How will races be balanced?

[Boltersam]

It's a simple question that may have been answered before, but how will they be balanced? Covenant tech is far more advanced than humans, and they have more numerous powerful ground troops by way of Elites. How will the UNSC combat them in naval combat, and without Spartans? The flood are another matter entirely, and would probably be the most balanced, though infection forms might be a bit strong if they can instantly infect NPCs and possibly players.

And a side note, will hand to hand combat differ from regular SS13's? And how?

[Cael_Aislinn]

I'm pretty keen on asymmetrical balance. In general I don't want Covvie weaponry (mainly plasma) to be as downright brutal as it was in the books but the general themes for the two factions are going to be:

Covenant
- Faster capital ships, but most other vehicles are on-par.
- Capital ships, fighters and vehicles require less refuelling or maintenance.
- More "utility" or non-combat capital ship abilities (microjumps, tracking missiles, shields, cloaks)
- 99% of weaponry is plasma based: higher cooldown per shot, more damage per shot, consumes replenishable charge.
- Much harder to upgrade, replace or repair vehicles and machinery (think Apple vs Windows).
- Wide variety of races with different stat bonuses.
- RnD and upgrades are limited due to religious lore reasons.
- Players should be generally aggressive and zealous due to religious lore reasons (lower ranks seen as expandable, take risks for honour + glory etc).

UNSC
- Capital ships are much tankier (loads of armour).
- Capital ship weaponry tends to be dumbfire and/or highly explosive.
- Easy to pull apart a vehicle or machine and upgrade it.
- 99% of weaponry is chemical projectile based: fast fire rate, reload using magazines, some weapons can share ammo.
- Capture Covenant equipment or retrieve Forerunner gear to reverse engineer it for new gear or upgrades.
- Mine or retrieve rare resources for RnD to get weapon and gear bonuses (eg bonus shield damage, shield/armour penetration, energy ablation etc).

I'm quite keen for capital ships to have NPC crew which can be ordered around by players so this will be a part of balancing.

[Boltersam]

I've seen a few of the movies, and hot damn, the humans were absolutely decimated by the plasma weaponry, so I can see some downtuning will be have to done for those.

So, the Covenant will be a lot more self-sufficient, and at the earlygame (If we have rounds.) they'll be superior to the UNSC, but static in terms of research progression. The UNSC are a lot more adaptable and tougher, as well as getting stronger the more enemies they defeat due to looting and part collecting. (My warthog will be the pimpiest, bow before my pink flora-patterned sonic-speed rammer, mere mortals!)

Will the Covenant have the players start off at the lower ranks? (Probably not grunts, due to how insignificant they are, but Jackals and lesser Elites.) And, if so, how will progression work?

Next up, armour and shields. How will the UNSC handle those?

Continuation of the earlier question, how will the UNSC counter the real juggernauts like the Brutes, capable of taking out entire squads of ODSTs, and I'm told can take on a Spartan, too, that the Covenant may have right from the beginning?

[bloxgate]

Brutes weren't even in the games until Halo 2, so it'd probably be fine to leave them out of the server IMO.

[Cael_Aislinn]

Yeah Brutes won't turn up frequently. Hunters will still be around, but we'll be "creative" with our interpretation of how tanky they are and you'll probably be able to kill them with a few rockets to the face. I like the idea of Covenant being in a race against time to take out the UNSC before the UNSC can tech up, because that's basically what happened over the course of the first 4 games (when the Infinity launches the UNSC officially overtakes the Covenant IMO).

The way I'm planning to do ranking is a combination of job role and player experience with the role (self ranked). For UNSC this is pretty easy, eg pilots could get a choice of Lieutenant, Captain or Major, or the ship captain could have a rank of Lieutenant Commander, Commander or Captain. The ranks would all have effectively the same permissions and responsibilities but indicate their level of experience/seniority.

I'm on the fence about Cov players being anything other than elites. There's such a disparity in survivability that I'd only want players do it as a respawn thing (everyone starts as Elite... you die you only get to respawn as a grunt or jackal).

[bloxgate]

IIRC a single rocket could kill a hunter in the first game if it didn't hit the shield. Shouldn't be too hard to make them beatable.

[Mook476]

The balancing sounds pretty good, and I like it so far.

[Nightspark43]

I'm on the fence about Cov players being anything other than elites. There's such a disparity in survivability that I'd only want players do it as a respawn thing (everyone starts as Elite... you die you only get to respawn as a grunt or jackal).

Personally, I'm very specifically looking to play as a Kig-Yar when it comes to it, but I do like the idea of the species respawn being skewed, like Grunts spawn almost immediately, Jackels take only a few seconds, Elites take around fifteen or so seconds, and Hunters take a few minutes.

[Koenigsegg]

Yeah Brutes won't turn up frequently. Hunters will still be around, but we'll be "creative" with our interpretation of how tanky they are and you'll probably be able to kill them with a few rockets to the face. I like the idea of Covenant being in a race against time to take out the UNSC before the UNSC can tech up, because that's basically what happened over the course of the first 4 games (when the Infinity launches the UNSC officially overtakes the Covenant IMO).

The way I'm planning to do ranking is a combination of job role and player experience with the role (self ranked). For UNSC this is pretty easy, eg pilots could get a choice of Lieutenant, Captain or Major, or the ship captain could have a rank of Lieutenant Commander, Commander or Captain. The ranks would all have effectively the same permissions and responsibilities but indicate their level of experience/seniority.

I'm on the fence about Cov players being anything other than elites. There's such a disparity in survivability that I'd only want players do it as a respawn thing (everyone starts as Elite... you die you only get to respawn as a grunt or jackal).

Personally, beside the Sangheili, I am interested in the Kig-Yar, as I find them interesting because of their shield and ability to be somewhat "tankers" or "guardians". Okay, I don't know how their shield will be good. If it's going to deflect/protect only in the direction of the shield, whether or not it will discharge itself from the damages then recharge completely after a delay, etc.

I'm curious about it because the Kig-Yar is definitly something I would see myself playing. Same for the hunter the real big tank boy. (Speaking of them, are they going to be as powerful and annoying as in the games? Ahah, just asking because it's already hard to survive one shot without getting the shield disabled and health lowered to 20%.)

As for the Unggoy... Well, I'm too sure how you plan to make them balanced. No doubt any races can be interesting. (Maybe because I am more leaning towards roleplay than gameplay). Are they going to be weak as fuck? What will make them truly unique (and by that, I mean something that can truly contribute rather than be a simple living shield.

And will Elites be able to use a shield/cloak at the same time? I'm really curious! ^^,

[Ruse]

I wonder if seeing how small some grunts are would they be given vent crawl or be hard to hit if you consider that most players would be aiming directly ahead of them and considering the average height for both most covvies and humans that would simply fly over a unggoys head or body in general this would make up for being genuinely weak and without a shield like most unggoy tend to be unless they have both a jetpack and a fuel rod then they are annoying