[DISCLAIMER: all suggested modifications to abilities and stats are meant as a proof of concept- the numbers aren't final and are only included to give a rough estimate of the changes- please focus any feedback on the ideas behind the changes rather then only on whether the current numbers are balanced(though numbers feedback is also useful)]
General Analysis of the Role of Battleships
It's well known that 2 of the games three battleships are rather sub-par. Battleships as a whole have been designed to be "pure-combat" ships with less in the way of utility/late game fleet support then most other capitalships, but contribute more in the way of firepower then, for example a colony or support capitalship.
This really should mean the battleships should excel in the early game, when the added firepower of one combat-focus ship to a small fleet makes a larger difference to your total fleet potency then fleet-support skills which scale better into the late game when most of a fleet's firepower comes from it's large complement of frigates.
The problem is of course that it's hard to justify battleships as a means of boltering early firepower when frankly for the advent & TEC carriers posses superior firepower at a greater range with more flexibility(fighters for anti-light damage, bombers for anti-module). I will discuss the firepower of battleships relative to carriers more thoroughly in the next section.
Firepower of Battleships and Carriers Contrasted
The core of this problem lies in the fact that carriers start with 3 extra squads of strikecraft, and by level 10 have 6 more squads then a battleship. By contrast the radiance's weapons exceed the DPS of the weapons of the Halcyon by about 20 DPS at level 1, and somethign around 38-40 extra damage at level 10.
3/6 squads of fighters have roughly 12*3/12*6=36/72 DPS(=48/96 damage against light armor, 18/26 against most other armor types) 3/6 squads of bombers have about 17*3/17*16=51/102 DPS(which is 33/66 DPS against capitalships, 51/102 DPS against heavy cruisers, & 25/50 against most other ships).
There's something to be said about the battleship damage being dependable whereas strikecraft squads can be damaged and destroyed to be sure. But IMO that is more then made up for by the fact that strikecraft have an enormous range advantage and can focus fire(whereas the battleships divide their DPS between banks targeting separate enemies).
The point is even before abilities come into play carriers have a firepower advantage on the battleship- this is not the only issue of course(radiance & Kol have ship specific issues as well unrelated to their battleship status).
Consequently I believe the less powerful battleships could be remedied by improving their firepower. I think the best way to do so is by buffing seperate abilities to improve firepower in ways focused on different types of enemies- that way the player can specialize the firepower of their battleship to meet the situation much as a carrier can be loaded with fighters or bombers to meet the situation(though since skills learned are permanent and can't be swapped like strikecraft the skills shouldn't be too specifically focused).
So What Makes a Battleship "Work"?:
So far the two battleships which are actually viable are the kortul and the discord(we'll see when the vasari are in whether their new battleship is any good). I'll focus mostly upon the Kortul as it fills a more traditional battleship role then the discord(which is as much a support debuff boat as a battleship despite the name).
So what traits do these ships have that the radiance & Kol lack? Well both despite being strong early game combatants with good offensive firepower abilities also have some degree of late game utility(jam weapons & AM draining attacks for kortul, Armor reduction & Lethargy for the Discord)- this is primarily an area which the Kol falls short(radiance has DA).
That said, the biggest area the Kortul excels where the other battleships fail is in it's high sustained firepower and durability via Power Surge. Power Surge allows the Kortul to match if not exceed the firepower of a carrier, and become fairly durable it's self making it a very potent addition to early game fleets which are small enough that capital-ship firepower is a large portion of total fleet firepower.
Honestly I think the biggest problem with the radiance and Kol is just that- they can't compete with carriers in terms of early game firepower. Specifically the radiance lacks the tools(only one basic ability deals damage and the damage isn't really the focus of that ability) and the Kol has the tools(Gauss Railgun can put out some serious damage if spammed) but lacks the AM to keep up with it's ability's AM demands. That said, being that the biggest flaw in radiance specifically has always been early firepower(even in diplomacy) I can't understand why DA dmg/sec was heavily nerfed in rebellion. Seriously it went from 16.67/26.67/33.33 DPS in diplomacy to 12/14.9/17.8/20.7 DPS in rebellion.
The last part of the equation is durability- the Kol has this in spades(it mostly lacks in the previous areas). The radiance however doesn't. EAA is definitely the world of the 4 battleship "survival mechanism" even considering it is passive(this is in large part due to the fact that advent fleet synergy being what it is, by the time a capitalship is taking hull damage it's already in dire straights). That said, personally I think any deficits in survivability are far less important then the lack of early game firepower.
Ship Specific Discussions:
The Kol:
The Kol's biggest problem is and always has been that it has 3 active abilities, two of which have short cooldowns and are primarily meant to just deal damage(which means to really boost Kol's sustained damage output they need to be spammed). The Kol's AM simply can't keep up. Flak burst is particularly an AM hog.
Another more specific issue is that Flak Burst is unreliable unlike other Anti-SC ablities doesn't "buy time". If flak burst doesn't actually kill any squads(as it often won't in it's first shot) your ships are going to take the full brunt of the bomber attack even after using flak burst(which has a very high AM bost btw). Moreover the effectiveness of Flak burst varies drastically based o who your opponent is- Vasari bombers have roughly twice the hull of advent bombers. this makes the ability difficult to balance as balancing it against the advent means leaving it useless against the vasari and balancing it against the vasari will make it too hard of a counter to advent SC. Flak burst needs something new- something that levels it's effect against all race's strikecraft so that it's effect can be balanced accounting for all races.
