[Fail Post] Re-balance Ideas Summarized

[KarmaQU_EU]

[Serious Fail Post] Re-balance Ideas Summarized

Somehow I forgot why I started this post after finishing section 1. The recent disappointment backlash from thinking about the insignia contest didn't help.

 

This whole post, yes all of it, was just the byproduct of me trying to figure out what went wrong with the class balance in this game.

When WoWs was just released, it followed a rock-paper-scissor roundabout of DD>BB>CA>DD with CV thrown in.

Nowadays it's BB>CA>DD>DD, with CV thrown out.

 

So after some thinking, I managed to reach the conclusion that "citadels" were what was ultimately breaking the balance. It was the outlier in the equation, and will need to be either reworked, or removed.

The process ... was a bit longer, and which I am trying to re-present it here ... to questionable success. I am probably forgetting lots of things, and misreading myself on the rest (what little I scribbled down in short notes).

 

1. Summary of the original "Damage Effects Rebalanced" discussion post.

2. An analysis of the "Class-Counters" situation in current game.

3. Experimental application of ideas from "Damage Effects Rebalanced" to class balance in current game.

4. Conclusion, attempt to rebalance "citadels", and withstanding problems.

5. How the CV fits into all this.

6. Extended ideas.

7. Rambling.

 

Spiritual continuation of this post: (Disclaimer: some ideas have changed from the original posts since being summarized here)

 

1. Firstly, a summary of ideas from the original "damage effects rebalanced" discussion post.

(The original post, through brief discussion with forum members, concluded with ideas affecting: )

-

"Blackened Hull"!!

"Fire Damage"!!

"Flooding Damage"!!

"Damage-con and Heal"!!

"Selective Balance to all classes"!!

-

(Note that the ideas are not final, and small details may still freely change.)

 

"Blackened Hull"!! (KarmaQu version.) (All mentions of "Blackened Hull" from here on out refer to the rebalanced version unless specified)

Ships upon being severely damaged, gains the "Blackened Hull" buff on section or whole of their hull. This is similar to how "Blackened Hull" gets applied and functions in current game.

"Blackened Hull" improved can be seen as an nondiscriminatory survival buff for any ship class, protecting against "nondirect" and "unfair" damage, above its current function of preventing damage over-saturation in the same area of a ship.

Overpens, External Fires, Shattering and Non-critical section AP, Glancing and non-critical section HE, will have their damage significantly reduced against "Blackened Hull". 

 

For example, classes and some of their most feared damage in the current game:

This means for a DD with "Blackened Hull", any AP overpen will deal trivial damage.

For Cruisers, lower and same caliber HE will do significantly reduced damage.

For BBs, Fires will do noticeably reduced damage.

 

But since it is non-discriminatory buff, all classes in general will be less likely to die from soft fluffy HE spam, "unfair" fire ticking damage, and partial-pens and over-pens that do not hit them somewhere in the center-of-mass.

In fact, you might as well think of it as a second HP bar for all ships ... their "cannon fodder" HP bar, and their "core" saving-grace HP after getting "Blackened Hull".

To put it into perspective, it means in the new meta, "execution ammo types" will be different from "damage-dealing ammo types". And which will vary depending on ships. In other words, it will be just as easy to damage a ship, but slightly harder to kill it. 

 

Torpedoes generally do reliable damage, but in some cases of multiple torpedoes hitting the same part of a ship especially at the tips of the bow and stern, consequent torpedo damage is greatly reduced. Many the lives of a DD has been saved from this mechanic and it is good, thus here to stay.

 

Originally this was envisioned to specifically address the "BB AP being unfairly OP vs DDs, even with overpens". But as you can see, "Blacked Hull" alone is not sufficient to balance it out, nor most of the other ideas by themselves. Thus please be patient and read to till section 4.

 

"Fire Damage"!!

- Total number of Fires possible on a ship is based on ship size. 4 fires max default for all ships is no longer the case. Ex. BBs have up to 7-8 fires slots, while DDs only 3. CVs only 4 but each fire deals double.

- Fires start slow, doing less damage in the beginning, but more damage as time passes. Fires will no longer deal their damage in constant ticks throughout a set duration. Instead, the total damage stays the same, but actual damage amount is concentrated towards the end of the set duration.

- Fires have a chance to cause a "critical effect" on the ship, once it burns to its terminal stage of the set duration, causing semi-random debilitating debuffs. A critical effect is not guaranteed to happen, and only 1 such "critical" effect may occur per fire, max. This means it could damage modules, start another fire (but this fire has 0 chance of causing a critical), or even initiate a short countdown before a partial or critical magazine detonation (if it burns internal, and reaches a magazine) (this can be countered by damage-conning the fire, or deliberately flooding the magazine). 

