[Pre-production] Balance Patch: The Emerging Light

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Balance patches in DarkOrbit have been a rarity. This has allowed a few aspects of balance to get out of control.

The biggest issue though is that some of these areas have been unbalanced for so long that they have become rooted deep within the meta. Despite having a negative impact on the state of the meta itself, many players have grown attached to the ship or formation due to its power.

This patch hopes to shake things up a bit - but not too much. The aim is to alter the balance in PvP whilst keeping PvE almost entirely untouched.

If you are curious as to why some changes have been made, there are dev notes under many of the ships / formations explaining some of the problems the particular subject had and how the changes hope to address this.



One of the biggest changes you will see the pacing of abilities, as the abilities connected with Goliath ships have had their cooldowns extended to either 14 or 15 minutes.
The reason for this is to try and change how abilities are used - instead of players feeling they might as well use it every fight simply because they have it, they should use abilities when they feel they need an edge in a fight they might otherwise lose.

The increased cooldown times also serves as a way to prevent players using their ability more than once in a fight, something which caused a lot of frustration.

During the open beta testing we will be watching carefully to see how this change impacts PvP.
In particular the effectiveness of the Aegis and Hammerclaw ability cooldowns compared to the Goliaths will be watched closely.



The other large change is the impact of Ring and therefore Moth formations in PvP. The Ring had a negative impact to the diversity of viable options within PvP and this impact went unchecked.

A further explanation of this issue and the changes they are being made can be found in the drone formation post.



TESTING PHASE
We will have extensive testing for this balance update with more players involved than any update in the past. There will be 3 types of testing used.

1. Small closed test groups​

This group will be hand picked based on players who hold a good reputation in PvP and are able to provide clear critical feedback on many areas of PvP balance.

2. Large closed test group​

This will be our First to Fight group, here we will be able to collect a large amount of feedback, both in player opinion and in data.

3. Open beta​

With an open beta it will allow us to collect even more data and of course even more opinions, at this stage we are looking to fine tune the patch and get it ready for release.



All in all, this will be a lengthy testing process and we cannot put a date on when this patch will be released.

We are very eager to see your feedback on this topic, especially once you have all had a chance to test out the various changes on a test server.

 

SHIPS
The amount of genuinely viable ships in PvP is limited to a small number. Many PvP encounters within the game, whether it be in a group or solo, end up being repetitive with the same ships being used with the same tactics.

Whilst we understand players have become very used to particular ships and there might be nerves when this changes we feel a change is for the best.

A larger variety of viable ships is very important for creating a more interesting PvP environment - which is what these changes are aimed at doing.

The main targets are the Spectum and Tartarus.
These two ships on their own caused a lot of frustration for the community, in particular the Tartarus.
As a result the Tartarus has had changes which push players to change the ship from a running tactic to one which produces periodic heavy DPS throughout a fight.

The Solace was another ship which caused many issues for players, however the necessity of this ship stems from the popularity of Moth and Ring, further explanation on this can be found in the drone formation post.



AEGIS

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Aegis, A-Veteran and A-Elite.
  • Using the A-Elite abilities
• Passive bonus for A-Elite changed from +5% damage to +5% damage and +5% shield.

Dev notes:
Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Aegis as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviation was an unnecessary complication.




CITADEL

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Citadel, C-Veteran and C-Elite.
  • Using the C-Elite abilities
• Passive bonus for C-Elite changed from +5% damage to +15% shield and +15% HP.
• Fortification duration reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
• Fortification cooldown increased from 360 seconds to 430 seconds.
• Fortification no longer sets movespeed to 0 and will increase reduce the users move speed to 200.
• Incoming damage reduction from Fortification increased from +50% to +80%.

Dev notes:
The Citadel was rarely used as a tank ship for PvP purposes. We felt one of the main reasons for this was the lack of movement whilst using Fortification as players could simply move out of the Citadel's range and it would be left doing nothing.

To remove this weakness the Fortification has received a minor rework. The low movement speed can be combined with the Travel ability to make the most out of the Fortification and prove some much more useful tanking ability in PvP.

Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Citadel as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviation was an unnecessary complication.




CYBORG

• Duration of Singularity reduced from 30 seconds to 27 seconds.
• Cooldown of Singularity increased from 175 seconds to 900 seconds.

Dev notes:
Cooldown increased to be in line with other cooldown changes. The duration had a slight reduction to lower the overall DPS output of the ability, whilst keeping the ship as one of the best overall DPS ships in the game.




DIMINISHER

• Own shield lost upon Shield Leech ending is reduced from -30% to -10%.
• Shield Leech damage bonus increased from +50% to +60%.
• Cooldown of Shield Leech increased from 180 seconds to 840 seconds.

Dev notes:
If a Diminisher's opponent used a backup shield tech and the beginning of the Shield Leech ability then more often than not the Diminisher would lose more shield than their opponent, the shield loss has been reduced to mitigate this.




GOLIATH-X

• Passive bonus changed from +2% EP and +2% damage to +10% EP and +5% damage.

HAMMERCLAW

• Generator slots increased from 14 to 15.
• Speed increased from 290 to 300.
• Passive bonus changed from +20% HP to +10% HP.
• Shield recharge duration increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Healing beam duration increased from 6 seconds to 7 seconds.

Dev notes:
The Hammerclaw suffered from being slower than most other ships in PvP, the increase to 15 generator slots nd plus +10 base speed will allow it to reach the same speeds as a regular Goliath.

The duration of two abilities have been slightly increased to allow the ship to sustain more damage for itself and targeted friendlies in a single fight.




MIMESIS

• Scramble damage bonus increased from +25% to +30%.
• Scramble shield depletion rate reduced from -10% per second to -8% per second.
• Phase Out teleportation distance reduced from 50 units to 35 units.

Dev notes:
The Mimesis remains to be a more experimental ship for players and the main focus on what this ship can and can't do revolves around the usage of its Scramble ability.

The bug of this ability aims to allow various ways of making use of Scramble easier to do, be it having an Aegis partner, backup shield, Diamond or using SAB-50 - just to name a few.




SENTINEL

• Fortress duration increased from 10 seconds to 65 seconds.
• Fortress cooldown increased from 90 seconds to 840 seconds.

SOLACE

• Nano Cluster cooldown increase from 90 seconds to 840 seconds.
• Nano Cluster self heal reduced from +50% to +45%.
• Nano Cluster group heal reduced from +25% to +15%.

Dev notes:
Solace receives some small nerfs to its self heal and some larger nerfs to its group heal.

This is to prevent larger groups consisting only of Solace from being able to extend a fight duration by a ridiculous amount, whilst still keeping the role of the Solace the same.




SPEARHEAD

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Spearhead, S-Veter and S-Elite
  • Using the S-Elite abilities.
• Passive Bonus for the S-Elite changed from +5% damage to +10% damage.
• Mark Target now applies a damage buff based on the amount of members in the group.
  • Mark Target gains +5% damage against the targeted player per member in the group.
  • In a group of 8 players, Mark Target will do +40% damage to the enemy effected by the ability.
• JAMX effect duration increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• JAMX chance of revealing cloaked ships increased from 50% to 100%.
• JAMX cooldown reduced from 207 seconds to 160 seconds.

Dev notes:
Despite having a very useful skill set for group fights, the spearhead is rarely used as the trade off in lack of power is too big if it is being used instead of a Goliath.

The changes of Mark Target allow the spearhead to bring in a large burst of single target DPS to make up for the overall lack that it would typically bring to a group.
JAMX changes boost the usefulness of this ship in typical group PvP.

Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Spearhead as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviation was an unnecessary complication.




SPECTRUM

• Prismatic Shield duration reduced from 30 seconds to 22 seconds.
• Prismatic Shield cooldown increased from 180 seconds to 900 seconds.
• Own damage reduction whilst Prismatic Shield is active is reduced from -50% to -45%.

