ILLUMS VS. KODIAKS
Well. I just did another test recently. Everyone knows Enforcers need a fix, but everyone is pretty much happy with Kodiaks and where they are. So I figrued, let's try Illums vs. Kodiak. Prove there is balance in the game.
I did two tests.
First Test
This was the simplest test. I sent 20 Illums up against 12 Kodiaks. No upgrades. This was more of a control to see how the two ships are balanced. I figured this is large enough a scale to get good results. The results were as expected.
4 Kodaks were alive when the last Illum died.
20 I vs. 12 K : 4 K survive
Second Test
The first test isn't fair though. The Kodiak player spent more total money, so the Illums need $$ spent on upgrades to balance them out.
I'm going to need to go back and readjust this test. I did the same as in the enforcer test. I gave the Illums +10% shields, +10% health, and +5% beams. This was a bit much. I'll need to double check, but I think I should have only given +10% shields and +5% health. I think I overcompensated for the Illums so now I need to redo this test.
With the same set up as the Enforcer test, however, where the Illums recieved aforementioned upgrades
20 Illums vs. 12 Kodiaks: 7 Illums survived (again, this test isn't valid, but at least an indicator)
ILLUMS VS. ENFORCERS
I recently did a test with SilverSurfer online to deteremine something. JJ has done tests that show that the Illum is easily the most powerful long range frigate. He's also exposed that the Enforcer is easily the worst Heavy Cruiser.
When I crunched the numbers, I looked at Illum vs. Enforcer and just wasn't sure which would win.
Now, that's without damage multipliers applied. HC's do 150% against lrfs. LRFS do 75% of their damage against HC's so that doesn't tell the whole story.
When I saw the above chart, I was curious. My expectation is that HC's will beat anything outside of HC's and bombers. I think that's perfectly reasonable. HC's come so late in the tech tree that you'd expect them to be the strongest, and it says in their info card in-game that they counter lrfs.
I wanted to see if Vasari really can use enforcers on the Illum spammer. I did 3 tests of 50 Illums vs. 25 enforcers. I'll explain each test.
There are some folks who are going to say hey Raging Amish, Illums and Enforcers don't cost the same so how you do your experiment by ship slots is wrong. Actually, you'll find this interesting. If you use 4.5 cred = 1 resource (which I feel is slightly more accurate than 5 cred per resource, the black market hovers between 400-500), you'll notice that Illums and enforcers in fact cost the same.
2 Illums: 760 cred + 120 metal + 110 crystal = 1795 cred
1 Enforcer: 625 Cred + 150 metal + 110 crystal = 1795 cred
So, in my opinion, the cost of the ships is equal when looking at equal ship slot analysis.
This was the simplest test. I sent 50 Illums up against 25 Enforcers. No upgrades. This was more of a control to see how the two ships are balanced. I figured this is large enough a scale to get good results. The results....were staggering.
22 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcers.
50 I vs. 25 E : 22 I survive
Second Test: Balanced w/ no Reintegration
The first test leaves out the fact that enforcers cost 2 extra mil labs and ALSO cost more to tech, so I did my best to give the Illums upgrades to balance this out.
I did a full analysis of upgrade costs. I couldn't get exact matches in cost, but I think I got close.
One thing that has hit me is that I could have adjusted the differences in cost by giving more Illums than giving more upgrades. That would make a difference, but arguing about spending $$$ on upgrades rather than ships is splitting hairs.
With all of that said, I did this test with no reintegration. In the no reintegration test, I had to compensate for the exta money Vasari spends on 2 labs (2760 creds), and then the extra spent on buying the level 5 tech compared to tier 3 tech (1525). To balance this out, I gave the Illums Both LvL 1 Shields and Health (+10% net combined shields/health), and then one tech in beams. This comes out to a cost of 4512.5 creds. This is 300 creds more than what I was aiming for, but as close as I could come. 300 creds won't tip the scale of a battle, so this is fair.
22 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcer.
*50 I vs. 25 E : 22 I survive
*I should mention that in this test I microed more effeciently and the Illums didn't get as close initially as they did in the first test. Surfer had to move his Illums closer mid battle, and I was microing better, so this test was slightly skewed in the beginning, which is why we have the same # of survivors as before.
