State of Destroyers

Ships
1

Destroyers have been an interesting addition to gameplay, and are very interesting ships to play and to play against. They require the development of new strategies, and have greatly changed gameplay in all game modes. However, destroyers suffer from a serious balance problem, and sometimes result in new strategies that are overall detrimental to gameplay and enjoyment. There are 3 specific problems with destroyers:

 

  1.      They are far too powerful in groups

  2.      Their modules are too easily killed by splash damage

  3.      They are worth the same amount of objective / kill points, despite necessitating being a far greater investment for a team to kill

 

These suggestions should solve these problems, and provide a better gameplay balance for destroyers and non-destroyers alike.

 

  1. Destroyer Balls

A large group of destroyers (a destroyer ball) is impossible to kill, as there is no arrangement of ships that produce enough damage to counter / break up the destroyer ball, other than a larger group of destroyers. This leads to PvP becoming about who can bring the most amount of destroyers into a fight. There have been several suggestions about limiting the number of destroyers per match, or ensuring that there are equal numbers of destroyers per team. Both of suggestions limit the ability of the player to choose their ship roles, the first by locking out destroyers over a caped value, the second by forcing the player to choose his or her destroyer lest they put their team at a disadvantage in a destroyer ball.

The suggestion that I have to combat destroyer balls is to reduce the survivability of individual destroyers in a destroyer ball, to allow the breakup of said destroyer ball by non-destroyer ships. To this end, I propose the following change:

 

·        The magnetic field of allied destroyers resonates together, reducing their shield and hull effectiveness. For each allied destroyer within a radius of xxxxx m from the player’s destroyer, the player’s hull and shield resistances are reduced by yyyyy points.

 

The way this mechanic would work is that for every allied destroyer inside of a radius around the player’s destroyer, the player would receive a temporary resistance debuff, that would be removed if the allied destroyer(s) moved out of this radius.

The radius would be fairly large (suggested 2000 m to 3000 m) to accommodate the long range of destroyer weapons and active modules (to allow destroyers to support each other, but not to the extent that they are un-killable).

The resistance reduction would also be fairly large (suggested 20 to 40 points per) to account for the fact that even without resistances factored in, destroyers have enormous hull and shield strength.  

For example, if a team had 2 destroyers within 3000 m of each other, they both would receive a would receive a -40 points resistance debuff. If the team had 3 destroyers all within 3000 m of each other, they would each receive a -80 points debuff. If, however, those destroyers were strung out in a line, each more than 1500 m away from their neighbor, the destroyers on the end would receive -40 pts, while the one in the center would receive -80 pts. Furthermore, if no destroyers are within 3000 m of each other, they would receive no debuffs.

Thus, the larger the destroyer ball is, the weaker each individual destroyer is, allowing the destroyer ball to be broken up with non-destroyer ships. Additionally, destroyers who do not want debuffs will naturally spread out, further breaking up destroyer balls.

 

  1. Destroyer Modules vs Splash Damage

The opposite problem occurs with destroyers and splash damage, specifically the covert-ops and its plasma arc. These ships can single-handedly take a destroyer from full health (shields and hull) to less than half hull in the one second of a well-placed plasma arc. Now, although I appreciate the David vs Goliath sentimentality, losing all of your modules and most of your health (a destroyers defining attributes) in a little under a second to a single plasma arc (or tempest launcher, etc.) and leaving your ship dead in space is incredibly frustrating, especially with 30 second respawns. It also seems very un-Star Conflict like, as destroyers are the only ship that can take hull damage before losing its shields. To this end, I propose the following solutions:

 

·        Prevent the modules from taking damage until the destroyer has no shield remaining

 

*Or*

 

·        Make damage taken from exploding modules count against the shield health first before hull health.

 

Any of these changes will allow a destroyer to more effectively survive the destruction of their modules, without making them tankier in general, thus making them more enjoyable to play, even when under attack from a bunch of stinging gnats. Additionally, it will not remove any game mechanics, or the skills involved with them, only changing the results of those mechanics.

 

  1. Destroyer Points

Attacking and killing a destroyer is hard work, even for a coordinated group of players. They have so much health that you are virtually guaranteed to have some losses while attacking, if not from the destroyer itself, then from other players defending their teammate. As such actually killing a destroyer should be worth more than the one kill that is awarded, especially given the necessary teamwork aspect of most destroyer kills. Thus I propose the following changes:

 

·        Destroyers count as more than one kill in beacon capture, combat recon, and detonation matches (2 – 4 kills per destroyer kill)

 

·        Destroyer kills are worth more points domination matches (20 – 40 points per kill)

 

·        Destroyers kills are worth more points in Dreadnaught Battles (30 – 60 points per kill)

 

This will balance out the ability of a destroyer to inflict massive damage, while itself being hard to kill.

