::RULESET DISCUSSION::

[Gravedust]

Well I tried explaining it in words but it got long so I made a picture as a demonstration:



The black dot in the center is a missile unit with a 20-range launcher on a standard 30x30 map. The orange squares represent the area of the map that he can hit.

[captainbravo]

Dec 7, 2011 11:19:16 GMT -8 Gravedust said:

(Mind you these are with -my- pods, which are a little more defense-oriented than the ones the players seem to like to produce)

I defy you to show me a pod more suited to defense than the GOLIATH.

[Gravedust]

Okay, you definitely have me there.

[disastranagant]

Dec 7, 2011 12:28:42 GMT -8 Gravedust said:

Well I tried explaining it in words but it got long so I made a picture as a demonstration:



The black dot in the center is a missile unit with a 20-range launcher on a standard 30x30 map. The orange squares represent the area of the map that he can hit.

That's a really tiny map for the kinds of speeds and ranges pods have.

[captainbravo]

Yeah, but I'd imagine in normal gameplay you rarely move your full move. Remember, moving diagonally cuts that in half, and objects on the field will change things up, too.

That does bring to mind a question I wanted to ask, though. You've referenced some test games you ran to check the system, is there a chance we could see some of these? Are they on a board, or archived somewhere? I'd love to see how some of the previous games played out, even if some things have been changed since.

[Farseli]

Yes and no. I mean, my pod is move 5 jump 3. Going full out it would take me 4 turns to cross it, and going corner to corner would take me 8 turns. That's a lot of time to get my face kicked in. This is also ignoring what the terrain might look like.

[Gravedust]

30x30 is standard, mostly because it's a size that fits on a monitor w/o tablebreaking, and is big enough so you can see what's going on pretty easily, and I also like to put lots of details on maps.

Terrain will ameliorate pods' movement a lot too. It just depends on the map.

>>That's a really tiny map for the kinds of speeds and ranges pods have.
Welp, that's why I did so much to discourage really fast pods. People really seem fixated on making Move 10 pods for whatever reason and I wasn't expecting it. We'll see how they fare against the ones that are slower but spend more points on armor, guns and goodies.

As for the range, that is very intentional. I want you to have to be thinking about the majority of pods on the map being able to take a shot at you if you are in a bad position, and choose your moves carefully.

[captainbravo]

Honestly, I think it's probably because your pods are pretty much the gold standard for medium-range. Hell, that's not even including the designs you've got hidden up your sleeve. (I really like the Goblin, it's got style.) When given a toolbox, and a bunch of well-balanced toys, we naturally start making the un-balanced ones to fill out our choices. That's why every pod I've made has emphasized one or two stats, at the cost of most everything else.

Hell, even my attempt at making a modular pod that can do almost anything falls victim to this. By making it equip 4 different weapons at all times, it becomes more fragile, and utterly ineffective at concentrating on any one thing. Jack of all trades, master of none.

[Gravedust]

Dec 7, 2011 14:01:42 GMT -8 captainbravo said:

Yeah, but I'd imagine in normal gameplay you rarely move your full move. Remember, moving diagonally cuts that in half, and objects on the field will change things up, too.

That does bring to mind a question I wanted to ask, though. You've referenced some test games you ran to check the system, is there a chance we could see some of these? Are they on a board, or archived somewhere? I'd love to see how some of the previous games played out, even if some things have been changed since.

...There is a very old playtest on this forum that you can look at if you want, ( www.gravedust.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=127 ) but a LOT has changed since then it was my first one. Since then I've run three or four, but I tend to overwrite the maps with each new turn (the map files wind up pretty large, the one for the current mission is 14mb. They are actually illustrator files I compress into images.) So no, there isn't anything like an archive as such. : /

[disastranagant]

Dec 7, 2011 14:15:35 GMT -8 Gravedust said:

30x30 is standard, mostly because it's a size that fits on a monitor w/o tablebreaking, and is big enough so you can see what's going on pretty easily, and I also like to put lots of details on maps.

Terrain will ameliorate pods' movement a lot too. It just depends on the map.

