Spiral Knights - Bomb mechanics overhaul

Bomb mechanics overhaul

16 replies [Last post]

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 06:59

Keepscaite

A suggestion to make bombs a little more viable

Let's face it, bombs as a whole, are ridiculously outclassed by the other two weapon types. It also doesn't help that some Bombs' effectiveness has diminished a lot when compared to before. *cough*Invincitinks*cough*

Bomb Bowling

Manual Detonation

In the case of the first one, I'd imagine it so that the normal attack button would plant a bomb instantly (the fuse is still there though), whereas if you were to use the charge, the Knight would roll the bomb like a projectile, and it would INSTANTLY detonate upon contact with anything.

I'm well aware that using the method I used above, the DPS of ALL bombs would increase exponentially. Every bomber would practically have managed to reach more than MAXIMUM CTR. DR would become a weapon that could murder anything. ANYTHING.

But thankfully, I have a fix for that. Make it so that the normal attack's animation takes a noticeably long time. Like, about as long as an Autogun charge with 0 CTR.

This would actually make ASI USEFUL on bombers, while at the same time lowering a bomber's dependence on CTR. Madness!

On the other hand, we can't have Bombers overshadowing gunners with their bowling prowess. Thankfully, the fix for that is equally easy. Simply make it so that ALL bombs have the same walking speed as Irontech/BAB.

Oh but of course, speaking of Irontech, if Bomb Bowling is to be implemented, Irontech would, become utterly redundant. It would be completely and utterly outclassed by BAB.

OHOHOHOHOH! Worry not young reader, that is also easily fixed. To begin with, do you know why anyone ever bothered crafting an Irontech at all?

Range. Yes, that's it. Anyone who ever made Irontech (specifically the 4*) must've done it for it's higher range.

That being said, I'm saying that Irontech would have the WIDEST range of any 5* bomb, in return for it's slower charge time.

However, on the off chance that OOO would think my idea of implementing bowling is too OP. Then here's my other idea.

Basically, like the one above, you make it so that the normal attack will place a bomb on the ground instantly, still having the slow planting speed, but make it so that the fuse won't appear until the knight uses his/her charge attack.

This way, players would have a much easier time setting up multiple bombs, predicting enemy placement, etc. It would also make it possible for players to coordinate chain explosions with other players.

Using this second method would also be much easier to code than the former. Plus, it also won't need anywhere near as many balancing tweaks as the former.

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 10:41

Dinosaurvista

Would make bombs even more useless

First idea would make bombs even more high-risk low-reward than they are now. The clunky attack speed, which makes the bombs not "OP" would just leave you WIDE open for enemies, and you would be nigh useless in arenas. Sounds very broken. Compared to guns or swords; they have variety. There are fast guns and slow guns, but your idea would make all bombs really slow.

Second idea sounds very slow and hard to set up; you would be useless when walking around and attacking. If a single enemy appears and you have to attack it, you have to slowly set up a bomb then charge attack until it dies. Not fun. Then if you are with a party, the monsters will all be killed before you can even do anything. If you main bombs and all your damage comes from your bombs and your bomb set, you would have a very hard, or mundane, time.

Right now there are fast and deadly bombs (such as DR) and supportive bombs (such as all the hazes) your ideas would just narrow the options for bombers further by making all bombs slower and much more risky to use.

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 10:53

Melonfish

Let's not yet talk about dual weapon wielding with bombs.

I'll just bluntly leave my own stance on the matter here.

Planting bombs as a regular attack command, which was actually how bombs worked in early beta, is kept preserved in Blast Network as well as the Gremlin Demo in their usual method of bombing. So the coding is there and sufficiently intact.

However, decreasing the walking speed of charging all bombs to that of Irontech or Vortex bombs because of the ability to plant them on the go is going to cripple their useage much more than necessary. In fact, I argue that they should all share running movements (variable speeds if needed) and have the tiptoing done away from ID, BAB and the Vortex bombs. The first concern is to moderate uncharged bombs to have less power than wheter they would be charged, that means adjusting their attack power, blast radius, potency of their effect, etc.

