ILLUMS VS. KODIAKS
Well. I just did another test recently. Everyone knows Enforcers need a fix, but everyone is pretty much happy with Kodiaks and where they are. So I figrued, let's try Illums vs. Kodiak. Prove there is balance in the game.
I did two tests.
First Test
This was the simplest test. I sent 20 Illums up against 12 Kodiaks. No upgrades. This was more of a control to see how the two ships are balanced. I figured this is large enough a scale to get good results. The results were as expected.
4 Kodaks were alive when the last Illum died.
20 I vs. 12 K : 4 K survive
Second Test
The first test isn't fair though. The Kodiak player spent more total money, so the Illums need $$ spent on upgrades to balance them out.
I'm going to need to go back and readjust this test. I did the same as in the enforcer test. I gave the Illums +10% shields, +10% health, and +5% beams. This was a bit much. I'll need to double check, but I think I should have only given +10% shields and +5% health. I think I overcompensated for the Illums so now I need to redo this test.
With the same set up as the Enforcer test, however, where the Illums recieved aforementioned upgrades
20 Illums vs. 12 Kodiaks: 7 Illums survived (again, this test isn't valid, but at least an indicator)
ILLUMS VS. ENFORCERS
I recently did a test with SilverSurfer online to deteremine something. JJ has done tests that show that the Illum is easily the most powerful long range frigate. He's also exposed that the Enforcer is easily the worst Heavy Cruiser.
When I crunched the numbers, I looked at Illum vs. Enforcer and just wasn't sure which would win.
Now, that's without damage multipliers applied. HC's do 150% against lrfs. LRFS do 75% of their damage against HC's so that doesn't tell the whole story.
When I saw the above chart, I was curious. My expectation is that HC's will beat anything outside of HC's and bombers. I think that's perfectly reasonable. HC's come so late in the tech tree that you'd expect them to be the strongest, and it says in their info card in-game that they counter lrfs.
I wanted to see if Vasari really can use enforcers on the Illum spammer. I did 3 tests of 50 Illums vs. 25 enforcers. I'll explain each test.
There are some folks who are going to say hey Raging Amish, Illums and Enforcers don't cost the same so how you do your experiment by ship slots is wrong. Actually, you'll find this interesting. If you use 4.5 cred = 1 resource (which I feel is slightly more accurate than 5 cred per resource, the black market hovers between 400-500), you'll notice that Illums and enforcers in fact cost the same.
2 Illums: 760 cred + 120 metal + 110 crystal = 1795 cred
1 Enforcer: 625 Cred + 150 metal + 110 crystal = 1795 cred
So, in my opinion, the cost of the ships is equal when looking at equal ship slot analysis.
This was the simplest test. I sent 50 Illums up against 25 Enforcers. No upgrades. This was more of a control to see how the two ships are balanced. I figured this is large enough a scale to get good results. The results....were staggering.
22 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcers.
50 I vs. 25 E : 22 I survive
Second Test: Balanced w/ no Reintegration
The first test leaves out the fact that enforcers cost 2 extra mil labs and ALSO cost more to tech, so I did my best to give the Illums upgrades to balance this out.
I did a full analysis of upgrade costs. I couldn't get exact matches in cost, but I think I got close.
One thing that has hit me is that I could have adjusted the differences in cost by giving more Illums than giving more upgrades. That would make a difference, but arguing about spending $$$ on upgrades rather than ships is splitting hairs.
With all of that said, I did this test with no reintegration. In the no reintegration test, I had to compensate for the exta money Vasari spends on 2 labs (2760 creds), and then the extra spent on buying the level 5 tech compared to tier 3 tech (1525). To balance this out, I gave the Illums Both LvL 1 Shields and Health (+10% net combined shields/health), and then one tech in beams. This comes out to a cost of 4512.5 creds. This is 300 creds more than what I was aiming for, but as close as I could come. 300 creds won't tip the scale of a battle, so this is fair.
22 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcer.
*50 I vs. 25 E : 22 I survive
*I should mention that in this test I microed more effeciently and the Illums didn't get as close initially as they did in the first test. Surfer had to move his Illums closer mid battle, and I was microing better, so this test was slightly skewed in the beginning, which is why we have the same # of survivors as before.
