1 (edited by Burial 2013-09-07 16:18:55)

Topic: MK3

A band of vets from my alliance had a brainstorming session and came up with a MK3 plan that requires minimum amount of work in arts and coding department. It also gets more people to farm on Beta and has few twists that makes the game more enjoyable to a lot of parties..
If that sounds interesting then keep on reading. cool

MK3 MANIFEST

Something a lot of players feel is the balance between MK1 and MK2 bots is bad. From combat capabilities, MK2 is always superior to MK1 in every way and that is what should change with MK3 bots. We came up with the idea that MK3 bots should have superior damage to MK2 but inferior tank to even MK1 counterparts. That makes them easier to lose as a result of poor play.

We went with superior damage route because it's something both PVE and PVP players find useful.

Bear in mind that we only thought about MK3 combat bots to keep the work amount required to add them as low as possible.

Superior Damage
Superior damage is archieved by raising the bot's damage bonus from 5% per Robotics skill to 10-15%. Here is where some community input is needed on what the exact damage output should be when considering the tanking drawback. This chart can help with that. I compared MK2 against MK3 with maxed DPS skills. I personally think 10% per Robotics skill is balanced.

Inferior Tank
Inferior tanking abilities comes from the fact that MK1 slot loadout is used. That means the end result will have the same tanking abilities as MK1. Until...

Superior Speed
To make MK3 bots more interesting and give them more interesting roles, they should have 10% speed bonus comparing to MK1 counterpart. Way to balance it out is to make their tanking ability even smaller: -10% armor and -10% accumulator.

SLOT LAYOUTS

Aside from the stats differences mentioned previously, they should have identical slot loadouts as their MK1 counterparts, meaning 1 less head and leg slot than MK2. Bot bonuses itself should come exactly like MK2 besides raised Damage per Robotics skill.

MK3 CORTEXES AND CT-S

In an attept to attract even more attention to Beta islands, we figured best is to make MK3 Cortexes a rare drop from Beta Rank 5 NPCs and Beta Observers. We figured best is to not limit them to only beta and add them to 3-stripe Star Beacon loot tables too. The main point is that they should be very rare in all the cases.

MK3 CT-s should be acquirable as a rare drop from Beta NPCs and from Artifacting on Gammas. Again, they should be very rare!

PRODUCTION COSTS

Production should be handled in familiar manner. For MK3 bot, you need MK3 cortex, MK3 CT, MK2 bot itself and minerals required to build MK1. Additionally to that, some Colixum based commodity could be added.

BIGGEST ISSUE

Biggest issue is figuring out how their texture should be colored. Pink only fits to Ville and black is already taken by faction heavies. Gray? Just darker shade of the MK2 color? Something else?

BUT WHY?

A lot of players have been longing for new bots for a while now. We figured the dev team is small and came up with the plan to first and foremost, make MK3 bots balanced and not superior to MK2s in every way! It might not be the coolest of ideas, but it's something new that hopefully doesn't require too much work.

Additionally it enhances following:
- Add meaning to Beta islands
- Make farming NPCs more interesting since you might jackpot
- Buff Artifacting
- Better chances for vets to blow their NIC up

Any ideas, suggestions? What devs think? Yes, no, maybe?

Re: MK3

its a bit dull Burial tbh

Can we not make the changes something actually different instead of just MOAR damage?

I had the idea a while ago about having an on board teleporter but i'm not just saying that, something out of the box is all I would like.

If we HAVE to go more damage i'd prefer to have something that dramatically reduces speed (even to zero) for more damage. You can keep the tank big_smile

3 (edited by Burial 2013-09-06 20:53:12)

Re: MK3

Well. Might be dull, but the main idea behind it actually is to please different crowds:

- More bots
- More Beta usage
- Better artifacting rewards
- More fun with NPC farming, potential to hit jackpot

And most of all: As little development time used as possible.

And by the way, don't think that more damage and speed is just that and dull. There could be a lot of clever fits unlocked with those bots. smile

4 (edited by Celebro 2013-09-06 20:52:33)

Re: MK3

I would just prefer a  re-balancing of Mk1 and MK2 with far clearer roles defining them.

