Capital Ships NEED major rework: here is proposal. (Updated 3/23/09 again)

kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

Capital Ships NEED major rework: here is proposal. (Updated 3/23/09 again)

Devs and others PLEASE read this.

News (3/23) : I am working on evaulation mod now. I am working on TEC side.

Now it is done. Download

The changes made in this evaulation mod are a bit different from the ones posts here, due to either my lacking skill on modding and/or limitations on engine/hard wired settings.

Now you can download this.

To people who play singleplayer only : PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT OR POST ANYTHING HERE. This is dedicated to real-life multiplayer.

This thread is for major rework on capital ships' abilities.

There are many threads about capitals in this forum. While we may have different opinions on each individual ships (other than some must-have ones), I found there are some concurrent consensus capital ships ; most of time, they suck.

Yes, they suck, period.

OK, need more explanation? They suck horribly.

Still need extra explnation? Other than a few must-have caps, they suck horribly.

MOAR explanation? Other than a few must-have caps, they suck horribly because many of abilities are useless or become obsolate in late game because they don't scale well.

I don't know about what other's feelings, but I am getting tired of the fact that people are forced to choose specific caps in order to stay alive in multiplayer.

Why Vasari player must choose that space egg?

Why Advent player must choose that mothetship?

Why TEC player must choose that siege ship?

What about other ships?

Do you EVER see a Sova carrier unless you play 1vs1 game where your home and opponent home is just one phase line away?

Do you EVER see Marauder? I played more than 200+ games now, and I saw only FIVE cases people actually use them.

Or what about Advent battlecruisers; they actually had more chance to be shown in 1.05 than in 1.1.

Wait, there's more! Some caps are just plain better than others!

Both Mazda and Vulkoras do same things, yet in performace they are vastly different.

Advent gets massive boost with its superior colony cap and synegy, while Vasari's follows close and TEC's being just underwhelming.

Oh, by the way, some capitals need extensive micro to be make useful.

Look at Dunov. People who are used to enjoy usual low-micro-environment SOASE will find themselves in trouble to use this rectangle ship properly.

You need to look AM of TEC ships in general, or AM will run out pretty fast.

You need to memorize which ability requires front-facing or not. Else you will have trouble that Dunov needs to face the enemy front in order to fire Magnetize and EMP charge.

These micro requirements are unnecessary and opposite of what this game is aiming for.

My suggestions' are:

1.) We NEED better access to high level (5+) capital ships in mid-late games.

2.) ALL capital ships' abilities need to be useful for MOST of times, like ones of teh EGG!, Mazda, etc.

3.) MOST of abilities need to be scale well as the fleet goes bigger, like Mazda's missile barrage.

4.) People should not be penalized at start because they do not choose 'proper' cap, usually colony cap.

5.) At last, MOST of abilities need mininum micro requirement. Avoid manual targeting/micro as much as possible.

Let's take care of 1 and 4 first. In order to accomplish these goals, following changes are necessary.
1> Colony frigate's anti-matter regeneration rate need to be as same as level 1 colony cap. This reduces waiting time caused by colony frigate and allows faster colonization.
2> Rehaul the way research on capital ship level works : make two or three stages of the research that which will increase the basic level of the capital ships. This means the capital ship comes right out of the factory with more than level 1. The research cost would be 1000/200/200-1200/400/200-1500/500/300 For basic level of 3-4-5.

Now 2,3,5, I will go for each ships. First TEC.

Remember the purpose of this changes to make pretty much all of capitals as effective as teh EGG! or Mazda with missile barrage.

Kol:
-Railgun: Not only it has lackruster damage, the AM cost is just too high.
Solution: Keep the damage/cooltime same, but let it ignores shield and its mitigation, like phase missile with 100% chance of bypassing shield and mitigation, and reduces AM cost to 50. At last level, it does 1200 unmitigated damages on nearby targets, as radius of 1800.

-Flak Burst: High AM cost, otherwise it is fine.
Solution: 100AM -> 90AM.

-Adaptive Force shield: So-so ability, but it does not scale well (only affects KOL)
Solution: I think this should be AOE effect that affects nearby ships (radius of 4000/5000/6000), and reduce damage reduction to 10/20/30% Leave the phase blocking values as it is.

-Finest Hour: Very fine ability that needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

Sova:
-Number of strikecrafts: It simply does not have enough in early and not so impactful in late game.
Solution: 4-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1 as level increases. So in total it will have 9 strikecrafts at level 10.

-Missile Battery: Why do we have this?
Solution: Change its armor to "Very Heavy", lasts permanently instead of limited life time. Reduce AM cost to 100. As level increase, decrease the spawn time to 50/40/30sec instead of 50 for all levels. Increase DPS to 20/30/40. Leave other numbers as it is. Limit the number of battery Sova can operate to 2->4->5.