Because of these first two issues the first change I would propose is to make Flak Burst far stronger, but on a much longer cooldown(less of an AM burden & strong enough that the first casting has a quantifiable effect on the coming bomber swarm).
As many have suggested over the years, making Adaptive Forceshield Passive would help ease Kol's AM problems a bit(heck with it's duration it pretty much has 100% uptime already).
Gauss railgun I don't think needs any new effects, but could use a small AM cost reduction- It's post shield DPS is actually pretty comparable to that of the Jarrasul's Nano-dissembler(whic his IMO a good example of a sustained damage ability), but the AM cost per second of spamming Gauss railgun every 8 seconds is massively larger then keeping nano-disassembler running. If they AM costs were similar the two might be pretty comparable(-50% speed>-3/4/5/6 armor but Nanon dissaembler may be maintained on up to 3 targets).
SO I think my proposed changes would be something along the lines of:
Gauss Railgun: reduce AM costs by 5 or 10 at all ranks
[comments: nothing fancy here, just a modest AM cost reduction ]
Flak Burst: Increase cooldown to 25 seconds. Instead of dealing damage instantly destroys the 2/4/6/10 Nearest squads of enemy strikecraft and deals damage to each other strikecraft in the area equal to 30/40/50/60% of it's maximum hull points(damage still reduced by armor).
[comments: After a great deal of thinking the only real way to make Flak burst equally useful against all types of strikecraft I really felt went with the theme of the ability was damage based on target health. This also prevents later game strikecraft with hull upgrade research from becoming super resistant to flak burst. The 2/4/6/10 squads instantly destroyed means flak burst WILL always reduce the impact of the approaching bomber swarm it is used to counter. Moreover I think it's fair as even at max rank it essentially destroys a squad every 3 seconds on average- which isn't all that far off the rate carrier capitalships produce strikecraft for no AM. Also for those leary of '% of max hull' damage, vasari bombers top out at what? 175*ish* health? the ability would in that case cap out at 105 damage against the beefiest strikecraft(so about 1.5x current effect, less against frailer ships)]
Adaptive Forceshield(passive): Reduces all damage dealt to the Kol by 10/15/20/25% and grants it 14/21/28/35% phase missile block.
[comments: a little bit weaker then the current effect, but up 100% of the time with no AM cost. it's WAY better then the radiance's EAA at the very least. ]
Altenative Adaptive Forceshield(passive): Increases shield mitigation by 4/6/8/10% and 4/21/28/35%
[comments: This one would in general be slightly stronger then the first damage against damage that doesn't bypass shield mitigation, but would be a bit vulnerable to effects that do(with the phase missile block this mainly means it would be weaker to abilities that bypass shields). That said this one also has the advantage of being very simple. ]
Base Stats: Increase the damage of the kol's autocannons a bit- nothing huge, maybe a 10-15% boost
[comments: The greater spammability of Gauss should give the kol some anti-capital ship DPS, this change would give it a bit more anti-frigate firepower- they would also make the splash damage from it's ult a bit stronger]
These changes would IMO fix the Kol's problems. It's AM supplies would actually be able to keep up with it's ability use, It would have more sustained firepower in general(possibly rivaling that of a carrier), and to top it all off it would actually have a strong and more importantly reliable anti-SC ability(actually probably the strongest early-mid game due the the relatively smaller numbers of strikecraft present)
The Radiance:
The Radiance is a bit more complicated. It doesn't even really have the tools at present to compete with a carrier in offense. It's clearly meant to be a pseudo-tank w/ animosity/EAA, but frankly no capitalship can really tank late game so past the early game the Radiance can't really perform this purpose.
That said Radiance can already be useful late game just via DA & cleansing brilliance, so I will focus primarily on buffing the radiance's early game.
First off, boost DA damage. There was no reason this should have been nerfed in rebellion(Radiance was already UP because of lack of earlygame firepower in diplomacy, so why nerf the damage of it's highest priority skill to level up?). That said I would primarily like to buff the lower ranks of it's damage output to target the early game, so perhaps have the dmg/sec be constant at all ranks(after all the total damage per cast already scales up with rank via the duration increasing and getting closer to the cooldown).
I know many people's reaction may be "DA is already great, why buff it?" simple, DA is good enough that it will generally be skilled first meaning any buffs to other skills past rank1-2 don't really see play in the early game...you can only really buff the early game by buffing abilities people actually have points in early game. Buffing DA is practical for this reason(and frankly it's mostly just rolling back an unnecessary nerf to an already UP ship)
Honestly buffing DA's damage could probably give the radiance plenty of anti-capital ship firepower, so next I will focus upon giving it some anti-frigate firepower. The best candidate for this feels like animosity as that ability is already tailored toward wading into a mass of frigates. So perhaps add a secondary effect that improves Radiance's ability to engage multiple enemies.
Granting a bit of extra survivability to EAA may be nice as well(for the taunting battleship it's a bit odd that radiance is by far the squishiest battleship), but is less important then other changes.
Anyway without more ado my propositions would be:
Detonate Antimatter: increase dmg/sec to 25 at all ranks.