- Fires will differ by "internal" and "external" fires. An "Internal" fire does roughly 1.5x the total damage of an "External" fire, and has a guaranteed "critical effect" at its terminal phase of the duration. This makes it actually about twice as dangerous. Internal fires will always be internal and external fires will always be external, same as their "spawned" fires via critical effects. The chance of applying an internal or external fire varies and depends on the HE shell hit in question penetrating armour layers.

- When a fire is allowed to burn through its full duration, it will apply a brief "burned out" buff noticeably reducing fire damage on the same section of the ship (so affecting about 2-3 slots) for a few seconds (but less than 10). This is for softening purposes.

- Fire burning damage is partially moderated by shell caliber. Generally, large caliber shells add a flat damage over lower-caliber shell fires. (Thus fire chance will have to be balanced across the board. But this will provide incentive for large-caliber HE usage. Specific caliber-increase may vary per ship for balance purposes, similar to the HE 1/6 pen vs 1/4 pen.) 

- Fire chance will be higher than current overall, especially favoring rapid hits. But hold your horses because a lot of the remaining ideas help to balance this out. As said, please be patient till section 4.

- Fire infliction on the same slot no longer fails as is current game (because cannot repeat inflict), but will instead upgrade the fire to an internal fire. Total duration and critical 1 max. remains unchanged.

 

"Flooding Damage"!!

- Hp size, ship speed and ocean surface conditions, do not effect flooding speed (or damage). 

- Flooding can also cause critical disabling like fire, on the appropriate modules (mostly underwater).

- Flooding causes NO straight-up HP damage (straight-up structural integrity loss as we know it) but instead "flooding" damage.

- Flooding has no fixed duration, unlike fire. Flooding has no set number of slots per ship, but no upper limit either. Flooding slots differ by "large" slots or "small" slots. "Large" slots increase flooding speed more compared to small slots. Total flooding speed depends on total amount of slots and slot type.

- "Flooding damage" "floods" your HP bar, starting from the other side (right side), with a deep blue "flooding bar" that competes with your HP for space, within your HP bar. Imagine it like poison, poisoning your HP bar. Flooding damage "winds up" faster in empty spaces of the HP bar, but pushes much slower against still healthy (red-filled) sections of the HP bar. But it will push, relentlessly. Overlapping flooding and HP sections will show dark purple. Flooding can be stopped, but the flooded bar section will remain. Damage-con also works to cause this bar to drop (reduce towards the right side), both passively non-stop (similar to pumps pumping out the water) and actively if you have charges to spare.

- HP cannot be repaired past "flooded" sections. This is another reason for modular micro-partitioned damage-con and damage-repair consumables, for the excess heal to not be wasted, and players will no longer have to "save" a heal for when it is at max repairable damage. HP can be continued to be repaired once the flooding is pushed back.

- Flooding causes reduced ship max speed depending on flooding severity. However, ship will also sink lower beneath the water, visibly. (Underwater citadels, or even-lower silhouette of DDs ftw.)

- Flooding slows BBs down more noticeably than "smaller" ships.

- Because of the way pumps work, BBs will have a harder time "clearing" flooded portions of their HP bar. Because flooding happens percentage-wise, like fire-damage, but the pumps work numerically. This means BBs will have a much harder time clearing flooded portions than "smaller ships" with less base-HP numbers.

 

- Intentional flooding of magazines at risk of detonation (partial or critical) from a fire effect:

A set amount of flooding damage is added similar to a reverse heal process, depending on magazine size. The detonation risk for that turret is nullified (from normal sources too) but turret is temporarily disabled, equivalent to being damaged via normal means. 

Still, some flooding damage is preferable to losing large chunks of HP from detonations.

 

"Damage-con and Heal"!!

- Damage-con consumable and heal consumable will be charge-based and micro-partitioned. Heal can be set to auto-cast.

- Damage con is no longer "1-button totality", possible from being "micro-partitioned". The exact method of micro-partition is open to ideas. In general, the concept is that damage-con can have "charge", and fixing relevant types of damage will consume appropriate amounts or even type, of charge. It can still be used similar to now, one-button and game auto-distributes charge to repair. Or can be more tactical, and "manual repair" or click-list on debuffs, or use preset priorities rules for one-button damage con. Generally more "severe" damage requires more "charge".

- Damage-con effect can vary by ship, but different than fire slots. E.g. BBs might have more slots (to simulate more damage-con squads) but slower application. DDs might have a single or few slots, but higher efficiency. Etc. 

- Passive vs Active damage-con mechanics may be considered. Lots of design possibilities. Appropriate captain skills/equipment/flag modifiers as necessary etc. 

