Skip past this first part if you don't wanna read a buncha stuff

Recently took a totally non-scientific poll of players I consider knowledgeable/smart/elite/whatever who have started GL or reset their ship in the last 18 months, and what do ya know? Not a single one of them plan on using researched weapons, defense, hull, shield, or reactors long-term.

Interesting!

It seems that smart players who want to use game mechanics to their advantage consider it a problem that attack/defense/shield/hull/energy modules lose value (and even become a burden) as their ship ranks and receives increased artifact production. Who woulda thunk it? So they plan ahead and (don't) add decks accordingly, or simply replace researched modules with scan/cloak/ability/% modules as they grow. Can't blame 'em for considering these modules they worked so long to earn or research "useless."

This calls into question the long-term value of, well, pretty much any module that gives pure attack/defense/shield/hull/energy. And it's a disappointment, really. Building your ship is a big part of the game, but if you're only going to hurt yourself long term by building past a certain point, that takes away part of the fun and reduces options for people who want to compete with other tough ships (i.e. enforces homogeneity of shipbuilding technique among people who want to become "elite"). Among newer players, you never hear anybody talk about Large Ship Builds (LSBs) with anything other than scorn or pity. The only question is "Am I gonna be SSB or MSB?" and how small you can remain while still fitting all must-have items on your boat. How boring is that?

Golgotha has made some very solid suggestions about this problem, but his pertained only to the highest-end research stuff. This would mean even the neat toys like the Hypervoider and upgraded Korteth Twins still become "irrelevant" after some point. But what if instead of adding a % buff, modules simply scaled with you as your ship ranked? Below is a modest proposal for making ship modules relevant long-term:

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It's safe to start reading here.

Attack, Defense, and Energy attained through modules scales by 0.00075 per rank. Thus, at rank 500, a Heavy Null Ray would increase attack by 412.5, rather than its base attack of 300 [(1 + (0.00075 * 500)) * 300], while at rank 2200, it would increase attack by 795 (this may sound like a lot, but it really shouldn't be by that rank).

OPTIONAL: Upkeep would increase by .000075 per rank, thus at rank 500, a Heavy Quasi is going to cost you 1,063,437,500 CR per day, rather than its base cost of 1,025,000,000 CR per day [(1 + (0.000075 * 500)) * 1,025,000,000].

Shield and Hull attained through modules scales by 0.0015 per rank. Thus, at rank 500, a Heavy Obviator Shield would increase shield strength by 978.25, rather than its bass increase of 559 [(1 + (0.0015 * 500)) * 559], while at rank 2200, it would increase shield strength by 2403.7 (again, may sound like a lot, but it shouldn't be by that rank).

OPTIONAL: Upkeep would increase by .000075 per rank, thus at rank 500, a Perfect Sync Plating is going to cost you 166,000,000 CR per day, rather than its base cost of 160,000,000 CR per day [(1 + (0.000075 * 500)) * 160,000,000].

Would be a bad idea to scale cloak and scan for obvious reasons. However, the chance of giving and blocking critical hits could be scaled by rank -- no idea how to implement that, as I have no knowledge of the mechanics that go into determining critical hits.

Furthermore, upon unlocking a passive ability, wearing a full set of the appropriate final research tier modules would grant an additional 3% for attack, defense, and energy; 5% for shield and hull.

I believe scaling would make ship modules retain their value (though artifact production would still be the primary method of growing your ship), and provide more options for players wanting to build their ships in different ways. Some players might stick to the pure "nothing but scan/cloak/buff/ability" item ideal, others might say "It's worth it adding decks for a module that adds x-number of [attack/defense/hull/shield/energy] per deck, not worth it for anything below that threshold, yet other players might go all-out and not feel like they "screwed their ship over" down the road, due to the fact that even their Leviathan Rift-Emitter is still growing in power with their ship.

Certainly, this would create more variety and viable options than the SSB/MSB route everybody and their uncle is taking now. Big ships could truly "Get huge and be somebody," as even at rank 2000, the additional attack from modules would be a nice advantage, even for a ship with great AP. Mid-size ships would have to think even more carefully about what modules warrant becoming "forever" pieces of their ship and what modules are swappers. Small ships... well, this doesn't do anything for tiny ships, but they already have a pretty sweet advantage and disadvantage that has been talked about to death in other threads.

Here is a link showing the scaling bonus and upkeep for damage/defense/hull shield using the last available modules.

I can see complaints about this making planetary defense even more irrelevant and NPCs even less of a challenge, but those are separate issues (if you even consider them issues) that already exist regardless of this suggestion.


EDIT: Upkeep Scaling Reduced and Considered "Optional."

Not that big a fan of the passive +x% when a full set is installed. However for the rest It seems like a considerable idea, it is not overpowered but it adds too the effectiveness of ship moduels.

+0.5

Curious: is it the % period you don't like, or do you think it is OP at the rate I chose?

i.e. would you be OK with it if it were like 2% and 3%?

Its mainly the percentage on attack that is the bugbear for me. a 3% boost to attack is when fully buffed at a high rank, a substantial amount. Everything else I would be fine with having a percent boost for a set. Maybe a 1% boost to attack so that it keeps with the pattern of a boost for having all mods installed. But not more than that I would say, one main reason being SSB is a purely defencive option and only realy benifits in the defencive stakes. Therefore to Even it out Defence on LSBs should be improved alone. With defence, hull and sheild for instance a 10% boost as defending doesn't impact invasions/base damage. it'd be highly substantial a impact and give LSB a clear boost

The counter-argument is that LSB's are supposed to be the ships that can conquer worlds and smash bases better than anybody else.

That said, I do agree with you that 3% attack may be too much.

