innociv innociv

Shortlist simple easy 1.035 suggestions (or 1.04 ;/)

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Shortlist simple easy 1.035 suggestions (or 1.04 ;/)

from Sins Forums

Well the game is rather.. messed up now.
This whole people accidently telling the enemy your plans because /a doesn't stick.
The lack of colors, you can't tell if someone said something to everyone or just you. While what you say will go "To allies: yada yada" everyone else just gets your name and text, so you have no idea if they accidently told that to the enemy or not, you have to ask if they ally chatted that.
Then there is the bad imbalance between races now from the new black market. The only time people play Vasari now is because they purposefully want to gimp themselves and know they'll win anyways, or because they haven't seen how much worse they are(which then the game starts and 20-30 minutes into it they say "my god vasari is horrible now..")

Are we going to have to wait until 1.04 to get these things fixed?.. 1.04 is supposed to have lots of new features and extras as I understand it, and thus it's not coming out next week or anything. Probly late next month, right? But can we wait and undure the game being so messed up until then in online play?..

I'm going to keep this simple without to many explainations so that it's not tl;dr:

Firstly.. Please bring back random amounts of extractors per planet like in the "Random Resources" setting in 1.02! :(

Black Market

  • How the Black Market works now is much better, but the prices are not. This whole tec and vasari imbalance is coming from cheap buy prices and even worse sell prices. The solution to this is simple.. adjust the Black Maret so buy pries tend to go higher and stay high, and sell prices be much higher too.
  • The 3:2 ratio was better than the one now :(
  • sellPrice 1.6(up from 0.8) buyPrice 2.4 would be good, IMO, and have booms happen twice as easy and the price go down slower after booms.

LRMS
TEC Jav LRM
  • 1.03 cost. 275/45/25
  • Supply increased to 6.(up from 4)
  • Reduce range (it's at.. 11000.. now.. With Akkan it's 13000 or so. It should be getting 11000 WITH akkan, so start at 9250 or so)so that it doesn't outrange Gaurdian's Repel skill and so many other abilities without having Akkan(that'd be buffing akkan if using it made javs outrange some abilities. Tactics, and such).

Advent Illum

  • 1.02 cost. 360/50/40 I believe it was
  • Supply increased to 7.(up from 6)
Vasari Assailant.
  • 1.02 cost. 360/55/35
  • Supply increased to 8.(up from 6)
All LRMS
  • Medium Damage Vs. Very Heavy increased to 100%(up from 75%, this is what heavy cruisers and buildings have now.
  • Building armor changed to a new "Building" armor type. Medium damage vs. buildings 50%(down from 75% it had on Very Heavy) All other damage types vs. this building would be the same as Very Heavy's.
  • Medium Damage Vs. Cap armor to 50%.(down from 75%) At starting at 11/13 DPS, half that is still good dps against a cap ship. Illums have anti-cap damage, so they'd do the same, but each beam of theirs is only 5.2DPS against caps versus the current 9.75 of assailants. 50% would bring assailants down to 6.5 for caps, much better.
  • In short, LRMS damage increased vs HC's, lowered against buildings and caps.
Light Frigates
Vasari Skirmisher
  • Hull Regen increased to 1.5(up from 1.0)
  • Damage increased to 13 DPS(up from 10.5)
  • Range increased to 4250(up from 3500)
  • Increase hull to 800(up from 700). Reduce shields to 340(Down from 440). [More effect from hull upgrades, more effect from healing abilities when hull is gotten to sooner. It's self repair would happen sooner with hull getting attacked sooner.)
  • OR reduce its supply to 6, increase DPS to 11, reduce cost to 360/60/0(down from 400/70/0).

Siege Frigates

  • 1.02 Cost or 30% increased DPS. (currently a siege cap costs LESS than 4 siege frigs, and the siege cap is as good as 6-8 siege frigs at bombarding planets, while obviously the siege cap is obviously much better at fighting too.)
  • 1.03 Survivability

Carriers.

