Vasari are king. there is no disputing this, it didnt always used to be this way, and it didnt take much to reach this point, but here we are, and here is why. 1. scramble bombers. 2. phase missles. everyone knows scramble bombers needs to be nerfed... but phase missles? well, we need to be carefull, but lets do some quick calculations first.
A max upgraded phase missle does 1.74x the damage (on average) than an unupgraded phase missle to a frig at max mitigation. That same phase missle does 2.04x the damage when thrown against a lv 5 cap ship at max mitigation (60%, 70%)... for advent, it gets horrible... a lv 10 advent cap ship with max mitigation research (no pacts), in its own culture gets hammered for 3.24x the damage of an unupgraded phase missle. (throw in the phase 15% extra phase missle bypass from a missle pact, and things get rediculous)
basicly, if something has shields, phase missles do a really really good job at popping them. vasari fighters at max upgrades are better at popping cap ships than enforcers... i kid you not. (enforcers do 1.91666 damage per fleet supply... *.75 for thier modifier vs capital armor, gives 1.4375 dps/supply fighters, do 1.464 per fleet supply... and they get a 50% modifier, but they also get a 204% buff due to phase missle upgrades....(vs a lv 5 cap ship) and so they do 1.492 dps/supply.
basicly, why would you buy enforcers, which might die, when you could use... fighters? (wtf?) (and they respawn for free if your carefull with your carriers)... if fighters are better than enforcers... could you imagine how much more effective bombers are? well, lets do the math, ehh? 2.44 dps/fleetsupply *.75*2.04 = 3.735145 dps/supply. Max upgraded bombers are exactly twice as good at killing that lv 5 cap ship as max upgraded enforcers are, to within the margin of error on the spreadsheet i am getting my numbers from.
lets do lrms for funz? (and maybe flack too if i get bored) Assailant: 13dps/6*.75*2.04 = 3.315dps/supply vs that poor lv 5 cap ship. Flacks... 16.333/5/2(assumping 2 weapon banks are firing at the cap ship)*.5*2.04... bullshit... 1.666dps/supply ... thats higher than the enforcer!!! (not a max upgraded one mind you... but why the hell would anyone want wave cannon upgrades when they could get phase missles?) oh, and these ships get charged missles for extra fun. (and flack got 2 extra banks for firing at other things)
so... what about the lonely skrimisher? .857dps/supply unupgraded, or 1.03dps/supply upgraded. wow, that is so low. you know... i wonder.... 12/7*1.5...=2.5714dps/supply for antiheavy duties... bombers? 17.088/7*.5*1.74 2,124 dps/supply vs all frigs except heavies.
Is it any wonder phase missles are so loved? well, i dont really want to get rid of phase missles, they are what make vasari vasari, but what does need to be changed is so that things like flack and fighters are more effective than killing capitlships than enforcers. dont buff the enforcers, they already were buffed, no, instead, lets decrease the multiplier of phase missles vs capital ships. Let us reduce the modifier for phase missles on fighters/flack against capital ships from .5 to .4, and the modifier from lrm/bombers from .75 to .6 aka, a pathetic 20% nerf on phase missles vs capital ships. (and only capital ships).
please, reduce scramble bombers to 1.8 levels, and decrease phasemissles vs capitalships by 20% this is only phase missles vs capitalships mind you! everything else would be unchanged! its a very small nerf, but one that will help you keep your capital ships alive a little bit longer, and would open up the vasari to the possibility of using its other ship types.
(mind you, after my proposed nerf, phase missles will cream that lv 5 cap ship much faster than the same ship types of the other races upgraded to the same degree,... the modifier now effectively being 1.632 for maxed phase missles vs capships, vs 1.3 for say, tec maxed missle research, but the situation is significantly improved to the point where you should be building enforcers instead of flack and fighters to kill capital ships.)
I was disagreeing that the backweighting of the ability meant that it was too weak at the lower levels: just because it is backweighted doesn't make it weak.
Compare it to Heavy Strikecraft. Is that backweighted in the same manner? Why shouldn't the supposed weakness of ADA apply to Heavy Strikecraft? ADA was fine as it was, Heavy Strikecraft is fine at is is.
Could you write up your figures? L2 ADA is currently +14 strikecraft based on 7-craft squadrons, or up to +18? As the old extra strikecraft ADA it would be +8 strikecraft..? That isn't catching up, in terms of sheer numbers?
The problem with the Halcyon is that it has too many squadrons, yes.... Under the old system a better player was rewarded for keeping their strikecraft intact. We shouldn't support poor play. ADA is not balanced, because it rewards Halcyon users too early, and rewards poor play. Heavy Strikecraft is balanced.
I'm not advocating that we revert to ancient versions of the game. The progress has included steps forwards as well as steps backwards- on the small scale the improvements to Skirmishers and Enforcers were very welcome, on the larger scale no-one would want 1-squadron carrier cruisers. However, altering the Illuminators to standard lrf was a move against variety. There's also useful capital abilities that were nerfed in the past but wouldn't be too strong compared with the capitals we have at present.
