Since the weekend is approaching, I figured it would be a good idea to release one more update...all together, 25 abilities across 12 different capital ships have been changed...since so many things have been changed, this change log will consist of all changes made from the very beginning...here is the most recent change log...

Official Change Log of Project Equilibrium

v0.20

Capital Ship Changes

-Kol

--Adaptive Forcefield
---Changed to passive ability

--Flak Burst
---Range increased from 2400/3000/3600 to 3000/3300/3600
---Cooldown decreased from 12/10/8 to 10/9/8
---Damage increased from 30/45/60 to 40/50/60

--Gauss Rail Gun
---Antimatter cost decreased from 75 to 40/50/60
---Damage increased from 325/650/975 to 600/900/1200
---Target's max speed penalty decreased from -100% to -50%
---Now decreases target's weapon cooldown by 20%

--Finest Hour
---Antimatter regeneration decreased from 5 per second to 3 per second
---Hull regeneration increased from 10 per second to 15 per second

-Radiance

--Animosity
---Cooldown increased from 35s to 60s
---Buff on targeted ships is now reapplied 50 times a second to prevent manual retargeting
---Now affects ships entering the area of effect after the ability has been cast
---Now affects strikecraft
---Now restores 2/2.5/3 hull points everytime damage is taken
---Max number of targets increased from 8/16/32 to infinite

--Cleansing Brilliance
---Duration decreased from 8s to 6s
---Damage per second increased from 250 to 500

--Energy Absorption
---Antimatter from damage taken percents increased from 5%/10%/15% to 10%/20%/30%

-Sova

--Missile Batteries
---Cooldown decreased from 35s to 35/30/25

--Heavy Strikecraft
---Physical damage bonus increased from 12%/24%/36% to 15%/30%/45%
---Armor bonus increased from 2/3.5/5 to 2/4/6

-Skirantra

--Scramble Bombers
---Duration decreased from 120s to 60s
---Antimatter cost changed from 50 to 45/50/55
---Cooldown time decreased from 35s to 24s

-Jarrasul

--Colonize
---Planet now temporarily has an extra 1/2/3 constructors; no structure build rate bonus
---Duration increased from 240/480/720 to 720s

-Dunov

--EMP
---Range increased from 4500m to 5000/6000/7000
---Antimatter cost changed from 100/90/80 to 80/90/100
---Cooldown decreased from 50/45/40 to 30/25/20

--Magnetize
---Antimatter cost increased from 80 to 80/90/100
---Max number of targets increased from 8/12/16 to 1000000 (essentially infinite)
---Max number of strikecraft that can be destroyed increased from 8/12/16 to 20/25/30
---Damage to target per impact decreased from 25 to 15

--Shield Restore
---May now cast ability on self
---Amount of shields restored increased from 250/500/750 to 500/750/1000

-Rapture

--Domination
---Cooldown deacreased from 60s to 30s

--Vertigo
---Range of casting ability increased from 4500m to 6000m (range of buff unchanged)
---Antimatter cost decreased from 70 to 50/55/60

--Vengeance
---Range increased from 6000m to 8000m
---Antimatter cost decreased from 70 to 50/60/70
---Cooldown changed from 30/35/45 to 30/35/40
---Duration increased from 20/30/40 to 30/35/40

-Antorak

--Distort Gravity
---Antimatter cost decreased from 65 to 40/50/60
---Cooldown decreased from 45s to 30s
---Ranged increased from 5000m to 8000m

--Subversion
---Range increased from 5000m to 50000m
---Antimatter cost decreased from 100 to 50
---Cooldown increased from 75s to 150s
---Structure and ship build time penalty increased from 50%/100%/150% to 100%/200%/300%
---Duration increased from 300/450/600 to 360/480/600

-Marza

--Incendiary Shells
---Fixed bug where debuff was cancelled by successive shots
---Now temporarily decreases target's armor by .5/1/1.5

-Revelation

--Provoke Hysteria
---Cooldown decreased from 180s to 120s
---Percent of planet population killed per second increased from .75% to 1%