Planting bombs as a regular attack command also means that ASI can now be an overall applicable bonus, which adds a field for adjusting what bombs would be faster or slower to set up. It also means modifying older Demo suits or creating new ones to provide such bonuses.

And most importantly, with the ability to plant bombs more quickly than possible by charging them, there should be a reasonable limit on how many of them you can place on the ground at a time in the same fashion as the Bomb upgrade in Blast Network: bombs would have their own limit on how many you can place at a time depending on what they do. This is important to suggest this in order to prevent resorting to a timer to take care of this balance, which would very badly complicate the use of bombs and be very likely to create bugs.

Now, let's try applying all this to, say, an Electron Vortex.

The main draw for this bomb is its gravitational pull. This is an integral ability that should be present in its uncharged state. In order to balance it, first of all the explosion it makes at the end and the Shock affliction won't be part of it outside of being charged. The result would be the same effect you would see from hitting the Dark Matter bombs that appear during the Tortodrone event. This is supposedly a heavy weapon, so walking with it will be slower (but no more tiptoing) and the window of action for planting it will use up more frames than average. The limitcount for the uncharged bomb placement onscreen would be two or three. Lastly, the radius range of the gravitational pull would be about 10%-20% of its charged output.

I ought to make an overview for all bombs using this system I brought up and see what can work at best.

And finally, I'd like the radius circle for bombs to be a feature that can be toggled on or off.

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 13:10

Thunder-The-Bright

algorithms are the solutions to any problem.

bombs are viable. they can kill crowds better than any brandish you can see. they don't need a buff. well, not all of them.
since you mentioned invincitrinks, let me tell you: shards are right now the most UP weapon in the game. don't balance everything on that.

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 14:19

Fehzor

What if the charge mechanic was reversed?

Step 1. You charge the bomb, it stores it as soon as the charge meter is full and begins again. You can store up to 3 bombs.

Step 2. You place the bomb, it explodes, you lose one from your bomb storage. Bomb storage is displayed somewhere.

I think this addresses most of the issues with bombs. First, it would make bombs combo better with swords and guns, as gunners/swordies could charge up and store a graviton, or perhaps a stagger storm for use mid fight, and then pull it out whenever they need it. Second, it would allow for bombers to minimize the risks taken by their weapon greatly, enabling them to better use their shield. It would also allow them to deal large amounts of damage in casual encounters against like 2 enemies and then charge up later.

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 15:37

Avihr

Void

I'm just going to copypaste this thing I posted on some other thread here, sorry for being a douche and ruining your suggestion.... Heeere goooes:

I always thought that bombs would be way better if instead of having to charge them up, they'd instantly be placed in the ground and have a much shorter fuse time (almost instant) , and after that a cooldown starts ticking down to use this bomb again, say 7-8 seconds with slight variations for each bomb type. With this new mechanic, hitting enemies is easier and safer while not having to rely on insane CTR and obnoxious spamming just so you can consider yourself useful, (mainly in LD, monsters are very easy to hit with bombs anyway) making them a bit more party friendly (less effects obstructing your team's vision) and focusing a bit more on their support role rather than a means to mass DPS, you can use your shield or switch to a secondary weapon while waiting for the cooldown to be up again, meaning that shields are not as meaningless to use if you're a pure bomber, the way it works now pure bombers (may they rest in peace) have very little use for their shields, for them it's either fight or run around shielding, can't do both at the same time.

Their damage might have to be buffed up a bit to compensate for an increased downtime (Status increased for hazers) And shard bombs.... well they'd still suck, I have no Idea what could make shard bombs better, if anything this change would make them a bit worser than they are now.

And bombers would now have a bit of a better chance of survival against a gun user or after getting caught off guard by a striker, because the moment you walk into a bomber, you can get your face blasted away by a bomb, get sucked into a vortex or be stopped on your tracks by a freezing mist.

