Balancing the 3 factions...for real... » Forum Post by Seleuceia

Interesting direction; I think this is very viable, but we have to tread carefully. By your numbers, Flak Burst is just as powerful at level 1 as level 3 and only differs by cooldown. This is significant for high-level Kols, but very soft for low-level Kols. This opens up more possibilities for tri-skil Kol builds, which I like a lot, but may have overstepped somewhat and made tri-skill the default build because 1 point in flak burst is sufficient until you're a high level anyways.

I still want to keep adaptive forcefield active, but for the time being we need to change our focus to the GRG, which is an ability in need of serious help. All we've done so far is make the flak/shield Kol stronger, without making GRG builds any more viable.

I'm going to open with these numbers:

Antimatter Cost: 25 (from 75)
Cooldown: 6 seconds (unchanged)
Range: 6000 (unchanged)
Damage: 300/450/600 (from 325/650/975)
Special: Target maximum speed decreased by 50% for 10 seconds, target attack speed reduced by 20% for 10 seconds.

This averages out to 50/75/100 dps before mitigation. Even a level 1 Kol should be able to use it for over a minute straight. The ability's new secondary effect of reducing attack speed would be particularly effective against starbases and other battleships. Thoughts?

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

This is what worries me about a Tri-skill build...the Kol has very little antimatter, so making it viable for 3 active abilities to be used also makes it very viable for one ability to be spammed virtually forever, which could be very difficult to balance...

Both the Radiance and Kortul have a passive ability...the Kortul is pretty balanced between Jam weapons and Power Surge, and honestly, if the Animosity did something useful, the Radiance would be balanced between detonate antimatter and animosity...

As much as I think it would be cool to allow a solid tri-skill build on the Kol, I just don't know if it will work out...

At first I was heavily in favor of the more power/less frequent route on GRG, but looking at the current GRG and your proposal (which I'll get to later), I think less power/more frequent is better for balancing...

If you want to use flak burst, 0 antimatter is as good as 99 antimatter, it simply is not enough...my current proposition creates this huge step between the shot that depletes all the antimatter and the following shot...so basically, its a double-tap of flak burst that does insane damage, but then you won't be able to use it for a long time...

What if flak burst was changed to a damage of 30 and cooldown of 9/7/5? The antimatter cost could be 55 or 60 (assume for this number adaptive forcefield is passive)...this is more antimatter per DPS, but also prevents the time gap between the 2nd and 3rd shot (or 3rd and 4th) that my previous proposition did...since it is more antimatter per DPS, high lvl Kols could not spam this ability quite as much, but low level Kols would be able to do 3 shots with a more steady frequency...

I'm thinking flak burst should be 30 damage, cooldown 9/7/5, and antimatter cost 60...a lvl 1 Kol could still pull this off 4 times fairly quickly (which is equivalent to 2 shots before), or could be more flexible and pull of 1 or 3 shots so it can use GRG...just a thought...

Now, for GRG...

On a conceptual level I like all your numbers a lot...I was originally against this, but I'm thinking that less power/more frequent is the route to go, it just is better for balancing...I'm sure you already did, but I just want to run the numbers for a second...

Disintegration does 2400 damage, and averages to 26.7 DPS...my understanding is, that is Hull damage that negates shield mitigation...now, lets assume shields mitigate on average 2/3 of the damage that GRG is doing...that is 33/50/67 DPS, which is a lot higher than Disintegration...

Now, disintegration is less flexible because of the 90s cooldown, it is an ultimate (needing lvl 6 cap), and it does a lot more than just damage the ship...90s of lvl 3 GRG is doing 3000 damage, which is a lot, but it's not bypassing shields and is not done in one quick strike...it also is doing only damage (no antimatter depletion) and it doesn't heal the Kol...

So, I do think that your damage values are very reasonable...

As for the secondaries...

I like the speed decrease for 10s...any longer, and this rather spammable ability might also be better than ion bolt in keeping a ship from escaping from the center of a well...

I'm not sure I understand attack speed...what exactly do you mean? Acceleration? Weapon Cooldown? I can see either one being viable and probably not OP at 20%...just curious at what exactly it does...

As for the antimatter cost, I think 25 is good regardless of whether adaptive forcefield is passive or active...

I think you might have nailed this ability Darvin...

In my opinion, I think the Kol can only be balanced after it is tested...it just needed too much work on too many abilities...the other ships we should be able to get close to perfect though before testing...

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Here is a resource focus upgrade which I thought of myself:

It is always active, but the bonus is in an area around the tradeport. So you have to build the tradeports near constructors.

Edit: Also I would like to see a lot of the abilities converted to passives. So that each cap has at least 1 passive ability. I don't think you can balance it otherwise, since Vasari especially suffer from lack of any sort of antimatter regen for their caps. While a ship like Advent carrier only has to use antimatter for 2 abilities.

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What if flak burst was changed to a damage of 30 and cooldown of 9/7/5?

