Astax, you got me thinking.

What did the Devs do when Returning Armada was abused and it needed to be balanced? They nixed the free ships that cost only antimatter and made the ability cost cash.

What did the Devs do when people would spam mines (Cykur, here's looking at you) in a single gravwell because mines only cost antimatter for Vasari and Advent? (This is also the issue combined with the fighter bug that made me leave the game). They made mines cost cash.

Making strikecraft cost cash is almost a necessity. This takes the guess work out of balancing them. If you think about it, when have you ever seen a unit that costs nothing to make? I can think of three games I've played where a carrier would release it's own smaller attacking units. Starcraft, Empire Earth, and Rise of Nations. In all three, strikecraft were bought, not given freely.

The best way to probably do this would be to take the cost of the current carriers and cut it in half. The initial costs of just the carrier would be half the cost of a current carrier. After that, you divy up the costs based on # of squads. Advent squads would cost 1/6 of the current carrier cost. TEC/Vasari would cost 1/4 of the current carrier cost.

OR you could make carriers cost a lesser amount. Make the strikecraft almost the entire cost of the carrier.

Balancing fighters would be easy then. Take 1 flak against one squad, Adjust the health of the fighters until it takes X number of mins to kill it (whatever time would be prudent).

There's one problem though. I have a hunch that currently the program for strikecraft production is the same for carriers, hangar bays, AND capital ships. Really, the only grievance I think we all have is with the actual carriers, not the way strikcraft are made on cap ships and hangar bays. If anything, how they're currently made on caps and hangar bays is appropriate.  

It'd be a nice balance. The fact that carriers can jump in...have all their squads die, and then jump out only to come back and repeat the process (at no cost to the user) is a load of bull. I've never played another game that had this feature.

DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:VeryLight 1.5
  DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYLIGHT:Light 0.75

Make flak burst and push antivery light damage.It would offset the fighters higher hp.Even if you gave fighters 100% hp increase that brings them to bout the same hp as bombers(advent).A level 3 kol does 60 damage(i think) and that would put fighter hp at 80(100%).Really if you 1 shotted all sc with one burst and the build rates are much slower but the sc are tougher then they might be op anyway.The flak burst was balanced off the fact the enemy could rebuild his squads much faster then the current version so it still might balance out just fine.Another thing you can do is lower am cost of burst so it takes more shots to kill the sc and the other player has more time to respond to the threat.You would still have enough am and shots to get the job done tho.You really cant have 1 kol 1 shotting all sc when build rates are slow and your sc are so important to the battle.Just knocking down their hp by half would be devastating in that kind of battle.If both players have similiar amounts of fighters and one side loses half its hp then its obvious who will win at that point unless the other goes on defenseSc battles will be very similiar to fleet battles at this point.Once one starts killing the other and winning its really hard to rebuild your fleet faster than they are dieing.Past this small balancing act with the caps I cant see any other probs with it.

Raging: I think that leaving strikecraft free for caps would be OK.  For Hangers though you think adding cost woudl be abd, but I think it might actually be good. Because if you added cost, you could decrease the cost of the hanger, which would lead to people putting these up, and just not buying the craft till they are needed.  Of course provided that once you buy a squad and it is produced it is launched at 100% health as is with any other frigate that cost money.  And you can give hangers a discount in cost of the strikecraft compared to Light Carriers.

I can see people putting down 3 hangers early on their homewolrd in case someone rushes them with LRFs, but not buying the fighters right away.  Cost would be a lot less significant, and probably worth it.  Much like people tend to build few odd turrets now, which have actually been worth the cost since they got capital damage type on them.

You sure turrets get capital damage? We're talking about turret turrets right? Beams on Advent. Missiles on Vasari. Gauss Cannons on TEC? I could have sworn they were antimedium. Guess they changed at some point.

This could fix things.