This Idea comes from considering the dangers and flaws of using bombs that require you to be vulnerable 100% of the time while bombing unless you spam your bombs a lot and everywhere, I don't think that bombing was ever supposed to be like this, Bombs should be a very powerful weapon that everything and everyone should run away from in FEAR, not something you have to throw everywhere as much as you can and hope that your enemies get hit 500 times so they can die, it's a frigging BOMB, bombs should be at the very top of the food chain when it comes to damage infliction.

and ofc... NO DAMNED INVINCITINKS

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 19:53

Xxpapaya

The papaya agrees

@Aviri
Frankly, I agree with your idea. It always struck me as weird how bombs were the least damaging weapons (Against 1 target at least). My main weapons of choice are the Nitronome and Dark Retribution and from my experience, I spend most of my time running around like Chicken Little dodging monsters while praying that my bombs kill them before they kill me. I can't give much of an opinion on the topic of LD as I rarely play it.

Here's my idea:
The charging mechanic stays the same (You hold down the attack button, and the bomb charges), only you can place down the bomb whenever you want, regardless of how long your charged it for. Of course, this could result in the spam problem being worse (honestly, a Nitronome every fraction of a second is cray-cray), therefore to compensate, the longer you charge the bomb for, the more damage it does and the further it knocks back enemies(?), and vice versa. This gives bombers a much larger variety of choices when being chased by ten thousand angry furballs.

In terms of exact figures, I suppose a fully charged bomb could do 3x it's original damage, and on the other side of the scale, a bomb in which you only raised above your head for a fraction of a second would do about half the original damage.

@OP
Out of curiosity, what happens when two bombs collide? (IF they collide)

Sun, 12/14/2014 - 23:22

Keepscaite

@Thunder: Bombs as they are

@Thunder: Bombs as they are now aren't useless, but they're underwhelming. They're also unbalanced as hell. Like the utter domination of CTR when using bombs, the inability to use the shield, the slowed walking speed, etc...

My idea for bomb bowling would actually make Bombastic demo viable.

@Cozmar: thank you for the input. I'm sure that the planting animation and/or charge time for detonation would require some balancing. That being said, the animation for all bombs would be different. Nitronome, DBB and DR would still be fastest, while BAB and Vortexes would be slowest.

I'll also admit, I didn't put anywhere near as much thought to manual detonation, as I did to the bowling idea.

@melon: the reason I added the MSD is because the bomb bowling would be crazy spammable otherwise. It's also because the charge bowling would also be instant detonation, no need for ASI or anything else. I also planned to add a damage boost for the charge, but I couldn't come up with a good number. (Probably 170%)

I also figured that the slow bomb planting animation would work enough as a 'pseudo' limiter to bomb planting spam.

As for the range between charge vs. no-charge... that part actually slipped my mind. Having a decreased range for uncharged bombs is good though.

@Fehzor: that's actually a pretty good idea. But I think it'd be a little complicated to code. It also doesn't alleviate the necessity for CTR on bombs, since you're still relying on the charge to do damage.

@Aviri: that's actually a pretty good idea overall.

And about your comment on shards. It's true that throwing a shard bomb is pretty pointless, but the ability to instantly detonate a shard bomb would make it a whole lot easier to use, because positioning and kiting would practically become a non-issue.

Funnily enough, the idea of manual detonation would work wonders on shards. A skilled player would be able to trap a single enemy between 8 shards or more. Of course, invincitinks would render most of the hits null.....

@papaya: That idea would make Nitronome the only blast bomb anyone would use. It also wouldn't really work with bombs that have no knockback, such as Hazes.

Also, multiple bombs would work like a Catalyzer. All the hits would still register, but the knockback would be random.

Mon, 12/15/2014 - 03:06

Avihr

Void

Thx, I am pretty sure that there are some flaws and necessary tweaks needed for my suggestion for it to be really perfect, for example I just realized that this mechanic benefits way too much from weapon slots and carrying 4 bombs at the same time could be pretty overpowered considering you can detonate each one of them very quickly, and instantly poison-shock-fire-stun someone or freeze-blast-vortexlock-blast , this could become OP very quickly since you'd be blasting misting and spamming much like you were before. also CTR would mean nothing at all after this change.