Currently well.. http://dstuff.l2wh.com/images/soase.png This shows well what I mean. Fighters are ONLY better against LRM's and bombers. Besides killing LRM's, you use bombers. This is rather.. or very odd to me. It would also make sense to me that if you had enough bombers you could overwhelm flaks (heavy armor) but this isn't the case. You need something like 7 carriers with bombers for every flak to overwhelm them. So as long as someone has just one flak which costs 1/2 as much for every 5 carriers, your heavy cruisers are safe.
This wouldn't be too much of an issue, but HC+Flak is a very strong combination. Bombers are their only really counter, but you only need 1 flak per 5 bomber squads to stop them. You can't use light frigs to kill their flaks because their HC's eat them.

Increase bomber HP 50% higher.

Fighters do 1/4th the damage as bombers against everything but LRM's and scouts, basically. But with how low hp/shields/armor scouts are you might as well use bombers for those too as 8.22 vs 19.50 is good enough against them. This shows rather well how you should only use fighters vs. bombers and lrms. On the other dozen of the units, in any situation, use bombers.
NAME........DPS.....vs v-light...vs light...vs med...vs heavy...vs v-heavy...vs cap...vs bomber
FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....2.44.......2.44.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33.........1.64
  • I'd give fighters a new damage type to make them just as good against medium armor and heavy without buffing scouts.(even if fighters did 9dps vs. heavy armor, flaks kill them twice as fast, so it's effectively half. This new damage type should do 100% to medium, 100% heavy, over the 25% it does now, but the rest the same as AntiLight)
  • 100% chance (up from 75%) to hit Bombers with this new damage type, this balances out the HP increase for Bombers with fighters attacking them. (effectively 33% increased damage against them vs. their 50% hp increase should work fine)
Numbers if Fighters got a new damage type that was same as AntiLight but 100% vs medium and heavy.
NAME........DPS.....vs v-light...vs light...vs med...vs heavy...vs v-heavy...vs cap...vs bomber
FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....9.75.......9.75.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33.........1.64
HOWEVER you must take into acount while they'd do SLIGHTLY more than the 8.22dps bombers do vs these, that the flaks will kill fighters about twice as fast as bombers especially with bombers getting a bigger HP increase to better survive flak, so bombers are better in situations against flak always, vs heavy and medium it depends on whether there is flak or not.
Also since abilities do damage vs. fighter typically(cap abilities) fighters are more suceptable to these, more to take into account with their balance.

Support Cruisers
Vasari Subverter
  • Increase supply cost to 9-11(up from 5)
  • Increase cost to 450/130/110(up from 400/80/80)
  • Increase cooldown on it's aoe disable to 70(up from 60)
  • Decrease duration on it's aoe disable to 25(down from 30)
  • If that isn't enough maybe it needs AOE range reduced aswell..
Vasari Overseer
  • Have it's health buff no longer require facing the target or greatly increase turn rate.

Buildings
Refineries

  • Increase their effectiveness, I'm not exactly sure how much.
  • Reduce cost to 1500/75/100(down from 1500/125/175) for vasari/tec's of course.. advent shares it with trade port.

Capital Ships

  • Remove the XP sharing so that two caps doesn't make you get half xp.  Both caps should get the maximum xp.   There is nothing overpowerd at ALL about rushing a 2nd cap, or using more than 2 caps, so why penalize they're xp rate?  2 caps might become viable with this change and the lrm nerf.

Mostly just simple entity editing except the black market and text thing. :3

Edited to include something about AntiMedium damage type, and Vasari skirmisher as no one uses them, they are highly regarded as far to expensive/not good enough.

Edited in suggestion to buff Refineries

150,710 views 114 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
Great list, I agree with most of it and want to generally say that innociv seems to be a cool guy ;)

Three things I'd change:

1) You are overdoing subverters. Yes, they are strong but over-nerfing things gets done really fast ... I'd go with a smaller nerf and if that isn't enough maybe another one later. Please don't make them really weak in one go.

2) About strike craft: There is an easier solution. Why not simply double all bombers HP and at the same time double fighter damage. Fighter vs bomber fights stay exactly the same, fighters get capable of really countering LRM (which they can't right now since LRM own carriers way too fast), bombers get an edge on flak and fighter dogfights get done faster. Maybe that would also be overdoing it ... so maybe 150% increase in bomber HP and fighter damage and see if it's enough first.