But then again, on the examples you gave- Returning Armada and Mines, what happened to them? No one uses them anymore. Could this happen to carriers if SC cost money? It's possible. The only way to keep them useful is to make SC dirt cheap (like interceptors in Starcraft). But then again, in starcraft there were no Hard counters for interceptors, no abilities that could kill them all with 1 shot, no units that excelled in killing them and nothing else, I mean it was easier to just kill the carriers that hosted them than to kill the interceptors so its hard to say how the gameplay in Sins would react. Making SC cost money could possibly fix the whole issue, but IC doesn't exactly have a great track record with making things cost resources and keeping them useful, so I'm a little hesitant to request it.

I forgot about that before replying, sorry. But still, changing SC costs from antimatter to actual resources presents another balance. LFs would be weakened even more, since their anti-antimatter abilities are just about useless against Carriers.

Though with cheaper Carriers too, the Capital Carriers might not be used, unless standard Carriers have fewer squadrons than currently...

Looking again at general SC costs, however, I think the easiest way to balance them is by increasing their antimatter cost, but removing the Carrier build penalty unless it's being attacked (And Capital ships would be exempt from these problems). I think this would be better, as while Carriers can still bring replace their squadrons in battle (So they aren't floating paperweights after three minutes), the antimatter cost would make far less replacement fighters, and Lfs would get a bit of a boost.

*A level 3 kol does 60 damage(i think) and that would put fighter hp at 20 with 100% hp increase over stock(40).

The point that seems to have been missed here, and that I must stress is that strikecraft are the only unit in this game that cost nothing to replenish once lost. No other unit can recreate itself indefinitely at no cost to the user.This is why carriers have been so hard to fix. They couldn't be balanced in the first place. Have you ever played a game where strikecraft were free? NO. IT DOESN'T WORK and is unsensible in terms of balance.

Before in 1.1 strikecraft were too poweful. Now they're god awful. There's so much guess work with how you balance a unit like this. There are cases where it will replenish its ranks mid battle because it has huge antimatter stores. There's also when it's been jumping so it is in an enemy gravwell and has no antimatter. Not to mention build penalties.

Is there honestly someone out there who's going to tell me it's fair that I can jump 10 carriers into your gravwell, take out say 10-20 long range frigates of urs, then jump out and regenerate my losses for free while you must pay to replenish your losses?

The problem and flipside to this arguement is that there is flak burst, halcyon bitch slap of doom, and magnestize. Capital ship abilities what will absolutely decimate strikecraft. With that said, I will yield to the fact that even though I've never seen strikecraft costing nothing to replenish work, that perhaps there is still a way to salvage the current system.

Strikecraft, long range frigates, and light frigates are all linked in this nexus of imbalance. Making fighters cost cash would take effort to program, but would be so much easier to balance than they are now. You want the guessing game and annoying imbalance to leave this game? I'm telling you taking the guess work and X factor of antimatter out of the equation makes balancing the unit way easier. 

@SS: The Vasari ability makes cost go up X2 and refresh rate go up X2, so that's not weakend. If anything, it's stronger. The Cobalt Sabatoge Reactor ability does 100 damage and disables abilities, so strikecraft wouldn't be built...period. Still strong. The only race squirreled here is Advent. Disipcles literally steal the antimatter, so yes, disciples would be somewhat less effective against carriers. 

The weakness of light frigs doesn't come from the fact that the ship is too weak. It comes from the fact that LRFS are ungodly strong against them and that against their ideal target (heavy armor), they only get a +50% bonus when it should be +75% or +100%. Weakening them against carriers is the least of our worries in balancing them.

Make Strikecraft cost $$$ (i'm debating this one, it could work, but it'd definitely need to be done right in practice), give light frigs a bit of a buff at their purpose, lower LRF health, balance the illum, balance the enforcer, up repulses antimatter cost, balance flak accordingly with the new adjustments to fighters, up the carrier's speed back up to 500 (why in the hell was it lowered to 450, lrfs can catch them now), keep the cost of strikecraft relativley low (make stricraft only 1/2-1/4 the cost of the current carrier)and you know what.....this game just might be balanced.

C'mon devs. You wanna sell Diplomacy you'd better balance Entrenchment first.