I'm leaning away from that, because I quite like the shock effect of the current high-damage model. Combined with fighters and flaks, this can be nearly instant death to strike craft that fly overhead, which is the threat that this ability should be presenting. By taking that away, as well as the long cooldown that presents a tactical liability, the ability becomes much less interesting, even if technically it is still useful and practical.

lets assume shields mitigate on average 2/3 of the damage that GRG is doing...that is 33/50/67 DPS

On average, I'd say half damage, for 25/37.5/50 dps after mitigation. That's exactly the same as nano disassemblers at level 1. Power Surge regenerates 25/35/45 shields per second. Though against capital ships your mitigation will reduce the damage to closer to one third, so power surge will negate a constant barrage of GRG.

I don't think disintegration is a good comparison for GRG, but you nailed that one yourself; a 90 second cooldown ability that has a lot of shock power can't be compared against a 6 second cooldown ability that's slow and steady.

I'm not sure I understand attack speed...

Weapon cooldown is what I mean here.

In my opinion, I think the Kol can only be balanced after it is tested...it just needed too much work on too many abilities...the other ships we should be able to get close to perfect though before testing...

Agreed; we're basically reworking every single ability on this beast, which means lots of testing is ahead.

Also I would like to see a lot of the abilities converted to passives. So that each cap has at least 1 passive ability

I completely disagree; a capital ship doesn't need a passive skill to succeed. There are many examples of capital ships (and while we're at it, heroes in WC3) that don't use their passive abilities all the time. I think we can achieve this for many capital ships without making abilities passive. It doesn't mean we shouldn't make any ability passive, but I don't think it should be our default answer.

Here is a resource focus upgrade which I thought of myself:

It is always active, but the bonus is in an area around the tradeport. So you have to build the tradeports near constructors.

I punched some numbers for that a while back, I came the conclusion that a 35%/45%/55% value for resource focus' effect would be enough to make it useful. I'm still in favour of just changing it to have those more reasonable values.

Since we got through GRG so quickly, how about I take a couple of cracks at an animosity rework. I've got two ideas:

Big Bad Voodoo Solution:

Instead of trying to force enemies to attack the Radiance, why don't we take away their ability to attack other targets? In Warcraft III, there is an interesting ability called "big bad voodoo", which makes all nearby allied units invulnerable... except the caster himself (if two allied Shadow Hunters cast this at the same time, neither becomes invincible). Changing animosity to have this effect would definitely make it useful, but we'd have to carefully tailor the area of effect and duration to keep it under control.

Area of Effect Debuff

We could add an area of effect debuff to animosity that hinders enemy units. This could be either replacing the current effect, or in addition to it. I'm not sure exactly what kind of debuff should be given, and I'm open to any suggestion, but it should be different from any other ability to make it unique.

I personally don't think tinkering with the skill's current form is going to change anything.

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The Kol needs to swap flak for magnetize. It would use a little less antimatter and the kol would be equal with the other battleships because it has an ability canceler.

Wait, nevermind, disruptive strikes is not a canceler.

SORRY

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Wait, nevermind, disruptive strikes is not a canceler.

Yes it is, actually; the change was made in 1.18.

I don't think the Kol needs to have a cancelling ability, and I think magnetize is much better suited to the Dunov... and that's going to be something we'll need to get around to eventually...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

First off, Syneptus...

I think your idea with resource focus is an interesting proposal...personally, I'd rather leave it as is but buff the numbers (as Darvin suggests) or make it passive, but lower the numbers and have it affect the whole gravity well (which is bascially making the range ridiculous like the PJIs)...I don't like the idea of being forced to build a trade port by an asteroid, this can force you to put facilities in places you may not want to defend or that force your constructors to move all over the place...it also lacks some flexibility, since orbital facilities can't be moved (ex, I might want extra crystal now but later I find I need more metal, except all my trade ports are by crystal mines)...

Nevertheless, this ability needs some rework, as Advent currently have the weakest economy....I think Advent should have the weakest economy (just part of their lot), but this ability currently is just pointless...unfortunately, your suggestion might get overshadowed by the fact we are focusing on capital ships, but please keep following the thread, as other things will eventually come up and we'd appreciate your contributions...

Now, Darvin...

I'm leaning away from that, because I quite like the shock effect of the current high-damage model. Combined with fighters and flaks, this can be nearly instant death to strike craft that fly overhead, which is the threat that this ability should be presenting. By taking that away, as well as the long cooldown that presents a tactical liability, the ability becomes much less interesting, even if technically it is still useful and practical.

Shock effect is important, and 30 damage twice as often isn't the same as 60 damage once (even if they average out the same)...I was a bit concerned with halving all the numbers as well...but, I think leaving at 60 damage is going to make it too "all or nothing", if that makes any sense...

What if it was 45 damage, cooldown of 12/9/6, antimatter cost of 80? This is basically 3/4 on everything of the 60 damage proposition, with a tad bit higher antimatter cost...more antimatter/DPS than 60 damage proposition, but less antimatter/DPS than 30 damage proposition...12s is the current cooldown for lvl 1 anyway (except now its doing more damage) and a low lvl Kol easily could get 3 of these out in 24s (135 damage for 240 antimatter...a lvl 1 might have a delay on the 3rd shot)...at lvl 3, you could do 90 damage in 6s...still enough time (if just barely) for a smart player to get his SC the hell out of there, but I think the faster cooldown will make each level of this a much greater threat...