[comments: total damage per 20 seconds in trinity: 200/400/600 With my changes total damage per 20 seconds would be: 300/390/480/570 . Still slightly lower at rank 4 then trinity rank 3, but stronger at lower ranks(not to mention it's still better overall at rank 4 as it has an extra 3 seconds of duration compared to trinity rank 3). I think this would be a reasonable way to give the Radiance much needed single target firepower(and frankly being that the damage didn't overpower radiance in trinity this should be fine as well). ]
Animosity: additionally for the duration of animosity Radiance's weapons banks may attack one additional enemy and have their rate of fire increased by -15/0/15/30%
[comments: I know this sounds big: consider the following though: Kortul's 'Power Surge' essentially improves weapons damage output by 25/50/75% and is up 67/71/75% of the time(I don't know the rebellion values). Meaning it cast every cooldown it is roughly a 16.3/35.5/56.2%. By contrast Animosity is up at most 20/35=about 57.1% of the time. With my proposition animosity would constitute a 33.5/57.1/80.7/104.2% increase in weapons damage, but divided among twice as many targets(and dependant on having that many targets to reach it's full potential). The slightly higher damage boost is compensated by the reduced focusfire. As for the other effects: considering Power surge has a better uptime compared to it's cooldown I think it's shield regen is about as useful as animosity's default effect. Also this would make animosity into a great visual lightshow in large battles . Also I realize the rank 1 reduces weapon fire rate seems weird. I initially had it at +0/10/20/30%, but wasn't satisfied with the distribution of bonuses as compared with 'Power Surge']
Base Stats: Shift some of Radiance's base shield points and shield points per level into hull and hull per level so that a larger percentage of it's health is in the form of hull.
[comments: Making more of radiance's health come from hull instead of shields relative to the other advent capitalships would be an easy way to buff EAA without adding anything more complicated to that ability. Moreover Advent capitalships are renowned for squishyness due to their low hull points- having their capitalship that is intended to serve as a pseudo tank eb the only exception to this rule would make the ship very unique in the Advent arsenal(possibly a good choice for combating vasari Evacuators/phase missiles? ]
Conclusion:
Well a discussion of battleships, what makes a battleship "good" and what can be done for the ships of this class which are subpar has been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks. Sorry if it is a bit of a rant, I tried to structure my thoughts as best I could at a moments notice(though I'll likely be editing this post over the course of the night).
Anyway any discussion on battleships, the general problems with the radiance/Kol, feedback to my proposed changes, or ideas of your own are welcome. Honestly I think the first step towards balancing the underpowered battleships is figuring out exactly what role battleships as an archtype should play in game strategy. I'm sure there's some controversy on the specifics of these issues, so let's hear some opinions!
Wow that's quite... comprehensive. I do agree that for battleships they seem to lack power relative to carriers. How to improve this will almost certainly take some hammering out but what you have looks great to me. I support this!
Also, now I see WHY the Kol isn't super three actives (4 with the ult) is a bit much. Changing adaptive forceshield a passive would be awesome!
I have one suggestion for the Radiance.
Completely at the bottom of the massive fin protruding from its belly there are two laser turrets, both pointed forwards indicating they should fire at frontal targets.
Yet, these two turrets never seem to fire at any targets at all.
How about enabling them to fire at frontal targets and giving the Radiance the equivalent laser damage buff for those two turrets suddenly being used for more than refrigerators.
When you look at capital ships(or even abilities/ships in general) there are two things that need to be understood about he way they are designed. One pure damage vessels do not work actually work, this is the primary reason for why the Kol and Radiance are seen as terrible is because of this innate problem that if it does to little damage it sucks, if it does to much damage its overpowered. This can be seen even in abilities, red button, chastic, etc. There are other cases of this that do not involve damage an example of this being Returning Armada, there is no inbetween in abilities like this.
The second point is that all capital ships are, are support ships combined with frigate/cruiser design.The Progenitor/Akkan/Jarrasul are essentially Colonizer Vessels.The Halcyon/Sova/Skirantra are essentially Carrier Cruisers.The Revelation/Marza/Vulkoras are essentially Siege frigates.The Rapture/Dunov/Antorak are essentially forms of the various Support Ships.The Kol/Radiance/Kortul have no function aside from LF/HC which are units that are supposed to be designed to deal damage. But they really do not have a clear indication of what their actual equivalents are.
The Kol for example, a very tanky ship, has a good ability to deal with Strike Craft through the use of Flak Burst, Gauss Rail Gun sucks lets move along, Adaptive Forcefield makes this ship even more tanky. Finest Hour Provides the Kol with the means to actually do some damage, give it antimatter regeneration, and hull repair further increasing its tankiness.The Radiance, scales to be a very tanky ship. Through the use of its Energy Absorptive Armor, Antimatter Detonate makes drains antimatter and disables abilities, animosity forces enemies to attack this ship. Cleansing Brilliance is a line nuke but requires a very good position to use it effectively and it cant even fleet wipe when fully charged even though it requires far greater positioning than the Marza.The Kortul is the only viable Battleship for multiple reasons. Its tankiness and damage is increased in one spell(power surge), its ability to deal with strike craft is very good because it essentially disables them for half a minute instead of having to have them destroyed through multiple waves of flak burst, Disruptive strike essentially functions as a way to disrupt antimatter flow to the enemy and reduces enemy ships ability cooldowns through autoattacks, is essentially the Kortuls "nuke".So what do these ships have in common exactly. What is their role.
