That is actually a really good idea...I'm going to try and implement it (I know this is one is possible) and make sure I can get it to work...once I got it working, the numbers can be tweaked to balance it more...I still think the structure build speed should be increased or lvl 1/2/3 instabuilds 1/2/3 constructors (though that third constructor might not be a big boost, so duration would have to increase with level as well)

A universal buff to the raw combat stats of the battleships is not bad...I was actually thinking of doing this to both the battleships and planet bombers (in conjunction with nerfing the carriers planet bombing DPS)...

My feeling is, durability is more important than increasing DPS...LRFs, SC, and HCs heavily overshadow low level caps in DPS, the key with Caps is their awesome abilities...I don't really want to add to the shields or HP, so I'm thinking a buff to armor and/or shield regeneration would be better...DPS probably should be increased as well (I'm thinking mostly frontal, maybe by 10-20%)...I think focusing on raising the base values (and leaving the per level increments constant) will especially help these ships be more powerful at the lower levels...

If this is done, the Kortul is probably fine as is...I may still consider buffing disruptive strikes, as I think its a little overshadowed by the other two abilities...

As for the Kol...

Only 6 ships have no passive abilities (Progenitor, Revelation, Kol, Dunov, Jarrasul, Maurader) with the Kol being one of them...two of these ships are colonizers, so that's an ability they won't be using in combat (end result, one less antimatter consuming ability during battle) and two of them (Maurader, Revelation) I'm considering changing one of their abilities to passive anyway (that's another story, to be resolved later)...a big problem with the Kol is antimatter consumption, and I think instead of reducing the antimatter cost of all three abilities (or all 4), why not just make adaptive forcefield a passive ability? 

As of right now, Adaptive forcefield gives a damage reduction bonus of 15%/25%/35% and PM block of 25%/45%/65%...

It costs 40/50/60 antimatter, has a cooldown of 45/40/35, and a duration of 20/30/40...

Now at lvl 3 (which implies at least a lvl 5 Kol), this ability already can be ran continuously for about 11 and a half minutes without any antimatter regeneration technology or culture bonus...higher lvl Kol's can do this even longer...that's all well and good, until the Kol tries to use any other abilities...if this ability were made passive, at level 3 the situation wouldn't be any different (in both cases, it's continuous) except that the Kol could actually use its other abilities...

The difference comes at lvl 1 and 2, where the cooldown is longer than the duration...even though the antimatter consumed per second is less at lvl 1 and 2, the antimatter of the Kol is also less (implied it's at lower level) and the ability is not continuous (44% of the time at lvl 1 and 75% of the time at lvl 2)...this would make adaptive forcefield much more powerful at lvl 1, slightly better at lvl 2, and the same at lvl 3...in addition, further balancing requires adjusting the antimatter cost of only 2 abilities, not 3...I'm afraid if all 3 abilities cost antimatter, and then 2 or 3 of them are buffed, there could be a situation where one ability being spammed too often becomes too powerful...

I think the effects of flak burst are fine, its the pressure on antimatter that hurts this one...the gauss rail gun needs to do more damage....how much more is going to be dependent on how often this ability can be used...since it does slow the speed of the ship, I think it should be on the more powerful/less frequent side, but either way its DPS needs to go up significantly...

Making adaptive forcefield a passive ability is obvious going to dramatically change how the antimatter costs are evaluated...if making adpative forcefield passive turns out to be a real bad idea, then obviously antimatter costs are going to have to go down a lot...if it works, then the antimatter costs may not have to be reduced that much....I'm going to wait on feedback about adaptive forcefield being passive before proceeding further on the other abilities...

As for the Radiance...

I'm not sure if cleansing brilliance is under powered...combined with malice it is pretty devastating and it scales well to the HP of the target...its not all that great at taking down individual targets, but it can damage multiple targets (especially with malice) which is in line with Advent military strategy...while one instance of this lvl 6 ability may not be too great, it is also one of the few ultimates to stack (missile barage, anima tempest, provoke hysteria, and disintegration being the only direct combat ultimates that do)...I think making this ability more powerful is going to result in 2 lvl 6 radiances with malice just being too damn powerful (I don't want to even think about more than 2), especially if the radiance is buffed in other areas (making it easier to get to lvl 6)...