Third Test: Balanced w/ Reintegration
So, reintegration. This should balance out the Enforcer right? It can stop mid battle and heal 720 health. WRONG. It heals at 18 hps. The Illums do way more damage than 18 dps just with their sidebeams. To compensate for the cost of reintegration, I show in the charts above that I had to include the extra cost of 4 health ups for the Vasari and 2 reintegration upgrades. To balance this out, I additionally gave the Ilulms both LVL 2 Shields, The second up in beams, and then 1 lvl 3 health upgrade.
During the battle, I built up a que of 20 illums or so and was microing to activate reintegration on the enforcers. The loss of the guns of the enforcers seemed to be the most staggering effect. Sure, the ship is healing, but it's guns turn off and it's not helping the battle.
21 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcer.
50 I vs. 25 E : 21 I survive
Conclusion:
This is just bad. I can't express how badly this needs to be balanced. This leaves Vasari players two options against Illums. You can either get fighters and watch them get mauled by flak, or get Starbases that can't jump from planet to planet.
This test to me exposes how bad enforcers really are and how strong Illums really are.
I can think of no reason for Illums to be this strong. At the very least, Illums need to be brought down on par with the other LRFs, and the Enforcer needs to be brought up to par with the other HC's.
This is the current chart for the statisticss of 60 ship slots:
My Proposed Fixes:
This is how I would balance the game if the current status quo of lrf's staying strong is to be kept. I gave the Illum the worst health of the group, and I did switch around the Assailant and LRM shields.
I gave LRMs the worst shields because TEC have the worst shields of all the races. Advent has the best. Vasari is the middle man. The list is inverted for health. Advent has worst health. TEC has the best. Vasari is middle man.
Now....I don't like that chart as it stands. Each HC has about 9750 combined health/shields. Each LRF has about 10500 combined health/shieilds. That's just wrong, even with the differences in armor.
I think the LRFS in general should be nerfed at least 10% in total health/shields. A 10% nerf to start in the next patch would at the least be a good start towards balancing lrfs. I DO BELIEVE that lrfs need a cut in combined health/shields. Currently, they are tough as nails (all three races, even when you're tec you either get LRMS or Kodiaks). This is what my chart would look like.
You don't have to agree with this. This is how the individual ship stats would change.
Original Stats:
620
Changed Stats w/o 10% nerf:
500
Changed Stats w/ 25% nerf:
450
540
I'm completely serious about that nerf. Long Range Frigates are supposed to be just that....long range. The kind of ship that fights great from afar, but if something gets close, they take 'em down easy.
As I mentioned before, this would require balancing flak, but it'd be a worthwhile fix to help the balance of this game.
Perhaps 10% is or isn't the right amount. But it's a start.
1 last Grievance:
The damage multipliers in this game need to be....rebalanced. When a ship goes up against what it counters it should be doing +75% damage, or maybe +100% damage. Not +25% or 50%. Now, for HC's, which get +25% to +75% against anything, that's not what I'm getting at. HC's are good against all. Every other frigate is great against something, but not good against most other ships.
I'll start with light frigs. Light Frigs need the buff to 175% at least against heavy armor. I'd prefer 200%.
I'm not so sure how to adjust flak. TBH adjusting flak depends entirely on whatever other adjustments the devs make, so rather than make a guess about flak, I'm just going to say they need fit in the flow of the game, however that may be.
LRFS should have high multipliers. It makes sense that this ship type has good multpliers. The point of the lrf is to be good at dealing out damage, but to be easy to destroy for enemies that get up close. IF THEIR HP/SHIELDS gets nerfed, I would fully support upping their multplier against medium armor to go up to 175% if it isn't already there, HOWEVER I understand that LRFS are so strong against light frigs that keeping them at 150% would make sense.
Bombers could use a boost. They do 100% against very heavy armor....which is what they're designed to counter. My feeling is this should be 125-200%. Not 100%. I just figure if the game is rebalanced, bombers need to stay strong enough to fight a kodiak rusher.
Parting Words:
I realize Stardock is the publisher and Ironclad is the developer, so pinning this problem on just one of the companies isn't fair, but how hard is it to get someone who's number savy to balance the game? The current balance of the game is at best abysmal. I know the races need to stay independent and unique, but god almighty that doesn't mean throw balance out the window.
I do not want to be an annoying jerk on the forums who seems to be screaming the loudest about the current state of the game. I like to think I've kept myself as logical and reasonable as possible.