Has every change really been correct- up to 1.19?
Actually IMHO I think it was a mistake to bump up SC command points. I feel that this game is all about who has the SC and not about anything else. You wanna win? Make an crazy amount of SC. Ive play many games that balanced fleets turn into Carrier only fleets b/c your forced to compete with someone who builds nothing than carriers.
Yes, heavy strike craft is backweighted, but the problem there isn't quite as significant as it is with the Halcyon because the added longevity it provides gives the Sova much needed staying power in the early-game. Once you start taking casualties, classic ADA offers no additional staying power.
I'd love to see a change to heavy strike craft that would be similar to ADA's transition from 1.17 to 1.18, but I just don't see any way to implement that.
Bombers (7 / squad):
Fighters (9 / squad):
It appears my earlier numbers were off (I didn't save the file, so I don't know where my error was); the 1.17 ADA only provides more strike craft than an equal level of the 1.18 version in a select few cases, all of them requiring the capital ship to have 8 squads.
First and foremost, capital ships need to offer rewards early or else they don't get used. Case in point is the Kol, a capital ship that is rock solid if you can get it to level 5 or 6, but a piece of shit until then. It almost never gets used, because for every one Kol that reaches those high levels, there are two or three that die along the way.
The Halcyon currently offers a neat balance of different skills, some of which help it more early and some of which help it more late (both in terms of levels and game stage). This makes it very versatile and interesting. ADA will always be an early-game ability simply because it doesn't scale as your fleet gets larger, but right now it plays its role very well of allowing you to spec your Halcyon as a fighting unit. I think that's balanced because you're sacrificing your progression in its fleet support abilities which will shine later.
Now as for "rewarding poor play", I disagree. Units will die, and fragile unshielded strike craft are no exception to the rule. The key, if you want to keep your numbers up, is to keep your casualty rate lower than your replacement rate. What ADA does is it ups your replacement rate and allows you to take riskier gambits or stay afloat in fierce firefights for longer, but on its own it's not going to prevent your SC from getting shredded if you're careless.
To reiterate my position, I believe the problem is with the strike craft, not the carriers. I think ADA is a fine ability as is. It's supposed to give you a punch in early-game battles, and if other combat-centric abilities aren't doing the same then they need to be buffed up to its level.
I believe it was a very sensible move; the illuminator makes a lot of sense as a LRF counter and it fulfills that role very well. If any units should fulfill the anti-capital role, it should be LF, HC, and other capital ships (more or less as is).
PM's are devastating. There is no doubt there. However, Wave Cannons suck. I proposed a long long time ago that we combine Pulse Gun and Pulse Beam research into a jointed system, similar to the way hull and regen are linked now. Some upgrades would help one more than the other and vice versa. For instance, PG upgrades would boost PG's by 10% per level (not much for something that does very little) and ups PB's by 5%. Then for PB research, you have it increase PG's by 5% again, but 15% for PB's. This yields a total improvement to PB's of 50% and PG's by 80%. Then, you would combine this with a change of fighters to PG's and bombers to PB's. After this, you would convert Orky's to Pulse Beams (graphic reasons mainly, but some balance) and then proceed to double the effectiveness of all wave cannon upgrades. Since there are six levels, this means that you would up their damage by 60%. That ought to make Enforcers the cap killers they ought to be.
Now, let's go over the impact it would have on each unit:
Fighters: These would have reduced power versus larger ships, but would become more powerful versus other SC, helping with air superiority since the closest thing the Vasari have to FB or TKP is Jam Weapons. This way, fighters are weaker versus the kings of the fleet (cruisers and capitals), but can take down their numerically superior counterparts from the TEC and Advent.
Bombers: Unlike their lighter cousins, bombers are receiving a full blown nerf here. No longer are they going to reign supreme with their PM's, but PM's to me always seemed more like capital class torpedoes to be launched from one capital to another. Even so, they still will deal 80% above their normal damage.
Orkuli: (It sounds better than Orkuluses.) Orky's will be buffed. However, while this will increase their power, it will increase the likelihood of a player investing in the higher tier Pulse Beams. Not only that, but it has always irked me that little dinky Pulse Guns appear on the otherwise fearsome Orkulus. I want to see the countless weapon emplacements on this thing after it has the bank upgrade fire away at fleets. Its mainly a graphical thing, but you can justify it.
Capitals: The Kortul will be most heavily affected as it will receive an 80% buff to its main weapons and a 60% buff elsewhere. Still though, even when you count Power Surge, it won't be that much. Capitals are not known for firepower.
Enforcers: These little ships would still be left out to dry in a way. There are simply too many weapon types for the Vasari when they have the king of all weapons: PM's. No other useful frigate would carry this weapon, but there is another way. It is possible to add multiple weapons to a frigate. It is not done in the game, though the engine supports it. It would be entirely possible to negate the buff I suggested to WC's and instead give this thing 12 or so PM DPS. That would make this ship very powerful.