Other than that the Devs have always been working on hybrids since the game's inception. So maybe even easier to add hybrid robots with a wide range of choices on offer.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: MK3

sound good on first read.

first things that come to mind: this is only for dmg bots. no ewar, indu, transport. dont has to be nessessary bad.

not too sure if its all that beta. remember there are only 6 beta islands. yea we dont have the popultaion that it might matter, but still i have mixed feelings about it.

production wise i think a heavy colixum based production would make sense so that gamma gets a bit meaning as well. honestly a lot of colixum. so we finaly see a bit trade of gamma materials to alpha.

Re: MK3

good way for the Devs to introduce new content quickly smile

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Re: MK3

The speed bonus and less tank is creative but an awesome idea... for texture you can go with black legs and arms with faction color shoulders.

I've played around with triple and quad plate mech load out, and the loss of speed made a joke out of trying to shoot an assault.. I even with a demob, basically gave up and just stood there letting him shoot me till my timer cooled off and docked... You can't underestimate the power of speed!

seems these fast and hard hitters should bonuses to signal masking due to their lighter weight structures and their seeming black ops roles. or perhaps due to their advanced actuators and experimental alloy structures they should get demob resistance?

Re: MK3

Not pooh poohing here... but

The MK II superiority comes from having the advanced mechanical skills to fill the extra slot.

By making MK III with the same slots as MK I , but increased 'baked in' dmg, you're acutally making the MK III bot easier to use for new players, and reducing the benefit of maxing out CPU for example.

That said, if they were to reduce the CPU/ACC/Reactor of the MK III with the same slots as MK I, then that would again make them difficult to fit and achieve the 'not as good as MK II'.

9 (edited by Burial 2013-09-06 21:16:42)

Re: MK3

Good points Arga.

I personally don't think it's best for newbies to use bots that are not well tanked since they seem to get more hit than vets but if they are willing to pay out the NIC(ICE?) and field something as expensive as MK3 to gain just about equal playfield with damage against vet with MK2, I don't think it's nessecarily a bad thing.

What I'm really after is to make MK3 bots expensive, useful in certain situations but easy to kill, making vets lose quite a lot of NIC with each MK3 loss.

The -CPU and -reactor is something worth considering. I'll get my spreadsheets up again.

(I haven't played a newbie combat character for quite some time, but from what I remember, I didn't really need to go even close to maxing my fitting skills up for MK2 mech - heavy is another deal if I want some play room with fits)

Re: MK3

Burial wrote:

Good points Arga.

I personally don't think it's best for newbies to use bots that are not well tanked since they seem to get more hit than vets but if they are willing to pay out the NIC(ICE?) and field something as expensive as MK3 to gain just about equal playfield with damage against vet with MK2, I don't think it's nessecarily a bad thing.

What I'm really after is to make MK3 bots expensive, useful in certain situations but easy to kill, making vets lose quite a lot of NIC with each MK3 loss.

The -CPU and -reactor is something worth considering. I'll get my spreadsheets up again.

(I haven't played a newbie combat character for quite some time, but from what I remember, I didn't really need to go even close to maxing my fitting skills up for MK2 mech - heavy is another deal if I want some play room with fits)

EW MK II is especially sensitve to skills, but its more about 'what' you put in the slots then just being able to fill them that needs high EP.

Expensive glass cannons - maybe a little too situational? Also, a mesmer MK III with even more burst damage than a MK II would be ... well I wouldn't want to get Merkle'd by one.

11 (edited by Burial 2013-09-06 21:42:15)

Re: MK3

When you look at the picture I posted in the first post, you see that full tuner Mesmer MK2 and full tuner Mesmer MK3 have 816 damage% and 970 damage% respectively. That's with 10% robotics bonus vs 5% on MK2.

With less tuners the difference is smaller. I personally think something along the lines of that is balanced, since you will be tanking a lot less, not to mention you rarely have full tuner fit on your PVP heavy.

Reducing reactor and CPU is something that should probably be done too, need to get beer goggles off for that math though.

