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.
Naw, I never suggested it and never would because it's like a bandaid solution - it covers it up but doesn't solve it. There are many cases where you'd really rather use the ability of all selected ships at the same time (like Assailant stance changes, for example) instead of one ship at a time, and Blair himself mentioned they were going to tweak it so we could do that. I'm guessing it's just not in our build and is WIP - or at least, I hope so.
This sounds good. The PJI should probably be more expensive though.
It's my first real post!
Okay, on the PJI issue: I always thought the PJI structure was USELESS in vanilla Sins. When I read the features list for Entrenchement I was looking forward to see how it would have changed, and so far it's not much different (if at all).
I think it needs to be a separate unit, and not merged with SBs because people are right; it would be overkill for an SB and smaller raiding/scouting forces would be useless. Instead, keep it as its own structure, but extend the AOE to the whole gravity well. Make it ACTUALLY 'inhibit' phase jumps though: ie NO ships jump... the invaders, or your own ships (including trade/refinery vessels). But make this an ability that needs to be turned on or off.
To that end, your PJI has two modes: on, and no ships jump, or off and all ships jump. When it's off, give it a heavy shield, but when it's on, all power is required to maintatin the inhibition field, so it has NO shields, and is thus vulnerable to attacks.
This will allow a myriad of strategies because you may WANT a raiding party to slip past the one planet because your fleet is waiting for it in the next gravity well, etc. This also gives the raiding party something to go after: a very vulnerable unshielded PJI. It could also require a ton of room to build, making it slightly more difficult to defend it (ie. the inhibition field affects other structures within a certain range and thus no structures can be too close to it) or something like that.
I dunno, just a thought.
No, that idea doesn't work well at all, mostly because it would require way too much annoying micro/clicking from the player. Let's face it- the fundamental POINT of Sins of A Solar Empire is large scale battles with a reduction in micromanagement. That's why we have fleets, auto placement, and auto-ability use.
Everyone's screaming about mines because they run fundamentally counter to the entire Sin's philosphy, in that you shouldn't pay heavily in blood for not micromanaging. In this case, you're bound to lose a fleet at little to no cost for not micromanaging your fleet to avoid/kill mines.
Mine clearance, detection and avoidance needs to be automated, so that a player can proceed through gravity wells by simply making a move order, and having that fleet proceed cautiously, blasting through the mines on it's own. This in itself, is the whole POINT of the mine field, to slow and deter. It's not supposed to be some super-gimmick trap that kills and entire fleet without warning. The slowed movement, and target diversion of the mines is by itself a real deterrent- imagine battling an enemy while your fleet is restricted in manuvering and diverting a good proportion of fire power, just to manuver? Mines are supposed to be navigational hazards; right now they are the most effective defensive weapon, period.
I seem to have gone off on a tangent. Regardless, having PJIs restrict movement entirely is a terrible idea, and a 'switch' makes it even worse.
Just take the PJI and make it cover the entire gravwell, and increase the range of star bases to that as well. That way if an enemy chooses to jump through the well and skirt your world, he'll pay a heavy penalty as a starbase and your hanger blast him to pieces as he encounters the phase delay. This way you open up the possibility of attack, but make bypassing fortress worlds a chore, which it should be.
I'm going to make this my last post on the PJI issue, because I want to explain my train of thought:
* A node-blockade PJI is a powerful defensive tool/option.
* Its goal should be to keep a raiding fleet from roaming freely around your inner planets, which traditionally have much lighter defenses than your border planets.
* To actually be the useful tool, it needs to not be paper thin so it can't get destroyed without at least some effort.
A separate PJI structure fails the last point. With the carrier changes, and general lack of quick anti-strikecraft capability of stationary defenses, it is fairly easy and fairly safe to destroy the PJI with bombers. You'd need more squads if there's a repair bay around (which there will be), but even 10 bomber squads (5 carriers, 3-4 if Advent) should be sufficient to take it out with a repair bay fixing it, in most cases.
As such, the node-blockade PJI becomes utterly ineffective because it can't delay hostile fleet movement long enough for your own defensive fleet to have a chance of getting there. It may be powerful in principle, but if it's too easy to destroy it will be useless.
Enter the Starbase. The goal here is to put the node-blockade PJI on something that can take more than a few bomber squads and survive, but at the same time be weaker and easier to destroy than a Starbase with another "super" upgrade. Going by your idea, researching the PJI upgrade can decrease shields on the starbase due to the power requirements to maintain the field, and at the same time it will also lock out some cool super abilities that other starbases can get (Vasari get debris sucking/damage shield, Advent get the meteorites as examples).