Honestly, there are so many things I would love to do with this ship given the time. If the community is making a massive mod upon receipt of the next patch, I would love to start editing this thing's code. I would give it new abilities such as instead of giving it dual weapons, make its weapons do something special. I could make WC's special. I could make them just as, if not more sought after than PM's by giving them effects. Its not hard. Not at all, but it would make these otherwise wimpy weapons devastating and infamous for their power. For instance, I could make them shield breakers that kill mitigation. I could make them all deal DoT's. I could make them all be small gravity bombs. I could make their blasts deal splash damage. I could even go so far as being able to disable tactical structures on ships. Pick the poison you wish to inflict, and I will be more than happy to fix it, and will gladly administer this new thing to opponents.
If anyone likes the idea of me overhauling Wave Cannons or has suggestions, I'm all ears as while I could make these things do any or all of the above, I don't think they quite fit. WC's are plasma weapons, so it needs to be sinister like the Vasari, but plasma-y to make sense...
Back on subject, Phase Missiles are not themselves the problem. The problem is that no other weapon class can remotely compare to a weapon that can bypass 2/3 of a ship's health in some cases and deal more damage when it hits home to boot! They are peerless. But I think that can change. It should change. I don't want them nerfed. I want them to have equals within the Vasari race so that other methods are equal. Now, if you scream foul that it would make the Vasari too powerful, tell me, when was the last time you saw someone use Enforcers or Skirmishers to great effect? I'm assuming the answer is vehement never. This will simply give Vasari players more options so that we are not forced to become one trick ponies. While we do that one trick very well, we would prefer to learn other tricks.
volt's ideas
i knew these were comming, 80% pulsegun upgrade... yes, because we need vasari more powerfull.
no one uses skirmishers or enforcers, not because they are weak, but because there is simply no point. any unit with phase missles simply does more damage, even against things they are not nessasary supposed to counter.
look: skrims, at max upgrades do 2.057 dps/supply base... assailants do 3.77 dps/supply base.
the ONLY armor type in the entire game that anti-heavy gets a higher multiplier than antimedium is against heavy armor. the appropriate numbers for that are 150%, and 75%. multiply everything out, and we get:
2.8275dps/supply for assailants
3.085 dps/supply for skrimishers
that is less than a 10% advantage for the skrimishers. (and assailants get charged missles, which puts them back ontop, by alot, very quickly)
SO: be honest. would you ever seriously put money into a unit type that does 9.1% more damage, against a single armor type, and about 1/2 the damage against every single other armor type? So, even if your enemy army has nothing but flack, carriers, and support cruisers, in the mid-late game, skrimishers should only back up your assailants, thanks to thier interference ability, but assailants will kill an army of even nothing but anti-heavy faster than an army of skrimishers.
enforcers have the same issue.
and both units were buffed.
I highly, highly doupt they need to be buffed even more, instead, phase missles need a tweak in the downward direction.
This is more or less true for Advent and TEC as well
Cobalts: 1.9 DPS/supplyJavelis: 2.75 DPS/supply
Disciples: 2.125 DPS/supplyIlluminator: 2.75 DPS/supply
Advent aren't quite as bad, especially once you consider that Illuminators need to use their side-beams to get their full DPS, but Cobalts have trouble matching up to Javelis, and don't have the powerful range either.
The only reason to use light frigates is for their mobility. This makes them better at pursuing kiting carriers, even if they're not that much better at damaging them. Their disruptive special abilities are also useful, but on their own don't sell the LF.
I'd agree we need to fundamentally make the LF more useful. They really did well in 1.18 because scouts were strong, and defensively they were great at absorbing damage from scouts, which made them the better-balanced unit in the early-game. With scouts removed, there's once again no reason to go with anything except LRF or bombers until heavies rear their head (and even then the Enforcer is pretty lackluster, though the Kodiak and Destra are fairly competitive).
well, lets see here... ya, thought so, your looking at unupgraded damage, i was looking at upgraded (for both skrims and assailants)
upgraded... cobalts are at 2.28, and javilis at 3.575
ratios... thats 1.83 for the asailant to skrim, and 1.56 for the cobalt to javelis.
now... unupgraded...
1.4473 for cobalts/javs
1.26388 for asailants/skrims
so ya, i see your point. (i wonder how cluser missles, and charged missles change this)
and unupgraded... asailants are much worse that skrims for taking out things with heavy armor.
so, perhaps the devs did a good job there, but it still doesnt change the main issue of this thread... which is phase missles vs capital ships.
Okay, allow me to elaborate. I know that Fighters and Bombers are currently far too powerful for taking down larger targets. This is because PM's allow them to do ~200% plus shield bypass. This is why I wanted to switch their types to something else. Please explain to me though how 200% is less than 80%? Yes PG's would be buffed, but what uses them? Currently, you have the Orky and the Skirmisher (ignoring support cuisers). By switching the Fighters over to this, you will nerf them. A lot. So while you may think that it is a buff, it ends up being a nerf relative to the current situation.