>>That's a really tiny map for the kinds of speeds and ranges pods have.
Welp, that's why I did so much to discourage really fast pods. People really seem fixated on making Move 10 pods for whatever reason and I wasn't expecting it. We'll see how they fare against the ones that are slower but spend more points on armor, guns and goodies.

As for the range, that is very intentional. I want you to have to be thinking about the majority of pods on the map being able to take a shot at you if you are in a bad position, and choose your moves carefully.

Your system has support for weapons with up to 70 range, which really leads one to expect something besides the knife fight in a phone booth map size you've chosen. Might want to pare some things down instead of assuming no one's going to use them. A midrange weapon probably shouldn't control half the map, it kinda kills the value of positioning your units.

[captainbravo]

Dude, come off it. The railgun thing is just a quirk of the formula, pretty much every weapon puts the max range somewhere between 15-30 squares. Don't act like because you can twink a stat that's the way things are presented, that'd be like if I tried to claim every map should be 100x100, since I managed to twink a Peregrine to have move/10 and jump/20.

Although maybe you oughta put a line in the railgun formula about max range, Grave, just to prevent it from becoming an issue.

Edit: And you've gotta define "midrange weapon" here. Artillery is explicitly designed to be long-range. Missiles are arguably a long-range system. Energy weapons, railguns, and cannons all recieve a sizeable accuracy penalty for long-range fire. Hell, cannons are almost unusable for any decent work at greater than about 6 squares, unless you specifically design it to be a long-range weapon, and even then you're playing against the weapon's strengths.

[captainbravo]

P.S.

Dec 7, 2011 14:15:35 GMT -8 Gravedust said:

As for the range, that is very intentional. I want you to have to be thinking about the majority of pods on the map being able to take a shot at you if you are in a bad position, and choose your moves carefully.

[Farseli]

While the direct fire weapons are able to reach out and touch someone at long-range, the increased difficulty of the shots (and reduced damage for lasers) means they will be less effective. You can snipe with lots of things that are not sniper rifles, it is just harder. We'll see how much gets changed after the first mission.

[captainbravo]

Dec 7, 2011 14:24:56 GMT -8 Gravedust said:

...There is a very old playtest on this forum that you can look at if you want, ( www.gravedust.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=127 ) but a LOT has changed since then it was my first one. Since then I've run three or four, but I tend to overwrite the maps with each new turn (the map files wind up pretty large, the one for the current mission is 14mb. They are actually illustrator files I compress into images.) So no, there isn't anything like an archive as such. : /

Haha, hahahahaha! I just noticed this quote:

This isn't a play-type I want to be workable, because (like I said when I did it) it's pretty cheap.

I thought up an entire in-game corporation which designs pods with this ideal in mind. Looks like I was spot-on when I made Technocorp bad guys!

[disastranagant]

Dec 7, 2011 14:40:37 GMT -8 captainbravo said:

Dude, come off it. The railgun thing is just a quirk of the formula, pretty much every weapon puts the max range somewhere between 15-30 squares. Don't act like because you can twink a stat that's the way things are presented, that'd be like if I tried to claim every map should be 100x100, since I managed to twink a Peregrine to have move/10 and jump/20.

Although maybe you oughta put a line in the railgun formula about max range, Grave, just to prevent it from becoming an issue.

Edit: And you've gotta define "midrange weapon" here. Artillery is explicitly designed to be long-range. Missiles are arguably a long-range system. Energy weapons, railguns, and cannons all recieve a sizeable accuracy penalty for long-range fire. Hell, cannons are almost unusable for any decent work at greater than about 6 squares, unless you specifically design it to be a long-range weapon, and even then you're playing against the weapon's strengths.

Nearly anything can be made to shoot 15, which covers exactly half the map. It also happens to be right in the middle of the range brackets for all the long range weapons, barring the tiny rails. The accuracy issue is easily overcome with pilot skill, since all range does is reduce the bonus you get from the target's size (and steeply enough that it hardly applies past 5 or 6 range, anyway). Until the map size was brought up, the mechanics seem to be geared toward agile fights over large areas. Now I can see why hacking is so stupid powerful: if everyone wasn't hacked into oblivion fights would be over really, really fast as both sides focus fire and tear each other apart.

