Of Kodiaks, Crusaders and Enforcers...

from Sins Forums
There is a clear trend in multiplayer towards heavy cruiser spam. I see many people completely bypassing the lower upgrades, teching for heavy cruisers. Whether you do it normally with some civic upgrade or just rush it alone, it is very effective. Too effective.

How? Because the lower military tier upgrades are too unnoticable. I mean 5% faster shield generation or 5% stronger lasers, almost never make a difference. Thats why it is so attractive to just bypass them and go for heavy cruisers, because they give you so much more health and firepower at once. A player who spend research in the lower shield/armor/weapon upgrades is almost always outmatched by a player who techs for heavy cruisers. A similar development, although not seen as often, light carrier spam.

Why is this bad? Gameplay gets repetetive and predictable. Players are forced to cruiser spam to compete.

How to fix it: Nerf Heavy Cruisers? Wrong. They should be quite stronger than frigates, like they are right now. There just have to be alternatives. And that should be the lower military upgrades. The effects should be at least doubled, if not tripled (5% -> 15% etc.)
so that the effects are noticable. This still doesnt make frigates uber ships, but if you research many of these lower upgrades, you are at least able to compete with a heavy cruiser spammer, allowing more gameplay variations.
19,284 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

How to fix it: Nerf Heavy Cruisers? Wrong. They should be quite stronger than frigates, like they are right now. There just have to be alternatives. And that should be the lower military upgrades. The effects should be at least doubled, if not tripled (5% -> 15% etc.)
so that the effects are noticable. This still doesnt make frigates uber ships, but if you research many of these lower upgrades, you are at least able to compete with a heavy cruiser spammer, allowing more gameplay variations.
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Ironically, I like this. Admitidly, you run into huge balance issues because the research techs are a lot stronger than most people think -- 5% doesn't sound like a lot, but for whatever reason experience proves it does add up.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I would agree with Ron. There are generally two levels per each "lower lab level" upgrade. So 5% lasers can become 10% lasers on the second level. Build another lab (or two depending on race) and you research another two levels. It will just keep going up.

Ironically, if you are able to do this at about the same rate that someone gets the five labs and heavy cruiser research you can get a frigate armada with comparable hull and shield points to unupgraded cruisers. Then if you throw even a handful of your own now upgraded cruisers into the mix a bit later...
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I say make the heavier cruisers more expensive (higher fleet cap cost) I'd also like to see heavy cruisers get a little bit of upgradability (perhaps 2 experience levels?) with a few extra abilities available AND let them have names that you can change.

If they cost say 25-30 Fleet points, that could be reasoanble, I'd still build 'em. The other day I had 25 Kodiaks backing up my capitals. They're hard to kill, which is what makes them so useful.

Also another Heavy Cruiser type per fleet would be useful. Perhaps a 2 figher medium carrier with a bit of flak self defense ability?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
This is simple mathmatics. If you build 5 labs and research the kodiaks or build 2 labs and research 4 upgrades, the kodiak variant is more cost effective.

Look at it like this: the 4 upgrades give your frigates 15% more health and damage, where the codiacs give you a ship alternative that has 50% more health and damage.

Higher fleet capacity is a bad option in my oppinion, I think the current values are already good. 25-30 supply for 1 codiak is way too high compared to the 40 of a cap ship.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I love researching all of my weapons research! Lol the crusader's special passive ability is hilarious... 1.5 dmg/sec to anything in range! That can add up to be a huge amount of damage if you have a lot of them!
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Dude heavy cruiser is not that powerful. I had AI kill a fleet of 100 kodiaks with a capital ship combo D:

Also its hilarious that the other thread is like sayign there is a trend to spam LRMs lol
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Some players will always gravitate towards building all of one type of unit. It doesn't mean that unit is unstoppable or too powerful.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
LRM spam is also a very valid option. You fail to see that the problem is not specifically just codiacs, but also light carriers and lrms.

This is because the damage and health upgrades are just too little to stand up with the ship prototype researches. Thats why they should be increased, so players dont just rush for 1 special ship upgrade and spam it, but can slowly research many upgrades, and to see more mixed fleets.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
LRMs + Kodiacs + support capitals = all you need.