 

"Selective Balance to all classes"!!

Due to the nature of how these ideas drastically change the mechanics of all classes, selective buffs and balancing envisioned in a class-specific way may be necessary.

Firstly, there are buffs to each main class:

BBs have their secondaries buffed, and gain an equivalent of "secondary barrage".

Cruisers have their HE and general utility buffed, AA barrage deals better aoe damage.

DDs have smoke on micro-partition, and can manually single-launch torpedoes, besides in preset waves.

 

2. An analysis of the "class-counters" situation in current game.

It used to be, DD > BB

Cruisers > DD

BBs > CR, via citadelling the fat CAs at high tiers, and citadelling the low-hp CLs at mid and low tiers.

 

However, Cruisers > BBs with HE, DDs > Cruisers with smoke, and BBs > DDs by hiding behind Cruisers and DDs.
This was fixed by nerfing HE pen especially CR > BB, introducing radar and hydro and gunboat DDs > DD, and BB-killer BBs > normal BBs. 

Because BBs were just a bit more safe, CVs were supposed to curb them down a bit.

This was changed with CV nerfs, and AA buffs.

 

So now the game has these situations: 

1 = counter _

0.5 = balanced _

0 = countered _

 

 

DD vs DD, tough and high pressure (0.5)_

DD vs CA, still generally countered (0)_

DD vs BB, wrong, BBs get high alpha damage and fast shell-speed to bully DDs. (0)_

DD vs CV, CVs now focus on DDs quite a lot more due to their lack of AA and early game over-extension. (0)_

In short, DDs 0.5 v 4.

 

CA vs DD, generally easy. (1)_

CA vs CA, fairly balanced (0.5)_

CA vs BB, BBs have it easier with high alpha but only if hits (0.5)_

CA vs CV, generally favours CA due to speed and AA, but less so due to extension (0.5)_

In short, CA 2.5 v 4.

 

BB vs DD, scary alpha damage (1)_

BB vs CA, scary alpha damage (1)_

BB vs BB, balanced (0.5)_

BB vs CV, quite balanced (0.5)_

In short, BB 3 v 4.

 

So BBs do get it best, primarily because of being able to hide behind team nullifies about 1.5 points of "supposed" weakness. If you fully consider that, BBs actually get 3.5 v 4, unbalanced.

 

Generally, a "balanced" situation is where the class should only counter its own class and its dedicated counter. So about 2 vs 4 points.

If we assume it that way, then DDs should have 1 point taken from BBs, and half a point taken from CAs, to buff itself.

(While I am not saying this points-based balance is sound, nor my analysis flawless, it is the best I could come up with atm because I forgot the original process of reaching the conclusion. :P)

 

3. Experimental application of ideas from "Damage Effects Rebalanced" to class balance in current game.

Following the conclusion above to buff DDs by 1.5 points, and nerf BBs by 1 point, and CAs by 0.5 points, 

We apply the "rebalance ideas" based on section 1.

 

Now:

DD vs DD, still potent, but slightly less so due to less overall pressure and surviveability increase from "blackened hull", and partitioned smoke (0.5)_

DD vs CA, still generally countered by overmatched HE caliber and utility+firerate (0)_

DD vs BB, balanced due to nerf of AP overpen in general and especially after "blackened hull", requiring BB to change ammo or use secondaries (slightly buffed), but torp and flooding changes makes DDs much scarier to BBs (1)_

DD vs CV, balanced assumed due to "preferred targets" no longer being just DDs with combined changes (0.5)_

In short, 2 v 4.

 

CA vs DD, always. (1)_

CA vs CA, even more balanced with the damage-con changes and utility increase. (0.5)_

CA vs BB, balanced with the fire changes and"blackened hull" buff, but still vulnerable to citadels, and more vulnerable to overall class buffs. (0)_

CA vs CV, slight advantage due to CV fitting ideal role of CV counter. (1)_

In short, 2.5 v 4, still within balanced range.

 

BB vs DD, balanced, in fact slightly countered, especially due to torpedo and flooding changes, and fire chance increase. (0)_

BB vs CA, slight counter due to AP citadelling ignores "blackened hull" buff, and able to damage-con or survive through CA fire buff. (1)_

BB vs BB, balanced, slightly more threatened due to being easier targets when debuffed. (0.5)_

BB vs CA, balanced, slight disadvantage due to CVs gaining strategic and debuff capability with possible new changes (0.5)_

In short, perfect 2 v 4.