Dev notes:
The Spectrum has been one the top 3 best ships since its release in 2011, six years of being in-meta and having a very powerful ability. At some points it has also been seen as the only ship to use by many players.

The aim of the Prismatic Shielding changes is not to nerf it so much that the ships is now useless, instead its to make it so the spectrum isn't as good in almost every situation as it is right now.

One of the key problems this ship caused was the time the ability would be up for and the frequent availability - this has been tackled by reducing both the duration and the cooldown significantly.

As a trade-off the laser damage reduction of the user has been lowered to allow the player to be slightly more aggressive when using the ability for its shorter duration.




TARTARUS

• Speed Buff reduced from +40% to +30%.
• Rapid Fire cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 24 seconds.

Dev notes:
The aim of the Tartarus was to provide a speed ship with high periodic DPS.

The big issue was the Tartarus filled one of these roles extremely well, the speed, however the periodic DPS was very lacking and largely went unnoticed.

The way this ship was used caused a large amount of frustration as a good Tartarus player would never die, but their ship was too weak to actually kill anything, so in most circumstances it was merely a troll ship in PvP.

The Tartarus now has 577 speed when the Speed Buff is active, however it can now deal a lot more damage with the Rapid Fire than before, meaning it can put up a good fight with its improved DPS.




VENOM

• Cooldown of Singularity increased from 120 second to 840 seconds.

 

DRONE FORMATIONS
Drone formations are an integral part of PvP - often having a bigger impact in fights than the ships themselves do. A player who makes good use of their formations can often defeat an opponent who has a better ship but poor formation management.

A large reason the drone formation meta has become stale is due to Ring and the consequences it had.
The strong shield it provides means its necessary to begin almost all fights in this formation, however it is so large that people quickly change to Moth as a counter and just try to out-DPS their enemy and ignore the shield and go for the HP.

This pressure to use Moth for most of the fight led to players overusing Solace, a change to Ring will go a long way to solving both the issues with Moth and Solace.


Ultimately, the fact that Ring provides the best shield in the game, resulted in shields actually being much less important in PvP and at the same time forcing in a meta which caused fights to often be repeated in the same way.

Similar to the situation with the ships, the formation changes are aimed to bring in more variety in PvP than exists right now.



CHEVRON

• Rocket damage increased from +50% to +65%.

CRAB

• Speed reduction reduced from -20% to -15%.

DOME

• Shield bonus increased from +30% to +40%.
• Shield regeneration increased from +0.5% to +1.5%.
• Laser damage reduction reduced from -50% to -30%.
• Speed reduction reduced from -50% to -15%.

Dev notes:
A large amount of changes have been made as this formation was rarely used in any areas of the game.
It will be watched closely to see if further changes can be made to the balance of this formation.




DOUBLE ARROW

• Added a +30% rocket damage bonus.

HEART

• Shield bonus increased from +10% to +20%.

MOTH

• Own shield depletion rate increased from -1% to -4%.

Dev notes:
A nerf to moth which allows it to still be powerful in PvP for damage output, whilst making the user vulnerable at a much quicker rate.




RING

• Shield bonus reduced from +120% to +85%.

Dev notes:
The shield bonus of ring was done to reduce the amount of time that Ring is active during a typical PvP scenario, this will encourage people to swap out to other formations whilst still keeping Ring in the same role.
In turn this will reduce the pressure for players to use Moth, therefore reducing the pressure on using Solace.




STAR

• A +10% evasion bonus has been added.

 

the ships abilitys now are fine they dont need changing all you need to change is cooldowns and moth

 

The lack of balance changes have been one of my recurring criticisms of the game. It's nice to finally see something being done in that regard.

 

Well i want to give you my feedback but it will be a lot. First i wanna give feedback to the drone formation changes.


Drone formations

First of all ring formation was to strong because of its shield bonus. 120% more shield was to much compared with heart formation. The biggest problem was that every enemy "camped" in ring formation to be safe or to annoy the people. We reached on average nearly 1 million or more shield. If the people used Spectrum or Solace there was no way to catch them.

