Played my first real Sins game in about a month (had minidump issues prior to 1.o4)
Fleets need a expensive Titan killer, or it becomes I need to get my Titan to kill yours..
Maybe as an upgrade to existing ship or a new missile type? I know bombers are suppose to work well, but that means every fleet now needs a fleet of carriers to survive?
Honestly, titan abilities do so much damage I don't think you'd have to make it petty much immune to work (say 10%). And I just think its the titan AoE abilities that have issues, Bilun's idea would effect abilities from capitalships, red button, wail etc, which is why I do not support it. I'd rather just nerf the damage output of titan abilities across the board than do that, no reason to have it affect every single ability ever.
I think their previous OPness is what part of the problem is. Indeed, if I could redo the whole game from scratch and make some code myself I wouldn't pick Corvettes either. But Corvettes are unique enough that we can do things to them, like make it so titans cannot target them with abilities, that we cannot do with anything else. And since the Devs have apparently abandoned their initial idea of letting them be a general attack craft, why not make them strong against things that most need counters. That happens to be LRF, titans and bombers, which they are already very good against. Its just titan AoEs will prevent them from lasting more than 5 seconds as it is now. To not make them immune from titan abilities will make them obsolete the second someone gets an Eradica out.
Goa surely you must see that there are tremendous balance problems with making corvettes a Titan counter? Why ever make a Titan with all the investment it requires when your opponent can simply quickly pump out the requisite number of corvettes with one military lab in order to counter it? Corvettes and Titans are fine as is. Corvettes are not meh or OP, they are in a really good place balance-wise. You've said low level Titans are not the problem, but high level ones are. Part of the game is not feeding your opponent's Titan to allow it to get lvl 6+ and if it does, then yes of course killing it becomes progressively more difficult. I don't see this as a balance problem though - it's fairly rare to see lvl 6+ Titans, at least in MP, as it is. At least 1.04 did make it much more expensive to re-field them.
What if frigates across the board were given a + 3 or so armor?
Except carriers.....
But here's the thing: no matter how much you nerf titan AoE there WILL always be more AoE present now then in tinity, by simple virtue of the fact that titans are present. Even if titan AoE were no stronger then Capitalship AoE there would probably be too much AoE for the smaller frigates to handle.
While people often cite titan AoE as the problem, the reality is that it's not just titan's fault. They are a major contributer, but in reality there is just too much AoE in general. I doubt we'll ever be able to nerf titan AoE enough to make small frigates viable late game without reducing it to below capitalship AoE levels, which I doubt people want.
No matter how much you nerf AoE as long as AoE is really a viable fleet destruction strategy the simple fact of the matter is the Carriers with 2-3x as much hull+shields a Flak frigate, LRF frigate, or flak frigate have will always be the superior choice. Either AoE will obsolete said small frigates or it will be reduced so low that it's more or less not an issue for carriers.
Besides, is one early game frigate having general ability damage resistance really such a bad thing? Not every single combat frigate needs to be countered by the exact same thing(AoE damage), which practically speaking is the only type of ability damage frigates really take.
Even in diplomacy LF fell off hard late game because pretty much everything on the field is great against them late game(The LRF that were common there wrecked them, HC have a high ratio, and bombers wreck anything with low HP if needed)- Would having them resistant to one major late game damage source(AoE damage) really be so bad.
But I suppose I digress, I'm as much talking about trying to give LF a viable late game as I am talking about making frigates resistant to AoE.
Surely you must see the problems that exist now?
For the record, I'm not advocating Corvettes as a hard counter in the sense that 9500 credits of Corvettes should kill a titan (at least, not very fast). If it turns out they can do that, their damage to them should be tuned down. But above all I think their debuffs at the least would be useful, and were designed around being used on titans. Its just as it is now, titan abilities will never let them live long enough to use them effectively.
Yes, but I think this is the single worst gameplay feature in Sins. Some people don't like titans because they are end game units. I like games with end game units, like Supcom or Command and Conquer. The difference is in games like that, the ultimate end game units do not level up. So even if its not very effective, you can pump out a ton of gunships or whatever and even if they don't last very long, they'll help wear down the end game unit eventually. If you have the superior economy, its never a bad idea to pump out units in those games. The idea that throwing a horde of frigates at a high level titan is actually helping your enemy seems ridiculous to me (even if it would be bad tactics in any game).
Ideally I think titans should not have used the same XP system as capitalships did. But we can't change that now. What we can do is make a frigate that you can build in large numbers to slowly help your own titan/capitalships to eventually kill it. Titans would still counter every other frigate hard, and unlike some people I think that's a good thing because its allowed capitalships to reach a level of importance they never had before. But you need to have the rest of your fleet supply in something, and right now the only thing that is remotely safe from titan AoEs are the overused and laggy carriers. At least if Corvettes were immune, we'd at least have another option.
Ekko maybe the dozen games or skilled games I've done are unusual, but I've seen quite a few end with a Vorastra getting to level 6. Eradicas can become borderline ridiculous at level 3, at least offensively, possibly defensively if the guy is willing to sacrifice a lot of guardians. And in single player you do see them all the time, and while the build cost and time increase have helped, it doesn't make taking high level AI titans out any less annoying.
Oh yeah,forgot to add to the end of my previous post(though I suppose it was already plenty long ):
I do agree with you on the topic of removing Corvettes from all Titan AoE damage ability's target filters. Honestly It felt like corvettes were supposed to be a titan counter from the start- Like capitalships titans deal only 25% damage to very light armor;corvette damage does a very respectable 70% to Titan armor as well. And of course titans present an even better target for stacking debuffs then capitalships. The only missing piece of the puzzle is that a few titan's AoE damage pretty much renders all that built in counter-potential inert.
