controls/ui:
A1. crosshairs, more visibility.
A2. ship-specific icon column in team list display.
A3. provide a menu option to make player ships 80% transparent. either constantly or when the cursor hovers over the ship model, make it fade out then in.
A4. shift, alt and ctrl modifiers are bugged (not handled properly), which prevents actions from being bound to those keys, or they turn on and off in quick succession for no reason apparently on occassion. they also activate zooming when scrolling the mouse, even though it is no longer bound in the keybindings menu.
A5. opening the map screen should not drain all power from your engines (cut them) as is the case… you should be able to continue to fly and afterburn with the map open.
A6. when comparing premium ships, it should use the max synergy stats of another ship, otherwise it is impossible to compare the two without actually buying the premium or doing all of the math manually. in fact, it might be better to compare then at MAX synergy… all ships, not just premiums. to get a better picture.
A7. with mortars, there is no barrel vector indicator, and what happens is when you’re rotating your view left, your guns might swing left, then you swing the view right and your guns have to traverse all the way from the left… it’s usually what causes the ‘no fire’ situation with mortars i think. also, rotating your ship faster than the traverse rate of the gun can do the same thing. you can fix some of it by giving them a higher rotation speed to counteract the effect.
A8. holding the mouse button heats your guns, even though they aren’t firing. noticable with gauss for example. in fact, you need to tap the fire button as fast as possible, since holding the button for each split second longer causes more overheat on your guns than is necessary.
A9. hybrid lockon option: based on context of your target cursor. if you click in empty space, it locks the target locking you (if there is no target locking you it cancels your current lock). if you click the target in your crosshairs, it locks that target. can be accomplished by firing each target command in sequence as follows: cancel lock, lock target locking you, lock target in crosshairs. it handles all situations except for nearest target. (also less useful options like next target or ally’s target which is better done through callouts). basically it favors selecting the target in your crosshair above all else. when there’s nothing in your crosshair it falls back to the target locking you, if there is none, then cancels your current lock.
ECM:
B1. shouldn’t be able to cap beacons in metastable
B2. needs a rebalance anyways… it’s an iddqd boat: 3 disables, a CC and invulnerability. none of which have counters, only reductions, and not very effective.
B3. 3 disables: stasis, emitter and energy absorber (prevents you from afterburning and using actives). energy absorber needs to scale depending on target size, and stasis needs to get replaced by something else.
CO:
C1. white noise too OP. breaks most units, including counters like snipers, tacklers and ecm.
C2. nukes are broken and can be abused to prevent bomb kills, beacon challenge, etc… especially in combination with disables/ccs. can prevent a beacon from being contested, period, without 2-3 guards as a counter.
C3. beacon drones need to be made immune to nukes, or only take 50% of their health as damage. removes a lot of strategy from the game by making beacons instantly useless.
LRF:
D1. empire LRF (disintegrator) is still OP in T2-… used it in T3 and is still capable of top frags and massive damage on top of that, but not as broken at least due to high health/resists in general. with the recent buffs to jericho LRF, not even sure of it’s impact in T2-.
tacklers:
E1. modules ranges should be increased to 4000-5000m. +100% ship range bonuses should be removed. this will allow tacklers to control a battlefield better and outrange some of the covert/ecm counters.
missiles:
F1. EM torps still do too much damage to inties, but lowering it will be not enough for frigates. needs damage scaling depending on target size.
F2. missile reload mechanics favor several deaths to maintain missile count. simply maintain the count after death. if someone wants new missiles on respawn, they should use another ship. meanwhile, the ship in the hangar should continue to reload so it can be used 3 minutes later.
F3. sometimes there is no missile warning indicator. usually when a voiceover plays… possibly in other circumstances. also, em torps have no indicator (maybe indicator at 2000m would be good).
F4. kinetic missiles need to be removed from existing T2 ships. this was a bug. they were removed from hangars but not from ships, so players with existing units can keep them indefinitely until sold.
F5. rotating lockon and missile indicators (RWR) radar warning receiver.
gameplay/balance:
G1. AOE weapons ie: torpedoes need to do less damage to smaller targets, more damage to larger targets.
G2. heals, debuffs etc also need to do most for larger targets and less on smaller ones. it’s why engineer heals are OP on inties, but mediocre on frigs which need 2+ minutes to top up.
G3. general imbalances due to gear performance within and between tiers.
G4. damage assists need to provide DSR.
matchmaker:
H1. does not balance teams for: ping (region), ship slots, tech level, equipment level, squads per team, etc… note: massive lag on RU servers, especially during peak hours. probably a routing capacity issue on a low bandwidth long distance link.
H2. selecting a region in the launch queue seems to have no observable effect. still get put on russian server 95% of the time during the day. probably because everyone else is selecting ‘any’. mm still makes no attempt to match regional players with others from that region.
maps/game modes:
I1. beacons in some maps confer an advantage to one side over the other due to cover placement. i’d have to build an entire list of them… no time as yet.
