[Balance] All races/factions are broken

from Sins Forums

Ok, I won't write a treatise on this, but after playing all of the races/factions, I have come to the conclusion that this game needs some serious balancing love.  Unfortunately, I don't think it will be easy, and many of the additional features are going to need some serious manipulation for everything to work.

Why do I say this?  Well it's simple really.  Back with Sins Vanilla, each race seemed to be better at a certain part of the game (i.e., TEC better early game, Advent better mid-game, Vasari better late-game, but could do well early game if the map was neutral rich).  With each expansion, the times that races seemed to have advantages never really changed, but the difference has increased.  With rebellion, the difference is now so pronounced (and even the timing has changed) that selecting a race that is good late-game is suicide. 

What has made the difference worse is that I feel each race now has a very limited path to success.  What I mean by that is that before you could use many different strategies for the same race.  However, now each race/faction seems to have only one or two viable strategies (i.e., Vasari Loyalist must use strip to the core to have a fighting chance, but using it is totally OP), and those strategies all seem to be OP in their own way.

In times past, this game was a counter game (rock, paper, scissors).  This lent itself to balanced fleets with frigates/cruisers/cap ships all rightly proportioned to get the right firepower (or if someone spammed a unit, you would spam the counter).  Now, it seems most fleets are Titan/Cap ship heavy with support from carrier cruisers.  Frigates seem to have gone extinct.  Also, I think it goes without saying that corvettes are just completely and utterly broken at the moment (one of the reasons frigates are non-existent).  They should not be good against everything.

Please discuss your thoughts on this.  I know I didn't go into detail, but I am talking from a macro view of the game as a whole at the 100,000 foot level.  There are plenty of examples, but I want to hear from people if this is their impression as well or if something else is going on.  I want to see this game released being as close to reasonably balanced as possible, which will help ensure a healthy and active ICO.

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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Balance can be broken down into 2 parts: overall balance and balance between factions.

Each faction except for maybe the Vasari Loyalists have at least as many different strategies open to them. For example, the Advent Rebels are in no way more restricted than original Advent and in fact have more options than before. Cap ship heavy fleets and new cap ship openers (Corsev) are now viable so there are more strategies available now, not fewer. Selecting a late-game faction is not suicide, quite the opposite in fact. The Vasari are late-game as are the Advent Rebels.

Frigates are non-viable against the Vasari Rebel's Titan however, they are still a useful late game tool against the TEC Rebel's Titan.

Corvette spam is not completely dominant at the moment because the Vasari ones are not very cost-efficient. Corvettes do too much damage to strikecraft, light frigates and structures. If they had say, a 0.25 damage multiplier against these units, than overall balance would be achieved. Buffs for the Coronata and Vorastra with a nerfed setup time for stripped to the core and nerfed SB phase jumping would put each faction in line with each other.

Balance can be fine tuned by nerfing the Corsev's tanking ability, buffing the Kol's Adaptive Force-Field, Revelation's Guidance, Radiance's Animosity and Antorak's Subversion.

 

 

 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

I do agree some tweaking needs to be done.  I don't know that I would call it "horribly broken" at the moment however.

 

Part of the problem is some of the old standby strats have gone to the wayside a bit, and people are going nuts.  For instance- I for one shed no tears for the LRF spamers getting hosed by vettes.  Cry me a damn river. 

Not that things like that don't need a bit more balance (having scout frigates as a solid vette counter would be absolutely hilarious), but it is not so impossibly far off and broken as some people make it out to be.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

As a whole, I agree with HowThe, game is in really poor shape right now...here are my thoughts:

LRFs and bombers could have been balanced without needing Corvettes...not that pro players care, but mods have actually realized such propositions and yielded good results...point is, Corvettes weren't needed to solve that problem...therefore, I would argue that Corvettes should add something unique instead of being used as an unnecessary mechanism to deal with LRFs...the debuffing ability on Corvettes is that unique asset as it puts them in a perfect position to counter caps and titans uniquely (ie not just really good via the damage tables like ogrovs vs SB)...

Corvettes just don't make for a nice early game...you can theory craft a nice counter system involving LF, LRF, flak, and Corvettes, but when a counter system starts to have too many ships and too many intricacies and hard counters vs. soft counters you just get a mess...

Sins in general has two types of ships: role types and counter types...role types are things like scouts, colony ships, siege frigates, support, etc. that fill a specific role...counter types are things like LF, LRF, fighters, etc. that are specifically meant to counter something...ships can play both parts (for example, one could argue support ships play a role but also counter HCs) but in general they fit in one of those two categories...

When you have a failed counter system (one that is heavily biased towards certain elements) like that of Diplomacy, more elements is not probably the best solution...too many counters, and you get to the point where everyone just builds hodgepodge fleets and throws them at each other...superficially this seems like "fleet diversification" but in reality its just a mindless strategy of having equal amounts of each ship type...I feel the addition of corvettes has brought us to this point: either they are OP, or when "balanced" they basically take the strategy out of fleet composition...this is why I have conistently advocated to make corvettes specifically as a counter against titan/cap heavy fleets and leave it at that...

As for all the new abilities/techs introduced into Rebellion, I see it as a lost cause...how I wish those things were implemented and what the devs are likely to do is so different that I really don't care how they are implemented in vanilla...corvettes though, that's doable and relatively straight forward...

 

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

TEC and Advent scale well against eachother.

 

Vasari steam rololololololol them all.

 

Really, that was nothing new, considering vasari was the best race last 3 releases of sins, but now it is just worse than when vasari used to have free RA, which  they now alos have and then some

 

Devs on crack confirmed.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Yes, the Vas need some tweaking.  Always have been nasty when played skillfully end game, and I'd agree it's a bit overboard at the moment.  But....

 

Where not the forums going ape over the TEC Rebs teching up to the rogue ability and going all mad land grab?  Like "Oh woe is me, the end of the game is nigh!  All is lost!" nuts?  Yeah, you could argue it 'is' that bad at the moment, but not wholly un-fixable.

 

@Howdid- I've never been a particularly big fan of a purist rock/paper/scissor gameplay mechanics.  I thought that is one of the things that Stardock's Galactic Civ's games got wrong, but MOO2 got right.  R/P/S makes for easier balancing, but does not necessarily a rich and intriguing game make.  (Though I guess that's a bit subjective)  MOO2 just screwed the pooch by never going back and attempting to balance some of that stuff out in the long run.