Where does the problem come in? And why is the Kortul so good.If you actually look at the scheme of battle ships. They are essentially Heavy Cruisers(Built in Tankiness/damage), Light Frigates(A way to disrupt antimatter/abilities), and Flak(A way to deal with Strike Craft).
The Kortul has every single one of these traits. While the others are missing at least one of these traits, the Kol is missing a way to deal with abilities and the Radiance ways to deal with strike craft. To be honest the Kol is simple to fix switch Ion bolt with Gauss, the Akkan is already really good and would still be good even without Ion Bolt. Target Uplink/Colonize/Armistice are already some of the most powerful abilities in game and Gauss would not be to bad on the Akkan anyway. This would fulfill the Kol into a good niche of being able to deal with abilities as well as being a good Battleship, it could also get a nice compliment of Antimatter cost reduction.
The Radiance may be much more complicated it actually has really good late game scaling like the other battleships and is probably the most tanky capital ship late game. It does not suffer from the same problems as the Kol as its antimatter reserves are not a problem for the Radiance. As much as I may catch some flak(hehe) for this I think Animosity should be removed and be replaced with telekinetic push. Tanks are for WoW, it was a nice experiment but after the holy trinity was nerfed the whole tank thing was no longer viable.
This would also require giving the Halcyon a new ability. But this thread is not about the Halcyon so we will not discuss it. These changes may not make them top tier must have ships but it will give them a niche so that they may serve a purpose.
Excellent Post Mayal, and I definitely agree that it's a big factor that the Kortul can boost both offense and defense in a single ability.
Your post also made me think on the converse of that topic: another thing the kortul has that neither of the other two do is a "one point Wonder" ability- something that get's essentially can fufill it's entire purpose at rank 1(Jam weapons) and the increased ranks only boost how often it may be used.
The result is that it can get significant unitlity even from the skill it leaves at rank 1- which certainly makes it a bit easier to dump points in the other abilities that scale heavily to rank.
Also while I'm a bit hesitant to move abilities off of capitalships that are already good(Akkan/Halcyon), you raise a very good point about Battleships essentially being a meld of LF, HC, & flak(and more to the point Kortul being the only ship to fill all 3 roles). Personally I think I would err more on the side towards replacing Animosity or Gauss with something new rather then move abilities off existing viable ships and risking making another ship subpar. But then perhaps I'm a bit too much of an idealist
Also you're probably right that tanks don't belong in this sort of game- perhaps it is time that Radiance's kit were updated to reflect this distinction. Though it would be nice if we could find some other function for the taunt effect...it is a rather interesting and unique mechanic.
That said, very insightful post- exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping for. Already I'm happy with the direction this thread is going
Well, to be fair the Kol has a all in one ability to and thats Finest Hour, but that is unfortunately the Bricks level six ability. Another great way to buff the kol is considering it has four abilities it could make great use of having antimatter regeneration also put on Adaptive Forcefields. Its supposed to spam its abilities but it is unable to due to antimatter cost that cannot be obtained till six.
And nothing wrong with being an idealist, I am one to but the only problem is stardock will choose the less productive and easier way out of it then actually handle it with elegance(which is understandable considering the time restraints). Example, how they handled Corvettes I feel was terrible.
The only problem is getting stardock to actually listen to the advice given because I know they read the threads, but they very rarely interact with the community.
Before I say anything else, PROOFREAD YOUR POST! You'll be explaining one thing and suddenly jump elsewhere or neglect words in the middle of a sentence. It's quite hard to follow at times.
EDIT: due to the fact that I was ninja'd by Mayall, some things I'll say below may no longer be relevant. It took a while to type this.
I'll refer to Rebalanced Races as it is the summation of the beliefs of myself and others. RR doesn't focus on stats, but rather on abilities, so the buffs will not be located in stats, but rather abilities. The following changes are those that were made to the Radiance and Kol in RR:
Radiance
Animosity: deals 7/14/21 DPS to those ships that are affected
Detonate AM: leaks AM into the space around the target, dealing 5.5 DPS to SC and reducing their accuracy slightly
Explanation: Anim becomes an AoE that Malice can utilize to damage enemy ships, but more importantly, it gives the Radiance significantly more raw damage output against multiple foes. The combination of these things allows it to be selected viably even from the beginning of the game because it suddenly can engage more enemies simultaneously than any other capital.
Given that RR is a mod for Trinity (though will eventually be updated for Rebellion), it still uses the Trinity DPS rates which I agree on. DAM was given the secondary effect to give it a minor ability to counter SC. It's very easy to fly the SC away from the target ship, so it doesn't do a whole lot, but it does give it some fleet defensive assistance on a ship that otherwise cannot help it's own fleet aside from disabling one capital's abilities.
I'm also not a huge fan of the buff EAA, though I would be alright with the stat shift of some shields to hull for the ship, allowing EAA to be of more use.
Kol
Gauss Rail Gun: damage increased from 400/725/1050 to 550/1100/1650 and the speed detriment has been replaced with a shield mitigation reduction of 8%/12%/16%
Adaptive Forcefield: now passive, due to the fact that it does nothing to help the fleet at large and the Kol is the biggest AM hog in the game
Explanation: GRG damage in Rebellion is fine IMO, but the fact that it's a gimped version of Gravity Bomb has never set well with me for an ability that does better against structures than ships. As such, I replaced that debuff with a new debuff to shield mitigation, giving the Kol more use as a fleet ship because it weakens a target ship, allowing allied ships to punch through more easily.
