Given that we're currently in beta for a new patch, I felt it would be a good time to propose some changes for a few underused capital ships and capital ship abilities.
To the developers: I disclaim all ownership of the following suggestions; if you take them, or some variation on them, I will demonstrate nothing but gratitude that they are present and usable in the finished game.
The Kol Battleship:
The Revelation Battlecruiser:
The Radiance Battleship:
The Skirantra Carrier:
The Antorak Marauder:
My rationale for this suggestion: Subversion is both highly circumstantial (it only has an effect if there is an active factory or active orbital construction process in place) but also pathetic compared to Embargo, which does more economic damage and provides the TEC player money! Rather than attempt to play with the other economic values by which Subversion could be more effective against the opposing player (culture, which is more of an Advent thing; extractor income, which is actually a very Vasari thing to mess with [being expert in mining operations]; or planetary construction projects, which is more of a TEC thing to mess with), I felt that the Marauder should stick to what it does best: messing with phase space. In addition, the potential advantages to be gained by preventing reinforcements from arriving at a planet can only emphasize the Marauder's deadliness as a hit-and-run attacker.
The Rankulas Battleship:
As indicated here (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/451038/page/1/), there seems to be some consensus that the Rankulas could be buffed. General suggestion trends are as follows:
The Rapture Battlecruiser:
Please discuss any aspect of these suggestions. My goal, as ever, is to buff underused ships and abilities; I can't abide something that's in a game to no purpose.
Weapons might be a bit much, not the least because the Halcyon also does that, but bombardment would be cool.
That is way too much for a passive. It's quite possible 20% would make the Radiance near unkillable with all the other Advent shield mitigation buffs.
IMO this might be a bit to elaborate and a bit of a stretch of the concept. Maybe preventing all defensive structures from firing for a while would be more fun.
True, and in mods I have seen several times invincible ships, and it's not that fun. Maximizing shield mitigation around 90-95% with every existing mitigation enhancement would be needed here, and the ship needs extra protection against PM so the increased mitigation won't be so useless against Vasari.
It needs to be passive, but with lower values, the 10-20-30-40 is too much, I think 7.5-15-22.5-30 would be better.
By definition it should do it, but it doesn't and it surprised me.. A high velocity gauss projectile could easily bypass shields as there is not enough time for shields to reposition power to the impact location. So a good idea.
I doubt these changes would make me choose that ship over the others, because the weapon damage is already increased by the Halcyon (just with cooldown reduction). And bombardnment increase alone is not a huge help, the ship would still need something useful.
Mines are not commonly used if you play against people, but it may be helpful against AI if you are fed up with that stupid amount of mines everywhere.
This would be way too OP if you build more Antoraks and use this ability constantly.
I support Goa's idea with the defensive structure disable firing stuff.
Other ideas are good.
I really like the suggestions for the Revelation, Kol and Antorak class capital ships. If a buff to raw attack damage would be applied to the Radiance class Battleship, the duration on this buff should be drastically reduced in order to balance it, though. Just my opinion.
To everybody: thanks for the contributions.
To address specific comments...
Goa:
I'm aware that the Halcyon already passively buffs weapons. I added weapon cooldowns to Guidance, in addition to bombardment cooldowns, for several reasons:
You are, I think, absolutely right that the buff to the Radiance's shield mitigation, as originally suggested, was WAY too much. Here is my thought process:
That said, I would like to reiterate that you're probably right: 13% is too little damage.
What do you think would be a balanced number by which to increase its maximum shield mitigation via Energy-Absorptive Armor? For the moment, I've modified the suggestion to improve shield mitigation by 2.5-5-7.5-10%.
What say you?
On the subject of Subversion, I actually originally considered your idea (shutting down defensive structures), but then I realized that you're still falling into the trap occupied by the current version of the ability.
To wit: currently, Subversion only works under two conditions:
Those are VERY limited circumstances under which the ability is effective, and it doesn't provide all that much benefit to begin with!
Your suggestion has the same problem: it is only effective under two circumstances:
Ultimately, it doesn't provide that much benefit.
I made the suggestion I made because it seemed very "Vasari" -- they already have means of detecting and interfering with phase jumps; this would fit very well with the Marauder's subversive nature.
That said, I will modify the above post, however, to suggest an alternative to my original proposition: that Subversion instead completely shuts down all ship production, building production, and planet upgrades for a period of 30-60-90-120 seconds.
