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Adjusting the Meta: increasing the viability of high-ROF low-alpha damage in PVP
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Ituralde
Fabian Fleet Systems
#1 - 2013-02-24 03:21:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Ituralde
Common fleet meta very much encourages (and has for essentially the entire history of EVE) focused fire, range projection, and high alpha. Focused fire and high alpha allows for the maximum potential for taking out targets, especially in the presence of remote repair, and range projection minimizes damage downtime between targets that, especially at scale, drop relatively quickly. This has adjusted in form in various ways over the years, but the majority of the most effective strategies tend to either directly leverage this combination or are served best when they are adjusted to better leverage this.

This isn't specifically a problem in of itself an issue. Eve fleet combat, be it in groups of 30 or 3000, has been fun over the years and there have been a lot of creative theorycrafting that has given rise to a whole array of viable, interesting, and nontrivial tactics at scale. However, it has always been the case that ships that require the ability to gap close and lack alpha tend to fall off at scale and do not have the same battlefield presence. This issue is further magnified by the fact that these close-range, high-damage, low-alpha ships do not have the damage to chew through hostile reps without, depending on kit and ship choice, anywhere from 2x to 8x the number of damage ships as the enemy has logistics.

The end result is that you can watch 20 megathrons pounding on a stationary, tackled target, and do no noteable damage to it, whereas 10 maelstroms would be able to volley it off the field.

To put it in a different perspective, twice the number of ships of a comparable class are incapable of doing any damage that will stick to a ship that would be instantly destroyed by half that number. While it is certainly the case that not all weapons should behave like Artillery, they should also not be completely invalidated simply because of how combined alpha scales when compared with combined DPS and combined logistics.

My suggestion is to change the role of close-range low-alpha DPS by adding On-Hit Damage Scaling. The feature would function as follows:

  • Every time a ship-based weapon (missile or turret, not drone) hits a target effectively, the damage multiplier for all ship-based weapons used on that specific target increases.

  • Every incomplete hit by a ship-based weapon (missile or turret, not drone) hits a target ineffectively or misses, the damage multiplier for ship-based weapons used on that specific target decreases to a minimum of its baseline value.

  • Damage would scale up a maximum of 4x the current damage multiplier. For reference, this is roughly the range at which a battleship using an ROF-driven weapon such as blasters or autocannons will significantly outdamage the repair capacity of a single logistics ship on a well-fit target.

  • Each full hit would contribute a maximum of 1% towards that growth, based on hit quality. So, hitting every shot in an 8-weapon ship requires 12.5 consecutive perfect volleys (100 perfect hits) to scale up to maximum damage in the shortest period of time.

  • Changing targets or losing lock would re-set the scaling to zero.

  • Missile damage growth per hit would look something like the following formula, such that hits below a certain quality do not contribute to damage growth: ( (Missile_Damage/Maximum_Potential_Damage) - .15) * 1%, which means that if a missile is doing only 15% of its damage or less, the damage does not grow.

  • NPCs would not see this growth, as much as it would be hilarious to see missioners explode en masse.


This feature would have the following consequences:

1. More turrets and higher rate of fire yield more damage growth.

2. If someone is kiting you even within optimal and you miss shots, not only are you losing the damage of the missed shots, but you also lose your damage growth on that target quickly. This will keep sig tanking near its current state, as without landing quality hits reliably on a target, the damage will not grow and logi will easily keep up the target. Similarly, solidly tackling a target will cause damage on that target to grow quickly beyond what logi can repair.

3. Damage would not grow much on high-alpha, lower tracking ships because hits would be less often and lower quality. Damage growth in fact would be maximized when targets are not shared at all.

4. Damage would scale effectively on static targets, meaning that its easier to destroy undefended sov structures after a while of facing no reason to change targets. This gives a significant incentive for a defender to have presence in space against an attacker.

5. Damage growth in larger fights would encourage split fire, as if you alpha a ship, your overall damage output never grows. This means for ships that can't easily change between targets due to range and mobility concerns, you gain a lot of utility and can reasonably zone targets within a fight above and beyond needing to focus a single primary.

