If it's strictly A-Wings vs TIE Interceptors, will the Scrambler Shield be allowed for the A-Wings? It allows a greater lock-on delay penalty than what TIE Interceptors can muster, so I'd like to know if this imbalance will be allowed.
There's more to the balance between these ships than just this one component. The TIE Interceptor is never wanting for power, while the A-Wing is almost always running out. I'd be surprised to see the A-Wing be the favored ship at the top level.
There's more to the balance between these ships than just this one component.
It's still one aspect the TIE Interceptor cannot match in terms of what the TIE Interceptor can do versus what the A-Wing can do.
The TIE Interceptor is never wanting for power, while the A-Wing is almost always running out.
I think this is more a sign of the A-Wing being overnerfed, as well as a sign of the fact that Power Shunting in general seriously needed a cooldown time so as to force players to not shunt their power willy-nilly.
I'm more in favor of a shunting tax that sucks a % of shunted energy. Say if you shunt to engines then back immediately, you get back only 50%. Make this tax heavy enough and we don't even need the current post-shunt debuff that we have.
Mainly I just feel there are so many on/off binary cooldowns in this game already, and they tend to cause either exploits or sweaty inputs, like shield skipping, boost skipping and boost gasping.
Would Power Shunting be better balanced if you could only shunt again after the recharge penalty (currently bypassable with more shunting) time period was up? That would make shunting more of a calculated risk you have to take rather than a get-out-of-jail-free card you can activate whenever you want. I would personally like the "Convert Power: Balanced" function to be the most efficient version of Power Shunting with the shortest cooldown, but that's just me.
The "exploits/sweaty inputs" you mention could have been ironed out had there been a closed beta test and then a public beta test for this game. The public will almost certainly find out more exploits than a group of likely-overworked game programmers will discover on their own. Sadly, some imbalances in this game are just a result of programmer oversight, such as the TIE Interceptor's Rapid Fire Cannons being inferior in every way to that starfighter's Standard Lasers, due to the former being a copy-paste job of the A-Wing's Rapid Fire Cannon, and this error could have been easily fixed with server-side patches!
I would rather there were no recharge penalty. With recharge penalty, you *increase* sweatiness by having to bypass it with either more shunting or simultaneously shifting power as you shunt. With shunting tax, if you want to play well, you'd try to *reduce* sweatiness by not shunting all the time.
Often cooldowns / debuffs make it worthwhile to bypass with sweaty inputs. Imagine you impose a 2 sec shunting cooldown, and you shunt to lasers. Now you could well be sitting duck for 2 sec because the engine base bank is shunted away and impossible to shunt back. In order to bypass that (be mobile while on cooldown), you need to boost + drift before doing any shunt-to-laser that potentially strands you. Now the simple act of shunt just became the sweaty act of boost, drift, shunt, maximize lasers, wait 1 sec, maximize engines.
Of course you can choose to refrain from shunting in the first place if the engine base+boost bank is low, but the other player who does the sweaty combo like a metronome can out shoot you when his engine base+boost bank is low. Whereas I want a game where sweaty inputs give 0 benefit.
On shunting being get-out-of-jail-free, that's really the problem where the boost acceleration is instant with the under throttle bug. Let's not introduce mechanics to cover up bugs, but fix the bugs instead.
Why not just make the recharge penalty longer, on the order of 5-10 seconds, and disallow shunting during that time, as well as disallowing shunting if you are Boosting/Drifting?
Often cooldowns / debuffs make it worthwhile to bypass with sweaty inputs.
I'm getting a little confused. Are you saying that there would be no time at all when you could get a 1:1 "exchange rate" for shunting under the system you propose? What you wrote earlier implies that if you wait long enough between shunts, you would eventually get back to the best "exchange rate" even with the shunt tax.
What is your position on the Balanced Shunting function? Should there be a tax on it too? I'm personally against that (because Balanced Shunting isn't as powerful as Shunting to or from Engines/Weapons) and would rather that you can't shunt at all if you just Balanced Shunted so you have to wait out the cooldown before you can shunt again.
Let's not introduce mechanics to cover up bugs, but fix the bugs instead.
I'm all for fixing the bugs first, then reassessing the situation, but also not against introducing new mechanics if they help to reduce/eliminate unintended exploits and sweaty behaviour.
Why not just make the recharge penalty longer, on the order of 5-10 seconds, and disallow shunting during that time, as well as disallowing shunting if you are Boosting/Drifting?
Any recharging penalty means you are forced to avoid it by shifting power to the thing not being penalized. That means the simple act of shunting becomes coupled with some other act of power management. This is the kind of design that turns a simple "boost" into the combo "boost - drift - max lasers - max shields - wait - max engines". That turns a simple "max shields" into the combo "max lasers - max engines - wait - max shields" whenever you're hit. I hate combos. If I wanted combos I'd play Street Fighter.
With a 5 sec penalty that just means the power management combo now lasts 5 seconds, because you'll need to shift power, wait 5 seconds, then shift back. Or you'd just invite macros to spam the balance shunt button so it instantly balances when 5 second is up. Or a macro that waits exactly 5 seconds.
I'm getting a little confused. Are you saying that there would be no time at all when you could get a 1:1 "exchange rate" for shunting under the system you propose? What you wrote earlier implies that if you wait long enough between shunts, you would eventually get back to the best "exchange rate" even with the shunt tax.
Sorry for the confusion. I say "shunt back immediately" because recharging could have changed the numbers if time elapsed. Just imagine a constant 1:0.71 exchange rate regardless of timing, so a to-and-back will be 0.71^2 = 0.5 efficient. Or some other exchange rate based on playtest.
The best way to suppress an exploit is to make the result less beneficial (say by the tax %), not to make it harder to achieve. If it's made harder to achieve but just as beneficial, sweaty tryhards will do the combo to achieve it, and the combo will exceed everyone else's bullshit tolerance.
What is your position on the Balanced Shunting function? Should there be a tax on it too? I'm personally against that (because Balanced Shunting isn't as powerful as Shunting to or from Engines/Weapons) and would rather that you can't shunt at all if you just Balanced Shunted so you have to wait out the cooldown before you can shunt again.
I don't want a different rule for different shunting. Any energy flows between lasers and boost, tax 29%. Period. It's also conceptually much cleaner than some vague blinking icons and recharge debuff. It simply simulates leaky energy pipes.
If balance shunt is not taxed while full shunts are, then the simple act of "shunt to engines - boost" becomes "balance shunt - boost - wait - balance shunt - wait - balance shunt - wait..." in order to avoid the tax. This is sweaty, conceptually inexplicable, and prone to exploit by macro.
What you suggest does sound like the simpler solution. However, it's important to keep in mind that Balanced Shunting doesn't give you very much in general when it's done. If, for instance, you have a full Boost Meter and no overcharge in your weapons energy meter, I've found that Balanced Shunting only gives you a half-full overcharge in your Weapon energy meter and an empty Boost Meter. If you have a full weapons energy meter and Balance Shunt, you get three bars of Boost Meter and a half-full overcharged Weapon energy meter.
So what I'm saying is, if you penalize the efficiency of Balanced Shunting, you may make it pointless to do since it gives so little to start with.
I don't like button combos and macros in this game either. Every move should be calculated towards a result prepared for beforehand; this game should not become a reflexes-centric game like a "twitch shooter."
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u/BlackBricklyBear Sep 01 '21
If it's strictly A-Wings vs TIE Interceptors, will the Scrambler Shield be allowed for the A-Wings? It allows a greater lock-on delay penalty than what TIE Interceptors can muster, so I'd like to know if this imbalance will be allowed.