A rather unconventional Approach to balancing Titan AoE

from Sins Forums

There's been a lot of talk recently on how overly titan-focused the game is, in large part due to Titan AoE damage marginalizing pretty much all non-carrier frigates late game.  Even in diplomacy before the rise of titans, most of the early game frigates lost usefulness by late game for less pronounced but similar issues.

Now a series of rather interesting thoughts came to me a little bit ago, going something like this:

 

Point 1:  AoE is out of hand

Point 2: AoE is *mostly* a late game concern

Point 3: Most ability damage dealt to frigates is AoE damage

Point 4: following from points 2 & 3 resistance to ability damage on frigates would have minimal effect on the early game

Point 5:  Since AoE damage is pretty much exclusively ability damage, resistance to ability damage could be used to address late game AoE issues

point 6: Following from points 4 & 5 & 3 Resistance to ability damage could be used to allow other frigates besides carriers maintain their usefulness late game without havign a major impact on the early game

 

Ok so that was a bit of an odd way to present my argument, but the idea is fairly simple: At present the damage table entries for ability damage is pretty much 100% across the board to all armor types except capitalships & titans for which it is 75%.

What if we for example the ability damage type were changed so that for example it did 65% to light armor, 50% damage to medium armor, 85% to very heavy armor  and still did 100% damage to very light & heavy armor?

Suddenly Light frigates(the counter to carrier frigates I'd like to note) & heavy cruisers would be just as resilient to AoE as Carriers, improving their staying power into the late game.

 

 

Now I'm sure many think this sounds kind of unorthodox and roundabout, but think of it this way: The only other real way to moderate AoE is to address each powerful AoE individually.  This way in one fel swoop we can make whole classes of ships nolonger obsoleted by titan AoE.

 

 

Pretty much the only real collateral damage are the couple instances of Early game AoE damage.  Well I suppose there's also something to be said for this making abilities more counter intuitive.

Well that's the theory in anycase.  To be completely honest I'm not even 100% convinced myself, but I thought it could make for some interesting discussion on the forums if I posted it so what the hey?  :D

 

Don't suppose any of our resident modders have experimented with anything like this in the past?

 

 

 

14,432 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Sounds good, but I would also recommend implementing an AoE cap, something that would limit the maximum damage you can do with one ability. This would make AoE less OP and more balanced.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Never knew that this was even possible with the game engine, let alone that it was already implemented for cap ships.

Very interesting.

EDIT: If this is applied on every ability equally, then it won't work all that well. If applied differently on different abilities, than it can, but then it wouldn't really be any different to directly nerfing some abilities anyway.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I think this is a rather poor way of balancing around the "problem", rather than addressing the cause of it. Basically you are proposing to globally nerf all ability damage just because a few are rather problematic. Its not just AoE damage that will be affected. Gauss Rail gun and others will all be weakened because of this, and these abilities should be buffed if anything. In other words, I think directly nerfing titan AoE damage would be a much better if this was really needed.

Second, I'd argue that any reasonable amount of a damage nerf you would give them won't address the issue. Titans will still keep all of their experience, meaning every time you lose even one frigate you've made the enemy titan stronger (or closer to getting stronger). And the AoE will still target an unlimited number of frigates, meaning potentially unlimited total damage no matter how strong you make the nerf. Other unlimited damage AoEs either can be interrupted (Missile Barrage), require you to lose a ship (Demolition teams), or deal rather trivial damage (radiation bomb). The lack of any counter, combined with the fact that bringing more frigates into a fight increase these ability's total damage output, is what makes these abilities so powerful. After a certain threshold, the exact damage they'll do becomes rather less important.

I should also point out your change will not affect one of the most damaging AoE abilities, the Maw, since this ability instantly kills the target, not damages them some arbitrary amount. That said it can be interrupted, so I suppose there is a counter for it if you happen have a titan interrupt prepared.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Leave them alone, they are not the problem, they are working as intended! 

 

If you're losing to a titan, you're doing something wrong, it's a whole overall aspect that you should be looking at, did you give them too much time? 

No expanding enough, thus resource behind? i dunno..

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
there is a counter for it if you happen have a titan interrupt prepared.
End of GoaFan77's quote

There's a titan interrupt??

Here are my thoughts on this...

