The "serious imbalances" thread » Forum Post by Schod

I didn't play beta so I'm unfamiliar with the old system. how was it set up before retail?

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Well, I just decided to try teching to Dark Armada in a 3v3 game (vs 3 TEC's) and it really is super powerful. Didn't research a single other tech or build a single extra building on my way there. I went from absolute last place with 3 planets getting pounded by my neighbour to taking him out just like that. I then proceeded to amass a fleet twice as large as anyone else and go on a rampage, winning the game with an ally.

It definately helped that two of the three opponents were picking on one of my allies and not attacking me. I think that the best counter to Dark Armada would be early game harassment. So if you're up against Vasari, HARASS! I didn't have a single missile turret the entire game, and lost a planet in the first 20 as a result, but the player couldn't press because my ally attacked him from behind while the other 2 were off hitting the third guy on our team.

As a comparison, I had a maximum of 5 planets that game and the largest fleet as a result of 5 phase stabilizers. One of my allies who was not attacked almost the entire game had a massive trade network, 10 planets, and still couldn't afford a fleet as big. The last opponent in the game hadn't been attacked all game and was also way behind me.

I am not sure what the right way to nerf Dark Armada is yet, and not 100% positive that they need it. To be honest, it's wicked fun to play as, lots of adrenaline as you wonder if you'll last long enough to get them online. I am 100% certain that the best way to counter it is to harass. The last thing they want to do is spend resources on ships or defences, and losing a planet with research buildings is devastating. Right now, if the Vassari player lasts long enough, they WILL win (unless something stupid happens, like their allies leaving).

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the best Ideas I noted in this thread...

moving siege frigates up a tech tier or 2.

That would effectively reduce their threat in the early game, I don't even think it is neccessary personally... but if a change must be made then that is a great one.

We need an extra upkeep upgrade or two... but the system in place is a good one.

The worst thing mentioned here is the idea that 20 siege frigates should die to 2 turrets... thats absurd... no other ship dies that quick... even scouts would last longer!

Frankly take a step back and think... if you were designing planet killing weaponry that cost allot... would you put on paper thin armor? Or would you pay the little extra to have them be able to survive a bit?

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I can't believe anywhere near half the people in this thread are serious.

How many games have you people played online?

The point on superweapons isn't even a valid issue.
For the cost of a novaliths you can make freaking 30 assaliants or lrms, bypass peoples planets and go right to the novaliths, kill them.
They'll die in less than 15 seconds against 30 assaliants or lrms. Go on to the next one. You've just destroyed 25k credits of buildings with 8k credits of ships. durdurdur.

Learn to play before calling things imbalanced, seriously.

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Firstly; asteroid.

So? An asteroid would still have a minimum of 1500 hp, and thus, take over 3 minutes for 4 siege frigates to kill

Secondly; tax income.

Considering you said asteroid above, asteroids really don't generate tax income of any significant amount

Thirdly; how many minutes till the frigates arrive?

Considering it's the beginning of the game, your fleet should only be 0-1 jumps away, besides, spending 600 credits per system for 2 light frigates to stop small siege raids is too expensive?

...most planets are not w/in 2 or 3 minutes jump of major production areas or of a decent sized fleet. oh, and early game I tend not to have 20 or so spare frigates floating around my empire doing absolutely nothing.

What I think you're trying to say is that you think players should not have to bother defending systems at all (2 light frigates per system, less if you scout, or just some turrets), and just have one fleet that defends their entire empire?

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psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

The beta system was a planetary upgrade for fleet points, just like the logistics ones. If I remember right, asteroids had one upgrade worth 40, the other planets were better with volcanic having the best, I think with 280 after full upgrades.

They were then modified by allegiance and you got the rationed value. Rather nice, just really shitty for a small map. Say you had a random small with 10 planets and one guy got a volcanic, the other guy got another roid. You're down a couple hundred fleet points.

I like the upkeep system, but having fleet caps be static and independant of your conquests just bites. A hybrid system using the planet based fleet logistics with a research modifier would allow a smaller empire to catch up at a higher cost.

Schod, eat it, they already die fast. Making them paper machete still wont change them dropping your capital down fast. Unless you like spending ten minutes razing your opponents asteroids, you're going to have to put up with how fast they actually drop a planet, and move on to solutions for preventing them from getting there. A speed nerf will help, nuking them to 1 hull point and shields still wont keep them from killing off a bunch of population in an undefended planetoid. It will make it nearly impossible to actually use them though, since one carrier will be able to assassinate your siege frigates in transit even behind enemy lines.

People saying what's the big deal with losing population. In an asteroid three jumps out from your capital, there is no big deal with it. If you lose half your population on the capital, you're down a few thousand credits in income. When they get those siege frigates back out before your defending fleet kills them, it's a rather one sided loss. Even the ai pulls this tactic off, it's a real no brainer for a person.