So the nerf will allow us now to catch them better especially if they cant use so much times Spectrum anymore. *Why there is no Solace cooldown? That will make the design much more attractive now than before.

Now i want to talk about moth. Moth was not that overpowered as you think. I mean there are two counters, crab and Solace. But i have never seen people in crab formation because of ring formation or because of Solace. *The only one formation used was ring formation even if they had no shields anymore.

Chevron is good as it is. You get a lot of rocket damage and you lose much hitpoints so you can get attacked by moth so you have to be careful. Chevron also is a better counter now against Spectrum.

Dome formation: I really cant see the sense in dome formation. Can you explain me the sense in PvP or PvE? @OP32

Double arrow is fine as it is. I cant say much about the star because we dont know the bonus yet. Heart formation is good as it is, too.

Ships

Solace: Why you changed the group heal? I mean it has a higher cooldown now and i guess that should be enough. There is no need to reduce the group heal. ( IMO )

Sentinel: Sentinel was a really good PvP ship and i am glad that the duration is now longer than before.

Spectrum: It is nice to see that you work against Spectrum because it destroyed the PvP balance much. And people trolled you with active ability.

Venom: Still a useless ship. ( IMO )

Diminisher: Pretty cool now that we lose now 10% shield after the ability instead of 30%.

Cyborg: The cooldown change is fine but why you changed the duration? I bought it because it was a little bit OP. But dont forget that the ability has so much counters. EMP + click something else + Solace. So IMO the duration change is not that good.

Hammerclaw: Seems pretty strong now and the speed is good now. It was the most useless ship because of the less speed.

Mimesis: It was used to be a ship for runners and i hope they cant run so much anymore. I like the scrambler ability cause it is a tactical PvP ship with less shield in the speed configuration and you have to use SAB-50 to keep the ability.

Goliath-X: I will never fly it because it looks so ugly.

Tartarus: Finally you reduced the speed of Tartarus. It was so annoying that people come to fight and then fly away. But my question is: The sense of Tartarus is to use the speed ability. Why there is a speed ability? Just give Tartarus more basic speed and remove the ability. ( The speed ability has no sense IMO if the ability has to be active all the time. )

Spearhead, Citadel and Aegis are fine now.

 

The only thing that i find not good is the cyboirg nerf not because it is not op but because it is difficult to build it. But the main thing that i dont like is that there is no buff on the vengeance like, ok the nerf on the tartarus but now there is absolutely no point on using any vengeance ship, so why not buff it?

 

op u dont no how to pvp anyway lol ,right listen i like the changes on heart but everything else is poor and just a way to make us pop quicker when we get 5v1ed also u lot nerfed the ring a while back to and now again !nothing we buy is safe u bring things out sell us them then change to suit u and never to benefit players and no one runs away on ring lol this y we have wheel u seem to not know what u on about and making moth looses shields this much is a intant pop if u get 3v1ed and have no protection ish and intas and so on and from 1 % to 4% also u even sneak cubes higher damage so we have to use more ammo now prots flying all over whole map after u pop it and can never get ship repped as they hitting us always ha,this is so stupid the radious is huge not to mention the 3 to 4 boss sks that also come to get u while u cube every single cube .anyway leave the ring formation alone its not even op like a said u already changed this over a year ago and now again learn how to play op32

 

As I have already seid, the balancing especially for the formations are "weird"

The normal rocket damage represents only a fraction of the total damage, 15% more damage won't affect anything.

I propose to look over this thread. It has some good ideas.

 

It does not make sense. There is no point now to use vengeance because they lowered the speed from tartarus? And what about the past? There was a sense to use vengeance?

@murdoc01

The only one who dont know anything about PvP is you. All people just fly in ring formation because of the massive shield bonus. In the past ring formation has 180% shield and you were not slower than now. So in the past you had more shield than now and you had the same speed. Now you have weaker shield and slower speed.

You accepted the terms and conditions and if you had read them then you would know that BP can change things whenever they want without guarantee.