AF has been made passive without a nerf. Why? Simple: it does nothing to support the fleet as a unit. AF is something that makes the Kol nigh immortal. Fire that would kill any other non-titan ship the Kol can shrug off because of it's stupendous health and this ability. As such, I saw no reason to nerf it for the transition. As most I've seen have said, AF made passive would open up AM for GRG and FB, making both far more viable, and thus allowing the Kol to exist in the first place. Buffing GRG then into something that helps a fleet would allow it to become less of a stubborn brick and more useful, and thus, more likely to be built.
Something that people repeatedly cite as evidence of the Kortul's "power" is Power Surge. Despite it's numeric boost to cooldowns, that really only results in a relatively small DPS increase. The reason that ability is powerful is that it allows the Kortul to temporarily tank large amounts of focus fire while wiping the AM out of any ship in the enemy fleet. The weapon cooldown reduction is effectively worthless for increasing DPS and rather it's primary purpose is to enhance the power of Disruptive Strikes, which is perhaps the best anti-AM ability in the game.
numOverTimeActions 1overTimeAction buffOverTimeActionType "RestoreShields" shieldRestoreRate Level:0 25.000000 Level:1 34.000000 Level:2 43.000000 Level:3 52.000000numEntityModifiers 1entityModifier buffEntityModifierType "WeaponCooldown" value Level:0 -0.250000 Level:1 -0.450000 Level:2 -0.660000 Level:3 -0.860000numEntityBoolModifiers 0numFinishConditions 2finishCondition finishConditionType "TimeElapsed" time Level:0 20.000000 Level:1 25.000000 Level:2 30.000000 Level:3 35.000000
Over the course of the buff, PS can regen 1820 shields, which at full mitigation can absorb more than 5200 raw damage, or forcing the enemy to output almost 150 DPS to overcome the regen value. Weapon cooldowns are handy, but really, at maximum level, they only double the DPS of the Kortul. That's "powerful", but for a ship that deals about 50 DPS, it's not a whole lot. Yeah, it'll bump DPS up to about 92 for the duration, but that's only the power of seven Assailants (which is 8 less fleet supply by the way) and have all of their damage in the form of phase missiles, making them immensely more powerful offensively.
Ultimately what things come down to is that Battleships are powerful, yes, but in the end, they can be outperformed by an equivalent group of frigates. I don't believe buffing their stats is going to make them work better or be more highly selected. Capitalships are powerful entities because of their abilities, not their weapons. To except this would be highly unusual and cause the ship to not properly scale into the late-game where they should also be useful if you ask me. Take the penultimate battleship: the Ragnarov. Is it feared more for it's direct damage output or abilities? Sure, it has massive batteries, but that doesn't make most of it's damage come from that source. Snipe can annihilate ships from across a gravity well. Shotgun can deal massive damage to the entire enemy fleet. It's guns are good, but it's abilities are awesome.
Ultimately, we can easily buff them so that they can take down any other capital one-on-one once engaged (a kiting carrier should still win obviously, though it should take a while due to anti-SC abilities), but without giving them absurd scaling damage, they'll be useless in the end in large end-game fleets. Giving them such damage scales would be somewhat illogical as a level 10 battleship might end up with more damage output than a titan which doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, a fresh battleship added into a late-game fleet becomes worthless because it would have to get more levels before it's damage output is high enough to make it worth the investment, which likely won't be the case because low-level battleships would just get FF'd to oblivion. It's like seeing a level 5 Marza. You kill it because of what it will be, not because of what it is.
They need to have power through abilities because if they don't, they won't stand a change late-game if freshly produced and I don't want to force people to spam battleships early on and hope some survive until later. Abilities that can support a fleet from level 1 in a way that is unique such as disabling abilities, draining AM, counter critical mass bombers, knocking down mitigation, etc are going to allow battleships to be built at any stage of the game, not damage output.
Anyways, I'll get off my soap box and give some general indications as to what I may adapt the above abilities into for RR for Rebellion.
Animosity: deals 6/12/18/24 DPS to those ships that are affected
Detonate AM: deals 13/16.3/19.7/23 DPS and leaks AM into the space around the target, dealing 5.5 DPS to SC and reducing their accuracy slightly
Explanation: simple adaptation of the abilities for Rebellion; no big changes from before
Gauss Rail Gun: damage increased from 400/670/940/1210 to 550/875/1200/1525 and the speed detriment has been replaced with a shield mitigation reduction of 7%/10.5%/14%/17.5%
Adaptive Forcefield: now passive; shield bypass resist changed from 25%/42%/58%/75% to 20%/32%/48%/65% and damage reduction from 15%/23%/32%/40% to 10%/16.7%/24.3%/30%
Explanation: with the addition of the fourth levels, I felt somewhat obligated to slightly nerf AF in it's conversion to passive while I also felt a comparative nerf from Trinity's RR version of GRG's direct damage was in order while allowing the mitigation debuff at level four to be more potent.
Ah, I remember when I used to post in giant walls of text (even if there were paragraphs), where I went in great detail explaining every nuance of reasoning behind the changes I was proposing.. I must be getting old after years on this forum in that I can no longer stand to read them all. So I'll just post what is already widely supported.
