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SageWon

Join Date 07/2008

+45

1.19 BETA/1.2 Buffs AREN'T ENOUGH

Carrier Caps are still TOO Strong, likely the primary Cap ship used online.

I would like to see more viable starting Cap ships (rather than just Carrier & Colony caps). Or support caps that are viable later in the game.

I tested each of the new buffed abilities against the strongest caps (carriers) in 1 on 1 fights. None of the buffed abilities made much of a difference (except Magnetize against a Halcyon). ALL of these buffed caps ships (except the Marza) are SO WEAK, that they barely scratched the carrier cap hulls after taking down the shields. In almost every case, the carrier caps won with over 1,500 hull remaining when they killed the opposing buffed cap. I just don't see many reasons to pick them over a carrier.

Battleships and support caps really NEED some more offensive power, some how, some way. First, these buffs generally need to be increased. And/or, as I have suggested elsewhere, add a starting squad for these level 1 caps. (Support would start with 2 squads, and battleships start with one, rather than 1 and none). Or other improvements.

Since this is a BETA we could test additional buffs. Like I said before, the BETA is a good start, but more is needed.

Tested in one on one fights, after jumping into a dead asteroid (LAN games with our 2 computers, on Pandemonium). The level 1 carrier caps always had bombers, whereas competitors had a fighter if available. Many of the opposing caps leveled up during the fight (from killing bombers), but I never chose additional abilities. They always started the fight down 100 antimatter, since the fight started after jumping into the dead asteroid. The results of victor's hull remaining upon opponent's death, are summarized in the following table:

...........................................................Hull Remaining...............................

.................................versus: Skirantra........... Halcyon.............. Sova
.............................................Scram Bomb..........Adept Drone A.......Missile Batt.
...............original hull+shield= 2425+1275........ 2075+1600......... 2850+1075

Kol.........Gauss R Gun.................1633......................1350.....................2075
Kol.........Flak Burst......................2125......................1900.....................2300

Dunov.....EMP Blast w/fighter........1250......................1700.....................2200
Donov.....Magnetize w/fighter........2150......................~100.....................2500

Marza.....Incend. Shells..................800........................300.....................1100 850

Radiance.Absorb Armor.................2000......................1700.....................2200

Rapture...Vertigo w/fighter............2175.......................800.....................2550

Antorak...Distort Grav w/fighter.......2100.....................1800.....................2450

Vulkoras..Phase Miss Swarm...........1450.....................1000....................2030

Edit: No Micro. Auto attack only - no kiting, or avoiding turrets/batteries. Most of which would further improve Carrier Caps results!

Edit: As of the 1.21 patch, and the well deserved nerf to bombers, these numbers are no longer applicable.

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Try again with carrier jumping in instead?

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Additional Observations:

Marza Incendiary Shells doesn't seem to be ANY better than before! In fact, the old version did slightly better in old tests! I think maybe it is still bugged? (EDIT: It was in fact bugged, and they later increased the stacking limit to 3).

Radiance's Absorbtive Armor hardly makes a difference! The extra 2 armor at level 1 only amount to about 100 extra hull over its short life in these battles. (Compared to a Radiance with only Animosity). 2 armor is equivalent to about a 10% increase in hull = Not much!.

Flak burst is absolutely pitifull. It hardly does any damage to any bombers (even the few that are in range). The damage rate itself needs to also be improved.

Magnetize does ok against tougher TEC & Vasari bombers. It was good against Advent bombers. But the Cap ship itself has little defense, and does little offensive damage.

Gauss gun is almost counter productive and barely dents sheilds. It just raises the shield mitigation so quickly, that hardly any damage gets through to the competitor.

Although Distort Gravity doesn't really improve offensive potential, I included the Antorak Marauder in the above charts to show how weak offensively this support cap really is!

I didn't include the buffed abilities that didn't improve 1 on 1 offensive capabilities. Like: animosity, colonize, or guidance & clairvoyance. But let me say that I tested them too, and the Revelation is a pitifully weak ship!

I can understand why a strategy game would include some techs that should be avoided (not worth the cost), and maybe the same can be said about certain abilities. But I tested all interesting abilities, and only know of couple that I would consider picking over the 'standard set'.

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Quoting Kitkun,

reply 1

Try again with carrier jumping in instead?

The carrier jumped in too. Both jumped in - to make it equal. Obviously these results would be different if one side was on the offensive and the other was on the defense (ie: 100 more AM). But I wanted them to be fair tests.

Not likely to try again real soon, it took hours! I can supply replays if neccessary. Sped up at 8 times, they don't take too long to review.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

preety sure he would have tested both ships jumping in.

were the carriers kiting?

