The Strategy

nerf SB. longer cooldown = gg i used to remember when people would laugh at me for being vasari. and now theyre numerous. it makes me sad.

To think, only a few months ago SB unambiguously meant "starbase". 

Anyways, yeah, we know that scramble (and while we're at it, carrier caps and bomber spam in general) is simply the strategy right now.  I guess the most appropriate question is: what should be done about it?

Carefull whey you ask "what should be done about it"... it tends to invite Volt_Cruelerz to suggust some crazy "fix".

I would suggust, perhaps, an increase in duration and cooldown time, (and an approprite increase in antimatter cost so that the antimatter per bomber/second is unchanged) so that it takes longer for all the squads to spawn, and you have more time to knock them out of the sky before they self-detonate.  30% increase in antimatter cost, duration and cool down doesnt seem to hard of a nurf. (hey, and you get to keep your bombers 30% longer)

Also, scramble bombers should not work in plasma.

I also feel that jam weapons got a slightly harder nerf than needed last patch.... but not by much.

Magnatize (on the donov) could target a few more strike craft to make it worth it... seriosly... its a anti-strike craft ablitiy, and it cant stop more than, what, 9/13/15 strike craft? or is that the duration? idk, its pathetic.  seriously, 2 donovs with shield restore and magnatize should make a vasari player with nothing but carriers be like... "oops"

The worst thing about scramble bombers, and vasari bomber spam in general, is that they have soooo many hitpoints! (and phase missles) quite simply, the repair cloud can bring a bomber at 1 hp, right back up to full in seconds... so even if you have flackburst or telepush... they just plain wont die.  (not to mention, because they have the most hitpoints, flackburst and telepush are the least effective against vasari strikecraft/bombers)  it takes a shitton of flack/fighters to break 20/25/30 hp/second on every single target in the sky.  seriously... if you cant instapop it... as long as repair cloud is covering it, it wont die.  No other faction can heal thier strike craft... and definatly not to such an amazing extent.

idk. and, I really am not sure how much of a nerf the vasari need... I mean, currently they are the most used race... because of... one carrier cap? I mean, that and illum nerfing is mostly what caused the switch.

 Its just that people like things that can pop capital ships fast... and the two things that do that are LRMS and bombers. hence, players spam lrms and bombers.  I mean, lrms are supposed to counter lfs... bombers, HCs... but even if there are not a single LF or HC on the other side... people still build these because these kill cap ships.

Seriously, people hate capital ships.  I mean, If you were to watch two ai battle, you will notice that the capital ships slug it out with the cap ships, and the fleets slug it out with the fleets. (hey, capital ships get the best multipliers agaisnt capital ships out of everything)... and thats imho the way the devs intended it...  cap ships battle cap ships, fleets battle fleets... and thats not what the players are doing.... but there is really no way to fix that.

well, if you slowed down lrms to 450 (they are not supposed to be speedy-chase-after-cap-and-pop)... or reduce their modifier from 75% to say 66%, it would help a little... cant really fix bombers without making them useless... since they are kinda supposed to kill caps... but the same, for 75% to 66% might be nice. Not big nerfs, just enough to make players be a little slower to spam lrms and bombers, instead of say, what are supposed to kill caps... heave cruisers and other cap ships.

Buff the other caps to the carrier's power. Neither of the races have much reason to use any caps other than carriers, the Progen, Akkan, Kortul, and possibly the Egg. Every other cap is either too underpowered or situation to be viable.

Vasari is, rather ironically, the only faction with completely viable caps. Skirantra and Kortul are amazing, and Egg is still fairly useful if only for Colonize. The Antorak and Vulkoras are still situational, but are seen fairly commonly (Vulk moreso).

Advent essentially just has the Progen and Halcyon. Radiance is useful occasionally for disabling, Rapture is very situational (And usually just to support multiple Halcyons?), and Revelation sucks.

And TEC has the worst of it all. The Akkan is great, and that's it. Sovas are really only useful for early on, and are simply outclassed very quickly. Heck, it seems Sovas are used just to have enough early Fighters to hold off dual Skirantra/Halcyon rushes. Marza is extremely countered now to be very viable. The Dunov sucks and the Kol is atrocious. TEC players really have no options for caps other than the Akkan and Sova currently.

