Mod discussion - Ship/Race rebalancing

from Sins Forums

Last night I cracked open the entity files for the first time, and started thinking about what I'd like to do to Sins to make it more enjoyable for myself; specifically, ship to ship combat.

I want to make fleet building and combat more satisfying. I feel that a lot of the complexity in the game is unnecessary, as shown by how simplistic the combat relationships are (build lots of the key damage dealers, support them with lots of incremental casters, and build unique ships when you want to kill fighters, bomb a planet, or found a colony). In my opinion, richness comes from relationships between ships in combat, which come from enhanced strengths and vulnerabilities. These interesting relationships will lead to interesting gameplay if they encourage interesting decisions. Many of the current combat systems don't cause me to change my thinking or decision patterns during the game, and I want to see what will happen when they are removed, simplified, or altered.

In poking around, I noticed a few issues that I felt could be improved:

-Super specialization of ship types - you need a specific ship for a specific task, like planet bombing, making fleet combinations obvious and uninteresting

-All ships can attack all targets with roughly the same effectiveness, except in rare cases (eg flaks v capital), making battles generally about who has more ships in aggregate

-Only 3 solid combat ships per race (light frigate, heavy cruiser, battleship); too many supporting ships with highly specialized roles

-Weapon types do not correspond intuitively with the type of damage inflicted (IE some pulse lasers are anti light while some are anti heavy, and some are anti capital)

-Homogeneous ships between sides - thus general tactics are identical for fighting each side, no matter which side you are

-Too many abilities have incremental rather than strong effects (lots of "+5% to ships in range" buffs); they feel like magic spells rather than deployed ordnance or special technology

-Damage/armor types are needlessly complex (6 damage types v 8 armor types makes for a confusing matrix)

-Shield mitigation is unnecessary and unintuitive

-Some ships are fugly and could be removed to unify the look of each race

-Capital ships are at bottom of tech tree, specialized cruisers at the top (I can build heavily armed battleships at the start of the game, but not heavy cruisers?)

-Capital ship leveling, XP, squadron counts, abilities, and crew caps are unnecessary and can be removed


Here are my rough design goals:

-Remove unnecessary complexity from ship to ship combat

-Streamline combat and ship design so combat results are more transparent

-Differentiate three races so players can use different tactics against each

-Add more variety in attack & vulnerability types

-Give each ship type individual character and flavor

-Make ships relate to each other in more interesting ways, through weapons, armor, abilities, and functions, to lead to more interesting decisions in fleet combat & fleet building

-Reduce dependency on single ship types for unique functions by consolidating roles


Here are some changes I'm mulling over, after testing a number of them out last night:

Ships overview:
-Remove 5 ships per side, reducing total count to 10 ships.
-Restructure each side's ships to be: two types of squadrons, six frigates/cruisers (built in frigate slots), four capital ships (built in cruiser slots)
-Capitals would occupy the same research spots as cruisers; some abilities would be given automatically and some would need researching

Ship differentiation:
-Make more ship types suitable for direct combat, but against different target types
-Add limited or advanced planet bombing ability to more ships
-Remove shield mitigation for all ships
-Make the squadron types for each side unique (eg fighter bombers & interceptors for TEC, suicide drones and assault craft for advent, planet bombers & frigate destroyers for vasari, etc)
-Combine ship roles to make each frigate more unique (EG TEC colony frigate colonizes w/ colony pods & repairs w/ repair pods; with upgraded ability could deploy invasion pods; other sides' colony builder units have different alternate functions, like scout))

Armor/Shielding:
Reduce armor types to three or four classes representing: fighter, frigate (light), cruiser (medium), capital/structure (heavy)
Damage types reduced to three or four which are:

-Anti-light: effective vs. light armor, weak vs. heavy armor, and good against fighters;

-Normal: equally effective against all types of armor and weak vs. fighters;

-Anti-heavy: weak vs. light armor, effective against heavy armor, and useless against fighters].