[Farseli]

Right, but target size really matters for these shots because a lot of people are going to run with some amount of evasion. Actually, cover and elevation play a great deal too. Sitting at height 1, if brown 5 got onto the height 3 hills, I would have a -20 to hitting them. As it stands, my cover will only drop their bonus to +10.

Their hit to me would be d100+10+40+20-10-20=40% chance of hitting
Me to them is d100+8+50-20-40=-2% chance of hitting. Even though my gun is listed out to 20, at 16 range I can't hit him because of battlefield position.

[Ghost of Starman]

That reminds me of something I meant to mention earlier, Gravedust -
This is partially a matter of personal preference, and partially an element of game design I happen to subscribe to, but (in the case of pilots' Hacking skill) if your assumption when you make the rules is that people will all be investing something in Hacking (I think you mentioned 20 Hacking skill as a typical number), that should be made explicit to players.

Or, to put it another way, when you present players with the Pilot Creation rules, you should start with "You have 20 points in Hacking and 80 points to spend. You can take points out of Hacking, but that's a deliberate weakness you're creating."

[Gravedust]

Yeah... I was sort of hoping it would be something players would figure out rather than need to be explicitly told.

I do mention that hack is important, the 20 was just a figure I used to calculate with, since it's a significiant but not cripplingly restrictive point investment, IMO. If you look at the current game most players brought 10-30 hack to the table anyway, so I think they understand it's a useful stat, even if they don't know exactly how it's effecting their chances.

The big discussion yesterday/today though HAS proven to me that a lot of hacking is pretty busted and direly needs an overhaul. I'll hopefully have the new changes done by the end of the current mission and I'll implement them at the start of the next one.

[Gravedust]

Okay, peeps were askign to see my playtests and this is the one I still have on file. It was a 10v10. All player pods vs all the other player pods. This is the end of round 9 you're looking at, red's turn, obviously.

Youc an see where the artillery was concentrated by the blast marks. and the shootng by the shellholes. The hill int he center was fought over a lot, as it was prime real estate. So was that building with a Height three tower in the right corner, In turn 2 the Red term Reaper parked his ass up there and proceeded to give everyone a headache. He had to move later because the Blue culverin and arclite got him into range.

IIRC the Peabo was the first to die. it did somethgin stupid and got jumped by Blue1, who was himesle jumped by RED 1, who later got killed by either the blue Danmaku or the Blue Gladius. This is what I mean when I say I use my melee units too early,usually. =P

Red Danmaku took out the blue Danmaku (Who had already taken a lot of fire,) then got blasted to shit by artillery and concentrated fire from the blues.

The Blue Balthezar got stunlocked and killed because it was dumb enough to go somewhere by itself. It took a LOT of fire before it finally kicked the bucket.

The reason you see the arty strikes near the building on the right was because the Blue Gladius was there last turn. The one up north is trying to get the Reaper who has been taking potshots at the hill folk.

The Balthezar in the west can only use it's laser because the Van Eck hacked his cannon out from under him the previous turn. He's getting right up in his face anyway to try and force it to retreat. Plus if he misses his disable hack then *boom boom boom.* This alse demonstrates why sometimes it's good to put a melee weapon on a pod even if it isn't melee-dedicated. He could be tearing B10's face off right now.

Blue 8 is being a sneaky bastard and using the opening on the west side of the map to get over to the Red's backline and screw with their arty. Red 8 just hopped on over to help.

Red 6 is hiding from the opposing Arclite, which thankfully is extremely slow. =P

[Farseli]

Wow, 10v10 on a 30x30 map is a clusterfuck. I love it! Interesting map as well. I've gotta wonder what maps you'll be pulling out on us later.

[cokerpilot]

Can split the movement from an overdrive?

[Gravedust]

Nah, otherwise the voting would devolve into chaos, probably.

[disastranagant]

Warning: stream of consciousness observation post inbound.

