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New combat/death system proposal
kyeto13
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
With very little chance of this getting implemented, I still wanted to throw this out there and get community feedback on this.
This proposal would require a few mechanics changes. However, by using assets readily available in game, we can change the feel of combat to a more drawn out, tactical, and nail-biting experience with risk and rewards.
1) Lower overall damage output and increase base resistance.
Simply enough. No more one hit kills and insta-death moves. Have you work for your kills without the cheap shots.
2) Add damage debuffs as a roll based on your total hull
With this, I mean that the lower your hull gets, the more chance you have of receiving a damage debuff. The Lower your hull, the more severe the debuff. My proposed scale would be as follows:
At 50% hull: 25% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 25% hull: 35% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 15% hull: 45% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
25% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15%chance of receiving a Critical Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
This means the lower your hull, the more damaged you get. Also, the longer you are under the threshold, the more damaged you get. This would more accurately portray the battle damage a ship would receive in a firefight. Consoles blow out. EPS systems overload. Personnel are injured. All of this going on as you are in combat. This would make long drawn out fights a nightmare as you are attempting to hold together your ship that is falling apart at the seams.
3)Timer cooldown based on injuries received
This is a two parter, but they both tie together. As of now, players are near reckless with their ships, as there is no cost to death besides a 15 second cooldown and maybe a trip to a starbase for all of 30 seconds to fix your injuries.
With my full suggestion, we add a time sink into fixing your injuries, that you can now accumulate without dying. No EC fix. No instata-heal at a starbase... but a true timeout to fix your ship. When you visit a starbase technician to fix up your now thoroughly beat up vessel, it will tell you that the ship will be unavailable for X amount of time while it is getting repairs. The suggested time-cost will be as follows:
Minor Damage=1 minutes each
Major Damage=3 minutes each
Critical Damage=7 minutes each
This will not stack and will be counted off one at a time. So the two Critical damages will be 14 minutes. The 3 major damages will be 9 minutes. Finally, the string of 5 minor damages will be 5 minutes. This makes the total down time for this vessel 28 minutes to completely recover. Damaged systems will be repaired in order of severity, so Critical damages first and Minor damages last. You can force pull a ship out of repair at any moment, but it will still have on any damages that have not been cleared yet. When you log out, all ships will begin an auto repair cycle. The repair cycle will be capped at 1 hour of downtime.
You can have multiple ships being repaired at the same time, and when your ships is being repaired, you may do any ground mission, or you can switched to an undamaged (or less damaged) vessel and continue playing.
4) Optional combat warp out sequence in order to avoid further damage and death.
So, with this current system I am proposing, you will build up damage debuffs while under fire, that will cost you in down time later on. Combat is slower and more drawn out so you can avoid these situations and make tactical decisions along the way.
My final suggestions would be an in combat "Tactical Retreat" warp out that you can activate under 25% hull. This would replace the current "abandon ship" power. This power would break combat and warp you out of the mission, without a leaver penalty. You would be essentially "forfeiting" the match and making a run for it while you can. This is literally a last resort button, as it takes you out of the mission and you receive no reward. (Partial rewards maybe possible for PVE queued mission, but not as much as the full reward for sticking it out. PvP will be discussed later on.)
This power would be negated by Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, or any power that holds a ship. It also will be negated by disabled engine power.
The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.
In PvP, the dynamic would basically be "last team standing." You would go until either one team is forced to warp out, or is destroyed. When you warp out, you will go into a spectator mode and will follow on of your allies. Participants will receive credit to the PvP dailies, plus the current EC and Expertise reward. However, if you can manage to actually KILL another player (since, this would be a rare occurrence now.) you would receive a nice dilithium reward plus a title. If you are within a team that gets a kill, and you are within 10 kms of the target in question, you will receive a smaller support reward. If you contributed 33% or more to the damage taken on a player, you will receive full credit for a kill.
_________________________________________________________________________
Obviously, there are alot of things to consider with this, such as the dynamic of leaver's penalties, plus missions where loosing too many members will make the mission impossible to progress. This will also need a massive balancing pass to remove one hit kill builds and NPCs from the game. (With some exceptions, such as the Borg Beach ball and the Plasma Lances, as those are avoidable with proper tactics and situational awareness).