Detonate antimatter is a fine ability, I agree it needs no buffing....

I like the concept of animosity, except that it doesn't work...one, the Radiance is the least resilient of the three Battleships, and two, human players can just give new orders again, so the force attacking doesn't work...

Now, I personally think energy absorption is a little weak....1 armor per level is like a 5% damage reduction...an extra 5% becomes better each armor point you add, but the damage reduction also drops away from 5% per armor point as armor values get really high...1 armor per level I just don't think is comparable to Power Surge or Adaptive Forcefield, even with the antimatter bonus and being passive...I'm thinking 1.5/3/4.5 or 2/3.5/5 might be more appropriate...

Energy absorption is important because it build up the resiliency of the radiance, which is important if animosity is going to work right...

Let's assume animosity works, and enemy ships must shoot the radiance...if the radiance can't take it, then animosity is worse than no ability at all...this is why I think energy absorption needs a slight boost, to give it the resiliency the Kortul and high level Kols have...

There was a suggestion I read somewhere on here about animosity that I thought was good...make the animosity ability pulse every second or two, meaning that even a human player can't do anything about the force attacking...I'm not certain this can be implemented, but if it can, I think it is the way to go (along with making the radiance more resilient)

 

 

 

Definitely; if the battleships get this buff the Marza and Vulkoras must as well.  The Revelation could get something different, as it's never been a front-line brawler and doesn't need to compete with these other capital ships (and in fact with an ability like Reverie it probably shouldn't) and we can treat it like a support capital ship.



I'm with you on armour, but I think that we should leave HP and shields alone.  Instead, why not increase damage by adding weapon banks (like a starbase).  This would mean a capital ship's damage against any one target would be unchanged, but it could fire at more targets simultaneously.



I think it's fine; this ability doesn't require antimatter, allowing you to spam power surge or jam weapons constantly rather than balancing both abilities.  If anything I'd pay attention to level 1 jam weapons (which has a dubiously small area of effect), but I wouldn't change anything substantially.


Ignoring the colonizers (I agree with you, you can effectively call colonization passive), these four capital ships actually are the bottom four on my list.

Making adaptive shields passive is an interesting idea, and I was once in favour of this.  However, the way the Kortul currently balances the antimatter cost of two abilities makes me think we can do better and create a much more interesting capital ship.  I like the idea that the Kol should be limited in balancing its three abilities by its antimatter.  We need to reduce, but not elminate, that cost to create an interesting and powerful capital ship.  I believe we want to put in a lot of heavy buffs to level 1 abilities (since low-level Kols will suffer disproportionately for their antimatter woes) and reduce its overall antimatter requirements, but not remove them.

Here are my thoughts:

GRG:  reduce the antimatter cost to 25, and lower its damage slightly at level 2 and 3 to compensate.  Decrease target's attack speed as well as its move speed for the duration (anti-battleship ability).  Highly spammable, but it will deplete you in time.

Flak Burst:  Change the area of effect to 3600 at all levels (from 2400/3000/3600), reduce the antimatter cost to 70.

Adaptive Forcefield:  Damage reduce to 60%/70%/75% (from 15/25/35), duration 20 seconds at all levels (from 20/30/40), cooldown 40 seconds at all levels (from 45/40/35), antimatter cost reduce to 25 at all levels.


My goal is to get the Kol to the point at which we can seriously entertain a tri-skill build.  That may seem a little lofty, but I think by back-weighting it skills at level 1 (which is fair enough since they all cost antimatter) it can be done.



Malice goes well with any area of effect damage.  The bottom line is that the Radiance should not need to combo off with another capital ship to make its ultimate viable.  If the enemy so much as moves units around it can screw up this ability, and it takes annoyingly long to get in position to set it up in the first place.  


This ability restores antimatter, what makes it weak is that the Radiance has nothing to spend that antimatter on and its own reserves are more than sufficient.  Yeah, you could buff it, but it's probably fine as is.  What we need to do is get a viable alternative to animosity in place in order to give us something to use antimatter on.