 

how long has it beeen since you saw a vengeance ufe? you think that after the tartarus nerf there will be any vengeance players? there is a bigger chance for them to use sperahead, also i read that the changes are made to balance the ships and use them all and not only cyborg and solace so... i guess there should be a buff on vengeance since nobody is using it since pusat and even before that.

 

I never said that there will be Vengeance players. Vengeance lost his special "ability" after they released Tartarus.

Spearhead is faster too, but has less HP and less lasers and the work was to be a group ship to turn off enemies Spectrum or whatever

 

so why not buff vengeance and do all these stuff? They say they want us to play with all the ships but they dont buff venge that was one of the most used ships with goli till 2 years ago

 

I am very pleased with all of the upcomming changes from this thread, however with the people about the Vengeance, it is pretty much useless now. But all the changes named in the thread is super nice in my opinion

 

Moth is too OP in group fights, if your on your own and fighting 3 or 4 people on full damag with moth, you die easily and the reduction of solace ability doesn't help with this. Most people on my server start with moth, just shows no skills In PvP because when they are alone they are easy to kill. I believe moth hp penetration should be reduced. Also rings sheild should be 100% to give cleaner sight when to change formations in battle. Battles should be longer to give more fun and enough time for people rep and come back, if it's done too soon people will not come back fighting and just give up, that's what I seen from experience.

 

I see a ringformation player is crying.

 

They cannot buff the Vengeance because, even with these updates, the Tartarus is still almost always better than the Vengeance due to more HP, more firepower, more shields with nearly the same speed.

The only thing they could do would be to reduce the Vengeance Lightning cooldown which is the only compatible pvp vengeance at this moment.

To make things worse, because the Tartarus will no longer be the fastest ship, even with its ability, the feared Pusat will most likely make a return. Which will then make it much harder for Spearheads and Vengeances to do anything.

Regardless of how you look at it, the Vengeance was crushed a long time ago. When the Pusat came out there were some users but ever since the Tartarus was released, nobody bothered to use it, for good reason. Unless they give it a new kind of ability, it wil most likely never return because it would make the Tartarus useless.

 

Finally an update that doesn't (completely) suck.

Moth rebalance is bad, the thing that should be changed is the penetration (attack) and not the penalty you get by using it (4% less shield per sec). Picture this:
You are fighting 2v1 and both of them come at you with moth... yeah...
That's why I'm saying the penetration needs nerf and not the penalty...

Cyborg change was good... it benefited those who have it a lot by simply making people use their emp, activating the ability and then run away... I'm talking about SB where you can't escape the map.

Spectrum change sucks. Well, not entirely at least. 15 minutes CD IS good but the duration is still high... I can see it being balanced once the ability lasts 17 or less seconds. Again dear devs, if you change something change the stats and NOT the CD.

 

Hey all, just want to my input on the changes, for the most part, op32- EXCELLENT job, I really think we should see a large variety of ships being used now in pvp. The re balancing on the ships were pretty much all spot on (venom still sucks), and I feel like the leo was naturally buffed from the chevron buff. Ring nerf, moth nerf- both very much needed, and thank god for the solace nerf which will reduce the 8 man solace outfits. Aegsis will actually be used more with the golis having longer cool downs. Citadel will be able to do its job as a tank, no one used it for damage anyway. I do think the spectrum nerf was needed, but honestly I think it needs a little bit more of a nerf than what it received. Also, thank god the Tart was nerfed, everyone just ran in it once they realized you aren't a bot , etc. Now, I do feel like the cyborg was hit kind of hard and honestly, with the current patch i would of gotten the hammerclaw instead, because it will for sure be good now. Nerfing ring was one of the most needed changes, giving people a chance at hunting solo again. This should balance pvp a lot, now you guys need to figure out a way to make it less expensive for noobs- hint, better paying missions that are easy for them to do, so they get addicted to the game.

 

Actually I use most of formation, Ring>heart>diamond/chevron>drill. Those are my formation switches and moth if they are lower hp.
Name me one good fighter who doesn't use ring??
I bet you don't even know how to PvP lol