Third Test: Balanced w/ Reintegration
So, reintegration. This should balance out the Enforcer right? It can stop mid battle and heal 720 health. WRONG. It heals at 18 hps. The Illums do way more damage than 18 dps just with their sidebeams. To compensate for the cost of reintegration, I show in the charts above that I had to include the extra cost of 4 health ups for the Vasari and 2 reintegration upgrades. To balance this out, I additionally gave the Ilulms both LVL 2 Shields, The second up in beams, and then 1 lvl 3 health upgrade.
During the battle, I built up a que of 20 illums or so and was microing to activate reintegration on the enforcers. The loss of the guns of the enforcers seemed to be the most staggering effect. Sure, the ship is healing, but it's guns turn off and it's not helping the battle.
21 of his Illums were left when I lost my last enforcer.
50 I vs. 25 E : 21 I survive
Conclusion:
This is just bad. I can't express how badly this needs to be balanced. This leaves Vasari players two options against Illums. You can either get fighters and watch them get mauled by flak, or get Starbases that can't jump from planet to planet.
This test to me exposes how bad enforcers really are and how strong Illums really are.
I can think of no reason for Illums to be this strong. At the very least, Illums need to be brought down on par with the other LRFs, and the Enforcer needs to be brought up to par with the other HC's.
This is the current chart for the statisticss of 60 ship slots:
My Proposed Fixes:
This is how I would balance the game if the current status quo of lrf's staying strong is to be kept. I gave the Illum the worst health of the group, and I did switch around the Assailant and LRM shields.
I gave LRMs the worst shields because TEC have the worst shields of all the races. Advent has the best. Vasari is the middle man. The list is inverted for health. Advent has worst health. TEC has the best. Vasari is middle man.
Now....I don't like that chart as it stands. Each HC has about 9750 combined health/shields. Each LRF has about 10500 combined health/shieilds. That's just wrong, even with the differences in armor.
I think the LRFS in general should be nerfed at least 10% in total health/shields. A 10% nerf to start in the next patch would at the least be a good start towards balancing lrfs. I DO BELIEVE that lrfs need a cut in combined health/shields. Currently, they are tough as nails (all three races, even when you're tec you either get LRMS or Kodiaks). This is what my chart would look like.
You don't have to agree with this. This is how the individual ship stats would change.
Original Stats:
620
Changed Stats w/o 10% nerf:
500
Changed Stats w/ 25% nerf:
450
540
I'm completely serious about that nerf. Long Range Frigates are supposed to be just that....long range. The kind of ship that fights great from afar, but if something gets close, they take 'em down easy.
As I mentioned before, this would require balancing flak, but it'd be a worthwhile fix to help the balance of this game.
Perhaps 10% is or isn't the right amount. But it's a start.
1 last Grievance:
The damage multipliers in this game need to be....rebalanced. When a ship goes up against what it counters it should be doing +75% damage, or maybe +100% damage. Not +25% or 50%. Now, for HC's, which get +25% to +75% against anything, that's not what I'm getting at. HC's are good against all. Every other frigate is great against something, but not good against most other ships.
I'll start with light frigs. Light Frigs need the buff to 175% at least against heavy armor. I'd prefer 200%.
I'm not so sure how to adjust flak. TBH adjusting flak depends entirely on whatever other adjustments the devs make, so rather than make a guess about flak, I'm just going to say they need fit in the flow of the game, however that may be.
LRFS should have high multipliers. It makes sense that this ship type has good multpliers. The point of the lrf is to be good at dealing out damage, but to be easy to destroy for enemies that get up close. IF THEIR HP/SHIELDS gets nerfed, I would fully support upping their multplier against medium armor to go up to 175% if it isn't already there, HOWEVER I understand that LRFS are so strong against light frigs that keeping them at 150% would make sense.
Bombers could use a boost. They do 100% against very heavy armor....which is what they're designed to counter. My feeling is this should be 125-200%. Not 100%. I just figure if the game is rebalanced, bombers need to stay strong enough to fight a kodiak rusher.
Parting Words:
I realize Stardock is the publisher and Ironclad is the developer, so pinning this problem on just one of the companies isn't fair, but how hard is it to get someone who's number savy to balance the game? The current balance of the game is at best abysmal. I know the races need to stay independent and unique, but god almighty that doesn't mean throw balance out the window.
I do not want to be an annoying jerk on the forums who seems to be screaming the loudest about the current state of the game. I like to think I've kept myself as logical and reasonable as possible.