3) LRM. 8 Supply for the Vasari one is way too much, it is not that much stronger then the TEC one. 7 would be better. And I don't agree on the damage increase versus heavy cruisers. Those cruisers are the only way to kill LRM right now (since flak take way too long to do it) and they should not die to LRM fire so fast.
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
i agree with many of these suggestions. there are a few points i would like to elaborate on with my own suggestions.

black market

the previous buy:sell price ratio (3:2) was better than the current one (3:1). essentially the new system is permanently a buyers market and favors massive credit income while severely punishing massive resource income. excess credits can ALWAYS be converted into something useful by using the market but excess resources can only be converted at an extremely inefficient rate. the extent to which this makes the TEC faction overpowered cannot be understated.

i would suggest the following changes that allow for the market to sometimes be a buyer's market (favoring credit income) and sometimes a seller's market (favoring resource income)

1. dramatically increase the frequency of market booms and market collapses, any large scale buying or selling (say >1000 resources at a time) should cause rapid change in prices.

2. during a boom (very high demand, lots of buyers/not many sellers) the sell price for the resource should increase at a fast rate until the boom is over, encouraging people to dump their stockpiles to raise cash. this would also allow shrewd players to build up large stashes of resources and wait for a boom before unloading for large profit. the buy price should remain unaffected though so as not to unfairly penalize players with a credit based economy. stable buy prices encourage liquidity, which is good for the game. there's nothing more frustrating then needing to buy a little bit of metal but you can't afford ANY because a boom just hit. a boom should be a good opportunity for people to profit by unloading their stashes but it shouldn't put a player into temporary paralysis.

3. during a collapse (very low demand, not many buyers/lots of sellers) the buy price should decrease quickly to encourage buyers to unload their credit surplus and snatch up resources at fire sale prices. this would allow shrewd players to buy up large stashes of resources at temporary low prices and either use them to stimulate production or save them for a boom that might come much later on. the sell price should not change at all during a collapse for the reasons mentioned above. the idea is to reward shrewd players but not to paralyze players who need to sell a small amount of resources to raise cash.


LRMS

return their range to 1.02 levels, they didn't need a range boost. as it is now only other LRMs and fighter squadrons can engage LRMs.

Siege Frigates

are massively expensive and hardly do anything at all. they're just a cleanup crew to kill a planet a bit faster after you've already destroyed everything in the system. if these ships are to earn their spot in the main battlefleet they need to do alot more damage, such that you can critically wound a colony before your enemy can destroy all your siege. either that or their ship-to-ship weaponry should be much more effective so they are more versatile.

Light Frigates

these have a very bad dynamic in the current LRM dominated warfare. LRMs are usually accompanied by Flaks to protect them from fighters (which destroy LRMs very efficiently). The only thing that destroys Flaks efficiently are Light Frigates but these are torn to pieces by the LRMs before the Light Frigates can do enough damage to the Flaks to matter. Light Frigs need to either take a bit less damage from LRMs or need to do ALOT more damage to Flaks (which are naturally more durable then most frigates anyway).


the big balance problem as it stands right now is that it seems clear that LRM + Flak > Carrier (with fighters) + Light Frigate. LRM+Flak is cheaper and available at a lower point on the tech tree. Carrier+Light (a mid-game combo) should compete better if not totally trump the early game combo of LRM+Flak.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
I really don't think what I suggested for Subverters is "too far".

They are more than TWICE as good as all the other races 2nd support cruiser, yet costs almost the same as the Subjugator. Really, they're more like 3-4x as good. So is it too much of a stretch to have them cost. They're so good we've just been hiding how good they are from people, telling each other not to inform people about them.

But i'll break it down:

Advent Subjugator:
400$/80m/80c 5 supply
550 hull, 300 shields
Good heal(must face), disables debuffs.
Disable for 40 seconds. 40 second cooldown. (so 1 can chain on 1 unit. Essentially 1 of these will counter a SINGLE HC, other support cruiser, as they can chain disable it.)

Vasari Subverter
400/80/80 5 supply(I've suggested changing this to 450/120/110, 9-11 supply)
600 hull, 300 shields.
Reduce target mitigation 10%, 25% increased phase missile penetration.
Disable for 30 seconds, 60 second cooldown. It's aoe is about a big as an asteroid I'd say, big enough to usually disable 10 loose ships, but i've seen 30 ships that where stacked disabled by one. (So 2 of them will disable 10 units minimum generally, so that's basically disabling FIVE more for the same cost and just 1 more supply!)