Turchany:
I disagree with your assertion that my suggestions for a passive Adaptive Forcefield are too much. If you look at the math, you will notice that Adaptive Forcefield, in its current incarnation can already provide 40% protection constantly (antimatter costs excepted); only at level 1 and 2 can it not provide the listed protection at all times, and I have brought those amounts down to compensate.
Also, with regard to my proposal to Subversion, note that the very first bullet point after the proposal indicates that it should apply a "Heightened Security" buff that specifically prevents chaining Subversion on the target planet.
Teun-a-Roonius:
On the subject of a cooldown for the damage buff I suggested: I originally proposed a one minute cooldown because, if I recall correctly, the Vasari Rebel ability Phasic Strike (which provides a temporary damage boost to units upon phasing into the gravity well) has a one-minute cooldown. I envision the two abilities in a similar light: both provide a temporary but significant damage boost, with time to maneuver between uses. In the case of the Radiance, this is for one ship, stacking in intensity over time; in the case of the Vasari, this is for a whole fleet.
Thanks again for your comments!
I agree the Revelation needs some sort of non-ultimate bombing buff but I'm not sure a weapon buff is needed too.
I know this is a bit off-topic (but as the topic's here...); I also have a couple of things I'd like to see changed.
First, I think Vengeance should deal back damage without shield mitigation (and perhaps even to the hull as well) when the incoming damage bypasses the shield. Vasari phase missiles really do cause much more damage proportionally than is reflected, since the reflected damage is absorbed by shields and is subject to mitigation by the aggressor.
Secondly, I also would like to see the Iconus shield bestowal ability improved versus PMs and other shield-bypassing attacks. The Iconus will apparently share damage without mitigation directly, which is first inconsistent with Vengeance, and it also makes them fall easily to PMs, since they won't automatically stop using the ability if they have some shields left even if there is no hull. I guess there are several ways this could be done. Either the Iconus should share damage on a purely numbers basis, so whether the incoming damage bypasses shields or not, the shared damage never bypasses the shield (like a normal attack), or the shield bestowal ability gives a phase missile block to ships as well as the damage sharing (which is perhaps less balanced).
And really off-topic (I apologise), but could we also have damage values updated properly on the infocards when a buff is applied that gives a visible "damage output" descriptor? So, for example, if you have an Ankylon in a friendly well with Militia Weaponry, you will see the damage values updated properly despite there being no indication the buff is active, but if you use Furious Defense, you will not see any increase in damage values, even though the infocard suggests the damage output is increased.
Agricus:
No need to apologize; this is a thread that invites discussion with regard to fixing underused capital ships and abilities, and I feel you bring up some very good points.
Point 1: Vengeance
There are three ways I see the ability working:
To be perfectly honest, I feel this subject is worthy of a thread of its own. Model #2 seems like the fairest way to deal with it, but there might be balance implications that I can't see from where I'm sitting.
I will respond to the rest of the points you brought up soon, but I have to run (duty calls). I will edit this post when I return.
EDIT:
Point 1 addendum: like Goa said, it's possible that a simple damage increase for Vengeance might do the trick without resorting to complicated behind-the-scenes meddling.
Point 2:
I could totally get behind Shield Projection providing an 8-12% reduction to phase missile penetration. My logic is as follows:
Point 3: Interface
The need for a more dynamic interface likewise deserves its own thread. Though I, personally, would be content with a more thorough listing of buffs in the infocard (some, I've noticed, appear to be omitted), a more dynamic user interface would be a benefit to all players.
There remains, of course, the question of priority -- do you feel that updating the interface in this particular way supercedes balance adjustments?
If you feel Vengeance is not strong enough (and now that the holy trinity is rarely used I may well not be), I think it would be easier to simply let it reflect a larger percentage back rather than change how it behaves. I don't think its so bad that it can't be saved by how it currently works (unlike Gauss Rail Gun).
Actually its shield projection, shield bestowal is the ability of Advent hangar defenses to give other structure shields.
I think I bugged the devs about this in the beta, you might want to post in the changelog thread or make an entirely new thread to remind them.
Admittedly, the main reason why I noticed it was because I like to use it as a way to kill TEC and Advent SBs (at least against AI). Especially if you have 2 raptures, you can get something like 400% reflection or more, which is like having four SBs attacking the original one (at full weapon upgrade, this can perhaps be in excess of 1500d/s although I don't know the capital ability adjustment versus structures). Cap ships can take 1/4 less damage than SBs, due to increased mitigation (57% versus >70%) so if you have enough total HP (and the planet is relatively undefended) I have found this can be quite devastating. You can't, however, do this against Vasari SBs with PMs unless they don't have the toughness upgrades for obvious reasons. I personally prefer your #2 suggestion over how it is now, as it is more in keeping with the ability's concept: you reflect exactly what you absorb; you damage the enemy as fast as it damages you.
