Testing changes made to Capital Ships » Forum Post by Seleuceia

The capitals have to retain something of their specialised roles, a two Revelation start could always lead you into trouble unless you were playing someone heavily dependent on capitals, perhaps a 3-capital start. It also stacks Clairvoyance, which is unnecessary. The Revelation is more potent on normal start, with fewer ships earlier, as beyond Reverie it has little to offer in a combat sense. Two Marza starts can be attempted, though I wouldn't, as they interfere with each others progression. Two Vulkoras is also a possibility, if a very aggressive one. However the siege capitals are too useful for.. sieging.. for them to have equivalent power to carriers against ships. I would expect that the best that could be hoped for would be that you would have a choice between a battleship (anti-carrier), a carrier and a colony ship for a normal start. If you went for a support or siege capital you should have to sacrifice early power and/or expansion for later benefits, and you might find yourself in trouble against an experienced player.

You've made the point that the battleships need to be able to tank given that carriers can kite, so why alter the hull points buff on the Radiance...? If you want more hull restoration increase the rate slightly- it was measured to Adaptive Forcefield but that is a passive, so maybe a slight fiurther boost for AM cost. Adaptive Forcefield has no regeneration though, so I hardly consider this to be weaker. Its exactly the sort of ability the ship needs to stand up to a fleet. Shield buffs can come from elsewhere in the Advent fleet. Don't worry that you are overbuffing the battleships until they are working. They still need a speed increase to help them disengage, like the support capitals.

The Dunov does not need extra shield regeneration on restore- if you want to buff it, extra points, lower cooldown, less AM perhaps but not an ability that makes it too similar to the mothership. TEC have Hoshikos, the most effective repair cruisers.

More online testers are always welcome, especially if you have a few tricks up your sleeve, Pbhead, that's exactly what is called for. But could you be more specific about the elements that worry you? What worries me most is that the mod doesn't reduce the carrier capitals to more resonable levels, I feel that the Halcyon and Skirantra both needed downgrading and the Sova could have been left alone. Only the Sova has a reasonable number of squadrons in 1.19, the other two are bloated.

A target cap of 32 would still leave Missile Barrage a very strong ability and deserves testing?

I'm also concerned about any changes to LRF as I feel that LRF-LF-Flak is quite reasonably balanced at present. If you make LRF weaker against capital ships you will buff the battleball in a spectacular fashion. Make sure that you have tested the altered capitals in a battleball situation quite thoroughly before you make changes, as it has the potential to ruin the game. Players just need to be careful with their ships before the specialist support cruisers are out in numbers, keep them not too many wells from repair, and near to the edge of wells. You have to appreciate that many early battles are won by a player who allows his capital to soak up a moderate amount of damage while attacking the enemy fleet. Even slight increases to battleship and support capital speed to stop carrier capitals kiting all other capitals will have a large effect on this.

When are you planning to test next- have you fixed any bugs in 0.2? We really need more discussion online, suggestions on the thread aren't always as useful. Syneptus, HerrP, are you going to join us?

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Okay, I've been working with animosity and here is my feeling...the unpredictability of hull regen on damage taken is going to make it very hard to balance this ship...

The current hull regen on damage taken has three possibilities...

One, the amount of hull regenerated is less than the amount of hull damaged...the question is, why do this when you could just use damage reduction?

Two, the amount of hull regenerated is equal to the amount of hull damaged...but then, why not just make the ship invulnerable, it would almost be the same thing (be a bit different for shield and ability damage)...

Three, the amount of hull regenerated is more than the amount of hull damaged...so hitting the ship repairs it, but then the cooldown has to be ridiculously long or this ability would be overpowered...and since this ship is going to have near infinite antimatter, a long cooldown is just going to mean the radiance will never ever have enough things to spend antimatter on...might as well add a fixed hull regeneration rate...

So, because energy absorption helps regenerate antimatter, I'd like an ability that can be used a lot (no long cooldown)...if that's the case, then the ability can't be something that essentially makes the ship invulnerable...since the primary effect of animosity has infinite targets, the secondary buff also needs to scale well with the enemy fleet size...so, a static hull or shield regeneration is out of the question...

That leaves only two things I can think of, damage reduction and shield mitigation...since the Kol already has damage reduction with adaptive forcefield and this is an Advent ship, why not try shield mitigation?

Lets try and compare this to adaptive forcefield which offers a constant bonus of 15%/25%/35% damage reduction...

A lvl 1 Radiance with no other bonuses has a max shield mitigation of 65%...a lvl 10 Radiance with all shield techs, all culture techs, and shield pact will have a max mitigation of 87%...so, we don't want the bonus to exceed 13%...

That is a very wide range of numbers, so lets look at what situations are most likely...

A lvl 1 Radiance will have 65%, and lvl 3 will have 67.2%, and a lvl 5 will have 69.4%...

With the shield mitigation techs and shield pact being very late game, lets take those out of the picture, and just make sure we don't ever exceed 13%...also, we probably could exclude the third level of advent culture techs...

So, lets compare a lvl 1 Radiance to a lvl 3 Radiance with first tier of culture techs and to a lvl 5 Radiance with second tier of culture techs...not perfect, because a player may not research these techs...on the other hand, the radiance could always be of higher level...

In these situations we are looking at 65%/69.2%/73,4% max shield mitigation...let's try to make this bonus work out to a 15%/25%/35% damage reduction...that will come out to a bonus mitigation of 5.3%/7.7%/9.31%...

If we took out all bonuses, we'd be needing animosity to give 5.3%/8.2%/11.1%...

Since there are higher levels and more mitigation bonuses that weren't included, I'd vouch for underestimating and going with the slightly lower numbers...

Therefore, I recommend a 5%/7.5%/10% bonus to shield mitigation during the effect of animosity...