-Increase given armor for some ships and decrease for others (to change effectiveness for high-ROF low-damage weapons and low-ROF high-damage weapons against armored targets)

Weapons:
-Correspond weapon damage type with the type of weapon (eg pulse lasers might be anti-medium, autocannons anti-light, etc)
-Some new weapons, designed for anti capital attacks, would have damage type Affects_Only_Hull, so they punch through shields completely (useful against advent ships & tec capital ships and structures)

Capital ships:
-As capital ships are 'cruisers', capital ship caps, XP, leveling, and ability upgrading would be removed
-Capital ships would usually start with a free ability and have to research the rest

Race differentation:
-Advent ships would have shields on all ships & structures but no auto repairing
-TEC would be the only race with a mobile repair ship, and have shields only on capital ships & structures
-Vasari would be the only race which auto repairs (using nanites in hull), and would not have shields on ships.
-Production: Differentiate production costs/times between races

Abilities:
-Remove most abilities that provide incremental effects (EG, +15% damage output to all ships within range)
-Add some new abilities that provide noticable effects (EG, emp cannon that drains all shields and antimatter in explosion range)

Research:
-Research would be generally untouched, except for the new ship unlocks & new ability researches
-Capital ship fleet caps would be removed or replaced by different research (such as research that automatically upgrades all capital ship crews' abilities)

Structures:
-Structures would be generally untouched, though I'd like to modify the types further (so that each side does not simply have mirrored building types)

Nice to haves:
-'phase out hull' abilities that simulate cloaking, along with counter abilities that 'unphase' units.
-New build orders/requirements for each side
-unique moneymaking methods for each side
-New research trees for each side
-Differentiated tactical structures (not simply turret, repair, hangar, etc)


I'd like to focus on the TEC first.
Here's a sample ship list:

Squadrons:
Interceptor squadron -> lasers excel against fighters and frigates, generally useless against cruisers, capitals, or structures)
Fighter/Bomber squadron -> Cannons useful against fighters and frigates, missiles equally useful against frigates, cruisers, and capitals


Frigates/Cruisers:
Colony frigate -> establishes colonies, repairs ships, and can invade colonies at a high level (model Protev)
Light frigate -> autocannons useful against all enemy ships, passable against fighters (model cobalt)
Missile frigate -> missiles good against capitals and structures; planetary bombardment missiles (model krosov)
Special Ops frigate -> phase out ability to avoid attack; disabling missile which freezes enemy ship; can board & cripple/DOT enemy ships w/ marines (model arcova)
light carrier -> field 2 squadrons of interceptors or fighter bombers (model percheron)
Escort cruiser -> Autocannons good against frigates, torpedoes very effective against capitals (model cicelo)


Capital ships:
Battleship -> Banks of weapons + gauss rail gun, best against capital ships (model Kol)
Research ship -> can project shields, launch EMP missile, explode radiation-type area weapon. Lightly armed. (model akkan)
Carrier -> can manufacture/deploy 6 squadrons of interceptors or fighter bombers (model sova)
Dreadnought -> powerful ship with upgradeable planet siege cannon (much more effective than 'raze planet') (model marza)


These are just my musings after playing around with the game for a few weeks and poking in the entity files. Would you guys be interested in such a mod? What suggestions would you have to improve, simplfy or alter combat dynamics?

modding
12,318 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Here are my rough design goals:
-Remove unnecessary complexity from ship to ship combat
-Streamline combat and ship design so combat results are more transparent
I was following along nicely until...
-Differentiate three races so players can use different tactics against each
-Add more variety in attack & vulnerability types
-Give each ship type individual character and flavor
-Make ships relate to each other in more interesting ways, through weapons, armor, abilities, and functions, to lead to more interesting decisions in fleet combat & fleet building
Now I'm confused. Is this not what you just said was wrong? Isn't this what the game designers made already? It strikes me as you want to take out all the stuff, and then put it back in...
-Reduce dependency on single ship types for unique functions by consolidating roles
And now (it seems like you are) back to your original intent... I am trying to understand, not trying to be a pain in the a@#...

As to the ship style suggestions:
I agree the way they are related to research seems bass-ackwards... I too find it very odd that you get capitol ships with great weapons/casters but have to research cruisers. I also find it VERY odd that you have state of the art weapons etc. on those capitol ships, but apparently your empire has a major brain fart when you want to put any meaningful ship together that's not the size of an asteroid, so you have to go think about it for 90 seconds.

