nerf SB. longer cooldown = gg i used to remember when people would laugh at me for being vasari. and now theyre numerous. it makes me sad.

Carefull whey you ask "what should be done about it"... it tends to invite Volt_Cruelerz to suggust some crazy "fix".

I would suggust, perhaps, an increase in duration and cooldown time, (and an approprite increase in antimatter cost so that the antimatter per bomber/second is unchanged) so that it takes longer for all the squads to spawn, and you have more time to knock them out of the sky before they self-detonate.  30% increase in antimatter cost, duration and cool down doesnt seem to hard of a nurf. (hey, and you get to keep your bombers 30% longer)

Also, scramble bombers should not work in plasma.

I also feel that jam weapons got a slightly harder nerf than needed last patch.... but not by much.

Magnatize (on the donov) could target a few more strike craft to make it worth it... seriosly... its a anti-strike craft ablitiy, and it cant stop more than, what, 9/13/15 strike craft? or is that the duration? idk, its pathetic.  seriously, 2 donovs with shield restore and magnatize should make a vasari player with nothing but carriers be like... "oops"

The worst thing about scramble bombers, and vasari bomber spam in general, is that they have soooo many hitpoints! (and phase missles) quite simply, the repair cloud can bring a bomber at 1 hp, right back up to full in seconds... so even if you have flackburst or telepush... they just plain wont die.  (not to mention, because they have the most hitpoints, flackburst and telepush are the least effective against vasari strikecraft/bombers)  it takes a shitton of flack/fighters to break 20/25/30 hp/second on every single target in the sky.  seriously... if you cant instapop it... as long as repair cloud is covering it, it wont die.  No other faction can heal thier strike craft... and definatly not to such an amazing extent.

idk. and, I really am not sure how much of a nerf the vasari need... I mean, currently they are the most used race... because of... one carrier cap? I mean, that and illum nerfing is mostly what caused the switch.

 Its just that people like things that can pop capital ships fast... and the two things that do that are LRMS and bombers. hence, players spam lrms and bombers.  I mean, lrms are supposed to counter lfs... bombers, HCs... but even if there are not a single LF or HC on the other side... people still build these because these kill cap ships.

Seriously, people hate capital ships.  I mean, If you were to watch two ai battle, you will notice that the capital ships slug it out with the cap ships, and the fleets slug it out with the fleets. (hey, capital ships get the best multipliers agaisnt capital ships out of everything)... and thats imho the way the devs intended it...  cap ships battle cap ships, fleets battle fleets... and thats not what the players are doing.... but there is really no way to fix that.

well, if you slowed down lrms to 450 (they are not supposed to be speedy-chase-after-cap-and-pop)... or reduce their modifier from 75% to say 66%, it would help a little... cant really fix bombers without making them useless... since they are kinda supposed to kill caps... but the same, for 75% to 66% might be nice. Not big nerfs, just enough to make players be a little slower to spam lrms and bombers, instead of say, what are supposed to kill caps... heave cruisers and other cap ships.

Which can be a fun discussion in and of itself.

I've actually been thinking on this subject, and my current leaning is actually the opposite: shorten the duration (I could go either way on cooldown, though).

The problem with the old scramble bombers was that they got shredded as fast as they could deploy, so duration or theoretical maximum number of squads never was really an issue.  It just didn't happened.  However, there was a tipping point that was crossed in the 1.19 patch, and the deployment rate overall became fast enough that a reasonable number of fighters couldn't suppress the bombers, so instead of staying at a roughly static number, they built up towards those theoretical maximums.

I think that if we just tinker around with the deployment rate, we'll end up ping-ponging between 1.19 ridiculousness and 1.18 mediocrity.  Either the fighters can suppress them and prevent them from reaching those massive swarms, or they can't and the bombers dominate.  I believe what we need is a Skirantra that can scramble fast enough that its bombers aren't just fighter fodder, but the duration of the bombers (if they do survive) is such that they won't build up these obscene swarms.

Therefore, I think that the duration should be the target of the nerf here.

When did jam weapons take a nerf?  I don't see it in the patch notes...

Magnetize is a bit of a weird ability.   The biggest difference between it and other anti-strike craft abilities is that it affects a set number of targets, whereas flak burst and the others are uncapped.  As far as I'm concerned, this makes it largely worthless for dealing with appreciable numbers of SC and it's primarily a disabling skill.

Unfortunately, we can't make it scale without cap, since this could turn it into a late game nuke (it's automatic death to strike craft, plus it deals damage to its target for each strike craft killed).  Short of complete rework, I have no freakin clue how to balance this ability for both early and late game play.  That said, it certainly could take some substantial buffing and it would still be completely reasonable in the early game.

