Some of you may be familiar with the first mod I worked on, Olympus. In it, each race would receive more or less a titan ship. That said, it was ultimately abandoned because (a) I didn't have much time to work on it, and ( it would cause balance issues.
Titan ships by their very nature can cause problems with balance. If they are as powerful as described, I just feel that games may consist of races to see who can make a titan faster. Now, that's all well and good, except that it could become the focus of gameplay.
I just want to know how it would be balanced... Would it have long upgrade times like starbases and start weak so that you can kill it unless it's supported by someone with lots of money (and who will also probably have a fleet) or would something else be used? I just want to know how it won't be unbalanced...
I'd personally like to see everything (well maybe not fighters, but almost everything) deal base damage to a titan. No particular fleet composition has any advantage over any other, all that matters is how well you command your fleet and how big it is.
This is pretty much what capital-type armor already is:
Anti-very-light (flak) : 25%Anti-light (fighter) : 50%Anti-medium (LRF): 75%Anti-heavy (LF): 50%Anti-very-heavy (bomber): 60%Composite (HC): 75%Capital Ship: 100%
The only ones that stick out are the light frigate (which is too fast a unit to buff versus capital ships) and the bomber (which got a much-needed nerf in that department quite recently). Everything else is either strictly anti-light (flaks and fighters) or deals 75%.
It's not damage modifiers that make bombers so dangerous in the late game. It's a combination of their speed, focus fire potential, immunity to regular attacks, and ability to synchronize attack runs that make them so deadly. Big targets like capital ships and starbases can really get pummeled in the first few seconds of battle, with little recourse if you don't have the right capital ships in formation.
Yeah, but even so.. I guess titans will probably have enormous ranges, so LRF will probably be in range, so I don't mind the heightened damage done by them..
Honestly though, I'd be fine with anti-structure frigates being able to attack titans... It's not like they'll be fast moving and against something with that much hull...
In regards to the bombers, the mod I'm working on now has a new class of frigates that comes out in the seventh tier for the sole purpose of taking out late-game bomber first passes... The TEC one deals passive splash damage; the Advent passively reduce the damage of SC in their immediate vicinity; the Vasari passively reduce the damage to capitals and starbases against all sources. Something like DC's is the only solution I've ever seen to bomber barrages. Anti-SC frigates just don't cut it in the end. Capitals and starbases just pop in that first pass.
Who says Titans won't have antistrikecraft weapons? Further I suspect Titans will be tough enough to survive several passes from any number of bombers that players reach in a normal game. And if its really necessary, I suppose they could reduce the modifier from bombers so that any fleet of frigates would be a valid counter. Point is I doubt the Devs are going to let bombers be the counter to Titans as well.
That is definitely a valid point... If titans did have anti-sc guns, that would definitely increase survivability...
Titans are large enough to be a structure, have them take structural damage instead . Titans should be able to outrun Vasari starbases so that the vasari . Considering vasari's late game advantage to movement, being the most vulnerable to a titan attack could be tweaked to make a good balance. Vasari might have a tougher time getting a starbase in close, but then they have phase missiles on their bombers so no worries, they will still be OP in the late game.
Also to be fair, the vasari always had a titan, it just had to be built in the gravity well. Its called the vasari starbase. Lol.
That's the other thing... Orky's might lose their movement advantage over other starbases... Surely though the disintegrators have to be able to punch holes in Athenian armor... I really do think that anti-structure frigates should be able to target titans...
I'm not too worried on this one. LRF cannot attack while kiting, so even if they do outrange the titan significantly it should still be able to close the distance pretty quickly.
The problem is that if multiple strike craft hit simultaneously, their damage is applied and then mitigation is adjusted. This means that if you synchronize your attack run, everything hits at minimum mitigation.
As I said, my fear is that Titans will be weak against bombers. There's no indication yet as to whether titans will have anti-strike craft capacity.
As I mentioned, bombers can sync their attack runs to hit at lower mitigations. This means that no matter how you cut it, those late-game first-strike bomber attack runs are going to outdamage anything else quite handily. Maybe it won't kill the titan, but it'll probably leave it heavily damaged.