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Lets see, siege frigates do 2 dps to planets, so 4 of them would be 8 dps

frigates do far more than 8 dps, but even if thats the case most planets are not w/in 2 or 3 minutes jump of major production areas or of a decent sized fleet. oh, and early game I tend not to have 20 or so spare frigates floating around my empire doing absolutely nothing.

4 siege frigates do 9.2 dps, but I dont see that as far more than 8 dps.

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Well, 4 Vasari sieges would be 9.2, 4 sieges from Advent or Tec would only be 8.0

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I can't believe anywhere near half the people in this thread are serious.

How many games have you people played online?

The point on superweapons isn't even a valid issue.
For the cost of a novaliths you can make freaking 30 assaliants or lrms, bypass peoples planets and go right to the novaliths, kill them.
They'll die in less than 15 seconds against 30 assaliants or lrms. Go on to the next one. You've just destroyed 25k credits of buildings with 8k credits of ships. durdurdur.

Learn to play before calling things imbalanced, seriously.

Isn't the fact you can crush 25k worth of superweapons with 8k of frigates itself a tad bit imbalanced?

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Well, 4 Vasari sieges would be 9.2, 4 sieges from Advent or Tec would only be 8.0

ye I was just giving him the largest plausible number in early game with 4 siege frigates of any race.

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I didn't play beta so I'm unfamiliar with the old system. how was it set up before retail?

The colony rush was very important so you could get a large fleet...
and once you started to lose planets, you lost fleet points and it was hard to come back. Imagine you get caught by suprise, and lose a planet. If you were near your fleet cap, now your in the negative and cannot build any ships. So your next battle, while you lose ships, you cannot make more. The player with more planets always had the advantage.

It just seems to me, games never finished on there own. People just got frustrated and quit because they could not field a fleet.

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oh that is so not true, I've seen plenty of games (at least as many as the situation you described) in which the offensive cost the player too much resource and he was struck down by a counter attack which removed more than he even had a chance of getting in the first place. the game never really entered a rolling-stone situation, and it sure isnt as bad as the "fix" we got for it.

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a broad based discussion topic for imbalances in need of sore fixing. after a week and a half this sort of discussion needs to be opened.
perhaps the most prolific is the one we should start out with

1) siege frigates kill planets too quickly, even in small groups they can annihilate a 3000 health planet before a fleet of ships 2 or 3 jumps away can react. even with the health decrease they can do too much damage too quickly.

I don't think their power is their problem, I think it's their balance in terms of cost vs. damage that is. They do far too much damage for their relative cost so change them to a Cruiser. You don't have to introduce a new model, just simply change their stats, pre-requisites, increase cost and reduce their speed relatively. Also beef up planet defences. Turrets need more DPS and Planet shields need to be stronger. Unless you're lucky and have planets really close you can't possibly defend against any reasonable fleet especially when you got pirates and multiple fleets hitting multiple planets at the same time. I'm not asking for invincible planets but for heaven's sake, being able to last long enough for a defence fleet to travel half a dozen jumps is a must. 20 turrets should be able to deter a single Cap ship. As things stand they have less DPS than an average rebel fleet surrounding Desert or Terran planets.

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20 turrets should be able to deter a single Cap ship. As things stand they have less DPS than an average rebel fleet surrounding Desert or Terran planets.

20 turrets in a cluster can easily kill a level 10 capital ship if it's by itself...

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So what do you think would be better?

leaving my testes where they were, instead of taking them and running around game-developing heaven screaming "YAY!!! you got so OOOOOOOooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnneeeeeddddddddd!"

aka they should have just tweaked the old system, instead of regurgitating this half baked concept...

I'm sorry, I didn't play in beta - what was the old system, and how should it have been tweaked?

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BigbadB: scroll up to reply 56 in this post.

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Just an idea, but what do yall think of having upkeep scaled to the size of your fleet (as in adding more ships raises the percentage of revenue lost to upkeep, making it possible, but detrimental to have huger fleets) and the logistics research would decrease the percent effect the ships would have on how much upkeep needs to be paid?

I've never had to look into this, but currently, once a logistics level is researched, you can't scale down the army to a lower logistic level, thereby costing less to maintain your navy, right? It seems weird to me that if the research is done, an army composed of only 200 logistical points would have the same upkeep as a 1000 (say you were an idiot and lost an entire fleet to the diabolical computer).

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The siege frigates do NOT need to be nerfed.

If you don't build a correct defense, and mass your fleet on the other side of the map, you're practically inviting him to throw in some siege frigates.

a) Hangar stations can build fighters, which are supereffective against small groups of siege frigates.

Even an asteroid can be upgraded with enough tactical slots, and hp, to survive 6-8 siege frigates on its own.