1. Passive adaptive shield/damage reduction on Animosity
2. Higher stats
I might also suggest an ability debuff on GRG (maybe that's what they tried with the speed debuff but it wasn't enough), so that all 3 battleships could be potent capitalship killers. The Kol and Kortul would also double as antistrikecraft while the Radiance tanked.
Volt im not entirely sure but does animosity effect strike craft. Because if it did, it would be an amazing anti strike craft ability with your rebalanced races mod. But I do find the buff to Detonate AM unnecessary but it would not hurt to have it.
As for the Kol I agree with the fact that Force Field should be a passive. But I still think Ion bolt is more fitting on the Kol than the Akkan.
Edit: Also those numbers for AF need a nerf as well because if you make it a passive it has a 100% uptime and does not need to have the same statistics.
I see where you're trying to go with Animosity, but first off, there's a target cap of 37 at level 4, meaning that it wouldn't be useful against SC. I suppose you could do a separate target cap+filter for them, but I'm not a big fan of that. Combined with the fact that TKP exists, there's no point. TKP would be significantly better and more useful than an anti-SC version of Animosity unless you caused Anim to deal damage, which defaults back to the current problems with balancing FB.
Animosity dealing a DoT creates a fantastic synergy with Malice, enabling players to get the ability before getting an Eradica with Chastic Burst, or just letting the Loyalists get it at all. The anti-SC functionality added to DAM was added to give the Radiance some capacity to counter SC. Not a huge buff, but enough to allow it to assist a Halcyon with TKP.
I'm also vehemently against swapping abilities as you have suggested. I honestly believe that GRG can work on the Kol, it's just that it by default doesn't have the ability to support a fleet properly, which IMO is the Kol's main problem, not that it can't take down abilities. Animosity would also be utterly useless on the Halcyon since you probably won't have it near the front line of combat because the radius of TKP is rather large while that of Animosity isn't and if you buff the range on it too much, it becomes a disabling tool all it's own simply because when under the influence of Anim, ships can't really do anything else that isn't an instant action. Jumping get's cancelled, movement gets aborted, channeled abilities are forgotten, etc and I don't want Animosity to be Gravity Bomb's ugly step-sibling.
I'm fairly certain it doesn't- at least the etitiy file only lists Frigate, Cap ship, and module. Would certainly be nice if it did though-bombers are one of the greatest expressions of terrifying focus fire, being able to dictate which cap ship some of the enemy bomber squads hate on would be useful....might make it difficult to actually taunt the enemies you want taunted with the target cap & strikecraft as valid targets though.
That said, that could be a fairly easy to sell to stardock way of adding some Anti-SC utility to the radiance.
Sorry about that; in the process of studying for finals and upon finishing my post I realized how little of the preceding hour I had actually spent studying . So I only gave it a hasty run proof read before dashing. on another break now, but I'll make sure to give it a more thorough read through later tonight when I'm done strudying for the night.
Explanation: Anim becomes an AoE that Malice can utilize to damage enemy ships, but more importantly, it gives the Radiance significantly more raw damage output against multiple foes. The combination of these things allows it to be selected viably even from the beginning of the game because it suddenly can engage more enemies simultaneously than any other capital.Given that RR is a mod for Trinity (though will eventually be updated for Rebellion), it still uses the Trinity DPS rates which I agree on. DAM was given the secondary effect to give it a minor ability to counter SC. It's very easy to fly the SC away from the target ship, so it doesn't do a whole lot, but it does give it some fleet defensive assistance on a ship that otherwise cannot help it's own fleet aside from disabling one capital's abilities.
KolGauss Rail Gun: damage increased from 400/725/1050 to 550/1100/1650 and the speed detriment has been replaced with a shield mitigation reduction of 8%/12%/16%
Something that people repeatedly cite as evidence of the Kortul's "power" is Power Surge. Despite it's numeric boost to cooldowns, that really only results in a relatively small DPS increase. The reason that ability is powerful is that it allows the Kortul to temporarily tank large amounts of focus fire while wiping the AM out of any ship in the enemy fleet. The weapon cooldown reduction is effectively worthless for increasing DPS and rather it's primary purpose is to enhance the power of Disruptive Strikes, which is perhaps the best anti-AM ability in the game.numOverTimeActions 1overTimeAction buffOverTimeActionType "RestoreShields" shieldRestoreRate Level:0 25.000000 Level:1 34.000000 Level:2 43.000000 Level:3 52.000000numEntityModifiers 1entityModifier buffEntityModifierType "WeaponCooldown" value Level:0 -0.250000 Level:1 -0.450000 Level:2 -0.660000 Level:3 -0.860000numEntityBoolModifiers 0numFinishConditions 2finishCondition finishConditionType "TimeElapsed" time Level:0 20.000000 Level:1 25.000000 Level:2 30.000000 Level:3 35.000000Over the course of the buff, PS can regen 1820 shields, which at full mitigation can absorb more than 5200 raw damage, or forcing the enemy to output almost 150 DPS to overcome the regen value. Weapon cooldowns are handy, but really, at maximum level, they only double the DPS of the Kortul. That's "powerful", but for a ship that deals about 50 DPS, it's not a whole lot. Yeah, it'll bump DPS up to about 92 for the duration, but that's only the power of seven Assailants (which is 8 less fleet supply by the way) and have all of their damage in the form of phase missiles, making them immensely more powerful offensively.
