Alrighty, so, I didn't want to write up a post like this until I got a good deal of game time with Entrenchment and be able to do this kind of thing justice.
So, time to jump right in.
Starbases
Right away it becomes obvious that starbases were designed to be flexible and specialized - having many more possible upgrades than available upgrade slots. Some of these roles they can fill well, others not so much. Their super abilities seem appropriate to their races.
The problem with them becomes with a certain playstyle. Namely, those who want Starbases to be the unavoidable defense mechanism are disappointed because, well, they're mostly avoidable. The most common suggestion to "fix" this is to increase their range. But then, that doesn't actually fix anything. Sure, with a longer range it'll be harder to pass it by without taking any shots. But you could still pass it by. Sure you might lose a few frigates while your fleet passes in range, but if you don't want to fight it [unless you're trying to bomb a planet and the orbiting starbase has a working upgrade that protects the planet] you can still jump out and attack another planet.
So, a range increase won't really do much, the way I see it. That's not to say range cannot be tweaked, but this range breakdown would make sense to me (this assumes maxed out weapon upgrades, and I could see sticking some of these range enhancements in them):
- Each starbase seems to have a short, medium, and long range weapon with the starting weapon being medium.
- The "short" range weapon should be able to hit any ship short of each races' long range frigates/defense busters.
- The medium range weapon should be able to hit Vasari/Advent long range frigates. The TEC always had a range advantage with the Javelis, so it needs to keep it.
- The long range weapon should hit all ships except defense busters.
-The long range weapon should also do more damage, as it's the only weapon that can hit that far, and the closer you come to the starbase the more firepower from other weapons it can use. At the same time, shortest weapon should do the most damage as it's similarly limited and it's the "special" weapon (heavy beams, lightning, etc). So in terms of highest>lowest damage progression it should be Shortest > Longest > Medium.
Now, that still leaves us with the problem of being able to bypass the starbases. The best suggestion for this I have is to bring back the beta-style PJI as part of its "this planet can't be nuked while the starbase is alive" upgrade. Basically, it would prevent jumping into your space but have no penalties for jumping into neutral or hostile space. Basically, it would be purely defensive. A hostile fleet that jumps in would be able to leave unhindered, but not be allowed to pass by the starbase to raid the next planet. This would also be useful at the star, if you own a planet that connects to it, or neutrals in the similar setup.
This PJI-like effect plus the range moderate range changes, when supported by repair stations and conventional defenses, should definitely make a maxed out "defensive" starbase do a good job at the defending thing. I definitely think most/all range enhancements should be part of the weapons upgrade.
The last thing is more aesthetic and unlikely to change. But, it's a bit odd for a starbase with so many firing points to all focus on a single ship. The imagery of a giant starbase loaded with weapons in movies, games, etc is that it's able to attack many ships at once. Watching it pour everything into one ship is a bit anti-climatic, especially when that ship (usually) doesn't even pop in one volley. Pretty sturdy ship to survive *that* much punishment for a while.. In any case, if it's possible, I think it would be great to tweak the focus fire mechanics a bit. I realize this is probably too deep in the weapons code since even with 20 firing points it's still one weapon and one shot, though. But, better to bring it up than not.
Mines
So mines turned out to be sort of a can of worms. In principle, they can be a great addition but their implementation right now is a little wonky:
- First, the mine detection is a bit buggy. In a lot of cases, they flicker between vulnerable/invulnerable which adds quite a bit of time since there's a very small window in which a ship can fire at them so the stars need to align just right.
- Second, placing mines takes way, way less effort than it does to disarm them (especially the spam-a-riffic Vasari/Advent ones).
- Third, mines created by the Vasari ability can be spammed to an insane amount, and to a lesser extent the same can be done with the Advent mines. The AI especially on Autocast just floods mines *everywhere*. I recently played a game where it took me half an hour to clear 600+ Vasari mines from one grav well with the flickering glitch. TEC doesn't really have this problem because mines cost resources, so the AI at least doesn't spam them.
- Fourth, Advent/Vasari mines can be deployed right at the jump-in spot.
Assuming the flickering glitch is fixed, the only remaining major issues are the effort to disarm and the spammability.
Regarding disarming:
- Mines are easy to deploy, so they should not be cumbersome to sweep.
- Currently, you need to micromanage extensively to disarm mines. First you move a scout in, then some combat ships, wait for them to shoot, then repeat.
