Gez you people are a bunch of carebears, though the fleets caps should be more expensive past some level its too easy to build massive fleets and the PJI needs a rework.

Siege frigates are ok their job is to destroy colonies whats with the whine leave a couple of ships or stationary defences to defend each colony it might drain your resources a takes a while to change your strats to accommodate this defence tactic.

I have been playing when ever I can siege frigates are easy kills, if super weapons bother you people so damn much get some balls and start attacking and destroying the enemy fleets and colonies too many lulls causes your opponents to start upgrading to super weapons stop them from achieving it.

you people do not listen...

I disagree with this guy, but at least he understands what I'm talking about.

*puts his head in his hands*

sadly, I agree.

I agree with multi :NOTSURE:

I think the imbalance issues can be helped with your ai allies responding to your request for help promptly. I don't claim this will be a complete solution, but at least it is a start. When one gets swarmed, and your planet is almost been grind to dust, and your allies have like 200 ships idly standing by 2 systems away, you ask for help, and it takes its sweet time. That type of allies are lousy to rely upon.

Which part do you disagree with the fact that everyone are a bunch on whiny carebears if something is slightly difficult or something is slightly stronger than they think it should be numerous threads are created about it and whine ie the pirates and siege frigates.

Why is it that everyone fails to realize that raising the fleet cap will raise it for EVERYONE. If you're being attacked by 3 AI/people with 2000 point fleets, and you raise the cap so you get more ships, you'll be attacked by 3 AI/people with 3000 point fleets instead. What's the difference?

If you think it'll make it easier, it won't The fewer the number of ships the more you can rely on your defenses, anyway.

What is this strange and unfamiliar sensation?
Oh no... I agree with Schod. Well, it had to happen sometime I guess.

One more time then, for those that still don't get it.

Siege frigs are a problem in the relatively early, where you don't have resources to fortify the planets with emergency shelter. They come in, most get blown up by the defenses, but plenty of them make it to kill your planet. And you're down a quarter of your population.

It doesn't matter that his fleet be slightly weaker becuase of it, because you just lost one hell of a big investement of time and resources.

The siege frigates do NOT need to be nerfed.

If you don't build a correct defense, and mass your fleet on the other side of the map, you're practically inviting him to throw in some siege frigates.

a) Hangar stations can build fighters, which are supereffective against small groups of siege frigates.

Even an asteroid can be upgraded with enough tactical slots, and hp, to survive 6-8 siege frigates on its own.

LRM type ships rapes siege frigates, and they are cheaper. Having a few of them a jump away is a cheap counter, and you can cover every planet they are one jump away from.

10 siege frigates costs close to 2 capital ships, or 22 to LRM frigates. Do you want them to be useless just because you don't have a decent defense against them?

I challenge anyone of those who have called for an nerf, to put up a replay where a small raiding party of siege frigates is raping a defended planet. If it isn't defended, then it's your own fault for losing it.

Edit: The argument that you did not have enough resources to build anything is invalid. The research costs are the same for both proper defense, and siege frigates in average for all three races. It also costs alot to build siege ships. Early researched, and produced siege frigates will cost atleast 3000-4000 credits. If he does have that much more credits than you, then you can't blame the siege frigs for losing, but rather your slow expansion and slow resource building.

My issue with the fleet cap is that the upkeep shouldn't be static. Each ship should add a small % of upkeep instead. If you lose a big army after a few fleet cap upgrades, you will still have that same big % on your income. This effectively lessens the chance of a comeback after a big loss.

I think the strength of defenses is fine. But the -cost- of defenses is absolutely ridiculous. Factoring in the metal and crystal costs, the defensive gun turret costs more than an LRM or Workhorse Frigate!

How silly is that? It is prohibitively expensive to put up defenses and it comes at a real cost to your other activities. They should make it so it's possible to build defenses without ruining your budget.

Regarding the superweapon thing... why not limit it to one but allow it to move with a cooldown, e.g. every 20 min to another planet. That would a) get rid of those shots taking an eternity to reach their destiny and allow persons to get rid of them. They might need a buff though if they are limited to only one (not really sure about it).





I would say they are different, not overpowered. Looking at the base stats they have shorter range than the other LR Frigates until fully upgraded. I mostly play Advent so I am not too familiar with the others, but the Vasari counterpiece can be freaking annoying aswell when fully upgraded and in a good setup so it get's the extra shield avoidance bonus.

Regarding the siege frigates... I actually don't have too much of a problem with them. They are annoying in the first and beginning of the second half of the game, but in the end they are pretty easy to deal with in my opinion ^^. It just takes a bit of time to find the right counter for them in each race.

Edit: The thing that needs the most fixing is the culture in my opinion. At the moment it is only good for prohibiting people to settle on your planets after they wiped out all the population which is ... nonsense to say the least. Seeing how long it takes to neutralize and enemy planet with culture is not quite fitting in a context with what it is supposed to do in my opinion. A good change would be for it to start influencing the enemies planet slowly but than speed up at an exponential rate (snowball system so to speak). Also it takes way too long on your own planets to spread your culture in my opinion.

Hey Schod, I thought I remember you being against changes to the siege frigates before? Is this a change of mind?

I haven't had any problem since the patch, they drop like flies to my defenses when the computer sends them at me.



Kinda agree, I wish it was more like you could support X ships per planet, with research making X larger, like in the beta. Not sure why they went the solid cap route...



