This Combat Balancing SUCKS! Here's why...

[mr.WHO]

I'd love Boosters having separate energy bar.

[hexx_eddi]

ya, I have to change my mind about the boosters. It is nice (with quick recharge mod) that you can boost almost nonstop but on the big ships it cost a lot for a short burst. So, yes, boost should be decoupled from the shields, then the shield recharge mechanic can be tweaked/changed.

[tarax007]

-No Turret Control Options for Destroyers and probably also XL ships. This is very painful! Because I use large ships for Boarding. Which means I need my turrets to do exactly what I want and when I want. I need them to stop firing at my target when a certain % of its Hull Damage was reached so the Boarding can begin. And I need them to fire again after a few seconds and them stop to keep the shields down and not go above the HP mark, either. In other words. I need full control over the turrets: What it fires at and when. Target My Target options would be very important so that a turret can also fire at an engine of the enemy ship for example. And of course the option to turn them off like I can in the Nemesis for example.

-No control over what Drones are doing. Flying the Destroyer and getting attacked will often trigger the Repair Drones to come out and try to repair some damage done to a turret of mine or an engine. But they do that in Mid-Battle and get snacked 1 by 1 within a few seconds. I need full control over what my drones are doing and when. A button to launch, and a button to recall. Same goes for Defence Drones of course.

-Shields not regenerating even on Corvettes, Large Ships & Carriers simply because a tiny little fighter keeps tickling it. Makes no sense. That giant War Ship should not suffer any problem whatsoever from that tiny fighter and especially not such a problematic one like having these Gigantic Captial Ship Shields unable to regenerate. Ruins Balancing and makes it possible for that small ship to eventually even kill the Capital ship. Ships should have a Shield Generation Power Output like in X3 while Ships must also have an Weapons Energy Output like in X3 with stored MW Energy and a Laser Recharge Rate in MW. So: Is the Laser Energy Recharge lower than the giant Capital Ship Shield Generator Output then the fighter wont be able to get it below 99% whatever it does.

-Rockets are completely broken. They cannot be targeted and taken down. Countermeasures barely do anything while it makes no sense that an enemy can carry 50 rockets but I can only hold 2 Counter Measures. What tha heck? And most importantly: Stupid little S-sized Ships firing homing missiles that one-hit kill my Nemesis Corvette? Thats ridiculous. My Destroyer lost almost 50% of its Capital Ship Shields from on of those rockets while that fighter was simply spamming those every 5 seconds. And they were even HOMING IN. They were no slow Anti-Station torpedos- Completely broken: How can it be that the same guys who made the perfect X3 Balancing got it SO WRONG in X4? We also need to be able to "Target Missile" per Button. So that our ship seeks the closes missile and targets it.

-When enemies abandon their fighters - the ship instantly goes down to 10% HP. Thats very annoying because many weapons fire salvos. And the ship was just at 70% Hp, dude jumps out and sets the ship instantly to 10% after getting the first projectile hit from a salvo. And then that very same salvo immediately kills the ship. Since we can easily restore a ship to 100% with the repair laser - why not leave that part of damaging the ship to 10% simply away? So I can rely on not taking out the whole ship with one salvo suddenly leaving me with no captured ship.

-Boosters need another energy bar.. (Yellow or something). AI will use boosters and destroy their shields but they somehow wont use the Travel Drive in combat to get fast without losing it. Makes no sense and makes them weak. Capital Ships have shields of enormous strength. And yet somehow they can drain their entire shield in 5 seconds completely by getting barely any noticible speed difference. Whereever I look: Having Shields bound to the Boost is a mistake and should be done like that. Please: Yellow Bar for Boost.

I agree with these points in general and what others said about Energy on ships - this NEEDS TO BE A THING!
Ship energy output should in my opinion then be used to power weapons AND the booster - This would make gameplay so much more fluid and fun!