*Note that the rewards and pilot stats will remain the same (each destroyer still counts as 1 player kill, and 1 player assist); only the team objective counter will change.*

2

Your solution for destroyer balls is rather harsh, although the general idea could work.  First, I’d not have it kick in until there are 3 destroyers too close; 2 destroyers are not as big a problem, and have numerous reasons to be close for teamwork not related to being a ball.  Second, the required distance should be substantially smaller, maybe 1500 to 2000 meters.

As an additional thought, it might make more sense the negative effects to be applied to offensive rather than defensive parameters.  Something along the lines of the massive energy consumption of weapons and active modules causing interference between destroyers.

 

The main problem I have with the current way modules are destroyed is that splash damage penetrates the shield.  If a cov ops can get inside the shields, they should be able to cause all kinds of trouble with a plasma arc.  The problem is that the current system is completely counter-intuitive.  Other than destroyer modules, the only damage that actually penetrates shields is collision damage.  Seeing as the hull is not directly damaged by the splash damage, it almost seems like an oversight for modules to take such damage.  It just doesn’t feel right to lose 2 or 3 modules to a Tempest Launcher barrage that only takes out half my shields.

 

As far as the third issue goes, destroyer kills should definitely be worth more than normal kills, maybe double.

3

·        The magnetic field of allied destroyers resonates together, reducing their shield and hull effectiveness. For each allied destroyer within a radius of xxxxx m from the player’s destroyer, the player’s hull and shield resistances are reduced by yyyyy points.

I don’t like it. There’s no other ship in the game that does that, and it’d be very difficult to deal with strategically from either side. Even though frigballs were completely ridiculous ever so long ago, there’s no frigate AOE debuff in the game for a reason.

 

·        Prevent the modules from taking damage until the destroyer has no shield remaining

 

*Or*

 

·        Make damage taken from exploding modules count against the shield health first before hull health.

I definitely like the second more than the first. Plasma arc is meant to be punishing – if you fail to use your eyes to spot it moving in quickly behind you, or if you stay nearly still in the middle of a dogfight, either way, you deserve to take that damage in the face. To be sure, plasma arc is more punishing against destroyers, for a variety of reasons. But the bloody module has a minute long cooldown and a high skill floor, and practically requires good ping, too – it really ought to do something other than scratch the shields.

 

(also personally I’d turn down the damage from destroyed modules a lot, ~10% of hull volume for each module is a bit much)

 

·        Destroyers count as more than one kill in beacon capture, combat recon, and detonation matches (2 – 4 kills per destroyer kill)

 

·        Destroyer kills are worth more points domination matches (20 – 40 points per kill)

 

·        Destroyers kills are worth more points in Dreadnaught Battles (30 – 60 points per kill)

Oh yes. This is practically self-evident. They should be worth two points or so in team battle, too.

4

matchmaker should sort them so both teams have an even number up to a certain maximum number.

5

goldfish i totally agree with you in 2) suggestion of yours but nerfing destros doesnt prevent destro balls nor it make it easier but u need to limit their max numbers and both side will leave happy and 3) suggestion u want greater reward? Well my idea is remove the respawn ability from destroyers, so when u killed a dessy duh! u killed a dessy he wont respawn again no more dessy for that player is there a greater reward than destroying a destroyer out of the game forever??

6

I don’t like it. There’s no other ship in the game that does that, and it’d be very difficult to deal with strategically from either side. Even though frigballs were completely ridiculous ever so long ago, there’s no frigate AOE debuff in the game for a reason.

 

You’re correct when you say there’s no other ship in the game that does that, but you’re over looking the fact that there is no other ship like destroyers.  Frig-balls were somewhat ridiculous to deal with, but only for less experienced teams that didn’t know how to develop any kind of strategies.  Pretty quickly it became clear that frig-balls were not the greatest method to win and they were certainly the least amount of fun.  I’m sure there are countless strategies that can beat down even a good frigball.   With only a somewhat coordinated team with one idea in mind, it’s very possible for that team to beat a frig-ball, and sometimes the coordination is not even necessary.  I’ve seen randos beat frig-balls plenty of times.  There’s no frigate AOE debuff because it doesn’t need one.  Destroyers do.