Now, other aspects of the ability do need to be balanced as well...right now the range of this ability is 3000/4000/5000...these values require much micromanagement if you want to affect LRFs (which is probably the most important thing to affect...since LRFs have ranges varying from 5000 something to 9800 (without bonuses), the current range of this ability is pretty pitiful...I'd advocate increasing it to 6000/7000/8000...

Since this ability is not granting invulnerability, I think the original duration of 20s and cooldown of 35s is appropriate...given that this ship has energy absorption, I'd like to at least try the original antimatter cost of 65...therefore, here is my proposition for animosity:

Shield mitigation bonus of 5%/7.5%/10/%

Range of 6000/7000/8000

Duration of 20s

Cooldown of 35s

Antimatter cost of 65

As a note, I tested animosity earlier and it effectively forces even a human player to attack the animosity...even if the ship is facing a target other than the radiance when animosity is activated, and even if you click madly on that target, the best you can do is keep your ships from turning...frigates actually won't even fire at your target even if you keep clicking on it, they'll just sit there...so you might as well just deal with it and let them shoot the Radiance I'd like some more testing by others to confirm this, but it seems this ability finally may actually work

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

The capitals have to retain something of their specialised roles, a two Revelation start could always lead you into trouble unless you were playing someone heavily dependent on capitals, perhaps a 3-capital start.

I agree, but I wanted to try it out...mainly, the guidance reverie combo...problem is, it requires a lot of micro (which I'm not an expert at) and until you get the ships to lvl 3 (so both have a decent level of guidance/reverie) it doesn't work very well at all...

The Dunov does not need extra shield regeneration on restore- if you want to buff it, extra points, lower cooldown, less AM perhaps but not an ability that makes it too similar to the mothership. TEC have Hoshikos, the most effective repair cruisers.

I'm leaning away from a secondary buff as well...however, I do like the idea of an instant shield boost in conjunction with a high shield regen over a period or 5 or so seconds...if it actually works and is tweaked right, it could make this ability just as useful for caps but more useful for frigates....

I'm also concerned about any changes to LRF as I feel that LRF-LF-Flak is quite reasonably balanced at present. If you make LRF weaker against capital ships you will buff the battleball in a spectacular fashion. Make sure that you have tested the altered capitals in a battleball situation quite thoroughly before you make changes, as it has the potential to ruin the game.

I am too...here's the thing...a lot of changes are going to have to be made to the caps in general (mainly speed changes, but maybe others as well)...I do think these changes need to be addressed, though I'm afraid to change both the abilities and speed at the same time...it could make it difficult to determine then if its the speed or the abilities that will need more work...

If many people really feel its time to focus and actually start changing other things besides abilities, then I have no problem moving on...my issue is (as I'm noticed on both of these threads) is that when another topic is introduced and discussed, previous topics sometimes fall out the wayside even though they weren't fully addressed...there are a lot of abilities that still need to be tweaked, changing other aspects of the capital ships may take attention away from them...nevertheless, the speed of the capital ships will have to be addressed eventually no matter what...

I'm also concerned about any changes to LRF as I feel that LRF-LF-Flak is quite reasonably balanced at present.

I sort of agree with this...the problem is, flak aren't that good at taking out capital ships or structures...even if you're enemy has mostly flak, LRFs are still really important for taking out the caps and structures...flak just aren't a strong counter against LRFs...they survive better but they don't have the offensive power LRFs do against anything else...

My main concern is how powerful LRFs are against carriers and support ships...unfortunately, those have the same armor type as flak so you can't change one without changing all three...

I'm not so sure about the target cap of 32 on missile barrage...I'd rather see it do less damage...even 2400 or 2500 would be a significant improvement over 3000...

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

Well, the thing that worried me most was the animocity with hp restore, but the +shield mitigtion is much better.

(one thing on that though... I do not know the answer to this question... and it would be intresting for you to play with... you see, the maximum shield mitigation in the raws, is always about 3 higher than the displayed mitigation ingame... in other words, in the raws, frigs have 60% max mitigation, lv1 caps 65%, but in-game, we see 57% and 62%. so, your lv 10 radiance, should have a raw mitigation of 65+10(level)+6(culture)+4(research)+2(pact),,, 87%. so, your suggusted 10% shield mitigation would bring it up to 97%... My question is... is 97% of te damage mitigated? or is 94% (the theoretical displayed value) mitigated? it doesnt really effect anything, that far into the game, balance is out the window, but the difference is still a factor of 2. (6% damage getting through vs 3%.)

that said, I really like the +mitigation idea for the radiance the best, and end game... that ship will be a monster... perhaps even taking away the title of "brick" away from the kol... however, in this case we might have a very, very usefull brick.

Its intresting... the three survival abilities that the battle ships have... power surge... adaptive force field... and enegry absorbing armor... and now this added to the fun. but its so late game... its like its own end-game technology in itself... then again, getting a lv10 cap ship is an impressive achievement all by itself.

On flack vs LRM... flack are only really a stop-gap to counter LRM... since thier damage is spread between multiple targets, repair abilities significantly decrease the effectiveness of the flack vs lrm battle... in other words, flacks might be nice to counter and stop an lrm spammer, but if you try to counter-attack, you might start having issues.

Whats this talk about a marza MB nerf? In multiplayer, someone really has to be slacking to not realize the 150 antimatter dissapearing, and the red all over the empire tree... even if they dont have a hard counter (wihich, expecially with this mod, is just plain irresponcible) they can still generally move their fleet far enough away fast enough, so that unless your fleet is made mostly from scouts, you wont lose your ships. The radiance in the mod now does 3000 damage, over significantly less time, and is now even easier to combo with malice... I dont feel like a MB nerf is needed.

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But you need a long coldown on Animosity otherwise you get the fleet retreat problem- the same with extending the area of effect? The ability as you have altered once more it is essentially a no retreat option with 2 Radiances?