To ICO and Stardock, this game is amazing. You've done a great job at fabricating what has to be a top 5 game for me to have ever had the pleasure to play. With that being said though, this game needs to be balanced, because after waiting over a year for this game to be fixed and balanced, I'm not sure how much longer I and the rest of the community are willing to wait. There are other games out there that don't give me this type of frustration, and I'm slowly turning to them, so fix it plz.
he used mass disorient once and repulse once then i EMP bombed him he didnt have the AM to do it again. he may have lost only 10 or less illums, thats how pathetic it is.
He had no weapon upgrades on his SB, only defence, he also had culture upgrades. so he didnt have many slots left.
I think the fake ilums say abilities disabled in red print on the info card.
Ya. It is sounding like things were left out. Did he have meteor too along with disorient? Disorient really screws with kodiaks and such anyways. I have said before if you are fighting illums and repulse with kodiaks(especially 60+) then you deserve to lose them. The advent player will wipe the floor with you if he is halfway decent because your kodiaks wont really be able to fire a shot. Doubly so if they were mass disoriented. The advent player would have had more of a chance but with an SB in the picture too then it is definitely possible that he could hold off both of you.
Illusion is not OP at all. It is easy to tell the difference between a fake illum and a real one if you know what to look for(and you really shouldn't be able to tell a difference IMO). In that manner you can just micro to kill the real ones. Sure it will soak up some side shooting or indirect damage but that is only situationally useful. If you are against someone that doesn't know how to tell the difference or doesn't micro, then yes it will make a difference there too. It is far from a game winner.
[_]-Greyfox
BTW The more I think about astax idea Im starting to like it.It does make sense but it seems like it could be hard to balance but overall the best idea.Tieing am to the production of sc makes carriers exetremely hard to balance out.Sc would have to be extremely cheap for it to work and much more resilient than now.I really like the idea of giving carriers abilities but if these changes come to pass they cant be labor intensive or complicated.It just needs to all work good and easy.Im with the rest of you guys tho we need a patch bad.I dont hardly play because of the current state.Things need to be balanced and it only takes a few min to adjust stats.
Yeah, Mindseye and Grey pretty much hit it on the nose. Your TEC fleet as you described it was 1380+ ship slots. Sunny's was 700 ish. Your fleet alone was twice his size. Illums are imbalanced yes, but unless he was abusing repulse, mass disorient, or meteor strikes, you should have won that. Especially considering you had a second fleet there.
he wasnt abusing repulse or mass disorient thats the problem. My donovs were using EMP bomb so his SB and gardians didnt have the AM to abuse it. he used mass idsorient 1 time and repulse he never fully got off.
ANd about making my kodies attack the real illums when i have 80 illums focus fiering my caps i needed to micro my donovs like crap i didnt have time to set individule targets for the kodies. if i spent 5 secs assigning targets my caps would be almost dead. what tipped the battle for me was illusion. not repulse not mass disorient.
Deceiver lost his fleet because it was repulsesed into the mass disorient and then sunny just creamed it.
Edit: i forgot he also had 12 carriers with all bombers,
now before you go rambleing about bobmers countering HCs he had all of his bombers on hold position at the edge of the grav well when i jumped in i had positioned my kols to jump right on top of the bombers, i got 2 flack bursts off and all of the bombers were destroyed.
He was also stupid to leave the bombers on hold posiotn so even after new ones build they stayed at their carrier. so the bobmers didnt play any role in the battle other than giving me 2 lvl 6 kols.
Me the free SC arent a problem. The SC are the carriers weapon, like the weapons of any otehr combat ships. The main problem is that you couldn'T much of anything in 1.01 to suprese them because the AM was not ajusted. You couldn'T kill off the AM in carriers. I know I tried it with 2 dunovs with lvl 2 emp bomb and he still had plenty AM to spare.
Thing is if SC cost money to build then if somethign happens to your ECON you wont be able to rebuilt them so you'll ahve units youve spent good money on that is not useless since your can'T afford to replace it weapon system. Might as well junk you carriers right now while your at it.
They were tools to contral SC just they were never properly used or ajusted. Not only does the carrier AM regeneration amount need to be lowered. But the LFs AM distortion abilaties need to be upped. They need to steal more AM and cause more DMG for those that do.
The tool was there just never used properly and then we went and created these "NEW" tools that had CASTASTROPHIC results on the game. You wanna go and create a new DISASTER TOOL? Personalay I think we all need a good dose of "KISS" KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!