 

 

 

I definitely like the second more than the first. Plasma arc is meant to be punishing – if you fail to use your eyes to spot it moving in quickly behind you, or if you stay nearly still in the middle of a dogfight, either way, you deserve to take that damage in the face. To be sure, plasma arc is more punishing against destroyers, for a variety of reasons. But the bloody module has a minute long cooldown and a high skill floor, and practically requires good ping, too – it really ought to do something other than scratch the shields.

 

(also personally I’d turn down the damage from destroyed modules a lot, ~10% of hull volume for each module is a bit much)

+1

 

 

·        Destroyers count as more than one kill in beacon capture, combat recon, and detonation matches (2 – 4 kills per destroyer kill)

 

·        Destroyer kills are worth more points domination matches (20 – 40 points per kill)

 

·        Destroyers kills are worth more points in Dreadnaught Battles (30 – 60 points per kill)

+1,000,000

7

  1. Having Destroyers worth more virtual points will not make them more balanced game play wise, and after they get poked by balancing stick, they no longer requer worth more virtual game points.

  2. No, until there are other ways to deal with Destroyers, there is no need to tremendously buff them like this.

  3. that will fix nothing, destroyers don’t have to be close enough to project their power, nor do you need a lot of them, there are big games and small games, different maps etc, this “fix” is pointless.

8

maybe a solution is seperating destroyers or at least the queues! maybe you have to decide if you fly destroyer or normal ship before you enter battle…

9

I understand the need for a change in the mechanics of destroyers, but a ridiculous debuff for flying as a team with other destroyers? Lol its like you want to kill their usage and teamwork entirely, destroyers are not op, a group of destroyers can be a hassle but if they are caught between a team they are not that strong, i experienced this first hand with destro balls thinking they can mow over a team just because they had more destroyers than us. I Disagree with most of the proposed changes, they just need to limit the ship count ingame, yes its a bit unfair but it is a simple and effective way to reduce their hassle of overpopulating matches. And as others have said tactics are made and have been made to counter such things, don’t understand why people still complain about destroyers, they are not hard ships to counter, and really don’t stand a chance without team support, just a giant moving target to draw attention. Just learn how to fly them or against them and it settles things

 

I like the module damage change proposed, its stupid how shield’s don’t do anything against explosive damage, understand it a balance choice but still just defeats the purpose of having them in the first place.

10

Thank you everyone for your feedback. If there are more suggestions, make sure to leave them here. We need to balance destroyers before they enter into t4 / t5. 

 

On the topic of limiting the destroyer per match: 

matchmaker should sort them so both teams have an even number up to a certain maximum number.

 

nerfing destros doesnt prevent destro balls nor it make it easier but u need to limit their max numbers and both side will leave happy 

 

 they just need to limit the ship count ingame, yes its a bit unfair but it is a simple and effective way to reduce their hassle of overpopulating matches.

 

Limiting the number of destroyers has been suggested before, in lots of places. I get it; it is simple and easy and might very well work. However, there are a couple of problems with that mechanic:

 

1)      Players who load into a match slower rarely / never get to play a destroyer because players who loaded in faster already fill the cap.

 

Firstly, I (along with I am assuming a great number of people) commonly load into battle 2 to 5 seconds slower than other players, who have already chosen their ships by the time I finish the loading screen. This puts players with better ping (aka not the North American community) at the advantage for picking destroyers. Secondly, players who join in progress will almost never get to play a destroyer. My solution allows players to still choose to play a destroyer, but it puts them and their team at a disadvantage, hopefully balancing everything out.

 

2)      A player only has a destroyer in their lineup, and joins the game in progress with the destroyer cap reached.

 

Does he / she / (the bimorph pronoun) fail to spawn in and the team is down a player, or is the destroyer cap exceeded and the other team placed at a disadvantage? Both options seem incredibly unfair for teams and detrimental to player experience. Does the cap change? If so, how does the other team know, and how can they take advantage of this? All around it seems like a bad idea, especially with the number of one-ship-wonder destroyer pilots in the ques these days.

 

3)      Players who really do not know how to play a destroyer fill up the destroyer cap on a team. They die and constantly respawn as destroyer, preventing other players from playing destroyers.

 

With my solution, at least veteran (or somewhat skilled) destroyer pilots will still be able to fly their destroyers, and their skill may be enough to offset the skills lacking in their teammates, despite the disadvantage. 