--Guidance
---Antimatter cost decreased from 75 to 65/70/75
---Duration increased from 15/30/45 to 30/60/90
---Now decreases antimatter cost by 40%

--Clairvoyance
---Duration increased from 90/120/150 to 90/180/270

-Vulkoras

--Phase Missile Swarm
---Range increased from 5000 to 6000/7000/8000
---Max number of targets increased from 3/5/7 to 24
---Antimatter cost changed from 90 to 80/90/100

--Assault Specialization
---Bonus damage against structures increased from 60/120/180 to 120/240/360

 

Interesting making the abilities cost more as they leveled up. I could understand this with the Kol, but I'm afraid this will just make everyone pick the level 1 abilities for the first three levels, but I suppose that's what testing is for.

Disciples aren't always viable, particularly if LRF are prowling about.  Antimatter regenerators come too late in the game to be a serious consideration.



I'm still leaning towards making its damage bypass shields.  Otherwise, I'd say take its range back to 5000 at all levels and give it a small damage buff.



I'm thinking that if this ability gave the target a temporary defensive buff, it would be extremely useful in the late game as an anti-focusfire tool.  You don't necessarily need fleet support, just an ability that will scale as fleets grow.



I don't think a target cap is the right way to deal with this ability.

Instead, I believe the solution is to reduce its duration, antimatter cost, and cooldown.  In other words, more frequent but less powerful bursts. This means that if you fail to counter it the first time, it's not the end of the world, but the enemy will get a second round before long.

Here's my suggestion:
Damage Per Salvo:  150
Duration:  12.5 seconds (from 25)
Cooldown:  60 seconds (from 240 seconds)
Antimatter Cost:  100 from 150

The total damage of this ability decreases from 3000 to 1500, which after mitigation is barely getting through the shields of most late-game units.  If you have any form of healing at all, the ability's actually not that strong.  The problem is simply if yo uget a full 25 second blast for 3000 damage... even after mitigation that's going to severely damage a heavy!



I'd prefer to see a secondary buff...



I think that's taking this one too far.  



The duration could be 10 seconds at all levels for all I care.  I only want to peek once and don't care about the remainder of the duration.  It needs a secondary effect, end of story.


I'm strongly against raising antimatter costs by level.  It's arguable on a support capital ship like the Rapture, but a completely non-starter on a combat ship like the Vulkoras with very stringent antimatter requirements.  It should stay the same or decrease, period.

I've experimented with this in custom Warcraft III maps, and my experiences are that they work best when there is no realistic comparison to be made between a level 1 hero and a level 10 hero.  These graduated mana costs work very well in RPG-like settings as a result, but in a situation like Sins of a Solar Empire where high level capital ships go up against low-level capital ships regularly, not so much.

That's what I did on magnetize...but for whatever reason the ability simply did not do anything to SC...other people reported the same problem...changing the value from -1 to another number seemed to fix it...there are also certain abilities that if the stacking limit is set to -1, a minidump occurs and the game won't load...when I was testing incendiary shells with stacking, I ran into this problem...

I'd like this too...unfortunately, I don't know how to implement it...the range isn't a big concern to me because the ship has a max # of targets (and you can't control which 24 ships those will be)...if it was like Missile Barage, then yes, I think the range should be reduced...the problem I found with this ability is that the current range usually leaves most ships out of range....you have to move the Vulkoras right into the enemy fleet, and even then, it usually won't be hitting much unless its the late game....

Your idea of shield mitigation is probably the best thing for a buff...lets see how this ability goes first, but a secondary buff is probably not a bad idea....

I don't either, but I don't really know what else to do...TEC needed this ability because of how weak their caps were late game....lets see if the other buffs make missile barrage truly in need of a good nerfing...

I was iffy on this one myself...but, the antimatter cost is still 150 which is quite a bit...considering how many ships there are in a given battle, I don't find one use of this all that great...only getting one ship every minute?  That's pretty much useless in a battle....you might get maybe 5 ships if you're lucky and somehow don't lose your cap by then...this makes the ability still expensive but you actually can get several ships during a battle...I don't think this will be OP, just more powerful...