[leecarter]

The shield recharge mod does at least make cap ships tougher. Same guy has turret and cap ship gun mods that also seem to help. No where near a perfect solution, but it's a workaround that makes cap ships worth investing in and scary to be around.

[mr.WHO]

Also they should increase the amount of flares on all ships. 10 flares on Carrier is a joke, but 1 flare on a fighter is INSANITY!

[Titan2k4]

Here's another crazy problem. I just got myself the Colossus for the first time and realized it has no frontal main batteries. Maybe intended as its not a Destroyer type Brawler but a Carrier. Fittet with Overpowered Rocket Launchers its the best you can have anyways right now also without main batteries. But the problem I have is... There is no turret control (as I stated above). So... I cant actually attack any ships with that. The only way for me to attack with the carrier is to let the captain hop into the captains chair and then order him to attack the ship. Then he will control all turrets. I WONDER HOW HE DOES THAT!!!! And since I love to capture ships with by boarding - I want to use the massive Infantry Regiment on that carrier as boarding party. But once the dude starts firing the turrets - he does not stop. Until I put him out of the chair again. And now I have the problem - the enemy ship has most likely returned fire - so my turrets are now automatically responding also when I am in the captains chair... So... If I leave the chair - My turrets fire. If I stay in the chair - the turrets fire. Its frustrating as shit not to be able to do such a simple task - control your weapon systems. Jesus Christ dudes. You can tell that they have not really spend any thought on the highe rend content: The game needed to be released and the plan was to deliver end-content in time afterwards. Great!

[Phoynix]

Actually in X4 Turrets do far less damage even the Large then the stock fighter weapons.

There is a mod on Nexus that just change the delay down to 2s (0s on L and XL) this is a good test if it really work as we hope.
https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/69

The weapon energy system is interesting but I think not really needed. A scout only has one weapon while a heavy fighter has 4. When you go up a level you have an own set of weapons not available for the smaller ships. At the and it just add a level of complexity that is not hard for the player but extra effort for the developer, they need to add a separate system and balance this system. While the current system already has an easy (and understandable) balancing. Stronger ship = more weapons, bigger ship = bigger guns.

[Sesk]

Here's another crazy problem. I just got myself the Colossus for the first time and realized it has no frontal main batteries. Maybe intended as its not a Destroyer type Brawler but a Carrier. Fittet with Overpowered Rocket Launchers its the best you can have anyways right now also without main batteries. But the problem I have is... There is no turret control (as I stated above). So... I cant actually attack any ships with that. The only way for me to attack with the carrier is to let the captain hop into the captains chair and then order him to attack the ship. Then he will control all turrets. I WONDER HOW HE DOES THAT!!!! And since I love to capture ships with by boarding - I want to use the massive Infantry Regiment on that carrier as boarding party. But once the dude starts firing the turrets - he does not stop. Until I put him out of the chair again. And now I have the problem - the enemy ship has most likely returned fire - so my turrets are now automatically responding also when I am in the captains chair... So... If I leave the chair - My turrets fire. If I stay in the chair - the turrets fire. Its frustrating as shit not to be able to do such a simple task - control your weapon systems. Jesus Christ dudes. You can tell that they have not really spend any thought on the highe rend content: The game needed to be released and the plan was to deliver end-content in time afterwards. Great!

You can control your turret "orders" in the top part of your screen.

[Phoynix]

L and XL can't be controlled like medium...

Here's another crazy problem. I just got myself the Colossus for the first time and realized it has no frontal main batteries. Maybe intended as its not a Destroyer type Brawler but a Carrier. Fittet with Overpowered Rocket Launchers its the best you can have anyways right now also without main batteries. But the problem I have is... There is no turret control (as I stated above). So... I cant actually attack any ships with that. The only way for me to attack with the carrier is to let the captain hop into the captains chair and then order him to attack the ship. Then he will control all turrets. I WONDER HOW HE DOES THAT!!!! And since I love to capture ships with by boarding - I want to use the massive Infantry Regiment on that carrier as boarding party. But once the dude starts firing the turrets - he does not stop. Until I put him out of the chair again. And now I have the problem - the enemy ship has most likely returned fire - so my turrets are now automatically responding also when I am in the captains chair... So... If I leave the chair - My turrets fire. If I stay in the chair - the turrets fire. Its frustrating as shit not to be able to do such a simple task - control your weapon systems. Jesus Christ dudes. You can tell that they have not really spend any thought on the highe rend content: The game needed to be released and the plan was to deliver end-content in time afterwards. Great!