I personally don't think tinkering with the skill's current form is going to change anything.

Even if animosity did successfully force attack, I agree...however, I'm not fully opposed to making animosity do what its supposed to (making the ability occur in waves would successful force attacking), and then adding another secondary advantage...

I'm personally more in favor of the debuff route...some ideas I have include an ability similar to Ruthlessness, but it only affects SC...don't know if this can be implemented, but the Vasari PM platform ability prevents passive regeneration, just something to consider...

Another idea (and this one is crazy I know) is an opposite of repulsion...bringing ships closer to the radiance...the range would have to be greater than repulsion, and the acceleration would have to be really slow...honestly, other than being interesting I don't know what purpose this ability would do, save making players scream at you while their capital ships failed to navigate through the super dense "fog" of ships...okay, this idea is just crazy and not probably part of a balancing mod, but I thought I'd mention it...

The other direction this could go is in making the Radiance more resilient while this ability is activated (and pulsing the force attacking as well)...damage reduction is the obvious choice, except that is too similar to the Kol...temporary invulnerability to the Radiance (real short lived) would be interesting...maybe something similar to energy absorption except it would be shields instead of antimatter and obviously would not be passive...

I'm not sure what to add to animosity, but I think keeping the force attacking (and maybe pulsing it to actually make it work) is more in line with a balance mod...instead of replacing the ability, I think something good (and I like a debuff the best) should be added to it...

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At least make Gauss Rail Gun or Flak Burst a wee bit more effective. (I am aware that there have been over 100 posts on this subject.)

Adaptive Forcefield needs a little more of an effect. Have it lower incoming damage and block more phase missiles, and have it lower damage from energy weapons. Would make some sense and would make the Kol more effective against the Advent.

Most of my ideas get shot down, but hey, I'm full of them.

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

I would love your big bad voodoo option for animosity Darvin... if there was a way to prevent two Radiances from casting it at the same time. I don't want to think about what obscene duel Radiance strategies we would see resulting from that.

As a suggestion for a debuff, how about a decrease in chance to hit (as animosity should at least be distracting the gunners on the other ships). Another option is actually a buff besides invincibility to all other ships, like +10% damage reduction.

GRG need to be balanced against nano disassembler I think (for the antimatter cost anyways). Sense it doesn't have the armor reducing effect though, it in fact needs to have a higher base damage even once factoring in mitigation to be effective. Just decreasing speed and attack speed (at those levels) are not equivalent to -5 (or 4.5) armor, which is one of the best negative buffs in the game.

I'm not sure if reducing damage from energy weapons is possible Syneptus, despite Reactive Armors description to the contrary.

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if there was a way to prevent two Radiances from casting it at the same time. I don't want to think about what obscene duel Radiance strategies we would see resulting from that

In Warcraft III, if two allied Shadow Hunters cast the ability simultaneously, neither becomes invulnerable. This would be the ideal way to handle it in Sins. Alternately, if this is not possible, the Radiance is simply never affected by this buff (this may be good balance-wise, since staggering two Radiances with animosity could cause some animosity...)

As a suggestion for a debuff, how about a decrease in chance to hit (as animosity should at least be distracting the gunners on the other ships).

The game already has an ability that does this. The "vertigo" ability of the Rapture. It's actually a very powerful ability, highly underrated.

GRG need to be balanced against nano disassembler I think (for the antimatter cost anyways)

I ran those numbers earlier. For nanos, you get 8.3/11.6/15 damage per antimatter spent. For GRG, under my recommendation, you get 12/16/20 damage per antimatter spent (before counting mitigation). Seems on track.

Just decreasing speed and attack speed (at those levels)

If we buff other battleships, this is going to be pretty powerful. Plus consider the case where the target is a starbase. That's pretty significant to cut a starbase's damage output by 20%.

I wouldn't discriminate based on the status of energy weapons for a defensive ability. Energy Amplification on the Halcyon works because all Advent weapons are energy weapons. But for a defensive ability, this would create a strong anti-Advent ability that has little effect from Vasari and close to no effect on TEC. The only strong combat unit in the TEC arsenal that uses energy weapons is the Cobalt; everything else of military significance uses autocannons or missiles.

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 85

1. In Warcraft III, if two allied Shadow Hunters cast the ability simultaneously, neither becomes invulnerable. This would be the ideal way to handle it in Sins. Alternately, if this is not possible, the Radiance is simply never affected by this buff (this may be good balance-wise, since staggering two Radiances with animosity could cause some animosity...)

2. GRG need to be balanced against nano disassembler I think (for the antimatter cost anyways)
I ran those numbers earlier. For nanos, you get 8.3/11.6/15 damage per antimatter spent. For GRG, under my recommendation, you get 12/16/20 damage per antimatter spent (before counting mitigation). Seems on track.

