The great and powerful Tempest

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The great and powerful Tempest

Postby theZJ » 26 Jan 2012, 00:03

aka the unit that noone will never, at any point in time, even just consider to build for any reason whatsoever.
Kind of understandable, given the fact that it costs 3 to 4 times the mass of a battle ship, while compared to the (ever broken) Summit, it doesnt even stand a chance. Same range, ~60% HP of the Summit and only delivering 33% more dps on the same range.
Yes, it can build ships. So can shipyards, and they dont cost ~30k mass.

I think it's time to do something about it. Navy is pretty broken at the moment, I really think several steps should be taken towards an improvement. The tempest is definitely one of the most obvious flaws. However, this is not intended to ignite another (completely ridiculous) discussion about navy balance, only about the Tempest.
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The most important question would be: What role would be fitting? Considering that the Aeon Battleship ranks among the worst of its kind, a long-range naval platform would definitely help. However, theres plenty of potential unused in this unit, so one could also explore a little more.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby noobymcnoobcake » 26 Jan 2012, 00:25

Yep its broken. summit wins against it submerged or not because of ground fire. 9k mass beats 28k yes that is stupid. IT was used a bit in 3599 due it its insanley quick buildtime (compared to T3 navy in 3599) but now it aint got that advantage is has none.
Double HP. 35000 to 70000. problem solved and it will still be beaten mass to mass by T3 navy. Yet it might actually be used.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby FunkOff » 26 Jan 2012, 01:24

Nooby's assessment is essentially correct. In testing the Tempest with 70,000 hp, it was still countered effectively by other battleships, but it has the unique ability to engage at range 150 (same as UEF battleship) and doesn't have the weakness to subs that other battleships do... and the ability to build other naval units on command. It's a simple change, but I think effective to give it a unique spot in the fleet as a strong, multi-role unit.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby FunkOff » 26 Jan 2012, 01:26

theZJ wrote:Navy is pretty broken at the moment, I really think several steps should be taken towards an improvement.


It's a lot better than 3599 in that T3 naval is now viable (thanks to the cheaper, much faster building battleship) but most tech 3 naval units are still useless, to include SMS and carriers (aside from the Atlantis). I had some ideas to improve that in my mod...
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby theZJ » 26 Jan 2012, 01:53

Even with 70k hp, the Tempest will never be worth its money - 28k for a huge floating brick that doesnt really put a lot of hurt onto the enemy and needs more investments to actually do something? Remember, the fatboy is just as potent as mobile building unit and it not limited to shooting with a pea blaster.
There has to be some incentive to build a tempest: If you want to spend money on HP; you can always mobile shields. Range, Mobility, Accuracy and DPS is a lot more important to a ship, as demonstrated by T3 sub hunters. I really think the Tempest should FEEL like an experimental.
Seriously, if you just got your fatboy/GC/ML/whatever ready, you know its going to crush things. And it does so well. However, the low damage of the Tempest will never accomplish anything even remotely worthwhile for its huge price tag. Its just no real threat. By the time you finish your tempest, the enemy will have, what? 4 to 5 battleships? Really? Your tempest isnt going to help you against the hurt those will put onto you. And neither will the mobile ship production, which requires you to stay stationary, another bummer.
What the tempest really needs is, plain and simple, the ability to actually decide fights, and you usually do that by destroying the enemy. This is usually best accomplished by damage.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby uberge3k » 26 Jan 2012, 03:03

I agree, no one builds these and it's a shame.

Perhaps we should take a cue from the other naval experimental, the Atlantis? It has decent air building capabilities, but the primary reason you build an Atlantis is to have a super-sub with massive quantities of HP to help control the sea.

I'd have to look at the numbers, but buffing the damage of its main weapon by a fair amount (2-3x?) might be a nice start.

Or perhaps it could be a "sniper" type unit - make its projectile move quickly so it's undodgable, do 10k damage a shot, but have a long reload time. You couldn't kite with it due to its slowness, but seeing it one-shot high tech ships from a distance would be a nice thing to see and give it that "omg send everything at it kill it kill it kill it now" fear factor that land exps have. :)
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby FunkOff » 26 Jan 2012, 04:33

theZJ wrote:Even with 70k hp, the Tempest will never be worth its money - 28k for a huge floating brick that doesnt really put a lot of hurt onto the enemy and needs more investments to actually do something? Remember, the fatboy is just as potent as mobile building unit and it not limited to shooting with a pea blaster.