This way, you end up with a powerful effect that's useful at the same time because it can't be nullified with as little effort as a separate PJI structure can be. The Starbase with the node-block PJI is weaker than its fully-military counterparts, but you get good use out of it. If the node-block PJI is its own structure, it not only can be spammed several per planet and on each planet (which is cheesy regarardless of how effective it would be) but a single structure could also be destroyed too quickly for it to have much effect.
Just make it so ships in the gravity well with an enemy starbase are slowed down (except the moveable starbase lacks this ability). This allows players to bypass starbases, but also makes it so a player has time to recall his fleet to defend his planets. Phase jumping is complicated because where do you retreat and how do you decide if it is a bypass or a retreat. Make it so every upgrade to the starbase slows down the fleet by a like multiplier. L2 starbase slows down the fleet by half and an L8 starbase makes it 1/8 the speed of opposing ships.
with all this PJI interdiction, lets remember that the average SB also needs to be harder to bypass than in the current build. PJI is, depending on how extreme it is implemented, a pretty high end solution, thus a change for the SBs without also needs to be in, because, well, as it is, the added benefit of them compared with existing defenses is not so huge and without changes they are next to useless in neutral wells.
In neutral wall their usefullness is to try and protect the neutrals you've cantured and to allow your trade route to pass, sinc ein entrenchment now trade routes will no longer pass throught neutrals. Unless you ahve a base there with a trade upgrade.
Alright, well, chiming in on the SB/PJI issue...
I don't like the idea of the SB upgrade completely outclassing the PJI ability. The damn things have really limited use as it is. *That said*, I don't think upgrading PJIs to be uber-blockers is a good idea either (for the same reasons it wasn't before).
Personally, I think the answer is that the SB should grant PJIs in the well the "uber-block" ability. Whether this is granted via SB upgrade as mentioned above or just an effect of the two being in the same well... I'll leave to those with a better feel for balance than I. IMHO, this offers a few nice things:
Starbases are not, by default, blockers. I consider this a positive, because, while I agree that military-oriented bases should be blockades, civilian/trade SBs shouldn't necessarily be.
Military starbases can't be completely ignored. With proper placement, the PJI is protected by the SB, and enemy forces need to deal with that. A buff to the PJI's HP might be in order, in any case, however. Strikecraft are an issue, but with anti-strikecraft defense buffs, I think that's dealable. Maybe allowing the SB upgrades to buff its defenses might not be a bad plan.
Finally, PJIs may actually get built!
Anywho, just some thoughts.
off topic but shadowhal i get the name and its hilarious
Indeed. Personally, I am fairly content with them never having any PJI-like effect or a spin-off. But, a lot of people do want to "soft" force engagement with a starbase (by that I mean the player will need to attack the starbase eventually, but is not forced by any taunt-like or tractor ability). Now, when the auxillary government upgrade is fixed players will need to destroy the starbase with the upgrade before they can destroy the colony, but then people's argument becomes "well, what's stopping them from just passing by and going to kill whatever other planet doesn't have one".
Hence, I'm trying to find an amicable compromise between everything. On principle, the starbase upgrades are pretty modular and seem perfectly fitted for something like this. A player could have a weaker PJI-base, a powerful military/planet protection base, a trade/construction base, etc - but never all at the same time.
So while starbases should not by default have any PJI-like effect built in, I could see it as a high end upgrade as a trade off for other high end upgrades that would be equally appealing under different circumstances.
my nickname? tbh I didn't have any sense in mind when I thought of it, but if you found one, I'm curious.
and yes @annatar: SB should not be everything. either economic or military, either a total stronghold or something slightly weaker with more blocking potential or whatever you call it. that's why I love the upgrade system so much, where you do have a number of hard choices as to what you install.
As I was playing last night I hit on every point almost that the OP brought up. I agree 100% The only other thing I would add that is a little cosmetic for me is that i think the starbases should be probobly twice thier size, they seem very undersized at the moment. Also I think thier weapons range should span the entire grav well and completley shut down a outbound hostile phase jump to force the confrontation.
I'll posta picture with detailed instructions on how the starbase PJI should work as stated by annatar sicne it seems most people don't understand it. Hope this helps to clear things up.
So Blue owner of planet E can jump to A.
He can retreat back to E if he wants.
But he can no go from A to B and C.
HE can jump to D and then to B.
From B he can also jump back to A, but cannot jump back to B after.
So in the end C is the only planet that Blue cannot jump to without killing reds Starbase at A
Oh and scouts with jump interference immune research should ignore this and be able to jump everywere anytime.
And the current standard PJI that no one builds is actuly very valuable. It's just that people havent figured out how to use it. It's mean to be a tool to help trap the enemi in a certain grav well to force him to fight your fleet even if hes going to lose. Since if he tried to runt he 700% charge up time will leave him extremly vulnerable. So he has to kill it before he can retreat. And killing it as stated by anatar is not to hard. But does give your time to inflic more damage on to him. In the past 2 days i used them twice to obliterate half of my enemies fleets sicne they didnt scout and we over confident. They also forgot to check for PJI until it was to late. When your ship starts tryign to jump out their is nothing you can do but wait. It's also a great tool for killign enemi caps, expecialy when you have an abilaty that will interup phase jumps. Sur kill garantied.