 

The main changes were

DD > BB, due to torp utility, "blackened hull" and smoke combined buffs

DD = CV, due to preferential targets now rebalanced amongst all classes with possible CV changes

CA < BB, due to the only "old-era" mechanic, citadels, being continued as is

BB < DD. due to change in preferential targets of other "larger ships", main ammo AP now highly nerfed vs DD, and how other ships can pressure it better, especially if it is debuffed, due to overall buff of all ships

 

4. Conclusion, attempt to rebalance "citadels", and withstanding problems.

The problem with the prior 2 sections is that they only considered ships versus each other in ideal conceptual application. In actuality, teamplay influences greatly the balance between classes, such as BBs able to hide behind teammates while DDs were pushed to the front. 

When I was originally thinking it through, I did a quick "rush-hour" style push-pull of many elements around, and in the end the "red car" which made it out of the mess was "citadels".

This was because any and every element, in the end, could be or already were softened and balanced for with both primary and secondary backups due to the increased sophistry of mechanics. Except "citadels", it matches every criteria for "bad" mechanic, from being un-counterable, sudden with no softening, often fatal-death, not reward-effort balanced, does not contribute highly to strategic depth or variety value for the game, and confers its benefits in a tunnel-vision way primarily for one class to dominate another. And in the end, the CAs still get pushed into the spotlight before BBs, where they are but tasty citadels served onto the table for the BB AP which was so far unaffected by any of the rebalance ideas.

(However, the true conclusion I forgot ... and is a critical failure. Was busy, bit tired, didn't do this in one sitting ... This is my problem. I can only either remember the conclusions, but forget the procedure, or remember the procedure, but forget the conclusion, thus rendering the procedure worthless ......)

 

Because citadels are the poster-mechanic of WoWs, and for good or bad, WG's pet game feature, it is impossible to imagine a game without them.

So instead they will be reworked, to still be dangerous, but less instant-damaging and unfair.

I cannot simply use mechanics derived from features imagined in the notes on this one, because the notes used very different systems from current WoWs to deal with that part. So some re-imagining will be necessary.

 

So far, most ideas were to link "citadels" with "fire" mechanics, such as having empty fire slots as saving grace, while filled fire slots would instantly be "triggered" to skip their duration and directly deal damage/criticals. Or, citadels no longer trigger 100% shell damage, but instead take normal hit damage with additional effects. None of them could quite compete with the current citadel mechanic so I didn't bother to propose any of them.

 

Thus the outstanding problem, and continued efforts after this post, will be to find a solution for the "citadel problem".

 

5. CV ideas which I will come back to later.

I had 2 "formed" CV ideas on these forums,

- one was "CV as spectacle", attempting to replicate a notes level effect at all costs,

- next was "CV as support class", which tried to give CV strategic capability besides tactical, and which would have fit nicely into the debuff-centric rebalance ideas, so CVs do not prioritize only alpha damage, but also zone-control and debuffing and utility.

 

This new "CV idea" is what was missing from the rant post about what I thought of the reddit article, and despite "fires" and "blackened hull", I did not actually come back to address CV.

This was because WG is performing their CV overhaul, and any CV ideas would be pretty mute until WG's new direction can be gleamed.

However, I also expressed clear fears in what a "WG direction" means. Aka. more WoT, more What-I-Hate, and less unique WoWs.

 

So this is a troll section where I imagine how WG would overhaul CV, if they wanted to make it as WoT as possible.

"CV more like arty, both exist yet have little presence on the game" - CVs now have a "focus reticle" similar to the arty reticle, where you press a key to cause to shrink and increase strike accuracy, at the expense of using up time and exposing your planes to prolonged AA. The difference between this and arty is that the arty reticle auto-shrinks while here you have to press a key.

 

"CV will now be affected by all types of AA instead of all-or-nothing" - As the reticle "shrinks, it simulates planes flying at lower altitude and closer to the ship to strike, thus being closer to the ships' AA, thus being more vulnerable to the AA. If this can be considered as a flat increase in AA damage taken by planes, it means even weak AA becomes strong enough AA if they fly low enough. Thus, " "balanced" against all types of AA".

 

"Skill ceiling fix, but also influence in match results and OP-ness fix" - fighters don't strafe, but don't cause skill any more, but are quite op, and so are scout-fighters, while rest of the planes get semi-customizable loadout (but only if you pay the extra exp and credits for it). CVs are primarily damage-dealers, not fighter-dancers.

 

"Class not "interesting and cheerful" enough" - CV progression and plane progression are now separate and additional tech trees, and CVs are not mirror-locked by their tier, but by a combination of CV + planes (such as larger hanger warranting higher tier, even if the larger hanger is stuffed with lower tier planes)(though the tiny CVL stuffed with higher tier planes would also be interesting to see though XD)

 

So, it is troll, but quite serious troll.