3. Just decreasing speed and attack speed (at those levels)
If we buff other battleships, this is going to be pretty powerful. Plus consider the case where the target is a starbase. That's pretty significant to cut a starbase's damage output by 20%.

4. I wouldn't discriminate based on the status of energy weapons for a defensive ability. Energy Amplification on the Halcyon works because all Advent weapons are energy weapons. But for a defensive ability, this would create a strong anti-Advent ability that has little effect from Vasari and close to no effect on TEC. The only strong combat unit in the TEC arsenal that uses energy weapons is the Cobalt; everything else of military significance uses autocannons or missiles.

1. I realize that, but as a mod it is just simply impossible, unless you made the ability not target any capital ships.

2. It is the after mitigation that I am most worried about. GRG would be a very competitive ability if it wasn't effected by shield mitigation.

3. Yes but in general offensive abilities tend to be a lot more potent than defensive ones, especially with the capital ship destroying capacities of nano. You maybe right, but testing is the only real way we have to find out.

4. Again I was talking about the feasibility of making a mod do that, not the strategic implications of such an ability if it were possible.

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1. I realize that, but as a mod it is just simply impossible, unless you made the ability not target any capital ships.

Yeah, that is a problem unfortunately. I could see making it not affect other Radiances, but not affecting any capital ships would probably remove a lot of the utility of this ability.

2. It is the after mitigation that I am most worried about. GRG would be a very competitive ability if it wasn't effected by shield mitigation.

Well, if you want to model 50% mitigation, cut it in half. If you want 65% mitigation, divide it by three. It's not as good as nanos in either case, but it's in the same ballbark and that's good enough for me. We can tweak it later depending on how it turns out.

Yes but in general offensive abilities tend to be a lot more potent than defensive ones, especially with the capital ship destroying capacities of nano. You maybe right, but testing is the only real way we have to find out.

I'd argue the opposite; defensive capital ship abilities tend to be a lot more potent than offensive ones. Repair Cloud will negate the effect of nanos... in an area of effect. Shield Restore will absorb the punishment of missile barrage, even without iconus backup, and MB is powerful enough to be quite controversial even as an ultimate. Power Surge is as close to invulnerability as you get in the early game.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

As far as I know, here is the latest info on changes to the Kol:

Adaptive Forcefield is now passive...it still grants 15%/25%/35% damage reduction and 25%/45%/65% phase missile block...compared to the current ability, the average damage reduction will be higher on low levels but the same 35% at lvl 3...this was due to the current ability having a longer cooldown than duration at lvl 1 and 2...

Flak Burst still costs 100 antimatter...however, the damage has been changed from 30/45/60 to 40/50/60 and the range has been changed from 2400/3000/3600 to a constant 3600...cooldown has been changed from 12//10/8 to a constant 10s...this should make flak burst 1 and 2 more powerful, but keep flak burst 3 more or less the same (slightly longer cooldown, 8s -> 10s)...as Darvin noted, a constant damage will make this ability too useful at lvl 1 and discourage pursuing higher levels of this ability...

Gauss Rail Gun now costs 25 antimatter instead of 75...damage has been reduced somewhat from 325/650/975 to 300/450/600...range (6000) and cooldown (6s) remain unchanged...the max speed reduction on the target has been reduced from -100% to -50% (-100% would make this too much like ion bolt given the new lower antimatter cost)...in addition, GRG reduces the target's weapon cooldown by 20% (should give this more kick against starbases)...the duration of these secondary effects is 10s and the debuffs are not stackable...

Though the Kol is mostly done, it is certainly still on the table...this ship (as well as the Revelation and Marauder) are probably going to require a lot of testing before an certainty on the changes can be achieved...

As for the Radiance:

As a note, the armor of a lvl x Radiance is 4.1 + .4x ...a benchmark lvl 5 Radiance (first chance at lvl 3 ability) would have 6.1 armor...

The Kol is getting potentially 35% damage reduction all the time (and PM protection)...the Kortul can regenerate 45 shields a second...with shields mitigating 2/3 of damage, this is equivalent to 35% damage reduction while the ability is active if the ship is taking 386 DPS (so, basically 46 LRMs FFing on the Kortul)...and what does the Radiance get?? At most, +3 armor from energy absorption...that is like 15% damage reduction, and it only works (if I understand correctly) once shields are depleted...

Its my feeling the armor bonus (especially since Advent shields are half the HP) should at least be somewhat comparable to what the Kol or Kortul are getting...now, yes energy absorption gives extra Antimatter...but Adaptive Forcefield gives PM block and Power Surge extra damage....I'd say that energy absorption is not only weaker defensively, but its secondary advantage is the weakest of the three as well...the radiance is more resilient than the other Advent caps, but it pales in comparison to the other two battleships when it comes to resiliency...

My feeling is, change Energy absorption's armor bonus from 1/2/3 to 2/4/6...it still isn't providing the same resiliency as the other two battleships but its closer...I'm fine the radiance not being quite the tank the Kol or Kortul is, but its a little too weak right now...