This ships a mess, it has three abilities that need to be fixed, two of which need major changes...your idea (at least I think it was your idea) to increase the planets susceptibility to bombing damage is a good one...

Since so many changes are being made at once, I'm afraid to throw in a ton of secondary buffs while at the same time making major changes to the same abilities...GRG, Jarrasul's Colonize, Animosity, Incendiary Shells, and probably some other things I can't remember all got new effects that have never been used before....let's test this, see how it goes, and then work from there....

You're the second person to say this so I'm going to keep a close eye on problems with running out of antimatter (or, not running out of antimatter) during the testing...of all the changes made, the antimatter costs and ranges were the...least thoughtful...changes...but (as I posted in the other thread) some of these changes will help the abilities be tested better and are kind of expected to be changed after testing...for many abilities, I want the power of the ability tested, find a level of power that's good, and then tweak the antimatter cost/range to determine when and how much that given level of power can be used...

Did some testing with the Kol today in single player...

Flak Burst seems to be pretty good...the larger range and damage increase at lvl 1 and 2 makes this a good, solid ability at all levels...however, even a lvl 10 Kol with Finest Hour can't use flak burst more than a few times, so I don't think this ability is overpowered...not as strong against Vasari SC, but any more and it would be too strong against Advent SC...

I liked the Adaptive Forcefield being passive, this made managing antimatter much easier...

Gauss Rail Gun I think still some needs a little more work...right now the damage is 600/900/1200 and antimatter cost is 40/50/60...lvl 1 of this ability seems to be almost perfect...the higher levels however seem to be a little weaker than they should be...I'd like to increase the damage rather than decrease the antimatter cost, as I think spamming this ability is a pain for micromanagement since the Kol has to be facing its target...I'd rather have it be more powerful/less frequent...

Also, the secondary buffs need some help...first off is the speed penalty...this is a good debuff as it helps you catch a fleeing cap (like ion bolt but not as good)...however, it only lasts 10s, forcing you to constantly spam GRG is you really want to take down a fleeing or kiting capital ship....I'm think the duration of this ability needs to be increased...right now it is 10s, what if this duration was increased to say, 20 or 30s?

The weapon cooldown debuff is hard to notice, even against capital ships...I can see this being useful against starbases, but any other situation and I think having the speed decrease is going to be more useful (good for cap killing)...however, extend the duration to 30s and this weapon cooldown would become very powerful...I don't see a good compromise between buffing the speed debuff without causing the weapon cooldown to be OP if just duration is affected...changing the speed or weapon cooldown values I don't think is going to help...I hate to say this, but it might be better to drop the weapon cooldown penalty so that the duration can be increased...so here's my proposition

Change GRG's damage from 600/900/1200 to 600/1200/1800...leave antimatter cost at 40/50/60...increase duration from 10s to 20s...leave speed debuff and weapon cooldown for now, don't want to change too many things at once...

I once was in favour of numbers similar to 600/1200/1800, but this just turns the ability into a "first-strike" nuke, and it's about micromanaging it to hit something that has low mitigation.  I dislike this, which is why I think cheaper and more frequent with a more potent debuff is the way to go. 

I think I'd rather increase the potency of the debuff rather than the duration.  GRG is an ability that suffers in the lightning quick late-game shootouts.  Cramming more shock power onto this abillity won't solve that problem, as no matter how high we go the Kol is going to get drowned out by the LRF pounding.  Increasing the duration might help a bit, but this ability is simply out of its element in these situations and is going to get outclassed by ion bolt or phase out hull.

The only capital ships that really depend on their weapons damage outputs are the Marza, Kol, Radiance, Kortul, and arguably Vulkoras.  The Kol can counter rock with rock, and Radiance and Kortul can both shut down the Kol, so that leaves only two capital ships that are adversely affected in a strong way, and neither are really intended as cap-to-cap brawlers.  As far as starbases go, this isn't going to stack up to what nanos can do.  So yeah, I think increasing the cooldown penalty and maybe the speed penalty would work well.