Oh, and to make this point separately from my previous reply: If done right $$$ shouldn't nerf carriers to obsolescence. I'd want the cost of the actual strikecraft to be cheap. That's the only way it'd work. Thanks to complete wipeout ablities on capital ships, making strikecraft expensive is not an option.

Deceiver is right, as is only steal antimatter does anythign to carriers.  I brought this point up before saying it stank.  This change would do nothing but buff LFs, since now the otehr abilities that a carrier would get to use AM would trigger reaction from Sabotage and Interference, at least that's how I envision it.

And yes point about mines and RA are noted. However RA is still sueful late game ability. It is cheaper ships than you would make otherwise.  It is just no longer a rush-to-mid-game-I-win ability.  How many tiems have I used RA since change? About as often as I have Pervasive Econ, anyone got a problem with that?

Mine price may be a bit steep now. But that is because of how mines function. Only bad players are ever killed by mines. If mines killed ships belonging to a good player also, then they be worth the price. Mine needs fix yes, no one will argue this. Probably cost reduction and so on.  But it does not mean we should drop everything go fix mines and not care aobut carriers.

Any change we would do like adding cost to the squads would also come with undoing a lot of other nerfs that we have now, like undoing production penalty.  Making squadrons start at 100% craft maybe, not just 1 craft.  Redoing the HP on squads so they last longer. Plus additions so that carriers can continue using AM.  Overall it would probably fix some stuff.  Should be noted that an ability to repair by carrier is a must because squadrons do not have shield mitigation.  The ability would not be same for all races. I think something like direct heal for Vasari, heal over time for TEC, and Advent will actually not repair but rather put a shield over a damaged craft. The shield would last till depleated. I think that would be pretty cool.

Also at the same time we will redo LRFs, like making Illums not beat HC outright like they do now. Hell even making illums not beat EVERYTHING outright like they do now :/

Aye, I'm aware they are, but you can't micro side beams to attack the right target. I didn't mention in this particular battle I was also Advent, and abusing guardians and illums, difference is I had to take 2 jumps to get to the battle and my Illums didnt have the AM to illusion when I got there, so pretty much he and I spent several minutes repulsing eachother around, but in the end he won because I wasnt able to kill many of his damage dealers, while every shot of his was slamming into real ships, only half of mine were, all this right after he slaughtered 60+ kodiaks, 2 kols, 2 dunovs an akkan a Marza and around 30 hoshis (well some of the hoshis survived), taking extremely minimal losses from that due to repulse and illusions. I'm not saying that Blackhawk didnt outmicro us, and that theres a bunch of things that could have been done differently, but when a guy can drop two fleets larger than his own, commanded by two pretty experienced players and all without losing even half of his fleet, there has to be something wrong.

We need a patch soon, I'm a patient as hell kind of person, but I'm losing it with this game.

i remeber that game deceiver. Sunny is such a bully.

I would have won because my fleet was better but he lied about his SB and he had mass disorentation. but really my fleet was far larger for fleet points and deceivers was probably bigger than his as well. but he destroyed both of our fleets.

With illusions it displayed him as having 178 illums. now illusion needs to be looked at. the fake illums should NOT show up in the empire tree or the unit count from the overveiw of the battle. When a guy only has 80 illums and it looks like he has 180 there is something broken. repulse, illums, illusion, best caps, Advent have almost all of the late game advantages. and for only teir 5 illusion is too powerful. maybe it should be switched with the destras ability, it is far more powerful.

This time im not even flaming about repulse i beat repulse that battle with emp bomb from the dunov and lrms his garudians were not the threat.

My fleet was about 30 lrms, 35 hoshies, 25 ceiloes, 60+ kodies, an akkan 2 donovs a marza 2 kols and 5 or so carriers.

All he had was 2 caps 12 flack, 80 illums with illusion and 10 or so gardians.

i lost all of my kodies the only thing that survived was about 20 hoshinkoes.

and i also had all of the armour upgrades and 30% hull upgrades to my ships. as far as i know he only had the shield upgrades required to get gardians because he was strapped for cash.

_|~Uber