Well, the fatboy is an inefficient builder as far as build power goes. The benefit of being able to build is twofold, first is flexibility: The fatboy can build flak and engineers to make up for it's lack of ability to reclaim/build structures/shoot air effectively. The second part is that the fatboy can supplement factories when idle at a base for defense.

The same applies to the Tempest: Cruisers for AA and engineers for reclaim/building structures is the best use of the tempest's ability to make units on the battlefield.

Also, niether the fatboy's nor the tempest's main guns can be called "pea shooters": the fatboy has 3,000 ranged DPS and the Tempest has 600 ranged DPS (at 50% further range than the fatboy) and an additional 360 torpedo DPS.

There has to be some incentive to build a tempest: If you want to spend money on HP; you can always mobile shields. Range, Mobility, Accuracy and DPS is a lot more important to a ship, as demonstrated by T3 sub hunters. I really think the Tempest should FEEL like an experimental.
Seriously, if you just got your fatboy/GC/ML/whatever ready, you know its going to crush things. And it does so well. However, the low damage of the Tempest will never accomplish anything even remotely worthwhile for its huge price tag. Its just no real threat. By the time you finish your tempest, the enemy will have, what? 4 to 5 battleships? Really? Your tempest isnt going to help you against the hurt those will put onto you. And neither will the mobile ship production, which requires you to stay stationary, another bummer.
What the tempest really needs is, plain and simple, the ability to actually decide fights, and you usually do that by destroying the enemy. This is usually best accomplished by damage.


Well, how would you recommend making the Tempest better then? With the additional HP I suggested, it just becomes what it's name is: An Experimental Battleship. It would be like a regular battleship but it would have longer range, more damage (1/3rd more than the UEF battleship) not be weak against subs (other bships are weak versus subs) and have the flexibility to build anything it needs (engineers/cruisers, etc). That's worth the additional expenditure, I would think, because when combined with mobile flak to cover it's air weakness, the Tempest would literally have no weakness and only brute force would be able to stop it, just like the Galactic Collossus, monkeylord and other XPs. Don't think of it as "well my enemy only needs 4 battleships to beat my tempest" but rather "if my enemy has anything less than 4 battleships, he can't stop my tempest". The tempest does 6000 damage a shot and that's enough to 1-shot any tech 1 or tech 2 ship or sub, with the exception of destroyers... which all have 80 range or less, which is the same range as the tempest's torpedoes, meaning one direct hit and a few torps will kill any any all T1-T2 ships.... killing an enemy destroyer every 10 seconds and barely taking a dent? That's bad-ass... and that's what you would expect from an experimental.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby pip » 26 Jan 2012, 09:59

I tend to agree with Funkoff, the HP buff is the first thing that is needed for the Tempest because of its high cost and huge hitbox.
I don't think anything is required concerning the weapons. The Tempest weapon has very longe range, and one of the biggest AOE in the game (5).
Just increasing HP by 100% should be enough to make it interesting and if it's not enough, an additional mass cost reduction would make it an excellent navy experimental.

And honestly, the Novax is way worse.
Last edited by pip on 28 Apr 2012, 13:08, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby Ze_PilOt » 26 Jan 2012, 10:09

I agree that the tempest is a very useless unit.

Even with more HP or DPS, it cannot shot anything but bases because of the charging bug. We need to fix that first.

Silly idea, why not push that "your base will be destroyed in no time" factor by making his weapon more like the Aeon Rapid Fire arty : many shells with pretty high precision, with an higher or equal range as the missile ship (by the way, the missile ship looks more an XP than the tempest actually :)

Or we can make it shoot mercies ?
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Re: The great and powerful Tempest

Postby lebensnebel » 26 Jan 2012, 11:45

a) I also like the hp buff.
My vision of the tempest is a role similar to stationary t3 arty - but floating. Putting massive hurt on naval blobs.
Therefore I would also consider some changes to the weapon:
b) Increase to 8000 damage per shot to be able to down a bulwark shield (would also 1-shot destroyers). So frustrating when you manage to get a shot in and nothing happens. Often enough the shot is dogged or uef has double shield anyway.
c) Increase projectile velocity a little.

Also, did anyone test if the problem of subs being hit with ground fire is avoided b increasing the depth?
d) If yes, I suggest the same for the tempest.
Last but not least:
e) Reduce time it takes to dive/resurface, so it is able to avoid a swarm of t2 bombers if you spot them early enough.

I'm not sure if it needs a cost reduce too.
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