Now Skirmishers, yes, they would still be weak relatively, but if we revert scouts, all of a sudden, they fit right in. When LF and Scouts were kings of early game, the Vasari were somewhat short-sticked by the superiority of the other races' LF. So, this could help with that.
In regards to Enforcers, why do you think I suggested giving Wave Cannons a special ability (along with the buff)? I don't know if this is what I'm going to decide on, but I did come up with something... We could make wave cannons neutralize the mitigation increase caused by them. All you have to do is use an instantaction debuff to knock down the mitigation the appropriate amount for the DPS used. In small numbers, this wouldn't make much difference, but late game, it would definitely encourage the use of them. This would yield a virtual bypass rate for WC's that would make them on par with PM's. You can yell at me, but I'm trying to help here.
Idk, maybe we have different visions of what Sins should be, but I envision Sins as having Vasari be the end-game kings of damage and speed. The Advent need to have their original synergies revived (Malice & CB, Malice & Vengeance, Vengeance & Animosity, Malice & Ruthlessness). The TEC should IMO be the best at economy and mass production. At first, this seemed to be how the game was, but as time went on, synergies were destroyed, abilities were nerfed, and RA was annihilated (though it at least has some value now compared to shortly after the nerf).
I'm trying to help here and you seemed to ignore the vast majority of what I said and instead only tried to speed read through it and thus missed the vast majority of its purpose. I want SC moved off PM's. I want Skirmishers buffed. I want Enforcers Buffed. I want Advent synergies buffed. I want a few things for the TEC buffed. I'm not trying to be partial to Vasari. Yes, I play as them primarily, but my auxiliary is Advent which I play fairly often. I don't want to unbalance the game. I'm trying to help. You know as well as I do that Phase Missiles should not be nerfed for fear that Vasari players would revolt and Vasari would become much weaker. You should also know that in order for anything to compete, it needs to be buffed to that level. Skirmishers and Enforcers aren't even used right now. All buffing them to the point of PM's (or at least in the neighborhood) would do would be to give Vasari more options and make them more dynamic players. I am pretty sure that it won't hurt, but please try to actually respond to my post, not what you think my post says... Not trying to be a jerk, but still, I'm pretty sure that you didn't read it fully. Perhaps I wasn't clear. Either way, I hope this post has cleared things up...
nono, i did read your post fully.
I just also know that such sweeping changes are not going to happen. these include:
new abilities
weapon type change
now... i could see the pulse line and the beam line beint merged in some way.. but not above 30% for either weapon.
I dont see the vasari as king of dps. that goes to the advent (look at their shit, for flack, lrms, LFs, HCs, all have higher dps/supply than the other races... preety sure strike craft too, but too lazy to do the math on that atm)
I see the vasari of the king of, picking exactly where and when the battle will be, under thier terms, and i have won a game, as a vasari, picking that i just wont ever fight that battle.
When the vasari were very far and few between... many people were calling for buffs to them,... and so forth...
I always said that Vasari will always lose in a fair fight... so, if your vasari, dont fight fair. Now they can win that fair fight... and have all thier nasty tricks to go along with it.
these tricks include:
gravbomb+phasejumpinhibitor
phasic trap nulifiying an unlimited number of strike craft instantly, and, with two hanger bays, forever untill the bays are destroyed, the strike craft scuttled, or the carriers leave.
Subverters. nuff said.
sneaky starbases.
the ability to bring a starbase from 100 hp back to 10000 almost instantly by warping in a dozen overseers.
kostura cannons.
phase gates.
and my fav... kostrua cannons+phasegates.
and there are many smaller ones, but these are the ones that are simply not comparable to the other races.
now, please, dont be offended. i did read your post all the way, all i was saying, is that i knew it was coming, and i knew it would be unbalanced. all i want (for now, at least), is a 20% nerf to phase missles vs capital ships, and a skirantra that doesnt do over 9000 damage. (over 3 min, for every lv3 scramble bomber activated... before phase missles)
seriously... each vasari bomber does 5.7dps... *3 per squad *3for 3squads, *180 seconds.... its over 9000... for 50 antimatter. now... that isnt entirely fair see you, cause those bombers are not holding positon, and can die (oh wait, hold position+repair cloud... zombie bombers!)... and it doesnt take into account phase missle research... so... with max phase missle research... against a lv5 capital ship... one press of scramble bombers will do... *drum roll please*
4235 damage before armor. the KOL (the ship with the highest hitpoints of all) has 4250 health at level 1. (or, since that damage was against a lv 5 cap ship... 5270 hp.
comparison: for 75 antimatter, an egg does 1125 damage... to that lv5 cap
and for 75 antimatter a kol does... less than 300 to that lv5 cap.
good thing capital ships have passive regen, huh? oh, wait, disrupter nanites.
