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.
They're already non-factor late game unlike every other unit in the game, furthermore, they eat up a huge fleet supply and cost a lot of resources. I think redefining them might be a bit better by increasing cost, changing armor type and raising speed, decreasing supply cost, and lowering hp. The nerf should come heavily in mitigation and also the armor type allowing balanced fleet or combat fleets to destroy them with ease rather than having specialized fleets for it - ie. armor might change to very light or medium or something. You also need to tell me how many siege frigates we're talking about and the overall map situation. This is a very touchy situation: nerf them more and they're useless throughout all periods of the game.
2) ship solid cap. it absolutely FAILS for large maps, we have numerous tales of indomitable enemy forces coming in droves that far exceed what a decent sized empire can handle. this issue extends beyond even just huge maps, I've seen it take effect in games revolving around 30 or so planets. the big issue: more AI means too big of a force to defend against
Agreed. as for the person who says it should be limited by the map , it really is. You can only produce so many resources to keep a fleet going and to keep the momentum up. Naturally, there is a soft cap that is experienced when playing any map depending on the planets you control. Ironically, there is no way around this and the devs should have kept the original beta formula or at least modified it to make it more effective rather than introducing the fleet logistics thing.
3) swarms, oh the type of swarms, which ones should I list? LRM swarms, fighter/bomber swarms, heavy cruiser swarms, LRL swarms, just-about-anything-with-a-gun swarms etc. some of these need to have a *little* more emphasis on the R/P/S element, or they simply are not defeatable by a more balanced force.
Show ten or twelve replays to demonstrate exactly what you mean and use a fleet with a good mixture of hard-counters/soft-counters and utility ships. I am more than certain that you'll be able to defeat a swarm fleet provided you micro with some degree. That being said, evidence really needs to be brought before everyone's eyes to confirm that case. There are too many variables currently, you need to lay out your scenario more carefully paying attention to details rather than a generalization.
4) PJI oh come now, seriously? 2.5x increase is something to sneaze at.
Agreed, do up it to 5x.
5) super weapons: a little overboard to make them unlimited in range *and* non-unique *and* doing massive ammounts of damage in one strike.
Honestly, there should be a reset or a button that forces people to attack and break a dead lock. All sides should have one (and they do more or less). That being said, since there isn't a ladder, or a standard of play, and the maps are random at times it is hard to say whether or not a nerf would be premature. Furthermore, you have to consider that any subtle change to the things above might change the end/late game as well. Frankly, I would wait and change everything else before I touched this one.
For planetary defenses to be a little more useful, ie buy you more time until defensive fleets can arrive, I think 'orbiting' defensive guns if built near a planet so they could 'move' around in a planet's orbit if built there(really close to planet) would help with being able to focus-fire. Greater range would be nice also, as would entirely different/second tier weapons platforms. Maybe researching this tech could be an 'upgrade' and would upgrade your existing defenses? Or actually since that might not work economically, perhaps introduce an 'upgrade' option to each already built gun/hangar/repair platform?
They are useful, however their cost needs to be decreased especially the hangar bays' tactical cost. The only real improvement is that along with a better rate of fire/range. Failing that, why not instead have the PLANET SHOOT?! Rail guns mounted on the planet's surface might make defense a bit better =p