Just for cost reference:
Iconus Gaurdian
525/110/120 7 supply.
So is it really so drastic to make the Subverter be 450/120/110 9-11 supply?

Right now subverters is the only thing keeping Vasari alive as a race with how hard the eco is nerfed. But in 1.02 they were very overpowered. And part of this suggestion was to change the market so prices will tend to be around how they were in 1.02, much much higher selling and higher buying prices.

I wonder really if it was intended to even make Subverters AOE disable? The description makes it sound like it's single target only such as Subjugators. Intended or not, I and others like the aoe disable. I'd rather it keep the aoe disable and be balanced out with nerfs to it's cost, supply, and take 3 of them to chain aoe rather than just 2(at 30/60 duration/cooldown two can chain disable, if it's 25/70 it'll take 3)

Yes subverters have the disadvantage of having to melee the target to do it's disable, which puts it up close so it can die easier, but again, this is a very powerful unit. It's already disabled 10-30 units for 30 seconds(25 under my suggestion), even if you lose a bunch before more disables you've had a big headstart on them where your ships haven't been taking damage and yours have.
So you lose some subverters, you've destroyed a bunch of their fleet. Even if you just kill one HC without losing one of your own with a subverter, it has made it's cost back to you!

Now yes you can't compare unit to unit. Vasari needs this good support unit to counter late game advent, or tons of kodiaks. That's why i've suggested making the Subverter just twice as good as the 2nd best support cruiser, instead of 3x-4x better.
It'd still be the best, just not overpowered. And they are overpowered. Yes I love their overpowered goodness myself, but i'm not going to like it when everyone is playing vasari just for this unit and using them against me all the time. It will remain powerful with what i've suggested, just not TOO powerful


Reason behind high supply is that that won't hurt someone just making a few of them. But if you make 30 so you can completely lock someone up, that's 330 supply if they take 11. You could fill up that supply with alot of damage dealing units and units with better tanking, or not drain your fleet cap earlier.


The reason you don't hear "nerf subverter!" threads is because it's unknown how good it is to many people. The description sounds like it's single-target disable, thus it looks worse than Subjugator. It takes using them on a group and being observant to see it's aoe and extremely powerful.


MAYBE I'm overdoing it with them. Maybe just changing the ability duration to 25 and cooldown to 70 would be enough. But they definitely aren't balanced how they are now. (or well, were in 1.02 where Vasari had more stuff going for them.)
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but for certain achievements like Union Buster where you have to kill X of a thing to get it, id love to see that info displayed somewhere so you can tell how far you have to go.

Otherwise I love the 1.03 patch and the ideas presented here by innociv and most others.
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
To person a bit bove about black market, yes basically what I was saying is we need prices more like 3:2 not he horrendous 3:1 we have now (which has hurt vasari so bad)
Great list, I agree with most of it and want to generally say that innociv seems to be a cool guy Three things I'd change:
1) You are overdoing subverters. Yes, they are strong but over-nerfing things gets done really fast ... I'd go with a smaller nerf and if that isn't enough maybe another one later. Please don't make them really weak in one go.

2) About strike craft: There is an easier solution. Why not simply double all bombers HP and at the same time double fighter damage. Fighter vs bomber fights stay exactly the same, fighters get capable of really countering LRM (which they can't right now since LRM own carriers way too fast), bombers get an edge on flak and fighter dogfights get done faster. Maybe that would also be overdoing it ... so maybe 150% increase in bomber HP and fighter damage and see if it's enough first.

3) LRM. 8 Supply for the Vasari one is way too much, it is not that much stronger then the TEC one. 7 would be better. And I don't agree on the damage increase versus heavy cruisers. Those cruisers are the only way to kill LRM right now (since flak take way too long to do it) and they should not die to LRM fire so fast.
End of quote

1. Maybe.. I still think they'd be great and i'd use them with what I suggested. I played Vasari in 1.02 after all(but now it's like playing with a limp). Just changing the duration/cooldown is maybe enough.