Which can be a fun discussion in and of itself.

I've actually been thinking on this subject, and my current leaning is actually the opposite: shorten the duration (I could go either way on cooldown, though).

The problem with the old scramble bombers was that they got shredded as fast as they could deploy, so duration or theoretical maximum number of squads never was really an issue.  It just didn't happened.  However, there was a tipping point that was crossed in the 1.19 patch, and the deployment rate overall became fast enough that a reasonable number of fighters couldn't suppress the bombers, so instead of staying at a roughly static number, they built up towards those theoretical maximums.

I think that if we just tinker around with the deployment rate, we'll end up ping-ponging between 1.19 ridiculousness and 1.18 mediocrity.  Either the fighters can suppress them and prevent them from reaching those massive swarms, or they can't and the bombers dominate.  I believe what we need is a Skirantra that can scramble fast enough that its bombers aren't just fighter fodder, but the duration of the bombers (if they do survive) is such that they won't build up these obscene swarms.

Therefore, I think that the duration should be the target of the nerf here.

When did jam weapons take a nerf?  I don't see it in the patch notes...

Magnetize is a bit of a weird ability.   The biggest difference between it and other anti-strike craft abilities is that it affects a set number of targets, whereas flak burst and the others are uncapped.  As far as I'm concerned, this makes it largely worthless for dealing with appreciable numbers of SC and it's primarily a disabling skill.

Unfortunately, we can't make it scale without cap, since this could turn it into a late game nuke (it's automatic death to strike craft, plus it deals damage to its target for each strike craft killed).  Short of complete rework, I have no freakin clue how to balance this ability for both early and late game play.  That said, it certainly could take some substantial buffing and it would still be completely reasonable in the early game.

I'm kinda iffy on this one.  The total hit points in the squad itself is the same as Advent or TEC bombers.  This certainly makes them more resistent to flak burst, but against fighters and flaks they're about the same as everyone else.  And as far as repair cloud goes, a Skirantra doesn't have the antimatter to spam both its abilities.  It's going to run dry (very quickly) if it does this.  It's certainly a Vasari advantage, but it's a bit more subtle.

It's pretty easy to thin out a conventional carrier bomber swarm with fighters.  Carriers will run out of antimatter if they keep replacing units.  It's the capital ships that keep the production line going that are the problem, and the Skirantra with scramble bombers is really the king of that production speed.  Carriers with fighters basically can't compete, because they do get shredded and worn down by flaks in a battle of attrition. 

I think part of the solution will be giving us a better answer to defeat carrier capital ships in general.  Because it's not just the Skirantra, the Halcyon and Sova are also dominating right now.  The Skirantra is just the worst offender of the group.  I think part of the solution is buffing the other capital ships so they also are suitably dangerous, and possibly buffing carrier cruisers to better compete with the capital variety.

Actually I blame the scout nerf more than anything for Advent's fall from grace.  It was entirely possible to play 1.181 Advent with a destra-based fleet and crush Vasari and TEC in the late game, but you needed the seeker to bring you through the early and mid-game if you weren't going with the bugged illuminator.  Its nerf is what really crippled Advent, IMO, more than any other faction.  TEC and Vasari can throw LRF at each other till the cows come home, both their scouts are equally gimped, but Advent can't match with illuminators because they come out too late and are no longer masters of the shoot-out.

but what happens when the enemy only has 1 cappital and the same fleet over and over

scm :-()

oh yer since im new (ive been playing for a month) whats karma just curios

scm

So it seems the evil advent rule of sins has finally fallen. We Vasari will always will rule.

OK, it seems we have moved on to a new imbalance. Could we just give up and play some of the great mods like DS that do have balance. Ironclad never has had sins balanced and never will.

DS is a great and epic mod... (games 5 or 9 pm est every sat/sun!) but it is not balanced.  course no one plays it competitivly, so no one really cares that much.

