We are revamping how the Nova Bomb works in the next reset to make it more consistent with how combat works.

The Nova Bombs will be moving from the normal Device Port to Alliance Device ports. You will no longer be able to buy a Nova Bomb at the regular device ports. We decided that this is a particularly nasty weapon and the Federation wouldn't allow it to be sold to anyone. Since the Alliance are the black marketers of the universe they can sell really nasty weapons like the Nova Bomb through their device ports.

The major change is in how Nov Bombs work. Currently Nova Bombs inflict random amounts of damage on all tech levels when used against planets and random amounts of damage to sector defenses. This is totally different from other combat methods in the game and definitely not consistent.

Nova Bombs will have different explosive levels you can purchase. The higher the level the more destructive power of the bomb.

When the Nova Bomb is used against a planet it will cause damage to the planets shields. If the shields are destroyed then damage is inflicted upon the planets armor, fighters and torps. If a planets armor is completely destroyed then the planet is destroyed. This means you will have to figure out what level nova bomb you need to purchase to damage a planet enough to take it without destroying it. This way the Nova Bomb uses similar combat algorithms to other attacks and maintains combat consistency.

If a Nova Bomb backfires the damage to the players ship will be similar to damaging a planet but at a FRACTION of the normal damage levels. The backfire will damage the ships shields and then the ships armor. If the backfire destroys all of the armor then the ship is destroyed.

The ability to damage planets with a Sector Nova will be re-enabled. This will prevent the use of larger players destroying low ranked players sector defenses without incurring a bounty. We have seen this greatly abused since the ability to damage planets was disabled.

Now this is not a bad thing because the sector nova damage will be distributed among everything in the sector. If there are planets in the sector then the damage is spread among all of them as well as the sector defenses. If you have a 5 planet sector with sector defenses then the damage will be divided by 6. One sixth of the damage will go against the sector defenses and one sixth will go against each planet. In most cases the planets will only suffer damage against their shields unless it was a MASSIVE Nova Bomb and those will be horrendously expensive. So you will be able to deplete the planets energy reserves without causing them tech level damage when using Sector Novas. This will make it so you can more easily take over a planet without heavily damaging it.

I thought you guys had it set up to where ya could only do a certain percentage of damage to planet levels when firing over a warp link. i had hoped to see some admins who were up to the task to modify some of the combat. of course everyone should want to play the new version now cause its SO cool. now you all got me to where i dont wanna play hardly any 0.20-0.21 AAT versions. And its not like i had a long history in the old game. Looks like your really getting a balanced game layed out.

We did but it wasn't consistent with the base combat formula. All combat should follow the same general theme. Shields take damage first and then armor takes damage when shields are gone. The Nova Bomb completely ignored that and used an arbitrary method I came up with.

With these changes the Nova Bomb will be more balanced and the number being used should be reduced since there are alot fewer Alliance Device ports in the game than normal Device Ports. Plus it means people can more easily check to see who is pounding a sector with Novas and possibly follow them to their launching sector by creating spy warp links to all of the Alliance Device ports.

I smell a potential research item. Especially for the higher level nova's... when research goes in, be sure to only allow the purchase of the lowest level nova's at the alliance ports and make people "Grow thier Own" big bombs.


The question I have is - If a planet can absorb ALL the nova damage with its shields will it take a tech level hit at all (as it used to work in .21)? I hope the answer is NO because that is what made the nova overpowering before.

It will work similar to any other combat. When a ship or planet it attacked they do not take any tech level damage until they start taking armor damage. So you will have to be careful and not use too powerful a nova bomb on a planet or you may destroy it or damage it too much to be worth saving.

And when you buy a nova bomb you cannot change its power level after you buy it. So each ship you own could be carrying a completely different level nova bomb.

Hmm! Sounds like an interesting change. I look forward to seeing how well it plays out.

Thanks for the info!

Seems like U got it right on track. Had tried it out... High level nova really hurts...

The nova's as of this writting are WAY over powered when launched in sector attack.

A lowly level 10 nova is not only ripping through level 25 shields it is taking HUGE chunks of planet tech with it. I launched a level 11 at a planet with 28 shields and the damn thing was down to level 3 tech.

I noticed that you guys fixed the bug I reported in combat_sectornova.php and since then things have been really nuts.

Some other notes:

Nova Level does not seem to affect what percentage of SD it will take out.
Nova Level does not seem to affect what kind of backfire damage will be done to you.

What is the nova level to planetary shield comparison?