2. I thought about the bombers and fighters thing A LOT, and a 50% increase in bomber hp and a new damage type for fighters I'm pretty sure is the only way to go. No other damage types would work. Changing AntiLight itself would imbalance scouts vs. light frigs a bit. So Fighters need their own damage type.
Doubling Bomber HP would make fighters not do well enough against them. +50% is enough.

3. Assailants are better than javs late game. MUCH better. Look at it as Assailant vs. Jav now.
Before Jav was 4 supply, 11dps, assialant was 6 supply and 13 dps. For 50%!! more supply assailant only got less than 20% more dps!
Now with 6 for jav, 8 for assailant, the assailant is 33% more supply for 20% more dps. More equal now.
It's a 2 increase to supply for assailants and 1 for illum.. I believe it'll cut down on the spam well.
Look at it this way too, Javs got their supply increased by 50% while assailants only get theirs increased by 33%
Supply wise, assailants have been made more equal to javs this way, as jav spam has been the biggest problem. Vasari only made assailants because they're other options weren't that good.

And a reason why assailant spam is prevalant, like i said, is Vasari has no other early game options. Skirmishers cost 7! supply, while assailants are 1 less! Why would you use Skirmishers, people have asked themselves to get an obvious answere.
My proposed buff to Skirmishers might give Vasari another option and not be REQUIRED to get 1 mil lab make assailants at the start.
Even if your enemy makes flaks, it's painful to make light frigs for them.

Also as I mentioned before, a 33% damage increase(100% instead of 75%) against HC is NOT going to make them very strong against HC's. They will still be worse than bombers (when not supported by lots of flak), support cruisers, and heavy cruisers. So they'll be the 4th best to counter. They are 4th currently, but they are a distant 4th.
2 LRMS are about equal in cost to 1 HC, but even with them getting a 33% damage boost 10 LRMS is not going to kill 5 HC's.
But if you keep Buildings and HC's both having the same armor type, and make AntiMedium do 50% against both in order to nerf LRM damage vs. buildings(which badly needs to be done!), then it's going to make that 4th best unit against HC's be worse. This would be buffing HC's as it's one less thing that does decent against them, and there aren't many things that currently do decent against them.
Wouldn't call LRM's a counter to HC's but they are "a unit that does decent against".
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
Innociv, the problem with raising subverter fleet supply to 9-11 is that Vasari already have higher "supply cost" units than any other race. Thus for any given fleet, vasari have significantly less units... Such a radical supply increase on subverters (from 5 to 9-11) would likely force vasari to have to be a "fleet upgrade" above an enemy to have any chance in a battle...This of course would give the already-weak vasari economy another big wack :).

An increase from 5 to 7 I could understand, perhaps with some resource/credit increase as well (This is assuming the vasari economy gets fixed with a black market fix, otherwise forget it!)... If more is needed later, they can always nerf again. Given how this is a nerf to a unit that nobody has yet really called for "omg nerf subverters" (Yes yes, your points about its description are valid...but we are still fixing a problem before it becomes a "crisis") Its a good unit, somewhat OP...but not significantly so IMO, given that its a vasari unit.

All in all, I think that IC/SD have so many bigger fish to fry for the sake of "balance" before they significantly mess with subverters...hehe.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
Well in 1.02 the races where well balanced and subverters prooved very overpowered then. Now, like I said, they're the only thing that keeps the race barely playable.

The nerf to subverters i've suggested goes along with improving prices in the black market to 1.02 levels (As I said, new market system is good, the prices for stuff is not though) which will bring Vasari economy back up.

Hopefully extractors will be buffed too, bringing Vasari up more. But buffed extractors with current subverters would be badddddd. :(
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
Stop with the subverters already! Without them the Vasari support is lackluster.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
Skirmishers cost 7! supply...
End of quote


Major off-topic, but I read that as 'seven factorial' supply and was like 'DAMN!' Back to my corner.