What if you had a Frigate, a Cruiser and a Capitol Ship that all started with basic weaponry... then as you researched the abilities were made available... much like how the extras on the capitol ships are when it reaches a new level.

As an example: Basic Frigate starts with projectile weapons but gains shields, Armor, lasers, ability to bomb, fight off fighters etc as research goes by. The Frigate window would have 5 ships, only one buildable at first with subsequent "remodels" becoming available as research progressed. Think in terms of retrofitting a ship with a missile bank for anti-fighter support, or with guns or bombs...

This would allow you to get complex without getting complex, and allow for the logical progression of ships it looks like you are going after...

Maybe once you have something that can actually be used it will become clearer...

T

EDIT: PLEASE ignore the apparent "tone" of this response... I have yet to figure out how to type inoffensively...
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
-Super specialization of ship types - you need a specific ship for a
specific task, like planet bombing, making fleet combinations obvious and
uninteresting.
Don't agree. Ship specialisation adds strategy depth.

-All ships can attack all targets with roughly the same effectiveness, except
in rare cases (eg flaks v capital), making battles generally about who has more ships in aggregate
Agreed, defensive ships/abilities should be buffed.

-Only 3 solid combat ships per race (light frigate, heavy cruiser, battleship);
too many supporting ships with highly specialized roles
Don't agree. Ship specialisation adds strategy depth.

-Homogeneous ships between sides - thus general tactics are identical for fighting each side, no matter which side you are
Agreed

-Damage/armor types are needlessly complex (6 damage types v 8 armor types makes for a confusing matrix)
Don't agree, you can use exactly this point to fix the previous homogeneos problem.

-Shield mitigation is unnecessary and unintuitive
Don't agree, I think it's excellent. It reduces the effect of FocusTargeting and makes battles last longer. Turn off PrefersToFocusFire and it's effect is greatly reduced

-Some ships are fugly and could be removed to unify the look of each race
Totally agreed.

-Capital ships are at bottom of tech tree, specialized cruisers at the top (I can
build heavily armed battleships at the start of the game, but not heavy
cruisers?)
I agree with you and Antracer.

-Capital ship leveling, XP, squadron counts, abilities, and crew caps are unnecessary
and can be removed
Don't agree. Again this helps solve your homogenous problem. You can't have a problem with a problem and it's solution...

EDIT: PLEASE ignore the apparent "tone" of this response... I have yet to figure out how to type inoffensively...
End of quote
Me too, lol
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
No problem with the tone, guys.. I tend to do the exact same thing myself. And thanks for the comments.

I do think Sins as is works fine. However, I think the game's combat, as a whole, is overly simplistic even with the existence of many complex systems. My feeling is that strategy in play comes from interesting relationships between entities, and not simply the existence of complex systems. Theoretically, if you can keep interesting relationships while removing complexity, the game will not suffer. Complexity often can lead to interesting relationships, but if it does not, I'm happy seeing what happens when you remove it.

I got most of my early-scale changes working last night, and the result is promising, though the game does play much differently:

Since you have to tech up to capital ships, they're valuable and a bit scarce until your economy is rolling. However, you get the light carrier, escort cruiser, and siege frigate at tech 2, while the akkan & kol are tech 3, and the sova and dreadnought are tech 5 (these are simple 1:1 replacements of original ship techs, I'm going to redo the tech tree when I worry about balancing).

There are no restrictions on how many capital ships you can have, and it's certainly doable to fill up your fleet cap with lots and lots of capital ships. The capital ship crew cap certainly helps to regulate the amount of capital ships, but I'm interested in how it plays without the hard limits.

The early game as TEC is a bit of a "million frigate march". Scouts have autocannons and are good against frigates. Cobalts are good against all ship types. Siege frigates can use their missiles against planets or ships, but they aren't very effective against lots of frigates (antiheavy damage, long cooldown, though damage is high).

The escort cruiser has a beam cannon that's good against capitals (cuts through shields), an ion cannon, deployable missile battery, and a flak burst. It's a bit overloaded, but it's nice to have a multipurpose cruiser. The light carrier carries two squadrons and can use repair drones. Interceptors are good against strike craft and passable against frigates while fighter/bombers can fight back against fighters w/ missiles, kill frigates, and kill capital ships.

