The only way the corvette could be more OP is to give the little sob fighters of its own, then it will, as it's done to Heavy/Light/AntiFighter, make also the Carrier frigate not worth building.
You have to get at least 5 military labs to develop your fleet. You must lay out lots of credits, metal, and crystal, then work up your fleet supply. Finally, you build up your fleet carefully choosing what you think is the ideal loadout. 1-2 capitals leveled up to at least 3. Frigs/Cruisers have all their abilities. Ready to go.
But the other player is Tech Loyalist, but it doesn't matter, who built up their economy with 3-4 civilian labs and 2 military lab and you are screwed without realizing it while your titan builds slowly and expensively. Why are you screwed? It is elementary my dear Watson. This player is corvette spamming and with an average supply of 3 and low cost has 70 of the little bastards just waiting. 70 of these monsters are gonna barrel your first capital with 2100 raw damage on the first inbound run. But wait... your pain isn't over yet because as they race off giggling they fire a parting shot each for another 1750 raw damage. If you had some fighters, they aren't in great shape either.
So, careful player with mixed fleet, titan in the works, 2 capitals doing nifty... 1 just got pounded with 3850 damage on first run. Mitigation aside, on the next pass he nails the other capital, then works through your fleet so the mitigation drops on that first capital -then he pounds it and cycles through the targets.
How to avoid being screwed? Don't build anything except corvettes you silly willy.
How StarClad can make the game fun and not Corvettes of a Solar Empire:
Rescale 3x, make them fit between light and heavy.
Boost cost to between light and heavy cruiser, bump armor a tiny bit, boost Hull/Shields 3.5x, change back weapon to light and able to fire on fighters.
Boost Anti-Titan ability % values 4x to reflect that it now takes 1 ships to do what 4 did previously.
Require Tier 3 research instead of Tier 0 for corvette unlock.
These are anti-titan, so let players get their conventional fleets out and play the damn game as they have all through Trinity, even get their titan out and having some fun. Then, bring out the Corvettes. There is no reason to have such a powerful and spammable ship out so early.
Taking it one step further:
Not only do Corvettes, because of their tiny size, not feature repair/maintenance crews, they also cannot produce enough power to properly recharge their shields at full power. In other words, either the drive or the weapons shut down when the shield is recharging.
(In game terms, once the shield drops below 25%, weapons will disable whenever the ship is moving, basically it can only move or fire. Once the shield is above 25%, it recharges at half speed if both engines and weapons are engaged.)
I'd like to point out that SC have passive regen even if they aren't docked...
Flak ships (which are the same size if not smaller than CVs) also have passive regen...
It makes absolutely no sense to me that these combat ships would not have regen, yet smaller ships and civilian vessels would...
right, but conceptually, what is happening? the host craft is sending out new strikecraft and the damaged ones are flying in for repairs...
All in all, I wasn't saying it should be done because it makes more sense that way, I was suggesting it as a game mechanic because a lot of people think corvettes are over powered. This way, they are limited use, but if you're very careful, you can keep them for longer. But the amount of time you need to spend to keep them functional is directly proportional to the number of them you have fielded.... meaning, if you spam them, you will loose them quickly.
btw, i wouldn't go for the above suggestion of shutting down weapons and all. I suggested keeping shield regen for a reason. this will keep them in the fight for a long enough period of time that they can contribute, but they wont be around for the next unless your careful.
@AJ:
I'm certainly not offended that you didn't list making corvettes strike craft as a possible nerf suggestion, but it's more than just a cosmetic nerf.
If you limit corvette numbers in the same way that strike craft numbers are limited, you can effectively balance corvettes stat-wise by comparing them to strike craft. Specifically:
Of course, since fighters and flak frigates become the natural counter to corvettes, you have to think about rebalancing the relationship between fighters, flak, and bombers; I'm think increasing fighter acceleration and deceleration, increasing fighter turn rate, and reducing the chance for flak frigates to hit fighters would be appropriate.
Also, I'm of the opinion that since corvettes have three different weapons systems, they should get three different damage types, one per weapon system, to make them a jack of all trades.
As an example:
The average TEC fighter, with no upgrades, has:
Likewise, the average TEC bomber, with no upgrades, has:
If corvettes were available as a kind of jack-of-all-trades one-man-squadron gunship with shields and a special ability (and reduced alpha strike capability compared to fighters or bombers), targetable only by flak frigates and fighters, they would appear, hypothetically, as follows:
In this situation, you choose fighters for fleet protection; bombers for alpha strikes; and corvettes for a source of constant damage to light, medium, and heavy targets.