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
Maybe Subverters are overpowered? I have used them a few times, but they die pretty fast, so I tend to favor enforcers. I will say, it is Vasari's counter to clustered ships. I find that if the game goes on too long and I'm playing Vasari, I tend to need RA to counter the TEC economy (this was the 1.02 economy, 1.03 is even more TEC favorable, but this is a market issue, not a TEC issue. I find the strength of the Vasari to be how fast they are out of the gate....once that early game burst of aggressiveness winds down, the Vasari better have secured some kind of advantage. Then comes dependence on technology (Subverters), or RA. So maybe Subverters are OP, but the Advent fleet synergies are downright evil in their own right.
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
Stop with the subverters already! Without them the Vasari support is lackluster.
End of quote


Subverters still have the -10% mitigation +25% phase missile penetration.. which is good, but it's aoe disable is better so no ones gunna spend AM on that ;)
And note i've suggested the buff to overseerers.

I'd be fine with a less drastic nerf than I suggested though.
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Innociv, the problem with raising subverter fleet supply to 9-11 is that Vasari already have higher "supply cost" units than any other race. Thus for any given fleet, vasari have significantly less units... Such a radical supply increase on subverters (from 5 to 9-11) would likely force vasari to have to be a "fleet upgrade" above an enemy to have any chance in a battle...This of course would give the already-weak vasari economy another big wack .An increase from 5 to 7 I could understand, perhaps with some resource/credit increase as well (This is assuming the vasari economy gets fixed with a black market fix, otherwise forget it!)... If more is needed later, they can always nerf again. Given how this is a nerf to a unit that nobody has yet really called for "omg nerf subverters" (Yes yes, your points about its description are valid...but we are still fixing a problem before it becomes a "crisis") Its a good unit, somewhat OP...but not significantly so IMO, given that its a vasari unit. All in all, I think that IC/SD have so many bigger fish to fry for the sake of "balance" before they significantly mess with subverters...hehe.
End of quote


what u are basicly saying is that we should wait for the disaster to happen.
We know that subverters are overpowered and the only reason that it isnt a change concern yet is the fact that its a ship which doesnt get used a lot and that vasari are nerfed due to the market changes (so the overpowered subverters currently cover up other vasari issues).
Though like inno said this will defiantly change and ppl will beginn to use subverters.
Now if we wait for patch 1.04 without fixing this subverter issue while fixing all the other stuff suggested here we will be having again a huge problem which then can only get fixed with patch 1.05.
So this would mean we would waste for sure at least 3 months on something that is already now obvious.
If we/IC keep doing it like this then it will require a long long time to get a decent balancing.
You simply cant do changes one by one, u have to address as many issues as possible while always taking a look at the bigger picture.
This bigger picture tells me that as soon as vasari is economicly on equall footing again subverters will tip the balance in favor of vasari's.
Its also not fun if the game has such uber/must have units. They are simply too strong compared to the other races support ships.
So if noone wants subverters nerfed then u would have to seriously buff the other support ships but that wouldnt be a good idea.
I already saw the first fleets which consisted of 50% subverters and thats not something i rly like to see.

Btw its also an option to simply reduce the range of the AOE ability instead of giving em a lot higher support. This way they would be more like other support ships and u could still built a decent number of ships as vasari.
Still i want to point out again how much more powerfull they are compared to other support ships so a nerf is A MUST.
Something i would suggest is to nerf subverters a bit and buff some of the other support ships, should also make support for other races more important and thus make a mixed fleet worthwhile.
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with OP on the Black Market. The rest was for the most part smaller issues that don't reeeeaally need to be changed anytime soon, and some are even acceptable as they are because it adds variety to game style. I mean the argument about fighters is great, but keep in mind that your counterargument applies to a certain gameplay approach. Whereas the market argument is a global issue that affects everyone. All in all though I agree with most what you said there. It was also nicely organized, easy to read, and very respectful. I hope the devs take some of your stuff to heart.
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
Stop with the subverters already! Without them the Vasari support is lackluster.
End of quote


the subverters are not there to fix all the other vasari issues.
U cant have one uberunit just cause some other units are badly balanced.
Instead IC should make Overseers more usefull and also some of the other vasari ships so that subverters are gonna be what they are supposed to be, support ships and not the main part of ur fleet.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
Another option would be to keep the AOE size the same and other things the same but make it effect a max of 5 or 6 units. But I'd personally prefer them be costly/in small numbers/be good.

Cielo's could probably use a buffing, and overseers might need more than simply faster turn rate or not needing to face, but these are minor and I could see waiting.