The armor/damage type rebalancing is more intuitive and effective. Damage type is tied to the weapon, not the unit. So, the Kol battleship has an antilight weapon (autocannons), anti medium (lasers), and antiheavy (beam cannons). autocannons are best against frigates, lasers are good against all ships, and beams/missiles/torpedoes are best against heavy armor. Some weapons ignore shields, making them really hurt capital ships. Capital ships, with heavy shielding, are all but immune to light weapon fire. By simplifying this system, the effects on combat remain similar but the usefulness to the player is increased. It's easier for ships to exploit firepower differences now.

Shield mitigation is out, but with increased armor (and increase-armor-to-effective-hp value), battles still last a good amount of time.

The capital ship shielding dynamic is fun, as some weapons really do put the hurt on capital ships (siege frigate missiles, escort cruiser beams, battleship beams)

Most importantly, all ships are viable in combat (except maybe the colony frigate). Capital ships are hardcore but have weaknesses. Combined arms fleets are useful simply because the ships complement each others' weaknesses. Combined arms in vanilla sins is simply having combat ships escort the spell casters and planet bombers.

However, in this mod, the combat results are much more decisive, and depend on your local unit type advantages much more than vanilla sins, which is more about having lots of the basic combat unit.

I will agree that by cutting out unit types, fleet composition is simpler. You have three types of frigates, two cruisers, and four capitals, and you can only combine them in so many ways.

By combining roles but still allowing ships to have a good amount of firepower, I think that increases the strategic depth of the game. With hyper specialization, your player choices are limited as there is only one type of unit to accomplish your goal, and only one type of unit that your enemy will use to accomplish the goal. With increased ship flexibility, your enemy may try a similar strategy but using different unit types

The game start is less interesting without a capital ship to level up, and the lack of the capital ship features are really obvious when playing. I find it fun to level up a capital ship, protect it, get XP, get the abilities I want, etc. But in terms of the actual combat, I don't miss the system as a whole. I also like not having to worry about how a caital ship's level determine's its combat effectiveness. A cap is a cap, and it hurts, and has weaknesses. I'd rather focus on that than worrying if my level 5 Kol can stand up to a level 7 Sova.

I like the stated idea of having ship specializations within the classes, where research adds functionality to your basic core class. I don't think we can add weapons through research, but we can at least add abilities...

The AI is smart enough to take advantage of the units & their features (smartly building good numbers of cruisers and carriers), though sadly, they do not use ships in the scout role for combat. Pity, because the arcova is now quite capable of handling itself against frigates. :)

I like the mod so far. I'm interested in exploring the research tree, and also changing core game dynamics between the sides (like changing how culture, trade, and mining operate).

Bugs/annoying things:
-Sometimes it crashes.
-Capital ship pathfinding/formations are buggy, as the game tries to cram too many caps into tight formations (since capital ships are frigates now)
-Not having a cap at the beginning of the game makes capturing planets slightly more difficult.

I'm going to clean things up over the weekend, add in the other two races, and probably release the mod on the forums. It's somewhat balanced, but I'm sure there are huge holes, and I'd like to get feedback. (also no more lrm rushing as TEC lololol since the lrms are gone)
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Your ideas mirror my own, with regard to making combat more interesting. I hope you get something knocked together that you can post. :)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
A quick update:

Removing the capital ship system and placing them at the upper end of the tech tree has a few main effects on the high level gameplay:

1) the start of the game is much more uninteresting without a capital ship to babysit

2) It is not very viable to pursue a civics-only research path, as you're simply stuck with light frigates, colony frigates, and scouts (no capital ships).

3) It's not very interesting to play the early stages of the game with a limited selection of ships.

4) The combat, with multiple varieties of capital ships and healthy amounts of varied ship types, is much more interesting than in stock sins (ships have exploitable weaknesses and useful strengths). An outnumbered player effectively using the right ship types can defeat a more numerous enemy.

5) Getting to the fun "large fleet battles" can be a bit of a chore, though.