You can control your turret "orders" in the top part of your screen.

[CaptainX4]

for now i use a small ship for boarding, get the carrier with the marines close, attack the enemy with the fighter, order the freighter to board and keep killing modules when marines launched send the carrier away. yeah, they have brought the retarded boarding minigame from X:R... i too hope that this will change

[Phoynix]

Best ship is the paranid M that has 5 main front guns(forget its name)
You can strip the shields and disable the engines on all the caps quickly and then just point it with a single pulse laser to get the crew t ostart to eject(they eject at 75% health and below)

Then at around 5% health you can send a single marine against the 1-3 personal left on board and take it over.

for now i use a small ship for boarding, get the carrier with the marines close, attack the enemy with the fighter, order the freighter to board and keep killing modules when marines launched send the carrier away. yeah, they have brought the retarded boarding minigame from X:R... i too hope that this will change

[snowman001]

Got to agree with the OP - the "boost" mechanic tied to shields is ridiculous and should have been culled from rebirth. with travel mode why oh why do we need a boost, its a silly gimmick from XR - i know the skunk needed to be competitive with all other ships in the game but please - BIN!!!!!!!!!!!! this idea it sucks.

Surely Egosoft can see that an M5 holding a capital ships shields "down" is obsurd.

Cap ships should be swatting swathes of fighters with flak (oh yeah no flak)

With the speed of patches coming out lets hope Common sense kicks in and we actually get a balanced fight part of the game . I personally want to be afraid of j's and k's . (those runs through Xenon sectors in ketrels - oh the memories) - knowing you were one flak shot away from poof! i mean whats the point of working to a destroyer when i can kill everything in a fighter .

[Hamakua]

Got to agree with the OP - the "boost" mechanic tied to shields is ridiculous and should have been culled from rebirth. with travel mode why oh why do we need a boost, its a silly gimmick from XR - i know the skunk needed to be competitive with all other ships in the game but please - BIN!!!!!!!!!!!! this idea it sucks.

Surely Egosoft can see that an M5 holding a capital ships shields "down" is obsurd.

Cap ships should be swatting swathes of fighters with flak (oh yeah no flak)

With the speed of patches coming out lets hope Common sense kicks in and we actually get a balanced fight part of the game . I personally want to be afraid of j's and k's . (those runs through Xenon sectors in ketrels - oh the memories) - knowing you were one flak shot away from poof! i mean whats the point of working to a destroyer when i can kill everything in a fighter .

They could do a few things to replicate the dynamic.

1. Have a boost gauge/reserve that you use up first and if you run out of that you can *then* use your shield as an alternative power source. Stop AI from using anymore than the first 25% of their shield boost.
2. Just completely axe boosting from shield energy, but "cut off" the ability to boost if your shields are stripped (which I think is the dynamic they are going for).
3. Code AI to not boost to their own death.
4. Code AI to more often "DPS trade" with the player where getting the damage out is more the priority than surviving. I.E. calling the player's bluff. Maybe for advanced pilots or "hard enemies".

AI is currently easy because it only runs at a certain point and the internal logic is banking on a a shield/boost bank to reset their engagement. I see what the coders were going for in the AI combat but it's the wrong priority. AI ships need to take the initiative and be more aggressive if they have the superior firepower and not be "Afraid" of takeing damage. They near instantly boost the moment they take fire - and that does far more damage than the actual damage from the player ship causes.