For this reason, I don't like the idea of increasing the percentages, since this will affect all weapons, not just PMs, which could be unbalancing.
I could totally get behind Shield Projection providing an 8-12% reduction to phase missile penetration. My logic is as follows:Advent have more shields than hulls and fairly low armor; consequently, they get the shaft from phase missiles (for which a number of context-specific buffs have been inserted into the game)Phase missiles are here to stay; the main problem with them, particularly against Advent, is Vasari bombers and alpha strike formations. Though I happen to favor converting Vasari bombers to fire plasma wave cannons, that is a subject for another thread; for now, a buff against phase missiles provided by the Iconus Guardian would give Advent a much-needed boost
Yes, and perhaps as an ability. it might be more strategically interesting compared to a global buff (you need to get the Iconus in position and use it). I would still like to see Shield Projection make the Iconus resistant to non-mitigated damage when sharing, though, if nothing else, since they are next to useless versus the Vasari as they self-destruct before all the shields are gone (and since the ability is coded to end when shields are depleted, they should not in other situations self-destruct).
Oh, definitely not. I was just saying, you know? I'd take balance changes over interface anyday.
I just thought (naively) as practically everything else updates weapon damage properly, it might not be too difficult to fix, and it seems a bit of a shame not to.
Adaptive forcefield gets its utility out of being able to pop it for special situations. So keeping it as an active lets you focus on the Offensive/Defensive Kol dynamic and is good for tactical considerations as an Active ability.
The Kol ability that should be made Passive is Flak Burst. Any Strike Craft flying in the Vicinity of the Kol just takes the damage. That would go a LONG way towards discouraging bomber spam and cementing the Kol a place in TEC fleets.
I like the change for GRG, it would help with the underwhelming damage the Kol puts out by giving it a strong punch and good finisher.
I disagree. Sure maybe Adaptive forcefield would allow you to strategically reduce damage from say a Raganrov's snipe attack with careful timing, but generally these special situations don't occur that often. Its high fleet DPS that kills caps, and even if AF was strong enough to make attacking the Kol impractical (and its not), you could just wait for the ability to end and kill it fairly quickly. For defensive non-healing abilities you really need them active at all times.
While passive damage to fighters has some merits and keeps them thinned down, the real problem with strikecraft is the "Alpha Strike", the fact that unlike frigates bombers can compress themselves very close together and attack one target all at once. Medium to large swarms can easily kill or cripple a capitalship in one pass. A passive flak burst would just see the bombers all attack the Kol first, and they would kill it before it killed them. Having Flak burst being an active ability allows the Kol (or a few of them) to have enough stopping power to really punish the alpha strike tactic, as virtually the entire bomber cloud will get hit for devastating damage if not 1HKOed, which is a huge advantage.
Thanks, Goa; you read my mind.
To add to your comments, though: if the suggestion I made for Flak Burst goes through (<fingers crossed />), Flak Burst will not only damage strike craft but actively reduced the damage taken by anything they hit, including the Kol itself. In this way, it would function in much the same way that you described Adaptive Forcefield -- as a strategic button to prevent damage. In this case, the "strategy" would mainly involve timing -- how soon do you fire it off? Do you fire as soon as a handful of squadrons enter the envelope, or do you take a few guaranteed hits from strike craft to wait for all of them to enter optimum firing range?
As most of seem to be aware, the Kol's primary problem is antimatter: with three active abilities, none of which are particularly overwhelming, it simply doesn't have enough bang for its buck. By making Adaptive Forcefield passive, we give it a solid defensive boost while simultaneously reducing its antimatter problems.
***
Agaricus, you have an excellent point about Vengeance and killing starbases. I feel it should be a valid strategic choice to let high-DPS targets kill themselves, and whilst this is possible against Advent and TEC opponents, Vasari units equipped with phase missiles have a sizeable advantage.
I'll throw it in the OP.
I said nothing about reducing the damage. Same damage, set as passive.
Hard counter Mass Strikecraft as hard as they currently counter Capital ships.
Jdr:
You'll need to specify a damage rate.
Flak Burst currently does 30 - 43 - 56- 69 damage to strike craft, but it does so on a 12 - 10 - 8- 7-second cooldown.
This makes its damage per second (to strike craft) 2.5 - 4.3 - 7 - 9.8.