I'm proposing buffing the armor bonus of energy absorption from 1/2/3 to 2/4/6...this ability hasn't been talked about hardly at all...I'm not sure if this is because animosity overshadows it or because I'm missing something and this ability doesn't need a buff, so I'm open to criticism and suggestions...

As for animosity...I first want this ability to do what it's supposed to, and I think the solution to that is pulsing it, so I'm going to try and work on that...however, I agree that a secondary effect is needed...I don't know what and there are lots of ideas out there, so I'm going to leave that open before making a proposition on it..

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My feeling is, change Energy absorption's armor bonus from 1/2/3 to 2/4/6...it still isn't providing the same resiliency as the other two battleships but its closer...I'm fine the radiance not being quite the tank the Kol or Kortul is, but its a little too weak right now...

I'm not sure what direction we should be heading with the Radiance, but I think your reasoning is pretty sound here.

I first want this ability to do what it's supposed to, and I think the solution to that is pulsing it, so I'm going to try and work on that...

I think pulsing it will just turn it into a click war. I'm thinking more of just scrapping its current effect entirely because it doesn't work in practice.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

I think pulsing it will just turn it into a click war.

I don't see how...it requires only 1 click to activate...I think I didn't explain what I meant by pulsing...

Animosity has an ability file AbilityTaunt which puts the buff BuffTauntSelf on the radiance...BuffTauntSelf "affects" most objects within range of the radiance with another buff called BuffTaunt...

BuffTaunt is the actual file that affects each individual ship...

Both BuffTaunt and BuffTauntSelf use instant actions, which is what allows the player to change each affected unit's orders after the ability is cast...

If BuffTaunt is changed to a periodic action, then it can "pulse" where the bufftype SetTauntTargetToLastSpawner is applied every x seconds...essentially if x is small (say 1s or less) then it would be virtually impossible to change the ships orders...this is the same mechanic that creates "waves" in abilities like Missile Barrage...

Likewise, if BuffTauntSelf becomes a periodic action (with an interval of say, 1-2s) then ships entering the range of animosity will be affected even if they weren't there for the initial activation of the ability...this is the same mechanic used in Jam Weapons to affect SC who enter the AoE after the ability was cast...

Making both of these periodic actions with small enough intervals should mean even a human can't change the orders of the affected ships (well, for more than a split second anyway)...in addition, ships entering the AoE after the ability is cast would still be affected...

Currently, the ability does not affect SC...I think this should be changed, as this will give the ability even more power...

That is what I meant by pulsing the ability...

While I think eventually Animosity should apply another debuff or should boost the radiance temporarily somewhat, this ability is currently an unknown quantity...we simply have no idea what its potential power is...

I'm of the opinion that the cooldown, duration, and antimatter cost should all be re-evaluated on the assumption that animosity does nothing other than successfully force ships to attack the radiance...I think this ability will need more, but I don't think we can really get idea of what to add until a successful force attacking AoE is tested...

Right now the antimatter cost is 65, duration 20s, cooldown 35s, and range 3000/4000/5000...

Here are my suggested changes...make both buffs periodic actions (BuffTauntSelf with interval 4s and BuffTaunt with interval 1s)...I also think the max # of targets should be made infinite and SC should also be affected....Let's test this first before another secondary effect is added to animosity...

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If BuffTaunt is changed to a periodic action, then it can "pulse" where the bufftype SetTauntTargetToLastSpawner is applied every x seconds...essentially if x is small (say 1s or less) then it would be virtually impossible to change the ships orders...this is the same mechanic that creates "waves" in abilities like Missile Barrage...

I did a little bit of modeling of this, and you'd need to pulse twice as fast as a player is clicking to override him 75% of the time. Given that, I think we need to pulse three times as fast as a player can reasonably click (which is about 10 times per second). I think no slower than 30 ms pulses are necessary, possibly as low as 10 ms pulses.

Currently, the ability does not affect SC...I think this should be changed, as this will give the ability even more power...

Do you know if SC would count towards the target cap individually or on a per-squad basis? If it's individual, you'd have to lift the target cap completely to do this.

Right now the antimatter cost is 65, duration 20s, cooldown 35s, and range 3000/4000/5000...

And 6/12/32 target cap... that'll probably need to be changed...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Do you know if SC would count towards the target cap individually or on a per-squad basis? If it's individual, you'd have to lift the target cap completely to do this.

I don't know, I'd guess per object (which would be per ship)...doesn't matter, because I've already lifted the target cap anyway (set max targets to -1.00000), I think having one severely hampers this ability...

As for the interval times...

I'd guess we'd need a frequency between 10 ms and 50 ms. I'm pretty sure 100 ms would be too slow for this purpose.

Good info! I was hoping someone might have some numbers in mind so it wouldn't have to be trial and error...I want the buff to be applied as often as possible for game play, but as least often as possible for performance reasons...now, the BuffTauntSelf won't need to be very often...4 seconds should be fine...make it much faster (I tried .5s) and you get to the point where, well I don't really know....the ships seem to not have time to respond to the ability, so they do nothing differently...

Now as for BuffTaunt, I'm going to try your numbers...though it will probably still need to be tested to make sure its not glitchy or a killer to performance...