The only significant difference this would entail is that they would be weaker to bombers.
Adjudicators are pretty worthless against single-targets to begin with, so this is pretty much an Ogrov-specific buff. Depending on how TEC's late-game balance plays out in Rebellion, that might be either reasonable or completely unwarranted.
I recall me and some others testing this a while back but we didn't see a difference between instantaneous attacks and attacks a few seconds apart (after mitigation updates). I'll do another test to see what happens...
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/409023
If it's truly instantaneous, then it should all go through, though it's always going to be staggered slightly in practice which would probably explain your results. You should be able to get some of the bombers to hit at the same tick, but not all will...
Considering you're looking at an effective quadruple damage from the ones that do hit on the same tick, you don't need too many to have a significant impact.
Just did a test using about 15 light frigates. I lined them all up and had them fire at a neutral LF so they were oriented correctly (so they would fire instantly when ordered), then told them to stop firing, waited for the enemy frigate to repair itself (took a while), and then had all my LFs fire again in a single volley. Assuming the theory that mitigation takes at least a tick to kick in, damage was significantly less than it should have been - one volley from one frigate did 41 damage, one volley from each of 14 frigates firing at once did 364 damage when it should have done around 574 damage. A huge difference.
Therefore, I'm pretty sure mitigation increases are calculated after every hit, inside of a tick (or something with an equivalent outcome).
Test it yourself if you want. It's really simple to set up.
Well, that't not necessarily the same thing LF do damage via volleys whereas bombers deal damage via a single hit. Since both are backloaded... That might explain the discrepancy...
I don't get the difference. Both units fire at once, then have a weapon cooldown time of a few seconds, then are able to fire again, and both are backloaded...
Just tested the same thing with bombers: it still seems as if mitigation is applied immediately, between shots, or something equivalent. One volley or pass from a single bomber squadron did 93 damage: the same from 12 bomber squadrons very close together did only 632 damage.
So attempting to synchronize all of your bombers to hit a capital ship at once doesn't really have much of an advantage over those bombers attacking the capital ship over a 10-second period, where the bombers are spread out.
Seems to me there would be some sort of countermeasure you could build to help defend against the Titan.
The best "countermeasure" will probably be the ability to attack the enemy while they're spending all their resources trying to research and construct it.
I guess I'm imagining it to be like a sort of Krogoth from Total Annihilation: extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive to build, but once it's operational, the game is basically over. So, the important tactics revolve around what you do with your fleet while the process is going on.
Corvettes are being introduced with Rebellion as well, so they might be a counter or have some role in this.
I doubt corvettes will do that much. They'll probably just be the new scouts. Small and fast ships that supplement your fleet with a few more light guns, but that's about it.
bombers are just small fast ships but if you get a swarm of them, they can be trouble. but who knows?
How about having one choice(per game):Superweapons or Titans?
Small, fast, and high damage. They're either the highest or second-highest overall damage dealer on a per-command basis, depending on which faction we're talking about.
I really hope that the Titans aren't severely overpowered and that they don't thus destroy the game. If so, then one of the rules of online multiplayer PvP will end up being "no titans". If, during the Beta, it becomes obvious that they cause a game play problem, then perhaps they'll need to add a "No Titans" option to the game settings. So far I've been pretty disturbed based on that screenshot of a titan more than dwarfing a Kol.
I'm sure that's going to be the main focus point of the beta, to make sure they aren't that over powered. I'm willing to bet that they'll take so long to deploy the vast majority of multiplayer games will have already been decided, but it certainly is a concern.
Usually people are so worried that endgame units may be too strong that in most rts game the last endgame units are actually useless.
Like you said they take too long to deploy and the game winner side is already decided by the time someone can make one and they arent strong enough to give the loser a slight chance to win again.
Or even if they are somewhat strong, compared to a bunch of smaller units costing the same overall resources, they are less effective (and you can make that bunch of small units earlier).
It would be nice for once that an endgame unit is actually strong enough to turn the tide of the battle a bit and make a difference in a match, but of course is still not enough to guarantee you a win if you made it first (unless you were already winning the game anyway).
So rather than being worried about the titans being overpowered I' m worried about them being useless like in most rts.
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