But these problems can be solved easy peasy lemon squeezy with a few tweaks:

Bombs could have a shared cooldown that works by bomb type, meaning that if you use a hazer, the 8 seconds cooldown applies to all of the other haze bombs in your inventory, so no multistatus infliction of doom for you or blast-to-win PvE obliteration, In addition every bomb has a 2 second "downtime" between each bomb no matter what kind of bomb you're using, just to minimize the effects of movement impairment and unfair permalocking of your enemies in a constant agony of explosions and vortexes.

Charge time reduction in bombs would be renamed to Cooldown time reduction... each "low" unit would reduce cooldown by half a second ( this would make a total of 3 seconds for a maxed out CTR).

Now just to give a general Idea on how cooldowns would be for each bomb type would be like:

Hazers: 10 seconds of total cooldown (9 at maxed heat level from natural CTR) [ 7 at maxed out CTR] Fuse time 1,5 seconds

Blast bombs: 9 seconds cooldown (8 at maxed out heat level) [6 at maxed out CTR] Fuse time 0,7 seconds *1,5 seconds for BAB and Irontech destroyer*

Vortex bombs: 11 Seconds cooldown (10 at maxed out heat level) [8 at maxed out CTR] Fuse time 1,2 seconds

Shard bombs: 8 Seconds cooldown (7 at maxed heat level) [5 at maxed out CTR] Fuse time 0,7 seconds *Dark retribution would count as a shard bomb*

Mon, 12/15/2014 - 04:19

Gunnerific

a quick analysis

Sword are meant to be quick and hitter at the cost of closing your range with the target, idealy best for short range combat.
Brandish defeats that purpose.

Guns are meant to be ranged (most guns anyway) mobile, keeping the distance while giving the user time to flee if need be.
Blitz defeats that purpose (if you use the charge more than the normal attack, which now fits the definition)

Bombs are meant to be a crowd controller, a shot in the dark, risky and powerful.
but in this game, their nothing but an excuse for an AoE weapon just to fit in a third class.

other than the rant, bombs are quite keen on the point where you have to be slightly reckless to deal any damage. No one plans out a grenade throw like a sniper shot. But it also requires that the player be focus with their surrounding, dodging every shot, swing and possibly knockback from their own mayhem. Therfore the only problem is power, nada. A swordie could easily clear our the same amount of enemies with a neutral sword faster than a bomber with a specialized bomb.

But buffing the bomb damage any higher would be rediculous! Well: why not scaled the damage of the bomb with the amount of enemies in the radius? Simple hitbox detection, run it through some mathematics which may slow the game.

That or do normal attacks that plant bombs equivilant of those of shorter range, increasing the higher risk higher reward mechanism of normal bombs/explosives in games.

Mon, 12/15/2014 - 09:05

#10

Avihr

Void

@Gunnerific I don't think that your comparison with grenades and SK bombs is very valid, because a handgrenade isn't something that is indiscriminately used in the battlefield and it is best used from a covered position (no high risks involved), grenades have more of a tactical use, they're not a machinegun to spray your opponent with repeatedly.

Grenades and explosives are often quite expensive to be indiscriminately used without any sort of planning, in fact, most detonations of bombs can cause more damage to the target if you actually plan how you're using it. (throw it into the enemy trench or a position where they take cover)

even if a real life comparison was correct,the problem with bombers continuously spamming outweigh whatever realism it might add to the game:

1: they knock enemies constantly making things harder for your team
2: they constantly fill your screen with effects that obstruct your vision and your team's vision, again making things harder for everyone.

Adding normal attacks with shorter range would only make bombs be even more spam-like than before. besides noone likes a game that requires nothing of you but to do the same thing over and over again remaining completely unreliant of skill and I say this because of LD mostly, a bomber cannnot dodge a player's sword or a bullet and that's why they're the most underused class in this game. In regards of PvE, monsters can be dodged by a bomber in the same fashion that a swordsman or a gunner can, but if being reckless (nooblike would be a better term) and spammy is what you have to do to make best use of a bomb, then it is safe to say that bombs in general have a flawed design that would better be changed to make them less annoying and impractical to use, after all the purpose of a game isn't to fully mimic reality, but to prove a fun and worthwhile experience to the ones that play it.