See that's a moment where you have to decide what's important. 6 caps, or knocking out his entire fleet. Use the dunovs to knock out the guardians first, and then just send in the kodies up close to the illums. Kodies will mop the floor. They don't have all that armor for nothin!
I would've sacrificed a cap or two in that situation. I lose a cap. He loses a fleet. Micro the real targets. Lose a Dunov? Bleh, so what. You obviously had a monster econ so buy another one and manually up it to level 3.
Keep the hoshikos close to the hc's. BTW, why'd you have 30 cielos? 20 tops with that kind of fleet that ya got. Oh, and you shouldn't fight near his starbase. If there was a more relatively unguarded planet behind that one you were fighting at (say no starbase or he's just starting to build it), go there. You'll save urself a lot of pain.
Im not debating the fact that with all the stuff he had, and hes superior micro we would have lost, I am debating the fact that he only lost 20-30 real ships in the whole battle.
MY fleet consisted of 100 illuminators, 7 guardians, 13 carriers (with fighters) a Prog and a revelation. lvl3 health & shields lvl2 weapons.
And if illusion doesnt take AM, why couldnt my fleet of 100 lums double in size? any thoughts on that?
He did have a fully upped SB with (im guessing) 3 hp/1 culture/1 weapons/2 Meteor/1 disorient.
Uber fought along the edge of it, but Im sure the repulse pushed his ships out of range of the SBS weapons (probably not meteor storm though). I chose to fight no where near it, though at one point he managed to line up his guardians and repulse about a quarter of my fleet all the way from halfway across the gravwell to within range of the meteors. Yow!
Uber and I weren't attacking to win, we were just(the three of us) in a stalemate for about an hour (this was an ffa game) and Uber decided to do a balls out attack on Blackhawk (which I was watching with Clairvoyance the whole time 2 jumps away) and I decided to join in for a little spice, and to get the game over with. I wasn't expecting to win, but I really thought blackhawk would have taken a lot more losses. The main reason was his instantly doubled fleet size, and repulse. Was pretty funny though seeing so many illums being tossed around like rag dolls for a good 15 minutes.
EadTaes: You should not think of the sqauds as the weapons of the carrier, but rather think of the carrier as a mobile factory + support vessel, and the Fighters/Bombers as their own unit. They will take damage and die, but at the same time they will cause damage and kill enemy ships right? I mean if they are not getting through at all to do any damage: DOCK THEM! You will spend money to replace them, the opponent will spend moeny to replace the frigates that were killed as well, much like is with any battle of frigate vs frigate. WHat happens if your economy doesn't hold up and you can't replace your squads? Same thing that happens when you can't replace frigates, you become overun by the enemy and die! Seems fair to me.
But you will have an advantage over using just frigates because the distance from your factory tot he frontline is 0! You build them right there, where as your closest frigate factory might be 2 jumps away otherwise. Your ships will be rebuilt faster than SC is replaced now using AM, because you are just constructing them and they will come out at full squadron strength when constructed. Your squads are more manuverible than enemy frigates. And your squads can hide inside the carrier.
Deceiver_0: The illusion thing is only mildly useful. Abiltiy would have to be replaced so that the ships cannot be so easily distinguished for it to be useful. Hell I know they can eat side beams, but thats only marginalyl useful.
Now vs a Starbase, it's pretty good because starbases will fire so many banks, and it is almost never microed with it's main bank. So yes vs a starbase you would probably make good use of whole lot of the illusions. Another use would be on mine field, but that is pretty micro intensive. You be suprised how many orders you would have to give to clear a nime field. But neither of these 2 things, Mines and SBs, were in the game when this ability was in, so I doubt this was it's intended use. It's more like they gave you lemons and you learned to make lemonade with them.
Dude not the same at all. You have to build the carrier at a very subtancial cost and if you can just defeat the carrier without defeating the carrier them selves then thier is no point to them. It's all wasted supply. Yes if you econ gets hurt then you will not be able to build as many frigates to replace them true, you wont be able to build replacement carriers. If your lokkign to defeat carrier without having to killt hem then just take carriers and SC out of the game all together. With your logic this woudl mena if you figting a dude that is spaming LRFs the best way to beat him is not to try and kill his LRFs but kill his frigate factory to stop production.
