Ground Combat Design Philosophy

What is this? (Overview)

This document covers the philosophy of Monolith ground combat. When adding content pertaining to ground combat, make sure it follows these principals.

In Monolith, while there is a focus on ship combat most of the time, the situation often arises where you encounter your enemy face to face, be it through boarding or happening upon each other in a contested station. For this occasion, Monolith has a significant amount of personal gear for players to use during ground combat, but when creating this equipment a number of questions arise, such as “how fast should it shoot?”, “what should it shoot?”, “how easy should it be to acquire?”, and more generally “how powerful should it be?”. Different people have different preferences and answers to these kinds of questions, so this document should be used as a reference when making gear for players.

General Ground Combat Balance Guidelines

The golden rule: Maintainers have final say over balancing. Content may be exempted from these guidelines at maintainer discretion, but these guidelines are intended to help a prospecting contributor know what we look for in terms of balancing.

#1. The goal of these guidelines is to make infantry combat feel fun - not too short, and not too drawn out. Instant-kills and excessively lengthy ground engagements are to be avoided as much as possible. The ideal engagement time should be 1-3 minutes long, though this is obviously not a hard requirement - battles should feel like they take a proper amount of time for what they are, which means they are highly circumstantial.

#2. In general, higher-tech (harder to access) gear should have more gimmicks and “feel” higher tech. Factions with different themes can escape from this general guideline (e.g low tech factions can have low-tech feeling weapons at high research, high tech factions can have more early gimmicks, etc). Gear should still follow sensible progression though.

Weapons

Guns and other weapons are hard to unify in terms of TTK, especially since many of them have different modes of firing or other gimmicks, and differing accessibility. In general, though:

  • Most weapons should take at least 3 seconds, and not exceed 6 seconds, to kill an unarmored human. (Exclusions to this rule may include dedicated anti-armor weapons.)
  • More accessible weapons should be simpler in function, while less accessible weapons should have more gimmicks and alterations.
  • Even if a weapon is rarer, more exotic or otherwise powerful, it should still abide by the TTK rule noted above. It can be very cool and powerful in other ways, but instant-kills should be avoided.

Ammunition

Guns are only half the weapon - Ammunition is also important for defining builds and allowing for more player agency. In general:

  • Ammunition types should not differ incredibly in terms of TTK - using AP ammo against an armored target should definitely be more effective but it shouldn’t be a near-instant kill, while using said AP ammo against unarmored targets should not make the weapon do no damage.
  • More exotic ammunition effects should be “higher tech” as per general guidelines.

Armor

Armor balancing is usually simpler than balancing weapons or utility gear, but can be complicated with speed, armor values, armor plates, personal shields, and other headgear functionality. In general, though:

  • Armor % protection heavily depends on what the function of the armor is. Many hardsuits are considered “Armor” but are in actuality focused towards utility.
  • Armor should also avoid having universal protection. For example, a brute-resistant piece of armor should not also be immune to radiation, poison, and heat.
  • “Light” armor should be harder to access (e.g require research), have lower stat protections, and should prioritize utility (gimmick) functions such as weak personal shields, visor effects, and improved movement speed.
  • “Medium” armor should be accessible, have middling stat protections, universally accept armor plates, and should prioritize balance between protection and gimmicks.
  • “Heavy” armor should be harder to access (e.g require research), have very high % protection for certain damage types, and should prioritize protection over gimmicks.
  • These general classifications can be overridden by faction styles - for example, TSF heavy armor can have more gimmicks that prioritize safety at the cost of % protection, tech factions can have low-tier armor with shields, etc. These are just general guidelines, they do not fit every niche scenario!
  • Armor should only ever slow down a user, never speed them up. However, make sure the speed debuff of armor makes sense for the protection that it gives. Light armor should feel lightweight, while heavy armor should make you feel like a tank.

Utility

“Utility” is a pretty big category. It encompasses things like hand-held shields, grenades, and other combat equipment that isn’t a gun or piece of armor.

In general, if a piece of utility equipment has a similar function to either armor or weapons, it should attempt to follow their guidelines.

  • Damaging utility gear (grenades, mines, turrets) should try their best to not instant-kill an opponent.
  • Protective utility gear (handheld shields) should either be counterable (ballistics v. energy shield) or not make a usually fair fight unbalanced (it should not make your character invincible.)
  • In general utility gear is harder to categorize and create guidelines for - if you’re ever unsure, ask a maintainer!

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