I2. give the commander 1 extra spawn during combat recon. it should alleviate most of the campiness, and reduce the amount of 30-second games… award the match to the team with the most commander kills. if they’re equal, based on points.
I3. bombs in detonation need to be the color of the team holding them regardless if they are out of range. this leads to much confusion. also, the bomb when dropped needs to emit a glow, maybe blue, diffuse… or maybe missile slowing field as an example… but not really, to make it easier to locate in close proximity: sometimes you can search for it and not see it if it’s real close and you are in a firefight.
I4. make buff/debuff assists 50 points, damage assists 100, kills 130, beacon caps 200. currently leading to improper rewards for poor gameplay. less beacon and assist farming… detonation bomb pickups 100, bomb plant 300.
I5. grant bomb pickup rewards only after 5-10 seconds of holding the bomb, since holding it for 5 seconds only to die instantly is counter-productive, but an easy farm for some people who prefer not to work for kills instead.
cosmetic:
J1. add a podium finish to the final scores screen, displaying the ship models of top players. to boost appeal of customization options.
J2. rename IR flares to ‘sentinel drones’ and turn them into small spinning silver/green orbs like ericsson logo, spinning around your ship. more ‘sci-fi’…
progression:
K1. synergy grind in T3 seems 33% longer compared to loyalty grind. needs a reduction.
K2. experimentals need to be made available on market, and as loyalty rewards at R3 of each tier. bump R2 and R3 Mk3 rewards down 1 tier so that R1 of each tier actually grants you something (as compared to nothing currently). otherwise, this is grind+pay2win. or as Mk1 rewards of the next tier (probably easier, and you have them after you’re done with a tier).
K3. contracts need to reward some percentage on loss/failure. otherwise it discourages some players from playing the game if they notice they are not progressing.
K4. tier 1 weapon choices need to be re-implemented. at least 1 extra primary for each ship, otherwise it presents a bad impression to new users.
K5. tier 1 premium ammo rewards need to be removed, as some players will soon find that thier GS is being sucked dry.
payment model:
L1. credits are 6.25$-7.95$+ for 1.25million, which you an earn in about an hour of gameplay (2 at most). that IS minimum wage in the USA… uhhh… what?
L2. $7.95 will also get you 374,786-477,000 synergy… average 425,893 synergy. to level a R9 that would cost about $16+… compared to a T3 prem which costs $11.40 on average… basically needs a boost by 50%: 150 synergy * 1.5 = 225. i’d say 250 synergy for 1 GS should be on par with premium prices.
L3. premium prices are too high to begin with: 11.40$ for a single ship (T3) is outrageous, 22.80$ for a T4? 45.60$ for T5s if they ever make an appearance? way too expensive for a single ship. this doesn’t include the cost of outfitting them with experimental items, which can exceed the price of the ship itself.
L4. there are currently 5 ways to buy synergy (or progression): DLC, license, premium ships, premium ammo, synergy transfer… this type of system confuses consumers… pretty much, that’s about it…
L5. premium ships still need a free synergy boost as they are still worthless except after you’re already done with a tier… that includes DLC ships…
L6. premium weapons are too expensive compared to experimentals. considering it’s about 1000 GS for 3 attempts at a T3 experimental weapon (less for mods), which has better stats than a premium at 1500 gs, but takes time and RNG to acquire. and also considering a premium is just a rental until you rank that faction. no, this is not a sign to increase GS salvage prices… in fact, RNG salvage needs to only be an additional chance to find items (not the only method), for this game to be considered competitive. see: available on market.
L7. making some ships exclusive to packs also reduces the competitiveness of the game and makes it harder to balance.
L8. in 1000 games, i have only been killed once by a premium item that i can recall. it was a T3 target painter.
implants:
M1. 4 ‘implant sets’: apply an ‘implant slot’ on each ship, which maps to one of 4 pre-set ‘implant sets’. this will allow players to better vary their ship roles. otherwise you are forced into roles.
M2. r2 neurocontroller oculus bug. description: 75% reduced lockon times, should read 43% lockon times.
engineers:
N1. turn engineer drones into condition removal. 1 drone will remove all conditions from the ally your crosshair is pointing at. will help to combat ecm and other spam, and act as a CC counter to prevent spikes on teammates. drones are still limited, can be killed, and require energy to use. it also gives the engineer something else to do in their rather mundane existence, and provides more utility than the current drone heal function.
notes:
there’s simply too much stuff for me to remember all at once. i may add more items to this list, which i’ll post in subsequent replies.
maybe i should post this in the dev questions section? would that be more appropriate?
more stuff here (edit1): [http://forum.star-conflict.com/index.php?/topic/21196-random-suggestions/page-4#entry222883](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/21196-random-suggestions/page-4#entry222883)
actually, i merged them into this post as well (easier to maintain). in the color blue. i’ll merge further additions in other colors.
especially if you pickup the bomb as someone else dropped it hehe.