UPDATE: Tried .050000s on BuffTaunt, and it seems to be stable, no issues...to make sure it actually works, it'll have to be tested against a human though...

EDIT: Make that .020000s...50 times a second...hopefully that will work...still needs to be tested against a human...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Alright, so...energy absorption is probably going to be buffed to 2/4/6 armor...animosity is become (hopefully) usuable, and can be buffed after testing (I think this is the best route for this)...detonate antimatter is pretty good I think, probably no changes there...

All 3 Kol abilities have been addressed...they may need a little more work (especially on whether adaptive forcefield should be active or passive), but I think they are at least good enough to go on to a testing phase...

That leaves the Kortul...I'd say this was the best of the 3 battleships to begin with...even more, I'd say all 3 of its abilities are in pretty good balance with eachother (disruptive strkes might be at a slight disadvantage) and all 3 are very potent...if there are any suggestions for changing the Kortul, by all means lets hear them, but this ship definitely needs the least work (if any) of the 3 battleships...

This leaves buffing the battleships as a whole i.e. adding more DPS, more firing banks, etc etc...

I really don't know how much of this needs to be done...the Kortul already was pretty beastly, the Kol I think is going to be much more powerful, and the radiance is still pending an extra buff to animosity...

If the battleships are going to be buffed as a whole, I think its time to focus on that...

With the Battleships mostly done (ability wise) I also think we should move on to the siege battleships...

The Marza is probably going to need the least work...as far as I know raze planet is a pretty solid ability, few complaints there...radiation bomb also seems pretty solid given its an AoE ability and bypasses (IIRC) shield mitigation...that leaves the incendiary shells...this ability is going to need some work, if nothing else to put it on par with the other two abilities...

Vulkoras has two different siege abilities that are pretty solid (haven't run the numbers yet though) but phase missile swarm is going to need a lot of work...my feeling is to bump up heavily the # of max targets, but I'd like to hear ideas...

Revelation's reverie I think should be left untouch...this ability is pretty powerful, I've used it a lot, and I don't know if buffing it is a good idea...clairvoyance I think is going to need work (lvl 2 and 3 at least), but not more than a few changes in numbers...and then guidance...I'm not going to say anything on that yet, I'd like to hear some ideas on that one first...

Overall, these ships will likely need a general buff similar to the battleships to put them on par with the colonizers and carriers, but that can be done later...

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5) Nerf Phasic trap...for a faction that can have their fleet anywhere at anytime, invaders should not be excluded from using THE MOST POWERFUL UNIT, SC...I'm not looking to kill the ability, I simply want it to be reasonable...

I haven't seen complaints on this ability yet which are to be taken seriously. It's an ability on a static structure (a hanger)... hard to see how it is OP or game-breaking. Vasari were seriously UP last patch, and seems like most of their OP-ness lately is with scramble bombers.

6) Potentially nerf Subverters...with all the other changes, I don't think this will be necessary, but I wouldn't mind hearing some good ideas...

No. I played this game heavily for years. Vasari support cruisers were always seriously underutilized. Subs just got buffed up to where they might be usable. They still require ridiculous amounts of micro to be used effectively, otherwise, left on autocast, they will jump to disable extractors, or all jump to disable the same ship. In other words, without serious micro, they are useless.

Their micro-intensiveness is enough of a nerf and a crutch already. They don't need to be nerfed back into oblivion, where they have been most of this game's existence anyway.

7) Buff Illuminators...seriously?

Uh... no, no, and thrice no. They were just nerfed, dude. They were the main reason Advent were ridiculously OP for God-knows how long.

And as far as scouts go, leave them the hell alone. We've been there, done that with buffed scouts. They helped to ruin the game last patch, which was in my opinion one of the worst patches of the game, and one of the least fun to play.

As far as capships go, I've thought about them for a long time. I strongly believe that the way to fix caps is to make capships be the counter to caps, not lrm or bombers or anything else. They should be there to support the fleet. They can't support the fleet if they can be countered by hordes of frigates. Make them essentially invulnerable to frigates, make frigates essentially invulnerable to them, and make caps be able to kill other caps. Then they can support the fleet, 'nuff said.

I'm all for a community mod, but this has to be done right. No offense to you whatsoever, and you are perfectly within your rights to make your own mod, but if this is to be a community mod, with any chance or hope of being accepted by the community, it probably should be done by the community at large (or, at least a good sampling of well-respected, experienced dudes within the community), not just one dude.

At any rate, good luck.

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The suggestion to nerf phasic traps is not unfounded. Its just no one used them until recently. With 2 or 3 of them you can disable any amount of strike craft pretty much indefinitely. They don't even build squads on them to save antimatter. They just save it for phasic trap. That basically leaves you to kill SB with an overwhelming number of ogrovs,HC(the only real advent alternative) or even more LRF(it takes absolutely silly amounts of illums to take down a decent orky even without fleet support and you are still going to lose a lot of them). This is obviously not the preferable way to do it. The orkulus is tough enough to crack even with bombers much less doing without them. Lets not forget the huge amount of bomber spam negating using HC much for it and ohhh yeah....you can't use fighters to counter them anyways because of phasic trap.