Are you suggesting that the Flak Burst ability should passively do the amount of damage-per-second I stated above to all strike craft in a given radius?
If so, then I'm afraid that would hardly act as a deterrent to strike craft at all; they would be able to fly in, kill the Kol, and fly out before taking anywhere near the amount of damage needed to kill them.
This would hardly mitigate the problem of alpha strike damage, whereas my suggestion would allow you to do that by using Flak Burst to not only damage strike craft but also give their attacks a chance to miss, thereby preventing them from doing a successful alpha strike and one-hit-ko'ing the Kol.
EDIT: Examples of alpha strike damage and mitigation:
All this discussion is reminding me about a couple of abilities I tried to mod back in the day with Trinity (although I have no idea whether they would be any good in practise), so I wonder whether the concepts might be interesting to throw up here.
Perhaps Clairvoyance could be turned into an economic ability by adding a small alteration in max allegiance, say +/- 5% to planets for the duration (I guess manipulating populations is what the Revelation is for, right?). It would first be an Advent-style way to boost your economy (so having early-game utility as well as perhaps compensating a bit for poor trade/refinery income) and second be a way to annoy your opponent by depressing income slightly or culture bomb a marginal planet. Although it is at-a-distance, which is obviously superior to Embargo or Subversion, you would still have to micro it carefully to get the best out of it which might balance that somewhat.
Actually, Subversion works even if the Antorak leaves: it's supposed to help with scouting as it makes the planet visible as well as tampers with construction.
My original idea was for an ability that when cast on a ship, gave a penalty to stats (e.g. weapon cooldown, ship speed), and this ship could spread it to other ships and structures it moved near, a bit like a virus. In the case of Subversion, maybe this could be a way to increase the ability's function by allowing it to spread to other nearby planets. One way might be to have ships at the Subverted planet have a percentage chance over time per ship to be infiltrated, and then another percentage chance for such ships to spread the buff to any other enemy gravity well that ship visits. Alternatively, you could have Subversion affect all civilian trade/refinery ships that enter the well for the duration, and have these ships spread Subversion by means of the trade networks (so more trade equals more effectiveness). All buffs would end when the original one does, although I don't know how you would deal with buff stacking, which might be a problem.
As things were getting derailed over at another thread (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/451038/page/2/#replies), I'm going to post the minor suggestion I have here instead, as it would perhaps be more on-topic.
The arguments against Animosity/Energy Absorptive armor essentially state that the cap ship is too weak for it to be a viable strategy (the argument for suggests otherwise ), so the following is an alternative idea for improving the Radiance in this context:
Calculation table available on request. Discuss.
Oddly enough, I actually wasn't trying to necro this thread; I was just being thorough and following the DNRY rule of web design ("Do Not Repeat Yourself" -- if something has been mentioned elsewhere, link to it).
That said? I'll take it.
I like Suggestion Two the best:
This seems to be in line with the "theme" of Energy Absorptive Armor:
That said: before we go any further, I think I should summarize what I think the ability should do, and compare it to the suggested numbers you provided in Suggestion Two. As I conceive it, Energy Absorptive Armor should provide the following benefits as it ranks up (bolded entries indicate my interpretation of your numbers):
Does this jive with your thoughts on the subject?
Either way, feel free to bust out the calculations; you seem to be more gifted with the numbers than I am.
I'd leave energy absorption alone and focus on making animosity do something to help the radiance's survivability...the only way someone is ever going to pick animosity is if they can pick it over energy absorption, because if you aren't picking detonate antimatter then there is no point in building the radiance...
In other words, the radiance's abilities need to be such that DA+animosity and DA+energy absorption are both equally viable builds...that means animosity must in some form help the radiance tank better...I'd suggest a simple buff to damage reduction or a simple buff to hull and shield regen...
Yeah, I usually go with the Damage Reduction buff as well. Though once I tried a heal on damage taken buff, that was fun. Made it a very bad idea to attack the thing with strikecraft.
You realize that a Radiance with 1 DA and 4 EAS could solo titans up to 3 levels below it, no problem?
This idea should be seriously revisioned.
As others suggested, animosity could take a buff instead (e.g. reduced incoming damage from taunted units) but we have to make sure that Radiance does not become an auto-win!
Think about it: Two Animosity Radiance caps capable of permanently keeping enemy fleet taunted, able to survive the onslaught for minutes... what the hell would you put against THAT? All those radiances now need to win every battle against any frigate/cruiser centric fleet is one Rapture with Vengeance. GG. Be careful.