I was under the assumption that there could be one day a community based patch. Under those conditions, WC's could receive a special ability and the researchables could be reconfigured in the way I suggested. My idea would still help as it would effectively nerf fighters and bombers by taking away their precious PM's while at the same time buffing an underused unit.
Now if you are going with what the devs could do for one final patch, the best they could probably offer is a 20% redux. They aren't going to do the changes I suggested, but I could. In fact, I could incorporate my suggestions in one afternoon. None of them are particularly big, but they are definitely beyond what IC would do for 1.20.
Also, I said damage, not DPS. This was to include all the nasty toys we use that you went on to list, but not necessarily DPS itself. My changes list was to stop SB from wiping out everything in its path while not going too far. It was also designed to buff two unused ships. You can't say buffing two ships that are completely unused right now is a bad thing. But if what I said is still a nerf overall, I don't see why you are disagreeing...
Didn't read all the posts so I might double.....
If you decide to upgrade phase missiles you are basically upgrading 70% of ships that as vasari you can build. Thats why upgrading them to full is best investment you can make. And yes you need to watch your caps if you play against vasari. They die really easy. Ad yes again phase missiles and bombers are main reason for this.
Now regarding fighter enforcer thing
Perhaps they have more damage than enforcer but tell me which one is easier to counter fighter or enforcer. 20 flak and keep your fleet clustered and those fighters wont come near your ships. And enforcers with some upgrades (hull regeneration armor) are hard to kill ships
Now of course there is a different story with bombers but we all know that vasari player that starts with 2 or 3 carrier caps get slight advantage at start but if other player invests in LRMs instead of cap ships with a little skill those 3 skirantras won't live so long.
Now late game vasari with their support ships and mine layer have almost unbeatable combo(that is if vasari player knows how to micro) but thats another thread altogether.
I think phase missiles should stay as they are. So is enforcer. 1 doesn't do much but get 15 or more and ...... Of course it all depends what you are against.
In vasari fleet only thing I would change is skirmisher. I don't ever build them unless I need to deal with carrier or flack spammer.
But greg, tell me.. Which deals more damage? A fully upped Assailant or a fully upped Enforcer. The answer is the Assailant. More damage for less. Its common sense to ignore the Enforcer unless you want an expensive meat shield.
If you want math, here it is. Enforcers have 20 DPS by default. Once fully upped, they are 26. Assailants start off with 13 DPS, but have PM's which have a virtual buff of 200% to 39 DPS in addition to the ability for most of that damage to bypass shields. On average, PM's can take down a ship with about 40-50% of shields left, which makes the total effective power of these things at around 400% plus the missile pact which bumps it up to nearly 500%. Need I say more? Tell me, which is the bigger number: 65 from the Assailant or 26 from the Enforcer? Your choice.
Honestly though, I was thinking about it and I am really starting to like my idea of WC's negating their own mitigation increases. That would make these things devastating and would be a different route a Vasari player could take. This would mean that Enforcers could be a bit of a forward force group. If you mixed them in with other weapons then their ability would be negated, but if you made monster Enforcer fleets, you could really put the hurt on someone. Perhaps as a distracting force. Sure, they would be easy to counter, but you still are going to take losses as they are HC's. It would force the enemy to make counters. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't work, but eh... its an idea...
Hmmm which one would i rather have 65 assailants or 26 enforcers????
It all comes up to what enemy has. 45 flak that are properly upgraded can easily kill 65 assailants. That is with a little help of micro. Now 45 flak against 26 enforcers. I don't think flak has a chance.
As well I think we all agree that 26 enforcers easily die to 3 cap ships with bombers on supported by some overseers or hoshikas with disable weapons or advent guardians with repulse and perhaps repair bay or 2.
All I'm saying is that it all boils down to skill of the player and fleets fighting. If fleets are balanced or if one player sends a cap into fry against 40+ assailants or 3 carrier caps with bombers. If you scout and build counters to what enemy is spamming and if your economy is sort of even phase missiles don't make things over powered for vasari. Their support ships make the difference. And a fact that while on defense they can completely negate enemy carriers.
No. You completely misunderstood my post. I am not talking numbers of ships. I'm talking DPS of each ship! Assailants have an effective DPS of 65 while Enforcers have a DPS of just 26. That is more than twice the damage from a ship that comes at tier 1! Assailants and their beloved Phase Missiles are king. Period. Flak, despite its hardiness, falls to PM's just like every other ship does. If its got shields, its gonna die. Now, if you start talking about supply, the difference is even more pronounced.
if you have 15 enforcers... you could have had 30 asailants.
15 enforcers would do an impressive 448.5 DPS. if you maxxed out wave cannons.
30 assailants do 468 dps BEFORE phase missle bypass and charged missles.
now... fighters
for the supply of 15 enforcers, you could have 13 carriers, thats 26 squads of fighters. Now, lets how those 26 squads hold position at your capital ship. you have... 20 garduas? ok. if the fighters are holding position, and your good enough at micro to get 2 banks firing, it takes 51 seconds (longer if the fighters have upgraded hull/armor) for one flack to do enough danage to to knock one squad (not including regen, and rebuilding of strike craft. )
in those 51 seconds... those 26 squads will have done 4160 damage to a lv 5 capital ship. thats after shield mitigation (but before armor) (and i calculated this in two seperate ways, and got the same answer so...)