I wanted to keep this to sort of "bare essentials" and not bother the devs to much now :x
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with the majority of the ideas but think fighters shouldn't be buffed that greatly, you also have to take into account that fighter squadrons tend to be larger than bomber squadrons, even though I see your point that against flak bombers would still be better I think bombers should always be a better choice against heavier armour types.
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
LinkesAuge, regarding the subverters I just happen to agree with Cykur that lategame, Vasari (even in 1.02) need such "great support" to have any chance. Or they could go RA. TEC have their insane economy, advent have their great synergies, what do vasari have for lategame?

Thats why I agreed a minor nerf to them was ok (assuming vasari econ is fixed). I played Vasari mainly in 1.02 (Although I liked TEC too), and I can tell ya (once again, like Cykur), I mainly went enforcers (HC) as a vasari. Subverters were a good addition but their fragile and dps is bad. The fact is, at this late point in the game, Vasari is weaker than advent's synergies and out-numbered by TEC. They *need* a way to even the score and in some ways subverters fill this void.

Thats why i'm wary of over-nerfing them, specially since right now as I said, its not a "crisis" yet. Maybe it never will be. Things sometimes look great on paper and don't work out as well in practice...
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
LinkesAuge, regarding the subverters I just happen to agree with Cykur that lategame, Vasari (even in 1.02) need such "great support" to have any chance. Or they could go RA. TEC have their insane economy, advent have their great synergies, what do vasari have for lategame?Thats why I agreed a minor nerf to them was ok (assuming vasari econ is fixed). I played Vasari mainly in 1.02 (Although I liked TEC too), and I can tell ya (once again, like Cykur), I mainly went enforcers (HC) as a vasari. Subverters were a good addition but their fragile and dps is bad. The fact is, at this late point in the game, Vasari is weaker than advent's synergies and out-numbered by TEC. They *need* a way to even the score and in some ways subverters fill this void.Thats why i'm wary of over-nerfing them, specially since right now as I said, its not a "crisis" yet. Maybe it never will be. Things sometimes look great on paper and don't work out as well in practice...
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Vasari do have RA late game :P, which is their answer to TEC's insane eco. Similarly, with RA you can out-manouver an advent's fleet (but it is unlikely you will defeat it head on). The problem with subverters is that they can disable entire fleets - I have seen fleets which were 50% subverters and its not pretty (if the other half is dps, like assailants). Yes they die fairly quickly to malice etc, but in the time his whole fleet is disabled you can really screw over one of his high level caps and if advent lose a few of those its gg. I think if this issue isn't addresed in the next patch, we will see subverter spam, since imo the cat is out of the bag on this one now :P. (of course, the Black Market and javelis LRM changes are more important imo).
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
Working on a mod that encompasses most of these changes.
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
Ehtom, RA isn't a strategy you usually decide to "go" because it is late-game... It takes so long to get all the civ labs, research, get the gates up, etc. RA is a strategy that you begin the game with... So unless you want us to always be going RA as Vasari, thats not really a answer to the late game.

I've yet to see a vasari successfully convert from going non-RA in the early/mid game, then see its not going to end soon and switch over to RA in time. Not with decent players anyhow. Have you?

I agree with you that lategame, a fleet with 50% subverters is effective. Whether this "effective fleet" can overcome advent synergies or TEC economy lategame...That case has not been made IMO. I think in such a situation, TEC or advent still have the advantage personally. Because it *is* an effective combination, I was ok with a small nerf to subverters... But please, lets not nerf the combination into the ground and stomp on it. If, after a small nerf, we see vasari being too strong in a non-RA lategame (which I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt), they can nerf subverters more.

Actually, this is my last post on subverters. I'm playing TEC Sim-City-Econ now anyway, why am I defending Vasari? Nerf it nerf it! :p.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with everything except the suggested assailant and subverter nerfs.

As they are, those nerfs are extreme.

The skirmisher is just a sucky unit and needs a buff similar in magnitude to your suggested nerfs to equal the assailant, and the subverter is quite strong, but is pretty much the only counter that doesn't involve RA, which some people don't actually like using, you know?

On a tangent though, it would be greatly appreciated if you could scrap more than one thing at a time.

You also NEED the ability to turn off and on charged missles for all of your selections, as it is, there are some serious problems with it.