First, I think you have the values somewhat backwards...my general philosophy would be that smaller ships take less damage...thus, abilities would affect corvettes (very light) the least, LRFs and LFs moderately (light and medium), support/flak/carriers a fair amount (heavy), HCs quite a bit (very heavy), and caps/titans the most....

There are some flaws, mainly that carriers and flak have the same armor type but vastly different HP, but overall that makes corvettes, LFs, and LRFs no longer titan food as bad as they are now...

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
Second, I'd argue that any reasonable amount of a damage nerf you would give them won't address the issue.
End of GoaFan77's quote

I do believe this idea has potential...consider an ability like scattershot...let's just say that at an arbitrary level, scattershot (or a similar titan AoE) must be used 3 times to kill HCs, but can wipe corvettes in 1 shot...that is a huge discrepancy that makes corvettes pretty much worthless...one could change the damage tables such that both ships could survive 3 shots, and thus corvettes no longer are obsolete...

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
Its not just AoE damage that will be affected. Gauss Rail gun and others will all be weakened because of this, and these abilities should be buffed if anything.
End of GoaFan77's quote

To be honest, I don't think that's relevant...you aren't using abilities like GRG on frigates, you are using them on things like caps, titans, and structures...frigates are mainly going to be hit with AoEs, and the only common exception I can think of is trying to snipe out or interrupt guardians (and if it's an interrupt then it doesn't matter)...

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
I should also point out your change will not affect one of the most damaging AoE abilities, the Maw, since this ability instantly kills the target, not damages them some arbitrary amount.
End of GoaFan77's quote

No it won't, but that doesn't mean the damage tables couldn't be used to deal with the other abilities...the maw may need unique treatment but that is indepenent of the viability of the damage tables fixing other AoEs...

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 6
*snip*
End of Seleuceia's quote

And here I thought you kept your trolling relegated to the modding section.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Honestly even just implementing this idea for even Light frigates alone would make a huge difference IMO.  If light frigates had any reasonable amount of survivability late game we'd have a small but fully functional set of Frigate counters in the late game:

 

LF>carriers(fielding bombers)>HC>LF...... and so on 

perhaps dropping LF damage taken from abilities to 50% or so should make them plenty resilient to AoE

In this fashion even without a broad suite of changes, just changing one ability damage entry could create actual strategic variety in late game frigate use.

 And it's not like many non-AoE abilities even get used on LF anyway.  Not to mention LF have fallen off hard late game pretty much since Vanilla- this would give them a long needed additional late game role(AoE resilient) which would have minimal impact on their early game(where AoE is less prevailent).

 

 

With the 1.04 changes it seems like corvettes are going to start getting remove from some AoE target filters, so they may see more late game play that way.  

Unfortunately though It will be difficult to build a cycle of counters involving corvettes as their prim counter, the Flak shares an armor type with Carriers and thus can't be improved by increasing resistance to AoE via damage tables.

 

 

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Good post bilun!

I for one think that your idea is quite good and I couldn't see why the developers wouldn't be interested in going for it.  It allows them to retain easy control with only adjusting a few values. 

This is a huge "feel factor" of the game.  In this manner the developers can control how the titans progress and the endgame feel for each faction.  Heck, they could even design research around this later, if they ever want to go the route of titan/capital ability improvements via research.

Considering the "feel factor" is critical to player enjoyment long term, they could even adjust the AoE's for each faction to give a different feel to the titan AoE's.  This would help add a bit of depth to AoE usage, yet I wonder if it would be adding much unneeded complexity.  Considering some AoE's would be stronger against certain types of ships then others, this change to gameplay might actually limit endgame fleet composition standards and decrease paths to victory vs. a certain faction.  I quite like where the game in this aspect is at this point, it feels a lot more free form then it did in diplomacy. 

I would just request that the developers develop the vasari AoE's first, TEC second, and advent last so that the advent have the best chance for being overpowered because of less testing.

Ya scratch that last sentence bit, that was just for my nemesis ooloo, who thinks i'm a raging pro advent fanatic.  :)

 

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting sareth01, reply 9
I would just request that the developers develop the vasari AoE's first, TEC second, and advent last so that the advent have the best chance for being overpowered because of less testing.
End of sareth01's quote

Lol +1