[Arghan]

Throw in 2 stuff:

You get BEST weapon in the beginning of the game. Pulse lasers are as far as i know most efficient. No reason to change to anything else. Peacing broken.

AI is dumb to all hells. Comming from elite and everspace - this dumb idiots need to swarm me to force me to disengage - no way to blow me up in a fighter.

[snowman001]

You make some very good points there. I'm a little confused though as too why the boost mechanic is needed at all - As you mention the AI has no idea what they are doing with it. As you rightly mention the AI use it to kill themselves - hit them once with the tier 1 laser they immediately boost away the reminder of their shields making for predictable - dare i say pedestrian combat.

I'm with you on untying it from shields - we have a crafting system . if we can craft a seta why not a boost tank - (like intergalactic nitrous )

Or remove it entirely for me - i mean would anyone actually miss the boost system if it was taken out ??

[GCU Grey Area]

Or remove it entirely for me - i mean would anyone actually miss the boost system if it was taken out ??

I definitely would.
Use boost quite frequently & find it very useful, both for a short term boost in a ship & sustained thrust when in my spacesuit
(like to set throttle slightly negative & use boost for forward thrust).
Also rather like the way boost depletes shields, reminds me of old games where redirecting ship energy between shields, weapons & engines was a key mechanic.
If I was to propose anything it would be travel mode should also drain shields & not be available if shield energy is too low.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

My thoughts on a combat rebalance.

1: Shield Mechanic is poor and easily exploited. Needs to be changed.

The idea of the shield being kept 'down' and not constantly recharging forever is a good idea so players can enjoy dogfights without the old problem of having mismatched fighter sizes shredding them. However, the mechanic is a bit TOO easy to exploit.

I would take a page from Elite in fixing this. Give shields a small continuous recharge rate, but if the shield is knocked out, it stays down for a fixed amount of time, then charges back up rapidly. This would allow for a heavier ship to have openings in their shield that can be taken advantage of, but doesn't leave them vulnerable to continuous damage from lone fighters.

Alternately, I would do a complete rework of the shield system. I tentatively call this the 'bleed through' mechanic.
In this mechanic, the shield coverage provides protection depending on its level. Shield recovery is constant, but as the shield gets lower, a percentage of projectile damage 'bleeds' through and damages the hull. As the shield level approaches zero, the hull takes almost all the damage. This means that even though the shields are up, extended intermittent combat starts to do serious damage well before the 'shields are down'.

This also gives shields 3 stat values that can be distributed across shield types.
a: Total Shield Capacity
b: Shield Recharge Rate
c: Shield bleed resistance

You can make is to some shields have a higher total capacity, but maybe trade off their recharge rate and bleed value. Or you have a fast-charging 'quick' shield that bleeds sooner, but charges faster. Or, you have a 'tough skin' shield that only starts bleeding at low levels, but has a lower total capacity and charges slow to average.

Picking these shields thus no longer becomes a 'good', 'better', 'best' mechanic that we have now. But rather, what shield suits a player the best for a task. A light, fast fighter might benefit from a 'tough skin' shield, that keeps it from taking hull damage in a dogfight. Meanwhile, a capital ship might benefit more from high capacity or even fast recharge shields due to having more hull strength and a large service crew... Allowing it to distribute and soak more damage across the board.




2: Boost and Shield linking mechanic is an interesting trade off, but extremely exploitable in favor of the player killing AI.

The problem here is that the AI aren't really aware of the detriment of using boost in a dogfight. In reality, using boost in a dogfight because you're at a disadvantage in the turning fight is just a quick way to get murdered. Unless you make use of boost early before the fight turns too far out of you or in this case, the AI's favor, to extend and use travel to escape...

Well, essentially, if you manage to get an AI's shields down, and then just land a few shots every few seconds to keep the shields from recharging, you pin them to the wall.


I would honestly change the boost system to be thermal like the weapons. Overuse the boost, and you have a forced cooldown. Perhaps even UP the stakes of overusing the boost in that your engine goes into emergency cooldown and your regular top speed drops by half.