The ammo costs on heavy rail guns seems to spiral out of control in a way that makes them fairly useless except on incredibly expensive pods. Case in point: my 2 pods the Fafnir and the Thunder Hawk. They do very similar damage, (and could have the same for a fairly trivial size/cost change on the fafnir), but the Thunder Hawk has more than double the range, 1/3 more ammo, 40 more armor, and consumes less energy (would also generate less signature if I lowered the range by 1), the major difference being that the Fafnir pays 18 size and 108 cost for its salvos while the Thunder Hawk only gives 12 size and 48 cost for its 12, combined with the rapid drop in range and increase in sig for using a bigger single gun.

This same phenomenon occurs to a lesser extent in all the ammo based weapons. It is far cheaper to make a pod that runs 3 or 4 10 damage, 3 radius artilleries than it is to run a single 30 or 40 one, even incurring the range penalty multiple times. It is less prominent in the cannons, since ammo runs from 2 bursts per size down to one, with single shots being more useful in most situations anyway. I wouldn't call it broken in these instances, though artillery in general has yet to really prove its place in my mind (that's whole can of worms I'm not in the mood to open and will need more data for anyway).

Perhaps something could be done such as boosting the ammo count of each level of rail ammo by 1, or maybe only decreasing the ammo count every other time you increase the cost.

Range could probably decay less rapidly, what with rails currently running the gamut from absurd overkill range that can't possibly be used down knife fight range. The linear decay is cute, but it kinda breaks down over such a wide array of equipment.

In some ways this can serve as a point against the volley mechanic. For the most part, the damage of a single weapon system doesn't really matter. The damage of 2-4 of them, on the other hand, matters immensely. There's no difference between 1 hit that does 50 damage and 2 hits that do 25, and most the time you even deal out the 25s in the same roll. At the same time, several weapon classes use the damage of a single system as the prime factor for determining range and ammo cost which adds a heavy incentive toward single purpose pods that mount 3-4 copies of the same relatively light weapon. Why should I mount a 20 point cannon when I can mount a pair of 10 point cannons and carry more ammo, shoot farther, have less recoil and do the same damage, all for a lower cost. This becomes even funnier when you consider the apparent goal of the pod size minima for cannons.

Sure, once in a blue moon the Fafnir will find itself in range of something with between 31 and 50 armor remaining and get to either fire at another pod in hopes of hitting both or use 2 actions to improve the odds of hitting (the chance at least one of 2 80% chances hitting is 96% YAY!), but the Thunder Hawk has twice as many opportunities to fire the shot in the first place.

[steelion]

This is an interesting point. After I read this, I was able to modify my Harbinger considerably, and I can confirm that as it is now there's really no reason to mount 1 large railcannons, as multiple smaller ones can do the same job many times better.

To be specific, I can get 10 extra damage, 4 more range, and slightly less energy consumption by splitting the 50 damage rail into four 15 damage rails, and actually made the pod a couple marks smaller in the process. Nevermind the 40 points I freed up in the process. An additional advantage of this is that the pod becomes much less vulnerable to being rendered totally ineffectual due to hacking.

I don't really know what can be done to fix this, since it also prevents overkill and allows for more reliable damage by scattering it over 2 or 3 seperate actions if necessary.

[Gravedust]

Ja, I noticed that about multiple weapons. : / in autocannons it sort of sorts itself out because of scaling recoil in a volley, but there's nothing in the rail mechanics to prevent it really. It's something I've been noodling. I'm sure it can be worked out one way or another.

Will respond more fully when I have time.

[disastranagant]

Jan 4, 2012 20:32:55 GMT -8 steelion said:

This is an interesting point. After I read this, I was able to modify my Harbinger considerably, and I can confirm that as it is now there's really no reason to mount 1 large railcannons, as multiple smaller ones can do the same job many times better.

To be specific, I can get 10 extra damage, 4 more range, and slightly less energy consumption by splitting the 50 damage rail into four 15 damage rails, and actually made the pod a couple marks smaller in the process. Nevermind the 40 points I freed up in the process. An additional advantage of this is that the pod becomes much less vulnerable to being rendered totally ineffectual due to hacking.