6. Position becomes far more important, as piloting mistakes previously hidden by remote repair can be exploited by tactics that aren't strictly alpha. Similarly, positioning to avoid damage has

7. Target painters and tracking disruptors both get a stealth boost, as tracking disruptors can essentially reset damage growth and target painters can effectively accelerate it

8. As Drones would count as individual entities with their own damage growth, carriers and supercarriers have noteable damage growth against large static objects, but not against most enemy ships or even enemy supers. Titans would gain a significant turret damage boost given their turret count, but only against targets they could consistently hit. Dreads, as they only have 3 or 4 direct-damage weapons would grow damage very slowly.

9. Battleship DPS would scale favorably against capitals and supercapitals.
Ituralde
Fabian Fleet Systems
#2 - 2013-02-24 03:21:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Ituralde
Here's some examples on how this feature can make combat more interesting and better involve piloting decisions.

In case 1, Pilot A is flying a Megathron and Pilot B is flying a Zealot in a group engagement. Pilot A engages Pilot B, doing 1200 DPS on his own, which is nowhere near enough to overpower the repairs incoming from Pilot B's logi corps. 30 seconds later, the damage is enough that the repairs are no longer keeping pilot B safe. Pilot B recognizes this and dives in closer to Pilot A, firing up his afterburner to maximize transversal, reducing the incoming damage and reducing the damage scaling gained on Pilot A's Megathron. Pilot A webs Pilot B, and pulls a bit of range and matches pilot B's heading to minimize traversal, calling for backup tackle. With multiple webs on, Pilot B can no longer effectively avoid damage, and calls for a cycle jam on Pilot A's mega to reset the damage growth, allowing the logi to, in this case, keep up with the damage.

In case 2, Pilot J is flying an autocannon-fit Tempest and comes across a Torpedo raven flown by Pilot K ratting in a belt. Pilot J immediately tackles the raven and begins to engage, maintaining the age-old habit of kiting using autocannon falloff to keep a safe distance. Pilot K turns his torpedos on the agressor, easily out-damaging the tempest at 30km fighting in falloff. The tempest, unable to effectively kite out torpedo damage, goes aggressive and closes within his optimal, knowing that the extremely high rate-of-fire on his autocannons will cause his damage to grow far more quickly than the low ROF torpedos being fired at him, provided he can land quality hits. While at an early disadvantage due to the higher base DPS of the torpedos, Pilot J's autocannons ramp up in damage inside his optimal and quickly outpace the Raven's damage, securing the kill in a close engagement.

In case 3, a curse flown by Pilot X in support of a support of a small skirmish fleet with logi comes across three ASB Maelstroms supported by a lachesis and a Hyena flown by pilot Y. A drake and a tengu in X's fleet are caught on jump-in by the long points on the lachesis. Eager for a T3 kill, the Maelstroms focus on the tengu trying to burn out from within 5km of their guns. Damage starts scaling quickly on the maelstroms, such that the logi in Pilot X's fleet rapidly cannot keep up with the incoming fire. Pilot X decides to TD each of the Maels, causing them to miss their shots as the tengu pulls range, allowing the reps from the logi to take back over. Naturally, the slower drake is not so quick to escape, and Pilot Y's fleet changes focus to him as he is still within the falloff of each of the Maelstroms. Initially, the resists on the drake allow its logi to repair away the damage, but the Hyena, while unable to risk closing to web range, throws its target painters onto the drake, causing the maelstrom damage to rapidly grow on it, causing the drake to drop before it can escape.

In Case 4, an buffer-kit Armageddon fights an ASB-kit maelstrom. Currently on TQ,the armageddon would get wrecked, being unable to punch through the ASB tank on the maelstrom. With this case, the Armageddon loads scorch and pulls range, preventing the Maelstrom from scaling its damage while landing good hits at a range in the Maelstrom's falloff but within its own optimal. Despite the higher rate-of-fire on the Maelstrom, the hit quality differential causes the Armageddon's damage to stack faster, pressuring both ASBs on the maelstrom. Once fully stacked, the Armageddon loads conflag and turns on the chasing Maelstrom, forcing both ASBs into reload and melting the low-buffer Maelstrom before the Maelstrom finishes off the Armageddon's buffer.

In each of the cases above, the dynamic would not be relevant as without growing damage, none of the ships targeted in these scenarios would take enough damage relative to the incoming reps to be forced to adjust their behavior. This turns the previously unkillable into a vulnerable target, complicating the equation in a fight above and beyond base damage vs tank capacity. Similarly, this damage scaling would magnify the effect solid piloting decisions, rewarding skillful play with a far more noteable and relevant payoff.
sabre906
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2013-02-24 04:24:37 UTC
Too complicated, too unbalancing, for fixing something so simple.