I'd rather see lower antimatter costs (shouldn't be trivialized now that Finest Hour has been nerfed) than increasing damage.  40/40/40 at all levels?

 

I like this idea.  If it were combined with a mitigation or damage reduction bonus (as I've recommended several times) it would really make this ability the king of anti-focus fire, as it should be.  TEC more than any faction needs more defensive tools in its arsenal to beat back focus fire.  This is very important since in the late game TEC needs to maintain multiple level 6+ capital ships to have a fair shot at winning.

A good point...so, damage stays the same (600/900/1200)...

I see your point with late game battles, so let's work with the debuffs then...the original debuff was -100% speed...this was changed because it forced the target to have to accelerate from zero...do you think bringing back this value to -100% might be a good idea afterall?  If not -100%, I think it needs to be more than -50%...it slows down the enemy ship but not by enough to be useful unless we're talking a long haul across an entire gravity well...

I still think duration needs to be increased...since the damage values at lvl 2 and 3 aren't that much better, I think the debuffs then need to become stronger at each level...either the values become higher or the duration becomes longer, or both...how about a duration of 10/20/30?  Speed could be -75% instead of -50%...

I don't really know what to do with the weapon cooldown bonus...10%/20%/30%?  Keep it constant?  Or do you think these values need to be higher?  Personally, I think the speed debuff is going to be more useful, it gives this ship a good counter against kiting carriers or caps trying to flee, so I don't know what to do with the weapon cooldown...When it comes to starbases, I think the duration is going to be more important than the specific number, because a short duration means the kol has to be in harms way the whole time...

We have duration, speed debuff, and weapon cooldown debuff numbers to work with...I'm tentatively thinking 10/20/30 for cooldown, -75% for speed, and 20% increased weapon cooldown, but I'd really appreciate feedback...

I tested this and the higher antimatter costs were somewhat of a killer...if the damage values aren't going to be increased, then yes I agree the antimatter cost definitely needs to be 40 at all levels...40/45/50 isn't bad either, but I want to get a better feel for this improved debuffs before I institute another incremented antimatter cost...

 

Tested GRG in SP with the following changes...

Damage: 600/900/1200

Antimatter cost: 40

Duration: 10/20/30

Target's max speed penalty: -75%

Darvin, I think you are right, the antimatter cost of 40 across all levels is much better...

The increased duration and increased speed penalty I felt were much needed...really helps at killing caps running away...still not as good as ion bolt, but ion bolt also doesn't do damage and it costs more antimatter...

The weapon cooldown penalty is something that's going to be hard to "notice" having any effect, so judging how powerful it is will be difficult...

A lvl 10 Kortul does about 87 DPS without any weapons technology or other bonuses...Power Surge lvl 3 increases that by 75%, or about 65 DPS...

Energy Aura gives a 7.5%/15%/22.5% DPS increase within a wide range...illuminators do about 16.6 DPS, so a 22.5% increase is 3.735 extra DPS per ship...to equate to 65 DPS (again, comparable to Power Surge), you'd need over 17 illuminators (which is a pretty decent amount for early game)...mid game, you'll probably see players with 3 or so of the fleet supply upgrades...that is 550 fleet supply or 91 illuminators...energy aura lvl 3 will add about 340 extra DPS (probably less since SC don't benefit from this)...

A nano weapon jammer with all its upgrades can reduce the weapon cooldown by 30% of up to 25 ships...lets say all those ships are destras doing 19 DPS each...that is a 143 reduction in DPS (less if the enemy is using LRFs)...

A Vasari starbase with all 3 weapon upgrades does about 422 DPS without any weapons technology or other bonuses...a 65 DPS change (comparable to the bonuse a lvl 10 Kortul gets from Power Surge) would be about +/- 15%...a 340 DPS change (comparable to energy aura lvl 3 during the mid game) would be +/- 81%....a 143 DPS change (comparable to fully upgraded nano weapon jammer) is +/- 34%...