Animosity is nice in theory, but in reality it's just not that useful.  There's an ability in Warcraft III that does this.  It's not even on a hero, and it doesn't cost any mana, and it has a very short cooldown.  And it's still considered a weak ability.  Given that background, I don't think we have a hope of getting animosity as it is currently implemented even borderline useful.  It needs to be replaced.

I agree, but save subversion I don't really know what conceptual changes you refer too. Ironclad has routinely added secondary effects to under performing abilities (Like GRG, though it still wasn't enough), which is basically what all the changes I've heard of to animosity do. Guidance I think can be made to be alright by decreasing the antimatter cost.

Also I very much second Darvin's idea on having capitalships being able to target multiple ships per bank. Though I don't think we can make Adaptive Forcefields truly be a viable third ability unless it is passive. Even if we made it good (75% might be an over buff, but regardless), it is to easy just too macro all of your fire onto other ships until the ability wears off, then go attack the Kol again. The fact that there are no other non-passive defensive abilities that don't restore health or shields (except arguably animosity, but that is hardly encouragement).

I had just come from reading another thread, so what I was referring to is not obvious, my bad...

There are some proposals that radically change what animosity does, to the point where it's not even the same ability...there also is a sentiment to put repulsion on the revelation and guidance on the iconus guardian...

For the Battleships, I like this...though I'm not sure how this can be implemented...increasing the weapons that already exist on the side banks I feel would do more or less the same as adding extra banks (minus the extra banks not being as good at FF)...

Indeed; it's not impossible, by the way.  Warcraft III heroes work very similarly to Sins capital ships, and there are several heroes that had three active-use abilities.  They are the warden, farseer, shadow hunter, dark ranger, lich*, bloodmage*, alchemist, beastmaster, and fire lord.  (*the lich and bloodmage both have one ability that can be used to restore their mana, which meant they weren't really paying mana for multiple abilities).  Some of these heroes are actually top notch.




GaoFan illustrates the primary balancing effect here.  The adaptive shields I've recommended should not be viewed as damage reduction, but rather temporary invulnerability.  This is "soft" invulnerability, you're not really invulnerable, but for all intents and purposes it's stupid to attack the Kol while it's active.  However, this ability cannot be active all the time.  The very purpose of this change is to make the ability non-passive, and instead something you use proactively.

The TEC faction in particular has a hard time keeping its capital ships alive late game, and the Kol needs to be able to survive a bomber swarm for its flak burst to take effect.  This ability now functions effectively in that role.

This might be a bit too strong, but this is the direction I think adaptive shields should be going in.




Works for me.

Could go either way, I think.

Threads like these spawned many of the ideas that formed 1.18, so even on the off-chance we could see a repeat of that, I'm going to involve myself in this process.

I actually like the lvl 6 being the point for the ultimate. True getting there is difficult to almost impossible in some cases. But a some of the suggestions put forth by this group (banks, increase in DPS, increase in Armor) would do much to help in this case, maybe even reworking the armor tables so that its tougher to break through capital class armor would be of help.

Since this project is moving along, I think it's important to address this...

Before I started this thread, I read a lot of other threads that touched on this topic...the two that really inspired me to start this thread were Four Capital Ship Abilities that Need Help and the Problem of Balancing With Ultimates and rather indepth phase missle examination.

Both of these threads illustrate pretty much every reason why I started this thread and this mod...

First, the factions are not currently balanced...

And it's not just Scramble Bombers...bottom line is, Vasari are most powerful right now...you can argue why and by how much, but they are...

Second, military tactics heavily favor LRFs and bombers...

Both of these units are just too universally good...how or if this should be changed is debatable, but I think it is seriously limiting diversity in strategies and fleet compositions...

Third, lack of consensus...

Pretty much everyone agrees Scramble Bombers is OP, but how do you fix it?  Ask 20 people on these forums, and you'll likely get 20 different answers (or 5 answers and 15 people each supporting a different idea)...now extend this to other problems...

Most people agree that the Vasari are currently the most powerful, but not everone...even among us that do think there is an imbalance, there is much disagreement on how to fix the situation...are phase missiles overpowered, or is it just bombers and LRFs in general?  Maybe bombers are too strong, or maybe most capital ships are just too weak...