To ICO and Stardock, this game is amazing. You've done a great job at fabricating what has to be a top 5 game for me to have ever had the pleasure to play. With that being said though, this game needs to be balanced, because after waiting over a year for this game to be fixed and balanced, I'm not sure how much longer I and the rest of the community are willing to wait. There are other games out there that don't give me this type of frustration, and I'm slowly turning to them, so fix it plz.
When forums go boom, leave and come back in a few hours. Seriously, double-posts all over the place
I don't think so; especially destras with full upgrades are quite amazing. That said, I do agree that LRMs might beat enforcers, but I'd fairly confidence about the other cases not seeing repeats of these amazing results.
I use em in comp stomps. Not worth your time until you've nearly maxed out the plasma damage upgrade line, but once you're there it's well worth phasing out your illums for destras. Mind you, this is from the perspective that defense is a non-issue and hence you don't need to worry about range and repulse.
Raging: there are 3 frigates that are damage dealers in the game: LRFs, HC, and Carriers. Flak was not meant as a damage dealer so it had its damage vs frigates nerfed. It can still be used sorta against LRFs, but to counter illums u usually need more flak than enemy has Illums, so its not real counter. LF will never be a damage dealer, we know why. But they do hold a decent role in coutnering other stuff. Personally I rather these were buffed vs carriers, then have carriers nerfed like they were.
In ideal setting you will have choice, kinda choose your poison, where you can pick what damage dealer frigate you want to fleet. This is where all frigates are relatively successful, nothing is OP. But you will always have one fo these 3 as backbone of your fleet. ALWAYS. That's how the game is designed pretty much. So you will always have people who rush for either of these 3 ships. It's kinda obvious.
Personally I don't mind so long as all strategies are viable, and some work better than others against some other strategies, but not against all other strategies. Stuff becomes OP when not only does it fair well against some strategies, but when it also fares decently agianst anything else u can throw at it. Like illums now. This we should avoid.
Now the dawn of the Carrier, which would be like 1.01? (1.02 was first carrier nerf i think, though even then this sitllw orked) Was not a perfect time, but it was more itneresting. The uniqueness of carrier kidna made it that you couldnt go 100% carrier. Most sucessful fleets would be 50% carrier 50% something else: This else would be LFs, LRFs, HC, or even Flak. This made for some vary good battles, and good strategy.
Now what I think we want to be at a place where there are as many strategies that work as possible so the game does not become 1 dimentional. 1.01 had many good strategies, but they all kinda evolved around the carrier so it pissed people off. We need to work something esle that works where carrier is not something you need to coutner with a carrier, but Flak does not automatically make carrier fail. This might need redoing how carriers work.
Simple blanket nerf on LRFs will not benefit the game. If there is to be a nerf it needs to be precise. So more testign is needed. You might find that when u put say Destra vs LRMs, you come out with exactly what you would expect. HC on top but not by Huge margin. This needs further investigation.
Double post
well amish and i tested illums vs kodies, 12 kodies vs 20 illums without any upgrades to the illums kodies won with 4 left.
Then the suprising part with upgrades to the illums just enough to balance out the fact that illums are teir 3 and kodies are teir 5. for the second test illums won with 7 left.
Now kodies are the strongest starting HC and with a couple upgrades to illums they lose to what they "Counter"
this is pretty pathetic
_|~Uber
I never said just a simple blanket nerf. I said if a blanket nerf was done, other things would have to be done to balance the game.
When I said 25%, I was just pulling what sounded like a reasonable number out of mid air. After doing the test with Uber, I saw that a simple 10% increase in total health and a 5% increase in damage was enough to completely tip the scales in a battle, so at a bare minimum I want all of the LRFS to be balanced (Yes, I said all). This doesn't mean the blanket nerf, however, that's one of many changes I'd make to the game.
What I do know is that after the test with the Kodies, a 10% nerf is all that would be needed. Now that I have a test to measure by, I see that 25% is a bit excessive.
I also disagree that there are just three damage dealers in the game.
The ships in this game are:
Scouts, Light Frigs, Long Range Frigs, Seige Frigs, Anti-Strikecraft Frigs, Colony Frigs, Carrier Cruisers, 2 Support Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers, Assault Cruisers, Fighters, Bombers, and Capital ships.