Energy Aura and Power Surge aren't great comparisons, but they both deal with weapon cooldown and both are good abilities, strong but not overpowered...it's unlikely you'll see a lvl 10 Kortul, and you probably won't see too many Vasari starbases with all 3 weapon upgrades...the other two starbases will be doing even less direct damage and will be banking more on abilities or hangar bays...energy aura also is going to be a hard comparison since it scales greatly with fleet size....

Nano weapon jammer is probably the best comparison...it essentially is equivalent to a 34% weapon cooldown debuff on a fully equipped Vasari starbase...as an aside, the duration of the nano weapon jammer is 30s while GRG is 10/20/30...

With all this in mind...

The weapon cooldown penalty with GRG is currently 20%...I don't think it would be appropriate to lower that any more at any level, otherwise it's just going to be pointless...I'm thinking a value somewhere around 30-50% might give this ability the kick it needs...

Alright, 100% is it then...

A good approach, so...

Agree...

This will be important for scaling...however, I think the duration may need to be a bit longer unless

Either duration is longer (10/20/30) and weapon debuff is constant (40) or duration is shorter (10/15/20) and weapon buff increments (20/40/60)...

I'm not certain about this...I think either damage is constant and cooldown decreases (like you have) or damage increases (600/900/1200) and cooldown is constant...right now I'm leaning towards the constant cooldown/increasing damage, but I think this could go either way...

The problem I see with a constant damage is that it will be too strong early game and too weak late game...

Early game, a constant damage means the damage is going to be relatively high at lvl 1...since that first shot is when the target has low mitigation, extra damage could be too devastating....in theory, a longer cooldown would balance this out, however I think the time it takes the Kol to turn and retarget is more the limiting factor than the cooldown time...

Late game, the constant damage means the damage is going to be relatively low at lvl 3...not that it matters much in the late game, but I think GRG could use the extra damage then (works great against structures that don't have shield mitigation)...

I think an increasing damage with a constant cooldown is the way to go...however, given the low antimatter cost, this ability can be used very frequently, so a constant weapon cooldown debuff and long duration would be much weaker than an increasing weapon cooldown debuff and short duration...

Right now I'm thinking...

Damage: 600/900/1200

Cooldown: 6s

Duration: 10/15/20

Target's max speed penalty: -100%

Target's weapon cooldown: 20%/40%/60%

I think you have a good approach Darvin...I'm not set on these numbers, but I think we're definitely close....

Actually, you're completely wrong here.  Even ignoring the gross stretch of imagination needed to compare a debuff that affects a single target and a debuff that affects an entire fleet, vertigo still reduces the damage of its victims more than my proposed GRG.

Vertigo gives a 10/20/30% damage reduction and a 10/20/30% accuracy reduction.  That works out to 19/36/51% damage output reduction.  Attack cooldown is a little tricky; an increased cooldown time of 20/40/60% does not mean damage reduced by 20/40/60%.  After all, if cooldown were increased 100%, you'd still be dealing damage (about half as much.  The actual damage reduction caused by the GRG numbers I just suggested is 16/28/37%.

So vertigo works out to 19/36/51% damage output reduction across an entire fleet, while GRG works out to 17/29/38% on a single target.  There is the speed reduction to account for, but vertigo is still the more powerful debuff in terms of damage reduced, and at the higher levels it's actually pretty significant.

There's no need to get haughty.  I didn't forget about the accuracy debuff (I mentioned it, actually), and my point was not that the 60% GRG was 2x better than Vertigo in every way.  Rather, I was just pointing out that you're giving GRG 2x the performance of the Vertigo's cooldown debuff.  I'd already written a lot, so I made that comment brief and hoped the point would be implicitly clear. 

To (hopefully) clarify, I think that's a bad/strange choice because Vertigo is a dedicated debuff/support ability for ships in a modest radius (4500 may or may not count for 'a whole fleet', I'm not denying that it's powerful..)  GRG is a DPS ability with a much lower cooldown, much lower AM cost, and the additional speed debuff.  That means that GRG already has a powerful role in boosting DPS and in helping chase down/destroy fleeing targets.  With that in mind, I don't think it should be competing with a support-ship debuff like Vertigo, even if it's only comparable vs single targets like Starbases.