Ultimately, coming to a consensus, even among a small group of very experienced players, is difficult...

Why I am doing this?  I'm not doing it because I want full control over the future of Sins or because I think my ideas are better than everyone else's...I want this game balanced, and I don't feel like waiting for another update that may or may not even balance the game...

Right now I am doing my best to generate a great discussion and get suggestions, feedback, and different opinions on how to re-balance the game...when this mod is done, it will be available for anyone to download...

Maybe this mod will be awesome, near perfect, and everyone will love it and play with it...maybe it'll flop and I'll be the only person in the world playing it...maybe some pros here will say "this Seleuceia's a tool, let's go make our own mod" and a successful community mod will spawn from this thread...I don't really know, right now I'm focused on making the best mod possible for balancing the game...

I want the community involved in this because I don't think one person can always be right and make all the right calls...and if there was a person, it certainly isn't me...but I know that if I personally make the changes and post my propositions here, at least it will be made, and the mod will actually happen...it's not that a community based mod won't work, it's just that it may never happen because it will lack consensus...

I appreciate everyone who has contributed to this thread, and I hope you all and others will continue to contribute your ideas and propositions...

The current focus of this mod is to balance all the capital ships...this inherently will help balance the factions and foster diversity in the choices players make when choosing to build a cap...this also needs to be done first because other issues (phase missiles, bombers & LRFs, faction imbalance) are heavily tied to this...

Once this is done, the focus will move on to balancing the frigates and SC...and after this, who knows, the game may be balanced by then...

As of right now a solid solution for Scramble Bombers has been found...the Halcyon, Progenitor, and Akkan are currently going to be left alone...a slight buff to Heavy SC and Missile batteries will hopefully give the Sova some more late game power...currently I'm thinking of having the Jarrasul's colonize ability lvl 1/2/3 temporarily add 1/2/3 constructors for an undetermined amount of time (contemplating 720s)...I need help implementing this (Help with making Jarrasul's Colonize Ability create 1/2/3 Constructors)...

Right now the focus is on the three battleships...Kortul is likely to be left alone, Kol is going to need some serious work, and a good solution for animosity is still needed...also, there is some talk of buffing the raw DPS and armor of the battleships...

The next step will be the support ships (Rapture, Dunov, Antorak)...quite frankly, I don't want to deal with the Kol, Revelation, and Antorak at the same time if I don't have to...

Just an update...got the Jarrasul to spawn an extra constructor ship temporarily...

Right now, I'm thinking this ability at lvl 1/2/3 should spawn 1/2/3 constructors for 720s...would love any suggestions or opinions on this...

Well, assuming the devs don't pick up on this and add something into the source code, the economic benefits we can choose from are quite limited. The only unique thing I can think of is have the Vasari "Pillage" some resources with the ability, as the other main economic benefits are already in use by the other colonization abilities. I would love to have a structure discount as well, but that is not possible with abilities. For now I think we should just stick with the extra constructors until it is clear another patch won't change it and (through the testing you recommended) it is proven insufficient to balance it with the other colonize abilities.

If you are going to go this route, the numbers will need to change.  What you want to look at here is not damage reduction, but TTL, time to live.  If you reduce damage by 25%, you increase the longevity of the capital ship by 33% (presuming no healing; it's even greater with healing).  If you reduce damage by 50%, you increase the longevity of the capital ship by 100%.  By doubling the damage reduction, we tripled the time to live.  There is a non-linear relationship between the two.

The 15%/25%/35% numbers you have equate to 1 17.5%/33.3%/53.8% TTL bonus.  In other words, the level 3 upgrade gives a much more significant boost than either the level 1 or level 2 upgrades.   This is without counting healing effects (much harder to model), which further favour level 3.  If you want a linear TTL progression, you need a non-linear damage reduction progression.

For instance, if you want 25%/37.5%/50% TTL progression, you'd need damage reductions of 20%/27%/33%.

The TTL increase of my 60%/70%/75% numbers (not counting downtime) comes out to 150%, 230%, 300%, in case you're curious.