Mon, 12/15/2014 - 20:54

#11

Gunnerific

hrm.

you commented on my second point, what about my first suggestion? The one where the bombs could scale their damage with the amount of enemies in the radius.

This could invoke early players to plan out their attacks to gain maximum damage output, less spamming i suppose and if the user still spam wouldn't we just presume said user is impatient and is just hoping for their bombs to do something.

Mon, 12/15/2014 - 23:56

#12

Blandaxt

okay..

so we now know they advantages and disadvantages of having a bomb. So, how about we come up with a way for us to be able to fight a flock of grievers or a pack of rocket puppies with a pure bomber knight that can be balanced out. If we can create this, i think bombs will be a legitimate weapon that players in the game can rely on. I was also thinking how will bombers fight fast close up enemies like strikers in ld that can close up the distance in a very short amount of time then it take to charge your bomb?

I was also thinking that if bombs had something like a damage radius (mostly 5 star bombs). The closest the enemy is to the center where the bomb was placed, the more damage the bombs will cause. The further they are to the center, then the less damage the blast will cause.Also, what if bombs were able to nullify any attack that is done during the explosion? would that help balance it out versus gunners and turrets (something like erasing bullets/missiles/sword slashes/and any attack wave done during the explosion).

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 02:26

#13

Keepscaite

@Bland

LD is very fast paced and requires some serious precision timing. In that case, only Aviri's instant explosion idea would work out. In one of my ideas, someone with good aim could use bomb bowling to snipe at incoming Strikers too, since a thrown bomb detonates instantly while a placed bomb still has a fuse line.

Also, the idea of having proximity damage is actually not that bad, but would be a major pain to code and debug. Would take even longer than the gunner update to implement.

Tue, 12/16/2014 - 02:32

#14

Xxpapaya

The papaya thinks

@Blandaxt
Disadvantages:
-Fairly long charge times
-Low damage (on a single target)
-Leaves you vulnerable when charging
-If interrupted, you'll damage output is nil
-People tend to hate you if you use the Nitronome
-Unable to take out more mobile targets when they are grouped together (Grievers)
-Unable to take out targets in places outside of range (Gun Puppies)

Advantages:
-Nice AoE damage
-Gives good crowd control/status effects
-A well positioned bombs places mobs in favourable positions
-Explosions look good <3

I like the idea of the bombs nullifying projectiles, but then all anyone has to do is spam Nitronomes. Perhaps, as you've mentioned (only in a different subject) only the projectiles/attacks near the detonation zone of the bomb will be nullified?

@Keepscaite
Haze bombs simply apply their statuses for a longer amount of time. Although I acknowledge your concerns about the blast bomb issue.

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 00:29

#15

Keepscaite

I forgot to mention this, but

I forgot to mention this, but bomb bowling isn't so much bowling as it is throwing. To make it easy on the devs, throwing a bomb would be pretty much exactly like throwing a pot.

Another thing I'd like to add, is that the ability to throw bombs would make us be able to keep up with swordsmen. You know how uncoordinates parties tend to ALWAYS have that one guy who keeps pushing enemies outside of your range?

Now before anyone comes to complain about how horrible a blast bomber would be in such a situation, I'd just like to say you have pretty much the same problem with multiple swordsmen targeting a single enemy.

Also, unlike guns, a bomb can only be thrown via charge. So it's not really spammable. The charge also slows you down afterall.

Imagine the ability to throw vortexes? Would certainly make chasing down enemies a lot easier.

Oh, needless to say, enemies will still try to dodge a thrown bomb.

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 11:29

#16

Blandaxt

agreed!

@Keepscaite:

agree with your idea to thrown the bomb after it is charged. i don't see any way that can be imbalance compared to the sword and gun abulities we have in the game.

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Bomb mechanics overhaul