Reload Modules would boost sustained DPS.



Does anyone remember what the balance used to be? I seem to remember For PG Cost it was Blaster>Railgun>Missiles and for CPU it was Missiles>Railgun>Blaster. Does that sound right? It's been a while.

And while that's true, no one likes to die instantly without any time to react. As I've stated the old system basically was "Instantly kill the enemy, or die during the reload" which isn't very enjoyable for the losing side of that engagement. This model allows you to take a good chunk of HP out of the enemy before they can get their hardener up, but still allows you remain in a position capable of winning in case the initial ambush fails. The old system did not allow this second condition.

soooo, your making it easier for the missile to kill the other tank, not only do they do massive damage but they reload faster?

* does rain dance to make Rattati appear*

Im amazed a rain of trolls hasn't already appeared.

So...missile turrets...

Well...what about making them a Burst Fire Weapon (Or rather a burst fire weapon that works more like the Combat Rifle)...with a 4 round burst, 12 or 16 rounds in the magazine, a burst interval of 0.2 and a fire rate of 0.1, Direct damage of about 485...reload speed of 8-10s?

Im amazed a rain of trolls hasn't already appeared.

Missiles will be able to contend with other turrets even in a direct fight (no ambush volley) due to similar sustained DPS.

I think this is the most important design goal and shouldn't be sacrificed under any circumstances.

As far as I can see your proposed stats seem to fit this nicely. Few things are going to die from a volley of ~3600 damage, but they will be hurting if they didn't have their hardeners on.

I wouldn't mind an even lower burst damage value. That way missiles become more focused on their delayed damage application rather than their burst damage application. But either solution is workable - and most importantly much superior to the current OHK-ambush style.

But, if the missile goes the sustained damage route... Then there is no burst damage turret. Both the rail and the Blaster are good at sustained DPS, but not burst DPS. Missiles should be the ambush weapon, but still able to put up a fight head on, especially against armor vehicles.

I'm fine with there not being a 'burst damage' turret. It's incredibly unfun design when you consider the cost of vehicles.

But, if the missile goes the sustained damage route... Then there is no burst damage turret. Both the rail and the Blaster are good at sustained DPS, but not burst DPS. Missiles should be the ambush weapon, but still able to put up a fight head on, especially against armor vehicles.

I thought of that too while writing that post.

I think both having a burst type of turret and a delayed damage type of weapon are worthwhile goals. Especially with the 'waves of opportunity' design going on right now I wouldn't want to miss a burst type turret, but there's a vacant spot for a low alpha weapon that does above-average DPS as a compensation for long travel time.

Bump!

had a chance to run those numbers pokey?

Simulated data

So, my spreadsheet skills are a bit rusty. After a bit of work though I think I've figured out how to display this data in sheet form of progression of a tank battle using your missile data.

If you could tell me how to improve my counters, to create some sort of loop, I would be ever so grateful. Going to try with the if function so I don't have to keep dragging my counters down to keep the data going.

Bleh total brain fart and forgot to do that for you...my apologies.

The spreadsheet assumes full auto and I dont really want to revamp it to include burst fire. So I'm going to model it as the burst being a single missile with the refire rate including the entire duration of the burst and the damage including all 4 shots in the burst. So the numbers might look a little odd but they're equivalent to what you're talking about.

Damage per Burst
485*4 = 1940

Seconds per Burst
0.1*4 = 0.4 seconds

Seconds between Bursts
0.2 seconds

Total time for each Burst
0.4+0.2 = 0.6 seconds

Magazine Size

12/(4/burst) = 3 Bursts/Magazine

Reload Time
8 seconds

Spreadsheet has been updated accordingly

Maybe I went a little too strong on the burst damage, but the idea would be that you change the Missile Turret to be the Industrial Strength Burst HMG/Combat Rifle...now with 100% more Explosions!

I agree that the burst is still pretty high. The overall stats look a bit too much like previous models that didn't work very well. However I think it would be possible to tweak it, I just wanted to input it exactly as you said so you could see the end result.

I'll fiddle with it a bit and see if we can bring the end-stats a bit more in line with what we're shooting for. Glancing over it again it may be as simple and changing the delay between bursts.

So in Delta, missiles were problematic. They were built around a concept that they had massive burst damage but awful reload which propagated a playstyle that relied heavily on killing the enemy in a single salvo, or dying on the reload. Not only was this really ****** for the pilot who just failed to finish off the last couple hundred HP and gets owned on the reload, but it was also very frustrating to armor tankers that would get taken from full HP to death in a matter of seconds with little time to react.

Rattati responded to this by basically decreasing the burst DPS by lowering the fire rate, giving vehicles more time to react, which inadvertently make the "die on the reload" far more prevalent. The large missile went from overpowered to underpowered, which is understandable given the binary performance that the turret has.

I felt we need to buff the Large Missile to somewhere between Delta and Echo, but also take a look at the core fundamentals of how missiles work. Here are the general calcs, and while this is just a first pass, provide constructive feedback but don't crawl up my ass if you don't like the numbers. It's a work in progress, so lets have a constructive conversation...I'm very reasonable if people are not asshats about it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H0Jb2GUobDx28eETJ-7SSD0z4f9VqfUKvFW1Lo_5eEQ/edit?usp=sharing

General Notes:
Reduced Damage Per Magazine to remove "Insta-gank" mechanic
Reverted Fire Rate to Delta levels
Moved Burst DPS to levels between Delta and Echo
Drastically reduced reload time (50% of Echo, 60% of Delta)
Sustained DPS between Blaster and Railgun
Burst DPS ~x2 that of a Blaster/Railgun

High Burst DPS makes it ideal for an ambush weapon to catch enemy vehicles with their hardeners down. The first volley will not kill the target, but it will do considerable damage quickly and a quick reload allows them to recover quickly. Sustained damage is being considerably buffed from Echo to rest between that of a Blaster and a Railgun.

Missiles will be able to contend with other turrets even in a direct fight (no ambush volley) due to similar sustained DPS. Also note that as stated, Sustained DPS for Blasters and Railguns only take into account heat buildup. After a handful of heat cycles the turret will have to reload, reducing sustained damage considerably. Missiles will not suffer from this issue as reload is the primary limiting factor in sustained DPS, not heat like Blasters/Rail.


Also I'm aware that the Railguns are underpeforming currently. I agree that some changes need to be made to them, but for the sake of the current conversation I assumed no change.

Are you going to put in the other variants? I think that my variant (v1) was agreed to be what the normal missile variant would be, and then the others were going to be variants (if we ever got those). Pokey's would be suited more for AI work, with the bigger splash damage and higher RoF, mine is normal, and then a burst variant would be the best for AV.