-Embargo: Fine ability that needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Heavy Fighters: Will be fine with increased number of strikecrafts.
Solution: N/A

-Rapid Manufacturing: What a facepalm ability.
Solution: For 90sec (from 45sec), ALL carriers (not just only Sova) in same grev well build strikecraft instantly. Reduce the antimatter cost for building strikecrafts by rate of 100% (1/2 of original) Oh, get rid of that lame 30% production bonus as well.

Akkan:
-Colonize: Good thing that now bonus applies instantly, but bonus on extractors are terribly wrong (since TEC has a cheap research to reduce the cost of extractors!)
Solution: As others suggested, give tax bonus and starts with 1-2-3 free extractor. Also it reduces underdevelopment cost for 60 sec-120 sec-180 sec by 50% for all levels.

-Ion Bolt: Other than AM cost, it is fine.
Solution: 85AM to 65AM.

-Target Uplink: So, why we have accuracy bonus when pretty every weapon does 100% accuracy? Yes ships lose accuracy (not by large margin) when moving but so far I really have not had a battle where every single ship is busily moving around (exception of my dying cap and flak frigates)
Solution: Change to damage buff, and increase the value to 10/14/18%.

-Armistice: fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

Dunov:
-Shield Restore: micro-intensive.
Solution: Fix autocast behaviour to prioritize capitals or always heal capital ships only on autocast.

-EMP Charge: who else knows this is front-shooting one?
Solution: Make this same as shield restore. No need for turning.

-Magnetize: who else knows this is front-shooting one?
Solution: Make this same as shield restore. No need for turning.

-Flux Field: With more powerful basic abilities, Flux Field will be useful.
Solution: N/A

Marza:
-Radiation Bomb: Probably AM reduction is needed.
Solution: reduce AM cost to 70 for all levels.

-Raze Planet: too much AM.
Solution: 70->60->50 AM.

-Incendiary Shells: A little bit low damage.
Solution: 4.5->6->7.5 damage per sec for 15sec.

-Missile barrage: I feel with the fix for support caps, Mazda will be more likely interrupted by disabling ability, making this ability much less useful.
Solution: Make duration shorter (25sec -> 20sec). Keep the total damage (3000) same. So....(bring calculator) it should to 187.5 damage per salvo, total of 16 in 20 sec. This will allow Mazda to do enough damage before it is crippled by various abilities.

....Maybe this change is not really needed?

But remember, this is a channeled ability that has THE LONGEST CASTING TIME. You should counter a lone mazda with support fleet very easily. Mazda with other support capitals are a bit different story, but if you diable mazda first, due to long cooldown time, your fleet will be saved.

NOW Vasari.

Kortul:
-Power surge: it is only good for the ship itself.
Solution: give same effect on nearby ships, radius of 2000-3000-4000. Increase the AM cost to 65->80->100 as level increases.

-Jam weapons: fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Disruptive strike: somewhat fine ability may need slight boost.
Solution: Further increases the chance to 45%

-Violate nanties: Recently I found that they nerf the explosion damage. WTF?
Solution: Bring 2000 explosion damage back.

Skirantra:
-Number of strikecrafts: It simply does not have enough in early and not so impactful in late game.
Solution: 4-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0 as level increases. So in total it will have 8 strikecrafts at level 10.

-Repair cloud: Too much AM cost.
Solution: reduce the AM cost to 80-70-60

-Scramble bombers: again, too much AM cost.
Solution: reduce the AM cost to 60-50-40.

-Microphasing Aura: the radius needs to be increased to be more effective.
Solution: increase the radius to 14000.

-Replicate forces: make the replicated ones remain permanent. If you want to whine, then you should Advent's dominance also not permanent (game description is lying to you!) Actually, dominance is more effective since it can get much more ships and enemy actually loses ship. Even if Dominance is fixed, I think this ability should be permanent one.
Solution: Make permanent and increase the number of created ships to 5.

Teh EGG!:

*Exchange Gravity Warhead and Subversion with Antorak. I mean let's make Antorak truly phase-gravity support ship, shall we?

-Colonization: may need some buff on bonus.
Solution: increase the buildtime reduction 20%-40%-60%.

-Nano: All hail to teh EGG!
Solution: All hail to teh EGG!

-Subversion: fine since now teh EGG! has it!
Solution: All hail to teh EGG!

-Drain planet: All hail to teh EGG!
Solution: All hail to teh EGG!

Antorak:
-Phase Out Hull: Fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Distort Gravity: Reduce the AM cost.
Solution: reduce the AM cost to 50.

-Gravity Warhead: The 'range' (not radius, get a hint) is too short.
Solution: it is more of bug, it should get same range of Nano, but it seems the range and radius in game file is messed up. Fix that and it will be fine.

-Stabilize phase space: very lackruster ability other than certain situation.
Solution: Make this passive ability. Yes I mean it. Make this mobile phase stabilizer.