The best idea I have is that mine sweeping should be consolidated to be done by one ship (preferrably the scout). This would work great for Advent/Vasari mines since they are the SpaceMine entity so the scout's minesweep ability can easily apply a DoT to mines in range. But of course, the TEC mines are planetary structures so that doesn't work. Failing that, the scout should at least disable abilities on the mines so they don't explode and so that you don't need to hold your breath and hope your ships making wide forward arcs on turns don't hit them. Either way, something needs to be done to cut down on the micromanaging required to destroy the mines.
Some kind of limit on mines allowed per grav well would probably be good (50-60?), but making all of them cost resources seems a more streamlined limiter - especially when disarming becomes easier and (hopefully) there's some AE way to sweep them.
Now, deploying mines at jumpin is nasty. Nasty, nasty. There's absolutely nothing incoming ships can do. Sure there are jump-in angles that you can control, but it's fairly easy to cover the entire arc with mines and even if you scout that minefield you still don't have a choice but to jump in a lot of cases. You can send a few suicide ships to trigger some mines, but the enemy can just replenish them for free. If the scout detection disabled abilities on the mines, this wouldn't be a problem - but as long as Advent and Vasari mines can be deployed beyond the standard build zone, this will always be an issue.
Defense busters
The Ogrov and the Starfish (well, we have the space whale, might as well have another marine nickname!) are interesting ships, but their usefulness is greatly diminished by the fact that their damage is strictly done by abilities and right now you have to target each and every ship. You really need to be able to select all of them, click the ability, select the target and have all of the selected ships use the ability. Otherwise they will never be used if you need to babysit cooldowns for each and every ship.
I don't have much other issue with them. There are some suggestions about combining the defense buster and the siege frigate but I don't see a logical connection between the two. Sieges are paper thin with short range planet nukes, and defense busters are sturdier cruisers with extremely long range attack. The two are pretty much incompatible, the role types differ too much to merge the ships.
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Fin.
Bang on.
Mines need to be cleared much easier, and a 50-60 limit is entirely reasonable.
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Starbases; you're pretty bang on there too. I like the strategic choices available, the costs seem wonky. I agree that more range isn't going to "fix" the perceived issues with them, although I do believe that they need to have enough range to acceptably deal with a mass of LRM's...
Can't help but agree on all aspects that you comment on there to be honest. Especially with regards to the Starbases range, having it work as you described would be a great improvement to the TEC & Advent Starbases of which at the moment are great but ofcourse less effective due to their inability to move.
However I would add that the Vasari starbase should have less range than the TEC & Advent starbases due to it's ability to move for balance purposes scaling something like: TEC > Advent > Vasari in terms of range. Where TEC have the longest range due to that being their usual advantage (still not long enough to reach the new structure destroyer ships) and not much of an increase over the Advent starbase but still slightly longer. The Advent starbase again having a long range but slightly less than the TEC one, the Vasari having a slightly improved range over what it has now but no where near as long as the TEC & Advent starbases due to their ability to move.
Mines certainely need tweaking and your suggestions certainely make sense, no real comments on those apart from if they take your suggestions & implement them we will no longer have rediculous amounts of lag
Annatar11, you've generally hit the nail on the head, and I feel confident enough to say that most of it is currently the reigning consensus here in the beta forum. But there's still a lot to nit pick.
I would also like to continue to spread my unceasing hope that starbases get specific bonuses, akin to planet bonuses, for being placed in different types of (neutral?)grav wells.
A solution I saw in another thread that seemed very reasonable for the TEC mine object problem is instead of the constructors building the mines as planetary objects, they instead construct a base that, once it is finished, immediately deploys a mine in its current location and then dissappears. For all intents and purposes it would appear the same as it does now, but the end result would be a TEC mine with a Mine_Object class, and thus scouts could be given a minesweepeing ability that affects all mines.
Also a comment on the progression of starbase weapon ranges. I think the default level weapons with no upgrades should be the shortest range, only for defense against direct attacks. The second tier should be medium range, and the third tiers should be extreme range. Currently the first upgrade for the Advent starbase describes the lasers as medium ranged, and when you consider the Kol's beams, they are longer range than typical TEC lasers, so it makes since that the starbase weapons would continue that trend. Also, the autofire needs to be fixed. Currently the actual range of starbases is further than it appears, but they dont automatically engage enemies until they get in range of their shortest range weapons.
lol plus 1 more karma for annatar
I like what you said about the starbases. fleets should have a very, VERY hard time destroying them, and and trying to bypass them should be more than just a pain in the arse. also, if the dev team doesn't increase the range to this extent you suggested, maybe we could have more than 1 per grav well (hint hint)?
dang cant give karma to OP... have to get to the bottom of this
Bang on strait.