Remove corvettes from all Titan damage ability filters and we have another viable late game combat frigate and a titan counter to boot.
Heck, you don't even need to remove every single one- For example the Ragnarov's AoEs both require it to face it's target and corvettes can EASILY stay in it's blind spot if microed. It's mostly omnidirectional Titan AoEs like Chastic Burst, Nano-leech, and Disruption Matrix/suffusion to a less degree that they need to be removed from the filters of. People may prefer to remove them from the Ragnarov's AoEs as well, but I'm not sure I think it's as necessary as the others.
i have killed a titan several times during a game. has been when it was a level 1 though. had 5 cap ships lots of lrm frigs and carrier cruisers against titan , 3 cap ships and various other ships. you can always hynt it down if u know a titan has just been bulit.
Yeah, the problem is more once it ceases being level 1...
The game is regarded as too Titan centric largely because once a Titan levels up a few times it can't really be dealt with without a leveled titan of your own. As a result, too much of the game revoles around killing the enemy titan before it grows while nurturing your own.
1. Titans come out way to early....8 military labs.
2. Titans need to level up at a MUCH slower rate.
3. Titans need to lose all xp when they die.
And hey, the chances of that happening are very slightly higher then the chances of everyone who reads this post spontaneously turning into Geese!
But in all seriousness, we've basically been told Titans aren't going to lose levels on death , to say nothing of the odds of titan research being pushed back 8 tiers. Not to mention such a pushback would greatly favor factions who have their new techs focused in the military tree.
I would like to see them level slower though. Maybe a 30-50% increase in the exp required for each levelup would be great. Also make titans worth more exp when killed to increase the "risk" of rushing them out.
One really unique role for a titan killer would be for it simply to have a targeted ability that prevents a titan from gaining experience while under its effect.
A titan Killer will not be roled as Titan Killer. It will be a Destroyer type between caps and heavy cruisers that is probably adapt at killing Fighters, Corvettes and Bombers. An Advanced Flak burst type of unit with anti-heavy weaponary when needed. Its movements will be faster than caps because its equiped with powerful engines.
If they do this the game will be fun again
I disagree. At 8 military labs, the game has progressed quite a lot.... to a point where I dont think any Level 1 Titan is going to make much of a difference, compared to the firepower your enemy is fielding at this time.
The current titan balancing may not be perfect but for the most part Titans do scale well with the advancing game.
to 2. No, they dont. They for the most part scale well already.... it is quite rare already to see a higher level Titan in MP... making this even slower will impact balancing in a negative way as many Titans need at least some levels on them before they are more than a oversized heavy cruiser.
3. Same thing.... if they do you need to totally rework Titan balancing.... otherwise if you loose your Titan it is often GG.
The game is quite fun already... as long you can stand the overpowered Vasari in general.
I only maybe see number two, but its not an ideal fix to the problem. I think titans would be hurt more by a unit that does better against them at any level, rather than slow them down and have them still be as powerful once they get their.
That's actually how I pretty much view it and I counter titans with developed cap fleets myself primarily.
I just like the idea of a the unit--not as a counter all on it's own to titans.
I agree with that too, one of the main things I like about Rebellion is that Titans have made caps viable now, because titans in effect counter swarms of frigates that used to make caps at best extremely hard to use.
However, you're not going to have all your fleet supply in cap ships. At most (and competitively you'll never see it) you'll have 850 fleet supply in Caps and titans. The rest has to be frigates. Unless something changes, that fleet supply will be used for a couple of support cruisers but the vast majority will be carriers. Carriers that also annihilate starbases and your capitalships that you're building to counter the titan.
Making Corvettes immune to titan AoEs would make this much more interesting, as they could fight titans for a little bit (note as titans have multiple weapons that fire in multiple directions, corvettes will be quite vulnerable to normal weapons from them, especially on the Coronata and Vorastra) and help the capitalships debuff the titans. Also, since corvettes happen to fire on strikecraft, if the two titans are fighting close to each other, your own Corvettes might be able to help thin down the bomber swarms a little bit as the enemy bombers fly pass after their attack run.
If I recall correctly corvettes are still VeryLight armor, and Titans only deal 25% damage to that armor type, meaning that if Titan AoE can no longer target corvettes they will have strong survival rates against Titans. Boosting corvette damage percentages against Titan armor will also reinforce that usage.
No one is suggesting boosting their damage modifiers any higher. If anything if it becomes possible to use Corvettes alone to take out titans it should be lowered. Its just they'll be totally useless against titans as long as they are effected by AoEs, which is a shame considering how useful they could be.
Corvettes also were intended to be multi-role...not just anti-titan. Unfortunately the lag issues, exploits and changes morphed them so much they don't really achieve their original purpose--a cheap garrison ship and quick build fleet that could defend assets or be thrown into a pitched battle to turn the tide.
Exactly, so it has been retooled to counter the ships that most needed counters. So far that's just LRF. In my opinions Titans are the next thing that could use something to at least be more annoying to them.
Corvettes die to frigates which die to titans and if titans died to corvettes there would be yet another loop.....
Titans
Tier 7 titan is not unreasonable, keeps Trinity combat strategies intact, and give time for player to build up their fleet tech a bit.
Antimodule ships able to target titan. Damage Percent Bonus for AntiModule vs Titan is 1.0 now, but could be reduced to 0.5 or 0.25 for extra firepower against it.
Check % chance of penalties for corvette abilities. Are they doing the job debuffing titans enough?
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