The buffs to phase missle swarm would not have affected the results at all...

same with antorak distort gravity.

I am quite suprised the marza did so well... that said... Did you notice if incend shells seemed like they still were canceling eachother and not stacking? Edit: you ninjaed me and confirmed my thoughts.

Try again at lv 3?

I feel like you trying to compare apples and oranges...

Heres the thing: Carrier caps have rediculosuly awesome dps... but... they are the weakest capital ships in hitpoints, hull, and base dps. You kill the strike craft (somehow, magicly)...

The skirantra has 21 base dps... the others have 33 and 34, but they are broadsiders.

... There are so many variables, I dont know where to start...

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Quoting Pbhead,

reply 4

preety sure he would have tested both ships jumping in.

were the carriers kiting?

The buffs to phase missle swarm would not have affected the results at all...

same with antorak distort gravity.

I am quite suprised the marza did so well... that said... Did you notice if incend shells seemed like they still were canceling eachother and not stacking? Edit: you ninjaed me and confirmed my thoughts... thats bug number 3!

Try again at lv 3?

I feel like you trying to compare apples and oranges...

Heres the thing: Carrier caps have rediculosuly awesome dps... but... they are the weakest capital ships in hitpoints, hull, and base dps. You kill the strike craft (somehow, magicly)...

The skirantra has 21 base dps... the others have 33 and 34, but they are broadsiders.

... There are so many variables, I dont know where to start...

No the carriers weren't kiting. Left to completely auto attack. So yeah the differences would be much greater. Worse for the buffed opponents.

Another huge factor, humans wouldn't sit there and let turrets decimate them, they would move away! the auto attacking AI doesnt.

Phase Missile Swarm added a minor amount of damage. It would have done better against multiple targets.

The Marza did so well, because it has lots of frontal fire power. Often the abilities are exhausted and never come into play because of too little antimatter. As a whole, the seige caps did better in these fights because most of their fire power is front focused.

I did try some at level 3. I will discuss that elsewhere. And see my post above that I was writing while you wrote yours.

Regards, Obi1

Oh, I know, not apples to oranges, but what else can you do?

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

Ya... let me get back to you on this... i got to go do real life...

I do find the marza's results quite intresting though... both in the shear almost winning, and the shells.

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with the dunov use a bomber rather than a fighter

pointless to have a fighter anyway if mag kills all the bombers

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My bad, I read wrong. Also, I'm pretty sure the incendiary shells thing wasn't supposed to be fixed in this patch.

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Quoting Derek06,

reply 7

with the dunov use a bomber rather than a fighter

pointless to have a fighter anyway if mag kills all the bombers

Good point. I reviewed my notes, and it did kill the bombers after a couple activations, but the fighter kept down the bombers after the Dunov was out of anti matter. So I don't know. The Dunov itself is so weak (offensively & defensively), that a fleet is required to take advantage of magnetize.

But yes, the choice between picking fighters or bombers is another very BIG variable. In my lvl 3 test of Halcyons vs Skirantra, I found that a Halcyon can win, if it has a couple fighters, rather than all bombers.

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In fairness, nobody would take a passive as the first ability as in any RTS or aRPG these are meant to be supplement the unit/character. Support caps are also not meant to be primary 'heroes'. Dunov could still use more buffs, but not to its combat damage.

That said battleships getting owned that badly is not good at all. Carriers should be below a battleship or assault cap in fighting ability, with their advantage being long range firepower (aka strike craft) and having more supportive abilities. They should NOT be winning slugfests.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

Initial thoughts are of ablilties vs strike craft.

There is no mistaking that the sova and skirantra have the best damage abilities in the game (and the 17.84/level passive increase in dps for haylcons is not that bad either (assuming you use bombers))

going to repeat this here, it gives DPS, DPA, and total damage for grg, sb, and mb)

Quoting Pbhead,

reply 67

Ok, I kinda just blurted out that sova missle batteries do more damage/antimatter vs kol GRG (and, since missle batteries are over time, and killable, it makes sence, and should be that way)... without actually doing the math to back it up... so math time!

1. missile battery DPS: 13/15.6/22.75

Lasts 180 seconds. (gets 16 shots off)

so. total damage of 2288/3088.8/4004 (which, I will go ahead and also do the old/new scramble bombers as well here in a bit)

70 AM 35 second cooldown time.

So, 32.7/44.1/57.2 damage/antimatter

At unlimited antimatter, you get 5.14 turrets deployed = maximum of 66.8/80.2/116.9 dps.

For GRG.