I'll have to think about how to make the early game more fun, without capital ship babysitting. As one of my friends pointed out, it seems like an addition to give the "big capital ship battle" feel to the early game; without it, playing for a few hours with tiny frigates is much more boring. I really feel that capital ships should be a reward that an empire needs to work for, pouring resources and time into to get big, powerful behemoths. With the current changes, though the early game is slower, you really feel like a badass when you get a capital ship heavy fleet together.

I think restructuring the research tree as antracer outlined would make a big difference, to add more ship variety and customization early on. I'd like to see the research (at least in the 'experimental design' section) more resemble homeworld 1, where you research chassis, drives, and weapons to unlock ship types, and further research unlock ship specific abilities.

I'll see if I can make a video showing off the combat balance as is.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

First... I'd like to thank the forums for "losing" the first attempt at this...

I was wondering this exact thing, almost down to the punctuation. By taking the CapShips out of the equation, what can you really do? To expand would require alot of small ship investment, use up all your resources... alot of time in battles with neutrals and pirates, and ineffectual battles with the other players.

I had thought if I were to do something like this I would incorporate a stepped strategy to the deployment of the CapShips. I will use the TEC simply to keep everything relative...

At game start there would be one cruiser and one CapShip available to each player. In the TECs case, it would be a "stripped down" Kol. Gone would be the big energy weapons, instead guns and missiles, with rudimentary shields and antimatter capabilities. Also, the first cruiser would be a basic guns platform.

As research progresses, the Kol gains larger weapons, better shields etc. I would have 3 iterations of the Kol. The other two slots would be a carrier and a Dunov support cruiser, with the targeting of the akkan as an ability instead of the "make fighters act like bumpercars" ability.

Cruisers would stay the same, although a definitive gun and a definitive missile boat would be there. The command cruiser would be very expensive, I would only want one or two per fleet. Think in terms of a fighter squad of 4 F-22 Raptors with their escort of 8 AWACS...

The early under fire powered CapShip would be enough to keep the neutrals and pirates off your back, might even avail itself to an early rush on an opponent given a good map start... More than likely, the last 1/2 of the game would rock as fleets of Kols, Carriers and Dunovs with full support fleets took to the skies...

I don't necessarily see alot of different things being an answer. From what I see, it's not so much a case giving the dog more places to explore, more a case of giving the dog some leash.

T
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I think you're on the right track, antracer... at the game start there isn't much to do besides having a quantitative advantage in small ships over the enemy. Once you get the early cruisers at tech 2 (cicelo with beam, ion bolt, and flak; light carrier with repair drones; krosov with long range missiles), your options really open up. Also, the ships are balanced to the point that if you get small ships which clean out frigates, you won't have much trouble with the militia and pirates early on.. you just need to waste resources on them to get to the point where you can expand.

The end game is way cool, with fleets of capital ships blowing each other to pieces, just as it should be. ;)

I will say that removing all of the personality from the capital ships makes them seem like 'big tanks' to churn out when you have the money. But in combat, they certainly pull their weight, and the AI knows how to load up on them. However, they're also a bit weak to weaponry designed to kill the cap ships. When you use the cicelo's ion bolt to disable ships temporarily & beam cannon which cuts through shields, fighter bombers with missiles that punch through shields, the akkan's emp blast to reduce said shields and antimatter to 0, as well as the kol's quad beams & railgun which also punch shields, you can quickly overwhelm and destroy an isolated enemy cap.

Right now the capital ships and cruisers don't have prerequisities, you simply need a number of research labs to unlock them. They're simply in the place of the old frigates and cruisers that needed unlocking. What I'd like, is for there to be separate lines of research; say, early capital ship drive research unlocks the akkan without many abilities, but then you need reinforced hull & beam weapons as well to unlock the Kol. But beam weapons and the cruiser hull are also needed for the escort cruiser... In addition, capital ship abilities as well as upgrades to capital ship types like extra armoror weapons-as-abilities would be unlocked through research. (for example, the dreadnought should be a heavily armed and armored planet cracker, given its size...). Similarly, you could unlock the other hulls and abilities along their own research lines.


(In other news, I fixed my only crash bug. Since I removed capital ship research, when you moused over the available capital ship crews, the game crashed. Hard to track down, since it always seemed like it crashed 'sometimes' when I went to click on black market...)