Vulkoras:
-frontal DPS/range concern: Increase dps value to 28 from 24 (look reference chart, not in game infocard) and increase the range to 6000. This way while it is still slightly weaker than Mazda, but will has slightly more range (Mazda has 5500 unlike all others have basic 5000. Wonder how many people know this...... BTW other than Vulkoras, all Vasari capital's phase missile's range is 5500, why Vulkoras has inferior range is beyond me.)
Solution: see above.

-Phase missile spawn: the problem is that it does not scale and short range, and can we make this as real 'phase missile' please?
Solution: Target 5/15/infinite number of ships. Increase the range to 6000. Give the bypass chance 20%-40%-60%. Keep the damage and AM cost tweaked as 80-110-140 as level increases.

-Deploy Siege Platform: too much AM cost.
Solution: reduce the AM cost to 80 for all levels.

-Assault specialization: actually fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Disintegration: I think it also needs to leech AM as well.
Solution: Make it also sucks 50AM per sec while recharges 35AM per sec for itself during the duration.

Advent:

Radiance:
-Detonate anti-matter: Fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Animosity: I'd say back to infinite targets back to 1.05.
Solution: Targets should be infinite in level 3 of this ability.

-Energy Armour : Again fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Cleansing Brilliance : Slight increase of total damage would be nice.
Solution: Make the duration of this ability to 10 sec, so it will do total of 2500 damage instead of 2000.

Halcyon:
-Number of strikecrafts: It simply does not have enough in early and not so impactful in late game.
Solution: 4-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0 as level increases. So in total it will have 8 strikecrafts at level 10.

-Telekinetic Push: Fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Adept Drone Anima: With increased number of strikecrafts this will be useful as well.
Solution: N/A

-Amplify Energy Aura: Fine ability needs no fix.
Solution: N/A

-Anima Tempest: With the increased number of strikecrafts, the number needs to be go higher (and needs to be more useful as well)
Solution: Create 60 strikecrafts from 30

Mothership:
Most of abilities are fine (I am getting lazy I guess) I will write down ones that need to be buffed and changed.

-Malice: OK, instead of affecting randomly chosen ships within radius, Make this as targetting ability with AOE.
Solution: The max number of targets can be infinite, but make this ability as targetting ability with AOE.... radius of 1000->2000->2500

-Resurrection: Hmmm, this should works for Allies' one as well.
Solution: see above.

Rapture:

Very few (in fact only one person) gives idea on this ship, and myself... I really don't know about this ship.
Leave as blank until more suggestions come (if ever )

Revelation:
-I say Revelation needs a huge beam cannon (one or two). Not only the abilities other than crippling one are rather underwhelming, Advent is only race without dedicated firepower support cap.
Put some beam cannon to make frontal dps of the Revelation to 23 (not as full as Vasari or Mazda since Revelation is more mix of siege/firepower and support.)
This is my sole idea, so feedback/thought on this would be good.
....Probably this is stupid idea...

-Guidance: Make this targetting ability with AOE.
Solution: See above (AOE radius 1000->1500->2000)

-Clairvoyance: The AM cost is still high even on 3rd level.
Solution: Reduce AM as 60->50->40.

Please make comments on my proposals, and give some ideas on Advent ships.

strategy

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I thought that number was broken. After a check of the advent I can tell you that with max research in advent culture mitigation is only 6%

Advent also has another tech in their military tree that offers +4% mitigation to all units, for a total of +10% along with culture.

Anyways, the underlying problem is that no matter how high you push shield mitigation, it always possible to launch that many more strike craft to basically kill the enemy in one strafe. You're not going to solve the problem, just increase the threshold at which it occurs. Advent still has an edge, as you'll need three times as much damage to fell them, but they'll still be vulnerable to the same sort of focus fire.

As I said, I believe a new mechanic is needed. Shield mitigation on its own won't be enough. An example of a possible mitigation is a time-based damage cap. The maximum damage a capital ship can take over a 1 second period would be capped at, say, 300 damage. Anything it takes over that amount would be cancelled out until the next time interval. This would ensure there comes a point at which you actually cannot dedicate more of your fleet towards attacking a capital ship. Clearly this is a dramatic mechanical change to the game, which is why I believe it's expansion pack material and not a balance tweak.

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OH yeah I forgot about that one so 10% it is. Means advent can get max mitigation with a lvl 5 cap a bit to soon for my taste. And yes lost fo strike craft can cause alot fo damage before mitigation kicks in. But the altehrnative is armor points. With to advent down mean much and to TEC and Vasary will give them a huge advanatge over advent. Other possibilaty is A reaserch that increases base HP flat so caps get more hit points.

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It doesn't matter whether its mitigation, armour, or health. You're just going to increase the threshold at which this "sudden death" occurs, and not prevent it outright.

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good post, i could go on for hours about what i agree and disagree with but i wont cuz i dont have sins anymore

all i have to say is advent has the suckyest of the suck when i comes to capitol ships. something really should be done to rapture and revelation because their abilities sound good on paper and have potential but when ever you try and use them they just blow.

please no one freak out and post under me if you like rev or rap because i dont care what you say or how badly you kill AI! play a skilled online game vs [DT] or [_] buy a rav or rap then post under me what happened to you

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and the whole mitigation agrument confuses me... and 300 dmg time intervals!? these are horrible idea. for 1 thats not even how mitigation works, and 2 why make capitol ships invincible!? i like caps how the are i rarely lose my caps its a micro thing. if you lose your cap to focus fire lemme instill some micro techniques before you go nerfing shit.