DPS (at unlimited antimatter): 66.6/120.8/175 DPS

For damage/antimatter you got 8/13.2/17.5 damage/antimatter spent (dont forget that, carriers have more antimatter storage and regen than battleships as well, so you cant quite compare this DPA vs the other DPAs... but its close enough)

Scramble bombers: squads last 75 seconds.... 1/2/3 squads... 50 am cost.

DPS/bomber = 96.9/13.5 = 7.18 dps.

For 3 bombers, thats 21.5 DPS so 21.5/43.1/64.6 damage/second

3 bombers/squad = 1615/3230/4845 Total damage. (previously 2584/4168/7752!! total damage)

So, 32.3/64.6/96.9 Damage/antimatter spent. (previously 51.7/103.3/155 damage/antimatter spent)

At unlimited antimatter, you end up with 53.75/107.5/161.25 DPS. (previously 73.7/147.4/221.1DPS)

So: intrestingly, for almost identical damage/antimatter, lv1 MB is (now) actually slightly better than lv1 SB, but lv 3 SB is much better in damage/antimatter, total damage, and DPS than lv 3 MB. (+ phaaase missles)

In unlimited antimatter happy land, A kol actually now is better than these other abilities... but in DPA... the kol is still amazingly underwelming (but MUCH better) (was 4.33/8.67/12.67 DPA)

That said... Unlimited antimatter fun land for the kol is now farther away with the last stand change...(lv6+ kol effectively lost .66 antimatter/second regen) Even with 3 donov's chaining flux field, the DPA for GRG is 32/52.8/70... Which is worse than unmodified SB, but slightly better than unmodified MB.

Both scramble bombers and missle batteries provide damage sinks, in which damage is effectively wasted, especially if the targets are not killed before they expire. (missle batteries is FANTASTIC for distracting HC millita... scramble bombers is great for distracting the other banks of the flack frigs away from your assailants) GRG does not.

Both scramble bombers and missle batteries are upgraded by research/pacts... GRG is not.

Carriers have about 325 less hp, and 1 less armor than battleships, and this gap widens as levels increase.

Battleships have about 50 dps, 25-30 of which faces the target. Carriers have about 15 of their dps faces their target (skirantras win with 12)

Basicly, without strike craft or abilities in the mix... battle ships will beat carriers by alot.

Its the strike craft and the abilites that change things... by alot

The question is, which one?

well, the answer is both... but...

I do belive that, for the sova and skirantra, at least, even without strike craft (or, fighters), they would still beat battleships just because of the extreme damage their abilities grant. (though.... how well do radiances do? radiances with detonate antimatter should do rather well, actually... 200 hull damage and 120 antimatter removed...)

And, the carriers, with 3 bomber squads should also beat the battleships without any points into abilities.

sooo many variables... increase in stats due to lv up, research, the fleet composition, capital ship synergy...

I just dont think we can say that the buffs were "not enough" based upon single lv1 capital ship fights.

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ZombiesRus5

Join Date 02/2009

+340

Support caps are also not meant to be primary 'heroes'. Dunov could still use more buffs, but not to its combat damage.

I'm ok with this statement. Support capitals should be about their abilities, not necessarily fleet damage dealers.

I wish battleships could equal the 50 supply in DPS they take up by level 4 or 5 personally. A level 5 carrier capital doubles it's dps by level 4-5 and is comparable to 50 supply of carriers while battleships have to wait to double their paltry base dps by level 10 and even then it's pretty terrible not providing any advantage over other capital ships.

Basically Battleships only fit the role of support currently IMO as they don't really add much to the table for dps. Carriers are the only capital ship to have decent built-in dps that is augmented a lot by their abilities. The problem as you've demonstrated above is the only capital capable of countering a carrier capital, is another carrier capital.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

I agree in principle with zombie here.

We so often complain about the ability balance, we forget about the unit stats, and their cost.

While battle ships do gain the most hp and shields per level... its not by much.

The most hull/level gained actually belongs to the MAURADER... 30 more hull/level than the kol.... Donov at second at 10 more hull/level than a kol. And, while the radiance has the most shields gained per lv at 180, 3 of the 4 other advent capital ships gain 175, and the forth gains 170/level.

The battleships do also have the most armor/level, but once again not by much... the akkan has the same armor/level increase as a kortul, and is only .05 armor/level behind a kol.

This all, is made up for of course in that battle ships have the worst antimatter and antimatter regen stats in the game.

(note for any devs reading: the maruader's antimatter regen and regen per level is much much lower than the other support capital ships, is this intended?) .85/second base + .09 per level VS 1/second base +.15/level...

ehh... so, increasing hp/level, armor/level, damage/level and/or refire rate/level for battleships would be an acceptable buff, or something...