Making SC cost money is the same as asking your frigates to pay 5$ for each shot they fire. So I ask you how would you fell if you ships couldnt fight back because you didnt have enougth money to pay for the freaking ammo. And don't compare them to mines. Mines recived a cost and a limit because they were a problem were you could fill every system with them and cause major lag.
AM was place in this game for a reason. That reason is it's a player controled control tool. To stop you enemy from using abilaties you need to fuck up his AM. With carriers you need to fix their AM rate so it is possible to fuck up their AM. Me that si the solution a PLAYER CONTROLED CONTROL SYSTEM. NOT A FREAKING ARBITARY PENALTY. No strategy in arbitary penalty, each time you add one your window of constraints grow smaller and smaller till even their is no strategy left just prescripted combat. The more arbitari penalties they are the more this game will suck and the more we will ahte it.
I have to disagree Ead. We're not suggesting a hike in price overall. Take the current price of a carrier and lower it, and then make strikecraft cost a certain amount with respect to their current cost.
If Carrier X costs 2000 cred and supports 2 squads, I say make the carrier 1000 cred and the squads 500 a piece, or perhaps the carrier 1500, and the squads 250 a piece.
The whole point of this is to make it so that strikecraft aren't so freely regenerated. If your fleet is fighters and I kill them off, you don't have to pay a dime to replace them, but I have to pay to replace anything you killed. That's bull.
It could be written so that a squad will naturally regenerate strikecraft, but that you must only buy replacements when the squad dies completely.
There could also be a reasonable cooldown on the rate that strikecraft can be produced.
On a tangent thought, this isn't the first thing I want fixed in the game. Fix the Illum, Enforcer, and Repulse First. Fix those and we can find the next new and improved exploits in the game.
So are you saying that in a battle with over 140 illuminators flying around, you can easily tell which ones are real and which ones arent? The empire tree is useful to an extent in deciphering this, but you're given 2 options. option 1: unstack the empire tree and shift attack all 70 of the real illuminators, or 2. let your ships auto target on all 140 enemy illuminators.
Problem with option 1) 70 ships is A LOT to shift click on to begin with. Secondly, the ships aren't represented with 'proximity' to your fleet on the empire tree, so theres a good chance you could accidentally send your ships to attack an illuminator thats a good distance away from your fleet, leaving the entire fleet open to attack from the rest of them, or forcing you to stop your fleet, and re-shift target the illuminators again.
Problem with option 2) Theres a 50/50 chance your ships will be attacking a fake target, that can be healed and whose shields can be restored just like a normal illuminator. So they can live just as long as the real thing, making it take twice as long to kill them all. If you think about the length of time it would take to kill all those ships, it effectively halves the total damage your entire fleet is doing to his 'real fleet', while at the same time extending the life of the real fleet allowing it to do more damage to yours than would otherwise be possible over that period of time.
A lot of this abilities brokeness has to do with the overwhelming power of illuminators, and a good nerf to them would probably cut down on the abuse, still, without a good Visual clue as to which ones are real or not, the ability doubles the health/shields of the illuminator. allows it to heal twice as fast and allows it to live twice as long to do damage.
EadTaes: The carrier cost will be cut by at least a half. As mentioned in my original post. No one will spend 850 credits and then some resources for a carrier if they also have to pay for the squadrons, this is obvious. Having carriers cost less is easy sell if they don't come with free squadrons. No one will fill their Fleet supply up with discount carriers, unless they also plan on building squadrons. So your cost for first wing of Squads + carrier will be about the same as it is now for just a carrier. But your Fighters will be more sturdy because since you are spending money on them, they deserve to be.
You can defeat carrier without defeating carrier right now! In 1.03 it is easy as hell to destroy all fighters with flak so that your carriers do NO DAMAGE. No amount of AM right now is enough to keep your fighters flying if the enemy countered with adequate flak. You are just left with a big expensive space box that cannot fire. If the squadrons cost money, and were launched at 100% craft, then you would always be able to replace them. Construction time would be a lot less than regenerating the full squadron of craft with current system, AM or no. And your carrier would not just be something that sits there making a space blockade.
AM on carriers is terrible mechanic right now. LFs cannot counter construction of craft using AM, they cannot do much at all. Only Disciples can drain a carrier of AM. The other 2 factions are SOL. I proposed there be abilities that the carrier uses that are Activated. Activated abilities can be countered because they will trigger Sabotage and Interference effects.