Ultimately what things come down to is that Battleships are powerful, yes, but in the end, they can be outperformed by an equivalent group of frigates. I don't believe buffing their stats is going to make them work better or be more highly selected. Capitalships are powerful entities because of their abilities, not their weapons. To except this would be highly unusual and cause the ship to not properly scale into the late-game where they should also be useful if you ask me. Take the penultimate battleship: the Ragnarov. Is it feared more for it's direct damage output or abilities? Sure, it has massive batteries, but that doesn't make most of it's damage come from that source. Snipe can annihilate ships from across a gravity well. Shotgun can deal massive damage to the entire enemy fleet. It's guns are good, but it's abilities are awesome.Ultimately, we can easily buff them so that they can take down any other capital one-on-one once engaged (a kiting carrier should still win obviously, though it should take a while due to anti-SC abilities), but without giving them absurd scaling damage, they'll be useless in the end in large end-game fleets. Giving them such damage scales would be somewhat illogical as a level 10 battleship might end up with more damage output than a titan which doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, a fresh battleship added into a late-game fleet becomes worthless because it would have to get more levels before it's damage output is high enough to make it worth the investment, which likely won't be the case because low-level battleships would just get FF'd to oblivion. It's like seeing a level 5 Marza. You kill it because of what it will be, not because of what it is.
Anyways, I'll get off my soap box and give some general indications as to what I may adapt the above abilities into for RR for Rebellion. RadianceAnimosity: deals 6/12/18/24 DPS to those ships that are affectedDetonate AM: deals 13/16.3/19.7/23 DPS and leaks AM into the space around the target, dealing 5.5 DPS to SC and reducing their accuracy slightlyExplanation: simple adaptation of the abilities for Rebellion; no big changes from before KolGauss Rail Gun: damage increased from 400/670/940/1210 to 550/875/1200/1525 and the speed detriment has been replaced with a shield mitigation reduction of 7%/10.5%/14%/17.5%Adaptive Forcefield: now passive; shield bypass resist changed from 25%/42%/58%/75% to 20%/32%/48%/65% and damage reduction from 15%/23%/32%/40% to 10%/16.7%/24.3%/30%Explanation: with the addition of the fourth levels, I felt somewhat obligated to slightly nerf AF in it's conversion to passive while I also felt a comparative nerf from Trinity's RR version of GRG's direct damage was in order while allowing the mitigation debuff at level four to be more potent.
Good read. I agree with a whole lot of what you've said- while your specific methods differ it seems many of your goals with your changes coincide with what I'd hoped to accomplish with my own propositions. Also kudos on the Marza Analogy- it made me chuckle.
While the numbers feel a bit intimidating (17.5% is an awful lot of mitigation) I particularly like your change of the Gauss railgun debuff to Shield mitigation. I'd been playing with a similar idea(in my case specifically it was a stacking armor debuff on GRG with a duration such that with the cooldown rate from finest hour a larger number of stacks was possible then pre-level 6, but same basic concept). Shield mitigation is probably a better means of designating a focus target though as shield mitigation is essentially an anti-focus mechanic(also the TEC have never really had much of an answer to high shield mitigation *cough* late game advent battle-balls*cough*).
Also while I certainly am a bit partial to the visual lightshow my proposition to Animosity would create, your change to Animosity is probably a much simpler and more efficient means of increasing Radiance's Ant-frigate firepower then what I'd had in mind.
Anyway thanks for reading and discussing, I'll see about neatening up my OP a bit by tommorrow.
Without some sort of defensive buff you're just going to get your radiance killed faster. No cap should want to get a swarm of bombers attacking it without doing something to ensure it can survive the encounter. As it is animosity is mostly suicidal late game.
Yeah, 7% shield mitigation is huge, let alone 17%. In one of my mods I have an ability that at max reduces shield mitigation by 20% without other effects, and its pretty good. GRG actually has decent damage output if you can keep the thing feed with antimatter. And ability disable/cooldown/antimatter cost debuff would make it more of a capital ship killer like Radiance and Kortul.
This would be particularly easy to sell to Starclad, I agree. I don't think it's the best way IMO, but it could work. The problem remains though that it would be the worst of the anti-SC abilities. FB kills, JW disables outright, whereas this just retargets. I feel like this would have to somehow go after squadrons though. With no target cap, instead of your Progenitor getting wiped from existence, your Radiance ceases to exist. With one, it would necessarily be weaker or stronger against the races' different strike craft counts per squad and I don't know of any mechanism aside from going through the carriers themselves that would make this work and to do that, you'd have to have a stupidly large range on it due to kiting and that's not something I'm a fan of. None of those three situations is something I'm comfortable with and
I don't see any way around any of them, so that's why I'm against this (not to mention the fact that so long as TKP exists, this mechanism is useless. An Advent fleet will almost assuredly have a Halcyon within it's first two caps and until multiple capitals start to be produces, SC aren't in great numbers, meaning this functionality wouldn't help a lone starting Radiance.