(Edit: silly me, it turns out you *can* add more than 6 frigates and 4 cruisers; you can have up to 9 of each. Don't know why I assumed it was hardcoded. This means it's certainly possible to have unlocked & progressive hull designs as you outlined antracer.)
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Edit: silly me, it turns out you *can* add more than 6 frigates and 4 cruisers; you can have up to 9 of each. Don't know why I assumed it was hardcoded. This means it's certainly possible to have unlocked & progressive hull designs as you outlined antracer.



So all those empty spaces are indeed usable... forgive my ignorance, please. As with all things, I know enough to get into trouble, but not enough to dial 911...

I can understand completely the desire to keep the traits of the ships. Given 9 spots, you could have 2 for each, with one for the carrier ?

Should I truly get into learning the hard stuff (given time from work), I think I will tend to focus more on (stop. can't let that go... "moron" hah !) I will want to have 3 types, three levels. The basic "battle ship" with big hull and big guns, the basic carrier and the basic support. Specialized weapons, EMPs, Targeting etc can be spread out amongst the levels and the classes from there. The main CapShip carries the armament, the support ship can carry the shield helps, EMPs and the Carriers can provide the targeting and leadership support. Diverse enough to need all three to be successful yet simple enough to balance all the races without getting mired in complications.

Figure you have 4 abilities per ship type... more than enough to make them different. Each level of tech unlocks a new ability. Game start is barebones one of each, giving you an even better start, as you have options right off as opposed to waiting around.

The cruisers to me are just bigger frigates. I tend almost to ignore them. It's too much micro management to have 5 different frigates, 5 different cruisers and 5 different CapShips to deal with. It gets too much for me to keep track of what is in what fleet, what has the enemy got, what do I need to build now... I go up the capacity ladder and push out Caps. I pair a Kol and a Dunov minimum, sometimes an Akkan or the planet bomber... couple cannon fodders along to soak up damage and I mop the floor with anybody, especially once the skill levels get up in the 6-8 range.

I'd be interested in seeing where you're at on all this... if you'd like another set of eyes.

T
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Most of these make sense, and really mostly they are common sense. Especially with the capital ships. Getting a free one is pretty strange to me.

With the armor types it is sort of annoying and very artificial. You can already make it so big guns can't target fighters, that's most of what's needed. Only light weapons should be able to target them in the first place. Unfortunately there's no way to limit bombers to only attacking large or static structures.

Siege frigates are just kind of stupid. I don't think small ships shold be able to bombard at all. The heavy cruisers and capital ships should be doing that.

For that matter, the frigates should have under 100 hitpoints and be a lot cheaper. That would make everything make so much more sense. There should be a big difference in firepower and durability between the three size categories.

Fighters should have way fewer hitpoints, too, but there should be more of them, but similar firepower. Basically, lethal if you have no defense against them, but unable to deal with heavy flack or interceptor superiority.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Combat balance is coming along. I'm giving limited abilities to the frigates to make them more combat viable.

balancing recap: No shield mitigation, improved armor on most units, only capital ships have shields. Armor and damage types reduced to essentially fighter, frigate, cruiser, and capital/structure. Capital ship shields are only penetrated by certain weapon types. Most units have offensive weapons. Capital ships replace cruisers, and as such there is no leveling, XP, unlocked abilities, or cap ship crew limit. Cruisers are in the frigate slots, and are available earlier in the game.

here's the combat balance so far:

Interceptors shred fighter/bombers and are decent against frigates. They're the best TEC defense against fighters. They have less health than in stock but comparable weapons.

Fighter/bombers in groups are good against frigates, cruisers, structures (missiles can't penetrate cap ship shields). They're quite powerful, but I think in latest builds I may have nerfed them too much...

Protevs launch auto-exploring probes, and colonize.

Arcovas are cheap picket frigates, using short range autocannons on fighters and frigates (antilight damage). I've been experimenting with giving them 'splash damage' on their autocannons so they can rip through multiple fighters at once after targeting one; still tuning that one. They're cheap, and in groups they can really tear apart fighters and frigates. They will have upgraded special abilities with research; not sure which though. When isolated they can still be ripped by fighters; they're best in larger groups.

Cobalts have antimedium lasers (good against all targets), and a 'dump antimatter' ability which gives them a speed boost and lowers their weapon cooldown. Still tuning that. They're a good all around combat frigate, and deadly in numbers.