Capital ships and Support Cruisers fall into the same group in that they aren't the heart of the fleet, but rather great support, so they're not the damage dealers. Seige Frigs and Assault Cruisers are specialized units, so they can be crossed off the list. Carriers themselves are not combat units, so we can cross them off that list.
This leaves Scouts, Light Frigs, Long Range Frigs, Anti-Strikecraft Frigs, Fighters, and Bombers. You've said that scouts, light frigs, and anti-strikecraft frigs aren't damage dealers. Even with the current state of balance in the game, I have to disagree, or better put, add a clause to what you've said.
There are 4 offensive units (technically 4 since fighters and bombers are in carriers) that are damage dealers in the game
Flak are horrible at going on the offensive because of bad damage multpliers, but are great on the defensive. Plop a bunch of flak next to a starbase with 5 repair bays and a couple hangar bays and you're made in the sun. Never going to do anything offensively unless your opponent spammed fighters, but defensively made in the sun. Ever been on the recieving end of a 2v1?
Scouts are pretty specialized at the moment, but since a majority of the community goes LRF, scouts are legitimate defenders and attackers against the most commonly used strat in this game. Scouts can kill seige frigs, mines (though you'll never see 'em used by humans), long range frigs, colony frigs, and other scouts. That's not a horrible list of potential targets for the cheapest fleet in the game. Not to mention scouts are incredibably tough. They just don't do that much damage. Great defensive unit in a lot of different situations.
Light Frigs I agree, but I wish this wasn't true. I can understand that light frigs can't be all powerful, but to have absolutely no role as they do now is a testament to the current balance of the game.
I'm still conducting testing, and need to do a test with LRFS vs. HC (Most likely Kodiaks). What I have seen so far is that Illums crush Enforcers, and with equal spending, just might beat Kodiaks.
LRMS are surprisingally close to Illums in stats, so I'm guessing I'll get the same results there too.
I would like to see this game closer to v1.01 too because each unit had more of a place. Maybe carriers are so frustrating to some because they can create and recycle units at no cost that will counter the 2 best damage dealers in the game, HCs and LRFs. But the game was MUCH more interesting then. The problem now is flak obliterate fighters, flak aren't very good against bombers, bombers obliterate HCs. So what does that leave us with? LRFs. Back in 1.01 LF were a viable strategy because neither bombers no fighters were that good against them and then LF could quickly close on and destroy Light Carriers. Fighters need to be put back to a 1.01 level.
Carriers were annoying because you COULD NOT SUPRESS sc build rates before.Now you can and carriers can be beat for this reason but the sc die to fast...Solution is to give sc more hp to counter slow build rates.Sc live long enough to kill lrf or hc but flak will eventually kill them and suppress them thus defeating the carrier without killing it like is supposed to be.Without sc being able to be suppressed you could not build bombers because the fighter force rebuilt and killed them to fast.
This leaves many options. use fighters to kill lrf while they slowly whittle away and leave your carriers open for attack.You can target enemy fighters and defeat them but leaves you open to his lrf fire.Once you kill the enemy fighters you can then bring out bombers for attack.Flak are still useful because they are a constant damage to sc.Flak are now linked to the number is how fast it suppresses sc instead of just slaughtering them.The more you have the less time your enemy will have.It will be open to how you want to play it.I really feel this is the answer to the carrier/ lrf balance issues.
Basically I think flak should be effective against fighters as they are against bombers right now.You need alot of flak to kill bombers and it takes some time.Bombers are counterable but still do damage because of this.
Now the lrf vs hc is another issue that should be fixed.Maybe give lrf less multiplier vs hc.
Raging: Not arguing with you, but here is how I look at things (The game makes a lot of sense when I think of it this way): Damage dealer can do good damage agaisnt more than one thing. They need good damage vs structures and cap ships to be effective backbone of your fleet. Something that only really works against one type of craft is more of a counter than a damage dealer. Yes scouts can damage other light units, but those are never present en masse. With this definition you do only have 3 damage dealers.