I agree the rush to heavy cruisers is sort of silly. The other cruisers are pretty overlooked. I also like your solution of making upgrades more effective, it would help safeguard against spam in a lot of ways.

Since I got the game i've been asking for the upgrades to be more effective. Early game you just don't NOTICE 10%- especially when it costs as much as a few extra ships that would give you MORE than 10% more damage. I'd like it if each level was 10%, meaning that after 6 upgrades (the usual thing, 3 boxes with 2 levels each) you would have 60% higher damage. While I would like to triple the effects, I think that would be imbalanced.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
lol and for Advent you got the beamy guys...so many beams.....
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
The upgraded weapons, armor, hull points and antimater are like intrest in your bank account. They don't mean a whole lot at first but over time they're very impressive. If you increase them (they're already quite potent when you've covered them all) you'd just create a new problem, imagine a capship with +75% hull points, why build anything else?
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Listen rushing any high tech units is not feasible on most map settings. LRMs take a chunk to build without any Ice planets on a normal resource map! Kodiaks are far worse!
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Since I got the game i've been asking for the upgrades to be more effective. Early game you just don't NOTICE 10%- especially when it costs as much as a few extra ships that would give you MORE than 10% more damage. I'd like it if each level was 10%, meaning that after 6 upgrades (the usual thing, 3 boxes with 2 levels each) you would have 60% higher damage. While I would like to triple the effects, I think that would be imbalanced.
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Odd that player experience in the beta showed that upgrades did prove effective, even if they didn't prove out very well mathematically.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I have no issue at all dealing with 9/10 types of spams, I've seen this one and its no different.

what spam we *should* be concerned about is the fighter spam, which has not been countered as we were promised.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

There is a clear trend in multiplayer towards heavy cruiser spam. I see many people completely bypassing the lower upgrades, teching for heavy cruisers...
There just have to be alternatives. And that should be the lower military upgrades. ...
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Feel free to shoot me down on this one but couldn't it be assumed that much of the lower tech is required to build a heavy cruiser and therefore dependent upon it? Just make the hull/laster/etc pre-requisites... no?

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
i just like to use a lot of bombers. u get a lot of these things and just build some ships to occupy the heavies and your bombers should do a great deal of damage to the heavies
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I tried this concept last night with Vasari, game looked like this:
I built 5 scouts, sent them on their merry way
Waited for the mines to give me enough resources
Built a Capship Forge, popped out a Jarrasul Evacuator
Taken the asteroid system below my home
Two scouts found an asteroid belt each, capped them for 4 metal and 3 crystal
Built two war labs
Waited
Built three more
Researched Enforcer Prototype. Yes, the very first research
Proceeded to build four of 'em and started to wtfpwn anything in my path before the first pirate attack which leveled up my Evacuator from 3 to 5, no losses

Mind you this was vs AI, but still... A cap and 4 Heavy Cruisers within 15 minutes of the game... I shudder to think what that would do online.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I dont understand, are you said if build more then 8 reseach lab will give more good stuff? Mostly I I build one military and one civi resech each pleant untill they are both 8.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top


Mind you this was vs AI, but still... A cap and 4 Heavy Cruisers within 15 minutes of the game... I shudder to think what that would do online.
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lose against a cap + ~25 light frigates (with proper upgrades)?
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Fighting heavy cruisers easy enough... [bomber] Drones will easily handle the Heavy Cruisers... Of course, they could always add anti-fighter ships, and you can have standard frigates to counter them... everything can be beaten.

The LRM, which is far too popular (but reasonable to be so), can be countered with [fighter] Drones as well. Of course there are easy counters to Drone carriers.

There's a balance to every ship type, and it's easy to beat any specific ship... but it takes some real strategy to develop/beat a designed fleet.

My counter to heavy cruiser spam would simply be a fleet of Carriers accompanied by Guardians (repulsion and shielding are wonderful) and Subjugators. :P
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Heck, given how slow the expansion would be with that "rush" build, the enemies economy should be able to do some nasty things to the player. A concentrated defense effort could hold out against a "mere" four kodiaks for a reasonable time frame, especially reinforced by a mobile fleet.