HW1 Ship Design for Speed/Health

[cloaked2222]

Re-posting as its own thread.

The basic ship properties are build costs, times, ship speed, and health. Getting these right requires a good top-down design. Generally these should have a similar feel to the classic games, while being balanced for HWR.

As part of the health review I decided to remove all the sidearmour damage less than 1.0, and adjust health accordingly. Gearbox did this as a quazi health buff which made little sense.... The only sidearmour damage left now is the 1.2x on all frigs, which is a relic design that should stay in place.

Health Review hw1 MS health is set between vay/hiig when upgraded.

I'll document a review on speed later. I already did one last month, I just didn't document it in a nice spreadsheet... b7 speeds are pretty good, with some planned changes for b8. Namely, hw1 colls, refineries, cloaked fighters, corvs, specialty frigs, and cloak gens, etc.

HW1 Ideal Design.xlsx spreadsheet is here: https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/2.3/tree/Cloaked/Balance%20Info

[cloaked2222]

Most of these speed changes have already been discussed before, or were in my June 2nd files. I re-tweaked corvs in this spreadsheet today however, as I like Fear's idea about making light corvs faster than vay corvs.

Speed Review b7 Speed | b7 Upgraded | Ratio | b8 Speed | Ratio | hw1c Speed | Ratio

Its very nice to have all these reviews finally documented. In the past we basically just did these type of reviews on a ship by ship basis when there were problems. Things would have been much easier if this had been done from the start.

[Novaras]

Cloaked fighters are better at 420 as I had them although it's a tiny difference I guess. Harrass this powerful shouldn't allow hamfisted blunders being forgiven by a high speed stat, that was my thought.

Repair corvettes should be as fast as multiguns

[Echo1707]

Support frigates are almost as fast as heavy corvettes. I stopped liking their speed when Fear kited the support frigate I was focusing down with my heavy corvettes to the end of the map :(

I also don't like very much the upgraded speeds of Vaygr's infiltration frigates: they are going as fast as corvettes, and even faster than salvettes.

[Novaras]

Frigates have always been able to kite out vettes to varying degrees... For example torps lose hard to lasers normally but can actually perform quite reasonably when kiting.

I'm always in the camp that combat utility should be faster than their target audience anyway.

[Echo1707]

Support frigates are not anti-corvettes, so kiting doesn't make them kill more corvettes. The target audience for support frigates should be frigates, not corvettes, and I don't have an issue with support frigs being the fastest HW1 frigs. But not even in HW1C support frigates where as fast as heavy corvettes.

Looking at the numbers, in HW1C heavy corvettes had 520 speed, support frigates 450 and assault frigates 325. This means that heavies are 520/325 = 1.6 times faster than assault frigates. If in build 8 heavy corvettes stays at 290 and assault frigates at 206, this means that heavy corvettes will be 290/206 = 1.4. Since 1.4 =! 1.6, this means we can't use proportions like 520 : 450 = 290 : x or 450 : 325 = x : 206 because we'd get different numbers (250.9 and 285.2 respectively). So instead let's view this problem with the help of segments with a start and an end point:

• for HW1C, we start at 325 (0%, or start of our journey), we rise a flag at 450, and end at 520 (100%, or end of our journey). We walked for 520-325 = 195 and rised our flag after 450-325 = 125, so this means that the flag is at 125/195 = 0.641 = 64.1%.
• for b8, we start at 206 (0%), we rise a flag at 64.1%, and end at 290 (100%). This means that we planted our flag at 206 + [(290-206) * 64.1%] = 206 + (84 * 125/195) = 206 + 53.846 = 259.8.

259.8 (-9.5% from current value) is still faster than any other frigate (bare the infiltration frigate, which I have an issue with because it's going slightly shy of heavy corvettes as well) and ever so slightly faster than salvage corvettes and minelayers (255 speed), like it was in HW1C where these corvettes have a speed of 425 and support frigates are at 450. In perspective, heavy corvettes were 15.6% faster than support frigates in HW1C, while using 259.8 they would now be 11.6% faster.

[Novaras]

I'm not strongly against it but I wouldn't personally make a change like that... I enjoy being able to run supports, if both of you dislike them being speedy it's fine I guess

[cloaked2222]

Its quite funny that support frigates ended up faster than repair corvettes in v2.1...

Spreadsheets are mostly class based, with some consideration for classes above/below. They're definitely not perfect. Based on your logic, ya support frigates could prolly come down to 260-270.

I'd guess scole made them fast, so they could support a corvette in a wall formation (popular strategy in hw1c). Prolly went with 287 since that's the hw2c vay infiltrator top speed. HWR's repair logic isn't as good as hw1c, so repair units likely need to be faster than hw1c. With corvette's speed going up, we may just want to leave support frigates as is, and potentially buff repair corvette speed to 320. This may be one of those cases where we can't really align with hw1c, due to HWR engine differences. I've done zero testing here though, so for all I know our recent repair range buffs mean its speed can come down some.

One thing scole did really good in his limited time, was tap into his artist skills. He would watch battles in detail, and tune things so they looked good, and worked together as intended.

[cloaked2222]

Fear: Light vettes at 320 is nice and makes sense. Don't know if multis also need the speed, light vettes are losing their identity...

Still feel this way? From many people's perspectives, multi's were the fastest hw1 vette for 16+ years till gbx screwed them up. =P

Fear: Iirc multigun HP change was very intentional and due to them overperforming in matchups as well as taking far too long to bring down... 1000 HP might be nice but 1400 is insanely high.

I haven't seen your tests so i dunno specifics. b7 MG 1100hp is still a lot less than heavies at 1700hp. Lowering their HP will make pulsar/missiles bring them down that much faster. Not too concerned if it takes ints forever to bring down multis.

Fear: Fairly ambivalent about minelayer change, 270 was more like a QOL change.

haha, no comment :)

[Novaras]

Before I nerfed their penetration vs corvettes, multis were beating missile vettes 1-1 lol

This is a pretty good example of why we should have playtested v8 before starting all this v9 stuff...

Lights not being the fastest corvette is a head scratcher for me, no clue what the purpose of the unit would be, and dont give me some nonsense like ' they're an earlygame unit' especially with tech times potentially coming down

[Echo1707]

Test data for multiguns vs ints is here: https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/2.3/blob/Cloaked/TestData/hw1%20multiguns.xlsx

[cloaked2222]

Implemented: https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/2.3/commit/f652c0daada6ccf28a5cede0e53e0e43eb83024d

Made a few tweaks from the OP, based on testing and discussion.