Its been over 1.5 years since Sins was first released and this is Ironclad's 22nd update to Sins/Entrenchment (ignoring all the beta updates).
It really hit us how the gameplay and strategies have evolved since then when we started tracking the source control changes for the siege frigate data which, as many of you may remember, went through a drastic nerfing early in 2008.
Well, now the situation is quite different due to a number of factors, not the least of which is player capability and the defensive measures added in Entrenchment. It was therefore neccessary to bring them back into the roster.
But we didn't stop at siege frigates. One of our primary objectives in this update is to make sure every unit is brought back into the pool of viable tools. In some cases this was as simple as modifying some data but in some cases we completely redesigned elements of them.
Naturally, trying to figure exactly what those changes needed to be was not an easy problem but one of the best ways was to play the game against as many players as possible so we once again took to playing regularly on Ironclad Online.
Unfortunately, we couldn't use our real names because when we did in the past we were the targets of unreasonable unholy alliances. Such circumstances aren't great for collecting data and analyzing strategies. Sorry for the smurfing but it was for a good cause
In addition to playing online we've spent a lot of time analyzing feedback on the forums, in particular the great thread by Deceiver_0.
In this thread he collected votes from everyone on a wide variety of issues and presented a consolidated place for ideas and potential fixes.
While we didn't agree with all the suggestions, we did attempt to address what we determined to be the underlying problems but in some cases we implemented the suggestions nearly verbatim.
Special thanks to everyone who contributed to that thread! Also, special thanks to everyone who wrote constructive posts or emails, we couldn't do this without you!
Enjoy!
-Ironclad
WARNING: This update will invalidate existing save games.
Gameplay / Balance:
Graphics and Effects:
While safety override is far more destructive, the Advent starbase can use its area of effect ability and remain standing, so they're two very different abilities that both fall under the broad category of "uncapped area of effect damage".
First of all, it's unlikely you'd spend large sums of money on an offensive ugprade without spending a similar amount on defensive ugprades. You'd need a significant fleet to be able to "bowl over" such an Advent starbase. In most cases it's simply not worth doing so (too much area of effect ability going off) and you're better off just using bombers. The end effect is the same as safety override. Moreover, if it has mass disorientation you're in BIG trouble since that does act as an area of effect debuff.
I thought it was immune to these abilities like capital ships are.
Agreed
Starbases are invulnerable to LF abilaties. And their AM recharge rate is sufficiently high enought that a dunov will not be able to put a dent in it's AM reserves.
Safety overide protocole is much mroe balanced then the Advent Metor + dissorientation.
For overide will kill your SB = big money going boomb. IF you leave you fleet aroudn youa re goignt o kill your fleet off to.
While Metor + mass disorientation will fuckup and kill your fleet, not as rapidly but it will, your SB remains standing, and your fleet can participate in combate with no adverse effects. Basicly if their is and advetn SB + fleet forget about it it's not going to happen. NO WAY IN HELL.
Other than special abilities vasari starbase is far ahead of TEC one in every way (TEC one being key for ship support or a costly but effective 1 shot weapon) after a test with all armor and weapons upgrades applied and all research done TEC starbase hull 20250 shield 8337 Armor 26, Vasari starbase hull 23100 shield 10500 Armor 30 AND vasari base can move has faster shield regen hull regen and more weapons damage per second and u dont lose the starbase to its abilities so no the vasari base is much better at frig and even cruiser forces (further note the vasari starbase also aquires these upgrades faster so its not just a late game thing) the TEC base is a much better support base and does rely on ships as much as the Vasari one would as for the advent starbase its nearly impossible to compare since usefulness changes depending on the situation
Thats what he meant hydra... he said its capable of destroying an infenite frigate force not that it actuall will. And the capability is hugely important: you will never see a fleet taking an argonev head on whereas this is entirely possible for an orky. A starbase if far more useful as a stalling mechanism than as a fleet counter, and the fear of red button will keep every fleet back untill bombers can chew through it.
Yeah thats true still in regard to some earlier comments it is worth putting up some statistical data which ill leave up to show that the Vasari starbase is not worthless once u acctually upgrade your tech besides hopefully noone would leave a fully upgraded orkulkos in a contested system undefended since all starbases become much more deadly once they are acctually with ships
that or your cap ships chew through it esspecially if its not well upgraded or you have suffiently strong desolators
I dont think i have ever seen a lv 6 desolator in multiplayer (although, that may change...)