While the numbers feel a bit intimidating (17.5% is an awful lot of mitigation) I particularly like your change of the Gauss railgun debuff to Shield mitigation. I'd been playing with a similar idea(in my case specifically it was a stacking armor debuff on GRG with a duration such that with the cooldown rate from finest hour a larger number of stacks was possible then pre-level 6, but same basic concept). Shield mitigation is probably a better means of designating a focus target though as shield mitigation is essentially an anti-focus mechanic(also the TEC have never really had much of an answer to high shield mitigation *cough* late game advent battle-balls*cough*). A bit intimidating though it may be, it should also be considered that the Subverter can reduce it by 8% and it's a frigate. Presuming your average capital, it's only taking 35% of incoming damage. This buffs the damage taken by said ship by 50%. Compare that with the already existing capacity of the Cielo's Designate Target which debuffs at 40%. Now yes, this will certainly be more effective against the Advent battleball, which is more or less the point. You can adjust the numbers as you wish, but I don't know what the current maximum mitigation is on an Advent capital under ideal conditions.
Also while I certainly am a bit partial to the visual lightshow my proposition to Animosity would create, your change to Animosity is probably a much simpler and more efficient means of increasing Radiance's Ant-frigate firepower then what I'd had in mind.Until you make the Radiance's target count something along the lines of 5-7, you won't have too much of a lightshow. One of my ideas that I never mentioned regarding Unity Mass was that for every capital nearby, the Coronata would gain an additional target per bank, though this was horrendously OP so I didn't mention it. Now that would be a lightshow.
More importantly though, I feel that my system would allow it to be used effectively as a first capital (quickly eliminating neutral defenders) or used as a good second capital if the first was a Progenitor due to Malice combining with this ability.Anyway thanks for reading and discussing, I'll see about neatening up my OP a bit by tommorrow.
I understand, but when I came up with the numbers, I was largely comparing this to Designate Target, but I understand where you're coming from. If someone could provide me with what the maximum mitigation of an Advent capital is under ideal circumstances in Rebellion, that'd be much appreciated.
still 75% for the rebels, 77% for the loyals.
6% via culture, 2% via shield research tree, so 8% (plus anything we don't know about). A level 10 capital will have 65+1.1*lvl, so at level 10, you'd have 84%. I was asking if there were any other things in Rebellion that were added that would augment what existed in Trinity.
Radiance definatly needs a boost (The discord is now the true powerhouse cap of the advent) but ive never had a problem with the Kol. Its tough to kill and deals a lot of damage even early on. I think the quick drain on antimatter is on purpose as otherwise it would be too powerful early game. between finest hour and the dunove's lvl 6 power. its a real powerhouse late game
Except that when playing MP, level 6 capitals are a rarity and will get focus fired on sight. Besides that, the Kol has very little ability to support it's fleet. It will prevent Advent bomber swarms from making a second pass, but you'll still get the full brunt of the first one which is 722 damage per Aeria. I haven't bothered calculating the damages for the others. It's still going to hurt a lot.
Discussing mods to buff the battleships is not the solution for the whole community..
It is certainly useful if that mod is something that is focused on user feedback and achieving balance.
To be honest I use KOL's as my workhorse capitals, and I RARELY lose one...
The fact that KOL's provide 360 fire power means I can charge the KOL's and heavy cruisers towards the enemy fleet and leave the LRM and dreadnoughts to provide long range support. The carriers ONLY deploy fighters until they and the Garda's have gained air superiority then I launch the bombers. I like what's been said so far but I don't think battleships should be one ship armies.
Sorry I have nothing more to say, Haha!
I don't agree, ever since rebellion I've viewed the KOL as a baby Ragnarov. I think to make it more useful GRG gets its damage increased like it was stated above, and reduce its antimatter a bit. AF needs to be passive, cause frankly why not? It just helps the KOL burn through its antimatter even more, and it doesn't even help the fleet out really. Or if it is not made passive nerf the affect a little bit and make the effect affect the whole fleet in say about a 2000-3000 km range?
Secondly, what is the point of making the Advent's battle ship take a tanking role? The advent are well known for having the squishiest caps in game, not too mention late game it's suicide as, once again, stated above. The radiance could maybe get that ability replaced with something that slows down bombers and fights and they take 30% more damage from flak or whatever the advent use. That's my idea though, so I don't know.
I totally agree that Adaptive Forceshield shall be buffed, but I disagree with this point.
TEC is not an AM abundant race; it has only 20% AM upgrade. On the other hand, the skill combinations of TEC Caps rely on AM heavily. That means:
- the TEC Caps are intended to be bricks;- so the player needs to manage the AM carefully, to avoid their Caps to become a pile of bricks.
An advent player suffers from counting how much credits he owns, and a TEC player suffers from AM shortage. That is fair.
So I prefer another way of buff, instead of changing the skill to a passive one.
The most significant thing you say in this wall of text is:
Yeah, why was Detonate Antimatter on the Radiance nerfed like that? An oversight or mistake? It seems out of character!
The best ability on an already lackluster ship cut 2/3s?
The Kol however should not be a baby Ragnarov. For the main reason that ships like that are the reason they're not in viability. Example, why pick the Kol when I can just get the Ragnarov. Personally I if Gauss were to stay jut give it a drain antimatter.Also that is kind of my point, tanking belongs in WoW.
If you took away GRG then the KOL won't have any damage abilities, and it is a battleship. The Kortul's ult, Nano dissembler i think it is called or something like that, does damage and the Radiance's DA and ult do damage. GRG needs to stay, because the KOL needs a damage ability.
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