From what I can tell it is -

Level 10 Nova's will tear through Level 25 shields
Level 11 Nova's will tear through Level 29-30 shields
Level 12 Nova's will tear through Level ?? shields

For the cost per nova vs the cost per tech that is destroyed the Nova is Vastly overpowered right now.

Yep, Kwae is right on point about the Nova so far. Not sure how things are working in the profile game... Anyway i was hoping to see it working kinda like PJ. mentioned above, where the shields is hit and energy leeched before the armor and other levels even take hits.

Yep, there are some bugs in it. I will be uploading new nova code this weekend. Trying something different again. I knew we would have to work with it to get it right.

What I would like to see is the following...


Nova Level****Direct Fire @ Planetary/Ship Shield****Sector Fired

10 ---------------------- 22 ----------------------------- 20 (-2)
11 ---------------------- 29 ----------------------------- 27 (-2)
12 ---------------------- 33 ----------------------------- 31 (-2)
13 ---------------------- 38 ----------------------------- 36 (-2)
14 ---------------------- 43 ----------------------------- 40 (-3)
15 ---------------------- 50 ----------------------------- 47 (-3)


10 = ~15B Credits
11 = ~50B Credits
12 = ~150B Credits (The tech this can take out cost 8T credits)
13 = ~1T Credits (The tech this can take out costs 250T credits)
14 = ~150T Credits (The tech this can take out costs ????T credits)
15 = ~1000T Credits (The tech this can take out costs ??????T credits)

Note 1:
When firing across a sector link Nova's lose power that would have been applied to planetary shields due to some of the blast energy being sent out into space rather than fully directed at the planet.

Note 2:
It is important to remember that a planets shields use 10 fold more power to support than a ship. So even though the top end Nova can't blow through a level 52 planetary shields system it most CERTAINLY can suck the energy levels down enough to drain the planets power making it completely defenseless.

Make it extremely difficult to take SD down real low with the stinking nova's . And also maybe more turn cost for those expensive ones. I want to have to work my @ss off to get into a sector because then the direct nova's are already so deadly anyway. I wanna see people having to use Attack and runs BIGTIME .

Maybe fighter shields could be a percentage of the highest planet shields in the sector that they are guarding.

This will make it MUCH harder for people to low-end nova thier way into sectors.

I really dont think a nova should be calculateable. Its an extreme weapon with frequent backfires. The backfire damage should reflect the level of the nova. And any nova damage shold be random range that may or may not take out specific amounts of shields and armor. And of course Sector nova damage should be scaled across all planets.

Now perhaps the number of fighters are depleted based on the number of planets in that sector. The more planets the more Sector nova depletion and the lees amount of max fighters that are taken out.

But... the nova is an extreme weapon and should not be nuetered, but always be subject to blowing up a ship that uses it. The smaller the ship the more likely the ship destruction.

I'd also say the higher the level the less likelyhood of a backfire, but I wouldnt make it ever 100% work, I'd say the most it should ever be is 75% chance of working no matter what level.

What is calculateable?
Nothing in this game is rock-paper-scissors. There are always variables to baseline damage and armor absorbtion. But as a baseline, I would like to see something simliar to my suggestion put in place.

We have already tried the non-level based nova's for the past several years. Now the nova's have levels. You can't go half-way on this. They either have levels with ranges of damage that they can do within a set definition OR we end up with wild wild west nova's like AAT has had since before time.



Agreed.
And as I reported earlier this is not happening. I believe that you should not be able to survive a level 13 nova backfire in your little level 16 endy. Every increase in nova rank requires an increase in ship class or ship level in order to survive a backfire.



Agreed.
Each planet is taking absorbtion of the nova energy via the shields. One can image that the fighters see the incoming nova and attempt to hide on the backside of the planets to gain protection. Thus, as you said, the more planets in the sector the less fighters that will be destroyed.

I still belive that firing a nova across a warp link should degrade the maximum energy that the nova can put out as some of the detonation energy is going to escape into space as it is not directed at a point-blank in sector target.



Bzzt.

Have you fired a nova recently? The thing is 10 fold more powerful than ever! With recent tweaking aside though (as PJ mentioned that this is a testing phase to get a feel for the correct damage) no one is neutering the nova. With the new level system you now have more nova power than ever in the form of huge giant triple sun core exploding radiation blast....



If done correcty...
If you want less backfires on your nova's I suggest you make a research colony and put your best scientists on that task. (aka don't give it to people by default).