The notion was to level the Radiance so that each of the repair situations you mention obtained. An Advent ship without its shields is in trouble and I wouldn't expect the Radiance to become invulnerable. The ship only has to repair very slightly at the top level.. 110%. The shield mitigation solution would just leave the ship vulnerable to phase missile upgrades again, the same old bombers/LRF combination- which would just become more necessary. We need more variety not less.

I'm also concerned that the ability as you have it modified in 0.20 has never been tested- you shouldn't modify again without testing? We could test it today if you like?

The concept of LRF is that they are the most vulnerable to capital area effect abilities, which flak can survive and LF avoid. Its possible that the damage fron Cleansing Brilliance, Volatile Nanites and Missile Barrage could even be increased to counter LRF. If you decrease the Missile Barrage damage then it is no longer fulfilling its role, as it is Illuminators can tank it. What I object to about Missile Barrage is that it either needs a limited area of effect, like the other two abilities mentioned, or a target cap. You shouldn't have a wide area infinite effect weapon, its nonsense to imagine the crew of the Marza as able to fire infinite missiles. They should either saturate a smaller area- so that barrage operates like EMP burst, and the barrage should be faster, with a reversion to the original waves and damage- or there should be a target cap in a wide area- and 32 ships is still a fair number of ships.

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TEC have Hoshikos, the most effective repair cruisers.

And later on, this doesn't even begin to cover the focus fire a target may take. TEC needs a true anti-focus fire weapon. Advent has a vengeance, shield restore/projection, and repulsion. Vasari has Overseers, Subverters, and phase out hull. TEC has... the Dunov's shield regeneration. This one ability needs to fill in for an entire faction's arsenal of anti-focus fire tools.

A target cap of 32 would still leave Missile Barrage a very strong ability and deserves testing?

This would probably leave it quite underpowered. Yes, destroying 32 frigates is a potent effect, but the problem is that there are still many ways to counter MB, including using regeneration to tank through it, moving out of range, and just cancelling it with something like ion bolt. This is fine when the ability might scrap an entire fleet, but only 32 frigates? Too easily counterable for that effect.

This is part of the problem with missile barrage. It is a game-ender if you don't counteract it, but there are so many ways to counteract it that it may have little to no impact at all.

I'm also concerned about any changes to LRF as I feel that LRF-LF-Flak is quite reasonably balanced at present.

I disagree; I feel LRF are dominating the equation. Sure, pure LRF loses to pure flak, but bring out a balanced fleet and it's invariably LRF, heavy, or bomber. LF just get roasted before they can even get close, a big chunk of flak chews up all the fighters, and what we're left with is bombers, heavies and LRF shooting it out. And once bombers become too prevalent, bye-bye heavies...

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I agree that animosity as it is working now is actually the best way to do. Neither damage reduction nor shield mitigation (which I don't think you can directly effect with an ability) has the potential to scale like the current system does, which is extremely important to an ability like this, less is start being irrelevant once 50 LRMs and/or (most likely you'll see and) a bunch of bombers start focus firing on it. From the sounds of it the new buff makes it impossible to target anything but the radiance but still allows you to move, which I say is how the ability is meant to work. That just leave invulnerability, but you might run into the fact that enemy ships don't like to target invulnerable ships, plus I don't think it is as original (and how do we make invulnerability scale with levels?).

As for LRM/capital ship modifiers, I think only a 5-10% decrease is all that is necessary, in other words the damage modifier would be 0.65-0.70 instead of the current 0.75. Anything below that and I agree we start to see tanking problems.

I like the missile barrage have a smaller area of targeted effect. If we are going to nerf it I think that is the way to go, it is the TEC's only great high level ability, and I think putting a target cap on it would be too much.

Edit:

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 106

TEC have Hoshikos, the most effective repair cruisers.
And later on, this doesn't even begin to cover the focus fire a target may take. TEC needs a true anti-focus fire weapon. Advent has a vengeance, shield restore/projection, and repulsion. Vasari has Overseers, Subverters, and phase out hull. TEC has... the Dunov's shield regeneration. This one ability needs to fill in for an entire faction's arsenal of anti-focus fire tools.

Which is why I think buffing the Celio is actually the way to go here. While designate targets is nice for amplifying focus fire on caps and starbases, embolden should be near the top of the frigate ability work list, quite likely on the structural level. I mean 2.5 shields and a 10% rate of fire increase is nice, but it is near negligible late game. Granted I know this is just focused on capital ships, but if this community patch ever gets "finished" I don't think shield restore will be the only thing standing.

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Yeah, I'd go for an improvement to the Cielo as well, especially rather than loading too much into a single ability on the Dunov, which also riskes making the Dunov itself invincible- except, again, to the problematic phase missiles. As if it needed repeating, the bombers/assailants combination is the biggest of the 1.19 problems. Also you have to consider overall balance- the cheaper TEC ships may gain more from anti-focus techniques, they were intended to be destroyed.

My interpretation was that ships affected by Animosity could only move if you spent all your time clicking move, and even then couldn't jump, which means that a long cooldown is still a requirement.

You can't possibly mean that Missile Barrage would be underpowered with a target cap of 32? Perhaps it might be underpowered as being the one TEC game-saving ability, but the purpose of the mod is specifically to avoid having such abilities? Can Cleansing Brilliance or Volatile Nanites be tanked? Will they destroy 32 frigates?

Even in the LRF situation you describe, you would be left with heavies, flak and LRF. Both flak and heavies defeat LRF and the flak impact bombers too. I don't believe that LF have a fleet role except as a surprise, but their other uses preclude strengthening them. Classically a ship has to fight or run away- flak can fight LRF and LF can run. If I was to make one change it would be the LRF-heavies relationship, where I don't consider that heavies have sufficient advantage, considering the extra cost and research. But that would mean an improvement to the firepower of heavies against LRF, not changes to LRF-LF-flak.

I've become more reconciled to Repulse given the weaker Illuminators but it still needs work- how about a 90 degrees cone rather than the 360 degree effect which makes it fairly skill-free to use?