Arties should never have been made into the alpha weapon of Eve. It has too little mitigating factors.

It should have been missiles. Travel time, exp radius, exp velocity, all limit its applied alpha. There would have been no "casual alpha" as in arties. Point plus multiple tps and long webs would have been a requirement for properly setting up an alpha on a target.
Ituralde
Fabian Fleet Systems
#4 - 2013-02-24 04:43:42 UTC
sabre906 wrote:
Too complicated, too unbalancing, for fixing something so simple.


I challenge you to explain this in detail beyond "TL:DR". This is simple, the more you hit a target, the more damage you do. I don't see what is so odd about that.


sabre906 wrote:
Arties should never have been made into the alpha weapon of Eve. It has too little mitigating factors.

It should have been missiles. Travel time, exp radius, exp velocity, all limit its applied alpha. There would have been no "casual alpha" as in arties. Point plus multiple tps and long webs would have been a requirement for properly setting up an alpha on a target.


At the end of the day, there will always exist a scale for which, for any damage level of weapon, you will be capable of alpha'ing an opponent outright. If it weren't artillery, it would be another turret weapon. All artillery does is allow smaller scale entities to also use alpha rather than restricting it to groups that could field a certain critical mass of pilots.

The key issues with alpha as artillery are in my mind twofold:

1. Tornados are way too fast and maneuverable, and can use this to compensate for the low rate of fire of artillery by simply holding range against most ships of cruiser class or below. As it stands, there is no good tool to gap-close on tier3s that has any realistic method of surviving their damage outside of a group of interceptors. Most ships in the cruiser class or above do not have comparable or greater speed than tier 3s. It should be the case that tier 3s have a massive mobility advantage on battleships, but not so when compared to cruisers or other battlecruisers.

2. Tier3s fit the highest-tier alpha weapons too easily. If it were as hard to fit top-level weapons on tier3s as it was to fit tachyons on an Armageddon or Apocalypse, there would be far more tradeoff in the ships themselves to reach these levels of alpha.

sabre906
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2013-02-24 04:51:58 UTC
Positive feedback loop is by nature uncontrollable and impossible to balance. Your wall of text is merely the tip of the iceberg of convoluted changes that is to come in a futile attempt to balance it. This is not going to work.

If alpha is the problem, fix alpha. Don't introduce more problems.
Ituralde
Fabian Fleet Systems
#6 - 2013-02-24 05:13:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Ituralde
sabre906 wrote:
Positive feedback loop is by nature uncontrollable and impossible to balance. Your wall of text is merely the tip of the iceberg of convoluted changes that is to come in a futile attempt to balance it. This is not going to work.

If alpha is the problem, fix alpha. Don't introduce more problems.



The problem isn't alpha, the problem is remote tanking. This is a solution to that problem. Alpha is a symptom of that problem.

More importantly, this is further addressing a long-standing gameplay concern of not having any incentive to do anything other than focus a single target, even when its not possible to completely alpha it.

If alpha were the lone problem, I would offer a different solution - rather than complaining that alpha is too strong, maybe we should look and see that instead its more that literally nothing other than alpha is strong enough?

This is really not uncontrollable or impossible to balance. In fact, there are multiple potential balance points, including but not limited to:

1. Damage growth rate
2. Peak Damage output
3. Damage decay rate on missing a target.

So I don't see how this is impossible to balance, nor do I see how you have enumerated any specific issue or any use case in which your scenario of critical balance failure exists in any manner whatsoever.


__________


The idea of growing damage on a single target isn't that new or revolutionary, or even that complex. I originally thought of it in terms of the wrecking shot mechanics, which are essentially a flat percentage to always hit a target for massively increased damage. In other games, there is a chance for a 'critical hit' that is called a 'critical threat range', and the original thought was for that threat range to exist as part of the to-hit mechanics and furthermore to grow and and shrink depending on how often you hit a target.

This proposal is a more simplified version of that, in a more simplified form that is easier to scale from a computational perspective as it doesn't add yet another chance based check that would (by the law of large numbers) yield the same net result at the cost of more lag.