The balancing in its current state to be frank is crap and everything is broke.
I personally have no clue as how to fix any of this. IDK if any of the other guys on ICO have a clue.
Let's go through the number of problems.
1. Corvettes
2. Vasari Rebels - Starbase Jumping
3. Corsev
4. Rebels vs Loyalists
Those are some of the bigger problems in my book. But theres a hell of a ton more. Anyone willing to state a problem please feel free to post it here. I'll probably merge them into this posts through edits or just have it as an info dump.
It's probably like those dimmer switches they put in bedrooms...
All these assumptions about planet bombing fail to take into account the most obvious and most important aspects:
If a war that has only been on going for 30 years or so, how can single colony ships repopulate an entire planet within that time frame? How can this happen on a regular basis? Also, if a neutral planet is colonised has no original inhabitants, where do the militia come from and who are they loyal to? Assuming that planets get completely wiped out and repopulated so frequently makes absolutely no sense at all.
Game play only makes sense and fits into the lore if you assume that planet population represents population under your control and registered for taxation. It does NOT just represent population alive. When bombing occurs, many die but the rest are unaccounted for because the infrastructure has been destroyed. Capturing the planet means taking the inhabitants under your control and registering them for taxation. This takes time, this is what 'growth' represents. I doubt that it means that Humans breed like insects in this universe.
This is why moving your government to onboard a starbase means that you cannot lose a planet through bombing. The aim of bombing is to destroy the government and inflict terror, not destroy the entire populace or something equally preposterous.
Also, if enemy culture causes you to lose control of a planet, it becomes neutral. Now if you recolonise, the population will be 0. This doesn't mean that they spontaneously committed mass suicide for no reason (Wail doesn't count) the population is still there but no longer under control.
You vastly underestimate the power of black-box scifi thinking.
Just discombobulate the combobulator, turn the baby vats, growth pods and synaptic programmers to 11 and pronto! You have 10 million humans per second to colonize a new planet.
Very clever, well done.
Only the Vasari are referred to as having cloning technology. And it is only used in reference to the best and brightest of Vasari fleet commanders, not civilian populations.
Maybe the reason why the Advent were expelled in the first place is because the Trade Order keeps all their women locked up at home and doesn't let them do anything other then having babies, and the Advent were feminists.
If we're just coming with silly explanations and all.
Or maybe there are no trader women...maybe all the traders are asexual "males"....
Yes, This man is right. Game need much rebalance.
I took one battle yesterday played Vasari Loyalist versus 2 guys Vasari Rebels. They crush me in 10 min with 2 SB jumping at my planet and one Titan and 1 CAPS. I had one fully upgraded SB with 6 repair platforms and 70 Bomber Squads. I took out Titan, and Caps. I had no chance vs. 2 enemy SB. I lost my 2 Caps and SB and whole game.
Now Vasarians Loyalist don't have the means to destroy SB. Only one Tech are usefull (100% Hull Repair) but it's not enough or is to expensive to research for now.
I'm really fear about to play TEC or Advent vs. Vasarian now.
The phase jumping orkies Are OP at the moment, but you can't not let it enter hostile territory... The orkolus is the vasari's structure buster.
Make the research tier 7 or something... And put in a delay for the reactivation of other star bases in the well of a destroyed/ departed active orkolus.
The Orkulus should have IMO:
An 'enable-jump' skill which would disable the weapons systems and normal thrusters in preparation for the jump. The cooldown time would last enough for the whole jump, plus some time idling at the new grawell, where none of its weapons work and it cannot move. Perhaps a second tier technology can make it stay invulnerable in phase space until this cooldown expires, or a 'phase shield' which has a chance of sending shot into phase space while the starbase stays in plain space instead, to reduce damage. A fully upgraded Orkulus is kind of like a second Titan, and even then you are not limited to 1 per game, only 1 active per gravity well. There should be some setbacks for the jump procedure.
The AI should be smart enough to only trigger this skill when it's already far enough the planet that the jump procedure can be done.
If the 'invulnerable' second tier is implemented too, it could also be used defensively, to avoid the starbase being destroyed while it waits for reinforcements.
I for one am totally shocked the Visari are completely broken. I mean, they were always the poster-child for balanced race design and now they get added to the beta late with less than month before release. No problem, Visari are easy to balance!
On a serious note, I'm not exactly sure what Ironclad was smoking with the way they implemented the Visari-R ability to move starbases. A one-time tier 5 tech? That's it for the ability to freely move the most powerful 'unit' in the entire game? This passed their internal balance testing? What makes things worse is that is going to completely overshadow any other Visari issues until it gets a fix, because anyone playing Visari-R is just going to focus everything on this tech. This needs a hotfix, ASAP, so testing can move on to other things.
As for corvettes, most people said that no good would come from them. That if they were buffed they'd become scout spam 2.0 where the only early counter was to spam scouts back. Hate to say I told you so, but...
I made a thread saying LFs need a buff badly. This would be the perfect opportunity to give LFs another role. Hard counter to corvettes, early game balance restored.