Discuss.
As I said, putting them on host craft does nothing for balancing them, it is purely visual.
What I read here, isn't "make them strike craft, therefore...", it's "make them strikecraft and... do some of those other things mentioned"
the only point you could maybe claim is that the replacement rate is diminished via the antimatter system, which just means people will use the carrier capitals more, and basically, you nerfed corvettes and buffed carrier capitals, which are doing just fine as is. If it was a severe enough nerf, they'd be as effective as the advent mine squadrons. And you'd lose the patrol-craft like roll they currently have, which is nice.
No...that is not happening conceptually at all...the SC repair even during combat, and no hand waving argument is going to convince me that an SC can both heal (while allegedly docked) and be chasing enemy SC at the same time....
The idea of CVs being sort of "heavy SC" or gunships or whatever is interesting...I wish SD would consider it as well as other alternatives (such as planetary defense ships)...such design decisions, however, would require many other concurrent changes in order to make the system interesting but balanced...for this reason, I am assuming that little to no fundamental changes will occur to corvettes...
As such, I'm advocating simpler "tweaks" such as a DPS nerf...to be honest, this passive regen thing seems silly to me...
All that is needed for Corvettes is for them to require Tier 3 research to unlock or require the last Titan research to unlock, then change the front and back composite weapons to medium weapons.
That isn't really the way I was pitching it, but I guess when I say 'conceptually' I mean 'pretend this was reality for a minute'.
Magic healing fairy dust is not standard issue on ships when I 'conceptualize', but to each his own.
Every suggested fix has had it's draw backs. The drawback here is that Advent could use another early game ship. If you say okay, well tier 3 for everyone except advent, then you've just let Advent have too much of an advantage. If you then try to nerf the corvettes, then you don't necessarily have to move it's tier, though you do have the option.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying I think that's a bad idea, but I want to make sure when people say "this is the fix" and others disagree or advocate something else, it's because there are other consequences.
Well obviously it should be...they sure as hell aren't using unmagical healing fairy dust...
So...give them the same type of damage as LRFs? So now LFs are marginalized more, and LRFs are still useless...I think you'd be better offing modding the damage table for composite weaponry than giving CVs a different pre-existing damage type...
Slamdunk...
I realize this is an old post now, but i still feel the Corvettes are OP, I was still able to crush everything with them i my last game.
So here is my suggestion:
How about making the Corvs a sort of strike craft, but not really a strike craft at all. How about having the corvs as something you can build after your titan is done. The corvettes could either only be avalible for building at a frig factory in the same well as the titan, or you could make it so the only thing in the game able to produce corvs is the titan. Further, you could limit them by saying they can only be in the same fleet as the titan, so like strike craft, they are limited to the fleet with their "mothership" in it. If that fleet leaves a corvette behind, the corvette will try to catch up while it starts to fairly rapidly degrade. You would not have to limit the number of corvs you could build (other than supply), and you would get ONE fleet that is totally kickass, not fifteen.
What do you guys think?
I think corvettes should have their damage nerf'd a little but should preform differently. In general corvettes are seen to be anti strike craft or anti capital, requiring frigate support and up to let them hit capitals with the same strength as just below a cruiser.
When you have them made to be a counter against strike craft in games or sci fi lore then they usually don't have some dedicated anti fighter platform like a flak frigate. But you do in sins, so I think they should have some kind of weapon performance which makes then good against large ships but rather ineffective against other ships, like how some SB weapons do less damage to non caps.
For example, in homeworld 2 you had 2 types of corvettes, you had a hard hitting but slow firing corvette, good for the larger, tougher ships. And then you had an anti bomber / fighter one, with lots of small, fast guns which could keep strike craft at bay. The corvettes were cheap but not too cheap, just a bit cheaper then the frigates. The corvettes on their own were quite ineffective, they were easy prey but when you put them in a fleet they were good for evening the odds in a fight against a capital.
Make it so either they have an effect where they are only effective against large ships and are weaker against other classes and are structurally weak. Then you could bump up their resource cost and they would play out as a specific counter, if you don't have the capital support / numbers to take on a strong enemy capital fleet, then you can get corvettes and use them to even the odds in a fight between capitals you can't match up against. Think of it as a ship small and fast enough to avoid the heavy hitting capital guns, but a large enough body to put on a weapon good at cutting through thick armor. You wouldn't use armor piercing rounds against a lightly armored vehicle for instance. But against something big its going to go through it and hit SOMETHING important.