Now, mind you, those flack have only done enough damage to knock down 20 squads... and some strike craft died before those 51 seconds were done, and some new strike craft were built... and so on and so forth... and those stike craft surely have hitpoint and armor upgrades that i didnt take into account.
and these fighters cost only antimatter.
and your ships are stuck, closenit not moving, not attacking.
enforcers, if you kill it, its dead... not so with stikecraft... you need to kill the carriers... and a skilled player wont let you get away with that.
oh, and 45 flack WILL NOT KILL 65 assailants. equal quantities of flack and assailants (as far as fleet supply), the flack barely win. if nothing is upgraded... add in phase missles and charged missles, and the assailants would win.
This is why I suggested ripping fighters and bombers off PM's...
Perhaps i did misunderstand you ....... but you are comparing assailants which are tier 1 but they have full phase missile upgrade which is tier 7 (might be 6 not sure here) with ship that is tier 5 and has no weapon upgrades???? That's how I understood you.
Perhaps 1 v 1 ship wise they do do more damage but in game wise i think its more useful to spam some heavies into your fleet.
In my opinion its not just about comparing 1v1 ship statistics. That way you can find all sorts of problems. I bet you cen find one on tec side with LRMs and kodiaks as well. LRMs fully upgraded probably do more damage than kodiaks. They also get buff (think its 40% not sure though) with tec pacts.
Its the way whole race mechanic works. If it was so easy you would have never seen enforcers and kodiaks in the game. Yes you can see LRM spamming at start but if the game is sort of even teamed sooner or later you will get heavies and carriers into the equation. Also keep in mind multipliers. And (i have chart in front of me) heavies have 5 types of armor with multiplier 100 or higher when LRMs have only 3 types and 2 of those are with 100% damage multiplier. All but one (medium armor) heavies have equal or higher multiplier than LRMs.
Another thing that just slipped into my mind is rate of fire. Don't have stats for that but lrms without upgrade fire very slowly compared to heavies and so are fighters and bombers if you don't put them into a ball. But if you let somebody ball your frigates or capitals????? Well...... If you do upgrade to fire quicker (lol don't know name as well) then there is penalty for turning rate and if ships are not in firing angle they don't fire. Now if they don't fire there is no damage. There is also HP shield and armor difference.
Now I know you are not talking just about assailants and i know fighters/bombers are for free but once AM is gone so are fighters and bombers and carriers are sort of sitting ducks. It just takes some skill to drain AM from them. So again in my opinion its all about balance of research and fleet composition and phase missiles are part of this balance.
Other than skirantras bomber spam and pacts races are pretty well balanced in my opinion. Each has weaknesses and each has strengths and each has a way its supposed to be played and phase missiles are one of strengths and ways to play for vasari player.
I know Pbhead that u are great player and more often than not i loose against you but I we seen with my own eyes assailants fleet ripped apart by flak counter and once player that was spamming assailants sees that other guy is spamming flak he usually tries to go for skirmishers to have counter for flak.Why is that? And skirmishers don't have phase missiles. Probably has something to do with the rest of game mechanic not just damage points.
Well ships counts weren't so high but if you go against 30 lrms 20-25 flak is enough to kill them. Again we are talking microing (turning rate ability to fire from all 4 sides etc). And if you are adding research you need to add right research on flak as well. Hull Armor .... area of damage
Actually, Enforcers do have upgrades, as I said, up to 30% and they are at a max of tier VII. PM's cap out at either V or VI.
Enforcers currently have no other function than meat shielding, but Assailants fulfill the same purpose and actually deal damage.
If you want to look at modifiers, even counting these, Assailants are superior. The point is, Assailants are far more reliable damage dealers than Enforcers. In fact, I don't think that in any category Enforcers are superior. The point is, there really is no true purpose to use them.
You are saying that one assailant does 65 dps. I think your estimates are way wrong.
If it was so if you get 1 assailant at the time against cap ship until you reach same hp level that cap ship has with assailants cap ship would die. Didn't test it and I won't but I think I know the answer.
I said effective. The physical DPS is a mere 13, but Phase Missiles hit a maximum of 240%, and I doubled that number to account for shield bypass (an assumption based on average shield strength). That actually gives you 480%, but for convenience sake I rounded up to 500%... That is where the 65 effective DPS comes from.
On the small scale, this doesn't come out. For one thing, in the early game when you are dealing with the numbers to which this doesn't apply, PM's are not yet upgraded anyways. Its like quantum physics. Technically a particle can be in one, two, or zero places at once, but on the everyday scale, we assume 1. Its the same thing here.
Idk, perhaps I should define the different names I'm giving to DPS's.