(Still not as serious as notes, where I had chaff and aerial smoke and cloud cover and flares and night fighters and medium bombers and rockets and cruise-torpedoes and decoy drones and parasite fighters and guided bombs and .............)

 

6. Extended ideas and rambling
WG should consider "rested exp", similar to the kind we see in MMOs, but applied to the lootbox system. (Perhaps on top of some of the other changes I suggested for lootboxes, linked with premiums, oh wait here's an idea, rested exp for premiums!)

 

The "rebalance ideas" are highly tentative. Before they can be seriously considered wholesale, more analysis on their impacts on the game will have to be performed, properly this time. Also, the mechanics themselves will have to undergo tests for checks and balances and "game" suitability aka. how smooth the logic is. So for now they are just for referential and comparison purposes.

 

And the rebalance ideas did not consider or address possible changes to equipment, consumables, and most importantly, captain skills. As we know, the current captain skills are not very inspired, and not very creative. They hem players in to very few paths with very few variations. Ideally, it should be possible to build ships offensively, defensively, or for utility, but with clear distinction between them, and not the best of all worlds. Coincidentally I think I have a bit of writing on skills somewhere out there.

 

And I really, really, do not feel very motivated or cheered up by the handling of this insignia competition, much less by insignias themselves. Who the - -- - - thought it was a good idea to have them flash in the players' face after they are sunk, instead of using them in a civil manner such as to show team lineups in an extended loading-room? Or just added colour beside the players in the score-boards? And WG really doesn't like us when we make "sarcastic, aggressive, low-effort, etc" posts, while it is ok for them to flash stuff at us in an "sarcastic, aggressive" way? And while I hate to be the one criticizing honest efforts at art as "low effort" (the insignias were probably done by the same artists responsible for the in-game achievement icons, which are not bad, though clearly under strict orders and guidelines which limited their expressiveness, but still not the artists' fault), the insignias are not the most notable example of "high effort" either. The cloth-textured ones tend to deal with plain animals, while the "military badge" styled ones are just eye-candy flashy. TO be fair, the insignias are compact, tidy, balanced, and actually not ugly, but still, flashing them at players? The artists would cry if they knew what their art was being used for. There are so many other styles possible, based on so many cultures, traditions, art styles, so many ways to make an insignia look beautiful, interesting, catchy, inspired, and used in a good way, but this ...? When we asked for player customization and representation, since years ago, this was not what we had in mind.

And the way this contest was handled ... while, on that I had already expressed my thoughts, on art, in a separate place. So please forgive me for not participating in this contest due to conscientious objection.

[Ulvesnutepostei]

Very interesting subject, I will read all this when I get the time ... prolly sometime before my 200th birthday 

[KarmaQU_EU]

It is a very bad idea to write posts when you're tired or not focused ...

Results in forgetting the most important points such as explaining why the "blackened hull" surviveability increase is a good thing at all ...

Ah well, already said is fail post. No, this time it's not a bait to see who still reads, if you do, and actually get the points or even ask questions, gg kudos to you. But fail post is still fail post. Think too much note down too little.

[Wildf1re]

 

So, I actually skimmed it - an shortened it down for you simply by removing stuff that where related to your own (seems to me) internal musings on the process and/or quality of your own post. Still long, but an attempt to help you shorten those damn long posts as sometiumes there are valid points but it's a chore to read through a massive wall of text to find those points... 

 

Your post with some "excess fat" trimmed out

Re-balance Ideas Summarized

 

The conclusion that "citadels" were what was ultimately breaking the balance. It was the outlier in the equation, and will need to be either reworked, or removed.

 

The process

 

1. Summary of the original "Damage Effects Rebalanced" discussion post.

2. An analysis of the "Class-Counters" situation in current game.

3. Experimental application of ideas from "Damage Effects Rebalanced" to class balance in current game.

4. Conclusion, attempt to rebalance "citadels", and withstanding problems.

5. How the CV fits into all this.

 

1. Firstly, a summary of ideas from the original "damage effects rebalanced" discussion post.

(The original post, through brief discussion with forum members, concluded with ideas affecting: )

-

"Blackened Hull"!!

"Fire Damage"!!

"Flooding Damage"!!

"Damage-con and Heal"!!

"Selective Balance to all classes"!!

-

(Note that the ideas are not final, and small details may still freely change.)

 

"Blackened Hull"!! (KarmaQu version.) (All mentions of "Blackened Hull" from here on out refer to the rebalanced version unless specified)

Ships upon being severely damaged, gains the "Blackened Hull" buff on section or whole of their hull. This is similar to how "Blackened Hull" gets applied and functions in current game.