Make the jump tec dependent on offensive deployement tier 2.
Simple as that.
By the way, with the slow economy (and awfully bad corvettes) of vasari rebels, you are telling me someone has managed to pull off an early starbase rush against skilled players in mp? I would like to see it with my own eyes.
You forget how good Vasari are at grabbing and securing neutrals early.
For certain I see everyone play vasari rebels now. A reason to play something else in truth, although I haven't had the pleasure to test them in mp.
The only other faction that's actually worth playing with a chance of survival is the TEC rebels since their titan + Orgovs eats other Orkies and Titans like nothing.
I have to agree with you, my friend and I tried out the Vasari for the first time last night, he was the Vasari Rebels and had a hard time keeping a good fleet mixed with a starbase. He is actually having it rough right now because he didn't have enough funds to stop the pirates from coming to attack him. He is just not able to gather the early game resources to expand comfortably. Let alone upgrading the starbase to be of use to send to a nearby AI gravity well, kind of hit him hard there.I played as the Vasari Loyalists and the economy is strong, but to get that way you have to focus your economy on the upgrades to get the capital ships out there. Which makes them capital ship heavy, I could not focus my economy on a fleet for early game if I wanted to get their unique researches. Which leaves them completely open, unless you ignore their unique side and go with a typical start.
It just seems that if you want to use the unique side of the Loyalists/Rebels of Vasari you have to wait till late game.
Overall, I have to say that loyalists are unbalanced as well. The problem is mainly that I see many pushing for the factors they like, along the many who try to balance out things. I think the issue with starbases is less worrying than others, given it happens later in the game, thus allowing for counters of some kind.
The issue here is that Vasari rebels rush it out in the first couple minutes. Find a game with like Greg or something because if they are playing Vasari rebels then expect a SB on your roid in about a couple minutes.
The thing is Visari weren't exactly crap beforehand. You can still play them exactly as you did in Diplomacy, and just use the new techs as needed. For instance, instead of going fully mobile as loyalists you can use their consume planet tech offensively. Take over worlds you have no nope of seriously holding for long, and blow them up. You get lots of money and your enemy can't build anything useful there anymore. You can use the 'cap ships have labs' thing to free up logistic slots and build more trade ports. And so on. The new options don't require you to go all-in with them, you have Visari's standard power plus new options. Very strong new options.
The starbase moving thing is just over the top power late game. It's a second fully upgraded titan that costs no fleet cap as others have already said.
Corvettespam is not working on these ones? I thought 200+ corvettes will eat everything even Vasari moving fortresses...
Corvette spam doesn't do crap against a Orky. Orky eats corvettes alive.
Hmmm small almost unarmored craft with extremely light weapons against moon-sized floating chunck of metal with multi-directional weapons of unimaginable power, lots of armor and plenty of shields.
Except corvette weapons aren't light. They're the same damage class as heavy cruisers, which is why they wipe out everything but flak frigates and the Orkulus when massed.
You mean the same moon-sized floating chunck of metal with multi-directional weapons of unimaginable power which is countered by bombers- which is to say " almost unarmored craft with extremely light weapons"
Bigger is not always better- in fact very often the biggest war machines are vulnerable to the smallest but most agile of enemies. When you build something that big for weapons you do so for HEAVY weapons, not for wieldy weapons with quick flexible targeting possibilities- those sort of weapons make more sense on smaller more mobile ships.
Honestly I think the Orky destroys corvettes on a technicality- it's the only starbase with non-capitalship type weapons, a decision which was made far before the conception of corvettes(which is to say it was not an intended consequence of giving the okry that weapon type- it's just something that "worked out"). Honestly I find it a bit disaapointing that corvettes get destroyed by orky- it was already the starbase the most lacking in counters and now it's the only starbase which didn't get a new counter added with rebellion.
The only attack that I have seen take out a full upgraded orky so far is the TecR Titan.
We all know that orky rush was viable in diplomacy. Rebellion just brings corvettes who are surest thing to go at start. If you plan to SB rush you can go SB + carrier with repair cloud with flak and start building it in enemy gravity well.
Well if you succeed and you pull it off same orky with 3 more labs which before was lost money now becomes very potent weapon with which you can move to other gravity wells.
Given that you are few jumps away and you scout well you can do that 3-5 minute into the game. Even if you are loosing and you wont succeed you can always cancel building of SB get most of resources spend back and that is enough to tip balance into your favour and fleet you just brought will be enough to overwhelm other guy.
I haven't tried to go 5 labs and then jump SB in and attack but this in my opinion is even harder to defend. 2-4 Phase jumping SBs can (in 5v5 matches) completely lock out player and prevent him to get help from ECO player. I am using them when playing vasari rebels but I agree they are very OP option.
Corvette spam doesn't work on them because they come accompanied with flak frigates and carrier with repair cloud. Even worse option is 1 mine layer to successfully set down 1 minefield. Most corvettes die from 1 or 2 mines.
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