So I say either do something like that OR make an actual anti-corvette specific craft which would be able to take on 6-8 corvettes on its own.
Aren't repair nanites an unmagical healing fairy dust? I guess repair bots are unmagical healing fairy rocks? I always figured the ships had a basic version of the races support cruiser repair ability. Not sure for Advent, maybe they use psionic fairy dust.
This is, I think, the true problem: everybody has their own idea of what the corvettes should do, and what it is actually good at. They rarely overlap. Then when you try to compare these ideas to how it actually performs, the ship doesn't help matters because it's schizophrenic:
That is the most apt description I could come up with for them, and I think it is missing a lot of what they are trying to encompass.
Looking at actual naval corvettes they have apparently never been too popular, too small / weak to be involved in anything more then patrol and merchant escort.
I think for corvettes to be balanced we need to fit a purpose on them, whether its dedicated anti cap or something else. Because atm until they are made more expensive then LF's they are going to be used on mass. Especially as they are so early in the tech tree.
I mean
That sounds like it would fit within a fleet structure, but because we can tech for them so so early and because they are cheaper then everything else, why have anything else? I mean heavy cruisers for their punch and ability to take hits, capitals for obvious reasons but why get light frigates that need corvette support if they are in-superior in most ways, and sure you might have long range frigates and frigates that make up the body of a fleet but when you could have 2-4 corvettes instead of said frigates, and cheaper, then that voids anything other then HC's or caps.
giving corvettes their own weapon class and armor would at least let modders solve the imbalance.
That's really the best solution at this point. Flak can't be made better against them without flak shredding fighters even worse and their weapon effectiveness can't be gimped without nerfing heavy cruisers.
Anti-corvette splash-mines that autocast every three seconds
This has been asked for so many times, I'm convinced SD now just refuses to do it out of spite...
It looks like the corvettes were reblanced.
I did some testing today and here are the Results:
1. 1 LF against 2 Corvettes --> 300,55,0 5 vs 380,40,20 6 --> Lf won heavy damaged --> Lf soft counters Corvettes
2. 2 Flak against 6 Corvettes --> 750,80,50 8 vs 1140,120,60 18 --> both Flak survied one with very low hp --> Flak hard counters Corvettes
3. 2 Flak against 7 Corvettes --> Corvettes won with 5 loses
On my opinion, this means the Corvettes are nearly balanced (perfekt balance dont exist).
You can counter them with Lf and dont need to buy a military lab and reseach them. If you need a fast counter.
Or you can buy two military labs and reseach Flak Frigates. If you scouted his Fleet and have enough time.
With a soft counter that is always available and a hard counter that is only a little bit harder to get as the corvette itself iam fine.
Sry for my english iam not a native speaker.
There is a problem when you use very small or very large amounts of ships...for very small amounts, things like passive hull/shield regen come more into play as well as statistical variance...as you add more ships, side and rear weapons (things relevant to flak and corvettes) become more and more useful....
In essence, flak and corvettes become stronger as you transition from smaller fleets to larger fleets, so very small experiments (especially if you don't have lots of trials) have limited value...
not to mention that corvettes main defense is spending as little time in weapons range as possible. very circumstantial to get any test you do. The flak test probably is closer to reality than the LF test due to flak having 360 degree weapons coverage. However, as Seleuceia pointed out, your fleet sizes might be skewing the results.
See if you get the same results with a 5-fold increase in fleet sizes (ie 5 LF against 10 Corvettes; 10 Flak vs 30 Corvettes; 10 Flak vs 35 Corvettes).
If you do or it's too close to call, try a 10-fold increase.
Also, I'm sure there's a difference between races and/or factions.
If the TEC got say... DU rounds that went through strikecraft/corvettes, and Advent got a passive firing ability that gave a 5% chance on a normal ship, and 40% on a covrvette that would double the damage and take the extra damage points from the shield... and the Vasari area of attack ability for their flak missile frigate got a buff towards corvettes... something like bonus damage to corvettes... id say theyd be spam proof. Since then, the Advent get a powerful anti corvette weapon, thatd annihilate them, and the TEC and Vasari can better take on large numbers.... The TEC ability would also be passive and decrease in damage as it passes through a target, and has a max amount of targets before it cant go through a target.
Thatd balance them nicely.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