"Blackened Hull" improved can be seen as an nondiscriminatory survival buff for any ship class, protecting against "nondirect" and "unfair" damage, above its current function of preventing damage over-saturation in the same area of a ship.

Overpens, External Fires, Shattering and Non-critical section AP, Glancing and non-critical section HE, will have their damage significantly reduced against "Blackened Hull". 

 

For example, classes and some of their most feared damage in the current game:

This means for a DD with "Blackened Hull", any AP overpen will deal trivial damage.

For Cruisers, lower and same caliber HE will do significantly reduced damage.

For BBs, Fires will do noticeably reduced damage.

 

But since it is non-discriminatory buff, all classes in general will be less likely to die from soft fluffy HE spam, "unfair" fire ticking damage, and partial-pens and over-pens that do not hit them somewhere in the center-of-mass.

In fact, you might as well think of it as a second HP bar for all ships ... their "cannon fodder" HP bar, and their "core" saving-grace HP after getting "Blackened Hull".

To put it into perspective, it means in the new meta, "execution ammo types" will be different from "damage-dealing ammo types". And which will vary depending on ships. In other words, it will be just as easy to damage a ship, but slightly harder to kill it. 

 

Torpedoes generally do reliable damage, but in some cases of multiple torpedoes hitting the same part of a ship especially at the tips of the bow and stern, consequent torpedo damage is greatly reduced. Many the lives of a DD has been saved from this mechanic and it is good, thus here to stay.

 

... as you can see, "Blacked Hull" alone is not sufficient to balance it out, nor most of the other ideas by themselves. Thus please be patient and read to till section 4.

 

"Fire Damage"!!

- Total number of Fires possible on a ship is based on ship size. 4 fires max default for all ships is no longer the case. Ex. BBs have up to 7-8 fires slots, while DDs only 3. CVs only 4 but each fire deals double.

- Fires start slow, doing less damage in the beginning, but more damage as time passes. Fires will no longer deal their damage in constant ticks throughout a set duration. Instead, the total damage stays the same, but actual damage amount is concentrated towards the end of the set duration.

- Fires have a chance to cause a "critical effect" on the ship, once it burns to its terminal stage of the set duration, causing semi-random debilitating debuffs. A critical effect is not guaranteed to happen, and only 1 such "critical" effect may occur per fire, max. This means it could damage modules, start another fire (but this fire has 0 chance of causing a critical), or even initiate a short countdown before a partial or critical magazine detonation (if it burns internal, and reaches a magazine) (this can be countered by damage-conning the fire, or deliberately flooding the magazine). 

- Fires will differ by "internal" and "external" fires. An "Internal" fire does roughly 1.5x the total damage of an "External" fire, and has a guaranteed "critical effect" at its terminal phase of the duration. This makes it actually about twice as dangerous. Internal fires will always be internal and external fires will always be external, same as their "spawned" fires via critical effects. The chance of applying an internal or external fire varies and depends on the HE shell hit in question penetrating armour layers.

- When a fire is allowed to burn through its full duration, it will apply a brief "burned out" buff noticeably reducing fire damage on the same section of the ship (so affecting about 2-3 slots) for a few seconds (but less than 10). This is for softening purposes.

- Fire burning damage is partially moderated by shell caliber. Generally, large caliber shells add a flat damage over lower-caliber shell fires. (Thus fire chance will have to be balanced across the board. But this will provide incentive for large-caliber HE usage. Specific caliber-increase may vary per ship for balance purposes, similar to the HE 1/6 pen vs 1/4 pen.) 

- Fire chance will be higher than current overall, especially favoring rapid hits. But hold your horses because a lot of the remaining ideas help to balance this out. As said, please be patient till section 4.

- Fire infliction on the same slot no longer fails as is current game (because cannot repeat inflict), but will instead upgrade the fire to an internal fire. Total duration and critical 1 max. remains unchanged.

 

"Flooding Damage"!!

- Hp size, ship speed and ocean surface conditions, do not effect flooding speed (or damage). 

- Flooding can also cause critical disabling like fire, on the appropriate modules (mostly underwater).

- Flooding causes NO straight-up HP damage (straight-up structural integrity loss as we know it) but instead "flooding" damage.

- Flooding has no fixed duration, unlike fire. Flooding has no set number of slots per ship, but no upper limit either. Flooding slots differ by "large" slots or "small" slots. "Large" slots increase flooding speed more compared to small slots. Total flooding speed depends on total amount of slots and slot type.