1 put your cap on hold position facing out of gravity well so i can jump out on a moments notice

2 support ships like hoshikos, guardians, overseers, dunovs, subjigators, motherships, skirantras, subverters, murauders. they all heal / protect your cap or disable / repel attacking ships. vs bombers flak burts and tele push

3 if your caps being chased by a fleet. tons of otpions jump into a system then directly back to trick fleets? use jump inhibitors and repair bays. as vasari if you upg the jump from deeper in a gravitywell tech you can jump in and out of a gravity well at semi-sharp angles much faster then the fleet your cap will completetly escape after 4ish jumps

i think if you experement with ALL the options you have and youll find capitol ships can be microed to a near 100% survival rate with proper judgment and sound micro. and if its very late game and your jumping your cap into a system with 100 bombers and 100 HC and jumpinhibitors spammed then yes maybe you should be on this thread begging for invicible caps because your stupid and you dont know how long to let your cap sit out of combat till its safe again

heres a list of problems with invincible caps you all surely havent considered

0 othership with tier 3 shield regen and anti matter tech will heal more shield faster than 300 dmg interval unless interval is 1 second ;l

1 Kol shield skill plus finest hour!? come on now hes got 120%+ invincibility 24/7 why dont we just heal it when we attack it ;l

2 imagine the raid tactics with a fully upg lvl 6 egg and some overseers!? it can get in bomb and colo your planet and get out before you can kill it, because overseers will heal it far faster than 300HP intervals

3 marzabation... need i say more? the last thing we need it 300 dmg intervals vs missle barrage supported by hoshis with a kol with flak and invinciblness and a dunov restoring invincibleness to 9999%

4 tier 3 shield regen on mothership!? 2 motherships tier 3 shield battleball guardians DIVIDING ALL DAMAGE TO CAPITOL EVENLY AMOUNG ALL SHIPS with 95% shield miti and sujigators healing faster then 300 dmg intervals. nothing will EVER die.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 1

I thought that number was broken. After a check of the advent I can tell you that with max research in advent culture mitigation is only 6%

Advent also has another tech in their military tree that offers +4% mitigation to all units, for a total of +10% along with culture.

Anyways, the underlying problem is that no matter how high you push shield mitigation, it always possible to launch that many more strike craft to basically kill the enemy in one strafe. You're not going to solve the problem, just increase the threshold at which it occurs. Advent still has an edge, as you'll need three times as much damage to fell them, but they'll still be vulnerable to the same sort of focus fire.

As I said, I believe a new mechanic is needed. Shield mitigation on its own won't be enough. An example of a possible mitigation is a time-based damage cap. The maximum damage a capital ship can take over a 1 second period would be capped at, say, 300 damage. Anything it takes over that amount would be cancelled out until the next time interval. This would ensure there comes a point at which you actually cannot dedicate more of your fleet towards attacking a capital ship. Clearly this is a dramatic mechanical change to the game, which is why I believe it's expansion pack material and not a balance tweak.

interesting thoughts. yeah, probably anything in the direction of more shield mitigation would just delay the threshold. but then, would not, at some point, be a moment where focus firing on capships were just a huge waste of firepower that would do more use against other ships?

you see, one problem you have here is: the more powerful you make capships on the offensive, in its abilities, the more incentive you give to get them killed fast. let's take the extreme case and assume that they were just big chunks having no abilities and doing no dmg. no one would care to attack them. so, when complaining about focus firing and their offensive or aoe shortcoming at the same time, remember that the two issues are interconnected.

one idea I had some time ago was a bit like the mechanic you described above. did anyone get info on starcraft II? that protoss unit with the heavy shield? well, how about a heavy shield generator that kicks in a certain dps and bumps up mitigation instantly significantly, but for only a short period. may the shield could even fail completely after the ability had worn off, so there'd be a price to it. dunno, just an idea I'm playing with.

also, that idea I read that the training research should outright start capships off with that lvl doesn't sound too bad. those are not that cheap anyway and they do not affect that many ships. look at the late game starbase boosts, they also affect only about half a dozen to a dozen units or however many SBs you have compared to literally hundreds for some of the other upgrades like health or armour.

lastly, side issue anyways, research cost for capship slots? they're pretty expensive, especially in early periods and with capships not all that popular, why make it even harder to get them by demanding huge resource costs for slots. I don't think I ever researched all 16 slots, because ... well, it was never necessary. by the time you such huge fleet sizes to allow for 16 caps with support, they would die too quickly to even bother and with so much cost involved ...

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After Tyr and Shadowhal post wich the later ut the finger on one thing. Capship slot are way to expensive and so are caps them selves for that matter.