 

Presuming they stay there twiddling their thumbs.  If you're that careless, you deserve what happens next.  Honestly, sit still near 20 or so flak frigates and you'll get the same effect.  It's actually pretty hard to blast the same squad twice in a row if the owner is actually paying attention, and good players won't let too many squads get in range of a Kol at any time.

 

No way; this totally gimps the ability.  As soon as you flak burst, all the bombers fly in because your cooldown won't be up for a whole 30 seconds.  This is more than enough of a window of opportunity to kill the Kol in the late game, and enough time to do serious damage and get out before it recharges earlier on.

Right now, flak burst is a threat that keeps strike craft at a distance from the Kol.  With an 8-12 second cooldown, there's not a big window of opportunity to get in and get out in between cooldowns.  With 30 seconds, that's easy as pie, and it destroys the deterrent aspect of this skill.  This is a massive nerf you're talking about, so much that it'd probably make the ability close to worthless. 

The problem with the Kol right now is that until it's level 5 you need two of them to do the job that should take only one.  With your change, you need three of them regardless of their levels.  Don't muck too much with the cooldown; this ability needs rapid fire to be effective.

If you aren't going to reduce the antimatter cost, I think the increase in damage per level needs to be softened a bit, perhaps 40/50/60 instead of 30/45/60.  You need a bit more bite at the lower levels because you can't use the ability as often. 

 

Probably won't do much, since fighters get ripped to shreds pretty quickly by flaks and don't have time to regenerate. 

Similarly, the current hull regeneration rate on bombers is pretty low, so lowering further wouldn't have a big effect since it's already negligable in an in-combat situation.

Another consideration is keeping damage per level constant (60) and then having a step-down cooldown (like 20/15/10)...I am almost more in favor of this simply because the lower levels of flak burst are too dependent on which faction you are fighting...lvl 2 and 3 are basically the same against advent, while the levels are vastly different against the Vasari...

At lvl 1, the current ability can do 60 damage in 12s or 90 damage in 24s (5/3.75 DPS)

At lvl 2, this becomes 90 damage in 10s or 135 damage in 20s (9/6.75 DPS)

At lvl 3, this is 120 damage in 8s or 180 damage in 16s (15/11.25 DPS)

A constant 60 damage with adjusted cooldowns could do the same DPS...

Lvl 1:  for two uses, a cooldown of 24s does 5 DPS...for three uses, a cooldown of 32s does 3.75 DPS...

Lvl 2:  for two uses, a cooldown of 13.3s does 9 DPS...three uses, a cooldown of 17.8s does 6.75 DPS...

Lvl 3:  for two uses, a cooldown of 8s does 15 DPS...three uses, a cooldown of 10.7 does 11.25 DPS...

Now, at lvl 1 and 2, the Kol probably is only going to be able to pull off 2 flak bursts...lvl 3, it can do a third, but SC might be out of range by then, so let's assume 2...

These are DPS values of 5/9/15 (which is pretty close to 5/10/15)...a constant damage of 60 with cooldown times of 24/12/8 yield these same DPS values...now, 24s is pretty long, so if this were changed to 16, that would be 7.5 DPS (slightly more than linearity would suggest, but the extra time and inability to do it a third time also allows SC to survive easier)

The previous post suggests damage of 40/50/60 with cooldown of 10s and antimatter cost of 100...

I'm thinking damage of 60 with cooldown of 16/12/8 and antimatter cost of 100 is also appropriate...this will have less bias towards certain types of SC (mainly Advent SC and TEC fighters), but will still deal out a lot of damage regardless of level...the higher cooldown times on lvl 1 gives enemy SC more time to get out of the way, but the damage they suffer is also much greater than the other proposition's lvl 1...right now I'm leaning towards this being the most balanced...

I agree lvl 1 needs the buff and lvl 3 should be the same...I edited my last post to address this, so I don't know if you saw it....It involves the cooldown, but as you say, antimatter is the limiting factor, not cooldown, so I think this final proposition might actually work rather well...

And by the way, thanks for looking at the Phase Missiles block...I don't think it needs to be changed either...