- "Flooding damage" "floods" your HP bar, starting from the other side (right side), with a deep blue "flooding bar" that competes with your HP for space, within your HP bar. Imagine it like poison, poisoning your HP bar. Flooding damage "winds up" faster in empty spaces of the HP bar, but pushes much slower against still healthy (red-filled) sections of the HP bar. But it will push, relentlessly. Overlapping flooding and HP sections will show dark purple. Flooding can be stopped, but the flooded bar section will remain. Damage-con also works to cause this bar to drop (reduce towards the right side), both passively non-stop (similar to pumps pumping out the water) and actively if you have charges to spare.

- HP cannot be repaired past "flooded" sections. This is another reason for modular micro-partitioned damage-con and damage-repair consumables, for the excess heal to not be wasted, and players will no longer have to "save" a heal for when it is at max repairable damage. HP can be continued to be repaired once the flooding is pushed back.

- Flooding causes reduced ship max speed depending on flooding severity. However, ship will also sink lower beneath the water, visibly. (Underwater citadels, or even-lower silhouette of DDs ftw.)

- Flooding slows BBs down more noticeably than "smaller" ships.

- Because of the way pumps work, BBs will have a harder time "clearing" flooded portions of their HP bar. Because flooding happens percentage-wise, like fire-damage, but the pumps work numerically. This means BBs will have a much harder time clearing flooded portions than "smaller ships" with less base-HP numbers.

 

- Intentional flooding of magazines at risk of detonation (partial or critical) from a fire effect:

A set amount of flooding damage is added similar to a reverse heal process, depending on magazine size. The detonation risk for that turret is nullified (from normal sources too) but turret is temporarily disabled, equivalent to being damaged via normal means. 

Still, some flooding damage is preferable to losing large chunks of HP from detonations.

 

"Damage-con and Heal"!!

- Damage-con consumable and heal consumable will be charge-based and micro-partitioned. Heal can be set to auto-cast.

- Damage con is no longer "1-button totality", possible from being "micro-partitioned". The exact method of micro-partition is open to ideas. In general, the concept is that damage-con can have "charge", and fixing relevant types of damage will consume appropriate amounts or even type, of charge. It can still be used similar to now, one-button and game auto-distributes charge to repair. Or can be more tactical, and "manual repair" or click-list on debuffs, or use preset priorities rules for one-button damage con. Generally more "severe" damage requires more "charge".

- Damage-con effect can vary by ship, but different than fire slots. E.g. BBs might have more slots (to simulate more damage-con squads) but slower application. DDs might have a single or few slots, but higher efficiency. Etc. 

- Passive vs Active damage-con mechanics may be considered. Lots of design possibilities. Appropriate captain skills/equipment/flag modifiers as necessary etc. 

 

"Selective Balance to all classes"!!

Due to the nature of how these ideas drastically change the mechanics of all classes, selective buffs and balancing envisioned in a class-specific way may be necessary.

Firstly, there are buffs to each main class:

BBs have their secondaries buffed, and gain an equivalent of "secondary barrage".

Cruisers have their HE and general utility buffed, AA barrage deals better aoe damage.

DDs have smoke on micro-partition, and can manually single-launch torpedoes, besides in preset waves.

 

2. An analysis of the "class-counters" situation in current game.

It used to be, DD > BB

Cruisers > DD

BBs > CR, via citadelling the fat CAs at high tiers, and citadelling the low-hp CLs at mid and low tiers.

 

However, Cruisers > BBs with HE, DDs > Cruisers with smoke, and BBs > DDs by hiding behind Cruisers and DDs.
This was fixed by nerfing HE pen especially CR > BB, introducing radar and hydro and gunboat DDs > DD, and BB-killer BBs > normal BBs. 

Because BBs were just a bit more safe, CVs were supposed to curb them down a bit.

This was changed with CV nerfs, and AA buffs.

 

So now the game has these situations: 

1 = counter _

0.5 = balanced _

0 = countered _

 

 

DD vs DD, tough and high pressure (0.5)_

DD vs CA, still generally countered (0)_

DD vs BB, wrong, BBs get high alpha damage and fast shell-speed to bully DDs. (0)_

DD vs CV, CVs now focus on DDs quite a lot more due to their lack of AA and early game over-extension. (0)_

In short, DDs 0.5 v 4.

 

CA vs DD, generally easy. (1)_

CA vs CA, fairly balanced (0.5)_

CA vs BB, BBs have it easier with high alpha but only if hits (0.5)_

CA vs CV, generally favours CA due to speed and AA, but less so due to extension (0.5)_

In short, CA 2.5 v 4.

 

BB vs DD, scary alpha damage (1)_

BB vs CA, scary alpha damage (1)_

BB vs BB, balanced (0.5)_

BB vs CV, quite balanced (0.5)_

In short, BB 3 v 4.

 

So BBs do get it best, primarily because of being able to hide behind team nullifies about 1.5 points of "supposed" weakness. If you fully consider that, BBs actually get 3.5 v 4, unbalanced.