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I recently posted a similar sentiment in the last 2 months.

Make Battleships, BATTLESHIPS!!!!

Please?

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Oh and huge part of this problem is bombers are OP atm.

If bombers suddenly went to average or UP then Carrier Caps would take the back seat again.

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ZombiesRus5

Join Date 02/2009

+340

Quoting rowanlad,

reply 15

Oh and huge part of this problem is bombers are OP atm.

If bombers suddenly went to average or UP then Carrier Caps would take the back seat again.

IDK, it might be impossible to take out a starbase if bombers are weakened too much.

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Quoting ZombiesRus5,

reply 16

Quoting rowanlad, reply 15Oh and huge part of this problem is bombers are OP atm.

If bombers suddenly went to average or UP then Carrier Caps would take the back seat again.

IDK, it might be impossible to take out a starbase if bombers are weakened too much.

You dont have to weaken Bombers against everything. Just Caps.

I personally hate to jump into a system fly over to battle a enemy fleet then he or his ally jumps in with 25+ carriers, they fly over nuke my Caps one at a time. Then leave. The only way to counter this really is to build more SC than your enemies...which turns the game into he who has the most SC/Bombers wins.

You can counter act this who issues by reducing Bombers damage vs Caps. Well this will help...but really only encourage build more bombers so you can nuke them for across the grav well.

You wanna see SC not be so overwhelming, put a tether on them. They can only fly so far from their carrier. That way...you can kit you Cap away from the horde of Bombers and you know bring those Carriers closer to fight, so maybe your poor LF can kill them before they nuke your Caps.

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Flak burst is absolutely pitifull. It hardly does any damage to any bombers (even the few that are in range). The damage rate itself needs to also be improved.

Flak burst is an uncapped area of effect ability; it SHOULDN'T be any good against 4 or 5 squads. I can certainly get behind an antimatter cost decrease for FB (especially since Finest Hour is now nerfed) but it should be measured against what it can do to larger swarms of strike craft, not a few piddly groups.

GRG is the ability we should be focused on when determining the Kol's early-game cap-vs-cap performance... and as you note it's still not very good since mitigation will eat up virtually all your damage. The ability really needs work.

I'm all in favour of a move speed increase for other capital ship classes (so they can catch kiting carriers - this is a factor you admit you haven't even touched on yet!) and an attack damage bonus for battleships and siege capital ships. Support caps could also use something; personally I favour an antimatter regeneration rate buff so they can better spam their abilities.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 18

I don't know what is wrong with flak burst, but in my tests it looked like it only damaged a few of the individual bombers within a couple of the squads. Those squads were still like 70%. And it happened to miss most of squads while autocasting. I could go back and check, but it looked like it hardly did any damage at all!

EDIT: I did go back and check, and I am seeing some peculiar behavior! I will test further, and post a bug report later if I can confirm.

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Ill second SageWon's experience. Im not sure if im missing something but it feels like FB is doing little to the SC in its range.

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I don't know what is wrong with flak burst, but in my tests it looked it only damaged a few of the individual bombers within a couple of the squads.

Partially this is a problem with the autocast, which doesn't time the ability to maximize the number of targets. Part of the issue is that squads themselves can become spread out, so you probably won't hit every member of the squad even if the icon appears in-range. These are two contributing reasons why the ability is garbage against smaller groups of units; against larger groups, there's a certain "averaging out" effect that you're bound to hit lots of targets, and your gardas can clean up the rest.

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The problem with bomber spam because flak is ineffective vs them. Flak's power vs fighetrs should be tone down a notch and it's power vs bombers turned up a maybe a few notches. Trying to defend your caps from bombers with your own fighters is near impossible since your fighters need to give chase. Having flak be more useful vs bombers then fighetrs would alow your to control your flak and position it to defend you vital caps. As for bombers leaving them mostly as they are would be fine and players would then need to learn how to use them wisely.

But just to say flak should never become a full counter where with equal number to enemy carriers it can clear the sky of enemy fighters. To me it has always been a tool that will thin out the enemy's SC numbers and thus reduce the damage your fleet is taking from them

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I think this comes down to not having a clear indication of what is supposed to counter bombers. You could make a case for flak, and a case for fighters, but at the end of the day neither are effective directly as counters. And having both is definately not the answer because flak is definately the counter for fighters, and it appears to me at least that if both sides bring both counters and bombers the flak and fighters basically nullify each other.

