Part ups and downs

from Stardock Forums
I know with the new build coming this may all be irrelevant, but I figured I’d stop putting it off.
 
I’m kind of down on armor. I realize that for the game to end, damage has to happen, but at present it’s only possible to build a tank with HP (including shields)  Armor wise, if I sacrifice both precious shoulders and half my dps for a deflector, I’m still way below many weapon’s unit of damage, and only cover one of five damage types.
 
Somewhat paradoxically, I’m down on regular damage.  I mentally subtract 10 from it’s rated dps, any servo that isn’t doing something specialized has about 10 regular armor.  Modifiying DPS isn’t accurate of course - the story can be much worse for pistols since they get a lot from fire rate.  I want to be able to see the unit of damage in weapon stats.  Range would be nice too.
 
I’m sure this is an artifact of the current part selection, but the damage types feel really lifeless.  Every weapon class has every damage type, and often I don’t know what is coming at me.  Yes, in moments of quiet I’ve seen the laser colors and contact effects, but I never notice them in the heat of battle.  I’m really hoping that with the full part selection, heat damage will only appear on flamethrowers and other weapons that are obviously causing damage by making the target hot.  I’d expect a hot fist or sword to do some regular and some heat damage - the smaller numbers on each leave more room for armor, while two types make it harder to block completely.  Having damage types only appear on certain weapon classes would make it easier to see what is coming, and make your choices of weapon types more significant.
 
Beam fists can be fun, but can also get micro intensive. I tried building a league of magicians once; with 5+ abilities on every servo I rarely had attention to use the fists, so they mostly ended up as subpar weapons.  The effects (proc on demand, plus others) are interesting, though it’s often hard to justify the weak weapons - in that sense they may be well balanced.  Still the reality based logical side of me wants to have a beam fist holding a weapon.  Wouldn’t work UI wise, except for the rifle, and probably not work balance wise.
 
Maybe make beam heads?  Limited to one per servo, and does something interesting with heads.  Heads work okay - it’s a simple sideshow, with only one choice in most situations.  Bodies seem like they should be a lot more significant - the core piece of the servo that suggests a basic strategy.  Legs are showing a bit more variation, although I still want them to be primary source of speed (perhaps with armor-like small variations)
 
Some parts feel weird - how do sharp legs affect my weapons?  Why does strapping a giant box to the back affect range or crit chance?  Perhaps the parts will change once more art comes online?
 
Juggernauts are especially raw, but it seems odd that the giant hulking war machines have some of the weakest weapons (at least in ranged)  Of course I’m going off of AI; I tired an offline profile and got the base parts, but at lv 5 have yet to pop a single juggernaut part, so still only have one lackluster arm.  I’d expect juggernauts to have the best damage, while the loaders are faster and tricksier for raiding, engineering, and support.
 
Though the biggest thing bothering me on a regular basis is part filtering/sorting. 
servo
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Armour is weird because it works so great against fast attacks, which is most of the buildings and units, but not creeps or most servo abilities. Because those things are easily killed I consider it my least wanted stat. This does however mean we have in armour and health a way to counter small and big hits. As well as resists to provide some protection to procs.

I think there's 4 problems with how it works in practice though

- There aren't many elemental attacks that are fast enough to be significantly mitigated by armour, especially compared to the vast number of threats from units and turrets dealing regular damage in small amounts rapidly. Only thing I can think of is elemental pistols.

- health and shields are universal, they both increase effective health, which scales with upgrades. It even helps somewhat against fast attacks like drones. Armour is not, it mitigates a subset of damage and becomes less useful with higher damage per hit and enemy weapons upgrades

- There aren't enough torso/legs parts, IMO needs parts that give a little health with no penalty, parts that have elemental armour and resist on the same item, also more legs with speed on them.

- The amount of armour on shoulder parts IMO needs to be higher to bring the opportunity cost down between picking a shoulder weapon, a shield generator, comfy chair etc. Maybe they need some resist on them too to make them more enticing.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

All fair points. Armor has been a little bland for sure.