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I mean 2.5 shields and a 10% rate of fire increase is nice, but it is near negligible late game.

Agreed, but even if it is buffed up, it's still not going to fulfill the necessary role of keeping capital ships alive versus focus fire like an Overseer or a Guardian can. It'd need to be fundamentally reworked.

What we need is an ability that can scale into the late game and provide true focus-fire protection. As far as the Dunov becoming mandatory, we already have mandatory capital ships for anti-strike craft and interrupts, why should anti-focus-fire be any different?

As if it needed repeating, the bombers/assailants combination is the biggest of the 1.19 problems.

Bomber/LRF is a problem to begin with, and Bomber/LRF with phase missiles is a nightmare. I totally agree.

You can't possibly mean that Missile Barrage would be underpowered with a target cap of 32?

Yes, I believe it would be. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest it'd be a borderline worthless ability.

Missile Barrage is currently only overpowered because of its theoretical maximum effect. In practice, if the opponent has the right countermeasures on the field it can actually be quite a moderate to weak effect. It's not even going to dent a Shield Restore/Projection combo, and one shot of ion bolt ends it. Heck, if you have enough hoshikos you'll survive just via their healing power, though it'll severely damage your entire fleet. I certainly consider it weaker than armistice in 90% of situations. What makes it controversial is that other 10% where it deals wicked damage across an entire fleet.

By taking away its ability to affect an entire fleet, missile barrage is no longer a credible threat to large forces, and in fact it'd be easily countered just by sitting still and focus-firing the Marza. Sure, you may lose 32 frigates, but if it sits still for 25 seconds it will die to a mid-late game fleet. Quite simply, missile barrage becomes worthless because in order to use it you take a very large chance that the Marza will die, a significant chance the ability will just get countered anyways, and even the best-case scenario is only 32 dead enemy frigates. This is not worthy of an ultimate ability, end of story.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

But you need a long coldown on Animosity otherwise you get the fleet retreat problem- the same with extending the area of effect? The ability as you have altered once more it is essentially a no retreat option with 2 Radiances?

It won't be a problem....animosity cannot override move orders or abilities, only targeting....

I'm also concerned that the ability as you have it modified in 0.20 has never been tested- you shouldn't modify again without testing? We could test it today if you like?

I've tested it in SP and the problem is that sometimes it just prevents the ship from taking damage while other times it heals it ridiculously fast...the issue is the differences in damage per hit by all the various ships...an HC does 18 DPS while an LRM 11...bombers are even worse since each individual ship does very little...a hull regen is simply going to be too hard to balance...I've tried various numbers around the 2-4 range and it's performance is too inconsistent....the numbers used in the mod were chosen because they are different at each level, yet are all close to the "Magic number"...my hope was that by having 3 different values we might get close to figuring out which one is "perfect" (Because it won't be a nice number like 2, or 3, or even 2.5)...

Neither damage reduction nor shield mitigation (which I don't think you can directly effect with an ability) has the potential to scale like the current system does

Shield mitigation is an entityModifier...it is the same mechanic used by the Subverter with shield disrupt...

I think these advantages do scale...they are percent decreases in damage taken, while something like Power Surge is a fixed increase in shield regeneration...

Let's say your fleet does 100 DPS to an enemy Kortul that is regenerating 45 shields per second...so you really are only doing 55 DPS, not 100...let's say you double your fleet size to do 200 DPS...now, you'll be doing 155 DPS to the Kortul...even though you doubled your fleet, you almost tripled the damage you can do to the Kortul...

Shield mitigation and damage reduction reduce incoming damage by a fixed percent...if the enemy doubles their fleet, they will double their damage, not triple it (or some other factor)...shield mitigation will scale, and actually will become more powerful as the game progresses do to mitigation bonuses and the increase in mitigation from higher level caps...even damage reduction won't do this...shield mitigation will actually scale into the late game better than any other tanking ability currently in the game...

The only issue with shield mitigation is phase missiles...now, the Radiance does have something for that (armor) but its not really enough...personally, I think PMs themselves need to be changed...the shield bypass chance needs to be decreased while the raw damage output is increased...that way, they are just as effective against cruisers but slightly less effective against caps as they are now...currently, upgraded PMs do over 2x as much damage as any other weapon against caps...the problem isn't the radiance, the problem is PMs, and they need to be fixed...

you see, the maximum shield mitigation in the raws, is always about 3 higher than the displayed mitigation ingame

I noticed this while trying it out today...I don't really know which value is actually being used to mitigate damage...I would guess it would be the ingame displayed value....in which case, I might recalculate my values to reflect this....

Whats this talk about a marza MB nerf? In multiplayer, someone really has to be slacking to not realize the 150 antimatter dissapearing, and the red all over the empire tree... even if they dont have a hard counter (wihich, expecially with this mod, is just plain irresponcible) they can still generally move their fleet far enough away fast enough, so that unless your fleet is made mostly from scouts, you wont lose your ships.

This is true...reducing damage of this ability may or may not be the way to go then...especially with CB buffed...

I like the missile barrage have a smaller area of targeted effect. If we are going to nerf it I think that is the way to go, it is the TEC's only great high level ability, and I think putting a target cap on it would be too much.

I agree...the range is 10,000m which is much more than most nearly any ability...reducing the range to somewhere in the 5-7000 range would at least require some micro to affect LRFs and kiting carriers...if I had to pick a number, I'd say 6000, but I'm not sure on that yet...

I feel LRF are dominating the equation. Sure, pure LRF loses to pure flak, but bring out a balanced fleet and it's invariably LRF, heavy, or bomber. LF just get roasted before they can even get close, a big chunk of flak chews up all the fighters, and what we're left with is bombers, heavies and LRF shooting it out. And once bombers become too prevalent, bye-bye heavies...

I agree...changes need to be made that encourage diversity...and making LRFs weaker against caps I feel will help...