And if you don't like arbitrary penalties that's great. I proposed the build penalties be reveresed. There will be no need for them at all if the craft cost money. We just have to come up with good build time for the craft. I think 45 secodns to 1 minute does nto seem bad. But we would still need to decide if you can build more than one squadron at a time per carrier.
Deciever, there are two ways to tell which ones are fake and which ones aren't. The first is what I mentioned with the left side bar.
The second is when you're building up a que of units to target, if the Illum has in red letters at the bottom of the description card "Abilities Disabled", this is a fake. You can target ones that are real. I think some of your Illums may have been fake and you didn't realize it. It's a possiblity, because the ability fires automatically when in combat.
Not trying to insult your intelligence, but maybe your fleet wasn't as strong as you thought it was.
And during the course of a battle your carrier will start costing you astronomical amounts. MATH
10 carrier at 1000 so 10000 add 20 squands of say 5 SC at 500 a squads 30000
Go in battle lose 40 SC 34000
Battle Big one lost 200 SC during the course 54000$ and it keeps taling. A constant running cost. Eventuly gets to the point were it's just not worth it economicaly. And in to that enemy has KOLs flak busrt and kill all your SC thats 100 SC so an aditinal 10000 in cost to replace from a compelte wipe out. So what do you amke SC mroe resistent? Then you get to a point were you can't killt hem fast enought and it's to powerfull like before. RUNNING CIRCLES. Why because its an abitary system. It automaticaly leads to the next step.
Now factor in Carrier loses to You lose your carrier but also all your SC on it since SC can't migrate, Not only are you paying to replace the damned SC already but now and in full carrier. That a full 2000 rigth there for each carrier.
And in the end we will endup right here again with the same problems. Because with a system liek that unlest you got and ECON from hell you wont be able to suport the carriers cost. But if you alreayd have sucha huge econ you'll just skip carrier all together and jsut build a huge ass fleet.
We created a new system for carrier their build penalty and ARBITARY SYSTEM with extremly bad results. Creatign a new ARBITARY system will once again lead to bad results. What you need is a player controled system so the results are decided by the skill of the player and their decisions in battle. And the system for that already exist with AM it just needs tweaking. I'm already working on a mod to test out the AM I just need to find the build times for bomber sna fighters for each race to crunch the numbers. Once it's done I will take you up for a game with it.
Thats what i keep SAY it needs to be tweaked the system is there is is just not setup to work properly. Fix it to work properly and you will have solved your problem.
EadTaes: Please stop using hyporebolies. Everyone can see you are opposed to the idea, no need to make stuff up. I never used any exact cost numbers, because I feel they would have to be tweaked many times before you arive at a good number. Regradless the cost Amish chose is per squadron.
Didnt think you were, but I mean my fleet was the same if not better than his, my entire fleet was destoryed, he lost 20-30 ships after destroying mine AND ubers fleet. Also, at no point in the battle were my "numbers" greater than his, which if my illusions work functioning correctly would not have happened, Im not really sure what happened there. And I do know about the 'abilities disabled' thing, but that means you have to hover over each one and check it, which still means you have to move your cursor over 140 ships that are moving around, flying over and other eachother and being repulsed back and forth, theres no possible way to efficiently target real ones over the fake ones.
Even if the fake ones were slightly translucent, they could be identified close up and improve your chances against them dramatically. If this were the case you could at least micro your ships and say,"wait no dont attack that one, attack THAT one"
I don't know, honestly if illums were put back in their place, and repulse was fixed, im sure I probably woulndt have a problem with this ability. Though I do think its a little less than fair that the best LRF in the game gets nearly 360 degree AOE attacks at no extra cost and another pretty sweet ability, it may be balanced somewhere else in the game that im not aware of. Hard to say until they patch this game, and fix the horrible imbalances.
I'd bet that if you did the 50illum vs 25enforcers test again with illusions against a real player, and of course a little something for the enforcers to balance the cost, those illums will come out a lot better.
really i think what deceiver and i are trying to say, is by itself the illusion ability is fine it helps the illum scale to late game. (Even though it is better than HCs late game without the ability). The real problem is the lack of usefullness of the other lrf abilites. the aoe attaks do next to no dmg to anything within its range. if you had 100 assilents focusfiering a SB with charged missiles illums nearby the SB probably wouldnt even have lost all of their sheilds when the SB dies.