LRM type ships rapes siege frigates, and they are cheaper. Having a few of them a jump away is a cheap counter, and you can cover every planet they are one jump away from.

10 siege frigates costs close to 2 capital ships, or 22 to LRM frigates. Do you want them to be useless just because you don't have a decent defense against them?

I challenge anyone of those who have called for an nerf, to put up a replay where a small raiding party of siege frigates is raping a defended planet. If it isn't defended, then it's your own fault for losing it.

Edit: The argument that you did not have enough resources to build anything is invalid. The research costs are the same for both proper defense, and siege frigates in average for all three races. It also costs alot to build siege ships. Early researched, and produced siege frigates will cost atleast 3000-4000 credits. If he does have that much more credits than you, then you can't blame the siege frigs for losing, but rather your slow expansion and slow resource building.

My issue with the fleet cap is that the upkeep shouldn't be static. Each ship should add a small % of upkeep instead. If you lose a big army after a few fleet cap upgrades, you will still have that same big % on your income. This effectively lessens the chance of a comeback after a big loss.

Agree

About Fleet Cap...

A solid reason why they changed the Fleet Cap from planets to Fleet Research, IMHO, is that the game could be more balanced. I like it this way than the Beta 4 Version. It makes the player think about spending the resources correctly, having accountant like feel (sarcastic). In all honestly I like this version of fleet cap better than the Beta 4 version though.

EDIT The 2 paragraphs I typed didn't help make my case, so I erased them...

Now onto the Super Cannons. They need to be adjusted and a Ship that has similar Power needs to be able to be built (A Incredibly Awesome looking Supership). They both must have a limit, dependent upon the fleet cap, again forcing the player to really think about how he wants to develope his Empire. REason for not based on planets is because that the other fleet caps are based on research.

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I hope to god the devs don't listen to you guys and you ruin the game.

I can't believe anywhere near half the people in this thread are serious.

How many games have you people played online?

The point on superweapons isn't even a valid issue.
For the cost of a novaliths you can make freaking 30 assaliants or lrms, bypass peoples planets and go right to the novaliths, kill them.
They'll die in less than 15 seconds against 30 assaliants or lrms. Go on to the next one. You've just destroyed 25k credits of buildings with 8k credits of ships. durdurdur.

Learn to play before calling things imbalanced, seriously.

Isn't the fact you can crush 25k worth of superweapons with 8k of frigates itself a tad bit imbalanced?

So every unit has to be balanced in "cost/(hull+shields)*dps"? Superweapons are always meant to not be worth their cost in their stats, but instead offer something normal things do not.

Just like cap ships. Generally it's better to have few caps, lots of frigs or cruisers, as the cost per health and dps of the frigs/cruisers is much much more effecient credit wise at least. But caps offer something frigs and cruisers don't, vastly superior abilities.

This game is balanced pretty well.

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1) siege frigates kill planets too quickly, even in small groups they can annihilate a 3000 health planet before a fleet of ships 2 or 3 jumps away can react. even with the health decrease they can do too much damage too quickly.

This is what you wrote in your original post. I find the attitude quite puzzling, because people half the time will read the original post and comment on that. If your subsequent thoughts are so profound, update the original post. I for example, just read the first page.

You should also rename the thread because the original post doesn't really address any serious imbalances. We need far more data before the serious imbalances are found. IMHO the nerf to siege frigates was a knee jerk reaction to the massive amounts of people who just bought the game and didn't know how to counter them. I wish all balance issues would have been held off for atlest a month.

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My issue with the fleet cap is that the upkeep shouldn't be static. Each ship should add a small % of upkeep instead. If you lose a big army after a few fleet cap upgrades, you will still have that same big % on your income. This effectively lessens the chance of a comeback after a big loss.

I like having a fleet cap based on research. Though, I think that developers wanted this game to more tactful game, versus rushing units, to out pace the enemy with ships(AKA Zergfest).

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I hope to god the devs don't listen to you guys and you ruin the game.

I can't believe anywhere near half the people in this thread are serious.

How many games have you people played online?

The point on superweapons isn't even a valid issue.
For the cost of a novaliths you can make freaking 30 assaliants or lrms, bypass peoples planets and go right to the novaliths, kill them.
They'll die in less than 15 seconds against 30 assaliants or lrms. Go on to the next one. You've just destroyed 25k credits of buildings with 8k credits of ships. durdurdur.

Learn to play before calling things imbalanced, seriously.

Isn't the fact you can crush 25k worth of superweapons with 8k of frigates itself a tad bit imbalanced?

So every unit has to be balanced in "cost/(hull+shields)*dps"? Superweapons are always meant to not be worth their cost in their stats, but instead offer something normal things do not.

Just like cap ships. Generally it's better to have few caps, lots of frigs or cruisers, as the cost per health and dps of the frigs/cruisers is much much more effecient credit wise at least. But caps offer something frigs and cruisers don't, vastly superior abilities.