It also seems to do a rather negligible amount of damage, and is really only worth it being available for the sentinel for its huge trade offs. A little micro and your assailants will be decimated.
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with the majority of the ideas but think fighters shouldn't be buffed that greatly, you also have to take into account that fighter squadrons tend to be larger than bomber squadrons, even though I see your point that against flak bombers would still be better I think bombers should always be a better choice against heavier armour types.
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I took into account that fighters have larger squadrans.
Both their total HP is still higher, and flaks do more damage against fighters than bombers. It'd be even more higher if bombers get that +50% hp
The special new damage type could give 75% vs. heavy instead of 100% so it'd do less than bombers, but i don't see why with how flaks decimate fighters.


Oh also carbon, I already made a mod with all these changes except extractors and armor type changes.


Regarding this whole subverters thing.
Okay so Vasari is so dependant on that unit. They need it to be at least 3-4x better than any other support cruiser to play late game? In 1.03 yeah, but with 1.02 eco I don't really think so, especially not so if they buff ore refineries (since vasari get tech3 ore refineries which'll stack on their cheaper extraction upgrades)

If Vasari has a problem after the fixed black market, buffed ore refineries, and nerfed subverters, then SOMETHING ELSE needs to be buffed, not have one severely overpowered super unit to fix the race!
Reply #48 from Stardock Forums Top
That's a good post with some logic to it. I'm not sure I actually agree with all innociv's proposed changes, or even with all of the problems they're solving, but I'm game to try them out and see how the game feels afterwards. My hunch is that despite the careful unit analysis these changes won't give us perfect balance either but if they can get any kind of consensus we might as well try them and see if they're fun.

I am a bit concerned about the idea of pushing the buy price much higher, but I suppose that with higher sell prices the effective spread between buy and sell would be much lower (currently I see sell prices around 1/3 or 1/4 of the buy price). I can already beat TEC with Advent a decent proportion of the time so I also wonder if some people are exaggerating the situation a bit. As I say though, I'm prepared to play it and see. The market improved from 1.02 to 1.03 and if innociv's suggestion improves it further that'll be grand.

The other thing I'd like to say without intending any disrespect to the way innociv has presented the changes which is good for the purpose of a discussion thread is that if all those changes are adopted as a package, I think someone should spend extra time on writing them up into something a bit more than the usual changelog format. It would be useful to announce the changes with a writeup that explains the rationale and how they relate to each other.

Skipping the explanations here does reduce the scope for people to disagree with the changes, but further down the line we'll probably be wanting to compare how effective these unit values are at solving particular balance challenges with some other proposal and that'll be easier if we have something to refer back to explaining how each change was supposed to contribute. The later part of the proposal already has good explanations, it's mainly the early bullet-point part I think needs fleshing out.

(Yeah, I can be a bit wishy-washy, I know... but hey, there's enough absolute confidence around already :) )
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
IF I explained every little detail people wouldn't read it. ;p

I think most peopel that have played a lot of games understand the reasoning.

And no this won't perfectly balance things, it is just a short list to address the biggest problems. The small imbalances aren't much to worry about.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
Regarding the market prices, I think innociv's suggestion is a fine "quick-fix". It would also be the easiest to balance.

Ideally, i'd rather a black market whose buy/sell price was more reflective on the *player* buy/sell patterns. Not sure how this would impact the game, but here goes:

Start off a preset "good" buy/sell price. Then every time someone buys that resource, the price increases (for both buy and sell prices, maybe keeping a ratio between them?) ...If someone sells a resource, the buy/sell price will then decrease. If most people are buying the resource, its price will keep increasing throughout the entire game until it gets so high, people will buy less and others will sell more. Goooo real market simulations :p.

This would be a grand way to balance the TEC cash-income with the vasari resource-income strengths. Let real-market dynamics solve it for you! :p.

Of course, to be a true market, one player would have to sell and another buy...None of this "buying from nobody" business. But given how we would then have "I need cash, but if I sell this resource my opponent will benefit! Do I need cash as much as he needs metal???" arising... And thus there would be hoarding, price gouging, etc...So I can understand not implementing that. I think the above suggestion would be a great "compromise"... Neat idea anyhow, heh.