But i would also add these points:
1) All starbase builders should be produced at the capital ship yards, So vasary needs a unique starbase builder as well.
2) Like you said mine should not be free, also all races should get a dedicated mine layer unlest your drasticaly start balancing them mines by were they can be placed.
3) Even if they do fix defence busters their useless rigth now since the starbase arent that strong, a small fleet has not trouble handling the base.
But other then that I support you 100%
The Orgov:The reason it's not easy to manage the orgovs. If they do what you say do. With there insane damage they will become op. The Orgov I think is destined to the place where the seige frig hides. Rear area clean up. Of little use. Starbases as you stated are avoidable. So why would you even make it except in specialized situtations to break a choke point. Just stand off with a carrier flt. and poof no micro, no useless redundent ship, and one extremly dead starbase.
The Starbase: Right on.
Is that not the whole point behind them? A fully upgraded starbase surrounded by full 35 point defenses is not a trivial thing to break anymore, especially with some of the starbases having some special attacks and the defense improvements. Hell, the Advent beam placements get +50% damage and can get 1.5k+ shields and you can have 20-25 of them (assuming 2 hangars and some repair bays). It would take a long time to break through that with just bombers.
I've never through of the Ogrov/Starfish as ships you always build. In that they're no different than any other ship really. You don't "need" to build heavy cruisers, there's light frigates and LRFs that also do damage. If you have enough superiority, the lack of heavy cruisers won't be noticeable. But nobody is complaining that heavy cruisers are useless. It's the same with these two ships. Sure, if you have superiority and a mostly unprotected starbase you don't need to bother with them. But what if you don't? What if you need to break a turtle before the enemy fleet gets there and it plus the turtle squishes you?
Well said, Annatar11.
I think I agree with you on nearly every point you make, but let me add my own two bits about the starbases and mines, just so I can say "Hey, I posted in that thread!".
I love how the TEC mines are done, save for two points: One, they're way too spread out.It's a minefield, not a golfcourse. If some hostiles run through it, I want them hitting the spiky little buggers left and right. Same goes for my forces, though, too; I wanna see some carnage if I'm plowing through a minefield. The second point I'm going to make is this: it's all good and well that I can spam mines to an absurd degree, but it's rather cheap and, in all honesty, boring. So, limits are good. But not just in the number you can place, but *where* you can place them. Rather than giving the whole gravity well over to mines, shouldn't there be a band between the buildable area of the gravity well and where ships jump in? After all, that's the best place for mines, so why not just simplify it a bit?
And then on to the starbases. I like what's been said already, about how a Starbase should be a chokepoint/defensive powerhouse. It seems that the original intent of the Starbase was to give not only some serious firepower to back up your normal defenses (hangers, turrets), but to also secure your planet from invasion for just that little while longer so your fleet can get there just in time. I guess you could call it a "bunker in space".
That being the (perceived) case, how about some standard abilities for all Starbases to make that ideal a reality? A kind of "Fleet Recall" would be nice, allowing the Starbase to create a Phase Lane between it and a nearby (within star system) fleet. Or, alternatively, a Garrison (taking from Star Wars: Empire At War) of cruisers and frigates, automatically deployed once hostile forces jump into the gravity well. Before you scream "IMBA!", I know it sounds imbalanced, but I only imagine a small force, meant to delay, not to defeat.
Anyway, that's my view on it. Take it for what you will.
+1
Wait, what?
Doesn't the Assailant have more range than the Javelis?
It shouldn't, not without its +25% range research/toggle. Assailant has 7820 default, Javelis has 9800 - I only have 1.05 files here at work but looking at the 1.1 change log there were no range changes.
For some reason I was under the impression it was the other way around.
I don't play TEC much anymore, though, so I don't see many Javelis-on-Assailant matchups.
Is this wrong?
I sense Karma in your future Anny.
Anny has hit the nail on the head. The one suggestion that should be added is research options. The Starbases currently have their own research box, so why not add something similar to mines.
For instance, add a larger sensor net, more explosive damage, or harder detection of phasic cloaks. You could also add some sort of mine control center as research option to allow you to add more fields starting with 30 with a max of 50-60. This prevents the massive build up in the begining of the game. The general consensus seems to be to add some sort of mine sweeping abiltity to the scouts. Good Idea
One thing to keep players from bypassing the starbases would be to just add a "magnent ability" to them. When a ship jumps into a planet they are pulled a little closer to the starbase, this way you can't avoid it as easily.