Subverters were nerfed and not buffed in their history. They used to be stronger. They are far from underutilized. Vasari have so many other options that sometimes subs don't get pulled out. Given enough time however they are definitely used. They are still very strong in my opinion and almost OP if not truly OP. People will throw up repulse but you can still fight with repulse. You can still jump out of the well with repulse unless they used their own MICRO to position it so that you cannot run as well. It takes large amounts of microing guardians to achieve good pushing to prevent retreat. For subverters all you have to do is spam them and aim them for the middle of a clump of ships. The most micro about it is using them individually at different spots to make your coverage complete. It takes just as much micro if not more to do repulse right with forethought of positioning them so that they are pushing where you want them to push or in anticipation of a retreat etc. The only useful way to counter subs are SC(you are fucked if you are on the offensive and there are the aforementioned phasic traps), nearby SB or spreading wide enough in your fleet to limit the disabling.

Vasari were NOT underpowered last patch. They were pretty much the same then. Its just a nerf to advent illums, scout nerfing, unneeded buff to scramble made it all the more obvious they were very much OP in their ways. I am not saying there is no winning against a vasari. I am saying that it is harder to win against one.

[_]-Greyfox

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

Quoting Agent of Kharma,

reply 94

I'm all for a community mod, but this has to be done right. No offense to you whatsoever, and you are perfectly within your rights to make your own mod, but if this is to be a community mod, with any chance or hope of being accepted by the community, it probably should be done by the community at large (or, at least a good sampling of well-respected, experienced dudes within the community), not just one dude.

At any rate, good luck.

Kharma, that is exactly what I have been trying to do in my thread. The problem has been getting the community to find much consensus on much of anything. Mods like this are far from what a community patch will be, but at least we are getting some people (and we need more) to debate about what a balanced game will be like and some ideas of how that will happen. Once we have some ideas we can make mods (like this one) to test them, and then decide what worked and what didn't.

Also, all of the things you pointed out where from earlier in this post. The direction is now focused on getting the capitalships balanced out so that they will all be more useful realitive to each other (Me and Darvin agreed that the Halycon is probably where most capitalships should be in effectiveness), thus preventing spamming of carrier caps we have been seeing. Specific issues with frigates will be left for latter.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

haven't seen complaints on this ability yet which are to be taken seriously. It's an ability on a static structure (a hanger)... hard to see how it is OP or game-breaking. Vasari were seriously UP last patch, and seems like most of their OP-ness lately is with scramble bombers.

Phasic Trap needs to be reworkd...it should buy the Vasari time to reinforce their defenses with a fleet by keeping SC temporarily out of the picture, but it should not keep enemy SC out of the battle forever, SC are simply too important...

Though it hasn't been discussed yet, my thoughts were to increase the antimatter cost and cooldown time while increasing the range...this would still allow SC to continuously be disabled, but not indefinitely...

No. I played this game heavily for years. Vasari support cruisers were always seriously underutilized. Subs just got buffed up to where they might be usable. They still require ridiculous amounts of micro to be used effectively, otherwise, left on autocast, they will jump to disable extractors, or all jump to disable the same ship. In other words, without serious micro, they are useless.

You should also then know that Domina Subjugators and Cielos are weak...with the subverter buffed, the Vasari can no longer complain about having crap support cruisers...subverters aren't just stronger now, iconus guardians are weaker...with the illuminator nerfed, battleballs with illums as the main source of non-SC firepower aren't as powerful anymore...this last patch weakened the power of the Advent's support cruiser and did nothing to the TEC, leaving the Vasari with the uppper hand...

The only change I was considering to subverters was preventing shield disrupt from affecting SBs and capital ships...PMs should be powerful against individual, high priority targets like caps but right now they are a little too powerful (sometimes 3-4 times stronger than other weapons)...

Uh... no, no, and thrice no. They were just nerfed, dude. They were the main reason Advent were ridiculously OP for God-knows how long.

With the "mystery damage" bug fixed, illuminators (per fleet supply point) do the same DPS as LRMs, except that only half of their damage is frontal...therefore, they are only half as powerful against caps, SBs, and structures...furthermore, they are a lvl 3 tech and their special ability does not increase damage like the other two LRF abilities...combine this with scouts being nerfed, and the Advent took a serious hit from the latest patch...because LRFs are the backbone of early fleets, Advent are too weak in the early game, which is why few players use Advent in MP...

The biggest problem I'm seeing here is a fixation on the past...it doesn't matter if the Advent were OP and the Vasari UP for a millenia, that doesn't reflect on the current situation...right now, the Vasari are OP, not by much, but enough to give them a clear advantage...Advent are severely hindered in the early game and TEC still have a poor late game performance...

And as far as scouts go, leave them the hell alone. We've been there, done that with buffed scouts. They helped to ruin the game last patch, which was in my opinion one of the worst patches of the game, and one of the least fun to play.

I agree 100%...I've been against changing scouts from the start, if LRFs are going to be fixed it needs to be in a different way...