Unless specifically stated otherwise, this post assumes that frigates excludes anti-structure frigates and carriers.
The category is only useful for noting how an ability scales with increasing numbers of valid targets. It includes nearly instant fleet destroying abilities such as Safety Protocol Override to a minor DoT like L1 Radiation Bomb. Simply placing Meteor Control
In orderly to safely directly assault an Argonev with frigates, the fleet must be large enough to destroy it in approximately 1 second (define this threshold as T), and that is assuming the TEC player cannot time the activation of Safety Override against the movement of the frigates and must wait until they are all in range. This is true regardless of what upgrades the Argonev has besides Safety Override. By contrast, a Transcencia can be safely directly assaulted by a frigate fleet that is large enough to destroy it in a much longer interval of time, as the first Meteor Control only does damage without providing any other methods of ensuring safety. The threshold for assaulting a Transcencia without losing a great number of ships (define as A) is much lower than against an Argonev. The gap between A and T is far larger than the gap between A and V, where V is the threshold needed to safely directly assault a Vasari starbase, whether you calculate the gap as a difference or a ratio. The end effect of Meteor Control is far more similar to the effect of the Orkulus' superior firepower and higher health than the effect of Safety Override, despite both abilities having "uncapped area of effect damage." The bolded sentence, in particular, shows a perfect awareness that difference between the Orkulus and the Transcencia is a matter of degree, while the difference between the Transcencia and the Argonev is a matter of nature.
How about Disruptive Strikes and Detonate Antimatter, then? Note that these are both the most durable ships for their respective races and can be sent to drain the Transcencia's AM alone--or with a Progen just outside the firing range of the Transcencia if necessary. The Radiance in particular can keep DAM active on the Transcencia indefinitely if supported by a Revelation.
Yes, they are already in. See reply number 88.
Ah ok, sorry. There's so much spam going on here that I didn't notice.
By the way:
What bug was that, actually? Other than the frigate shaking effect, I can't recall any bugs. I just thought the ability was junk .
Maybe you thought it was junk because of some kind of bug?
Yay it is out!!!
It was junk because it wasn't behaving correctly (i.e quite different than the spreadsheet predicted it should behave). It is now within a reasonable error of the intended design.
Did you address the issue of the Sentinels becoming completely frozen with the charged missiles? I used it with Sentinels the other day and the ability never ended--a bunch of ships ust became completely frozen in place--permanently--and I had to scuttle them. I don't know if it's also a problem with Assailants.
See I would say 99% of balance issues arise from stuff not behaving as it was intended by devs. It is always a challenge with any game to try to understand what the Devs intended, then go and figure out what behaves not as inteded, and EXPLOIT EXPLOIT EXPLOIT
COME ON! 2 mintues into the patch and I foudn a horrible bug! My Akkans colonzied an Asteroid and it spawned a GREY as in belogning to no player EXTRACTOR! I verified the same happened at lvl 2 of colonzie, spawns 2 grey extractors. This makes Akkans useless.
Further details: I am unable to scuttle or attack these extractors. They persist if planet is abandoned. They do not generate any income, at least none that I can verify. I put cursor over my crystal/metal productions and it showed no income.
I'm theorizing it's a random chance based on whether the planet is colonized first or the buff activates first. We've never actually seen this behavior (and I can't reproduce it as we speak) but an examination of the code shows the potential for the colonize to occur after the extractor buff. We are implementing a hypothetical fix now. Can anyone else reproduce his results?
That does suck, Astax.
Silly TEC... all of their component sovereignties arguing over who gets the rights to what resource extractor in the face of alien aggression... that's why the TEC is doomed... no true central authority. Kinda like the American south back in the day. Confederations are hard to run!
It happens with assailants as well. Blair said he addressed this problem from a previous patch, but the problem still persist
I have the same problem.. Using TEC when I take a plant with the capitol ship at the begining of the game I lose the ability to build mines for crystal or metal.
Astax i tested it as well and the extractors dont work for asteroids,terrens or desserts but mine worked for ice planets, so i dont know what that means...
It's been fixed. Hotfix tomorrow along with any other minor issues that come up today.
Wierd it not worked for me on either Ice Volcanic or Asteroids. Not tested on Terran or Desert.
i was hoping that the rapture's lvl6 ability would get some kind of buff, given that vulkoras and mazra is now very powerful......also was hoping for a rework for progen's resssurection, given the rarity it is used
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