Slot prices should be cut in half.

And for caps i would like to see them go from 3000/400/250 to 2500/300/200 would help alot.

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I won't argue that some of the capital ships don't need some "adjustments".

But this is sounding alot like the same out tired "gamelay is unbalanced" argument you see in other RTS, MMORPGs, or anything with a PvP out there.

If your so unhappy or itching for change, make a mod. What you have suggested isn't outside the realm of probablility.

The devs give the tools to make it happen and SINS has an almost unlimited talent pool of players who make mods.

I suggest you tap some of that and hook up with like-minded people like yourself. You could really get something going if you got enough together.

As for my opinon,

The ships are preety much fine they way they are, they could possibly benefit from some small changes but its sound all around.

Not all the ships can be great, if they were then your whole fleet could end up nothing but caps. Since the caps could bring all the fire power and utility to the table you would only use other ships as cannon fodder.

Not so great imo since when you get large scale, you should probably be focusing more on fleet manuvers vs individual ship performance. Then again thats just my opinon.

It can't be avoided that some stratagies work vs others. The problem you having is more of planned intented gamplay comming across actual game interaction with players. Some stuff just won't work.

Look at WOW's (infamous) Alterac Valley.

When it first came out it had an intended course for the players to follow in order to win. But it didn't happen that way, its been vamped and revamped over and over trying to make it better. But all thats happened is someone polished a turd.

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kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

I am gettins the forge files to see if there is any undocumented changes on capital ships.

Plus : I forgot who claimed that magnitize is not frontal firing.

It is indeed frontal firing, as confirmed in both my game experience and newly released reference file.

'needsToFaceTarget FALSE' setting is not found on both EMP and Maz, while shield restore has it.

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kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

AND ok, I need to clarify my views on capitals ships in current state and write some responses in general.

First of all, I don't say all capital ships suck. I highly suggest you to read carefully (not just reread, not required. Just read 'carefully') what I wrote on the thread.

What we have a problem with capital ships is that some of them are just purely excellent while others are underwhelming.

This immediately leads to the answer to those who think the game is 'fine' 'ok' 'balanced'.

It is not.

Yes, all ships have their uses and can be used on certain situation, BUT it does not indicate that they are 'fine'

That's some serious logical flaw here.

For instance, I see someone saying that certain caps are useful because they can stop Mazda firing missile barrage.

Then my question is "And then?"

See, I have always been saying in both forums and games, that specialized ships are NEVER be useful.

Because once you reach the environment that their abilities are not needed, they become just a waste.

So say you choose Antorak and I choose Mazda, and we both have similar size of armies.

We fought, and in ideal situation, your Antorak successfully blocks my Mazda from firing Missile Barrage.

Great job.

But what's next?

See, other than the instnace chasing phase jumping wounded capitals (and that's actually not that helpful with Distort Gravity due to micro issues) Your Antorak is inefficient in actual combat situation. Maybe it is useful to cripple my production and easiler reinforcement using phase gate, but in the end my Mazda does much more damage.

See, Antorak is wonderful on paper; it is quite versalite ship. It can cripple other caps, do faster phase jump, some planet crippling, and finally being mobile temporary phase gate.

But the problem is that OVERALL effiency from those sounding good abilities is smaller than more popular capital ships, like the egg.

See, only thing the egg lacks is crippling ability (hence risking the whole fleet disappear) but if you could (partially) avoid it using some micro, you are almost guaranteed to kill that annoying Mazda quite easily.

And hey! the egg has some better solution for planets; instead of merely crippling, it can actually do some serious siege damage + extra cash for the player.

The overall effiency between the egg and phase support cap is there.

Now in multiplayer, pretty much everyone WANTS to WIN.

In order to WIN, they must use BEST things, while waste NO MONEY on not so best ones.

The egg is surely the BEST, while Antorak is not so best (funny thing is that bot ships have to be in support role)

The conclusion is almost NO ONE uses Antorak now.

It is same story on the fact that (no 'almost' here) NO ONE uses Sova unless in really tight map.

Antorak was used quite more often because of certain balance situation made Antorak quite useful. Now the element got nerfed, making Antorak also useless as well.

The only solution for this is we either; nerf the egg and the mothership to hell so every capital ships are just so-so, or we buff rest of ships to close the gap between those two good ones and others.

Seems former solution is much less work required, but then we face another problem: the effiency of capital ships in general.

Some says buffing capitals will make other ships less appealing, but that's completely wrong.

IN current state capitals are AT best SUPPORT ships. They are not meant to be damage dealers (yes, not even Mazda) nor damage absorbers.

As I said in my comprehensive guide for this game, they are mages in RPG game.

They are hella weak and only thing they can do is to SUPPORT other ships. And in current state, only way to support other ships is to use abilities.

In current state, IMO, other than the egg, mothership or Mazda (and some more in some specific situation) they are not so useful in terms of cost (this can be argued)

You guys keep forgetting the fact that you need a separate facotry, separate fleet research (and it is tied to normal fleet keep research) and experiences for buying abilities.