While fighters and bombers do deal damage, I tend to lump them in with carrier because you can swap between the two. And if you were to classify them separately, Fighters would be more of a counter than a damage dealer. Their damage vs structures is pretty weak, and to kill a cap you need like 40 squads of fighters or a very dumb opponent.
top vasari: HC was never meant as a counter to LRFs in my mind. Though it does say they are Strong vs LRFs, they are just not outright counters. It also says they are strong vs Cap ships, and yet you will notice they are not as good at killing caps as LRFs are. It is generally accepted feeling though that they should fare pretty good vs LRFs. I think in equal combat HC should prevail with maybe 20-25% ships remaining.
Big problem with HC vs LRFs is that HC range is small, they need to clump up close and tight, so changing targets can really take away fromt heir fleet dps, especialyl if you queue target LRFs using the empire tree. This tends to target ships that are far apart in sequence.
Indeed 1.01 we were much closer to real balance. Like mind said the only real problem was you couldnt suppres the SC. But that could have easily been solved by lowering the recharge rate of AM on carriers. And by simply chnaging that you could have eventuly found the butter zone you wanted. Now we got this crap of shit worthless nerfs ont he carriers that completely broke the game up.
Also it's true that in 1.01 most of all strategies were centered around the carriers but thats because they could feild fighters or bombers, the only thing int he game they couldnt kill were LFs. And MY carrier count in 1.01 never exceded 20, it would be accompanie by 20 LFs (more in my enemies were carrier spamers up to 40) Support cruisers (final numbers 30 hoshikos 20 cielos, Flak 10-20, Scouts 10, HC 10-20 and if my enemy was smart enought to build LFs in a sufficiently decent amount I would build 10-30 LRFs depending on how much was needed. For me in 1.01 every unit had it'S role and job to do and a time to do it. And to me if every ship has a role and job to do then we are damn near balance. Now we are damned far from it once more.
Well if they intend to fix it. Why arn't they doing something. This is how I see it. They seem to be moving away from balance and more to self-destruction. 1.1 was almost there. Where are we now seems like were back in time to 1.03.
i know what you mean dark.
almost all of hte games i play online now have over 50% of the people being advent. Im even starting to play advent now because it is so easy to just roll TEC or Vasari players.
Me what I can't understand for the lave of god is why the havent yet said we fucked up and rooled it back and start work in a new avenue. This one is clearly leading us were we don't want to go.
Looks like you and I are on the same page after all Astax. Cool. I just hate lrfs as they stand now. They're early game HC's, and in the Illums case, all game HC. The LF could use a buff to fulfill a role, but the LRF needs a nerf to fulfill its role. It's supposed to do a lot of damage, but be easy to destroy compared to other units. The in game description even says this. But that's not the case. At all. LRFS shouldn't be giving HC's such a good run for their money.
Just a side note: I hope they don't plan on selling Diplomacy with this kind of imbalance. I know I won't be the only one to go find a different game if this kind of gameplay sticks around.
You and me both.
Well, quite frankly they made there money. They can chose not to give a dam. Like every other company doing everyother kind o business. Make yo money and run. O no he didn't!
EadTaes: I been thinking more and more that maybe Carriers should not swap from fighter to bomber so easily. And I think any future change should reflect this line of thinking.
Im thinking since Carriers take up so much fleet supply: they should maybe cost less by a lot. And isntead add cost to strike craft. Strike craft would no longer need AM to be produced (repaired) but you would get an ability you can research to repair strike craft in a squad with AM cast. This would target a damaged craft, not a destroyed one. Destroyed ones would have to be rebuilt at fraction cost of the whole squad. Solves people swapping from fighter to bomber. But also we would make fighters a bit more hardy vs flak, because they now cost money to make.
Also if simple repair does not use up all the AM a carrier has, I got another use for AM, make strikecraft require rearming. Rearming would be another ability of the carrier that would cost AM and it would work within a certain range (Not sure if it should be low range so they must return to carrier or long range so they dont have too... maybe short range for bomber, longer for fighters). This would make AM management for Carriers important, and make it possible to counter carriers by depleating their AM.
Also Bombers because they counter HC should require aditional research! Instead of the 2-3 labs they require now for carrier, they should need 4-5 labs. Bombers should be very resilient to flak. Maybe instead of damaging bombers the flak can get an ability to supress bomber squadron, which would cause it to not be able to fire its bombs for a few seconds. This way your flak can still reduce damage bombers deal, but would not destroy bombers, you would need fighters for this. And because bombers would now take 4-5 labs, your counter ability to bombers would also be higher up in tech tree than simple Flak.