I'm kinda iffy on this one.  The total hit points in the squad itself is the same as Advent or TEC bombers.  This certainly makes them more resistent to flak burst, but against fighters and flaks they're about the same as everyone else.  And as far as repair cloud goes, a Skirantra doesn't have the antimatter to spam both its abilities.  It's going to run dry (very quickly) if it does this.  It's certainly a Vasari advantage, but it's a bit more subtle.

It's pretty easy to thin out a conventional carrier bomber swarm with fighters.  Carriers will run out of antimatter if they keep replacing units.  It's the capital ships that keep the production line going that are the problem, and the Skirantra with scramble bombers is really the king of that production speed.  Carriers with fighters basically can't compete, because they do get shredded and worn down by flaks in a battle of attrition. 

I think part of the solution will be giving us a better answer to defeat carrier capital ships in general.  Because it's not just the Skirantra, the Halcyon and Sova are also dominating right now.  The Skirantra is just the worst offender of the group.  I think part of the solution is buffing the other capital ships so they also are suitably dangerous, and possibly buffing carrier cruisers to better compete with the capital variety.

Actually I blame the scout nerf more than anything for Advent's fall from grace.  It was entirely possible to play 1.181 Advent with a destra-based fleet and crush Vasari and TEC in the late game, but you needed the seeker to bring you through the early and mid-game if you weren't going with the bugged illuminator.  Its nerf is what really crippled Advent, IMO, more than any other faction.  TEC and Vasari can throw LRF at each other till the cows come home, both their scouts are equally gimped, but Advent can't match with illuminators because they come out too late and are no longer masters of the shoot-out.

oh yer since im new (ive been playing for a month) whats karma just curios

scm

DS is a great and epic mod... (games 5 or 9 pm est every sat/sun!) but it is not balanced.  course no one plays it competitivly, so no one really cares that much.

60% shield bypass is not balanced... 94% shield mitigation is not balanced.  being able to build lv 6 marzas is not balanced... but everything is so unbalanced that it all preety much works out in the end.

this game is preety darn close... its just, not quite. sweeping balanced changes are not required... only slight tweeks. (except, to like, GRG... that sucks balls)

Actually, The Strategy is spam bombers in general. Which leads to who has the most carriers game. IMHO, lame.

The issue with bombers is that, like LRF, they pack a lot more punch than the game's other units.  Light frigates, heavies, flaks, fighters, even capital ships pale in comparison to the sheer muscle exerted by LRF and bombers.  This isn't helped by the fact that bombers have unmatched mobility and LRF unmatched range.  This allows them to very easily pick off specific targets with that massive firepower.

This is a game where the only real defense is the ability to project enough damage to threaten the enemy, and that really makes bombers and LRF very powerful.  While bombers lack staying power due to their fragility, this doesn't soften the first few bombing strafes at all, and with capital carriers you can actually start pumping bombers again once fighters are suppressed because flaks won't cut it on their own in any reasonable numbers.

I'm sitting out multiplayer right now (I have been for the past few months, though mostly for personal reasons), but hopefully the next patch will improve matters.

The problem with that is that it changes strategy into a crap shoot.  Strategy doesn't enter into the matter if you can't make reliable predictions.

Instead, the goal should be to aim for that sweet spot of balance where no one approach is overpowering and a variety of paths are viable.  It doesn't need to be perfect, and I do believe that's possible.  Sins 1.181 was actually very close, illum bug notwithstanding.  Fix the illum bug and 1.041 Sins Entrenchment was probably one of the best balanced RTS games ever made.  Sure, carrier caps were on the strong side and the TEC faction was a little lackluster, but it was well into the sweet spot.

there are numerous balance mods out there... i think darvin3 made one once... but the problem is, mods are not helpfull for multiplayer.  I mean... it takes a sticky thread and recruiting to get a decent sized game of Distant Stars going at schedualed times... trying to get people to play a balance mod... would just be almost impossible.  just like Dirty's maps, just not everyone has them, or cares to get them.

Thats like saying why make a mod at all. This game thrives in single player.

Distant Stars is a bad example because its a total conversion. Lots of people like vanilla or you can easily stack the balancing mod on top of another mod if it uses stock ships.

This is one project I would do myself but don't have near the knowledge of Darvin3.

Sorry I have not tried it YET. A bad assumption upon what I have read.

A probability of failure is not a good excuse. If I were to start a mod, I would build off of the Optimization Project and incorporate the balancing files and work from there. Or keep them stackable separate so people can decide what they want on there own.

Thanks for the good points. I realize this would be a simple mod but as I stated before, I do not have the knowledge of whats overpowered or underpowered. I like Darvin's suggestions and if it could be expanded to show actual numbers for modding would be great.