They are not 3000/500/250 ships, they are MUCH more expensive. You need to do more research to get more than 1 capital (and it gets insanely expensive) and it does not cover the fact that YOU have to 'train' them (either buying, or put them into intense late battle) to make them useful.

Most of them are not useful until they reach level 6, and some of them are still not useful even at level 10

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i do agree that most capital ships are to weak they should be more powerfull "even in singleplayer... dunno whats the problem there"

only the marza / evacuator stick out above all others (and Advent's progenitor + Halcyon both having 2 powerfull abilities "shield regen , energy aura")

the game remains playable tough, and i do think other things should be looked at that seriously hamper gameplay before changes to capital ships are to be made,

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All I know is that the Marza is way overpowered. I have never been able to move my ships clear of it's missle barrage and always lose my entire fleet to it. I once lost 20 carriers and 40 illums within a 10 sec span to this Marza ability. The Marza was accompanied by some cobalts as well, but far fewer than I had ships. I originally had 3 times the number of ships, (illums, disciples, and carriers), and the Marza alone wiped out my fleet with only 3 ships remaining. Even though all ships I had were focused on the Marza, basically 60+ ship trying to kill one Marza, but that one Marza has an ability to wipe the entire attacking fleet? Absurd.

There is absolutely no ability comparable among Advent ships, and frankly, the Malice thing seems broken to me. It hardly does anything even on a level 9 Progen. Unlike the Marza ability, it seems to work only when damage is actually being taken by the ships affected and otherwise does notthing. Moreover, for several levels Progens are easy to kill, apparently dying to a few cobalts even. Vasari eggs can easily kill a cap like a Progen in 2 or so applications of its nanodissassemble ability.

Given how constrained the Advent econ is, there is never any chance to get the full range of possible counters before the Marza can get to level 6+. Are there any plans to fix that, or at least upgrade an Advent ability to counter it? The reason is the game becomes ridiculously unbalanced when one ship can wipe out an entire fleet, in such a short span of time that it can never be replaced. There are no comparable strategies in the other civs, although at least the Vasari ship can at least attack with its nanodissassemble ability, - Progen can't even do that. The malice thing takes many multiples of time longer than other abilities in other civs to achieve a similar combat result.

All of the antimatter stealing techs also don't work since Advent ships seem to have been slowed down so much, or something is strange with their pathing. I find it a bit ridiculous that a Marza can seemingly move across a gravity well and jump faster than a bunch of disciples. What's with the slow ship speeds for Advent?

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You ever tried using a Radiance or Revelation to disrupt it? Deals with missile barrage just fine. Also, shield regeneration can heal up 500 points of damage across your fleet, giving you more time to work with. It's brutal, but not unstoppable by a longshot.

The Progenitor mothership isn't an offensive capital ship like the Marza or Evacuator. Its shield regeneration and strong colonization skill are what characterize it since the malice nerf. Malice isn't even half-bad in its current state. Not awe inspiring, but not have bad.

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IN current state capitals are AT best SUPPORT ships. They are not meant to be damage dealers (yes, not even Mazda) nor damage absorbers.

That is the whole idea of cap ships!!!

There are not supposed to be damage dealers or meat shields, but I agree that many cap ships need a boost.

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Then maybe you first cap should be a revelation. But honest even with a Progen you can easily counter a marza if you invested you points in sheild restor and got to gardians. 33dmg shared 2 tiers of sheuld upgrade and and 1 progen repping 600HP of sheild should make your ships survive. Because keep in mind the Marza does 3000dmg mitigates. So only 1700-2000 dmg with be abllied onto the targets in the end. And in 600hp from sheild restore that number is lowered to 1100-1400. Voila you TANKED missile barage if you had purchused sheild upgrade fully to tier 2. Add in gardians and tanking it even easier. How ever at that point a smart TEC comander will start targetign your damaged ships to wipe out as many as he can before you can repair them. The same tactic can and should be used at advent with malice plus cleansing briliance.

IN addition tot hat is you could build a fleet that was 3 time superior to his, you coudl have easily invested ina 2nd cap. A revelation or radiance would ahve garantied you victory at equal fleet under the situation you descrive. But that is only if you use your caps right, and that si part of the micro department and directly relevent to your abilaty as a comander.

As for that 2 possible things. Your dicciples are fleeted with slowers ships. So if you give a move order they will only move as fast as the slowest ships. Make them into their own fleet when you need them to be indeepend of your main fleet. 2nd possibilaty is that he had hoshikos with demolition bots. IF even 1 ship get hits with demo bots he will slow down the whole fleet as to the behavior I explained above. The way to counter this since you can't be bothered to search for the ship that have demo bots on them is to break your fleet. After that each ship will move individualy and always at their maximum speed.