While not QUITE as terrible as permanent ship destruction, (which would have the players grabbing pitch forks and torches over losing purchases), it adds a dynamic between a ship and her command that seems to be missing from this game. This mechanic would hopefully curtail the Leeroy Jenkins moments, and bring players to pause.. and consider if they can actually WIN this fight with those three Borg Cubes over there. It would also allow people to more fully utilize those multiple ships that they will buy, in order to have a "reserve command" for when the TRIBBLE hits the fan.
This system could also be optional, a "hardcore mode" if you wish. However, the implementation of this would be troublesome, as hardcores players would essentially have to play with other hardcore players on their own teams and own rules.
Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments or edits you would like to add? Comment below.
This proposal would require a few mechanics changes. However, by using assets readily available in game, we can change the feel of combat to a more drawn out, tactical, and nail-biting experience with risk and rewards.
1) Lower overall damage output and increase base resistance.
Simply enough. No more one hit kills and insta-death moves. Have you work for your kills without the cheap shots.
2) Add damage debuffs as a roll based on your total hull
With this, I mean that the lower your hull gets, the more chance you have of receiving a damage debuff. The Lower your hull, the more severe the debuff. My proposed scale would be as follows:
At 50% hull: 25% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 25% hull: 35% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 15% hull: 45% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
25% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15%chance of receiving a Critical Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
This means the lower your hull, the more damaged you get. Also, the longer you are under the threshold, the more damaged you get. This would more accurately portray the battle damage a ship would receive in a firefight. Consoles blow out. EPS systems overload. Personnel are injured. All of this going on as you are in combat. This would make long drawn out fights a nightmare as you are attempting to hold together your ship that is falling apart at the seams.
3)Timer cooldown based on injuries received
This is a two parter, but they both tie together. As of now, players are near reckless with their ships, as there is no cost to death besides a 15 second cooldown and maybe a trip to a starbase for all of 30 seconds to fix your injuries.
With my full suggestion, we add a time sink into fixing your injuries, that you can now accumulate without dying. No EC fix. No instata-heal at a starbase... but a true timeout to fix your ship. When you visit a starbase technician to fix up your now thoroughly beat up vessel, it will tell you that the ship will be unavailable for X amount of time while it is getting repairs. The suggested time-cost will be as follows:
Minor Damage=1 minutes each
Major Damage=3 minutes each
Critical Damage=7 minutes each
This will not stack and will be counted off one at a time. So the two Critical damages will be 14 minutes. The 3 major damages will be 9 minutes. Finally, the string of 5 minor damages will be 5 minutes. This makes the total down time for this vessel 28 minutes to completely recover. Damaged systems will be repaired in order of severity, so Critical damages first and Minor damages last. You can force pull a ship out of repair at any moment, but it will still have on any damages that have not been cleared yet. When you log out, all ships will begin an auto repair cycle. The repair cycle will be capped at 1 hour of downtime.
You can have multiple ships being repaired at the same time, and when your ships is being repaired, you may do any ground mission, or you can switched to an undamaged (or less damaged) vessel and continue playing.
4) Optional combat warp out sequence in order to avoid further damage and death.
So, with this current system I am proposing, you will build up damage debuffs while under fire, that will cost you in down time later on. Combat is slower and more drawn out so you can avoid these situations and make tactical decisions along the way.
My final suggestions would be an in combat "Tactical Retreat" warp out that you can activate under 25% hull. This would replace the current "abandon ship" power. This power would break combat and warp you out of the mission, without a leaver penalty. You would be essentially "forfeiting" the match and making a run for it while you can. This is literally a last resort button, as it takes you out of the mission and you receive no reward. (Partial rewards maybe possible for PVE queued mission, but not as much as the full reward for sticking it out. PvP will be discussed later on.)
This power would be negated by Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, or any power that holds a ship. It also will be negated by disabled engine power.
The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.
In PvP, the dynamic would basically be "last team standing." You would go until either one team is forced to warp out, or is destroyed. When you warp out, you will go into a spectator mode and will follow on of your allies. Participants will receive credit to the PvP dailies, plus the current EC and Expertise reward. However, if you can manage to actually KILL another player (since, this would be a rare occurrence now.) you would receive a nice dilithium reward plus a title. If you are within a team that gets a kill, and you are within 10 kms of the target in question, you will receive a smaller support reward. If you contributed 33% or more to the damage taken on a player, you will receive full credit for a kill.