60% shield bypass is not balanced... 94% shield mitigation is not balanced.  being able to build lv 6 marzas is not balanced... but everything is so unbalanced that it all preety much works out in the end.

this game is preety darn close... its just, not quite. sweeping balanced changes are not required... only slight tweeks. (except, to like, GRG... that sucks balls)

While I agree with you in general, I'd say around 2/3rds of the game's capital ships are very weak and need more than just tweaking of one or two abilities.  I've posted this before, and I may as well do it again.  My personal opinion on capital ship "rankings":

1. Skirantra
2. Halcyon
3. Progentor
4. Sova
5. Akkan
6. Kortul
7. Jarrasul
8. Marza
9. Radiance
10. Vulkoras
11. Rapture
12. Kol
13. Revelation
14. Dunov
15. Antorak

We actually do have very noticable "tiers" here.  The top 3 in particular are extraordinarily powerful capital ships, and really aside from some very minor tweaking to specific abilities they are great.  I personally think the Halcyon is the paragon of balance against which every other capital ship should be measured.  Then you have three or four capital ships which are powerful, but have limitations or weaknesses that hold them back (typical "high" tier).  Then you have your mid-tier capital ships that are very powerful at what they do, but also highly specialized and weak outside of that specialization.  Then you have your low-end capital ships that just don't pack enough punch and need substantial help to be worthwhile.

My thoughts on how to deal with capital ships in general:

Battleships - increase their damage and armour so they become tanks that are capable of actually matching a kiting carrier capital ships in the early game.  Buff select abilities on the Kol and Radiance.  Give the Vulkoras and Marza the same treatment, since they are in-effect battleships with strong siege abilities.
Support - increase their antimatter regeneration rate so they can more easily spam their special abilities.  Combine with a buff to many of the weaker special abilities (which sadly is the majority of them) and they should be pretty dangerous.  Maybe up their hull and shield values to give them a little more survivability, or else maybe increase the range of their abilities to better allow them to kite.  Give the Revelation the same treatment, since it's really just a support capital ship with high bombard damage.
Miscellanious - buff the Jarrasul's colonize to make it more competitive with the Progenitor and Akkan.  Maybe tweak the Sova a bit so it scales better into the late game.  Somehow fix scramble bombers on the Skirantra. 

Actually, The Strategy is spam bombers in general. Which leads to who has the most carriers game. IMHO, lame.

i did some math... it seems that fighters holding position will kill bombers holding position faster than flack frigs can kill the fighters... and also, flack frigs suck really hard vs bombers. (i mean, they suck vs bombers BEFORE skirantra repaircloud)... but flack get a 56.25% multiplier vs bombers... and thats before hold position reduced damage output by a factor of 2/4 (depending on if you can micro your flack so that they are facing the bombers at 45 degrees and get 2 weapon banks firing)

one vasari flack frig can kill 1 bomber squad holding position in 228 seconds... not including regen and bomber rebuilding.  that said, you can build almost 3 flacks to a carrier, but compared to the same calulation against a fighter squad.. which is 96 seconds (also no including passive regen and rebuilding)

if you factor in that regeneration and rebuilding, things get complicated... but considering the bomber squad has more time to rebuild and regenerate... it benifits more from it than the fighters do... which skews things even more towards the bombers.

(vassari stuff used because vassari bomber spam is the bomber spam abused most... mostly because everyone is vasari now. )

The issue with bombers is that, like LRF, they pack a lot more punch than the game's other units.  Light frigates, heavies, flaks, fighters, even capital ships pale in comparison to the sheer muscle exerted by LRF and bombers.  This isn't helped by the fact that bombers have unmatched mobility and LRF unmatched range.  This allows them to very easily pick off specific targets with that massive firepower.

This is a game where the only real defense is the ability to project enough damage to threaten the enemy, and that really makes bombers and LRF very powerful.  While bombers lack staying power due to their fragility, this doesn't soften the first few bombing strafes at all, and with capital carriers you can actually start pumping bombers again once fighters are suppressed because flaks won't cut it on their own in any reasonable numbers.

So I started playing multiplayer again, This skirantra strategy is getting extremely annoying.

Like I think the patch before when Illums were bugged, was even more balanced than this. Although i have not really been destroyed completly from a carrier rush, I can't really imagine my self winning until I get help from a team mate against these. Atleast the Halcyon carrier will die quicker, I mean, actually die.

