially restrict the number of banks? Do you impose a further penalty if a number of banks are exceeded Do you scrap the stun entirely? Do you impose a limit of one stun per targeted ship per combat? Do you impose a cooldown (on the stun only) in addition to the new numbers you have implemented? I don't know the answer, but I do know that whatever you do now has to be fair to the AI. It is in manual combat where the AI is the weakest, you have just weakened it further, I feel you really need to think this through and redress the balance Edit Just to clarify, my "solution" was based on real life, there is a reason why an Aircraft Carrier is part of group and never sent out to hostile environs on it's own
Allowing the player to exploit the bank system when the AI won't does weaken the AI. That is why I support a limit. Also it prevents min max players from feeling they have to use a single slot for every weapon to reach maximum effectiveness. Some people do feel compelled to micromanage to this level, even if they don't like to, because they know they are otherwise making suboptimal moves. We aren't talking about a small 4 bank limit on a titan or anything. There would still be plenty of slots for realistic, non exploitative, ships.
I just recalled a poll we took here Perhaps letting the players deal with it in a more organic manner is an option after all? Nonetheless we agree here. But I don't support arbitrary limits, yes it's a quick solution but one that I feel is lacking. If this stun mechanic is such an issue, why not remove that effect from Phasors entirely? Why must this weapon, which has some of the highest number of modifications allowed, also have the ability to stun? Removing it would certainly mean it won't be exploited by anyone. Perhaps it could even be re-assigned (with it's reduced effectiveness) to a different weapon, One that requires much more space and can't be miniaturized easily.
We can go with a linear chance for phasor stun, to solve the deep vs spread slot issue. So, we can go with +5% chance of stun per individual weapon, indepent if they're all equipped in the same bank or spread through several. So, 20 phasors would mean 5% each of hitting, individually, indepent on if they are all in the same bank or spred through several. Note that it's not a sum of chances, like +5% per weapon, but the chance of each individual weapon at 5% hitting. But, probability explanations aside, the idea is to go with linear chance irrespective on if it's 5 phasors on 1 bank or 5 banks with 1 phasor each. We would allow people to go with as many banks as they wish for now. What do you think?
Preferable over the previous solution you proposed... yet I'm still feeling that it is the AI that loses out more than the player. I experienced what aReclusiveMind describes in his post. I entered a battle and had the AI target my flagship which was stunned on the first round. The first time this happened, I recall that I felt I was in trouble, something I rarely feel against the combat AI. I withdrew from the battle and almost lost the flagship as it was stuck for a while. A few turns later I came back and the AI now had a second Titan in the system. My flagship was the same Battleship that had fled a few turns earlier, this time though, it had far more numerous escorts. I beat them. But I did it by spreading out my SSPs over numerous ships versus one or two Titans. Yes it was a harder fight and required that I control more ships, but in both those fights, I felt the AI had a chance to fight well and perhaps even win, due to the weapons they were using. It is not usual for me to feel that the AI can do well in combat, and we have now diminished that AI in the single area where it was most effective at the tactical level You have my vote for the latest solution you just proposed, but I can't say that I feel great about how we have approached this. I mean what did we really just do? Did we just identify an area where the combat AI was giving the human player a problem (based more on a particular playstyle) and answer by diminishing the AIs ability to win a combat?