Krosovs are bombardment frigates that can use their nukes against ships and structures as well as planets. Currently the nukes do a small amount of splash damage to nearby units when exploding, making them somewhat useful against groups of frigates. The anti-heavy damage makes them useless in a standup fight against frigates, and light armor means they go down quickly. They're best to bombard structures from long range. They get destroyed by strike craft.

Percherons have repair drones onboard, and will soon launch marine transports which board, sabotage, and disable enemy ships. They carry two squadrons of either interceptors of fighter/bombers.

Cielos have the beam from the Kol's, an ion cannon to disable enemy ships, and a flak burst to kill rampaging enemy fighters. They're used as capital ship escorts, and tend to die unsupported in combat. Their beam punches through capital ship shields, making them very useful at attacking enemy capitals. It's not very effective against other cruisers and frigates however.

Akkans are used as support capital ships, with an emp strike that drains all shields and antimatter, a shield restore to help friendly capital ships, colonize, and a missile barrage which attacks fighters and frigates in range with anti-light missiles. They can really help clear the 'skies' when your Kols are being bombed...

Kols dish out punishment, and are more heavily armed than in vanilla. Their autocannons give them decent defense against fighters and frigates, and their beams punch capital ship shields.

Sovas have 6 squadrons and haven't gotten too much attention from me. They have heavy fighters and I'll get instant manufacturing working properly...

Dreadnoughts are planet crackers, with heavy shields, armor, and weapons. Lack of capital ship penetrating shields means they can't stand toe to toe with multiple Kol's without exploding, though. Their raze planet ability is very powerful.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Update:

-Tentative mod name: "No Heroes"
-Mod description: Removes capital ships as heroes (with abilities/xp/levels) and adds them into the higher end of the tech tree as conventional ships. All ships reinvented with new roles and abilities, most are multi role and better suited for combat. Ship list pared down to 4 frigates, 2 cruisers, 4 capitals. Combat balance simplified, streamlined, and made more decisive.
-All TEC ships are in except for the planetary invasion transport and marine boarding frigate.
-Only a few abilities left to code. (boarding ships & invading/pacifying planets)
-Critical damage system works, but needs some tweaking (capital ships rarely take critical hits for some reason...). Ships can lose engines, weapons, core (phase + abilities), or hull strength after taking damage, for a short period of time (30-90 seconds).
-TODO: Tweak/improve critical hit system, finish abilities, rearrange 'prototype' tech tree, write ability/research/unit descriptions, final balancing tweaks.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Update 2:

Critical system has been tweaked and now works fairly well. Ships that take lots of hull damage tend to lose engines, weapons, or hull strength (damage taken per sec as hull is on fire), as they have a chance to have a critical hit every 50 damage taken. Capital ships get damaged for 90 seconds, cruisers for 60, frigates for 30. Weapons which punch through capital ship shields (and do anti-heavy damage) can cripple a prized capital ship.

As was suggested in another thread, I equalized ship acceleration and deceleration values for turning and moving, so they slow down as fast as they speed up, and have to slow their angular momentum before they can begin turning. Capital ships now feel suitably massive. The AI is smart enough to brake before it reaches its destination, so it doesn't overshoot. This really improves the capital/cruiser/frigate/fighter balance, in my opinion.

I got the idea from another thread that I could add 'range bands' to each ship's weapons, giving weapons a bonus chance to hit or extra damage at their short range (if it exists, depending on the weapon) and a penalty at long range. I'll have to try that out next time I am working with the code base.

Still have the marine abilities to work on.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Hi thecaptain_ps,
What are the combat ranges in relation to the planet gravity area?

Some of the following is not exactly on topic but partly related and could have some bearing on the design of your work.

Also is there a maintenance cost associated with any of these ships and if not, can one be implemented?

The thinking here is it would tie you ability to not only wage war but to what you can wage war with to your economy so that the trade etc would have a big part in your ability to wage war.

To that affect can anything be done to what appears (from the demo) to be a never ending supply of the resources from the orbiting rocks?