Which is why I think buffing the Celio is actually the way to go here. While designate targets is nice for amplifying focus fire on caps and starbases, embolden should be near the top of the frigate ability work list, quite likely on the structural level. I mean 2.5 shields and a 10% rate of fire increase is nice, but it is near negligible late game. Granted I know this is just focused on capital ships, but if this community patch ever gets "finished" I don't think shield restore will be the only thing standing.

Cielo will probably end up being the first frigate ability changed...there is very little disagreement or controversy about this ability...it is weak, and no one likes it the way it is....

As if it needed repeating, the bombers/assailants combination is the biggest of the 1.19 problems.

Couldn't agree more...but I think the core of that issue is PMs, not just LRFs and bombers in general...

I've become more reconciled to Repulse given the weaker Illuminators but it still needs work- how about a 90 degrees cone rather than the 360 degree effect which makes it fairly skill-free to use?

Don't know if this can be implemented....even if it could, it would be near to impossible to use effectively...you can't order a ship to turn, you can only order it to move and try to get it to face a certain direction...and once using repulsion any movement will cancel the channeling ability...

Repulsion I currently think is mostly fine...the frontal firepower of illuminators is way to weak so hiding those behind it will give your enemy a lot of time to find a counter, go on the offensive, or bring reinforcements...sure, you can use repulsion to indefinitely protect your carriers, but bombers are already too powerful, and carriers too good at kiting...the issue there isn't repulsion protecting the carriers, but bombers in general being too hard to counter...

I group Repulse with Phasic Trap and Distortion field...people have problems with these abilities because they can last forever meaning that without a very specific counter, you're screwed...if the cooldown was much larger or antimatter cost higher, these abilities would give you nice window of opportunities to do whatever, but wouldn't last an entire battle...

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Well I guess I'll have to be the one defending phase missiles then. Perhaps it is just nostalgia, but they have always been the Vasari's key strength and that hasn't stopped them from being under powered through most of the game's history. With scramble nerfed and LRM damage against caps reduced, I think there is a real risk of over nerfing them unless we have a lot of time to test it and then if it seems clear they are still to powerful we might try altering them.

As far as heavies go, I think just reducing the effectiveness of LRMs and bomber against them should be sufficient. I don't think there is any reason to serious rework their base stats or research, just make their counters a little bit less hard.

As for shield mitigation on the radiance, another issue becomes the many shield increases the advent has. As mentioned the Advent can already get obscenely high mitigation as it is. Also it will make the Radiance/Progenitor combo all the more effective because shield mitigation effects both hull and shields, while as it is currently animosity won't kick in until after the shields are gone (unless phase missiles are involved, a main weakness already discussed). I realize that balance will be hard as it is, but don't we want to discourage LRMs and strike craft right now and encourage heavies, which this ability basically does right now? But simply I think you are worrying about this too much, if animosity can do its job without being suicide most of the time, then I think the Radiance is a viable capital ship again, so we should focus on other things.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Perhaps it is just nostalgia, but they have always been the Vasari's key strength

No I agree...I don't want to nerf them too much...I just think there are certain orders of ridiculousness that just can't be allowed...and PMs vs. high level caps (especially Advent) are way too good...I want to make it clear that any decrease in shield bypass would be offset by an appropriate increase in raw damage...

As far as heavies go, I think just reducing the effectiveness of LRMs and bomber against them should be sufficient. I don't think there is any reason to serious rework their base stats or research, just make their counters a little bit less hard.

I agree...on a per fleet supply point basis, LRFs do more damage than HCs against capital ships, structures, heavy armor, and medium armor...HCs are also more vulnerable to bombers...so basically, LRFs are better than HCs in every single way except when it comes to fighting each other...well, and HCs are slightly more cost effective per fleet supply point...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

The most recent version of this mod has been updated to v0.21, please make sure to download!

Official Change Log of Project Equilibrium

v0.21

Capital Ship Changes

-Kol

--Gauss Rail Gun
---Duration increased from 10s to 10/15/20
---Target's max speed penalty increased from -50% to -100%
---Antimatter cost decreased from 40/50/60 to 40

--Flak Burst
---Range increased from 3000/3300/3600 to 3000/3600/4200

-Radiance

--Animosity
---A new buff is applied to friendly ships that forces enemy to repick targets
---Frequency of buffs is now once every 4s (surprisingly, I think it works)
---Range increased from 3000/4000/5000 to 6000/7000/8000
---Cooldown decreased from 60s to 35
---No longer provides a hull regeneration bonus when damage is taken
---Now increases max shield mitigation by 6%/9%/12%

-Jarrasul

--Colonize
---Bug fix that caused minidump everytime ability was used

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Here is a list of abilities still requiring some work:

Group 1 - Need a lot work and/or testing

Animosity - need to make sure it overrides targeting orders (I think it is working right now), second buff needs to be tested
Shield Restore - I put this here only because it may need a secondary buff...may...however, I would like to consider having a shield regen over time (say, 3-5s) in addition to a fixed increase so that it is better on frigates...but, the current numbers have to be examined and tested to see what values we need here
Guidance - ability still requires a lot of micro yet isn't worth it, secondary buff probably will need to be changed
Clairvoyance - needs a good secondary buff, probably something that helps siege capabilities

Group 2 - Need some work, but are close to done

Gauss Rail Gun - weapon cooldown penalty needs to be tweaked
Magnetize - may need to rework max # of targets, and probably increase damage per impact; antimatter cost also probably needs to be changed to constant

Group 3 - May need some tweaking but conceptually fine and very close to done (if not already)

EMP - things to consider changing here are antimatter cost, cooldown, and range
Domination - Cooldown is 30s, which may or may not be too powerful
Vertigo - some tweaking with range and antimatter cost
Vengeance - some tweaking with range and antimatter cost
Distort Gravity - some tweaking with range and antimatter cost (recommend making constant)
Subversion - some tweaking with antimatter cost, duration, and cooldown; also need to determine if stacking should be allowed
Phase Missile Swarm - may need some tweaking with antimatter cost

Here are some things I have been thinking about...feedback welcomed...