Its like a really funny movie called shallow hal i thought thats why you chose it
On Mines:
At the very least there needs to be a limit on mines. Right now any long term player vs AI game gets aborted as soon as you encounter the 1st planet with so many mines that you cannot even see anything else in the system. Frankly I would welcome a complete removal of the whole mine field idea. They add no 'fun factor' and just add tedium.
Starbases:
Solid concept but need real range on the weapons to make them be an actual factor. Range is more important than firepower for defense.
Defense structure upgrades
All defense structure range is lacking. Better to have the gun platforms have 3x-4x thier current range but take more slots and/or cost more. The current short range really defeats the point of all the upgrades they can research. Why spend all that time and funds for something that will never fire a shot. A gun platform placed right next to a planet should be able to hit any bombarding ship within bombardment range of a planet.
I agree with most of Annatar's suggestions, but there are a couple things I want to add.
The Impluse page for Entrenchment used to say (it still might, I haven't checked recently) that one of the new features it would add would be a sub-space inhibiter, basicly a PJI but it slows movement of ships in regular space. I don't know if that idea was scrapped, or its a work in progress, but I think that it would be a good addition to starbases to make people engage them. Have it be an upgrade to the SB, like Annatar's PJI. If it slows down ships enough and the SB's range in increased enough, ships trying to go around will be torn apart by the SB's long range weapons. They can either attack the SB to make the effect go away, or they can try to go around and watch their fleet get torn apart. Having it be its own building wouldn't really work, because like the PJI it can be easily killed by bombers before it becomes a threat.
In addition to range increases, I also think that starbases should get damage and health increases. Even a fully upgrade SB, both weapons and defence, can maybe take down one ship from a large fleet before it is destroyed. No matter the size, it doesn't seem right for a fleet to be able to take down a fully upgraded SB with minimal loses.
Whatever limit is evetually given to mines, I think that the TEC should have a slightly higher limit, because they can't use theirs for offence like the other race's. They should get something to compensate for that. Scouts should also get a minesweeping ablity to make things easier.
Finally, something needs to be done to make putting a starbase around a star actually viable (and other uncolonizable things, but to a lesser extent). I remember that in an interveiw one of the Fraisers (Blair?) said that "star camping" (or something like that) would be a fun new tactic in Entrenchment. Right now the only use is to extend trade routes. They can't even defend one phase lane in. I'm not really sure what could be done to fix this, though. I hesitate to suggest moving starbases, as there is obviously a lot of opposition to that, but I can't think of a better solution.
Just my 2 cents
i have had attacking fleets jump out so wide as to go clear around the mine feild and i am making the feild wide in the first place to make it so this can't be done and the ai fleets still jump out Way out side of the field and it covers half the grav well as is . Please fix this because what good is a mine feild if you can just jump Really wide and go around it
Ogrov and Starfish might be more useful if they had shields. At least enough to hit a mine or two.
Larger is an under statement
Well I suggest 3 upgrades for the PJI: Flak, HP/Shields, and the ability to block ships from going thru. Also if we are really worried about a large fighter force they could give it the halycon fighter push ability with very limited use. Just enuf antimatter for 1-3 shots. This would help it survive.
If they put the PJI on the sb they need to delete the actual PJI for something useful. As it stands right now I have NEVER seen one built in mp. Hey Annatar excuse my invasion of your post Im just getting ideas out there
what i want is for them to fix what ever it is that If you are using alloy the STAR BASE up grades DON"T build
There actually is a way to sweep mines without obnoxious amounts of micro... I stumbled on it by accident. What you do is create a separate fleet made up of nothing but scouts and flak frigates. They will move as one blob, so you don't have to worry about moving scouts and warships separately, and you can just move them near a minefield and they will auto-kill every mine in range (Which is fairly long for flaks).
You still have to move them around manually to plant them near minefields, but at least it's not the nightmare that trying to manage your scouts in a regular fleet is.
Yes, I've been un-fleeting my flaks so they don't try to get back into formation, and I never have scouts in the actual fleet. It's still a lot of work, though
It would be a lot better if the mines themselves didn't twitch between vulnerable/invulnerable, the majority of ships' fire never damages them because of this.
Awesome thread guys. We're all just getting back to work and I'm combing through all the feedback. This thread is probably the best yet (of what I've read) and we agree with the OP on most of the issues and some of the solutions. I'd go into more depth but my time is probably better spent implementing and testing the changes
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