Now just rambling, it is a shame they did not take the opportunity to make a space exploration game of it, that is, you had to find that lucky bounty that was finite and after you found it you had to bring it back to your industrial centres before it could be used.

Anyway back onto the never ending supply. If this was finite then you would have to explore more and/or trade which again makes the economy key to your ability to wage war.

Cheers,

Teddy Bär
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
To that affect can anything be done to what appears (from the demo) to be a never ending supply of the resources from the orbiting rocks?
Anyway back onto the never ending supply. If this was finite then you would have to explore more and/or trade which again makes the economy key to your ability to wage war.
Cheers,
Teddy Bär

At current, I do not believe there to be a way to spawn new asteroids for resources... I imagine you could make a planet bonus or something that could effect changes in the output, positive or negative, but I would be wary of overdoing it...

The games economy is so oversimplified with the metal and crystal as it is that I believe you would really take it close to unplayable. Look at what's happened in 1.03 with having just two asteroids per planet vs the four before... It has really impacted the dynamics of the game, especially on smaller maps. To create a condition where planets lose their resource production, without having an ability to create more would force the player to try to move on like a locust swarm. If there are three other players on the map, you're unlikely to get another planet that is ready to colonize. What do you do on a small map with 10 or 15 planets when all of yours go into resource blackout? You're done... you can't support a fleet, you can't go to war... you go broke and lose the game getting you arse handed to you by the players who have resources left.

I understand that's a bit simplified, but it's a nutshell view, if you will.

To achieve what I believe you to be looking for, the ability to make planets with differing numbers of resource asteroids would be most helpful. By weighting the map with 1 or 2 resource planets yet allowing that 4 or 6 *asteroid "bonus" planet to exist, I believe you could make a case for your vision. It would become a focal point, a center of battle, a target worth fighting over.

From what I understand. it's currently doable by creating multiple planet files that are duplicates except for the resource lines and adding them in. (There are a few threads about this already) Combine this with planetary bonus and penalties that effect the amount removed and you can create any situation you choose. If you really wanted to lose resources at a planet they can be penalized down to 5% of what they were, effectively negating the production.

As for the OP... when do we get to play? I'd like the chance to try before the ranged stuff goes in, if only to have a point of comparison. It would also greatly help the learning curve with all the changes, and better enable comparison to OEM and other mods... although it appears you have an excellent handle on that already.

T
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
wooot? u actualy wanna spil the fun of the game and remove utility?

u cant be serious.... remove utility and replace with lrm + kodiak spamming?

that = so lame.


if i make a fleet i atleast get some utility with me, if you are unable 2 properly use utility then i'd suggest you go on training with an A.I.


the only thing that doesnt feel 100% in this game is people trying to take advantage making massed lrm's or kodiaks.. (not a problem rlly... these are the people that dont know how poerwul utility can be


a short example of utility... u bring 20 kodiaks??? fine i bring 30 lrm's a capital and repair cruisers (then micro a bit


if bth sides are pro-controlled i'll lose the REPAIR cruiser first..... since ofcourse he wil repair a unit 20 health a second




not alot more to say but.. make a mod, try n distribute it amongst us, the massers wil take the mod (cuase they can finaly win using that strategy) i'll keep playing the original, WITHOUT the need 2 mass utility 2 kil kodiak + lrm massers

S_o_L
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the comments SoL.

There are actually no kodiaks/lrm in the mod, though you're correct in that both utility classes are removed as well.

In this mod I have attempted to balance most classes against the rest, so that no fleet composed of only one unit type will win. Whether you try to mass frigates, cruisers, or even Kol's you seem to lose against a balanced force. I'd like for you to try the mod when it's out to see if it does still have problems with massing. My goal was to make each unit more useful, but also vulnerable to counters, to make massing less of a useful strategy than it is now in sins.

(For the record, TEC cruiser carriers have repair, so you can micro them while their fighters and bombers are off killing things)


In terms of the range bands... I haven't found a reliable way to get that working with the current ability system, so I'm going to cut that and simply finish the rest of the features and release the mod. I'd really like to finish with the TEC so I can get going on the advent and vasari...

I looked at maintenance costs and other economy modifications but I'm going to stick with the current research increases fleet cap and increases upkeep method.. it works and I see no reason to break it while I'm busy focusing on combat.