Magnetize - damage per impact needs to be increased (currently 15)...max # of targets right now is 30 at lvl 3...with shield mitigation reducing damage by about 2/3, that is only a meager 150 damage with one use (even less with armor or higher mitigation)...the original value was 25 which would amount to about 250 damage per use...if GRG can do 1200 damage (400 after mitigation) then surely this ability can do more than 250...I think raising the damage per impact from 15 to 40 is an acceptable change...

GRG - still unsure what to do with the weapon cooldown...20% is a little low, thinking it should be maybe 33% or 20%/30%/40%, something around there...

Guidance - What if this ability had the same bonuses but was AoE? It could be an active ability (like Vertigo or EMP) that has a range from the targetted ship, or it could be active and have a range around the Revelation...or it could be a passive ability...I think the current bonuses of 40% cooldown and 40% antimatter cost decrease would be a nice boost if it were AoE...affecting multiple caps at once and some support cruisers would make this ability a good support ability...

Clairvoyance - This needs help...the duration increases that were made I think are good for that one aspect of the ability, but it needs to do more...increasing the targeted planet's susceptibility to bombing damage would be nice...I don't know if this can be done, but if it could, would people be accepting of this sort of change? Revealing mines may or may not be a good addition, unsure on that for now...

Shield Restore - A fixed shield bonus with a fast regen over time might make this more useful on frigates...same overall shield bonus, but more efficient...

EMP/Vertigo/Vengeance - All these abilities may need some tweaking with the antimatter cost and cooldown...duration is fine I think, I'd rather see the cooldowns tweaked if necessary...as for the range increases, those probably will be brought back down to their original levels if capital ships become more resilient (however that is done)...

Distort Gravity - I think this needs to have a constant antimatter cost...not sure what cost to give it yet, may need to change the antimatter cost of phase out hull as well...

Phase Missile Swarm - Antimatter cost may need to be increased, not sure yet...tested this ability and it is pretty devastating...maybe it needs to be considering how easy it is to kill, but if this ship becomes any more powerful, this ability will have to be toned down....

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Well I guess I'll have to be the one defending phase missiles then. Perhaps it is just nostalgia, but they have always been the Vasari's key strength and that hasn't stopped them from being under powered through most of the game's history.

I think phase missiles are fine against frigates, the problem is purely in their performance against capital ships. Part of that is that shield mitigation is higher on capital ships, so ignoring shield mitigation is actually more powerful. The other side is simply that capital ships are already weak to these unit types, so Vasari just goes overboard with PM's.

I think that capital ships need to have a certain amount of phase missile resistance to keep PM's in line against them. Another option is to consider a different form of damage resistance for capital ships that would make them less dependent on shield mitigation.

I'm leaning towards lowering LRF move speed, and possibly turn speed, as a general solution to that problem. The illuminator may need a little more mobility than the other two to use its sidebeams effectively, but otherwise same treatment all around. Bombers, I'm less certain of.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

ya, phase missle swarm kinda scares me... There is this one guy on ICO who all he does is build 3 vulks (and preety much ignores everything else... sometimes even his roid) and starts seiging things to pieces... its a rather effective startigy if you dont see it coming... 3 vulks are great vs planets... and with your buffs... perhaps great vs fleets as well.

I also have a sneaking suspition that this ability causes desyncs... (based on the fact that the guy i mentioned earlier desynced when he was using his vulks (no idea if he had phase missle swarm, though, and that in a certain mod, a certain ability that is effectively a renamed phase missle swarm can also cause desyncs.)

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If you see a Vulkoras-opener when scouting, you had better be prepared for him when he arrives, because he will try to rip through your planets.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

well... ya... like i said, its preety effective if you dont see it coming. (aka... your not prepared)

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There are a lot of things that will kill you if you don't see them coming. Heck, if someone blindsides you with an ordinary LRF rush and takes out your factories and constructors on your HW, that could be enough to do it...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

So, I've been working on clairvoyance and I think I may have something that is really worth using...

When clairvoyance is used, it will apply a buff to all friendly ships in the gravity well that decreases their bombing damage cooldown...so basically, the revelation and any caps or siege frigates you have will do increased bombing damage for quite a while...I tested it and everything seems to work fine, no problems...so, now it comes down to the numbers...

First off, obviously this change has to be acceptable on the conceptual level...people are constantly asking for something, anything, to make the revelation a better siege ship....well, here it is, and I think this will work...

Now, what values to use?

Currently, one Vulkoras does 5.3 DPS to a planet...its passive ability assault specialization increases this by 25%/50%/100%...so, basically this ability adds 1.3/2.7/5.3 DPS....

A revelation does 5 DPS to a planet...so, in order for one revelation to get 1.3/2.7/5.3 extra DPS it would need bombing cooldown bonuses a little bit higher than the Vulkoras gets...

Of course, since this ability affects all ships in the gravity well it obviously cannot be as high as Assault Specialization, so...

We have two situations to account for...one, only capital ships bombing the planet and two, caps + siege (well, possibly just siege)...if it is just capital ships, then to get the equivalent of a Vulkoras's ability Clairvoyance would have to give a bonus of 25%/50%/100% all divided by the number of capital ships...and then, you'd have to add some since non siege caps do less damage to planets...so, lets say you have 3 caps (which is fairly reasonable for most situations), then such bonuses from Clairvoyance would need to be 8%/17%/33%..

However, there are siege frigates to consider...4 siege frigates use more or less the same fleet supply as 1 cap, so instead of 3 caps you could see 12 siege frigates...any given individual player is not likely to ever have this many siege frigates, but in MP games its not uncommon for at least one player to do this (usually an eco player or someone attacking an eco player)...Advent siege frigates do 3.1 DPS to planets, so 12 of these would be doing 37.2 DPS...to get the same bonus of one instance of assault specialization, Clairvoyance would have to give a bombing bonus of 3.5%/7%/14%...