If you don't think it's strange to give GRG ~2x the weapon-cooldown-debuff of Vertigo that's fine, but I do. 

You make a good point: I didn't bother to calculate the weapon inaccuracy and cooldown debuff together, and Vertigo is a fair bit better than the proposed GRG at lvl 3.. But that still doesn't mean it's what we should do.

...And I'm sure you're right about it not cutting DPS by 60%.  If I said that it was probably because I wasn't thinking..

@Seleuc: Yes.. cap ship survivability is definitely an issue.  Conceptually, I like to imagine Cap ships as somewhat immune to regular fire -- more so than they are now -- so that they're freer to cast their spells and move around, tilting the balance of the frigate/cruiser battle around them.  Of course, they have to be countered by something, and we probably wouldn't like the game if you always needed a cap ship to counter a cap ship. 

I'd defer to your and Darvin's experience on this.. But I think the obvious problem/solution here stems from what I've seen people saying since the original Sins release.  The problem with LRF is that they counter everything.  If Caps were only really countered by something like LF (I'm ignoring bombers here), and every faction could easily field LRF to counter the LF, then it would be easier to spot LF hordes and keep your caps safe/away from danger.  As it is now, the problem is that the best counters vs Cap ships are ubiquitous.  LRF squadrons are in every battle after the first few minutes, and if you want your caps to contribute then you have to bring them to those battles and face down the enemy spam with your own spam.. Right?

I don't know that LF or armor table adjustments have to be the answer.  The Distant Stars solution of buffing cap-ship HP/Shields across the board makes sense, although it seems like it might OP them a bit at the very start.  (Maybe it's better to buff their upgrades?)  I think a small, across the board speed buff for cap ships could also help vs LRF..

Anyway, I'm already very happy with a lot of what's been done.  It will never be perfect, but you're at least addressing some of the basic, glaring discrepancies among Capital abilities.  Changing the interaction between ship types is probably a more complicated issue because it's influenced by factional diversity with the economy, tech tree, and ship stats..

Good News!  Well, mostly anyway...I think I have finally gotten animosity to work properly...at least as good as I think we are ever going to get it to work...

Lets say a Radiance comes into the middle of your fleet and activates animosity...in the current version of the mod, fast clicking can still get your ships to turn and hit another target...

I've added a second buff file that affects all friendly ships with the same buff action that illuminators use with deceptive illusion...basically, it forces ships targeting something other than the Radiance to repick a target...the chance of picking a new target is set to 100%...this buff in itself doesn't do much, except that it disrupts user commands pretty effectively...

If you are targeting something other than the Radiance, and the Radiance activates animosity, the best you can do with fast clicking is keep your ship from turning...if a player honestly wants to spend the whole length of the ability constantly clicking on something, that's their choice but they'll have to pay the sacrifice of not being able to do anything else for the duration of the ability...it is now basically impossible to get a ship to turn away from the Radiance...if its already shooting the radiance, it will be until this ability ends...the only way to get around this is if you order the ship to move, but then you have no control over what you're shooting at....

We still need a solid secondary buff...the damage converted to hull points is going to be tricky to balance, I think we may need something else...

Bonus to shield mitigation?  Damage reduction?  Whatever it is, I really think it needs to help the Radiance be able to take...a debuff on all enemy forces is nice but it won't help keep the Radiance alive (unless it shut down enemy weapons)...something that is comparable to adaptive forcefield and power surge is needed....

Remember that energy absorption was buffed to give more antimatter...keep that in mind, because this ship is likely going to have plenty of antimatter until it dies...so animosity needs to be an ability that can be spammed constantly....this throws out low vulnerability or anything too powerful to require a long cooldown...and its not a fleet interrupt, ships can still be ordered to move and use abilities, so don't be too hesitant to give this ability a short cooldown if the buff is only moderate....ideas appreciated...