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So if you give a move order they will only move as fast as the slowest ships. Make them into their own fleet when you need them to be indeepend of your main fleet. 2nd possibilaty is that he had hoshikos with demolition bots. IF even 1 ship get hits with demo bots he will slow down the whole fleet as to the behavior I explained above. The way to counter this since you can't be bothered to search for the ship that have demo bots on them is to break your fleet.

This is why you should never use fleets in the first place. I find them largely useless, as whatever you gain from fleet cohesion behavior you lose from micromanagement headaches of fleet limitations.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 16

you do know that ships grouped in fleets have VERY MUCH IMPROVED automatic focus firing behavior when compared to non-grouped ships. its so precise in fact that even ships with different ranges and weapon systems will switch targets at the right time so close to zero shots are wasted. the level of clickfest manual micro you'd have to do to replicate this precision of firing is mind-boggling and i doubt anyone could do it for battles involving more than 20 ships.

you should definitely always form fleets just for the focus firing benefits, not to mention the side benefits of ships being smarter about auto-cast AI on support abilities and so on.

for those specific cases where you want a ship to move at a different rate than the slowest member of its fleet there are two different extremely easy solutions. the first is to take off group movement (the green arrows in the command console, group move is 3 arrows, individual move is 1 arrow). the other solution, so fleet orders won't countermand an individual move order is to select whichever ships you want to run outside of the fleet and just temporarily remove them from the fleet.

in the case given, where disciples were moving mysteriously slowly. the solution is just to switch to individual movement (single green arrow) that way even if one of them gets nailed with a Hoshiko bot the rest will keep going.

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Transitive nails it down. Now that that problem is solve back onto topic.

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But this is sounding alot like the same out tired "gamelay is unbalanced" argument you see in other RTS, MMORPGs, or anything with a PvP out there.

If your so unhappy or itching for change, make a mod. What you have suggested isn't outside the realm of probablility.

To people who play singleplayer only : PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT OR POST ANYTHING HERE. This is dedicated to real-life multiplayer.

ON-TOPIC:

I agree that the cap ships simply die too fast in mid and late game to focus fire.

My suggestions would be:

1. reduce the cost of building cap ships so its easier to replace them.

2. add a research that increases the overall hp of capships. something like 10-20% per research so they can get more surivabilty in the later game.

3. to prevent cap ships spam (in general and because of above buffs) increase the cost of the capship limit and/or make the fleet logistcs prequesite for it. so for example to get a second capship you would need to research the first fleet logistics technology.

and for the balancing issue...i think need to to seperate this from the overall tweaking of capships. Since i dont think that every ability has to scale with fleet sizes. they need to stay unique and while scaling abilities will be more powerful late game, non scaling abilities should be more powerful early game or when using multiple capships of the same type. the numbers still could use some balancing tweaks though. (i dont think that anything such radical like permanent replicate forces should be even considerd before someone tested it in a mod)

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Quoting Bodyless,

reply 19

ON-TOPIC:

I agree that the cap ships simply die too fast in mid and late game to focus fire.

My suggestions would be:

1. reduce the cost of building cap ships so its easier to replace them.

i agree in principle but the implementation should be contstructed carefully so as not to upset early game balance. cheaper caps could lead to cap spam in the early game. maybe cost reduction should only kick in after you've already researched a certain number of cap ship slot upgrades (cost reduction beginning at the 3rd or 4th slot maybe?).

2. add a research that increases the overall hp of capships. something like 10-20% per research so they can get more surivabilty in the later game.

disagree. capships already have 3 different ways of gaining overall hp. first is hull research. second is armor research. third is experience levels. my opinion has been that its the third option (XP level) that should be tweaked to correct this survivability issue. if caps were on average slightly higher level than they tend be now they would both last longer and have more impact in combat while they are alive.

not sure i like this solution. first of all, fleet logistics research is already pre-requisite to increasing cap ship slots. its not 1-to-1 (maybe it should be) but you still can't research enough cap ship spots to fill your logistics with 100% cap ships. second of all, i think the slot unlock research costs too much if anything. increasing the cost would just make it even more likely for people to take only their 1 free cap and then scrap the yard and never look back. these costs should be decreased in order to make cap ships a more integral part of gameplay.

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Quoting Cykur,

reply 24

The most useful two ships in the game are definately #1) the Evacuator and #2) the Progen because they are both multipurpose colonizers that have powerful combat uses.

I would agree the Evacuator is good, but besides being a decent colonizer, the Progen is really weak. The "good" combat ability of the Progen, Malice, doesn't work well against the strategic mix of abilities of other civs. The very light hull of the Progen means it is easy to kill, and Malice doesn't seem do anything unless the ships it is affecting are being damaged by some other means. Since typically ships are being killed one at a time (ie. focus fire), Malice is therefore mostly wasted anyway. Malice only shows value when illums are being used, and multiple targets have a possibility of being hit. Even then the usefulness of Malice is debatable since the period of time Malice affects a target is usually less than it takes to kill it, at least that is true in the first half of most games. Later, presumably one would have a larger fleet and make better use of it, but since ships are ordinarily targeted one by one by a player, Malice is fairly inefficient most of the time it is used. And it is catastrophically inefficient compared to other cap ship abilities of other civs.