Now what do we do with all these numbers? Well, since this ability is AoE it makes sense that one Revelation should not be comparable to one Vulkoras...in fact, two revelations should not even be comparable to two vulkoras...on the other hand, requiring 12 or more siege frigates to make this ability even comparable to one vulkoras also is rather unreasonable...so, I say pick some numbers that are somewhere in the middle...

I propose that Clairvoyance decrease the bombing cooldown of all affected ships by 10%/20%/30%...feedback appreciated...

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I think 10/20/30% is as good as any place to start at.

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I can't read all of this right now, apologies, but I made and tested some changes of my own last night so I'll throw in some quick comments:

Magnetize does not need to be doing 40 dmg per impact imo. It's a very good anti-SC ability since it kills ships outright. It's also an interrupt that disables abilities until it reaches its finish, and it has a low cooldown. It can be difficult to use vs kiting carriers since it can only target hostiles and the SC are normally near you, not near the enemy.. but aside from that I think it's already a great tool.

However, I cut the AM cost to 80/85/90, and I changed the max SC finish condition from 20/25/30 to 16/24/32. I didn't think a lvl1 ability with such a low cooldown should be able to completely dominate an enemy carrier wing in the early game. (Compare to Flak Burst, which even with two bursts for 200AM, it can only guarantee some dead fighters). And again, it's powerful even without the SC component simply as an interrupt. Instead of comparing it to GRG, I think you should be comparing it to Detonate Antimatter or some anti-SC abilities.

Animosity is still tricky: I tested different 'ondamage' regen values, and as you said, the effects vary a lot. More importantly though, I think you guys are still underestimating its power simply through its ability to control enemy focus fire.

When testing a regen of 3 per hit, my first thought was that this definitely wasn't OP'd with a 60s cooldown because, at best, the Radiance would regen a small amount for 20s and then get pummeled for 40s.. So I was thinking about ways to buff the ability (to justify an increase in AM cost) and maybe even lower the cooldown. We could make it interruptible and/or channeling. We could set the regen-on-damage very high (effectively an invulnerability/full hull repair), but make the duration much shorter (it would still work as a panic button to save allied ships from enemy focus fire).

However, when I loaded up a saved game with big fleets, I found myself with 3 Radiances that could, by virtue of their infinite target cap and high resistance to dmg, do an incredible job at tanking because they could constantly keep the enemy occupied and turning to face new targets.

I think some sort of dmg mitigation as you've chosen for v0.21 is a safer approach, but even still, a group of Radiances with infinite-target Animosity and some support can be incredibly powerful. Lvl 3 Vengeance is a whole lot deadlier if Animosity can summon force fire from 100's of ships at once. And with Dominas for healing, a few tanking Radiance's can literally shut down an enemy fleet's offense.

Obviously, the enemy only needs to move away to avoid this effect, but as you've said, moving costs them DPS and the ability to pick targets, and if the Advent fleet presses this advantage then it could be hard for the enemy to ever shoot anything but a Radiance..

So, my current view for Animosity is to try and embrace this strength as much as possible by buffing its ability to protect allied ships, but add some restrictions so it cannot dominate an entire grav well indefinitely. I also think Energy Absorption needs to be reverted because the Radiance needs an armor boost much more than it needs the massive influx of AM it receives from the current approach EA. And I just don't see how we'll put the extra AM to use. I don't want to change Detonate AM, and I've been tweaking CB, but even if we give CB a lower cooldown, the Radiance can't spend the insane AM income from 10/20/30% absorbtion when EA is combo'd with Animosity..

So I'm trying this:

--Animosity
---Cooldown is back to 35s
---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 1/1.5/2 hull points everytime damage is taken (Could be swapped for damage mitigation or..?)
---Max number of targets decreased from infinite to 32/128/512 (They can be tweaked, but I think it's best if we leave a cap so it's still feasible to 'overwhelm' the ability's influence)
---Range from 3000/4000/5000 to 3500/4750/6000 (This is important since the shorter ranges force the Radiance to always sit right on top of the units it wants to taunt).
---Speed, thrust, and angular thrust all increased per level (This was just a random idea, chosen over a speed debuff for the enemy because this lets the Radiance get into position and it has some utility outside battle, or for lining up a shot with CB).

--Energy Absorption
---Antimatter from damage reverted to 5%/10%/15% (from 10%/20%/30%)
---Armor increased from 1/2/3 to 1.5/3/4.5

--Cleansing Brilliance
---Duration increased to 12s
---Damage per second reverted to 250
---Removed the 'no target' finish condition (This lets the beam continue for the full duration even if the target is destroyed, which means you can target weaker ships and still get the full AoE damage effect out of the beam)

The duration/DPS change may not be necessary, but I'm still working on some ideas to buff/nerf this a bit and change it so it can work well with a lower cooldown. I like the idea of combo'ing the Energy Absorptive armor with Animosity, but the Radiance still needs a way to spend its AM in a timely fashion. CB seems like the best solution to me. I'm also thinking of shrinking the CB radius to 750 because it currently hits ships *way* *way* outside the beam.. And if we let it fire more often and for the full duration, then this could be a nice way to stab through clumps of enemy frigates/cruisers without the need for an exaggerated radius.

PS: I also experimented with an 'ondamage' AM drain for Animosity as a way to justify a big hull regen and let it spend more AM. The idea was to let it trade AM for this regen.. and ideally force Animosity to finish if the Radiance dropped to 0 AM.. But I wasn't sure if/how that could be done, and I decided it was flawed because it's circular with the Energy Absorption bonus. Maybe you can figure out a better approach though..

PPS: I'm worried that your new buff with Animosity, which forces enemies to repick targets, will unintentionally allow the ability to influence enemies outside its radius. I.e., it seems like it could extend some level of invulnerability to every allied unit within Animosity's radius, making them untargetable even if the attacker were shooting from far outside.. Is that an issue?