Also is there anyway to watch my old replays from entrenchment? It says invalid save because of different version cause of the recent patches.

I'm sitting out multiplayer right now (I have been for the past few months, though mostly for personal reasons), but hopefully the next patch will improve matters.

RTS games always the same. As soon as a patch comes out, everyone ASAP finds out what will kill what the fastest making the hole game lame.  So whats the point in changing anything. We need a random generator where every game each unit is a little different keeping the lifers on there toes.

The problem with that is that it changes strategy into a crap shoot.  Strategy doesn't enter into the matter if you can't make reliable predictions.

Instead, the goal should be to aim for that sweet spot of balance where no one approach is overpowering and a variety of paths are viable.  It doesn't need to be perfect, and I do believe that's possible.  Sins 1.181 was actually very close, illum bug notwithstanding.  Fix the illum bug and 1.041 Sins Entrenchment was probably one of the best balanced RTS games ever made.  Sure, carrier caps were on the strong side and the TEC faction was a little lackluster, but it was well into the sweet spot.

Is there a mod that does the strictly balancing issues you discuss. If not could you try. I would love it.

You seem to be the best man for the job.

I nominate Darvin3 

there are numerous balance mods out there... i think darvin3 made one once... but the problem is, mods are not helpfull for multiplayer.  I mean... it takes a sticky thread and recruiting to get a decent sized game of Distant Stars going at schedualed times... trying to get people to play a balance mod... would just be almost impossible.  just like Dirty's maps, just not everyone has them, or cares to get them.

Not for this game.  I never got into Sins modding for some reason, even though I do have a bit of a background there.

Thats like saying why make a mod at all. This game thrives in single player.

Distant Stars is a bad example because its a total conversion. Lots of people like vanilla or you can easily stack the balancing mod on top of another mod if it uses stock ships.

This is one project I would do myself but don't have near the knowledge of Darvin3.

Distant Stars isnt a TC.

Its not the problem of making the mod, its the problem of getting said mod to be mainstream. That the problem, with a vast majority of ICO players not on the fourms at all or active enough to know about anything worth knowing about.

And even then, there will be many players who wont want to find and download the mod just b/c they are lazy/mod illiterate/feel they shouldnt have to mod the game to enjoy it/etc etc etc.

Pb brought up DS as an example b/c even though we have 1000's of seperate IP's who have downloaded the game...we only get....4-5 players on a given weekend playing online. Sad IMHO. Heck we have a thread dedicated to it, promote it within our own mod topic, even promote it online on ICO and still we get low numbers.

Anyhow, I bet Dirty can tell you how hard it is to get people to download the darn thing, look at his map packs. So, mod away! If nothing else you can get a few player together and play our balance mod together. It will be like any other mod. A few core players. The only way you will ever get this mainstream is if you get the vast majority of ICO players to play with it. Best of luck with that...

Sorry I have not tried it YET. A bad assumption upon what I have read.

A probability of failure is not a good excuse. If I were to start a mod, I would build off of the Optimization Project and incorporate the balancing files and work from there. Or keep them stackable separate so people can decide what they want on there own.

Im not and Im sure Pb isnt suggesting you dont try. By all means go for it!!! Please do! Making the mod wont be the hardest part. My point is getting it widely accepted and mainstream is. Which IMHO will be critical b/c of your target group/players.

As for the actually modding part, honestly since you are just balancing and not creating a whole lot of new things. You be mostly changing numbers and such. Im sure it something you can figure out with little or no help. There are some really great guy/gals in the modding sections who could tell more than you like to know lol.

My suggesting is not to do the whole stackable thing if you can help it. Sure everyone gets what they want but again given the fact your mod is to help promote online gameplay and such, its much easier for everyone to just have to turn on 1 mod instead of 2-3. Experience has shown me that you get a rather large group of people who will be lucky to even install 1 mod and get the correct checksum, much less stack them in the right order to play with others. You call in the end, but simple will be much better for your mod.

Thanks for the good points. I realize this would be a simple mod but as I stated before, I do not have the knowledge of whats overpowered or underpowered. I like Darvin's suggestions and if it could be expanded to show actual numbers for modding would be great.