_________________________________________________________________________
Obviously, there are alot of things to consider with this, such as the dynamic of leaver's penalties, plus missions where loosing too many members will make the mission impossible to progress. This will also need a massive balancing pass to remove one hit kill builds and NPCs from the game. (With some exceptions, such as the Borg Beach ball and the Plasma Lances, as those are avoidable with proper tactics and situational awareness).
While not QUITE as terrible as permanent ship destruction, (which would have the players grabbing pitch forks and torches over losing purchases), it adds a dynamic between a ship and her command that seems to be missing from this game. This mechanic would hopefully curtail the Leeroy Jenkins moments, and bring players to pause.. and consider if they can actually WIN this fight with those three Borg Cubes over there. It would also allow people to more fully utilize those multiple ships that they will buy, in order to have a "reserve command" for when the TRIBBLE hits the fan.
This system could also be optional, a "hardcore mode" if you wish. However, the implementation of this would be troublesome, as hardcores players would essentially have to play with other hardcore players on their own teams and own rules.
Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments or edits you would like to add? Comment below.
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Post edited by kyeto13 on
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Comments
But I've been thinking about this mechanic, and i think it might actually SAVE PvP...
Hear me out.
With this system, you would have three ways to defeat another player in combat. All of them balanced.
DPSers= Shoot it until it is dead.
Debuffers= overwhelm a target with debuffs and injuries until they are ineffective and crippled.
Tanks= Simply outlast your opponent, and let your pressure damage slowly breakdown.
I also thought about adding a chance effect for Engy team to remove a injury in combat, because.. you know, that is what the Engy teams should be doing. There could also be a doff that allows EPtX to remove an damage debuff of the same category. So Emergency Power to Engines has a chance to remove an engine damage debuff. Because you are rerouting power around the damaged portion of the ship to temporality give you full combat ability.
Doing this would rebalance tanks and the Engineering class as they are going to have the most skills to be able to actively fix your ship while in combat. This will increase the staying power of both you and your teammates so they everyone can have the time needed to break down a target. You also have a unique approach to each class and how they achieve their goals, besides pure DPS.
Science characters now have a greater chance to apply damage debuffs over time. Skills like Gravity well have a greater chance of appliyng hull stress and fractures. Viral Matrix can do computer system damage. Tachyon beam can damage the shield systems. All while ABOVE the 50% health damaging threshold. So while their DPS might not be enough to get a target below the breaking threshold initially, their science skills can sabotage and cripple the ship immediately, until they are crippled and easy to defeat.
DPSers do the exact same thing as before. but now it is more of a risk. The longer they sit and try to wail on a single target, the more risk they are at receiving damage debuffs. And since they have limited engy slots, they will not have the resources to repair themselves mid combat. Meaning long drawn out battles are NOT in their favor.
This change would make the game more canon, more challenging, and more balanced in one go. Again. this hinges on a major balancing pass of all damage and abilities FIRST.
And Cryptic, since you are a fan of Dil sinks, How about adding an option where you can bypass the repair wait timer with a nifty "Pay now in dil" button. Equivalent prices to the R&D button would suffice. 1000 per hour.
I like the idea that your ship becomes less stable as it takes damage.
Makes that go-down-fighting skill a little more useful.
Although, i have to agree with Ash that the downtime on repair is too much.
kthnxbai
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
And timers aren't so bad, just think what other stuff you could do in that time - and it isn't like you lose access to all your other ships at the same time.
the current strength and suvivability of the average NPC ship(s) is so little that nothing of that would matter.
A grp of 3 frigates basically dies within 3 seconds of the fight if done moderately good.
what i'd like to see in addition to those proposed changes is a signifficant HP and ability buff for NPC ships, while at the same time reducing their numbers. Instead of 3 frigates, only 1...but that one frigate has equivalent HP and firepower as the 3 frigates had.
I'd rather the AI was upgraded such that it is capable of actually doing something and then have NPC potential be the same as the player version of the ship, some powers would be chosen by the devs to set the basic standard for an NPC ship while the others are chosen with an element of randomness (such that NPCs don't all turn out the same) by the AI.
Admittedly this would remove all low level player ships from endgame but if we're not allowed endgame Mirandas why should the NPCs use them at endgame? Science ships would become the new endgame frigates I should imagine given there isn't really an endgame frigate as such.
I think the timers on the damages are a little long considering you can't help really but get them under your system no ship is ever going to be competitive and not run out of ways to stay above 50% hp and it puts a major downer on GDF as you have no choice but to rack up masses of damage to realise it's full potential and thus rather than going down fighting, you just go down to be dead.