Hold position bug/nerf for strike craft and corvettes

Removing Hold Position for Corvettes is indeed a minor annoyance. Though you can still set their attack range to local area or move them away from the battle and have them fly back in when needed quite easily, since they are very fast.

Hold Position for strike craft is rather pointless anyway so I don't really see the complaint here. You can just dock them , which is basically the same thing as ordering them to stop. Hell, when they are docked they are even being repaired. Launching all strike craft at once can do a lot of damage when done at the right time.

So yeah, they should put back the Hold Position order for Corvettes. For strike craft, I don't think an order like that is a necessity.

The last thing we need is players microing massive fleets of corvettes--it's overkill. The current method keeps you from assembling your corvettes like Power Rangers into "Megacorvette Ball!" so they can act like a bunch of nanites transformed into a capital ship.

Yet the micro you speak of is exactly what happens...

You should see what I do with advent corvettes vs a ragnarov .

Micromanagement of corvettes is what makes them such fun unit to use, imo.

I've seen many of these "megacorvette balls" that you speak of, and yes they are overpowered at the moment.

I have several ideas on how to balance this out while ADDING to the game.

I am fairly certain this was an intentional decision by the devs...the unique fighter attack patterns given to SC and CVs are pretty much moot if you can just tell ships to hold position like the rest of the fleet...

While I understand that this type of tactic was useful in competitive games, I honestly would class it in the "exploit" category...SC and CVs were not intended to take formations like other ships, and allowing players to do so really was an oversight of the Sins before Rebellion...

Hmm not an oversight at all... the game had years of play and this was a viable bit of micro.

It had counters, like a kol flak burst or a halcyon TK push, as well as putting a group of fighters in similar formation.

This adds to the versatility of fighter/bomber control that was always quite fun.

Bombers were slow enough that this was a hard maneuver...

I'd say Z axis controls are more of an exploit...not even having an automatically mapped hotkey and all the loads of actual exploits... This just allows you to have finer control of strike craft.

Taking control away from the player in this regard doesn't make too much sense, considering the game now has corvettes to counter bombers...

Its overkill on the part of the developers.

SC hold was something the devs worked on and finally fixed.

Its not a nerf or bug but a feature. You werent suppose to be able to make them not move while attacking.

Um, you can't make your strikecraft and corvetts hold position?  I can....

And I always loved my battle ball of strikecraft.... was so much fun tearing a hole through LRM spammers

The fact that's its an effective tactic doesn't mean it adds to everyone's game.  I'd really hate to be forced to mass-spam corvettes as a necessity every game.

Might as well rename Sins, "Corvette Wars".   While acknowledging you like to have the option, I'd find it restrictive and taking away from other strategies.

Right now you have to micro to get a good effect and it's still doable.  Please don't make it easier.

The game has been full of "problems" since its inception...that a problem may not have been fixed over that time period doesn't change the fact that it is still a problem...

I'm not going to argue whether this should be in the game or not...what I do know is that the devs came out and said it was an intentional change to remove this option from SC...

I'm pretty sure the devs removed it from SC and didn't include it on Corvette's specifically because they found it unbalancing within the unit's intended role.

Personally I hate using genuine "never intended in any way" things that undermine other actually intended things in a game as "features".

Hmm but things never being intended, yet stay in the game and aren't fixed due to negligence is kinda rediculous.  This has found a place in the sins community, and frankly the developers could change their minds about it and find a way to ADD to the game, instead of subtract from the game.

They worry about more variables, yet they will have more balance in the game the more things they add.

Adding a huge amount to the amount of paths to victory, and then toning down the ones that are too dominant so that the diversity of strategy itself is a balance is important for sins.

An opponent counters one strategy, but hasn't scouted you fully and never saw your plan B strategy in the works...surprise!

These surprises will keep re-playability high for this game.

You can do this to some extent already in the game, but i'm talking about magnitudes of improvement, not just small fixes. 

The convenience of using the word intended is that the developers can change what is "intended" at a whim...

I'm providing feedback at how that whim isn't exactly welcome.

They added corvettes--which definitely changed things. So corvettes are in and off themselves an add already.  They are new and in beta so they aren't "established" and thus require the change you want because people are expecting it from established precedent.  

I used to play Advent and quit specifically because I saw the Illum abuse as unfair and counter to what the game had intended as balance.  Others saw it as a "tactic" and gleefully wracked up kills with it.

But I  don't think they intended or desired for corvettes to become the new Illum spam and I really don't want to see new sorts of things left in like that.

It's very clear that corvettes were meant to be light combat support ships and planet defense vessels--not something to be massed into armadas that devour everything in sight.

But

that is what the pros want them to be

they want a giant, gleefully satisfying ball of corvettes that chew through everything

Hehe...working on trying to implement that as we speak...

Just make their abilities require no antimatter and give them weapons banks like the flack frigate and you're good to go.

No...trying to make them tied to a planet's gravity well...

Just give them a passive phase engines disabled ability?

Well, that is the easy part I think...the tricky part is getting a planet to spawn them, but limiting how many are at a planet...

I'm not talking about corvettes.

They are so fast anyways you can keep them in a relatively tight ball anyways...they should have to be moving or face a penalty that increases damage against them.

Fighters and bombers however are completely justified in having tight formations able to halt. 

Pros are concerned with keeping the game fun for the long term.

@ sinperium

Well if they get rid of strong corvettes for the advent, the advent as a race will be screwed all over again...they might actually have to buff their economy..omg!

But if you've been playing sins a long time, you know that the advent won't ever get the love they deserve.  The devs prefer them to be relative fodder in the game, except for their tier zero/corvette rush.  In this the developers have always intended this to be their "balance".  The only addition to the game i've seen is that the advent now actually seem to have a decent endgame fleet...where before it was just sad.  I bet the vasari fleet still kicks the advents ass in maxxed out final fights though.

Corvettes should be tier 1 for advent and tier 3-4 for everyone else.  TEC don't need corvettes to mount a strong early defense, and vasari can get 3 labs easily early on to counter advent rushes.  Both would mean that they have different initial playstyles, but at the same time the advent are totally set up to lose a sustained rush over time...

if the advent haven't gotten a small eco up by then then they are doomed.

This is a good way to balance the game.

Make structures and constructors harder for corvettes to kill , and you will achieve balance.

You might consider limiting the mobility of corvettes to owned gravity wells, so they can't be used to rush.

Unless things in Rebellion have changed, and I hope they have, the AI cannot "see" if a ship's phase engines are disabled. It will treat the ship as if it can still retreat into phase space, and will leave ships at the edge of a grav well waiting to phase jump until they do or are destroyed.

Or perhaps, the advent corvettes are the only ones that can warp in, and the other races corvettes are planetary defense only.

Notice: I wrote gravity wellS. Corvettes, if implementable code-wise, should be able to jump defensively. But IMHO, corvettes are already balanced. TEC corvettes comparatively suck.

I did a little experiment days ago: in the same task (attacking a neutral planet) with the same micro, the same number of TEC corvettes lost 11 and took more time while advent corvettes lost 5 and took less time to execute. Infact corvette spams are less effective with TEC already.

I'd like to see corvettes with no jump capability but have a carrier type craft that could spawn them in a hostile gravity well during assaults.  It would keep players from launching 500 corvette invasion forces and reduce lag in doing so.  It also would still allow complete freedom to defend your systems with corvettes.

If we could get a mine layer to drop corvettes like mines that would be perfect.