Yeah, the Assailant and the Javelis are flipped on that chart
I thought of a kind of forced attack mechanic, but I don't think taking the decision to engage out of the player's hands is necessarily the best one. Might be fun for the starbase owner to watch ships helplessly pulled to it, but probably a bit frustrating for the other guy if there's nothing he can do about it.
I see.
Thank you.
Saves me setting up a game to compare them.
Well like I said, I do only have the 1.05 files at work.. so if you have 1.1 or better yet Entrenchment just open up FrigatePhaseLongRange and FrigateTechLongRange and look at the weapon ranges
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334028/page/2
HO SNAP!
If Anny is right, Troll_Siddy can eat my shorts!
Back on topic,
The one thing I don't like here is the Beta PJI idea. I think we'd be much better off allowing people to jump between planets. Having a PJI Mitigation might work, where only a certain amount of fleet supply can jump at a time or something.
I think it would be much better to create something to draw the fight to a starbase.
Make it have a very strong planetary shield.
Make Auxillary government actually work.
Instead of long range weapons that affect the whole gravity well, make the starbase have an ability that does that. Slowed movement, -25% Chance to hit, 700% jump calculation time... etc
Have a tractor beam on the weapon, so you can stop a precious ship. The enemy now has to choose between raiding backworlds or losing that ship.
I really think making starbases as a inpenetrable wall will slow the game down and limit strategy to stalemates and over turtleing.
Yeah, checked, and you're right-for some reason my convertdata isn't working, even though it's the one in the Sins folder (probably because of Entrenchment), but I have the 1.1 files in the Forge tools 1.1 pack, so that's close enough I suppose.
Which means a different post on the forums I made is wrong. I'm surprised no one corrected me on it.
@Tkins
Yup, that's the one.
Yes. Can't really deny that. But my suggestions weren't only what I wanted, I was trying to be objective on the whole. A lot of people do not want ships to bypass starbases, at all.
The PJI suggestion does assume that Auxillary Government (and its racial cousins) work properly and that a colony protected by a starbase with this upgrade cannot be destroyed while the starbase is up. That's very good. But there's still a lot of complaints that "well, the ships can just forget it and bypass the starbase and raid the next planet" - which currently is true. We already have a normal PJI, but ideally you put your defenses to face the enemy jumping in, but a PJI can't reach the other side of the grav well from there - so you either put your PJI and defenses to protect it on the other side of the planet which screams wrong on many levels.. or you come up with something else. That, and the PJI also affects retreat jump time.
Right now, if you get into trouble at least you can try to blow up the PJI and it's a much more reasonable goal than trying to quickly blow up a maxed out Starbase to retreat On the flip side, if the "can't jump into friendly systems"-like PJI effect is put on a starbase, and the defense buster ships are tweaked to not be so cumbersome to use, destroying that starbase becomes more manageable as well.
The way starbases are now, cheap at the start, and upgradable to strengethen, I really have no qualms with people bypassing a starbase to jump into the next planet. It's not very hard to set up a starbase on every world on a small map and every other world on a medium map, so if they keep jumping around, they are only running into other starbases. If starbases protect planets and attract attacks, then who cares if they are jumping all over the place.
Especially if a starbases limits planet destruction and has the range to take out a few ships passing through, then they are at a loss if they keep jumping all around your systems.
For a medium map, this allows some room for people to still raid inner planets, but if you place the starbases strategically it's only your minor planets. The strongest planets will have a starbase there defending it. You'll still need a defense force to attack the raiders, but they won't be able to bypass everything and take out a homeworld.
I like that!
Edit*
P.S. I'm only going after this point because all the others I pretty much agreed with. You didn't suggest moving or jumping starbases!! It's a STATIONARY FREAKIN' BASE!
personally i think mine fields (atleast for the tec) have to be larger. mine are usually 100-120 mines since they are easy to avoid since they dont follow u and seem to have a short range of affect.
i dont like the idea of starbase firepower being limited like that since it is a frontline defence platform, you should be able to defend the front lines with them but as of now there not very good at that b/c u can either go around them or kill them with a small fleet of caps and cruisersor a lot of bombers. star bases dont let you build more than one per planet if the number were increased to 2 per planet it would be harder to go around them or atleast more defencive stand point to defend that choke point or key phase lane you want to guard opposed to one and the enemy slipping through.
just my 2 cents though.
OK yeah I like your idea better
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