Hm. So would you say the DR nerf to taunted units I suggested would not help the Radiance tank? Units that are more vulnerable would be more easily destroyed, and you could use it to effect on a titan for example (if you're in position).
Heh. But I had something minor to add, so I'm not exactly repeating myself. Also those SM increase values you originally mentioned are definitely OP .
Passive armor increase (I actually don't know the current values on this; the wiki appears to be out-of-date)
It's now 2/4/6/8. I disagree that there should be more than one durability buff: either we go with armor, damage reduction or shield mitigation. If the values are too small, then the attribute should be increased.
It's 5%/9.1%/13.2%/17.3%, although I don't know right now if it's raw incoming damage (before modifiers), or actual taken damage.
Weapon DPS increases by 5% per incoming attack received, stacking up to 100%->200%->300%->400%; lasts for 1 minute; each attack received refreshes the duration
The values you use are for 76% max mitigation, and are balanced at cap ship level 1 with no research and no armor buff, (armor 5.4) but due to the multiplicative effect of SM, the buff improves over the existing armor buff by a small factor (1-2%) as the armor of the ship increases. Also, note that the buff continues to improve compared to how it is now with increased SM research.
If you add the existing armor buff at the same time as you propose, then you need to reduce the SM values by quite a bit to compensate.
As for the damage buff, I would add it to Animosity as per my last suggestion, although DR reduction is better IMO if you want to do that.
Note: Lots of edits here. Sorry about that if you saw the intermediate messes!
Also, I disagree with your idea of buffing the marauder.
Yes, this ship is at the very end of my priority-purchase list in most games, but it's not because it's bad at what it is meant to do (i.e. trollcruising through enemy worlds and pissing the enemies off).
Marauder sucks because all caps gain levels from fighting and the Marauder is useless in battle. Yeah it has the POH that deals shit damage and makes an enemy ship immune or lets your own ship survive a few seconds longer or, if the enemy happens to be channeling something, it can act as an interrupt. It all sounds awesome on paper, but if you actually compare this ship in a fight with any other, you will see how useless it really is except for a few specific situations.
What the Marauder needs is viability in battle. Something that you can use to properly impact a fight, maybe not by brute force and tons of damage, maybe it has to work in a more indirect way, but it has to have some purpose until it's level 7, when being able to zzap around behind enemy lines, act as a phase stabilizer and interrupt powerful enemy abilities actually becomes important.
I dunno what that should be. Some suggestions could be:
> Distort Gravity should reduce weapon cooldown on nearby friendly ships and/or push enemy ships away (aka repulsion) or something.
OR
> phase out hull could be made more combat-oriented, e.g. when an enemy ship and one of your own are phased out at the same time (not hit by the spell at the same time, but affected by the spell), the friendly ship drains the enemy one of hull and shields. Every additional friendly ship affected at the same time increases the drain's strength and every enemy ship affected at the same time is just another victim. So you could drain 4 enemy targets with one friendly ship (strong heal for the friendly, weak drain on the enemies) or, conversely, drain one enemy ship with 4 friendly ships (strong drain on the enemy, weak heal on the friendlies).
OR anything else that's actually useful as of level 3 and in normal fights, not necessarily involving a Lvl6 Marza.
Whatever is to be done, it has to make sure that the ship has something to fight with or support a fleet with. As it stands, this cap is a liability in a fight, and it has to be in a fight to level.
Still balanced because:
In short, the only time this could be a problem would be in the early game when players don't have titans, multiple caps, and lots of SC....but if you have 2 radiances early game, you will have a bad fleet and will only have 2 instances of low level animosity....
I would be very wary of buffing the marauder....the only ability that you might want to work on is subversion since it is completely useless...but I would definitely not buff its other 3 abilities....
On the subject of the Marauder, I'd personally like to see it have some sort of offensive buff, whether it be worked in to distort gravity or subversion or replace one of those abilities.
I would propose a phase missile upgrade in the distort gravity ability (kind of makes sense that if you can phase jump closer to planets your phase missiles would be more effective) but this would encroach upon the territory of the Stilakus Subverter and Distort Gravity is already an awesome ability.
I feel the Vasari in general lack offensive fleet buffs on their capital ships. TEC have Targetting Uplink (Akkan), Advent have Amplify Energy Aura (Halcyon) and Vasari have what? Microphasing Aura (Skirantra) only affects strikecraft and is, in my opinion, a hell of a lot worse than something like Concentration Aura (Rapture).
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