 

I’m not saying that capping destroyers is a bad idea per se, in fact I would welcome a cap of some kind. It would just have to be implemented in a smart way, and it could easily become problematic. 

11

Thank you everyone for your feedback. If there are more suggestions, make sure to leave them here. We need to balance destroyers before they enter into t4 / t5. 

 

On the topic of limiting the destroyer per match: 

 

 

 

Limiting the number of destroyers has been suggested before, in lots of places. I get it; it is simple and easy and might very well work. However, there are a couple of problems with that mechanic:

 

1)      Players who load into a match slower rarely / never get to play a destroyer because players who loaded in faster already fill the cap.

 

Firstly, I (along with I am assuming a great number of people) commonly load into battle 2 to 5 seconds slower than other players, who have already chosen their ships by the time I finish the loading screen. This puts players with better ping (aka not the North American community) at the advantage for picking destroyers. Secondly, players who join in progress will almost never get to play a destroyer. My solution allows players to still choose to play a destroyer, but it puts them and their team at a disadvantage, hopefully balancing everything out.

 

2)      A player only has a destroyer in their lineup, and joins the game in progress with the destroyer cap reached.

 

Does he / she / (the bimorph pronoun) fail to spawn in and the team is down a player, or is the destroyer cap exceeded and the other team placed at a disadvantage? Both options seem incredibly unfair for teams and detrimental to player experience. Does the cap change? If so, how does the other team know, and how can they take advantage of this? All around it seems like a bad idea, especially with the number of one-ship-wonder destroyer pilots in the ques these days.

 

3)      Players who really do not know how to play a destroyer fill up the destroyer cap on a team. They die and constantly respawn as destroyer, preventing other players from playing destroyers.

 

With my solution, at least veteran (or somewhat skilled) destroyer pilots will still be able to fly their destroyers, and their skill may be enough to offset the skills lacking in their teammates, despite the disadvantage. 

 

I’m not saying that capping destroyers is a bad idea per se, in fact I would welcome a cap of some kind. It would just have to be implemented in a smart way, and it could easily become problematic. 

if you’ve checked the most recent poll, the community is at least 80% casual players. I doubt they care about someone getting a longer wait time if it means destroyer stacked steamrolls stop. They also don’t know how to deal with or drive destroyers and as casual players you can’t simply ask them to git gud without enraging them and provoking a report, because they don’t play for the same reasons as someone playing to win above anything else, and the concept of utilizing their problem solving and logical thinking part of their brain to achieve success in a game environment is unfathomable. because they play for fun in the current year of 2016.

But enough with the passive aggressive memes, here is my point;

For both community and economy reasons there needs to be a compromise. For example a “destroyers to player ratio” counter with a predicted wait time so people know what kind of wait to expect. You would be surprised how many fewer complaints you will get if people see this information before clicking on  battle because it means they’re consenting to it and not going into queue blind with no ability to cement expectations.

Also, giving destroyers game modes around having two or three of them per team would be interesting as well. Some sort of hybrid between captain and detonation or beacon capture would be neat, where the game mode only activates if a certain number of destroyers are in queue.

12

I understand the need for a change in the mechanics of destroyers, but a ridiculous debuff for flying as a team with other destroyers? Lol its like you want to kill their usage and teamwork entirely, destroyers are not op, a group of destroyers can be a hassle but if they are caught between a team they are not that strong, i experienced this first hand with destro balls thinking they can mow over a team just because they had more destroyers than us. I Disagree with most of the proposed changes, they just need to limit the ship count ingame, yes its a bit unfair but it is a simple and effective way to reduce their hassle of overpopulating matches. And as others have said tactics are made and have been made to counter such things, don’t understand why people still complain about destroyers, they are not hard ships to counter, and really don’t stand a chance without team support, just a giant moving target to draw attention. Just learn how to fly them or against them and it settles things

 

I like the module damage change proposed, its stupid how shield’s don’t do anything against explosive damage, understand it a balance choice but still just defeats the purpose of having them in the first place.

 

 

I agree that a single destroyer, by itself, without a supporting destroyer ball is easy to kill. I have been that destroyer, and I have killed that destroyer. My changes would not target lone destroyers, they are not the problem. The problem is that a group of destroyers is impossible to kill without serious losses and coordination because destroyers simply have too much health to kill them before they kill you. Period. Either the destroyer’s support (other destroyers) kill you while you focus the destroyer, or the destroyer kills you while you focus its support (other destroyers). The solution then is to decrease the survivability of the single destroyers, so that they can be focused and killed before the rest of them kill you.