I don't really know what can be done to fix this, since it also prevents overkill and allows for more reliable damage by scattering it over 2 or 3 seperate actions if necessary.

Your new Harbinger probably looks a lot like the new No-Name Pod I've been bouncing around since learning about the actual size of the maps. Though I've been thinking about taking it clear up to 20s with all the size saved by not cranking the hell out of range.

[steelion]

Basically, yeah. A little more damage and ammo per rail and half the range vs what's in the database. I'll probably leave the Harbinger as it is and see what you come up with, and field either it or my Pillager design (which I might be able to tweak, now that I think of it) when my turn comes around. I figure then we won't have two virtually identical quad-rail designs.

[disastranagant]

Right now I'm looking at 135 hp, 6/3, 20 damage guns with 16 ammo, 15 range and 16 total sig. Jets only run 5, so you can get away with spamming them. If I cut the armor 105 I could drop the sig on the guns to 12. Damage comparable to the Thunder Hawk, but slightly less range, more way more speed and half the armor. Could cut the ammo to 12 to get that to 115 or possibly 120, as well.

More damage than an AC/25 burst, more accurate and all for ~160 size. Not a micro pod by any means, but it can move.


e: gravedust.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=poddatabase&thread=292&page=1

[captainbravo]

Damn, I just ran the numbers, if I split the 50-d rails into two 30-ds, I get almost twice as much ammo, more armor, less size, and more damage on my BL4. Not to mention greater hacking protection, since even if someone manages to disable 1 gun, I'm still shooting with almost the same damage as before with just three. Man.

[Gravedust]

Yarr, I think today will be me breaking out the calculator and having MathFest 2012.

I'll be looking into the volley mechanics (or lack thereof) and how Rails stack up against other weapons, and I'll be checking the number of multiple smaller weapons vs. their larger counterparts across all categories. If anyone wants to have Fun With Numbers(tm) time with me, then you're more than welcome

That said, while it sort of makes intuitive sense that a big weapon should be 'better' statwise than two (or more) smaller ones, if that's not the way it works out then I'm actually okay with that. I was specifically trying to discourage "add largest gun available in category, add armor and mobi to round out cost, call it good" design choices, so a lot of the bigger weapons are inefficient.

The 4-weapon maximum was originally intended to counter having a ton of teeny weapons, (battletech MG spam go!) but since the Volley mechanics as mentioned make any number of similar weapons function like one large weapon, that really circumvents that intention. ((actually.. did you know that the 1st generation Disable hack took out all weapons in THE WHOLE CATEGORY? I.e all energy weapons or all rail weapons, not just 1. That was to encourage hybridization. ...actually I may add that back in as a mid/high-level hack just to fuck with pureblood designs...)))

So (also as mentioned) the problem may just lie in the Volley mechanic (or again, lack thereof) to counter this I was thinking (these need to be evaluated, this is just a brain dump)

• Volleys generate double Sig.
(could be countered by no-sig weapons, but could also be counter-countered by just making all weapons be at least Sig 1, most weapons pay a lot for sig reduction anyway.)

• Accuracy penalty for volleying (-10 -15, -20)
(Meh, but possibly serviceable. Wouldn't effect artillery (unless I institute Arty Difficulty rolls.) and further decreases the attractiveness of Cannon volleys…

• Just getting rid of volleys altogether.
(Volleying has gone in and out of the rules several times and in most cases doesn't make a whole lot of difference. I'm loathe to yank it out though, I'd rather put some conditions on volleying like the ones above that keep it part of the rules but make it more of a strategic/design choice.

Anyway. Suggestions/observations welcome as always. Remember you'll have a lot more weight behind your argument if you back it up with numbers, (which are more helpful to me in the long run anyway.)

Excellent discussion so far though. I'm glad I have observant peeps shoveling through the rules to find stuff like this. As I mentioned I notice it, usually, but I have a bad tendency to ignore the little itches of possibly flawed mechanics because I'm not exactly motivated to go poking holes in my own work that could conceivably take hours/days to analyze and patch. My next project will be a lot more thoroughly and extensively number-crunched, I'm learning a lot from this. -_-