+1

You want reserched items to be used, the easy way is make damage cap solely based on rank. Then everyone and their mother will want every toy they can cram on their ship.

I don't necessarily want them to be used, I just want to see non-scan/cloak/%/ability modules be viewed as a viable option for all ranks... or at least not be viewed as useless after a certain point.

Making it so everybody wants to stuff everything on their ship would only create the exact opposite kind of homogeneity we are seeing in ship-building right now.

Fixed that for you... Under no circumstances should SSB be removed as a valid stratigy. LSB just needs help becoming a valid statigy also, not by ruining ssb.

I fail to see how that screws them, their damage cap is likely still the same as before. Their stats are still the same so its still crazy good for their rank... can you expalin how that screws them?

Yeah, their damage cap -- the main thing that makes the SSB special and appealing for so many players -- is now exactly the same as everybody else of the same rank... only they can likely only fit like 1/4 of the modules as their friends. Trolling, or do you really not see how this screws them over?

Plus they have gone through months if not years of resticting the decks they install and so have had years of having lower scan for instance than others around their rank. All their sacrifices they made to be a cut above the rest when it comes to defence are for naught. I would quit if that happened, Im pretty sure a lot of others would too.

Here's the thing, go ahead and give me a 500% increase to all of my ship modules... toss 20-30 emp's at me, and you're gonna hit me for my dmg cap, which as a LSB is like 3500 atm.

What i'm getting at here, is that there is no idea that can be implemented that will satisfy all sides, and none of these ideas do anything other than to ensure people who are hard to kill, become more difficult to kill than before.

Everything stays the same, just those who went MSB/LSB route can have a bit of a % boost.



Yeah, but the thing is that applies for all "big ships". Which means that nothing actually changes. Except now, you've just gone and made everyone else that little bit harder to kill.

MSB's and SSB's stay just as difficult to kill as before, because their dmg cap don't care that you have 40k more attack.

Golgotha's idea, wasn't just to affect last tier modules, it was to add a way to do % dmg to a ship based on a fixed proc rate, like the way the Gemini Cannon work.

We could have a cap on how much damage cap deck can provide, say 5000 deck(2500 cap). Anything over 5000 deck won't raise your cap.
It'd be reasonable, quite honestly using any more than that will probably save only the effort of switching stuff so it won't really matter too much.
Or we can have something that scale with the rank, say instead of max(rank+19, deck)/2, we make it max(rank+19, min(deck, rank*3))/2. For anyone who don't read formula, that means your damage cap cannot go above 1.5 times your rank.

What this would do, however, is make MSB somewhat obsolete as the damage cap increase for going LSB would be much smaller. But SSB will still enjoy the extra protection compared ot MSB(and therefore LSB)

what about something different than, you can't deal more damage than YOUR damage cap, you can still be a tiny ship with a tiny damage cap, It might take 1000 clicks to destroy you, but it will take you more energy to destroy a huge ship, the huge ship in turn will get slightly better energy rate at pvp. Also it helps them npc/even things out.

It's not really about being harder to kill. There should be tradeoffs for every style of play, and bigger ships having a bigger damage cap and costing way more CR to maintain is perfectly fine with me. The problem is that...

Small ship: if built with care, gets a big advantage when it comes to being hard to kill, and can still deal a ton of damage with good production. The tradeoff is major inconvenience in fitting stuff on their ship and the fact that they can't scan worth crap until much, much higher rank (and it's still inconvenient), and are especially vulnerable to hacking.

Medium Ship: Can do everything a big ship does, but not at the same time. Somewhat harder to kill, and can do everything a big ship does... just not at the same time. If anything, can be even more inconvenient than SSB when it comes to shuffling modules, because they typically carry and use a lot more of them.

Large Ship: more vulnerable to attack (damage cap), but can do everything at once and deals out way more punishment than small and medium ships. Well, at least until the TO count of the smaller ship makes the difference negligible... at which point they're basically paying way more upkeep for a negligible attack bonus and the ability to do scan runs without a swap-o-rama.

Oh, so in other words choosing to be a LSB is actually a net penalty. No wonder nobody considers it a viable option anymore. That's why I consider it a problem. There are clear credits and debits to SSB/MSB... is there any major beneft to LSB? I'm not coming at this from the position of somebody who puffed up his ship and wants the rules bent to my own playstyle. I have no researched weapons/defense/hull/shield, and plan to keep it that way; unless Dan releases some awesome new must-have modules (possible) or I am still playing GL in a few years and go up a few thousand ranks (highly unlikely), I will never go above 3.6k decks. But I do consider it a problem that under current game mechanics, people who want to just strap on every piece of equipment and build a huge ship can't do it without feeling like they royally screwed themselves over long-term. There should be real benefits and debits to each playstyle -- not benefits that turn into debits the longer you play. And I think the best way to do this would be to make modules themselves scale with ships.

Ah. I thought he had decided against that after awhile. If so, my mistake.

Simple idea would be adding a new module that adds % extra based on your decks and or ship modules. (5000 deck ex)ship module that gives you a .001% hull bonus for every deck you have- limit 5. So 25% hull bonus while a ssb would only get a 10% hull bonus or less. The module should be fairly large 80 decks?
Same concept for other stats with the numbers varying to avoid being op.
Another idea to bypass the damage cap a bit- offensive Gemini cannon but less %

Yeah, pretty much anything non OP that adds a reward to the punishment of having more decks would be interesting.

Offensive Gemini cannons would be a bad idea, though, as % damage just takes all the time people have put into increasing their defense and hull and wipes it away with a roll of the RNG.

Once again, you are screwing over anyone who has built a ssb or msb. Just stop, please. Any attempts to change ssb inevitably mess it up for anyone who hasn't built a ship with thousands of decks. Improve LSB, dont weaken SSB.

+1