Physical: the straight DPS as said on the infocard.
Virtual: the amound of damage it would normally take to inflict the same amount of damage. Phase missile DPS is virtually higher than the others due to its mitigation bypass ability. This is where its power comes from. Even if the bypass rate is a mere 30%, the damage payoff is huge in that short interval.
Effective: the amount of damage that over a given time takes the same amount to kill an object. This deals with actual shield points. By negating them, you can effectively deal twice the damage. It is not uncommon at all for a capital ship to die with a good chunk of its shields intact. When combined with the fact that those hits that are hitting the shields are also affected by mitigation, it comes out to about a 2x multiplier overall.
So, on a larger scale, my numbers were more or less correct as it would technically be 62.4, but when I rounded I got 65 (its a nicer number). I know what I'm talking about here. I play as the Vasari and have spent a good deal of time looking into PM's and mitigation.
phase missles get a bonus of 2.04 (not 2.4) against a tec lv5 capital ship.
now, volt, your wrong, but... you can get those numbers easy if you throw in a missle pact.
45% shield bypass.
ya.
lets see here... against a lv10 advent capital ship, max research in its own culture... vs phase missles with misslepact...
uasually, damage would be reduced to .15 of the dps on the card. (85% mitigation)
426% effective damage boost above unupgraded phase missles.
if i did my math right... by the time you have done 500 damge to the shields... you will have done ~3000 damage to the hull. *pop*
I was counting the missile pact, but I added it in later. I did not however take the time to come up with the actual multiplier to deal with the shield bypass. I just assumed given the variability of it. If you want to count me wrong, here is the place to do it. In the end though, I wasn't really that far off...
.30% chance of bypassif bypassed deals deals 666.7% damage last researchable increases damage by 20%overall damage boost: 2.4x
.45% chance of bypass (counting missile pact) if bypassed deals 666.7% damagelast researchable increases damage by 20%overall damage boost: 359% (this increase shouldn't surprise you as you are increasing the liklihood of bypass by 50% relative to the default.
So to account for shields for effective damage, I believe they go up to 2400 don't they? By the time you've killed the hull, there are 1900 shields points left (just going with what you said since I don't want to recalculate it). Next, you find the number of hits that it took to reach that point through division: 65 hits on the hull and 38 (actually ~37.2, but I rounded up since you can't have a half-attack) on the shields. This totals to 104 hits.
Now, before I go farther, you should notice something. The above does not work. The above should reflect the number of hits on hull to shield, but as it turns out, your math was flawed. You should have had that otherwise. 65/.45 does not equal 38/.55; instead you end up with 144.444 and 69.091. I suppose this means that I will have to redo that part...
Well, then, if we have 65* hits on hull to deal 3000 damage, that means that we will have (divide by .45 and multiply by .55) 80 hits* on shield. That comes out to be 1032.778 damage to shields, not the number you got. This means that when you kill it, it will still have ~1370 shield points or 56.97% of them. Next, you note the rate at which it traditionally damage the shields versus the rate of the hull. The shields dealt 13 damage per shot whereas hull shots dealt 65.
Next, you move on to amount of shots it would have taken a normal weapon dealing 13 DPS to kill the ship in question. 2400+3000=5400 total health points. Now, every shot must deal 13 damage rather than the occasional heavy hitter that deals 65. This means that it will take 415 shots to bring it down. Then, you divide by the number of shots it took Phase Missiles which is 145. This gives you a multiplier of 2.862x.
Last, you tack on that 2.862x to the overall damage boost from earlier and you end up with 10275%. In short, Phase Missiles effectively deal 10.3 times as much damage as every other weapon.
So, yes I was wrong earlier, but it appears I underestimated it, not overestimated. In the case that these numbers are wrong however, feel free to correct me, but I don't think they are...
In the question given earlier, why wouldn't one Assailant kill one Capital? Well, first off, you should understand that capitals deal way more damage and have way more health than one single Assailant. This goes beyond what phase missiles add and thus one-on-one, the capital will win. This is excluding SC and abilities that would shred the Assailant btw... In other words, the capital wins.
*This is not what would actually happen in game. In reality, the hit counts would be significantly higher and the damage counts per shot would be lower. For our purposes however, it is the ratio between the two that counts.
well your wrong. First:
45+65 =110%
45+55=100% (durh)
if you threw 100 missles, 45 hit the hull, 55 hit the shield... not 45/65.
when i said the 500 damage to shield, i believe my calculater said somehing like 533.333,
ok... 30% shield bypass, 85% shield mitigation.
30% of the time (.3) we do damage of 1. 70% of the time, we do damage of .15
we compare this to 100% doing .15...
so... .3*1+.7*.15 = .405 << that is how much damage you do in comparison to the infocard (not including armor modifiers)
*1.2 (for NME warheads) = .486.
we no divide this by non-upgraded damage... (.15) to get 3.24... or 324% base damage.