I have no problem with swatting swarms away using a balanced force, never have...



Kinda agree



TEC's the only one that does massive damage, the others are utility. I don't like them at all, personally...

My guess is balance, especially in multiplayer. A larger empire already offers many advantages over a smaller one - if they can also build more ships, then the larger empire will pretty much always beat the smaller one, no matter what the smaller one tries.

Having solid caps for all players means that a smaller empire still has a chance against a larger one, which leads to more enjoyable games as it encourages people to fight to the end, rather than simply quitting as soon as one player ends up with more planets than them.

It also has the effect of making empires harder and harder to defend as they grow larger and larger, which is something I like from a conceptual point of view.

BigBadB got the right idea on why the ship cap change was made.

Siege frigates are of course ridiculous, however the fix for them needs to be carefully considered. I have had planets which had reasonable defenses fall to them, even when my fleet managed to make it back to take them on (they got away anyway, even though I chased them through many systems).

On the other hand, my fleet (with 1 capship) took out an enemy planet's defenders, and it then took FOREVER for my single cap ship to bomb it down to where I could put a colony on it. An effective siege frigate would have been helpful in that circumstance.

So on the one hand, it is outrageous that siege frigates can take down your planet when it has reasonable defenses, and even a fleet wailing on it (even worse when the frigs escape). On the other hand, you want them to be effective in taking down a planet... IN THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES.

The fix would seem obvious: keep them powerful enough in offensive weaponry to take a DEFENSELESS planet down in a reasonable amount of time, but make them so weak that they simply cannot enter a system which has defenses and survive at all. Even if they enter a system en mass (20+), a couple of simple turrets should be able to kill every single one of them well before the planet dies. Someone might scream that this fix would make their armor and hit points far too weak, however their armor and hit points SHOULD be extremely weak. That way they are limited to being able to do their job, and do it well, BUT ONLY UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES.

I'd definately nerf their armor, hit points, shield, shield mitigation, etc. I would also nerf their speed.

I would say supply based on population would be ideal (maybe planets)... add my vote to this initiative. Technology COULD modify supple (+20% to the supply garnered from planets, etc).


Siege frigates would come and bomb my planet, my fleet comes in... my fleets starts wailing at them... a few of them die, the planet die, the rest escape... I like them to do just as much damage if not MORE to planets... but be weak and easy to kill. So you better PROTECT those weak bombers with a combat fleet... take over a system, destroy defenses, and THEN bring in the siege to finish it off... not jump in with a group of siege, kill, and leave.

doesnt mean the point is valid, now any game is caught in a situation akin to an endless restoring force equilibrium. its like trying to roll a boulder out of the grand canyon with your bare hands.

no, you just completely misread everything I ever said on those threads.
and I'm being serious, not sarcastic.

unfortunately I seriously doubt the devs will be lifting any fingers to make a drastic rework of the system back to something that is actually functional on many levels. just aint gonna happen.

*sigh* another person who's head my point flew merrily over, let me reitterate

[insert reitteration]
[insert withering diatribe]

understand yet?

I wasn't supporting or denying the validity of any point. I was only affirming that what he wrote is the reason for why it is the way it is.

I don't bother to argue on these forums

you are wiser than I am annatar, but the point stands that I'm in violent dissagreement with the devs for opening this massive can of ugly, gross, nasty, sex-organ infesting worms.

I agree on all points with Schod.

Suggestions for two of them:

1) Move siege frigates a place or two up the tech tree. The problem isn't their survivability, they've already had a nery and they don't need another one or they will be completely useless. The problem is that they can be rushed. We'll lets just add ten or so minutes to the time it takes to bring them out. That way you should be prepared for them (at least having jump detection and some kind of battle line) or it really will be your own fault.


5) Limiting superweapons to just one would be useless. Possibly up the cost a bit. I see their place in the game as being endgame stalemate breakers. They need to be strong enough to turn the tide in a game where both sides have bunkered down on choke points and are never going to be dug out. They shoud just be so prohibitively expensive that building one before this endgame stage should place you massively behind the others.

There should also be some kind of notification to the other players on starting to build a superweapon (as with artifacts), so they get a chance to do something about it.

So what do you think would be better?

Lets see, siege frigates do 2 dps to planets, so 4 of them would be 8 dps, assuming the planet has the minimum level of hp, 1500, that would take 1500/8 = over 3 minutes of bombing to take down. Two light frigates can kill all 4 of them before you lose the planet - Enemy loses 2000 credits, 280 metal, 240 crystal, you *spent* 500 credits and 90 metal, and those units are still alive, so you lost nothing, except credit income.

Please explain to me how that was 'neutering' you.

Firstly; asteroid.

Secondly; tax income.

Thirdly; how many minutes till the frigates arrive?

leaving my testes where they were, instead of taking them and running around game-developing heaven screaming "YAY!!! you got so OOOOOOOooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnneeeeeddddddddd!"


aka they should have just tweaked the old system, instead of regurgitating this half baked concept...

frigates do far more than 8 dps, but even if thats the case most planets are not w/in 2 or 3 minutes jump of major production areas or of a decent sized fleet. oh, and early game I tend not to have 20 or so spare frigates floating around my empire doing absolutely nothing.

If the opponent goes superfast with siege frigates, then his main fleet will severely lack firepower due to the money being spent somewhere else. He'll still be far off any LRM ships to boost his firepower.