OK, I'm now looking at most of the Mercenaries ships, in light how things are now.
I'm going to use this thread for regular status updates on the various ships, and I'd like it if other people looked at them and put their opinions here.
Please label things as BUG if they are obvious broken - that is, if the actual behavior is different than the stated (or obvious) purpose, or the values are such that they cannot be used for the purpose they seem made for.
Things should be labeled MISFEATURE if the issue is one where the values don't really make sense and which may cause the ship in question to be misused or underused.
Label things as BALANCE if the current values seem plausible, but may cause unintended consequences, and the value should be tweaked a bit.
To start with:
Friendly Mike's Travelling Emporium, Avatar-278, and The Txlrp, all have a sensor range of 7. Why? These are intended to be parked at a single planet, not out exploring. The various science vessels at least had the excuse that their SCIENCE, but these are wealth or manufacturing bonus ships. Has zero reason to have a large sensor radius. Should have it's sensor radius reduces to 2 (the minimum). This is a misfeature.
Avatar-278 provides it's +5 bonus to RAW Production, which means it aids Research and Income as well as Social/Ship construction. Given that there are other ships specifically for those abilities, this is a BUG. It's bonus should be applied solely to Construction (Ship and Social). Also, is this ship Avatar-278, or RG-278? The text can't make up it's mind, and is noted as both in various places. This is a documentation BUG.
The Txlrp is only a +15% manufacturing bonus, but costs MORE than Avatar-278 (which provides a flat production bonus and is radically more powerful). Even considering the fact that Avatar-278 costs Antimatter, this noticeably unbalanced. Either reduce the cost for this ship (say by 33%) or restore the bonus to a minimum of +25%. BALANCE.
As mentioned in another thread ( https://forums.galciv3.com/485237/page/1 ) :
The Facade, Path to Rhuin, Prospector, and Ysengard all have a sensor radius of 2 (the default minimum) despite being equipped to Survey. This cripples the primary purpose of buying these ships. All should have a base sensor radius of 5, to make them at least equal to the ordinary Survey Ship that most civilizations start with. This is a BUG.
Good points, I almost all my games the ships you listed are the only ones i buy.
The Fencer and The Xorbert also have the silly 7 Sensor Range issue of Avatar-278, et al, above. Misfeature.
The Praxis gains +5 Malevolent every time it wins a battle and survives. This is horridly overpowered. First off, it should never apply to battles with pirates, otherwise you just farm Malevolent by doing nothing than having it kill pirates (which is a no-risk proposition). Secondly, even when fighting "real" enemies, +5 is ludicrously high. A +1 is far more reasonable. Balance.
Apex is merely a slightly stronger version of The Txlrp, with a +25% rather than the +15% of the later. Since Txlrp really should get a buff or major cost reduction, the same should apply to Apex. I'd go with +25% and +50%, respectively, or, alternately, a 33% reduction in cost for both. Balance.
The Straisor adds +10% to Raw Production. For a ship that's only available in late game, and costs $6000 + 22 Antimatter + 1 Elerium + 2 Durantium, that's an extremely underwhelming bonus. Drop the cost significantly (at least in half), or up the bonus to something like +25%. Balance.
The resource requirements for several of the ships is completely silly. 96 Durantium for The Shaout, really? Any of the ships which require 20+ resources should seriously have that scaled back. Balance.
This has been my tentpole issue for a while.
https://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/119/?
This is also easily my biggest issue with the game at this moment. Not enough to make me stop playing or anything, but I would love to see this addressed sooner rather than later.
From my post in the coding extravaganza thread regarding the roles of the mercs:
As for the Shaout costing 96 Durantium, as soon as I get that I can clean up entire fleets so it's worth every penny to me. I do play on Abundant everything though.
IIRC The path of Rhuin claims to have some sort of range bonus, but in my experience it does not benefit from any of the range techs. So it starts out good, but as you research up the tree it quickly becomes useless compared to your own survey vessels or the other survey mercenaries.
Good stuff.
i admit to not being very familiar with the Mercenaries. I did do some balance for 2.6 for them but will look at further updates for 2.7.
Thanks for taking another look at them. I really like the mercenaries, but they really have been neglected since they were introduced.
Yay!
I think iReadEarth figured out how to mod some aspects of them?
This game's still fun, when modded.
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