Special abilities should be more "special"

There needs to be a greater distinction between normal weapons and your special weapons. Special weapons need to make a BIG impact... they need to be able to turn the tide of a battle not just boost one ship's combat power by 20 percent or something. Likewise, they should be harder to spam. Maybe increase the cool down times by a lot or increase AM cost. But I think they should all be more powerful and less frequent. The only reason I can think to keep them both weak and frequent is because people seem to want the AI to use them... and the AI doesn't know how to use them... it just slaps on the fire button like a 4 year old banging on an arcade machine with no quarter in it... So in that context I understand the need to basically not punish the AI as much for firing the weapon too soon or too late.


But I think everyone agrees the AI needs a lot of work and as such I don't think it's right to cripple the special weapons simply because the AI doesn't know how to use them.


In addition, I'd just like to remind everyone that I'm in favor of supply ships and supply yards instead of regenerating AM in ships. So spamming the specials would be harder as the AM wouldn't just come back unless you had enough supply ships that phased in with your fleet.
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In addition, I'd just like to remind everyone that I'm in favor of supply ships and supply yards instead of regenerating AM in ships. So spamming the specials would be harder as the AM wouldn't just come back unless you had enough supply ships that phased in with your fleet.


I'm in favor of something the devs already said wouldn't happen (except in a mod), so that'd make this idea even better than it is if it happened!

... rofflecopter.

Anyway, I personally like the "spamable" nature of most special abilities. Stuff like embargo and the Kol's shield boost wouldn't be effected as long as their length was increased appropriately (as things stand, you can keep an embargo up indefinitely if you don't use anti-matter elsewhere, and I believe the same thing goes for the shield boost). Other powers, like the intercept, repair, designate target and shield restore powers just about scream for being spamable, they need that to work as they do.

Other stuff, like the anti-matter sabotage power of Cobalts might do well with your new system, while others, like the Kol's direct fire ability would become overpowered if you increased its strength to match a longer cool down.