I think flak should be equally effective on both bombers and fighters, but shouldn't do alot of damage to either. More, it should slow them down. As it currently stands, flak is like a damage over time over an area. if you slow down the strikecraft, they spend more time taking damage. IDK if its possible, but another way of doing something along these lines (w/o the slowdown) is to make the damage amount increase with time by stacking somehow. Then, a counter would be to move your strikecraft out of the flak area for a time or docking them (like a quick repair) to let the affect wear off, but you'd lose the DPS for a time. I have no idea what to do to fighters, but I see them more as the direct counter for bombers and they should be better at it.

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Their is a clear counter to bombers it's fighters. The thing is the fighters fly all over the place and cannot be controlled to defend 1 spot in space in particular. Witch is what you need to defend your caps from bomber spam.

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Pbhead

Join Date 12/2008

+77

There are not nearly enough numbers here.

Seriously. More numbers....

HP:

Initial:

advent: 42hp/fighter*9 = 378hp/squad 78.75hp/bomber*7 = 551.25 hp/squad

Vasari: 97.75hp/fighter*4 = 391hp/squad 175hp/bomber*3 = 525 hp/squad

TEC: 63hp/fighter*6 = 378hp/squad 110hp/bomber*5 = 550 hp/squad

Max upgrades (no pacts):

Advent: 65hp/fighter*9 = 585hp/squad 121.875hp/bomber*7 = 853.125 hp/squad

Vasari: 154.7hp/fighter*4 = 618.8hp/squad 273hp/bomber*3 = 819 hp/squad

TEC: 105.3hp/fighter*6 = 631.8hp/squad 182hp/bomber*5 = 910 hp/squad

DAMAGE: (all fighters have 12 second cooldown, all bombers have 13.5 second cooldown)

advent: 16damage/fighter*9 = 144damage/squad 34.41damage/bomber*7 = 240.87damage/squad

Vasari: 30.75damage/fighter*4 = 123damage/squad 76.9damage/bomber*3 = 230.7 damage/squad

TEC: 19.5damage/fighter*6 = 117damage/squad 44.4damage/bomber*5 = 222 damage/squad

Max upgrades (no pacts):

advent: 20.8damage/fighter*9 = 187.2damage/squad 44.73damage/bomber*7 = 313.13damage/squad

(vs no shields, raw damage)

Vasari: 36.9damage/fighter*4 = 147.6damage/squad 92.28damage/bomber*3 = 276.84 damage/squad

(vs 60% shield mitigation, normalized for comparison )

Vasari: 53.5damage/fighter*4 = 214damage/squad 133.8damage/bomber*3 = 401.42 damage/squad

(vs 70% mitigation (lv5 cap), normalized for comparison) ^^^ so close!!11

Vasari: 62.73damage/fighter*4 = 250.92damage/squad 156.876damage/bomber*3 = 470.63 damage/squad

TEC: 25.35damage/fighter*6 = 152.1damage/squad 57.72damage/bomber*5 = 288.6 damage/squad

Hokey. SO.

flack do Advent: 18 dps Tec: 15.33 dps Vas: 16.33 dps (normalizing to 4 fleet supply...: 13.067)

Upgraded: Advent: 23.4 Tec: 19.93 dps Vas: 19.6 dps (normalizing to 4 fleet supply...: 15.68)

Now, damage modifiers...

Flack vs Fighters has 75%*1.333 = 100% (which... for a counter is very low mind you.

fighters vs fighters has 65% *100% =65% (which... is pathetic.)

Flack vs bombers is 75% * 75% = 56.25% (which... is slighly more effective than throwing your flack at heavy cruisers)

fighters vs bombers is 75% * 200% = 150% (which... should be effective.)

SO... assuming everything is in range and stuff... and every gun can fire (ha!)...

(well, honestly... its not that simple... one needs to take into account the fact that... well, a LOT of damage is wasted on overkilling fighters/bombers...) More is wasted on flack guns sitting idle (worst case senerio = hold position = 1/4 damage done.... 1/2 damage if you micro well...

Anyway... (unupgraded)

it takes an advent flack frig (best) 16 shots to kill a vasari fighter squad... : 20 seconds.

it takes an advent flack frig 47 shots to kill a an advent bomber squad... : 58.33 seconds.

it takes an advent fighter squad 21 shots for it to kill an advent bomber squad. : 37.3 seconds.

it takes an advent fighter squad 27 shots for it to kill an advent fighter squad : 55.4 seconds

If we assume that the strike craft commander is not a complete moron... we can go ahead and double the flack vs stuff kill times...

So... maybe hopefully... it should take just as long as a flack frig to kill a fighter squad as it takes a fighter squad to kill a bomber squad. And it takes about 3x as long for a flack frig to kill a bomber squad than it takes a fighter squad to kill a bomber squad.

And i really should have done this stuff in excell or something... but unless someone has some imput... i think i am done for a bit.

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