Caps however would probably still get free sqaudrons. I haven't thought this out that much yet. Maybe they can get bombers without research because they are bigger ships, and you need some research to accomadate big old bobmer on a small light carrier... I think that's justifable. And since they take no AM to replace craft as is, they shoudlt ake no AM to repair and rearm craft from a Cap ship.
Anyway this is my current thinking on the carrier/strikecraft issue. I been putting bits and pieces together trying to come up with something that works for a while now. Some of these ideas are inspired by other posts on the forums.
Im not to crazy about your idea astax.Mostly I dont want heavy micro and complication of carriers.I like for battles to be easy.Wish they would fix the empire tree from jumping everytime you select something and for a person to be able to use an ability of all selected ships.Like the kodiacs intercept ability.The fact you have to hit everyship makes me never research it.The ilums illusion ability too.
Yes I know it seems a bit too micro intensive as I laid it out. Like I said it's just stuff I been cooking up in my head. However only one that would really be a plroblem would be replacing stuff from damaged squadrons. The repair abiltiy would work OK on AUTOcast, so would rearming, if we make the squadrons naturally path back towards a carrier. As is the squadron pathing is bad anyway, a lot of people use hold position, so it definately needs redoing regardless.. Also adjacent carriers could rearm squadrons that are not their own.
Honestly autocast abiltiy on replacing strikecraft from damage squadrons is a no go cause it could deplete you of moeny. I guess we can still put it in but it be like autocast placing mines, very bad idea.... The best way I can come up that does not make it too bad would be if teh squadron still delt it's macimum damage even with missing craft. The craft would simply count as sort of HP indicator. And you wait to replace craft till whole squad is gone, Replacing entire squadrons might be easier and less microish.
Me no new research is needed. Simply makignt he scuteling of SC take 30 to 60 seconds and force the SC to be docked during that time will solve the switchign back and forth between fighters and bombers. Add in and AM cost to scutelignt he SC and that problem is a none issue. If someone switched from 1 type tot he next it will be his decision and he will suffer the penalty when he choses to.
Also they have this already scripted when underfire carrier should have a build penalty but only when underfire not when their is simply and enemy ship in the gravaty well. Under such a tool giving a 75% to 100% build penalty I would strongly approve ofve. Why? Because once again it's a player induced penalty whos severaty will be determined byt he skills and fleet mix of each player, not a game impose penalty were you suffer no matter what. (Caps should be excluded from this, no penalty ever)
For the carriers speed nerf yes kitting carriers around was bad. However flat out nerfing their speed wasn't the answer since this makes carriers slow to move around. If you carriers ar eon 1 side of yoru empire andyou get attaked on the on the other side it's gonan take you so much longer to get there now that the party will be over before you get there. Onca again the player should ahve control on this. While SC are out and about then speed penalty and i would add a maneuvering penalty as well, when they are docked the carrier should be able to move at full speed and full maneuvering. (Caps should be excluded from this, no penalty ever)
Af all this is donne will come the test is flak still to effective, just okay and undereffective.If it's to effective then reduce flaks rate of fire until you reach the butter zone.If it's fine do nothingIf it is undereffective then recude the carriers AM regeneration rate until you reach the butter zone.
I don't want to change the Fighters HP as that screws witht he balance betweent he fighters them selves. Fighters becoem lest effective at killing each other ect. While changing the flaks rate of fire of the the Carriers AM ammount only affect flak and Strike Craft only vs each other.
I have to disagree. Adding an additional cost to SC would likely completely ruin Carriers and simply make LRFs more powerful. Considering already existing build penalties, antimatter costs, and the efficiency of Flak, building sufficient Fighters to take out LRFs would be next to impossible until very late in the game.
Also, Bombers do have some use early-game, for aiding in taking out Capitals. And in addition, late Bomber research would make both Advent and TEC battleballs considerably more powerful; imagine trying to take out level 6 Progen or Marza without sufficient Bombers!
The SC repair ability for Carriers would be rather good, though. Maybe it should only affect docked SC as a balance.
Finally, I've found that currently, SC swapping is fairly difficult. Each Carrier already spends a lot of antimatter on two/three squadrons, and they do run out prematurely replacing the squadrons with new ones. Though for the sake of some realism, I think that SCs should be docked before scuttling occurs. After all, no one would just detonate useful personalle and metal just to spend more!