45% shield bypass, 85% shield mitigation
45% of the time (.45) we do damage of 1. 55% of the time, we do damage of .15...
so... .45+.55*,15 = .5325 *1.2= .639 /.15 = 426% increase in damage (the exact same number i came up with before)
Now, i understand how your getting your incorrect numbers.... 666%*.3*1.2... ya, see that incorrectly multiplies the damage boost of the NME by the unmitigated damage vs mitigated damage. the correct way, there, would be (6.66*.3+.7)*1.2 = 324%
in the same way... (6.66*.45+.55)*1.2 = 426% damage boost.
Ok... for our ship with 3000 hull and 2400 shields... and... lets give it some armor... a maxxed out radiance has 12.1 armor... 12 is simple and nice and round.
Now: 1 phase missle does 78 damage. this is in the raws.
78*1.2 (for NME) = 93.6 damage. but, antimedium gets a .75 multiplier against capital armor.
if that missle hits the shields... it will do 78*1.2 *.75*.15 damage. (after shield mitigation has gone up to max)
10.53 damage to the shield.
now... if that missile bypasses the shields... it will do 78*1.2 *.75*.625 (.625 is how much a weapon does against 12 armor vs 0 armor) or 43.875 damage the the hull.
Now... if we multiply these by the numbers by the chance of the missle hitting either the shields or hull... we can get an average of what our single phase missle will do.
so: on average one phase missle will do: 10.53*.55 = 5.7915 damage to shields, and 43.875*.45 = 19.74375 damage to hull.
now... if we have 3000 hull to eat through, we divide that by 19.74375 to find out how many phase missles it will take...
151.94.... 152 phase missles. those 152 phase missles will do 880 damage to the shields. (more, actually, due to shield mitigation ramp up) the ship will have around 1500 shields left.
(yes, that means if you have 150 assailants you will get refrackingdiculously close to 1hk0ing a maxed out lv10 advent capital ship.)
NOW... to find out the damage bonus... we need to figure out how many phase missles it would take to pop that capital ship WITHOUT upgrades...
so... each phase missle now does 78*.75*.15 damage... or 8.775 damage. agaisnt the hull, it does 78*.75*.15*.625... 5.4854 damage. so... 2400 shields/8.775 273 phase missles to drop the shields... 3000/5.4854...547 phase missles to destroy the hull. 820 phase missles.
we now divide this 820 by our 152... and we find that the upgraded phase missles kill the lv10, advent, 12 armor capital ship 5.3948 times faster... or simply, are 539.48% more effective than unupgraded.
I will now redo the entire calculations... but this time, i will use the ACTUALL hull and shields of the radiance... and i will throw in a single subverter using shield disruption.
a maxxed out radiance (no pacts) has 4381 shields and 3913 hull, and 12.1 armor.
a subverter manages to get close enough to cast disrupt shields.
that radiance, in its own culture now has 75% (65+10(forlevel)+10(forresearchandculture)-10) max shield mitigation, and will have to face 30+15+25=70% phase missle bypass.
78*1.2 *.75*.25 = 17.55 damage per phase missle that hits the shields.
78*1.2 *.75*.6230529595 = 43.7383 damage per phase missle that hits the hull.
on average, each phase missle will do 5.265 damage to shields, and 30.6168 damage to hull.
127.8 phase missles.... 128 assailants to 1hko a maxxed out radiance. it will have slightly less than 3708 shields left when it dies. (assuming exactly 70% of the phase missiles bypass the shields.)
so: to prove i am right... who wants to get a lv10 radiance for me to pop? I cant just use volt, cause i need a tec ally to give meh missle pact... and help feed a radiance to lv10.
Now... continuing on... unupgraded phase missles wil ldeal 78*.75*.25 damage to shields... and 78*.75*.25*.623053 damage to hull (14.625, and 9.11215)... to eat through 4381 shields, we need 299.55 phase missles, and 429.4 to breach the hull. 729 phase missles. we divide by our 128, to give a 569.52% increase in the effective damage due to the phase missle upgrades.
without the subverter, it would take 1215 unupgraded phase missles to kill the lv10 radiance.
so... not including regen, repair bays, guardians, shield restore or perseveriance... the difference between those 128 assailants (768 supply) it would take almost 60 seconds for the assailants to kill the radiance, without the subverter, and without the upgrades.... vs instapopping. (due to the cool down of 6 seconds, thats where your 1000% inprovement comes in... (well, slightly less)... actually 949%.
point is... volt... in order to reach the rediculous numbers you a comming up with... I have to add on another modifier you never accounted for.. in this case subverters. (last time it was missle pacts)
THERE ARE NO MORE MODIFIRERS. well, wait, i guess you could have a ceilo using designate target... but thats just reaching even higher levels of rediculous.
So: please! devs! all I am asking in the OP, is to please please please make it take 154 assailants to instapop the lv10 advent capital ship instead of 128! just reduce the modifier of phase missles vs capital ships from .75 to .6... and .5 to .4... its still rediculous! just slightly less so.
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