I strongly believe that the way to fix caps is to make capships be the counter to caps, not lrm or bombers or anything else.

I agree as well...once the capital ships are balanced this will likely be the next focus point....

I'm all for a community mod, but this has to be done right. No offense to you whatsoever, and you are perfectly within your rights to make your own mod, but if this is to be a community mod, with any chance or hope of being accepted by the community, it probably should be done by the community at large (or, at least a good sampling of well-respected, experienced dudes within the community), not just one dude.

I agree 100%...the only problem is, do you see a community at large working on a mod? This last patch (and this game as a whole) has been out for a while, and people have been complaining about it since it came out...examples are Four Capital Ship Abilities that Need Help and the Problem of Balancing With Ultimates and Four Game Mechanics that Need Help in order to Enhance Variety in Strategies by DesConnor, rather indepth phase missle examination. by Pbhead...and there are countless others...

Despite several good players making good observations and good suggestions in regards to this game and this last patch, nothing has been done about it...this patch has been out long enough, if a community mod was feasible it would likely have been started by now...

I'm not dumb, I know I don't have a lot of recognition or respect on these forums and therefore what I say carries little credence...but I'm being proactive, I'm going out and getting ideas, making files, and preparing a mod that can be tested...it's not that I think I'm the best to do this, its that I don't see anyone else doing it and I personally want to enjoy this game again...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

As an update, I've created this thread for testing...

Testing changes made to Capital Ships

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What about giving scouts an upgrade ability that costs metal/crystal that turns it from a scouting vessel to a more combat vessel? It would probably have to be a researched ability. You could replace the martyrdom upgrade, as ti is mitigated by shields, and is largely useless.

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Vasari were seriously UP last patch

Completely disagree; Vasari was a very well-balanced and powerful faction last version. Personally I thought there were superior to TEC, and if not for the illuminator bug I believe they'd have had a shot at being the best faction. Hardest to play, sure, but not weak.

Personally I think phasic traps do need to be weakened, because right now they completely take an indefinite amount of strike craft out of the picture. This is way stronger than the current "jam weapons" ability on the Kortul. It is simply not right for a hanger to be outperforming capital ships.

As the others have noted, people don't even build squads on their hangers anymore to conserve antimatter for this ability. While I'm of the opinion that hangers use too much antimatter to build squads and get depleted too easily, this is a clear sign that the ability is at very least much too powerful compared to the other function of this structure.

Uh... no, no, and thrice no. They were just nerfed, dude. They were the main reason Advent were ridiculously OP for God-knows how long.

Unless you're planning to nerf the Javelis or the Assailant, or give Advent some other buffs to compensate, the Illuminator needs help. It's doing its job, but it's simply not in the same league of power as the other LRF now.

Yes, it was too strong, but the bug fix has well over-shot the sweet spot and made it too weak.

We've been there, done that with buffed scouts.

Scouts were never buffed. They were just as strong as they ever were in 1.18.

Frankly, I did prefer the scout swarms to the LRF swarms, and I thought 1.181 (illuminator bug notwithstanding) was the best version of Sins produced. I felt the only problematic scout was the Advent scout, due to its much higher durability. I felt the only change necessary to scouts was to standardize them around the performance of the TEC variant.

Make them essentially invulnerable to frigates, make frigates essentially invulnerable to them, and make caps be able to kill other caps. Then they can support the fleet, 'nuff said.

No, then they will dominate the fleet and the battle effectively ends when your capital ships die. There's no point in building anything but capital ships if nothing else can seriously challenge them, and it's all about killing the enemy's caps. And this is before considering the decisiveness factor, an effect common to all RTS games that encourages using a few big units rather than many small units; this must be counterbalanced by ensuring that smaller units are more cost-effective, otherwise they will never be used.

Masses of frigates must be able to beat capital ships, and I think any attempt to change that would be disasterous. Making capital ships more resistant to focus fire, better able to survive firefights? I'm all for it, but they still have to lose in a shootout to frigates at the end of the day.

Now, as for siege caps:

The Marza needs a buff to its "incendiary rounds" ability. This ability is close to worthless currently and needs help. Its damage is too low, and the effect doesn't scale very well at all. It probably needs a secondary debuff or an area of effect.

The Vulkoras needs a buff to its phase missile swarm. This ability is simply too weak currently, and with a very tight target count doesn't scale very well at all. This capital ship lacks the antimatter to effectively use the ability. A small buff to its passive ability might also be good.

The Revelation is the tough one here. Reverie is fine as is, even perhaps a bit too strong. It's the other abilities that need help. I do not believe we can buff them up to an acceptable level without adding secondary effects. Advent simply has no abilities that benefit from improved cooldown, so guidance is a waste, and clairvoyance simply does too little when a cheap 200 credit scout will do the same job without having to expend a precious capital ship promotion. Even its ultimate needs help, since it's very nice currently.

Give the Marza and Vulkoras teh same generic buffs as the battleships. The Revelation needs something as well, but I don't think that treating it like a battleship is thematically appropriate.

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