Hey, Galactic Junkers!

It's Gajxo here with another dev diary. This week I'd like to introduce the new scoring system for our team deathmatch game mode. We believe it will improve balance and make matches more rewarding. The new score system is a modification of a community suggested solution and it's something we have been discussing for some time. It is already being implemented and will be released as soon as it's ready and tested.

The problem:
A common complaint from the community is that matchmaking creates match-ups, where the power difference between the weakest and strongest ships is too large. Usually ships are split relatively fairly into the two competing teams so the overall result of the match is quite even. The issue is that highly rated ships in both teams decide the course of the match, get the most kills and the best score. The weaker ships, on the other hand get a unfavorable K/D ratio and have a hard time reaching a satisfying score. This is frustrating especially for newer players, who feel cheated and have a hard time progressing.

Goals of the new score system:

• compensate the imbalance in ship rating within matches and create fairer motivations for both low- and high-level players
• support and reward teamplay slightly more

The solution:

Flexible number of points for ships

• At the start of each match, every ship will be given a point value based on its rating relative to other ships. This point value will be given for killing or damaging this ship.
• The point value will be communicated in the lobby, in the score screen and in the target HUD in-match so that enemies are aware of it at all times.
• A ship can be worth 60, 120, 180 or 240 points. The 'base' value stays at the current 120 points (100 for damage and 20 for the core). This means that the weakest ship can be worth only ¼ of the strongest one.

New victory condition

• The winner of a match will be the team, with the most points, when the timer expires. Currently it's the team with the most kills. The 20 kill condition will be removed.

Assists get more points

• Each % of damage done to a ship will give 1 score point. Eliminating a ship (destroying its core) will reward 20 points. This remains remains unchanged.
• The points for a eliminated ship's remaining HP will be distributed proportionally to all players, who did at least 1 % of damage. These players will also be awarded a kill assist. That means it will be more rewarding to assist in damaging a ship relative to elimination. In the current system all points for a ship's remaining HP are given the the killer.
• The 20 point bonus for a kill assist will be removed.

A game design sketch of the score display in the lobby.

What we hope to achieve?
Powerful ships will have motivation to focus on other powerful ships, because of the overall impact on victory. At the same time, weaker ships will get a much better reward for doing damage to strong opponents and shouldn’t get frustrated, because they won't be 'feeding' the opposing team anymore.

The increased reward for assisting in ship elimination should also help the score to better reflect the relative effort put into the destruction of a ship by assisting players.

That's it for this week. What do you think of the new score system? What other features could help us improve balance Let us know on the FORUM.

Martin 'Gajxo' Gajarsky
Game Designer