13

if you’ve checked the most recent poll, the community is at least 80% casual players. I doubt they care about someone getting a longer wait time if it means destroyer stacked steamrolls stop. They also don’t know how to deal with or drive destroyers and as casual players you can’t simply ask them to git gud without enraging them and provoking a report, because they don’t play for the same reasons as someone playing to win above anything else, and the concept of utilizing their problem solving and logical thinking part of their brain to achieve success in a game environment is unfathomable. because they play for fun in the current year of 2016.

But enough with the passive aggressive memes, here is my point;

For both community and economy reasons there needs to be a compromise. For example a “destroyers to player ratio” counter with a predicted wait time so people know what kind of wait to expect. You would be surprised how many fewer complaints you will get if people see this information before clicking on  battle because it means they’re consenting to it and not going into queue blind with no ability to cement expectations.

Also, giving destroyers game modes around having two or three of them per team would be interesting as well. Some sort of hybrid between captain and detonation or beacon capture would be neat, where the game mode only activates if a certain number of destroyers are in queue.

 

People should not have to wait in ques in order to play the ships that they want to. The higher-level tiers have enough problems with que times without adding further waiting because of destroyers. Also, I’m not saying that players should “get gud” in order to play destroyers. What I’m saying is that not everyone with a destroyer plays it at the same level, and that matchmaking should not be based simply on whether or not you have a destroyer. A destroyer does not maketh the pilot; the pilot maketh the destroyer.

 

Furthermore, everyone should be able to play any ship that they desire to at any time they want to. With that philosophy in mind, the only way that ‘destroyer stacked steamrolls’ will be stopped is by decreasing their ability to ball up. Reducing their resistances makes them easier to kill, and thus balls can be broken up.

 

Game modes where destroyers play a specific role could be interesting, but care would have to be taken so that players are not stuck playing destroyers that they might not necessarily want to fly in such a game mode, or are prevented from flying destroyers when they want to. 

14

People should not have to wait in ques in order to play the ships that they want to.

if the game had a community that wasn’t three digits during western prime time it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

15

I don’t like it. There’s no other ship in the game that does that, and it’d be very difficult to deal with strategically from either side. Even though frigballs were completely ridiculous ever so long ago, there’s no frigate AOE debuff in the game for a reason.

 

No, to deal with frigballs, they just nerfed frigs to death and buffed everything else. My solution would do essentially the same, just in a targeted and situation specified manner. Individual destroyers would remain just as powerful and challenging, however groups of them would not be unkillable. From a strategic standpoint, destroyers would either spread out, allowing them to be focused down individually, or group up, receive the debuff, and be killed easier. There are trade offs to both approaches and teams would have to learn to play destroyers differently. 

 

 

I definitely like the second more than the first. Plasma arc is meant to be punishing – if you fail to use your eyes to spot it moving in quickly behind you, or if you stay nearly still in the middle of a dogfight, either way, you deserve to take that damage in the face. To be sure, plasma arc is more punishing against destroyers, for a variety of reasons. But the bloody module has a minute long cooldown and a high skill floor, and practically requires good ping, too – it really ought to do something other than scratch the shields.

 

(also personally I’d turn down the damage from destroyed modules a lot, ~10% of hull volume for each module is a bit much)

 

I agree on both fronts. While I hate being plasma arced more than anything in a destroyer (and I often play against people who are very good at plasma arcing me), the idea of a small ship doing fairly massive damage to a big ship is a good one. Plasma arcing destroyers will especially become more viable when destroyer balls are spread out, leaving individual ships more vulnerable to attack. 

 

As for reducing damage taken by exploding modules, I am all for that, as long as the damage done remains high enough to either force the destroyer to retreat to find heals, or to make it a tempting target for other ships. 

16

No, to deal with frigballs, they just nerfed frigs to death and buffed everything else. My solution would do essentially the same, just in a targeted and situation specified manner. Individual destroyers would remain just as powerful and challenging, however groups of them would not be unkillable. From a strategic standpoint, destroyers would either spread out, allowing them to be focused down individually, or group up, receive the debuff, and be killed easier. There are trade offs to both approaches and teams would have to learn to play destroyers differently.

Destroyers that are actually spread out instead of sitting behind one rock in a circlejerk are tremendously more dangerous already, forcing them to spread out is to forcing them to be even more efficient, no thank you.