12 (edited by Sundial 2013-09-06 23:00:24)

Re: MK3

Celebro wrote:

I would just prefer a  re-balancing of Mk1 and MK2 with far clearer roles defining them.

Other than that the Devs have always been working on hybrids since the game's inception. So maybe even easier to add hybrid robots with a wide range of choices on offer.

+1

Why does it have to be MK3? Why can't we just have specialized bots be MK2 and generalized be MK1?

We should have combat bots for MK2 in each size focussed on different things...

Leave the current mechs (MK1) as they are, then add specialized versions (MK2) with specific roles and slot layouts/bonuses for doing certain things better.

Example for Pelistal:

--MK1 Tyranos--

4 High
4 Launchers
2 Turret/Utility
3 Low

5% Missile Damage
5% Lock Time
5% Recharge

--MK2 Tyranos: Assault Configuration--

4 High
4 Launchers
2 Low

5% Missile Damage
5% Lock Time
1% Velocity (Trade for recharge bonus)

Role Bonus:

25% Missile Cycle Time

--MK2 Tyranos: Bunker Configuration--

3 High
4 Launchers
4 Low

5% Missile Damage
5% Lock Time
5% Recharge Rate

Role Bonus:

-25% Reactor Stability
25% Shield Absorbsion
-80% to shield cycle time (reduce to 1 second)

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

13 (edited by Martha Stuart 2013-09-06 22:53:39)

Re: MK3

Sundial wrote:

Stuff

God dam, I would Love to have my Tyro mk2 have a 50% accum recharge rate + a 25% shield absorption.  Throw in a reactor sealing and I would be unbreakable.

14 (edited by Sundial 2013-09-06 22:56:19)

Re: MK3

Martha Stuart wrote:
Sundial wrote:

Stuff

God dam, I would Love to have my Tyro mk2 have a 50% accum recharge rate + a 25% shield absorption.  Throw in a reactor sealing and I would be unbreakable.

Notice I reduced the high slots to 3 smile

We want it to be tanky and be able to fire more often than another shield bot under fire but obviously we don't want to obslete the tyranos mk1's abilities by giving it a better slot layout. Thats why I moved the 25% shield bonus out of the high slot into the role bonus and gave it reduced slots.

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: MK3

Yes, I always liked the idea of roles, it always comes to mind when you try and make an effective fit, you always ask yourself what is the intended role before you fit for the job, if you want to be a sniper/tank/assault role in combat. Ofc solo players might not favour this and want more diversity which is harder to balance, but when u are in a squad you want each roles to be covered as effective as possible.

For instance to make this simple, even miners are fitted for a role, mining is a role but there is more into that, you ask yourself what type of miner do you want? I want a miner to mine as fast as possible therefore you fit full set of indy tuners.

Well ok dumb example just making the point of the thought process that goes on.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: MK3

The problem with MK 3 bots, is the more ways they are different from current bots. The longer it would take to implement them. Time for testing and balancing is time the Devs don't really have atm, much less time for coding them. So less is more in terms of seeing them relatively soon. And relatively soon is most likely post steam and missions.

But even seeing them on the test server near that same timeframe would be an accomplishment. Even if it is a ways away from implementation.  I am curious to see where this thread will go.

Those of you lucky enough to have your lives, take them with you. However, leave the mods you've lost. They belong to me now.

Scarab Kill Count:2

17 (edited by Sundial 2013-09-07 01:03:08)

Re: MK3

http://pastebin.com/JyV0qGCm

Here is my initial attempts at a system for reballancing MK2 robots into interesting roles. Some of the roles are inspired by Perpetuum, some of the roles are inspired by EVE.

I don't mean to hijack your thread Burial but I feel like alot of these ideas could be mixed together with your MK3 system (specialized bots that are not straight upgrades at everything).

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: MK3

With the MK3 idea we came up with, the important part isn't the bots themselves. We chose damage and less tank simply because first of all, both PVP and PVE benefit from more damage, making the bots sought after by both and secondly, adding even more tanky bots to the game is not probably best idea. Add glass cannons and vets will start to hurt their wallets fast.