Apropos... we just pulled type-specific armor last week. There's a single armor value and it works against everything. We're trying it out (it'll be in the next update) because people just weren't having time/desire to think about those specifics in the heat of battle.

That change coincided with a big rebalance of all the damage and armor values. It's not perfect right now, but it's definitely better. Melee damage has a rightful place. Armor is meaningful (maybe even too much so ATM). Parts have a progression.

This next update will be the first one that has the RTS scaling working with the progression, as well. We can't have your Servos getting crazy good while the drones never change. So, the drones and other RTS bits will "keep pace" with your Servos. We've chosen one of two pretty obvious ways to do that.  Interested in feedback on that.

All that said, the parts will be getting at least one more big re-jigger when the Raptor servo comes online (the flying one). No, not this upcoming update. The one after. Some of the things that are on the champ right now will be moving over, etc.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting BXP_Godgib, reply 2

All fair points. Armor has been a little bland for sure.

Apropos... we just pulled type-specific armor last week. There's a single armor value and it works against everything. We're trying it out (it'll be in the next update) because people just weren't having time/desire to think about those specifics in the heat of battle.

That change coincided with a big rebalance of all the damage and armor values. It's not perfect right now, but it's definitely better. Melee damage has a rightful place. Armor is meaningful (maybe even too much so ATM). Parts have a progression.

This next update will be the first one that has the RTS scaling working with the progression, as well. We can't have your Servos getting crazy good while the drones never change. So, the drones and other RTS bits will "keep pace" with your Servos. We've chosen one of two pretty obvious ways to do that.  Interested in feedback on that.

All that said, the parts will be getting at least one more big re-jigger when the Raptor servo comes online (the flying one). No, not this upcoming update. The one after. Some of the things that are on the champ right now will be moving over, etc.

Cool changes, can't wait to see how it plays out.

 

Also is Raptor the final name for that class? Sounds better than 'The Floater' :D Can you tell us anything yet about how it might play? Personally I'm hoping they get something like champ's fist beams and move kinda fast

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Dracohouston, reply 3


Quoting BXP_Godgib,
reply 2

All fair points. Armor has been a little bland for sure.

Apropos... we just pulled type-specific armor last week. There's a single armor value and it works against everything. We're trying it out (it'll be in the next update) because people just weren't having time/desire to think about those specifics in the heat of battle.

That change coincided with a big rebalance of all the damage and armor values. It's not perfect right now, but it's definitely better. Melee damage has a rightful place. Armor is meaningful (maybe even too much so ATM). Parts have a progression.

This next update will be the first one that has the RTS scaling working with the progression, as well. We can't have your Servos getting crazy good while the drones never change. So, the drones and other RTS bits will "keep pace" with your Servos. We've chosen one of two pretty obvious ways to do that.  Interested in feedback on that.

All that said, the parts will be getting at least one more big re-jigger when the Raptor servo comes online (the flying one). No, not this upcoming update. The one after. Some of the things that are on the champ right now will be moving over, etc.



Cool changes, can't wait to see how it plays out.

 

Also is Raptor the final name for that class? Sounds better than 'The Floater' :D Can you tell us anything yet about how it might play? Personally I'm hoping they get something like champ's fist beams and move kinda fast

It's as final as anything is ATM. We're going with it until something better comes along, but we're fine if something does not.

Heh, you have some pretty good ideas about what it should do...

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I think Raptor would be a good enough name for a flying class, given that birds of prey are generally called raptors as well.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

One more thing I forgot about: field modification effects.  The example would be the acid pool grenade launcher.  Being able to cut off an area (or at least make it expensive to cross) has interesting possibilities, although 75 damage starts to become lacklaster after getting other shoulder parts.  Mines do more damage, though they can be cleared with a sacrificial drone, and are often used as grenades.