For example, two or three applications of an Evacuator's nanodissassmble ability and the Progen is dead. The Evacuator doesn't even need support ships to do it. There is nothing on the Progen that can counter that at similar levels of ships. Although in theory one could have a mix of cap ships to compensate for the inherent weakness and counter the overpowered abilities of other civ's cap ships, the Advent econ is so tight, more than one cap ship is effectively impossible to get early enough on most single star maps. Anyone trying that (other than on a multistar map where you might get the time you need) would get quickly over-run and killed if they were playing opposite decent players.

The Marza also easily kills off Advent ships like Progen easily since has an easy to upgrade fleet-killing ability also that is nearly impossible to counter in most combat situations. That one ability alone is overpowered since it can completely cripple the military and economy of an opponent (economy because it could kill a hundred ships within seconds)...basically you could use just that one ship to win the game. Again there is nothing comparable to it that is available to Advent's arsenal in most game situations. Even a level 9 Progen with fully upgraded malice will never ever see the kind of fleet-wiping ability that ships like the Marza has. Since it is easier for TEC to rebuild a fleet, if there was a fleet-killing ability anywhere it should be on Advent since once their fleet is wiped in a span of 10 seconds, they have zero capability to rebuild it in time, except maybe on very large maps, which are not played that often. I would think TEC would be less affected by losing a bunch of cheap ships since they get trade early and have inexpensive ships (relative to their potential income).

The way it is now, Advent is much more challenging a civ to play than TEC or Vasari for the simple reason that it has been given a poor set of abilities. The pathing and speed of the Advent ships seems more clumsy than other ships also, since I have chased Marzas across several gravity wells with disciples and for some reason the Marza moved faster and jumped faster than disciples (andno, the disciples were targeted on the path endpoint of the Marza, not the Marza itself, so they were not getting tied up within the grav well firing instead of jumping. And no, they were not group jumping either, they just seem to hang up on the grav well edge more than the Marza did.)

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i don't think you understand how Malice works.

say 8 ships are affected by a Malice. any damage dealt to any of those ships is collected in a Malice "pool". the damage is collected at a rate of 30% of damage done (so every 100 points of damage dealt to a Malice'd ship adds 30 to the pool). when the duration of the Malice expires (10 seconds) it will then dump the damage collected in the pool on all the ships that were effected by the Malice.

so Malice doesn't get wasted unless you somehow manage to destroy every one of its targets before 10 seconds has elapsed. its not like you're just Malicing exactly one ship, everything hit by the ability is subject to damage propagation both in terms of collecting damage received and getting hit by the pool dump at the end of the ability. it works equally well if you focus fire or spread fire. in fact, its a pretty good way of getting your focus fire target train to deal some extra damage to targets you haven't started firing on yet.

its a great ability if you think of it as an infinitely scalable AoE attack. it does rely on the power of the rest of your fleet so its stronger in the late game than the early game, but its still a very strong ability.

and as a final note, i think most people think of Shield Restore as the "good combat ability" of the mothership. its certainly one of the most important abilities for the advent fleet in the mid-game when you have Iconus Guardians covering you.

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kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

Quoting JuleTron,

reply 14

IN current state capitals are AT best SUPPORT ships. They are not meant to be damage dealers (yes, not even Mazda) nor damage absorbers.

That is the whole idea of cap ships!!!

There are not supposed to be damage dealers or meat shields, but I agree that many cap ships need a boost.

Yes, that's the whole idea of cap ships.

And the problem is they don't do this well.

I don't mean to make them damage dealer or absorber. Capital ships NEED boost on ABILITIES so they can SUPPORT other ships well, as dev had intended to.

Notice there isn't any 'boost hp/armour' or 'boost damage' suggestion on my original thread? (with exception of Vasari Siege ship, which is unbalanced compared to Mazda in dps part)

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kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

By the way 25 seconds channeling ability CANNOT be overpowered. Unless it does 9000 unmitigated damage per sec.

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Actually quite a few of these suggestions looks like they would make cap ships more valuable.. although I did have issues with a few. Top of my list would be the Kol's rail gun and and the AOE buffs for kol and kortal. For the rail gun to be boosted to such a high instant dmg with an area of effect, that would basically one shot most ships as the damage is dealt instantly. Almost like shooting cleansing brilliance....just faster and repeatable with a disregard for the increasing mitigation due to the instant damage. I think just a skill cost decrease would make it powerful enough as is. As for the AOE buffs... I just see all sorts people crying foul there when Assailants start looking like they can use missle swarm or kodiaks start surviving 20 squadrons of bombers strafing them.

For targetting uplink, I wonder if they could turn that into a skill that turns it into small AOE of the Cielo cruisers skill...I think it was called designate target... not sure. That ability is really weak sauce and needs a change.

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