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

However, I cut the AM cost to 80/85/90, and I changed the max SC finish condition from 20/25/30 to 16/24/32. I didn't think a lvl1 ability with such a low cooldown should be able to completely dominate an enemy carrier wing in the early game. (Compare to Flak Burst, which even with two bursts for 200AM, it can only guarantee some dead fighters).

All good points...

When I changed the antimatter cost to 80/90/100 I figured it would probably need to be changed, but I wanted to see how reasonable each of those numbers were...100 is just too expensive, and even 90 is pushing it for a lvl 3 dunov...80 I think is a good number for lvl 1, and your suggestion of 80/85/90 I think is more appropriate than my original values...

Your SC finish condition is basically the same at lvl 2, slightly nerfed at lvl 1, and slightly buffed at lvl 3...I think this is a good approach, though lvl 1 is going to be a little on the weak side against advent fighters (which you will see early on) as one use of this won't even wipe out 2 squadrons (whereas it will take out over 5 Vasari bomber squadrons, also seen early on)...nevertheless, no matter what we do it's going to be hard to balance against the three factions...advent fighter squadrons have 3 (sometimes more) time more SC than Vasari bomber squadrons...since this ability can be used several times and does act as an interrupt (and will now have a lower antimatter cost) I think your numbers will be fine...

As for the damage, I still think 15 is too weak...I'm going to reinstate the original value of 25, and go from there...

So, my current view for Animosity is to try and embrace this strength as much as possible by buffing its ability to protect allied ships, but add some restrictions so it cannot dominate an entire grav well indefinitely. I also think Energy Absorption needs to be reverted because the Radiance needs an armor boost much more than it needs the massive influx of AM it receives from the current approach EA. And I just don't see how we'll put the extra AM to use. I don't want to change Detonate AM, and I've been tweaking CB, but even if we give CB a lower cooldown, the Radiance can't spend the insane AM income from 10/20/30% absorbtion when EA is combo'd with Animosity..

I agree that its important this ability doesn't strangle the enemy indefinitely...this is exactly why I advocate shield mitigation over hull regen...hull regen is extremely power...sure, you can make a long cooldown, but you get two radiances (or more) and the cooldown doesn't matter...you run into the same problem you have with subverters, phasic trap, and repulsion...it goes on indefinitely once you get enough of them...and unfortunately "enough of them" in this case is two...

The latest version I'm suggesting that buffs shield mitigation prevents this indefinite strangle on the enemy...yes, multiple radiances prevent the enemy from shooting anything else, but at least with this type of buff the Radiance still can be killed...its powerful, but its not invincible, and this is why I like shield mitigation...while weakening a multi-radiance combo, shield mitigation also makes a single radiance more powerful...temporary invulnerability is nice, but if it's on only one-third of the time your ship is still very very vulnerable...shield mitigation 4/7 of the time will help the ship stay alive if it doesn't have a 2nd radiance to draw fire off of it...

I also agree that energy absorption is an issue...you simply get a bunch of antimatter and don't have enough things to spend it on...I hate to say this but I think we're going to have to go back to buffing armor...I know not everyone likes it but the antimatter conversion increase isn't useful no matter what buff animosity gives...

Removed the 'no target' finish condition (This lets the beam continue for the full duration even if the target is destroyed, which means you can target weaker ships and still get the full AoE damage effect out of the beam)

This is a really good idea...

PPS: I'm worried that your new buff with Animosity, which forces enemies to repick targets, will unintentionally allow the ability to influence enemies outside its radius. I.e., it seems like it could extend some level of invulnerability to every allied unit within Animosity's radius, making them untargetable even if the attacker were shooting from far outside.. Is that an issue?

This may be true, but I doubt it will be an issue...the range of animosity could just be toned down a bit to fix this...honestly this side effect is what makes this ability work...

---Buff on targeted ships is now reapplied 50 times a second to prevent manual retargeting

I've tested this ability and these high frequencies either don't work (the affected ships won't turn) or they're unnecessary...so far, with the most recent version the absolute best I've been able to do to thwart this ability is prevent my ships from turning...but that's 20s of time I didn't do any micro and the ships would't shoot at what I was clicking at, so as far as I can tell this ability is working...

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

Since the new change to guidance isn't really all that great, I'd like to try something else...

I'm going to try a new passive ability with a range of 8000m that reduces the antimatter cost and cooldown of all non-ultimate abilities by 10%/20%/30%....

Given how the game works, the antimatter cost reduction will actually come out to be 9%/17%/23%...This ability is passive and works all the time...flux field reduces antimatter cost by 75% and is active 1/3 of the time which averages to a 25% reduction, which is still more powerful than this (though it does require antimatter), so I think these numbers are at least a decent start...

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I still think we need to do a bit of comparison testing between animosity with hull restoring buffs and animosity with shield mitigation buffs. The AI is not sufficient a challenge to see if the radiance will be overwhelmed with either buff, and with the hull repair we need to worry about fleet compositions (i.e. at least a balance fleet, and a fleet of mostly heavy cruisers/carriers/lrms). As to the multiple Radiances with the infinite target count, as long as ships that move out of the target area aren't effected, and as long as the Radiances aren't completely invincible, I think it is okay. Making it channeling is also probably a good idea, after all, that would be a nice closet buff to ion bolt and magnetize.

Energy absorption is probably okay either way, for my personal mod I have it at 1.5/3/4.5, which seems to work well to me.

Alright, if you want to nerf phase missiles against capital ships I'm all for it. Of course I'm not sure we can do that outside of giving an ability to all capital ships to do that, which will make the Kol even less special. Because that is likely to be both technically difficult and controversial, I say we wait until the next community patch (or the end of this one if we really have nothing better to discuss) before we deal with it.

Edit: I don't think a passive guidance should effect both cooldown time and antimatter usage rates, but I suppose that is something else we will need to test.

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