I like roles too, but changing MK2-s and rehashing even more old content gets us nowhere in the end. Not saying your idea isn't good, but we can archieve similar results by just fitting MK2 bots up with different modules, to some extent. Why I really like the MK3 idea we came up with is because it handles a lot of problems simultaneously like vets waiting for new bots(for years!), beta activity and small buff to artifacting. Not to mention a great way to loose NIC!

19 (edited by Hunter 2013-09-07 05:45:21)

Re: MK3

TBH: i would like to get implementing MK2P robots first. MK2 bots suffers because of incuffiend CPU and reactor. So it would be good to be able this kind from MK1 prototype + MK2 spare parts (cortexes and resources).

The theory of mutual interests
Why the crybabies wins?
Где Ханя - там победа (с)
DEV Zoom: No need to speculate...

Re: MK3

Sundial wrote:

http://pastebin.com/JyV0qGCm

Here is my initial attempts at a system for reballancing MK2 robots into interesting roles. Some of the roles are inspired by Perpetuum, some of the roles are inspired by EVE.

I don't mean to hijack your thread Burial but I feel like alot of these ideas could be mixed together with your MK3 system (specialized bots that are not straight upgrades at everything).

Good thoughts, however, evasive lights will be too op - ppl will just zerg with them killing everything here and there. Should be something one - hit size or immune to demob.

21 (edited by Whorum Post Alt 2013-09-07 12:54:17)

Re: MK3

Underlying message:

Send more ill equipped nuubs to beta for us to destroy.

Re: MK3

Sundial wrote:

http://pastebin.com/JyV0qGCm

Here is my initial attempts at a system for reballancing MK2 robots into interesting roles. Some of the roles are inspired by Perpetuum, some of the roles are inspired by EVE.

I don't mean to hijack your thread Burial but I feel like alot of these ideas could be mixed together with your MK3 system (specialized bots that are not straight upgrades at everything).

+1

RIP PERPETUUM

23

Re: MK3

How about needing PL's to make MK3 Mechs ? .. would increase their rarity

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

24 (edited by Martha Stuart 2013-09-08 09:33:26)

Re: MK3

Tux wrote:

How about needing PL's to make MK3 Mechs ? .. would increase their rarity

I like this idea

25 (edited by Inspiration 2013-09-08 15:53:49)

Re: MK3

Something being rare should not mean finding it is confined to areas under control of a very small amount of people, that will just unbalance things more. Specifically gamma, where bases keep the "natives" safe from having to deal with PVP and where observers are plentiful and easy to kill. It all sounds too self-serving.

Also, why should new content be restricted to a few "elites" being able to control supply? That would have NO value to the game whatsoever!

As for better mk3 seed mechanics:

1. Make it a very rare drop in artifact scanning on BETA, where everyone with balls can access it and still have to do some serious effort to find them.

2. Use the existing SAP mechanic. I don't like this option as it really is free candy. Tying even more game balance into the broken mechanics (my personal opinion)  of conquerable structures seems bad to me.

3. Make multiple mk2 CTs convertible to a Mk3 one.  But please make this vastly inferior to say the quality you get with artifact scanning. Exposed activity should be rewarded!


Now to the core of the idea, are the Mk3 bots as described desirable?

I think adding glass cannons just ads a ton of scenarios that scream exploit. It also promote blob fights where one side is sure to win regardless of tank and throw out possible interesting fights and tactics.

For PVE the whole proposal is bad, spawns that need little tank are so easy, the firepower would go to waste. And those that are hard, require the tank. A reverse proposal might work for PVE tho, more tank, less damage. Allowing players with less accounts then me to take on harder spawns, be it more time consuming.

A better idea would be to make mk3 speed and range specialists (detection + lock + optimal) with moderate dps, mediocre tank and very easily jammed and hurt by interference (to force use of more terrain in groups). Speed always gives nice tactics and range offers even more. My side intention with this is to make gamma bases that are bad or not defended easier to dispose off to make room for others.

This would also make them the ideal bots for scanning on beta. Good detection, fit a masking module and use the speed to find things of value.