Really amish by saying that i just sacrifice my caps to his fleet so i have a chance to beat his fleet that is just stupid(not the suggestion but how powerful the ability becomes), think about it if you get illusion you would then get automatic kills to caps because they have to micro the rest of their fleet so hard that they cant keep their caps alive.really i had 2 lvl 6 kols a lvl 5 marza lvl 4 akkan 2 lvl 5 donovs i didnt want to just let them die without even trying to save them.
really you have the best lrf combined with a lrf ability that just blows away the other ones. IMO illusion should just make a fake illum that isnt on the empire tree. its fine if it is in the overall count of units but not on the empire tree. Illusion should just be an ability that is intimidating and that is it, because that is all the other lrf abilties are they have no real purpose other than intimidation.
another problem is fighters on hold position will not only target real illums they will target the fake as well as the real so illums bascically get 2X the hp against fighters because not on hold position it takes far too long to take out a group of illums.
What I would accept as a cost to SC was a Pay to purchase a squad, But that to replace the lsot SC is free.
So buy carrier 1000 purchase 2 SC squads of fighters 500 each to 1000 for both 2000 totalk witch should be equal to current cost of carriers.Go in battle lose all the fighters they are raplaced at no cost.
Your enemy got HC and you need bombers, scuttle the fighters and purchase 2 bombers squads 1000 cost again.
Well SC replacement I have not discussed at length BECAUSE there is some creative thinking that needs to be done around that. Most likely what I would like to see is squadron continue to do full damage even if it is missing craft. Just like a frigate at 10% hp still does full damage.
Right now I'm thinking only damaged craft will be repaired free. How to replace missing SC I have not give that much thought because one would have to see how it would play out in practice. Simply put your squadrons will deal damage and kill opposing frigates while not losing a whole squadron yourself. If you could continuely replaced the SC that died for free, you would probably not notice any economic cost from using carriers(fighters should be much sturdier if cost is implemented). While your opponent would notice quite a cost, since he would be losing frigates left and right. Though ocne again I state these are just my projections. It may be that in parctice free SC replacement is necessary at soem sort of interval. But I feel strongly that in the end some squadrons would need to die off in order to maitnain some balance between strikecraft and frigates. There just needs to be some sort of attrition factor.
In fight of fighter vs fighter, you might also not be losing a lot of craft with HP boosts. I am not sure how the combat is resloved now, if you tell all your squads to attack an opposing squad do they go after the same craft in that squad? Do they just pick one craft at random?
I think fighter vs fighter damage would be reduced, and given repair abilities by carriers, they would be able to fight quite a while. So if you want a decisive victory vs fighters you would need to employ fighter+flak, or fighter+flakburst/telepush (Jam weapons would however become more of an ability to protect your fleet vs strikecraft or protect your bombers vs fighters), or fighter + LF to disable repair abilities of the carriers. Simply going fighter vs fighter would be ineffective and boring.
Fighter vs Bomber would be fairly strong though. But flak vs Bomber would be fairly useless once again given that the carrier has enough AM to keep repairing the craft, and that bomber can damage flak fairly well. Using Flak + LF though should be enough to counter equal supply of bombers.
For the bombers dont worry they cost s shitload more AM person to replace then fighters. So if you tweak the AM to the figthers to be barely able to replace and eventuly run out of AM someone sending in bombers on suiicided missions will soon be running dry. Even in 1.01 it was possible to kill the AM of carrier if they were bomber spamers and you had enought fighters. Althou it wasn't fast enought.
I found out some strage things about the AM restore rate thought it mean 0.4 AM restored per second whent he line said AntiMatterRestoreRate 0.400000 but thats imposible since a TEC carrier with a 15% build penalty replacing 1 squad continusly is consuming 3.55 AM per second. But carrier have 2 squads so thats 7.1 AM persecond but yet my carrier were no were close to running out of am. So I think it's a percentage and a TEC carrier has 400AM and a 4% restore rate would mean 16 AM recharge per second. However I don't think I noticed AM restoring that fast when I was watching my Carriers. So I am waiting for a responce and some skilled modders for that. If not I'll ask the devs and hope they will answer.
It doesnt make sense to me that fighters cant kill fighters.This would mean in battle that fighters are fear free of other fighters.So without flak you are totally boned.I mean it would force flak use in game but then there is only 1 way to kill fighters which I dont like much.You should be partially effective in a rock vs rock battle.
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