This game is balanced pretty well.

Damn I missed this point Innocity that you made. Good point.

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Just an idea, but what do yall think of having upkeep scaled to the size of your fleet (as in adding more ships raises the percentage of revenue lost to upkeep, making it possible, but detrimental to have huger fleets) and the logistics research would decrease the percent effect the ships would have on how much upkeep needs to be paid?

I've never had to look into this, but currently, once a logistics level is researched, you can't scale down the army to a lower logistic level, thereby costing less to maintain your navy, right? It seems weird to me that if the research is done, an army composed of only 200 logistical points would have the same upkeep as a 1000 (say you were an idiot and lost an entire fleet to the diabolical computer).

The specifically decided NOT to do that because this way lets players overextend themselves. Now, if you want to "rush" early and expand your fleet, if you fail, it hurts you more than it hurts them because you're stuck paying upkeep for all those ships you lost (as it should) rather than hurting them because you disrupted their economy.

Not that early harassing shouldn't be a balanced strategy. Actually, I think a few changes to make harassing more viable would be nice. The point is to make a penalty for overextending. Makes the game more interesting.

Of course, if you're the Vasari, you don't have to worry about that because all your ships are free! I'm surprised no one has responded to my post about that.

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I don’t have any problems with ship vs. ship balance (or at least I haven’t noticed any imbalance.) but I do agree with the point about fleet cap/swarms.

I grow tired of seeing a feet with 60+ LRMS or whatever single ship class. It seems the only time I get a decent, reasonable engagement, is within the first 10-15 minutes, when at the most people will generally have 1-2 cap ships and 5 other lesser ships trying to defend or expand their territory.

I know the idea is to have smaller feet’s such as that on multiple fronts but the reality is I don’t see that being employed.

My only suggestion on that particular matter would be (as many have already pointed out) to have the option of fleet cap depending upon map size/number of planets (not for the individual player.) that way at least it’ll institute a fair game yet expanding will be double edged sword.

(keep in-mind that I only play multiplayer, on average sized maps.)

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I have never been "hit" by 2 or 3 seige frigates... its when 15 of them jump in.
They jump in and proceed to bombard a planet to dust. If I manage to get my fleet in on time (will ONLY happen if they are 1 jump away) they just fly out to the edge of the system and jump out.. my ships can't catch them so often I don't kill a single one.

If I have 3 fighter and 3 bombers squads and some turrets around the planet (out of range for them) then they can still jump out without a single one dying. And if they choose to attack me, they can kill a 6000HP planet before the turrets and fighters kill them, and still haven enough time for most of them to survive and escape. Fighters and bombers are woefully ineffective against them, turrets are the most effective. With 6+ turrets they are shredded... assuming they are in range of the seige frigates that is.

2 turrets shouldn't shred them. I wouldn't want them to be weaker or higher tech then they are now, just make them move slower. Slow enough so that if they are bombing a planet and a fleet of 10 frigates + 3 capitals comes in, that they would CATCH those bombing frigates and actually do some hurt. Instead of them just jumping away unharmed because they all fly at the same speed. That's the most frustrating part, they are uncatchable as they move the same speed as other things... on the other hand it kind make sense for everything to have the same engines... its a "that's life" kind of case...

Planet killers do way more then 2 damage per second to a planet. more like 20.
I enjoy having a few bombers as assistance to my capitals and attack frigates in order to finish off planets one the defenses are down... It seems silly to send them alone, bomb the planet, then leave...

All that being said, there is the concept of choke points. I just played 4 hard computers and the only way to handle this and other tactics was to find convinent choke points and fortify the hell out of them (max out tactical and then build as many structures as allowed... 2 repair platforms with upgraded repair speed, 3/4/6 hanger bays for dead astroid/astroid/planet, and as many turret as I can... about 6 or so... all clustered around the repair bays).
Sure that kind of defense costs MORE then a sizeable fleet. But it requires zero control on your part and the repair platforms do an amazing job of keeping things running... worse case scanerio the bombers destroy the planet, but your fortifications remain and keep on shredding the assulting fleet.

I just had a dead astroid with 2 upgraded repair stations, a planetary shield, 2 hangers, and.. I think it was 11 gauss canons all clustered immidiatly around the astroid (So everything was in range...) its the smallest of all protection fleets. But it was POWERFUL.
4 enemy capital ships (level 1) and about 30 ships were just gnashing their teeth at it (well I did upgrade most military techs)... they popped one of the hangers... by that time 2 capitals died and a bunch of the smaller craft... and it also held for 30 minutes... at that point the enemy was down to half their forces and I was only missing the one hanger.. At which point my fleet finished decimating their 5th planet since the attack started, colonized it, and proceeded to render aid...

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