Doing this would introduce more variation into the selection of of your all-round, combat, and travel engines above the values they have now. All-rounder engines balance your performance, with an average booster that has moderate cooldown rates. A combat engine would have the most efficient cooling, but the booster would be very powerful and hot, meaning your boosts with the combat booster have to stay short. Meanwhile, the travel engine is built for escape. It doesn't have a fast cooldown for the booster, but the booster is tuned to provide a good, long push to allow the ship to get separation before using the travel drive.



3: Combat engagements are a bit too close together at the moment.

While I will admit this is likely to allow you to SEE what you're fighting, right now the engagement range seems a little too close for what we're doing. As a point, I got killed by friendly fire from behind while engaging a Xenon M. What happened? Well, I was so close just to HIT the thing, that I was in the sphere where most of the friendly fire from everyone was converging. That included a missile I didn't even know was fired. The Xenon exploded, and I exploded about a second later when the missile went spearfish and just slammed into the back of me.

So here's what I would do.
a - Double shot velocity on all weapons. With all the maneuverability that ships have in this game, it seems kind of silly to even have an aimpoint prediction retical on a target if your shots will never connect with it unless the target takes up half the screen.

b - Improve the accuracy of aim assist by making the gymbals account for your maneuvers more quickly. It's a TARGETING COMPUTER. I should not be able to witness the aimpoint adjustment happen slower than my own eyeballs can track to my own stick input.

This would bring the point of engagements in dogfights out farther.

[snowman001]

Or remove it entirely for me - i mean would anyone actually miss the boost system if it was taken out ??

I definitely would.
Use boost quite frequently & find it very useful, both for a short term boost in a ship & sustained thrust when in my spacesuit
(like to set throttle slightly negative & use boost for forward thrust).
Also rather like the way boost depletes shields, reminds me of old games where redirecting ship energy between shields, weapons & engines was a key mechanic.
If I was to propose anything it would be travel mode should also drain shields & not be available if shield energy is too low.

Hmm must just be me that finds it a gimmick - well id suggest its unlinked from shields . I really like the idea of balancing system powers but to link the boost to shield power doesn't really add up too me. you hit boost thus exposing your ship/shield to faster moving space debris/asteroids ect but by doing so you remove your only protection from said items - seems so backwards to me . you boost in combat to give your self distance or a better attack vector but sacrifice shields - surely this is completely counter productive

Im not against the boost mechanic entirely per se . just that it drains shields when you need them most .

I would suggest that its changed to a consumable we craft - surely some form of gas fuel /propellant would be more realistic . We mine gas - why cant thsi be used as a consumable fuel ?

[GCU Grey Area]

Im not against the boost mechanic entirely per se . just that it drains shields when you need them most .

Exactly! That's what makes it an interesting tactical choice.
Got to decide if the risk/reward balance worth sacrificing a bit of shielding for a sudden burst of speed.
Shields have always been my preferred power source for afterburners, boosters, etc in X games.
Drawing on a seperate power source carried in the hold made the choice far less interesting for me, so always avoided the spacefly or e-cell options.
Think it would be good however if maybe weapon systems could also be used as a power supply,
e.g. powering down weapons (i.e. selecting a config with less than full set of weapons) could provide a continuous increase to base speed & maybe improve shield recharge rate too.

[snowman001]

But there is no tactical choice the AI is as dumb as bricks - the only danger is debris asteroids ect that you are more likely to hit when boosting.

I do like your idea of weapon power but again your gimping your fighting ability when you need it most, but this is a much better solution than the one we have now due to any tactical advantage you gain from boosting is negated by lack of shield power . The weapon power is an interesting one though - again not very realistic for a simulation game i feel .

I mean be honest how many times have you boosted at the wrong time and ploughed into a station/rock with no shield.

Interestingly would the AI resort to boosting rather than shooting if weapon power was sacrificed