 

Generally, a "balanced" situation is where the class should only counter its own class and its dedicated counter. So about 2 vs 4 points.

If we assume it that way, then DDs should have 1 point taken from BBs, and half a point taken from CAs, to buff itself.

(While I am not saying this points-based balance is sound, nor my analysis flawless, it is the best I could come up with atm because I forgot the original process of reaching the conclusion. :P)

 

3. Experimental application of ideas from "Damage Effects Rebalanced" to class balance in current game.

Following the conclusion above to buff DDs by 1.5 points, and nerf BBs by 1 point, and CAs by 0.5 points, 

We apply the "rebalance ideas" based on section 1.

 

Now:

DD vs DD, still potent, but slightly less so due to less overall pressure and surviveability increase from "blackened hull", and partitioned smoke (0.5)_

DD vs CA, still generally countered by overmatched HE caliber and utility+firerate (0)_

DD vs BB, balanced due to nerf of AP overpen in general and especially after "blackened hull", requiring BB to change ammo or use secondaries (slightly buffed), but torp and flooding changes makes DDs much scarier to BBs (1)_

DD vs CV, balanced assumed due to "preferred targets" no longer being just DDs with combined changes (0.5)_

In short, 2 v 4.

 

CA vs DD, always. (1)_

CA vs CA, even more balanced with the damage-con changes and utility increase. (0.5)_

CA vs BB, balanced with the fire changes and"blackened hull" buff, but still vulnerable to citadels, and more vulnerable to overall class buffs. (0)_

CA vs CV, slight advantage due to CV fitting ideal role of CV counter. (1)_

In short, 2.5 v 4, still within balanced range.

 

BB vs DD, balanced, in fact slightly countered, especially due to torpedo and flooding changes, and fire chance increase. (0)_

BB vs CA, slight counter due to AP citadelling ignores "blackened hull" buff, and able to damage-con or survive through CA fire buff. (1)_

BB vs BB, balanced, slightly more threatened due to being easier targets when debuffed. (0.5)_

BB vs CA, balanced, slight disadvantage due to CVs gaining strategic and debuff capability with possible new changes (0.5)_

In short, perfect 2 v 4.

 

The main changes were

DD > BB, due to torp utility, "blackened hull" and smoke combined buffs

DD = CV, due to preferential targets now rebalanced amongst all classes with possible CV changes

CA < BB, due to the only "old-era" mechanic, citadels, being continued as is

BB < DD. due to change in preferential targets of other "larger ships", main ammo AP now highly nerfed vs DD, and how other ships can pressure it better, especially if it is debuffed, due to overall buff of all ships

 

4. Conclusion, attempt to rebalance "citadels", and withstanding problems.

The problem with the prior 2 sections is that they only considered ships versus each other in ideal conceptual application. In actuality, teamplay influences greatly the balance between classes, such as BBs able to hide behind teammates while DDs were pushed to the front. 

... any and every element, in the end, could be or already were softened and balanced for with both primary and secondary backups due to the increased sophistry of mechanics. Except "citadels", it matches every criteria for "bad" mechanic, from being un-counterable, sudden with no softening, often fatal-death, not reward-effort balanced, does not contribute highly to strategic depth or variety value for the game, and confers its benefits in a tunnel-vision way primarily for one class to dominate another. And in the end, the CAs still get pushed into the spotlight before BBs, where they are but tasty citadels served onto the table for the BB AP which was so far unaffected by any of the rebalance ideas.

 

Because citadels are the poster-mechanic of WoWs, and for good or bad, WG's pet game feature, it is impossible to imagine a game without them.

So instead they will be reworked, to still be dangerous, but less instant-damaging and unfair.

...some re-imagining will be necessary.

 

Thus the outstanding problem, and continued efforts after this post, will be to find a solution for the "citadel problem".

[KarmaQU_EU]

@Wildf1re

Thanks ... I was and still am really tired ... probably wasn't a good idea to attempt to fit 5 points or more (all pretty complex) into a single post when I usually overflow with just one, anyways ...

This thing's beyond salvage. I'm gonna have to rewrite this whole thing sometime later. TY for the help anyways, first time someone on forums actually did that ...

[Wildf1re]

6 minutes ago, KarmaQU_EU said:

@Wildf1re

Thanks ... I was and still am really tired ... probably wasn't a good idea to attempt to fit 5 points or more (all pretty complex) into a single post when I usually overflow with just one, anyways ...

This thing's beyond salvage. I'm gonna have to rewrite this whole thing sometime later. TY for the help anyways, first time someone on forums actually did that ...

Your welcome .

[_ramrus_]

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