Well u missed the part where building SC would no longer require AM, and Flak efficeincy agianst fighters would be reduced... Also I would probably be in favor of removing most of SC building penalties. And the Carrier would be far cheaper to produce to begin with, it's the Squads that would fill up the rest of the cost. But everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess even not liking my ideas. Just wanted to point out your concern is not valid in this scenario. I heard about adding cost to strikecraft from someone a while ago and I too felt it wouldn't work. That's why I decided to remove all tehse restrictions because I feel it could only work with these restrictions lifted.
Your other points do have merit. But I feel if Bobmer is to be effective counter to HC, it needs tot ake a bit more research.
This would not do anything I feel. As was back in 1.02, smart player would dock anyways and retreat far away (another planet) to swap from fighter to bomber. If they could, they would go to the star to actually swap. This would really undue the AM cost. Swapping in combat worked very poorly in 1.01, and was near impoissible in 1.02.
Hell in 1.02 I even micro docked/undocked fighters/bobmers vs JJ in one epic battle. It was glorious game, very close actually. We both mciro docked strikecraft. Though it is rare when you really have to do this, depended on your opponent really. When your opponent is trying to retreat his HC thats damaged, you undock bobmers finish it off, dock again because there is enemy flak/fighters about. When your opponent undocks bombers to do the same to your HC, you undock fighters and kill a few bobmers. It was intense.
Anyway I do agree slow carriers is suck
Hey if his flee is faw away then thats that the time to strike and cause damage. If eh goes tot eh start then good for him. Would only helo make star important and building a starbase there interesting instea dof havignt hem largely ignored like now.
I dont see how it would mess up the balance between fighters.They would take longer to kill each other so what?Thats where flak come in to win the fighter battle with their 4 guns.If you lower build rates the fighter battle is basically endless anyway.The whole point is to make fighters live long enuf to do their job.If you choose to use your fighters to kill lrf for example and not fight the enemy fighters then by the time you kill his lrf your fighters are dead and you have none and thats the trade off and where strategy comes in.You dont just sacrifice your fighters to kill his lrf and then rebuild you force in seconds.That is what made carriers so annoying and why everybody always had tons of them.As far as tele push and flak burst all they have to do is up the damage.Its a really simple way to fix the prob.
Then by upping the damage on falk burst it causes more damage to bombers too. Now to fix thta you need to up the HP on bombers. But now fighters are having a hard time killing bombers and flak isn't much help. What do you do? Their a few things you can do but uping the fighters damage is most likely what will happen. And now fighters kill LRFs to fast again and you have comme full circle. Modifing the fighters HP is a deadend that goes round and round and round. Modifing the flaks rate of fire or lowering the recharge rate of anti matter on carriers are both the 2 tools that can allow you to control the fighters.
By lowering the rate of fire you still cause as much dmg per shot as before. Meaning fighter when fired upon will still take the same amount of damage how ever the flak frigates will fire lest often at 1 particuler fighter and will cause lest damage to multiple fighters. This keeps flak effective and force the person to have more flak in order to ingame more targets.
Lowerign the AM recharge rate is what should have been done first. The reason you couldn't Stop fighters from commign back in 1.01 was simply because carriers always had AM to spare. In fact I had done the calculations and it came out to ba that a carrier sittign still would recharge the AM it consumed ot build a fighter in full durring it's build cycle. So carrier couldn't run out of AM EVER. In 1.02/1.03 the build penalty si there and they did increase the cout and built time of SC. However like in 1.01 a carrier will restore the AM it consumes during the time period it take to build 1 SC. Carrier always had a SC controll toll however it was NEVER USED, NERVE AJUSTED, so because of that it nerver worked. Because of that shooting AM depletign skills at carriers such as EMP bomb didn't have any effect. 1.01 SC couldnt be suppresed becasue the toll to do it with simply had not been adjusted to do it'S job liek ti was suposed to in thw first place. And instead of adjustignt hat tool that just needed soem tweaking we created whole new tools with DISATEROUS EFFECTS on the gameplay.
All this talk kinda got me thinking. I'm gonna pull all carriers from me mod. Go no S/C Change the flak to a gunship. See how the AI plays with it. Kinda sucks cause what to do with the carriercap?
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